I honestly really don’t understand the claims that Marx is unclear, unless we just mean difficult. He is clear and relatively unambiguous when he introduces, uses and develops concepts. He can write densely, but the concepts are fairly clearly defined or characterized in his texts, and his system(s) of thought hang together extremely tightly, and the latter virtue might have been reinforced by the emphasis on systematic philosophy in German idealism. While his syntax can be write complex at times, the main difficulty of the text is due to the fact that he’s doing serious scientific analysis. He’s not just batting out essays for intellectual masturbation. Marx is a a writer where the difficulty of the writing is, to a great if still incomplete degree, a reflection of their scientific depth of insight and rigor of analysis. That being said he also has far less scientifically dense texts, and those I think are extremely clear.
Hey, I get that you’re defending your boy, but your post comes across a little as “you’re just too stupid for Marx.”
I think your post misses the point though. Lots of people are told to “read Marx” when they come into the movement. It is, like you said, a scientifically dense text. This makes it a challenge for most people. This is a frustrating experience. The meme you’re complaining about is people venting a common frustration with a movement rite-of-padsage.
But also, Marx finds ways to be unclear in some of his less rigorous texts. There’s a couple common sins:
run on sentences that cover whole paragraphs
Whole chapters where the evidence is laid out long before the argument and you have to read for pages without knowing where he’s going.
Words that mean one thing in day-today speech and something else in Marx (reproduction, fetish, realization, valorize, sublimate, etc.)
Jargon that doesn’t usually show up outside of Marxism: reify, proletarian, etc.
Marx is unclear for 99% of people and pretending it’s easy makes you look like a big-brained elitist.
I honestly really don’t understand the claims that Marx is unclear, unless we just mean difficult. He is clear and relatively unambiguous when he introduces, uses and develops concepts. He can write densely, but the concepts are fairly clearly defined or characterized in his texts, and his system(s) of thought hang together extremely tightly, and the latter virtue might have been reinforced by the emphasis on systematic philosophy in German idealism. While his syntax can be write complex at times, the main difficulty of the text is due to the fact that he’s doing serious scientific analysis. He’s not just batting out essays for intellectual masturbation. Marx is a a writer where the difficulty of the writing is, to a great if still incomplete degree, a reflection of their scientific depth of insight and rigor of analysis. That being said he also has far less scientifically dense texts, and those I think are extremely clear.
Hey, I get that you’re defending your boy, but your post comes across a little as “you’re just too stupid for Marx.”
I think your post misses the point though. Lots of people are told to “read Marx” when they come into the movement. It is, like you said, a scientifically dense text. This makes it a challenge for most people. This is a frustrating experience. The meme you’re complaining about is people venting a common frustration with a movement rite-of-padsage.
But also, Marx finds ways to be unclear in some of his less rigorous texts. There’s a couple common sins:
run on sentences that cover whole paragraphs
Whole chapters where the evidence is laid out long before the argument and you have to read for pages without knowing where he’s going.
Words that mean one thing in day-today speech and something else in Marx (reproduction, fetish, realization, valorize, sublimate, etc.)
Jargon that doesn’t usually show up outside of Marxism: reify, proletarian, etc.
Marx is unclear for 99% of people and pretending it’s easy makes you look like a big-brained elitist.
Factory workers understand Wage Price and Profit better than “middle-class” students because they are already familiar with the conditions.
Organizing a reading group is definitely useful though. Organizing in general is.
Thank you for making this point in a normal way