Last week Islamic terrorism in Paris hit the ruling class where it lives, in the media. It's tempting to think of the Islamist threat and its terrorist outrages as special and unique and unprecedented. But suppose we just call it “The Muslim Question.” Then it has a curious familiarity; it seems like an echo of something we've heard before. I'll tell you what that something was. It was the “Social Question” of the 19th century. All the right people then agonized over the cruel exploitation of the working class by the callous bourgeoisie, just as all the right people today agonize over the danger of old white men and their Islamophobia. The right people all agreed back then that the Social Question required a political response. The smart Jewish kid Karl Marx and his trustafarian friend Friedrich Engels came up with a revolutionary response. Their plan was to enlist the working class in a civil war against its capitalist exploiters. Then...(Read Full Article)