Back to Marx

Without a doubt Karl Marx’ philosophical work had a fundamental impact on “western” concepts of society and economics that still reverberates in the philosophical discourse on Marx. When it comes to analyzing this ongoing discourse it should be noted that due to language barriers the work of Chinese scholars is underrepresented in this discourse. This book is a translation of Zhang Yibing’s reference work “Back to Marx” fi rst published in 1999 in the PRC. The book is a serious inquiry into the complex interrelationships between Marx‘s political and economic philosophy, based on a very careful and systematic reading of a wide range of textual sources, including—in particular—the newly published second edition of the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA2), which collects a large amount of notes, drafts, manuscripts, and excerpts previously unavailable to the scholarly community. The analyses themselves are closely reasoned, subtle, and circumspect. It may best be described as a “dialectics of Marx’s thought” from the fi rst writings in the late 1830s through the 1840s and through the “Grundrisse” and “Capital”. Other than the sharp breaks offered by “Western Marxist” commentators such as Althusser the author of this book refl ects both on continuities and discontinuities, surface readings and deep structures, and the interplay of philosophy, history and economics in the various phases of an unfolding theoretical system based throughout on a critique of capitalism. The secondary literature on Marx covers works published in Western Europe and North America, Eastern Europe and Russia (Soviet Union), China and Japan. This kind of coverage is an important contribution in itself and allows non-chinese readers insights into the Chinese reception and interpretation of the international discourse on Marx. The author Prof. Dr. Zhang Yibing teaches philosophy at the Nanjing University and is one of the foremost scholars of Marxism in China, a Marxist analyst of contemporary philosophical issues. At the same time he is the Chancellor of the Nanjing University.