Marx

Marx occupies a unique position in the history of political thought. That is because his work has been so influential in setting the terms through which the modern world is to be understood, both in relation to its historical conditions of possibility and in terms of a hierarchy of causal systems and processes. Moreover, engaging in research on Marx sets up a unique series of challenges, because the volume of materials available is so large as well as because his authorial authenticity is so controversial in relation to his career-long collaborator Friedrich Engels. Over and beyond those difficulties his reception has been constructed through politicizing movements and great-power projects. Scholars must be aware that over time the Marx-canon has changed dramatically, as commentators have approached his legacy-papers from different perspectives. Marx was never a philosopher or historian or economist or sociologist, but rather a political activist and agitating journalist, and not a political leader or the founder of an “ism.” In commentary his posthumous fame teleologically intrudes on any contextualizing biography and academic critique. His published writing and recorded thinking present an exploratory rather than dogmatic mind, yet political theorists have probed his thought for generalizations that conform to disciplinary expectations. No other figure in the history of political thought has been so extensively researched, so broadly influential in so many intellectual endeavors, and so reductively reprised and productively revisited. As a figure in political theory, this makes Marx a rich resource and continuing inspiration.