Marx and Modernity

In this illuminating and concise collection of readings, Karl Marx emerges as the first theorist to give a comprehensive social view of the birth and development of capitalist modernity that began with the Second Industrial Revolution and still exists today.

Autorentext
Robert J. Antonio is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas. He has written widely on Marx, critical theory, and classical and contemporary social theory, and is the co-editor of A WeberMarx Dialogue (with Ronald Glassman, 1985).

Klappentext
Karl Marx is, perhaps, the founding figure of modern social theory. His ideas and writings have been entwined with some of the twentieth century's greatest struggles for justice, and some of its worst repression. He has inspired an equal measure of followers and critics, and entirely diverse lines of research and theory. Each new generation of social thinkers have advanced theories in the wake of Marx, proving his undying contemporary relevance. In this illuminating and concise collection of readings, Karl Marx emerges as the first theorist to give a comprehensive social view of the birth and development of capitalist modernity that began with the Second Industrial Revolution and still exists today.

Organized analytically, each section of readings relates to an enduring facet of Marxist thought. Along with Marx's own writing, there are fifteen contemporary essays on a variety of topics showing the influence of Marx on today's world. Editorial introductions are included at the beginning of the volume and of each section to situate the readings historically and intellectually. Every student and scholar of social theory and Marxism will find this to be the defining collection of Marxist modern thought.

Inhalt
Notes on Contributors. General Editor's Foreword.

Acknowledgments.

Introduction: Marx and Modernity (Robert J. Antonio).

Section I: Marx Readings.

Part 1: Marx's Vision of History: "Historical Materialism.".

1. Primary Historical Relations or the Basic Aspects of Social Activity (with Friedrich Engels).

2. The Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas... (with Friedrich Engels).

3. The Formation of Classes... (with Friedrich Engels).

4. Preface to A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy.

5. Labor Rent.

6. Karl Marx (Friedrich Engels).

7. Letter to Joseph Bloch (Friedrich Engels).

Part 2: The Juggernaut of Capitalist Modernity: The Revolutionary Bourgeoisie, End of Tradition, and New Social Powers.

8. The So-Called Primitive Accumulation.

9. Development of the Division of Labor (with Friedrich Engels).

10. Bourgeois and Proletarians: (with Friedrich Engels).

11. Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation.

12. Cooperation.

13. Cardinal Facts of Capitalist Production.

Part 3: Marx's Labor Theory of Value: The Hidden Social Relationship Beneath Capitalism's Distorted "Economic" Surface.

14. The Two Factors of a Commodity: Use Value and Value.

15. From Value, Price and Profit.

16. The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof.

17. The General Formula for Capital.

Part 4: The First and Second Industrial Revolutions: From Manufacture to Modern Industry.

18. Division of Labor and Manufacture.

19. Machinery and Modern Industry.

Part 5: The Downside of Capitalist Growth: Unemployment, Poverty, Speculative Crises, and Environmental Devastation.

20. General Law of Capitalist Accumulation.

21. The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall.

22. Progressive Production of a Relative Surplus Population or Industrial Reserve Army.

23. Increase of Lunacy in Great Britain.

24. The Economic Crisis in Europe.

25. Modern Industry and Agriculture.

Part 6: Globalization and Colonialism: The New International Division of Labor.

26. Foreign Trade.

27. Repulsion Attraction of Workpeople.

28. The Crisis in England.

29. British Incomes in India.

30. The Indian Revolt.

Part 7: New Society Rising in the Old: Socially Regulated Capitalism and a Third Industrial Revolution.

31. The Factory Acts.

32. The Role of Credit in Capitalist Production.

33. Fixed Capital and Development of the Productive Forces of Society.

Part 8: The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Vicissitudes of History: Counterrevolution, Dictatorship, or Radical Democracy?.

34. Bourgeois and Proletarians: (with Friedrich Engels).

35. Proletarians and Communists: (with Friedrich Engels).

36. The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

37. The Civil War in France.

38. Critique of the Gotha Program.

Section II: Contemporary Readings.

Part 9: After Communism: The Death or Return of Marx?.

39. Mourning Marxism (Ronald Aronson, Wayne State University).

40. Marx Redux (David Harvey, Johns Hopkins University).

41. The Return of Karl Marx (John Cassidy).

Part 10: New Economy or Old?: Information Capitalism and the Polarization of Class, Race, and Ethnicity.

42. The Connected and the Disconnected (Jeremy Rifkin).

43. The Architect of a New Consensus (Thomas Frank).

44. Societal Changes and Vulnerable Neighborhoods (William Julius Wilson, Harvard University).

45. Fortress L.A. (Mike Davis).

Part 11: Neoliberal Globalization: Concentration, Proletarianization, and Immiseration in the New Transitional Order.

46. America's Immigration "Problem" (Saskia Sassen, University of Chicago).

47. "These Dark Satanic Mills" (William Greider). &l...