Housekeeping
Posted on Thursday 25 January, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized
I’ve finally got round to updating my links. Please check out the latest recommendations, including my newly adopted son John Angliss’s You See, it is Only a Very Young Boy’s Record, Mike of Team Shiraz’s solo effort Mike’s Little Red Page, and Chris Dillow’s persistently thought provoking Stumbling and Mumbling.
And while I’m recommending blogs,Southpaw Punch’s stunning post on Jade Goody and the CBB racism affair is absolutely the best thing I have seen on this issue, in the blogosphere or anywhere else. Writing of this cogency puts more than a few highly paid national newspaper columnists in the shade.
And no, and this isn’t today’s main post. Check back later.
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Comments
19 Responses to “Housekeeping”
I was wondering why my pageviews had gone up a lot. Here’s clearly why. I suppose I better get off my high horse and ‘enter’ again at this particular ExTrot blog.
Whether my article is good or not, I think it is different (from what I have seen of others) in that it doesn’t just half think, as far too often left bloggers do.
So we get in left blogs – ‘Jade Goody’s a bigot; let’s criticise her for that’ or, more arguably, ‘women wearing veils are being oppressed’. Both those statements are correct and need to be made but they are missing out on the big picture. They also go no further than the Guardian or Telegraph.
Lefts need to think of class and race. As I said in my article, about comments by Lefts on Goody’s racism – ‘They have no conception of class, as well as race, and have no knowledge about materialism – ideas are determined by conditions, not vice versa.’
P.S. It’s good to be reported as SouthpawPunch rather than Southpaw Punch so I get alerts. There’s too many to track at ‘Southpaw Punch’.
There’s not a few fight fans probably rather bemused by blog. Anyone want to guest post on Marxism and Boxing to give some of my visitors something to read?
Anyone want to guest post on Marxism and Boxing to give some of my visitors something to read?
Lord, I’d love to, if only because it would follow on so well from that excellent BB post. Race, class, money, machismo and disapproving middle-class liberals – what’s not to like? But I’ll have to pass, as I really don’t know anything about boxing.
disapproving middle-class liberals
Oh gawd, it’s leftist showboating again. Just like you’ll never read a good posting including the term “lol”, so with postings invoking “middle-class liberals”.
Is it not possible that boxing, is, in fact, genuinely grim and deplorable? And that this might not be a “middle-class” reaction but one shared, in fact, by quite a few working-class people including a fair proportion of women? Is it also not possible that such a view should be considered on its merits and without the aforementioned invocation of middle-class liberals?
I wrote the following about Marxism and Boxing a couple of years ago:
http://www.socialistunitynetwork.co.uk/news/tysonquits.htm
Oi, Osler, don’t forget me and Marsha!
Jim Denham recently wrote an excellent piece on Boxing:
http://shirazsocialist.blogspot.com/2007/01/greatestin-foulest-sport.html
Justin, I hate to tell you this but you’ll probably agree with it.
Somebody who really knows his boxing is Eamonn McCann. You might have to pay him tho…
Justin, I hate to tell you this but you’ll probably agree with it.
Note though the line about few socialists being concerned about boxing: always, people have to make some claim (and usually specious) about the rest of the left rather than just make their argument.
I appreciate both the links about boxing.
I am very serious about providing something. I must get 3 or 4 visitors a day – sometimes 10 – and usually from the USA searching on boxing terms.
I’m sure most leave immediately but I’d love to have ‘boxing’ in my index or send them to another left site. It’s probably not their usual reading matter.
The rub with both the articles (above) is that they both oppose boxing. And maybe we should. I don’t think I should argue with James Cannon on that. But then again, I’m not sure – I do like watching it.
I see it as a bit like vegetarianism when desire may overcome principles.
It probably is wrong to kill and eat cows but they sure do taste good.
Especially roasted in a orange sauce. Or flame grilled over a slow-burning… you get the picture.
My thinking is that fight fans are immediately going to get turned off by pinko types trying to ban their sport.
So I will wait til I see a red defence of the noble art and then maybe approach the authors named above to see if I can carry both sides.
The attempt to graft the standard BMA critique of boxing onto an argument about capitalism really does tend to come aground when one thinks of Cuba; whatever one’s view of the Cuban state, it is a highly egalitarian country and they *love* boxing.
Southpaw,
You need to subscribe to Edge of Sports, the excellent socialist soprt column by Dave Zirin.
He has covered boxing, and there is a lot of good stuff about it in his book “what’s my name, fool?”
There is less about boxing availablw on the web, but these articles are intersting:
http://www.edgeofsports.com/2006-11-22-211/index.html
http://www.edgeofsports.com/2005-11-19-163/index.html
http://www.edgeofsports.com/2004-01-15-37/index.html
well not really dsquared, becasue Cuba is obviously a society with a relaltionship to the dominant capitalist world system.
In fact the Cubans only particpate in amateur boxing, which is safer and more regulated.
Southpaw
I looked up some more articles for you about boxing, but Dave;s spoam filter has postponed it appearing.
Anyway, check out Dave Zirin’s writings
Perhaps Dave could sort out his spam filter so he can at least approve the comments that include a properly-done HTML link or two, as opposed to them just being immediately deleted. I did a nice long thing about the origins of electronic music (disagreeing with Kit), with a lot of trainspottery links. But gone, the whole lot.
So, how about it, Dave?
Daggi
I think I can approve comments like that, so I will in future.
Southpaw
What’s up with you? Don’t you think America’s predominantly blue collar fight fans can be won to Marxism through a direct class appeal on the basis of the transitional programme? Must you pander to their reformist consciousness? You know what your trouble is, don’t you? You’re a reformist.
always, people have to make some claim (and usually specious) about the rest of the left
Hey ho. My point was that, as it seems to me, boxing is an issue – one of several – where valid concerns about what people do to their bodies often get overlaid and entangled with unacknowledged class antagonism. I’m not saying that anyone who wants boxing banned is a middle-class liberal; I’m not saying that boxing shouldn’t be banned; I’m not saying I’m not a middle-class liberal; and I’m not saying anything about ‘the Left’. In fact, I don’t think I’ve said any of the things you’re arguing with; perhaps you should argue with someone who has.
Er, No, Dave.
Transitional demands (maybe boxing isn’t so clever) v full revolutionary programme (ban it now).
Anyway, must be one of the highest ever numbers looking at my blog today – clearly a lot of lost lefts do coagulate here.
So I feel like it’s LPYS conference, Bridlington 1983.
You’re the LP bureaucrat paying for the event and watching your party brand being used to get the youth along.
I’m Militant (Derek Hatton, probably), freeloading, but ready to eat your children.
I’m not sure who is the IMG.
Dave still no link to unionfutures? I’m beginning to think you don’t like me
And I see Owens alerted you to our new blog socialistyouthnetwork.blogspot.com
Fear not MJ, both will get links next time I update the sidebar. Sooner rather than later.