I read Capital I before I had become involved at all in political activity, and I thought it was a beautiful book. My (passive/disinterested) [a]political response was that perhaps we should hope for a return to feudalism. That is, I did glimpse its devastating presentation of capitalist relations but was not in the least moved to any sort of political action. When several years later I read Volume II, the first 125 pages also struck me as beautiful; that relentless circle around the same tautologies gave me a feel for the beast I was by that time opposing. I guess I don't understand Chuck's reaction.
Carrol > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:pen-l- > [email protected]] On Behalf Of Chuck Grimes > Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2013 2:30 PM > To: Progressive Economics > Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Naive notes on Heinrich/Locascio > > > On the whole, the book gave me some motivation to try (again) to crack > Capital. > > Max Sawicky > > ------------ > > I tried for several years on and off to break into the stone wall gibberish > that confronted me with Capital v.1. It was a very old translation, 1909 in > a very well bound hardback that had survived numerous readings. I bought it > at Moe's back in the early 1990s. > > I tried Bender's The Essential Writings and The Cambridge Companion and > got > pretty much nowhere. These were honest attempts reading say a hundred or > more pages and I still got fed up. > > I really couldn't understand why Marx started a revolution and turned into a > titanic monster of the whole western world for a century going on two. > > If I was my enemy, I never would have mounted such a fuss. Without a big > stink, there would not have been enough people who read Marx in the US to > even take over Berkeley. So how on earth did it get as far as the potential > to destroy the planet and end civilization in a millennial nuclear winter? > All of this over scribbling I couldn't understand? > > Finally, I sat down one night four years ago and watched David Harvey's > lectures and DID THE HOMEWORK which was doing the assigned reading. It > took > over a month to get to chapter 15 going at it every other night or so. I > went back to my student habits and kept notes on the sections to keep track > of the sequences. I finally just pooped out. Later that year I finished it > off. You have to get that far before it starts to break the pace of a > agonizing repeative slog. I had stopped just short of where the text > straighten out and began to roll. (I realized early the reason for the > repetition. It's based on Hegel's method of dialectic to exhausion. You need > to study Hegel to see it and that is a very annoying journey I wouldn't > recommend.) > > Finally, I started to get it and understand why the fuss. > > Now there is probably a whole anti-Harvey school, but frankly fuck them. > Harvey did it for me, got me over the mountain. I am not interested in > endless quibbling over what Marx meant, whether he was right or wrong on > this or that. The blunt point of all that writing was we are going to live > in a god awful nightmare until we beat the holy shit out of the capital > death grip on our society. > > Here is the lecture series. Pretend you are going to nightschool. > > http://davidharvey.org/ > > My copy was a different translation, varied in read passages, and was a pain > to orient myself during the lectures. Get this translation: > > http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Critique-Political-Economy- > Classics/dp/0140445684 > > The page numbers might differ, but the quotes will be the same. Don't argue > with the text. Just relax and accept it. Argue and interpret later, after > you've finished it. This is like school, so stop interrupting the class with > all your butts. > > (Just read Jim Devine's post, so there are the answers to your buts, but > stop all that and get through the text. Julio's comments are also great and > together they reminded me of various sections. I read it in so short a > period that a lot of the fine points just blew over my head. If you can > study it on that kind of detail, so much the better.) > > Try to remember Marx is writing against the economic theories of his > moment, > which are not much different from our own. Since I spent most of my > working > life in obnoxious small business maintenance shops, that was the world that > I used to understand Marx. In that context, Marx was right on. I could see > the points directly from work memory. > > Study aids. This course needs motivation and you can get that through > internet sources. Put some Lewis Hine photographs up next to Harvey and > look > at them every once in a while. Type Lewis Hine photography of child labor > and click images. You'll get several pages worth. Click the thumnails for > enlargement. > > Read the wikis on Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. > They are short but help a lot on historical context. > > For extra credit, watch Germinal (1994) with Gerard Depardieu. I could only > find a spanish language version for free. I had already read the novel and > remembered the general sequence. I would suggest the novel, but reading > Marx > is enough reading to get through. > > When Marx finally drills home, you can get that feeling of adventure again. > I did and watching Egypt blow up was like watching something I never > thought > would happen again, only on a much more vast scale. It died or has > apparently, but for those weeks several million people were living on the > edge, breathless, going to the square. Then I read Trotsky's monument, The > History of the Russian Revolution, I could see the demonstrations, the all > night meetings, the ceaseless movements through the city stirring the gods > of history from their slumber. Another fantastic jolt. C'est possible. It is > possible! > > CG > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
