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Podcast: New Books in Western European Studies
Episode: Andrew Hartman, "Karl Marx in America" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Description: Karl Marx in America (University of Chicago Press, 2025), by Andrew Hartman
To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. People have long viewed the United States as the quintessential anti-Marxist nation, but Marx’s ideas have inspired a wide range of people to formulate a more precise sense of the stakes of the American project. Historians have highlighted the imprint made on the United States by Enlightenment thinkers such as Adam Smith, John Locke, and Thomas Paine, but Marx is rarely considered alongside these figures. Yet his ideas are the most relevant today beca...