Pound read and heavily annotated an Italian edition of Kapital (1931, I
think).  The edition is now at the Humanities Research Center in Austin.
Pound admired Marx's passion for social reform, but believed that he didn't
understand the nature of money.

Tim Redman

-----Original Message-----
From: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Carrol Cox
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 4:53 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Pound & Politics


Richard Seddon wrote:
>
>Pound found Marx's reasoning simplistic and largely
> uninformed.
>

Pound did make rather snap judgments on many things -- not a negative
criticism of the poem, because poems are quite justified in making bad
judgments. Actually, I suspect the main contribution poems make to
general intellectual life lies in the questios they raise (deliberately
or as an unintended consequence) than in any positive "vision of life"
or political thesis they embody. Whatever one thinks of Pound's views,
the poem forces the reader (or at least can force the reader) to
formulate his/her own comprehensive perception of the world we live in.

But regardless of what kind of ultimate judgment one makes of Marx's
work as a whole, to say that it was either "simplistic" or "uninformed"
illustrates pretty complete ignorance of Marx's work.

Pound had either read _Capital_ or browsed in it (probably the latter),
because in Canto 33 he makes excellent use of some material from the
chapter on the working day.

Carrol

> Rick Seddon
> McIntosh, NM