Abstract

Gareth Stedman Jones has written a scholarly and interesting biography of Karl Marx, framed by the plausible idea that the ‘authentic’ Marx needs to be recovered from layers of 20th-century misinterpretation. The book focuses more on the political context than the intellectual content of Marx's ideas, and its treatment of the latter has some limitations. Not least, the author underestimates the complexity, interest, and relevance, of certain elements of Marx's thought.