“History is philosophy teaching by example,” said Bolingbroke. Philosophy has a reputation for being abstract, which it is. Philosophy also has a reputation for being impractical or pointless, which it certainly is not. Here is my nine-minute explanation for why philosophy is life or death. (Much thanks to Christopher Vaughan for his fine video and […]
Philosophy and a century of war Read More »
“A common misconception often quoted by media, politicians, activists is that violence is on the rise and has historically been much lower. Similarly, the trend in post-colonial anthropology has been to regard historically indigenous and tribal societies as more peaceful than contemporary Western society. However, archaeological evidence shows that previous societies had very high level
Modernity’s declining violence Read More »
This is the fifth chapter of the audiobook version of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. Chapter Five: The Crisis of Socialism [mp3] [YouTube] [74 minutes total] Marx and waiting for Godot [mp3] [YouTube] Three failed predictions [mp3] [YouTube] Socialism needs an aristocracy: Lenin, Mao, and the lesson of the German Social
The Crisis of Socialism [EP audiobook] Read More »
This is the fourth chapter of the audiobook version of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. Chapter Four: The Climate of Collectivism [mp3] [YouTube] [102 minutes] From postmodern epistemology to postmodern politics [mp3] [YouTube] The argument of the next three chapters [mp3] [YouTube] Responding to socialism’s crisis of theory and evidence [mp3]
The Climate of Collectivism [EP audiobook] Read More »
In an earlier post on Marx and Engels’s The Communist Manifesto, I offered two explanations for why the 1848 Marx held that communism could only come about by violent revolution. In response to that post, Tibor Machan pointed me to this passage from an 1872 speech Marx gave in Amsterdam: “We are aware of the
More on Marx and violent revolution Read More »
In my Contemporary European Philosophy course we discuss Marx and Engels’s The Communist Manifesto. One question we raised was why Marx and Engels rejected achieving socialism by democratic and reformist methods. Why the insistence upon violent revolution? Here’s Marx in an 1848 newspaper article: “there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies
Marx’s philosophy and the *necessity* of violent politics Read More »
The ten-point list from The Communist Manifesto, with my rough quantification: 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. [Partial check: property taxes, zoning laws, the federal government alone owns 30% of all land in the USA. .6 points.] 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Marx’s 10-point plan 50% realized in USA Read More »
Following up on a series of recent posts on Marxism and its fellow travelers (Engels, Mao, Guzmán, Hobsbawm), a question about whether Marxism’s brutal history is a built-in consequence of its principles or an accidental by-product of well-intentioned theory. So a series of quotations from some principal figures: Marx in 1848: “there is only one
Marxists and violence Read More »