Much commentary lately on the Pope’s critique of capitalism. Some even describe it as ‘Marxist’, this is silly, but so also are many of the evocations of the Marxist legacy on the left. Marx wasn’t the first or the last critic of capitalism. The originality of Marx’s work does not lie in his moral critique […]
New Communists
An interesting critique of the ‘new Communists’ here that in part misses the point. Some observations drawn from the history of real Communism and real anti-Communism.
Past electoral lessons
Delight of second-hand bookshopping is finding curiosities that shed unexpected light on present. Two old examples of British electoral studies read recently have some lessons for present.
Climate policy and the second best
Generally I have been in the market camp on climate change policy. I have tended to accept the arguments of those as Andrew Leigh who contend that:
Reasons to be cheerful
Some valuable words from Brad de Long: If all goes well in China and India in the next generation—and if nothing goes catastrophically wrong in the rich post-industrial North Atlantic core of the global economy—then the next generation will see a real milestone. For the first time ever more than half of the world will […]
Econophysics
One of the joy of the Internet is rapidly learning about entirely new things. Via a blog comment here I came across ‘econophysics’, described in a Nature article as: For the past two decades, some physicists have been trying to apply their ideas and tools to an area that seems a long way from traditional […]
Communism and history
Thinking of of writing a book on the modest topic of the past and future of socialist politics. Much Australian left commentary sees the history of socialism as irrelevant, in particular the Communist movement is either an embarrassment or else the product of malign individuals.
Rembering Jerry Cohen
Reviewing my lecture on Marxism for Modern Political Ideologies I looked over Andrew Heywood’s valuable Political Ideologies. To Heywood any future for Marxism rests on ‘post-Marxism’ in the Laclau-Mouffe sense. There was a time when an alternative road was proposed: that of analytical Marxism. Jerry Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History was one of its […]
Primaries or collective self-governance
Primaries are back in the news in Australia following media reports of their use by the British conservatives to endorse a candidate. Primaries seem to attract sympathy from the left judging by Larvatus Pradeo. I doubt however that the current uninspiring quality of Labor MPs would be much improved by primaries, although some of the […]
Tugan-Barnovsky and China
Discussion of the Chinese economy often centers on the idea that Chinese economic growth is fundamentally unbalanced due to low levels of domestic consumption and a reliance on exports. Yet China seems to have weathered the global financial crisis particularly well. Zacharay Karabell: China’s path, of course, is hardly without skeptics. The common argument against […]