Wait, this whole time he could write clearly? Why didn’t he do it in the shit you guys made me read?
I honestly really don’t understand the claims that Marx is unclear, unless we just mean difficult. He is clear and relatively unambiguous when he introduces, uses and develops concepts. He can write densely, but the concepts are fairly clearly defined or characterized in his texts, and his system(s) of thought hang together extremely tightly, and the latter virtue might have been reinforced by the emphasis on systematic philosophy in German idealism. While his syntax can be write complex at times, the main difficulty of the text is due to the fact that he’s doing serious scientific analysis. He’s not just batting out essays for intellectual masturbation. Marx is a a writer where the difficulty of the writing is, to a great if still incomplete degree, a reflection of their scientific depth of insight and rigor of analysis. That being said he also has far less scientifically dense texts, and those I think are extremely clear.
Hey, I get that you’re defending your boy, but your post comes across a little as “you’re just too stupid for Marx.”
I think your post misses the point though. Lots of people are told to “read Marx” when they come into the movement. It is, like you said, a scientifically dense text. This makes it a challenge for most people. This is a frustrating experience. The meme you’re complaining about is people venting a common frustration with a movement rite-of-padsage.
But also, Marx finds ways to be unclear in some of his less rigorous texts. There’s a couple common sins:
run on sentences that cover whole paragraphs
Whole chapters where the evidence is laid out long before the argument and you have to read for pages without knowing where he’s going.
Words that mean one thing in day-today speech and something else in Marx (reproduction, fetish, realization, valorize, sublimate, etc.)
Jargon that doesn’t usually show up outside of Marxism: reify, proletarian, etc.
Marx is unclear for 99% of people and pretending it’s easy makes you look like a big-brained elitist.
Factory workers understand Wage Price and Profit better than “middle-class” students because they are already familiar with the conditions.
Organizing a reading group is definitely useful though. Organizing in general is.
Thank you for making this point in a normal way
Because he has to adhere to German academic writing tradition. Philosophers do the same thing, where the expound pointlessly on a subject for like three to four pages before getting to the point.
I really strongly disagree with the idea that Marx digresses at all often uselessly on a topic, especially in a work like Capital, his training in the German philosophical tradition enhanced his ability to deepen his conceptual analysis and preempt criticisms. He is also laying out a certain method of analysis in these texts. You might see it as useless, but there is a reason why is has been one of the most intellectually (and politically) fruitful bodies of though in the modern world.
I really strongly disagree
Same, I think Marx can be quite poetic when he wants to be. Hegel or critical theorists like Adorno are far more challenging to read than Marx, in terms of prose.
In his letters (I can’t remember where exactly) Marx actually does mention at a point that he also considered Capital to be a work of art. It is definitely very literary, especially in certain sections with their descriptions of the experiences of the working class, but that literary quality definitely doesn’t preclude it being scientific or relatively clear, if difficult, and even he could have been clearer (including by making it less literary, although then perhaps it might not have been quite as successful or moving).
Adorno imo is an actual example of intellectual masturbation. I tried reading Against Epistemology and I found it pretty impenetrable, even when you’ve read Hegel. Hegel is obviously not easy and I think could be clearer (Force and Understanding in the Phenomenology is something I’ve reread I dont know how many times and I’m still not sure what the argument is in fine-grained detail).
It’s mostly the memes that has invented this persona around Marx, by people who have never read Marx and by academics who dislike him.
Freud(interesting reactionary thinker) is also lambasted the same way.
Marx is unclear for 99% of people and pretending it’s easy makes you look like a big-brained elitist.
There are plenty of PhD fucks in the academic institution who cannot figure their way out of Freud and Marx, so no, it’s not because of elitism.
Grad school media studies read Hegel/Lenin challenge.
You can imagine what an uproar this would cause with blind or other vulgar democrats - my conspiracy with bismark
Shit never changes, does it.
Marx stepped into a Romcom for a moment.
nah he’s too much of a wife guy for any romcom who’s plot doesn’t involve jenny
this is one of the reasons I just can’t believe Marx had a love child with the housekeeper
My rabid Christian fascist in denial libertarian co-worker preaches all day about Marx being a Demon worshiper who cheats on his wife willy-nilly and cites that dubious claim as historical facts.
I personally think it’s more likely Engel’s kid, not the child of someone else outside of Marx’s household alltogether since all historical evidence that surrounds the man points towards him being a serial monogamous wife-guy with a bad case of loving his wife a huge amount.
Wow, the train situation has actually improved since then. I couldn’t find even a historical North Western station, but starting from Paddington, there’d be a train in 3 minutes, half an hour and an hour.
Just imagining him going
“Oh you’re Bismark’s niece?? Funny…” in an ice cream shop lolIs this a good bio to read?
I am on a quest to find the best Marx biography myself. Haven’t found it yet, seems like there isn’t one definitive one out there. Michael Heinrich has apparently written a great one but he’s only done one of three volumes (or the others haven’t been translated into English yet, I don’t remember).
I’ll check that out, the translation of vol 1 is published by Monthly Review, so I’ll take that as a good sign
