Re: Henry Liu

[Chris Brady <cdbrady@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

personally --and no slight to anyone else-- there are messages to our
list
from some contributors in particular that I always take time to at least

skim; one of those is Henry.  I don't know which came first for him
--his Marxist analysis or his capitalist experience-- but I am sure one
assisted the other.  Another Marxist whose understanding of capitalism
allowed for him to make a living was Harry Magdoff, author of The Age
of Imperialism.  When Magdoff was muscled out of his government job
as an economist during the post-WWII red hunt, he had few choices
and a family to support.  So he went into the business of advising
investors.
He was also the co-editor of the Marxist Monthly Review, along with
Paul Sweezy.  Sweezy, arguably America's foremost contributor to
Marxist economic analysis, was intimate not only with capitalism but
with
individual capitalists of the highest order: his father worked with
J.P.Morgan.
Who would have better comprehension of a particular phenomenon that
one who has actually observed its inner workings, and, based on such
empiricism, offered cogent class analysis?

For my own part, my experience as the general manager for an upscale
and hugely popular restuarant on the Upper West Side in the early 1980s
provided me with much material that undergirded my developing studies
of marxism in the 1990s. Other occupations in the trades, and travel,
only augmented my studies.  As Marxists, we should use the dialectic
to derive utility from all our experiences.

by the way, Ho worked as a cook on a tramp steamer to make his way
to Europe, as best I can recall, and did not lounge in the lap of
luxury...