Henwood on Keynes

Charles Brown CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us
Thu Oct 8 08:37:25 PDT 1998


Marx and Engels also use the terms "barbarian" ,"savage" and "lumpenproletariat". In their personal letters they use racist epithets, including the "n" word. Marx called one house guest a "Jewish n-word." Of course, Marx himself was a Jew and nicknamed the Moor for his swarthy complexion, so this may be the privilege of using epithets that apply to oneself.

However, overall, they are 1000 times harder on the bourgeoisie ,and their texts are overwhelmingly anti-elitist. The negative epithets that saturate their writing are "bourgeois" , "ruling class", "petty bourgeois", "petty bourgeois philistines" and the like. Anyone who honestly reads Marx, Engels and Lenin gets hyped up against the ruling class and elites,

and for the working masses and underdogs. One's respect for the working class zooms as they convincingly persuade that the rising of the w.c.

is our only chance for getting out of this mess.

The proletariat are the "gravediggers" of capitalism. Doesn't sound very elitist.

Charles Brown


>From the market to the Marxit


>>> "William S. Lear" <rael at zopyra.com> 10/07 9:53 PM >>>
On Wed, October 7, 1998 at 18:00:30 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes:
>Max Sawicky wrote:
>
>>You said procapitalist AND elitist, implying
>>separate deficiencies. How is Keynes the
>>text elitist, as opposed to Marx?
>
>Of course Marx's texts are hard to read, if that's what you mean, but they
>couldn't be any other way, could they? I'm talking about social
>philosophies - Keynes was a elitist - his economy would be run by people
>like him, like there are many of those - and Marx wasn't.

Do you think referring to "the idiocy of rural life" was elitist? Hobsbawm has a neat little route around this one in his intro to Verso's (ironically) upscale Commie Manifesto.

Bill



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