Marx was no more responsible for what others did with his discoveries than Einstein was for the atomic bomb. One of the big illusions people have about Marx is that he wrote some kind of blueprint for a future society. The truth is that people reading his work looking for this find only frustration - he is almost completely silent abut it. Fluctuations in the price of cotton, however…
Those who find actually reading Marx daunting - and he is difficult in places - should take a look at Terry Eagleton’s little book Why Marx Was Right - specifically aimed at stripping away the many layers of myth and misunderstanding which have hidden the real Marx.
The truth is that he was a very insightful political economist, that got some things wrong but a lot of things right (just like Einstein, who brilliantly described the large scale structure of the universe, but never got to grips with quantum uncertainty, nor imagined that his work correcting Newton’s calculation of the orbit of Mercury would one day be used to build bombs).
Did you know Marx dedicated the first volume of Capital to Darwin? They were both part of the same intellectual movement - challenging superstition, tradition, the authority of scripture, etc, through the conscientious accumulation of evidence and reason. Marx relished the iconoclasm, of course, whereas Darwin feared it.
Most interestingly, Darwin is generally misunderstood in a similar way to Marx. He did not actually originate the theory of evolution (by means of natural selection) - the really important thing he did was to accumulate masses of detailed evidence that effectively proved it. Hence (as you point out) the less-than-gripping narrative of The Origin of Species. He went on to write a book about earthworms.
Indeed. The origins (pun intended) of natural selection go way back to Roman and later Islamic philosophers, who without the rigour of Darwins research, came pretty close to the same sort of conclusions, without having any sort of idea how it all worked.
Edit : Not that Darwin had any idea how it all worked, but he did know the basic mechanisms.
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The origins (pun intended) of natural selection go way back to Roman and later Islamic philosophers, who without the rigour of Darwins research, came pretty close to the same sort of conclusions, w
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I’d be grateful for references to find your sources, not questioning your post, just want your info
Conversations with my Nephew, who is a senior lecturer in ancient history, and specialises in Roman philosophers and poets. I’m sure there will be some stuff online somewhere.
For anyone interested in the original idea of money, and how it’s been corrupted into an operand of modern slavery, these video explainers by Canadian artist, Paul Grignon, are a must watch:
The Essence of Money
youtu.be/_dwL9lqVBxY
Digital Coin (not Bitcoin - money backed by real stuff!)
youtu.be/XyWfUqEyIZc
And don’t forget his original Money As Debt series:
Part 1: youtu.be/2nBPN-MKefA
Part 2: youtu.be/MbqOSv7iPgs
Part 3: youtu.be/hBj8YrHJru0
Not directly relevant to my research (but it couldn’t be) Nevertheless it’s an interesting read and thanks for drawing my attention to this classical aspect to the subject
