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- Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine <[log in to unmask]>
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Sat, 24 Jun 2000 16:11:45 EDT
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In a message dated 06/24/2000 2:35:31 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
<<
 I think the production of wealth involves the expenditure of labor to add
 value to certain materials.  (The labor theory of value as enunciated by
 Smith and Franklin, and amplified by Marx is the most useful theory, I
 think).
 What do you think it involves?
  >>

I think the production of wealth, especially as it's being used here, refers
to exactly what it says, the production of wealth.  otherwise, one would be
in the position of  (using your definition) opposing the production of
anything.  while it's no doubt true that labor adds value, it's pointless to
argue that anything produced creates wealth (when in fact you mean value),
because it's for whom the wealth is created, and for whom it's enjoyed that's
at issue, with Christ and/or with Pound.
<<
 What does the individual produce, if not wealth?  How is subsistence
 possible without some such production of wealth?   In the case of Jesus,
 when he (and his father) acted as carpenters, they added value to the
 materials they purchased, and sold them.  They used the proceeds to purchase
 other goods which were necessary for subsistence, and for the continuation
 of production.  This is a common feudal and pre-feudal mode of production.
 I am suprised you find it odd or strange.  In developing countries this is
 still how many, many people still produce wealth.   (Granted, we are not
 talking about large amounts of wealth; but it is the only kind of wealth
 that over half the world's population has access to).
  >>

here again you're confusing, perhaps deliberately, wealth with value.
getting paid 30 cents an hour for stitching together a garment is not wealth,
unless you want to so debase the concept of wealth as to make the concept of
wealth so broad as to be meaningless.

<<
This is one way, perhaps, to interpret my words.  But that was not the
meaning I wished to convey.  I am differentiating between two acts:
PRODUCING WEALTH, and BECOMING WEALTHY.  It seems that Jesus did not have
any problem with the first, but said that the second was fraught with all
sorts of moral difficulties and spiritual peril.>>

so that's why you commented on the "eye of the camel" quote?  listen --
wealth is not poverty.  the exploitation of workers, no matter what they're
producing, can't be explained away as the 'production of wealth' & that
therefore Christ, or Pound would approve of it.  and one more thing --
despite your attempt to make it so, the 'production of wealth' is, in
reality, never an abstraction.  real relationships are involved.

<<
Well, of course there are as many exponents of the "spirit of the teaching
of Christ" as there are individuals.  I leave it to you to expound the
teaching as you see fit of course.  You could spell it out for us if you
like.  I have no objection. [As to "the spirit of the poet in Pound," I am
trying to explicate the meaning of Pound's work, which may not be precisely
the same thing that you are talking about.  In any case, the same rule as
regards "the spirit of the teaching of Christ" may apply.  I invite you to
give us your rendering of the "the spirit of the poet in Pound," as you see
it.]  >>


unlike you, I see the poetic dimension of the poet Ezra Pound as an
expanding, creative act.  I do not attempt to reduce it to the facts of his
life, nor to his political remarks, and I think that attempts to do so, such
as yours, have an agenda that has nothing at all to do with the stated
objective -- to understand.  you have it backwards -- the genius of Pound's
poetry has nothing at all to do with being a fascist, or an anti-Semite, or a
crank -- it exists in spite of these things.  your attempt to reduce the
Cantos to a warmed over version of your version of Confucianism has more to
do with your limitations than with any of Pound's.  you're not the first
critic who's tried to make a reputation gnawing on the rotted flesh of
Pound's failures, nor will you be the last.

jb...

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