Spoiler Alert: Karl Marx Is Dead

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Even with My 3,000 Loving Arms' superpowers it isn't easy to eavesdrop on history. I tried but had to do my laundry and while I was comforting my white anklet with pink accents, over the loss (in the dryer) of its twin, Karl Marx died.

You may think I'm uncaring for talking about white socks with pink accents more than Karl Marx but if you think I'm bad, look at legislators playing computer Solitaire and Hearts. All the while Karl Marx's love for humanity, for workers who are most often little more than legal and duped serfs, was agan scorned this week.

Unions were killed--for the moment, anyway--in Wisconsin; “terrorists” hunted in D.C.; programs which could help people like you and me, the ones who breath and don't receive orders from Greedo Limbaugh of Planet Hate, were ignored.

Please read Isaiah Berlin's biography of Karl Marx (entitled Pete King Is a Big Fat Arsehole Though His Actual Arsehole Is Probably Teeny Tiny Accounting for, Hence, his Many Fears, and Further and Also I Wonder if The Billionaire Koch Brothers Back King as they Backed the Governor of Wisconsin Who Is Killing Unions Which Benefit People, All People, Black People, Women Because the Billionaire Koch Brothers Want More Money in Their Coffers (Why, I Don't Know). NO! It's entitled Karl Marx!

Question:  Are you sure Isaiah Berlin's biography of Karl Marx, published by Oxford University Press paperbacks, isn't called  Who Killed Elvis? NO! It's Karl Marx.

He was poor and difficult. A German in England. Jewish but not so happy with being Jewish though if his father converted to Christianity why was he considered Jewish? His vision of all workers joining and his convincement that history is a progression, each era new, not replicating, fills my heart with gratitude. He wanted each person to be able to actualize their greatest potential, to have the freedom to be creative and happy. I'm sorry you died, Karl Marx. Like other brilliant thinkers including Aristotle, Jesus, St. Francis, the Buddha, Hafiz, Tagore, Dorothy Day you are respected but not enough followed.

*http://blogs.courant.com/capitol_watch

Karl Marx, Close Observer to the Max

a Monty Pythonization of Karl Marx

I've been reading a biography of Karl Marx (titled Bippy Goes to the Circus, NO! titled Karl Marx) by Isaiah Berlin and published by Oxford paperbacks.

It's brilliant. Berlin describes Marx' intellectual context, that being the what's what and who's who in Europe; the thinkers of Germany, France (and soon England--I'm waiting for the next chapter); much on Hegel; Marx' family--he had a warm relationship with his father, despite his father's desire to, as we say, fit in.

And Marx' character; he was a true rebel with a grand cause and no gun, and far more intellectual than Che Gueverra, who was no dullard himself.  Just as Marx (and Engels) demonstrated an eye for detail and facility with close description, as in the Communist Manifesto, he demonstrated an enormous capacity for reading and analysis.

He saw that in the industrialized era, production caused, in Isaiah Berlin's words, "intellectual, moral, religious beliefs, values and forms of life . . . which uphold the power of the class whose interest the capitalist system embraces."  A Catch 22 in the making.

Capitalism and production are not timeless in the way Truth, Love, Compassion are. They are simply "uphold the power of the class whose interests the capitalist system bodies." Capitalism is not a "timelessly valid institution" but it is seen as such.  It's as if the belief in a divine king and queen were simply auctioned off to the highest bidder and that bidder is the rich who control production and product and thus become falsely "valid."

I don't see how to break through but I am hoping that as we awaken to the corruptibility of capitalists, as in crashes of the past few years, we just might inch toward some improvement in the distribution of wealth (to coin a phrase).

Now back to Bippy Goes to the Circus. Can't wait until the movie comes out.



*http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Dunechaser/MontyPython/WorldForum/02-karl.marx.jpg