My name is Marc Mulholland. I am a Fellow (lecturer and tutor) in the History Faculty of Oxford University. My College is St Catherine's. I come from Ireland.

This is a blog relating to my book published in 2012 by Oxford University Press, Bourgeois Liberty and the Politics of Fear: From Absolutism to Neo-Conservativism. Now on sale here and here. If you want 20 per cent off the price, I can arrange that! Send me a message or leave a comment, and I'll tell you how.

The thesis my book is examining was rather pithily summarised by Leon Trotsky in 1939: "Wherever the proletariat appeared as an independent force, the bourgeoisie shifted to the camp of the counter-revolution. The bolder the struggle of the masses, the quicker the reactionary transformation of liberalism." [Context is here]

However, my book isn't a defence of Trotskyism, or indeed any particular ideology. It's a study of an idea that took shape in Left, Right, and Centre variations.

This blog has tid-bits not included in the book, and other thoughts that occur.

You can see book details at the OUP website.



Saturday 14 July 2012

Variants of Leftism

Here's Frank Warren comparing the US 'Popular Front' liberalism of the 1930s to the Cold War liberalism of the 1950s:
The Popular Front liberals, with their simplistic ideology and sentimental unity of ‘progressives,’ betrayed a moral callousness toward those who suffered under Stalin’s crimes. But the contemporary liberal, with his new found knowledge of totalitarianism, his hard-headed, realistic, tough-minded pragmatism, has temporised with social ills, avoided conflicts with conservatives in the name of consensus, suggested and justified outrageous actions in the name of the ‘free world’.
I don't think either category has entirely gone away.
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