Marx myths
12th December 2003
Philip Gasper (Letters, December) attributes to Isaiah Berlin the "myth" that Marx wished to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin, and claims that it was exposed as false by Fay and Feuer a quarter of a century ago.
However, in Karl Marx: His Life and Environment, itself republished exactly 25 years ago, Berlin writes that the Darwin story "appears to be apocryphal and to rest on a mistaken identification of a letter sent by Darwin to Marx's son-in-law, Edward Aveling."
Paul Morland
London NW11
Rattling mantises
21st January 2004
Michael Lind's review of Vernon God Little (December) contained a startling error. He writes, "DBC Pierre's solecisms provide accidental comedy in this tedious book: 'Bugs chitter in the willows... The mantis rattles behind market stalls.'... I had to read this several times before I realised that he was referring to cicadas. Praying mantises do not rattle; they make no noise at all."
But the mantis in question is not an insect. It is the "oil pumpjack" that sits next door, which has been "fixed up like a mantis." That Lind is unaware of this association seems incredible. It first shows up at the beginning of the third chapter, and is subsequently employed as a recurring motif, a symbol of the infuriatingly repetitive trappings of rural home life.
Justin Gottschalk
New York
Theatre archives
23rd January 2004
You report (January) that the National Theatre archive is full, and that lack of space will mean material will begin to be shredded. This is untrue. Archive repositories of most living institutions periodically exhaust their storage space; the NT archive (which is far from "cavernous") is facing this prospect and has arranged extra storage facilities.
I also want to clarify the confused reference made to electronic storage: "The fact is that archives, like history, have to be edited; memories have to be selected, and the rest should be recorded and stored electronically." There is no "rest": material is either archival or not. Theatrical material in archives takes many forms: prompt scripts, playbills, costumes, audio recordings, posters, photographs etc. Electronic storage has been employed for a few of these series, but it is not a panacea for all archive storage; indeed, it is loaded with problems and is the most fugitive medium archivists have in their care.
Gavin Clarke
Archivist, National Theatre
Prospect theory
31st January 2004
Reading Iain McLean and Richard Holton's piece on prospect theory (February) I recalled a discussion I had with colleagues 30 years ago regarding our differing perceptions of council rates and income tax. The point of the discussion was that while none of us exactly enjoyed paying tax, we disliked rates violently, even though the total sum was very small compared with the monthly tax we had to pay and the benefits more tangible.
We concluded that the difference was that one had to sign a cheque for the rates while income tax was removed from pay at source, unnoticed without analysis of one's payslip. Thus the payment of rates was, in effect, a loss on our current savings: we suffered from prospect theory's "loss aversion." This seems, for once, to be common sense economic theory.
Peter Maddox
Swansea
Christmas for Christians
14th January 2004
Samantha Ellis's column, "My Jewish-Muslim Christmas," (January) was an irritating dig at Christmas, the most important religious and cultural holiday for Christians, many of whom feel it to be one of the most joyous things in life itself.
Christmas is not in any way recognisable as a secular holiday, so the secular nature of Ellis's celebration, which she spends an entire column detailing, has nothing to do with Christmas. Do you not see how Christians might find this rude?
Frederick Fries
Barre, Vermont
Open source revolution
12th February 2004
Azeem Azhar's otherwise excellent article on open source (February) failed to address one of the key issues in the debate: the impact that open source software could have on people living in developing countries. Three advantages arise from the fact that source code is open to everyone. First, the source code can be "localised." In other words, more people can use the rich diversity of local languages to enable access to knowledge held on computer-based systems. Second, simple systems can be designed that do not require the latest expensive computer systems, thereby making access to knowledge less dependent on income. Third, by adopting the "commons-based peer production" system outlined in the article, self-employed people working as part of a network of individuals can have a huge impact on the development of new software products. Locally based software industries can be started with a few individuals sharing their intellectual capital without the need for high levels of capital investment.
David J Grimshaw
Rugby
What about the Sheilas?
29th January 2004
After reading Kate Kellaway's review of fiction in Australia (February) it seems that woman are definitely down under there! One reference to Kate Grenville, winner of the Orange prize, was all we got. Are there no Australian women poets, authors or playwrights? What about Christina Stead? Patrick White cited her as the most important living Australian writer. The Man Who Loved Children is the most famous of her many novels.
Hylda Morley
Iolyn Park, Conwy
French corruption
15th January 2004
Tim King's piece (January) on corruption in France is supported not only by Eva Joly's book but by many French writers in, among others, Les Profiteurs de L'?tat, L'Arrogance fran?aise and La Vendetta fran?aise. However, David Goodhart in his foreword says "It would be churlish not to admit that the same elite has had a better record in running France since 1945 than its British counterpart." How does he know that? And what are Prospect's criteria for good government?
Brian Gray
Loire Atlantique, France
NHS capacity
12th February 2004
What a pity that Harvey Cole (January) spoiled an interesting and informative piece with the trite statement that "the final test of a health service is the life expectancy of its population." In advanced western democracies, life expectancy is not top of my list of "health service" quality indicators. What about survival rates from conditions amenable to medical intervention? What about quality of life for the chronically sick? Cole seems to suggest that Britain should pat itself and the NHS on the back. Yes, the OECD data he uses show no clear relationship between expenditure and life expectancy. But there are many "health inputs" (eg fat and salt consumption, exercise patterns, income inequality), that help explain why life expectancy in the US is lower than in Britain and elsewhere in the EU. Cole apparently seeks solace by comparing the NHS with US healthcare. But in doing so he runs the risk of confusing "health output" (such as average life expectancy) with "healthcare system output" (such as cancer survival rates).
Benedict Irvine
Health Unit, Civitas
More Adorno-bashing
7th February 2004
I wholeheartedly agree with Guy Sigsworth's criticism of Adorno (Letters, February). Adorno's opinionated dismissals of composers such as Elgar or Sibelius are baseless. He patronisingly writes: "Elgar, whom the English apparently really like listening to, has absolutely no following in Germany." If he had bothered to do any research, he would have discovered that, after a performance of The Dream of Gerontius in D?sseldorf in 1901, Elgar was hailed by Richard Strauss as the foremost English composer of the day. His works were subsequently performed all over the continent by major conductors; in 1908 the first symphony was performed no less than 100 times, from Manchester to Budapest. Similarly, he compares the music of Mahler to Sibelius as that of a virtuoso to a "St?mper" (hack). I admire both composers, but I would dare to claim that Sibelius gets as much drama and pathos into a symphony lasting 20 minutes (the 7th) as Mahler does in one lasting one and a half hours (his 7th). Adorno evidently had such an axe to grind that he failed to hear or see the merits of any work that didn't fit in with his philosophy. Adorno may have been an important philosopher, but I take any of his writings on music with a very large grain of salt.
Guy Johnston
Kirchhundem, Germany
Phillips in Israel
7th February 2004
It is difficult to know where to begin commenting on Melanie Phillips's article (February) apart from crediting her admission that she is an ardent supporter of Israel whose government hosted her visit. She certainly makes Sharon look quite a softy. To say that the Eretz checkpoint (into Gaza) suffers from constant Palestinian mortar fire is a huge exaggeration. She implies that the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza are a major source of Palestinian armaments. But there is no proof that these tunnels even exist. Given Israel's total control of the border areas I doubt whether anything more than the odd pistol gets through.
She speaks of the Palestinian unwillingness to make peace but doesn't point out that the occupation must end before an occupied people can be expected to "make peace." She says Israeli soldiers only blow up houses of terrorists, that they are careful not to shoot civilians and that they crave for reconciliation. Anyone who follows what is happening on the ground knows that this is nonsense.
She has Israeli soldiers kindly allowing Palestinians into the industrial parks but doesn't explain that these parks are sweatshops employing wretched Palestinian labour to produce goods cheaply for the Israeli market. She refers to "a few settlements" in Gaza. She doesn't tell us that these settlements cover 30 per cent of the land area of Gaza, even though the settlers number only 6,900 against a Palestinian population of 1.3m. She mentions security council resolution 194 whereas it was, in fact, a general assembly resolution. She speaks of Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 1985. It was 2000, not 1985. I could go on.
Trevor Mostyn
Oxford
