Citizen Marx

""In his informative and enjoyable new book [Leipold] examines the political opinions of Karl Marx and their place in the rather neglected field of 19th-century republicanism. . . . [H]ighly original.""---Jonathan Rée, Literary Review ""Many non-socialist 19th-century radicals shared much of Marx’s diagnosis of the problems with capitalism. But they disagreed sharply with his proposed cure. They dreamed of reversing the process by which the working class had lost access to its own means of production. Bruno Leipold gives us a fascinating look at these debates. . . . [and] showcases the ways in which classical republican themes about freedom from arbitrary power influenced Marx’s own thought.""---Ben Burgis, Unherd ""[A] brilliant systematic study of Marx’s relationship to republicanism as a form of radical politics in his lifetime, and the heavy influence on Marx’s ideas of the republican conception of freedom. . . . [Citizen Marx] ought to be very widely read. . . . [and] it should be comprehensible and useful to activists in the organized and disorganized left.""---Mike McNair, Jacobin ""Leipold meticulously documents Marx’s vacillating journey between the philosophies of republicanism and socialism. . . . Classical history of political thought tends to present Marx’s thought as a stand-alone, independent reflection on the political tensions of industrial capitalism, as if Marx’s socialism emerged out of an intellectual vacuum. But Leipold shows that Marx continuously positioned himself vis-à-vis rival thinkers and activists.""---Tim Christiaens, LSE Review of Books ""Leipold boldly argues that 'republican freedom suffused Marx’s critique of the social domination of capitalism'. . . . [and] convincingly shows that Marx did not really convert to a preexisting communist vision so much as fashion his own version of communism by combining elements of republicanism with it. . . . provocative.""---Andrew Hartman, New Labor Forum ""Citizen Marx presents a compelling, deeply researched, and elegantly written analysis of Marx’s relationship to republicanism, and it will no doubt become an important point of reference in future discussions about Marx’s thought. . . . [It] is an excellent reconstruction of the debates in which Marx’s communism was forged, and it succeeds in contextualizing Marx’s thinking without burying it in the nineteenth century. Although the book is clearly a work of intellectual history, it also engages with several issues that remain relevant for twenty-first century revolutionaries.""---Søren Mau, Spectre