AtD translation: "trains of history" and "multiples"

[Mark Kohut]

     Some glossing. Trains are bad shit in Pynchon. Wherever they appear.
> They brought the

loot of industrialism everywhere. See the famous Hawthorne story. how Frank
meets his end.

         So, I read 'trains of history" as we learn from Jochen and a
famous quote of Marx: "Revolutions
are the locomotives of history" in a judgmental way by Tom . ....That
"trains of history not fully run"
fits right into TRP's satirization of Marx's prophecies and ways elsewhere
in his work, not least in AtD.
[NOT I would argue Marx's deep insight "the labor theory of value" because
the exploitation of labor, workers
is, of course, a lifelong constant theme....

     I might read 'multiples' this way....."government budgets anywhere"
tell the story,.......the govenrment's
money is always allocated where there is the most fear.......the most
immediate fear.....
    money budgeted for the military as fear of other countries get created;
money for the police as Law & Order
    is always the solution to creating fear of the Other, of violence;
money for border defense since we must fear
    immigrants; money to keep women from their rights over their own
bodies, like that.

>
> <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> >>
> >> P557.7-14   “Everywhere one finds a spectrum of need, from bludgeons and
> >> machetes to submarines and poison gases—trains of history not fully run,
> >> Chinese tongs, Balkan komitadji, African vigilantes, each with its
> >> attendant population of widows-to-be, often in geographies barely
> sketched
> >> in pencil on the back of some envelope or waybill. One glance at any
> >> government budget anywhere in the world tells the story—the money is
> always
> >> in place, already allocated, the motive everywhere is fear, the more
> >> immediate the fear, the higher the multiples.”
> >>
> >> What kind of "multiples" are we talking about exactly? I assume it has
> to
> >> do with profits, but more details will be welcome.
> >>
> >> The wiki says "Karl Marx, in Das Kapital, referred to wars as the
> 'express
> >> trains of history' ", but I couldn't find such reference in either the
> >> English or the Chinese edition of Das Kapital. However, in his Class
> >> Struggles in France 1848 to 1850, Marx did say "Revolutions are the
> >> locomotives of history", a quote known to many Chinese who lived through
> >> the Mao era. Can anyone confirm or deny the claim in the wiki?
> >> --
> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>