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> Jerry Monaco:
>
> > Also Doug should compare Marx's published writing
> with > Butler's. Even in the most difficult portions
> of
> > Capital I could read it with enjoyment at age 14.
>
> The commodity chapter is one of the most notoriously
> misunderstood passages in Marx's oeuvre.
>
> If you understood it at age 14, despite the fact that
> figures like Engels and Kautsky got it wrong, I am
> impressed indeed.
The prose wasn't impenetrable. The prose for that matter as I emphasized, was quite beautiful, even in translation. I remember I had copied out into my notebooks during the next two years in religion class (Catholic high school and we were studying Augustine and Aquinas at the time, which was occasionally impenetrable) whole pages of Capital. My teacher was very much into liberation theology and was impressed that someone in his class would even want to read Marx.
So I thought I understood the stuff, even if I didn't.
But this is the arrogance of youth. It took me a long time to realize how much I didn't understand. I understand less now than I ever have at any other point in my life and not only of Capital.
A conceptual framework can be hard to understand and yet it can be written in prose that is pretty easy to enjoy and get to know. Take the dare and set side-by-side Marx's prose from anything he published during his lifetime and Judith Butler's prose and it is very easy to see that Marx is trying to communicate and argue. I read Judith Butler's prose and I get a sense that communication is not exactly on the top of her list. I might be wrong. She might just be awful at communicating her thoughts.
At about the same time I read Bertrand Russell's book on the theory of relativity , perfect reading while taking a train since so many of the examples are train examples. I can't say that I understood relativity theory, but his prose was not impenetrable, and he made you understand the vast amount you didn't understand at the moment, but could understand in the future. In fact there are portions of Russell's book where (1) he admits his own ignorance and the spaces in his knowledge, and (2) where he sets out possible ways for the reader to overcome portions of his/her ignorance of physical theory if one should wish.
So perhaps if someone on this list or elsewhere could set out to write a book to explain the theories of Judith Butler to me in the way that Bertrand Russell explained the theories of Einstein to me when I was 14, and also explain to me why those theories are so complicated, the way Russell explained why Einstein's theory were complicated, then I would understand what I am missing.
There are all kinds of books that do this for Marx and to it well.
Jerry
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