Emily Armando
In his play Marx in Soho, playwright Howard Zinn resurrects Karl Marx and his ideas by asking his twenty-first century audience to reconsider Marx as more than just a name in a textbook. Through this creative one-man play, Marx comes to life as a relatable human being. He “clears his name” from being associated with failed attempts at communism and establishes a one-on-one relationship with each member of the audience, asking them to consider “What would Marx think?” He lets each of them in on his disappointment and frustration that the same problems he offered solutions for in the nineteenth century continue to be perpetuated almost two hundred years later. He cites the continuous mistreatment of workers, obsession with private property, and disparity of wealth as proof that little has changed since the time of his writing The Communist Manifesto. Marx in Soho humanizes Marx in order to prove to its twenty-first century audience that although he may be dead, his ideas and analyses of capitalist society remain relevant and useful. By presenting Marx as a human whose ideas are just as vivacious as he once was, Marx in Soho proves that problems brought onto humanity by capitalism and private property are still prominent and in desperate need of being re-examined and resolved.
Although disappointed with the current state of society, the character of Marx reiterates his belief that people are still fully capable of inciting a revolution that can better society. Despite failures of so-called “Marxism” and “communism” in the past which have given the ideas (and Marx) a negative connotation, his true theories are still valid and applicable to the twenty-first century. Once the workers themselves recognize the injustice of the capitalist system as well as the power the have in numbers, they have both capability and responsibility to start a revolution for a more equal society.