If the contents of CAPITAL were on a par with recipes--a ludicrous comparison--we could Ignore it with impunity. But unlike any cookbooks of which I am aware CAPITAL is a
STUNNING achievement of SCHOLARSHIP with an UNPRECEDENTED ENCYCLOPEDIC scope. CAPITAL is GREAT because any serious inquiry into capitalist society is impoverished by its neglect, and will perpetuate the same myths in political economy and the popular mind which abounded prior to Marx's opus and which are rampant today. A neglect which you seem to advocate. Moreover this is a MONUMENTAL work apart from the truth it contains due to its pivotal role in the history of modern era. The VASTNESS of human intellectual endeavors which display Marx's MANIFOLD influence includes, but by no means limited to: Economics, political science, literary theory, psychoanalysis, philosophy, linguistics, historiography, feminist theory, sociology, semiotics, social anthropology, even phenomenology--sorry no Marxist cookbooks! The TOWERING historical significance of Marx (& Engel's) writings will stand long after our puny squabble. No credible history can ignore the MASSIVE impact, for good or for evil, which Marx has had in the last century and a half. The shape of the present bears his mark as will any foreseeable future. Any of these points alone demands that Marx be read. Comparisons with cookbooks aside. A far more apt moral analogy would be: "what if Jeffery Dahmer had discovered a cure for cancer?" Don't even try and tell me you wouldn't seize it for loved ones suffering from this horrific disease--one by the way that rarely existed prior to capitalist industrialization. Forget Mr. Dahmer, what about actual discoveries? Are we to stop flying in jets, because the jet engine was developed by NAZI engineers? Should we cease watching television or using computers due to the fact that Shockley, the inventor of the transistor, was a racist and advocated eugenics? Gaughin left his wife and kids for Tahiti and Polynesian women; must we delete his pictures from art books, take down his paintings, and deny their aesthetic value? Is it immoral to study his works and imitate his painting style? And what of history, are we to expunge from its pages all mention of the infamous? History with only the 'good guys'--something worthy of the Disney channel or Stalin! Will you cease reading Paci, due to his citing of Marx? Heidegger too for supporting Hitler? (The latter of which fails in eliciting from you even a murmur, let alone a webpage such as the one celebrating Marx's death. Should not this NAZI's works 'raise red flags' [perhaps ones w/ swastikas] as well? Or does your moral outrage only situate itself where convenient?) Perhaps the moral credentials of everyone whose works we read or with whom we speak should be examined before we confer agreement or allow them an iota of influence. How on Earth would one ever implement what you seem to imply? Who will head the "Tribunal of Moral Purity"--St. Peter is currently otherwise employed. Are we to live in terror of one day finding out that Newton was a serial killer or that Euclid sexually assaulted children? No compromise! --Burn we must- burn all physics (sic)- burn all geometry (sic). Would such revelations show that all of what these authors wrote was both immoral and false? What a shortcut to learning you've
stumbled upon--refute them by looking in closets rather than in books! Never mind such speculations about the sins of Euclid or Newton--what of us? We live in the US comfortably as a result of genocide perpetrated against Native American populations, and continue to live so as the US murders & tortures its swath across the globe so that multinational
corporations can carry on that rapacious activity known as 'free enterprise'. Big Macs are made with beef fatted on pastures created by slashed and burned Brazilian rainforest, which displaces indigenous peoples. Monopoly$oft makes its software to exclude competition and maintain its stranglehold on the market. Nike barely pays subsistence wages in its third world sweat shops. All of which is readily explained by Marxian analysis. Animals are slaughtered and experimented on with an unspeakable atrocity--one that would embarrass the Gestapo for their not having thought of first--simply so we can stuff our mouths with flesh and pills. Everyday we rely on products stained with innocent blood. Or are all these ills now deemed illusory because you have 'refuted' Marx and 'vindicated' capitalism? Unfortunately or not it just is a facet of the ambiguity of the human condition that a "despicable" person can not only produce a work of GENIUS but one that uncovers
TRUTH as well! So please spare me of irrelevant & self-righteous condemnations of others not able to present a defense on their own behalf! Let us not waste our time parading the sins of Bush, Marx, Hitler, Heidegger, or Dahmer! What about our own bloody little mitts? What is the judgement against us? For we are all accomplices in this carnage called "life"! And what you've uncovered after all, was that Marx is one of US!!! Must we burn ourselves as well, please--please couldn't we simply wait till Hell!
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DESPICABLE MYTHS ABOUT MARXISM
USA vs NAZI STATE
CIA'S CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
THE BUSH'S "FAMILY VALUES"
GEORGE BUSH & THE ASSASSINATION OF JFK
