I assume you’re talking about his time in the Spanish Civil War. But even then some of his contemporaries saw him as essentially an unserious war tourist who was in Catalonia just to collect juicy material for his writing.

Orwell had no understanding of the world-wide significance of the struggle in Spain, he knew little of the national efforts of the Popular Front government to achieve a united front against fascism, he had never seen the Republican flag, he did not agree with the actions of the POUM — he took a rifle in the role of an outsider, a journalist looking for experiences to figure in a future book.” — Bill Alexander, commander of the British Battalion of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, in George Orwell and Spain (1984), p. 94.

Not to mention his supposedly negative review of Mein Kampf. Yeah, he shit talks it super vaguely here and there (“Then suddenly it turned out that Hitler was not respectable after all.” I’ve heard of ironic understatement, but don’t you think you’re overdoing it just a little here George?), but then he somehow finds it possible to say that he doesn’t personally dislike a literal genocidaire and spends so much time talking about Hitler’s supposed supernatural “charisma”:

But Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality, which one can feel even in the clumsy writing of Mein Kampf, and which is no doubt overwhelming when one hears his speeches. I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power—till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter—I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. One feels it again when one sees his photographs—and I recommend especially the photograph at the beginning of Hurst and Blackett’s edition, which shows Hitler in his early Brownshirt days. It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can’t win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some such theme.

(Side note: really suspicious that when I googled for Orwell’s review, the versions in the top results always seem cut out the part where Orwell says he never was able to dislike Hitler… )

And his ending paragraph, ostensibly meant as to criticise the fascist false promise of providing with meaningful struggle in a nihilistic world, actually spends more time puching at “hedonistic” Socialism (Socialists want peace and sustainable material improvements for the lives of the working class? Oh horror!) and while also doing false equivalency between Stalinism and Nazism:

Also he has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all “progressive” thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people “I offer you a good time,” Hitler has said to them “I offer you struggle, danger and death,” and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet. Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war. After a few years of slaughter and starvation “Greatest happiness of the greatest number” is a good slogan, but at this moment “Better an end with horror than a horror without end” is a winner. Now that we are fighting against the man who coined it, we ought not to underrate its emotional appeal.

Orwell’s not a commited anti-fascist. His worst condemnation of fascism is merely of its aesthetics, and his tepid opposition to Nazi Germany is just another opportunity for him to posture and smear leftists that are more serious than he is in defeating fascism.

classic stories of the Wéstern tradition

What’s with the accent mark? Is this some sort of advanced esoteric racism that I’m too non-Amerikkkan to understand?

Ah I guess then it makes sense to me why they would publish Losurdo’s other works, but not his book about Stalin specifically. They’re big tent, with exceptions for anything too closely associated with or explicitly positive about big bad Joey Steel.

Checking the sources cited in the wikipedia page, it seems that there may be actual justification for not saying “second wealthiest”? The sentence in question specifically links to a 2015 Reserve Bank of India annual report about percentage of population below the poverty line, not state GDP. The other source, a UN/government think tank index of sustainable development goals, also says that as of 2020 Kerala places 2nd in terms of “No Poverty”. So, technically, the data being referred to in this specific case was in relation to poverty rates, not wealth.

However, the second source at the same time positions Kerala in 1st place overall among all other Indian states in terms of sustainable development goals generally. So yeah, someone should maybe go and fix the wikipedia page accordingly.

Bernie read Settlers

Oh hey

Apparently Sharts was an American socialist politician and a lawyer who defended in court?

Joseph William Sharts (September 14, 1875 – May 15, 1965) was an American attorney, political activist, newspaper editor, and novelist. Sharts is best remembered as a popular novelist of the first two decades of the 20th century and as a defense attorney in a number of high-profile political trials, including cases involving Socialist Party of America leader Eugene V. Debs, future Workers (Communist) Party leader C. E. Ruthenberg, and radical clergyman William Montgomery Brown. Sharts was a top leader of the Socialist Party of America, sitting on that group’s governing National Executive Committee from 1925 to 1932. He was three times the Socialist candidate for Governor of Ohio.

Wonder whether the book’s actually good. And whether there’s some specifically intended political meaning? The blurbs I could find online seems to say that it’s historical fiction about the Bar Kokhba revolt, but not sure what statements (if any?) about history/contemporary politics it’s trying to make.

Read a comment responding to the April Fools’ post saying that Verso is run by trotskyists (specifically their senior editor Sebastian Budgen). So is all this controversy basically part of some obscure ongoing infighting between trots and MLs within left-wing publishing/academia? Not very familiar with industry politics for niche left-wing publishing companies. Is there a particular ideological tendency in contemporary left-wing publishing? (I assume there’s a perception of trotskyist-aligned theory having some degree of outsized prominence, what with the memes about trots selling newspapers) Is everything published by Verso considered trotskyist or trotskyist-associated, or are they seen as generally non-sectarian?

Neat. Another book on my reading list…

Careful, Joanne might decide to say that actually golem legends are lies made up by rabbis to steal real wizard valour.

The Sun-Cross series is the one where a wizard has to escape the Nazis who reverse-isekaied him into our world, right? Was there jewish mysticism in the book? Haven’t read it myself but I literally just read a critic describing it as an interesting experiment with/subversion of the portal-quest fantasy subgenre (instead of being directly told about the true nature of the world by reliable wise sage figures (eg. Gandalf, Aslan), the protagonist has to actively question and interpret the world around him to find out the truth (ie. the holocaust)).

: Only the most broken people can be great leaders.

Wow, I didn’t know Rothko was a self-professed anarchist. I guess that and the fact that he later donated the pieces to galleries indicate that his guiding principle was egalitarianism (everyone should be able to enjoy art, not just rich assholes) rather than elitism (only people with real taste would appreciate my genius). A really nice sentiment, but possibly a bit idealist (now rich assholes in charge of the Tate Modern get to benefit from and control public access to his art).

“Anybody who will eat that kind of food for those kind of prices will never look at a painting of mine,” he once said.

Wait, I’m not quite sure if I quite get what he’s trying to say? Did he mean to say that rich porkies that eat at pretentious fancy restaurants would be so stupid and tasteless that they would never look up from their overpriced food to enjoy the nice paintings on restaurant walls, or that he doesn’t want any ultra-rich porkies to see his art? Or a combination of both? The first reason doesn’t seem to make complete sense to me; isn’t one of the benefits of being mega-rich off of countless exploited workers that sometimes (and in any case, much more often than the exploited workers) you choose to spend your nearly endless free time learning to appreciate fine art? Is he saying bad taste in food is directly correlated with bad taste in visual art? Did he just hate tasteless rich people, or rich people in general?

Actually, this makes me wonder what abstract expressionists as a movement thought about the relationship between their art and their rich patrons, and whether their art reflected this in any way. I mean, was Rothko’s disgust here the exception, or a widely held sentiment among his peers? The topic seems to me to be unavoidable to anyone with half a working or artistic brain; especially if, as I assume, most artists begin as starving students/apprentices/newcomers and later in their career get offered insane sums of money for their work.

: Stupid commies, don’t you realise that violence never achieves anything? Miss me with all that talk of revolutionary collective action; real progressivism is when you vote for nice, intelligent Democrat politicians so that they can bestow upon the American people positive socioeconomic policy changes like NAFTA and the Affordable Care Act.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s ever been a full translation of Tjokroaminoto’s Islam dan Sosialisme into English. :-(

In my English copy of Syed Hussen Alatas’s Islam and Socialism (which is itself a translation from Malay to English) from which I copied the above extracts, the footnotes say that the English translation of Tjokroaminoto’s words being quoted are Alatas’s own translation. In fact, I think the only extant full translation of Tjokroaminoto’s book is from the original Indonesian to Malay.

Hey I’m glad that you find this interesting! I’m not really subject area expert on Islam or Islamic finance; just picked up a few things here and there from studies and from work. Honestly a bit surprised that I have this much to say about it, especially from the angle of Marxism.

And don’t worry about convincing your hypothetical Muslim interlocutor about the truth of the immortal science or whatever; even if they’re not convinced into immediately converting to secular communism, if they truly are arguing in good faith and with intellectual curiousity, they’ll probably arrive at some general position about their own religious belief and practice that would lead them to do some good in the world.

Go get some sleep!

Ultimately I think that Islamic jurisprudence was a product of its time and, at that time, critique of the economy in a fully-realised way didn’t exist.

More precisely, it’s that the Quran and the hadiths - the written sources - that were a product of their time. Jurisprudence - if understood as the legal theorising and interpretation being done upon prior texts - is a continuing process that’s still ongoing today, and it’s definitely here where modern forces of global capitalism have influenced modern Muslim legal theorists into moulding the orignial texts into the current industry/academic edifice that’s labelled as “Islamic finance”. So yeah, technically speaking, it’s not that “Islamic jurisprudence was a product of its time”, but “is a product of its time”: that time being present-day global capitalist hegemony. (Sorry, I’m probably nitpicking here; I know you said you want to avoid going into the weeds with interpretation and real-world application. I think I would agree generally with most of what you’ve written above; just taking the opportunity to air out and give some structure to a few thoughts that had been jangling around my head for some time.)

I’d be fascinated in hearing what a Muslim would have to say about how they think Muhammad would respond today if he saw how private equity firms like BlackRock are grossly distorting the property market and squeezing every last penny out of people who have no other options for housing available. Something tells me he wouldn’t just be like “Alright guys, this arrangement is totally fine as long as you don’t jack the rents up too high, okay?”

True, and I’m aware that there is some existing discourse/scholarship by Muslims on the Islam’s compatibility with socialism as a political movement. Syed Hussein Alatas’s Islam and Socialism provides a good overview, I think. One bit I think is particularly relevant to the concept of riba is where Alatas outlines the position argued for by Oemar Said Tjokroaminoto, who was a nationalist figure in pre-independence Indonesia; Alatas suggests that Tjokroaminoto, in trying to prevent a spilt between the Islamic moderates and radical Marxists in his party (which eventually happened and led to the the radicals joining the Communist Party of Indonesia) attempted a theoretical reconciliation of the contradictions between Islam and socialism (pg. 62-4):-

In 1924, Haji Omar Said Tjokroaminoto, the leader of Sarekat Islam, then the biggest political party in Indonesia, published a monograph (113 pages) on Islam and socialism. (…) It arose out of the need to counteract communist propaganda. Tjokroaminoto’s party, the Sarekat Islam, was seriously infiltrated by communist elements which led to a split in 1923.

(…)

Regarding state ownership of the means of production, Tjokroaminoto suggested that this was Islamic. In the time of the Prophet, the state owned and acquired land. It is interesting how Tjokroaminoto linked Marx’s theory of surplus value and its expropriation by the capitalists to Islam. The Islamic prohibition of usury, according to Tjokroaminoto, is the same as a prohibition against the immoral capitalist expropriation of surplus value.’ The reforms carried out by the Prophet were thoroughly in the spirit of socialism. The instances cited by Tjokroaminoto are the following, in his own words:

“With the law of zakat Islam intended to make it obligatory for the rich to spend on behalf of the poor. In the time of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) land was the greatest source of livelihood for the working class, and as I have explained earlier, land was owned by the state. Small industry from pre-Islamic times was run by the poor or the slave for the sole profit and welfare of the owners, most of whom were harsh and oppressive. Before the advent of Islam, those who worked in industry were extremely looked down upon by the aristocracy, while the slaves who functioned as labourers were treated as animals by their capitalist masters. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) immediately raised the status of labour and workers. Though he descended from the highest Arab aristocracy, he worked as a trader before his preoccupation as a Prophet took up his entire time. As a recognized prophet he became ‘the spiritual and worldly ruler over Arabs and the Muslim territory, but he mended his own clothes and shoes. The biggest step he took in the direction of industrial socialism was when he raised the status of the slave to that of the free man. The slaves were given rights which they never had before. The slaves were made fellow workers; they were given positions of command in the army, or to become heads of other undertakings, while in yet other spheres as in the family, they became members of the family who treated them as animals before the coming of Islam. That being the case, the slaves took part in sharing the welfare and the profit of their masters. Truly, the step taken by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) to improve the condition of the working class during his time, was unsurpassed in greatness in the economic history of the world.”

Tjokroaminoto was not blind to the fact that during the last thirteen centuries, despotism, autocracy and egoistic materialism had chiselled at the foundation of Islam. As long as the Qur’an is still with us, the ideal of democracy and socialism in Islam shall remain alive. He said: “If we Muslims truly understand and practise the teachings of Islam, we cannot avoid becoming a true democrat and a true socialist.

Islam gets an honourable mention because of their fairly strict prohibition on riba, which is like usury except a souped-up version of it (which is more or less enforced in Islam, unlike most forms of Christianity)

With how Islamic banking/finance is currently widely being practiced, can you really say that prohibition of riba is being strictly, or even “more or less”, enforced in contemporary Islamic practice? I think the best that can be said is that the prohibition is observed in form, but not in spirit. In my very limited experience (please take all this jabbering with a ton of salt; I’m neither Muslim myself nor any sort of specialist in Islamic finance) with Islamic financing on the legal side, it largely seems to involve private or sometimes state-owned financial institutions using profit-sharing, joint-venture, and/or commodity sale contracts to imitate the practical effects and consequences of conventional fixed or variable interest financing instruments while still formally complying with the riba prohibition. Essentially, the bank’s technically not earning any interest off the principal; just “profit” from commodity sales/company shares. Seems to me that what’s been done is just a thousand convoluted and fancy ways of ensuring that the surplus value reaped by the bank is not vulgar “interest”, but some other technically non-prohibited form of (or names for) extracting value from the labour of others, thus reducing the practice to basically a matter of formal compliance without any application of its underlying or originally intended principles - i.e., the moral idea that any financial exploitation of others (in other words, capitalism) inherently corrodes your soul.

I also can’t see any real difference in material interests between Islamic and non-Islamic financial institutions: both are typically just extreme concentrations of financial capital, privately owned, within capitalist societies motivated by their own reproduction/perpetuation/expansion through systemic extraction of surplus value through investment in market commodities and productive concerns. In the worst case scenario, I can see how leftists fixating on riba as a theoretical concept leads to idealist mystification of productive/property relations, frustrating the materialist analysis of that which is central to Marxism.

Basically, it’s all like this mostly because of (like you said) the destruction of pretty much all 20th century efforts towards socialism in Muslim-majority countries (except Libya? But I’m not aware whether Gaddafi promoted Islamic financial principles), resulting in those Muslim-majority countries being dominated by reactionary politics, leading to this utterly debased version of Islamic finance being the global industry norm.

That Pratchett’s gone and she’s still alive and a successful writer is definitve proof that god hates fantasy literature.

That worm has just the right number of nipples.