An Introduction to Karl Marx

I agree with the reviewer who suggested the title "Elster on Marx" might summarize the contents better than "An Introduction to Karl Marx" if Elster's goal is to introduce Marx to newcomers. But Elster right from the start lays out his point of view (methodological individualism, rational choice theory etc.), and I find no claim to dispassionate objectivity. It has the necessary caveats, and it is an erudite analysis. Marx is one of history's most fussed-over figures, and I'd prefer to see an introduction to him lay out the data a bit more disinterestedly -- in the first part of the book, anyway -- and in the second part announce, "Now here is where I stand." That is exactly Thomas Sowell's approach in "Marxism: Philosophy and Economics". Plus, between the two authors, Sowell seems to directly quote Marx & Engels twice or three times as much. Now there's novel idea -- Marx on Marx! If I were making a reading list for a freshman intro course in social science, I'd pick Sowell's book.

Apparently the gentleman below and I have read different books with the same title, because the book I read, "An Introduction to Karl Marx" by Jon Elster, was absolutely nothing like the book mr. Doepke reviewed. The book, as far as I can tell with my level of marxian scholarship, is a complete introductoin, and it suffered from none of the failings attributed by it below. Descriptions flowed easily and succintly and I had no trouble understanding them at all. Perhaps this is because I am more of an advanced marx scholar than our other reviewer friend. But I suspect that the reason mr. Doepke is not happy with this book is because it is a disspasionate consideration of Marxian ideas from a supremely educated man who holds no special religious-kind of attraction to Marx, as so many Marx scholars do. Let there be no doubt- the disspasionate nature of mr. Elster's analysis of Marx and his contributions is what makes him a rare find. Most all Marx scholars have some kind of agenda in approaching marx, and are colored accordingly (Tom Sowell and Edward Herman, for example). To his undying credit, Mr. Elster is a leftist who seems to have no agenda in speaking about Marx. Stunningly, he without exception atomizes Marx's main theses and considers them both seperately and as a whole. The result is incisive and dead-on commentary that no other scholar alive has ever even approached, to my knowledge. What George Orwell did for concretly existing communist governments Jon Elster has done for Marxian theory- a deadly accurate eye methodically slashing through to the real core. I have never found a single scholar that I was not hard pressed to disagree violently with, but Elster manages to leave me without complaint and wondering how I am able to critique the bad points of his books. I am simply unequal to the task of disagreeing with any of Elster's main notions. This is an amazing fact considering we have no ideological common ground. That's how good this man is. And a last point- unlike most Marx scholars, Elster has a wide range in a vast array of subjects, which makes him interesting to philosophers and economists such as myself in addition to nearly the entire sweep of the social sciences from psychology and sociology on outward. Buy this book. Elster has no equal.