Theory rather than barricades

Abstract

After the failure of the politics inspired by Marx, it seems foolhardy for anyone to try to arouse a reader’s curiosity with a study of »Marx as a Political Actor.« But the Trier historian Wolfgang Schieder has shown convincingly that the excessive respect that has been paid to Marx the theorist has served largely to conceal just how much he was also a man of »political action.« With the end of socialism, it is now high time to uncover the »historical Marx« from the deformations of an incomparable history of posthumous impact and effects — and this in a critical research programme into »Marx’s life.«