Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Marx has an answer...

Marx no doubt thinks this worry about identity is rather bourgeois. It is precisely the kind of problem he thinks will vanish in his state.
And yet this is a big claim.
Marx knows that Dickens is the great chronicler of what it is to be human for his time.
That is what it is to live in the nineteenth century, and have nineteenth century thoughts.
Dickens is therefore right for his time.
that goes without saying.
And yet it is not what the revolution calls for.
That revolution needs is not the novels of the present, but rather the books of the future.
And it is the job of Marx's peculiar brand of economy, storytelling and philosophy that is right them
This job is utterly proactive. One does not get the future one chooses without stocking the past with the right types of critiques: The right movements and thoughts.
These thoughts then need to be blend across an emerging thinking process, or a series of definition about what it is to be human.
Once this movement has occurred then and only them is it time to talk about the kind of Self conscious act that a revolution might take.
One needs then to write the novels of the future, make the myths for revolution - make revolution and its protagonists truly revolutionary. Before ever one can even think on acting.
Hence he might say Das Captail, and the Eighteenth Brumair: What are these but novels for the future?

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