My older brother Michael, occasional visitor to the comments boxes here at the Virtual Stoa, has started his own blog over at michaelbrooke.com. Since a typical email message from the man fills several screens, expect frequent, lengthy posts — some of which might be about films.
It’s good to read that Radio 3 is going to broadcast a live performance of John Cage’s 4′33′’ this evening. The original piece was written for solo piano, but this time around it’s been rearranged for the entire BBC Symphony Orchestra…
UPDATE [luncthime]: Chris Bertram has a report of the time 4′33″ was performed at his school…
R. H. Tawney, author of Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Equality and other fine books; born 30 November 1880, died 16 January 1962.
I’ve just noticed that Ishbadiddle has started publishing again, after more than a month’s break. I was worried that it wouldn’t return, so this really is good news.
Yesterday was anecdotes about G. D. H. Cole lifted wholesale from other people’s blogs. Today we turn to Joseph Schumpeter, and to Marc Mulholland:
Coffeehouse Spat: Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter were mutual admirers and quite good friends. Nevertheless, there were tempremental differences, as this circa 1919 anecdote, extracted from Swedberg’s biography of Schumpeter, describes:*** Both had met in a Vienna coffee-house. In the presence of Ludo Moritz Hartmann and Somary. Schumpeter remarked how pleased he was with the Russian Revolution. Socialism was no longer a discussion on paper, but had to prove its viability. Max Weber responded in great agitation: communism, at this stage in Russian development, was virtually a crime, the road would lead over unparalelled human misery and end in a terrible catastrophe. ‘Quite likely’, Schumpeter answered, ‘but what a fine laboratory.’ ‘A laboratory filled with mounds of corpses’, Weber answered heatedly. ‘The same can be said of every dissecting room’, Schumpeter replied. Every attempt to divert them failed. Weber became increasingly violent and loud, Schumpeter increasingly sarcastic and muted. The other guests listened with curiousity, until Weber jumped up, shouting ‘I can’t stand any more of this’, and rushed out, followed by Hartmann, who brought him his hat. Schumpeter, left behind, said with a smile: ‘How can a man shout like that in a coffeehouse?’ ***
How indeed?
Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, murdered in Berlin, 15 January 1919.
Rosa Luxemburg is also, of course, the internet’s favourite Marxist.
UPDATE [16.1.2004]: It’s good to see other bloggers taking an interest in Dead Socialists, or, at least, in this Dead Socialist. Norman Geras enthuses and recommends a couple of books (we might throw his own The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg into the mix here, while we’re at it); and Socialism in an Age of Waiting reprints her final editorial for Der Rote Fahne, 14 January 1919, the day before her murder, the one that ends with the stirring words, “‘Order prevails in Berlin!’ You foolish lackeys! Your ‘order’ is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will ‘rise up again, clashing its weapons’, and, to your horror, it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!…“
Announcing a new set of political bloggery awards [”We’re not offering prizes to the top-rated blogs. (They probably wouldn’t want them.) Just pretty good publicity”], The Guardian’s mysterious Backbencher lets slip that she reads the Virtual Stoa…
In the meantime, the Backbencher kicks off the search with her own choices: the quirky Virtual Stoa, scourge of the Lib Dems Oliver Kamm, the overflowing Political Theory Daily Review, and for its thrilling political optimism, Howard Dean’s Blog for America.
Doesn’t she have better things to do with her time?Anyway, she’s missing the point of the Googlebomb, there, I’m afraid. The point is not the thrilling optimism of Dean’s blog; it’s that Dean’s optimistic. And it’s been a successful Googlebomb, too.
From S.i.a.A.o.W.:
According to Oliver Postgate’s delightful autobiography, Seeing Things, [G. D. H.] Cole was a model for Professor Yaffle, the woodpecker in the children’s TV series Bagpuss. It seems that there is a kind of immortality for theoreticians after all.
Brother Michael, what can you tell us about Postgate and the Clangers as a fable of British Socialism?And while we’re all telling G. D. H. Cole stories, this one’s from Alan Bennett’s diaries for 1984, reprinted in the excellent Writing Home:
7 December. To a party at the Department of the History of Medicine at Univeristy College. I talk to Alan Tyson, who’s like a figure out of the eighteenth century: a genial, snuff-taking, snuff-coloured, easy-going aristocrat - Fox, perhaps, or one of the Bourbons. He is a fellow of All Souls, and when Mrs Thatcher came to the college for a scientific symposium Tyson was deputed to take her round the Common Room. This is hung with portraits and photographs of dead fellows, including some of the economist G. D. H. Cole. Tyson planned to take Mrs Thatcher up to it saying, “And this, Prime Minister, is a former fellow, G. D. H. Dole.” Whereupon, with luck, Mrs Thatcher would have had to say, “Cole, not Dole.” In the event he did take her round but lost his nerve.
That’s quite enough for one night.
Michael Young, principal author of the 1945 Labour Party manifesto, “Let Us Face the Future“, author of the funny novel, The Rise of the Meritocracy [see his later remarks on his neologism here], co-author of the classic study, Family and Kinship in East London inspiration behind the Consumers’ Association, the Open University, et cetera, et cetera, born 9 August 1915, died 14 January 2002.
Following on from the discussion at the usually estimable Harry’s Place and the generally ridiculous Thinker’s place (here and here) about William Morris and the Fabians following this piece in the Guardian by Sunder Katwala, I’ve published on this site an edition of William Morris’s 1893 lecture on “Communism”, edited by George Bernard Shaw and published by the Fabian Society in 1903 as Tract #113, based on scans from the 1907 reprint.
Note One: The main text of this lecture/pamphlet has appeared online before, rather attractively presented with Morris wallpaper designs in the margin; though Shaw’s useful introduction, I think, has not.
Note Two: This is the second VS-sponsored reproduction of Old Pamphlet Literature, joining the still-excellent wartime PEP-job “Are Refugees An Asset?” — the answer is Yes — which is still recommended.
Note Three: There really should be more early Fabian tracts than there are available on the web. (Curiously, it’s not something the Fabian Society itself seems to have been interested in doing through its own website, which is a shame.) I might stick a few more up next time I have a bit of spare time. Which won’t be for a while, since it’s now the start of term…
Here’s a snippet from Don Flynn’s recent JCWI discussion paper, “‘Tough as old boots’? Asylum, immigration and the paradox of New Labour policy”, discussing some MORI research:
This records the fact that, throughout the 1990s, public concern about immigration as expressed in a succession of surveys remained low, with around or just under 5% of respondents recording it as ‘one of the most important issues in Britain today’. The pattern of response changed after 1997 with the beginning of a jagged series of up and down swings on the graph… rising to the point that, when polled in 2003, around 25% of respondents said that they believed that immigration policy was an issue of pressing importance.The MORI research plots this rise in public anxiety against a graph indicating an increase in enforcement actions by the Home Office which were, ostensibly, intended to allay fears. The chosen index of the rate of asylum decisions taken by IND officials shows that, just as the publicly-heralded policy of faster resolution of applications kicked in around 1997/8, the trend of anxiety moved upwards rather than declined. This suggests the existence of a link between the intensity of government action and public anxiety, rather than a straightforward engagement of the public with allegedly unpalatable facts about immigration.
Other findings in the MORI research bear this out. The greatest level of expressed anxiety was to be found in towns and districts of cities where immigrant penetration of local communities was low or non-existent… Further, when questions were framed in a manner intended to elicit more detailed and concrete responses about the perception of local community issues, concerns about immigration vanished from the scale and were replaced by unhappiness about the absence of facilities for young people, ‘low-level crime’, and road and pavement repairs…
A pdf version of this pamphlet is available here.
Over at Respectful of Otters, Rivka reproduces “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” in Latin and comments, “But seriously: I don’t know what it is about fans of Latin that prompts them to translate just about anything into Latin, seemingly unprovoked. You don’t see Ancient Sumerian hobbyists doing anything like that, do you?”.Well, you do, actually: go here for some discussion of the problems that you run into when you try executing the important project of putting Elvis Presley lyrics into Sumerian.
(The same guy also recorded quite a bit of Elvis in Latin, so perhaps it’s only Latin obsessives who also want to put things into Sumerian, too.)
James Joyce, born 2 February 1882, died, 13 January 1941.
UPDATE [lunchtime]: The Guardian has republished its 14.1.1941 report of the news of Joyce’s death.
My first decent-length post is up at Fistful, “I Don’t Understand Modern Conservatism”.
Back with more dead socialists at the VS tomorrow. Don’t worry.
I’m pleased and surprised to note that the Virtual Stoa has finally made it into the lower reaches of the Flappy Birds bit of the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem, though I suspect that that’ll be a temporary condition, and that I’ll devolve to the ranks of the Slithering Reptiles for at least a little bit longer.
In other news, I’m about to begin a stint guestblogging over at A Fistful of Euros, so do wander over there for a bit of Euro-blogging over the next few days if you think you might be interested in what I have to say. (No reason why you should be.)
In other, other news, I was delighted by this piece of spam which landed in my inbox earlier this evening. Not that I want to lower the tone or anything.
UPDATE [13.1.04]: Yes, I’m a slithering reptile again…
I found myself thinking nice things about W. for possibly the first time on Wednesday, reading about the new immigration proposals on my way home from damp, cold San Francisco to damp, cold Oxford. But well-informed commentators are sounding the alarm: Nathan Newman and MaxSpeak (here, and then here) make the case.
Via Britishspin, I learn that Tribune magazine has got itself a blog, though not as yet anything to put on it. Possibly a space to watch (or possibly not), especially if it becomes a home for the long-awaited Stephen Marks blogposts.
It’s flattering to see that this blog has been nominated for a 2003 Koufax Award over at the Wampum blog, in the category “Best Series“, for the Dead Socialist Watch. [Note to English readers: Sandy Koufax was one of the great left-handed pitchers in baseball; the Koufax Awards celebrate the left-hand-side of the blogworld.] But fine though the DSW is, it can’t even begin to compete with Tim Lambert’s ongoing and brilliant coverage of John Lott, a deserving winner if ever there was one.
When I’m not reading the blogs, I’m reading the newsletter of the Classical Association, CA News. This is old news, but it’s only just reached me, and it made me laugh, from the round-up of “Classics in the Media” in 2003:
But the biggest publisher’s advance, $500,000 no less, has gone to Victor Davis Hanson for a book on the Peloponnesian War. Hanson is a Classics teacher and raisin farmer… [blah blah blah] He followed this up [= Who Killed Homer?] with a devastating review of a Judith Hallett anthology, which led her to protest that he had not disclosed to the editors the fact that, some years previously, she had reported him and a colleague to the FBI as fitting the description of the wanted “Unabomber”…
The colleague, perhaps unsurprisingly, was John Heath, co-author of the egregious nonsense that was WKH?, a book that was memorably and also devastatingly reviewed by Peter Green in the New York Review of Books [though sadly, it’s not online: it should be, as a public service to the world].Judith Hallett’s more recent contribution to classical studies has been to translate the American classic, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”, into Latin. Sing along with me, please:
Aufer me ad arenam.
Aufer me cum turba.
Da mihi glires sparsos melle.
Reditum domum non curo velle.
Pro leonibus exhortemur.
Nil refert hominum.
Duo, tria membra edent
gladiatorum.
[And for an almost-literal and spendidly-singable translation back into English: Take me to the arena / Take me out with the crowd / Buy me some dormice in honeycomb / I don’t care if I never go home / So let’s root, root, root for the lions / Not the humans they maim / Munching two, three more body parts / at our Caesar’s game!]
Over at A Fistful of Euros, the excellent Scott Martens has quite a lot of sensible comments about John Laughland’s loopy book, The Tainted Source, which I also attempted to trash back in 1998. Read both pieces. Then don’t bother with the original.
Sunder Katwala celebrates 120 Days of Sodom Years of the Fabian Society in today’s Guardian — which is still one of my favourite organisations, despite everything (both past and present).
I’m not sure a lot of the historical claims Katwala makes are accurate (whether Morris was ever a Fabian is being discussed here, and the claims about women’s rights and decolonisation are absurd, with no mention being made, either, of early Fabians’ support for empire). But some of them may be.
Whatever the case, this birthday provides me with a nice excuse to reprint a chunk of the first ever Fabian tract (they call them “pamphlets” now, which is a shame), “Why are the Many Poor?”:
The competitive system, which leaves each to struggle against each, and enables a few to appropriate the wealth of the community, is a makeshift which perpetuates many of the evils of the ages of open violence, with an added plague of tricks of trade so vile and contemptible that words cannot adquately denounce them.What can be said in favor of a system which breeds and tolerates the leisured “masher,” who lives without a stroke of useful work; the wage-slave workers, who toil for the mere mockery of a human life; the abject pauper and the Ishmael-minded criminal; - which makes inevitable and constant a three-cornered duel of dishonesty between the producer, the middleman, and the consumer?
Nice echoes of Ricardian socialism there towards the end; you can read the rest here (it’s not very long).
S.i.a.A.o.W. is discussing the Enlightenment, universalism and pluralism — which provides a good moment for me to recommend my friend Sankar Muthu’s excellent new book on just this topic: Enlightenment and Empire, which, as I have long promised to say, shows off Professor Muthu at the height of his swinging artistry…
… I’ve plugged this book before, but the difference now is that it is finally in the shops (at least, there was a copy in Cody’s in Berkeley two weeks ago, which I happily snapped up). And what a good book it has turned out to be — a very serious and sympathetic study of the anti-imperialist theories developed by, in particular, Denis Diderot, Immanuel Kant and J. G. Herder, which explores their understandings of human unity and cultural difference in a series of illuminating discussions of some key texts and episodes from the latter part of the eighteenth century. It’s very readable, and exceptionally timely.
You can read the introduction here. And since it’s been published in hardback and paperback simultaneously, there are copies to suit all budgets.
The other must-read Enlightenment book of recent years is, of course, Jonathan Israel’s colossal Radical Enlightenment. But since the folks at S.i.a.A.o.W. have got the word “spinoza” in their collective email address, I like to imagine that they have a well-thumbed copy on their collective bedside table already…
