This was article written by Adam Buick for the journal Radical Philosophy 10. Spring 1975 . JOSEPH DIETZGEN is indeed a neglected philosopher. How many people know that he was the man Marx introduced to the 1872 Congress of the First International as ‘our philosopher’? Or that it was Dietzgen, not Plekhanov, who first coined the phrase ‘dialectical materialism’? Or that for the first thirty or so years of this century Dietzgen’s Philosophical Essays were to he found on the bookshelves of any working class militant with Marxist pretensions? Who, then, was Dietzgen? What were his views? And, indeed,...
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A new documentary film on the life and music of Phil Ochs, “There But For Fortune,” is being shown in a several US cities now. It hasn’t come too soon, certainly, because Ochs today is largely unknown outside the circle of lefty baby-boomers. Often Ochs is dismissed as a “topical” songwriter whose music, for that reason, hasn’t stood the test of time. “He’s no Bob Dylan,” his critics sometimes say. Dylan himself famously told Ochs he was “just a journalist” (as he threw him out of his limousine). This image of Ochs owes much to his own statements, for...
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Occasionally gets a membership application from someone who has a rough idea of what we stand for. They may have read few Socialist Standards and perhaps been to a meeting or two. They’re fired up and want to get involved so they ask for an application form, fill it in, – and suddenly they’re puzzled. – Why do we ask them their views on religion? (It’s not just religion we ask them about of course but their understanding and agreement with our case generally but it’s often a religious view that proves to be a sticking point)....
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Frank Dikötter, a historian who teaches at the University of Hong Kong, said he found that during the time that Mao was enforcing the Great Leap Forward in 1958, in an effort to catch up with the economy of the Western world, he was responsible for overseeing “one of the worst catastrophes the world has ever known”. Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural history from 1958 to 1962- The Great Leap Forward – explains that at least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years. His book, Mao’s Great Famine;...
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We’re celebrating the 124th anniversary of a General Strike held to win the 8 hour work day. That General Strike of May 1, 1886 was called by the forerunner of the American Federation of Labor and organized throughout the Canada and the US. On that day 300,000 to half a million workers set down their tools and marched in the largest industrial cities in North America. 80,000 in Chicago, 10,000 in Detroit, New York, St. Louis, etc. If an action of this size happened today, 4 to 6 million would be on strike and 100s of thousands in the...
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From the Socialist Standard, July 1989. Up until 1789 France was an Absolutist state ruled by a king who claimed that his total power to rule had been granted him by god. All the top posts in the army, the government, the civil service, the church and the judiciary were reserved for the members of a hereditary nobility. The population was in fact divided into three “orders” or “estates”: the clergy, the nobility and the rest – over 95 per cent of course – known simply as the Third Estate. Relics of Feudalism The vast majority of the population...
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Even 90 years after the Russian revolution there are still some who claim that the event shines as a beacon for socialism. We were able to say at the time that whatever was happening in Russia it was not a socialist revolution. In August 1918 the Socialist Standard pointed out that, while there were industrial towns in Russia, the country was largely agricultural with about 80 per cent of the population still living on the land. The answer to the question whether “this huge mass of people” (about 160 million), which indeed included some industrial and agricultural wage slaves,...
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Our subject this evening is “Socialism – Utopian and Scientific.” Most relevant in the examination of this subject is history. Not the history you have studied at school nor the history with which current literature is so preoccupied. Currently a history titled “History as Mirror” comparing the fourteenth century and its horrible conditions with the twentieth century that we know contributes very little to understanding with...
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Down through the ages there have been various interpretations of history. For example, there are the theories which see in history the working out and realization of some sort of divine plan – like Hegel’s philosophy of history, which sees the whole historical development of society as the realization stage by stage of the so-called Absolute Idea. Again, there are the various theories which see history as moving through “cycles,” every civilization passing by some inescapable necessity through the cycle of rise, plentitude of power and decline – as in Spengler’s Decline of the West or Toynbee’s Studies in...
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Titanic: 100 Years On
This April will witness the 100th anniversary of the sinking of theRMS Titanic. Many words will be written in the capitalist media about the disaster, but what of the class aspects of the tragedy and has anything really changed in the last century? The Titanic came into being purely for the speedy conveyance of the rich and wealthy classes between Britain and the US. Opulence and luxury were the watchwords of her design and construction, rather than safety. Designed around class division and reflecting the extremes of wealth and poverty in Edwardian Britain, the vessel featured Turkish baths, gymnasiums, electric...
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