More Greatness than Illusion: Stedman Jones on Marx
| Date | 01 January 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885117709606 |
| Published date | 01 January 2019 |
| Author | David Leopold |
| Subject Matter | Review Articles |
EJPT
Review Article
More Greatness than Illusion:
Stedman Jones on Marx
David Leopold
University of Oxford, UK
Allen Lane: London, 2016; xvii + 768 pp. ISBN: 978-0-713-99904-4,
£35-00 (hbk)
Abstract
Gareth Stedman Jones has written a scholarly and interesting biography of Karl Marx,
framed by the plausible idea that the ‘authentic’ Marx needs to be recovered from layers
of 20th-century misinterpretation. The book focuses more on the political context than
the intellectual content of Marx’s ideas, and its treatment of the latter has some
limitations. Not least, the author underestimates the complexity, interest, and rele-
vance, of certain elements of Marx’s thought.
Keywords
Biography, Friedrich Engels, Gareth Stedman Jones, Karl Marx, socialism
The evidence of my bookshelves suggests that it is remarkably difficult to write a
good biography of Karl Marx. Perhaps especially one which seeks to do justice to
the writings as well as the life, which stands a chance of appealing to a wide
audience and from which specialists might also learn. The many current obstacles
here include: that significant new material emerges only infrequently; that the
numerous competing volumes leave little space to say anything new, at least with-
out going seriously astray; and that this is a subject area in which it is really hard to
mould opinion, in which everyone can appear to have already made up their minds.
Yet Gareth Stedman Jones has done that difficult thing. Since I venture some
non-trivial criticism below, I want to stress here that Karl Marx: Greatness and
Illusion is a very good biography, containing some excellent scholarship and
European Journal of Political Theory
2019, Vol. 18(1) 128–137
!The Author(s) 2017
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885117709606
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Corresponding author:
David Leopold, University of Oxford, Manor Road, Oxford, OX1 3UQ, United Kingdom.
Email: david.leopold@politics.ox.ac.uk
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