Book Review First Draft – Why read Marx today? – Jonathan Wolff
Prior to studying this module around the topic of historical economic thought, I myself thought, ‘what is the point in looking at economic ideas that were written so long ago?’. Therefore, I chose this book by Jonathan Wolff to try and convince me that ideas written and created by some of the most influential economists such as Marx could be relevant when compared with the ideas of today.
The book itself consists of 4 main sections, which pose as the chapters of the book. The first is the self titled ‘Introduction’. This concisely summarises the life of Karl Marx and the main pieces of literature that he had written over the course of his life time. In my opinion, this section is written and presented very well to me as a reader of whom had no real background knowledge to Marx’s life or pieces of work.
The second section of the book outlines the early writings of Marx, in which one of his key theories is discussed, alienated labour. As Wolff chose to keep this …show more content…
It acts as an overview of the previous points mentioned but in this instance Wolff critically analyses each of Marx’s views and theories to see how relevant or truthful they are with the now more up to date theories. One example which is particularly prevalent is where Wolff criticises the view where Marx believes communism will follow after a collapse of the capitalist society’. Marx believed that in his socialist society, the population would be able to share the abundant resources fairly and freely, however Wolff then argues that this simply would not work as a result of the human nature to prioritise themselves. He then continues to argue that communism fails to produce any incentives with the collapse of the free market, which will then result in shortages of goods that have no incentive for
Prior to studying this module around the topic of historical economic thought, I myself thought, ‘what is the point in looking at economic ideas that were written so long ago?’. Therefore, I chose this book by Jonathan Wolff to try and convince me that ideas written and created by some of the most influential economists such as Marx could be relevant when compared with the ideas of today.
The book itself consists of 4 main sections, which pose as the chapters of the book. The first is the self titled ‘Introduction’. This concisely summarises the life of Karl Marx and the main pieces of literature that he had written over the course of his life time. In my opinion, this section is written and presented very well to me as a reader of whom had no real background knowledge to Marx’s life or pieces of work.
The second section of the book outlines the early writings of Marx, in which one of his key theories is discussed, alienated labour. As Wolff chose to keep this …show more content…
It acts as an overview of the previous points mentioned but in this instance Wolff critically analyses each of Marx’s views and theories to see how relevant or truthful they are with the now more up to date theories. One example which is particularly prevalent is where Wolff criticises the view where Marx believes communism will follow after a collapse of the capitalist society’. Marx believed that in his socialist society, the population would be able to share the abundant resources fairly and freely, however Wolff then argues that this simply would not work as a result of the human nature to prioritise themselves. He then continues to argue that communism fails to produce any incentives with the collapse of the free market, which will then result in shortages of goods that have no incentive for