Kevin's Watch

Fair to say Wosbald, that Marx was less concerned about equality than he was about fairness. That it was the non-exploitation of workers that concerned him more than the fact of everybody having the same, being 'equal', as it were?

For some reason (if it's true) this seems to have been lost or misplaced, in the popular conception of the man.

+JMJ+

peter wrote: ↑ Fair to say Wosbald, that Marx was less concerned about equality than he was about fairness. That it was the non-exploitation of workers that concerned him more than the fact of everybody having the same, being 'equal', as it were?

For some reason (if it's true) this seems to have been lost or misplaced, in the popular conception of the man.

Firstly, there are "many Marxes". Marx is one of the most (over)interpreted of philosophers. Many interpreters jockey to be the seen as the authentic inheritor of Marx and many others seek to redeploy Marx in novel contexts. But since you're asking me, I'll say that I interpret Marx fairly classically, viz., in continuity with the grand metaphysical tradition of German Idealism.

And in this reading, Marx has two overriding concerns suffusing his professional work:

1. The Class-struggle between:
   • Capital
   • Labor
2. The Valuation-struggle between:
   • Exchange-Value
   • Use-Value

So, if one assumes, like I do, that Marx is both inverting and reversing Hegel ("standing Hegel on his head", in Marx's words) then Marx is to be interpreted akin to Hegel, viz., as a philosophical Totalist — a Utopian. This would mean that both of these above-mentioned struggles are to be eliminated as society reaches utopic Infinity. There will be no more Class-struggle since there will be no more Capital class bogarting the means of production. And there will be no more Valuation-struggle since there will be no Exchange-Value stymieing the flow of goods. This is "pure equality" because there is no conceivable possibility for there to be inequality. One Class. One Valuation. 1=1.

As such, this constant drumbeat in Marx leads one (or at least, leads me) to think that his central focus was not tinkering around the edges of the present system in order to make it more "fair" but was rather, the Revolution, the "quantum leap", that would usher in the New Order. (One caveat is that, for Marx, pure equality doesn't necessarily mean "everybody having the same", but it does mean everybody having what they need.)

Now, it's possible that Marx set aside his utopian philosophical obsessions in his "regular life" and worked toward more realistic goals such as "fairer treatment", but I can't really speak to that. You'd hafta ask someone less versed in Marx the Metaphysician and more in versed in Marx's biography or Socialist history.

Gratitude Wos.

I'll need to work on some of that to get my head fully around it, but it surely helps to have it expressed in terms I can at least begin to comprehend.

+JMJ+

peter wrote: ↑ Gratitude Wos.

I'll need to work on some of that to get my head fully around it, but it surely helps to have it expressed in terms I can at least begin to comprehend.

I'd rewritten it a few times to remove superfluities and to try to improve clarity. I hope I was successful.

If I can offer any other help, just holler.

Please indulge me to offer a brief conclusion to my earlier post, as this may also be helpful:

Short Form: A sanitized, domesticated Marx — Marx the social reformer, Marx the petit bourgeois do-gooder — does a double disservice in that it can anesthetize one to the real dangers inherent in Marxism as well blunting the positive elements which can be recuperated like the gold from the dross.

That's an interesting little addition Wos.

I'm loath to ask someone else to do all the heavy lifting and then pick their brains on a subject, but will risk a brief further trespass on your time in the spirit of your offer.

Sanitised in the sense of simplified, or in the sense that there is a 'malevolence' or 'malice' in it, not usually mentioned by those who champion the 'ism' that has developed out of it?

Presumably the different interpretations of Marx come not least because of the breadth of disciplines his work covers, and the tendency of each reader to come at it from his or her own background (I'd be interested in it more from an economic perspective; how it would sit against the work of Smith {or even later, Picketty perhaps}).

But could you indulge me with a brief summary of "the real dangers inherent in Marxism", if they are other than that they lead inexorably and invariably to the horrors of Stalinism or Maoism? (Why this would be would be a question that I'm sure would require a book in itself to answer.) Should they concern me as a social democrat (or probably closer, a democratic socialist)? Brute monsters we can see: the snakes in the grass (if they are there), more difficult.

+JMJ+

peter wrote: ↑ […]

Sanitised in the sense of simplified, or in the sense that there is a 'malevolence' or 'malice' in it … ?

[…]
But could you indulge me with a brief summary of "the real dangers inherent in Marxism" … ?

[…]

"Sanitized" in the sense of someone who's not a threat to Bourgeois Capitalism — someone who's happy to accommodate the system rather than someone willing to mercilessly expose its internal contradictions and hypocrisies.

In general terms, the prime danger of Marxism is that it's an unreal utopianism, which means that it proposes an alternative just as unworkable and contradiction-ridden as the ideologized Capitalism it opposes. An equal-and-opposite error — jumping into the maw of Charybdis to escape Scylla.

Amen to that Wos. That dilemma, even I can grasp. Look at the news in Europe today.

(Ps. Like the new avatar. Reminds me of the (rap) lyric "And if the truth be known, we all need mercy when our cover gets blown.")

+JMJ+

peter wrote: ↑Mon Feb 17, 2025 7:32 am Amen to that Wos. That dilemma, even I can grasp. Look at the news in Europe today.

(Ps. Like the new avatar. Reminds me of the (rap) lyric "And if the truth be known, we all need mercy when our cover gets blown.")

Cool.

+JMJ+

Capital as Organic Unity: The Role of Hegel’s 'Science of Logic' in Marx’s 'Grundrisse' by Mark E. Meaney

Now doing a second reading of Stephen R. Donaldson's mystery novel The Man Who Killed His Brother.

I'd like to do a reread of that series too.

Currently reading the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series for the first time. Currently reading the 2nd in the series - Played with Fire. I'm really enjoying it so far.

StevieG wrote: ↑ Currently reading the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series for the first time. Currently reading the 2nd in the series - Played with Fire. I'm really enjoying it so far.

Damn, I love these...first time I read them I'd borrowed book 1 and 2, because the owner was still busy with book 3. When I got to the end of 2, (3 basically continues right on in one single story) I couldn't wait and went out the next day to buy them all for myself.

(I'm less enamoured with the following series, at least, the ones I've read, but the original 3 are just brilliant.)

--A

+JMJ+

After 3 long years, I'm finally out of the Hegel–Marx dialectical maze. It's been a long, strange trip. Always difficult (often brutally so), though well worth the effort. Always interesting, though rarely fun.

And now, on to the grim, stoic twilight of German Idealism …

On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason by Arthur Schopenhauer

In the UK, coal miners in the North Country used to offset the brutality of their working lives by breeding and rearing canaries. These fragile and delicate little birds became the loves of their lives, set against what they did down the pits during the day. (That and 'the fancy' - the name given to the arcane craft of flying exhibition pigeons, of which I could write a wonderful account, so magical a practice can it be.)

What I wonder, would be the canary equivalent of three years spent immersed in the Hegel-Marx dialectic? Mario wouldn't cut it - no, it would have to be The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, so if I could just recommend a good book......

Now I'm reading, for the second time, Stephen R. Donaldson's mystery book The Man Who Risked His Partner.

Cord Hurn wrote: ↑ Now I'm reading, for the second time, Stephen R. Donaldson's mystery book The Man Who Risked His Partner.

Those are really good, enjoyed them a lot!

Last non-fantasy I finished was the second "My Struggle" book by Karl-Ove Knausgård. I loved the first one but the second one kind of got on my nerves. Don't think I will continue with the remaining ones, at least not now. Who knows..
Apart from that, it's mostly technical documentation these days.

+JMJ+

peter wrote: ↑ In the UK, coal miners in the North Country used to offset the brutality of their working lives by breeding and rearing canaries. These fragile and delicate little birds became the loves of their lives, set against what they did down the pits during the day. (That and 'the fancy' - the name given to the arcane craft of flying exhibition pigeons, of which I could write a wonderful account, so magical a practice can it be.)

What I wonder, would be the canary equivalent of three years spent immersed in the Hegel-Marx dialectic? Mario wouldn't cut it - no, it would have to be The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, so if I could just recommend a good book......

I will say that one "offset" has been the reading of a book written by a normal human for normal humans. To read through an entire section at a non-glacial pace rather than every. single. paragraph. being an exercise in cryptanalysis is like a freshly released, bewhiskered captive rediscovering sunlight.

I can get that Wos. For years I read only nonfiction, in the belief that time not spent learning was time wasted (and in the equally erroneous belief - though I never really thought of it - that there was nothing to be learned from novels). They were good years, but when I eventually came up for air I was like a child released into a field of corn.

On the subject of men who's lives were of a nasty and brutal stamp, finding relief in the most frivolous and delicate of areas, I read that Oscar Wilde, on his celebrated tour of the United States, used to appear on occasion at the roughest of saloons and venues in the 'wild West', where the most appreciative and receptive audiences for his readings were often of the roughest and normally most indisciplined type. And that they always without exception treated him with the utmost of courtesy and respect, unlike his more 'refined' audiences in the east.

Well, finished Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, and ended up enjoying it more than I expected.

About half-way through the sequel The Mountain Shadow now.

--A

+JMJ+

On the Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer