Solid and comprehensive without being dry or tedious,. Professor Avineri's book is destined rapidly to become known as oue of the most reliable English-language studies of the Marxism o~ Marx. In addition, despite its author's consistent, obviously sincere stance of scholarly objecti~eity, this work will not remain immune from employment in the arena o~ political controversy. On the first page of his Preface:, the author expresses his conviction that "the dialectical relations between theo,ry and practice have to be predicated upon a prior autonomous understanding of theory." But it is obvious that, in the case of a living value theory like that of Marx, objectivity itself can constitute a parti pris.
- First of all, a summary of the main themes and subjects of The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx is in order. The unity of Marx's ideas across the years is clearly the strongest single point of emphasis. ~ Professoa" Avineri not only discusses at length, like a number of other recent authors,, the development of the "early Marx" in reaction to Hegelianism, but goes on to, show, in one dbmain after another, the continuation of the earlier ideas in many later writings and speeches. As a complement to this theme of unity within Marx, the distances separating Marx from both Engels and Lenin receive frequent mention, though the latter two, thinkers are studied only by way of co,ntrast with Marx and not in themselves. Avineri's conclusions strongly hint at the need for a re-evaluation o~ the conception of Marx as a "revolutionary," especially when this is identified with being a Jacobin, and provide much fuel for the controversy as to whether Marx was a "democrat," and ff so in what sense. Special stress is placed, inter alia, on the related themes of the abolition of the state and universal suffrage, on the change of referent of the concept of "universal class" from Hegel's Prussian bureaucracy to Marx's proletariat, on Marx's peculiar epistemological position, regarded as being midway between classical materialism and classical idealism, and on his seemingly (but not, according to, Avineri, fundamentally) inconsistent treatments of the Paris Commune; on all these po,ints and many others, Professor Avineri's eminently clear and neatly-documented analyses carry considerable conviction. As examples of other interesting but less central aspects of this study, one may cite the author's contribution to the thus far meager literature on Count August yon Cieszkowski as a Marxian "forerunner," and his successful attempt to. minimize the claim that Lorenz you Stein's work exerted a tremendo,us and unique influence on Marx's early intellectual development. Finally, the critical thesis of Professor Avineri's brief "Epilogue" should be noted: it is that Marx was tmable to achieve more than the most mediocre success in connecting his brilliant systematic theses with the concrete historical phenomena of his contemporary world:; 1 One is immediately reminded of another strong argument along similar lines in Gajo Petrovic's two essays, "The 'Young' and the 'Old' Marx" and "The Continuity of Marx's Thought." Cf.