> It seems to me that it's a wide-spread assumption, unfortunately
> shared even by some leftists who complain that book-learning is
> either above or irrelevant to the working class in general (not just
> the poor).
I never said that books were irrelevant to the working class; I said that turgid academic Marxist theories were not going to be embraced by people who haven't been schooled in radical history -- and that's a lot of people, not just workers.
In another post you said that Engels wrote a pamphlet especially for workers' consumption. But Freddie didn't have to compete with TV, radio, the Web, CDs, video games, video tapes, and so on. Despite the illiteracy of his time, Engels could still count on enough readers to get his ideas across. Today? Not a chance, unless he put his ideas into a PlayStation game.
DP