Marx Voted Top Thinker By Brits

The Guardian ^ | July 14, 2005 | Charlotte Higgins

[johnnyBbad]

What do you expect from the Guardian?

I'm surprised Stalin didn't win.

[familyop]

Please, please, don't post or look at articles about the UK! Look at the French! Keep all eyes on the leprechaun (pagan Bill O'Reilly, for example) news about the French!

And BTW, no survey sampling about Great Britain (over-pronounce the _T_ for political correctness) is legitimate, unless the surveyors survey every single Brit and swim across the English Channel first.

[johnnyBbad]

But "equality" feels so good doesn't it?

[joebuck]

Given that Marx was off on almost all of predictions and theories on the fate of capitalism. Given that his theories on historical materialism have failed to develop as he explained them and given that Marx completely failed to recognize the emergence of the American middle class - I'd say Marx wasn't that great a thinker at all. Most of us could name a score of mathematicians and engineers who, as great thinkers, are in a class well above Marx.

[MadIvan]

It is possible he won because Marxists organised a mass vote; they're much more organised than Hegelians, for instance.

Here's what swung it. They got a bunch of idiot university kids to vote. The last time the university lobby nearly won something was when the students at Brunel University tried to get Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the engineer, voted Greatest Briton over Winston Churchill. They nearly did it.

Regards, Ivan

[MadIvan]

And BTW, no survey sampling about Great Britain (over-pronounce the _T_ for political correctness) is legitimate, unless the surveyors survey every single Brit and swim across the English Channel first.

Shove your condescension up your anal orifice. It's well known that there are a group of people who seize on the slightest bit of bad news coming out of Britain as an excuse to dance on our grave and sing Alleluia.

If you don't like being reminded you're full of donkey excrement, too bloody bad.

Ivan

[durasell]

Given that the ratio of people who have actually read Marx compared to those who spout off his "greatness" or "evil" is about 1 to 100,000 I'd say the poll is meaningless.

[MadIvan]

There are loads of people who revere Marx on Free Republic. Every single time there is an argument about free trade, the Buchananites post Marxist analysis of its effects to support their arguments.

Thus Karl Marx is alive and well, even on Free Republic...just some people refuse to allow us sane individuals to stamp out the remaining embers.

Regards, Ivan

[Sans-Culotte]

Melvyn Bragg is a popular guy associated with the arts over there. He used to host (maybe still does) the South Bank Show, which featured actors, directors, etc, and is also an author, whose works include an interesting biography of actor Richard Burton. I think he's a 'Sir' now.

His audience for the poll was likely a bunch of fine arts afficiandos, who, like the artistes they worship are probably Marxists.

[MadIvan]

See Post 14 - Buchananite adherence to Marxist analysis of Free Trade.

Regards, Ivan

[Timocrat]

One should not underestimate the influence of the communist lecturers in Oxford and Cambridge.

Channel 4 is the preferred station for the local Marxists. Bragg is hard left. One would get the same result if the Pacifica or NPR audience were given the chance to answer an online poll. It means nothing.

[T.L.Sink]

The fact that they know nothing is shown by the fact that everything we know about Socrates (8th) comes to us from Plato's (4th) Dialogues!! I'd say Marx should be #1 if it comes to the most HARMFUL influential philosopher. None could rival his influence for its destructive and demonic results.

[MadIvan]

None could rival his influence for its destructive and demonic results.

I would argue it was Jean Jacques Rousseau, who is the spiritual forefather of Marxism, and also the favourite philosopher of the French Revolution.

Marx was an overly verbose idiot. The Labour Theory of Value is the biggest piece of economic stupidity ever suggested.

Regards, Ivan

[Stag_Man]

"I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it. Nor can I embark in search of the savages of Canada, because the maladies to which I am condemned render a European surgeon necessary to me; because war is going on in those regions; and because the example of our actions has made the savages nearly as bad as ourselves." --Voltaire's response to Rousseau after reading The Social Contract

I think this is one of the greatest put downs ever, right up there with Churchill's famous ones.

[Bon mots]

Marx was not a philosopher. He was a historian.

[MadIvan]

One must remember that Rousseau's observations of man in a state of nature are entirely based on his wandering around a bunch of country gardens in France.

Um, "non, Monsieur".

Regards, Ivan

[beaver fever]

" Do Socrates, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, or Hume ring any bells?"

Those guys are obvious but Wittgenstein gets 16%?

That's not right and Hegel should have taken Marx off the list. Just because Marx has a statue in Hyde park doen't make him the World's greatest philosopher.

[GOP_1900AD]

Edmund Burke is rolling in his grave! Have they no shame?

[MadIvan]

Have they no shame?

We are talking about BBC Radio 4. So the answer to your question is "No".

Regards, Ivan

[subterfuge]

On another note, the French just voted Jerry Lewis the greatest human being of all time.

The guy that invented wine came in second.