Living a Marxist Life

Book excerpt: The last ten years have seen a dramatic upsurge of interest in socialist theory and politics. As a recent Washington Post op-ed put it, “We are living in a new social democratic moment”. People are increasingly drawn to Marxist theory but find it difficult to imagine how it can be integrated practically into an everyday life pervaded by capitalist norms and social practices. Often intuitively, they agree with Marx's critique of capitalism, but don't know how to bridge the gap between their sense of dissatisfaction with the present and a revolutionary solution which can feel indefinitely postponed and remote. Living a Marxist Life responds to this disconnect by framing Marxism not as a mere “theory” but as a practical philosophical truth-a lived practice that immediately changes the reality of those experimenting with it. From Frida Kahlo to Jean-Luc Godard, Pablo Picasso to Angela Davis, Marxists are not dry theoreticians but embodied agents of a process that is as intensely imaginative and joyful as it is demanding and difficult. This book, then, is a chronicle of radical change-a record of the ways our thoughts, habits, desires, actions, and emotions can be fundamentally reshaped by an encounter with Marx. This book is not an introduction to Marx, nor a systematic defense of Marxism. Rather, it is a self-help book that calls into question the very idea of self-help, a guide to the good life that rejects normative morality, and an inspirational manual that promotes philosophy, sociology, and politics, not vague spirituality or religion, as solutions to the urgent problems that face us.