New radio documentary out now: How Marx Made the Right
I've made a radio documentary for BBC Radio 4 that explores how Karl Marx helped make the modern conservative movement. You can follow this link to listen to it - and it's available in the UK and abroad. Here's how the BBC describes it:
"Marking 150 years since the publication of Das Kapital, Tim Stanley, a former Marxist, make the case that the Right's ideological debt to Marx is almost as large as that of the Left. He argues that, both historically and on a personal level, conservatism is largely a response to Marxism. We can trace the Marxist influence on conservative doctrine as far back as the 19th century when, reacting to the revolution of 1848, French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville first made the case for turning the proletariat into a class of small property owners so as to give them a stake in society and prevent revolutions. A nation of property owners remains a central conservative ideal nowadays. Meanwhile, the contemporary right is defined by a fiscal credo devised by economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, as a direct response to the ideological threat they saw in state socialism. On a personal level, many leading conservatives - including Tim Stanley himself - became conservatives as if in response to their own early embrace of Marxist doctrines. And while the right wing ideologies devised by Hayek, Friedman, and Thatcher seemed to have triumphed in the 1990s and early 2000s, the rise of a new brand of right-wing populism suggests that the right-wing doctrines of neo-liberalism in fact needed their socialist enemy to survive. A Kati Whitaker production for BBC Radio 4." About me
I am a historian, journalist and broadcaster - specialising in US history, politics and religion. I write a column for the Daily Telegraph, which you can read by clicking on this link. I am a contributing editor of the Catholic Herald and write regularly for CNN. I can often be spotted presenting the BBC's Thought for the Day, or as a panellist on BBC Question Time.
I got my PhD in history at Trinity College, Cambridge. I taught US history at Sussex, London and Oxford. I completed a research fellowship at Royal Holloway. I've published several books. I converted to Catholicism at the age of 23. Most people would call me a conservative, but I prefer "traditionalist". The Amish seem to know what they're doing. Half the week I work in the Daily Telegraph office as a leader writer and columnist. The newspaper sent me to cover the 2016 presidential election. The rest of the week I do a million other things, like put up shelves and try not to smoke. Sometimes you'll see me me in London, other times in Washington DC. |