''Making Sense of Marx'' is a 1985 book about

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

by the social and political theorist

Jon Elster Jon Elster (; born 22 February 1940, Oslo) is a Norwegian philosopher and political theorist who holds the Robert K. Merton professorship of Social Science at Columbia University. He received his PhD in social science from the École Normale Supe ...

, in which the author reevaluates Marx's ideas. The book has received a mixture of praise and criticism from commentators.

Reception

''Making Sense of Marx'' was praised as "sharp" and "hard-headed" by the political scientist David McLellan. McLellan 1995. p. 441. The political philosopher Richard W. Miller called Elster's work "erudite". Miller 1999. p. 77. Conversely, the

Marxist economist Marxian economics, or the Marxian school of economics, is a heterodox school of political economic thought. Its foundations can be traced back to Karl Marx's critique of political economy. However, unlike critics of political economy, Marxian e ...

Ernest Mandel Ernest Ezra Mandel (; also known by various pseudonyms such as Ernest Germain, Pierre Gousset, Henri Vallin, Walter (5 April 1923 – 20 July 1995), was a Belgian Marxian economist, Trotskyist activist and theorist, and Holocaust survivor. He fo ...

gave the work a negative review, while the philosopher

Jan Narveson Jan Narveson (; born 1936) is professor of philosophy emeritus at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. An anarcho-capitalist and contractarian, Narveson's ideology is deeply influenced by the thought of Robert Nozick and Da ...

wrote that the work was, "greeted with highly mixed feelings by those who had hoped the title meant that there was sense to be made" of Marx. Narveson 2001. p. 348.

Bibliography

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References

1985 non-fiction books Books about Karl Marx Books by Jon Elster Cambridge University Press books English-language books Rational choice theory {{philo-book-stub