Vulgar Marxism

“Baring’s pathbreaking research into the history of worker education reveals a complex story, offering valuable lessons in nurturing a productive relationship between progressive theoreticians and the people who actually make history.” * Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley *“As a program of mass emancipation and enlightenment, Marxism faces the challenge of spreading the news. In this deft study, gifted intellectual historian Edward Baring shows that Western Marxism was born more out of contemplating the education of working people than out of skepticism of reductive and simpleminded theory. Masterful.” * Samuel Moyn, Yale University *“This is an ambitious and masterful work that recasts our understanding of Western Marxism. Deeply researched, cogently argued, and elegantly written, it easily earns a place alongside classic studies by the likes of Martin Jay and Perry Anderson.” * Warren Breckman, University of Pennsylvania *

Edward Baring is associate professor of history and human values at Princeton University. He is the author of Converts to the Real and The Young Derrida and French Philosophy, 1945–1968.