[lbo-talk] From another thread

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Nov 27 09:26:08 PST 2009


I don't see where the conflic is. I can easily see reading Shakespeare or any other text for one reason on one occasion, another reason on another occasion.

Incidentally, if by other means one has already established some point re u.s. social relations in the 1920s, then one book can easily be enough to _illustrate_ the point. It doesn't have to be evidence to be an illustration. I know many readers of Marx regard the chapters on the the work day and the chapter on machinery as _evidence_ but I would disagree. They are illustrative of arguments otherwise supported. They are not evidence of anything. Most of _Capital_ requires only one empirical point, that stated in the very first sentence of Vol. 1: that wealth undner capitalism consists of a great pile of commodities. Evidence is needed only whenhe turns to historical arguments (such as the distinction between formal and real subsumption of labor to capital.)

Carrol

Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
> At 06:01 AM 11/26/2009, shag carpet bomb wrote:
>
> >>>Berube falls into the same problem as WBM in that he argues from
> >>>the basis of
> >>>what was or wasn't going on in the novel (The Great
> >>>Gatsby)....This approach uses the fiction as a
> >>>social document.
> >>
> >>
> >>Imagine reading Shakespeare that way. You'd miss almost everything
> >>good about it.
> >
> >are you agreeing with chuck or not? it's hard to tell.
>
> I'm agreeing. Ted says Shakespeare understood money very
> well. That's no doubt true. But Shakespeare is as good now as he
> was 400 years ago not because he tells us a lot about his own time
> but because he is "bottomless",as a book I've been reading recently
> describes it. You can keep going back to the well and finding new
> things that are more than just information about money and humankind,
> although that is there of course.
>
> I read one of Marx's kids saying she could recite from Shakespeare
> when she was six because her father placed such an emphasis on its
> importance. I don't think Marx read him only to find his thoughts on
> money or the transition from feudalism to capitalism.
>



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