Brad De Long thursday Aug. 13, 98 writes: "When a text becomes itself transfigured--when it ceases to be of mortal origin and meaning, but instead becomes Holy Writ for a world religion--then all rules of interpretation and argument are suspended..."
Doyle Let us see ...Marx was writing about economics, and the bible is about religion. Brad postulates that Marx was writing religion. The problem with the comparison is the lack of insight it gives to the paragraphs cited. Really what is to argue with Marx writing as he did of Europe at the time he wrote:
Karl Marx: ""It is a great fact that the misery of the working
masses has not diminished from 1848 to 1864, and
yet this period is unrivalled for the development
of its industry and the growth of its commerce."
And after four pages of official statistics and government reports detailing poverty in England, moves on to the European continent where:
"Everywhere the great mass of the working classes
were sinking down to a lower depth, at the same rate
at least, that those above them were rising in the
social scale. In all countries of Europe it has now
become a truth demonstrable to every unprejudiced
mind, and only denied by those, whose interest it
is to hedge other people in a fool's paradise, that
no improvement of machinery, no appliance of science
to production, no contrivances of communication, no
new colonies, no emigration, no opening of markets, no
free trade, nor all these things put together, will
do away with the miseries of the industrious masses;
but that, on the present false base, every fresh
development of the productive powers of labour must
tend to deepen social contrasts and point social
antagonisms. Death of starvation rose almost to the
rank of an institution, during this [1848-64]
intoxicating epoch of economical progress, in the
metropolis of the British Empire."
Doyle It would be a fairly accurate statement of the lives and possibilities in Europe at the time. What precisely makes this religious? An appeal to the "truth" of workers lives? Otherwise what has this quote got to do with refuting Marx other than to impute that the someone who is Marxist is religious about Marx? Come on, can't we rise above the level of duh here? You been watching too much Homer Simpson? regards, Doyle Saylor