--- Rakesh Bhandari <bhandari at berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Andie, you claim that Marx set out to destroy anyone
> whom he could
> not dominate.
Where did I sat that? I said he was intolerant of disagreement and that he used polemic as a political weapon. The conclusion you draw does not follow.
To historical and biographical details
> that speak
> against this vicious caricature--his admiration for
> the Communards
> whose principles he detested,
He cut a lot of slack for people who actually tried to male revolutions. In his letters to Engels he is scathing about the childish adherence to obsolete notions like justice and fairness common in the International, which, however, he says one has to put up with for the sake of political unity.
his embrace of
> Dietzgen, and one should
> add his many compromises in First International
As for example I noted above
--you
> say that Marx
> had an illegitimate child
I did, and so did David McLellan, and it's virtually certainly true. And I said I didn't think the worse of him for that, just for not being a father to the kid. And I don't use the word "illegitimate," which is really insulting.
and that I am true
> believer.
This answer shows that you are. It's not enough that Marx is a universal genius who revolutionized social science and made a vast difference, in my view fir the better, in world history, in your good he has to be a saint too. That's childish.
As Blake
> noted, Marx was an urbane and polished
> controversialist compared to
> his pathetic, fulminating, not very nice critics.
Well maybe "as compared to," but what does that tell us? British food, according to Doug, has improved in recent decades. As compared to Mill, Marx was a total jerk, personally speaking.
>
>
> The true socialists, Bauer, Weitling, Proudhon,
> Lassalle, Bakunin--I
> am supposing that you think all Marx's criticisms
> vicious and
> caricatural, but you have yet to show so in any
> concrete instance.
I did not say that. I said they were nasty, bitter, witty, abusive, and full of invective. Also one-sided and making no attempt to give the other side its best shot. They may have been, and in many cases were, perfectly accurate. I don't have to "show" this, if you can't see this reading, e.g., The Poverty of Philosophy, if that strikes you as urbane (I didn't say Marx wasn't polished), well, we have different standards.
In
> fact your writing is without names, arguments,
> references, detail.
Because the things I am saying are so obvious that they are like saying that Marx is a critic of capitalism.
> But these opponents were not quite the innocents you
> seem
> think--Bauer and Bakunin anti Semites, Weitling a
> champion of the
> lumpen proletariat and the criminals, Proudhon a
> petty bourgeois
> socialist, Lassalle a Bismarckian.
So maybe they deserved the abuse Marx heaped on their heads. But all I said was that he heaped abuse on their heads, not that they were innocents. The two names I did mention, Mill, it;s hard to find anything nasty to say about him (but Marx did), and Proudhon, who, whatever his other failings, was not the idiot that Marc depicts him as being.
And even if Marx
> was unfair to
> any one of these or other rival socialists
Is that an admission that he was or only for the sake of argument?
--say
> Moses Hess but not
> Karl Grun and many other true socialists--it would
> not follow that
> Marx set out to destroy any and all rivals whom he
> could not control.
No, it it would support the propositions I offered, that he was intolerant of disagreement, given to invective and abuse, and inclined to use polemics as a political weapon. I said nothing about "destroy" or "control."
>
> You also seem to think Marx had no scientific
> integrity--
Where the fuck do you get that? I said he was a universal genius. I compared him to Newton (favorable as regards his character, btw). This establishes beyond argument that you are a true believe who takes any criticism, even personal or stylistic, of his hero as a total rejection. For you, Marx must be perfect or nothing. No, I agree, you don't belong here. And, btw, Marx would have made meat pie out of you in two seconds.
making say
> Theories of Surplus Value an exercise in the
> destruction of strawmen.
Did I say anything about TSV? Did I say that Marx attacked only straw men? Did I saw that any one of his critiques of an opponent was wrong? Mean isn't the same thing as wrong.
> You only reveal here your own astonishing ignorance.
Astonishing only to you. Everyone else has known about it for decades.
> To be sure, Marx
> was probably less than fair to JS Mill on a few
> questions.
So, basically, I'm right. Mill was a nice guy. Marx was not a nice guy. Why are you getting your panties in a bunch?
But his
> many mistakes, prejudices and limits do not confirm
> your vicious
> description of Marx.
Oooh, Chucko had "many mistakes, prejudices and limits" -- apart from being less fair than Mill, what exactly were these?
>
> Between your invective and the pathetic defenses of
> Marx on this
> list, I shall stay clear. It was mistake to rejoin
> the list.
>
> Rakesh
I agree, unfortunately. And this is a nice list. There are lists like Lou P's Marxism list where people really play rough. But if you too thin-skinned for this list, you probably are going to be unhappy anywhere on the net. I rather regret it, because you are really smart and have a lot to offer. I just wish that you weren't so touchy about Chuck, whom I admire more than just about any other thinker -- but not as human being.
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