Battle of Ideas

I am, for my post-marxist techno-nihilistic whats-so-bad-about-paedophilia sins, partaking in the Battle of Ideas next month in a session about cooperatives and employee ownership.

Comments

[Ian Christie]

Sup with a long spoon at the Battle of Ideas. They have many excellent speakers, but the audiences are packed with IoI drones. 'Invasion of the Body-Snatchers' comes to mind.
The ex-Living Marxist IoI and their many front organisations used to be vulgar Marxists and are now vulgar technophiliacs and proponents of no-holds-barred global industrialism and crude libertarianism. They switched sides from far left to the Ayn Rand-style far right without a beat. The common thread is power-worship and a C19th ideology of secular progress through technology. They are clever and energetic and right on the money every other blue moon, but need to be treated with great suspicion.

[Kate]

Seconded. Its always interesting to see who they put you up against on a panel. In my experience, the IoI tend to assume what you are going to say before you get there, and then put you up against someone with whom they hope you will have a scrap. It is subversive to be a model of reasonableness in that context; though the audience may feel robbed...
Given the topic, however, your panel may be sweetness and light.

[Will Davies]

Agreed. It's indicative that I'm supposed to be discussing the 'battle' over employee ownership. Perhaps I should go one further and, a la Republican presidents, declare a 'War On Shareholders'...

[Oranjd]

I like that the conflict within the debate itself mirrors the conflicts within New Labour - is the revival of cooperativism a rebranding of "public service reform" or the return of the "third way"?

On the intellectuals formerly known as the RCP - I once spoke to a former member who told me that the Spiked / IoI stuff wasn't a break in political terms, but about adjusting to changed circumstances...

[Simon]

Background on these guys here...

http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/LM_network