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The republication of Karl Korsch´s Karl Marx (1938) makes available to a new generation of readers the most concise account of Karl Marx´s thought by one of the major figures of twentieth-century Western Marxism. Originally written for publication in a series on ´Modern Sociologists´, Korsch´s book sought to bring Marx´s work to life for an audience of non-specialist readers. As Michael Buckmiller writes in his new introduction to the work, Korsch wanted his book to serve as a passport into the non-dogmatic sections of the American labour movement. The result is a bracing, concise, and accessible overview of the entirety of Marx´s thought, and a pungent history of ´Marxism´ itself.

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Foreword by Michael Buckmiller

Introduction

PART ONE: SOCIETY
1. Marxism and Sociology
2. The Principle of Historical Specification
3. Specification (continued)
4. The Principle of Change
5. The Principle of Criticism
6. A New Type of Generalisation
7. Practical Implications

PART TWO: POLITICAL ECONOMY
1. Marxism and Political Economy
2. From Political Economy to ´Economics´
3. From Political Economy to the Marxian Critique of Political Economy
4. Scientific versus Philosophical Criticism of Political Economy
5. Two Aspects of Revolutionary Materialism in Marx´s Economic Theory
6. The Economic Theory of Capital
7. The Fetishism of Commodities
8. The ´Social Contract´
9. The Law of Value
10. Common Misunderstandings of the Marxian Doctrine of Value and Surplus-Value
11. Ultimate Aims of Marx´s Critique of Political Economy

PART THREE: HISTORY

1.The Materialist Conception of History
2. The Genesis of Historical Materialism
3. The Materialist Scheme of Society
4. Nature and Society
5. Productive Forces and Production-Relations
6. Base and Superstructure
7. Conclusions

Bibliography
Index of Names

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Karl Korsch (1886-1961) was one of the most significant Marxist writers of the twentieth century. Along with Georg Lukacs´s History and Class Consciousness , Korsch´s Marxism and Philosophy (1923) stands as one of the two major contributions to the study of the philosophical underpinnings of Marxist theory.

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