Marx in Soho: A Play on History

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In this witty ad brilliant "play on history", renowned historian Howard Zinn brings Karl Marx to life to defend his ideas and comment on the world today.
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Overview

In this witty ad brilliant "play on history", renowned historian Howard Zinn brings Karl Marx to life to defend his ideas and comment on the world today.
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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Taking his inspiration from Karl Marx's stay in London's Soho district after his exile from the Continent, Zinn's (A People's History of the United States) one-man play reads like a first-person memoir narrated by a distinctive voice. Laid out on the page as seamless monologue, it envisions Marx in the Soho district of New York in the present, where his mind reels at the same capitalist injustices that boggled him 150 years ago. The wizened and ailing Marx discourses on the economic state of the modern-day U.S., heatedly decrying the vast disparity between rich and poor and the corrupt, systematic funneling of the wealth that workers earn into the hands of capitalists. Through cascading recollections, we learn of Marx's devoted marriage, his love for his children and his stormy debates with Mikhail Bakunin, a fellow radical whose concept of a revolution of the spleen rather than the intellect makes Marx seem cold by comparison. These nuggets of personal information yield warmth and mettle where the dialectical prose gets heavy-handed. Often, the doctrines espoused threaten to overwhelm Zinn's expressed mission to expose Marx's human side. Zinn is, after all, reissuing Marx's socialist critique to apply to modern America and, along the way, revising Marxist doctrine by imagining the theorist himself rethinking some of his more off-the-mark notions. Most often it is Marx's critical wife, Jenny, and brilliant daughter Eleanor who take him to task when he fumbles. With Zinn's hefty prologue and scholarly but pointed reading list, the text is a cleverly imagined call to reconsider socialist theory as a valid philosophy in these times. Zinn's point is well made; his passion for history melds with his political vigor to make this a memorable effort and a lucid primer for readers desiring a succinct, dramatized review of Marxism.
Library Journal
Marx's reputation may be in far more robust health academically than practically, but even among campus intellectuals his image has gotten a whipping. With Freud, Marx is one of the two 19th-century men who dominated--even created--the social sciences and critical thinking of this century. With psychoanalysis, Marxism has fallen hard; socialism, history as class struggle, and the idea that pervasive commodification is a bad thing are conceptual victims, both of apparent market prosperity in the West and the moral and fiscal bankruptcy of the governments established under the Communist rubric. Zinn, the eminent Left historian (A People's History of the United States, Borgo, 1994), suddenly "hot" thanks to buzz spread by his young family friend, actor Matt Damon, believes that Marx will have deep relevance in the next century, too. This one-man play, an imagined monolog that Marx delivers after being wrongly returned from death but with a glitch, is a witty delight that will engage both new and old acquaintances of the Marxian corpus. Though its brevity and entertainment-first intent depart radically from the density of Marx's actual written polemics, even conservatives will find Zinn's Marx-for-bright-funseekers an intelligent and diverting read. Recommended for academic and public libraries alike.--Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., PA
Kirkus Reviews
By left-wing historian Zinn (The Zinn Reader, 1997; A Peoples' History of the United States, not reviewed), a whimsical one-man play in which Karl Marx returns from the grave to modern-day Soho—not to the London Soho where he lived, but through some otherworldly bureaucratic error, to the New York neighborhood of the same name. Zinn explains in his introduction that he intends to show that "Marx's critique of capitalism remains fundamentally true in our time." Mercifully, however, Zinn's Marx spends little onstage time defending chimerical Marxist oddities like the surplus value theory. Instead, Zinn presents Karl Marx the revolutionary, the family man, and the impecunious scholar. Rather than the often nasty and abusive character portrayed by some writers, Marx emerges here as an earthy, passionate figure, righteously angry about poverty, injustice, concentrations of wealth and power, and rapacious corporations. Marx also emerges as a beleaguered family man (no mention here of his impregnating the family maid), struggling to keep his wife and children clothed and sheltered. Proclaiming that "I am not a Marxist," Zinn's Marx decries the defunct Soviet Union and other police states created in his name, and talks dreamily of the paradisaical socialist society which he still believes will follow the imminent collapse of capitalism, in which workers are no longer alienated from the products of their labor and from one another, and in which inequality and want will be abolished. Imaginatively pointing to the globalization of the world economy and the merger frenzy as dark confirmations of the truth of Marxist criticism of capitalism, Zinn has Marx urge Americans to strivefor an egalitarian society. The onstage Marx urges that we use "the incredible wealth of the earth for human beings" and to give people the necessities of life. An imaginative critique of our society's hypocrisies and injustices, and an entertaining, vivid portrait of Karl Marx as a voice of humanitarian justice—which is perhaps the best way to remember him.
From the Publisher
"An imaginative critique of our society's hypocrisies and injustices, and an entertaining, vivid portrait of Karl Marx as a voice of humanitarian justice - which is perhaps the best way to remember him."-Kirkus Reviews

"A cleverly imagined call to reconsider socialist theory... Zinn's point is well made; his passion for history melds with his political vigor to make this a memorable effort and a lucid primer for readers desiring a succinct, dramatized review of Marxism."-Publishers Weekly

"Even in heaven it seems, Karl Marx is a troublemaker. But in the deft and loving hands of activist/author/historian Howard Zinn, the historical figure... is also a father, a husband and a futurist possessing a grand sense of humor."-ForeWord

"A witty delight that will engage both new and old acquaintances of the Marxian corpus.... Even conservatives will find Zinn's [book]... an intelligent and diverting read. Recommended for academic and public libraries alike."-Library Journal

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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780896085930
  • Publisher: South End Press
  • Publication date: 7/1/1999
  • Series: Political Science Series
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 88
  • Product dimensions: 4.20 (w) x 7.00 (h) x 0.30 (d)

Meet the Author

Howard Zinn: Howard Zinn (1922-2010) was a historian, playwright, and activist. He wrote the classic A People's History of the United States, “a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories.”

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Sort by: Showing 1 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted March 4, 2006

    Brilliant. Absolutely Brilliant.

    Marx in SoHo is a great introduction to Marxism and who Marx was. Zinn's portrayal of the often criticized figure is suberb, and he brings life to Marx's past and what his true philosophy of Communism was. It dispels many ideas that people have, for example, thinking that there ever was a truly Communist country. This book is filled with wonderful, almost lyrical writing and has an amazing point to our overall lives. Brilliant.

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