On Jonathan Sperber’s Karl Marx

In Sperber's account, Marx is a backward-looking figure rather than a prophet, responding to the eighteenthand early nineteenthcentury theories of political economy developed by Adam Smith and David Ricardo, fascinated by the early modem privatization of land, and holding the French Revolution...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCanadian Journal of History Vol. 49; no. 2; pp. 255 - 258
Main Author Leonard, Sarah L
Format Journal Article Book Review
LanguageEnglish
Published Saskatoon University of Toronto Press 22.09.2014
Subjects
Activists
Biographies
Engels, Friedrich (1820-1895)
French language
Ideology
Jews
Journalists
Language culture relationship
Marx, Karl (1818-1883)
Marxism
Middle class
Nobility
Political activism
Politics
Self concept
Sperber, Jonathan
Europe
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Summary:In Sperber's account, Marx is a backward-looking figure rather than a prophet, responding to the eighteenthand early nineteenthcentury theories of political economy developed by Adam Smith and David Ricardo, fascinated by the early modem privatization of land, and holding the French Revolution in mind as the model for political change. When one considers that Marx was baptized and raised as a Protestant, that Jews in the Rhineland (from which Marx hailed) benefitted from the universalist ideology ushered in by the French Revolution, and that Judaism as a racial identity did not emerge until the end of Marx's life, the apparently self-evident "fact" of Marx's Jewish identity looks a bit like a retrospective invention.
ISSN:0008-4107
2292-8502
DOI:10.3138/cjh.49.2.255