Philosophy
Proles and polls
Jun 23rd 2005
From The Economist print edition
A spectre haunts the BBC
“DEMOCRACY is the road to socialism”, wrote Karl Marx: Britons seem to agree. Communism is in disarray these days, but BBC listeners have put its top brain at the front of a poll to find history's greatest philosopher.
Charlie Taylor, the man behind the vote, said Marx had “built up a commanding lead” over Ludwig Wittgenstein, an Austrian philosopher of language, in second place.
Voters have until the first week of July to choose from a list of 20 philosophers picked by “In Our Time”, a highbrow radio discussion programme. (Recent topics include theology in 12th-century Paris and “The Sublime: Defining the State of Awe”.)
What explains Marx's comeback? Rick Lewis, editor of Philosophy Now magazine, puts it down to name recognition. Eric Hobsbawm, a Marxist historian, thinks it stems from “his liberation from the Soviet Union and prediction of globalisation”. Madsen Pirie, president of the Adam Smith Institute, a libertarian think-tank, blames the voters. “The BBC audience,” he says “is increasingly isolated from reality”.
But, given that anyone can vote on the BBC website, there might be another explanation. Such online polls are notoriously open to meddling. Time Magazine's ‘Person of the Century' vote was the victim of a campaign to boost Ataturk, a Turkish politician. In 1996 Labour supporters organised the vote in another BBC poll to make Tony Blair the year's outstanding figure.
Far be it from The Economist to suggest foul play, despite Marxists' talent for poll-rigging and ballot-stuffing. Instead, we offer advice on tactical voting. Either John Locke or Adam Smith would command our vote, but neither made the shortlist. Of those remaining, J.S. Mill, author of modern liberalism and backer of both free speech and free trade, is our natural choice. Sadly, he hasn't much hope of victory.
In their place we suggest the current third-place candidate: a liberal sceptic and empiricist, a contemporary of Adam Smith and a man with a good shot at winning. Economist readers seeking to stop Marx should vote for David Hume.
:rockon: 
