Tell us about your background and more importantly, how did the idea of this book come to you? Where did you get the idea to write this wonderful book about vulgar Marxism, which you use in a different sense, which we'll talk about soon?

As you said, I'm an intellectual historian, and the type of intellectual history that I do is I want to take texts that are widely read, that still have readership today, still have an impact on the way in which we think about the world, and then I want to think about different contexts in which we can read it in order to read it in new ways.

Often cover overlooked contexts, contexts that have been ignored by previous scholars.

And one of the ways I do that is that I tend to look at what these intellectuals were doing most of their time.

Most of the time they weren't writing books.

How can we see what their major focus in their life helps shed light on their ideas? And if you look at the many of the people I was studying in this book, the history of Marxism, what they spend a lot of their time, their day jobs, as it were, were revolved around education.

So I love this story about Antonio Gramsci, one of the most significant Marxist intellectuals of the 20th century.

What is so specific about this time window that you decided to focus on Marxism? What was happening in Europe, let's say, at that time, the war of European Marxism or socialism that you decided to focus on that particular time window?

Uh, what is so specific about this time window that you decided to focus on Marxism? What was happening in, in, in, in Europe, let's say at that time, the world of European Marxism or socialism that you decided to focus on that particular time?

Yeah.

So, I mean, so one way to think about this is to think about what happened beforehand.

I mean, why isn't this a story about Marx? And I think if you read Marx, Marx is interested in education.

He does these popular lectures, um, in Amsterdam in lead up to 1848.

You know, um, he writes kind of popular versions of Capital, which, um, uh, in the 1860s.

Um, but he never really seems very invested in those things.

... is really important as opposed to, let's say, economics or party strategy? Why do you think that's, e-education is a better lens for s- for understanding these debates in that, in that particular time frame about Marxism?

Tell us about your background and more importantly, how did the idea of this book come to you? Where did you get the idea to write this wonderful book about vulgar Marxism, which you use in a different sense, which we'll talk about soon?

So as you said, I'm an intellectual historian, and the type of intellectual history that I do is I want to take texts that are widely read, that still have readership today, still have an impact on the way in which we think about the world, and then I want to think about different contexts in which we can read it in order to read it in new ways.

Often cover overlooked contexts, contexts that have been ignored by previous scholars.

And one of the ways I do that is that I tend to look at what these intellectuals were doing most of their time.

Most of the time they weren't writing books.

How can we see what their major focus in their life helps shed light on their ideas? And if you look at the many of the people I was studying in this book, the history of Marxism, what they spend a lot of their time, their day jobs, as it were, were revolved around education.

So I love this story about Antonio Gramsci, one of the most significant Marxist intellectuals of the 20th century.

What is so specific about this time window that you decided to focus on Marxism? What was happening in Europe, let's say, at that time, the war of European Marxism or socialism, that you decided to focus on that particular time window?

Tell us about your background and more importantly, how did the idea of this book come to you? Where did you get the idea to write this wonderful book about vulgar Marxism, which you use in a different sense, which we'll talk about soon?

As you said, I'm an intellectual historian, and the type of intellectual history that I do is I want to take texts that are widely read, that still have readership today, still have an impact on the way in which we think about the world, and then I want to think about different contexts in which we can read it in order to read it in new ways.

Often cover overlooked contexts, contexts that have been ignored by previous scholars.

And one of the ways I do that is that I tend to look at what these intellectuals were doing most of their time.

Most of the time they weren't writing books.

How can we see what their major focus in their life helps shed light on their ideas? And if you look at many of the people I was studying in this book, The History of Marxism, what they spend a lot of their time, their day jobs, as it were, were revolved around education.

So I love this story about Antonio Gramsci, one of the most significant Marxist intellectuals of the 20th century.

What is so specific about this time window that you decided to focus on Marxism? What was happening in Europe, let's say, at that time, the war of European Marxism or socialism, that you decided to focus on that particular time window?

And maybe how a thinker like Kautsky, um, responded to those dynamics.

Yeah.

I mean, I think, you know, there's, uh, um, there's, it's happening at sort of two levels.

One is this sort of, this really sort of mass-based printing, um, texts in the tens or maybe hundreds of thousands and selling them very cheaply.

Um, you know, being, you've got them being sold, uh, um, on the street, um, or by the party in, in various sort of locations.

And then there's the kind of, you know, the texts that are used by, um, you know, sort of, are read by party leaders who are, are being, like, digested.

Um, I mean, th- those are, c- can be sort of often quite separate.

... foundation.