Things
have been a little quiet around the Just Third Way network, what with the Three
Rs of reading, researching, and ’riting.
We located a number of very rare (but fortunately relatively
inexpensive) books about the Revolutions of 1848 and the New York City mayoral
campaign of 1886 — yes, there’s a connection with the Just Third Way — and have
had some rather interesting breakthroughs in tying together some seemingly
disparate elements. There have, however,
been a few items of note:
• A number of new articles have
appeared on the New World
Standard Critique that should be of interest to readers of the Just Third
Way. Of particular note is “Being
Your Own Boss,” a reposting of the piece from this blog.
• We neglected to post it last
week, but the Perth Herald-Tribune
published “England’s
Difficulty and Ireland’s Opportunity” on February 22, 2017. The article discusses how, in light of
Britain’s leaving the European Union, Ireland can avoid losing a significant
portion of its export market, 40% of which goes to the United Kingdom.
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| George: His original words being edited. |
• While responding to a follower of
the agrarian socialist Henry George, we discovered completely by chance that
recent editions of George’s classic Progress
and Poverty (1879) appear to have been edited slightly to give a different
impression of the direction of George’s thought. In the online edition of Progress and Poverty, following the passage where George discussed
why he did not claim his system is socialist (below), he declared, “The ideal of socialism is grand and noble. I am convinced
it is possible to achieve. But such a state of society cannot be manufactured —
it must grow. Society is an organism, not a machine. It can live only by the
individual life of its parts. In the free and natural development of all its
parts, the harmony of the whole will be secured. All that is necessary to
social regeneration is ‘Land and Liberty’.”
This did not sound right, so we checked our copy, published in 1935, and
a facsimile of the 1879 edition we have on hand. Sure enough, the last sentence on page 321
had omitted a key statement by George.
It originally read, “All that is necessary to social regeneration is included in the motto of those Russian
patriots sometimes called Nihilists — ‘Land and Liberty’.” The italicized phrase, which links George’s
proposals to the program of the Russian Nihilists, was edited out, and replaced
with a footnote drawing a similarity to the Nihilists without suggesting a
link.
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| "I am not a cigar ... I mean, a socialist." |
• Georgists, of course, have
insisted since the 1880s that they are not
socialists, even though they openly advocate abolition of private property in
land. This seems to be because George,
despite appearances, said his proposals were not socialist, even though others
kept insisting that georgism is socialism.
This problem can be solved rather easily. George did not
call himself a socialist because he redefined socialism from “the abolition of
private property,” to “absolute State control over every aspect of life,” and
then stated his belief that such control could not be maintained except in
primitive or decayed societies. This is
on pages 319 to 321 of the 1879 and 1935 print editions of Progress and Poverty. George
then claimed his proposal tended to
socialism, and fulfilled the ideals
of socialism (ibid., 433-472), but was not socialism . . . even as he
said that socialism would be a great idea! (Ibid.,
321.)
• Possible conferences are being
discussed for the Justice University event in Kentucky on April 8 and in Virginia on April 28
and 29. We’ll let you know when more details
become available.
• CESJ’s latest book (makes a great
pre-Easter gift . . . obviously), Easter
Witness: From Broken Dream to a New Vision for Ireland, is available from Amazon
and Barnes
and Noble, as well as by special order from many “regular” bookstores. The book can also be ordered in bulk, which
we define as ten copies or more of the same title, at a 20% discount. A full case is twenty-six copies, and
non-institutional/non-vendor purchasers get a 20% discount off the $20 cover
price on wholesale lots ($416/case).
Shipping is extra. Send enquiries
to publications@cesj.org. An additional discount may be available for
institutions such as schools, clubs, and other organizations as well as
retailers.
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| "Hulk IS smiling! |
• Here’s the usual announcement
about the Amazon Smile program,
albeit moved to the bottom of the page so you don’t get tired of seeing
it. To participate in the Amazon Smile
program for CESJ, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift
through. Once you’ve typed (or copied
and pasted) “Center for Economic and
Social Justice Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you
will be taken to the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• We have had
visitors from 31 different countries and 46 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past week (Google “improved” their
analytics, making it impossible to see trends longer than a week instead of the
previous two months). Most visitors are from the United States, Canada, Nigeria,
South Africa, and Australia. The most popular postings this past week in
descending order were “Philosophies at War, XII: Vatican Letters, Part One,”
“Twenty-First Century Coaching and Team Building,” “Thomas Hobbes on Private
Property,” “Leading With Excellence in a Changing World,” and “Philosophies at
War, X: The Soul of the Hive.”
Those are the happenings for this
week, at least those that we know about.
If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a
note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into
the next “issue.” If you have a short
(250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the
blog — do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#