borrowed thoughts
Last week, I ordered a book from another library in the state. On Monday, a padded envelope containing a hardcovered box was in my campus mail. The box unfolded in four directions, revealing an extremely old text. I’ve tried several times to pick it up, but it comes apart in my hands like dried flowers. I’m grateful they sent this to me, but really, it shouldn’t be touched, not even by air.
In case you can’t tell from this photo of the spine (ha!), it’s Marx’s
Misère de la Philosophie: Réponse a la philosophie de la misère de M. Proudhon. It goes like this: Monsieur Proudhon wrote a book called
The Philosophy of Poverty and Karl responds with
The Poverty of Philosophy. Wait—it gets better. Here’s the foreward (in English):
M. Proudhon has the misfortune of being peculiarly misunderstood in Europe. In France, he has the right to be a bad economist, because he is reputed to be a good German philosopher. In Germany, he has the right to be a bad philosopher, because he is reputed to be one of the ablest French economists. Being both German and economist at the same time, we desire to protest against this double error.
The reader will understand that in this thankless task we have often had to abandon our criticism of M. Proudhon in order to criticize German philosophy, and at the same time to give some observations on political economy.
Gotta love Karl. He was such an intelligent prick.
It’s the third edition, printed in 1922. I’m guessing this particular text wasn’t of stellar quality; I’ve seen books from the 19th century that have held up better than this one. Still, it’s nice having this in my office; it makes the room smell like old book. I fear that it’ll spontaneously combust if I leave the hardcover box open too long, though, so I’ve left it in the box since taking these pictures a few days ago.
I don’t romanticize books the way some people do, but I like the thought of this text slowly disintegrating over time in this little hardcover box, like a stomach digesting its own ideas.
[ three pics of this book up in gestalt ]
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7 responses
inspoetica
Comment posted at 11:48 on Wednesday, February 12, 2003
This is the stuff I keep coming back here for. Beautiful and brilliant material res.
Now, I did not know you could ORDER books from the State Library? Tell me how!
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Comment posted at 20:58 on Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Oh, dear God!@$# You have an incredible website. The photos… the layout… the concept! I’m… speechless. Holy crap. (hereby, rendered speechless, only to begin again tomorrow)
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Comment posted at 07:58 on Thursday, February 13, 2003
Was Karl a Prussian? Prussians always thought like that about the French. The French always felt German cuisine is unfit for livestock. Now they’re hoping to keep the biggest bag of Euros between them, but with the French driving Renaults. Airbus is magic because airplanes fly despite historical sentiment and “cooperation”. What I am ignorant of, are “observations on political economy” the same as or different from observing economic policy?
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Comment posted at 08:23 on Thursday, February 13, 2003
inspoetica: Interlibrary loan. The book was checked out, not purchased.
blue: merci. j’aime le fois gras, (ou les grenouilles grasses, comme vous voulez.)
heisenberg: I don’t think Karl was Prussian. He was born in Berlin, though I don’t know the lineage of his parents. If I were French, I’d probably think the same of German cuisine. I’d say that up to a certain point in history (early 20th century, perhaps), observations on ‘political economy’ and ‘economic policy’ were more or less the same thing. As with most of the social sciences, I think they’ve since moved into separate offices. In other words, I think some people now observe economic policy outside the political realm, say, as a set of equations and variables. ‘Observations on political economy” might be better defined, since Marx, as “observations on the political relationships and structures caused by economic policy.” I don’t know, just venturing a guess. Those terms seem to indicate different foci.
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Comment posted at 11:16 on Thursday, February 13, 2003
I hesitate to write and compliment you and your site’s absolutely elegant design, for I will have no defense when you catch me stealing it!
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Comment posted at 14:59 on Thursday, February 13, 2003
Sir Paul of kiplog fame: your food blog has been in my bookmarks file for quite some time, so I’m particularly flattered by your compliment. Thanks!
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Comment posted at 07:44 on Friday, February 14, 2003
I am German and think the same of German cuisine. On the other question your answer seemingly stopped short. Veblen, Marx and others thinking about distributional issues meet academic neglect while not even the most extreme free market advocacy from the Cato Institute speaks against central banking. Has central banking policy not been a distributional equilibrium force? There is an ebb-tide in political economics when Democrats challenge Bush tax policy as theivery in the night, asking it be in the sunshine, and George and Ari get away with spinning that as “fostering class warfare” with little notice from the press or academia. There is economic engineering and sampling-survey theory but the AARP seems the one bastion of political economy because of drug costs and skepticism over Ponzi schemes a/k/a social security. Fanon and Lenin had thoughts about imperialism that also seem to have hit the academic scrap yard and I seldom hear Marcuse’s name anymore. Has this more to do with the sociology of tenure, grant sources, and journal editorships; or is this political economics, live and in action?
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