chat

As a teacher of literature there is nothing wrong with reading a summary first. I encourage students to do it because when you're reading what's important isn't merely what is said but how it is said and the context it exists in. So knowing what's coming (yards of linen, coats, or the French revolution) is important, but understanding how it's presented.

I think is what you get from reading the material i.e. "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living" and understanding that this is why revolutions often clothe themselves in the trappings of the past because we cannot escape history (or, as Marx puts it one sentence before, "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."). Reading a summary to understand the broad strokes allows you to recognize the meaning in the text as you encounter it, rather than middle through.

Most importantly, you can use the summary as a point of productive dialectical disagreement. If you accidentally read the CIA summary of Marx that's not a problem, you can use the disagreement between your reading and the summary (as long as your reading is grounded - this is where conversation with comrades and such can help) to actually understand the text. Summaries, after all, are focused on one set of priorities and assumptions, and if you disagree that's not a problem - you're just noticing something different in the text.

So use summaries, but never feel chained by them.