Re: origins of industrial capitalism -- Middlemarch on PE

From: Michael Eldred (artefact@T-ONLINE.DE)
Date: Sun Sep 21 2003 - 05:07:26 EDT


Cologne 21-Sep-2003

Rakesh Bhandari schrieb Sat, 20 Sep 2003 15:22:42 -0700:

> >Cologne 20-Sep-2003
> >
> >"She sat down in the library before her particular little heap of
> >books on political
> >economy and kindred matters, out of which she was trying to get
> >light as to the best way
> >of spending money so as not to injure one's neighbours, or -- what
> >comes to the same
> >thing -- so as to do the most good. Here was a weighty subject
> >which, if she could but
> >lay hold of it, would certainly keep her mind steady." (George
> >Eliot, Middlemarch,
> >Chapter Eighty-Three p.804)
>
> My interest is not as fleeting as Dorothea's; nor are my motivations
> for this study in any way similar to hers. My wife the English
> professor tells me that you have inappropriately used the passage.
> But then as with your idea of the Cartesian limits of Marx, I again
> have no idea as to what you are on about.
> Rakesh

Rakesh,
If taking a passage out of its context in a novel and putting it next to
thoughts on the origins of industrial capitalism is inappropriate, then
the use of the passage is inappropriate. I prefer to call it
juxtaposition. The discrepancy can be productive, like an art work by
Kurt Schwitters.

Of course I don't want to suggest your interest in PE is fleeting. I
sent the e-mail with the above header more as a note to myself. I like
to have intriguing passages simply work on me. Sometimes thoughts come.

By contrast, I spent quite a deal of effort in this forum trying to show
why and how the Marxian approach to the phenomenon of value has to be
freed from its Cartesian casting. That was not simply juxtaposition, but
is flanked by many years of work.

Whether laconic or prolix, it seems to make no difference.

Michael
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