There was a time when ideas seemed capable of changing the world.

In "When Marx Was Still in Fashion," political scientist Kees van der Pijl takes you back to the 1970s and 80s, a period when Marxist thinkers, students, and academics played a significant role in the political and intellectual landscape.

The university was not a neutral place, but a battlefield of ideas, ideals, and power. Van der Pijl provides an inside account of how theory, activism, and geopolitics intertwined in a world that was in constant flux.

This book is not a dry history lesson. It is a personal and sharp retrospective on a time when convictions truly had an impact, and when that world slowly transformed into something completely different.

For anyone who wants to understand how ideas become power, and how that power subsequently shifts.

Why you'll want to read this book

• Unique insider perspective on the academic world of the 1970s-90s
• About Marxism, universities, the Cold War, and ideological struggle
• Sharply, personally, and sometimes surprisingly honestly written
• Explains how an entire era of thought emerged and disappeared

For readers interested in:

• political history
• Cold War
• university & ideology
• power and social change
• intellectual memoirs

In short:

A rare glimpse into a time when ideas truly held weight and shaped the world.

Kees van der Pijl is a Dutch political scientist primarily known for his work at the intersection of international political economy, geopolitics, and power structures in the global economy.

He belongs to an academic tradition that critically examines how economic and political power is organized worldwide, and how elites, states, and international institutions collaborate or clash within this framework.

Van der Pijl studied and worked in the Netherlands and later internationally. For many years, he was associated with:

the University of Amsterdam
later the University of Sussex (UK), where he was a professor of international relations

Within academia, he is often categorized within the fields of:

critical international relations
international political economy (IPE)
Marxist-inspired analytical traditions (without being dogmatic)