Friday, March 3, 2017

News from the Network, Vol. 10, No. 09


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.
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.
"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.
"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#