In Praise of the Short Book/extended essay

15 years of serious blogging has created almost 2000 posts here – some of which are extended essays to be grouped together, with some editing and an introduction, to become mini-books. This is the process in which I am currently engaged around the topic of populism – sparked by a reading of The Populist Moment – the Left after the great Recession by Arthur Borriello and Anton Jaeger (2023).

This post, however, is more by way of a tribute to the format of the extended essay or short book for which I’m beginning to notice an admirable growing trend. ”The Populist Moment”, for example, is only 147 pages long and another Verso book (this time about the Italian right) - First They Took Rome - is just 174 pages. For several years, I’ve been urging authors and publishers to exercise more self-discipline – so this is indeed a welcome trend.

But the unannointed king of the contemporary extended essay is Perry Anderson whose extended essays in the London Review of Books have become the stuff of legend. ”Highly readable but serious” is the best way to describe the writing of this Marxist historian who has been based variously in the UK and the US and is the subject of a very inadequate Wikipedia entry. This Jacobin article does him more justice. I tried to google for other prominent extended essayists but all I got were guidelines for writing extended essays for the Internațional Baccalauriat!

George Orwell and Arthur Koestler wrote extended essays but the only contemporary exponent of the art I’ve come across is Aurelien

Some recommended reading

Contesting the Global Order – the radical political economy of Perry Anderson and Immanuel Wallerstein by Gregory Williams (2020)

The H Word – the peripeteia of Hegemony Perry Anderson (2017) is 156 pages

Pessimism of the Intellect – history of the New Left Review Duncan Thompson (2007)

The F word again

One of the rarer of blogging pleasures is, for me at any rate, provoking a reader to write a comment. Apart from family and friends, I have only one such reader – who happens to be a fellow-blogger, Arthur Bough, aka Boffy – an economist whose blog contains detailed  Marxist exegesis and an excellent leftist blogroll.

He’s been good enough to include me in his blogroll on which he clearly keeps an eagle eye – ever ready to join battle. My last post on Paul Mason’s latest book on Fascism struck a nerve – with Boffy’s opening shot being an accusation that the Ukraine War seems to have revealed Mason in his true colours as a strong supporter of NATO. As an old supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament this was (bad) news to me.

But I take the line that we shouldn’t allow our prejudices about authors to interfere with our judgement on the coherence of a book’s argument (eg I have enjoyed Niall Ferguson’s recent books). And I find Mason consistently worth reading – not least for the breadth of his reading and the way he integrates useful references into the body of his text.

And, further, my post had actually been about Mason’s most recent book on Fascism – not his earlier one on PostCommunism which Boffy had critiqued extensively (in a series) to which Boffy refers again in his comments

Boffy’s basic argument seems to be that Mason’s support these days for a Popular Front is hypocritical as Stalin and the Comintern held the line so strongly against any common front with Socialists (although Mason reveals that, for some reason, Stalin conceded to Georgy Dmitrov when the Bulgarian leader told him to his face that this was unacceptable). But Mason was, of course, a Trotskyite and, as such, always opposed to Stalinism. As always happens in leftist disputes, I am therefore left a tad confused.

And this is perhaps the point at which I should come totally clean - and confess that I have always had an inclination toward the liberal rather than radical side of social democracy. I may have been a regular reader of New Left Review from its very first edition in 1960 but, when push came to shove, it was Gaitskell and Crosland I supported in the struggles for the soul of the Labour Party – although, in 1979, I appeared on platforms with Tony Benn and never shared the popular vilification of Jeremy Corbyn – whose 2017 electoral platform electrified me. Perhaps I’m simply becoming more radical as I grow older – but the way Corbyn was vilified by the UK media (including The Guardian) and put under military and MI5 surveillance proves to me that UK democracy is non-existent. This is a revealing and harrowing hour-long interview with Corbyn about that experience from Declassified UK which has attracted 1400 views – so much are voters starved of basic political power. How can a country imagine it’s democratic when the duly elected leader of the Opposition Party is the subject of sustained abuse from the country’s newspapers? Basically the message is

“we allow you to vote every 4-5 years – but only if we agree with the harmless remedies your party supports”

If I had my time again, I would return to the spirit I showed in 1977 when I penned a thoroughly critical long article exposing the fragile foundations on which democracy was built.

Fascism Resource

Why do I get the feeling that Fascism is pigeon-holed academically? There seems to be something deviant about people who show interest in the field – is this unfair?

Interview with Paul Mason on his latest book

Three Faces of Fascism; Ernst Nolte (1966) This book by a German historian about French, German and Italian fascism attracted a lot of criticism at the time – for being too sympathetic

The regime model of fascism (2000) a long academic article which compares Austrian, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Romanian and Spanish forms of Fascism.

The Anatomy of Fascism Robert Paxton (2004) as the title says

Studying Fascism in a post-Fascist Age Roger Griffin (2011) a fairly personal article about the academic field written a decade ago

Visualising Fascism – the 20^th century rise of the global right ed J Thomas and G Eley (2020) A curious book co- edited by an historian who has specialised in Germany which focuses more on the aesthetic side of the subject.

Celebrating the Open Free Spirit

In the eleven years of blogging, I occasionally muse about the nature of blogging. When I’m in a (self-) critical mood I refer to it as an extreme form of self-advertisement; in more benign moods I talk about its role in clarifying confused thinking….

And, of course, I’ve noticed that most serious blogs specialise in a particular topic – be it novels; economic, political or legal commentary; the EU; social policy; Marxist economics; a particular academic discipline etc 

What I haven’t paid enough attention to is how few serious blogs there are – like this one - which challenge these boundaries and choose to tramp or trespass in what I have called “NO Man’s Land”. The other image I have used is that of the butterfly which gracefully alights for a few moments on a flower and then moves on. I should perhaps be more careful in my use of that image/metaphor since the butterfly’s life is a short one   

So in closing, for the moment, this series of “posts…so far this year”, I want to try to identify those few blogs which set their face against being enclosed by boundaries and range more freely.  

1. Let me start with someone who has sadly gone silent these past couple of years – a retired Liverpool academic, Gerry of How the Light Gets In whose material  makes for great reading - with celebrations of the history and landscapes of NE Engalnd – as well as cultural and literary events all covered in loving detail. Hopefully Gerry will find his voice again…

2. Then a blog from a Bulgarian woman long resident in the US – Maria Popova - whose Brain Pickings focus on the timeless and uplifting advice of creative writers such as Ursula le Guin, Kurt Vonnegut, George Orwell and Rebecca Solnit

3. Then there’s my current favourite blogger, Canadian Dave Pollard of How to Save the World whose blog exudes the integrity of someone searching for what is worthwhile in life and living  

4. Another blog which defies classification is RioWang – which is half travelogue (but of such way-out places as Iran and the Caucusus ) and half celebration of the remnants of old Jewish history in such places. This, for example, is the latest post which includes a classic Persian song

5. Brave New Europe is a leftist site with an open and creative selection process

6. The Worthy House is a blog I hesitated to include – since its over-confident, ant-leftist tone sometimes offends me but the sheer range of its reviews warrant its inclusion. See for yourself with these reviews of the important book The Geography of Thought; Banfield’s The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (to which I often refer in the posts); and Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs of which they seem none too fond.

But why can I find only a handful of blogs with such an open spirit?

Posts This Year – Part V – the last few weeks

Post Title	Inspired by	The basic message
Demons and Demos	A Polish right-wing philosopher challenges liberal democracy	Identity politics has indeed gone too far
How America Lost its Mind	A 3 year old article with that title	is puritanism and post-modernism really to blame?
The Dethroning of Reason	Remembering the debate in the 1970s about “muddling through”	Did post-modernism and behavioural economics really start the rot?
Positive Public Administration	A long-overdue Manifesto	We have become too cynical about institutions
Feelings	“Nervous States” book by William Davies	How did experts initially get their status – and then lose it so recently?
Head Hand Heart	David Goodhart’s latest book	The devaluing of manual and technical work and the overestimation of the university
Links I Liked	The accident of genius; how a 1977 report changed the UK	30 years after Thatcher’s resignation, we still don’t have the measure of her
Humankind	Rutger Bregman’s latest book is a model of clarity	His argument that humans are basically altruistic doesn’t quite convince – altho he adds the rider about “power corrupting”
How Myths take root and are difficult to shift	A reread of Bregman’s book	One of my famous tables - with 22 of Bregman’s exploded myths explained
Covid19, governments, Science and Lies	I get fed up hearing the UK PM talk about “following the science”	Governments can’t avoid choices and values. Experts have their limits
The Continuing Saga of Brexit	2 of my favourite blogs	The endgame
Whatever happened to peak oil?	Reading at last J Michael Greer’s “The Long Descent” (2008)	I realise how little I understand about energy issues
The 2020 posts …..so far	This is the time of the year when I start to think about the annual E-book of posts	It is an opportunity to reflect on the blog’s distinctiveness – and what it might be doing better
Perennials - II	I like to think that a post of several years ago can still be read with benefit	why straddling boundaries gives insights
Mapping the Common Ground	A book-length report from a fascinating new think-tank with teams in 4 countries	Gives a detailed insight into the UK of 2020 – using the work of psychologist Jonathan Haidt
Le Temps Perdu III	The third of the series	Why we should turn off the News
Between the Lines - IV	I’ve started – so I’ll finish	What I would like to be distinctive about the blog
The blog that keeps on giving	Dave Pollard’s blog which, like mine, is also one of the few generalist blogs	The importance in these times of good questions – and of not being put off by the lack of response

 

Between the Lines - IV

Drafting the brief intros to the series of this year’s posts I’ve been rerunning this week has been a useful exercise – at least for me. It’s encouraged me to express more clearly the philosophy behind the blog viz –

-      Reflective – taking distance from “current affairs”

-      Sceptical

-      Open – to deeper analyses

-      questioning the nature and effects of (social) media 

It’s interesting that the blog has taken recently to using the title “Whatever happened to??” to explore the sudden (and strangely unremarked) disappearance of a topic which used to be on everyone’s lips… 

We need to think more deeply about who’s pulling the strings of such intellectual fashions 

Today’s batch of posts somehow resonate with me– they may seem a bit fixated on the irrelevance of most books written by social scientists (except generic ones) but this serves only as a contrast with those written by David Graeber whose death has been such a tragedy for anyone with common sense.

 

Post Title - just click the title to get the post	Inspired by	The basic message
whatever happened to governance?	Realisation that no one was talking anymore about what was once a hot topic	did we actually learn anything from this abstract debate of the past 2 decades??
"Governance" as New Kid on the Block	Some material on networks	A reluctant concession that governments actually have to share power
why are political scientists so irrelevant?	Trying to find useful books	Penis envy has made academics in the field of political studies avoid interesting topics which are of public concern
Le Trahison des Clercs	Asking the same question today which Benda did in the 30s	How few good non-fiction books there are
Expectations	Untypically short, almost poetic post	Keep them low
Fiddling while Rome is Burning	Continuing disappointment with non-fiction books	Ban the specialists who have never tasted other worlds
The Americans take no prisoners	US libertarian article goes over the top	and accuses all progressives of being Marxists
Some Advice for social activists	Street protests in Sofia	A great reading list
Links I liked	Includes review of  the “Hope Gap” film; and powerful excerpts from Martin Hagglund’s “This Life - secular faith and spiritual freedom”	This “scooping up” of odd hyperlinks is proving less easy than I thought? Why? Too scrappy?
Why do Economists talk Gibberish?	More people need to take this question seriously	Recommendations for those who want economics explained in clear language
David Graeber RIP	We lose one of our clearest prophets 25 years too early	Most of Graeber’s work can be read online free
Strategies for Governing	My most inspiring book of the decade	We need more skills of statecraft
So Isst die Welt – und musst nicht so sein	I try (again) to explain my fixation on public admin	Most of the literature is useless – a mere handful of books are worth reading
Links I liked	The German model; meritocracy; democracy by lot?	Some great reading recommendations
Another Landmark	The blog hits 400,000 clicks	9 justifications for why blogging is good for you
Crowds and Power II	Another blog invites me to do a guest post about protests in Sofia – and I offer 4,000 words	The title is from a famous book by a Bulgarian émigré written in 1960 and the post looks at the varying success of street protests in the region
Crowds and Power !!!	how the past has 30 years have treated Bulgaria and Romania	Go back to Some Advice for social activists
Whatever Happened to Planning?	A dream; John Friedmann’s “Insurgencies – essays in planning theory”	It’s been absorbed in strategic thinking