The Virtual Stoa

I met the Guardian’s Rory Carroll on a trip to Italy around three years ago, at the end of his stint as the paper’s Rome correspondent. We were sitting on a roof-terrace of a residential block in the centro storico, where a mutual acquaintance was staying, and I assume we were having something to drink, though I don’t remember what it was. What I do remember was that he was delightful, smart, interesting, and very funny, and I felt sick in my stomach when I read yesterday afternoon that he’d been kidnapped in Sadr City. Best of luck to all those involved in trying to secure his release.

UPDATE [11pm, 20.10.2005]: Good news, over here.

I had the lunchtime news on the telly yesterday, which I hardly ever watch, and there in the middle of the programme was my old friend David Renton with his new baby Sam talking about not getting enough paternity leave. More on them here.

Class Worrier Raj shares his opinions on land reform with the readers of yesterday’s South Africa Mercury.

John Reed, Oregonian, journalist and witness to the Bolshevik seizure of power; author of the instant classic, Ten Days That Shook The World. Born 22 October 1887; died of typhus, 19 October 1920.

This, obviously.

Karl Kautsky, the “Pope of Marxism”. Born 16 October 1850, died 17 October 1938. Various Kautsky texts are available here, including The Class Struggle, his commentary on the 1891 Erfurt Programme and one of the most widely-read works of Second International Marxism.

UPDATE: Whoops: posted this on the wrong day by mistake, and have now altered the date-stamp to bring him into line…

Contradictory Ben has a useful round-up of the current state-of-play regarding exorcism and the churches.

I met the C of E’s Exorcist for Oxfordshire (or, perhaps, for the Diocese of Oxford) not so long ago, I think, but I can’t remember which one he was, and I don’t think he took that part of his job especially seriously.

Here we go, to end this mini-serial, broken up into a number of shorter paras for ease-of-reading convenience.

We may go one step farther. The property of labour, you say, overbalances the community of land: because the value of it, when compared with the value of land, is worth ninety nine parts in a hundred. Now if, by saying, that the property of labour overbalances the community of land, you only mean, that labour is worth much more than uncultivated land, we might allow it. But if you mean, that, because the value of labour is so much greater than the value of land, the labour of one man will overrule or set aside the common claim of all mankind, we must deny it.For suppose the labour of him, who cultivates the land, to be worth ninety nine parts in a hundred of the whole value of the land, after it is cultivated; all that could be due to the labourer, upon this supposition, would be no more than the produce of his own labour: the ninety nine parts, which belong to him, would not swallow up the hundreth part, which he had originally no exclusive right to. This hundreth part, that is, the land itself, must therefore still remain in common, as it was before; he might labour in it again, if he pleased, as one of the joynt commoners; but he would have no property in it.

Let us try this reasoning in another instance. The landlord, as we call him, or the owner of the soil, after property has been introduced, has an exclusive right to some certain quantity of land, suppose for instance, to an acre which bears twenty bushels of wheat: the tenant ploughs and sows this land; and besides the mere personal act of labour, he uses his own materials in cultivating the land. Now the labour of the occupyer puts the chief value upon the land, and without this labour it would be worth little; for it is to [p.61] this, that we owe all its useful production. For whatever the straw, bran, bread, &c. of that acre of wheat is worth more than the product of an acre of as good land, which lies waste, is all the effects of labour.

You see then how much the property of labour overbalances the property of land. But no one will be led to conclude from hence, that, because, according to this reckoning, in the value of an acre of land ninety nine parts in a hundred are owing to the labour of the occupyer, the property, which he has in his own labour, will swallow up the property, which the landlord has in the soil; and that the land, because he has cultivated it, will for the future become his own.

But if the right of property in the soil, which in estimating the value of land, is but one part in a hundred, is not overruled or set aside by the overbalance in the value of labour; I can see no reason why the same overbalance should be supposed to set aside the common claims of mankind to land, which was never appropriated. Let the right be what it will, whether it is a right of property, or of common claim, if an overbalance in the value of the labour, which is joyned to it, will not swallow up one of them, no good reason can be given, why it should swallow up the other.

And that’s your lot.

Oh dear. I’ve just realised who the “Morgan” and the “Platell” in the TV show Morgan and Platell must be. My goodness.

Nick Cohen’s got himself a blogsite. It’s already doing a service by hosting his recent New Statesman article, as the NS has one of the most frustrating websites around, but with luck it’ll do a bit more than that. [via]

Benny Lévy, aka Pierre Victor, French militant in La Gauche Prol�tarienne, later Jean-Paul Sartre’s secretary, and, still later, convert to Judaism. Died 15 October 2003, aged 58.

Thomas Sankara, prime minister and President of Upper Volta / Burkina Faso. Born 21 December 1949, killed in a coup, 15 October 1987.

I’ve broken up the inordinately long final para., to help bring this epic to a digestible conclusion:

To strengthen this opinion concerning the introduction of property, and to answer an objection, which has been hinted at already, Mr. Lock compares the value of labour with the value of the land, with which it is so mixed.

“Nor is it, says he, so strange, as perhaps before consideration may appear, that the property of labour should be able to balance the community of land. For it is labour indeed, that puts the difference of value on every thing; and let any one consider what the difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco, or sugar, sown with wheat or barley; and an acre of the same land lying in common, without any husbandry upon it, and he will find, that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value. I think, as he goes on, it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth, useful to the life of man, nine [p.59] tenths are the effects of labour: nay if we will rightly estimate things, as they come to our use, and cast up the several expences about them, what in them is purely owing to nature and what to labour, we shall find, that in most of them ninety nine parts in a hundred are wholly to be put on the account of labour.”

But we may ask in return, what the value of pure labour is, when considered merely as the personal act of the labourer? If neither the timber of his plough, nor the horses that draw it, nor the meat, which they eat, nor the manure, which he lays upon his land, nor the grain, with which he sows it, are his own, what will you rate his labour at? Certainly you rate it much too high, if upon comparing it with the value of the land, you set it at ninety nine parts in a hundred, or even at nine parts in ten. But you will suppose all these materials to be his own. I ask therefore how he gained property in them? You answer, by his labour, and explane this labour to be only the act of taking them or separating them from the common stock. Now this labour is of little or no value at all; and consequently you cannot say, in this instance, that the common right of mankind is overbalanced by the labour of the occupant. And if, in one instance, a labour, which is worth nothing, when compared with the thing acquired, will give the occupant property; then we can have no reason to imagine, that it is the high rate of labour, when compared with the value of land, which so overbalances to the common right of mankind to the land, as to give the labourer an exclusive right to it. You have only dazzled our eyes with this high account of the value of labour; since you must, in order to give it so high a value, suppose property to have been introduced before- [p.60] hand by a labour, which is of little or no value at all.

The end is nigh…

A couple of days late with this one, I know, but I want to get this off my chest. What on earth does Malcolm Rifkind think he’s playing at, pulling out of the Tory leadership contest and saying he doesn’t have a chance? Of course he doesn’t have a chance; he never had a chance. By staying in the race and being the guaranteed first-round eliminee, he allowed the Tories to use the first ballot as an intelligence-gathering straw poll, to find out whether the four “serious” candidates had a chance (”serious” in inverted commas, owing to the presence of Liam Fox in the line-up), which is valuable for them, and he prolonged the contest for a week by requiring an extra ballot, thus adding to the gaiety of the nation. I could understand what he was doing if his pulling-out-and-backing-Clarke was necessary to get Clarke the extra support to keep him in the race for a bit longer. But as it is his withdrawal is much more likely to have the effect that Clarke’s knocked out on the first ballot, killing his candidacy far more quickly. If he’d really wanted to support Clarke, why not stay in the race, vote for KC, and tell his supporters (both of them) sotto voce to do the same?

Grr.

Julius Nyerere, President of Tanzania, born 13 April 1922, died 14 October 1999.

Someone has just arrived at the VS looking for “oliver-kamm dsquared penis picture”. For some reason, this blog occupies the two top spots. Perhaps Google images might help? Actually, let’s hope it doesn’t.

You didn’t think I’d stay away for long? Last week’s instalment was written when we were all feeling quite gloomy — we’d just got the news that Enkidu would have to spend at least four weeks in our attic with a big bandage on his leg and a stupid plastic cone of a collar. He’s only five months old (today!), and it seemed like an intolerably long time for such a young animal to be so constricted and confined. Well — one week on, and he seems to be doing fine. He likes company, but doesn’t mind whether it comes from me or from Josephine or from Andromache, so we’re taking it in turns to sleep in the attic with him, to combat loneliness and despondency. And he’s developed a tremendous new mode of self-expression: when he wants companionship, isn’t getting it, and thinks there’s someone in the house, he thumps on the door repeatedly with his bandaged leg, which makes a terrific racket in a house where noise carries easily. And what we know, that he probably doesn’t, is that quite soon he’ll have a functioning paw, and can go back to being fully mobile again.

Anyway: here’s a picture of a kitten-with-a-bandage. I removed the cone-collar for the photoshoot, as it’s too undignified, but the bandage isn’t so bad at all:

Andromache, on the other hand, goes from strength to strength. She managed to switch off my laptop last week, which I thought very clever: an initial lunge for the keyboard hit the power button, leading to the “Do you want your computer to shut down?” dialogue box to appear, and a second lunge managed to connect with “enter” at exactly the right moment. And here she is, at long last, up a tree…

Sidney Webb, Fabian socialist and husband to Beatrice (”two typewriters that beat as one”, et cetera), born 13 July 1859, died 13 October 1947. If you haven’t already, you really should read the Webbs’ defence of the show trials.

Here’s a bit more, with similar editing principles as in earlier instalments.

[p.57] “In Mr. Locks opinion, property in immoveable goods, such as the earth or soil, is acquired in the same manner and is governed by the same measure, as property in moveable goods.

“As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, enclose it from the common.”

But what is this again, but the exercise of a common right, instead of such an exclusive right as property is. For not to insist here upon the limitation of having property only in so much land, as we can use; let us try the effects of this right, and see whether they are the same with the effects of property. Suppose then, that the man, after he has for some time tilled the land, and cultivated it, was either by age or sickness to become incapable of tilling and cultivating it any longer: if the mixing his labour with it was his whole title to it; when his labour ceases, his title to the land must cease with it; the land can be his no longer, than he can cultivate it; and when he is disabled for labouring, he cannot sell or let it to any other person: that is, it was his to labour in, but not his to dispose of as he pleases: and consequently his right could only be a right to use, and not an exclusive right of property. This Mr. Lock might have been sensible of, if he had attended [to] his own reasoning.

“He, say this author, that in obedience to the command of God, to improve the earth to the benefit of life, tilled and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it something, that was his property, which another had no title to, nor could, without injury, take from him. Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of [p.58] land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left, and more than the yet unprovided for could use.”

If then his title to the land, which he occupies, rests upon this principle, that there was enough for others, besides what he had taken for his own use; it is plane that, unless there had been enough for others, his title would not have been a good one: and from hence it follows, that all his title is no more than a common right to use what he wants, and no an exclusive right of property: because the right of property does not at all depend upon the convenience of others.

Just one more paragraph to go — but it’s a long ‘un.

As he was being chased into exile in Switzerland following the condemnation of his book on education, Emile, Jean-Jacques Rousseau composed a short “prose poem” based on the Biblical story of the Levite of Ephraim in the Book of Judges. It’s one of his shorter and more obscure pieces of writing, obscure in both the sense of little known and also rather difficult to understand quite what he’s getting at in it. Still, modern scholarship — Thomas Kavanagh, Mira Morgenstern, etc. — is doing its best. He wrote in his Confessions that

In three days I composed the first three cantos of the little poem which I finished at Motiers, and I am certain of not having done anything in my life in which there is a more interesting mildness of manners, a greater brilliancy of colouring, more simple delineations, greater exactness of proportion, or more antique simplicity in general, notwithstanding the horror of the subject which in itself is abominable, so that besides every other merit I had still that of a difficulty conquered. If the Levite of Ephraim be not the best of my works, it will ever be that most esteemed…

I’m delighted to be able to report that this disturbing Biblical tale of violent rape and murder is now available to the contemporary reader in Lego, over at (where else), The Brick Testament. Read on, Rousseauists, read on…

Charles Fourier, utopian socialist and prophet of the counter-giraffe.
Born 7 April 1772, died 10 October 1837.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, born 14 June 1928; died at the hands of Bolivian soldiers, 9 October 1967.

Willy Brandt, German Social Democrat Chancellor, 1969-1974; born 18 December 1913, died 8 October 1992.

Clement Attlee (or here), Labour Prime Minister, 1945-51, born 3 January 1883, died 8 October 1967.