M ar x ’s Literar y S tyle

By Ludovico Silva Verso, 2023

Reviewed by Jonathan Diebold

Marx’s Literar y Style, by Venezuelan poet and academic Ludovico Silva, is a useful, if not essential, work, analysing par ticular aspects of how Karl Mar x wrote. Without reading this book, Mar x is still ver y much accessible, but anyone hoping to conduct a serious study of Mar x ’s writing would benefit from some analysis of how he wrote.

Written in 1973, this book has just been translated into English for the first time by Paco Brito Núñez, published by Verso, with a foreword by Alber to Toscano.

Born in 1937, in Caracas, to a middle - class family, Ludovico Silva studied in Europe, but returned to Venezuela by 1964 He was active in the literar y scene as an essayist and poet, and, though sympathetic to the ideas of Mar xism, disdained to join the organised left. From 1970 almost until his death in 1988 he was a professor of philosophy at the Central University of Venezuela. In par ticular he was interested in things such as alienation under capitalism and what he called “ideological surplus value ”

In writing Marx’s Literar y Style, Silva argues that Mar x consciously adopted a par ticular style in order to communicate his ideas. Mar x, “is not content with the clean conscience that comes from having used the scientifically correct terms” but rather his writing uses “ever y linguistic resource at its disposal.” Mar x wrote not just to understand the world, but to change it.

Some critics of Mar x point to his use of imager y and metaphor in order to slander him as unscientific But Mar x use such devices to make clear and concrete difficult and abstract concepts. As Silva writes: “His metaphors constitute an additional expenditure of verbal energy that ensures effective communication with the reader. Many scientific writers consider additional expenditures of this kind inappropriate and silly ; they do not seem to aspire to communication – in fact, some take an unhealthy pleasure in not being understood”

The first chapter describes Mar x ’s origins as a writer. Perhaps the most enlightening point here is that Mar x star ted off as a journalist, writing on politics and philosophy, before becoming a theorist in his own right. He originated as someone whose task was not just to record ideas, but to communicate them effectively to his audience Other points raised here, his failed effor ts at poetr y, his study of the classics, are more in the realm of interesting biographical details.

The second chapter, which is the key par t of the book, is divided into sections each analysing different features of his style, beginning with the “Architectonic of Science ” This was perhaps the weakest point, and the most poorly explained, but essentially seems to outline that Mar x ’s analysis of capitalism across his entire oeuvre is one internally consistent system. As Mar x writes to Engels, “the advantage of my writings is that they are an ar tistic whole ”

“ The expression of the dialectic, or the dialectic of expression” is a far more interesting section, pointing to a sentence structure used time and again by Mar x, “in which opposite terms are neatly drawn in an antagonistic correlation before being fused in a synthetic phrase ” What this amounts to is an explanation of things in a dialectical way – drawing out how seemingly opposite concepts depend on and presuppose one another. This type of wordplay isn’t just ornamental, but both explains the immediate subject being discussed and engages the reader in thinking dialectically.

In the third par t of the chapter, Silva speaks not just about Marx ’s use of metaphors, but also presents a ver y solid argument that too often Marxists have treated his metaphors as theories. For example, he argues that “base and superstructure” and “ideological reflection” are not theories in their own right but only metaphors to explain a broader theor y of ideology – metaphors which, though useful, break down when studied on their own and out of context. Base and superstructure, for example, is used to point out how a society ’s ideology is built on a material “base” – its economy and so on But this fails to bring out the full nuance of how a society ’s ideology develops in response to the development of its economic system, and how this ideology is in turn used to ensure that development The ideological superstructure and the material base it is built upon are not static forces but are ever changing and developing, and this metaphor only seeks to help readers to understand this, while the full theor y is elsewhere

Finally, the chapter discusses other features – Mar x ’s spirit of mocker y, his indignance, his spirited attacks on his opponents, how he renders the abstract concrete. All are clear throughout his work. Just note how many of his works’ titles begin with the words “a critique of ”

The third chapter seeks to appraise Mar x ’s works on the basis of the features laid out in chapter two.

Overall, Marx’s Literary Style is a wor thwhile book. For anyone making a serious study of Marx ’s writing, as all