Karl Marx

Martyr poet Saroj Dutta once said that it is the complex course of history that gives birth to individuals and creates their specific roles; later, it is those very individuals who shape history. This statement applies a hundred percent to Karl Marx. The intellectual luminosity born of the Renaissance in the fifteenth century, augmented by the brilliance of the French Revolution, touched upon the philosophical insights of Hegel, Feuerbach, and others, the economic frameworks of Adam Smith and Ricardo, and the utopian socialism of Saint-Simon and Robert Owen. When society, restless with a fierce desire for change, prepared to voyage into the unknown lands of revolution, Marx emerged—he who forcefully overturned the long-standing, head-heavy stasis of intellectual discourse, placing it firmly on its feet. He demonstrated that for ages philosophers had only interpreted the world, while the real task remained unfinished. That task was to transform the decaying, crumbling system and to create a society in which the state—like the devilish old Sindbad—imposed by humans upon humans could be destroyed, replaced by an exploitation-free society where people would receive “according to need and give according to ability.” The life and ideology of this visionary thinker and practitioner, Karl Marx, have never before been explored in Bengali with such clarity and depth. Divided into seven chapters, this book by Sunil Mitra accomplishes that task flawlessly. Sunil Babu demonstrates with exceptional skill that Marx’s life and experiences are themselves a reflection of his ideology.