By: Rius Publisher: Pantheon Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Pantheon Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 160 Publication Date: July 15, 2003 Release Date: July 15, 2003
Product Description: A cartoon book about Marx? Are you sure it's Karl, not Groucho? How can you summarize the work of Karl Marx in cartoons? It took Rius to do it. He's put it all in: the origins of Marxist philosophy, history, economics; of capital, labor, the class struggle, socialism. And there's a biography of "Charlie" Marx besides.
Like the companion volumes in the series, Marx for Beginners is accurate, understandable, and very, very funny.
Good Accompaniment to the Manifesto. Nowadays, a lot of the versions of Marx's "Manifesto of the Communist Party" come with about 100 pages of analysis and attempts to decode Karl's thinking. What they should come with is this book.
"Marx for Beginners" is a wonderful way for anyone who wishes to study Marx's writing to get their feet wet, and for the experienced Marxist reader, it provides a bit of humor to the writings and gives ways to explain Marx to other people.
Even though it is a cartoon book, the illustrations are not pivotal to the writing. They seem to serve mostly as filler, just brackets to attach speech balloons to. But what is in the speech balloons is where the brilliance of the book comes through. Rius gives a brief history of Marx's life, a rundown of philosophy that helped form Marxist thought and then an analysis of the Manifesto. The best feature is when a complex item is discussed, Rius will state the "academic" definition, but then give a practical real-world example of that concept. He also includes a useful glossary of many common terms that come up in discussions of Marxism.
Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone studying Marx. The only downside is that Rius's writing is very pro-Marxist which may repel non-Marxists from seeing the book's utility. However, most people who purchase this are probably already pretty pro Marx .
Useful little booklet on Marx I bought "Marx for Beginners", a cartoon introduction to Marx written by Mexican political cartoonist Eduardo del Rio ("Rius"), not so much because I needed an introduction to Marxism but to see how the theory can be summarized as pithily and shortly as possible. And indeed, Del Rio has done an admirable job on this. The reader is guided through all aspects of Marx' work as well as biography, even including an extraordinarily rapid overview of the history of philosophy and of the early socialists. Of the economic theories of Marx only the basics are explained, but nevertheless sufficient to get the point of what Marx tried to show in "Capital", if not how he proved it.
As far as the political side goes, Del Rio usefully emphasizes the limitations of social-democracy and its inability to get beyond the exploitation of capitalism, as well as many quotations from Marx showing how he opposed this tendency. As criticisms, one could remark that Engels gets short shrift in this book - admittedly it is titled "Marx for beginners", but one wonders why not "Marx & Engels for beginners"? Also, Del Rio seems to take the connection between Marx and Lenin as a natural progression for granted, even including in the (otherwise very handy) vocabulary of terms under Marxism-Leninism: "theory of the proletarian liberation movement". Hardly something uncontested.
The drawings are clear and funny, if a bit on the juvenile side compared to the content that he is trying to convey. This might have a good effect on younger people reading it though, making it possibly useful as a high school text on Marx, if there ever is a capitalist country brave enough to allow it. Due to the requirements of Del Rio's purpose, some of the summaries of earlier thinkers are so simple as to be simplistic, but this can't be helped. Overall, a practical and well-done introduction to Marx for the complete novice.
Good but not great introduction to Marxism Unfortunately some of the comments concerning historical developments are more dogmatic than historically factual. A serious problem for people who like facts to be presented as facts and interpretations as that ant not facts.
It Ain't Doonesbury Good to see this worthy little work back on the shelves. Sure, it's easy to ridicule a popularizied version of any weighty academic subject, especially one making use of cartoon humor. But the true measure should be how well the central ideas are rendered. In that key respect, Rius's primer serves very well as an introduction to the sociology of Marxism, less well to the economics (the determinist, breakdown element is severely underplayed), while the philosophical aspects are dealt with manfully, but are likely too complex for even the best efforts. The work's special virtue lies in dealing with those aspects of Marx's thought most appealing to a general readership: exploitation, surplus value, property relations, class struggle... in short, those aspects that impinge most directly on daily life. Prospective readers can gain real insight into the power of Marx's thought through these more prosaic topics.
A key caveat -- as another reviewer points out, Lenin is either wittingly or unwittingly presented as Marx's historical successor, a move which elevates the role of the communist party in Marxist theory at the expense of the more libertarian strand represented by Rosa Luxemburg. Given the collapse of the soviet bloc and its Leninist legacy, this aspect should be kept in mind. Still and all, it's ironic that at a time when the reformist era of welfare economics and middle-class prosperity is surrendering to renewed polarization and social Darwinism, that Marx is treated as passe. If anything, his analysis of capitalism's intractable nature appears more timely than ever.
a good read Interesting book. If you want to read about Marx in a digestible form, definitely read this book. It's really funny too.
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