As Ehara specifies in the “Afterword of the Translators,” this Japanese version en- titled Another Marx is a translation of two books by the original author （p. 390）: Another Marx, published by Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2018; and Late Marx, for which the publication data is not available.
The former book corresponds to the first nine chapters in the Japanese translation, and the latter corresponds to the last three chapters and the epilogue. In the original version of the former, the nine chapters are grouped into three parts: “Intellectual Influences and Early Writings,” “The Critique of Political Economy,” and “Political Mili- tancy,” in chronological order. Hence, the latter book can be virtually regarded as the following fourth and concluding part of this biography of Marx, which allows us to read this Japanese version not as a combination of two different books but as one consistent book. Yet, it is a pity that the “Bibliography” and “Index” sections in the original first book are not reproduced in the Japanese translation.
One of the most important charac- teristics of this biography of Marx, published in the bicentenary year of his birth, is that the author incorporates the results of the publication of the second MEGA volumes. In particular, it incor- porates the volumes belonging to its Part IV including the excerpt notes Marx took during his scientific activities. This particularly applies to Marxʼs intensive study during the first years of his exile in London at the beginning of the 1850s, as discussed in the first chapter of part 2, and to his extensive study of natural sciences and anthropology during his last years at the beginning of 1880s as concisely described in the first chapter of part 4.
Marx is one of the few figures in the history of economic thought, of whom a considerable number of biographies have been written, from the classic biography authored by Franz Mehring in 1918（English translation: Karl Marx: The Story of His Life, Routledge, 2003） to the recent voluminous work by Gareth Stedman Jones entitled Karl Marx: Great- ness and Illusion, Allen Lane, 2016, leaving aside the other numerous banal ones published in the ex-Soviet Union. The author of the present biography attempts to present “Another Marx” to his readers, -one that has never been seen in these foregoing biographies. Marx is, of course, not only an economist; he is a philosopher or social thinker in the broad sense of the term, and above all, a communist revolu- tionary. However, it is also incontestable that in all of his wide range of political and scientific activities during his life- time, his economic research occupied a key place. From the very early times, one of his most important objectives was to achieve a systematic work on political economy.
Traditionally, the three Books of Capital were considered as such. In contrast to Capital, the early economic writings of Marx, represented by the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, published for the first time during the 1930s as byproduct of the editorial work of the first MEGA in Moscow, were regarded in such a tradition as “immature or pre-Marxist writings.” In opposition to this view, some biographers of Marx described his manuscripts of 1844 rather as embodying a “newly discovered, true Marx” who had been overshadowed till then by the “scientifi- cist, objectivist” understanding of his theory and thought. The author of the present biography criticizes both of these views, predominant until recent times, to bring forward the gradual evolutionary process of Marxʼs economic research. According to the author, the essential links between the “young” and “mature” Marx consist in the excerpt notes taken during the early years of the 1850s, known as the “London notes” published for the first time as second MEGA-volumes; and the first manuscripts of Marxʼs critique of political economy from 1857 to 58, well known today as “Grundrisse.” Therefore, the author examines the former material in detail, to connect Marxʼs economic research and its results, from the mid-1840s to the late-1860s. Considering Marx as an economist, this may be the most remark- able point in this book. Another important contribution of this biography is the vivid description of Marxʼs activities in the General Council of the International from 1864 to 1872 and of his continuing conflicts with Bakunin and Proudhon. The author emphasizes the fact that Marx and his partisans were rather a minority in this organization, and that Marxʼs view on the labor movement and its objectives underwent important changes during these years. Simultaneously, Marx was very busy drafting the manuscripts of all the three Books of Capital. He eventually published its first Book in 1867. The final, fourth part of ʻLast Marxʼ lively depicts how he struggled, till the end, to complete Capital and extend his intellectual curiosity to an ever wider range. Although the analytical part of Marxʼs main economic works（Capital to begin with, and including The Poverty of Philosophy, Wage Labor and Capital, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and other manuscripts）still leaves something to be desired, this is certainly a novel biography for the new and younger generations.
Marcello
Musto
