Marx's Critical/Dialectical Procedure

Demonstrating that Marx is the legitimate founder of what was to become the critical theory of society, this book argues that in order to justify a new conception of human beings and human behaviour, Marx undertook a radical critique of the theoretical analytical method of his predecessors and contemporaries in the fields of political economy, philosophy and the natural sciences. Whilst elements of the method of other thinkers remained present in Marx's thought, he achieved a new synthesis of procedural epistemological and ontological analysis. H.T.Wilson argues that Marx's intellectual attitude can be characterized by dynamic, active reflection rather than by more passive forms of contemplation. Marx's thought emerges as something much less deterministic and much more interactive than his critics have argued. Indeed the book goes a long way to refute claims that there is a causal relation between holistic and historicist thinking and totalitarian practices.