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 a [...]

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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 springing from the [...]

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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
“Environment molds history,” says Jared Diamond in [...]

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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 essentially evenly [...]

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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: “Socialism: Dead [...]

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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 so broad [...]

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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 band of rebel gladiators [...]

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