Bask - Shop now
$15.65 with 46 percent savings
Digital List Price: $28.99

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Sold by Amazon.com Services LLC.
eBook features:
  • Highlight, take notes, and search in the book
  • In this edition, page numbers are just like the physical edition
You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Kevin Anderson
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies Enlarged Edition, Kindle Edition

by Kevin B. Anderson (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.8 out of 5 stars 23 ratings
In Marx at the Margins, Kevin Anderson uncovers a variety of extensive but neglected texts by Marx that cast what we thought we knew about his work in a startlingly different light. Analyzing a variety of Marx’s writings, including journalistic work written for the New York Tribune, Anderson presents us with a Marx quite at odds with conventional interpretations. Rather than providing us with an account of Marx as an exclusively class-based thinker, Anderson here offers a portrait of Marx for the twenty-first century: a global theorist whose social critique was sensitive to the varieties of human social and historical development, including not just class, but nationalism, race, and ethnicity, as well. Through highly informed readings of work ranging from Marx’s unpublished 1879–82 notebooks to his passionate writings about the antislavery cause in the United States, this volume delivers a groundbreaking and canon-changing vision of Karl Marx that is sure to provoke lively debate in Marxist scholarship and beyond. For this expanded edition, Anderson has written a new preface that discusses the additional 1879–82 notebook material, as well as the influence of the Russian-American philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya on his thinking.
Previous slide of product details
  1. ISBN-13
    978-0226345703
  2. Edition
    Enlarged
  3. Publisher
    The University of Chicago Press
  4. Publication date
    February 12, 2016
  5. Language
    English
  6. File size
    831 KB
Next slide of product details

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Anderson’s survey of a large swathe of Marx’s writings illustrates the volution of Marx’s thinking and the breadth of vision. This is major work which will influence debate and thinking for a long time to come.”

-- Barry Healy ― Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

"Marxist scholar Kevin Anderson has undertaken an exhaustive reading of some of Marx's lesser-known writings. He explores how Marx developed and changed his ideas about societies that, in the 19th century, were still peripheral to capitalism. . . . This whole book is fascinating." -- Colin Barker ― Socialist Review

“Anderson may just have provided the burgeoning Marx industry with another major focus for its research and debates. Marx at the Margins reveals a dimension of Marx that is very little known and even less understood. Anderson makes an overwhelming case for the importance of Marx’s views on non-Western societies, ethnicity, nationalism, and race to our interpretations of his thinking over a wide range of topics. This is an incredibly innovative, interesting, and terribly important book that will greatly benefit any of its readers.” -- Bertell Ollman, New York University

“Marx at the Margins is a book of tremendous scope, filled with important scholarly contributions, including Anderson’s highly original reading of Marx’s theory of history. In this truly ground-breaking work, Kevin Anderson analyzes Marx’s journalism and various unpublished writings on European colonialism and the developing countries for the first time, breaking the long-held stereotype that Marx was an incorrigible class and economic reductionist. Well-written in clear and accessible prose, Marx at the Margins proves that Marx is the sophisticated and original theorist of history some might not have ever expected him to be.” -- Douglas Kellner, University of California, Los Angeles

“Marx at the Margins is essential reading for anyone seeking to explore the sophistication and complexity of Marx and Engels’s writings on race, nationalism, ethnicity, and the historical development of non-Western societies.”

-- Nagesh Rao ― International Socialist Review

About the Author

Kevin B. Anderson is professor of sociology, political science, and feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is coauthor, with Janet Afary, of Foucault and the Iranian Revolution.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01BWMDZQU
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The University of Chicago Press; Enlarged edition (February 12, 2016)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 12, 2016
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 831 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 333 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.8 out of 5 stars 23 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Kevin Anderson

Kevin Anderson

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
23 global ratings

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers
Write a customer review

Top reviews from the United States

  • Pietro G. Poggi
    5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Interesting Take On Marx!
    Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    This book culls the notes, letters, and uncollected articles of Marx to provide a view of Marx that is only hinted at in his canon. Although it is possible that a devotée of Marx will be able to ignore or rationalize Marx no matter what they read herein, for others it merely confirms the suspicions formed when reading Marx's most notable works. This should be indispensable for Marxists and naysayers alike.
    One person found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • darkdoody
    5.0 out of 5 stars love it
    Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    good book
    One person found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • R.E.P.S.
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Brings many recontextualizing fragments together to alter the received dogma of what Marx means to us today.
    Helpful
     Report
  • Juan Pablo Mateo
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    OK
    Helpful
     Report
  • Mohammed
    5.0 out of 5 stars Karl Marx
    Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    Very good book and informative.
    Helpful
     Report
  • The Gypsy Professor
    4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting work at the margins
    Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2010
    Verified Purchase
    Kevin Anderson does a wonderful job exploring Marx's work on the "Margins" of the industrial world. So often times pondered by students of the twentieth century as to why the Bolshevik revolution, a revolution Marxist in character, took place in the most backward of European countries finds traction within Anderson's insight. His treatment of Marx's writing on india also prove interesting.
    4 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • M. A. Krul
    4.0 out of 5 stars Marx on nations, races, and development
    Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2010
    "Marx at the Margins" is a title supposed to work two ways. It is a substantial analysis and review of Marx's writings, familiar and yet unpublished, about nations and races, but it is also an attempt to revive parts of Marx's analysis which are often seen as marginal or irrelevant to his overall thought, but which author Kevin B. Anderson argues actually were a very central concern of his. Since Anderson is working on a forthcoming scientific publication of Marx's "ethnological notebooks", which have never yet been published in full in any language, he is in a good position to expand on the nature and background of Marx's writings on non-Western nations and their histories. Additionally, the book covers the way in which Marx discussed the intersection between race and class, notably in the case of his journalism on the American Civil War but also in the context of Ireland (as the Irish were effectively not considered 'white').

    Anderson traces the way in which themes of alternative routes to development, anti-colonial resistance and the negative results of imperialism on the workers of the imperial country became increasingly important in Marx's writings over time. Much has been written about the (in)famous writings of Marx and Engels on the colonies and 'lesser nations' in the 1840s and 1850s, in particular Marx's journalism on India, but Anderson emphasizes how this was only their viewpoint during this period and how they became ever more critical of imperialism and ever less convinced of capitalism's progressive power outside the Western world as time went on. This has been pointed out by various commentators on Marx already, but given the pervasive influence of the Communist Manifesto and the 1850s journalism on the way Marx and Engels are perceived as always seeing imperialism as progressive historically (while always recognizing its massive damage), it can't hurt to underline this again. Anderson also goes into more detail into the writings on the American Civil War, which are interesting and somewhat overlooked; important is the way Marx sees the position of the 'poor whites' as being maintained artificially by holding down the blacks, and notes the impossibility thereby of the 'poor whites' emancipating themselves on the basis of oppressing another. He compares it to the position of the plebeians in Rome.

    Unfortunately, here as elsewhere Anderson makes a ridiculous amount of 'hineininterpretierung' about the supposed major differences between Marx and Engels, since he follows Dunayevskaya's school of interpretation on this point. In fact, as has been pointed out by many critics such as the excellent J.D. Hunley, there are no significant differences of opinion between Marx and Engels, although being different people they certainly had differences of style and emphasis. It is absurd, as Anderson does, to demand that when Engels for example writes that Marx was planning to write a book on Morgan's anthropology (like he ended up doing himself eventually), Engels should provide evidence for this! The two gentlemen saw each other literally every day once Engels moved to London, and discussed their views in depth; if there were any major differences in viewpoint one would surely think they would have noticed! Moreover, Anderson like many other critics of Engels are perfectly happy to believe him at his word when he graciously gives Marx more credit than he deserved, such as when he claimed Marx really wrote most of the Manifesto - Anderson approvingly quotes this, while in fact we know that the Manifesto was based itself on a major draft along the same themes, one that Engels had written. This ridiculous idea of "Marx's Marxism" versus "Engels' Marxism", where anyone can take aspects of Marxist writing they don't like and shove the blame off onto poor Engels, really needs to go away.

    That said, Anderson has much interesting to say about the way in which Marx (and Engels) shifted position throughout their writings, from a viewpoint of capitalism as highly murderous but still basically progressive, and thereby imperialism also, to a severe skepticism about the progressive potential of either and an increasing belief in the possibility of multilinear development. It is important to point out that Anderson describes their way of thinking here, and points to many interesting notes and commentaries that are not yet known even to most scholars of their writing, but that he does not defend the correctness of Marx's thought on these topics as such. This is good, because while Anderson makes an intriguing case for seeing the 'Asiatic mode of production' in the late Marx as a concept of multilinear development rather than one of stasis, we know that Marx and Engels got much of the basic empirical patterns of Asian history in particularly entirely wrong. Moreover, even if in their time a door was still open to socialism on the basis of pre-capitalist patterns, surely such is no longer possible today, when capitalist relations have pervaded virtually every nook and cranny of the world's production. In that sense, we may actually be closer to the situation described in their early writings than in their later one. But Marx and Engels' writings on subjects as nation, race, and gender are indeed important and Anderson is surely right in emphasizing what a central role they came to play in their thought. This is all the more significant because of the persistent power of these categories today, as well as the debate on imperialism vs nationalism in left-wing thought. This book is therefore important reading for anyone interested in Marxism.
    17 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report

Top reviews from other countries

  • M. A. Krul
    4.0 out of 5 stars Marx on nations, races, and development
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 3, 2010
    Verified Purchase
    "Marx at the Margins" is a title supposed to work two ways. It is a substantial analysis and review of Marx's writings, familiar and yet unpublished, about nations and races, but it is also an attempt to revive parts of Marx's analysis which are often seen as marginal or irrelevant to his overall thought, but which author Kevin B. Anderson argues actually were a very central concern of his. Since Anderson is working on a forthcoming scientific publication of Marx's "ethnological notebooks", which have never yet been published in full in any language, he is in a good position to expand on the nature and background of Marx's writings on non-Western nations and their histories. Additionally, the book covers the way in which Marx discussed the intersection between race and class, notably in the case of his journalism on the American Civil War but also in the context of Ireland (as the Irish were effectively not considered 'white').

    Anderson traces the way in which themes of alternative routes to development, anti-colonial resistance and the negative results of imperialism on the workers of the imperial country became increasingly important in Marx's writings over time. Much has been written about the (in)famous writings of Marx and Engels on the colonies and 'lesser nations' in the 1840s and 1850s, in particular Marx's journalism on India, but Anderson emphasizes how this was only their viewpoint during this period and how they became ever more critical of imperialism and ever less convinced of capitalism's progressive power outside the Western world as time went on. This has been pointed out by various commentators on Marx already, but given the pervasive influence of the Communist Manifesto and the 1850s journalism on the way Marx and Engels are perceived as always seeing imperialism as progressive historically (while always recognizing its massive damage), it can't hurt to underline this again. Anderson also goes into more detail into the writings on the American Civil War, which are interesting and somewhat overlooked; important is the way Marx sees the position of the 'poor whites' as being maintained artificially by holding down the blacks, and notes the impossibility thereby of the 'poor whites' emancipating themselves on the basis of oppressing another. He compares it to the position of the plebeians in Rome.

    Unfortunately, here as elsewhere Anderson makes a ridiculous amount of 'hineininterpretierung' about the supposed major differences between Marx and Engels, since he follows Dunayevskaya's school of interpretation on this point. In fact, as has been pointed out by many critics such as the excellent J.D. Hunley, there are no significant differences of opinion between Marx and Engels, although being different people they certainly had differences of style and emphasis. It is absurd, as Anderson does, to demand that when Engels for example writes that Marx was planning to write a book on Morgan's anthropology (like he ended up doing himself eventually), Engels should provide evidence for this! The two gentlemen saw each other literally every day once Engels moved to London, and discussed their views in depth; if there were any major differences in viewpoint one would surely think they would have noticed! Moreover, Anderson like many other critics of Engels are perfectly happy to believe him at his word when he graciously gives Marx more credit than he deserved, such as when he claimed Marx really wrote most of the Manifesto - Anderson approvingly quotes this, while in fact we know that the Manifesto was based itself on a major draft along the same themes, one that Engels had written. This ridiculous idea of "Marx's Marxism" versus "Engels' Marxism", where anyone can take aspects of Marxist writing they don't like and shove the blame off onto poor Engels, really needs to go away.

    That said, Anderson has much interesting to say about the way in which Marx (and Engels) shifted position throughout their writings, from a viewpoint of capitalism as highly murderous but still basically progressive, and thereby imperialism also, to a severe skepticism about the progressive potential of either and an increasing belief in the possibility of multilinear development. It is important to point out that Anderson describes their way of thinking here, and points to many interesting notes and commentaries that are not yet known even to most scholars of their writing, but that he does not defend the correctness of Marx's thought on these topics as such. This is good, because while Anderson makes an intriguing case for seeing the 'Asiatic mode of production' in the late Marx as a concept of multilinear development rather than one of stasis, we know that Marx and Engels got much of the basic empirical patterns of Asian history in particularly entirely wrong. Moreover, even if in their time a door was still open to socialism on the basis of pre-capitalist patterns, surely such is no longer possible today, when capitalist relations have pervaded virtually every nook and cranny of the world's production. In that sense, we may actually be closer to the situation described in their early writings than in their later one. But Marx and Engels' writings on subjects as nation, race, and gender are indeed important and Anderson is surely right in emphasizing what a central role they came to play in their thought. This is all the more significant because of the persistent power of these categories today, as well as the debate on imperialism vs nationalism in left-wing thought. This book is therefore important reading for anyone interested in Marxism.
    Report

Report an issue


Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report