Abstract

Norman Levine: Marx’s Discourse with Hegel. Basingstoke: Palgrave Mac- millan 2012. 360 pages. ISBN 978-0230293342. Review by Jacob Blumenfeld “Marx appropriated Hegel’s method, but he rejected Hegel’s system.” This is the core idea that Norman Levine repeatedly asserts throughout his most recent book, Marx’s Discourse with Hegel. Although this is Levine’s main point, it is by far the least interesting and perhaps the least convincing idea to stem from his extensive research. His contribution to the long debate concerning the influence of Hegel on Marx is rather more of a philological nature than anything else. Levine has done the painsta- king and rigorous archival work, with the help of the MEGA , of documenting exactly a) which texts of Hegel’s were available to Marx and when he read them, b) which texts of Hegel’s were available to Marx but were never read, and c) which texts of Hegel’s were never available to Marx (ch. 2). Given this “visible” and “invisible” bibliography of Hegel, Levine then reconstructs, year by year from 1837 to 1848, exactly how Marx’s knowledge of certain texts from Hegel directly influenced Marx’s philosophy, politics, and vocabulary, as can be seen in his dissertation, newspaper articles, manuscripts, and books (ch. 3). With this in view, Levine is able to judge how Marx mis-read Hegel (ch. 4), and how Marx’s method is indebted to Hegel (ch. 5).