On Jan 2, 2006, at 1:20 AM, Chuck Grimes wrote:
> I've wondered about this while reading Kapital. Who is this text for? How could you write for the working class and expect them to understand this?
Capitalism is really complicated, so a book about it has to be pretty complicated too. As Marx wrote in the preface to the French edition of Capital:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p2.htm
> I applaud your idea of publishing the translation of “Das Kapital” as a serial. In this form the book will be more accessible to the working class, a consideration which to me outweighs everything else.
>
> That is the good side of your suggestion, but here is the reverse of the medal: the method of analysis which I have employed, and which had not previously been applied to economic subjects, makes the reading of the first chapters rather arduous, and it is to be feared that the French public, always impatient to come to a conclusion, eager to know the connexion between general principles and the immediate questions that have aroused their passions, may be disheartened because they will be unable to move on at once.
>
> That is a disadvantage I am powerless to overcome, unless it be by forewarning and forearming those readers who zealously seek the truth. There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.
A lot of populism can't be bothered with the fatiguing climb, which is why the politics are often so deficient.
Yay if regular folks want to read it, but an anatomy of capitalism and a critique of its official economics doesn't have to be accessible to everyone, does it?
Doug