Marx in Motion

Karl Marx is the most historically foundational and systematic critic of capitalism to date and the years since the 2008 financial crisis have witnessed a rebirth of his popular appeal. In a world of rising income inequality right-wing nationalisms and global climate change people are again looking to the father of modern socialism for answers. <p/>As this book argues every era since Marx's death has reinvented him to fit its needs. There is not one Marx forever and for all time. There are a thousand Marxes. As Thomas Nail contends one of the most significant contributions of Marx's work is that it treats theory itself as a historical practice. Reading Marx is not just an interpretative activity but a creative one. As our historical conditions change so do the kinds of questions we pose and the kinds of answers we find in Marx's writing. <p/>This book is a return to the writings of Karl Marx including his under-appreciated dissertation through the lens of the pressing philosophical and political problems of our time: ecological crisis gender inequality colonialism and global mobility. However the aim of this book is not to make Marxism relevant by applying it to contemporary issues. Instead <em>Marx in Motion</em> the first new materialist interpretation of Marx's work treats <em>Capital </em>as if it were already a response to the present. <p/>Thomas Nail argues that Marx was a new materialist <em>avant la lettre</em>. He argues that Marx did not believe history was determined or that matter was passive or that humans were separate or superior to nature. Marx did not even have a labor theory of value. Marxists argue that new materialists lack a sufficient political and economic theory and new materialists argue that Marx's materialism is human-centric and mechanistic. This book aims to solve both problems by proposing a new materialist Marxism.<br>