The French philosopher Daniel Bensaïd shows that Marx’s “critique of political economy” encompassed three great critiques of the scientific and political canons of its age—historical reason, sociological rationality and scientific positivism. We find here a “post-postmodern Marx,” inhabiting a contemporary world replete with contingency, crisis and contradiction —ensuring that this nineteenth-century thinker is relevant to the twenty-first century of global capitalism.

“The result of a long process of research, this book offers us an analysis of the thought of Marx and of its relevance which should be considered as a new landmark, and which opens up new perspectives and polemics which will no dolubt continue to live on for some time.” — Le Monde

“Bensaïd furnishes us with a new reading of Marx which both criticizes and surpasses the debates and problematics of the past. A Marxist reading of Marx, in the sense of the eleventh thesis on Feuerbach: interpreting the world in order to transform it ... A reading which is neither apologetic nor conservative.” — Le Quinzaine littéraire

Daniel Bensaïd teaches philosophy at the University of Paris VIII and is the author of books on Marxism, Walter Benjamin, the French Revolution and Joan of Arc.
Publication
Cloth: October 2002
Paper: August 2009

400 pages

Cloth
ISBN-13: 978 1 85984 712 1
£20 / US$30 / CAN$42

Paper
ISBN-13: 978 1 84467 378 0
£12.99 / US$24.95 / CAN$27.50