Sunday semi-sermon

'Language is practical consciousness', wrote Karl Marx, a much misunderstood philosopher as gleaned from Erich Fromm's masterpiece "Marx's Concept of Man", a paperback left behind on a dusty bookshelf in a rural Wyoming cabin.

The book lives up to its cover, which promises 'A provocative new view of Marx stressing his humanist philosophy and challenging both Soviet distortion and Western ignorance of his basic thinking.'

That man 'makes his own history,is his own creator' is Marx's fundamental idea. From there he explores the relationship between man and nature, the concept of labor, the proper regulation of economic and societal order.

Despite the claptrap--the pathetic and unscrupulous use of his ideas by the Soviet Union and the hick interpretation by the US propaganda machine of ''Marxism'" as everything evil--thereby creating a necessary enemy--Marx is perhaps the last great thinker in the western canon.

Marx, properly understood as a champion of human freedom, would have many sympathizers in the small Wyoming town of Cody. There are however no biographies of either Mr. Marx or Mr. Freud, the other great liberating force of the 20th century, in the Cody Public Library.

The Cody Meat Company, which features 'locally raised livestock', a practice presumably endorsed by Mr. Marx for its economic efficiency, is closed on Sunday