<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>nice man</title></head><body> <div><font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000">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</font></div> <div><font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000">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.</font></div> <div><font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000"><br></font></div> <div><font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000">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. </font><br> <font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000"></font></div> <div><font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000">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.</font></div> <div><font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000"><br> <br> </font></div> <div><font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000">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</font></div> <div><font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000">it not?  What did he contribute to the social sciences that you take to be revolutionary?  Only vagueness.</font></div> <div><font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000"><br></font></div> <div><font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000">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.</font></div> <div><font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000"><br> <br> You then say Marx's character hardly matters but that's what you were focused on.</font><br> </div> <div><font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000">You are the one who wants to take cheap shots against Marx, making outrageous generalizations about his modus operandi. I am resisting it.</font></div> <div><font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000"><br></font></div> <div><font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000">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.</font></div> <div><font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000"><br> <br> </font></div> <div><font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000">Rakesh</font><br> <font face="Courier" size="+2" color="#000000"></font></div> </body> </html>