The Theory of Revolution in the Young Marx (Historical Materialism, 2)
by Michael Lowy (Author)
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The central theoretical argument of this book is that Marx's philosophy of praxis - first formulated in the Thesis on Feuerbach - is at the same time the founding stone of a new world view, and the methodological basis for his theory of (proletarian) revolutionary self-emancipation.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
This book is brilliant, incisive, honest, and deserves to be read with attention. It is an important event in the Marxist theoretical production.
- Politique Hebdo, Paris
Michael Löwy's book helped an entire generation to rediscover Marx's thought beyond academic scholasticism.
- La Quinzaine Littéraire, Paris
A remarkable essay, whose merit is not only theoretical, but also historical, because it examines unknown aspects of the evolution of young Marx's thinking.
- Politics, Paris
This work is an exemplary model of application of the historical materialist method to the study of an ideology.
- Siempre, Paris
A reading of Marx that breaks with dominant pseudo-orthodoxies. It has great qualities as the analysis of a very important moment in the history of political thought.
- Folha de S. Paulo, S. Paolo
About the Author
Michael Löwy, Ph.D. (1974) in Human Sciences, Sorbonne, is Research Director in Sociology at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris. He has published on Marx, Lukács and Walter Benjamin, as well as (with Robert Sayre) Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity (Duke, 2001).
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Product details
Publisher : Brill Academic Pub (December 1, 2002)
Language : English
Hardcover : 206 pages
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Top review from the United States
Uptown Philosopher
5.0 out of 5 stars A much-needed corrective to most Marx scholarship
Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2013
Lowy's classic book is essential reading for anyone interested in Marx, Marxism and socialist politics today. In this book, Lowy, in effect, gives a Marxist analysis of Marxism itself. Through a careful historical analysis of the conditions--political, social and economic--Lowy excavates the core insight that distinguished Marx from earlier socialists: he thought that the working class could, through a mass-democratic revolutionary uprising, emancipate itself.
Some early socialists had looked to elites for aid in realizing utopian blueprints, whereas others thought the masses were too ignorant to actually play a role in building a better world and looked to conspiratorial, coup-like strategies to bring about a society of equals.
What distinguished Marx was that he had the radical idea that socialism had to be brought about through the self-activity of workers themselves. That is, socialism could not be won on behalf of workers and handed down to them from above---it had to be built from below through workers own conscious self-organization and struggle. Lowy shows how Marx arrived at this position through a careful analysis of his writings, his life and the historical/political conditions around him. Using the critical tools of Marxism itself, he shows how Marx arrived at the conclusion that working-class revolution from below was the only way to get from here to a better world---a world in which working people democratically control economic production and society without any rulers above them, whether they be capitalists or party/state bureaucrats.
Lowy's book should be read alongside scholarship done by Hal Draper on the theme of working-class self-emancipation. This theme, which is central to Marxism and key to distinguishing Marx's ideas from his predecessors, has been largely forgotten by many self-described "marxists" both in activist circles and in the academy. It is clear that you cannot both defend Stalin's USSR and think, as Marx did, that working class people should control society from the bottom up. But is is equally clear that you cannot take Marx seriously if--as many academic Marxists tend to do--you think that capitalism is so thoroughly ideologically dominating that workers are too deluded to see either their own interests or the path to a better world. The great virtue of Lowy's book is that it shows, by way of careful, historical and political analysis, that these distortions blind us to the core of Marx's project---that of building socialism from below through a critique of capitalist society.
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