More specifically concerning: marx
The Historicity of Peasants
14 March 2003, around 9.01.
Have been reading Michael Rostovtzeff’s A Large Estate in Egypt in the Third Century B.C. A Study in Economic History (Madison, WI: 1922), a short book in which the notorious Russian historian gives the Zenon archive his attention. Of course, in 1922 the Zenon archive, with early Ptolemaic documents numbering in the thousands, was bigger […]
the arrow of time
27 April 2013, around 17.53.
An enlightened voyage: ‘The Vessel of the Constitution steered clear of the Rock of Democracy, and the Whirlpool of Arbitrary Power’ From antiquity to fascism, Homer has been criticised for garrulousness – both in the hero and in the narrator. —Theodor Adorno (Dialectic of Englightenment: ‘Excursus 1: Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment’, p. 53) Nestor, […]
all we like sheep
17 January 2024, around 4.17.
Our woollen manufacturers have been more successful than any other class of workmen, in persuading the legislature that the prosperity of the nation depended upon the success and extension of their particular business. They have not only obtained a monopoly against the consumers, by an absolute prohibition of importing woollen cloths from any foreign country; […]
norming
4 February 2024, around 19.07.
Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, one cannot judge or admire this particular society by assuming that the language it speaks to itself is necessarily true. —Guy Debord (The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Ken Knabb, §202) I am in a book group or class (I suppose […]
going for broke
8 February 2024, around 11.57.
A week of personal time tracking; left (4:00 a.m.) to right (3:59 a.m.)(blue is reading, green is sleep) The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the public house, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save and the greater […]
Adversaria (11)
29 February 2024, around 4.00.
‘…poetry, which is like modern dance for uncoordinated people’ —Claire Dederer (Love & Trouble, ch. 13) ‘…The Editor, an avuncular but testy figure who might send a few encouraging words written in a discouraging hand’ —Lavinia Greenlaw (Some Answers Without Questions, p. 99) ‘I read the letters but couldn’t understand them. I could understand the […]
roundabout
4 March 2024, around 9.40.
Far from being able to satisfy the yearning for immortality by trustfully throwing oneself upon the bosom of the Eternal by an immediate moral and religious act, the individual felt constrained to take a long and circuitous route. —Jacob Burckhardt (The Age of Constantine the Great, trans. Moses Hadas, p. 154) My major reading project […]
close encounters
21 March 2024, around 8.16.
A man cannot be judged solely by the company he keeps. This is often true of young people, who are easily influenced. Indeed, even at a later age, the converse is sometimes true: that no man is responsible for his acquaintances. In true love, however, or in true friendship, the encounter is quite different: the […]
Adversaria (12)
31 March 2024, around 8.10.
‘Lack of clarity is selfish and confusing. The writer is wasting your time. Up with this you need not put’ —Deidre Nansen McCloskey (Economical Writing, p. 17) ‘No one is prepared to be Serious, especially about Art. I liked the way these critics wrote and fell under the rhetorical spell of their semi-colons, qualifications and […]
Adversaria (13)
30 April 2024, around 7.15.
‘Hunger is hunger, but the hunger gratified by cooked meat eaten with a knife and fork is a different hunger from that which bolts down raw meat with the aid of hand, nail and tooth.’ —Marx (Grundrisse, trans. Martin Nicolaus, p. 92) ‘Works of fiction should be seen as responses to obsessions, instincts, and tensions […]
fundamentals
7 June 2024, around 7.30.
August Sander, Farmer (ca. 1925) Let us say that what separates the great book from the merely good (or interesting) is that a great book, however it innovates, whatever its oddities, will teach the reader how it is to be read. 1 Grundrisse is not, then, a great book, but it is still in an […]
in line
1 August 2024, around 9.19.
The first peculiarity which strikes us when we reflect on the equivalent form is this, that use-value becomes the form of the appearance of its opposite, value. —Marx (Capital, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes, p. 148) It is supposed to be warm today. We have been out of town due to the great building repair […]
pseudaphoristica (23)
4 August 2024, around 11.21.
The economical hobby of using pathetic fallacy to achieve the alchemical transformation, not of base metals into gold, but of worth (or value) into meaning.
social currency
7 August 2024, around 18.18.
The name of a thing is entirely external to its nature. I know nothing of a man if I merely know his name is Jacob. In the same way, every trace of the money-relation disappears in the names pound, dollar, franc, ducat, etc. The confusion caused by attributing a hidden meaning to these cabalistic signs […]
applied economics
19 August 2024, around 18.18.
The tree service came today to do the brush chipping. It was rather a large pile of deadfall and branches trimmed in a haphazard attempt to meet fire safety standards. It took hours and hours (of good, healthy exercise, naturally) to gather everything together, and I imagined it would take hours and hours (or an […]
glimmer
20 August 2024, around 19.39.
Pausing to watch the morning light and consider the fausses fraises de production. 1We must be permitted our little jokes.[↩]
Adversaria (17)
31 August 2024, around 4.11.
‘Karl knows something of every handicraft, and in addition he has the ability, peculiar to nearly all Norwegians, to tackle any situation with the most meagre equipment. He is what the Norwegians call for short an altmüligman—an everything-possible-man’ —Christiane Ritter (A Woman in the Polar Night, trans. Jane Degras, 52%) ‘…the heart of man is […]
Adversaria (29)
31 August 2025, around 4.08.
‘So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish […]
tragedy of the commonplaces
4 September 2025, around 11.07.
It’s the season when academics seek to snatch inspiration from the jaws of administrative despair by posting online the more promising tasks they intend to assign their students, and one that sparked my interest was keeping a physical commonplace book (giving credit while appropriating [the modifications seem too few to call it adapting] an assignment […]
momentous
7 September 2025, around 16.07.
Waiting for the dog to finish her dinner and listening to the sound of her eating, and then to the click of her claws as she wanders toward the back of the apartment in search of praise or reassurance or perhaps another round of dinner. The dishwasher needs to be emptied, and although it is […]
planavorel
11 September 2025, around 17.12.
It might have happened. I might have reached the stage of having too many reading projects. I say this because, as I worked through my morning books before starting the work day, nothing seemed like it was part of or in service of anything. While I was mildly amused by some of the books, a […]
briars and brambles
14 September 2025, around 17.17.
No equal capital puts into motion a greater quantity of productive labour than that of the farmer. Not only his labouring servants, but his labouring cattle, are productive labourers. In agriculture, too, Nature labours along with man; and though her labour costs no expense, its produce has its value, as well as that of the […]
the more fool
18 September 2025, around 16.09.
Those who consider everything in relation to its usefulness for them, and who measure happiness by the possession of the goods of fortune, should remember that they are grasping fragile and unstable goods that are often destructive for those who own them, and that by the movement of one moment their entire happiness and they […]