Socialdem. 21st Century

Bravo, regressive left.[embedded content]It doesn’t matter of course that many people who are not white like good English grammar, or indeed that in many non-Western languages spoken all over the world good grammar and good standards of expression are supported by non-White people.Of course, it would be but a short step from this dubious illogic to say that scientific truths – such as, say, the germ theory of disease? – are viciously racist and just a big conspiracy to oppressive the Third...

No, I regret to inform you it is not because of his criticisms of Israel, or the recent anti-Semitism hysteria in the Labour party.It is because: (1) he is in favour of Britain remaining in the EU and has become pro-EU (see here);(2) he is in favour of unending, catastrophic mass immigration into Britain (see here and here).(3) he is in favour of Turkey joining the EU, a measure which would be a catastrophe for Europe (see here). These things are becoming politically toxic all over Europe,...

From Eleanor Marx Aveling’s essay “The Woman Question” (1886): “They forget that by capitalist employers this very sex-helplessness of woman is only taken into account with the view of lowering the general rate of wages. Again, there is no more a natural calling of woman than there is a natural law of capitalistic production, or a natural limit to the amount of the labourer’s product that goes to him for means of subsistence. That in the first case, woman’s calling is supposed to be only the...

More brilliant quotations from Postmodernist scam artists by Gad Saad, an evolutionary behavioural scientist and YouTube personality.[embedded content]It is well known that Foucault admitted he had to have 10% incomprehensible gibberish in his writing to be “taken seriously” in French Poststructuralist circles and in French intellectual life. Even worse, Bourdieu put it at 20%.[embedded content]

An anecdote here told to Hitchens by Huw Wheldon as related by an old man who (supposedly) had worked in the reading room of the British Museum in late 19th century and who, when pressed, remembered details of Karl Marx’s time there.It sounds rather apocryphal, but, still, funny stuff.

I’ve now had the time to look at this recent brouhaha in more detail.Ken Livingstone’s original BBC radio interview is here.Listen to it carefully.First, let us examine the suspended Labour MP Naz Shah’s original comment, which can be seen here. Obviously that is absurd, unrealistic, and anti-Israel, but as anti-Israel remarks go, there are far, far worse things amongst the viciously anti-Semitic elements of the minority community from which Naz Shah comes, who no doubt increasingly form part...

And they don’t make UK Labour party politicians like him anymore.These videos are from 2013:[embedded content][embedded content]And while we are on this subject, this was also one of the few issues on which Thatcher was right:[embedded content][embedded content]

That might as well be the name of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the “free” trade agreement currently being negotiated between the unelected EU and the United States, given the new details here, with the agreement set to allow corporations the right to sue governments for social, economic or environment regulation that causes them “loss of profits” in secret anti-democratic tribunals.Just another reason why the people of Europe should abolish the rotten EU, and why...

Internet libertarian personalities come and go, but I gather that one Stefan Molyneux is popular at the moment (his YouTube Channel is here).His video on Karl Marx is below, and it is somewhat amusing, even though not always accurate.[embedded content]Molyneux takes his critique of Marx from Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals (Harper & Row, New York, 1990), which is actually a very interesting analysis of Marx.In turn, Johnson relied on these sources, either directly or indirectly: Felix,...

In volume 1 of Capital in Chapter 25, Marx reproduces a selective quotation from William Gladstone on the condition of the working classes in England from a speech Gladstone gave in the House of Commons on 16 April 1863: “On April 16th, 1863, 20 years later, in the speech in which he introduced his Budget [sc. Gladstone said]: ‘From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per cent In the 8 years from 1853 to 1861 it had increased from the basis taken in 1853 by 20 per...