Christopher Hitchens
October 8, 2005
This one is especially for my socialist friends. :) On browsing through the Reason website, I came across a four year old interview with recovering marxist, Christopher Hitchens. It makes for very witty and entertaining weekend reading. Here are some choice excerpts to tease you:
"I certainly wish I wasn't a smoker and wish I could give it up. But I'm damned if I'll be treated how smokers are now being treated by not just the government, but the government ventriloquizing the majority. The majoritarian aspect makes it to me more repellent. And I must say it both startles and depresses me that an authoritarian majoritarianism of that kind can have made such great strides in America, almost unopposed. There's something essentially un-American in the idea that I could not now open a bar in San Francisco that says, "Smokers Welcome.""
"The War on Drugs is an attempt by force, by the state, at mass behavior modification. Among other things, it is a denial of medical rights, and certainly a denial of all civil and political rights. It involves a collusion with the most gruesome possible allies in the Third World. It's very hard for me to say that there's an issue more important than that at the moment."
(On the anti-globalisation movement)
"I do remember thinking that it had a sort of archaic character to it, exactly the kind of thing that Marx attacked, in fact, in the early critiques of capitalism. What SDS [an anti-globalisation group] seemed to want was a sort of organic, more rural-based, traditional society, which probably wouldn't be a good thing if you could have it. But you can't, so it's foolish to demand such a thing. This tendency has come out as the leading one in what I can see of the anti-globalization protesters. I hear the word globalization and it sounds to me like a very good idea. I like the sound of it. It sounds innovative and internationalist."
"Marx's original insight about capitalism was that it was the most revolutionary and creative force ever to appear in human history. And though it brought with it enormous attendant dangers, [the revolutionary nature] was the first thing to recognize about it. That is actually what the Manifesto is all about. As far as I know, no better summary of the beauty of capital has ever been written. You sort of know it's true, and yet it can't be, because it doesn't compute in the way we're taught to think. Any more than it computes, for example, that Marx and Engels thought that America was the great country of freedom and revolution and Russia was the great country of tyranny and backwardness.
But that's exactly what they did think, and you can still astonish people at dinner parties by saying that."
To read the whole interview, go here:
http://reason.com/0111/fe.rs.free.shtml
And after that, if you're in the mood for some live interviews/debates with some very interesting people, including a few with Mr Hitchens, visit Hay Festival Radio. I can especially recommend the one with him and Stephen Fry on the topic of blasphemy:
http://www.hayfestival.com/2005/archive05.asp
Note: Christopher Hitchen's website can be found here:
http://www.hitchensweb.com/
"I certainly wish I wasn't a smoker and wish I could give it up. But I'm damned if I'll be treated how smokers are now being treated by not just the government, but the government ventriloquizing the majority. The majoritarian aspect makes it to me more repellent. And I must say it both startles and depresses me that an authoritarian majoritarianism of that kind can have made such great strides in America, almost unopposed. There's something essentially un-American in the idea that I could not now open a bar in San Francisco that says, "Smokers Welcome.""
"The War on Drugs is an attempt by force, by the state, at mass behavior modification. Among other things, it is a denial of medical rights, and certainly a denial of all civil and political rights. It involves a collusion with the most gruesome possible allies in the Third World. It's very hard for me to say that there's an issue more important than that at the moment."
(On the anti-globalisation movement)
"I do remember thinking that it had a sort of archaic character to it, exactly the kind of thing that Marx attacked, in fact, in the early critiques of capitalism. What SDS [an anti-globalisation group] seemed to want was a sort of organic, more rural-based, traditional society, which probably wouldn't be a good thing if you could have it. But you can't, so it's foolish to demand such a thing. This tendency has come out as the leading one in what I can see of the anti-globalization protesters. I hear the word globalization and it sounds to me like a very good idea. I like the sound of it. It sounds innovative and internationalist."
"Marx's original insight about capitalism was that it was the most revolutionary and creative force ever to appear in human history. And though it brought with it enormous attendant dangers, [the revolutionary nature] was the first thing to recognize about it. That is actually what the Manifesto is all about. As far as I know, no better summary of the beauty of capital has ever been written. You sort of know it's true, and yet it can't be, because it doesn't compute in the way we're taught to think. Any more than it computes, for example, that Marx and Engels thought that America was the great country of freedom and revolution and Russia was the great country of tyranny and backwardness.
But that's exactly what they did think, and you can still astonish people at dinner parties by saying that."
To read the whole interview, go here:
http://reason.com/0111/fe.rs.free.shtml
And after that, if you're in the mood for some live interviews/debates with some very interesting people, including a few with Mr Hitchens, visit Hay Festival Radio. I can especially recommend the one with him and Stephen Fry on the topic of blasphemy:
http://www.hayfestival.com/2005/archive05.asp
Note: Christopher Hitchen's website can be found here:
http://www.hitchensweb.com/