Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Perhaps no social theorist has generated more intense feelings among more widely dispersed audiences than Karl Marx. His name is identified with some of the twentieth century's major emancipatory struggles and worst forms of repression. As capitalism spread throughout the world from its original centers in Europe and North America, his ideas were appropriated in nearly every corner of the globe, and were revised, blended with other traditions, and applied in heterodox ways. Different Marxisms bear the imprints of highly divergent cultures, times, and sociopolitical aims. The importance of Marx's thought for labor movements and other forms of resistance and insurgency, as well as for various socialist and communist parties and regimes, has made it a topic of intense debate on the left and right. However, his mature work is as analytical and sociological as it is political. For this reason, his ideas have generated diverse lines of social research and social theory. Also, like Nietzsche, Marx provided alternative presuppositions and concepts to other modern social theories, stimulating numerous attempts to refute or dismiss his ideas. Thus, he has been an oppositional reference point for very diverse types of theory (e.g. from function-alism to postmodernism). Although pronounced dead on many occasions, he always seems to rise again from the ashes. Even after the late twentieth century, ... log in or subscribe to read full text