Roland Boer's Blog, page 68

Call for Papers: Historical Materialism Australasia 2015

Australasia’s own Historical Materialism conference will meet again this year: 17-18 July at the University of Sydney. More information here, but I have copied the call for papers.

Historical Materialism Australasia 2015: Reading Capital, Class & Gender Today

The year 2015 marks a series of conspicuous anniversaries. Three books in particular celebrate significant milestones this year. Raewyn Connell and Terry Irving’s seminal Class Structure in Australian History was published thirty-five ye...

The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel now published

The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel is out.Permit me to say that I like the way this book has turned out, largely due to careful and detailed attention from the people at Westminster John Knox Press. It is part of the Library of Ancient Israel series. The blurb reads:

The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel offers a new reconstruction of the economic context of the Bible and of ancient Israel. It argues that the key to ancient economies is with those who worked on the land rather than in interm...

On solipsism and Roosevelt

In December, 1933, Stalin did an interview with a correspondent fromThe New York Times. Already there is a glimmer of the potential for the cooperation between Stalin and Roosevelt in the Second World War, although his comment on United States solipsism still seems to apply.

Roosevelt, by all accounts, is a determined and courageouspolitician. There is a philosophical system,solipsism, which holds that the external world does notexist and the only thing that does exist is one’s ownself. It lo...

The beauty of no internet

One of the enjoyable aspects of heading off a cycling tour or mountain-hiking (in Australian lingo, it’s ‘bush-walking), is the absence of any internet or even phone contact. Increasingly, the pleasure applies at home. The internet has been off since Saturday – until now. I have not been troubled by email, the desire to blog, what passes for news, or even the temptation to waste time on other useless web-based pursuits.

Inaugural Stalin Prize film night an unexpected success

Today, on Mayday, we had the inaugural Stalin Prize film night. More than I expected gathered to watch the epicFall of Berlin (winner in 1950). We drank vodka, soaking it up with various nibblies. Some extraordinary scenes, such as the one when a mad and rat-like Hitler meets prelates from the Vatican and promises them that he will save ‘Western civilisation’, or the Stakhanovite themes at the beginning, replete with the rich harvests and steel plants that smiling children simply visit on a w...

The peasant woman’s ‘brown eye’

In an address to the first all-union congress of collective-farm shock brigaders (1933), Stalin deals with the processes of admitting individual peasants into collective farms. Some such farms were a little wary of accepting individual peasants who may not have been so keen on collectivisation. The reasons were many, such as this one about the peasant woman’s brown eye:

Two years ago I received a letter from a peasant woman, a widow, living in the Volga region. She complained that the collect...

Can a religious person join the communist party?

Can a religious person join the communist party?

One would expect that the answer would be a resounding ‘no’. Is not Marxism a materialist philosophy and political movement, with no time for the mystifying effects of religion or indeed for reactionary religious institutions? The catch is that communist parties around the world have actually permitted religious people to join and be members.

Let us go back to the First International. It was accused by the reactionary right and indeed by former...

Potential panel on In the Vale of Tears at Historical Materialism Australasia 2015

Having just returned from a lively panel on ‘Marxism and Theology’ at the New York Historical Materialism conference, I have been asked whether I would be interested in a panel on my Deutscher-prize book, In The Vale of Tears, for the Sydney event – on 17-18 July. The catch is that not so many Marxists in Australia know much about philosophy, let alone Marxism and religion. One or two come to mind, but this is probably a good moment for some crowd-sourcing. Suggestions welcome (send to my Uni...

Why would one join the Chinese Communist Party? Or, how socialism has become ingrained within Chinese culture

Is the communist party of China a bunch of mean, nasty and greedy old men, terrorising and suppressing a fearful population? Do they merely use socialism as a thin veneer for outright greed, maintaining power by authoritarian means when needed? I have heard not a few voice such opinions. Yet it jars somewhat with my experience of finding many young people keen to join the party. Why would they desire to join a party that is supposedly widely disparaged and held in disdain? In order to underst...

Who’s Karl Marx?

Recently I visited New York – the first time in 15 years – and had the pleasure of sitting next to an American man travelling with me from Beijing to New York (over the north pole). We talked for a little and then he asked me what I do in China.

‘Teach’, I said.

‘But what you teach?’ He asked.

‘Marxism, philosophy and religion’, I said.

‘Marxism? What’s Marxism?’ He said.

‘Karl Marx …’ I said.

‘I’ve never heard of him’.

I sat pondering the long shadow of that alcoholic, Joseph McCarthy.