>Marx's original insight about capitalism was that it was the most =
>revolutionary and creative force ever to appear in human history. And =
>though it brought with it enormous attendant dangers, [the revolutionary =
>nature] was the first thing to recognize about it. That is actually what =
>the Manifesto is all about. As far as I know, no better summary of the =
>beauty of capital has ever been written. You sort of know it's true, and =
>yet it can't be, because it doesn't compute in the way we're taught to =
>think. Any more than it computes, for example, that Marx and Engels =
>thought that America was the great country of freedom and revolution and =
>Russia was the great country of tyranny and backwardness.=20
". . . the beauty of capital . . . ." Hmmm, I do recall the Futurist manifesto going on about the beauty of modern machinery, and of war, "scorning women" and such. I can appreciate the complex beauty of functioning capitalism, how it all fits together and works in theory as outlined in Capital and the Grundrisse, but Hitch gets drunk simply on the imagery, ignoring all else. Nice to see he mentioned Marx and Engels' thoughts on America (shows he reads more than the basics)(they felt a peaceful revolution could be possible there), but I don't think M & E meant it in quite the same way as he did.
Todd