Karl Marx: His Life and Thought (4th Edition)

Karl Marx's contribution to modern social thought is so immense it is now difficult to understand the profound degree to which much of what he thought and wrote has been almost totally discredited and discounted. This is not to deny the fact that his social theory is indeed quite essentially flawed, but rather to suggest that given the relative proportions of his contribution to sociology, economics, and cultural critique, one tends to throw out the baby with the bath water in summarily rejecting all that this intellectual genius had to offer regarding the nature of modern capitalistic society. No book does a better job of presenting the broad sweep of Marx's remarkable critical contributions than this wonderful and quite comprehensive biography of Marx by renowned psychologist and academic David McLellan. With painstaking care and meticulus attention to detail, McLellan places Marx's life in context, showing how the multitude of social, cultural, and economic issues that formed him and scarred him early in life carried with them a most urgent message regarding the nature of modern society.

This is the fourth edition of David McLellan’s Karl Marx: His Life and Thought, the first edition of which was originally published in 1973. For the 4th edition McLellan has updated the detailed footnotes at the end of each chapter, as well as the extensive and very useful annotated bibliography at the end of the book. McLellan’s biography has stood the test of time, and despite the much-publicised and over-hyped publication of Francis Wheen’s biography of Marx in 1999, McLellan’s book remains by far the best biography of Marx available in English.