The politics of character development : a Marxist reappraisal of the moral life /

Christensen (Bemidji State Univ.) offers a clear and focused account of the importance of engaging in Marxist moral evaluation and character formation. He articulates his account in the idiom of conventional moral philosophy. Christensen calls his Marxist position "consequentialist contextualist" and describes the basis for moral and political critique in terms of species-based universal moral goods always realized and/or monopolized only in particular contexts of material and social resource distributions. In these respects this book complements Kai Nielsen's Marxism and the Moral Point of View (CH, Apr'89). Christensen's ability to state his account in conventional terms enables him to engage readers unfamiliar with Marx's work and scholarship based on it. This is the principal strength of this book, and it is sufficient to recommend it for all substantial collections in ethics and politics. It is also the principal concern some readers will have with the work--Christensen's acquiescence to what may seem bourgeois categories. The voice shifts clearly from the first two of the three main chapters, in which the tone is academic and scholarly, to the third, in which Christensen engages in spirited critique of Americanism. The book is perhaps short on discussion of the psychological and sociological details of character development. Upper-division undergraduate; graduate; faculty. D. R. C. Reed; Wittenberg University