The Joy of Reading Marx

In many conversations about reading Marx's Capital, most of the people in my particular circle seem to assume that the desire to read this monstrous book is evidence that I am a Marxist.  This is not the case.  I know as well as anyone that Marx's revolutionary ideals failed in practice and am certainly not going to advocate for a return to Leninism or whatever.  Closer to the truth is the fact that I am deeply interested in Marx's analysis AND critique of capitalism and am eager to know more about his analysis since I understand from scholars that where he failed in providing an effective response to overthrowing capitalism, the man understood capitalism and its many dimensions better than any economist of his time.  

I would not be so arrogant as to read the book completely on my own knowing that my ability to understand economic theories and the like is average at best and probably more like below average.  So, I'm reading along with David Harvey's online lectures because I read parts of Harvey's The Postmodern Condition last year and appreciated his manner of thinking and the way that he communicates his ideas.  I'm learning a lot about key points of Marxist theory that I didn't quite grasp before, especially the term "circulation" and why this term is so important in contemporary theories of affect and the notion of movement in postmodern theory in general.

Aside from the insights, I'm also finding the reading of the book to be less onerous and more intriguing than I thought it would be.  Marx has a way of using strange similes and metaphors that give one pause...sometime because they have the air of anti-semitism (Marx was born into a Jewish family that converted to Christianity the year before he was born), but more importantly because these metaphors are glimpses into the subjective side of Marx's thinking beyond his methodical dialectic examination of capitalism.  

My favorite metaphor so far is from Chapter 10, The Working Day: "Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks." Oh la la!  Vampires?!  His vitriol toward the capitalist who he understands to value capital more than workers/people comes out in full force only in these metaphors.  His voice of general outrage is only hinted at when he explains algebraic formulas for pages and pages to illustrate how workers are exploited by basically being paid for 6 hours of labour each day that he works 12 hours (and yes, the gender is important because the book also nods toward a misogynistic view in which women entering the workplace would devalue the labour of men...).  These metaphors often come at the end of a mathematical analysis and help to punctuate his point in a manner that I'm not accustomed to reading.

I'm really enjoying Capital way more than I thought I would, and the good news is that because I'm not reading it for a class I can focus on the parts that interest me most.  

...and we're back!

I've taken an unannounced break, and now I'm back to blogging.  It's been quite a month -- packed up and moved out of DC, traveled 4,000+ miles across country from DC to Memphis, Memphis to Urbana, Urbana to Milwaukee, Madison to Minneapolis, Minneapolis to Pierre, SD, Pierre to Rapid City, Black Hills to Little Bighorn, Yellowstone, Grand Teton to Reno, a stop in Lake Tahoe and finally, arrived in Santa Cruz.

One of the terms of my funding with UCSC is establishing residency ASAP, so my first order of business after unpacking our shipping container was registering my car and getting a new California license.  The woman at the DMV said "Welcome to California!  Now you can live la vida loca."  It made me laugh out loud, and I've been thinking about this general laid back attitude around me.  It's infectious.  Most of the people I've encountered at the DMV, the farmer's market, the shops in downtown, and even at big box stores like Costco and Target are polite without being in your face and pushy.  I think part of what I'm feeling is a real community vibe, like everyone knows that we share this space and that we rely on each other in some way as consumers, merchants, neighbors, etc.  I like it a lot so far.

In my own way, I am living la vida loca.  I have absolutely no obligations at the moment.  I don't know how to emphasize that I have never really experienced this level of freedom before.  I've been unemployed for only 2 stretches in my life: once after returning home from a year in France and once for a few weeks before I started the master's program.  Neither of those times were relaxed, however, because I was unwillingly unemployed and was consumed with incessant job searching during that time.  This is different.

I sleep until I wake up every morning. I read a lot and have already finished Lauren Berlant's Cruel Optimism, which I've been trying to read for a year now.  And I'm reading Marx's Capital (Das Kapital) in conjunction with David Harvey's online lectures.  I'm exercising daily at a gym with kickboxing and/or pilates.  I'm keeping in contact with friends through email and Facebook.  I'm  enjoying the ocean and the adorable downtown Santa Cruz, cooking everyday and eating healthy, and generally just being relaxed.  This is a crazy new kind of life for me.

Sure, school will be getting busy, but that's another month away. And I'm recalibrating so that I'm ready to be a normal kind of busy rather than a crazed-lose-my-hair-ruin-my-fingernails-can't-keep-up-with-friendships-no-time-for-exercise kind of busy.

Part of my crazy new life also includes writing everyday, so I'll be blogging regularly again.

Attachments

Have you ever had to get rid of a significant amount of your possessions?  An extremely unscientific survey of my friends suggests that a few people find this activity cathartic and the rest of us hate it with a passion.  And why is it that we hate it?

On the one hand, there is a redeeming quality of having to take stock of all of your belongings and either find a place for them to fit into the moving truck or toss it (or sell it).  But on the other hand, there seem to be an almost unending amount of things that you need (like organizing drawers/baskets) that don't seem to fit into things that you pack, but are necessary for having an organized home, and they can get expensive if you keep tossing them and buying new ones with every move. 

Then, there are those things that you are personally attached to, but don't necessarily have a great reason for your attachment.  Like, the lamp that has adorned my bedside for years.  I know that because I bought it for $20 eight years ago, the same type of lamp will cost $50+ nowadays and it won't likely be exactly what I like.  I find my mood takes a deep southward dive the minute I start thinking about getting rid of it, and giving it away, not even selling it!  Don't even get me started on how pissy I get the moment my shoes stop fitting into things and there isn't enough room in my jewelry box for large earrings.  Oh yeah, it's bad.

I mean, really, why is it that I can't seem to throw out these things without all of these feelings of attachment to these things?!  What is interesting to me is that I think this might be a fairly specific American problem.  It's not exactly hoarding because I'm not talking about collecting things compulsively and just accumulating things.  I can't help but wonder if, as Americans, our consumerist culture makes us inherently more attached to things because we see consuming as one of the most active modes of citizenship.  What I'm suggesting is perhaps the idea that because buying things is an articulation of our belief in America (I'm not going to cite sources here, but consumerism as an patriotic act is pretty widely studied) our things come to take on a meaning beyond just their utilitarian purpose.

It's just a thought.  And as I have a few more days of packing and getting rid of things, I might have more to say on this topic soon.