'Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion' shows a man ahead of our time

As ordinary people have more and more power taken away by neoliberalism and globalisation, there’s no time like the present for a fresh biography revisiting what Karl Marx actually stood for, writes TP O’Mahony.

AT A TIME when capitalism is facing a new crisis, and we are all living with the repercussions of how deeply unstable and socially damaging it is, a new biography of the man who saw clearer than anybody else in history its contradictions and inherent injustices could hardly be more timely.

The insights, analyses and warnings that Karl Marx bequeathed to us have arguably never been more relevant; that is why interest in Marx and Marxism has revived, and why it is more important than ever to distinguish between Marxism and the shocking perversions and aberrations of Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism, and their appalling consequences, which were constructed in his name.