The Communist Manifesto

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As my last purchase in America (except for a sandwich), I picked up an e-book reader, one of these little black-and-white low-powered devices that will probably be eclipsed by sleeker coloured tech in a year or two. It's a marvellous little gizmo, which has revolutionised not only how I read but what I read. Flicking on at the touch of a button,

Comments

[gerald_duck]

For what it's worth, I do have a paper copy of the Communist Manifesto and have read it.

Compared with Mein Kampf it was mercifully brief and lucid.

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I think I think I'll skip the 'dolf - or, more accurately, I hope it's never the most illuminating thing available to read.

[gerald_duck]

He did get elected, and most Germans weren't stupid or evil. He's possibly the most vilified man in history, someone it's hard to be objective about. Actually reading his own words is as close as I can get, at this remove, to understanding why he was, for a few critical years, so very glamorous

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Sony Reader PRS-950.

[chris_sawyer]

The problem with human governments, is they involve humans. Even if we could strip away every facet of our society, and return to a basic agricultural existence, there would still be some of us who would attain a disproportionate level of control upon the group, and next thing you know, it's feudal lords and robber barons all over again.

CEO's have replaced the Dukes of old as our robber barons, and loud-mouthed politicians are our feudal lords.

I don't think humans will ever rid their world of injustice, it's just too ingrained into our animal psyche.

[footpad]

It is better, though. Progress has been generally forward.

Our technology may yet reverse the trend, though. Ubiquitous surveillance, coupled with ubiquitous enforcement of whatever arbitrary ethos wins the power-struggle of the day...

[gerald_duck]

I'm beginning to think that privacy is a lost cause. For example, I predict that Google's aerial imagery will be a live video stream by 2020. And too few people are taking a long-term view of cryptographic security: the thirty-year rule in the UK binds the government archives to thirty years of secrecy, but all too little of that material is being encrypted to withstand attack by computers a million times more powerful than we have today. It will be decrypted long before it's declassified.

This will change society, but not necessarily for the worse. It might be hard for the soi-disant moral majority to criticise those with openly esoteric lifestyles when their own little peccadilli are plain for all to see. Nobody's lifestyle would remain hidden from public scrutiny, but nobody could be a hypocrite.

My brother's emigrated to Sweden, for example, and by all accounts it's a very liberal and tolerant country. It's also very open: everybody has a national identity number which ties everything together through publically-accessible

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I'm so sorry. I know I should concern myself with the corollaries and fundamental wisdom of your always-instructive comments, but:

Peccadillos. (Or, anglicised, ~lloes.) Spanish.

[heavens_steed]

I'm pleased to see that you are one to agree with me about the success of capitalism. However, I think you give too much praise to Marx. Marx may have had a bright mind but his ideology was doomed from the very beginning because of two simple and false assumptions: 1) Human nature is fundamentally good and selfless and human beings will voluntarily work together for the greater good 2) That religion is the enemy of a prosperous and just society rather than the foundation for it. Adam Smith's ideas were superior and more successful because they perceived human nature accurately and were not hostile to religion.

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We are destined to disagree on point (2), but let's not contest it now or we'll stray a very long way from Marx. :)

Regarding point (1): a month ago I'd have said exactly the same. Now I'm not so sure. I haven't read enough of Marx to have a firm opinion on the matter, but, at least so far, I'm getting the impression that that view is much too simplistic-a sort of "pop Marx" that far too casually dismisses his contributions to the field of economics. I'm very curious to find out how much we dismiss as "Marxism" is actually just the damned legacy of Messrs.Ulyanov and Jugashvili. It may be that Marx actually had much better, or at least more humble ideas.

[megadog]

If you're warming to the appeal of Adam Smith [we'll make a libertarian of you yet!] can I also direct you towards John Stuart Mill ?? (but suggest you also read the works of Jeremy Bentham as a precursor).

Though I'm intrinsically not a "utilitarianist" and question his "greatest-happiness principle", other slices of Mill's ideas really ring true in oh so many areas.