Esperanto and Politics don't mix: a lesson from the 1920s

There's a famous quote by Ormond E Burton which gets mentioned many times by Anzac commentaries: ‘somewhere between the landing at Anzac and the end of the battle of the Somme New Zealand very definitely became a nation.’ . Just what this means exactly, and just how much of our so called 'national identity' derives from our inheritance of WW1 battle experience is a subject I will leave to the various newspaper and magazine editors. I'm much more interested in the man Ormond E Burton, and how this conservative trope squares – or fails to square – with his subsequent statements about nationhood and his militant pacifism.

Sue Bradford's talk 'The Left in Aoteroa' – a few thoughts

I joined a group of around forty people last friday here in Dunedin to listen to Sue Bradford's talk “The Left in Aoteroa: Some Lessons from Syriza and Podemos”. It wasn't nearly as big a crowd as the one she attracted late last year when she talked about her thesis about a left wing think tank, but this probably had something to do with the timing of the lecture in the middle of the afternoon and a last minute venue change. There seems to be an appetite on the left for the sort of discussion which Sue is initiating, and I include myself wholeheartedly in this curiosity and desire for debate.

Samuel Parnell and the history of Labour Day in New Zealand

Labour Day does not attract a lot of attention in the New Zealand of 2014. There are no major ceremonies or parades, and very little media coverage or discussion about its history or meaning. It pales in comparison to other public holidays such as Anzac Day and Waitangi Day, both of which are commemorated with big ceremonies and a large amount of media attention and debate. Yet all three public holidays represent a connection to an important aspect of New Zealand's history: our bicultural heritage (Waitangi Day), our involvement in war (Anzac Day) and our Labour history (Labour Day).

Bad Taste

There's a facebook trendy-whatsit at the moment which asks people to list ten books which have had a profound influence on them. The rejoinder is to “not think too much about it”, and the unstated claim here is I think that 'overthinking' such a list would be potentially dishonest. Books, like music, are very easily thought of as spiritual, cultural and political indicators of some sort. If I list a Stephen King novel, that sends out a very different message from listing Proust, for example. So far, no one has nominated me to make my list. If they did, I can honestly say that I would find it very difficult to live up to the “not think too much about it” requirement: I read a lot, I think quite a lot about how my tastes have changed over time, and I tend to reflect critically on books that I have enjoyed. All this thinking I already do – and I am almost certainly guilty of 'overthinking' at least sometimes, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing always – means that I would find it pretty much impossible to spontaneously make a list of ten such books.

Three reviews of Thomas Picketty's book

There's been a lot of discussion in the media about Thomas Picketty's book Capital in the 21st Century. What I found interesting about this attention is how it provoked comparisons to Marx - the title itself suggests Picketty is trying to provide us with a "modern" updated theory of how capitalism works. 

Marxism on the internet

I first encountered Marxism years ago when I was a teenager. I had never been all that interested in politics until that moment, but learning about a theory which brought together history, philosophy, economics and sociology into a cohesive system inspired me a great deal. The school system tends to isolate subjects into separate categories, and I found the holistic vision of Marxism to be an appealing alternative to what I had been taught. So I read lots and lots of books: Marx, Engles, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg and so on. There was a lot in these books I did not fully understand, but the things which I did understand have influenced me a great deal.

The Like of it Now Happens

The title of this blog, 'Pseudo Reality Prevails' is not an original invention. It comes from Robert Musil's novel The Man Without Qualities, first published in 1930. I picked up a paperback second hand copy from Onehunga's 'Hard to Find' bookshop a few years ago without knowing anything about it. The title itself appealed to me, and also the blurb on the back cover:

The scene is Vienna on the brink of the first world war, an epoch grinding to its tragic end.