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[This individual, who wrote "A Beautiful Mind" now breezily takes us down a journey through the history of political economy. The following is a comment I posted on Amazon about her] Yes, I've got to say I watched Ms. Nasar being interviewed on CSPN2's Book-TV on 9/17/11 in which she gave an atrocious presentation worthy of a Saturday Night Live caricature. It seemed every fourth word was "ya know"; all she needed was to be chewing gum to flesh out the role. Turns out she's considered a serious intellectual, but unfortunately didn't have any critique of Karl Marx's ideas besides glibly tossing out shopworn personal attacks against him. Yes, as Ms. Nasar stated, Isaiah Berlin's biography is an excellent and fair overview of Marx's life and work, but one that will set one straight from notions bandied about by Ms. Nasar that Marx was a rich idler. In reality, he lived in difficult circumstances most of his life, struggling hard to make ends meet, having been evicted from numerous rentals along with his family and with more than one of his children dying because he couldn't afford to provide them necessary medical care. Edmund Wilson's review of Marx in "To the Finland Station" gives a similar take on Marx's life and work with more inquiry into his personal life and foibles and the conditions of economic hardship he struggled with; for sure not as tough as those of the workers in the industrial slums of Manchester, but by no means a bourgois life of ease and comfort either. Thus, both authors would find preposterous Ms. Nasar's assertion that Marx, as opposed possibly to Engels who was the scion of a prosperous Anglo-German capitalist family, had income within the top 5% of British households. Moreover, the idea that Marx as an economist, intellectual and activist had his work subsidized by others is unremarkable. It is also incontestable that he produced, in addition to collaborative projects with Engels and others, a massive body of work on his own, most notably his magnum opus Das Kapital. What person in that situation is not subsidized by grants, donations or a salary unless he or she is independently wealthy? Ms. Nasar at Columbia? How often did Alfred Marshall step out of a library? who knows? what does it matter? Why substitute petty gossip for confronting the ideas of these thinkers? I will defer judgment until I peruse her written work but at this point Ms. Nasar comes across like a superficial media pundit and a political hack and not as a serious academic. It needs noting that according to Wikipedia, Ms.Nasar's family background is with the CIA. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
