'Belfort Bax and the Ethics of Socialism' pt 2 mp3

‘Belfort Bax and the "Ethics of Socialism"’ pt.2

audio file - 46 mins, 42MB

A talk in the 1982 'Socialist Thinkers – People Who History Made' lecture series. Once again, the speaker/lecturer is Steve Coleman, and this time the socialist thinker under discussion is Ernest Belfort Bax.

Down the years, Bax is someone who has been pretty much written out of the history of the nineteenth century British Socialist Movement, yet he was a heavyweight figure in the Social Democratic Federation in the 1880s and a major player - alongside Morris, Aveling and Eleanor Marx - in the Socialist League split from the SDF in 1885.

Whilst Henry Hyndman is always on hand to take on the role of the Victorian villain for the failure of the Marxist Left in Britain for not fully integrating into the wider Labour Movement, and William Morris gets rediscovered every generation via a new biography and/or a new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Bax, if he is known at all, is best known these days for his virulent anti-feminism in the latter years of his political life, and his capitulation to British chauvinism at the outbreak of the First World War.

see also www.worldsocialism.org