Karl Marx

I accidentally started reading the Viking Portable edition of Works of Karl Marx.  Here in the United States, Marx gets short shrift for various reasons, but in other places in the world he enjoys a somewhat higher repute, as one of the founding philosophic originators of Communism/Socialism/Marxism.

So far I've read the introduction by Eugene Kamenka (Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University, Canberra), from which I feel I learned quite a bit about Marx and the times and people around him.

In the introduction, a quote from Saint-Simonian Amand Bazard reads in part:

"...by giving to a certain class of men the chance to live on the labour of others and in complete idleness, it preserves the exploitation of one part of the population, the most useful one, that which works and produces, in favor of those who only destroy."

That passage leaped off the page for me, as sounding very similar to Veblen's notion of the Leisure Class in the quasi-peaceful stage, and was written sometime around 1828, long before Veblen.

What Bazard is espousing is the abolishment of private property (meaning private control of the means of production) in favor of social ownership of the means of production.  Veblen also discusses the creation of and maintenance of private property, as being a necessary precursor to establishing a leisure class, a leisure class which is supported by labor of others, and which itself does not produce but consumes.  If we substitute "conspicuously consume" for "destroy" in the quote above, we come very very close to Veblen, at least in that one (admittedly out of context) passage.  With this insight, I'll be more aware of any tendencies toward socialism in Veblen,  though I have not recognized anything overtly socialist in the first several chapters.

In Das Kapital and other writings, Marx lays out his thinking on scientific socialism, in a framework he intended to be devoid of moral and ethical adornments.  His scientific socialism model was not supposed to describe what the proletariat should do, but rather what the proletariat would be forced to do as the natural consequence of advancement in the science and technology of production.  Marx did read Darwin, and commented in correspondence with Engels about applications of "evolution" to his theories of economic, political and social order.

I had never considered what lifestyle Marx must have led.  Evidently he lived in poverty and relied on financial assistance from Engels and others for much of his adult life.  He had varying levels of contact and exchange with numerous now famous intellectuals of the time from different spheres, which I thought was really interesting.  I found it quite interesting that he studied languages, mathematics, economics, plant and human physiology (physiology??) and presumably a host of other subjects after he left the university, to support his continued thinking and philosophical writing.

He studied Russian (the language) in order to read N. Flerovski (pseudonym of sociologist and economist Vasilii Vasil’evich Bervi) "Position of the Working Class in Russia". I try to imagine self-studying a foreign language, and achieving sufficient mastery, so I could read and understand a treatise written in that language.  The mind boggles, though apparently Marx did have Latin, Greek, German, French and English under his belt by then, so maybe the task was more approachable for a multi-lingual european than it would be for me.

For what it's worth, it took me quite a while on Google to find an english search result on Bervi or his book(s).  Google Books had the first english reference to Bervi I came across, a reference in "A History of Russian Thought" by William J. Leatherbarrow and Derek Offord.

I gather from some of Marx's letters in the Portable Marx, that he was unpleasant and antagonistic to those who did not agree with him, and generally may not have been a very happy or pleasant person.  When I was younger I didn't think being happy amounted to much. Now I'm less sure of myself in nearly all respects, and certainly in respect to the merits of happiness.

Comments are welcome, though moderated.