Marxism: Philosophy and Economics

From his roots as a young Marxist economist to renowned libertarian thinker, Sowell comes full circle with this work. Having seen Marx from both sides and with a broad perspective, Sowell describes not only the concepts essential to Marxist economics but also an illuminating biographical outline of Karl Marx. The book takes head on the often misunderstood ideas and lexicon behind Marxist economics, laying out the ideology's essential ideas and giving the reader a working understanding of it's basic elements. But while it is most helpful, it is nonetheless a dense work despite it's brevity (281 pages) and some segments require rereading. If the nuts and bolts tend to baffle you, this one might be a bit much. The reader need not be an economics major, but bear in mind that this is hardly a casual read.

Even though this book was written almost 30 years ago, there is a lot of relevancy to today's political climate. After reading this book you will see where President Obama got much of the guidance for where he is trying to take America. This is frightening.I'll give you some excerpts from the book which should reveal the overall flavor of Marxism as studied by Thomas Sowell:The Marxist constituency has remained as narrow as the conception behind it. The Communist Manifesto, written by two bright and articulate young men without responsibility even for their own livelihoods -- much less for the social consequences of their vision -- has had a special appeal for successive generations of the same kinds of people. Intellectuals enjoy a similar insulation from the consequences of being wrong, in a way that no businessman, military leader, engineer or even athletic coach can.

... don't try to read Marx. His writing is all but impenetrable.Sowell is well known for making the complex understandable. And Marx is exceedingly complex. So much so that it takes quite a while to get through even Sowell's lucid explanation here.The intense weirdness of all things Marxian begin to become clear to the reader as Sowell first takes you through Marx' philosophy. Once you understand Marx' thinking, it becomes easier to understand where and how he got his economic ideas.The tone is even and professorial throughout the book. There is no attempt to persuade the reader toward or away from Marxism; Sowell simply explains it. However, no objective reader will come away convinced that Marx was right about anything!If you believe that knowing one's enemy is essential to defeating him, this book is required reading.

Sowell is my favorite contemporary economist, and a great writer. Not all economists are great writers, look at Hayek, although to be fair Hayek's first language was German ANYWAY I wanted a book that simply told me what Marx and his economics and philosophy were all about, without adding modern interpretations into it. And this book does exactly that. It is a bit difficult to follow at times, obviously the more you know about classical economics (the economics Marx used as a springboard for his own analysis) and philosophy the better. The book fills in some detail on the philosophical background that Marx and Engels grew up in, but leaves out some of the important economic details. This is a book for those with a grounding in economics, especially those who know how classical economics differs from modern economics (Sowell's "On Classical Economics" or "Classical Economics Reconsidered" would make a great companion book to this).If there is a weak spot to the book, it is the chapter on the Marxian concept of value, possibly the longest in the book, and on the most complex and difficult to understand topic. I still don't have a perfect grasp of it, but this is because Sowell is attempting to distill a massive three-volume epic into one 300-page book.Until the final chapter, you'd have no idea where to place the author on the political or economic spectrum. It is simply an objective interpretation of Marx up until that point, and the only "sermonizing" is when Sowell goes out of his way to explain more modern (and corrupt) interpretations of Marxism which are not supported by the writings of Marx/Engels. The last chapter, on the legacy of Marx, adds some critiques from an economic, historical, and even moral standpoint, although Sowell makes it clear that what happened in the USSR, China, Cuba, etc., is not what Marx planned (Marx did not support revolutionary groups overthrowing governments, rather he believed that communism would *emerge* after certain conditions had been met).I'd like to see a larger critique of Marxian economics, philosophy, and history, but that's not what I wanted from this book. I'd like to see Sowell write a book where he puts his usual Hayekian analysis on things, explaining why Marxism, Leninism, etc., don't work in practice and how they clash with contemporary economics. You could say that to some extent, he did that in Basic Economics, but it was far from being the main thrust of that book.

I actually read the whole book. It's quite dry compared to Dr. Sowell's other writings. It's a great survey of a vast topic. It only deals with the Karl and Freddy. He doesn't go into Cultural Marxism or Political Correctness.It's a lot like one of the those Oxford Short Introduction books, but much longer and written by someone you can trust.If you want more arrows in your quiver to fling at the left, this isn't the best place to look. If you want a basic understanding of Marx, his philosophy and economic theory, this is a great place to start.There is not much Sowell snark in this book. It's academic in its tone. He does make some excellent criticisms of Karl Marx as a human being in this book.