The “New Marx Reading”: an Overview

This article offers a historical and conceptual overview of the so-called "New Marx Reading" (Neue Marx-Lektüre), from its mid-1960s-roots in the work of marginal Frankfurt scholars and in the German debate on the State up to the work of its current leading voice, Micheal Heinrich. Born in opposition to traditional Marxism in the wake of the "New Left", the NMR has given fundamental understandings of Marx's theory of value, of the State and of the aim of the critique of political economy tout court. This tradition has (re)discovered the notion of social form and the form-genetic method as indispensable, while mostly neglected, key-concepts of Marxian thought. The article helps in giving a first approach to the NMR, highlighting its peculiarities and its importance for current debates on capitalism.