Marx Matters

Choice Award Outstanding Academic Title 2022

Despite being repeatedly declared out of touch and outdated, Karl Marx's ideas have never mattered more.

Marx Matters is an examination of how Marx remains more relevant than ever in dealing with contemporary crises. This volume explores how technical dimensions of a Marxian analysis remain relevant to our understanding of inequality, of exploitation and oppression, and of financialization in the age of global capitalism. Contributors to this important volume track Marx in promoting emancipatory practices in Latin America, tackle how Marx informs issues of race and gender, explore current social movements and the populist turn, and demonstrate how Marx can guide strategies to deal with the existential environmental crises of the day.

Marx matters because Marx still provides the best analysis of capitalism as a system, and his ideas still point to how society can organize for a better world.

Contributors are: Jose Bell Lara, Ashley J. Bohrer, Tom Brass, Rose M. Brewer, William K. Carroll, Penelope Ciancanelli, Raju J. Das, Ricardo A. Dello Buono, David Fasenfest, Ben Fine, Lauren Langman, Alfredo Saad-Filho, Vishwas Satgar, and William K. Tabb.

David Fasenfest, Associate Professor of Sociology and Urban Affairs, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Wayne State University, is an economist and sociologist who has written numerous articles on regional and urban economic development, labor market analysis and work force development, and income inequality. His work has appeared in Economic Development Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, International Journal of Urban and Regional Review, and International Journal of Sociology. He is the editor of Community Economic Development: Policy Formation in the U.S. and U.K., Critical Perspectives on Local Development Policy Evaluation, and Social Change, Resistance and Social Practice. In addition, he edits the journal Critical Sociology and is the editor of the book series Studies in Critical Social Science published by Brill Academic Press.

Publication date: April 4, 2023

List of Figures

Notes on Contributors

1 The Once and Future Marx
  David Fasenfest

2 What Marx Anticipated That Is, or Should Be, Central to Political Economy Today
  William K. Tabb

part 1
Marx's Political Economy for the Present
3 From Marxist Political Economy to Financialization or Is It the Other Way About?
  Ben Fine

4 Value, Capital and Exploitation in Marx
  Alfredo Saad-Filho

5 Social Oppression, Class Relation, and Capitalist Accumulation
  Raju J. Das

6 The Power of Money
  Penelope Ciancanelli

7 Great Replacement and/as the Industrial Reserve Populism or Marxism?
  Tom Brass

part 2
Marx and a Changing Society
8 Emancipatory Thought in Latin America The Enduring Legacy of Carlos Marx
Ricardo A. Dello Buono and Jose Bell Lara

9 Marx, the Commons and Democratic Eco-socialism
  Vishwas Satgar

10 Marx Matters, in Theory and Practice Reflections from the Corporate Mapping Project
  William K. Carroll

11 The Capitalist Racial State and Black Lives in Struggle
  Rose M. Brewer

12 Marxism and Intersectionality A Critical Historiography
  Ashley J. Bohrer

13 Marxism, Peasants, and the Cultural Turn The Myth of a 'Nice' Populism
  Tom Brass

14 Marx on Social Movements Left and Right
  Lauren Langman

Index