Karl Marx: Style and Distortion

In general, political beliefs which appeal to 'the people' or a class of 'ordinary people' are often held to be suspect, because they are tacitly speaking about the reader. When they refer to these masses, they mean to refer to an overall category which these readers are or might as well be in. Hence, when they attempt 'rousing' rhetoric and so on, this can also serve to promote the listeners and involve them in this upwards movement - in a slightly back-handed manner. Populism tends to use this to notable effect, although even North American politicians are known to frequently call on populist rhetoric and especially on the campaign trail. There are other reasons why people are concerned about such beliefs, but we shall discuss that in a post following this.

In general, when people in capitalism encounter Marxism and related viewpoints in a positive manner, they are experiencing some amount of disillusionment with official politics and trying to see past the illusions of such political forms. However, that Marxism is effective in intercepting this, or the revolutionary or 'disillusioned' element in such societies, is not entirely coincidental. It is actually something which is deeply inter-woven in Marxist texts in a stylistic sense, which invites their viewing in such a context.

However, this can at times seem to distort the message. If a text is encountered in the context of disillusionment, then it often has to be seen in the context of another political view or situation. It cannot present a focussed and emphatic proclamation of its perspective, but must respond to other things or possibly qualify this. For instance, Das Kapital is forced in its presentation of value to continually respond to possible criticisms of itself - which many critics have taken as an authoritative documentation of ways to dispute it. These opposed points force their way into the texts. That readers then complain, although of course people would do whatever they could to dispute or question the points made by Marxism, that it is too boring and laboured is really to leave Marx no way out in this endeavour.

Nonetheless, these texts which were abandoned by most do hold notable interest. There is no need to heap calumny upon condemnation just for mild personal caprice.

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The effectiveness of Marx in intercepting certain situation is manifested in multiple ways. However, we must also note that this form of political straying, or disillusionment with the major Parties and beliefs, can also seem to capitalism like a turn towards laissez-faire. Hence, its promoters do their best to assimilate this form of politics into a sort of indifferent, ecstatic, laissez-faire posturing. They will take for granted that that is what is being attempted, as they will not acknowledge the albeit complex content of revolutionary politics. Hence, Marxism can also form something of an ambiguous area. The strictness of Das Kapital, which at least firmly defines that which it takes issue with, can often dissuade these although they might occasionally also assume that they know what it's on about without engaging with it. In any case, after this general caution we may move on.

Firstly, let us examine the structuring of a paragraph in the article 'The June Revolution.' We are first presented with a somewhat 'optimistic,' rousing - but highly subdued - couple of sentences.

"The workers of Paris were overwhelmed by superior strength, but they were not subdued. They have been defeated but their enemies are vanquished."

Hence, there is no decisive demolition here. As we have noted, by this category readers of various kinds are also designated or involved, and hence here it seems a re-assuring and slightly encouraging statement. It refers, like the Christian myth, to perseverance despite the odds, to the re-assuring ability to keep going. However, contrast this to what follows:

"The momentary triumph of brute force has been purchased with the destruction of all the delusions and illusions of the February revolution, the dissolution of the entire moderate republican party and the division of the French nation into two nations, the nation of owners and the nation of workers. The tricolor republic now displays only one color, the color of the defeated, the color of blood. It has become a red republic."

After the dedicated denial of a decisive destruction, now we are presented with images of not only decisive but slightly hyperbolic destruction. Words like 'all' and 'entire' appear notable, along with repetitions of certain words which serve to stress this aspect of their text. However, this is not merely a contrast. This is the general direction of the paragraph from its opening. 

The final sentence might seem vaguely humorous insofar as a 'red' republic could give the overly-optimistic sense of a communist region, but in any case it just lurks there like a punch-line hanging ghost-like between the lines.

Hence, from the presentation of perseverance and a cause, we are led instead into a portrayal of general destruction and blood-shed. The final sentences meditate for a while on the theme of blood. Of course, part of the point here is of interest: with the decline of the moderates, the division is no longer as clearly obscured. At least not to Marx, which is fortunate.

The situation is also of interest: it describes a National Assembly being set up in the throes of an uprising, with various political forces within it. After some time of being indecisive, they were eventually displaced. This would seem to indicate the paralytic force of these diverse strains being placed together in this eclectic organisation.  This situation would recur later on in history, albeit leading instead to things like Stalin instead of an eventual monarchist revival. Which some might not find entirely dissimilar.

Hence, after the stirring initial theme, you do not have a continuation but rather a 'descent' or rather a distortion. This allows Marx to make more notable and insightful political points than are usually allowed to ordinary populists. However, the overall movement is in general a disillusioned one, where after a general sense of hope this is turned into a dark 'realisation.' Most political figures or texts would rather stop at the first, strangely. Marx, however, does better than that here.

Of course, this kind of shift or distortion in tone need not always imply the blatant conjuring of blood and wanton destruction. Nonetheless, it can take up a slightly humorously exaggerated form as in this rather special paragraph:

"Fraternite, [...] this fraternity which in February was proclaimed and inscribed in large letters on the facades of Paris, on every prison and every barracks -- this fraternity found its true, unadulterated and prosaic expression in civil war, civil war in its most terrible aspect, the war of labor against capital. This brotherhood blazed in front of the windows of Paris on the evening of June 25, when the Paris of the bourgeoisie held illuminations while the Paris of the proletariat was burning, bleeding, groaning in the throes of death."

The next paragraph is a slightly peculiar adventure where Marx anticipates their future of requesting alms from Engels, and eventually follows this 'burning, bleeding and groaning' with a paragraph ending about how the people thought they had destroyed, "their enemy when they had overthrown the enemy of their enemies, their common enemy." It is at the least a decent example of 19th Century slap-stick, like much of the 1848 revolution.

 This kind of structure is reprised yet again, however, and quite clearly, in the following paragraph:

"The February revolution was the nice revolution, the revolution of universal sympathies, because the contradictions which erupted in it against the monarchy were still undeveloped and peacefully dormant, because the social struggle which formed their background had only achieved an ephemeral existence, an existence in phrases, in words. The June revolution is the ugly revolution, the nasty revolution, because the phrases have given place to the real thing, because the republic has bared the head of the monster by knocking off the crown which shielded and concealed it."

Oddly, this could also be used to describe other February Revolutions, although revolutions in June need not have the same historical co-ordination. Strangely, even the description of the February revolution goes from paraphrasing praises to a negative appraisal.

This structure becomes quite entrenched, even in slightly subtle ways, through the rest of the text. For example:

"Order! was Guizot's war-cry. Order! shouted Sebastiani, the Guizotist, when Warsaw became Russian. Order! shouts Cavaignac, the brutal echo of the French National Assembly and of the republican bourgeoisie."

"Is the deep chasm which has opened at our feet to mislead us, democrats, or cause us to believe that the struggle for a form of polity is meaningless, illusory and futile?"


"For whom did you make the February revolution, you rascals -- for yourselves or for us? The bourgeoisie put this question in such a way that it had to be answered in June with grape-shot and barricades."

"Thus the workers fought in February in order to be engulfed in an industrial crisis."

 In general, this structure of a clear and inviting situation - at least in appearance - followed by a grim atmosphere is one which relates quite clearly to the sense of disillusionment or slipping away from certain portrayals. Strangely, this kind of thing is now associated more with the Soviet Union, although of course usually it is the preserve of Marxism and conspiracy theories. An aesthetic which so favours conspiracy theorists is one which is generally safe from such extensive foreign intrusion, although the Cold War was a site of many 'conspiratorial' actions and groupings (the name itself is conspiratorial - claiming a war when each nation itself stringently avoids declaring a state of war) and hence allows these elements a seeming alibi. However, conspiracy theories can be iffy in this regard: after presenting an appealing image of things, they then wish to demonstrate that things are not appealing - but this would seem if anything to encourage an overly optimistic view of things and the sense that only minor obstacles must be dealt with or shoved out of the way. Generally, this is unrealistic even by the conspiracists' terms: they portray a situation where a whole realm exists often out of most people's explicit control, and which is rather sinister. The perspective where conspiracy theorists merely become part of the glorification of the social system is that of the person with comfortable personal position in this system, who expects much from it or aspires to receive this and hence can only admit conspiracies to appear on the sides. Apart from this, conspiracy theories can at the least involve notable observations on a society which is highly 'alienated' in Marx's terms and where events might appear to inhabit a realm apart from the disenfranchised citizens of the nation. They hence deal with elements which call this social system into question. In any case, their format allows for Marx to seem highly appropriate to certain situations, in terms of political conflict - at least if these are present.

The danger otherwise is that people might dismiss it as garish and overly dark, or in general not see the appeal in such texts.

Nonetheless, this type of method tends to be prominent, in various forms, as Marx continues on. The general tone of this is quite apt:

"For the entire duration of its rule, for as long as it gave its grand performance of state on the proscenium, an unbroken sacrificial feast was being staged in the background – the continual sentencing by courts–martial of the captured June insurgents or their deportation without trial. The Constituent Assembly had the tact to admit that in the June insurgents it was not judging criminals but wiping out enemies."

While most Christianity speaks of  walking away from 'the world,' before sanctifying and chanting hymns to everything in it, Marxism at least on some level attempts to enact this. It moves from the official 'performance' to a tone quite different, and often dark in subject-matter. The texts with Engels can often be of interest because this tendency interacts with some others, with various results; however, generally Marx's texts written without such interference are not as well recognised. This might be in part due to the style bringing up things people would rather not be reminded of.

In any case, such distortions do have occasional note in popular culture. Even in video games, the sudden shift of a 'heroic' journey to a dark place with blood-thirsty characters in Lavender Town has been associated in pop culture with not only horror but also suicides. There is something that people find unnerving about it, allowing for rather exotic or troubling stories to be easily associated with it. Likewise, Dracula has an influential shift from the tone of the early novel, giving notes on the location almost reminiscent of travel-writing, to the sudden influx of a darker atmosphere which seemingly appears in the form of an animal. The whole of the area is tainted with this kind of darkness, as though it had distorted into something new. The animals are strange, and so are the people - indeed, the image of an eccentric or highly peculiar person is called upon for Dracula's associate, albeit with the absurdity occasionally played up to the point where it might seem inadvertently humorous rather than fitting with the pathos of the story. This is less thorough in that novel, however, where a neat ending must be drawn regardless - the distortion is a phenomenon that enters into the style, but not an abiding characteristic. However, Marx's use of it can not only easily lead to associations such as that which Wurmbrand drew to the Satanic, but can at times lead to notable insights in the area. In this sense, Marxism cannot stay fixated upon the idea of rousing or positive emotions, but must deal with the darker aspects of what is before it. Hence, it has an interest which can easily continue to torment and disturb anew.

'Finding Jerry'

People generally were expected to proclaim strongly their own superiority, intellectually and generally, to one Adolf Hitler, who was leader of Germany in the 1940s and wrote books and speeches of generally more political depth than most modern politicians. Notably, their Party also declared war on the British Empire and Soviet Union. They were frequently expected to read Mein Kampf and be revolted immediately by how much better they were than it, how much it was below them. This was how they treated Hitler. However, Hitler was leader of Germany and a powerful statesman - and, guess what, the next day these same people would have to return to the ordinary life which compels this reaction to Hitler as under a knife, yet where they would willingly submit and show obeisance to any authority figure or person of wealth and stature. One might ask how they continue, when this contradiction seems manifest - although in a sense it merely follows that these people of whatever type are in no position to criticise Hitler for anything, or that Hitler has a partial immunity here. In general, it would seem to follow that for these things to be clearly harmonised and allowed for, it requires general incorporation into their lives. Hence, it isn't actually sufficient that they disapprove of Hitler completely - and can brush him off cheaply - and then go into an environment where this can be applied to anyone, but rather the authority figures must be validated in some way, must be automatically set apart from and against Hitler. This would only have been the case in the British (or, technically, the French - but they got not very far) army of the 1940s war. There, it was a group of people with an administrative set-up which was automatically and directly part of the struggle against Hitler, almost by proxy, and hence which offered - at least - a partial resolution of this conflict. As such, these people had to treat their workplace as so to speak the British Army against Hitler, as the continuance of this in modern times, where each member is a soldier serving the anti-Hitler cause and any member dissenting of this cause is likely to be cast aspersion upon and thrown out - which could not be done arbitrarily or as if Hitler were not somewhere present here.

This was only a partial security for these people, however. Of course, it was still inconsistent, given the capitalistic system that the British Army were fighting for and on behalf of, or in brief given the British nation of the time, and hence the only at all consistent solution was that of Gandhi - that Britain should submit and Nazi targets commit suicide like lemmings are often portrayed as doing. To be fair, Gandhi's cause was given significant momentum by Hitler's war, and as their primary cause benefitted from this side they had to have a certain sense of indifference to the war. While Nazism was an attempt to avenge German treatment and their apparently unfair loss of the war, Russia conversely was a state formed in retreat from opposing forces and hence which took refuge in the pre-existent template of 'socialist' politics, which however ultimately collapsed under opposition as was the inevitable result - due to the 'internationalism' of Second International socialism (Engels offered some contrast and had highly nationalistic tendencies at times), the Soviet Union exercised international  influence, but because of this it was gridlocked into the format of 'peaceful co-existence' and integrated into this international system, which made it idle as a point of opposition to this. A political system which is denationalised or has no clear link to a concrete representation is one which is idle or merely an existent economic category turned into a pseudo-political system; that is, unless it is merely an expression of an individual's temperament and thus cut off from others, but then it is in a way exclusive to this individual and people's evaluation of them. The natural form of realisation of a political system or viewpoint is the nation, or its demesne, and with no realisation of this a political system is idle or does not by itself have any viewpoint. A state forged in promises of retreat from this kind of assertion on the world is always likely to turn into something like the Soviet Union, as in a sense it is a mere shelter from war rather than a politically significant entity. As a state, it must call upon some political ideology - however, because it is formed through promises of retreat, this cannot be a mode of expression of the state, and hence must be denationalised and abstract. Nonetheless, Marxism must be one of the only systems to get essentially one chance to prove itself, while in conflict of course with the rest of the world and tendencies in a nation which want to co-operate with this - which is somewhat like saying that the lack of monarchs (or effective idleness of monarchs as a governing force, which is just a variation) failed de facto with Cromwell.

Socialism has many forms, and it might seem strange that everyone instantly accepts that Marxism is the only one which counts and the earlier and similar forms can be dismissed if it has problems, and likewise that after about half a century we could draw the conclusion that it could be thrown aside rather than amended or improved in any way - in brief, that even capitalism's supporters are Bordigists. You might suggest that there were many people during that time who did not want to give it a chance, and hence it had an uphill struggle.

In general, popular recent novels for instance have either originated in Britain or drawn upon British archetypes - the Hunger Games for instance drew upon the image of active resistance to some random 'totalitarian' forces, which is ultimately a British archetype, as well as grabbing and relying upon the archetypes of British authors like George Orwell. Hence, this sense of a British context was fairly inherent to them, because it means that people who dislike them can be safely dismissed rather than given increasing ground and allowed or encouraged. If you wanted to make noise about something, noise against it had to be hidden away or attacked, or it would just be a meaningless cacophany - which in a way it is anyway. The classics are not dry for no reason, they are dry so that they would not inspire strong negative feelings or aimless enthusiasm about the work of art in their case, and hence could take some sort of message forwards and last. Marx set themselves the task of not fading away like the fragile utopians, and as time went by had to take on an increasingly detached tone to avoid this at all costs. Recent British popular novels are just fake classics.

There may have been poetry after Auschwitz, but increasingly people did not read it. This is because poetry includes several mechanisms which lead to a somewhat dry approach to things, and this was eventually ruled out in the form of Nazism. It might be said that 'Bordiga's' approach to the Nazis was found offensive not because he said anything actually offensive for most of it - his generally attributed comments about the worst effects of fascism being anti-fascism are highly offensive to people, realistically, but they can still pretend to like him somehow - but because he wished to analyse it rather than merely give way to possibly opposed sentiments. Of course, if any analysis were to be made, however flawed - and Bordiga's analysis was highly flawed, in its attempt to assimilate the Nazis to Marxist categories which were least appropriate to them -, this required avoiding this sentimental mode for a moment. Hence, Bordiga was a victim of a social agenda of sorts that applied after the Nazis - everything had to be poetry after the Nazis. Poetry as an art form is simply the locking up of a person in the form of a poem, for other people to inspect, although it can view other things as higher than poetry and not accept this schema. People could no longer write things and expect instant reactions - it had to be vetted before anyone could react to it, and if people disagreed they would jettison it in shock. This didn't stop the Marxists, who if they read Marx generally only thought it of note to note down that they disagreed. But it could be said that, after Marx and Engels, the Marxist movement was pure poetry.

Admittedly, Mitchell Abidor's introduction to 'Auschwitz, the great Alibi' was somewhat strange, and read like a person who had no idea what they were intending to read (an analysis of the Holocaust in socio-historical terms) or indeed what Marxism involved. Perhaps they believed the academic reduction of Marxism to a bunch of phrases like 'class struggle,' and so were shocked when the Marxists started actually talking about things. They just wandered into this and then panicked. Still, Marxism by this point is like a sieve that people can move into and out of as they please, it is an art and not a determinate entity. People can disagree with Marx persistently and take a generally negative attitude towards their works, and yet still be Marxists, so long as they are discussing Marxism. It's a question of handling an aesthetic, not of anything particularly determinate. Now, this makes it almost inevitable that such texts are going to be attacked - they might assume that they have safety and can claim a certain obscure viewpoint, but if something is objectionable to society generally, just about anybody could just drop in and attack it, and the Bordigist text is hence a barely-moving target.

Evil is something relevant to all determinate action - that which is excluded is 'evil.' Hence, Nazism was relevant to almost all determinate action in capitalism: people either judged an evil or opposed thing by the standard of Nazism, or they just didn't get it. The latter is their problem, and not a problem with the text. Now, if people object to a text because they don't understand it, they will take issue with the next text to the same extent, because it will surprise them and they will be perturbed by it - this is a dynamic which becomes tiring quickly, and one might as well just offend them and get it over with. Because we know that this Bordiga has some claws at least, or can be offensive, if people don't get Bordiga then we can accept that they would be distanced from these people - they don't continually go into their texts with expectations that they will be catering to them and their interests and view, whatever these are. If this is not presented explicitly, then it gets tiring - although of course they might well get shunned for it.

In leftist groups, certain terms are buzz-words which can lead to rejection, but these are all that people get passionate about discussing. Continually discussing topics which have the threat of expulsion tied to them on some level is not something that people should continue with, or have to. But why would they do this? Multiple reasons. Firstly, non-Marxists weren't necessarily interested in Marxism, which is both offensive to what they believe and value, and also dry and involved; but they were fine with people who just wanted to take Marxism and make it a hardly different flavour of what they already did. Marxism was based on Hegel in some ways, and he was not one for presenting 'results' emptied out by eschewing the reasons and process behind them - and when this process was supposed to be an involved examination of interconnected economic categories, then, well, this could raise problems if it isn't to be abandoned completely. And when it's abandoned, you don't have Marxism, just phrases stolen from it and used without the same reasons, mere appearance and imagery without substance. People generally preferred that Marxism be a flavour of something compatible with capital, and hence when 'Marxism' was to be discussed - and in leftist groups or discussion generally this was an alleged focus, but it would be misleading to say that anybody cared about it - it was in this form and hence in a sense a foray out, where Marxism was not to be allowed to return without a threat of expulsion for whatever reason. While Marxist theory is a somewhat open field, Marxist discussion is like being walled in on various sides until discussing Marxism is no longer an option - they have a notably problem with discussing Marx, and relating other things back to Marxism is a bridge too far for them. Relating things back to them is essentially giving them a direction which draws the things which they like and find accessible off into the distance and far from where most people were comfortable. In addition, Marxism is something which is generally excluded from actual social life, or somewhat distanced from it, and hence in a sense if it is put into interaction with this social life then it is simply a question of querying the strange creatures who call themselves 'Marxists,' and from there on the terrain becomes hostile. A 'Marxist' Party or discussion group is vulnerable to this unless it's pretty much just you and Jesus, or in general people more detached from such interaction and enthusiasm, if hypothetically they happened to have an interest in discussing these things.

Neo-Nazism, while it might seem disturbing, can take on strange forms - for instance, people who believe that British history stopped in the 1940s, and hence are fervent British nationalists trumpeting Britain's heritage. Stormfront are moderate - you could call them black nationalists, as they do want a black nation. They're just another case of 'poetry' or 'art' in lieu of politics - a certain aesthetic is what interests them, and what they pretend distinguishes them from other views. The Nazis lost over 50 years ago, but they want to pretend that their side can hardly stop winning; they pretend to be radical, but their support of Trump places them at around the same level as the CPUSA, except with no doctrinal concerns or even political views to give them even the appearance of an association with radicalism. Stormfront is, on the one hand, rich people and pretend-rich people congratulating themselves on how rich they are (though they may, as Hitler was, be poor), and living vicariously through others, and on the other hand it is a conduit for more radical political tendencies inspired by the Nazis that however have no explicit sanction there for image reasons and otherwise. In a way, you'd have to be quite radical to go to Stormfront for political reasons, when Stormfront is just about as hostile a place to political views generally as possible - but politics and seriousness there isn't the main trend, and alongside this comes things like praising 'beautiful white Amazonian' females in a way that might resemble a lyre if its player were an annoyed cat enmeshed in it. In general, Neo-Nazism rarely interacts with Nazism, so you might suspect they don't figure there's much of worth there. Without Neo-Nazis, the Nazis would just be this ever-present force of opposition, that could be realised in any way and suddenly, but Neo-Nazis served to neutralise this so far as they could do so. At least, when it was an accusation thrown at Neo-Nazis - otherwise it might still scare and disturb them.

In general, Nazism isn't quite coherent enough to constitute something exactly outside of the opposing workplace or society, and other things might oppose it. These are all seen through the lens of Nazism, but do not like Nazism try to integrate into European society as closely, and hence cannot have the same dramatic potential because they are just generally divergent rather than diverging in only certain particular and striking ways. Nazism was something which the system saw fit to associate with all that it opposed and hated, and in general all that it considered evil - that which was not incorporated into it. The Bordigists represented Auschwitz as a new and pernicious alibi in the fight against socialism, but it would seem unlikely that Auschwitz would formulate any new alibis against socialism unless socialism were somehow involved, such that this seems problematic unless we are to surmise that these Bordigists considered the Nazis to be socialists. Nonetheless, it did furnish a new alibi of sorts - an image of evil which could easily be opposed to an image of Western capitalism as good. The war hence becomes a fight against the 'real enemy,' and hence the other sides are allies - this cannot be avoided, if you would ally with them. If you take this image of evil too seriously, but hardly care about people praising capitalism or not doing so (many anarchists are like this), then ultimately capitalism's image is the only beneficiary of this. Hence, this was a clear political move - the more evil something is, the better everything else is, the more praised.

But this is in some ways a literary move. The British Empire - of course, Britain only shed some parts of its Empire, rather than changing itself completely - and for that matter the Soviet Union was hardly spotless. But when people talk about Britain during the war, they talk of course about Britain as seen through contrast with Nazism - where the objectionable elements are cleaned away. At the least, there is some capitalistic aspect which is a force for pure good in an era where socialism was established, which is really enough to make socialism dismissed. Socialism was for many years obscured precisely because all of this shine was enough to mean that it was merely a vague exception. It could easily be conflated with reformism - all it did was pick partial holes in something which was basically and clearly good. Capitalism could not be clearly attacked by forces that were not co-operative with it. Nonetheless, the main tropes of anti-socialism in the following years grew out of this war, which created a world which in any case seemed to require little alteration. Capital took recourse to a sense of 'conservatism' if you like that promoted capital because it was there, and to do this you needed to whitewash all of this to form a basis on which discussion could be promoted. This was only allowed for after the war, after capital had finally found a force firmly in opposition to it and not serving it. Discussion begun on this basis promised little for socialism, for the main point had already been conceded and any incidental dents were unlikely to make a notable impact, but attempting to eschew this basis led to instant attack and rejection.

Socialism had little headway because it had no place in that socio-political landscape. With the fall of the Soviet Union, it hence fell away generally and became irrelevant. It lost a nation which co-operated with the West, but after this brief seeming incursion in the present world situation fell away, it was left with a completely clean slate. Socialism was no longer a radical force - instead, dividing up and invading the Middle East became a Western focus and opposition to the international system was concentrated there. The left, however, was a Western creature that had made many Western norms into issues of automatic exclusion when people diverged from them, and hence became mere slaves benefitting the West in its actual issues, and quite willingly. They could not put forward a coherent and different political platform, because most of what was important to them was, strangely, things that were common.

The Nazis were an image of evil because of their domestic politics, making their nation into an image of sorts - Britain was excluded from this because they focussed on 'foreign' politics, or oppressing and fighting Indians, and so on. The British domestic policy hence became merely a mirror of Nazis' to ideology, and Nazi foreign policy focussed around their domestic area. Due to their whitewashing as states, their 'alibi,' they felt quite comfortable just throwing states up and trying to displace the nations of a given area. Hence, the Middle East were effectively confronted with the ghost of anti-Nazi forces in every way, and with expansionism in many forms. Conversely, they faced little resistance from what the West finds most offensive, namely things which seemed 'Nazi'-like, and hence the qualification that all other things were far less offensive than this would merely be an external hindrance to their struggle. It was not merely a British Empire, but instead a global capitalistic Empire, one where the major capitalist states could just take on various forms spreading like a cancer over the globe. Hence, it was a financial Empire, and had to find suitable forms of expressing this. For all the hype about the USA, after the 20th Century the world had changed dramatically, and the USA was old and its image practically ancient. This all hearkened back to a time when none of these conflicts yet existed, to a different world order, and hence such patriotism could not adequately express the new world order, if we may use this phrase in a more generic sense. Instead, new nations had to arise to do this, such as Israel. Without these, all of the new elements of the world order and so on found no expression, and hence they were necessarily forged by these powers, through whatever means. The alternative to this was 'leftism,' which also expressed this, but rather than in the form of enthusiasm for a given state through the form of Israel and so on, through taking nearly any popular movement in capitalism and excluding anything else. This served to link all of these different places together. As we are now still seeing, all nations had to be harmonised artificially through things like the Olympics to allow for the impression that all of these things were also made new by these new states and were not reducible to the old things which they themselves were chained to.

Nonetheless, the Nazis created a problem - if they were taken as a picture, how could this picture not be tampered with in the process of a war, remain focussed on a domestic, 'totalitarian' perspective rather than getting caught up in patriotic fervour and other such things which colour portraits of for instance the Spanish Armada? How, likewise, could they be secured as a source of feeling from history, where things like gladiators, colonialism and suchlike are commonplace - and often would have gone much further if they were capable of it - and might reduce their impact? Britain could in a sense add no more to the Nazis as such than they found, and hence had to draw on Nazi patterns - belligerent elected leaders, with imperial hopes, drawing on themes like blood and land and using similar gestures. If they didn't portray things in these terms, from early on, they would be speaking of a conflict, and not get immediate sanction to talk about domestic policies and what 'everyone' accepted as an exemplary evil.

How could a tendency be accepted as something outside of the system, something that was not merely reformist? A 'revolution' could mean anything, and is used to describe any loud political movement - it means nothing by itself. It could rearrange social relations, or it could just rearrange objects. A socialist often wished to be outside this or to appear so, but this was less straightforward than it might appear, they usually would just deal up a bunch of ideals that were mild enough to mean anything. This was hardly that critical. Changes to political form were commonly proposed, changes to organisation of economic units without any particular consideration of the economic context or what they were doing were common, but changes to the overall economy which changed it to something else were not common. So 'revolution' didn't really mean much. This was suspect. Still, after over a century, socialism was something of a damp squib - a movement that meant nothing, a word that meant little, a revolution that meant less than Ron Paul's, and the hope that some group might take them somewhere. Obviously, whether they wanted this depended on where they wanted to go. But this neutralisation benefitted the 'socialists,' and meant they were not distanced from the system - so why would they complain? The socialist movement was primarily a mirage, where buzz-words were everything and politics and such almost nothing.

Being outside of reformism was not as easy as saying so. A cosmetic change is cosmetic - although it can be presented in various ways, it need not be so. Ultimately, if you start from a given social system, and are plausibly locked in discourse with it, everything you're dealing with is actually capitalist. You could propose things which are compatible with socialism, such as, 'Birds can still fly,' or, 'People could still fall down ladders,' but these could be possible under other systems. These are merely illustrative, but are just as valid as most of the more 'sophisticated' portrayals of socialism. Most traits of 'socialism' are reducible to these. Socialism, of course, was what was to be contrasted to capitalist reality, and in this sense was an ideal or if you like an aim. If an ideal was fundamental to capitalism, it would be present and fully realised somewhere in capitalism, as Marx often noted in some way, unless socialism or some other external system were getting in the way. Otherwise it could hardly be that fundamental, if it may be eschewed and capitalism remain what it is at all. Many words which Marx used are mere tautologies when used outside of their specific context - all conflicts involve 'contradictions,' and as Hegel observed in dealing with motion only a contradiction with something essentially outside of a moment could dissolve it, while things like the 'law of value' in some form or other were common before Marx, and other things in the book even in context are merely vague generalities that could mean anything. In addition to this, he repeatedly calls on Hegelian concepts without giving the reader any clear suggestion of what they are to mean here, which might work in shorthand as with Marx's comments on calculus, but in a longer work just means that he's persistently relying on Hegel to gratuitously fill in the gaps in his own work. We are to just assume that the author has a similar take on Hegel, if people are to read Marx in these sections, when of course these small phrases can permit of interpretation.

Ultimately, precisely because it put too much emphasis on use-values, the law of value would disappear from the field - people did not want too much focus on specific things and how they are valued, which would disturb the act of creating values irrespective to content. Hence, this section of Marx remained unpopular among most social strata, often proclaimed something that people should avoid despite Marx using it to put forward the framework of his system. Inviting people to just throw themselves at the rest of a book without knowing what it means specifically is literally just asking for the kinds of objections commonly given to the book. A fair few people read Das Kapital - but they ultimately rejected it. For a bible, Marxism had only the Manifesto, which is a short work that at least shares with the Bible that it veers from its initial direction to something quite different. This is a short work written on request, which is not an attempt at anything too dramatic or developed, but merely a short presentation. People don't read Marx for explanations, they read it so that they can see what his problem is with everything they do. In general, then, the illusion of sides - socialism and capitalism - is imputed onto Marx's texts, in the manner of foreign imposition and for the entertainment of the viewer, in general vulgarised or hostile readings of it such that Marx is neatly placed into their own drama. These then seem clear, when they are not. A similar thing happens to the Bordigist text, except in a more modern context.

The general orientation of such a movement against the capitalist social system would be clear: it would be in constant and persistent conflict with them, within and without its own territory. It is a movement against this, that cannot simply let it standing without becoming a movement for something else. But then, national conflict can itself be amorphous, so the angle from which it did this would be important. In this, people don't like to talk about the politics of a nation (a political entity), but instead about atomised social units, which definition cannot of course be led to socialism by the 'anarchy of the market.' As such, there are so to speak multiple barriers to this being clear, and it is quite a difficult path. There is a firm contrast between statements of the form, 'Socialism is compatible with...' which could still have socialism itself be anything, and actually delineating socialism. Socialism is hence made to stand for something which is vaguely seen as good, as sharing the positive traits that other things also display, rather than divided from these things or aggressive about opposed systems. It is hence in the context of 'socialist unity' not a political movement at all, but instead a vague positive association, free to be conferred upon other things as well. A side fighting only in self-defence do not want to fight particularly, so they are weak - but only if the opposing side is particularly different in agenda, or has a notable motivation of some sort, as otherwise they will not be able to force the issue. Socialism might try in some way to attack the established order over a prolonged time, but will usually hence after any initial inroads be forced onto the defensive repeatedly, as a result of its being too similar.

In general, then, the boundaries between something which was and was not a part of the system was not clearly set forward by the word 'socialism,' or by common views on it. It could mean almost anything, depending on the personal quirks of the person whose socialism it was. On might hence derive, however, that socialism generally involved a limited interest in escaping from the society it was in. We mean this, of course, not in the sense of 'escapism,' which is idle - nobody wants to escape, and then doesn't enact this -, but instead in the general sense of a fundamental alteration. But socialism of all forms had certain common characteristics - it was associated with 'goodness' of various sorts, with happiness, with alleviation of 'ills,' with servants rather than masters, and so on from there. After the Second World War, all of this was in a sense discredited, so with the passing of the Soviet Union the few remaining stalwarts such as an obscure clause in the Labour Party's constitution which seemingly didn't make a socialist impression and others became idle and faded away. These traits could occur either in partial gains or be restricted to a pseudo-radical political change. Stalinists or 'Marxists-Leninists' associated socialism with traits attributed to the domestic association of the Soviet Union, such as efficient and strict labour, which made them able to show up in places where other currents often didn't, but also with some of the classic traits. Stalinism is hence mostly taking the traits of Western capitalism, such as wages, and then trying to show how exalted they are by taking on a Stalinist Russian form. It is the ideology of peaceful co-existence. Stalinism generally shuns anything too radical for it, albeit gradually and after the tacit acceptance that they give to 'socialists' and people who seem appropriate to this movement.

The sun sets and rises, but does the threat feared in Nazism remain through this, is this basis of evil present throughout? It generally only seems to arise when social conduct or alternatively human expression is concerned. Outside of this, how do people reassure themselves that they have a sense of good and evil? Their whole frame of reference shatters. Mostly, to people, good and evil were things that spur feelings, which hence have to be encountered in some form. But what happens when the link to this becomes missing? And this could be a problem for conservatism of the traditional sort, as time went on - people increasingly faded out and became amoral, unconcerned about their values. Yet this threat is always present, because social interaction and the presence of these ideas of evil is only experienced in the form of some particular, limited community or neighbourhood, yet this has always the danger of external elements which wish to enter - which are defined by their externality and being outside of this - and which threaten it. Hence, the movement against immigration was in a sense always likely. But this only occurs in a time when the major political currents have become idle - one is merely a vehicle for identity and dynastic politics, and the other has been replaced in its own Party. There are no more firm boundaries, and what does a nation mean when a significant proportion of it want someone elected essentially for their surname? Is it that different from the others? Still, if Nazism frightens them, it also lets them all into contact with it. It has a notable element which is not political, which hence undermines the political element. But then, so does most 'socialism.'

Hence, as we said, a denationalised and depersonalised ideology is necessarily in some ways a part of the system, hypostatised elsewhere. This describes most of socialism. But it can barely escape the halo that capitalism gained over time, a halo being something which it had often relied on. It hence became idle. To separate from the system, and posit a goal outside of it, meant to depart from this system briefly. But socialism rarely wished to do this - people joined socialism if they did mostly only because it made them happy already, when their goals were not yet set outside of the system socialism was their favoured of such goals. No difficulty was suggested. It was more like an expedition or road trip than a serious interest. But over time it became a very brief road trip. Ultimately, when 'evil' was ever-present, something that flaunted its credentials as such only to continually reduce to some warped exercise in being 'good' was a mere mirage, leading in directions which led nowhere. It could affect some people, but mostly it was not political; the left was just a way of doing penance to the UN.

Ideological Expropriation

You are probably familiar on some level with how capital employed the working class to produce surplus-value for itself, in the form of their product and its value on the market.

However, also notable in Marx's account is how capital ideologically expropriated the properties of its labourers, a central part of capitalist ideology.

For example, one such instance drawn upon by Marx is capitalist claims that money, or capital, is directly productive in the capitalist labour process. This hence takes the labour's property of productivity, and instead appropriates it to capital, quite as capital is said to expropriate them generally. It is partially true, however: money is the productive force because it is the spur of working class production, and hence the animating force of production. Of course, people can and have produced for many reasons unrelated to money, and hence this only applies to a highly specific form of society - it was true of the working class under capitalism, but the defiant schoolboy does not throw paper-planes they make at a teacher for such reasons. This is generally conceded, however.

Just as the working class is that sector of society hired to serve the interests of capital, as a whole, and procuring unto it surplus-value, so ideologically capital relies on the working class and description of it is relied upon to furnish the attributes of capital. Money capital must, in its own functioning, realise in some manner the division between itself and the 'working class.'  Hence, developing the category of the 'working class' and trying to explain its attributes is implicit in the interests of the capitalist class, and in this sense quite safe because it is done under capital's guidance. It is unlikely to be able to lead any further than this.

The working class is a social force of capitalist production, and not a strata of people, insofar as it is not a fixed attribute but requires constantly to be refurnished and redefined by the process of employment and atomised signing of contracts. People cannot start 'working class' - they become working class because they are hired to do things, which then has to be repeated continually. The working class is hence not comparable to the aristocracy, which was slightly more stable at least due to not having to go through the same process: the working class is not a stable social strata of people, with whatever traits, but a certain role in capital's process of production.

The 'working class' is hence composed in a highly atomised process which occurs periodically, and not by identification with a group. This derives in some manner from capital, which is similarly amorphous and therefore forms the working class in this manner. In this sense, the traits of the working class are also derived from that of capital, which actively forms them as such.

Attempts at avoiding this identification with capital, or dissociating the working class from capital, have generally sought to avoid referencing this formation. Nonetheless, it is true, and does great violence to such attempts at a working class 'identity' and so on.

In any case, it should be clear that the traits which capital promotes itself as having in the production process, are generally rendered up by the working class, and this ideological function on behalf of capital is a part of their function. While it is generally recognised that ideological jobs have the clear function of pandering to capital, and require people of such disposition, due to the law of value other forms of labour are not qualitatively distinguished, and hence have similarly an ideological component. If this is neglected, people will not be offered jobs, though they can still perform human labour. Where production for the market is to assimilate also the intellectual fields significantly, all other forms of labour must take on such an ideological character, as the law of market production is the law of value. This hence requires the possibility of an 'ideology' of the market, or that the market has taken the form of a partisan, social force, or formed a society around it, hence capital. It was hence in this sense inevitable that the promulgation of market labour would result in a society structured around the market.

When we say 'ideological,' however, we mean of course not honestly or independently so, but instead in terms of how the 'ideological' functions were carried out - pandering.

Promotion became an increasingly effective force as the means of producing it expanded, and capital would not promote things that did not favour it. As such, anything else was excluded from such. As all economic actors, apart from communists of whatever place, functioned in all of their economic activities with a prospect of monetary gain, therefore none of these could organise an alternative to this form of promotion by this point, as it would inevitably fall into monetary and hence business schema within the economy. This is important, as it concerns the cultural life of a nation, as well as what causes and such were promoted within it.

In general, then, capitalist ideology is founded on expropriation of the traits of the working class. This means that merely accusing them of expropriation needn't mean much, as after all this is the purpose of capitalistic production, and a higher development of the law of value than producers' property. They are both ideologically and in reality inoculated against this charge, they take on the properties of labour and drive it. The labour is carried out for monetary return from the capitalists, which is in a sense more immediately assured than from sale, and therefore money capital is not in actual fact excluded from the production process. One could hypothesise a communistic situation where production is not carried out under these lines, or this abstraction from its traits as labour, but this would not describe the act of production under capitalism, where capital cannot be extricated from it. To equate them would merely be to attempt to portray things as already communist, which is problematic although it might make apologetics easier.

In general, then, ideological defences of capital appropriate the traits of the 'working class' to capital. The production of this is necessary, as it helps in the appropriation of ideological labour. Hence, any attacks on this system, to be publicised among a group directly involved in capitalist production, had to in some way link into or complement this systematic. To make up for this, 'leftist' groups were apt to configure artificial categories like 'far-right,' generally inconsistent with their own portrayal of the economic spectrum, where these involved obvious tendencies towards social regulation and often the turning of society towards a common, consciously specified end. In this, such a 'left' will of course oppose them The left is so used to apologetic that anything likely to be inaccessible among capital's supporters is likely to offend it. From there, negotiation with labour is negotiation over a common fund, it is in a sense despite its bitterness something finite. Its organisations are organisations of negotiation with capital, and hence limited in their radical intent. They can easily come into enmity to this, once it reaches beyond where this cannot go, if it cares about bringing the unions along with it. In a society of abstract labour, it seems reasonable that affluence would ultimately flow to some extent to people of various kinds that did not work. That's not wholly down to them. While Marx begun from the notable position that the mode of production, and class, is constructed on the basis of a certain type of production or is an inevitable result of it rather than an active impulse, this slightly unpopular view wasn't significantly represented later on, leaving Das Kapital to be taken as a bunch of rousing but amorphous slogans. People like to be cheered on, but one might question what their purpose is.

As such, this general expropriation cannot be seen as confined to economic questions. It is not only the means by which capital happens to defend itself, but also the means by which it was forced to do so. However, capital is not content with 'defence' - it wants people to fall in line, and to serve it, in whatever capacity. This leaves it actually quite shorn of defences, as it has no interest in such stasis - it is vulnerable. Hence, capital thrives on expropriation, which implies that capital must by itself lead to some differentiation of the classes, and investigation of another class. When the capitalist mode of labour, so far as it was developed by capitalist and labourer, grew past a certain threshold, it became incompatible with previous systems, and hence had to absorb their subjects into its thrall. Capitalist production involves a relation in which this expropriation is systematic and hence something dealt with from the beginning, this is hence a feature of capital which isn't wholly foreign to it. Likewise, whether or not the husband is 'bourgeois' and the wife 'proletarian,' as the famed analogy goes, the latter still has sex - of whatever type - with the former and marries them, often due to their own passion, and is hence in a marital or close union with them. Their relation to the rest of society is hence left out of the original account, nonetheless their relatively closer relation would thus seem to exclude the rest of society, who are outside of this relation, and hence perhaps by implication communism. Of course, the rest of society cannot usually relate to them in this way, and rather seek to participate in their relationship, support them and bring them closer together, which hence relegates them from this. In general, in order to retain their relationship at an artificial distance, they would have to appropriate the categories of society outside of this to it in a domesticised way which is hence ideological promotion and immersion.

A relation of expropriation cannot be stable, unless the system is itself based on expropriation. If people are producing or acting with the intent of being expropriated from, then they cannot actually produce content of their own, because they are trying to produce for another. This is hence highly problematic, and requires content to be expropriated from outside of this relation. However, this means that the task of both expropriation and, inherently, confrontation and attacking is given to the 'lower' class, while the other class pretends that this external element, apart from and probably against the system, does not exist. This means that both are hostile to forces outside of this system, and will go out of their way to undermine it. This is especially the case where such sentiments in favour of the system are deep-rooted. Nonetheless, it hence means that neither is to be trusted, at least as a group, with doctrine.

To conclude, capital's ideological apparatus hence clearly also shows signs of 'appropriation,' suggesting that this is not a merely economic mechanism. This has direct consequences for its mode of engaging with 'other views,' or even those which are nominally so, which can disturb this if they are not hemmed into it again.

Observations on Marx in History: Das Thrace Marx (V)

V.

It must be noted that the title of Karl Marx's 'Das Kapital' is an amusing reflection upon the reduction of the labourer to labour-power. The subtitle also might be saying something. That the book seems to be trying hard to turn off most casual readers, or people who might read other books, thus seems like its own message.

Observations on Marx in History: Das Thrace Marx (IV)

IV.

In speaking of possession, we must also mention Kierkegaard (not Proudhon, whose names were in the opposite order), who of course wrote many works while seemingly being another person. Now, this is passed off in part as an act of self-control, but the actual writing is instead a restraint of self-control in order to write against it, or certainly apart from it, so to say that Kierkegaard was exercising self-control by restraining self-control seems fairly absurd and would cancel - as dealing with a specific problem - so as to leave merely that Kierkegaard was nothing and the spirit writing it was in complete control. Now, obviously, this is mediated, and one particular character has a name which is a parody of Georg Wilhelm, or Hegel, whom he was polemicising against, although obviously he did not count on accessibility here because the other side is more Hegelian, perhaps suggesting either that Kierkegaard wrote like a Hegelian, or that this was discarded polemical material which was found to sit better on that side, where it could be developed. Their treatment of Mozart is not, however, aesthetic, but rather detached, relative to the aesthetic material, but they get away with this because they are still praising them, although this need not mean that they like him, nonetheless it is perhaps likely that the aesthetic side would only come across as an abstraction if they weren't discussing Mozart, which feels like it might be Kierkegaard making life too easy for himself, while assuming that people of that sort would like Mozart's art just because they like Mozart's life, or in brief that they are 'existentialists' like Kierkegaard.

But obviously this makes sense, as a coherent work begins with the author writing, and only then can they begin to distance the story from themselves, before again at the ending having to make an explicit intervention to (explain themselves to Regine Olsen, who looks like Emma Roberts on a bad hair day) give the works some coherence as part of an authorship, rather than an exercise in mechanical or automatic writing. However, Kierkegaard was always clear that he did not identify with the views which are actually in his earlier works, and preliminary research or follow-up would show that. We are hence to believe that his early works are popular either because people want to spite him but nonetheless feel obligated for whatever reason to say that they like some of Kierkegaard (which would make them Marx), or that after that he just disappeared and was never heard from again, and his legacy was never revived, but his earlier works always taken in terms of some abstract initial impact. But this is subject to the Orwellian clause, namely that he's relying on these two views to popularise his work. However, what actually occurs is that people like Kierkegaard's earlier work, or they view this as a mess unrelated to his real concerns, and prefer their later works - however, people generally avoid this choice, and merely moderate this by liking some of his later works, but then disliking the rest because they're polemical, which is a lie as Fear and Trembling for instance was a polemic against Christianity, and in brief equates to saying they dislike the others because they actually only like the earlier works, which is incoherent - but they do not view him as an authorship, with a progression, but rather just some isolated phrases and views spread through time, some of which they like.

Kierkegaard explicitly guards against this interpretation, by the concept of authorship and pseudonymy. While more valid, this is still a lie, as he is either a religious author or not, either a philosophical author or not, and instead wants to write in such modes in an irreligious form, basically just out of the spur of the moment and because of a lost engagement.

However, one may also ask whom Kierkegaard wrote for, and in this you would have to look briefly at his work. One frequent answer is Regine Olsen. This is fake, but as they use it often misdirected, misplaced and malign. Firstly, though, who is Regine Olsen? Regine Olsen is ultimately a bit like a ghost who is, certainly, watching his work, but not alone, and the whole turmoil begins because of what? - he hurt her feelings. You might usually expect such a case of a broken engagement to be a problem because of, for instance, unforeseen circumstances, or the need for support, but instead it becomes apparently a matter of feelings. Hence, unspecified others - but not Regine Olsen directly - continue to channel these hurt feelings to attack him, on behalf of Regine Olsen, and he apparently leaves that situation noticing that it's actually just this seeming mechanical progression of people. His further work hence involves constantly apologising for and dealing with these hurt feelings, repeating these feelings as if to give people ammunition, and as a result Regine Olsen is ever-present, but merely as an accuser who is constantly watching in accusation, while the actual point of his work is necessarily not to write to her, for as a reader she is merely suffering, and suffering because she was and is being insulted, but this is quite detached from the works themselves, which are for some unspecified other whom is also rejected by one Regine Olsen, which Regine Olsen, of course, could not have gone through, and as such which is not a basis for her. Obviously, the analogy excludes Regine Olsen, it does not allow her in unless she is rejected by Regine Olsen as if a completely different person, which she is not. Kierkegaard's audience is merely a projection of himself as a ghoul, who may or may not be, but is pre-supposed, and hence ultimately socially neutral or passive themselves, but is nonetheless necessarily distinct from Kierkegaard himself. They would hence speak about what people are, or their existential state, but in a way less likely to shake anyone's sense of propriety, and will instead be known for their marital adventures mostly and possibly bringing this to an end. Their face would be frozen into this one progression. However, that this was just Kierkegaard's functional object, and not necessarily their actual object or hoped reader, might also be clear, and as a personal hope would instead reduce to someone in the future, probably distinct from the audience posited in the works.

Kierkegaard and Hamlet:

Hamlet also has a female who has little other point in the progression than to be a romantic character, he begins by being separated from her, implicitly however, although he himself says little about this relationship or why he was in it in the first place. In this sense, in romance, he is just your typical Romeo, with his 'family' separating him from Ophelia, him breaking this, and then being sent by a monarch, into exile, where he discovers this time that he is going to die, before returning and doing just that. We may here observe a Horatio/Mercutio - Claudius/Capulets/Gertrude/Montagues - Hamlet/(Ophelia)/Romeo/(Juliet) axis here, where the former dying means that the second live, and so on - and Mercutio's apparent death is a major cause of uproar in the play and its change of tone - such that Horatio's survival may apparently be correlated with Hamlet's end in that specific way, but was necessary in some form for the conclusion to occur, as for instance when Hamlet jumps into public contentions with Laertes, over Ophelia's dead body, and nonetheless can be seen as somewhat restrained and not abandoned because of Horatio being there as a bit of a silhouette rather than a completely-formed character, or as still, and hence Hamlet as a unit with them can always withdraw to the character who doesn't half sound like Polonius - and it must be noted how Mercutio's random decision to fight with Tybalt, which the play condemns, seemingly, but does not bother to engage with, with Mercutio not even being the passionate one, basically turns the direction of the play, in a way which is basically just random chance rather than resulting from anyone's action or anything else. This is then supposed to be taken as somehow inevitable, in the process pretending that the purpose of Mercutio's action can be summarised in terms of Romeo and Juliet's almost equally random relationship, when it is presumably not that simplistic.

Hamlet, like Kierkegaard, begins by speaking in things that can't be understood, which in this case are for both of them riddles, although Kierkegaard's are temporally mediated or clear to the audience, which might seem to undermine the point. While Hamlet references 1 Corinthians 7 in the statement that those unmarried shall stay as they are, Kierkegaard is also fond of such passages, especially later on. Both of them get into heated conflicts over splitting with Regine Olsen or Ophelia, coincidentally with their 'brother,' which become interminable. Kierkegaard signally failed to get his 'recruits' to follow along with him, and instead figured that they were conspiring against him, although to what cause he was unsure, not being certain if he was doing this in the name of true Christianity, his beliefs, his personal temperament, or what. Both Regine Olsen and Ophelia have no independent works, not only as not given a chance to speak back, but also as represented in the works, in addition to which while Ophelia is a strange character, almost Kierkegaardian in an inverted way, who Hamlet would in no wise wish to be around, as her general characterisation is of one whom is not only passive with regards to others, but absorbs what they say and merely may shriek this out at Hamlet as if deeply felt, one whom is not only influenced but possessed constantly, albeit by those around her instead of spooks, so in that sense more secularly than Kierkegaard, as indeed turns out to be the case, and likewise Regine Olsen's distress and hurt feelings amplify or otherwise merely on account of others' use, or are mostly then used by others repeatedly against Kierkegaard, making her hurt feelings merely a vessel for whatever calumny they may wish to unleash, at which point you might realise that Hamlet is faced likewise with Ophelia mostly simply following others' orders when it involves hurting or at least seeming to act against him, leaving Hamlet facing a court where almost nobody likes him, and people will spin things against him, although not accusatively so much as just speculatively or with a slightly negative twist, while any negative actions in that direction are taken explicitly, because Hamlet is still ultimately just acting upon various feelings within the context of this court as a setting. Kierkegaard and Hamlet both, of course, as they are from Denmark, also effectively reject someone whom they were engaged to in favour of other things. They do both tend to be found, when with Ophelia or everyone's favourite 'Mean Girl,' although oft confused, Regine Olsen, in intimate or symbolic situations, occasionally sending letters about things, which may occasionally address the female in mostly positive terms although we are given no real reason to like them, other than dubious victimhood, or alternatively alone and harsh towards them, or alone and observing them closely in a sort of painted scene, possibly offering something for some reason, without either really getting much further comment from them, other than perhaps apologetically.

Is it possible that, in restraining his self-control in the pseudonymous works, he was not merely subjecting these each to their own author as if possessed or negated, but in fact that the consistent carrying out of this in an authorship was also subjected to such a possession by something else entirely? Spooky, but kind of cool.

Observations on Marx in History: Das Thrace Marx (III)

III.

It has been said that poets shape the world we exist in, perhaps to the point of making it more appealing than it is, somehow, presumably via paganism. The song about favourite things from The Sound of Music is not particularly subtle about what it is, namely that it's a female singing about her favourite things in order to insist that others, including the audience, take this also as their favourite things. This is the general point of the song, and its aesthetic appeal is contingent upon this insistence. Now, this seems like a rather strange concept for a song in the first place, but nonetheless it isn't something which could occur by itself, especially once sexual themes and marriage have been brought up, before it become some sort of strange pornography, and as the character is not assumed to be immune to these but rather associated with them, while on the one hand explaining why the audience might find this impressive (if underwhelming in the end or only preparative to something else.), it also follows that this has to be mediated somehow or it may become vulgar or crude. As a result, it becomes a slightly more complex matter, or the song itself seems to detach from the character who is supposed to sing it - as it might, they are only a character - which also seems to excuse it.

What effect is this song to have on the things themselves? It is presumably meant to figure their stories in some way. As a result, the children and others are presumably supposed to encounter these, and as the song itself is shallow and says little about these objects other than that someone likes them, and expects the others to like them for no reason, they are presumably to have not signified, said, meant or figured anything other than screaming, 'Like me!' over and over again, like a Twitter account or most pages on the internet compared to this post. Try it. This is essentially just imbuing the objects with a ghoul of some sort, which had earlier been inducted by the necessity of a character having to have favourite things which were not hers, with the opening being created prior to this by their both being characterised as familiar with and describing particular aspects of the outside world to be liked despite little experience of them on the other side, and then not explaining this at all, and on the other hand the obvious fact that she is also separated from these in the act or hoping to be back with them, as another musical filled with pop songs said 'Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again,' which in brief cancels out to leave a void. They are hence doing little but pinning ghouls from somewhere - which bane may be called a banshee by some - on random locations and objects as some sort of threat. It must also be noted that in this process the singer becomes as it were a pagan, but in addition as they are merely attempting to substitute for or possess the children of either gender, they are posited as leaving Christianity (and 'strict' Christianity is just Christianity), in order to further their personal life as a transsexual. In that sense, it must be observed that Marx's 'x' in the name is highly important, as with slight modification he becomes a weeping creature crying about their favourite objects, as they are.

However, it is also worth noting that the sense of comfortable numbness, which was merely apparent, about Karl Marx's writing could only occur through a similar process of implanting screaming voices in it touching on talking points, which could not occur from someone who did not like or relate to them, but only from Marxism itself, from which we saw continually a bunch of shouting about certain buzz-words in order to turn the 'objects,' which were simply various terms that happened to reoccur in Marx, into screaming entities which may turn readers off from within the book. This adherence to Marxist terms would seem to anchor them as Marxists, although to be convincing they would also need to pretend to be imbued in this, rather than in some other sphere. Nonetheless, it made them weirdly inclusive about this term, until it couldn't mean much. However, it also implied a sort of threat, as if Marx was screeching constantly about things threatening to people such as communism and demanding that they listen to him about this - which doesn't make a lot of sense. Surely disliking that kind of attention-seeking would be more characteristic of Marx than his opponents, who in truth could not be bothered with coherent statements so much as just appealing to whoever or making appealing sounds or gestures. This is itself misleading, however, or in order to appear serious on any level they were to be taken as caricatures, which is again self-undermining on their part.

Observations on Marx in History: Das Thrace Marx (II)

II.

The 'Manifesto of the Communist Party' may not always work out as seemed, and that so many claim to just take it in their stride is perhaps deceptive of them, or otherwise they take it personally and are offended before realising what they are reading. It is much like mentioning Hegel. Especially on a Valentine's Day, where the dichotomy as it were between the profane world and the heavenly realm is most pronounced. While it has been taken for granted that its first main section begins strikingly, this is mostly seen as hinging not on the statement itself or its truth - which was of course queried by Friedrich Engels - but on the exciting and appealing nature of class society to readers, which would nonetheless imply taking it and being encouraged to take it as a positive, when Marx and Engels are, much later, critical of it. However, as here they are discussing class society in the context of seguing into a description of capitalism, this is hence merely the drama of class society, and for a 'Manifesto' one might therefore wish to ask which of two alternatives they were attempting: either to turn the reader off the manuscript - from which they were expecting a glance at communism - or to make it accessible via the appealing nature of capitalism and class society to readers of the time, which would seem vulgar but is likely to occur at times to buttress and otherwise highly delayed subject-matter. In addition, that the 'Manifesto' is generally seen as an accessible, even highly accessible, book as opposed to Hegel and such, unlike later works such as 'Das Kapital,' and its many analogues, would necessitate that it be taken as one of the two, neither seeming too favourable. It must be remembered that none of this early segment is polemical.

However, the way the schema works out is treated as merely aesthetic when it is touched on, not so much as appealing as a question of praise or blame, rather than dealt with as a structure which is perhaps neglected compared to that of Das Kapital for instance because it is disorganised, this not however making it that different in focus. In this sense, as perhaps appropriate to its authors, it takes the form less of a work of advocacy as a nightmare of capital, where despite its dream-like progression and the abstraction of its apparently positive traits taken uncritically - and in this passage capitalism is seen mostly as the progress of the bourgeoisie, and these as its historical actors - but then this dream faces the loss of control - the primary flaw to be shown in it by this work - and is plunged into crises where it goes awry, and hence foreign things start appearing, which is displayed as well in the proletariat, which threaten it and keep it in fear. Usually, it would stop here, but Marx and Engels do by a conjuring trick manage to keep it going to a muted hope for a better future, although it might be unclear at this point what this improvement could be seen as in the context of the work if continuity is to be maintained, other than a reinstitution of the apparent harmony of capitalism upon a higher level of some sort, which is of course held to be impossible by this point. The work, despite their stress on bases, does not seem to give communism's explanation a basis in the work, other than capitalism, while giving this was purportedly the purpose of the work. Nonetheless, many seemed to take the work as in essence a personal polemic, whatever it may then go on to say, and one written against them, or in competition with them, which other than seeming like an inherently absurd but typical of a certain social system manner of reading a book which has not been promoted as positive by this system, is a slightly absurd perspective when it was generalised and spread or the attempt made to do so - or portray it as such a polemic against them - and as such you may wonder if such were not mostly seeing ghosts, as it were. The book itself has a reputation belonging to a book otherwise associated with the occult, such as the Bible, and this mysticism makes the book appear distinct rather than as it is a writing of words. Nonetheless, its early sections do have some strange transitions in perspective and subject, and you would be surprised if there was not some poltergeist afoot.

Observations on Marx in History: Das Thrace Marx (I)

I.

Marx and Engels early wrote the famed 'Manifesto of the Communist Party.' This begun its main sections in a somewhat inaccessible, idiosyncratic manner by instead focussing on the development of capitalist society, and its nature, from a mostly positive point of view, before unveiling - the reader perhaps not drawn in at this point by the excitement of capitalism portrayed in its own terms - its difficulties, and finally a movement against it. This somewhat strange mode of beginning, which goes on for some time, is found again famously in Kierkegaard's pseudonymous works, incorporating the ideologies of 'the aesthetic,' or ordered fornication, and 'the ethical,' or reactive or reactionary marriage, which he associates with Hegelian Christians and Judaism, before undermining both critically from the perspective of faith, which they were merely attempting to reach while violating it inherently and standing against it. In this, he is still, like Hegel before him - and that his 'pseudonymous' form is merely a vulgarisation of Hegel's categories is fairly obvious despite his polemic, and he is generally as you might expect better off philosophically when writing down his own thoughts rather than someone else's while in the guise of another, which a less respectable person might call stealing - overly positive about what he criticises via a pseudo-personal identification, while obviously in his recollections of Regine Olsen she fails to take on any clear symbolic purpose other than that of a character, and likewise neither 'the aesthetic' or 'the ethical' come to mean anything, again hoping that Hegel's categories will somehow anchor this by giving it sense, but one quite different and more detached.

In all of this, he falls into the trap that we may call 'GWF' Hegel, the one and only, just as Hegel perhaps subscribed overtly to Hellenicism and so on. He is unable to escape the lure of the Hegelian categories, like that of Regine Olsen before or rather after them. We shall hold off comparing them, but the Hegelian categories seemingly would compare favourably, and clearly can have more lasting impact. His later work, in journals and articles, is generally more direct, but also more extreme, generally, in the questions with which Kierkegaard was concerned. It is also worth noting that Kierkegaard and Marx begin from similar stand-points of looking at concrete human activity and the human individual, which is perhaps a half-excuse for Marx in this form if not for Kierkegaard making up abstactions whose unique human activity could be summarised as other people's, except that Kierkegaard nonetheless focusses on the human individual at least in the religious realm, responding to issues apparently raised in Denmark at the time (after divorcing from an engagement, perhaps out of basic common sense or if for whatever reason necessary nationalism, with a nominal doppelganger for 'Ophelia'), while Marx effaces this, but through this can consider the hypothetical relation of the human individual to society, and hence discuss the faults of the social system at the time, which of course did not change until that was abolished. Nonetheless, Kierkegaard's literature is as a result more living in itself, although this is confined by its focus on the religious to the poetic sphere mostly or to an inauthentic reproduction of philosophy, although some of his later polemic within a delimited region could be a highlight of the genre, and also, because of his regard for the circumstances and the opponent he was attacking, and his personal stand against this on behalf of Christianity but on their own, came across as significantly more necessary than many of Marx's attacks on other socialists, which tended to be quite minor and a implied no real nor living opposition, although there was some cynicism to this which was obscure, but promising and anticipative.