Karl Marx: The Burden of Reason (Why Marx Rejected Politics and the Market) [Paperback]

Megill's analysis is based on the highest level of scholarly erudition....there is no doubt that in terms of both scholarly references to original materials and thorough guidance to secondary literature, Megill's work is invaluable. ...There is much of value in Megill's book; it deserves the serious attention of anyone interested in Marx, either as a theorist of human history or as a critic of the modern capitalist world.In Allan Megill's exciting presentation, Marx is neither a hero nor an anti-hero, but one of the representative theorists of the 19th century. The book addresses new, hitherto neglected, questions to the Marxian oeuvre and opens up a post-Marxist inquiry concerning its relevance or irrelevance.Karl Marx: The Burden of Reason is a distinctively modernpost Communist and post Marxistassessment of what is living and what is dead in the thought of Karl Marx, a virtual report card on Marx's philosophy and social theory, scrupulously formulated, thoroughly researched, and argued from an explicit position in the historical present. Hide-bound Marxist-socialists (like myself) will find Megill's assessments challenging if not to say disconcerting. On Megill's view, Marx the rationalist philosopher is, as they say, 'history.'Original and eruditea novel approach to the meaning and significance of Marx's views on modern society.Following the demise of Marxism, Allan Megill performs a painstakingly careful autopsy of the remains. The cause of death turns out to be Marx's unwarranted faith in the embeddedness of reason in human affairs, a premise that thwarted his appreciation of the virtues of politics and the market. And yet for all its faults, Marxism left a valuable legacyorgans that can, as it were, be harvested for future usethat this erudite, fair-minded, and closely argued study works hard to preserve.The most careful and scholarly reassessment now available. . . . It shows an extraordinarily thorough command of the enormous literature on Marx. Proceels5