And now, fresh for Halloween, some news from beyond the grave, as Karl Marx returns to reveal the awful truth:

DS: So you don't think your relation with Hegel...

KM: Hegel Schmegel. I must tell you a secret: I never actually read, except in the most cursory fashion, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit or his Science of Logic. Life's too short.

DS: This will be a bit of a shock in some quarters.

KM: People should read the great English economists, Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Well, not really English: one's a Scot, the other a Sephardic Jew-clever people of good stock, who know the value of money. Germans like Hegel transform hats into ideas. I prefer the Brits who transform ideas into hats.

And stop talking about that damn manifesto, anyway. It was a quick piece of hack work, done while he hadn't done much real thinking yet, and he's kind of embarassed by it. He also kind of likes America, and disavows the Leninists. But then again, he's not apologizing for them....

via Ken MacLeod. And by the way, on the subject of Scottish SF writers, please welcome your new Evil Overlord...