The attempted murder of Marxism

January 16, 2009 at 10:28 pm (blogosphere, crap, Jim D, Marxism, stalinism, SWP)

“In this way rose feudal socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history” - K. Marx & F. Engels, 1848.

At Last! Someone’s bothered to review Lenny “Tombstone” Seymour’s extended postgrad thesis The Liberal Defence of Murder (Verso, £16.99).

And what a splendid review it is, too: Little Seymour is, we’re told, “an instinctive academic – who thankfully can write nearly as well as Noam Chomsky” (!!!) C’mon, be fair: try reading Seymour’s turgid and self-righteous blog: Chomsky doesn’t deserve that comparison, whatever we might think of him.

Pity, really for a would-be “Trotskyist” (assuming Seymour still considers himself part of that tradition) that this adulation comes from the Stalinist rag, the Morning Star.

And what the Stalinists really liked about Seymour’s attempt to join the big intellekshalls he so admires, is his attack on the Enlightenment: “He shows that many of the greatest Enlightenment thinkers, such as John Locke, believed that ‘savages’ in faraway lands that just happened to be resource-rich, should be excluded from the emancipation of humanity -which should itself bow down before the concept of private property.”  

This ahistorical drivel is, of course a fundamental attack on the method of another product of the Enlightenment: Karl Marx. But Seymour and his SWP (“non-registered”) pals long ago parted company with him, of course.

PS: The Priest has offered to review Seymour’s masterwork, but only if he gets a free copy. He’s  buggered if he’s going to pay good money for it.