Reviews for The beginning of the Chumash

The average rating for The beginning of the Chumash based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-10-25 00:00:00 Jason Evans A subtle paean to Engels. Paints a picture of Engels as the precursor, refiner and ultimately the author of most of what today bears Marx's name. I exaggerate but it is only because this take amazes me. The book is a great intro to Marxism and takes special care to interpret Marx on his own terms and to stick to all his terminologies and conventions and thus resolve some of the apparent contradictions. This is definitely a work I will keep in mind during my soon-to-begin exploration of Marx's works and later interpretations. When the conclusion has a passage like this, it makes the book so worth it! - The Marxist constituency has remained as narrow as the conception behind it. The Communist Manifesto, written by two bright and articulate young men without responsibility even for their own livelihoods'much less for the social consequences of their vision'has had a special appeal for successive generations of the same kinds of people. Not to Mention: Despite the massive intellectual feat that Marx's Capital represents, the Marxian contribution to economics can be readily summarized as virtually zero. Professional economics as it exists today reflects no indication that Karl Marx ever existed. This neither denies nor denigrates Capital as an intellectual achievement, and perhaps in its way the culmination of classical economics. But the development of modern economics had simply ignored Marx. Even economists who are Marxists typically utilize a set of analytical tools to which Marx contributed nothing, and have recourse to Marx only for ideological, political, or historical purposes. In professional economics, Capital was a detour into a blind alley, however historic it may be as the centerpiece of a worldwide political movement. What is said and done in its name is said and done largely by people who have never read through it, much less followed its labyrinthine reasoning from its arbitrary postulates to its empirically false conclusions. Instead, the massive volumes of Capital have become a quasi-magic touchstone'a source of assurance that somewhere and somehow a genius "proved" capitalism to be wrong and doomed, even if the specifics of this proof are unknown to those who take their certitude from it.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-05-01 00:00:00 Erica Vino You can't get away from the importance of Karl Marx to culture, history and politics. So I decided I'd read Marx's Das Kapital. I tried. It's impenetrable, turgid, truly painful reading. Mind you, I don't mean that in and of itself is a refutation of Marx's claims. Human Action, the magnum opus of Ludwig Von Mises, the economist arguably most revered by free market advocates, is easily as impenetrable and painful to read. Sometimes it's just the case that some subjects (such as the Theory of Relativity) are inherently difficult and not to be understood without a lot of work. Thus I picked up Sowell's Marxism. I hoped it might either save me from reading Marx or might make him more comprehensible next time I tried. I knew from other books by Sowell that he is an elegant writer, and that though he is now pro-free market, he once was himself a Marxist. It's evident reading this book that Sowell's reading of Marxist literature is exhaustive and that he spent decades thinking through the ideas of Marx. That doesn't mean all the ideas within this book are easy to digest, but that's not the fault of Sowell. Three-quarters of the book are a kind of "Marxism 101 for Dummies" that is free of any sniping or arguments--they're just an attempt to help people understand what Marxism is, and what it isn't, concisely, in lucid prose, with generous quoting from Marx and Engels--duly cited--and with summaries at the end of each chapter. I'm sure some Marxists would disagree with some of his interpretations of text--just as Orthodox, Catholics, Methodists and Baptists would disagree over the Bible despite all being Christians. But I was impressed by Sowell's tone in the explanatory chapters--measured, reasonable, objective. Quite unlike the rather tendentious, even acid Sowell I've found in his political columns. I bet if you gave the text of the explanatory chapters to a Marxist, he might disagree with some points, but he wouldn't guess this was by an opponent of Marx. And Sowell is careful to set before the reader Marx's influences from Hegel to Adam Smith, the differences between Marx and other contemporary socialists and his successors such as Lenin. Plenty of the things I learned about Marx's beliefs surprised me. (For instance, Marx supported religious freedom. He did not support banning religion. By saying religion was the "opium of the people" he meant that people used it to help blunt their pain over their circumstances, but not that it needed to be prohibited the way we prohibit heroin.) The last two chapters go beyond simple explanation and interpretation. "Marx the Man" is a short biography of Marx, that had its own surprises and ironies, and in the very last chapter, "The Legacy of Marx," Sowell finally unleashes his critique of Marx's system. All well-worth the read.