Etienne Balibar's brief exegesis of Marxian theory is a lucid, but by no means dumbed-down account of the major problems and ideas in what is now called 'Marxism.' Balibar moves through the major concepts as a seasoned veteran of the ENS-his writing on ideology and history is particularly articulate. In addition, there are wonderful little snapshots of the major Marxian thinkers-from Gramsci to Althusser. Although many might object to the importation of 'ontology' in this interpretation, Balibar has still produced an invaluable resource.

The title is misleading. This book is an excellent essay about Marx that places his thought in historical context. Beyond that, however, it leaves much to be desired. I found it to be only an historical introduction to Marx that failed to provide any focused overview of his ideas. Aside from the cursory mention of other philosophers and very brief allusions to their ideas, there is little here for anyone hoping for an explication of Marx's philosophy. In short, I found the book light on content and difficult to read. I was very disappointed and chose not to add it to my library. If you are looking for a clear and concise discussion of the philosophy of Marx, this book is not a good investment.

“The Philosophy of Marx” by Etienne Balibar is a difficult, unfocused but oddly useful introduction to the philosophy of Marx. Mr. Balibar is a world-renowned scholar who has updated the text for a timely reissue by Verso Books. Readers who are seeking to understand Marx will find many insightful passages but may be frustrated by the author’s tendency to drift.

Mr. Balibar contextualizes the life and time of Marx to help us understand the purpose of his writings. We learn that Marx was, more than anything else, an activist philosopher whose ideals were intended to not interpret the world, but to change it for the better. For that reason, Marx sought to prove that humanity’s essence was defined by its ever-changing real-world material and social relations (not a spiritual abstraction of an imagined world). History turns on the struggle between the ruling class who owns the means of production and the working class. And so on.

The trouble is that Mr. Balibar doesn’t structure the lesson in a way that is easy to understand. As Mr. Balibar moves from one subject to the next, he introduces us to various critics of Marx’ philosophy; taking us down many discussion paths for no clear purpose. In that sense, the book comes across as a random collection of scholarly articles instead of an intentional learning program. It’s a shame because Mr. Balibar certainly knows the subject well.

Verso's decision to republish this book should be lauded. For the better part of a decade in the late '90s and '00s they allowed it to languish in out-of-print obscurity; it deserved a better fate, as this is a very useful classroom text.

This is simply the best introduction available to the issues and texts of Marxism for the contemporary student of continental philosophy or "theory." Balibar is astonishing in his brevity and his lucidity when summarizing a hundred and fifty years of Marxist thought on issues such as ideology and false consciousness, time and history, class struggle and dialectics. The main text is organized in about five brief chapters on themes such as these. Page-length boxes set into the text expand on key issues, texts, and sources -- from the "three sources of Marx's thought" to the Theses on Feuerbach -- and provide capsule biographies of important Marxist writers from Gramsci to Lukács to Lenin. It's also a terrific reference -- if Balibar's text is sometimes too dense for an introductory-level student to read quickly, its density helps it retain interest and utility for the more sophisticated reader. There is no other book like this one, and it should be embraced.

Re-entering the world of studying socialist, anarchist, and other leftist thought one often ends up reading French texts released by Verso press quite a bit. This is a slim volume and ostensibly designed to be an introduction to the philosophy of Marx. Verso has given a slick red-tape Marx profile cover, and it stood out on a book shelf as I pursued the standard texts from Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, Robert Service, V. I. Lenin, and Leszek Kołakowski. I have also recently read Das Kapital while listening to David Harvey's lectures on the topic.

So this brings me to Etienne Balibar, student of the infamous anti-humanist and structuralist Marxist Louis Althusser. Like Althusser's students Charles Bettelheim, Alian Badiou, and Jacques Rancière, Balibar stayed in the Marxist tradition unlike his compatriot Michel Foucault. Balibar largely became involved with Marxism from Althusser's lectures on Das Kapital. Balibar is not just a critical theorist, he was directly involved French immigrants rights and the Maoist activism of many of Althusser's students.

So far so good, right? You may say, "Slim volume written by a prominent thinker who is also actually an activist. So your implying its obtuse? It's French."

Slow down, gentle reader. This book while marked as an introduction to the Philosophy of Marx has two functions: one, it is an attempt at an introduction of Marx's philosophy. It is vital, however, to notice that philosophy is specific here. It is not an introduction to Marx's sociology or his economics. While it does touch on this points as each element is intertwined with the others, it is specifically about philosophy in the narrow sense. Secondly, Balibar is not just introducing the material, he is making a sustained argument about Marxist philosophy itself.

The book is quite excellent in discussing the background of the Marx especially in compared to a lot of what you would get in a dismissive general theory textbook. The section on ideology-not surprisingly given Balibar's relationship to Althusser, is very lucid and powerful in explaining how Marx attempted to account for the limits and basis of human thought without the aid of advanced sociology, which arguably Marx is one of the several founders, or modern neurology. Furthermore, the block inserts on Gramsci, Althusser, Lenin, Benjamin,etc are all excellent in their concision and aid to the controversies of Marxist philosophy..

Yet one must not ignore that this is all written under the guise of Balibar's thesis: "there is no Marxist philosophy and there will never be; . . . Marx is more important for philosophy than ever before." In this Balibar has placed Marx as vital to the academic philosophy and its relationship to praxis, but completely outside practical application by socialists. Furthermore, he makes this almost argument entirely on conflict between dialectics of history and critical theory being at an aporia. This is particularly true in the last section, which, despite the clear and generally readable translation of Chris Turner, comes off as muddled.

What is even not interesting is that Balibar makes this claim without any reference to Marxist historical practice. He is only concerned with the abstractions that emerge from Marx's own development. So Balibar does seek to place Marx in his own historical context but denies the importance of practiced Marxism: "The events which marked the end of the great cycle during which Marxism functioned as an organizational doctrince (1890-1990), have added nothing new to the discussion itself, but have swept away the interests which opposed its being opened up."

His thesis is also predicated on the claim that while Marx's attempt to make philosophy cause action and also place it in a sociological context makes him a truly original thinker, Balibar says that Marx is a dogmatist that falls short of fully exploring his claims. This kind of argument has been made in far less obtuse ways by Isaiah Berlin or even Noam Chomsky. I suspect because this is sort of a liner-notes form of Baliber's developed critique in Masses, Classes and Idea that there is no reason to assume that class structures will because consistent because "the emergence of a revolutionary form of subjectivity (or identity)... is never a specific property of nature, and therefore brings with it no guarantees, but obliges us to search for the conditions in a conjuncture that can precipitate class struggles into mass movements..." (Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx, Routledge. Trans. James Swenson.)

Still let us return to a structured critique of the book instead of jumping to the Balibar's other works that inform it. The second chapter focuses on the praxis/poiesis dialectic (or, in non-philosopher speak, "theory/action" divide). Balibar reads this as an aporia:

"it is not difficult to derive the following hypothesis from Marx's aphorisms: just as traditional materialism in reality conceals an idealist foundation (representation, contemplation), so modern idealism in reality conceals a materialist orientation in the function it attributes to the acting subject, at least if one accepts that there is a latent conflict between the idea of representation (interpretation, contemplation) and of activity (labour, practice, transformation, change). And what he proposes is quite simply to explode the contradiction to dissociate representation and subjectivity and allow the category of practical activity to emerge in its own right"

Yet, even if I agree with Marx, can we say that there is actually a real dialectic there? What if the problem that Marx was trying to reconcile resolves itself in practice. Belief is acted upon and created through action. There is a lot of modern psychological studies to confirm this. This means that philosophy that is not enacted is not operating in good faith. This seems to be consistent with Marx's intention and his economics but removes the problem Balibar is placing on him by accepting an essentially Hegelian dialectical problem.

In discussing ideology Balibar seems to indicate that it is conflict with fetishism in Marx's work. That this is a hard division between Marx's early and later thought. However, he admits that fetishism is concerned with economic mystification and ideology is concerned with state/cultural mystification. He see these as opposed, perhaps because Balibar accept's Althusser's conception that ideology is totalizing.
On this, I am not sure if I agree, but it seems to be that the difference between ideology and fetishism is descriptive focus. Fetishism calls attention to an element of commodity value that is ideological and mystifying but is in no way in conflict with the larger analysis of capital and class emergence.

Furthermore, Balibar talks about Marx's having an "evolutionary" or "Darwinian" view. He is accusing Marx of having somehow sublimated a theory of progress. I think this is a misunderstanding of what an evolutionary view is. It is a common mistake made from Herbert Spenser onward that evolution implies teleological process towards some absolute goal. Indeed, Hegel also has this latent teleology. Marx, however, seems to indicate unsure of this: capitalism contradictions make impossible to be self-sustaining, but in very little of Marxist writings does he seem to say that the outcome of this dialectical impasse has a specific ending. It seems many of the historical problems of the Paris Commune may have complicated Marx's view, something that Balibar himself suggests.

This critique aside, I find Balibar's book to be challenging and engaging when it is clear. Balibar's discussion of Marx's revolution of the idea of "subject" is worth the 140 pages. It's introductory elements are sound, but this text is NOT an introduction to Marxist philosophy as you can tell by the my critique. Indeed, you would have to familiar with the primary texts and a good bit of post-structuralist and post-Marxist jargon to get past parts of the last chapter.

For a better introduction to Marxist thought, read Marx. Then watch the David Harvey lectures I posted, and if you still need some supplements--don't feel bad about it, Marx combines economics, philosophy and nascent sociology in a way that few people can handle from every aspect.

For those more textually inclined: David Harvey's Companion to Capital, The Cambridge Companion to Marx, and Terry Eagleton's Marx Was Right are all more introductory in a (slightly in the case of Eagleton) less polemic and obtuse way.

If you want a ready an interesting and provocation, but brief philosophical treatise on Marx, do read Balibar.Also I can suggest reading his work on Kapital with Althusser and some of his reflections on Dictatorship of the Proletariat. For similar critiques, Derrida's The Spectre of Marx and the reaction against it, Ghostly Demarcations, are quite good.