David McDonagh – RIP
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David Ramsay Steele writes:
“I am shocked and saddened to hear of the death of my dear friend David McDonagh. He has probably had a greater impact on my life and thinking than anyone else I have personally known. He was born and raised in tragically dysfunctional circumstances and spent much of his childhood in institutions, from which he emerged with nothing in the way of a respectable education. He became a general laborer, then a painter-decorator. Because of being a painter-decorator, he immediately reacted to the TV adaptation, and then to the book, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, that remarkable socialist story in which painter-decorators in their work breaks sit around talking about what is wrong with society. A little later than me, he joined the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and thus did acquire something of an education. By the early 1970s, we both had severe doubts about socialism/communism, me primarily because of Mises, McDonagh primarily because of Michels. And so by the mid-1970s we both arrived at libertarianism. We each got our Form Fs (Form A is when you join the SPGB, Form F is when you cease to be a member). Owing to a traffic accident, he lost the use of his right arm. He used to say “Circumstances are the victims of people”; after his accident he would add, “but sometimes the circumstances hit back.” He then went to Warwick University and got a degree in philosophy. He was the most perfectly honest person I have known. He said “Honesty is an achievement,” meaning that honesty does not come naturally or spontaneously but requires work. He challenged and changed the ideas of thousands of people. Human civilization is a bit more fragile because of his passing.”
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