by Chris Bertram on November 9, 2003
Chris Brooke (the target of my comments in the post immediately below) has been blogging much of interest recently. He’s noticed “Josh Cherniss’s Greatest Marxists poll”:http://j3.blogspot.com/2003_11_02_j3_archive.html#106825002950107 and “gives his opinion”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/2003_11_01_archive.html#106830719156581669 :
bq. I went for Gramsci, Luxemburg, Benjamin, Adorno and Habermas, raising a querymark over whether the last one was allowed, and worrying over whether this list was a little too full of the Frankfurt School.
All in all, a pretty rum set of choices if you ask me. The only one of them who would make my list is Rosa Luxemburg. Gramsci has always struck me as (a) unreadable and (b) uninteresting and — as Chris admits — Habermas wasn’t a Marxist (but then nor were Adorno and Benjamin). Whatever his faults, there’s no question that Leon Trosky should top the poll.
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by Chris Bertram on November 9, 2003
Quite a sporting weekend for me: I saw Leicester Tigers beat Wasps 32-22 yesterday, then Wales gave England a scare in the Rugby world cup, then Liverpool were denied a deserved point against the S*** at Anfield when referee Graham Poll lacked the courage to award us a cast-iron penalty. Two wins out of three isn’t bad. but when I weight them by how much I care it is still pretty grim.
The only one of these events I attended in person was the Tigers-Wasps encounter which was thoroughly enjoyable and ended a losing streak for Tigers. Bizarrely, the Zurich Premiership continues whilst the leading players are all at the World Cup with the consequence that the strongest teams become the weakest overnight.
All of which is a prelude to brief comment on which teams the English should support at the Rugby World Cup.
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