by Of interest only to those interested in the development of Karl Marx as a philosopher and public intellectual rather than as an economist. When I was a grad student in philosophy, I read duly read some Marx, but he was not high on my list. I never read Capital and still haven't other than some selections. Marx is actually considered a philosopher rather than an economist. The other two of the big three were not economists either. Smith was a philosophy professor who ventured into political economy as an aspect of social and political philosophy and Keynes was trained as a mathematician. Social and political philosophy was always an interest of mine and I eventually came to the conclusion that to approach social and political philosophy properly it was necessary to read political economy.
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Of interest only to those interested in the development of Karl Marx as a philosopher and public intellectual rather than as an economist. When I was a grad student in philosophy, I read duly read some Marx, but he was not high on my list. I never read Capital and still haven't other than some selections.
Marx is actually considered a philosopher rather than an economist. The other two of the big three were not economists either. Smith was a philosophy professor who ventured into political economy as an aspect of social and political philosophy and Keynes was trained as a mathematician.
Social and political philosophy was always an interest of mine and I eventually came to the conclusion that to approach social and political philosophy properly it was necessary to read political economy. That is how I got involved in MMT.
Looking back, I now believe that Marx and Engels are far more important in the history of thought than I had previously realized. I had considered Marx to be third tier in philosophy in terms of reading priority, but now I would move him up a notch as a comprehensive thinker, or even two if one is chiefly interested in ethics and social and political philosophy and related subjects.
I had known about Marx's interest in anthropology, for example, the work of American anthropologist Lewis Morgan. While he came to anthropology later than communism, anthropology confirmed his views on communism through historical data.
This article is about much more than anthropology, however, and I would say it is a must-read for those interested in Marx to grasp his depth and breadth of thinking, to which he had devoted his life. To read Marx primarily as an economist largely misses the point of his literary corpus. It was a more a sideline for him. He only came to realize the central important of political economy to social and political through after completing his early works. Then explaining the economic infrastructure of society became a major focus. However, this article shows how his interests and explorations were broader even late.
I think Marx went wrong in assuming philosophical and scientific materialism in that it worked against his overall goal which was humanistic, that is, establishing the philosophical basis for human freedom. But that was conditioned by his times and similar conditions persist.
This assumption lead to the further assumptions about the role of private property and the conclusion that abolishing private property would lead by itself to socialism and then communism when what is actually required as a shift in the level of collective consciousness, which is broader and deeper than the material infrastructure. Historical data seems to back this up. Arguably, I am being too hard on Marx in this regard, but that is the way many influential players came to understand him anyway. It is utopian thinking.
MR OnlineKarl Marx and the Iroquoi (Rosemont, 1989)