1986 Reviews

Review of Louis Dupré, Marx’s Social Critique of Culture

West, Cornel

Despite the proliferation of fine works on Marx, Dupré's learned text deserves attention. This is so because it provides a superb critical exposition of the complex development of Marx's social vision and theory as well as a provocative organicist critique of cultural disintegration in the modern West. In his close readings of Marx's works—from the doctoral dissertation to the third volume of Capital—Dupré displays an intellectual patience, historical sensitivity, and philosophical acumen rarely found in scholarly treatments of Marx. By refusing to succumb to either uncritical presentation or tendentious dismissal, he provides one of the most reliable, succinct, and engaging
interpretations we have of Marx's own writings.