M-TH: Re: Marx on Timon of Athens

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Mon Jun 7 13:34:06 PDT 1999


At 22:58 07/06/99 +1000, Rob Schaap wrote:
>G'day Chris,
>
>In *C1* Marx refers to Timon's speech, in which money is described as the
>'common whore of mankind': "Just as every qualitative difference between
>commodities is extinguished in money, so money, on its side, like the
>radical leveller that it is, does away with all distinctions." He then goes
>on to quote, of all characters, Creon (Sophocles's Antigone) on the evil of
>filthy lucre - and then gives us a bit of Athenaeus on greed. All to show
>that we have, under capitalism, lost the common-sense insights of yore.
>
>>>Marx would never have posited a "normal" attitude to money.
>
>What is (importantly) meant then is: *normal for western precapitalist
>societies* - from 460BC to 1601AD, anyway.
>
>Take a peek at S.S. Prawer's *Karl Marx & World Literature* - as Timon
>doesn't directly rate a mention in the index, try pp329-331 of the 1976
>edition (perhaps, alas, the only edition of a terrific book). Marx also
>muses about Timon in the Paris Manuscripts somewhere.
>
>Cheers,
>Rob.

Bravo. From this fragmentary connection some interesting themes develop.

Another subscriber from the Bhaskar list was visiting lbo-talk and sent me a note.


>Marx quotes from Timons in Capital, the Chapter on money, the section on
>hoarding. It's the second footnote. He quotes also in the Grundrisse,
>v. 28 of the Collected Works, at p. 100, though this is just a line.

He thought it is probably also in Grundrisse.

A. I am having second thoughts about pronouncing that


>>>Marx would never have posited a "normal" attitude to money

The historical sources he cites come from times of commodity exchange and money but before the capitalist mode of production came to dominate.

B. Thanks for the clue about the Paris Manuscripts.

I have located it in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844, Third Manuscript, penultimate section, on Money. (Penguin edition pp 376-377)

This quotes the same passage from Timon of Athens but in full, and with a further passage.

He writes "Shakespeare paints a brilliant picture of the nature of money"

"It is the alienated capacity of mankind".

The discussion goes into dialectically complex psychological detail about the experience of money in a commodity dominated society, in contrast to a truly human relation to the world.

The existence of the same passage in Capital 1867 and in the Paris Manuscripts 1844 raises the question once again of the continuity versus the contrast in Marx's early and later writings.

Chris Burford

London



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