Why Read Marx Today?

Rating:
Summary: Marx for Beginners
Review: One nice thing about the end of the Cold War was the relaxation of pressures to demonize (or deify) Karl Marx, the 19th century economist, philosopher, and activist. This short, readable book is a good introduction to Marx's social and economic theories, written at a level appropriate for college freshmen or intelligent high school students. Author Wolff rejects as unproven Marx's grand theories of historical materialism and surplus value, but he finds much of value in Marx's critique of capitalist culture and its tendency to warp humane values. All in all, Wolff gives a balanced, intelligent assessment.

Rating:
Summary: A great primer on the timeless philosophy of Karl Marx
Review: This seems like a very fair question-why should anyone bother to wrestle through the endless volumes of Karl Marx's prolific work? After all, communism died with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union; and, there are few economies today who would abandon the market and mimic the Soviet Union's state-planning.

In this short volume, Jonathan Wolff, of University College London, tries to convince us that studying Marx is worth the time and effort. He does this by analyzing in-depth Marx's entire range of philosophical pursuit-from his thoughts on religion to the "Jewish Question" to the more familiar writings of "The Capital" and the "Communist Manifesto."

This intellectual trip is elegant, well-written, and surprisingly dense. It will certainly appeal to those with little or no background on Karl Marx; it will also likely fascinate veterans of Marxist thinking since Mr. Wolff's reconstruction and assessment of Marx's writings is both trenchant and comprehensive.

What, in the end, of the central question? The case for reading Marx is partly historic since his influence over the twentieth century is towering. But at a more fundamental level, Marx's philosophy is not about communism; in fact, Marx devotes little time analyzing why or how communism would come about and work. Marx's writings are a critique of capitalism and its salient features based on his account of human nature and history. So communism might have died in 1989, but Marx's ideas live on.