How could anyone find Marx's Capital dreary? I mean, honestly. OK, one might find the technical political economy, the value theoretic analyses and so forth, outdated, pointless or irrelevant, I kinda do myself. And the book get off on that foot with the definition of a commodity, etc. But for lively -- to say the least! prose, especially in the historical sections, general vim and vigor, memorable language and characterizations (Moneybags should be so lucky!), conflict and excitement, there's no one writing in economics probably since Smith who can lay a hand on Chuck. (Maybe Veblen.) That that goes for JMK himself, although his writing is far better than the average economist's, even of his day.
Btw, for all who missed it, there was an interesting long review in The Nation by Robin Blackburn of a life of Joseph Schumpeter, an eccentrically conservative but deeply brilliant Austrian economist -- Austrian in the sense of, from Vienna, rather than in the sense of Austrian School, Hayek and Mises. Schumpeter's the fella that coined the term" creative destruction" to describe capitalism; he's a genuine _political_ economist with a wide-scope vision, and his prescience about the shape of the second half of the 20th century and the start of the 21st is startling. The bio itself is 700 pp. long -- longer than Capital I! Yikes. I may put it on my someday list -- but it will send me back to read Schumpeter's masterpiece, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, which is an excellent piece of writing. Schumpeter was quite respectful of Marx, although politically opposed to and analytically skeptical of him.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> Just noticed this from my Keynes notes. Keynes, CW
> 28, p. 38: Marx's
> Capital is "dreary, out-of-date, academic
> controversializing," like
> the Koran.
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