Ray Nipper 

Marx on the economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844  

Karl marx is known for his numerous stances on economics and the role of the state. In his essay “From economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844” Marx puts his focus mainly on the sort of objectification of the worker. He believes that with the way the state operates as of now the worker is essentially relegated to an inferior position. He believes that whether it’s capital being in the hands of a few or those who are a “Land rentier” these all in a way squeeze the worker.

     He says “The whole of society must fall apart into the two classes, the property owners and the propertyless workers.” He has a point here. He essentially is saying sooner or later it’s going to be tension between the haves and the have nots. Marx believes that the “Political economy” as he says could care little about the priorities or needs of the worker. He states that when it comes to the wages of the proletariat the political economy essentially only hears the needs of the capitalist. I personally don’t find money making evil. I don’t believe marx thinks that profit is inherently bad either. However even if we look at our own society people aren’t receiving proper or even equal wages compared to what they do for work. He also seems to make a distinction between a plain economist and a “Political economist”. He feels a political economists lives in a “Fictitious primordial condition”. He feels a political economist sadly ignores the relationship between labor and exchange. 

     Marx states “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces,the more his production increases in power and range.” He believes the worker being cut out of the deal so to speak.According to Marx the worker himself is a commodity producing other commodities. Marx feels men are essentially being reduced to and by their labor. There is some truth to this. Labor itself is a product. If someone works a job like being a mechanic they are essentially selling their ability or the commodity they possess of being able to fix cars. There is a sort of detachment when it comes to things like this. I think marx believes the more products a man makes the lesser he becomes. Almost as if the society he lives in values the commodity more than it does him. 

     I feel whenever we read Marx we have to remember the time period he lived in. It’s fair to say he lived in a different world than ours. The main point of ire for me nowadays is the wages people are paid vs the cost of living. I’m not a communist. To be frank I believe communism is a utopian ideal and I’m not too trustworthy of utopian ideals. Utopian ideals cannot be actualized because they depend on everyone being able to see the light essentially. That cannot happen. I don’t believe in a perfect society, I believe in a better one. So with that I believe taking some aspects of socialism as opposed to communism makes more sense and is more reasonable. Profit and money aren;t inherently bad,people getting paid next to nothing while still being expected to make a living however is. It is a shame how many people cannot afford to live alone in this society. Everyone cannot simply be dismissed as lazy or unwilling. 

     Who doesn’t want a good place to stay? Who doesn’t want a nice car? Who doesn’t want to be able to go on vacation with their partner? We are not lazy because if we were lazy we’d lose everything. The average person probably wishes they were a bit lazy just so they could relax for once. The minimum wage is still about 7 dollars while the cost of everything else has skyrocketed. Some may dismiss what I’m saying as liberal ramblings but i’m serious. What’s political about wanting to live? What’s political about wanting to have the funds to potentially raise a family? What’s political about happiness? This is why politically I could care less about exhausted titles and silly tropes. People deserve better because for so long we’ve received worse.  

Are theories attached to the text or buried within them? When a painter paints do they ponder “I wonder what people will think ?” Or “I wonder if they can see what I see?”. In Johnson’s deep dive of Melville she uncovers many theories within the text to attempt to prove that theoretical questions are already buried within the text themselves rather than a shiny new treasure that the readers find. She also touches a little into the blurred lines of truth and lies that Saussure talks about as we the readers often assume a perspective or that a story has a singular interpretation, a tradition that has gone on since the inception of text like the bible.In showing 4 separate arguments Barbara reveals that Billy Bud can be interpreted as a criticism of the broken nature of truth as much as the justice system itself. In Melville there are three characters . We have Billy the main protagonist described as innocent , handsome, illiterate and simple minded, Then we have Claggart who is described as intelligent , articulate and cunning with a startitiling and uncomfortable appearance not to be confused with unattractiveness . Lastly the Captain is described as a dreamy book snob . Each accordingly assigned the position of good, evil and judge . So when presented with a case in which Billy murdered Claggart most people decided he was instantly innocent and a sign of truth and Claggart lies and guilt .However in a certain part of the essay Barbara tears this apart through questioning many facets of the evidence pointing to such to point to a possible theory and lesson in BB that the truth isnt straight forward as much as it can just be what’s convenient and easy . This is shown in the ambiguous ending that somehow tells the story in different ways through a song in which Billy is portrayed as a grown man ,and paper in which he is portrayed as the villain . Essentially sending us back to the beginning to relive the tale through different lenses . Who knows maybe one of the endings is the true tale after all we never are told about how the narrator hears the story in the place.

One of the first arguments Barbara makes is how willing we the audience are to dig into Claggart’s description given for a lack of information while also overlooking the same in Billys as shown when she says..”The fact that nothing is known of Claggart’s origins is not a simple, contingent….· lack of information; it is the very origin of his “evil nature…in Billy’s case, an equal lack of knowledge leads some readers to see his origin as divine. ..who his father is, Billy replies, “God’t’nows.” .I think this shows that truth and fact are believed just on the notion of being right but convenient. The way Billy is described makes us the readers give him the benefit of the doubt off the drop because of his lack of intelligence and stutter but that’s all we know .On top of that Barbara finds his obsessive control of people’s view as him being a golden boy unsettling . For someone that’s portrayed being harmless and not very smart you can also argue he is possibly just as manipulative. Being a carpet or pleasant to be around can be done genuinely but when its done fishing for a rewarding response from people it’s manipulative as you are purposely changing and carving parts of your external image to get an advantage in some way shape or form whether its the peoples favor or self satisfaction. To add the mounting case how is it that a timid likable boy is able to kill a captain in one punch ?? This goes back to the case of not knowing anything about billy as Barbara also mentions “As Billy is being taken from the merchant ship to the warship, he shouts in farewell, “And good-bye to you too, old Rights-oJ-Man.” . Again this shows another side of Billy that’s never mentioned and is read as a attitude and final middle finger to his stay at the ship which doesn’t make any since when he was forced to go. Also its mentioned that Billy is the peacemaker of the ship as a reason for him not to leave . While this may make Billy seem like a good kid another way this can be interpreted is Billy disturbs the work on the ship and is again a manipulative character so much so that he changes the mood of what would thought to be a dreadful duty to something entirely different attracting people to do his bidding and buy into his innocence like a moth to the flame.Overall at a quick glance Billy is taken as innocent even readers and critics bought into it which proves that truth and lies within itself are subjective social constructs that mankind created so there can be winners and losers in the battle of intellect we wage on each other.

Options can torture a person. When an individual has to make a decision, there is pressure to make the “correct” choice; however, who has jurisdiction over which course of action creates a better outcome? A grand decision lies in the indecisive mind of an individual. Decision making or a final judgment is an aspect of daily life. Whether a decision is reached in thirty seconds because a person has already established their favorite drink at a cafe or, the decision is reached in thirty days because a person can’t decide whether to date someone or not- my best advice would be to not, a human’s brain is constantly guiding an individual through their lives. Furthermore, a person’s mind is filled with different scenarios; people must wrestle with different possibilities to reach the best outcome. Let’s pull on the decision to date for a moment. An individual might create a pros and cons list to map out the multiple ways a relationship can go and if they are content with the inevitable uncertainty of dating.

This constant diving into scenarios is exactly what Captain Vere in the novella, Billy Budd, was faced with when a crime is committed on his ship. Billy Budd, who is a handsome and polite sailor, strikes Claggart, a skeptical higher official, and kills him. Claggart’s evil or highly analytical tendencies lead him to believe that Billy Budd was involved in mutiny. Since Billy Budd’s stutter prevented him from articulating his defense to Claggart’s claim, he resorted to violence. This violent act left Captain Vere in a difficult position. He is forced sit down with the “differences within” and the “differences between” to make an accurate judgment.

The text tells us that “differences within” are related to multiple traits that exist in a person. For example, “… (Billy as divided between conscious submissiveness and unconscious hostility, Vere as divided between understanding father and military authority) …” (Johnson 2274).  The traits that make up an individual are oftentimes selectively expressed. Even though a person’s righteous qualities are displayed to their peers, it does not mean that they always have good intentions. Differences within also emphasizes how one does not exist without the other. Goodness can only be produced from knowing and having evil traits. Furthermore, the text reveals that “differences between” are face value/ broad observations. An example of this would be known binaries such a masculine versus feminine or authority versus criminal.

Melville’s text reveals that these differences contribute to the act of judging. Through language and a person’s actions, the differences within become performative when they are differences between. Barbara Johnson writes, “The political context in Billy Budd is such that on all levels the differences within… are subordinated with differences between…” (Johnson 2274). Captain Vere recognized the differences within his own good and evil qualities to try and understand Billy Budd’s character. He knows that everyone has their excellent and deplorable qualities even if one is hidden away. Additionally, Captain Vere is Billy Budd’s father, meaning struggles with his duties as a father to protect his son and his responsibility to keep order on the ship. Further, he considered the differences between, which gave him the lens of seeing the actions as a victim and a perpetrator circumstance. Through this lens, he understood the horridness of one of his highest men murdered. The differences within laid out an understanding of his role as a captain and his role as a father and the differences between are the two routes that reach a final jurisdiction. He can either side with Billy (the murderer) and justify it with the notion that his evil qualities had been displayed, but he is generally a good person; or he can side with Claggart (the victim) and see it as a face value crime. His judging process is evidence of Veer considering the knowable (guilty or innocent/ differences between) and the questionable (everyone has just and unjust thoughts/ differences within).

Reaching a decision is completely arbitrary, because of the conflicting nature of humans. Humans must consider the knowable and the questionable and both provide keen information to plan. Why a person reached a decision is not of importance. The process of understanding how the differences within and the differences between influence a person, spits out a decision. In the end, those factors helped him prosecute Billy Budd.

The problem for Johnson with reading Billy Budd and reducing each character to the simple embodiment of an abstract quality is that it creates a disagreement over the meaning behind the story and a conflict between character and plot. Billy Budd begins with the description of three main characters. These characters are introduced as “the innocent, ignorant foretopman, handsome Billy Budd; the devious, urbane master-at-arms, John Claggart; and the respectable, bookish commanding officer, Captain the Honorable Edward Fairfax (”Starry”) Vere.” This introduction emphasizes the qualities of each man and creates the intended nature of the character going forward. However, despite nature, good, evil, judgment, each character opposes their fate and acts in opposition to their described self. The reader sees this reverse as Billy kills despite being innocent. This discrepancy continues with the other two main characters. Claggart dies a victim but is introduced as the embodiment of evil within the tale. Vere, whose nature is one of justice, balance, and judgment, allows a man to be hanged even though he believes him to be innocent. The initial reduction of good, evil, and judgment sets the reader forth considering the actions of each man to be in accordance with their nature. This nature being pre-established determines the qualities and therefore the plot of the tale. However, since the reverse is in effect the plot suffers. Johnson determines the only course of action is ”to save the plot and condemn Billy (“acceptance,” tragedy,” or “necessity”), or to save Billy and condemn the plot (“irony,” injustice,” or “social criticism”).” The plot of Billy Budd and the characters is discordant because the nature of the characters is inharmonious to their actions. Johnson also notes that readers have to make the rationale that “each is more important for what he is than what he does. . . . Good and bad, they occupy the region of good and evil.” With this justification, reading each character as the simple embodiment of an abstract quality is a suitable course but the plot still suffers and is deemed unimportant. Billy Budd’s reduction of each character’s nature is reminiscent of Nietzche’s ideology that humans tend to reduce something to its simplest form so we can grasp the concept but in the end, it is an equation of unequal things. Billy Budd, to me, is an equation of unequal things because the nature of each character is in reverse to their actions. These unequal things, however, equate to the story but it is up to the reader to dissect it and come to the realization of what gets sacrificed due to the reduction and simplification.

Barbara Johnson takes us into this discussion in a piece, “From Melville’s Fist: The Execution of Billy Budd”, that they traverse through three main protagonist characters. The three characters are Captain Vere, John Claggart, and Billy Budd which all are represented in a way the text states, but who’s to say that is how they should really be portrayed. Within these characters, one has been giving the better appeal whereas the other is the negative denotation of it. In this case, Billy would be the guilty; while Claggart would be the innocent. It intertwines with the Saussare’s concept of the signified and the signifier and as a result, getting to know the differentiations on an intimate level. From the text itself, Billy is represented as intelligent and handsome, while Claggart is described as evil and sophisticated. With this in mind, us as readers, the audience can understand that this may be a passage that has a good character and a bad character just by descriptive words, however, Johnson questions how the assumptions that us as readers make based on just connotation, that there will be jargon that will be missed since it is therefore just one piece of writing, accordance to Barthes’ reading where we know that from work to text, we go from unitary to interpretation. “In an effort to examine what it is that is at stake in Claggart’s accusation, it might be helpful to view the opposition between Billy and Claggart as an opposition not between innocence and guilt but between two conceptions of language, or between two types of reading” (Johnson, 2261).

Intertwining with Saussure’s notion, Johnson mentions that while Billy is the signified because of his inner self and is also the signifier which is his outer self. The readers must not simply rely on the text but on the “critical phenomenon” on both. Claggart accuses Billy that he is plotting against them, although the murder hasn’t happened just yet, he is stating that a mutiny will occur. The sign was the yearn for help and unfortunately Claggert was murdered as a result from the accusation, leading to the execution of Billy. Johnson takes that idea/part of the piece and describes it as a story that takes place between the “postulate of continuity between signifier and signified and how remarks can mean something”, but that doesn’t mean it is reality; almost like it’s a paradox of performative communication. The idea of being and doing infers to how something being said orally, is completely different from something being done. From the beginning, a distinction between good and evil was already assigned to characters, but the real evil was Billy while Claggart was the real victim. “…it is precisely the absence of knowledge that here leads to the propagation of tales. The fact that nothing is known of Claggart’s origins is not a simple…lack of information; it is the very origin of his “evil nature”. Interestingly, in Billy’s case, an equal lack of knowledge leads some readers to see his origin as divine” (Johnson, 2267).
In that case, does the signifier really mean the signified? Because in this case, the sign which is words and character descriptions don’t correlate with the actual relationship to the character. It’s an ironic approach; and that may be because we weren’t introduced too much of what the protagonists were about and what they mean. On the other hand, Vere is being described as the reader by committing action, which is judging. “It is Vere who brings together the “Innocent” Billy and the “guilty” Claggart” (Johnson, 2274). In this case, his judgment then becomes a situation of decision. All in all, Johnson mentions that it’s all in the idea of knowing and doing; whether the things that give meaning are the things that will be evoked and if the words we read are actually “preventing us from ever knowing whether what we hit coincides with what we understand” (Johnson, 2277).

In Johnson’s essay, “From Melville’s Fist: The Execution of Billy Budd”, on page 2319 right off the bat with her description of the three men, the reader can get a sense of how these men are all going to perceive this story. Sort of like how Saussure says that everyone can be viewing the same thing but perceiving it as different. Billy Budd being described as “handsome”, “innocent”, and ignorant can tell us that he probably will be an unreliable source of telling us what really happened. Next in description is the “respectable”, and “bookish” Captain who we can tell is going to be maybe someone of a higher ranking in society with more power and reliability. The descriptions between the two, you would trust the Captains viewpoint over the arrogant Billy Budd. Johnson does begin to explain that Melville goes into great depth on both the characters “physical and moral characteristics” giving the readers more insight on them. This helps to also have the reader’s clue into how they are going to perceive the characters. One of the big aspects of this reading is that these men seem to do the opposite of the things people would think they would do. For example, on page 2321, Johnson writes, “Interestingly enough, Melville himself both invites an allegorical reading and subverts the very terms of its consistency when he writes of murder: “Innocence and guilt personified in Claggart and Budd in effect changed places” (p.380” Allowing for the existence of personification but reversing the relation between personifier and personified, positioning an opposition between good and evilonly to make each term take on the properties of the opposite”. This gives basis for what Saussure is trying to explain when it comes to the signifier and the signified. Take for an example, your most trusted best friend and your biggest enemy both catch your boyfriend cheating on you. Your best friend who saw the same exact situation as your enemy, will tell a completely different story when they repeat it. So, when Mellville introduces and describes these characters in the beginning of the story, he is simply trying to make you establish a judgment of what you think these characters are going to do later in the story, especially if you don’t know the ending. To sum up this whole idea I am trying to instill between Saussure’s theory and Johnson’s essay, is that we all see the same thing, we just might not interpret it the same.

Roman Jakobson disagreed with the Saussure’s notion of a static and arbitrary sign that hacks relevance only synchronically. For Jakobson signs need not to be placed in a polarity of synchrony/ diachrony (p1146). Rather, he envisioned an intermediary synchrony. One that was capable of changing from one form to another. In Jakobson’s seminal chapter seminal chapter from linguistics and poetry, he adds verbal functions, which permits one to note that of all the functions interacting collectively, one of them must always dominate the others. He suggested that the poetic function could deepen the fundamental dichotomy of signs and subjects. He set out to show how the poetic function could operate in a nonparticipating context, one that could have considerable significance in the daily lives of ordinary folk who might not even be aware of a poetic function unveiling itself right in front of them. “Two aspects of language and two types of aphasic disturbances.” Jakobson connected the field of the psychomotor disunity of aphasics (those who had extreme difficulty with speaking due to an inability to distinguish one word or object from another) to the realm of the poetic oscillating between metaphor and metonymy. Basically Jakobson is trying to say everything about our daily language in life is poetry. Verbal communication is a form of language and language has to be investigated in all forms (p1147).
The way of speech, in which the addresser sends a message to the addressee. Example, when you’re giving a speech you’re giving out messages in your words for the audience to learn and receive. (P1147).
When you’re listening to the speaker and engaging into the topic you start to form an impression of emotions” (p1148) and in some way this is poetry in itself. The poetry is how you grasp the attention of the reader receiving the message. On page 1151 he quotes “why do you always say Joan and Margery instead of Margery and Joan? It’s not that one is better than the other, saying Joan and Margery sounds smoother.” The poetry in this form of language is the grasping the readers attention. The addressee sends a message to the addressee.

In Melville’s Fist, Barbara Johnson deconstructs and refocuses the conversation and criticism surrounding Herman Melville’s Novella “Billy Bud”. Johnson observes the state of criticism surrounding the piece and how critics often fall into two different camps: those who see it as a “testament of acceptance” and those who consider it a “testament of resistance” or “ironic social criticism” (2319). She goes on to explain the critical obsession with the good/evil dichotomy between the two characters Billy and Claggart and how when they veer from their roles and their actions reverse the expectations. Johnson says “discrepancy between character and action that gives rise to the critical disagreement over the story” (2321) It is the discrepancy between the characters’ established nature and their actions that catapult the conflict and plot of the story. Melville positions this story of polar opposites clashing and reversing roles as the playground for a commentary on judgment and criticism.

Throughout, Johnson uses Saussure’s theory of signifiers/signified to clarify the difference between the two twos of readers that Billy and Claggart are. Saussure proposes “Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes, symbolic rites, polite formulas, military signals, etc. But it is the most important of all these systems.” (825) Language, the exchange of signs and how each read them causes conflict. This theory is used as Johnson explains the difference between the two readers. The central struggle between Billy and Claggart is the differences in how they communicate, read situations, and how they process and demonstrate signs. Johnsons says “it might be helpful to view the opposition between Billy and Claggart as an opposition not between innocence and guilt but between two conceptions of language, or between two types of reading” (2322). There is a disconnect between Billys motivated signs and how Claggart reads them. Billy reads everything at face value and “never questions the meaning of appearances” which makes it impossible for him to effectively read signs. According to Johnson “, Billy is symbolically as well as factually illiterate.” Billy is what Johnson explains as a “literal reader”. Billy also puts a lot of value on signifying goodness. Claggart on the other hand is an “ironic reader” who often assumes signs to be “reverses the value signs of appearances and takes a daisy for a mantrap” which causes problems between Billy and Claggart because Claggart reads the signs from Billy as dubious.

On the reading “On truth and lies in a nonmoral sense” I sort of see some good points on some of his views, even though some things do not make since. Nietzsche thinks concepts are formed from a plurality of a particular experience from which we abstract similarities and omit difference to produce a unifying concept. Nietzsche says that it amazes us when we discover that even the most certain and rigid concepts, such as mathematics is merely the residue of metaphor origination in particular sense experiences. What I realize is that he incorrectly opposed idealism as a subjectively derived truth, rather than an objectively derived truth universal for all people. Rather he regarded as derived from individual perspectives of those living within a world of constant change or everyday change. What then is truth? a movable host of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphism’s, in short, a sun of human relations, which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and established (p768). Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions- they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained on sensuous force (p768). Apparently he hadn’t noticed the objectively derived, universally true existence of gravity and the sensuous force that is experience as a consequence of denying the truth of its existence.  What led me to see his views more what is biography before  his book, which Nietzsche argues that suffering is necessary for artistic expression (p761). At first, I thought he meant suffering was good for us but as I kept re-reading I tried to change my perception of his way of thinking and try and understand. He does not think suffering is good for us. He thinks that suffering is necessary to human greatness, to great creative achievements. If you want to achieve great things one must be able to tolerate and perhaps even welcome suffering, but that doesn’t mean it does a person good to suffer. Tragedy can exist only so long as we recognize and accept, and affirm the irresolvable contradiction between our hopes and how the world is (p761). He also states that that “to have the strength to love life even though suffering is inevitable (p762).

In Barbara Johnson’s essay “Melville’s Fist,” she analyzes and contrasts Billy and Claggart’s abilities as readers. She then proceeds to use Saussure’s theory of signifier and signified in order to help clarify this difference between the two. When it comes to Billy and Claggarts reading capabilities, they are complete opposites of each other in terms of how they interpret and relate to the external factors in the world. When describing both Billy and Claggarts as readers, they can best be described as simple (Billy) and complex (Claggart). When it comes to Billy, he believes that the world can either be black or white with no possibility of there ever being an in-between. When he reads, he always takes what he reads for face value with no deeper interpretation or level of understanding. His failure to dive deeper and analyze what he reads follow him into how he solves problems, deals with criticism and how he reacts to being questions. When it comes to Claggart, he is total opposite. He reads to better understand. He reads to find deeper meaning and does not just take it for face value. He, as a result, develops a “question everything” mentality. When it comes to Billy and Claggarts relationship to each other, Claggarts does not trust Billy and questions his intentions. Billy’s inability to express himself leads him to attack Claggart which only contributes to Claggarts feelings. Johnson uses Saussure’s theory on signifier and signified to clarify these differences between the two. In it, Saussure examines the relationship between sound-image and the concept. Through Billy, it represents a person who is unable to differentiate signifier and signified and only looks at it as something that cannot be distinguished while Claggart is able to differentiate between the both the signified and signifier and is able to understand signed system. Claggart also express a post structuralist view. As a post structuralist, it supports going against the grain of the world and pushes for the person to continuously ask questions.