From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Mon Oct 09 2006 - 14:48:44 EDT
One other thing I should perhaps mention - in truth, I don't rate my knowledge of Marx & Engels as all that good either. I mean, as socialist I studied his main writings and many letters, but I have not plowed through all of the Collected Works. I haven't had the opportunity, and possibly never will have. I read quite a number of biographies of Marx of the years and many hundreds of commentaries, but when you do that, you realise that, perhaps ironically, there doesn't exist one biography yet, that does real justice to the man and his works, in the sense of being both objective, comprehensive, accurate and sympathetically critical, and having full regard for the context of the times. We haven't really got beyond Marx at all yet, in that sense. Hal Draper, who devoted much time to unearthing the real Marx, commented how there was scarcely another author in history who had been so voluminously misrepresented in the literature as Karl Marx... Some authors put you to sleep, but I found that Marx & Engels got me thinking, they were thought-provoking. You can think a bit much for your own good of course, in which case you're better off with an author that puts you to sleep! :-) But as authors who don't bore the pants off me with inanities, Marx & Engels still rate highly with me, even although I wouldn't call myself a "Marxist". Somehow their synthesis was so good they still speak to the problems of our age, even although probably they could scarcely imagine what it would be like... I have a gut-feeling that Marx & Engels will make a come-back at some stage, and believe it is important to understand the meaning of their endeavour, and do something with that experience, whatever form that may take. Jurriaan
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