Jessy Chantre từ Stronia, Poland

_essychantre

12/22/2024

Dữ liệu người dùng, đánh giá và đề xuất cho sách

Jessy Chantre Sách lại (10)

2019-05-07 16:30

Bút Ký Người Đi Săn Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Ivan Tuốcghênhép

This and Russian Thinkers would make a perfect introduction to leftist revolutionary thought of the 19th century. Not finished with it yet, but so far it's good, though I have some quibbles. [ETA: finished; loved it.] It corrects the common perception that Communism was an invention of mostly Marx and partly Engels by detailing the movement's antecedents in Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owens, and others, most of whom were inspired in turn by the French revolution. I hadn't realized that in the case of both Marx and Engels, it really did take a village. The sense of genealogy goes a long way toward removing early Communism from the drawing room and planting it in the streets, and also makes Marx look a little less original, but considering his sophistication compared to the lunatics who inspired him, it makes him look smarter, too. On the other hand, the book necessarily engages its protagonists' ideas in broad strokes. That's OK, but at times Wilson needed to rein it in. We are told that the newly empowered French postrevolutionary bourgeoisie's "ideas" became "vulgar"- excuse me? Wilson is comfortable with the nuts and bolts of the labor theory of value, but as Menand points out in the excellent introduction, he's fuzzier when it comes to dialectic. (Menand observes that Americans are uncomfortable with the both/and nature of Hegelian philosophy, preferring to give things "thumbs up or down." Thus we here are saddled with leftists whose abstemiousness leads them to expect to save the world by buying only organic lettuce.) Why not start with Hume or Kant or Hegel or Fichte? Because, Menand implies, Wilson liked writing stories about eccentric industrialists more than he liked discoursing on Feuerbach. Who can blame him? It's an unusual intelligence that can assimilate stories about Marx's romance with Jenny von Westphalen but can't bear to muster more than a few sentences on The German Ideology. The other thing this book lacks is a sense of the complexities of Russian politics. After reading Orlando Figes' book on the Revolution, I was impressed with how many different factions had to fall into place just so during the period 1905-1917 for the Bolshies to win the day. Wilson has nothing but derision for the very important Populist movement and does not even mention the Slavophiles, opinions on whom split the Russian intelligentsia down the middle for such a long time. All in all, Wilson approaches 19th century nationalism as a blip on the radar where most sources today seem to see it as much more influential than that. But this book was written nearly 80 years ago, and if it had said everything I wanted it to then reading it would have been pointless. Engels comes off better than anyone here. Wilson lovingly details his tireless support of the Marx family despite Marx's insensitive and obnoxious nagging, and manages to make Engels' business dealings consistent with his ideology. This is no small feat. Engels was the convivial one; Marx was the crank, and once Marx died, Engels took to having dinner company over again, remarking that he had been underrated while Karl was alive and overrated after he died. While Karl and the subsequent savageries of Lenin and Josef "Care Bear" Stalin make it hard to read this book with too much sympathy, Engels makes it all seem like it could've worked. What an astounding work of narrative history, though. I heartily recommend this to anyone with an interest in 19th and 20th century European politics and thought.

Người đọc Jessy Chantre từ Stronia, Poland

Người dùng coi những cuốn sách này là thú vị nhất trong năm 2017-2018, ban biên tập của cổng thông tin "Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn" khuyến cáo rằng tất cả các độc giả sẽ làm quen với văn học này.