A discussion of Bruno Leipold's book, Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought, with comments by Corey Robin.

Citizen Marx is the first book to offer a comprehensive exploration of Marx’s relationship to republicanism, arguing that it is essential to understanding his thought. Challenging common depictions of Marx that downplay or ignore his commitment to politics, democracy, and freedom, Leipold shows that Marx viewed democratic political institutions as crucial to overcoming the social unfreedom and domination of capitalism. One of Marx’s principal political values, Leipold contends, was a republican conception of freedom, according to which one is unfree when subjected to arbitrary power.

Panel

Bruno Leipold is a Fellow in Political Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he will also take up an Assistant Professor position in 2025. He is the co-editor of Radical Republicanism: Recovering the Tradition's Popular Heritage (Oxford University Press) and works on the thought of Karl Marx, republicanism and democratic theory.

Corey Robin is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of The Enigma of Clarence Thomas, The Reactionary Mind, and Fear, and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and other publications. He is currently at work on King Capital, a political theory of capitalism, which is under contract with Random House. In 2024-25, he will be a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar and the Carl F. Cranor Visiting Scholar, delivering lectures on a variety of topics at colleges and universities across the United States.