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Glasgow foundryman Thomas Bell (b. 1882) discovered as much agitating for the Socialist Labour Party, a precursor of the Communist Party. “With cold, hard scientific logic and quotations from Marx and Engels, we usually reduced all opposition to silence,” he assured his readers, “but we never made members.” He suspected “our sectarianism had something to do with it.”

Apparently the workers “thought we were terribly intellectual, and that they had to have a knowledge of Karl Marx and science before they could join the Party.” Walter Citrine (b. 1887), who passed through an early Marxist phase, noted that a workmate on a Liverpool construction site, an SDF man, was “cordially hated by most of the other workmen because of his sarcastic manner, and perhaps because he always defeated them in argument.”

Not many working people were prepared to accept dictates from such men, especially when Communist discipline went beyond matters of ideology. As Hymie Fagan (b. 1903) recalled, the Party closely policed the daily lives of its members, dictating their dress and even instructing them to pay their bills: “We did not want our members to appear queer, in the original sense of the term, in the eyes of the working class.”


LMAO

kokorodoko wrote: Sat Jul 29, 2023 6:57 pm “We did not want our members to appear queer, in the original sense of the term, in the eyes of the working class.”

The "original sense" is obviously merely odd or similar, but the Freudian double-meaning is impossible to ignore. I am reminded of Orwell having his hilarious "oh my god what if everyone will think I'm gay and a sissy because I associate with leftists" moment in The Road to Wigan Pier, which even the head of the CPGB thought was ridiculous.

I might read this later on but I have to post this amazing book cover.

Emil Cioran: The Temptation to Exist

Went to edit the earlier post and think I accidentally deleted it. Anyway.

The writing is beautiful. There are clear differences in depth and quality of sections. The doomer existentialism is touchingly personal and characterful, but when he goes into his nationalism he sounds rather like a typical Romanticist bookworm.

The most potential is shown in those parts that ponder over the tendency to revolution and the striving for individual distinction (and its concomitant antagonism) that is taken to characterize European history.

Anton Chekhov, 52 Short Stories.

I love this guy's writing. He throws in tiny details that really make the stories come alive. He doesn't resolve his "plots". They're just slices of life that reveal the characters' psychology through the use of the telling detail. If you want to immerse yourself in 19th century Russia but don't want to tackle long novels, Chekhov is the go to guy. Highly recommended for fans of short stories by Hemingway.

InMySoul77 wrote: Sun Aug 13, 2023 9:23 am Anton Chekhov, 52 Short Stories.

I love this guy's writing. He throws in tiny details that really make the stories come alive. He doesn't resolve his "plots". They're just slices of life that reveal the characters' psychology through the use of the telling detail. If you want to immerse yourself in 19th century Russia but don't want to tackle long novels, Chekhov is the go to guy. Highly recommended for fans of short stories by Hemingway.

I love Chekov. I reread his plays every so often. You're not just immersing yourself in 19th century Russia, you're immersing yourself in life.

enframed wrote: Sun Aug 13, 2023 11:03 am

InMySoul77 wrote: Sun Aug 13, 2023 9:23 am Anton Chekhov, 52 Short Stories.

I love this guy's writing. He throws in tiny details that really make the stories come alive. He doesn't resolve his "plots". They're just slices of life that reveal the characters' psychology through the use of the telling detail. If you want to immerse yourself in 19th century Russia but don't want to tackle long novels, Chekhov is the go to guy. Highly recommended for fans of short stories by Hemingway.

I love Chekov. I reread his plays every so often. You're not just immersing yourself in 19th century Russia, you're immersing yourself in life.

I just grabbed a collection called The Images of Chekov from the library last week. Some memorably excellent stories. I find he has the ability to depress me more than most.

I also started Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. It's been passed around my family. A coming of age story about game programmers at MIT. It's highly readable, but too early to tell if it's going to communicate something greater to me. I realized I have a habit of picking up middle brow, year end list stuff between heavier canon type stuff. It feels really easy to read after something so intense.

I've been reading Platonov's Foundation Pit for a while. Everyone acts so damn weird in this book. Don't know if there's a point to this or if it's just a Russian thing.

Thoughts on Lonesome Dove…

My ex-wife has been trying to get me to read this book for years. She and I still talk books and records, because we have similar interests in both. I borrowed her copy and I’m 3/4 through.

McMurtry’s language has always fallen a little flat for me, but what he lacks in language, he makes up for in humor and charm.

I enjoy his modern novels, particularly everything up to about 1975. The Last Picture Show and All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers are great books.

He’s a hack when he writes about cowboys, but the aforementioned humor and charm keeps his stories afloat.

1986 must’ve been a slow year for Pulitzer-worthy fiction.

Wondering if the character Newt was based on my great-great grandmother’s brother Nute Rachal. McMurtry used my great-great Uncle Nute as a character in his book Anything For Billy. Nute and his dad DC were renowned cattle drivers from South TX. They had a method of driving cattle that was fast and not particularly ethical, as far as I can tell. I regret not talking to McMurtry about it when he was alive, because he probably knew more about that branch of my family tree than anyone else.

kokorodoko wrote: Sun Jul 02, 2023 9:22 am Fichte: Foundations of Natural Right (1797).

Finished this now. Most of the second part is rather boring detailed legal stuff.

What I like the least about the practical societal vision outlined:
From the fact that the whole thing is founded on a contractual relation voluntarily entered between two individuals, which is to guarantee their mutual trust, and is seen to be not simply an agreement between the two as individuals, but at the same time a decision by each to submit to a law that has stronger degree of objectivity to it - this law is a chain of reasoning which is considered to lead each to recognize the necessity of establishing such a contract in order to preserve their freedom and security, and furthermore the societal machinery which is taken to follow from this as a necessary component of its maintenance.

This being so, a crime against another member of society (i.e. another party to the contract, all citizens are by extension considered parties to every contract between individual citizens), i.e. a breach of their contract, is considered a crime against society or the state itself. It is not seen simply as a conflict between two individuals, but a disruption of the law itself, and of the entire social body, and on that basis the offending party is dealt with.

Notice it said citizens. This only holds for those who are parties to the contract, and therefore only these are considered protected by the "rights" that this confers. This sort of societal arrangement is considered the only one under which individuals can reliably live, and anyone who does not live in this way, or does not want to, must either be forced to, or done away with in some fashion. An explicit example in the text says that if a state were to encounter a people without a state, the former has the "right" to force the other people into such a contract (i.e. force them to form a state), or otherwise to subjugate them (force them to abide by their own laws).

In the passage from aggregate of individuals to state, the future citizens are said to transfer the power they hold each in themselves to an institution acting on behalf of all, and the power wielded by this institution is considered the very same as that wielded by any individual, that when the state is acting it is effectively each citizen that is acting. But an institution is not in fact the same thing as an individual at all. Their equivocation could make some sense rhetorically, but here no essential distinction whatever is made.

Is this Rousseau's fault? Guess we'll find out.