Karl Marx and the Future of the Human - (The Raya Dunayevskaya Marxism and Humanism) 7th Edition by Cyril Smith (Paperback)

About the Book

Cyril Smith shows that Marx developed a far richer and liberatory vision of humanity and the alternative to capital than that which has characterized his followers, and he makes a powerful argument that it is essential to return to Marx's original body of thought in order to r...

Book Synopsis

In this excellent study of Karl Marx's thought, Cyril Smith takes a long and winding route that starts with classical world thought. When he arrives at the door to Marx's pantheon we see that, with the significant yet largely overlooked example of Spinoza, most thinkers-and especially Western ones-are opposed to essential aspects of democracy. In Marx and the Future of the Human Cyril Smith explains that Karl Marx, more than any other thinker, is misrepresented by what has come to be understood as "Marxism." Marxism has developed into, among other things, a method for analyzing capitalism, a way of looking at history, and a way to theorize the role of the working class in a future society. Marx, however, speaks about a conception of human life that was absent during his lifetime and remains absent today. Marx sought "the alteration of humans on a mass scale: " economics, politics, daily lived-life, and spiritual life. In discussing Marx and spirituality, Cyril Smith relates Marx to the thought of William Blake. Someone coming to Marx for the first time as well as the seasoned scholar can read this book. Marx and the Future of the Human is a book rife with thoughtful and creative connections written by someone who has spent most of his life close to the spirit of Karl Marx's thought.

Review Quotes

"A novel approach that connects the effects of labour and capital to a notion of humanity from William Blake...written with exuberance for the subject matter." --Political Studies Review

"This work represents an important addition to the growing number of works which seek to clarify the difference between Marx's critique of capitalist society and the approach adopted by traditional or orthodox Marxists. . . . The manuscript contains important insights that will contribute to the process of further clarifying the nature of Marx's relation to previous schools of thought, especially Hegel's." --Peter Hudis, Co-editor of The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx by Raya Dunayevskaya

A novel approach that connects the effects of labour and capital to a notion of humanity from William Blake...written with exuberance for the subject matter.

This work represents an important addition to the growing number of works which seek to clarify the difference between Marx's critique of capitalist society and the approach adopted by traditional or orthodox Marxists. . . . The manuscript contains important insights that will contribute to the process of further clarifying the nature of Marx's relation to previous schools of thought, especially Hegel's.

About the Author

Cyril Smith is formerly Lecturer of Statists at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Marx at the Milennium.