Poumed

At the head of everything is God, the Lord of Heaven.
Everyone knows that.
Then comes Prince Torlonia, lord of the earth.
Then come Prince Torlonia’s guards.
Then come Prince Torlonia’s guards’ dogs.
Then, nothing at all.
Then, nothing at all.
Then, nothing at all.
Then come the peasants. And that’s all.

~ Ignazio Silone, Fontamara (1931). (via @ndy)

Debates and arguments: David Cesarani, Marek Edelman and Michal Kaminski – click the link from Engage, then return to read the comment thread.

From the magazine rack: 1989 Timothy Garton Ash (NYRB); What Is to Be Learned? Thinking about 1989 Mitchell Cohen (Dissent); The Memory That Will Not Die: Exhuming the Spanish Civil War Julius Purcell (Boston Review); 100 Years of Servitude: Gabriel García Márquez’s Infatuation With Castro and Other Dictators Enrique Krauze (New Republic); Terry Teachout on the Congress for Cultural Freedom (Commentary).

Book reviews: John Gray on Robert Service’s Trotsky; Jonathan Yardley on Kati Marton’s Enemies of the People; DG Myers on two Lionel Trilling biographies; Colm Toibin on Sheila Rowbotham’s Edward Carpenter.

Some Irving Kristol obits I missed: Christopher Hitchens, David Brooks, Myron Magnet,  Eric Alterman , Michael Lind, Justin Vaïsse, Kevin Mattson, Seth Lipsky, John Guardiano, Christopher DeMuth, Mary Eberstadt, Joseph Epstein, Danny Finkelstein.

Archival: Walter Lacquer on Why the Shah fell (1979).

From the magazine rack

Principia Dialectica: ‘the Bolshevik system – a system to which I was opposed, and to which I am still opposed today’: Hungarian Marxian philosopher Gáspár Miklós Tamás takes on Andrei Plesu.

New Politics has had a much-needed makeoever and is looking good. They’ve now got bloggy stuff, like Scott McLemee on Hubert Harrison [see also McLemee at CJR]. And some of the recent articles are interesting, such as Dan Jakopovich on revolutionary unionism, Stephen Eric Bronner on critical theory, and Jorge Robles on the workers’ movement in Mexico.

Over at Dissent: THE OTHER GEORGE: Lichtheim on Imperialism by Mitchell Cohen

AN INDEPENDENT mind, George Lichtheim was “the real thing, not the self-announced sort,” writes Mitchell Cohen. “His histories of socialism and Marxism are among the most intelligent that we have….Even if you would dispute him on something or many things, you’ll feel smarter for the disagreement.”

And, from Telos, a poem by Brecht for the people of Iran.

Finally, Schalom Libertad reports on the history of Jewish Currents, while The Tablet celebrates Yiddish radio.