Everything McKibbin says is true, but he and other historians have missed other factors which may be at least as important, and which only become visible when working people themselves explain why they were not (or had ceased to be) Marxists. They rarely mention such global issues as the purge trials, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the invasion of Hungary, or Khrushchev’s “secret speech” of 1956. Instead, they emphasize philosophical, ethical, and literary problems.

Put bluntly, the trouble with Marx was Marxists, whom British workers generally found to be dogmatic, selfish, and antiliterary. These complaints cannot be dismissed as the sour edge of post-Hungary disillusionment—though the disillusioned deserve to be heard here. The memoirs of those who were never disenchanted and of those who were never Marxists, as well as a revealing sociological study, point to the same conclusion, though most of them were written before 1956. British working people judged Marxism by the Marxists they knew, and concluded, with good reason, that such people were not going to make a better world.

...

In the first half of the twentieth century “Practical Christianity”—a vague but sincere belief in charity, equality, and doing good—was the consensus theology of British working people, whether or not they attended church. It was a doctrine entirely at home in the Labour Party, but difficult to reconcile with orthodox Marxism.

Early British Marxists dismissed as “bourgeois” the same canon of English classics that inspired generations of autodidacts, thus alienating the very proletarian intellectuals who might have been the driving force behind a more creative Marxism. Where Marxists defined exploitation in purely economic terms, Labour socialists, brandishing their Everyman’s Library volumes, promised beauty in life, joy in work, a moral vision in politics.

...

The respective ideologies taken up by the Labour and Communist parties did create a self-sorting mechanism, with idealists and self-improvers attracted to the former, cynics and authoritarians to the latter.

The early Communists in particular included many genuine crusaders, such as Helen Crawfurd. But even she once confided to a comrade, “Mary, Communism is all right, though there are scoundrels in the Communist Party!” My point is that there was something inherent in Communism that put the scoundrels in control. The ideology attracted them to the point where they came to dominate the Party, and most of the idealists either left in disgust or were pushed out.


(Jonathan Rose: The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes)

^
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.