Philosophy

A Rift in the Iron Curtain :1. FROM HOLLYWOOD TO ROME

Taking advantage of what is left of my rights, I hereby serve notice of intention to join in the public discussions stirred up by President Truman's decision to send a United States ambassador to the Vatican. And if you expect me to be calm and politely restrained in my utterances, you're in for a disappointment. I was burned up about the encroachments of authoritarian clericalism long before the President's decision was announced. His latest stroke of statesmanship just added a little fuel to the flames which have been scaring my tender flesh. This is not a debate, properly speaking. From the...

A Rift in the Iron Curtain :1. FROM HOLLYWOOD TO ROME

Taking advantage of what is left of my rights, I hereby serve notice of intention to join in the public discussions stirred up by President Truman's decision to send a United States ambassador to the Vatican. And if you expect me to be calm and politely restrained in my utterances, you're in for a disappointment. I was burned up about the encroachments of authoritarian clericalism long before the President's decision was announced. His latest stroke of statesmanship just added a little fuel to the flames which have been scaring my tender flesh. This is not a debate, properly speaking. From the...

A Rift in the Iron Curtain :1. FROM HOLLYWOOD TO ROME

Taking advantage of what is left of my rights, I hereby serve notice of intention to join in the public discussions stirred up by President Truman's decision to send a United States ambassador to the Vatican. And if you expect me to be calm and politely restrained in my utterances, you're in for a disappointment. I was burned up about the encroachments of authoritarian clericalism long before the President's decision was announced. His latest stroke of statesmanship just added a little fuel to the flames which have been scaring my tender flesh. This is not a debate, properly speaking. From the...

Teach yourself socialism

Marxism and nationalism (Mark Sandell) We must study the inter-relations (Edward Conze; continued) Download PDF

Ludwig Feuerbach: "the true conqueror of the old philosophy"

Among Karl Marx’s most famous writings are his Theses on Feuerbach. But who was Feuerbach? Ludwig Feuerbach was brought up a devout Protestant, and started at university as a student of theology. He then became one of the most brilliant students of Hegel at Berlin university in the 1820s, and a Hegelian academic philosopher, though, as Engels remarked, “a never quite orthodox Hegelian”. In the years after the publication in 1835-6 of David Strauss’s Life of Jesus, which subjected the Bible stories to the same sort of critical sifting of historical evidence as other stories of long ago...

Marxism in the 1960's and 1970's

Jelle Versieren’s generous review of Antonio Gramsci: working-class revolutionary ( Solidarity 311) offers a wealth of background information and context-setting. A central assessment, however, seems to me skewed. He writes that the “new wave of energy” in the intellectual affairs of the left over the whole long period from 1956 (Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin, and the consequent turmoil in the Communist Parties) through the turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s to the early 1980s (when “Eurocommunism” mutated into a drift towards plain bourgeois liberalism) produced two main...

Bread and Roses

As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day, A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses, For the people hear us singing, "Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses." As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men— For they are women's children and we mother them again. Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes— Hearts starve as well as bodies; Give us Bread, but give us Roses!

Mourn Not the Dead

Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie— Dust unto dust— The calm, sweet earth that mothers all who die As all men must; Mourn not your captive comrades who must dwell— Too strong to strive— Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell, Buried alive; But rather mourn the apathetic throng— The cowed and the meek— Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong And dare not speak!

Coffee table radicalism

It is difficult not to warm to a film that places a radical left wing philosopher into mock ups of various film sets to lecture on his theory of ideology. That is what film maker Sophie Fiennes has done with Slavoj Žižek. So we have Žižek dressed as a priest talking about the ideology of fascism in the mother superior’s room from The Sound of Music, about the vampiric attitude of the ruling class towards the working class in the lifeboat from Titanic and about the nature of political violence in Travis Bickle’s single iron bed from Taxi Driver. All of this is amusing enough and makes a long...

A Consecration

Not of the princes and prelates with periwigged charioteers Riding triumphantly laurelled to lap the fat of the years. Rather the scorned—the rejected—the men hemmed in with the spears; The men of the tattered battalion which fights till it dies. Dazed with the dust of the battle, the din and the cries, The men with the broken heads and the blood running into their eyes. Not the be-medalled Commander, beloved of the throne, Riding cock-horse to parade when the bugles are blown, But the lads who carried the koppic and cannot be known. Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.