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Karl Marx's Theory of Ideas

John Torrance author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:19th Jun '08

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Karl Marx's Theory of Ideas cover

A new look at Marx, showing how he provides a sociology of ideas which is still of value in explaining how social life shapes and distorts people's ideas and beliefs.

John Torrance takes a fresh, un-Marxist approach to Marx's texts and shows that a more precise, coherent and cogent sociology of ideas can be extracted from them than is generally allowed. He explores the implications of this for twentieth-century capitalism and for recent debates about Marx's conceptions of justice, morality and the history of social science.Marx's undeveloped ideas about how society presents a misleading appearance which distorts its members' understanding of it have been the subject of many conflicting interpretations. In this book John Torrance takes a fresh, un-Marxist approach to Marx's texts and shows that a more precise, coherent and cogent sociology of ideas can be extracted from them than is generally allowed. The implications of this for twentieth-century capitalism and for recent debates about Marx's conceptions of justice, morality and the history of social science are explored. The author argues that Marx's theory of ideas is sufficiently independent of other parts of his thought to provide a critique and explanation of those defects in his own understanding of capitalism which allowed Marxism itself to become, by his own definition, an ideology.

"Torrance's book is packed with suggestive notions .... The issues raised in the book are indeed of lasting and contemporary importance." Richard D. Chessick, American Journal of Psychotherapy
"...Torrance operates in the analytical mode and aims to give the reader a plausible construal and defense of Marx's ideas -- at least in the area under discussion. And, in this aim, the book very largely succeeds." David McLellan, American Jounral of Sociology

ISBN: 9780521066723

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 26mm

Weight: 670g

456 pages