Regarding production I asked, "What do you think it involves?" jb wrote: <<I think the production of wealth, especially as it's being used here, refers to exactly what it says, the production of wealth. >> I understand that the basic procedure for defining a term or phrase necessitates using words other than those contained in the term or phrase under discussion. So, to say that the "production of wealth" involves the "production of wealth" seems to me somewhat tautological. <<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.>> You and I might agree on the basic premises and may simply be using the terms differently. I think your remarks are directed at the DISTRIBUTION of wealth while I am talking about the PRODUCTION of wealth <<so that's why you commented on the "eye of the camel" quote? listen -- wealth is not poverty. >> I agree with the sentiment. You are using the word "wealth" in its common parlance. The technical economic definition of wealth (whether you are Keynesian, a laissez-faire capitalist, a fascist, a marxist, a stalinist, or an anarcho-syndicalist) includes "any produced good which has economic value". Other definitions are possible of course. <<the exploitation of workers, no matter what they're producing, can't be explained away as the 'production of wealth' >> I agree. The production of wealth within a capitalist context must include exploitation as its primary feature. <<that therefore Christ, or Pound would approve of it. . . . the 'production of wealth' is, in reality, never an abstraction. real relationships are involved.>> Once again I agree. If, in principle, you mean that Christ would not approve of capitalist exploitation, feudal exploitation or State-Socialist (Stalinist) exploitation or any type of exploitation, I thoroughly concur. {Pound, on the other hand, did approve of exploitation. In spite of his denunciation of some types of exploitation --- such as British imperial exploitation --- you are aware that he supported Mussolini's form of fascist exploitation, Hitler's form of Nazi exploitation, and the entire record of Chinese imperial exploitation, that is, the exploitation of the Chinese people by the bureaucratic and feudal landlord classes. ] <<unlike you, I see the poetic dimension of the poet Ezra Pound as an expanding, creative act.>> I also see it as a creative act. The question is WHAT is being created? <<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. >> I am talking about the IDEAS and BELIEFS which infuse the Cantos and much of Pound's written work. Isn't it more or less of a reduction of Pound to simply say his work is "an expanding and creative act"? You could say that about the work of any poet from Homer to Shakespear to Byron. Are you reluctant to CHARACTERIZE this act, to interpret it, other than to say it is "creative" and "expansive". Other than this, I am not clear on what you think about what Pound did. <<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.>> Not inspite of these things. But in relation to these things (and in relation to many other things). I might venture to ask whether you see Pound IN RELATION to anything other than a very abstract or ethereal act of "creation." What did he create? Why did he create it? What is the relationship between his creation and the world that he tries to represent, transform, and transcend through his work? His act of creation seeks to embody and express ideas and beliefs about social issues, political philosophies, historical acts and movements, and many other topics. Do you want to separate the aesthetic aspects of Pounds work COMPLETELY from any relationship within the world in which it exists or from the world it depicts? I get the fact that you disapprove of some aspects of my approach. But what is your approach? You seem interested enough in economic theories, but I do not understand how you relate this interest to your interpretation of Pound? Recall Pounds on words on this issue: He himself said: "New Masses [Magazine] is quite right/My poetry and my econ/are NOT separate or opposed" (Pound/Zukofsky, 169). I take him at his word on this. So examine a line from the Cantos: In the Cantos, Pound refers to Confucian ethical notions such as "filial piety" in contexts where the implications are clearly economic as well as moral. For instance, in Canto 98, employing the ideograms for land and money, he writes, Filial piety is very inclusive: it does not include Family squabbles over * land * money, etcetera (98/691). [Sorry that I cannot transmit the ideograms via email; you'll have to look at the original]. Such moral injunctions must be viewed in their historical contexts. They are not to be interpreted merely as friendly admonishments to brotherly love; they are designed to uphold the economic interests of a particular socio-political formation. As Chinese historian Yang Jung-kuo points out, Confucius concluded that filial piety and brotherly duty were the fundamentals of benevolence. Why? This was because under a slave system ancient society was ruled by the clan aristocracy. The slave owners as a ruling class belonged to the same clan and had the same ancestors. Confucius thought that the sharp contradictions and strife among the slave owners would lead to the collapse of their rule. Therefore he pointed out that so long as they showed filial respect to their ancestors and parents, the slave owners would be united vertically. By brotherly duty he meant mutual affection and love among slave- owners horizontally. With the slave-owners united both vertically and horizontally, there would be no insubordination and rebellion and the rule of the clan slave-owning aristocracy would be made secure. (Yang, 12-13. In Criticizing Lin Piao and Confucius). Regards, Wei ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com