Michael, Lou has a point here; remember that Marx wrote for a German audience in the first place -- who might or might not know the details of the original publishing of PL. But as the whole of Marx's discussion makes clear (and subsequent history emphasizes), this distinction of productive and unproductive labor is something of a mare's nest. Probably there is not a lot of room for humor in discussing such a topic.
Incidentally, slaves (as in the slave south) were not productive laborers, their owners were not capitalists, and the importance of cotton to the development of capitalism is irrelevant to the understanding of social relations in the South. Carrol -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael Smith Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2016 2:37 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Pen-l] For Karl Marx, writers of romance novels are productive workers On 1/24/16 1:45 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: > Smith, I know that your purpose here is to bait me and not contribute > anything of value, but I was quoting Karl Marx. Mea culpa. I seldom follow Louis' links, but clearly I should have made an exception in this case. What would be presumptuous in a lesser figure is, of course, rather endearing the the Great Man -- Marx, I mean, not Louis. We make allowances for the people we admire, don't we? I fear that Louis is in error -- a characteristically self-important error -- when he says that my 'purpose' here is to bait him. One must admit however that it is one of the minor delights the list affords, a never-failing source of innocent merriment. Best, MJS _______________________________________________ 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
