Three Essays on a)Links between Hitler and Trump, b) Political changes compelled by the digital economy, and c) What Great Books are Made of, Courtesy of V Hugo and D Halberstam.
It's not because I agree with much of what you say that I'm commenting. But I doubt I'd be commenting if I didn't.
You're much better read than I am. Well, you've maybe read other things, but neither of us was a Civil War soldier. It's interesting to contemplate: you have space in your kit bag for one book. Which do you take? One that tells of the misery of others.
They'd have done well, also, to take the manifesto. It's easy to read it today in the lumbering shadow of the legacy of communism, which gets defined as a system, and to dismiss it as a recipe for that system. For that is what it certainly was not.
Of course it's a system: it was inspired as a reaction to systems. To be of practical application it needs to be systemised, just like banking, insurance, the work-life balance, how a blender works. But, and, here, you're right again, communism is far more than a system, because it is a system that flows out of ... an idea. Without the idea that subtends communism, any system that aspires to it will end up a deformed version of it. Just as we see with capitalism, with democracy, with equality, with nebulous concepts like freedom.
When communism's failings as a state system showed to the fore, what followed was not collapse. It was forty years of putting up with the failings. No one needed to read Victor Hugo to discover what all was wrong. They just needed the courage to grasp the idea and put to death the bastardised version of their ideal.
I'll close now. It's not criticism, but I did smile when juxtaposing these two gems: "Something really gets on my nerves: People today are such inane, snot-nosed assholes, and they are so very certain that they are the most sophisticated, stellar people who have [ever] trod upon the earth – after all, they wear designer footwear." And "Camille Paglia condemned what she has seen as academia’s distaste for the heartfelt, emphatic stance and preference for material that is ironic, aloof, keeps its composure and reads the way ladies were once taught to behave, which is to never give oneself away. I agree with Paglia."
It's not because I agree with much of what you say that I'm commenting. But I doubt I'd be commenting if I didn't.
You're much better read than I am. Well, you've maybe read other things, but neither of us was a Civil War soldier. It's interesting to contemplate: you have space in your kit bag for one book. Which do you take? One that tells of the misery of others.
They'd have done well, also, to take the manifesto. It's easy to read it today in the lumbering shadow of the legacy of communism, which gets defined as a system, and to dismiss it as a recipe for that system. For that is what it certainly was not.
Of course it's a system: it was inspired as a reaction to systems. To be of practical application it needs to be systemised, just like banking, insurance, the work-life balance, how a blender works. But, and, here, you're right again, communism is far more than a system, because it is a system that flows out of ... an idea. Without the idea that subtends communism, any system that aspires to it will end up a deformed version of it. Just as we see with capitalism, with democracy, with equality, with nebulous concepts like freedom.
When communism's failings as a state system showed to the fore, what followed was not collapse. It was forty years of putting up with the failings. No one needed to read Victor Hugo to discover what all was wrong. They just needed the courage to grasp the idea and put to death the bastardised version of their ideal.
I'll close now. It's not criticism, but I did smile when juxtaposing these two gems: "Something really gets on my nerves: People today are such inane, snot-nosed assholes, and they are so very certain that they are the most sophisticated, stellar people who have [ever] trod upon the earth – after all, they wear designer footwear." And "Camille Paglia condemned what she has seen as academia’s distaste for the heartfelt, emphatic stance and preference for material that is ironic, aloof, keeps its composure and reads the way ladies were once taught to behave, which is to never give oneself away. I agree with Paglia."
I agree with you. Let's keep our composure.