at Durham University. He is the coeditor of Radical Republicanism: Recovering the Tradition’s Popular Heritage.
Leipold applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought, and reported the following:
Page 99 of Citizen Marx discusses the young Karl Marx’s views on democracy. It sets out how Marx thought that people had a right to political participation, partly because he thought we had a human need to do so. But he also interestingly believed that this didn’t require everyone to directly participate and he thought there were good reasons for some form of representation. Here a brief extract:Visit Bruno Leipold's website.Marx first defended the legitimacy of the desire to take part directly in the legislature. That desire reflected a genuine need “of all to be real (active) members of the state . . . to give themselves a political being ... to demonstrate and give effect to their being as something political.” A “member of the state” who is denied the chance to properly participate in the decisions and deliberations of their state “would be an animal.” Political participation was thus, Marx again implies, an important aspect of our human nature. …Page 99 would do a reasonable job of giving readers a summary of the book. It showcases one of my central arguments: that part of Marx’s republican inheritance was his deep commitment to democracy. It also gives readers a sense of his more specific ideas on democracy and his perhaps surprising concession to practical concerns when it comes to the need for representation. But it would also slightly mislead readers because it is not until page 100 that I clarify that Marx also thought that representatives would need to be tightly controlled by their constituents through binding instructions. That’s important because I argue that Marx endorsed a much more democratic idea of democracy than what we are familiar with today.
The goal of modern democratic struggle was…on Marx’s account, not direct participation but the extension of the right to vote and stand for office. Marx in fact thought that there were good reasons to fight for democratic representation rather than direct participation. He argued that making use of representatives in legislative matters was justified both by the large numbers of citizens in modern states (“the best reason that can be advanced against the direct participation of all”) and the need for a certain division of labor between citizens (otherwise the “individual would have to do everything at once; whereas society both lets him act for others and others for him”).
So in sum, I think page 99 would only do a decent job if it inspired readers to turn to the next page!
--Marshal Zeringue
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