Language English ISBN 978-0521297059 Subject Karl Marx | Pages 556 Originally published 1985 Page count 556 Country United Kingdom | |
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Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback) Similar Works by Jon Elster, Karl Marx books | ||
Making Sense of Marx is a 1985 book about Karl Marx by Jon Elster, in which Elster reevaluates Marx's ideas. The book has received a mixture of praise and criticism from commentators.
Contents
Summary
Elster reevaluates Marx's ideas from a rational choice perspective, arguing that Marx at his most insightful was in some sense a methodological individualist.
Scholarly reception
Making Sense of Marx was praised as "sharp" and "hard-headed" by political scientist David McLellan in the 1995 edition of Karl Marx: His Life and Thought. Richard W. Miller, writing in The Cambridge Companion to Marx (1991), called Elster's work "erudite".
Conversely, the Marxist theorist Ernest Mandel gave the work a negative review entitled "How to Make No Sense of Marx", while philosopher Jan Narveson wrote that Making Sense of Marx was, "greeted with highly mixed feelings by those who had hoped the title meant that there was sense to be made" of Marx.