Gordon Brown on why girls in London should be raped

The Labour party may well implode over the course of this year. One man who seems wholly unconcerned about this is Gordon Brown. He writes in Project Syndicate about 

Ratcheting Up the Pressure on Afghanistan’s Gender Apartheid

This is because in pubs and working men's clubs across England's green and pleasant land, the hot topic for discussion is getting the Taliban to shave regularly and appoint more lesbians of colour to important offices of State. 

Despite recent efforts to make gender apartheid an international crime

like being Jewish?  

and to charge Afghanistan, countries have begun resuming relations with the Taliban regime.

Russia was the first, and so far is the only, country to fully recognize the Taliban regime. But the Chinese always maintained such relations. China counts in that part of the world. Most Central Asian countries have Ambassador level ties with Kabul. 

The United Nations must accelerate efforts

it has zero influence.  

to hold the Taliban accountable for its denial of girls’ and women’s rights, particularly their right to an education.

The Taliban can rely on the Russian and maybe also the Chinese veto.  As for Field Marshal Munir, he may have his own problems with the Taliban but he is an Islamist. He doesn't think Pussy Riot should rule the neighbouring country. 

Brown doesn't seem to realize that the West can no longer interfere in the internal affairs of non-Western countries. 

EDINBURGH – As we enter a new year, 2.13 million primary-school-aged children remain out of school in Afghanistan, while 2.2 million girls have been excluded from secondary education since the Taliban’s 2021 ban, part of a broader campaign to erase women from public life.

Because women in public life were so useless the Taliban was able to take over with nary a shot fired once Biden cut and ran.  

But despite this egregious abuse of human rights

Iraqi human rights were upheld very well by Blair & Bush- thinks nobody at all. 

(which Richard Bennett, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan,

he was appointed in 2022 after the Taliban took over. He is utterly useless.  

has labeled “gender apartheid”),

what label does he give to Whites invading and occupying a Muslim country? Crusader apartheid?  

countries have begun resuming relations with the Taliban regime.

The Taliban supports the Iranian regime. Pakistan too is cautiously supportive portraying the current unrest as purely economic in origin (though the hint is that it is a Jewish conspiracy).  

The UN mission to Afghanistan noted in a 2025 human-rights report that the Taliban regime has intensified its restrictions on girls and women. International negotiations, including the Doha meetings hosted by the UN and Qatar, have made no progress on the matter, owing to the Taliban’s insistence on excluding women’s organizations from any talks and refusal even to discuss girls’ rights. Given this, it is hardly surprising that global mediators and the Taliban have not established a working group focused on female education.

Because it is a non-issue. If Afghan men want their daughters to get an education, that is what they will get. Don't mess with Afghan dudes.  

Worse, restoring normal relations with the Taliban regime means relinquishing countries’ only leverage – international isolation, further diminishing prospects for restoring access to education.

Pakistan's attitude does matter but that has nothing to do with women's rights. China seems keen to develop the country because it has a lot of 'rare earth' and other such resources.  

Last July, Russia became the first country to recognize the Taliban government and restore full diplomatic relations – without securing any concessions on girls’ and women’s rights.

How strange! Putin is well known for his support for Pussy Riot.  

This followed the Russian Supreme Court’s decision in April to remove the Taliban’s classification as a terrorist organization, allowing for closer security cooperation against the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan (ISIS-K) that attacked Russia in 2024.

There you have it. If Afghanistan is useful in the fight against Islamic State, it will have de facto recognition from all and sundry.  

China, for its part, accepted the credentials of an ambassador from the Taliban regime in January 2024, but stopped short of de jure recognition of the government, some key members of which remain under UN sanctions. That has not prevented China from pursuing closer economic ties with Afghanistan. Chinese companies have made significant investments in Afghanistan’s resource sectors. In August, Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Kabul to discuss the country joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

China matters. The UN matters only about as much as Gordon Brown matters.  

After Afghanistan’s falling out with Pakistan, previously the Taliban’s biggest supporter, in October, India upgraded its ties with the regime, including by formally reopening its embassy in Kabul. That same month, Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, a sanctioned official who required a travel waiver from the UN Security Council, visited India and proclaimed that “the future of India-Afghanistan relations seems very bright.”

This is a useful bargaining chip against Islamabad.  

Even more concerning, some European countries have increased engagement with the Taliban as part of a push to deport failed Afghan asylum seekers, lending credibility to the regime despite its persecution of girls and women. This stands in stark contrast to the efforts to make gender apartheid an international crime, which in Afghanistan’s case would imply imposition of further sanctions.

In other words, we should import lots of Afghans to rape girls in London so as to protest against girls not being allowed to go to school in Kabul.  

In July, the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Haibatullah Akhundzada and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, two senior Taliban officials charged with gender-based persecution.

That's all very well, but what if the Taliban retaliates by putting a price on the head of judges in the Hague? The US may impose financial sanction of judges, but jihadis will chop off your head.  

Despite this progress, outside powers have become less interested in confronting the regime, appearing to justify this, at least in part, by weak internal opposition. Whereas India, Iran, and Russia backed forces that put the Taliban under real pressure in the 1990s, there is no organized armed opposition in Afghanistan this time around.

Pakistan is trying to ally with the Tajiks under Ahmed Masood.  

The United States, however, has taken a hostile attitude toward Afghanistan, which President Donald Trump recently called “a hellhole” after an Afghan man killed two National Guard members. As a result, the administration has stopped issuing visas to Afghan nationals and vowed to re-examine every immigrant from Afghanistan who entered the country under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden.

Trump can always send Afghans to some Central American or African shithole.  

Up until now, negotiations at the UN on gender apartheid in Afghanistan have focused more on advocacy than on binding agreements, although there have been calls more recently to classify it as a crime against humanity.

Shitheads classifying shite don't matter if they have no military or economic power. China has both. If you can't pressurize China, you can't pressurize Afghanistan.  

The 59th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in June-July 2025, debated this matter, and Bennett, the special rapporteur, has persistently advocated referring such crimes to the ICC, making girls’ rights a condition for engagement with the Taliban, and devising mechanisms to hold the regime accountable.

ICC issued warrants for Netanyahu & Gallant. Going after Jews is one thing. Go after Jihadis and they may suicide-bomb your ass. That is, if they can be bothered.  

While no treaty amendments or sanctions have been adopted yet, the UN’s Sixth Committee (Legal) has advanced a draft global treaty targeting crimes against humanity.

Trump is putting the financial squeeze on the UN to get rid of this sort of useless shite.  

Further discussions about the treaty, expected later this month, should consider codifying gender apartheid as a crime under international law.

Death should be outlawed under international law. I'm not getting any younger you know.  

Such a move would bolster efforts to pressure the Taliban. The Security Council, to its credit, has sought to do this in its briefings, but the UN system currently lacks a unified enforcement strategy.

So does the Institute of Socioproctology which banned death three years ago. We don't have the money to arrest the Grim Reaper. Kindly contribute to our kick-start campaign.  

Pressuring the Taliban to end its gender apartheid is not only a moral imperative; it is also a strategic one.

It is futile. 

Afghanistan’s population has swelled to more than 42 million and is only growing: Iran and Pakistan forcibly returned 2.6 million Afghan refugees in 2025 alone. This huge influx has strained an already teetering economy. But escaping poverty will be impossible so long as the Taliban denies half its population the chance to be educated and join the labor force.

The solution is female only factories or piece-work done by women within their own homes.  

Kanni Wignaraja, the UN Assistant Secretary-General and the UN Development Programme’s Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, put it best: “The primary issue facing Afghanistan’s economic future” is girls’ and women’s rights.

This is silly. The primary issue is transport infrastructure and investment in mineral & metal extraction.  

“That is the issue,” she added, “that will kill the country, economically, socially, politically.”

More Afghan women should get degrees from Bryn Mawr & Princeton. Kanni herself is very productive- thinks nobody at all. 

Education is not a panacea. Most educated Afghan men can't get jobs. That is an urgent problem for the regime. ISIS will happily recruit such people. Women simply don't matter though if you get paid a fat tax-free UN salary, it may be in your interest to pretend otherwise. 

Stiglitz on why we must stop talking to Americans.

Project Syndicate has an article by Stiglitz on  

America’s New Age of Empire

Following the United States' illegal intervention in Venezuela,

if it is illegal, why has Trump not been prosecuted? The answer is that his action was legal according to the only law which counts- viz. American law.  

there is a palpable sense of uncertainty and foreboding, particularly among America's traditional allies.

Sir Keir fears being kidnapped? Don't be silly!  

But it should already be obvious that things will not end well, either for the US or the rest of the world.

This is not obvious at all. Maduro didn't trust his own Army which is why his security detail was Cuban.  The question is whether Delcy Rodriguez can hold on to power. Still, a big donor to Donald, the head of a 'vulture' fund, will probably triple his profit on the forced sale of the Venezuelan oil company's refineries and other assets in the US. That's ten billion dollars right there. Chevron too will make a lot of money. But Exxon's reluctance to return to Venezuela is justified. The Orinoco Basin may become even more ungovernable. 

NEW YORK – US President Donald Trump has drawn a wave of criticism for his actions in Venezuela, violations of international law, disdain for longstanding norms, and threats against other countries – not least allies like Denmark and Canada. Around the world, there is a palpable sense of uncertainty and foreboding. But it should already be obvious that things will not end well, neither for the United States nor the rest of the world.

This isn't obvious. I personally don't think Iran will witness a revolution, but we have to agree that Obama was wrong to try to appease a corrupt, maniacal, regime. Iran's people are now experiencing the joys that Hamas or Hezbollah, with Iranian support, inflicted on the people of Gaza or Lebanon.  

None of this comes as a surprise to many on the left.

What didn't come as a surprise to the rest of us is that Stiglitz was wrong about Chavez. Is there anything he has been right about?  

We still remember US President Dwight Eisenhower’s valedictory warning about the industrial-military complex that had emerged from World War II.

Kennedy won the election by gassing on about an imaginary 'missile gap' with the Soviet Union.  

It was inevitable that a country whose military spending matched that of the rest of the world combined would eventually use its arms to try to dominate others.

Stiglitz was in his twenties when the US intervened massively in Vietnam. It has been doing 'domination' for a very long time now.  

To be sure, military interventions became increasingly unpopular following the American misadventures in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

The mistake is to keep boots on the ground rather than do hit and run or shoot and scoot.  

But Trump has never shown much concern for the will of the American people.

That's why he was never elected President.  

Since he entered politics (and no doubt earlier), he has considered himself above the law, boasting that he could shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue without losing a vote.

Because he didn't just understand what Americans wanted (e.g. protection from low-wage competition/immigrants) he actually gave it to them.  

The January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol – whose anniversary we have just “celebrated” – showed that he was right. The 2024 election reinforced Trump’s hold on the Republican Party, ensuring that it will do nothing to hold him accountable.

Unless they lose the mid-terms. In that case, Trump turns into a lame deck facing impeachment hearing and Congressional inquiries into Epstein etc. It may be that Trump fears he won't be able to turn Consumer Confidence around by November and so is offering his core supporters foreign policy victories of a type which they may believe will enrich the country going forward. Sadly, Robber Baron tactics seldom make sustainable profits. That is why such Barons disappeared from Europe a long time ago. 

The capture of Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, was brazenly illegal and unconstitutional.

If so, why has no Court case not been brought against him? The plain fact is, if snatching Maduro was illegal, so was Obama snatching Osama. At that time, the US argued that it could violate territorial sovereignty if  'the host government is "unwilling or unable" to suppress a transnational threat emanating from its soil.

As a military intervention, it required congressional notification, if not approval.

This only becomes an issue if Trump loses control of Congress. Everything depends on the mid-terms.  

And even if one stipulates that this was a case of “law enforcement,” international law still requires that such actions be pursued through extradition. One country cannot violate another’s sovereignty or snatch foreign nationals – let alone heads of state – from their home countries. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and others have been indicted for war crimes, but no one has proposed deploying soldiers to seize them wherever they happen to be.

So, Trump has done what no previous POTUS could. That's a feather in his cap. Sadly, this isn't true. There was once a guy called Saddam Hussein who lived in a country called Iraq. The US invaded and occupied it and then hunted down Saddam and his henchmen. 

Even more brazen are Trump’s subsequent remarks. He claims that his administration will “run” Venezuela and take its oil, implying that the country will not be permitted to sell to the highest bidder. Given these designs, it would appear that a new era of imperialism is upon us.

Only if you believe Imperialism can make a profit. It can't. That's why it ended.  

Might makes right, and nothing else matters. Moral questions – such as whether killing dozens of alleged drug smugglers without any pretense of due process – and the rule of law have been shunted aside, with barely a whimper from Republicans who once proudly touted American “values.”

America values winning. Trump is a winner. Let's see what happens if the Republicans lose the mid-terms by a wide margin. Thankfully, stories of corruption & incompetence in Democratic States- e.g. the Somali 'childcare' scandal which has ended Walz's political career- may save the bacon of the GOP. 

Many commentators have already addressed the implications for global peace and stability.

 They have addressed it by screaming hysterically and soiling their pants. 

If the US claims the Western Hemisphere as its sphere of influence (the “Donroe Doctrine”) and bars China from accessing Venezuelan oil, why shouldn’t China claim East Asia and bar the US from accessing Taiwanese chips?

Because it has to conquer Taiwan first. The US just showed that they have the monopoly on global force projection. Even the newest Chinese aircraft carriers are only about 80 percent the size of the biggest American carriers. Moreover, the Yanks have turned combined operations into a fine art. The Chinese simply don't have the experience of doing any such thing. 

Doing so would not require it to “run” Taiwan, only to control its policies, particularly those allowing exports to the US.

The only way to control Taiwan is to occupy it and jail lots of people.  But, this may kill off the golden goose. The smart guys who make silicon chips will have emigrated to the US by the time you get hold of the place. 

It is worth remembering that the great imperial power of the 19th century, the United Kingdom, did not fare well in the 20th.

It fared very well. In both world wars, the Royal Navy was able to prevent Germany from getting vital raw materials. Indeed, during the Great War, many Germans starved to death. The reason the Brits got rid of the Empire was because they could make more money without incurring much cost out of the British Commonwealth and 'Sterling Zone'.  

If most other countries cooperate in the face of this new American imperialism – as they should –

why don't they? The answer is that they have problems with each other.  

the long-term prospects for the US could be even worse.

Long-term prospects depend on productivity and technological innovation.  

After all, the UK at least tried to export salutary governing principles to its colonies,

e.g. killing coolies who objected to foreign rule 

introducing some modicum of the rule of law and other “good” institutions.

The US has the same intention. But so does the Ayatollah. Good institutions kill women who don't wear hijab.  Women who don't wear hijab are violating God's law- which is above international law. As for the homosexuals, don't get me started, mate. 

By contrast, Trumpian imperialism, lacking any coherent ideology, is openly unprincipled – an expression solely of greed and the will to power.

Which is why it is more acceptable than Biden's sententious shite. Trump is transactional- just like China.  

It will attract the most avaricious and mendacious reprobates that American society can churn up.

America was created by such reprobates. The First Nations were slaughtered or driven off their ancestral land.  

Such characters do not create wealth.

America is very poor. This is its punishment for robbing the indigenous people of their land.  

They direct their energy to rent-seeking:

If you own the underlying resource, your economic rent rises by raising its productivity. You can't get any rent for a pile of stinky shit.  

plundering others through the exercise of market power,

plundering does not involve buying or selling. It involves beating and robbing.  

deception,

e.g. making treaties with the indigenous people and then breaking them once you have the upper hand.  

or outright exploitation.

Slavery? Does Stiglitz really not know the history of his own country?  

Countries dominated by rent-seekers may produce a few wealthy individuals, but they do not end up prosperous.

Which is why the vast majority of Americans are starving.  

Prosperity requires the rule of law.

America's law was 'if you are brown or black, Whitey is welcome to fuck you over.'  

Without it, there is ever-present uncertainty.

There was the certainty, for black and brown people in the US, that Whitey would fuck them over.  

Will the government seize my assets?

Will the Whites seize my ancestral land even if, by treaty, they promised not to do so?  

Will officials demand a bribe to overlook some minor peccadillo?

Trump caught Stiglitz masturbating in public. He let him off after Stiglitz handed over a couple of bucks.  

Will the economy be a level playing field,

which it may have been in the Stone Age.  

or will those in power always give the upper hand to their cronies?

 The US was founded on the principle that those in power would give the upper hand to people of their own race. 

Lord Acton famously observed that, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Power replied 'Lord Acton is a fuckin' poofter. Most Catlicks are, you know.'  

But Trump has shown that one does not need absolute power to engage in unprecedented corruption.

One does need to have SCOTUS on side as well as a majority (however slender) in Congress.  

Once the system of checks and balances starts to fall apart – as indeed it has in the US – the powerful can operate with impunity.

Which is why the mid-terms are important. The Dems can't afford to be complacent about this. Maybe lurching to the Left will help them. Maybe not.  

The costs will be borne by the rest of society, because corruption is always bad for the economy.

Stupidity is bad for the economy. Corruption can be 'enabling'- i.e. a way to get round stupid laws or regulations.  

One hopes that we have reached “peak Trump,” that this dystopian era of kakistocracy will end with the 2026 and 2028 elections. But Europe, China, and the rest of the world cannot rely on hope alone. They should be devising contingency plans which recognize that the world does not need the US.

They should have started doing this in 2017. China, it must be said, has significantly raised its threat point while reducing its vulnerability. Europe has been playing tiddlywinks.  

What does America offer that the world cannot do without?

Trump just showed us. America can do global force projection. Europe can't go it alone as the Suez Crisis showed. China may be able to match the US in ten years time.  

It is possible to imagine a world without the Silicon Valley giants, because the basic technologies they offer are now widely available. Others would rush in, and they may well establish much stronger safeguards.

Coz that's what the Chinese are all about- right? 

It is also possible to imagine a world without US universities and scientific leadership, because Trump has already done his utmost to ensure that these institutions struggle to remain among the world’s best.

They were doing it to themselves. Harvard now has a remedial math program. Apparently, there are undergraduates who can't do calculus or basic algebra- stuff the Chinese learn by the age of 16. It is said this is because of COVID. But China had a tighter lockdown.  

And it is possible to imagine a world where others no longer depend on the US market.

That is already happening which is why TACO (Trump always chickens out) applies.  

Trade brings benefits, but less so if an imperial power seeks to grab a disproportionate share for itself.

Sadly, 'Immiserizing growth' (increasing output of goods in inelastic demand leads to a fall in revenue (worse terms of trade)) has been around since before I was born. But non-Imperial countries with an advanced manufacturing/service sector gain even more because they don't have to spend on imperial force projection. 

Filling the “demand gap” posed by the US's persistent trade deficits will be a lot easier for the rest of the world than the challenge facing the US of dealing with the supply side.

This would happen in any case.  

A hegemon that abuses its power and bullies others must be left in its own corner.

Hegemons can't be made to go sit in a corner. The reason they are the hegemon is because they can fuck up anyone who tries to fuck with them.  

Resisting this new imperialism is essential for everyone else’s peace and prosperity. While the rest of the world should hope for the best, it must plan for the worst;

Sir Keir should find some nice cellar to hide in. Otherwise Trump may snatch him from 10 Downing Street.  

and in planning for the worst, there may be no alternative to economic and social ostracism – no recourse but a policy of containment.

Lets all stop talking to America. They will cry and cry. Stiglitz himself is constantly in tears because smart people refuse to talk to him. That is why he gave up his plan to conquer the world. If it worked on Stiglitz, it will work on Trump. The King should pretend he is invisible. He should say 'there's a bad smell here but I can't see the fat bastard who must have farted. Probably it is a ghost. Fetch the Archbishop to conduct an exorcism.' Trump will take the hint. He will resign office and go set up a B&B in Vermont with his new husband- Vladimir Putin. 

 

Anton Bernshteyn showed that all problems about certain kinds of infinite sets can be rewritten as problems about how networks of computers communicate. 

he uglier a set is, the fewer ways there are to measure it. Descriptive set theorists ask questions about which sets can be measured according to different definitions of “measure.” They then arrange them in a hierarchy based on the answers to those questions. At the top are sets that can be constructed easily and studied using any notion of measure you want. At the bottom are “unmeasurable” sets, which are so complicated they can’t be measured at all. “The word people often use is ‘pathological,’” Bernshteyn said. “Nonmeasurable sets are really bad. They’re counterintuitive, and they don’t behave well.”

This hierarchy doesn’t just help set theorists map out the landscape of their field; it also gives them insights into what tools they can use to tackle more typical problems in other areas of math. Mathematicians in some fields, such as dynamical systems, group theory, and probability theory, need information about the size of the sets they’re using. A set’s position in the hierarchy determines what tools they can use to solve their problem.

 “distributed algorithms”—sets of instructions that run simultaneously on multiple computers in a network to accomplish a task without a central coordinator.

Dagger Symmetry & the Sword Prophesy

Because so worthless the Son, by Mum, infinitely treasured

& because, the 'uglier' the set, the less it can be measured

Philosophy is but scolding- Poetry, a lecture,

& Advaita its own Collatz conjecture

Envoi-

Peace hath a Prince! Diakonia's distributed algorithm

Thy damaru drum but Entropy's rhythm.

Guardian wrong on MNREGA

Why does the UK not guarantee British citizens a certain number of days of paid work every year as agricultural labourers? The answer is because it industrialized long, long ago. It got rid of 'outdoor relief' and 'Workhouses'. It does, however, have cash benefits for poor people. The reason all countries try to move in this direction is because after the Agricultural Revolution came an Industrial Revolution. The proportion of the population engaged in agriculture must fall. 

India has grown a lot in the last 20 years. It is obvious that its rural employment guarantee scheme must change. This is not 'the Guardian view', but it is the sensible view. 

Few countries have attempted anything as ambitious as India’s rural jobs guarantee.

It was stupid. India needed to industrialize not to trap people in involuted agriculture. Still, corrupt, coalition, politics forced Manmohan to go down this foolish road.  

Under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, any adult in the countryside who demanded work was entitled to a job on local public works within 15 days, failing which the government had to pay an unemployment allowance.

Did they actually get it? No.  A parliamentary committee report found that across a five-year period from 2018-19 to November 2023, only about 3% of eligible workers actually received an unemployment allowance. But hardly any one was registered as eligible. Only ₹90,000 (£750) in total was released as "unemployment allowance" by various states for the entire financial year, a figure noted as deficient by the Economic Survey 2024.

Enacted in 2005, MGNREGA created the world’s most far-reaching legal right to employment.

Why not create a legal right to immortality? That way nobody would die.  

It generates 2bn person-days of work a year for about 50m households.

What voters want is cash transfers because work done under the scheme is unproductive. The sum involved is about 125 pounds per household per year. This is only about ten percent of expenditure at the poverty line. Free rations, cooking gas etc. is more important. Top this up with cash transfers while saving money on admin and materials used to create the illusion of work being done. 

Over half of all workers were women, and about 40% came from Dalit and tribal communities.

They would prefer cash transfers. That is what they will get. Still, both the Centre and the States can use this shitty act to shore up their support in the rural areas- i.e. enrich local bigwigs who start behaving in a feudal manner. That's not a good thing.  

For a country where vast numbers rely on seasonal farm work, the scheme mattered.

What mattered was money. Give them money. Don't resort to the Victorian 'food for work' mishegoss.  

It stabilised incomes, raised rural wages, expanded women’s bargaining power and reduced internal migration.

No. It empowered local 'notables'. It was corrupt. The rate of return on its projects was low or negative.

Households could demand up to 100 days of paid work at a statutory minimum wage, turning employment into an enforceable right.

No. If you don't get it or you do get it and don't get paid, you are in the same boat as thousands of Government employees whose salaries haven't been paid. Go to court by all means. The case will drag on for decades.  

The World Bank derided it as a “barrier to development” in 2009 – but praised it as “stellar” five years later.

The World Bank had been chased out of the infrastructure building business in India in the Nineties by crazy 'activists' who operated on a global scale. They had learned to kowtow to the crazy leftists who 'occupy Wall Street'. 

India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has however replaced this rights-based system

It was presented as such, but it was no such thing. Rights are meaningless without judicially enforceable remedies. But, because the legal system is dysfunctional and enforcement is discretionary, any such remedies are arbitrarily rationed. 

MGNREGA was a centrally sponsored scheme under the Union Government's Ministry of Rural Development, with the central government bearing 100% of unskilled wage costs and 75% of material costs. Initially there was some notion that local panchayats would find good projects. They didn't. That's why the new scheme focuses on the supply side. Good projects get the green light. Shite doesn't. At any rate, that is the theory. 

with a centrally managed welfare scheme, VB-G RAM G, a shift opposed by the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz

who is utterly ignorant of India. Admittedly, he is also ignorant of everywhere else, still the fact is only a bunch of racist cunts would hold the opinion that a White dude is more knowledgeable about Venezuela or India than the brown people who actually live there.  

and the inequality scholar Thomas Piketty.

see above.  

Mr Modi usually shrugs off critics.

No. He responds to them because he wants to win elections. But what the Guardian is doing isn't criticism. It is eating its own stinky shit. Modi is right to shrug off the criticism that he isn't eating enough of his own shit. This is because eating shit is evidence of mental fucking retardation.  

This time, though, he may have overreached. As MGNREGA’s architect

that was Raghuvansh Prasad Singh of the RJD who was Minister of Rural Development in UPA1. He had a PhD in Math. Manmohan had to defer to him, because RJD had 24 seats,  though he knew the Biharis would steal all the money. 

Jean Drèze argues, the new plan centralises power while offloading responsibility.

Dreze knows money gets stolen. He won't admit this because then his one claim to fame is that he helped transfer money from poor brown working people to rich, corrupt, parasites whose sons and daughters get degrees from fancy foreign universities and acquire valuable real estate there.  

The central government gains discretion over when and where the scheme applies, caps funding and shifts financial risk to Indian states.

How bizarre! Why is the Central Government not bankrupting itself? Why is it trying to balance the budget? Surely it should go in for hyper-inflation? As for 'financial risks'- they should be borne by those who undertake projects which they believe will be profitable- i.e. yield more revenue, or cut costs, for the State Government.  

If the scheme is “switched off”, failure to provide work is no longer illegal.

It was never illegal.  

Prof Drèze is right to say that this is “like providing a work guarantee without any guarantee that the guarantee applies”.

Which was true of the previous system and is true of every fucking guarantee including the guarantee to guarantee the guarantee of the guarantee.  

The old system had its flaws: inefficiency, underfunding, corruption.

If a thing is flawed, the Guardian view is that you should stick with it.  

But the answer was reform not repeal.

This is reform.  

Poorer states, facing new liabilities, may simply ration access to avoid paying out.

That already happened. How fucking stupid are the cunts who write for the Guardian? The reason cash transfers are better is because the admin cost is minimal. The problem with MNREGA is that the cost of ensuring the thing isn't too fraudulent is high. Since richer states can afford better administration, they were able to get more money from the Centre for various anti-poverty programs. In the poorest places, disbursement was lowest precisely because of the expectation that money would be stolen which in turn meant nobody wanted to sign off on disbursement.  

Remarkably, Mr Modi is attempting to prevail with arguments that have failed him before.

No. Everybody gets that cash transfers are better. That's what won the recent Bihar elections. The new law gives a soft landing for existing beneficiaries (i.e. corrupt coteries who, however, are vital for 'booth management' in rural areas) while giving room for rapid expansion of particular schemes- e.g. renewable energy- for which there are economies of scale (or a need to support indigenous manufacturing- e.g. solar panels).

His government passed in 2020 three “farm bills” that aimed to shift Indian agriculture away from a state-led administered-price system toward a more market-based model. They were repealed in 2021 after year-long protests.

Why? Modi forgot the role of the 'middlemen' (arhathiyas) in Punjab, Haryana & Western UP. The latter two were important for the BJP, but the bigger risk was for the party to be perceived as anti-farmer. Anyway, the laws were permissive and depended on the States for implementation. In other words, getting rid of them imposed no cost. 

Farmers

Some farmers in the North West.  

were furious that protections they relied on were taken away without consultation.

No. They said that they feared that this was the thin of the wedge and that at some future date their interests might suffer.  

The odd thing was that it was Kejriwal who gained most from the protests.  

Mr Modi miscalculated in thinking that farmers saw market “freedoms” as opportunities.

He thought that Sikhs going crazy would consolidate the Hindu vote. If it worked for Rajiv, why not for him? The answer is that lots of arhatiyas are Caste Hindus. You could get Dalit consolidation against the farmers but Congress- which did have a Dalit CM in Punjab- was too sclerotic to work this angle. 

Repeating this with rural jobs seems foolhardy.

Not to Indians. We get that it is part and parcel of propaganda for 'double engine sarkar'- i.e. the advantage of having the BJP rule your State as well as the Centre. But propaganda is all it is.  

When monsoons fail, employment guarantees become crisis buffers.

Monsoon failure has highly localized effects which demand ideographic interventions. This is best left to the District Administration. Adding layers of bureaucracy doesn't help. The best system was the British one where the District Collector had wide powers. Sadly, a corrupt political class has intermediated itself alongside shitty NGOs.  Some three decades ago P.Sainath wrote a book titled 'Everybody loves a good drought'. He may have added 'everybody loves farmer's suicides or the plight of unemployed rural labourers'. This is because money could be stolen from such schemes. 

Indian states such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra are drought-prone and electorally pivotal.

Drought can affect some part of virtually every district. 

Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh vote in 2028 in regional polls; Maharashtra follows in 2029.

BJP will raise cash transfers to poor women before the elections.  

A weak monsoon in 2026–27 would allow rural distress to build up under a limited and discretionary scheme.

Unless the BJP wants to get re-elected and provides relief under one or more of the plethora of available schemes. On the other hand, a sufficiently bad sequence of monsoons may cause the State to go off a fiscal cliff. The truly important entitlements- free food etc.- disappear. . 

Climate shocks could translate into electoral judgments by polling day.

Only if Modi is stupid. But he isn't stupid. One way or another, money will be spent to buy votes with cash transfers. But you have to pay off corrupt coteries. That is what 'anti poverty' schemes are for. 

Under the old system, job demand automatically expanded supply,

That was the theory, not the practice. 

diffusing blame;

fuck blame. Politicians want credit.  

under Mr Modi’s plans, the finger will point squarely at Delhi.

No. Delhi will come across like Santa Claus. But what matters is free food and cash transfers. With anything else, the blame falls on the local administration or village council.  

Prof Drèze is backing grassroots protests,

He is Belgian. Also he is a weirdo. The urban Naxal rent-a-mob will come out in force- but they have no force and, in any case, will start demanding the declaration of war on Israel and America and so forth.  

insisting the right to work still exists and must be honoured.

There is no right without an incentive compatible remedy. It isn't the case that 'right to life' means that Death has been abolished. 

Its potency lies with female workers who learned, through MGNREGA, to claim wages and work – not charity.

They don't want work. They want cash transfers. So do British women. They aren't asking Sir Keir to give them 100 days work per year digging ditches.  

As with the farm protests

which were about the arhathiyas. Why? The middle-men also arrange soft bank loans (which will get written off) and other benefits.  

women’s presence turns technocratic disputes into moral reckonings.

Vaginas in Gaza created a 'moral reckoning' for Netanyahu. Venezuelan vaginas will force Trump to repatriate Maduro. Ayotallah Khameni is very frightened of Iranian vaginas. This will cause the fall of Islamist regime everywhere. 

If work is denied because of Mr Modi’s new caps, discontent in the courts, states and streets could again align, as it did before the farm bills fell.

If work is denied, vaginas will take to the streets. Modi will fall. Trump too will fall if Kamala- who was denied work in the White House- unleashes her vagina. Liz Truss should have set her vagina loose on the City of London. That way, she would have remained P.M.

Why does the Guardian have such stupid and ignorant opinions on every subject under the Sun? Is it because it doesn't have to make a profit? It merely has to virtue signal while living in a fool's paradise. Modi doesn't have that luxury. 

Wittgenstein & Masturbation

Wittgenstein wrote- in Section 107 of the Philosophical Investigations-

The more narrowly we examine actual language,

like the actual language he is presenting here

the sharper becomes the conflict between it and our requirement. (For the crystalline purity of logic was, of course, not a result of investigation: it was a requirement.)

What this actually means, narrowly examined, is that if you require logical purity, then there is a conflict between how we normally decode a sentence in natural language and the method of logical analysis. At first blush, this seems a reasonable proposition. Logic is one thing. Linguistics is another. 

The problem here is that it is always possible to give an narrow 'interpretation' to intensions such that they have well defined extensions in which case logic can work its crystalline magic. 

Furthermore, linguistics is not enough when it comes to 'actual language'. You need to understand motives, strategies, and the possibility of error or 'noise'. Still, one may say, 'narrow examination' involves algorithmic grammar induction. Moreover, by a theorem by Anton Bernshteyn, some 'infinite' problems in descriptive set theory are 'algorithmically tame'. In other words, so far as we know, 'narrow examination', if done by systematically by smart people, can make continuous progress of the sort that occurs in other STEM subjects. Logic becomes more crystalline and pure while descriptions, simultaneously, become more precise and useful. There is no conflict. The thing is 'win-win'. 

Even for non-smart people- e.g. me & Witless- if there is a requirement to analyse a piece of actual knowledge in a logical manner, we merely distinguish cases where there are well defined extensions and thus valid logical operations from other cases where intensional paradoxes arise. 

Suppose we have a requirement to use chop sticks to eat our dinner. It is soup. We may say there is a conflict between using our chops sticks to satisfy a particular requirement of ours while also getting something to eat for dinner. But this conflict is easily resolved. Use the chopsticks to stir up the soup and then slurp it down from the bowl. True, if you were served egg fried rice instead, you would get more use out of your chopsticks. Your date will think you are cosmopolitan and sophisticated more particularly if you place the chopsticks up your nose and do your Dr. Fu Manchu impression. 

The conflict becomes intolerable;

It really doesn't. Witless had fought in the Great War. That conflict was pretty fucking intolerable.

the requirement is now in danger of becoming empty.

Nope. It is like the requirement to use chopsticks. Depending on what you are dealing with, you may get little use out of it.  

— We have got on to slippery ice,

How?  

where there is no friction,

Yes there is. Friction increases lubrication or 'slipperiness'.  Most people in colder countries can adjust their gait or change their shoes to deal with slippery surfaces. The thing really is no big deal.   

and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal;

for sliding around? Witless doesn't get that friction helps generate lubrication or slipperiness. 

but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk.

Fuck off! We still get to work even when there is slippery ice on the pavements.  

We want to walk: so we need friction.

Traction. But we can change our shoes or manner of walking.  

Back to the rough ground!

Rough trade, more like- you big sissy. 

108. We see that what we call "sentence" and "language" has not the formal unity that I imagined,

Both have 'formal unity' for different 'formal' purposes- e.g. that of contract law. They may not do so for informal purposes.  

but is the family of structures more or less related to one another.

People in a biological family tend to be related to each other or to have ancestors or descendants in common.  'Family of structures' is merely a figure of speech. Is it useful? No. But shitheads may not understand this. 

-- But what becomes of logic now?

Smart people develop it further. You don't.  

Its rigor seems to be giving way here.

It may 'seem' so to a shithead. The fact is mathematical logic made great strides in the Fifties and Sixties. This turned out to be very useful indeed.  

-- But in that case doesn't logic altogether disappear? -- For how can it lose its rigor?

A penis does not disappear even it becomes flaccid. The fact that you can't use chopsticks to drink water doesn't make the chopsticks disappear. It just means they aren't used for that particular operation. Where intensions have well defined extensions, Liebniz's laws apply and logic can be used. Where this is not the case, logic can point out that the 'intensional fallacy' is at work.  

Of course not by our bargaining any of its rigor out of it.

Rough trade wants to get paid. That involves bargaining.  

-- The preconceived idea of crystalline purity

is like the preconceived idea that your wife will suddenly become a virgin on the honeymoon night.  

can only be removed by turning our whole examination around.

If Wittless had married, he would soon have turned his wife around.  

(One might say: the axis of reference of our examination must be rotated, but about the fixed point of our real need.)

This merely changes the coordinate system, nothing else. A fixed point arises when there is a continuous function mapping a nonempty, compact, convex set to itself. 'Real needs' are discontinuous. Witless is talking in a mathsy manner, but what he is saying is nonsense. 

If we have a 'real need', then there is an 'objective function'. Mathematics may be usefully applied. 

The philosophy of logic speaks of sentences and words in exactly the sense in which we speak of them in ordinary life when we say e.g. "Here is a Chinese sentence",

Nobody says that in ordinary life. You may say 'this is Chinese writing' but how the fuck would you know if it was a sentence or a phrase or a paragraph? A 

or "No, that only looks like writing; it is actually just an ornament" and so on.

So what? The philosophy of logic isn't itself logic.  

We are talking about the spatial and temporal phenomenon of language,

You may have been talking when you said this. You aren't now. You are dead. That's one spatial and temporal phenomenon we can all be thankful for.  

not about some non -- spatial, non -- temporal phantasm.

Phantasms are still spatial and temporal. Was Witless capable of writing a single sentence which wasn't stupid, ignorant or self-contradictory? 

[Note in margin: Only it is possible to be interested in a phenomenon in a variety of ways].

It is also possible that there is no such phenomenon.  

But we talk about it as we do about the pieces in chess when we are stating the rules of the game, not describing their physical properties.

No. We don't talk about words in the way we talk about chess pieces. When did anybody say 'horsie means 'little horse'. It is a word used by children. If you need to move this word around in a sentence be sure to only advance it two steps in one direction if you are advancing it one step in the orthogonal direction'.  

The question "What is a word really?" is analogous to "What is a piece in chess?"

No. It is analogous to 'what is a chess piece really?' The answer is- beneath the veils of false consciousness, both are really types of penis invented by Capitalist Patriarchs to ass-rape the Environment.  

121. One might think: if philosophy speaks of the use of the word "philosophy" there must be a second order philosophy.

Why? I may speak of myself. Nobody thinks there is a 'second order' me.  

But it is not so: it is, rather, like the case of orthography, which deals with the word "orthography" among others without then being second -- order.

Or like the case of Witless who would often talk about himself. But he was merely second rate. He wasn't 'second-order'.  

122. A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words.

No. We fail to understand stuff coz we are stupid, lazy, ignorant or because it is simply not in our interest to do so.  

-- Our grammar is lacking in just this sort of perspicuity.

Not mine. I'm not a drooling imbecile.  

A perspicuous representation produces just that understanding which consists in 'seeing connections'.

No. 'Seeing connections' has to do with paranoia, drug use, or creative thinking. Witless's 'perspicuous representation' does not exist. There are no 'family resemblances' save where there are biological families, nor are there 'language games' as opposed to coordination or discoordination games.  

Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate cases.

Telling stupid lies.  

The concept of a perspicuous representation is of fundamental significance for us. It earmarks the form of account we give, the way we look at things. (Is this a 'Weltanschauung'?)

No. It is some shite Witless pulled out of his arse.  

123. A philosophical problem has the form: "I don't know my way around."

No. It has the form 'this is an open problem'. The meaning is that some other discipline hasn't yet closed the question.  

124. Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language, it can in the end only describe it.

Not as well as linguistics.  

For it cannot give it any foundation either.

Sure it can. But that foundation is likely to be shitty.  

It leaves everything as it is.

Unless it shits itself and people slip upon its turds.  

It also leaves mathematics as it is, and no mathematical discovery can advance it.

Math can close questions previously thought open and thus 'philosophical'.  

A "leading problem of mathematical logic" is for us a problem of mathematics like any other.

Because you have no interest in either subject. Why not say 'a leading problem for smart people' is, for us, like any other smart peeps get excited about but which we can't understand.  

125. It is the business of philosophy, not to resolve a contradiction by means of a mathematical or logico -mathematical discovery, but to make it possible for us to get a clear view of the state of mathematics that troubles us: the state of affairs before the contradiction is resolved. (And this does not mean that one is sidestepping a difficulty.)

In other words, the business of philosophy is Grievance Studies. I am deeply troubled by the state of mathematics due to nobody is giving me Fields Medals. Is it coz I iz bleck?  

The fundamental fact here is that we lay down rules, a technique, for a game, and that then when we follow the rules, things do not turn out as we had assumed.

Von Neumann helped elucidate in which types of games this was likely to happen. If you keep losing at noughts and crosses, chances are you are stupid. Do your PhD on Wittgenstein & Bhratrhari or some such shite.  

That we are therefore as it were entangled in our own rules.

only in the sense that we are sucking our own cock.  

This entanglement in our rules is what we want to understand (i.e. get a clear view of).

which is like getting a clear view of our fucking ourselves the way the Pope keeps urging us to do. I really think she ought to return to the Vatican. How long is she going to crash on the couch? Serves me right for attending an inter-faith dialogue hosted by a hobo. 

It throws light on our concept of meaning something.

The whole point of having a concept is you don't need any further light being thrown upon it.  

For in those cases things turn out otherwise than we had meant, foreseen.

Which is why, if the thing is consequential, we get better at expressing ourselves or foreseeing the outcome of our actions.  

That is just what we say when, for example, a contradiction appears: "I didn't mean it like that."

That's not a contradiction. It is a statement which may be true- your g.f. may tell you you have a tiny todger because she loves you- or which may be false. She wants to hurt your feelings.  

The civil status of a contradiction, or its status in civil life: there is the philosophical problem.

Why stop there? Why not say 'It isn't you. It's me.' is the foundational problem of philosophy.  

126. Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.

It really doesn't. I want a pizza. Will Philosophy put it before me? No.  Fuck you Philosophy! Fuck you very much!

-- Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us.

Vaginas were of no interest to Witless.  

One might also give the name "philosophy" to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions.

One might also call it 'masturbation'. Witless used to think about math when wanking in the trenches during the Great War. Admittedly, that is one better than shitting yourself while in the trenches- which is what I would have done- but I do feel Witless might have been a better philosopher if he had thought about wanking while pretending to understand math.  

Marx on Lagrange & a purely algebraic foundation for calculus

 Marx, late in life, made some note on Mathematical subjects which, however, weren't published till the 1930s. It would be unfair to make fun of a non-mathematician for jotting down random thoughts which occurred to him as he tried to make sense of an alien subject.

Nevertheless, such jottings may be of interest to mathematical economists working in the Marxist tradition. In particular, those who wanted to get rid of marginal analysis which Kantorovich had implicitly incorporated into his work on 'objectively determined valuations' or shadow prices, might have asked whether non-standard analysis of some type could offer a non-heretical way forward. 

Consider the following on 'Taylor Theorem, MacLaurin’s Theorem, and Lagrange’s Theory of Derived Functions’

Lagrange, towards the end of the eighteenth century, had made an attempt to found calculus purely on algebra. By about 1830, with the work of Cauchy, it became obvious to the mathematical community that this could not be done. However, this knowledge may not have percolated very far. 

Newton’s discovery of the binomial (in his application, also of the polynomial) theorem revolutionised the whole of algebra, since it made possible for the first time a general theory of equations.

We would say this problem was solved completely by Galois in 1830. Prior to that there was no clear distinction between 'theory of equations' and 'algebra'. About 15 years previousl, Argand had shown that the fundamental theorem of algebra (d'Alembert-Galois theorem) did not have a purely algebraic proof. By about the mid nineteenth century this was widely accepted. You can minimize the non-algebraic assumptions but you can't do away with them altogether. Marx may have thought this was still an open question. 

The binomial theorem, however - and this the mathematicians have definitely recognised, particularly since Lagrange - is also the primary basis (Hauptbasis) for differential calculus.

Everyone could see that Newton needed it to get to calculus.  

Even a superficial glance shows that outside the circular functions, whose development comes from trigonometry, all differentials of monomials such as xm, ax, log x, etc. can be developed from the binomial theorem alone

Logarithms predate the binomial theorem. Slide rules were being used 20 years before Newton was born.  

It is indeed the fashion of textbooks (Lehrbuchsmode) nowadays to prove both that the binomial theorem can be derived from Taylor’s and MacLaurin’s theorems and the converse.

Apparently, Taylor's work didn't get much attention till Lagrange said it was the basis of differential calculus (which already existed before Taylor was born). I suppose he meant that his own treatment of classical mechanics drew much on Taylor.  

Nonetheless nowhere - not even in Lagrange, whose theory of derived functions gave differential calculus a new foundation (Basis)

Lagrange sought to define derivatives algebraically from the Taylor series expansion, rather than through limits. Sadly this does not appear to be possible and this was well known by the mid nineteenth century. 

- has the connection between the binomial theorem and these two theorems been established in all its original simplicity, and it is important here as everywhere, for science to strip away the veil of obscurity.

I suppose Marx knew that Newton was Master of the Mint. Maybe history had taken a wrong turn because a proper labour theory of value was suppressed by evil Capitalists.  

Taylor’s theorem, historically prior to that of MacLaurin’s, provides - under certain assumptions - for any function of x which increases by a positive or negative increment h,76 therefore in general for f(x±h), a series symbolic expressions indicating by what series of differential operations f(x±h) is to be developed. The subject at hand is thus the development of an arbitrary function of x, as soon as it varies.

This is nonsense. Taylor's theorem gives a good approximation but only for differentiable functions. It is useful. It isn't magic. 

MacLaurin on the other hand - also under certain assumptions - provides the general development of any function of x itself, also in a series of symbolic expressions which indicate how such functions, whose solution is often very difficult and complicated algebraically, can be found easily by means of differential calculus.

An approximation is useful enough. But Fourier Series, introduced in 1807, were often better. Pade approximants came into use by about 1890.  

The development of an arbitrary function of x, however, means nothing other than the development of the constant functions combined with [power of] the independent variable x,  for the development of the variable itself should be identical to its variation, and thus to the object of Taylor’s theorem.

Only differentiable functions are the object of the theorem whose utility is it makes it quick and easy to get a good enough approximation a lot of the time. But there were better methods. 

Perhaps, Marx, in his old age was afraid that younger men would make innovations in his theory and get all the credit. Thus he wants the whole of calculus, indeed algebra, to be contained in the binomial theorem or the Taylor expansion. In this way, he remains the owner of every subsequent advance in his theory. Sadly, his theory was shit. No advance could be made. 

It may now be asked:

Did not Newton merely give the result to the world, as he does, for example, in the most difficult cases in the Arithmetica Universalis, having already developed in complete silence Taylor’s and MacLaurin’s theorems for his private use from the binomial theorem, which he discovered? This may be answered with absolute certainty in the negative: he was not one to leave to his students the credit (Aneignung) for such a discovery. In fact he was still too absorbed in working out the differential operations themselves, operations which are already assumed to be given and well-known in Taylor and MacLaurin. Besides, Newton, as his first elementary formulae of calculus show, obviously arrived at them at first from mechanical points of departure, not those of pure analysis.

As for Taylor and MacLaurin on the other hand, they work and operate from the very beginning on the ground of differential calculus itself and thus had no reason (Anlass) to look for its simplest possible algebraic starting-point, all the less so since the quarrel between the Newtonians and Leibnitzians revolved about the defined, already completed forms of the calculus as a newly discovered, completely separate discipline of mathematics, as different from the usual algebra as Heaven is wide (von der gewöhnlichen Algebra himmelweit verschiednen).

The relationship of their respective starting equations to the binomial theorem was understood for itself, but no more than, for example, it is understood by itself in the differentiation of xy or (x/y) that these are expressions obtained by means of ordinary algebra.

The real and therefore the simplest relation of the new with the old is discovered as soon as the new gains its final form, and one may say the differential calculus gained this relation through the theorems of Taylor and MacLaurin. Therefore the thought first occurred to Lagrange to return the differential calculus to a firm algebraic foundation (auf strikt algebraische Basis). Perhaps his forerunner in this was John Landen, an English mathematician from the middle of the 18th century,

who contributed a column on mathematics to a ladies' journal! 

in his Residual Analysis. Indeed, I must look for this book in the [British] Museum before I can make a judgement on it.

Why not just ask a Math professor? Can Calculus be given a purely algebraic foundation? No. Lagrange & Landen thought differently. They were wrong. 

But, if Lagrange was wrong about math, might Marx not be wrong about political economy? This is the fear that motivates his 'mathematical' researches. 

Lagrange’s great service is not only to have provided a foundation in pure algebraic analysis for the Taylor theorem and differential calculus in general, but also and in particular to have introduced the concept of the derived function, which all of his successors have in fact used, more or less, although without mentioning it. But he was not satisfied with that. He provides the purely algebraic development of all possible functions of (x + h) with increasing whole positive powers of h and then attributes to it the given name (Taufname) of the differential calculus. All the conveniences and condensations (Taylor’s theorem, etc.) which differentials calculus affords itself are thereby forfeited, and very often replaced by algebraic operations of much more far-reaching and complicated nature.

Marx is saying 'I am the Lagrange of Political Economy. I have given all History a foundation in purely economic analysis based on the labour theory of value. True, like Newton, I may not be aware of certain useful applications which flow from my own theory. This does not detract from my greatness. 

2) As far as pure analysis is concerned Lagrange in fact becomes free from all of what to him appears to be metaphysical transcendence in Newton’s fluxions, Leibnitz’s infinitesimals of different order, the limit value theorem of vanishing quantities, the replacement of 0/0 ( = dy/dx ) as a symbol for the differential coefficient, etc. Still, this does not prevent him from constantly needing one or another of these ‘metaphysical’ representations himself in the application of his theories and curves etc.

Marx was aware that he wasn't 'Marxist' himself. He wanted to give an economic explanation for events but would get carried away by his own savage indignation at the philistinism of the bourgeoisie. The truth is, Math developed fast in places where the application of Math made the most money or most increased military security. The Indians and the Japanese and so forth had infinite series but they never bothered to develop calculus. Why? There was no pressing financial motive. Neither country was engaged in oceanic commerce. They weren't competing with neighbours who might invade if their fleet grow bigger thanks to their greater maritime commerce.

Competition isn't always a good thing. It can be wasteful or involve the production of nuisance goods. One way of reducing competition is to become a vertically integrated monopolist. You control every step in the production and marketing process and, hopefully, this keeps you safe from potential rivals. Marx faced competition from other radical political economists. If his system had an independent foundation within itself, then it was vertically integrated and relatively immune to attack. Equally important, Marx would have laid the foundations for the discovery of  'laws of motion' for Capital similar to the Euler-Lagrange equations. It was a pipe dream. Still, Marx became the name of an actual demon- unlike Laplace's merely hypothetical one. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.