After Marx

Marx raised more questions than he, or anyone else, could ever reasonably hope to answer.

Terence Ball (Author), James Farr (Author)

9780521276610, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 June 1984

300 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.44 kg

These twelve original essays are 'after' Marx in several senses. The first and most obvious is the purely chronological sense: They are written one hundred years after Marx's death. The authors are therefore able to see more clearly what Marx did not or could not see and to see more clearly that which he foresaw only dimly. The second sense in which they are after Marx is political: In this century virtually all revolutionaries call themselves Marxists and purport to apply Marx's precepts to political practice. Armed with their different interpretations of a nineteenth-century theory, they have altered - and continue to reshape - the political contours of the twentieth century. Marx raised more questions than he, or anyone else, could ever reasonably hope to answer. To raise anew some of these questions and to approach them in the critical spirit of Marx's own thinking, are the common themes running through and uniting these essays.

Preface
Contributors
Editor's introduction Terence Ball and James Farr
Part I. History and Revolution: 1. Marxism, revolution and rationality William H. Shaw
2. Historical materialism and economic backwardness Jon Elster
3. Producing change: work, technology and power in Marx's theory of history Richard W. Miller
4. Marxism's central puzzle Philippe Van Parijs
5. Marxian functionalism James Noble
Part II. Morals and Politics: 6. Alien politics: a Marxian perspective on citizenship and democracy Paul Thomas
7. Democracy: utopian and scientific C. B. Macpherson
8. Marx's moral realism: eudaimonism and moral progress Alan Gilbert
9. Exploitation, class and property relations John E. Roemer
Part III. Methodology and Criticism: 10. Marx and positivism James Farr
11. Marxian science and positivist politics Terence Ball
12. Marxism as method Terrell Carver
Indexes.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]