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9.30.00, 10:27 p.m.

Rob e-mails me to ask, "Do you have the citations for Marx's statements on the commodity fetish? I know it's in one of the volumes of Kapital, but those are pretty damn big."

I reply, "Yes, I do as a matter of fact! It's in the first volume of Kapital, part one 'Commodities and Money,' chapter one on 'The Commodity,' section three on 'The Value-form, or Exchange Value.' If you have the Penguin edition it begins on page 163. That's my favorite part, naturally!"

Crown me Queen Geek now, please.

RESPONSE A frequent and always welcome source of dialogue, John Burke wrote to respond to an earlier entry (look down) about the dangers of adhering to a theory/action split in which the latter is valued over the former: "The eerie familiarity is older than that. I sat in a CPUSA training class listening to Will Weinstone, who was already in his late '70s (this was 1968), hectoring someone into cringing silence with that deeply corrupt business counterposing 'action' (good) to 'theorizing and talk' (bad), when in fact all that was meant was 'shut up and do as you're told.' In fact I would venture that the mechanism by which this tactic 'reproduces structures of complicity and violence' is that it valorizes command-and-obedience as the model for revolutionary practice."