Marshall Berman | Author, philosopher, 72
Marshall Berman, 72, an author, philosopher, and educator whose optimistic, humanist writings on economics, art, and culture were shaped by his early immersion in the works of Karl Marx, has died. Fellow author Todd Gitlin said Mr. Berman, a native New Yorker and longtime Manhattan resident, died Wednesday of a heart attack.
Marshall Berman, 72, an author, philosopher, and educator whose optimistic, humanist writings on economics, art, and culture were shaped by his early immersion in the works of Karl Marx, has died. Fellow author Todd Gitlin said Mr. Berman, a native New Yorker and longtime Manhattan resident, died Wednesday of a heart attack.
"Master lyric-analytic Marxist, defiant chronicler of cities, activist, sage, dear friend" was how Gitlin remembered Mr. Berman in a posting Thursday on Facebook.
Mr. Berman had a long and prolific life of the mind. He wrote several books, notably the 1982 publication All That Is Solid Melts Into Air; served on the editorial board for the leftist magazine Dissent; contributed essays to the New York Times, the Nation, and other publications; and taught politics at the City University of New York and the City College of New York.
His intellectual awakening happened while he was an undergraduate at Columbia, in the 1950s. He came upon Marx's Economic and Political Manuscripts of 1844 in a bookstore. Long after the Cold War ended, he remained influenced by Marx and interpreted him in ways that delighted and infuriated.
He was praised as an exuberant prose stylist who made subjects from Goethe to Brazilian architecture accessible. - AP