Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx : A Revolutionary Interpretation

by Hook, Sidney

• ISBN13: 9781573928823
• ISBN10: 1573928828
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-12-01
• Publisher: Prometheus Books

Summary

Published in 1933, at a time of widespread unemployment and bank failures, this book by the young Sidney Hook received great critical acclaim and established his reputation as a brilliant expositor of ideas. By 'revolutionary interpretation' Hook meant quite literally that Marx's main objective was to stimulate revolutionary opposition to class society. Hook later abandoned the revolutionary views expressed in this volume, but he never abandoned his warm positive views of Marx as a thinker and a fighter for freedom. He eventually concluded that 20th century history had proved both him and Marx wrong about the necessity of revolutionary means to achieve their mutual social goals. But, says his son Ernest B Hook in an introduction, this concession of error "he did not see... as an admission of intellectual weakness, but the natural position of a reasonable person when, in the light of observation and experience, he concludes he has erred.".

Author Biography

Sidney Hook became a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University, where he remained until his death in 1989.

Table of Contents

The Mutable Unmuted Sidney Hook (1902-1989): Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx and Towards the Understanding of Sidney Hook	p. 9
Historical Introduction	p. 35
Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx	p. 67
Preface	p. 69
The Quest for Marx
Introduction	p. 77
On Historical Understanding	p. 83
"Der Kampf Um Marx"	p. 92
The Orthodox Canonization	p. 99
The Revisionist Exegesis	p. 109
The Syndicalist Heresy	p. 118
Lenin: The Return to Marx and Forward	p. 127
Marxism as Method	p. 138
The Philosophy of Marx
The Marxian Dialectic	p. 147
Dialectic and Truth	p. 176
The Materialistic Conception of History	p. 189
What Historical Materialism Is Not	p. 215
Problems of Historical Materialism	p. 237
Marx's Sociological Economics	p. 261
The Philosophy of Political Economy	p. 284
The Class Struggle and Social Psychology	p. 301
The Theory of the State	p. 323
The Theory of Revolution	p. 347
Dictatorship and Democracy	p. 372
App.: Four Letters by Frederick Engels on Historical Materialism	p. 397
From Ideology to Philosophy: Sidney Hook's Writings on Marxism	p. 417
Marx in Limbo: An Imaginary Conversation	p. 445
Communism in Hell: An Interview with Sidney Hook from Beyond the Grave	p. 457
Works By and About Sidney Hook	p. 463
Index	p. 477
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