Marxian analysis

Regular-ish commenter "dougie" notes astutely (in comments to the old-time radio post the other day) that it takes a long time to read Das Kapital. This reminded me of a book I almost read one time consisting of letters Marx wrote to his parents. And maybe vice versa. Can't seem to find it, but, I swear, a lot of the letters from Marx, Jr. went like this:

Dear Dad,

The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or - what is but a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within which they have been at work before. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic - in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so we can not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life,
from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production. No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore, mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.

Love, Karl

P.S. The check was late again. Ask Mom to send more cookies. No chocolate chip!

Except, you know, about 4,000 times longer.

Update: Okay, you caught me. The quote is actually from Marx's "Preface to 'A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'" (1859). This in no way detracts from the point, which, if I have to spell it out, is that Marx is REALLY BORING.