Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Perhaps the wording was obtuse? (Score 1) 39

In the first place, I'm offering brief quotations as linkage to the fully quoted passage, rather than in-lining my remarks.

OK, thank you for the clarification. I wasn't sure based on what you wrote if you stopped where you thought the idea of the statement ended, or if you stopped there just to highlight that sentence without doing a longer quote.

In the case of the Communist Manifesto, a single sentence is usually a single thought. Sometimes a single thought is spread over multiple sentences in this document but I don't think I've seen him ever write a sentence where he incorporated multiple thoughts - or at least, not thoughts that hadn't been introduced earlier in the same chapter. In this vein is it acceptable for me to then assume that if you raise a question by quoting a part of a sentence that you want to discuss the entire sentence (at least, unless explicitly stated otherwise)? I just want to make sure I understand what questions you are raising and how, here.

And in the second place, I'm just really not sure that the bourgeoisie ever accomplished Marx's stated outcome:

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

I guess it makes partial sense if you consider the transition of some of these professions from ones involving patrons to commission musical works, or endow universities.

I would argue from my experience that the only one from that list who is not manipulated at the whim of the market is the priest. I have not seen the market as a tool that benefits anyone from the lower economic echelons.

That said, this smacks of an evidence-free charge to make the bourgeoisie into bigger super villains, or something.

I wouldn't say he's trying to make them into "villains", he is trying rather to show what happens when one class of people has unchecked dominance over another and the dominated class has close to no opportunity to change it on their own. This may, again, be human nature - but that is what made the idea of communism so revolutionary as it hadn't been done before (and arguably still hasn't been done).

Comment Re:Let's rewrite that (Score 1) 39

Does he mean:

"The emergence of the bourgeoisie is the flip side of the brutal Middle Ages vigor (e.g. Crusades?) that all of the reactionaries admire, and but which today has all gone to foppish decadence?"

I would say that Marx saw the accumulation of bourgeoisie power as a direct result of the brutal class warfare of the middle ages. Remember the Marxist ideal - which arguably has never been pursued anywhere for very long - is to have a classless society. This is what made the Manifesto so revolutionary, he wanted to propose a very different way of going about doing things for society.

Now, whether or not it is absolute human nature to divide people up into classes is a discussion that should still be had. Regardless Marx wanted to have a run at not having that division.

I'm working far too hard to make this mean something.

It means plenty. It just might not have the meaning that you were trying to extract.

Comment Re:Common sense (Score 1) 21

It's fiancé, you lazy slob!

Firefox 33.0 claims otherwise.

Learn to properly use the tools you have

Rather arrogant of you to assume that you would have better knowledge of these tools than I, particularly when you began your rant not knowing what tools I am using.

Did you have an argument, or are you just crank-writing to me? My lunch is more interesting so far.

Comment Re:Common sense (Score 1) 21

We're talking about Jose Canseco here. "Common Sense" doesn't apply to a roided-up ex-celebrity ballplayer.

Very true. He did, however, qualify for a gun permit in ... oh, wait it's Nevada. In some other places gun owners generally have common sense. It's a good thing people in states like Texas are so much more ... what's the word, the opposite of responsible?

Comment Re:Common sense (Score 1) 21

Even I know that the first commandment of gun safety is

Always treat a gun as if it is loaded

It really boggles me that people will proceed to clean a gun without first checking whether or not there is ammunition in it. Any time anyone hands me a gun for any purpose - regardless of who they are, where they are, how I know them, etc - I first check the chamber and any ammunition clips to see that I know whether or not I have just been handed a loaded weapon. When I unlock my gun cabinet and remove a gun from it the first thing I check - even though I have the only keys and I always double-check the chambers before placing a gun inside the cabinet - is to ensure I am not handling a loaded weapon.

This is common sense. How the fuck someone can proceed to attempt to clean a gun when there is ammo in it is beyond stupid. The only good news here is that he didn't hurt his fiancée. This type of stupid leads to injuries and deaths of innocent bystanders far too often.

Comment Wait another week... (Score 0) 669

Not long ago the Catholic Church was going to be OK with gay marriage and some limited forms of birth control, until they decided a week later that they still aren't. We ought to let the dust settle more on this one before we start congratulating the church on a sudden outbreak of common sense.

Comment Re:At least a full day late on this article (Score 1) 46

Ordinarily, yes. However it involves money (and more particularly, things that can be advertised on sites such as this in hopes of making money off of them) so someone probably posted it on facebook a while ago and then someone from here thought it was a worthwhile opportunity.

Comment Perhaps the wording was obtuse? (Score 0) 39

Your writing suggests you might have gotten hung up on

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence.

Based on your comment of

Really, really needs some kind of reference as to what he means.

In this case, I intentionally quoted the full statement from him rather than the part you specifically mentioned in your JE. If I'm reading your comment correctly you seem to be searching for Marx to be sharing some great insight (ie, "the Bourgeoisie has disclosed...") from the upper crust. I will argue that you are reading this statement incorrectly; he didn't receive a great insight from the Bourgeoisie themselves, but rather their existence itself is insight in to how the division of class has come to be in the current era.

Similarly you bring up

"The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo. . ."

Which, when you expand the full statement to the paragraph of

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

You see that Marx's argument is that occupations that were not previously driven by the pursuit of money have been made in to laborers by the Bourgeoisie.

Slashdot Top Deals

1 + 1 = 3, for large values of 1.

Working...