Engels and the Car Industry
No, no real link between the two. Or perhaps?
Matthew Yglesias considers the outcome of Chrysler filing for Chapter 11:
Looks like Chrysler will wind up in a pre-packaged bankruptcy before becoming a firm jointly owned by Fiat, the United Auto Workers, the United States of America, and Canada.
Robert Reich is skeptical of the idea of bailing out US companies, because – well, what is a US company these days:
Besides, as I’ve said before, the “American auto industry” shouldn’t be defined as auto companies whose headquarters are in the United States. The true “American auto industry” is Americans who make automobiles. At the rate the Big Three are shrinking even as they�re bailed out, foreign automakers with American plants may soon employ more Americans than the Big Three do. The Big Three have gone global anyway.
And just by accident those links appeared along with a link to a lecture at the LSE about Friedrich Engels. You know, the guy with the really big beard who played Chris Lowe to Marx’ Neil Tennant.
With capitalism in crisis, the shadow of Karl Marx is looming large. But what about the co-author of The Communist Manifesto? In advance of a major new biography, The Frock-Coated Communist, Tristram Hunt explores the life and work, the personal contradictions and ideological breakthroughs, of Friedrich Engels. Cotton-lord and communist, Engels was the man who turned Marxism into a political force – and whose vision was then brutally betrayed in the 20th century. Tristram Hunt is an historian, broadcaster and a lecturer in British history at Queen Mary, University of London.
Right-click on the link to download the lecture.
Update: Tristram Hunt also has a column on Mr. E for May Day.
Comments Off | Political science etc., Politics