Abstract

The scope of this book is accurately stated in the title and subtitle. It provides a clear outline of the main Marxist concepts and theses grouping them around the central concept of the ideal of the authentic man—the working man in a worker’s state freed from the alienations and estrangements of ‘capitalist’ society. Dr Koren is neither Marxist nor anti-Marxist, and he rounds off each chapter with some critical reflexions. The criticism is well-balanced, erudite, unpolemical. The author knows his texts too well to accuse Marx of attacking private property or of defending a crude materialism. He presses gently but firmly on the weak points of the Marxist system: its inherent tendency towards oligarchy and dictatorship, its oversimplification of the class struggle, its assumption that human development cannot advance beyond Communism.