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.
>