People really need to read Wages, Price & Profit.

Or....a better read...the US Constitution, which establishes principles for a FREE society and functional capitalism...which has unfortunately been totally fucked up by 200+ years...well, honestly more like 50+ years...of liberal intervention and regulation...

You Am'rcans and your constitution. You know, there are much better ones out there.

Name one, Yonni. Name a more successful country in the last 230+ years.

Didn't say the constitution is perfect -- which is why the founder's were wise enough to allow it to be changed through a rigorous and difficult process.

What I find laughable is all you Non-Americans who criticize those of us that think the Constitution of our country is something of value -- as if wherever you are from people just do whatever they want with no controlling documents.

I note, further, you criticize...and yet fail to offer an alternative or identify your own origin...typical of a jealous foreigner...

That has to do with the availability of land, labor, and capital. Other countries lacked one or more of these things. The constitution has nothing to do with it.

Oh and two massive oceans that protect us from Eurasia where all the population centers are.

Oh yes...Russia has no land or nature resources....that is why Communism was such an abysmal failure...

BAD PUTIN! GO TO YOUR ROOM you skewer of truth! You are such an idiot.

And believe it or not, Putin, there were hostile people's in the America's...their cultures and governmnet/political systems could not stand up to European systems of governent....which then failed to Democracy and Capitalism.

Your perversion of facts is ridiculous.

We thrived because we had the systems in place to reward success, moron...as opposed to various forms of government that steal success for the state's use.

I wonder, Putin...when you go to work (or do you work...perhaps you don't?) do you strive to be better than the people around you for further rewars, raises, etc? In class, do you fight to be top of the curve? i.e. Are you the *typical* hypocrite who lives a life completely separate from his stated philosophy?

Good night Putin. You are just too much of a moron fucktard to bother with any ore.

MUTE!

"Russia has no land or nature resources."

Never said that. I said countries lacked at least one of three things: land, labor, or capital. Russia lacked capital for much of the 19th century, and in terms of land a small percentage is arable, so the land advantage is not really an advantage.

They also have massive undefended frontiers which has basically made it so its a miracle any kind of long lasting polity has survived in the area around Muscovy. This has meant that Russia has been compelled to be a garrison state for much of its history.

Re: Wages, Price & Profit - Putin was right, it is relatively short and easy to understand, with great nicely layed out arguments

Haven't got around to reading this yet (in the middle of Anti-Duhring), but I hear this is also quite good. Was taught in the USSR until 31.
The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1903/economic/index.htm

Krellin, you are comparing a country that has two massive oceans on either side and began its industralisation in the early 1800s compared to a country that has huge land borders and began its industralisation in the mid 1920s. There are plenty of things the USSR can be criticised on, but they should be made in the context of the country's surrounding and history.

Largeham...we didn't START on both ocean fronts...good god, you people act like people landed on the shores and found an industrial paradise...pick up a history book. We actually *did* have wars on this continent...with the French, the Spanish, the Indians...lots of conflicting ideas here as well...and the dominant ideology - freedom, capitalism - won out, and won over the people, forging them in to one, as opposed to Europe that could never get along. Those same Europeans came here, and though they often had biases also saw that opportunity to succeed was more important than fighting with guy next door.

To suggest that the establishment and growth of the US was just some easy, no-brainer endeavor just demonstrates either your extreme bias, or your complete ignorance of per-US history and US history.

"We actually *did* have wars on this continent...with the French, the Spanish, the Indians...lots of conflicting ideas here as well...and the dominant ideology - freedom, capitalism - won out, and won over the people, forging them in to one, as opposed to Europe that could never get along."

What conflicting ideas? How were the French and Spanish not "capitalist"? All three were slave empires.

The wars that were fought were not really fought between equals. France didn't invest in their colonies nearly as much as the British did, and the population was small compared to their English foes. Spain handed over the Mississippi river without even a fight. Napoleon gave us a huge swath of land for pennies. Our continental empire came very cheaply. In 50 years we acquired both coasts.

We still almost managed to blow it by provoking the British in 1812. Washington was burnt to the ground. If they weren't preoccupied with Napoleon it likely would have been the end for us.

I'll leave it at this:

Aside fro The Communist Manifesto (which we say doesn't count here, hence my not commenting at first) I've read Marx's Historicist literary criticism for, well, Theory of Literature class...

And I'll leave it at this:

Historicism is a decent way yo approach literature, so I give Marx credit there (even if others were doing it before him, he really popularized it to a great degree) and I'll even go so far as to say that I WILL agree to some extent with his idea that the Ideological Superstructure of a state via literature is constructed for the benefit of those in power to reinforce their views (after all, it fits that we have so many narratives and authors who utilize Judeo-Christian themes when that's been the dominant religion in the West for 2,000 years, though I WOULD say I think this idea is at least in part flawed as, say, a Dickens figure who is certainly famous in his own time yet does NOT agree or endorse the economic policies of the time seems to fly in the face of that idea) but as usual...

I don't like the end to which Marx takes it.

So, we'll see about that (don't hurt me, Putin! Ah, what the hell, take your best shot, I guess, but come on, that wasn't so bad a comment, was it? ...You'll probably say it was, but oh well, that's what I get for coming into a Marx thread, eh?) ;)

Marx didn't do literary criticism. And Marx was a savage critic of historicism. I'm not surprised at you condemning Marx over and over again after having read scantly anything he wrote.

Then you can blame the professors at CSUN (the one in question one who is a fan of Marx and wrote a book on Marxism and the Black community) that say otherwise.

I mean Marx is used as a springboard literary criticism, but you said "Marx's literary criticism". Maybe you just write in a confusing manner. But anybody who has read the Theses on Feuerbach knows that Marx is no historicist.

And I don't consider myself having scantily read Marx...wait, that didn't come out right... ;)

TCM is a major work, that + his works pertaining to literature that we read...decent enough sample size to form at least some opinion...

I don't ask everyone read all 37/8 plays by Shakespeare before they say he's good or bad...a major work or two, maybe 4 plays total with one a Big 4 Tragedy (Lear/Hamlet/Macbeth/Othello) and some sonnets, and after that, yeah you have enough to at least give an opinion on the man's style and some of his work and ideas.

You've out-read me on Marx--no question. I concede that.
You've out-read possibly EVERYONE here on Marx.
That doesn't mean everyone not having read all you hasn't read enough for a say.
Same as Shakes, a major work + some smaller bits...after that, I can give at least an INKLING of what I think of Mr. Marx.

Well, we took the works/excepts from those works and used them for Lit. Criticism, that being the class...maybe it wasn't written intended to be Lit. Criticism, but as you say, that's what we used it for.

So those, TCM, and then, of course, that essay "On the Jewish Question" which my pro-Marx professor ALSO felt was anti-Semitic, to get an impartial 3rd party's take on it, so you can and will still disagree there, I'm not rehashing that old debate as it's doomed to failure, but that IS a valid way of taking it...it's not just one lone anti-Marx Jew reading that in...

But you haven't even read On Jewish Question and yet you are notorious for calling Marx an anti-semite every chance you get.

One doesn't expect to people to read all of Shakespeare to have an opinion on him, but if you have as strong an opinion on Shakespeare as you have on Marx one would think that you'd have at least read more than one bloody play.

Ok so now you claim to have read On the Jewish Question. I still don't think either you or your professor actually read that piece.

What is amazing to me though is your condemnation of Marx, who is actually Jewish, and rather proud of his heritage actually, but your apologism for Nietzsche who palled around with some of the most notorious anti-Semites in Europe. Whatever.

You should really read this.

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/journal/index.php?journal_id=10&article_id=33

What do you mean "OK so now you claim..."

We had an argument where I specifically cited that essay before...that's how (at least in one case) my charge of Marx as an anti-Semite came up, lol.

And I don't AT ALL claim to have "as strong" an opinion on Marx as I do on Shakes...

I said AN opinion, just a simple, humble opinion, I freely concede that you have more textual familiarity with Marx to back your point of view on him, I'm not saying I can out-text you on him the way I might if we were to debate, say, Shakespeare or Orwell or Eliot or some other author I've read a lot of and so have a lot of read texts to pull from.

As for Nietzsche, you know as well as I he had that famous falling out with Wagner and went so far as to write an essay about it, "Nietzsche Contra Wagner," and that MOST--I say most and not all because I'll agree, like Eliot, he had a statement or two about Jews as people that wasn't perfectly friendly--of his statements against Jews were about religious Jews and Judaism as a religion, not so much the sort of flagrant, shallow, "Drum all the Jews out of music including Mendelssohn" malicious anti-Semetism that Wagner put both in an essay and his operas.

The thing is, I recognize...

If you call all instances of anti-Antisemitism before WWII the same and refuse to read or hate them all...

You'll miss out on probably 4/5 of the great authors in Western Literature and Philosophical and Political thought.

Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, T.S. Eliot, Nietzsche, D.H. Lawrence possibly...

Up and down the line, you'll miss out on a lot, you have to consider with each author:

1. What sort of antisemitism are they employing, and
2. Do they give both sides a chance to speak

Shakespeare, for example, has Shylock referred to more as "Jew" than his actual name in the play, and he's the villain...

But he also goes to great pains to show how vacuous and stupid most of the Venetians are as well, and that they've treated Shylock unfairly, and gives Shylock a chance to speak in his "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech...and with Shakespeare, GENERALLY, they who have the best speeches are the ones Shakespeare wants you to listen to.

"Hath not a Jew eyes?" and "The quality of mercy is not stained!" are the two famous speeches from that play, spoken by a Jew and a woman...speaking to a Jew, so clearly Shakespeare backs Portia (in keeping with his feminism in most of his comedies/problem plays) and he at least gives Shylock an eloquent speech to express his view and defend himself; he loses, but if he won, the crowd of his day would've hated Shakespeare, so I can't blame him for that, the point is, AT LEAST Shylock gets to speak.

Same with Dostoyevsky; he was Christian, but gave atheist Ivan Karamazov one of the greatest atheist speeches of all-time in that work.

If both sides are given the chance to speak, I don't treat it as harshly, because "casual" antisemitism/anti-atheist sentiment pre-1945 was just the norm, it'd be like saying Jefferson was an utterly disgusting man because he held slaves--that part of his life was obviously wrong, but that was also the social norm at the time in America, so we can hold it hypocritical to an extent that he says "all men are created equal" when he held slaves, but not discard him entirely, in my view.

Dickens and Eliot both had antisemitic passages/essays that they in later life had taken out of their works or kept from being re-published as such...and that's again fine with me, if you say something wrong and then realize you were wrong, I have no fault with that,everyone says stupid things...there was a lot heavier a depiction of Fagin as an anti-Semitic caricature in Dickens' first publication of "Oliver Twist," but he took some words out in later publications, agreeing that was a bit too mean-spirited.

T.S. Eliot gave a pre-WWII speech on the importance of national homogeneity and as such, in an Anglican country, said that a large amount of Jews were undesirable, not because he wanted them all dead--he actually had a great many Jewish friends, including those in Virginia Woolf's family, and had some Jewish poets defend him after charges of anti-Semetism first stung him in the post-WWII years-- but because he felt that nations and people stuck together better when they had a shared culture, and saw Jews as other to that, and rather than kill them all, thought they belonged more to Eastern Europe...he discontinued that speech's publication and essentially disavowed that whole stance after the war, much the same way Shaw didn't bring up the idea of eugenics again after the war.

THAT I can respect and get behind in an author, if they say something wrong but realize it was wrong and rescind it and give their mea culpa...



To the best of my knowledge, Marx NEVER apologized for "On the Jewish Question."

If you DO have, in your faculties of Marxist reading and knowledge, a Dickens/Eliot-esque example of him rescinding anti-Semitic remarks, or if he, like Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky, gave a pro-Jewish speech as well as that anti-Semitic essay...go ahead and tell me about it, maybe he DID say so, and I don't know, I'm not a Marx scholar, just someone who's read SOME--not all, SOME--Marx, and found OTJQ anti-Semtic, a position I'm not alone in, and don't know of a pro-Jewish essay by Marx or an apology for the anti-Semitic nature of that essay by him. If either exist, please enlighten me.

...Apparently while I was typing that you DID link something, lol

What should he apologize for? The whole essay is about him advocating for Jewish political emancipation and religious freedom! Read the essay! And read Bauer's essay too.

I did, Putin, lol, hence why I said the essay is anti-Semitic.

I have a different reading and interpretation of it than you do, your view isn't self-evident, as again, someone at least on your level (if not above, again, the man wrote a book on Marxist thought, so chances are he knows what he's talking about at least to some degree) agrees with me that, while he likes Marx, "On the Jewish Question" CAN be seen as early anti-Semetism on his part.

So I HAVE read the essay...I just came away with it bearing a different opinion than you.