Some saddening news out of Cairo, Chris Harman has died after suffering a cardiac arrest.
Despite personally having no affiliation with his SWP, this is a great loss to Socialists everywhere.
I finished Zombie Capitalism only last week and it taught me more about Marxism than my undergraduate degree ever did. His People’s History of the World is a heavly thumbed reference volume on my shelf.
Sadly I never heard him speak in person but I have an mp3 somewhere of a talk given a year or two ago, I will see if I can get it up here.
There is little firther to add – I only knew his work and not the man – however, I would like to say his contribution to public life and his writings will be sorely missed.
More at Luna17, A Very Public Sociologist, The Third Estate and Lenin’s Tomb.
MP3 files of many of Harman’s talks are available here: http://www.resistancemp3.org.uk/.
There is an archive of some of his writings from the 1960s and 1970s here: http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/harman/index.htm.
Thanks for that, I do need to check out some more of his writings.
I always think its a shame that someone has to die before everyone takes notice of them, or gives them their due.
With a public intellectual and activist like Chris Harman that is less true, as he didn’t stop being relevant or active. But even at the very least, its going to prompt me to look at his work.