First posted March 27, 2012 ‘Do you know’, Napoleon once said to Fontanes, ‘what astounds me most about the world? The impotence of force to establish anything. There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind. In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind’ Conquerors, you see, are sometimes… Read More Albert Camus: The Almond Trees (1940)
First posted December 05, 2016 In honour of Adam Zagajewski being awarded the 2016 Jean Améry Prize for European essay writing, Eurozine publishes Zagajewski’s defence of ardour. That is, true ardour, which doesn’t divide but unifies; and leads neither to fanaticism nor to fundamentalism. We’re left with the impression that the present day favours only… Read More Adam Zagajewski: A defence of ardour
There Are Places In The World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness By Carlo Rovelli Reviewed by Pratik Kanjilal “To hear a cultivated person of today joking almost boastfully that they are completely ignorant about science is as depressing as hearing a scientist bragging that they have never read a poem,” writes the Italian… Read More A mind without borders
First posted April 05, 2015 NB: This is a short piece about the German carpenter Johann Georg Elser. It was written in 2001, as an appendix to a public lecture. Now a film is being released about this little-known hero. Read the BBC report below this story: The man who missed killing Hitler by 13… Read More In Memory of Johann Georg Elser, the carpenter who nearly prevented the Second World War
First posted February 09, 2012 A photo of a lone man with his arms folded as hundreds around him perform a salute in Nazi Germany has resurfaced. The snap was taken in Hamburg in 1936, during the celebrations for the launch of a ship. In the crowd, one person refuses to raise his arm to… Read More Ordinary people. The courage to say NO
First posted May 31, 2016 IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies. This, at least, may seem enough of a truism to pass over without comment. Not so, however. For the modern intellectual, it is not at all obvious. TWENTY-YEARS AGO, Dwight Macdonald published a series of articles… Read More Noam Chomsky, The Responsibility of Intellectuals (1967)
Fredy Perlman First posted 2013 & April 2015 Written: 1977; First Published: 1977; Source: Red & Black Detroit Public Domain: Perlman Internet Archive 2006. This work has always been completely free The Egocrat does not express his longing for community and communication in practice; he transforms it into a Thought. Armed with this Thought, he is still mute and powerless, but is no longer… Read More Ten Theses on the Proliferation of Egocrats (1977)
First posted December 3, 2016 Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion By Gareth Stedman Jones; Reviewed by Jeremy Adelman While Jenny was dying, Marx wrote a letter to the Russian Group for the Emancipation of Labour in Geneva on the question: was communal property good? Stedman Jones ends Karl Marx with a story about the fate of… Read More Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion
Kasia Delgado First posted September 7, 2019 Vladimir was sentenced to 10 years’ hard labour. Ivanna was Prisoner 108, and his secret correspondent. She looks back on a love affair with a man she never met In 1953, a young Ivanna Maszczak trudged through the Siberian labour camp in which she was serving a 10-year… Read More ‘I longed for the moment you would write’: The Gulag penpals whose love lasted 60 years
Ben Okri NB: This is a fascinating meditation, not merely on the Queen, but on God, monarchy, twentieth-century history and impermanence. Not to mention our regard for sheer human decency. Well written sir. DS Monarchs have passed away before, but there is something special which Queen Elizabeth has done, which makes it harder for the… Read More Queen Elizabeth was part of our psyche
After the truth-shower 