Re: Norm's reading list

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Lisa & Ian Murray wrote:

> Norm,
>
> Before you go into further debt slavery with all those texts, try The New
> Palgrave [a great series btw] titled "Marxian Economics".

Almost all the texts mentioned imply that Marx was an economist and that
Marxism is an economic theory. But this destroys marxism. Marx was not
an economist in any of the ways that that term is used today, and Marx gives
not answer to any of the questions asked either in economic literature or
in the daily newspaper about "the economy."

Whatever text a beginner begins with it must (if it is a theoretical text)
emphasize history and commodity fetishism or it must be grounded in
some specific struggle (won or lost) against the power of capital.

No work that has a title which includes some version of "Marx's
economic theory" can be an accurate introduction to Marx, because
the title has already placed a barrier between the reader and Marx's
thought (or the history of marxismi).

Carrol

P.S. In terms of current academic terminology "sociologist" and
"historian" both distort Marx, but either is preferable to "economist."