Stop, Rakesh. I am not doing this any more. No more on Marx's or Mill's personality and character. My lips are sealed.
Except (since this is substantive and goes to ideas) I will say that Marx was a social scientist and a revolutionary -- after 1845 he lumped philosophy in with ideology and turned away from it decisively, even though he kept a great residual respect for Hegel. As for what his contributions were (right or wrong), I am sure I have nothing particularly original to say.
I'm not sure what your problem is with my respecting Marx's achievement even though I disagree with a lot of his ideas. Just like Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, and many other giants. Newton too, who was also wrong about fundamentals.
You may think I am not entitled to respect Marx's ideas unless I agree with them more than I do. I don't even call myself a Marxist. Think what you like, I can't stop you. Please don't explain, though.
--- Rakesh Bhandari <bhandari at berkeley.edu> wrote:
> OK so you're noting that Marx used invective and
> unfair argument to
> make meat pie (your expression) of any and all
> opposing points of
> view. But you agree that he did not always do that.
> For goodness sake
> does the name Weston mean anything to you? Value,
> Price and Profit is
> not outrageously urbane by the standards of polemics
> of
> his time?. How did Marx speak of the Owenites? He
> was less than
> urbane in Poverty of Philosophy but admiring of the
> Communards
> inspired by Proudhon. And even the Critique of the
> Gotha Programme is
> hardly fiery; for that matter neither are the Notes
> on Adolph Wagner.
> And then as you admit the way Marx conducted himself
> in the First
> International (except in relation to Bakunin)
> speaks against your
> image of a fire breathing unethical polemicist. So
> then you have to
> specify the cases in which he used caricature and
> invective to
> destroy opposing points of view; you have to specify
> why in some
> cases he would indeed brook (and work with)
> opposition, but of course
> you said that he never did. False.
>
> The character assassination via the generalization
> that he would
> brook no opposition and that he always used every
> tool, legitimate
> and illegitimate, to destroy views opposed to his is
> clearly unfair
> (as was your character assassination of me as a true
> believer whose
> commitments cannot be rationally discussed). That
> was your
> proposition. I never denied that Marx could be
> urbane, fair and/or
> inexcusably nasty with opponents--that is, that he
> was human. You
> said that he was always the last. It's just vicious
> anti Marxist
> hyperbole from a person who actually agrees with
> very little of
> Marx's social science though for some reason you
> insist on calling
> him the Newton of the social sciences.
>
> Then you say that Marx was intellectually unfair to
> his opponents in
> general, implying use of strawmen and absence of
> charity in all his
> disputes with opponents. But you give no example.
> Give me something
> concrete and we'll work from there.
>
>
> It also makes no sense to me for you to claim that
> KM is the Newton
> of the social sciences and then compare KM to
> philosophers whose
> arguments you also reject. Was he a social scientist
> or a
> philosopher? Was his theory successful in some sense
> or was
> it not? What did he contribute to the social
> sciences that you take
> to be revolutionary? Only vagueness.
>
> Then the bizarre comment about my criticism of JS
> Mill--that I am
> focused on his personality? I never admitted that JS
> Mill was fair to
> his critics, explicit and implict. If he was a
> sweetie in
> argumentation, it was only because he often did not
> argue with those
> who disagreed with him. Nothing was argued about. I
> take this to be
> often more violent, less sweet than open and honest
> polemic. Failure
> to recognize is often an attempt to humiliate and
> wound. Moreover,
> why play this evasive game? Your socialism is closer
> to JS Mill's
> pseudo socialism than Marx's. Why comment on
> personalities only to
> hide your real political commitments? Yet you can't
> have non
> capitalist relations of distribution with capitalist
> relations of
> production. By the way, Marx refused to lump JS Mill
> in with the
> vulgar economists.
>
>
> You then say Marx's character hardly matters but
> that's what you were
> focused on.
>
> You are the one who wants to take cheap shots
> against Marx, making
> outrageous generalizations about his modus operandi.
> I am resisting
> it.
>
> And as you may know but others don't Marx seems to
> have been an
> active and good father in the raising of his quite
> accomplished
> daughters.
>
>
> Rakesh
> > ___________________________________
>
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