April 2009

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

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.

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 springing from the period ca. 1500, indicated by the onset of the Reformation. Over and over our sense of historical modernism draws us to this point of the so-called ‘early modern’, and into a controversy or equivocation over its significance as one of the great turning points of history. Relative to world history, progress explodes in the sixteenth century, despite the puzzle over the Renaissance. The abrupt start after 1500 is constantly suggested and then challenged or retracted because its proponents cannot account for it, or sort out the fact that a discontinuity might interrupt prior continuity. We can easily see the reason for the confusion, and its resolution. [click to continue...]

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

“Environment molds history,” says Jared Diamond in _Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies_ (p. 352). Everything important that has happened to humans since the Paleolithic is due to environmental influences. More precisely: all of the important differences between human societies, all of the differences that led some societies to prosper and progress and others to fail, are due to the nature of each society’s local environment and to its geographical location. History as a whole reflects these environmental differences and forces. Culture is largely irrelevant: the environment explains all of the main tendencies of history; cultural factors affect the minor details. Diamond proceeds systematically through the main phases of history in all parts of the world and tries to show, with detailed arguments, how each phase, in each major region, is explainable largely by environmental forces. The final outcome of these environmentally caused processes is the rise and dominance of Europe.
[click to continue...]

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 essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do not invest, 40% say capitalism is better while 25% prefer socialism.

There is a partisan gap as well. Republicans – by an 11-to-1 margin – favor capitalism. Democrats are much more closely divided: Just 39% say capitalism is better while 30% prefer socialism. As for those not affiliated with either major political party, 48% say capitalism is best, and 21% opt for socialism.

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: “Socialism: Dead or Alive?” Twelve of the participants voted for dead.

A single dissenting voice risked “derision,” in his words, by insisting that “once the sordid memory of Soviet communism is laid to rest and the fervor of anti-government hysteria abates, politicians and intellectuals of the next century will once again draw openly upon the legacy of socialism.”

I was that lone dissenter. In the 1960s, I had been a member of the radical antiwar group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and even after that organization descended into violence and chaos, I kept the faith alive and edited a Marxist theoretical journal that advocated democratic socialism. Subsequently, I suffered my share of disillusionment with Marx and socialism, but I never bought into the facile view that the collapse of Soviet communism had altogether relegated these ideas to the dustbin of history.

And although I felt isolated in my viewpoint in 1995, I think I have been proven prescient. In recent months, the onset of the severe global economic downturn has undermined faith in the magic of the market and resurrected the specter of socialism. John Makin, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, the same think tank that years ago hosted that panel on socialism’s demise, recommended that the Obama administration nationalize the banks. American politicians and policymakers—not known for their admiration of Scandinavian socialism—have begun looking to the experiences of Sweden and Norway for inspiration. A recent Newsweek cover even announced, “We Are All Socialists Now.”

Socialism, once banished from polite conversation, has made a startling comeback. But what about socialism as a remedy for today’s crisis?

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 so broad in scope and devastation that it has global capitalism—and its high priests—in an ideological tailspin.
Yet even as faith in neoliberal orthodoxies has imploded, why resurrect Marx? To start, Marx was far ahead of his time in predicting the successful capitalist globalization of recent decades. He accurately foresaw many of the fateful factors that would give rise to today’s global economic crisis: what he called the “contradictions” inherent in a world comprised of competitive markets, commodity production, and financial speculation.

1848

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 band of rebel gladiators grew
into a huge revolutionary army, numbering about 100,000. In the end the
full force of the Roman army was needed to crush the revolt.

Despite his well-deserved fame as a great revolutionary leader and
one of the most outstanding generals of antiquity, not much is known
about Spartacus the man. It is always the victors who write history and
the voice of the slaves throughout the centuries can be heard only
through the accounts of the oppressors. What little information we have
is from accounts written by his mortal enemies. The surviving historical
records are all written by Roman historians and therefore hostile. They
are often contradictory. /p>