Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Chomsky, Noam; Graeber, David; Wolff, Richard. "On the Topic on which Karl Marx spent Effort." (n.d.) Retrived from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5iQQJadIWE.




  Noam Chomsky: The Concept of Marxism is the one which I find troublesome. In Physics for example, there’s nothing like Einsteinism, because Einstein isn’t God whom you worship. Rather he’s a Humanbeing who had important Things to say and, like every other Humanbeing, made Mistakes. So you learn from what he had to say and disregard his Mistakes. Now, Marxism, the Concept, in my view, belongs to the organised Religion. It’s a kind of a Worship of an Individual which makes no Sense. If you look at Marx himself and others who are working in that Tradition, you learn what’s valuable and you disregard what’s Wrong. After that, we just go and look. So for example, take say, Socialism. Marx had almost nothing to say about it. If you read – I’m not a great Marxist specialist [Accurate.], but as far as I understand and I’ve read a fair amount [To be done.] – there are few scattered sentences in Marx’s Writings about Socialism. He’s a theorist of Capitalism. He was a theoriest basically of Capitalism. 19th century, perfectly naturally. And he did develop a sort of abstract model of the Capitalist system and its Properties from which I think there is a lot to learn. Any intelligent Person should read and learn what you can from it, as you learn from others. But to assume that it offers the Doctrine for today makes no Sense. I can’t imagine Marx would have believed that. He also wrote important Things about contemporary Affairs: for example, on British and India. Certainly worth reading. But if we’re still repeating those Things now, Civilisation would be Dead, you know, from which we’ve learned something in last 100 Years. Yes, there’s a Contribution like the rest of the cultural Tradition, and you learn from what’s important and you disregard what’s not useful.


  Graeber: […] anthropologist. And I suggest that, in a way, what you think of Marxism, taken to its logical Conclusion, what’s
  Logic of critique whereby we are interpreting any particular Phenomena
  specific totality from which can be apologised in some way. That’s why Marx was famously unwilling to comment on what the Communism might be like.



  Richard Wolff: Remember I told you Marx never wrote a book on Communism, never wrote an article on Communism. It wasn’t the Topic he ever spent much Time on. [omitted] […] can find in Marx’s Work - and I’ve read it all – anything about Socialism and Communism, any Kind of sustained Analysis. He didn’t believe in that. That was looking into the Future for him. He didn’t believe in that. He once made a Joke, «Go talk to the first [Person] in the County Fair.» I don’t do that. I analyse what I can see and what I experience, Capitalism.

No comments:

Post a Comment