Moving Up The Charts
The BBC proves that people are getting desperate: Marx popular amid credit crunch
Karl Marx is back in fashion, says one German publisher, who attributes his new popularity to the economic crisis.
Publisher Karl-Dietz said it sold 1,500 copies of Das Kapital this year – up from the 200 it usually sells annually.
…“It’s definitely in vogue right now,” said the publisher’s director Joern Schuetrumpf.
“The financial crisis brought us a huge bump.”
…
“There’s a younger generation of academics tackling hard questions and looking to Marx for answers,” Mr Schuetrumpf said.
But he doubted their perseverance: “I doubt they will read it all the way to the end, because it’s really arduous.”
Arduous? This book is the ultimate cure for insomnia. “Turgid prose” was invented to describe Das Kapital. Bulwer-Lytton was John Grisham compared to Karl Marx. I survived a year of “The Novels of Soviet Socialist Realism” so I know “boring”. I read Pravda and Izvestia daily for years, so I know “turgid”.
This door stop is boring in English; it is more boring in German; and it is the ultimate expression of boredom in Russian. The only way this book inspired a revolution is if a frustrated student threw it out a window and stuck an official by accident. The Communist Manifesto, fine, I can see that stirring up trouble, but this is the first large scale economics text book, and it is just as “exciting” as all the others.
OTOH, it is clearing an inventory back-up for a few publishers, so it will help the economy an infinitesimal amount.
2 comments
It would be way more fun if Harpo Marx was back in fashion…..
At least the horn would keep you awake.
Now with Groucho you could always hope for the secret word [a reference from very early television].