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Old May 25th, 2011 #31
Karl Radl
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Default Yet another Kosher Communist: Amy Levy

Yet another Kosher Communist: Amy Levy

Long-time readers of SC will remember that I occasionally comment on the goings-on the various learned societies and interest groups of which I am a member. One of these groups is the ‘Socialist History Society’; or SHS, and I have pointed out several times before the absolute profusion of work about the ‘chosen’; (1) as well as the fact that supply most of the officers and major figures in the society have Yahweh’s holy ichor flowing through their veins, (2) that the SHS produces, sponsors and propagandises for.

Yet another kosher communist is now being promoted by the SHS in the form of the jewish communist, writer and probable lesbian: Amy Levy.

Levy was something a novelist; perhaps the Israel Zangwill of her day, although not in the same league as her jewish contemporary Benjamin Disraeli. That said Levy does seem to have shared Disraeli’s radical political interests to a degree (in spite of Disraeli’s supposed ‘Conservatism’). (3)

Levy is also famous for being a friend of Eleanor Marx; favourite daughter of the infamous Karl Marx (and his battered and abused wife Jenny von Westphalen), (4) and although she doesn’t come in for a mention in any biography or work on Marx or Engels I have read she does get a mention in Yvonne Kapp’s superb work on Eleanor that has yet to be surpassed. (5)

Amy Levy is; of course, long-dead, (6) but her legacy of jewish involvement with communism apparently lives on in the SHS with not one but three female scholars (one of whom is; surprise surprise, also a jewess [Nadia Valman of the University of London]) (7) giving separate talks about her at the Bishopsgate Institute in London (in the United Kingdom for those with limited geographical knowledge).

One wonders why the scholars; historians and otherwise, who are sympathetic to Marxism (all of those presenting on Amy Levy have fairly open positive biases towards their subject) (8) are so obsessed with jews when one of the basic postulates of both Marxism and most modern; although not historic, socialist thought is that every individual has an equal right to be part of the community and get an equal share in its general fortunes (ergo the socialist slogan: ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their need’). (9)

The question remains: why out of all the ‘proletarian’ activists and ‘de-classed’ intellectuals do the leftists seem so obsessed with Shylock and not with Bassanio or Antonio?

Could it be I wonder that so many of their ‘proletarian’ activists and ‘de-classed’ intellectuals just so happen to be past or present members of tribe? (10)

References


(1) See for example my article; ‘A Little More Gefilte in the Socialist History Society’, which is available at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...efilte-in.html.
(2) See my article; ‘The Socialist History Society does Auschwitz’, which is available at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...iety-does.html.
(3) Cecil Roth, 1952, ‘Benjamin Disraeli: The Earl of Beaconsfield’, 1st Edition, Philosophical Library: New York, pp. 40-48; Sarah Bradford, 1996, ‘Disraeli’, 2nd Edition, Phoenix: London, pp. 40-44
(4) Heinz Frederick Peters, 1986, ‘Red Jenny: A Life with Karl Marx’, 1st Edition, St. Martin’s Press: New York remains the best biography of Jenny von Westphalen I know of and is preferable to the more commonly-cited hagiographic account offered by Luise Dornemann, 1971, ‘Jenny Marx: Der Lebensweg einer Sozialistin’, 1st Edition, Dietz Verlag: Berlin, which builds its case on the same logic used by Pierre Durand, 1970, ‘La vie amoureuse de Karl Marx’, 1st Edition, Julliard: Paris, which Peters rightly takes explicit and frequent issue with.
(5) Yvonne Kapp, 1979, ‘Eleanor Marx’, 2 Vols., 1st Edition, Virago: London. Levy’s relationship with Eleanor is described in detail by Kapp in Vol. II, pp. 258-260.
(6) She committed suicide after becoming depressed possibly because of her lesbianism.
(7) http://www.english.qmul.ac.uk/staff/valmann.html [Last Accessed: 24/05/2011]
(8) To be fair to Levy she is the subject of general scholarly inquiry from a literary standpoint for example in Kate Flint, 2009, ‘Photographic Memory’, Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, Vol. 53, pp. 1-4. Flint also touches on one of my favourite authors; Thomas de Quincey, in the course of her article whose work I thoroughly recommend for both its comic and intellectual value.
(9) I might add that that necessarily implies that those who are given more according to their need are essentially extorting those who are giving more according to their ability and nullifying natural selection in the process, which is just what happened in countries that follow the castles in the sky of most socialists (although let it be known that I am no friend of capitalism either).
(10) I have pointed this out in passing in another article; ‘Another Kosher Communist Obituary’, concerning the obsession the SHS has with the self-chosen ones, which is available at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...-obituary.html.

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This was originally published at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...-amy-levy.html
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