Jonathan Sperber

The closer you look at a thinker, the harder it is to say what he thought. The simplifying of Marx, often inspired by those both pro and con, reduces him to class struggle, theory of surplus value, dialectical materialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the falling rate of profit, etc. Sperber's biography goes a good way towards showing that Marx's actual thinking is much more dynamic, more complex, and less consistent.

Sperber's intention is to treat Marx, as the subtitle indicates, as show more a nineteenth century figure, in the context of nineteenth century thought and events. And he does so admirably. He avoids the iconic Marx, created primarily by twentieth century thought and events, allowing us to see Marx as a thinker among thinkers and as a revolutionary among revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries of his own time.

I am not a Marx scholar by any means. I have not studied Marx as closely as other 19th century thinkers (Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche), and I don't have the background in the history of economics to pick up the subtleties of Capital or to criticize Marx's principal contentions there and elsewhere. But Sperber's book does give me the broader context and at least the rudiments of Marx's thinking to put together for myself an historical picture of Marx's intellectual development and something of the development of the culture of revolutionary thinking during the mid-nineteenth century.

Marx never had the leisure to be a "philosopher" in the traditional sense. He never held academic positions. Instead he pieced together a career as a journalist, surprisingly even a popular journalist at times, to help make ends meet for himself, his family, and his causes. He didn't always succeed, and, of course, he famously depended on the support of Engels to remain afloat financially.

But through the journals he founded or contributed to and through mostly unfinished manuscripts of a more theoretical nature, we can see something of the evolution of his thought, sometimes punctuated by issues of personality and struggles within the politics of revolutionary movements. Sperber is particular adamant in his portrayal of Marx as an Hegelian to the end, somewhat contrary to the portrait, encouraged by Engels, of Marx as a positivist economist, constructing theories from hard economic data. Underlying the theories is always the sense of historical development, a rationale, in Hegelian manner, to the progressions that Marx saw in the forms of labor and the organization of production.

The book is also a personal biography. Sperber presents a convincing account of Marx's troubled devotion to his family. In fact, he goes some way toward pointing out the apparent contradiction between the traditional attitudes Marx had toward family, the role of men as fathers and breadwinners, and bourgeois morals and respectability. The personal Marx was inescapably a man of his time.

It's no sanitizing account of Marx as a person, though. Marx could certainly be petty. Sperber follows a running theme of Marx's penchant for attacking those around him, both personally and publicly. Within the circles of revolutionaries, it was if Marx attempted to monopolize what was (and still is) a broad spectrum of what could be called "socialism" and even covered the tracks of his own intellectual development by harshly criticizing those who thought what he once thought but has changed his mind about.

It's hard to write a book about Marx. Everybody already knows who Marx is, or they think they do. For us, Marx is polarizing. Are you pro or con? It's a sucker's question, and a way to close, not open, thinking. Hopefully, Sperber's book will help a little bit to bring discussion of Marx back to the real Marx rather than that iconic Marx of twentieth-century making. show less

Important note for Kindle readers: the links to the book's notes do not work iso if the notes are important to you, do not choose the Kindle edition.

As a non-academic layperson, this book was a bit of a stretch. It is as much a discussion of Hegelianism and positivism as it is a biography, and I felt a bit at sea without a steadfast understanding of these things. Still, Spurber has a firm grasp of his subject and of the attending historical, philosophical and economic factors of the day and show more guides the reader quite capably through Marx's times and his life.

The hardest thing for me to deal with was that Marx seems inherently unlikeable as a person and his political and economic ideas seem driven more by his personal hatred for Prussia, the Czar and his scorn for the Bourgeoisie than by any kind of real concern for the future of humanity. This is a man who expounded on economic theory yet could never manage to pay his own bills. He was a man who extolled the proletariat yet was appalled at the possibility of having to give up his servant and his middle class status. And perhaps, most importantly, as Spurber deftly illustrates, Marx's thinking was imprisoned within his own time and looking back to the French Revolution; he did not have the imagination or the crystal ball to foresee how capitalism would evolve in the 20th century and beyond. To me, his theories seem woefully irrelevant.

As the author admonishes, Marxism as it has been co-opted by its latter-day adherents bears only a fragile resemblance to Marx's own (oft re-formulated) theories. He does seem to attract those who, like him, simply want to tear down and destroy. One wonders if, had the essentially bourgeois Marx had been able to find a job after his college graduation, that we might have spared us the carnage of Stalinist Russia and Maoist China. show less

Brilliant, readable grand summary of these revolutions. It is not the most dramatic book, if drama means leading personages and famous events. But it makes the case (overwhelmingly) that this way of looking at 1848 fails to capture what is really unique: the dramatic expansion of political experience, beyond the tiny minorities that had participated in politics before. Outside of Paris and Vienna, beyond the labor movement, Sperber shows that the mid-century revolutions were more inclusive show more than the French Revolution, even if less "successful," and set a high-water mark for political participation that would not be reached again for fifty years. Particularly strong IMHO on the Habsburg Empire and its periphery, the part that I've really struggled to get (or to care about): Hungry, Romania, Croatia, places like that, and on the issues of religion and nationalism. Great selective bibliography, too. Can't say enough good things about this lucid, sweeping but surprisingly short book. show less

I picked up this textbook after reading Sperber's great short survey of the revolutions of 1848 and am not disappointed. It's clearly organized and vigorously argued, subtle and creative in the many different approaches it takes to the period. Military strategy, comparative politics, economic history, gender relations, you name it, it's in here. Excellent descriptive bibliography, too.