From: Ian Hunt (ian.hunt@FLINDERS.EDU.AU)
Date: Tue Oct 25 2005 - 20:22:04 EDT
Marx was clearly referring to vampire bats, who live off other animals by sucking their blood: the analogy was intended to imply that capitalists were parasites. > > If capital is dead labour sucking living >> labour to grow as more dead labour, where's >> the problem in the analogy with vampires? > >Riccardo: > >You have not watched enough Gothic horror films. >Vampires in literature and film are NOT dead -- they >are NEITHER LIVING NOR DEAD. They are >*UNDEAD*. The vampire analogy that you, following >Marx, are asserting would only work if the capital >represented _undead_ labor and when bitten by the >vampire-capital workers become _slaves_ to capital. >That, however, makes no sense if it meant to describe >the exploitation of workers by capital. > > > ******************* > > >It is worthwhile to recall that Bram Stoker began research >for _Dracula_ in 1890 and published that book in 1897. >This, of course, was decades after the first edition of Volume I >of _Capital_ was published (1867). This suggests that the >vampire that Marx was thinking of when he wrote the famous >vampire quote was _not_ Dracula_. It's also worthwhile >noting that the Dracula Myth was (very!) loosely based on >the legend of an actual historical character -- Vlad the >Impaler, a Rumanian royal from the 14th Century. It >was Stoker, however, who transformed the bloody Vlad >the Impaler legend into a _vampire_ legend. Note further >that the vampire legend is also associated with the superstitions >that arose in Medieval Europe under feudalism and in that >sense are cultural remnants of feudalism that survived into >the modern bourgeois epoch. For the analogy to work (no >pun intended) wage-workers have to be re-conceived as >*not* workers. > >In solidarity, Jerry -- Associate Professor Ian Hunt, Dept of Philosophy, School of Humanities, Director, Centre for Applied Philosophy, Flinders University of SA, Humanities Building, Bedford Park, SA, 5042, Ph: (08) 8201 2054 Fax: (08) 8201 2784
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Oct 26 2005 - 00:00:05 EDT