[Milton-L] Milton and Marx

[John Hale]

Interesting strand, so thank you Nancy.  But it's winter here, and my
brain is frozen, as you will see from the questions now.
1. Milton could be seen as a professional author to almost the extent that
Spenser was.  What extent was that, given the ideological drives of the
committed Protestant?
2. Has this topic anything to do with the surprising number of his
publishers?  Why did he change so often?
John Hale



>
>
> Nancy Charlton wrote:
> >
> > Hello all --
> >
> > Brooks reflects upon his conversation with a trucker he met at a
> truck
> > stop in VA, describes his dedication to his work, and uses this as
> the
> > point of departure for a look at the values that determine social
> > class in the USA. What is called (in varying tones of derisiveness)
> > the "working class," concludes Brooks, defines itself by "the moral
> > centrality of work" (term from sociologist Michele Lamont). They do
> > "hard things," as opposed to those who must persuade and hence work
> > with words, whom they regard as lying and manipulative. They see
> > social class in moral rather than economic terms
> >
>
> Class is a relation and a process, NOT an identity, and the bulk of
> the
> u.s. working class (about 85%+ of the population) does _not_ engage in
> hard physical labor. Brooks is simply spouting sheer nonsense.
>
> > To exemplify further--and this is why I'm sending this to
> > Milton-L--Brooks observes:
> >
> >      Karl Marx once observed that “Milton produced Paradise Lost for
> >      the same reason that a silk worm produces silk. It was an
> >      activity of his nature." Here was a guy that had found in
> >      trucking the activity of his essential nature.
>
> > Why silkworms? Exotic and precious, perhaps; but did PL flow from
> > Milton's gut like material to enclose a pupa?  Was he a hard worker
> or
> > a manipulator?
>
> We are reading Karl Marx here, not Richard Crashaw. The point of
> comparison is very simple: both Milton and the silk worm PRODUCE.
> Nothing else about the silk worm is relevant, since Marx is not
> concerned with either psychology or aesthetics here but with the
> nature
> of capitalist production -- more specifically, with the difference
> between productive and unproductive labor under capitalism. Let's have
> some more context. (It comes from the Economic Manuscript of 1861-63
> (second rough draft of Capital):
>
> ****It emerges from what has been said so far that to be productive
> labour is a determination of labour which has at first absolutely
> nothing to do with the particular content of the labour, its specific
> utility or the peculiar use value in which it is represented.
>
> The same kind of labour can be productive or unproductive.
>
> E.g. Milton, who did the Paradise Lost for £5, was an unproductive
> worker. But a writer who does factory labour for his publisher is a
> productive worker. Milton produced Paradise Lost for the same reason
> as
> a silkworm produces silk. It was an expression of his own nature.
> Later
> on he sold the product for £5. But the Leipzig proletarian of
> literature
> who assembles books (such as compendia of political economy) under the
> direction of his publisher is a productive worker, for his production
> is
> from the outset subsumed under capital, and only takes place so that
> capital may valorise itself. A singer who sells her songs on her own
> account is an unproductive worker. But the same singer, engaged by an
> impresario, who has her sing in order to make money, is a productive
> worker. For she produces capital.'**** (MECW 34, p 136)
>
> Notice, Marx does _not_ distinguish class on the basis of the kind of
> work done but on the kinds of relations involved. So both the trucker
> and the hack reporter for the NYT are working class. If either has
> contempt for the other, so much the better for capital.
>
> Also, "his nature" for Marx would be historicized, not some mystical
> "essence" as with Brooks.
>
> Carrol
>
>
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