Political Economy from Pufendorf to Marx

Recovers the revolutionary views on political economy and Marxism of the visionary historian, István Hont (1947–2013).

István Hont (1947–2013) defected from Communist Hungary in the 1970s and became renowned globally as a scholarly visionary in political ideas. This book brings together seven of Hont's previously unpublished papers, recovering his revolutionary views on the history of political economy from Samuel Pufendorf to Karl Marx.István Hont (1947–2013) defected from Communist Hungary in the 1970s and became renowned globally as a scholarly visionary in European political ideas. Following his death, a wealth of unpublished material from an early project rewriting the history of liberty, politics and political economy from Samuel Pufendorf to Karl Marx was discovered. This book brings together seven of Hont's previously unpublished papers, providing a revolutionary intellectual history of the Marxian notion of communism and revealing its origin in seventeenth-century natural jurisprudence. Hont aspired to integrate the history and theory of politics and economics, to infuse present-day concerns with a knowledge of past events and theoretical responses. The essays selected for this volume realise Hont's historical imagination, range and intellectual ambition, exploring his belief that Marxism ought to be abandoned and explaining how to do it.