DANIEL.DAVIES at flemings.com wrote:
> heh, heh, heh, beat ya to this one, Doug ......
>
> check it out http://www.polyconomics.com/
>
> In Defense of Karl Marx
>
> To: Sylvia Nasar, Ph.D., NYTimes economics correspondent
> From: Jude Wanniski
> Re: Reviewing the Marx biography
>
> Your review of the new Marx biography by Francis Wheen, a Brit who you say
> writes for The Guardian and the humor magazine Private Eye, really does the
> old man and the book a great disservice. And I say this even though I'd not
> heard about the book until I saw that you were treating Karl Marx as if he
> were "Groucho." I don't blame you for that, Sylvia, as that comparison is
> never made in your review -- it was a bit of hype by the Times editors. Nor
> do I blame you for the headline on the review: "The First Marxist: His
> latest biographer says the man who wrote the Communist Manifesto was
> unkempt, unreliable and often broke." I don't know of any Marx biographer
> who has portrayed Marx differently, so why the headline? Where I fault you
> is in your cursory treatment of Wheen's assertion that Marx was a great
> political economist whose insights endured. You have a doctorate in
> economics, but the way you disposed of Marx suggests me that you never
> really took a hard look at what he was all about. I came away thinking
> Wheen is right and it is you who look silly to those who have studied the
> man and his philosophy. First, here is the relevant paragraph in your
> review:
>
> Wheen's portrait of Marx's life is artfully shaped and makes delectable
> reading. Alas, his breezy comedy takes an unintentionally farcical turn
> when he assesses Marx's ideas. Improbably asserting that all Marx's
> critics have either not read "Das Kapital" or else misread it, Wheen
> provides a capsule summary that is perversely selective and highly
> misleading. He insists that Marx's major economic and political
> predictions have stood the test of time. Hello? Capitalism has
> self-destructed? Socialist societies that have dispensed with markets
> and democracy have succeeded? Wheen's defense of Marxism has got to be
> one of the silliest apologias of all time.
>
> My advantage, I suppose, is that I've taken the trouble to read Das Kapital
> not once, but several times, since my grandfather gave me a Modern Library
> edition for my highschool graduation. I also read several other books by
> Marx and about him. In fact, I recently came across a 1928 bio of him by
> Otto Rühle, Karl Marx: His Life and Work, which interested me because it
> was written prior to the 1929 Wall Street Crash. A lot of Marx fans saw the
> Crash as proof of Marx's vision about an end to capitalism. You know,
> Silvia, it was completely consistent with his warning that unless it was
> checked by active, universal suffrage, runaway capitalism would blindly
> drive toward maximum profits and political self-protection at the expense
> of the working class. Those economists who believe the Great Depression was
> caused by the gold standard can blame Marx, who believed with all classical
> economists that a gold-defined money was as good as it could get. If you
> believe the Crash was caused by the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, as I
> demonstrated in The Way the World Works, you would have to hand it to Marx
> for seeing it in advance. Now that we have been through the mess of the
> 20th century, it is easy to say we proved Marx wrong, but I think the
> experience proved Marx correct. He was an ardent democrat who saw that only
> the votes of the masses could offset the untrammeled greed of the ruling
> class, which would if it could always put its interests ahead of ordinary
> working people. He also was an unabashed admirer of the United States,
> which he saw as the last best hope of mankind, precisely because it still
> put the interests of market democracy ahead of the political elites.
> If Marx were alive today, he would continue to observe the controls the
> Political Establishment wields over the interests of ordinary people. He
> would identify the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as
> perfect examples of undemocratic capitalist institutions, meant to serve
> the interests of our multinational corporations and banks -- at the expense
> of the poorest people on the planet. The NYTimes, one of the principle
> voices of the Establishment, is of course a faithful supporter of the
> IMF/World Bank policies that are at the root of so much misery, poverty and
> war in the developing world.
> You write that Marx was an opponent of "markets" as well as of "democracy."
> Please give me the citations, Sylvia, or I will have to conclude that Wheen
> was correct when he said the opponents of Marx have never read his work.
> Near the end of his life, so many utopians in Europe had tried to stir
> revolution in his name that Marx himself insisted he was not a Marxist. He
> certainly would have turned in his grave in watching the
> Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist experiments cast in his name. Might I suggest you
> read up on him before you do any more book reviews or continue work on your
> forthcoming book on the great economic thinkers of the 20th century.
> Several years ago, at the end of the Cold War, I spent several months doing
> just that. I wrote a long tract, Karl Marx Revisited: A Fluid Economy,
> which I think is fairly easy reading for a college freshman. You can find
> it at my website's "Supply Side University." Perhaps you will also finally
> decide to actually read some Marx. You can find everything he ever
> published on line, at the Marx/Engels Library.
>
> ___________________________________________________________________________
> _____
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> This email is confidential to the ordinary user of the
> e-mail address to which it was addressed. If you are not
> the intended recipient, please notify the sender
> immediately on (44) 20 7638 5858 and delete the message
> from all locations in your computer. You should not copy
> this email or use it for any purpose, or disclose its
> contents to any person : to do so may be unlawful.
>
> Email is an informal method of communication and is
> subject to possible data corruption, either accidentally
> or on purpose. Flemings is unable to exercise control
> over the content of information contained in
> transmissions made via the Internet. For these reasons
> it will normally be inappropriate to rely on information
> contained on email without obtaining written confirmation
> of it.
> ----------------------------------------------------------
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu