Pathologise what you don't understand.

posted by Mr. Vidiot @ 4:10 PM Permalink

I barely have time to blog, but this article on Karl Marx really was beyond the pale.

Excerpt: Karl Marx, who complained of excruciating boils, actually suffered from a chronic skin disease with known psychological effects that may well have influenced his writings, a British expert said on Tuesday.

The article goes on to say:

"This explains his self-loathing and alienation, a response reflected by the alienation Marx developed in his writing."

This "british expert", Sam Shuster, doesn't understand a single thing about Marx so he's just making stuff up. He's pathologizing Marx. And by pathologizing him and making him sound crazy and depressed, then all of his writings can be discredited and won't be thought of as the brilliant writings that they actually are.

First and foremost, alienation was a very comforting feeling for Marx. It was pleasurable. It gave meaning to the world. Mr. Shuster obviously doesn't know what Marx was trying to say. Mr. Shuster is confusing alienation with anomie. Alienation is a nomic process and nomic means to give order and meaning to the world. Anomie is a sense of isolation and meaninglessness. Alienation actually prevents anomie. Alienation inverts the mind and human processes but alienation is a nomic process that gives people meaning in the world. It separates people from the world. Alienation merely means that you no longer recognize what you produce as your own.

In other words, alienation is a process in which you produce the world that you no longer recognize as your own. Man forgets that the world was produced by him. THAT'S the alienation of which Marx spoke.

On top of that, Marx only wrote about alienation when he was younger. He alluded to it when he was older, but it had already been fully developed by then. When he was old, he wrote Das Kapital. The economic/philosophy manuscripts of 1844, etc. was later Marx. Shuster didn't even get the time eras right. Marx was not an old, bitter man when he came up with alienation. He was young. In fact, it was his dissertation and he was critiquing Hegel's and Feuerbach's concept of alienation. He came up with the theory of alienation, but he didn't come up with it in a vacuum.

So Mr. Shuster is an idiot. He doesn’t understand Marx and he’s just saying things that means absolutely nothing. He’s speaking nonsense. He outta’ go read a book at Starbucks. Perhaps he should start with “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.” That seems to be about his level.

Labels: Karl Marx, sociology