COUNTERPUNCH, SEPTEMBER 13, 2019
The first installment of Michael Heinrich’s three-volume biography of Karl Marx titled “Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society” is now available from Monthly Review Press. In keeping with MR’s long-time tradition as a movement rather than an academic press, the cloth edition is $34.95 and the eBook is only $19.95. Given the renewed attention to Karl Marx since the financial crisis of 2008, it will help us understand how his life and thought evolved. Heinrich is a consummate scholar of Marxism, best known until now for his 2012 “An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital”, also available from MR.
At 384 pages, Heinrich’s first volume is almost as long as Francis Wheen’s 1999 “Karl Marx: a Life” that won the prestigious Isaac Deutscher award that year. Out of curiosity, I read the first 59 pages of Wheen that covers approximately the same time frame as Heinrich’s, namely from Marx’s birth in 1818 to the completion of his Ph.D. dissertation in 1841.
