A challenge
Further to the token outbreak of student radicalism at the Adam Smith College in Kirkcaldy, the reasoning of the students has been disputed. Today's letter page of The Scotsman features a fairly robust defence of Adam Smith and gives the chance for Paul Muirhead, the student activist apparently at the forefront of the name change, to back up his rhetoric with a spot of analysis. Regardless of the fact that the letter's author was Professor Gavin Kennedy, an author of a book on Adam Smith, I cannot see Mr Muirhead doing anything other than dig himself into a deeper hole.
Quite a few other blogs have questioned the motives and reasoning behind the attack on Adam Smith. Here are just some that I enjoyed:
Proportional Belief contains this entry whilst as a balance (of sorts) we travel over to Historical Materialism for this. The latter is satisfied that the students' status as anti-capitalists is sufficient to compensate for their poor analytical skills, which I suppose is to be expected from a practitioner of Historical Materialism.
Finally, The Agitator points out that they Glasgow University tried something similar a few years back but it only lasted for a single day.
Quite a few other blogs have questioned the motives and reasoning behind the attack on Adam Smith. Here are just some that I enjoyed:
Proportional Belief contains this entry whilst as a balance (of sorts) we travel over to Historical Materialism for this. The latter is satisfied that the students' status as anti-capitalists is sufficient to compensate for their poor analytical skills, which I suppose is to be expected from a practitioner of Historical Materialism.
Finally, The Agitator points out that they Glasgow University tried something similar a few years back but it only lasted for a single day.
posted by Inchbrakie at Wednesday, October 05, 2005
2 Comments:
Thanks for commenting on my blog.
I think that actually Adam Smith should be celebrated as a great thinker of the Scottish Enlightenment - without Smith's advances in economics, Marx would have almost certainly have not made the breakthrough he did - but I also think that there are people who are equally worthy of celebration and commemoration. To me, as a socialist, Adam Smith is probably celebrated already enough by institutions etc - where as Jennie Lee, as one of the most important women socialists of the twentieth century does not get anywhere enough recognition. I think then when students do things like this it goes someway towards rectifying the balance and so should be supported. Cheers.
Fair comment Snowball. I agree that Jennie Lee's achievements and contributions make her a worthy figure for commemoration.
The shoddy & dogmatic reasoning given by the association spokesman for the name change seems to be the main target of those critical of the name change (myself included). There seems to be a fair bit of anger amongst the college's student population as they see the way in which the association's name change was handled as having been underhand and no more than a politically inspired stunt to get it's organisers a high profile - something they seem to have achieved!
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