1848+: Last and First Men

The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels by Tristram HuntThe Sunday Times review by Robert Service Alone amid the Manchester 19th-century “cottonocracy”, Friedrich Engels hoped for the British economy’s collapse and was carefree about losing his fortune forever. That alone would have made him the most extraordinary capitalist. But of course we have [...]

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A discussion of Kant, the movie The Matrix, and the French Revolution

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No Marx without Engels Tristram Hunt describes how Friedrich Engels financed the research behind his friend Karl Marx’s epic critique of the free market, Das Kapital.

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We cited this essay Jim Blaut and Jared Diamond here in the previous post. In light of that post, here is a section from World History And The Eonic Effect on the sudden rise of the modern, with a brief discussion of Blaut. 6.1.1 Frontier Effects and The ‘European Miracle’ There is mysterious seminal generation [...]

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The Unrepentant Marxist has an essay on Jared Diamond from Jim Blaut, this in the light of the lawsuit against Diamond April 24, 2009 Jim Blaut on Jared Diamond (This article was included in Jim Blaut’s “8 Eurocentric Historians”) The Geographical Review, July 1, 1999 Environmentalism and Eurocentrism: a review essay by James Michael Blaut [...]

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Just 53% Say Capitalism Better Than Socialism Thursday, April 09, 2009 Email to a FriendAdvertisement Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better. Adults under 30 are [...]

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Confessions of a True Believer By John B. Judis May/June 2009 The collapse of Soviet communism never relegated Marx’s ideas to the dustbin of history. In 1995, a magazine published by a conservative Washington think tank brought together a group of writers and scholars to debate a question that seemed to have a foregone conclusion: [...]

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Thoroughly Modern Marx By Leo Panitch May/June 2009 Lights. Camera. Action. Das Kapital. Now. The economic crisis has spawned a resurgence of interest in Karl Marx. Worldwide sales of Das Kapital have shot up (one lone German publisher sold thousands of copies in 2008, compared with 100 the year before), a measure of a crisis [...]

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1848

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Spartacus – a real representative of the proletariat of ancient times In the first century BC, a slave named Spartacus threatened the might of Rome. Spartacus (c. 109 BC-71 BC) was the leader (or possibly one of several leaders) of the massive slave uprising known as the Third Servile War. Under his leadership, a tiny [...]

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