Marx's Literary Style

Ludovico Silva's Marx's Literary Style argues that a failure to understand Marx's literary mode of expression leads to confusion in his work. Silva isolates key elements of Marx's style, including search for architectonic unity, dialectical expression, and metaphor, and reveals misunderstandings of terms such as alienation, reflection, and base and superstructure. This edition, featuring an introduction by Alberto Toscano, is a valuable contribution to understanding Marx's complex and multifaceted literary style.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 128 pages
Publication date: 24 January 2023
Publisher: Verso Books

In his book "Marx's Literary Style," the Venezuelan philosopher and poet Ludovico Silva makes the case that a significant portion of the misunderstandings surrounding Marx's writings stem from a lack of comprehension of his literary mode of expression. Silva conducts meticulous readings of critical passages from Marx's oeuvre in order to isolate the fundamental characteristics of his style. These include his pursuit of textual architectonic unity, his ability to express himself dialectically at the sentence level, and, most notably, his remarkable gift for metaphor. Silva's exceptional sensitivity to Marx's literary choices enables him to shed light on a number of concepts that have been persistently and tragically misunderstood by many of Marx's most influential readers, including alienation, reflection, and base and superstructure.

At the core of Silva's book is his assertion that we cannot hope to understand Marx if we approach him solely as a scientist, philosopher, or literary writer, when in fact, he was all three simultaneously. This book, originally published in 1971, stands as a significant contribution by one of the most prominent Latin American Marxists of the 20th century. This edition, featuring an introduction by Alberto Toscano, marks the first publication of one of Silva's works in English.

Weight: 128g
Dimension: 139 x 209 x 12 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781839765537