On the Latest Marx Revival: Republicanism, Materialism, Sociology

This paper addresses the ongoing explosion of new research on the life and career of Karl Marx. Twentieth Century interpretations of Marx were decisively shaped by the way his editors and literary executors presented his literary remains for various reading publics. They also discussed his ideas in fairly abstract terms, with little reference to the contexts in which they took shape. More recent scholars have sought to rectify this approach through close examination of the original documents and the specific struggles and debates into which Marx was attempting to intervene. This article engages with three crucial examples of this new scholarship: those of Bruno Leipold, Thomas Nail, and Thomas Kemple respectively. It focuses particularly on new understandings of Marx’s relationship with politics and political institutions – an aspect of Marx’s project that was once thought to be underdeveloped, but that we can now recognise as sophisticated and robust. It shows how Marx’s body of work is sturdy enough to carry the weight of an astonishingly wide array of different approaches. It concludes with some comments on the radical, revolutionary nature of Marx’s understanding of republicanism.