Una vez superado el clima de antimarxismo dominante en los años ochenta y noventa, el Marx del siglo XXI quedó liberado de la pesada hipoteca de ser el “padre” de los comunismos reales del siglo XX. De los escombros del Muro de Berlín surgió un Marx capaz de ofrecer claves válidas para entender el mundo globalizado por fuera de las interpretaciones canónicas de un partido o una ideología. Más cerca en el tiempo, el estallido financiero de 2008 nos recordó que su diagnóstico sobre la expansión del capitalismo, con sus crisis periódicas y su carga de miseria, exclusión y violencia sistémica, permanece vigente. Esta Antología, cuya edición estuvo al cuidado de Horacio Tarcus, uno de los más reconocidos historiadores del pensamiento de las izquierdas, está destinada no a los especialistas sino a los estudiantes y lectores en general que buscan acercarse a la obra de Marx por primera vez. Y viene a salvar una ausencia, ya que textos emblemáticos como el Manifiesto Comunista o El Dieciocho Brumario de Luis Bonaparte, entre otros, circulaban hasta hoy aislados, y las escasísimas antologías disponibles son tributarias de la ortodoxia soviética, ya superada. Este volumen reúne, en versiones completas y anotadas, los textos fundamentales de Karl Marx, esos que se han convertido en clásicos y en cita obligada dentro del amplio campo de las humanidades y las ciencias sociales. El orden de los escritos sigue un criterio cronológico, en un arco que va de 1843 a 1881, desde su ensayo sobre la cuestión judía, pasando por los capítulos centrales de El capital, hasta su visión de los primeros movimientos revolucionarios en Rusia. Con un estudio preliminar que funciona como excelente guía de lectura, al restituir el contexto imprescindible de cada escrito, explicar sus ejes conceptuales y señalar los debates que suscitó a lo largo del siglo XX, esta Antología demuestra que tiene sentido “volver a Marx” y dialogar con su obra, ya sea para descifrar nuestro presente o para alimentar la utopía de superarlo.
Author
Karl Marx, Ph.D. (University of Jena, 1841) was a social scientist who was a key contributor to the development of Communist theory. Marx was born in Trier, a city then in the Kingdom of Prussia's Province of the Lower Rhine. His father, born Jewish, converted to Protestantism shortly before Karl's birth in response to a prohibition newly introduced into the Rhineland by the Prussian Kingdom on Jews practicing law. Educated at the Universities of Bonn, Jena, and Berlin, Marx founded the Socialist newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. After being expelled from France at the urging of the Prussian government, which "banished" Marx in absentia, Marx studied economics in Brussels. He and Engels founded the Communist League in 1847 and published the Communist Manifesto. After the failed revolution of 1848 in Germany, in which Marx participated, he eventually wound up in London. Marx worked as foreign correspondent for several U.S. publications. His Das Kapital came out in three volumes (1867, 1885 and 1894). Marx organized the International and helped found the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Although Marx was not religious, Bertrand Russell later remarked, "His belief that there is a cosmic force called Dialectical Materialism which governs human history independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" (Portraits from Memory, 1956). Marx once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist" (according to Engels in a letter to C. Schmidt; see Who's Who in Hell by Warren Allen Smith). D. 1883. Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Hegel's Philosophy of Religion in 1840. Marx was also engaged in writing his doctoral thesis, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, which he completed in 1841. It was described as "a daring and original piece of work in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom of philosophy": the essay was controversial, particularly among the conservative professors at the University of Berlin. Marx decided, instead, to submit his thesis to the more liberal University of Jena, whose faculty awarded him his PhD in April 1841. As Marx and Bauer were both atheists, in March 1841 they began plans for a journal entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), but it never came to fruition. Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history. Marx is typically cited, with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, as one of the three principal architects of modern social science. More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl\_Marx http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/ http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi... http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/... http://www.historyguide.org/intellect... http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic... http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/... http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
