What's the word for what Marx is doing here? Not quoting, not paraphrasing but ...? Edit: Also, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon

@PoloHoleSet Sure we are. There is an explicit claim here (this is a real quote) and an implicit claim (this quote correctly reflects marx's opinion). The implicit claim is the one that is actually relevant here, as the reason for using this quote is to attribute certain opinions to marx. The fact that the quote actually says something entirely different is thus relevant for an answer.

@tim - any time there is a question about "is this claim true" or "did this person say this," and an answer provides insight to the context that makes the quoted/questioned statement misleading (often with a "yes, but...." in the answer), moderators will edit or shut that down as non-responsive to the question asked.

@tim - read on down in the quoted meta/discussion you, yourself, linked, and look at what the moderator who most often shuts down answers that highlight context says about it.

@PoloHoleSet In my experience mods generally don't do that (unless the context provided is widely off-topic or unsupported by evidence). The meta question also deals with this exact situation, and the upvoted answer agrees with that. While the mod there has a somewhat different opinion, they agree that context can and should be provided if appropriate. I mean, using the no-context approach, we could have a question asking if Obama said that "slavery is ok", with an answer that simply says Yes (with a link to a source of course); and that's really not in the spirit of this site.

He never actually says slavery was bad. There were white supremacists who supported the union e.g. Lincoln.

@tim - My experience is quite different, obviously, and the mod there acts according to the somewhat different opinion he offered, as he offered it, at he's not alone. We'll have to agree to disagree.

"It is clear that these aren't ideas Marx holds" That doesn't seem clear to me. It appears he is writing about slavery, posing a question and then attempting to answer how Mr Proudhon would have answered. "After these reflections on slavery, what will the good Mr Proudhon do?" is when Mr Proudhon's dialetics is being applied.

It's not clear (to me, at least) how much of what Marx writes there he actually means. It could be: "Here are some observations on slavery, which I really mean; now let's see the silly things Proudhon would do with them." Or it could be: "Here are some silly things Proudhon might say about slavery, and them some silly conclusions he would draw." One bit of evidence for the latter is his use of the term "antagonism", which he says earlier on is characteristic of Proudhon's sloppy argumentation.

@GarethMcCaughan I guess you could read it that way as well, but it doesn't make much sense to me. I think we can all agree that Marx critizises the synthesis of liberty and slavery he attributes to Proudhon. But if he agrees with the previous points, what would his solution be? And how does that fit in with his opinion about black emancipation?

@GarethMcCaughan That reading also conflicts with other writings by marx on the topic, eg The Poverty of Philosophy where he again attributes this opinion to Proudhon: For him, M. Proudhon, every economic category has two sides – one good, the other bad. [...] What would M. Proudhon do to save slavery? He would formulate the problem thus: preserve the good side of this economic category, eliminate the bad.

@tim That quote would make a great addition to the answer, since it directly references M. Proudhon, not just the general attitude to slavery. Indeed,that source contains a very similar paraphrasing to the one in the original quote. I find the footnote added by Engels interesting, though - essentially saying that the underlying logic is sound, since the USA in particular was dependent on slavery at the time.

It struck me that the question in the title can be answered with "No. He wrote that Proudhon would say so."

@PoloHoleSet from Sklivvz in comments to his answer: "I'm only declining to address non-notable implicit claims. As long as you are able to prove that a claim is notable, we're gold." In this case, the questions implicit claim that these are Marx's own thoughts on the subject I'd say is pretty notable and worth dispelling.

@JollyJoker Thanks, that seems to be a much better summary which leaves less room for interpretation.

@TemporalWolf But the claim that these are Marx' own opinions (as indicated by the question title) is only made by the questioner and by nobody else (as far as I can see). Why should that be notable and worth dispelling? Maybe questioner should provide some links where this claim is made, in order to underscore the notability.

@Trilarion The entire point of pulling the quote out of context is to attribute this opinion to Marx; The only other reason to use this quote from an obscoure letter Marx wrote is to show his criticism of Proudhon, but that doesn't work without the context. Googling the quote shows that it is only used to criticize Marx (and not for his criticism of Proudhon) (see eg here). Each individual page is probably not notable, but taken together - in addition to wikiquotes - it becomes notable.

@tim Shouldn't the question itself contain the quotes you mention that use the quote of Marx to criticize him? Otherwise how can we judge the notability? I think the question has to be extended to include notable criticisms (not just do the job of criticizing Marx itself) to prove they actually also exist outside of this stackexchange.

@Trilarion That's probably something that should be discussed under the question, not under this answer. But honestly, it is very very difficult for me to believe that anyone would actually think that this quote is used neutrally at wikiquotes. When someone is quoted as saying (slight simplification) "Slavery is good", when they actually said "X is bad because they think slavery is good" , how is that not a deliberate attempt to attribute this opinion to them? Why else remove the context from the quote? There is really no good reason for that at all.

@Trilarion Note that wikiquotes contains the context now (although the highlighting and image are still highly misleading), but didn't when the question was asked. It also did not contain the ... that are now in the question, indicating that the quote is taken out of context.

@Tim I didn't know that wikiquotes did only contain the cut version at the time of asking. How long was it there already? Did anyone remove anything? Shortly after the question was asked when I looked wikiquotes up it was already changed. That's why I added the... in the question.

@Trilarion Ah, makes sense. It had been that way since at least 2013 and has only recently been changed to include some context (I assume in response to this question).

tl;dr answer. Still upvoted, though.

@JollyJoker are you thinking of juxtaposing, perhaps? Otherwise it's citing.