Re: Marx versus Engels? And other preposterous things

["David Schanoes" <Schanoes@xxxxxxx>]

I don't wish to appear rancorous or antagonistic,  but.....has anyone
read Oishi's book?  What's preposterous here is getting worked up at a
book based upon a reviewer's review.

That's item 1.  Item 2.  News flash, Marx developed his ideas in
notebooks which in his own handwriting show the starts, stops,
development, discontinuities, etc. of his analyses.  These are
specifically Marx's, not Engels' writings. Marx's communications with
Engels during work on these notebooks show very little
"cross-pollination."     It is from these notebooks that Engels culled
the material for Vol 3 of Capital, parts of TSV and other publications.
None of which diminishes Engels' work.

Item 3.  I've read some of Oishi's work, not all of it, and not this
specific book, but his emphasis in those works has not been on blaming
Engels, etc. Rather through detailed, rigorous, actually painful, almost
Talmudic examination of Marx's original writings (manuscript and
notebooks), Oishi seeks to reestablish the "radical totality" of Marx's
revolutionary critique, and the fundamental unity of all aspects of the
critique in Marx's development of and from "alienated labor."  It is
that alienation specifically, the separation of humans from their social
labor, their collective production that Oishi traces throughout the body
of Marx's analysis.

 That is the real import and value of  Oishi's work.  The "blame game"
regarding Engels is not the essential point and only reproduces from
either, both, all sides, the reification of the vibrant, concrete,
totality of Marx's work that was inflicted on it, not by Engels, but by
the "officialdom" of the 2nd International.


Now for something completely different:  Charles Brown brought a tear
to my eye with the story of the sale of Rouge Steel.  Ah yes, those days
flooded back in all their sooty intensity, as I recalled those salad
days of my youth working at Great Lakes Steel, just up river from Rouge,
on old Zug Island, a manmade hunk of slag, compressed coke dust, and
scarred lungs tethered to the mud and slime of the Detroit River in
Ecorse (I think), or was it Wyandotte?  No Wyandotte was BASF chemical,
but that's another story, and another rash.

What an experience for a boy of my tender years and unantagonistic
disposition, working in the warmth of the coke ovens, secure in my
asbestos jacket and pants, which oddly enough burst into flames when I
got too close to an open cell of the coke battery-- and the warmth we
all shared passing the whiskey bottles around while the slag was dumped
behind a berm and dripped through the retaining wall like pus from the
devil's own eyes.

Well, it sucked, but it was all we had,  Everybody wanted to work
doubles, , sleep in your car in the parking lot and come back for
another double.  $3.33/hr straight time, $4.50 on the double plus $3
meal allowance.  You could buy a fair amount of whiskey if you pooled
your meal allowances, which we did.  But then somebody would reach for a
knife.....

dms





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