|
01 Jan 1938
A portrait of Hungarian-born photojournalist Robert Capa (1913 – 1954) used to introduce an article, featuring his pictures of the Spanish Civil War, in Picture Post, 3rd December 1938. (Photo by Pict… Read more
By: Picture Post
Collection: Hulton Archive
People: Robert Capa
|
Via Jonathan Woods, who has the full un-watermarked image.
“Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted.” – Groucho Marx
Welcome to 2013 at Poumista. Here’s a taster of some stuff I’ve been reading lately.
Bloggery
Norman Geras: Long overdue justice for Victor Jara; War memory: what is it good for?
David Osler: Two Milibands on the monarchy.
Book reviews
David Osler: Maonomics by Loretta Napoleoni; Bash the Rich by Ian Bone.
From the archive of struggle
At radicalarchive.org:
*Murray Bookchin: Anarchism vs Syndicalism (1992)
*Murray Bookchin: using x-rays for hair removal and fitting children’s shoes (1962)
Espace contre ciment:
*Rudolf Rocker: Seid aktive Nichtwähler! (1924)
At David Osler’s blog:
*Duncan Hallas: Cult Becomes a Cropper (1985) [on Healy's WRP, but eerily relevant to the current enjoyable crisis of the British SWP]
2012 was a slow year here. However, I wanted to thank my referrers and look back on a couple of the highlights.
My top referrers were:
Thanks comrades! Thanks, of course, to readers and commenters as well, in particular Petey, Mikey and TNC. (Two thirds of my readers were in the US, the UK was the second most visiting country, followed by Spain, France, Canada, Australia, Germany and Italy. I am pleased to note I have a reader in Syria.)
My main referrers, however, by a huge margin were search engines rather than blogs etc. Google images sent me more readers (27,000) than google proper (8000). I think the lesson for bloggers is that image metatext gets google image juice. Non-google search engines lagged way behind. Top search terms were as follows, hyperlinked to the most appropriate material to keep that google juice flowing:
Most are predictable, but Dirlewanger and the Dirlewanger Brigade were quite a surprise, and Frederick Douglass too. Oskar Dirlewanger was a psychotic paedophile Nazi who fought in the Condor Legion of German fascists in the Spanish Civil War before going on to command his own exceptionally brutal SS brigade on the Eastern front in WWII, specialising in fighting partisans in Poland and Belorus. I have never written about him or his brigade here, so have no idea why it generates search engine traffic.
With only three posts actually written in 2012 featuring (highlighted in bold), the most popular posts (or at least the most visited ones)
My favourite 2012 posts, however, were:
January 7, 1919 – This date marked the beginning of Argentina’s “Bloody Week” (AKA Tragic Week) in Buenos Aires. Workers (led by Italian anarchists) were demonstrating for the 8-hour work day and were fired upon by the authorities, leaving four dead and nearly 30 wounded. Clashes with the authorities on the day of the funerals left another 50 dead. A General Strike was called and strikers were attacked by trade union reformists and paramilitary groups collaborating with the police. By January 16 the strike was crushed, with as many as 700 dead and 2000 wounded, many of whom were Jewish-Russian immigrants targeted by racists and anti-Bolshevik hysteria.(From the Daily Bleed and Wikipedia)January 7, 1939 – Tom Mooney, a labor activist wrongly convicted of murder in the San Francisco Preparedness Day bombing in July 1916, was freed after 22 ½ years in jail, granted an unconditional pardon by Governor Culbert Olson.(From the Daily Bleed)
Via Lists of Note, here’s some rulins from Woody Guthrie.
As 1941 drew to a close, the great Woody Guthrie sat and drew up an illustrated list of 33 resolutions for the following year, 1942. The charming result of his efforts, entitled “New Year’s Rulin’s,” can be enjoyed below.
Transcript follows. Image — a larger version of which is here — courtesy ofThe Woody Guthrie Foundation.
Transcript
NEW YEAR’S RULIN’S
1. WORK MORE AND BETTER
2. WORK BY A SCHEDULE
3. WASH TEETH IF ANY
4. SHAVE
5. TAKE BATH
6. EAT GOOD – FRUIT – VEGETABLES – MILK
7. DRINK VERY SCANT IF ANY
8. WRITE A SONG A DAY
9. WEAR CLEAN CLOTHES – LOOK GOOD
10. SHINE SHOES
11. CHANGE SOCKS
12. CHANGE BED CLOTHES OFTEN
13. READ LOTS GOOD BOOKS
14. LISTEN TO RADIO A LOT
15. LEARN PEOPLE BETTER
16. KEEP RANCHO CLEAN
17. DON’T GET LONESOME
18. STAY GLAD
19. KEEP HOPING MACHINE RUNNING
20. DREAM GOOD
21. BANK ALL EXTRA MONEY
22. SAVE DOUGH
23. HAVE COMPANY BUT DON’T WASTE TIME
24. SEND MARY AND KIDS MONEY
25. PLAY AND SING GOOD
26. DANCE BETTER
27. HELP WIN WAR – BEAT FASCISM
28. LOVE MAMA
29. LOVE PAPA
30. LOVE PETE
31. LOVE EVERYBODY
32. MAKE UP YOUR MIND
33. WAKE UP AND FIGHT
The material on centrist Marxism was removed from the Wikipedia article on Centrism, so I have created a new article on the former. It is very much a work in progress, so anyone reading this who is a Wikipedia editor, please work on it. It started like this:
Centrism has a specific meaning within the Marxist movement, referring to a position between a revolutionary and reformist position. For instance, the Independent Labour Party (ILP) was seen as centrist because they oscillated between advocating reaching a socialist economy through reforms and advocating revolution. The members of the so-called Two-and-a-half and Three-and-a-half Internationals, who could not choose between the reformism of the social democrat Second International and the revolutionary politics of the Communist Third International, are exemplary of centrism in this sense; instances are the Spanish Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), ILP and Poale Zion.
Revolutionary Marxists often describe centrism in this sense as opportunistic, since it argues for a revolution at some point in the future but urges reformist practices in the mean time; Libertarian socialists and anarchists view any reformism as political opportunism because they view reformism as incapable of effecting structural changes to social organization.[1]
The term “Centrism” also denotes positions held by some of the Bolsheviks during the 1920s. In this context, “Centrism” refers to a position between the Right Opposition (which supported the New Economic Policy and friendly relations with capitalist countries) and the Left Opposition (which supported an immediate transition to a socialist economy and world revolution). By the end of the 1920s, the two opposing factions had been defeated by Joseph Stalin who eventually gained enough support from members of the factions through the application of various ideas formed by the factions’ various leaders. (i.e. Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, etc.)
Català: Placa Andreu Nin a Biblioteca Pública de les Rambles de Barcelona (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Gabriel Schoenfeld had an article about why he supported Mitt Romney. Bizarrely, he thanks Max Shachtman. [h/t TNC]. Eric Lee also writes on Shachtman’s legacy. Remembering Hilda Friedstein: Hashomer Hatzair activist and animal rights pioneer. James Bloodworth: Chavez’s dark side; It’s time to give Christopher Hitchens a statue. Andrew Coates: On the left press; European revolutionaries and Algerian independence 1954-1962.
Blogging Victor Serge: A wonderful series by Adam David Morton. The Lectern on The Case of Comrade Tulayev. More links from Sarah J Young.
Blogging George Orwell: On the publication of The Road to Wigan Pier.
From WSWS: Exhibition of photographer Agustí Centelles in Barcelona: Many unanswered questions about the Spanish Civil War; Wolfgang Brenner’s Hubert in Wonderland: A life in the shadow of Stalinism; The reactionary politics of Grace Lee Boggs; The dead-end of Catalan independence.
Below the fold, some items from Entdinglichung’s Weekly Worker feature: (more…)
 |
13 Nov 1937
Bodies of children awaiting burial after a Nationalist air raid on their school at Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
By: Keystone
Collection: Hulton Archive
|
Recently I was lucky enough to take part in a meeting of radical historians in Barcelona. The event was billed as “a meeting of colleagues and comrades, all active in interpreting and bringing out the radical history of the place where they live”.
As well as sharing experiences and having a good time, the gathering was aimed at establishing “a more or less formal network/platform for the future. An international network of independent tour guides, street storytellers and historical activists”.
Radical historians and tour guides from Dublin, Barcelona, Olso, Berlin and London were present, as well as members of the RaspouTeam who make innovative use of street art, QR codes and radio to celebrate the revolutionary history of Paris. For my own part, I delivered a presentation on Liverpool’s history from an anarcho-syndicalist viewpoint, including some general history of the Solidarity Federation (which goes back to the founding of the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation in 1950), of which I am a member. Also participating and helping to facilitate the meeting was a CNT member who has set up a bar off La Rambla called La Llibertària, which is run as a workers co-operative. The walls of the bar are covered in posters, photographs and original newspapers from the Spanish revolution and it is well worth a visit for anyone spending time in the city.
Libertarian Anthology III: Trade Unionism, Councilism and Revolutionary Syndicalism is edited, published and produced by Acracia with the co-operation of Grupo Cultural de Estudios Sociales de Melbourne, November 2012. The anthology is comprised of five essays:
• ‘The basis of Trade Unionism’ by Emile Pouget;
• ‘The origins of anarcho-syndicalism’ by Rudolf Rocker;
• ‘Fernand Pelloutier and the dilemma of revolutionary syndicalism’ by Alan Spitzer;
• ‘Councilism and Syndicalism: a historical perspective’ by Andrew Giles-Peters and;
• ‘Anarchism and Trade Unionism’ by Gaston Gerard.
From the Foreword:
This third issue of Libertarian Anthology is devoted to the topic of trade unionism and the evolvement by one of the groupings within it to revolutionary ideals; whom ever has taken the patience to study both the economic and political development of society over the past two centuries will come to realise that the goals of anarcho-syndicalism did not evolve from unachievable utopic concepts conveyed by a few lunatic innovative goodhearted individuals, instead, these goals are the outcome of constant struggles within the maladjusted social conditions. As a result we have the pleasure in presenting the reader with a collection of articles which we hope will demystify the misunderstanding of anarcho-syndicalism…
Download here.
For more infos write to exiliolibertario[at]gmail[dot]com.
From Entdinglichung:
Hands off Suez! Hands off Hungary! (pdf file, 1.13 mb), a 1956 brochure from the anti-Stalinist Marxist Vanguard circle around Walter Kendall (1926-2003), which opposes the imperialist intervention in Suez and the Soviet intervention in Hungary and seeks to popularize these positions in the TUC:
It’s that time of year again. It will be on Saturday 27th October From 10am to 7pm at Queen Mary’s, University of London on the Mile End Road. Here are two Poumista recommendations.
The Path Not Taken - welfare history and the libertarian perspective 11am – 12 noon Room 3.22
To know where you’re going, you need to know where you came from. One piece of hidden history is the way working class people, in face of the most ruthless capitalism ever, erected a system of welfare services, based on mutual aid “friendly societies”. Health, education, housing, benefits, etc, were all included as the new book tells. We can’t resurrect the friendly societies but we can work for modern collective libertarian welfare services, as well as defending the compromise welfare state. Books available. Organised by: Socialist Libertarian Group [Whoy are they?]
1839: The Chartist Insurrection 12 noon – 1pm Room 3.18
The Chartists were the original political movement of the working class, and 1839 was the year a National Convention assembled in London, and revolution seemed a real possibility. The year ended with an armed uprising in London, followed by the trial of its leaders for treason. Our speaker, David Black, is co-author (with Chris Ford) of a new book on the events of 1839. Organised by: Hobgoblin
Reificationofpersonsandthings posts a wonderful video of EP Thompson and CLR James talking history in (presumably) the mid-1980s. I can’t find much information about this film, apparently released in 2007 in Ipswich, Suffolk by Concord Media.
According to Amazon,
This classic filmed conversation between two radical historians covers many issues: from the threat of nuclear war to the significance of the Solidarity movement in Poland, the independence struggle in Zimbabwe and the overthrow of the Shah in Iran. Do these movements offer encouragement to those suffering repression in other parts of the world? What does the future hold for India and the black African states? The film illustrated with archive footage and music is provided by Spartacus R.
Spartacus R died two years ago. He was the bassist in the great Osibisa. Here is his MySpace page.
Update: Histomatist has also posted it.
Update 2: Principia Dialectica on EP Thompson and George Lichtheim on William Morris.
“Harsh voiced and nasal, his guitar hanging like a tire iron on a rusty rim, there is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings. But there is something more important for those who will listen. There is the will of the people to endure and fight against oppression. I think we call this the American spirit.” John Steinbeck on Woody Guthrie
A particularly poignant image from Dorothea Lange:
[Photo: Shorpy/Dorothea Lange for the Resettlement Administration]August 1936. “Example of self-resettlement in California. Oklahoma farm family on highway between Blythe and Indio. Forced by the drought of 1936 to abandon their farm, they set out with their children to drive to California. Picking cotton in Arizona for a day or two at a time gave them enough for food and gas to continue. On this day they were within a day’s travel of their destination, Bakersfield. Their car had broken down en route and was abandoned.”
As it’s Music Monday, and I haven’t honoured it for a while, here’s some songs. The road in the picture must be Route 466, the road that leaves the iconic Route 66 at Kingman, Arizona, ran through Bakersfield on to the California coast. These were the routes that carried thousands of migrants westward from the ecological and economic disaster of the Dust Bowl: half a million Americans made homeless, 15% of Oklahoma’s population moving to California.
Here’s Woody Guthrie and “Dust Cain’t Kill Me”, from his Dust Bowel Ballads, which Steinbeck was describing in the quote at the start of this post.
And here is Red Kilby doing “Bakersfield Sound”, explaining and celebrating the amazing musical culture created by the dustbowl migrants and their children in the interior of California. That’s the great Ralph Mooney on steel guitar; he passed away last year: incredibly influential in country music, but little known outside it.
Here’s a young ex-con Merle Haggard singing “I’m A Lonesome Fugitive” (“Down every road, there’s always one more city/I’m on the run, the highway is my home“) on the Buck Owens Ranch Show. Owens was the king of the Bakersfield sound.
And finally, here’s Merle again, with his Okie anthem, “Okie from Muskogee“, with Willie Nelson, in a lovely self-parodic mode:
Merle Haggard; Working Man’s Blues; Jesus Christ; Woody Guthrie at 100; Vigilante Man; Hobo’s Lullaby.
N.Y. – Lawrence strike meeting (LOC) (Photo credit: The Library of Congress)
From the Modern School:
September 30, 1912 – The Lawrence, Massachusetts “Bread and Roses” textile strike was in full swing. On this date, 12,000 textile workers walked out of mills to protest the arrests of two leaders of the strike. Police clubbed strikers and arrested many, while the bosses fired 1,500. IWW co-founder Big Bill Haywood threatened another general strike to get the workers reinstated. Strike leaders Arturo Giovannitti and Joe Ettor were eventually acquitted 58 days later. (From Workday Minnesota)
From Film Threat, via J:
THE BOOTLEG FILES: PEOPLE OF THE CUMBERLAND
BOOTLEG FILES 259 “People of the Cumberland” (1937 pro-union propaganda short).
LAST SEEN: Available at online vide sites.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: I am not aware of its video release.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: A seriously obscure title.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE : It is possible, but not likely at the moment.
“People of the Cumberland” is probably among the most obscure films to be featured in this series – I only first learned of it a few weeks ago, and only then I stumbled over it by accident. But as with many obscure films, it has a strange and fascinating history that deserves attention.
This 20-minute film was the product of Frontier Films, a collaborative effort of left wing creative artists who sought to use motion pictures as a vehicle to spread their political messages. The group had its genesis with the the Worker’s Film and Photo League, a Communist organization created in 1930, which later transformed into Nykino in 1935, before becoming Frontier Films in 1936. The group’s members included prominent independent and avant-garde film leaders of the 1930s, including Willard Van Dyke, Paul Strand and Leo Hurwitz.
Frontier Films wanted to depict aspects of American life where left-of-center political input saved the day. In the case of “People of the Cumberland,” that meant the arrival of labor unions. Although Frontier Films operated without the blessing or backing of any specific union, its pro-union message was loud and clear – or, in the case of this film, it was condensed into the succinct slogan “Get wise, organize!”
For the Sake of the Song, a fantastic music blog, occassionally posts briliant Spanish music, and I have linked there before in this series, I think. Here’s the lastest:
[...] a quartet of fantastic flamenco pieces from thirties Spain. Featuring Pepe Pinto, Antonio Mairena, Manolita from Jerez, and last but not least the legendary Tomás Pavon. ¡Palmas y agua!
Pepe Pinto – Hermanita, Sientate A Mi Vera Cuando Querra La Virgen Del Mayor Dolor
Antonio Mairena – Soleá De Alcalá
Manolita De Jerez – Bulerias
Tomás Pavon – Cantes De Triana
This release is on Arhoolie, mainly a bluegrass label, although it also carries loads of stuf by the great Flaco Jimenez. Some of the music is incerdibly rare. These are almost all Gyspy singers, who hunkered down in the years of the Spanish Civil War and Franco dictatorship, playing in late night dives in the urban ghettos of Andalusia. They sang a deep, rough, almost orgasmic cante flamenco, at a time when the fashion (and, after Franco’s victory, state approval) was for a more Castillian, operatic, smooth, flamboyant style.
(more…)
Jim D on Eddie Yeats, the Higginsites and me: a confession. Tendance Coates on Richard Seymour (the Palme Dutt of the SWP) versus Hitchens. Gus Tyler on Milton Friedman’s inventions. Eric Lee on the turn to left antisemitism of the American SWP in 1972. Marko Attila Hoare on Montenegrins, Serbs and anti-fascists.
From Lists of Note:
In 1946, George Orwell published ‘Politics and the English Language,’ an essay in which he criticises the bad habits of many writers and promotes the use of clear, unfussy language wherever possible. Towards the end of the essay, Orwell provides the following list of rules for writers.(Source: Politics and the English Language; Image: Orwell at work, via.)
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
In the February 1935 issue of Esquire magazine, an article by Ernest Hemingway appeared that was titled ‘Remembering Shooting-Flying: A Key West Letter.’ In it, Hemingway reeled off 17 books, all of which he “would rather read again for the first time [...] than have an assured income of a million dollars a year.”
That list can be read below.
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
Far Away and Long Ago, by W. H. Hudson
Buddenbrooks, by Thomas Mann
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë
Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
A Sportsman’s Sketches, by Ivan Turgenev
The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Hail and Farewell, by George Moore
Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson
La Reine Margot, by Alexandre Dumas
La Maison Tellier, by Guy de Maupassant
Le Rouge et le Noir, by Stendhal
La Chartreuse de Parme, by Stendhal
Dubliners, by James Joyce
Autobiographies, by W. B. Yeats
Early-1966, believing its contents to be “immoral,” the Hanover County School Board in Virginia decided to remove all copies of Harper Lee‘s classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, from the county’s school libraries. As soon as she was alerted, Lee responded perfectly by way of the following letter, written to, and later published in, The Richmond News Leader.
Also sent, as mentioned in the letter, was a contribution to the Beadle Bumble Fund — a project set up by the newspaper in 1959 to highlight/compensate for “official stupidities,” and which subsequently gave away copies of the banned book to all children who asked.
(Source: Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird; Image: Harper Lee, via.)
Monroeville, Alabama
January, 1966Editor, The News Leader:
Recently I have received echoes down this way of the Hanover County School Board’s activities, and what I’ve heard makes me wonder if any of its members can read.
Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that “To Kill a Mockingbird” spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is “immoral” has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink.
I feel, however, that the problem is one of illiteracy, not Marxism. Therefore I enclose a small contribution to the Beadle Bumble Fund that I hope will be used to enroll the Hanover County School Board in any first grade of its choice.
Harper Lee
Late-1914, an aspiring young writer named Max Fedder sent a copy of his manuscript, “A Journal of One Who Is to Die,” to Jack London, the author responsible for such works as The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and, most relevantly, Martin Eden — the bleak story of a young man battling to become a writer.
The brutally honest response he received can be seen below.
(Source: No Mentor but Myself: Jack London on Writing and Writers; Image: Jack London, via Answers.)
Oakland, Calif.
Oct. 26, 1914
Dear Max Fedder:
In reply to yours of recent date undated, and returning herewith your Manuscript. First of all, let me tell you that as a psychologist and as one who has been through the mill, I enjoyed your story for its psychology and point of view. Honestly and frankly, I did not enjoy it for its literary charm or value. In the first place, it has little literary value and practically no literary charm. Merely because you have got something to say that may be of interest to others does not free you from making all due effort to express that something in the best possible medium and form. Medium and form you have utterly neglected.
Anent the foregoing paragraph, what is to be expected of any lad of twenty, without practice, in knowledge of medium and form? Heavens on earth, boy, it would take you five years to serve your apprenticeship and become a skilled blacksmith. Will you dare to say that you have spent, not five years, but as much as five months of unimpeachable, unremitting toil in trying to learn the artisan’s tools of a professional writer who can sell his stuff to the magazines and receive hard cash for same? Of course you cannot; you have not done it: And yet, you should be able to reason on the face of it that the only explanation for the fact that successful writers receive such large fortunes is because very few who desire to write become successful writers. If it takes five years work to become a skilled blacksmith, how many years of work intensified into nineteen hours a day, so that one year counts for five-how many years of such work, studying medium and form, art and artisanship, do you think a man, with native talent and something to say, required in order to reach a place in the world of letters where he received a thousand dollars cash iron money per week?
I think you get the drift of the point I am trying to make. If a fellow harnesses himself to a star of $1000 week, he has to work proportionately harder than if he harnesses himself to a little glowworm of $20.00 a week. The only reason there are more successful blacksmiths in the world than successful writers, is that it is much easier, and requires far less hard work to become a successful blacksmith than does it to become a successful writer.
It cannot be possible that you, at twenty, should have done the work at writing that would merit you success at writing. You have not begun your apprenticeship yet. The proof of it is the fact that you dared to write this manuscript, “A Journal of One Who Is to Die.” Had you made any sort of study of what is published in the magazines you would have found that your short story was of the sort that never was published in the magazines. If you are going to write for success and money, you must deliver to the market marketable goods. Your short story is not marketable goods, and had you taken half a dozen evenings off and gone into a free reading room and read all the stories published in the current magazines, you would have learned in advance that your short story was not marketable goods.
[...]
Any time you are out here in California, I should be glad to have you come to visit me on the ranch. I can meet you to the last limit of brass tacks, and hammer some facts of life into you that possibly so far have escaped your own experience.
Sincerely yours,
Jack London
In October of 1949, a few months after the release of George Orwell‘sdystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, he received a fascinating letter from fellow author Aldous Huxley — a man who, 17 years previous, had seen his own nightmarish vision of society published, in the form of Brave New World. What begins as a letter of praise soon becomes a brief comparison of the two novels, and an explanation as to why Huxley believes his own, earlier work to be a more realistic prediction.
Fantastic.
Trivia: In 1917, long before he wrote this letter, Aldous Huxley briefly taught Orwell French at Eton.
(Source: Letters of Aldous Huxley; Image: George Orwell (via) & Aldous Huxley (via).)
Wrightwood. Cal.
21 October, 1949Dear Mr. Orwell,
It was very kind of you to tell your publishers to send me a copy of your book. It arrived as I was in the midst of a piece of work that required much reading and consulting of references; and since poor sight makes it necessary for me to ration my reading, I had to wait a long time before being able to embark on Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Agreeing with all that the critics have written of it, I need not tell you, yet once more, how fine and how profoundly important the book is. May I speak instead of the thing with which the book deals — the ultimate revolution? The first hints of a philosophy of the ultimate revolution — the revolution which lies beyond politics and economics, and which aims at total subversion of the individual’s psychology and physiology — are to be found in the Marquis de Sade, who regarded himself as the continuator, the consummator, of Robespierre and Babeuf. The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it. Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. I have had occasion recently to look into the history of animal magnetism and hypnotism, and have been greatly struck by the way in which, for a hundred and fifty years, the world has refused to take serious cognizance of the discoveries of Mesmer, Braid, Esdaile, and the rest.
Partly because of the prevailing materialism and partly because of prevailing respectability, nineteenth-century philosophers and men of science were not willing to investigate the odder facts of psychology for practical men, such as politicians, soldiers and policemen, to apply in the field of government. Thanks to the voluntary ignorance of our fathers, the advent of the ultimate revolution was delayed for five or six generations. Another lucky accident was Freud’s inability to hypnotize successfully and his consequent disparagement of hypnotism. This delayed the general application of hypnotism to psychiatry for at least forty years. But now psycho-analysis is being combined with hypnosis; and hypnosis has been made easy and indefinitely extensible through the use of barbiturates, which induce a hypnoid and suggestible state in even the most recalcitrant subjects.
Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war — in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.
Thank you once again for the book.
Yours sincerely,
Aldous Huxley
In September of 1848, the incredible Frederick Douglass wrote the following open letter to Thomas Auld — a man who, until a decade previous, had been Douglass’ slave master for many years — and published it in North Star, the newspaper he himself founded in 1847. In the letter, Douglass writes of his twenty years as a slave; his subsequent escape and new life; and then enquires about his siblings, presumably still “owned” by his old master. He even asks Auld to imagine his own daughter as a slave.
It’s a lengthy letter, but perfectly written and such a valuable read. The final paragraph is also exquisite.
(Source: The Frederick Douglass Papers; Image below via Library of Congress; Image above, of Frederick Douglass, c.1874, via Wikipedia.)
I know I’ve been a slow blogging here lately. Here are some of the things I’ve been reading in my absence, if you know what I mean. Beatrix Campbell and the “invisible” women of Wigan Pier. Hitchens’s introduction to Orwell’s Diaries. Algeria: Fifty Years of Independence. An evening with the SWP. Malatesta on Bakunin as “too marxist”. Book notes: Michael Staudenmaier on the Sojourner Truth Organization. Back to that first International? In what senses can we describe certain political, religious and social movements of the English Revolution (1640-1660) as radical?
Below the fold, some of the gems from Entdinglichung’s weekly workers series. (more…)
IISG: Today in History Entdinglichung La Bataille Socialiste Bob From Brockley Radical archives Christie Books Criticism etc Histomatist
