Technology

We must challenge notions that Marx can explain the modern world

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS: How will our deepest thoughts at the end of 2017 be altered by the intellectual climate of 2018?

26 December 2017

Number 2 — Science Photo Library/Alamy Stock Photo

The 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth falls on 5 May 2018. Two centuries have passed under the shadow of one of our most inescapably powerful thinkers about economics, technology and power. May is also the 50th anniversary of a near-revolutionary uprising in Paris. Marx’s mark was all over the événements of 1968, when an alliance of students and workers came close to overthrowing the government of Charles de Gaulle.

Those of you who tried to sit out 2017’s centennial commemoration of the Russian revolution will have no chance next year. The old, bearded patriarch’s face will be…