Karl Marx as Democratic Theorist

Karl Marx had relatively little to say about democratic political institutions, a fact which, this article argues, has obscured an understanding of him as a democratic theorist. Still, his writings, the author insists, rest on a notion of democracy in which individuals cooperate freely and equally in the activity of governing. This process oriented view of democracy, the author concedes, is not the usual reading of Marx, but it is, she concludes, a more promising basis for a theory of socialist democracy.