I hadn't given much thought to the way I wanted to put something together until I really started reading Das Kapital.
It isn't that Marx's Capital is the best possible way for constructing an intellectual work, but that the work itself is put together in such a systematic and crystalline fashion.
Starting from the commodity, Marx builds an entire system up from very simple mechanisms. You don't see this type of project a whole lot anymore.
I look at my work and it appears as a confused mess in comparison, but I'm not sure that this is entirely a bad thing. Marx is indeed a tragic figure, as it seems that he did end up producing a private work in social association with other private thinkers.
And the work appears as a great cathedral, or work of production, that had to be produced on the backs of workers and slaves, if one is to trace back all of the various strains of material support.
It is a towering work of one person's thought, so that it takes a rigorous, academic approach to truly understand the nuances of the argument.
One can be right about it. One can be wrong about it. And one has to concentrate a huge amount of energy, of computing power, in a limited number of individuals. It becomes clear why Lenin was so adamant about a vanguard class, and why the practical revolutionary struggles curdled into the Stalinist regime. Stalin was reputed to have impeccable logic.
And this is the issue. The more that one single person strives to understand a greater breadth of existence, the more idiosyncratic and abstract that understanding becomes. Universal truths must be expressed in a private language in this case.
The mystics on the other hand seem to understand quite a bit, and at the same time they are insisting: give it up! Perhaps it is because there is a more even distribution of thought and action.
Hmm, some things to consider. And what am I to do?
