Michael

I thought I'd share a little gem from Paul Johnson's incredibly useful and fun book, "Intellectuals" which takes a close look at what he terms "the moral and judgmental credentials of certain leading intellectuals to give advice to humanity on how to conduct its affairs."

He tackles many of the illustrious of the past few centuries: Jean-Jacques Rousseau ("An Interesting Madman"), Shelley ("Or the Heartlessness of Ideas"), Tolstoy ("God's Elder Brother"), Bertolt Brecht ("Heart of Ice"), Jean-Paul Satre ("A Little Ball of Fur and Ink"), etc. Perhaps my favorite chapter concerns Marx. The following is a brief extract:

[Marx] was totally and incorrigibly deskbound. Nothing on earth would get him out of the library and the study. His interest in poverty and exploitation went back to the autumn of 1842, when he was twenty-four and wrote a series of articles on the laws governing the right of local peasants to gather wood....But there is no evidence that Marx actually talked to the peasants and the landowners and looked at the conditions on the spot.

The other knowledgeable man was Engels himself. But Marx declined Engels's invitation to accompany him on a visit to a cotton mill, and so far as we know Marx never set foot in a mill, factory, mine or other industrial workplace in the whole of his life.

The question this and other matters discussed in Johnson's book (which has, predictably, been criticised repeatedly by lefties as "mean-spirited" but not, as far as I know, on factual grounds) raises is one you have asked repeatedly: why wasn't any of this ever brought up by the professors at our Lousy Ivy University? It's not like this stuff was a secret, exactly--except from us students.

Cheers,

Friedrich

Dear Sirs:

I have no reasons whatsoever to defend Marx from Johnson´s jokes about the German philosopher. Nor am I a Marxist enthusiast myself. But to believe that writting a book on social poverty demands a much closer contact with poor people is tantamount to say or believe that to write an academic thesis on prostitution would demand the thesis´ author to get to bed with whores in order to know how they live, make love and welcome their guests in bed.
No matter how Marx is wrong or not,he is a famous man, even in spite of himself, while Johnson is to forever remain an unknown man . He should, at least in spirit, thank Marx for having given him (Johnson)an opportunity to get known to the wide public of his readers, who are less numeropus than Marx´readers. Well,if I intend to write an essay on the side effects of drug consumption among youngsters, must I use heavy drugs to do it? Or must I become a gay man to study the social behaviour of homossexuals? Would Mr. Johnson ever dare contradict me?

Hamilton Castro
Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

Posted by: hamilton castro on November 6, 2003 01:44 PM






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