Marx and the bluebooks

[alanjjohnstone]

I believe Iain Mackay's book on Proudhon is critical of Marx's habit of distorting certain parts of Proudhon's writings“…we find Marx arbitrarily arranging quotations from Proudhon’s book, often out of context and even tampered with to confirm his own views…”Property is Theft!_ A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology – Pierre-Joseph Proudhon – Google Books

[twc]

Well then, show us the courtesy of sharing with us Mackay’s argument that convinced you.I ask two questions.  Is Mackay referring to Marx’sPoverty of Philosophy (1847). — Marx’s early polemic?Economic Manuscripts of 1861–63.  — Marx’s mature economic writings, collected in Theories of Surplus Value?As to MacKay’s convincing arguments, see ALB’s assessment of his Proudhon book:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2011/no-1283-july-2011/book-reviews-property-theft-marxism-and-world-politi

[ALB]

Fortunately this time the allegations are readily available. Here:http://anarchism.pageabode.com/pjproudhon/appendix-proudhon-and-marx.htmlI've had a quick look and they seem more like disagreements than distortions.

[alanjjohnstone]

TWC, in your haste to defend Marx, you appear to read that when i quote Iain Mackay's opinion, you ascribe them to me. Mackay's view of Marx's use of quotations differs somewhat from Engels and involves accusations which some readers of this thread may be unaware of, particularly the OP.The original quote continues: 

Quote:

This allows him to impute to Proudhon ideas the Frenchman did not hold (often explicitly rejects!) in order to attack him. Marx even suggests that his own opinion is the opposite of Proudhon’s when, in fact, he is simply repeating the Frenchman’s thoughts. He takes the Frenchman’s sarcastic comments at face value, his metaphors and abstractions literally. And, above all else, Marx seeks to ridicule him.

I'm no literary scholar, it has been some years since i opened a page of Poverty of Philosophy and i have most definitely not read Proudhon and in particular his "System of Economic Contradiction".ALB would put it down to disagreement to indicate and bring out a divergence of ideas but  Mackay would say it is a case of Marx purposefully and wilfully misinterpreting Proudhon to win the debate..  Since the topic is about Marx's intellectual honesty so being accurate in espousing a rival's argument is pertinent and debating that issue is Iain Mackay and not me.I can provide his e-mail if you wish and i'm sure he will only be too happy to respond to you.   

[ALB]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

TWC, in your haste to defend Marx, you appear to read that when i quote Iain Mackay's opinion, you ascribe them to me.

But I think the way you introduced MacKay's view did suggest that you endorsed it..

alanjjohnstone wrote:

I believe Iain Mackay's book on Proudhon is critical of Marx's habit of distorting certain parts of Proudhon's writings.

How else are people to interpret the words "critical of Marx's habit" which is accepting, as MacKay alleges,  that Marx did have this habit?If you want to be nice to those anarchists who are near to us, there is no need to do so for those who aren't  such as Proudhon who was an anti-socialist and his modern-day supporters who stand for a state-free market economy.  I have never understood why anarchists want to see Proudhon as their founding father.

[alanjjohnstone]

Hmmm…are you trying to distort what i say, ALB…Having not read Iain's book, i can only say "i believe…" and use just the one citation as justification for the belief he is critical..And now you impute some ulterior motive in bringing Iain's criticism to the attention of the OPWhen i cite Paul Johnson a right-wing historian hack, i'm not wishing to be nice, nor any affinity for some Cambridge academics from the 19thC. but try to answer the OP's question. The debate on Proudhon, as i already pointed out , i am not qualified to enter since i have not seriously read anything by him apart from once having a poster featuring the following

Quote:

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."

Can't say there is much i dissent with in that.

[Anonymous]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Quote:

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."

Can't say there is much i dissent with in that.

So what? – most self-respecting 'liberals' wouldn't find much in that statement to dissent from either…

[twc]

Oh dear!  “To crown it all, to be mocked, ridiculed, derided”!Not to crown it all, “exploited” hides among the slings and arrows.

[alanjjohnstone]

Your right Gnome…any liberal critical of the surveillance society we live under wouldn't find too much to fault with such an observation that still sounds fresh and relevant a hundred and fifty years after it was written.Horrible to imagine, isn't it, to have some of our values shared by non-socialists and not use it as openings for dialogue and discussion and debate but instead to disparage, discourage and dismiss, rather than seek some rapport on agreed ideals to try and make connections. But here is another comrade who felt its message resonated and was worth circulating. http://class-warfare.blogspot.com/  

[Anonymous]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Your right Gnome…any liberal critical of the surveillance society we live under wouldn't find too much to fault with such an observation that still sounds fresh and relevant a hundred and fifty years after it was written.Horrible to imagine, isn't it, to have some of our values shared by non-socialists and not use it as openings for dialogue and discussion and debate but instead to disparage, discourage and dismiss, rather than seek some rapport on agreed ideals to try and make connections. But here is another comrade who felt its message resonated and was worth circulating. http://class-warfare.blogspot.com/  

The expression "Liberal" is being used nowadays without knowing the real meaning of the expression, and its origin, and application.The so called liberals are just apologists of state capitalism, like the left winger who are opposing the so called neo-liberalism, which does not exist either, they are also apologist of state capitalism, or state controlled economy, the main distinction of capitalism is not only private property, it is wage slaveryLiberalism and liberals do not exist, they did not even exist in its real purity in France and England when it emerged as a very strong economical current. The state since its emerge have always participated in the economical affairs of the class societyIn the US peoples call liberal to anybody without knowing what they are saying, and the talk about 'big government" without knowing what they are saying, it is just state capitalismMao Tse Tung wrote about Liberalism and he did not know what he was saying either, and the Maoists continued using the same expression, for Mao it is a matter of  personal issue within the vanguard party, and Mao as a philosopher and as a economist was a disasterThe Catholic church opposed liberalism too, and they never used the expression in the proper way, but they are heavy supporter of capitalism and class society.This article written by the  Socialist Party does really express what Liberalism is : http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2008/no-1251-november-2008/end-“neoliberalism”

[Anonymous]

There are not evidences showing that Karl Marx falsified the Blue books, they are just gossiping created by some groups of Anarchists and anti-Marxist.Opposition against Marx is nothing new, and it has existed since Marx and Engels became socialists, opposition and liesalso existed within the First International, and the Bakuninist have spread a lot of lies against Marx, the thing is that most Anarchists do not know that Marx was also an Anarchist and that Proudhon was not the founder of Anarchism. Anarchists have said that Marx received large sum of money from a group of capitalists  in order to write Capital, and that communism is a Jewish conspiracy created to control the world and that the Bolshevik revolution was also a Jewish conspiracy. The Bolivirian has also spread a lot of lies against Marx when it was discovered that he wrote against Simon Bolivar calling him a Napoleon Bonaparte, and nothing that he wrote about Simon Bolivar is not incorrect

[ALB]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Can't say there is much i dissent with in that.

Personally I've never thought much of that well-known quote from Proudhon. It is individualist anarchism which any anarcho-capitalist would endorse. In fact do endorse. And it was Proudhon's objection to "communism" to which he was vehemently opposed all this life.I read (ploughed) all the way through that anthologyof his writings  Iain Mckay gathered and I can let you know that you've missed nothing by not having read him. His stuff is just turgid and pompous with it. There's nothing of interest in what he wrote except perhaps his understanding that working for wages was an indignity. Only he didn't want to end it by going forward to the common ownership, democratic control and production directly for use of communism/socialism but backwards to an imagined society of independent (self-employed) producers, some organised in coops, producing for the market. He's not one of us and deserved the ridicule Marx gave him.

[robbo203]

Brian wrote:

mullrae wrote:

The only thing I could find was this but how Marx was supposed to have falsified anything is beyond me https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1867/blue-book-speech.htm any views gratefully accepted regards ian.

Thanks for that.  But until we have a direct link to the Quora post where the original accusations were made and be in a position to rebut them effectively this extract from the Marxists Archive is not that helpful.

 Here is the link to the thread in Quora where the accusation is made concerning Marx and the Blue Books.  Scroll down to the contribution by Lynx Keplerhttps://www.quora.com/Did-capitalism-in-the-West-change-to-contain-the-spread-of-communismI invited Mr Kepler to this forum to defend his claim. However, having somewhat pompously dismissed the contributors on this forum as a bunch of …er…"crybabies", he seemed strangely reluctant to take up the challenge, LOL Incidentally I see the peice about Marx's alleged falsification of the evidence in the site Alan linked to –  http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com.es/2016/05/marxs-dishonesty-in-his-quotation-of.html – was written up by someone with the initials "LK".  Same person, I wonder?

[Anonymous]

In the Spanish language there are several websites that indicate that Marx falsified the Blue books, but they do not provide any evidences to prove their allegations, even more, they have also said that Engels falsified the Blue books to write his books of the Conditions of the Working Class in England, and they do not provide any evidences either. They just want to put mud on top of Marx, Engels and socialism.Until now the best witness indicating that Marx did not falsify the Bluebooks have been Paul Lafarge, who was his secretary and his daughter Eleanor Marx, and his best biographer: Franz MehringThe others personalities who have indicated that Marx falsified the Blue Books are websites of Christians, conspiracionists and peoples who proclaim that the world is controlled by the Illuminati, and satanic personalities, but none of them have not given any valid evidences of their allegations. What many website have indicated is that Marx was an assiduous reader of the Bluebooks, and he read all of them,  and he used to buy all them continuously, and in some book stores the purpose of having them  was used them  in order to wrap merchandise sold by those stores, and that the British official did not care about the contain of those documents.The basic problem with Marx is that he never defended the capitalist class, and he never wrote anything defending their economical system, if he would have done the opposite, they would have given him a prize in literature and economics

[Anonymous]

ALB wrote:

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Can't say there is much i dissent with in that.

Personally I've never thought much of that well-known quote from Proudhon. It is individualist anarchism which any anarcho-capitalist would endorse. In fact do endorse. And it was Proudhon's objection to "communism" to which he was vehemently opposed all this life.I read (ploughed) all the way through that anthologyof his writings  Iain Mckay gathered and I can let you know that you've missed nothing by not having read him. His stuff is just turgid and pompous with it. There's nothing of interest in what he wrote except perhaps his understanding that working for wages was an indignity. Only he didn't want to end it by going forward to the common ownership, democratic control and production directly for use of communism/socialism but backwards to an imagined society of independent (self-employed) producers, some organised in coops, producing for the market. He's not one of us and deserved the ridicule Marx gave him.

That is the reason why many Leninists and Stalinists have  considered Anarchism as an individualist theory. They are also mistaken because Proudhon is not the father  of Anarchism

[Author]

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