From Soixante-Huit to Soixante-Neuf

Glen Newey

  • Collected Papers: Technology, War and Fascism by Herbert Marcuse, edited by Douglas Kellner
    Routledge, 278 pp, £25.00, March 1998, ISBN 0 415 13780 2
  • The Contract of Mutual Indifference: Political Philosophy after the Holocaust by Norman Geras
    Verso, 181 pp, £15.00, June 1998, ISBN 1 85984 869 9

‘Statecraft’ is a word not much heard nowadays. The idea that politics could be a craft or techne, familiar to readers of Plato and Machiavelli, is well-nigh beyond superannuation. But even though there’s little bite left in the old dog, it can still bark at a full moon. Its main currency now is in conspiracy theory – or, with the recursive tic which marks this style of political analysis, conspiracy theory theory. For a peerless example, see Lyndon LaRouche Jr on Daniel Pipes’s Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes from in Executive Intelligence Review:

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