Capitalism and alienation

[marmar]

from the International Socialist Review:



Capitalism and alienation
Capitalism creates a society that robs most people of their creative potential, says Phil Gasper


I’M SURE it’s not often that the ideas of Karl Marx are discussed in the prestigious pages of the British Journal of Dermatology, but an article published there in January 2008 attempted to throw light not just on Marx’s state of physical health, but also on its supposed consequences for his entire worldview.

According to the paper’s author, a professor of dermatology at the University of East Anglia in England named Stephen Shuster, medical evidence suggests that Marx suffered from a disease known as hidradenitis suppurativa in which the apocrine sweat glands—found mainly in the armpits and groin—become blocked and inflamed. According to Shuster while Marx complained of excruciating boils, he was actually a victim of this chronic skin disease.

So far so good—a medical mystery solved, perhaps. But Shuster goes on to argue that, “In addition to reducing his ability to work, which contributed to his depressing poverty, hidradenitis greatly reduced his self-esteem. This explains his self-loathing and alienation, a response reflected by the alienation Marx developed in his writing.”

Now I’ve actually read quite a bit of Marx, and this description struck me as just a little off. It is true that Marx told Engels in 1867, “The bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles until their dying day.” But while I’ve noticed quite a lot of loathing of exploitation, oppression and poverty in Marx’s writing, I somehow must have missed the “self-loathing” that Schuster talks about. As for alienation, while Marx discusses it at length in his early writings, I personally find what he has to say illuminating and insightful—an analysis of one of the central problems of modern society that is still with us more than a century after his death. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.isreview.org/issues/74/gasper-alienation.shtml

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. A professor of dermatology has no standing to comment on psychology

Especially not on the psychological state of somebody living 150 years ago. This qualifies as somebody speculating well beyond his or her expertise, or, for that matter, the evidence.

Whenever I see somebody trying to "explain" a philosopher's work based on personal characteristics, I know I'm reading a line of utter bullshit. Either address the concepts or don't, Professor Schuster, but please stop pretending that you can "explain" their origin in the personal traits or conditions. The only one to ever do this well was Pierre Klossowski, whose Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle did address Nietzsche's medical conditions at some length. But Klossowski, unlike Professor Schuster, wasn't an overreaching fool, so he addressed the concepts in a complex way, rather than simply pointing to a "cause" for the concept in some other system (physical, etc.). This particular kind of imbecility has become all the vogue now, unfortunately, as evidenced by the publication of severe stupidities (see, for example, James Miller's completely asinine book on Foucault).