READING
Why Marx is so Underrated
And why I think we need to acknowledge his contributions.
Karl Marx is a rare phenomenon in the history of humanity.
It’s not very often that a person’s ideas are powerful* enough to mobilise people across the entire globe, collapse and build empires and change the course of history.
Maybe for that very reason, he is intimidating to study.
*Given the nature of the topic I feel the need to say that I am not a communist. I don’t think anyone should be either unless you have been living under a rock the past two centuries.
Talking to friends in Germany, Marx’s birth country, I am often surprised about how little people know about his major contributions to Philosophy, Economics, Political Science, Sociology and so many other fields. Especially since these friends usually study one of these disciplines themselves.
Surprisingly they would all know about the ideas of Popper, Habermas, Adorno who are the great thinkers of the past century but were in no way as ground-breaking and original as Marx & Engels*.
*When I say Marx, I often mean a mix of ideas coined by Marx and Engels since they were very closely collaborating in the production of the work we associate with Karl Marx today.
One might say that, there are tons of assumptions and inferences made by Marx that you can easily discredit with today’s knowledge.
But isn’t this also true for Freud, Darwin, Adam Smith or many other great thinkers who we credit for their significant contributions to their respective fields even though some of their ideas are outdated, disproved or outright rejected by now?
That’s why I came to believe that there is a silent censorship, at least in Germany, when it comes to studying Marx.
The censorship is silent in the sense that:
- Nobody is banning his books
- It’s not a criminal act to read or quote him
but
- He is not read in school or university
- His name is associated so strongly with propaganda & politics rather than science & philosophy that voluntarily you refrain from reading him
I guess the moment ideas come alive and become tangible in real life they no longer seem credible*.
(*Which is a phenomenon maybe worth thinking about: what is the value of social science ideas that have never had the chance to be refuted since they weren’t or couldn’t possibly be empirically tested.)
Many associate Marx’s ideas with the Soviet Union, Cold War and the practical meaning of what it means to be a “communist”.
This is also fair since one of Marx’s major contributions to Social Science was understanding the intersection of ideas and action.
But, does the fact that he believed in the idea of revolution and proletarian dictatorship as a solution make his ideas about historical materialism and surplus value less great contributions to philosophy and economics?
Does the fact that his ideas were used by generations of activists in almost a religious, cult-like manner make his account of class history, concepts like base and superstructure less valid in studying Sociology?
If you know a little bit about the history of Germany, it’s easier to understand why people are reluctant to associate themselves with Marx’s ideas let alone reading and learning about them.
But I think it’s a form of disillusionment to deny him the place he deserves in textbooks and Social Sciences/Humanities curricula.
Just as you cannot understand Marx without Hegel, you also cannot understand Critical Theory or Frankfurt School without Marx.
Let’s strip the name “Marx” of the ideology and activism it’s associated with and just read and understand his contributions without having to agree with his “what to do”.
How is it in your country? Do you read Marx at university and in which context?
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