Tonight at Horizontal Pedagogy–Marx and Hindu mystical poetry

Hi everyone! At tonight’s Horizontal Pedagogy meeting we’ll be discussing two short texts, a passage from Capital and a poem by Allama Prabhu (along with anything anyone else brings along!):

“That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus value for the  capitalist, and thus works for the self-expansion of capital. If we take an  example from outside the sphere of production of material objects, a  schoolmaster is a productive laborer, when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation.”

(Marx, Capital, p.511, penguin international complete works)

***

A little bee born
in the heart’s lotus
flew out and swallowed
the sky

In the breeze
of his wing, three worlds
turned upside down.

When
the cage of the five-colored swan
was broken, the bee fell
to the ground with broken wings.

Living among your men,
O Lord of Caves
I saw the lovely tactic
of truth’s coming on.

–Allama Prabhu, from Speaking of Siva