Aften Marx.

These twelve original essays are "after" Marx in several senses. The first and most obvious is the purely chronological sense: They are written one hundred years after Marx's death. The authors are therefore able to see more clearly what Marx did not or could not see and to see more clearly that which he foresaw only dimly. The second sense in which they are after Marx is political: They are written in the aftermath of Marx and in his shadow. In this century virtually all revolutionaries call themselves Marxists and purport to apply Marx's precepts to political practice. Armed with their different interpretations of a nineteenth-century theory, they have altered. and continue to reshape - the political contours of the twentieth century. In different ways and with different emphases, the essays pursue the meaning of Marx's texts. The authors analyze Marx's fallacies, overstate ments, and omissions and, in the critical spirit if not always the letter of Marx's theory, they develop themes that his theorizing made possible but that he himself did not pursue. In spite of his having been so often caricatured as a dogmatist. Marx raised more questions than he, or anyone else, could ever reasonably hope to answer. To raise anew some of these questions, and to approach them in the critical spirit of Marx's own thinking, are the common themes running through and uniting these essays.