Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Marx for Beginners by RiusReview by: Bill RolstonFortnight, No. 147 (May 13, 1977), p. 14Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25546261 .

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14/Fortnight

Rius

MARX FOR BEGINNERS (Writers and Readers Publishing

Cooperative, ?1.00) In 1847 Frederick Engels published

Principles of Communism, a catechism of

questions and answers about the

Communist League to which he and Marx

belonged. Half a century later James

Connolly published his Socialism Made Easy, the first part of which was in the form

of a debate with an argumentative potential recruit to socialism. So Rius is by no means

introducing something completely new

when he decided to write Marx for

Beginners?ox, I should say, draw it: for this book is a biography of Marx and a synopsis of Marxist thought in cartoon form. As Rius

realizes, many Marxists would regard such an endeavour not only as a sacrilege, but as a complete waste of time, "because Comrade Karl is supposed to be completely

beyond the range of simple minds". It is not

merely a refutation of such disbelievers, but a credit to Rius and to his pen that the

attempt succeeds magnificently. Content-wise, it is all there: Marx's life, his

development, his break with Hegel, his

friendships and loves, his migraines, depres sions, and haemorrhoids, his writings, and the complete content of Marxist science:

"surplus value", "dialectic", "mode of pro

duction", "class struggle", etc. As the blurb for a movie might put it "Ladies and

gentlemen, all is revealed in dazzling, wide screen colour". Or as Rius himself announces it: "Dialectical Materialism?dia lectics by G W F Hegel and materialism by L Feuerbach".

That is what makes the book live, the form. For example, Reformism is explained by a cartoon about American union workers

holding up a massive banner saying, "Thanks Boss for a lovely raise !" And at the beginning of the discussion on surplus value, a droopy old knight with a droopy moustache drawls, "I promise not to yawn if

you keep it simple". And so on. Because the form is so unique it is impossible to do

justice to this book in a review. Well, not

impossible; but the reviewer would need to do the review in the same form, that is, as a cartoon. But I can't draw. So I will forget about the review and merely recommend the book highly. It is flawless. But don't believe me; read it and judge for yourself.

I still have space left, so, as I am no longer writing a review, I will give you a few facts. Rius is the pen name of Eduardo del Rio, a

Mexican cartoonist and writer, and world innovator of this new type of political comic

strip. In English the only other example of his copious work we have is his Cuba for

Beginners, which by all accounts is as

enjoyable as this book. Both books are

published by the Writers and Readers

Publishing Cooperative, a group on London which includes John Berger and Jean Mohr.

They are publishing Berger and Mohr's A Fortunate Man, and for this reason, as well as for the translation and publication of two of Rius' works, the cooperative deserves all the laurels. But there is even more to follow. Rius' Marx for Beginners draws much of its

theory from The Communist Manifesto {in fact, the "heaviest" part of the book is pp.

113 to 121 where large lumps of the manifesto are quoted verbatim) and steers clear of Capital) some might see this as a

failing, considering that Capital is in fact the flesh put later on the skeleton constructed in the Manifesto. If that is indeed a

failing?and in the context of the book as

being a guide for beginners, I do not believe it is?then the cooperative is to correct it by

publishing later this year Phil Evans' Capital for Beginners. Further, Lenin for Beginners, Christ for Beginners ("and what's more, he

was a Palestinian !") and Ireland for

Beginners (complete with a cartoon of a

stage-Irish potato wearing a straw hat and

saying "Hi, folks !") are in preparation. So, full marks to the cooperative for publishing good books which are highly readable

without watering down the content, and

which, moreover, are at a reasonable price. One last point, with which I have no doubt

Rius would agree; Marxism, like sex, can never be learnt from a manual, no matter how many illustrations there are in it.

Bill Rolston

Leon O'Broin

REVOLUTIONARY UNDERGROUND. THE STORY OF THE IRB

(Gill and Macmillan, ?6.95) It is remarkable that so little has been written

about the IRB, the foremost Irish secret

society, in existence for 66 years and the forerunner of the IRA. This book is claimed

by the publishers to be a full scale history. Unfortunately it is not. Coming as it does from a distinguished scholar such as Leon

O'Broin, one expected more. In fact the first two thirds of the book are pretty boring.

There is no in depth analysis of the rise of the "Organisation" as the IRB men called

themselves, nor any real attempt to give us some insight into the minds and thoughts of its original leaders. There is a chapter

ostensibly devoted to the Invincibles which in fact only mentions them three times, and

adds nothing new. In fact when I was

recently writing a film script about the Phoenix Park assassinations I was able to find out more about the Invincibles in half an

hour in the library than O'Broin, despite his access to the most arcane archives, is

prepared to tell us. Whenever he touches

upon interesting and relevant topics, such as the bitter internecine strife between the Clan na Gael members in America, who for 50

years sustained the dream of a rising against the British, which led to murder, intrigue and

splits, O'Broin only whets our appetite, never satisfies it. Similarly, fascinating char acters like the English spy Henri Le Caron (real name, Beach) who infiltrated the upper

echelons of the Clan and faithfully reported all their plans back to England for ten years, or Lomasney, the Clan's roving "mad bomber" who finally blew himself and two

companions up while trying to destroy London Bridge in 1884 are barely men tioned. Nor is any space given to the Clan and IRB's hair-brained schemes and

attempts to invade Canada. Instead, for much of the book we have repetitive extracts from police reports saying that

nothing much was going on.

For the remarkable fact was that for most of its 66 years the IRB did very little. Unlike the Fenian organisation in America the IRB

was a completely oath bound secret society, complete with code names, passwords, conspiracies and traitors. At its height, in the

1860s, it numbered some 40,000 men, but, on the eve of the 1916 rising it could barely

muster 1,000, some of whom were unable to

get to Dublin in time to join in the fighting after the rural insurrections had been aborted. For many years, particularly under the Presidency of Fred Allan, who finally resigned in 1910, the IRB was ineffective, sterile and impotent. While John Devoy, "the greatest of the Fenians" as Pearse called him, devoted his long life in America to scheming, raising money and plotting the overthrow of English rule in Ireland, in the mother country, his agents were

accomplishing little or nothing. And yet, for all this, it is probably true to say that without the IRB there would have been no Easter

Rising, no war of Independence, and no IRA. Moreover, as O'Broin points out, if it

had not been for two IRB men, the veteran Tom Clarke and Sean MacDermott, the

Rising, despite Pearse, Connolly and "all the

others, would probably not have happened. The last third of the book shows this, and

when he is dealing with the events of 1914-24 O'Broin casts off the sluggish

pedestrianism of previous chapters and the book picks up momentum. The material on

MacDermott, who, in point of fact in 1915

effectively WAS the IRB executive is interesting. James Deakin and Denis

McCuHough were nominally the successive Presidents of the IRB from 1913-16, but Deakin was too busy with his business and McCu Hough was out of touch in Belfast. In

effect, MacDermott, with the support of

Clarke, ran the IRB, set up the secret military council, involved Pearse, Plunkett, McBride and the others behind the backs of many nominal IRB executives, just as Eoin MacNeill was kept in the dark by the Volunteers he supposedly controlled. The

IRB didn't have a mandate for the rising, but then, what successful revolutionaries ever

do, any more than our so called democratic tweed led urns and tweedledees MPs have a real mandate to run our lives for us. But they had a dream for which some of them

worked all their lives and were prepared to

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