Sunday, February 26, 2006

"Khrushchev's Secret Speech -- Full Annotated Text"

"Khrushchev's Secret Speech -- Full Annotated Text":

"Allow me first of all to remind you how severely the classics of Marxism-Leninism denounced every manifestation of the cult of the individual. In a letter to the German political worker Wilhelm Bloss, [Karl] Marx stated: 'From my antipathy to any cult of the individual, I never made public during the existence of the [1st] International the numerous addresses from various countries which recognized my merits and which annoyed me. I did not even reply to them, except sometimes to rebuke their authors. [Fredrich] Engels and I first joined the secret society of Communists on the condition that everything making for superstitious worship of authority would be deleted from its statute. [Ferdinand] Lassalle subsequently did quite the opposite.'

Sometime later Engels wrote: 'Both Marx and I have always been against any public manifestation with regard to individuals, with the exception of cases when it had an important purpose. We most strongly opposed such manifestations which during our lifetime concerned us personally.' "

Friday, February 24, 2006

Eurozine - Articles

Eurozine - Articles: "Karl Marx himself saw capitalism in a positive light; in its very progress he saw its demise. A demise precipitated by the anarchistic heart of the network society? "

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Don't Stop thinking about tomorrow

Don't Stop thinking about tomorrow:

"What first made me doubt the classic economic definition of a company was when I observed the truly successful companies. Companies such as IBM, Siemens, and Toyota don't define themselves as a bundle of assets that produce goods and services to be sold at the highest price for the lowest cost.

They define themselves as a community of people; therefore, the company is people and not just a set of assets, abilities and skills or hands and minds. These companies basically consist of individuals who share values that are in harmony with the values of the community."

Monday, February 13, 2006

The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millennium

Crisis Magazine: "Paul Gottfried, a Yale Ph.D. and professor of humanities at Elizabethtown College, has given us a brief yet deeply learned overview of the modern European Left. The Strange Death of Marxism is the third in an important if underappreciated Gottfried trilogy that began with After Liberalism and Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy"

Friday, February 10, 2006

The Karl Marx blog of the week!™

franco_pelayo My Sanctuary

Contains a nice summary of Karl Marx and his work that seems to borrow heavily from David McLellan's, Karl Marx: His Life and Thought.

But the font is in fancy black and blue.

Congrats on being the Karl Marx Blog Of the Week!™

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

TCS Daily - The Surprise of History


TCS Daily - The Surprise of History: "It is widely assumed that the concept of the End of History is derived from the nineteenth century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Francis Fukuyama in his best-selling book entitled, The End of History and the Last Man, has done much to popularize this idea, so that in the minds of many intellectuals Hegel and the End of History thesis are one and the same. But Fukuyama is not the only contemporary thinker who has ascribed this thesis to Hegel. The fabulously erudite English author Paul Johnson has also argued that Hegel held this thesis, though for Johnson this was proof positive that Hegel was an intellectual charlatan, while for Fukuyama Hegel's thesis of the End of History was proof positive of his prophetic genius. "

I think even Dr. Marx would be ok with a Hegelian interlude now and then!