WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO

I have been absent from this site for several days because I have been brooding about my next Marx lecture.  I have reached the point in my lectures at which I must make good on my promise to “put the irony into the equations” so that Marx’s literary critique of the mystifications of capitalism, his economic critique of classical Political Economy, and his historical account of the slow development of capitalism within the old order are united in a demonstration that capitalism rests on the exploitation of the working class.  Yesterday, during my morning walk, I figured out how to explain this in a way that will, I hope, be both clear and persuasive.  This involves a fundamental critique of the Labor Theory of Value and an entirely new set of equations that build the mystifications of the capitalist marketplace into the mathematics.  I have no idea whether the lecture will be a pedagogical success – which is to say, whether it will make any sense to the viewers – but the lecture will encapsulate my novel interpretation of Capital for eternity, or what passes for eternity in the Cloud.  This seventh lecture will be followed by a final eighth lecture in which I look to the present and try to answer two questions:  First, what is the modern neo-classical mystification of capitalism that has taken the place of the old classical mystification; and Second, what is happening right now “within the womb of the old society,” in Marx’s pregnant phrase, that is preparing the way for the possibility, if not the inevitability, of Socialism?

Meanwhile, Trump is ensnared in the trap being laid for him by a porn star, a Playboy Playmate, and a former Apprentice contestant, and the consensus among the legal commentators is that he is in for a world of hurt.  If these three women are his undoing, I shall experience a conversion on the road to Damascus and start believing in a God with a truly divine sense of humor.