‘Citizen Marx’ with author Bruno Leipold

As some of the most powerful capitalists in history are openly disavowing political democracy and calling for the unbridled rule of private wealth, now is a good time to revisit Karl Marx’s revolutionary republicanism and his ideas about political power and social classes. In his recently published Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought, Bruno Leipold argues that Karl Marx’s thinking was deeply informed by republicanism. Challenging common depictions of Marx that downplay or ignore his commitment to politics, democracy, and freedom, Leipold shows that Marx viewed democratic political institutions as crucial to overcoming the social unfreedom and domination of capitalism. 

Placing Marx’s republican communism in its historical context—but not consigning him to that context—Leipold traces Marx’s shifting relationship to republicanism across three broad periods. First, Marx began his political life as a republican committed to a democratic republic in which citizens held active popular sovereignty. Second, he transitioned to communism, criticizing republicanism but incorporating the republican opposition to arbitrary power into his social critiques. He argued that although a democratic republic was not sufficient for emancipation, it was necessary for it. Third, spurred by the events of the Paris Commune of 1871, he came to view popular control in representation and public administration as essential to the realization of communism. Leipold shows how Marx positioned his republican communism to displace both antipolitical socialism and anticommunist republicanism. One of Marx’s great contributions, Leipold suggests, was to place politics (and especially democratic politics) at the heart of socialism.

Bruno Leipold is a fellow in political theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
He is the coeditor of Radical Republicanism: Recovering the Tradition’s Popular Heritage.

Join our five-week reading group on Citizen Marx starting April 2.