Karl Marx in America / Andrew Hartman.
| Author/creator | Hartman, Andrew author. |
| Format | Book |
| Publication | Chicago, IL ; London : The University of Chicago Press, [2025] |
| Copyright Date | ©2025 |
| Description | 594 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Subjects |
| Contents | Introduction. Karl Marx, ghost in the American machine -- American revolutionary : the US Civil War -- Working-class hero : the Gilded Age -- Bolshevik : the Russian Revolution -- Prophet : the Great Depression -- False prophet : midcentury liberalism -- Red menace : postwar conservatism -- Humanist liberator : the new left -- Theorist : academia in the age of Reagan -- Specter haunting : twenty-first-century capitalism. |
| Abstract | "The vital and untold story of Karl Marx's stamp on American life. To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. People have long viewed the United States as the quintessential anti-Marxist nation, but Marx's ideas have inspired a wide range of people to formulate a more precise sense of the stakes of the American project. Historians have highlighted the imprint made on the United States by Enlightenment thinkers such as Adam Smith, John Locke, and Thomas Paine, but Marx is rarely considered alongside these figures. Yet his ideas are the most relevant today because of capitalism's centrality to American life. In Karl Marx in America, historian Andrew Hartman argues that even though Karl Marx never visited America, the country has been infused, shaped, and transformed by him. Since the beginning of the Civil War, Marx has been a specter in the American machine. During the Gilded Age, socialists read Marx as an antidote to the unchecked power of corporations. In the Great Depression, communists turned to Marx in hopes of transcending the destructive capitalist economy. The young activists of the 1960s were inspired by Marx as they gathered to protest an overseas war. Marx's influence today is evident, too, as Americans have become increasingly attuned to issues of inequality, labor, and power. After decades of being pushed to the far-left corner of intellectual thought, Marx's ideologies have crossed over into the mainstream and are more alive than ever. Working-class consciousness is on the rise, and, as Marx argued, the future of a capitalist society rests in the hands of the people who work at the point of production"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Issued in other form | Online version: Hartman, Andrew. Karl Marx in America. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2025 9780226537511 |
| LCCN | 2024046635 |
| ISBN | 9780226537481 (hardcover) |
| ISBN | 022653748X (hardcover) |
| ISBN | (electronic book) |
| ISBN | (electronic book) |