Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion by Gareth Stedman Jones (review)

Gareth Stedman Jones, Professor of the History of Ideas at Queen Mary University of London, and Director of the Centre for History and Economics at the University of Cambridge, offers a penetrating portrait of one of the most significant critical thinkers of the nineteenth century. Marx's contribution to world history began during his life time, and his influence expanded after, seriously shaping twentieth-century historical development. Marx still remains, in some quarters, a historically magnetic reference point; a situation that has been further bolstered since his death in 1883, by an added "mythological" status.

Professor Jones's exploration of what he effectively personalizes as "Karl's" life and thought is a most welcome addition to a vast, and often ideologically dominated literature, where historical sensibilities are easily unraveled and incensed. His quest reflects his own evolving understanding of historical circumstance, particularly when analysis leads to new social realities through maturity and research.

In an effort to circumvent contemporary travails, and the sizable burden of existing Marx hagiographies, Stedman Jones uses an intellectual biography format to elaborate how Marx's thinking grew out of his responses to the philosophies, political events, and dialectics that dominated his times. In this way, Jones supplements Jonathan Sperber's Karl Marx: A Nineteen Century Life (2013), which also examines Marx within the framework of his era.

As the author states in his acknowledgement, "I have decided to pay as much attention to Marx's thought as to his life. I treat his writings as the interventions of an author within particular political and philosophical contexts that the historian must carefully reconstruct" (xv). It can be further argued that Jones's approach is a corrective to that larger than life Marx legacy that sees him as a perspicacious prophet whose relevance and analyses are as instructively true today as yesterday.

Stedman Jones's Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion is a massively impressive enterprise that is rich in primary Marx archival materials, including friends and family correspondence, and Marx's own journalistic endeavours. Such material provides the necessary background to describe more completely his developing thought as well as personal struggles.

Structurally the book builds an extensive platform to explain the many ups and downs of Marx's long career. This includes his family environment, and other significant influences, as he grew from romantically inclined poet to a post-Hegelian philosopher and historical materialist. This is organizationally accomplished by "A Prologue: The Making of an Icon, 1883-1920," and twelve subsequent chapters: "Fathers and Sons: The Ambiguities of Becoming a Prussian"; "The Lawyer, The Poet and Lover"; "Berlin and the Approaching Twilight of the Gods"; "Rebuilding the Polis: Reason Takes on the Christian State"; "The Alliance of Those Who Think and Those Who Suffer: Paris 1844"; "Exile in Brussels, 1845-8"; "The Approach of Revolution: The Problem About Germany"; "The Mid-Century Revolutions"; "London"; "The Critique of Political Economy"; "Capital, Social Democracy and the International"; "Back to the Future"; and a concluding "Epilogue" to tie the many parts to the whole. Illustrations and maps also supplement notes and references that are not over-reliant on secondary sourcing.

The author argues that if Marx is to be explored without illusion, we must "put Marx back in his nineteenth-century surroundings, before all these posthumous elaborations of his character and achievements were constructed" (5). This insight underpins the entire book and is persuasively presented in a coherent and, considering the subject, readable fashion. This is important given the often problematic philosophical fits and revisions, as well as obfuscations that at times impacted Marx's writing. The reality of critically influential events not materializing according to Marx's predictions and prognostications is pointedly observed.

In examining Marx's contextual growth and development, Greatness and Illusion in addition serves as an insightful overview of European History from 1815 until the century's end. This includes commentary on the work of his lifelong friend, financier, and...