What are Gareth Stedman Jones’s politics these days?
I’ve just read an article about him which makes him out to be an enormous reactionary. Not so much for his Marxism Today embrace of the free market, but for this account of his experiences in Paris in the ’60s:
> “What I discovered in the 60s was that they were much squarer than we were,” he laughs.
> “They had all these books and films but their idea of what to do on a Saturday night was
> playing bridge, listening to Louis Armstrong and wearing suits! So I did feel that culturally
> we were more emancipated.”
Who would want to be emancipated from listening to Louis Armstrong and wearing suits?
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That sounds like the best Saturday night ever!
Please can you start calling him Gaz Top?
Comment by Marty @ 5/20/2005 10:04 am
Dude, you’re bang on. Oooh, the Man wears suits, oooh, I’m more right on because I wear *jeans*. Louis Armstrong is rubbish! I prefer Cream. They’re much better.
Well done.
Comment by Alistair @ 5/20/2005 3:20 pm
yeah, he’s pretty reactionary. see his classic attack on the movement here: http://squawk.ca/lbo-talk/0208/0761.html
Comment by geo @ 5/20/2005 5:27 pm
Gaz Top used to (probably still does) give a course of lectures on Marx, arguing that Marx was always a straight-forward Young Hegelian, but after bourgeois revolutions seemed to stall, he cast about for another revolutionary subject, and added a superficial theory of class struggle so he could construe the proletariat as revolutionary. It’s a bold thesis.
Comment by Tim @ 5/20/2005 7:11 pm