Reflections on Sven-Eric Liedman’s Marx-Biography “A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx”

Christian Fuchs

doi:10.31269/triplec.v16i2.1039

Christian Fuchs University of Westminster, Communication and Media Research Institute & Westminster Institute for Advanced Studies

DOI: https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v16i2.1039

Keywords: Karl Marx, Sven-Eric Liedman, Marx-biography, A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx, bicentenary, 200th anniversary, 5 May 2018, 1818

Abstract

The English translation of Sven-Eric Liedman’s Marx-biography A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx was published two weeks before Marx’s bicentenary. This article presents reflections on Liedman’s book and asks how one should best write biographically about Marx. The paper compares Liedman’s biography to the Marx-biographies written by Jonathan Sperber (Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life) and Gareth Stedman-Jones (Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion). A biography is a way of repeating a person’s life, works and age in a process of reconstruction and retelling. The question that arises is how to write a biography as a dialectical text.

Sven-Eric Liedman: A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx. London: Verso, London, 2018. 768 pages., £35.00 hbk. ISBN 9781786635044

Author Biography

Christian Fuchs, University of Westminster, Communication and Media Research Institute & Westminster Institute for Advanced Studies

Christian Fuchs is a professor at the University of Westminster. He is co-editor of tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. His research interests are: critical theory, social theory, political economy of media and communication, critical digital media studies.
URL: http://fuchs.uti.at, Twitter @fuchschristian