Cyril Smith's book "Karl Marx and the Future of the Human" is one of the few books on Marxism I've recently read that really surprised me in its line of thought. Whether this is a good thing, however, remains to be seen.

The book follows to basic approaches to Marx in making its point. The first is that it reads Marx as above all a humanist, interested in overcoming alienation, and that all his works, including the 'systematic' ones, are to be seen in this light. Of itself this is not wrong (though hardly original), and Smith has some good commentary on various of Marx' texts. The second approach, however, is to read this humanism as above all a necessitation of unification, that is, unification of each human with the other humans and with nature. This is also a common view of Marx, often emphasized by Marx' opponents as a 'remnant of Romanticism' or such things, and it can certainly be supported in the texts.

But here things go off the rails. Cyril Smith decides that science is a bad thing because it objectifies its subject and in so doing takes an essentially atomistic view of the world. The very fact, even, that the world is scientifically analyzed is a sign of alienation, because if man is one with his surroundings, he doesn't need to analyze them (apparently). This leads Smith to declare that Marx would have opposed not only official "Marxism", but even philosophy, political economy, history, and the natural sciences altogether, as these are all products of alienation and therefore bad.

Where then should we seek answers? Cyril Smith first gives us a history of philosophy showing how the way was cleared for these insights, a history that is astoundingly amateuristic and full of pointless invective against historical figures in a childish manner (oh no, Aristotle had slaves, surely this insight shocks the world). The point in any case is to show that all the philosophers, in particular the hated Enlightenment thinkers, only perceived the world in an alienated manner and could not overcome the limitations of (proto-)science.

The mystics, however, were much better. In the tradition of people such as Boehme and Meister Eckhart Cyril Smith sees the real forebears of socialist thought. Since these people said that "as it is in heaven, it is on earth" (a random statement by Hermes Trismegistos), they really meant to say that we should pay attention to the world as opposed to God, though couched in theological terms. And because the mystics, following the neoplatonist tradition, were obsessed with unity and reunification, they really had the relevant insights.

Needless to say, this is all inordinately silly, especially since Cyril Smith uses a lot of scholastic-esque wrangling with Marx' texts to produce conclusions as far-fetched as these, and as usual Engels is the big bad boogey-man who created the awful "Marxism". The book gets two stars since Smith's intent is undoubtedly good and the humanist nature of Marx cannot be stressed enough, but I cannot recommend this book to anyone. ( )