back to article The Extreme Centre, Rise of the Super Furry Animals and The Kind Worth Killing

El Reg bookworm Mark Diston looks at the latest from the literary world. Tariq Ali dons his polemicist hat in support of the disenfranchised electorate. Ric Rawlins charts the success of one of the most celebrated bands to emerge from Wales, and Peter Swanson clocks up his second crime-thriller novel. The Extreme Centre: A …

  1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Socialism: it's fun, try it!

    “In memoriam: Hugo Chavez, the first leader of a movement that defeated the extreme centre”

    Woah. The guy the who managed to actually wreck Venezuela's economy so much that it turned from a major coffee exporter to a rounding error on the exporters' charts and even toilet paper became an item of rarity? Yep, it's not the Yankee's fault. It's believing in your Marxian power of economic übercontrol.

    I think we can skip this book.

    “refuse to step down and talk to the people whose worlds they have destroyed.”

    Is that so.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Socialism: it's fun, try it!

      You mustn't berate the socialists so; after all, they have the best of intentions!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Socialism: it's fun, try it!

      The disasterous attempt to control the price of bog roll says it all. A company I know has business there. It's easy to get there (the planes are empty), miserable to be there (the crime rate is terrifying) and hard to leave (the planes are full).

      Trouble is, I can take a lot of what Tariq Ali has to say at face value. Our political elite are dirty in the extreme. But what destroy the argument by rolling out a basket case like Venezuela?

    3. veti Silver badge
      Pirate

      Re: Socialism: it's fun, try it!

      Say what you like about Chavez - oh, you have. Fair enough, and true enough.

      But he still did what his voters elected him to do. He gave capitalism a well earned kick in the nads. He stood up to the banks when they told him disaster would follow. Sure they were right, but he stood up to them anyway.

      I just hope Syriza has as much integrity, I really do.

      1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        Re: Socialism: it's fun, try it!

        "He stood up to the banks when they told him disaster would follow. Sure they were right, but he stood up to them anyway."

        That reads very much like an old Jewish joke.

        But I don't think you got the joke part of it, did you?

        1. Gordon 10

          Re: Socialism: it's fun, try it!

          If I can misquote Churchill :

          “It has been said that capitalism is the worst form of democracy except all the others that have been tried.”

  2. x 7

    by publishing this review of Ali you give the marxist fool a false aura of validity. He's an out of date extremist irrelevant dinosaur who needs to be dumped in the shitpan of history along with all his false ideologies. To paraphrase Thatcher, such people should be denied the oxygen of respectability.

    By even reminding us of his continued existence you do the world a disservice.

    1. Red Sceptic

      Marxist, certainly - fool, I think not.

      I'm of an age to remember Ali and the IMG (International Marxist Group), a time that kindled my interest in politics. At a time when politics has become a short game of "what'll get us (me) elected?" We **desperately** need people of all shades of politics who will fill the gap with well-argued polemic and who are committed to ideas, concepts and movements.

      My politics are pretty far-removed from Ali's these days, but I always find him interesting to listen to and to read. There are precious few people currently writing about politics about whom I would say that.

      1. veti Silver badge

        @Red Sceptic: hear, hear!

        Politics isn't just about getting elected, it's not even just about doing what the public wants. It's about debating ideas - all the ideas, even really lame ones if they've got a noticeable core of supporters - so that anyone who chooses to participate, knows that they've been heard.

        We need more people who are prepared to make an argument with passion and conviction. There are a substantial number of closet Marxists out there to this day, and the only plausible way you'll convert them is to let them have their champion - and see him lose, fair and square, on his ideas. Not shouted down or censored by the bigger boys, but engaged in public debate, conceding point by point until the violence of his rhetoric is disarmed.

        It's the same with Syriza in Greece: I sincerely hope we'll get to see what a real socialist government can do in modern Europe. What I fear is that they'll be forced to back down by private, back-room browbeating from the Germans and their mates, and then their voters will see them as no more than just another bunch of sellouts - and that'll be basically the end of democracy in Greece (and very likely, neighbouring countries too) for two generations. What should happen is that the consequences of each action get talked and reasoned out, in detail and in public, the voters' wishes get respected, and we can all see what follows.

        1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

          I used to live in the the most real socialist country with truly real socialist government - called USSR and I can tell you - it doesn't work.

          You, Veti, have let yourself be seduced by seemingly easy solutions which don't actually stand up to any serious analysis.

          1. AbelSoul

            Re: the most real socialist country

            ".. called USSR"

            I think I have a bit of a discrepancy with your definition of "truly real socialism."

            As far as I can tell, such a place has never existed and, if one ever did, it certainly wasn't USSR.

            1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

              Re: the most real socialist country

              Oh. You are talking about the fluffy, cuddly socialism which one can dream about but never build in real life. Well, that's what dreams are for.

              As far as practicality is concerned, the USSR was the closest to socialism as it was possible to approach on this planet.

          2. veti Silver badge

            You can use the USSR experience, if you like, to demonstrate that socialism didn't work when someone tried to implement it in Russia after the First World War. (Arguments about whether it was "really socialism" are missing the point, I think - the point is, earnest and well-meaning people tried to introduce socialism, and the USSR is what they ended up with.)

            It's a long stretch from that, to convincing people that it can't be made to work in a much smaller, much more highly developed country almost 100 years later. (Because the USSR experiment was destroyed by embedded corruption; therefore it's the date of implementation that matters, because that's when the corruption was introduced, not the date of dissolution.)

            Let's see. That's all I'm asking - let us see what happens.

            1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

              I think we need to step back a bit and clarify what do you mean by true socialism.

              1. x 7

                you know its true socialism when the bullets start flying

              2. veti Silver badge

                I didn't say anything about "true socialism". I think trying to distinguish between "true" and "false socialism" is a mug's game. All there really is, is "good-faith attempts to apply socialism", and the question that interests me is "if you make one of those, what do you end up with?"

                The answers we've got from large countries in the early 20th century (USSR, China) - isn't very promising. Other attempts have been made, but I think Greece could be a uniquely valuable data point - it has all the advantages of being a well connected country, within the EU, with a reasonable democratic tradition, well developed economy, and a well established nation state (i.e. it's not likely to do a Yugoslavia on us). Most importantly: it might be well enough placed to avoid being treated as a pawn in a cold war between superpowers.

                1. x 7

                  "good-faith attempts to apply socialism"

                  that phrase is an oxymoron: "good-faith attempts to apply socialism" are impossible. All socialist movements are led by charlatans - or worse

                  FWIW Greece had its experiment with socialism once it was liberated after WWII. The UK had to free them from it by taking sides in the resulting civil war.

                2. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

                  But Greece isn't remotely socialist?? It's a kleptocracy.

  3. graeme leggett Silver badge

    That Super Furry Animals book cover

    For some reason I was reminded of the Illuminatus trilogy. Eye in the pyramid and humanoids covered in hair. Is there a deliberate connection

  4. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    Thanks for the warning!

    A treatise on a bankrupt ideology, a book about mediocre music and a badly written pulp fiction - 3 tomes I can now safely avoid! Thanks again.

  5. breakfast Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    " You have to hand it to Ali; he’s been kicking against the pricks for so long, he knows his subject like the back of his hand and goes straight for the jugular.

    I don't even want to think about how going for the jugular constitutes a kick against the prick.

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