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Karl Marx: His Life and Environment
First published over fifty years ago, Isaiah Berlin's compelling portrait of the father of socialism has long been considered a classic of modern scholarship and the best short account written of Marx's life and thought. It provides a penetrating, lucid, and comprehensive introduction to Marx as theorist of the socialist revolution, illuminating his personality and ideas, and concentrating on those which have historically formed the central core of Marxism as a theory and practice. Berlin goes on to present an account of Marx's life as one of the most influential and incendiary social philosophers of the twentieth century and depicts the social and political atmosphere in which Marx wrote.
This edition includes a new introduction by Alan Ryan which traces the place of Berlin's Marx from its pre-World War II publication to the present, and elucidates why Berlin's portrait, in the midst of voluminous writings about Marx, remains the classic account of the personal and political side of this monumental figure.
This edition includes a new introduction by Alan Ryan which traces the place of Berlin's Marx from its pre-World War II publication to the present, and elucidates why Berlin's portrait, in the midst of voluminous writings about Marx, remains the classic account of the personal and political side of this monumental figure.
228 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1939
About the author
Isaiah Berlin
168 books696 followersSir Isaiah Berlin was a philosopher and historian of ideas, regarded as one of the leading liberal thinkers of the twentieth century. He excelled as an essayist, lecturer and conversationalist; and as a brilliant speaker who delivered, rapidly and spontaneously, richly allusive and coherently structured material, whether for a lecture series at Oxford University or as a broadcaster on the BBC Third Programme, usually without a script. Many of his essays and lectures were later collected in book form.
Born in Riga, now capital of Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire, he was the first person of Jewish descent to be elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. From 1957 to 1967, he was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1963 to 1964. In 1966, he helped to found Wolfson College, Oxford, and became its first President. He was knighted in 1957, and was awarded the Order of Merit in 1971. He was President of the British Academy from 1974 to 1978. He also received the 1979 Jerusalem Prize for his writings on individual freedom. Berlin's work on liberal theory has had a lasting influence.
Berlin is best known for his essay Two Concepts of Liberty, delivered in 1958 as his inaugural lecture as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford. He defined negative liberty as the absence of constraints on, or interference with, agents' possible action. Greater "negative freedom" meant fewer restrictions on possible action. Berlin associated positive liberty with the idea of self-mastery, or the capacity to determine oneself, to be in control of one's destiny. While Berlin granted that both concepts of liberty represent valid human ideals, as a matter of history the positive concept of liberty has proven particularly susceptible to political abuse.
Berlin contended that under the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel (all committed to the positive concept of liberty), European political thinkers often equated liberty with forms of political discipline or constraint. This became politically dangerous when notions of positive liberty were, in the nineteenth century, used to defend nationalism, self-determination and the Communist idea of collective rational control over human destiny. Berlin argued that, following this line of thought, demands for freedom paradoxically become demands for forms of collective control and discipline – those deemed necessary for the "self-mastery" or self-determination of nations, classes, democratic communities, and even humanity as a whole. There is thus an elective affinity, for Berlin, between positive liberty and political totalitarianism.
Conversely, negative liberty represents a different, perhaps safer, understanding of the concept of liberty. Its proponents (such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill) insisted that constraint and discipline were the antithesis of liberty and so were (and are) less prone to confusing liberty and constraint in the manner of the philosophical harbingers of modern totalitarianism. It is this concept of Negative Liberty that Isaiah Berlin supported. It dominated heavily his early chapters in his third lecture.
This negative liberty is central to the claim for toleration due to incommensurability. This concept is mirrored in the work of Joseph Raz.
Berlin's espousal of negative liberty, his hatred of totalitarianism and his experience of Russia in the revolution and through his contact with the poet Anna Akhmatova made him an enemy of the Soviet Union and he was one of the leading public intellectuals in the ideological battle against Communism during the Cold War.
Born in Riga, now capital of Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire, he was the first person of Jewish descent to be elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. From 1957 to 1967, he was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1963 to 1964. In 1966, he helped to found Wolfson College, Oxford, and became its first President. He was knighted in 1957, and was awarded the Order of Merit in 1971. He was President of the British Academy from 1974 to 1978. He also received the 1979 Jerusalem Prize for his writings on individual freedom. Berlin's work on liberal theory has had a lasting influence.
Berlin is best known for his essay Two Concepts of Liberty, delivered in 1958 as his inaugural lecture as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford. He defined negative liberty as the absence of constraints on, or interference with, agents' possible action. Greater "negative freedom" meant fewer restrictions on possible action. Berlin associated positive liberty with the idea of self-mastery, or the capacity to determine oneself, to be in control of one's destiny. While Berlin granted that both concepts of liberty represent valid human ideals, as a matter of history the positive concept of liberty has proven particularly susceptible to political abuse.
Berlin contended that under the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel (all committed to the positive concept of liberty), European political thinkers often equated liberty with forms of political discipline or constraint. This became politically dangerous when notions of positive liberty were, in the nineteenth century, used to defend nationalism, self-determination and the Communist idea of collective rational control over human destiny. Berlin argued that, following this line of thought, demands for freedom paradoxically become demands for forms of collective control and discipline – those deemed necessary for the "self-mastery" or self-determination of nations, classes, democratic communities, and even humanity as a whole. There is thus an elective affinity, for Berlin, between positive liberty and political totalitarianism.
Conversely, negative liberty represents a different, perhaps safer, understanding of the concept of liberty. Its proponents (such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill) insisted that constraint and discipline were the antithesis of liberty and so were (and are) less prone to confusing liberty and constraint in the manner of the philosophical harbingers of modern totalitarianism. It is this concept of Negative Liberty that Isaiah Berlin supported. It dominated heavily his early chapters in his third lecture.
This negative liberty is central to the claim for toleration due to incommensurability. This concept is mirrored in the work of Joseph Raz.
Berlin's espousal of negative liberty, his hatred of totalitarianism and his experience of Russia in the revolution and through his contact with the poet Anna Akhmatova made him an enemy of the Soviet Union and he was one of the leading public intellectuals in the ideological battle against Communism during the Cold War.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 102 reviews
December 6, 2012
This is the first book-length biography of Karl Marx I read. Actually, it is more a book about Marxism than about the individual. Few very personal details are included, but what is discussed is important. The occasion of my reading of it is burned in memory. Except to me, it is not important.
By junior year I was quite the high school radical. A member of Students for a Democratic Society and The Young People's Socialist League, a good student, a volunteer on weekends at the Chicago A.C.L.U., I was an unremovable thorn in the side of the school's conservative administration, a delight to most of my teachers, an associate of the intellectuals of the senior class and an absolute neurotic when it came to females of my own age.
So great was my reputation that I was occasionally invited to political events associated with schools out of the district. On one such occasion, a meeting at a private home in Skokie to organize the Niles Township schools, I met Fern Platt.
Fern was also left-wing, Fern talked to me, Fern even invited me to meet with her a few days after the meeting: one particularly slushy day by Old Orchard, a shopping center near her house, far from mine. Arriving, footsore, chilled and soaked, my shoes ruined, we spent a rather uneventful hour or so looking into stores, maybe buying an ice cream, before I had to trudge home in the darkening afternoon. By now I was obsessed, excited thoughts of her occupying the hours and miles back to Park Ridge. She had said she'd telephone the next day, Sunday.
Sunday, another grey, miserable day with the temperature hovering at the freezing point. I sat upstairs in my brother's room, Isaiah Berlin in hand, waiting for the call. Hours passed. The phone would sound, but not for me. My thoughts struggled to apprehend the progress of the Idea in history against the steady pull of Fern: her visage, her voice, her smell. Hours passed. Hegel was replaced by dialectical materialism. The alluring image of Fern was increasingly disrupted by doubt ("she said Sunday, didn't she?"), fear ("perhaps something horrible has happened!"), dread ("she'll never call--she never intended to call--we'll never meet again!") and despair ("no girl would ever want me").
She didn't call. I finished the book. I never saw her again.
By junior year I was quite the high school radical. A member of Students for a Democratic Society and The Young People's Socialist League, a good student, a volunteer on weekends at the Chicago A.C.L.U., I was an unremovable thorn in the side of the school's conservative administration, a delight to most of my teachers, an associate of the intellectuals of the senior class and an absolute neurotic when it came to females of my own age.
So great was my reputation that I was occasionally invited to political events associated with schools out of the district. On one such occasion, a meeting at a private home in Skokie to organize the Niles Township schools, I met Fern Platt.
Fern was also left-wing, Fern talked to me, Fern even invited me to meet with her a few days after the meeting: one particularly slushy day by Old Orchard, a shopping center near her house, far from mine. Arriving, footsore, chilled and soaked, my shoes ruined, we spent a rather uneventful hour or so looking into stores, maybe buying an ice cream, before I had to trudge home in the darkening afternoon. By now I was obsessed, excited thoughts of her occupying the hours and miles back to Park Ridge. She had said she'd telephone the next day, Sunday.
Sunday, another grey, miserable day with the temperature hovering at the freezing point. I sat upstairs in my brother's room, Isaiah Berlin in hand, waiting for the call. Hours passed. The phone would sound, but not for me. My thoughts struggled to apprehend the progress of the Idea in history against the steady pull of Fern: her visage, her voice, her smell. Hours passed. Hegel was replaced by dialectical materialism. The alluring image of Fern was increasingly disrupted by doubt ("she said Sunday, didn't she?"), fear ("perhaps something horrible has happened!"), dread ("she'll never call--she never intended to call--we'll never meet again!") and despair ("no girl would ever want me").
She didn't call. I finished the book. I never saw her again.
July 19, 2022
La lectura de esta biografía de Karl Marx, a la que en esta nueva edición se ha extirpado su subtítulo original – Su vida y su entorno –, ha reafirmado la percepción que obtuve al leer Pensadores rusos de Isaiah Berlin como un extraordinario historiador de las ideas, que aplica un método crítico por el que se funde con el objeto de estudio y extrae los puntos esenciales para posteriormente reflejarlos en un lenguaje diáfano y riguroso. Como afirma Terrell Carver en el postfacio de la obra, «Berlin sintonizaba temperamentalmente con la complejidad y con la apertura de miras, y (…) esto puede ser una virtud académica y política, especialmente al ocuparse de Marx y el marxismo, puesto que ambos son fenómenos complejos y abiertos a la discusión». El pensador nacido en la actual Letonia, defensor de la complejidad humana y escéptico respecto a los sistemas intelectuales simplificadores del pensamiento, inició su producción literaria con una obra heterodoxa en la que desafiaba las concepciones que por entonces habían establecido firmemente los comentaristas de la obra de Marx.
Karl Marx: His Life and Environment fue publicado en 1939, cinco años después de aceptar un encargo editorial para el que el biógrafo del autor Michael Ignatieff afirma que no estaba preparado y que «no sabía casi nada sobre el tema». Desde luego, la temática se encontraba muy alejada de su campo de investigación, lo que complicaba la elaboración de un libro para el que no contaba con referencias válidas y el acceso a información sobre el filósofo de Tréveris era extraordinariamente limitado. Sin embargo, contra todo pronóstico su genialidad le permitió realizar una biografía que, con leves retoques en las sucesivas ediciones, ha sobrevivido al paso del tiempo como una semblanza desapasionada, fiel a la figura retratada y ajena tanto a los acercamientos hagiográficos como condenatorios que se habían publicado anteriormente y continuarían editándose después. Su opera prima marcaría definitivamente el sentido de su carrera historiográfica, que satisfizo su natural interés por las ideas, teorías y el aspecto revolucionario de las corrientes liberales y nacionalistas del siglo XIX.
La obra pretendía situar a Karl Marx en su contexto intelectual, poniendo especial énfasis en sus influencias, precedentes y figuras paralelas: Hegel, Feuerbach, Saint-Simon, Annenkov, Herzen, Proudhon, Bakunin, etc. Se trataba de una delicada misión, habida cuenta del contexto histórico en el que se enmarcaba su propósito, las establecidas perspectivas tanto de la ortodoxia marxista como de los críticos antimarxistas y los filtros – el engelsiano y los de las respectivas corrientes que se identificaban como sus herederos – por los que las ideas del intelectual judeoalemán habían sido introducidas. No obstante, logró dejar estas perspectivas fuera de su análisis y eludir cualquier tipo de contaminación ideológica que se interpusiera desde el presente, lo que en algunos casos le lleva durante el escrito a dejar preguntas sin responder y permitir al lector la posibilidad de otorgarlas una respuesta.
Desde la introducción a la obra, donde realiza una exposición sucinta pero clarividente de las principales ideas de Marx, estableciendo los elementos esenciales que conformaron su doctrina y señalando los ejes centrales en torno a los que giraban sus análisis, Berlin hace gala de su comprensión profunda de la filosofía marxiana – por evitar el término «marxista», del que famosamente Marx también se apartó – y de sus excepcionales dotes divulgativas. Posteriormente da comienzo el relato sobre el filósofo revolucionario, en el que hilvana las vicisitudes de su compleja existencia con la explicación de su pensamiento, lo que en ocasiones lleva a extensas digresiones, como es el caso del tercer capítulo, en el que realiza un esbozo de los jóvenes hegelianos y la «filosofía del espíritu». Resulta curiosa la ausencia de una terminología habitual cuando se trata el personaje de Karl Marx como «socialismo científico» o «materialismo dialéctico», que se debe al propósito del autor de beber únicamente de las fuentes del momento sin dejarse influir por las interpretaciones posteriores. Para Berlin, el desarrollo de la doctrina de Marx culmina en «una notable combinación de principios fundamentales, simples, con generalización, detalle y realismo» que el autor oxoniense define con precisión, absteniéndose de pronunciarse sobre cuestiones conflictivas y permitiendo al protagonista de su obra expresarse en abundantes citas. Quizá uno de los más importantes aspectos que aporta Berlin es la pléyade de intelectuales precursores y contemporáneos de Marx de los que éste extrajo ideas y principios para incorporarlos a un sistema cerrado del que fue artífice con la inestimable asistencia de su fiel amigo y compañero Friedrich Engels.
Para el biógrafo, Marx buscaba proporcionar una explicación detallada y completa del surgimiento e inminente caída del sistema capitalista. Con este objetivo elaboró una teoría económica completa y una teoría de la historia que establecía la primacía de los factores económicos como elemento determinante del comportamiento de las sociedades. Berlin hace poco hincapié en la teoría del valor-trabajo, a la que parece considerar de poca importancia ya que interpreta que la teoría de la explotación basada en ella «resulta comparativamente poco afectada». Del mismo modo, presta poca atención a las aportaciones de Engels a la muerte del «Moro», así como al impacto de las doctrinas de Marx en los movimientos políticos que se apoyaban en su pensamiento, que se entreven únicamente en algunas sentencias a lo largo de la obra.
Uno de los mitos que yo creía verídicos – y el propio Berlin también, ya que lo incluyó en la primera edición de su obra, aunque corrigió su error unas décadas después – y desmonta esta edición de la biografía era el de la dedicatoria por parte de Marx de la segunda edición del primer volumen del capital a Charles Darwin. Al parecer, aunque quedara profundamente impresionado por los descubrimientos del naturalista inglés, la anécdota es apócrifa y es producto de una mala interpretación de una carta enviada por Darwin al yerno de Marx, Edward Aveling. Berlin subsanaría esta confusión y publicaría en 1978 un artículo en la revista Journal of the History of Ideas titulado «Marx’s Kapital and Darwin».
A lo largo del libro son señaladas distintas paradojas en las que, en opinión del autor, incurrió Marx durante su vida y sus escritos, siendo la más relevante aquella que ocupa el último párrafo de la obra:
Estas frases tocan una tecla sobre la que he reflexionado alguna vez y de la que ignoro si existe literatura al respecto, que es cómo explica la filosofía de la historia marxista el surgimiento y colosal expansión e influencia del propio marxismo. En cualquier caso, la exposición de las ideas de Marx en esta obra es esquemática y su estudio requiere el análisis minucioso de las obras originales, que se encuentran listadas en un anexo bibliográfico realizado por el mismo Terrell Carver. Según asegura el profesor estadounidense, la biografía realizada por Berlin dio comienzo al estudio reflexivo y sistemático de la obra de Marx como «una figura importante e incluso de primer nivel intelectual, más allá de las controversias ahora periclitadas sobre el bolchevismo, la guerra fría, el telón de acero y el muro de Berlín». Desde entonces, la bibliografía publicada sobre Karl Marx ha sido formidable y, en muchos casos, mucho más fundamentada y crítica que este libro de Isaiah Berlin. No obstante, pocos autores podrán igualar las brillantes apreciaciones que destila esta obra y el estilo luminoso y afable que se desprende de sus páginas.
Karl Marx: His Life and Environment fue publicado en 1939, cinco años después de aceptar un encargo editorial para el que el biógrafo del autor Michael Ignatieff afirma que no estaba preparado y que «no sabía casi nada sobre el tema». Desde luego, la temática se encontraba muy alejada de su campo de investigación, lo que complicaba la elaboración de un libro para el que no contaba con referencias válidas y el acceso a información sobre el filósofo de Tréveris era extraordinariamente limitado. Sin embargo, contra todo pronóstico su genialidad le permitió realizar una biografía que, con leves retoques en las sucesivas ediciones, ha sobrevivido al paso del tiempo como una semblanza desapasionada, fiel a la figura retratada y ajena tanto a los acercamientos hagiográficos como condenatorios que se habían publicado anteriormente y continuarían editándose después. Su opera prima marcaría definitivamente el sentido de su carrera historiográfica, que satisfizo su natural interés por las ideas, teorías y el aspecto revolucionario de las corrientes liberales y nacionalistas del siglo XIX.
La obra pretendía situar a Karl Marx en su contexto intelectual, poniendo especial énfasis en sus influencias, precedentes y figuras paralelas: Hegel, Feuerbach, Saint-Simon, Annenkov, Herzen, Proudhon, Bakunin, etc. Se trataba de una delicada misión, habida cuenta del contexto histórico en el que se enmarcaba su propósito, las establecidas perspectivas tanto de la ortodoxia marxista como de los críticos antimarxistas y los filtros – el engelsiano y los de las respectivas corrientes que se identificaban como sus herederos – por los que las ideas del intelectual judeoalemán habían sido introducidas. No obstante, logró dejar estas perspectivas fuera de su análisis y eludir cualquier tipo de contaminación ideológica que se interpusiera desde el presente, lo que en algunos casos le lleva durante el escrito a dejar preguntas sin responder y permitir al lector la posibilidad de otorgarlas una respuesta.
Desde la introducción a la obra, donde realiza una exposición sucinta pero clarividente de las principales ideas de Marx, estableciendo los elementos esenciales que conformaron su doctrina y señalando los ejes centrales en torno a los que giraban sus análisis, Berlin hace gala de su comprensión profunda de la filosofía marxiana – por evitar el término «marxista», del que famosamente Marx también se apartó – y de sus excepcionales dotes divulgativas. Posteriormente da comienzo el relato sobre el filósofo revolucionario, en el que hilvana las vicisitudes de su compleja existencia con la explicación de su pensamiento, lo que en ocasiones lleva a extensas digresiones, como es el caso del tercer capítulo, en el que realiza un esbozo de los jóvenes hegelianos y la «filosofía del espíritu». Resulta curiosa la ausencia de una terminología habitual cuando se trata el personaje de Karl Marx como «socialismo científico» o «materialismo dialéctico», que se debe al propósito del autor de beber únicamente de las fuentes del momento sin dejarse influir por las interpretaciones posteriores. Para Berlin, el desarrollo de la doctrina de Marx culmina en «una notable combinación de principios fundamentales, simples, con generalización, detalle y realismo» que el autor oxoniense define con precisión, absteniéndose de pronunciarse sobre cuestiones conflictivas y permitiendo al protagonista de su obra expresarse en abundantes citas. Quizá uno de los más importantes aspectos que aporta Berlin es la pléyade de intelectuales precursores y contemporáneos de Marx de los que éste extrajo ideas y principios para incorporarlos a un sistema cerrado del que fue artífice con la inestimable asistencia de su fiel amigo y compañero Friedrich Engels.
Para el biógrafo, Marx buscaba proporcionar una explicación detallada y completa del surgimiento e inminente caída del sistema capitalista. Con este objetivo elaboró una teoría económica completa y una teoría de la historia que establecía la primacía de los factores económicos como elemento determinante del comportamiento de las sociedades. Berlin hace poco hincapié en la teoría del valor-trabajo, a la que parece considerar de poca importancia ya que interpreta que la teoría de la explotación basada en ella «resulta comparativamente poco afectada». Del mismo modo, presta poca atención a las aportaciones de Engels a la muerte del «Moro», así como al impacto de las doctrinas de Marx en los movimientos políticos que se apoyaban en su pensamiento, que se entreven únicamente en algunas sentencias a lo largo de la obra.
Uno de los mitos que yo creía verídicos – y el propio Berlin también, ya que lo incluyó en la primera edición de su obra, aunque corrigió su error unas décadas después – y desmonta esta edición de la biografía era el de la dedicatoria por parte de Marx de la segunda edición del primer volumen del capital a Charles Darwin. Al parecer, aunque quedara profundamente impresionado por los descubrimientos del naturalista inglés, la anécdota es apócrifa y es producto de una mala interpretación de una carta enviada por Darwin al yerno de Marx, Edward Aveling. Berlin subsanaría esta confusión y publicaría en 1978 un artículo en la revista Journal of the History of Ideas titulado «Marx’s Kapital and Darwin».
A lo largo del libro son señaladas distintas paradojas en las que, en opinión del autor, incurrió Marx durante su vida y sus escritos, siendo la más relevante aquella que ocupa el último párrafo de la obra:
Marx erigió el sistema para refutar la proposición de que las ideas determinan decisivamente el curso de la historia, pero la misma extensión de su influencia sobre los asuntos humanos debilitó la fuerza de sus tesis. Pues al alterar la opinión hasta entonces dominante de la relación del individuo con su entorno y con sus semejantes, alteró palpablemente esa misma relación; y, en consecuencia, constituye la más poderosa de las fuerzas intelectuales que hoy transforma permanentemente los modos en que los hombres obran y piensan.
Estas frases tocan una tecla sobre la que he reflexionado alguna vez y de la que ignoro si existe literatura al respecto, que es cómo explica la filosofía de la historia marxista el surgimiento y colosal expansión e influencia del propio marxismo. En cualquier caso, la exposición de las ideas de Marx en esta obra es esquemática y su estudio requiere el análisis minucioso de las obras originales, que se encuentran listadas en un anexo bibliográfico realizado por el mismo Terrell Carver. Según asegura el profesor estadounidense, la biografía realizada por Berlin dio comienzo al estudio reflexivo y sistemático de la obra de Marx como «una figura importante e incluso de primer nivel intelectual, más allá de las controversias ahora periclitadas sobre el bolchevismo, la guerra fría, el telón de acero y el muro de Berlín». Desde entonces, la bibliografía publicada sobre Karl Marx ha sido formidable y, en muchos casos, mucho más fundamentada y crítica que este libro de Isaiah Berlin. No obstante, pocos autores podrán igualar las brillantes apreciaciones que destila esta obra y el estilo luminoso y afable que se desprende de sus páginas.
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November 17, 2015هر دوران جدیدی با رهایی طبقه ای آغاز می شود که پیش از آن سرکوب می شده است.
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پرولتاریا از هر چیزی محروم شده است جز انسانیت محض، همین بی چیزی و تهی دستی باعث شده است نماینده همه انسان ها باشد.
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در جنگ ملت ها یا خاندان ها هر کس که پیروز شود کارگران دو طرف همیشه بازنده اند.
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پرولتاریا از هر چیزی محروم شده است جز انسانیت محض، همین بی چیزی و تهی دستی باعث شده است نماینده همه انسان ها باشد.
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در جنگ ملت ها یا خاندان ها هر کس که پیروز شود کارگران دو طرف همیشه بازنده اند.
December 10, 2018
کارل مارکسِ آیزایا برلین مابین روایت زندگی شخصی و اجتماعی مارکس و ضمنا تحلیل زمینه و زمانهی او در نوسان است. برلین این شاهکار را وقتی تنها سی سال داشته منتشر کرده است —که واقعا رشکبرانگیز است— و طبق گفتهاش نیمی از کتاب را به درخواست ناشر در نسخهی نهایی حذف کرده است. کتاب نهایتا به همان سنت «تاریخنگاری اندیشه» متعلق است؛ مؤلف از ریشهها و تأثیرات تاریخ بر اندیشمند مورد بحثش سخن میگوید و اینکار را با نهایت زبردستی انجام میدهد
August 8, 2019
This is the type of fine work that has given Oxford University such an august reputation. I think that it is very much worth reading for someone who has read "Das Kapital" and several other of Marx's major works. Do not read it if you have only read "The Communist Manifesto".
Berlin's stated objective is to show how Marx combined Hegelian philosophy, classical British economics and the works of early theorists of socialism such as Proudhon to produce a corpus of work that was sufficiently comprehensive and systematic to sustain Communism as a dominant political force in the twentieth century.
Berlin is much better writing about Hegel and the pre-Marxian theorists of socialism than about the classical economists such as Ricardo, Say and Adam Smith. This however is quite normal. Very few of Marx's analysts have ever taken the effort to understand the economic thinking of Marx's time and thus never say anything of any substance about Marxian economics.
Berlin represents very well the thinking in British academic circles about Marx on the eve of World War II. In 1939 when his book was published, communism existed only in the USSR many observers thought that it was very unstable and might be eliminated. Ten years later, Communism had spread to China and ten or so additional European countries. Every where it was very solidly implanted. In other words, the world has a much different view about the posterity of Marx than at the time Berlin wrote his book. Berlin's book is still excellent but it no longer represents the current academic debate about Marx.
Berlin's stated objective is to show how Marx combined Hegelian philosophy, classical British economics and the works of early theorists of socialism such as Proudhon to produce a corpus of work that was sufficiently comprehensive and systematic to sustain Communism as a dominant political force in the twentieth century.
Berlin is much better writing about Hegel and the pre-Marxian theorists of socialism than about the classical economists such as Ricardo, Say and Adam Smith. This however is quite normal. Very few of Marx's analysts have ever taken the effort to understand the economic thinking of Marx's time and thus never say anything of any substance about Marxian economics.
Berlin represents very well the thinking in British academic circles about Marx on the eve of World War II. In 1939 when his book was published, communism existed only in the USSR many observers thought that it was very unstable and might be eliminated. Ten years later, Communism had spread to China and ten or so additional European countries. Every where it was very solidly implanted. In other words, the world has a much different view about the posterity of Marx than at the time Berlin wrote his book. Berlin's book is still excellent but it no longer represents the current academic debate about Marx.
Read
August 2, 2016Isaiah Berlin, the sort of broad-ranging thinker that makes me want to give up the intellectual effort entirely, takes on Karl Marx, a bright but impoverished family man living in London.
What I loved about Berlin's analysis was that while personal details were critical to the narrative, Marx's relationship with the ideas that came both before and after him is far more important. We learn no only about Marx, but about Hegel and Engels, Lafargue and Duhring, Saint-Simon and Feuerbach. And what I love most is how nonpartisan Berlin is with his analysis of the man's philosophy. Instead of writing as a fawning Trotskyist or a fuming anticommunist, he is merely writing as someone whose first allegiance is to the intellectual approach, albeit his own pluralistic, skeptical, emphatically liberal-democratic intellectual approach.
What I loved about Berlin's analysis was that while personal details were critical to the narrative, Marx's relationship with the ideas that came both before and after him is far more important. We learn no only about Marx, but about Hegel and Engels, Lafargue and Duhring, Saint-Simon and Feuerbach. And what I love most is how nonpartisan Berlin is with his analysis of the man's philosophy. Instead of writing as a fawning Trotskyist or a fuming anticommunist, he is merely writing as someone whose first allegiance is to the intellectual approach, albeit his own pluralistic, skeptical, emphatically liberal-democratic intellectual approach.
February 2, 2018
خیلی کتاب علی بود ،ان روز های که مارکس در تبعید کشور انگلستان است هرگز فراموشم نمیشود ، در آخر کتاب گاه حس میگردم این من استم بجای مارکس که میمیرم
November 11, 2014
خوب، نوشتههای آیزایا برلین شفاف و روشنه و برای آدمهای آماتوری مثل من یک کلیاتی رو به قابلفهمترین شکل بیان میکنه. با این حال به نظرم میرسه مترجم در قسمتهای فلسفی و عمیقتر کتاب نتونسته به اندازهی کافی شفافیت متن رو حفظ کنه. اما به هر حال محیط و اوضاع و احوالی که مارکس در آن زندگی کرده و به عظمت رسیده رو قشنگ توصیف میکنه. آیزایا برلین این کار رو خیلی بهتر در کتاب رمانتیسیسم انجام میده و ما را قادر به درک یک دورهی تاریخی میکنه که در کشور خودمون چنین دورهای وجود نداشته است.
با خوندن این کتاب به یک سری تناقضاتی در تفکر کارل مارکس مواجه شدم که مطمئن نیستم ناشی از عدم درک درست متن توسط خودمه یا واقعا جای بحث داره. مثلا این که چطور میشه آدم هم معتقد به ناگریزی پیروزی پرولتریا باشه و هم به مبارزهی قهرآمیز و خشن. اگر جامعه هنوز انقدر رشد نکرده باشه و هنوز به آن مرحلهای از تاریخ نرسیده باشه که پرولتاریا بر بورژوازی پیروز بشه، مبارزهی قهرآمیز در آن چه جایی داره؟
با خوندن این کتاب به یک سری تناقضاتی در تفکر کارل مارکس مواجه شدم که مطمئن نیستم ناشی از عدم درک درست متن توسط خودمه یا واقعا جای بحث داره. مثلا این که چطور میشه آدم هم معتقد به ناگریزی پیروزی پرولتریا باشه و هم به مبارزهی قهرآمیز و خشن. اگر جامعه هنوز انقدر رشد نکرده باشه و هنوز به آن مرحلهای از تاریخ نرسیده باشه که پرولتاریا بر بورژوازی پیروز بشه، مبارزهی قهرآمیز در آن چه جایی داره؟
February 18, 2020
"Like Lenin after him, he seemed to have nothing but contempt for those who, during the heat of the battle, while the enemy was gained one position after another, were preoccupied with the state of their own souls"
"Marx's mode of living consisted of daily visits to the British Museum reading room, where he normally remained from 9 in the morning until it closed at 7..."
"Marx's mode of living consisted of daily visits to the British Museum reading room, where he normally remained from 9 in the morning until it closed at 7..."
September 10, 2022
Propagandistic, ideological and plain wrong.
Avoid it.
Avoid it.
April 12, 2019
کتاب زیر عنوان زندگی و محیط داره اما در مجموع با خوندنش اطلاعات خیلی جالبی هم از روند زندگی و هم از تفکرات و ایدههای مارکس به دست میارید.
جایی از کتاب در مورد اثر اصلی کارل مارکس، کتاب سرمایه، میگه که این اثر از روزی که منتشر شده تا الان میلیونها موافق و مخالف دوآتشه داشته که حتی یه خط ازش هم نخونده بودن.
و فکر میکنم شناخت مارکس در ایران به طور کلی به همین صورته. طرفداران و مخالفهایی که در واقع حتی شناخت درستی از ایدهها و زندگی این فرد نابغه که در هر صورت روند درک ما از جهان رو بعد از خودش در تمام زمینهها زیر و رو کرده ندارند. این کتاب میتونه مرجع مناسبی برای آشنایی با مارکس باشه هرچند اگر تجربه خوندن فلسفه سیاسی و آشنایی ابتدایی با تاریخ اروپا ندارید باید در حین خوندن کتاب خیلی سرچ جانبی بکنید تا متوجه تمام اتفاقات کتاب بشید.
جایی از کتاب در مورد اثر اصلی کارل مارکس، کتاب سرمایه، میگه که این اثر از روزی که منتشر شده تا الان میلیونها موافق و مخالف دوآتشه داشته که حتی یه خط ازش هم نخونده بودن.
و فکر میکنم شناخت مارکس در ایران به طور کلی به همین صورته. طرفداران و مخالفهایی که در واقع حتی شناخت درستی از ایدهها و زندگی این فرد نابغه که در هر صورت روند درک ما از جهان رو بعد از خودش در تمام زمینهها زیر و رو کرده ندارند. این کتاب میتونه مرجع مناسبی برای آشنایی با مارکس باشه هرچند اگر تجربه خوندن فلسفه سیاسی و آشنایی ابتدایی با تاریخ اروپا ندارید باید در حین خوندن کتاب خیلی سرچ جانبی بکنید تا متوجه تمام اتفاقات کتاب بشید.
August 4, 2019
Bastante informativo e de acessível leitura, é um relato neutro do ponto de vista ideológico, cumprindo assim as expectativas desta leitora de nele encontrar uma descrição equidistante do biografado e do seu pensamento, sem pender nem para anti-marxismo nem para “hagiografia” -sem se poder, naturalmente, descartar o inafastável pendor subjectivo, ainda que diluído, que qualquer obra contém em si do seu autor.
March 26, 2015
برای رنج و درد روانی یک درمان وجود دارد و آن هم درد و رنج جسمانی است
کارل مارکس
کارل مارکس
February 8, 2021
”As soon as he concluded that the establishment of communism could only be achieved by an armed rising of the proletariat, his entire existence turned into an attempt to organize and discipline it for its task. His personal history which up to this point can be regarded as a series of episodes in the life of an individual, now becomes inseparable from the general history of socialism in Europe. An account of one is necessarily to some degree an account of the other.”
Reputation – 4/5
Isaiah Berlin was an incredible talker. There are videos of his interviews and lectures on YouTube confirming that the orderly and even progress of Berlin’s ideas in spontaneous speech exceeds all but very few of even the best edited and printed books by today’s intellectuals and public philosophers. By the end of his life, Berlin was no longer writing books, but merely dictating them in his nasally baritone. Some, such as the famous “hedgehog and fox,” which were more or less throwaway ideas to Berlin, became to mere mortals fully developed philosophical or artistic treatises.
Berlin was born in Latvia in 1909, spent his childhood in Russia, and saw the 1917 Revolution first-hand. Following the Revolution, his family moved to London and by his mid-twenties he was one of Britain’s foremost intellectuals - no small feat in the age of Russell and Wittgenstein. In 1939, he published his first book: this small biography and intellectual history of Karl Marx. Despite its age and brevity, it is still the most highly esteemed study of Marx in English.
Point – 5/5
Like much of Berlin’s later work, this “biography” of Karl Marx is more of an history of ideas. We do glimpse some of Marx’s personality through his letters and remembrances of him by his contemporaries (particularly of his putrid living conditions), but the main focus of this book is his thought and how it developed. This is perfectly appropriate in a work on Karl Marx. No man since Saint Paul of Tarsus lived his life so completely subservient to an idea. As the above quote makes clear, a life of Marx is inseparable from an understanding of European socialism. An understanding of Marx’s thought is inseparable from an understanding of the main currents of European philosophy in the 19th Century. In short, these were German idealism, French rationalism, and English economics. Marx absolutely mastered all three. Most people who take a shot at explaining Marx today don’t understand a single one.
In order of difficulty to the English intellectual, French rationalism is comprehensible with some study, English economics is practicably understandable in day-to-day life, but rarely theoretically or empirically mastered, and German Idealism is still badly misunderstood and feebly taught even at the graduate level in Anglophone universities.
Given the width and depth of Marx’s own study and intellectual environment, it requires a formidable mind to properly understand his ideas. To clearly explain them has proven to be a practically insurmountable task in English.
Berlin’s contribution is that of a continental intellectual of old-world heritage from a wealthy Jewish family. He spoke and wrote German, French, Russian, and English with perfect fluency. Given his pan-European roots, his linguistic virtuosity, and first-hand experience with Marx’s ideas in action, he is the only intellectual of whom I’m aware that would even have the starting material to write a good book on Marx.
But Berlin had more than the starting material, he had the mind to make it into something comprehensible. His writing style is tidy and proper. Sometimes his clauses seem excessive, but each is packed with meaning, and there is very little flourishing for rhetorical effect. If any complaint can be made of Berlin’s style, it is that he is so thorough that he breezes through aphorisms as if they’re not even worth repeating. Here is a typical example, the underline is mine:
”It [Marx’s system] has altered the history of human thought in the sense that after it certain things could never again be plausibly said. No subject loses, at least in the long run, by becoming a field of battle, and the Marxist emphasis upon the primacy of economic factors in determining human behaviour led directly to an intensified study of economic history, which, although it had not been entirely neglected in the past, did not attain to its present prominent rank, until the rise of Marxism gave an impulse to exact historical scholarship in that sphere – much as in the previous generation Hegelian doctrines acted as a powerful stimulus to historical studies in general.”
This second sentence, through its understanding of the form of ideological debate and its invocation of Hegel, is a better concise explanation of Marx’s impact on the social sciences than can be found in entire articles and books.
Recommendation – 4/5
I would recommend this as the best book on Marx for the Anglophone audience. It is necessarily an outsider’s view – Isaiah Berlin was not a Marxist, but a liberal democrat in the old European sense. As a sort of last testament, he threw blame for nearly all the terrors of the 20th Century on the Counter-Enlightenment thinking that arose in Germany towards the end of the 18th Century. This was the philosophy that would grow into German idealism and influence Marx. The incredible thing about this book is that its author believed so strongly that the Marx's ideas were basically fruit from the tree with the root of all evil, yet he has accurately understood them, and treated them with equanimity and clarity. That is much more than can be said for most books on Marx.
Personal – 5/5
Marx himself is often accused of writing unclearly and stupidly. But I wager if the amount of unclear and stupid writing about Marx were put against his own, the explanatory drivel about him would outweigh Marx’s by at least a factor of a million. This is what Berlin meant when he said that no subject loses by becoming a field of battle. The misinterpretation of Marx in printed books could fill the Atlantic Ocean. So, if I am wrong about Berlin's book, and a true disciple who has understood Marx is able to point out its logical flaws, then at least 300 pages of well-written intellectual history is hardly a drop in such a sea of nonsense.
Reputation – 4/5
Isaiah Berlin was an incredible talker. There are videos of his interviews and lectures on YouTube confirming that the orderly and even progress of Berlin’s ideas in spontaneous speech exceeds all but very few of even the best edited and printed books by today’s intellectuals and public philosophers. By the end of his life, Berlin was no longer writing books, but merely dictating them in his nasally baritone. Some, such as the famous “hedgehog and fox,” which were more or less throwaway ideas to Berlin, became to mere mortals fully developed philosophical or artistic treatises.
Berlin was born in Latvia in 1909, spent his childhood in Russia, and saw the 1917 Revolution first-hand. Following the Revolution, his family moved to London and by his mid-twenties he was one of Britain’s foremost intellectuals - no small feat in the age of Russell and Wittgenstein. In 1939, he published his first book: this small biography and intellectual history of Karl Marx. Despite its age and brevity, it is still the most highly esteemed study of Marx in English.
Point – 5/5
Like much of Berlin’s later work, this “biography” of Karl Marx is more of an history of ideas. We do glimpse some of Marx’s personality through his letters and remembrances of him by his contemporaries (particularly of his putrid living conditions), but the main focus of this book is his thought and how it developed. This is perfectly appropriate in a work on Karl Marx. No man since Saint Paul of Tarsus lived his life so completely subservient to an idea. As the above quote makes clear, a life of Marx is inseparable from an understanding of European socialism. An understanding of Marx’s thought is inseparable from an understanding of the main currents of European philosophy in the 19th Century. In short, these were German idealism, French rationalism, and English economics. Marx absolutely mastered all three. Most people who take a shot at explaining Marx today don’t understand a single one.
In order of difficulty to the English intellectual, French rationalism is comprehensible with some study, English economics is practicably understandable in day-to-day life, but rarely theoretically or empirically mastered, and German Idealism is still badly misunderstood and feebly taught even at the graduate level in Anglophone universities.
Given the width and depth of Marx’s own study and intellectual environment, it requires a formidable mind to properly understand his ideas. To clearly explain them has proven to be a practically insurmountable task in English.
Berlin’s contribution is that of a continental intellectual of old-world heritage from a wealthy Jewish family. He spoke and wrote German, French, Russian, and English with perfect fluency. Given his pan-European roots, his linguistic virtuosity, and first-hand experience with Marx’s ideas in action, he is the only intellectual of whom I’m aware that would even have the starting material to write a good book on Marx.
But Berlin had more than the starting material, he had the mind to make it into something comprehensible. His writing style is tidy and proper. Sometimes his clauses seem excessive, but each is packed with meaning, and there is very little flourishing for rhetorical effect. If any complaint can be made of Berlin’s style, it is that he is so thorough that he breezes through aphorisms as if they’re not even worth repeating. Here is a typical example, the underline is mine:
”It [Marx’s system] has altered the history of human thought in the sense that after it certain things could never again be plausibly said. No subject loses, at least in the long run, by becoming a field of battle, and the Marxist emphasis upon the primacy of economic factors in determining human behaviour led directly to an intensified study of economic history, which, although it had not been entirely neglected in the past, did not attain to its present prominent rank, until the rise of Marxism gave an impulse to exact historical scholarship in that sphere – much as in the previous generation Hegelian doctrines acted as a powerful stimulus to historical studies in general.”
This second sentence, through its understanding of the form of ideological debate and its invocation of Hegel, is a better concise explanation of Marx’s impact on the social sciences than can be found in entire articles and books.
Recommendation – 4/5
I would recommend this as the best book on Marx for the Anglophone audience. It is necessarily an outsider’s view – Isaiah Berlin was not a Marxist, but a liberal democrat in the old European sense. As a sort of last testament, he threw blame for nearly all the terrors of the 20th Century on the Counter-Enlightenment thinking that arose in Germany towards the end of the 18th Century. This was the philosophy that would grow into German idealism and influence Marx. The incredible thing about this book is that its author believed so strongly that the Marx's ideas were basically fruit from the tree with the root of all evil, yet he has accurately understood them, and treated them with equanimity and clarity. That is much more than can be said for most books on Marx.
Personal – 5/5
Marx himself is often accused of writing unclearly and stupidly. But I wager if the amount of unclear and stupid writing about Marx were put against his own, the explanatory drivel about him would outweigh Marx’s by at least a factor of a million. This is what Berlin meant when he said that no subject loses by becoming a field of battle. The misinterpretation of Marx in printed books could fill the Atlantic Ocean. So, if I am wrong about Berlin's book, and a true disciple who has understood Marx is able to point out its logical flaws, then at least 300 pages of well-written intellectual history is hardly a drop in such a sea of nonsense.
Read
November 5, 2020Esta es sin duda una obra fundamental para quien quiera introducirse en la vida y obra de aquel mastodonte de la filosofía, la economía y la política que fue Karl Marx. Sorpende que sea un liberal clásico como Berlin quien fuera capaz de realizar este empeño no solo monumental por su contenido, sino también honesto y riguroso en sus juicios. Es igualmente valiosa la caracterización del contexo histórico e intelectua, que permite hacerse una idea cabal de cuál fue el recorrido que el pensamiento radical y revolucionario hubo de emprender para llegar a lo que hoy conocemos como movimiento obrero. Poco más se puede añadir, aparte de decir que toda persona que se interese por Marx debe pasar por este libro, que por si fuese poco es claro y disfrutable en su rigor.
August 19, 2020
Marx’s age was a pivotal, tumultuous age. A time punctuated with big, bold and dangerous ideas that would inevitably drag the rest of the world kicking and screaming into existence. And so, it takes a lot of courage, not to mention a strong will, to write a biography of Karl Marx, especially if the writer has dared to go through all 40 volumes of his writings and correspondence.
Most of the reviewers of this book that I’ve seen, however, seem to think that since the lack of Marxists in departments of economics, history and philosophy is somehow proof of the inadequacy of Marx’s theories, which left one reviewer to absurdly wonder: “why the rest of us should bother with Marx’s ideas now that the Berlin Wall has fallen.” (Which is the equivalent of wondering, since America has never had a female president, why bother with algebra). And so I feel that the time has never been better for a return to Marx, as all parts of the ideological spectrum have distorted his ideas in the most ridiculous of ways. He is forever being stupidly linked with Stalin, by both Stalinists and apologists for capitalism. So this is as good a time as any to set the record straight.
What I loved best about Berlin's analysis was that while personal details were critical to the narrative, Marx's relationship with the ideas that came both before and after him were far more important to the author. We learn not only about Marx, but about Hegel and Engels, Lafargue and Duhring, Saint-Simon and Feuerbach. And it was rather refreshing to read how nonpartisan Berlin is with his analysis of the man's philosophy. Instead of writing as a fawning Trotskyist or a fuming anticommunist, he is merely writing as someone whose first allegiance is to the intellectual approach, albeit his own pluralistic, skeptical, emphatically liberal-democratic intellectual approach. And it is to Berlin’s credit that he treats Marx’s ideas with great respect. He doesn’t insist that Marx’s analysis in Capital is flawless, but sees it as a work of the imagination, its purpose an ironic one, juxtaposed with grim, well-documented portraits of the misery and filth which capitalist laws create in practice.
Berlin likewise represents, very well, the thinking in many British academic circles about Marx on the eve of World War II. In 1939 when this book was first published, communism existed only in the USSR and many observers thought that it was very unstable and might ultimately be eliminated. Ten years later, Communism had spread to China and ten or so additional European countries. Everywhere it was very solidly implanted. In other words, the world has a much different view about the posterity of Marx than at the time Berlin wrote his book. And yet, Berlin's book, while excellent, no longer represents the current academic debate around Marx.
Nevertheless, Berlin still managed to write an extremely readable book, even though it’s a relatively short one, which is why I recommend it as a place to start for those who are becoming interested in Marx and Marxism before turning to Marx’s writings—or perhaps as a companion to a reading of Marx’s works in more or less chronological order. Much that can appear hard to understand without the contexts of times, places and personalities becomes easier to comprehend when those contexts are provided. This is the exact type of book that has given Oxford University Press such an august reputation.
I was however, hoping to learn a bit more about the economics of Marxism, but instead ended up learning more about Hegel, I’m afraid. Which is ultimately the reason for not giving the book a 5 star rating, as the book is otherwise very engaging and, unlike most books about German philosophers, clear in its prose and purpose.
Yet in spite of being readable, Marx is still not an easy book to read. There is no air-brushed Marx in its pages. It portrays Marx as a courageous revolutionary, a brilliant thinker, a sophisticated political strategist, a charming conversationalist, a Victorian gentleman, an unreliable provider for his family, a careless spender of other people’s money, a man all too willing to rely on his most loyal friend (Engels) to cover up his shortcomings (at earning money, writing articles, and meeting deadlines) and, at times, someone who simply did not seem to think very much about the consequences of what he was doing for himself and those he loved most dearly.
I also think it’s important to point out that since in history class we are all taught the same comforting doctrine of progress: Horrible things happened in the past like slavery and the Black Death, but the world is now a more gentle and enlightened place. Still, it is in this world today that more than seven million people die from hunger each year, even though it has never been more obvious where to find the money that could save them. Remember: Marx is forever telling us more - never less - of what it means to be human. Which is why I consider Marx to be primarily a philosopher of freedom, a man who sought to make the world rather than be made by it. And as Friedrich Engels wrote in 1883: “We are what we are because of him: without him we should still be sunk in a slough of confusion.”
Most of the reviewers of this book that I’ve seen, however, seem to think that since the lack of Marxists in departments of economics, history and philosophy is somehow proof of the inadequacy of Marx’s theories, which left one reviewer to absurdly wonder: “why the rest of us should bother with Marx’s ideas now that the Berlin Wall has fallen.” (Which is the equivalent of wondering, since America has never had a female president, why bother with algebra). And so I feel that the time has never been better for a return to Marx, as all parts of the ideological spectrum have distorted his ideas in the most ridiculous of ways. He is forever being stupidly linked with Stalin, by both Stalinists and apologists for capitalism. So this is as good a time as any to set the record straight.
What I loved best about Berlin's analysis was that while personal details were critical to the narrative, Marx's relationship with the ideas that came both before and after him were far more important to the author. We learn not only about Marx, but about Hegel and Engels, Lafargue and Duhring, Saint-Simon and Feuerbach. And it was rather refreshing to read how nonpartisan Berlin is with his analysis of the man's philosophy. Instead of writing as a fawning Trotskyist or a fuming anticommunist, he is merely writing as someone whose first allegiance is to the intellectual approach, albeit his own pluralistic, skeptical, emphatically liberal-democratic intellectual approach. And it is to Berlin’s credit that he treats Marx’s ideas with great respect. He doesn’t insist that Marx’s analysis in Capital is flawless, but sees it as a work of the imagination, its purpose an ironic one, juxtaposed with grim, well-documented portraits of the misery and filth which capitalist laws create in practice.
Berlin likewise represents, very well, the thinking in many British academic circles about Marx on the eve of World War II. In 1939 when this book was first published, communism existed only in the USSR and many observers thought that it was very unstable and might ultimately be eliminated. Ten years later, Communism had spread to China and ten or so additional European countries. Everywhere it was very solidly implanted. In other words, the world has a much different view about the posterity of Marx than at the time Berlin wrote his book. And yet, Berlin's book, while excellent, no longer represents the current academic debate around Marx.
Nevertheless, Berlin still managed to write an extremely readable book, even though it’s a relatively short one, which is why I recommend it as a place to start for those who are becoming interested in Marx and Marxism before turning to Marx’s writings—or perhaps as a companion to a reading of Marx’s works in more or less chronological order. Much that can appear hard to understand without the contexts of times, places and personalities becomes easier to comprehend when those contexts are provided. This is the exact type of book that has given Oxford University Press such an august reputation.
I was however, hoping to learn a bit more about the economics of Marxism, but instead ended up learning more about Hegel, I’m afraid. Which is ultimately the reason for not giving the book a 5 star rating, as the book is otherwise very engaging and, unlike most books about German philosophers, clear in its prose and purpose.
Yet in spite of being readable, Marx is still not an easy book to read. There is no air-brushed Marx in its pages. It portrays Marx as a courageous revolutionary, a brilliant thinker, a sophisticated political strategist, a charming conversationalist, a Victorian gentleman, an unreliable provider for his family, a careless spender of other people’s money, a man all too willing to rely on his most loyal friend (Engels) to cover up his shortcomings (at earning money, writing articles, and meeting deadlines) and, at times, someone who simply did not seem to think very much about the consequences of what he was doing for himself and those he loved most dearly.
I also think it’s important to point out that since in history class we are all taught the same comforting doctrine of progress: Horrible things happened in the past like slavery and the Black Death, but the world is now a more gentle and enlightened place. Still, it is in this world today that more than seven million people die from hunger each year, even though it has never been more obvious where to find the money that could save them. Remember: Marx is forever telling us more - never less - of what it means to be human. Which is why I consider Marx to be primarily a philosopher of freedom, a man who sought to make the world rather than be made by it. And as Friedrich Engels wrote in 1883: “We are what we are because of him: without him we should still be sunk in a slough of confusion.”
September 19, 2018
Un libro fantástico y muy ameno. No esperes una biografía, si no un análisis del entorno y evolución de la ideas alrededor de la mente de Marx.
June 15, 2013
This was a train wreck from the beginning for me, and I'm not afraid to admit that it was only so because it was basically out of my league. This is a book about a 19th century intellectual, written by a 20th century intellectual, and when read by a 21st century average joe, like myself, it doesn't always translate so well. I struggled with the prose from page one. Half page, run-on sentences packed with references to 18th and 19th century philosophers and their tenets made for an extremely hard read for me. For this reason, I found it too wordy and self-indulgent, it seems that Sir Isaiah Berlin made this work much more confusing than it had to be. Of course, someone with a more refined pallet would probably think it was eloquent and to the point.
The dryness of the material had me daydreaming, and I would finish two or three pages before I realized that I hadn't retained a word of it. Even after going back and rereading these parts I often found it hard to grasp, especially the discussions on basic Hegelianism and historical materialism. Unfortunately, these were important concepts in Marx's own philosophical development, so that made the later discussions on Marxism cloudy and confusing as well.
Still, I did get what I set out to get from this book, which was a basic understanding of Marxism and the man that Karl Marx was, along with the historical and philosophical environment that created both. I learned a lot of hidden European history that we simply do not ever talk about in the USA. The plight of the 19th century European working class in the throws of the industrial revolution is covered in detail. The most interesting theme for me is that of the revolutionary thinkers and leaders of the time who set out to improve the condition of the masses, but often succumbed to the basic human urge to improve their own condition first.
There is a short two-part passage near the end of the book that I found important and representative of this book's content and my experience with it. Berlin is speaking of Marx's seminal work, Das Kapital, it starts "It has been blindly worshipped, and blindly hated, by millions who have not read a line of it.." To me, this first part is absolute truth. Future communist societies that grew out of Marxism, like the USSR, often misinterpreted or ignored even the most basic elements of Marxist thought, most notably, his disillusionment with the state. Nevertheless, Marx was held up as a hero and father of their bastardized offshoots. Meanwhile, Americans growing up in the Cold War era generally have no understanding of the tenets of Marxism or it's importance in the development of modern social and political thought. Yet Marxism carries a connotation only slightly less negative than Nazism in the USA. The second part continues "...or have read without understanding its, at times, obscure and torturous prose." This simply represents my own personal feeling about Berlin's book in general.
I'm sure that I am not among the target audience for this book and my rating reflects that. I would guess I grasped about sixty percent of the material, and I am positive that a more scholarly individual would find much more to like, less to dislike, and would give this thing a higher rating. Still, even through my struggles, I am glad I stuck it out, because the stuff I did get out of it was very interesting. Despite my low rating, I would actually recommend this book to anyone looking to get a a basic understanding of Marxism and is willing to put in the time to negotiate the challenging style.
The dryness of the material had me daydreaming, and I would finish two or three pages before I realized that I hadn't retained a word of it. Even after going back and rereading these parts I often found it hard to grasp, especially the discussions on basic Hegelianism and historical materialism. Unfortunately, these were important concepts in Marx's own philosophical development, so that made the later discussions on Marxism cloudy and confusing as well.
Still, I did get what I set out to get from this book, which was a basic understanding of Marxism and the man that Karl Marx was, along with the historical and philosophical environment that created both. I learned a lot of hidden European history that we simply do not ever talk about in the USA. The plight of the 19th century European working class in the throws of the industrial revolution is covered in detail. The most interesting theme for me is that of the revolutionary thinkers and leaders of the time who set out to improve the condition of the masses, but often succumbed to the basic human urge to improve their own condition first.
There is a short two-part passage near the end of the book that I found important and representative of this book's content and my experience with it. Berlin is speaking of Marx's seminal work, Das Kapital, it starts "It has been blindly worshipped, and blindly hated, by millions who have not read a line of it.." To me, this first part is absolute truth. Future communist societies that grew out of Marxism, like the USSR, often misinterpreted or ignored even the most basic elements of Marxist thought, most notably, his disillusionment with the state. Nevertheless, Marx was held up as a hero and father of their bastardized offshoots. Meanwhile, Americans growing up in the Cold War era generally have no understanding of the tenets of Marxism or it's importance in the development of modern social and political thought. Yet Marxism carries a connotation only slightly less negative than Nazism in the USA. The second part continues "...or have read without understanding its, at times, obscure and torturous prose." This simply represents my own personal feeling about Berlin's book in general.
I'm sure that I am not among the target audience for this book and my rating reflects that. I would guess I grasped about sixty percent of the material, and I am positive that a more scholarly individual would find much more to like, less to dislike, and would give this thing a higher rating. Still, even through my struggles, I am glad I stuck it out, because the stuff I did get out of it was very interesting. Despite my low rating, I would actually recommend this book to anyone looking to get a a basic understanding of Marxism and is willing to put in the time to negotiate the challenging style.
July 3, 2010
This book was my introduction not only to Karl Marx and his thought, but to the author Isaiah Berlin. While I have fondness neither for the thought nor for the writings of Marx, I have become a fan of both the works and thoughts of Isaiah Berlin over the decades since this first encounter. Even in this early work (first published in 1939) Berlin's incisive and elegant style highlighted by meticulous scholarship is present. He brings to his study of Marx a much needed freedom from bias. While it is a short book it covers the essentials of a life that was devoted to reading and writing--unlike many other radical lives that were devoted more to the battlements and the streets. From the youth of Marx to the refolutions of the 1840s to the appearance of the first volume of Das Kapital in 1867 there is a thoroughly intense readability to this biographical portrayal of ideas. And the portrayal and analysis of ideas is why I enjoyed this book and continued to return to Berlin's other books over the ensuing years.
February 25, 2020
Uma obra de grande qualidade, com o rigor e a mestria do grande Isaiah Berlin. A melhor introdução ao marxismo de Marx e não aos "marxismos" que proliferaram aqui e ali. Além de muito bem escrito, Berlin preocupa-se em manter o rigor dos factos, distanciando-se de leituras parciais. Um excelente livro para quem quer conhecer Marx e o "primeiro marxismo".
January 2, 2021
What better way to start my "Month of Marx" than with Isaiah Berlin's erudite sketch of Karl Marx's life and theory. In the final sentence of his afterword, Terrell Carver write that "Berlin thus created quite a lot of uncertainty about Marx, and we can all benefit from that." Berlin has equipped me (or at least inspired me) to read past the cloaks of Orthodoxy and anti-Marxism. (Whether or not I understand what I've read is a separate question that will test me as it once did Russians.)
I did not know that Marx's journey began, in part, in search of why the 1789 French Revolution failed. How did liberté, égalité, fraternité end in the Bourbons? The 1848 émeute and The Commune of 1871 were likewise seminal moments in his development. In 1848, Marx pinned defeat on the dissipated nature of his co-revolutionaries. The principal lesson? "Disseminate among the masses the conciseness of their destiny and their task." A Hegelian in theory if not in spirit, Marx believed that the slow, painstaking education would, eventually, maximize the contradiction and end in violent, revolutionary Synthesis.
The Marx rival I found most fascinating, Bakunin, drew an entirely opposite conclusion from 1848, withdrawing into secret terrorism. Marx hated Bakunin's insistence on loosely confederated, vaguely nationalist, politically aloof Communist groups (instead of Marx's International), fearing that it would kill the proletariat in its infancy. Marx was a tactician in need of an army.
His greatest attempt to raise one was The Communist Manifesto. Berlin is at his best when describing that thin pamphlet. My favorite portion of Berlin's analysis is not related to the contents of Marx and Engel's message, but instead the muted historians joke that follows, "[The Communist Manifesto's] most immediate effect, however, was upon his own fortunes. The Belgian government... brusquely expelled Marx and his family from its territory."
Its time to wrap up my review because I've got a family here around me. Marx the man is singularly unattractive to me (although I believe I would have gotten along swimmingly with Engels), Marx the oracle seems to have been wrong, but Marx the social theorist will stay with me for the rest of my life. And I think that is what Berlin would have wanted.
I did not know that Marx's journey began, in part, in search of why the 1789 French Revolution failed. How did liberté, égalité, fraternité end in the Bourbons? The 1848 émeute and The Commune of 1871 were likewise seminal moments in his development. In 1848, Marx pinned defeat on the dissipated nature of his co-revolutionaries. The principal lesson? "Disseminate among the masses the conciseness of their destiny and their task." A Hegelian in theory if not in spirit, Marx believed that the slow, painstaking education would, eventually, maximize the contradiction and end in violent, revolutionary Synthesis.
The Marx rival I found most fascinating, Bakunin, drew an entirely opposite conclusion from 1848, withdrawing into secret terrorism. Marx hated Bakunin's insistence on loosely confederated, vaguely nationalist, politically aloof Communist groups (instead of Marx's International), fearing that it would kill the proletariat in its infancy. Marx was a tactician in need of an army.
His greatest attempt to raise one was The Communist Manifesto. Berlin is at his best when describing that thin pamphlet. My favorite portion of Berlin's analysis is not related to the contents of Marx and Engel's message, but instead the muted historians joke that follows, "[The Communist Manifesto's] most immediate effect, however, was upon his own fortunes. The Belgian government... brusquely expelled Marx and his family from its territory."
Its time to wrap up my review because I've got a family here around me. Marx the man is singularly unattractive to me (although I believe I would have gotten along swimmingly with Engels), Marx the oracle seems to have been wrong, but Marx the social theorist will stay with me for the rest of my life. And I think that is what Berlin would have wanted.
November 18, 2020
a very clear intellectual biography of the Moor
June 26, 2015
The curriculum I taught this year at my high school involved using Marxism as a critical lens through which to evaluate various works of literature. Unfortunately, I didn't know nearly as much about Marx as I needed to, and have begun to address this lack with Isaiah Berlin's wonderfully succinct biography. I agree with everything said about it by my Goodread's friend, James Henderson, and, like him, am now very interested in pursuing Berlin's other works.
As to Marx, I find it an amazing contradiction in his character that though a life-long devotee of books and ideas, as a determinist he discounted the power of ideas to influence history. History was for him a dialectical mechanism with a predetermined end. But, as Berlin comments on this idea, "the very extent of its own influence on human affairs has weakened the force of its thesis." Marx is a classic example of a determinist who saw himself as somehow outside his own deterministic framework.
As to Marx, I find it an amazing contradiction in his character that though a life-long devotee of books and ideas, as a determinist he discounted the power of ideas to influence history. History was for him a dialectical mechanism with a predetermined end. But, as Berlin comments on this idea, "the very extent of its own influence on human affairs has weakened the force of its thesis." Marx is a classic example of a determinist who saw himself as somehow outside his own deterministic framework.
June 18, 2014
There may be better introductions now on Marx in the terms of scholarship, but the style of Isaiah Berlin's prose compensates this. To read Berlin is always a pleasure.
September 21, 2022
Not Berlin’s most original book.
March 14, 2022
“If anything is certain,” Karl Marx once declared, “it is that I myself am not a Marxist��. The 20th-century intellectuals and party ideologues who proudly called themselves Marxists typically had a clear sense of their doctrine: Marxism as they conceived it was a theory of society that pulled away the mystifying veil of capitalism to reveal the economic exploitation at its core. Embracing the universal concept of human history that portrayed class conflict as the final engine of change. More than this, it served as the modern name for an ancient but enduring dream: to put an end to unfreedom, and to realize the words of the old prophet, to “wipe the tears off every face.”
Now being out of that lucid dream we see here in this book, Isaiah Berlin analysing one of the greatest figure of ninetieth century. It would be wrong to assert that he only focused on Marx. He covered almost everything surrounding the historical movement of Marx's time. While doing this, apart from Marx he had to draw so many vivid pictures of the mentality of that particular period. A brilliantly lucid work of synthesis and exposition, the book introduces Marx's ideas and sets them in their context, explains why they were revolutionary in political and intellectual terms, and paints a memorable portrait of Marx's dramatic life and outsized personality. Berlin takes readers through Marx's years of adolescent rebellion and post-university communist agitation, the personal high point of the 1848 revolutions, and his later years of exile, political frustration, and intellectual effort. Critical yet sympathetic, Berlin's account illuminates a life without reproducing a legend.
As Berlin was brilliant and precise in his skill in sketching a vivid picture of history and Marx,this book as a result demands a very thoughtful reading. It is dense,but burning with amazing gusto and excitement. So it is one of those book that makes us fall in love with the subject of history.
Now being out of that lucid dream we see here in this book, Isaiah Berlin analysing one of the greatest figure of ninetieth century. It would be wrong to assert that he only focused on Marx. He covered almost everything surrounding the historical movement of Marx's time. While doing this, apart from Marx he had to draw so many vivid pictures of the mentality of that particular period. A brilliantly lucid work of synthesis and exposition, the book introduces Marx's ideas and sets them in their context, explains why they were revolutionary in political and intellectual terms, and paints a memorable portrait of Marx's dramatic life and outsized personality. Berlin takes readers through Marx's years of adolescent rebellion and post-university communist agitation, the personal high point of the 1848 revolutions, and his later years of exile, political frustration, and intellectual effort. Critical yet sympathetic, Berlin's account illuminates a life without reproducing a legend.
As Berlin was brilliant and precise in his skill in sketching a vivid picture of history and Marx,this book as a result demands a very thoughtful reading. It is dense,but burning with amazing gusto and excitement. So it is one of those book that makes us fall in love with the subject of history.
June 24, 2021
This is not biography, it’s the intellectual history of Karl Marx — the people, places, and ideas that influenced Marx himself, and made Marx and Marxism. And it’s done by Isaiah Berlin, who knows more about every single obscure historical intellectual figure imaginable.
So if you want to know Marx and his life, this isn’t the right book. If you want to understand what Marx believed, how he came to those conclusions, and why he’s the dominant figure in communism, this book not just good, it’s probably the best out there.
Berlin traces every influence with Marx. He weaves in family, friends, work colleagues, the cultural atmosphere around Marx, and more. The result is a clear portrait of how and why Marx became MARX, and resulted in Marxism. Berlin, as in all his writing, can get wordy with prolific use of the semicolon for wildly long sentence-paragraphs, but he covers a lot of ground in a fairly short book. Were this a 21st Century book, it’d be 500-600 pages minimum. Berlin accomplishes all of that in half the pages.
Highly recommend if Marxism is an interest.
So if you want to know Marx and his life, this isn’t the right book. If you want to understand what Marx believed, how he came to those conclusions, and why he’s the dominant figure in communism, this book not just good, it’s probably the best out there.
Berlin traces every influence with Marx. He weaves in family, friends, work colleagues, the cultural atmosphere around Marx, and more. The result is a clear portrait of how and why Marx became MARX, and resulted in Marxism. Berlin, as in all his writing, can get wordy with prolific use of the semicolon for wildly long sentence-paragraphs, but he covers a lot of ground in a fairly short book. Were this a 21st Century book, it’d be 500-600 pages minimum. Berlin accomplishes all of that in half the pages.
Highly recommend if Marxism is an interest.
January 28, 2022
Heard a few people talk about this Karl fella, so thought would read this.
He seems like a very non-interesting guy with some very interesting (and some clearly wrong) ideas. The stuff about how Hegelian a lot of his thought is was good and something I didn't appreciate that much.
The biography parts were quite boring but I think that's because he didn't do too much.
Worth reading for a good overview and some context setting for marxist thought.
He seems like a very non-interesting guy with some very interesting (and some clearly wrong) ideas. The stuff about how Hegelian a lot of his thought is was good and something I didn't appreciate that much.
The biography parts were quite boring but I think that's because he didn't do too much.
Worth reading for a good overview and some context setting for marxist thought.
June 12, 2017
If you read this not for the sake of Marx but to get a glimpse of what a brilliant mind Isaiah Berlin has, then you'll be pleased. Nonetheless, it's a very good biography of Marx and description of the development of his philosophy.
December 20, 2012
In addition to being about a titanic man in Marx, this is the first work of another titan, Isaiah Berlin. It is more of an intellectual biography than a close look at the chronological details of Marx's life. Marx comes across as a horrendous man, totally obsessed with his cause to the detriment of all else. He was driven by a single minded desire to see what he thought was inevitable come to pass, namely, the overthrow of capitalism. He believed this to be inevitable due to the inexorable laws of history, as outlined by Hegel. Although this did not come to fruition in his lifetime, he laid the foundation for the bloody and tyrannical revolutions of the past century which imposed dictatorships across the world in the name of the worker.
Marx operated with an intense hatred of all who disagreed with him, usually in even the smallest matters. He viewed many who agreed with him with contempt due to their dullness of perception, histrionic mannerisms, or love of popularity. All paled before the cause and failure on the part of others to grasp what he saw unleashed his vehemence.
His devotion to reading and study was voracious and commendable. For example:
His leisure, since his schooldays, had been mainly spent in reading, but the extent of his appetite in Paris surpassed all limits. As in the days of his conversion to Hegelianism, he read night and day in a kind of frenzy, filling his notebooks with extracts and abstracts and lengthy comments on which he largely drew in his later writings" (72).
Describing him late in life, Berlin says:
"His mode of life had scarcely changed at all. He rose at seven, drank several cups of black coffe, and then retired to his study where he read and wrote until two in the afternoon. After hurrying through his meal he worked again till supper, which he ate with his family. After that he took an evening walk on Hampstead Heath, or returned to his study, where he worked until two or three in the morning" (228-29).
To show that great evil can coexist with a love for the good, witness his fondness for Shakespeare:
"He was fond of poetry and knew long passages of Dante, Aeschylus and Shakespeare by heart. His admiration for Shakespeare was limiteless, and the whole household was brought up on him: he was read aloud, acted, discussed constantly" (230).
Marx showed absolutely no concern for his religion:
"He was baptized a Lutheran, and was married to a Gentile: he had once been of assistance to the Jewish community in Cologne: during the greater part of his life he held himself aloof from anything remotely connected with his race, showing open hostility to all its institutions" (83).
A couple of his quotes that jumped out at me:
"Ignorance has never yet helped anyone."
"To leave error unrefuted is to encourage intellectual immorality."
He died in peace, which is more than can be said of millions who fell victim to his idealogical heirs.
Marx operated with an intense hatred of all who disagreed with him, usually in even the smallest matters. He viewed many who agreed with him with contempt due to their dullness of perception, histrionic mannerisms, or love of popularity. All paled before the cause and failure on the part of others to grasp what he saw unleashed his vehemence.
His devotion to reading and study was voracious and commendable. For example:
His leisure, since his schooldays, had been mainly spent in reading, but the extent of his appetite in Paris surpassed all limits. As in the days of his conversion to Hegelianism, he read night and day in a kind of frenzy, filling his notebooks with extracts and abstracts and lengthy comments on which he largely drew in his later writings" (72).
Describing him late in life, Berlin says:
"His mode of life had scarcely changed at all. He rose at seven, drank several cups of black coffe, and then retired to his study where he read and wrote until two in the afternoon. After hurrying through his meal he worked again till supper, which he ate with his family. After that he took an evening walk on Hampstead Heath, or returned to his study, where he worked until two or three in the morning" (228-29).
To show that great evil can coexist with a love for the good, witness his fondness for Shakespeare:
"He was fond of poetry and knew long passages of Dante, Aeschylus and Shakespeare by heart. His admiration for Shakespeare was limiteless, and the whole household was brought up on him: he was read aloud, acted, discussed constantly" (230).
Marx showed absolutely no concern for his religion:
"He was baptized a Lutheran, and was married to a Gentile: he had once been of assistance to the Jewish community in Cologne: during the greater part of his life he held himself aloof from anything remotely connected with his race, showing open hostility to all its institutions" (83).
A couple of his quotes that jumped out at me:
"Ignorance has never yet helped anyone."
"To leave error unrefuted is to encourage intellectual immorality."
He died in peace, which is more than can be said of millions who fell victim to his idealogical heirs.
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