Henwood on Keynes

[Charles Brown]

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