Ebook: Understanding Marx, Understanding Modernism

A concentrated study of the relationships between modernism and transformative left utopianism, this volume provides an introduction to Marx and Marxism for modernists, and an introduction to modernism for Marxists. Its guiding hypothesis is that Marx’s writing absorbed the lessons of artistic and cultural modernity as much as his legacy concretely shaped modernism across multiple media.
A close engagement with Marx's central philosophical texts, the focus of the first part of the volume, involves reading Marx in relation to his artistic and primarily his literary antecedents, from Epicurus and Dante through Shakespeare and Dickens. The second section, on aesthetics, is concerned with recognizably modernist aesthetics and demonstrates how Marx and Marxism were taken up by key modernists across multiple media in forms such as the novel, the poem, cinema, theatre, music and architecture. Concluding with a glossary of mini-essays on key concepts from 'commodity' through 'ideology' to 'utopia,' this volume will be invaluable to students who wish to engage with Marx's philosophy in their own work.