Mick Hartley

6 responses to “The Decent Marxist”

1. 

   Gene

   November 7, 2013

   My only contact with Norm over the years was a brief email exchange about, believe it or not, The Beatles. But in those remarks and his writings it was obvious he was a good man and one I could enjoy having a pint with, even though politically we would have been worlds apart in many ways.
   It also seems clear to me that were he ever forced to choose between humanity and his ideology, the latter would have been quickly thrown over the side, not something I think you could say about many committed leftists.

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2. 

   Mick H

   November 7, 2013

   As you say, a good man. I just met him the once, though we exchanged e-mails often enough.

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3. 

   Bob-B

   November 7, 2013

   A great guy, and a great thinker. So many of his posts are of lasting value. For example, the debate between Alan Johnson and Norm about Marxism is well worth reading:
   http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2007/07/why-i-am-not-a-.html
   http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2007/09/on-still-being-.html
   And of course that is lots of excellent stuff on various kinds of nonsense in the pages of the Guardian.

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4. 

   Trofim

   November 8, 2013

   I second everything said. It is significant that I didn’t realise he was a marxist, or even a lefty, for some time, because his intellectual honesty, courtesy and kindliness didn’t I’m afraid, seem at all characteristic of what I understand to be on the left nowadays. Unfortunately, he had one particular characteristic which he shared with people such as Kitaj, Roualt the artists, Simone Weil and others which makes one difficult to talk about – namely, not having heard his name spoken, I’m still not sure how to pronounce his surname. Is it G as in Gordon, or G as in George?

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5. 

   Mick H

   November 8, 2013

   Hard G – as in Gordon.
   Yes, for a self-proclaimed Marxist he was as far from an ideologue as you could imagine.

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6. 

   Bob-B

   November 9, 2013

   Geras is a Lithuanian name. Norm says something about the family’s Lithuanian background here:
   http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2012/11/jack-geras-at-100.html

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