I wish I could remember the details, because it would make me sound smarter, but I remember reading most, if not all, of Thomas More's Utopia in college, and being struck by what a miserable, boring, joyless paradise More hoped we would one day achieve. The politics of it all I don't think were quite as jaw-dropping as what H. G. Wells laid out, but it still sounded like a whole bunch of no fun. And yet that word is still thrown around as a symbol of the ideal.
As for Wells, I'm not as familiar with his fiction as I'd like to be, but as I remember it, the Eloi in The Time Machine -- which I have read -- with whom the Time Traveler was so enamored, seemed like a lumpy, bland group. I guess that's how Wells saw mankind. Even worse, that's how he saw the good ones. I guess what I'm trying to say is, H. G. Wells must have been a real bitch to hang out with.
bill | | Email | 08.06.08 - 1:45 pm | #
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Yeah, the Coupland piece really elaborates everything so well (which I guess it should since it's 20 pages longer than my post) not just about Wells but about how so many political idealogies of the thirties were so confused. And Wells really didn't seem to see the contradictions inherent in oppressing someone for their freedom. And I love that he actually believed that at a certain point the elite would resign their posts and leave. Hahahahaha. It's a mixture of political naivete and cultural snobbery that makes for a bad soup.
And yes the Eloi. Boring, faceless, lifeless. No individualism, nothing to strive for, no goals to set. What a bore. Utopian automatons.
greg | | Email | Homepage | 08.06.08 - 1:57 pm | #
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I know that Stalin was particularly delighted at how much he had duped HG Wells (who wasn't as taken with the revolution as he thought he should be - but who, nevertheless, came back home and reported on how "candid" Stalin was - this as millions upon millions starved in the Ukraine in the famine that wasn't even happening, according to Stalin) But Wells was one of the many "useful idiots" without whom the terror of Stalin would not have been possible. Walter Durranty -Beatrice and Stanley Webb - HG Wells ...
I am also VERY interested in the fact that Rebecca West (one of my idols, and certainly one of my favorite writers and thinkers of all time) had a long-term affair with him, and they had a child ... and she herself was a brilliant writer against fascism, although there was a socialist aspect to her political views (most intellectuals had that at the time). She was NOT duped by the Soviet Union and the show trials - when most in the West were credulous to the point of stupidity: "Why are all of these people confessing if they're NOT guilty?" was the basic attitude in the West toward the show trials - so it's a really interesting dichotomy between the two lovers. I'd love to be a fly on the wall to their political conversations!!
I actually bought a couple months ago the complete collectino of her letters - and haven't read it yet, but I'm eager to get to it!
Two fascinating complex individuals.
Oh, and amusingly: Rebecca West is one of the "witnesses" in Reds - who speak about that time in history (she's the one who sits with another old lady, and West has beautiful big eyes behind googly-eyed glasses) - and at one point, West, an old old woman, says, and you can still feel the contempt in her voice so many years later, "You know who didn't know anything at all about socialism? Beatrice and Stanley Webb. They didn't know a THING."
The so-called experts.
Anyway, I'll stop ranting now. It's one of the periods in history I am totally fascinated by!
sheila | | Email | Homepage | 08.06.08 - 3:41 pm | #
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There are a couple of quotes from Beatrice and Sidney Webb's stuff in the article and apparently Wells based the characters of the Baileys in The New Machiavellis on them and ripped them apart.
According to the article Wells eventually rejected most of Fascism and Nazism's tenets but clung to the idea that Fascism could be made to work if done properly, i.e., liberal fascism. He liked the efficiency of Fascism and while he liked many of the ideals of the Left he felt that they were the wrong type of people for revolution, describing them as, among other things, "barely cryptic nudists," "extremely woolly vegetarians, "flimsy people," and finally concluding "not the stuff revolutions are made of."
Since I cannot copy and paste from the article as it is embedded PDF and my level of permission with JSTOR does not allow me to download the PDF, whereby I could convert it, I have done the next best thing. I wanted you to read the Stalin/Communist section of the article, so I took a screenshot and uploaded it to Flickr in two pages. Here they are:
Part One Read First
Part Two Read Second
greg| | Email | Homepage | 08.06.08 - 4:04 pm | #
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Yes, I've actually read that (like I said: that whole era is a passion of mine)!
The alliances were a shifting thing - as well as the political labels themselves - like Orwell experienced, and others ... who started out strictly Left and with the advent of Stalinism and the tales of terror and the gulag had to either break with Russia, OR stick up for it, OR say, "Well, socialism is still possible - if it weren't for pesky villains like Stalin!"
As though it was the PERSON that was bad, not the idea itself.
Watching all of those people work that all out - on the ground - AS events were occurring - is endlessly fascinating (and also infuriating).
sheila | | Email | Homepage | 08.06.08 - 5:00 pm | #
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Oh, and I think a LOT of people at that time had a very difficult time of it - letting go of ideology, or the "idea", the abstraction. That is the whole danger with that kind of utopian fascistic thinking!
That's one of the reasons why Orwell was so excoriated - but why he is one of my favorites. Because he remained independent. Not wishy-washy - but a man who was able to look at his own idealogy, and really ask the tough questions. And make a break with his old comrades because he would not choose an abstraction over the human reality right in front of him.
He has still not been forgiven by many for that.
sheila | | Email | Homepage | 08.06.08 - 5:02 pm | #
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All of this is very a propos with this week's death of Solzhenitsyn, another one of my intellectual heroes - another guy who could not be used by the state no matter how hard they tried, who did not choose abstractions over humanity - until the last 10, 15 years of his life, perhaps) and whose writings mean more to me than I can ever say!
sheila | | Email | Homepage | 08.06.08 - 5:05 pm | #
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Sorry to babble on. But that decade or so of political thinking (and thinkers, mistaken or otherwise) is an ongoing passion of mine.
sheila | | Email | Homepage | 08.06.08 - 5:28 pm | #
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Sheila - Thanks for the insight. I love Orwell too and thought he was planted firmly on the ground. I do believe that most idealogies that do not focus on state control over the individual are not bad in and of themselves but can be twisted by the wrong person. I've never viewed the Soviet Union as anything close to actual communism so I think it's a shame that communism itself got such a bad rap due to the Soviet Union, China and Cuba which are all dictator states.
However, I don't believe pure communism can really work beyond a small village anyway due to the evergrowing needs of the growing populace that can only be handled with free enterprise, government services, entrepreneurialism and other things that come with democratic or socialist or parliamentary systems.
What annoys me about that era is all the "useful idiots" who aided the Soviet Union in perpetuating its myth. I remember reading the acceptance speech of Paul Robeson after receiving the Stalin Peace Prize and wondering how he could be praising the Soviet Union and Stalin so much. Was he that naive? Was the information just that hard to come by? What?
Yet for people like Orwell it didn't seem as if the truth about the Soviet Union was a mystery and so it lessens my view of all those who, by the late forties, especially after Berlin, still viewed the Soviet Union as a great nation run by a peace loving government.
greg | | Email | Homepage | 08.06.08 - 6:45 pm | #
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I've never heard of a government -- including ours -- that could be genuinely called peace-loving. Except, perhaps, Switzerland? When I see all the talk about "useful idiots" I think of all in the media who, over the past six years or so, have been skillfully manipulated by the powers that be, elected or not, to bolster this administration's war. Capitalism or communism, there's always been those useful idiots who are duped by the ruling elite who, strangely, never seem to change.
Rick Olson | | Email | Homepage | 08.07.08 - 3:01 pm | #
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Rick - Don't get me started on the "useful idiots" in the media, or for that matter the "useful idiots" in Congress who have (all apologies to readers for getting so political) let this administration get away with outright thuggery of the lowest order. I've had Presidents in the past where I did not agree with all of their policies but none until now that I felt had done as much damage to our country and its reputation. And that's saying a lot considering some of the things past administrations have done from Johnson to Nixon to Reagan to Clinton. Ironically, the first Bush is looking to have historically one of the most acceptable (that is scandal free) and relatively dignified administrations of the lot of them from LBJ on. Who'd a thunk it?
greg | | Email | Homepage | 08.07.08 - 5:32 pm | #
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Oh and Rick, you forgot to add, "Oh my god, Greg, totally awesome video!"
greg| | Email | Homepage | 08.07.08 - 5:37 pm | #
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Oh my God, Greg, totally awesome video. When will I get my check?
Rick | | Email | Homepage | 08.07.08 - 9:00 pm | #
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Sounds like The Dark Knight.
MovieMan0283 | | Email | Homepage | 08.07.08 - 9:27 pm | #
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Rick - The check was sent last week. You didn't get it?
MovieMan0283 - You've got the check don't you?
greg | | Email | Homepage | 08.07.08 - 10:10 pm | #
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Greg - I think people were so invested in socialism working that they were willing to write off millions of deaths - or to not believe it even happened ... because it somehow threatened their ideology.
That's why these folks went AFTER Orwell (and others) who saw what was going on, and spoke it out.
It was seen as a "betrayal" - know what I mean? The true believers needed the "idea" to work, and to be PERCEIVED to be working (which was even more important) - so: famine? What famine? There was no famine. Show trials? They were totally real trials and those people on trial were enemies of the state. Why else would they confess? Gulag? It's just a prison system, like every country has.
WILLFULLY not seeing what was going on. Or - basically eating up Soviet propaganda and reporting it back to the West.
It was naive, I think it was very naive.
BUT I want to make clear that I looove HG Wells' fiction and his writing!
He was a mixed bag, like all of us.
Thanks for the great discussion!
sheila | | Email | Homepage | 08.08.08 - 10:13 am | #
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Fascinating article and follow-up comments. I think a great deal of the Communist apologists on the Left and the Fascist/Nazi sympathizers on the Right were a product of the seeming failure of Capitalist Liberal Democracy in the US, Great Britain and France at the time. In 1936, most folks expected that Hitler or Stalin would be the face of the future, not FDR or Chamberlain (and poor old Winston was a non-factor at that time, even if he did correctly predict what would happen in Europe). So I think things have to be taken into context. Few thinkers were as clear eyed and grounded as Orwell, unfortunately. As for Wells's Liberal Fascism, isn't it pretty much the same thing as Marx and Engel's Dictatorship of the Proletariat which, once all has been achieved, would wither away leaving the proles free? In the end, it's all pie-in-the-sky optimism, since knowing what most of us do about human nature, it is the rare dictator or junta that ultimately resigns and frees its people of its own free will. Like the greatest philosopher of the latter half of the 20th Century said: "Don't follow leaders; watch your parking meters.
Fred | | Email | 08.08.08 - 2:27 pm | #
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Sheila and Fred - Thanks for the follow up comments. I think you both touch on the same thing, basically willful ignorance in the face of idealogically defeating truths. I can certainly understand wanting a better system in the face of a world in economic turmoil. I think what bothers me most about Wells' ideas, the reason I am admittedly a little harsh on them and condescending by calling them dimwitted is because of what I say in the post and Fred echoes here, which is anyone of intelligence should know that oppressive powers do not step aside when their "work" is done. The fact that that is a central tenet of Liberal Fascism makes the whole enterprise ridiculous in my eyes. How could Wells be that daft?
And Sheila, perhaps I should read more Wells. I like his stories but his prose numbs me. The last Wells I read was "The World Set Free" and I found it laborious to get through not because it was too loquacious but because it was stilted, to my eyes at least. I haven't read "The Invisible Man" since I was a teen but I do love the opening pages of "The War of the Worlds" and wish more of his novels had the kind of menacing eloquance that opens that story. It's beautiful.
greg | | Email | Homepage | 08.08.08 - 3:01 pm | #
As for Wells, I'm not as familiar with his fiction as I'd like to be, but as I remember it, the Eloi in The Time Machine -- which I have read -- with whom the Time Traveler was so enamored, seemed like a lumpy, bland group. I guess that's how Wells saw mankind. Even worse, that's how he saw the good ones. I guess what I'm trying to say is, H. G. Wells must have been a real bitch to hang out with.
bill | | Email | 08.06.08 - 1:45 pm | #
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Yeah, the Coupland piece really elaborates everything so well (which I guess it should since it's 20 pages longer than my post) not just about Wells but about how so many political idealogies of the thirties were so confused. And Wells really didn't seem to see the contradictions inherent in oppressing someone for their freedom. And I love that he actually believed that at a certain point the elite would resign their posts and leave. Hahahahaha. It's a mixture of political naivete and cultural snobbery that makes for a bad soup.
And yes the Eloi. Boring, faceless, lifeless. No individualism, nothing to strive for, no goals to set. What a bore. Utopian automatons.
greg | | Email | Homepage | 08.06.08 - 1:57 pm | #
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I know that Stalin was particularly delighted at how much he had duped HG Wells (who wasn't as taken with the revolution as he thought he should be - but who, nevertheless, came back home and reported on how "candid" Stalin was - this as millions upon millions starved in the Ukraine in the famine that wasn't even happening, according to Stalin) But Wells was one of the many "useful idiots" without whom the terror of Stalin would not have been possible. Walter Durranty -Beatrice and Stanley Webb - HG Wells ...
I am also VERY interested in the fact that Rebecca West (one of my idols, and certainly one of my favorite writers and thinkers of all time) had a long-term affair with him, and they had a child ... and she herself was a brilliant writer against fascism, although there was a socialist aspect to her political views (most intellectuals had that at the time). She was NOT duped by the Soviet Union and the show trials - when most in the West were credulous to the point of stupidity: "Why are all of these people confessing if they're NOT guilty?" was the basic attitude in the West toward the show trials - so it's a really interesting dichotomy between the two lovers. I'd love to be a fly on the wall to their political conversations!!
I actually bought a couple months ago the complete collectino of her letters - and haven't read it yet, but I'm eager to get to it!
Two fascinating complex individuals.
Oh, and amusingly: Rebecca West is one of the "witnesses" in Reds - who speak about that time in history (she's the one who sits with another old lady, and West has beautiful big eyes behind googly-eyed glasses) - and at one point, West, an old old woman, says, and you can still feel the contempt in her voice so many years later, "You know who didn't know anything at all about socialism? Beatrice and Stanley Webb. They didn't know a THING."
The so-called experts.
Anyway, I'll stop ranting now. It's one of the periods in history I am totally fascinated by!
sheila | | Email | Homepage | 08.06.08 - 3:41 pm | #
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There are a couple of quotes from Beatrice and Sidney Webb's stuff in the article and apparently Wells based the characters of the Baileys in The New Machiavellis on them and ripped them apart.
According to the article Wells eventually rejected most of Fascism and Nazism's tenets but clung to the idea that Fascism could be made to work if done properly, i.e., liberal fascism. He liked the efficiency of Fascism and while he liked many of the ideals of the Left he felt that they were the wrong type of people for revolution, describing them as, among other things, "barely cryptic nudists," "extremely woolly vegetarians, "flimsy people," and finally concluding "not the stuff revolutions are made of."
Since I cannot copy and paste from the article as it is embedded PDF and my level of permission with JSTOR does not allow me to download the PDF, whereby I could convert it, I have done the next best thing. I wanted you to read the Stalin/Communist section of the article, so I took a screenshot and uploaded it to Flickr in two pages. Here they are:
Part One Read First
Part Two Read Second
greg| | Email | Homepage | 08.06.08 - 4:04 pm | #
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Yes, I've actually read that (like I said: that whole era is a passion of mine)!
The alliances were a shifting thing - as well as the political labels themselves - like Orwell experienced, and others ... who started out strictly Left and with the advent of Stalinism and the tales of terror and the gulag had to either break with Russia, OR stick up for it, OR say, "Well, socialism is still possible - if it weren't for pesky villains like Stalin!"
As though it was the PERSON that was bad, not the idea itself.
Watching all of those people work that all out - on the ground - AS events were occurring - is endlessly fascinating (and also infuriating).
sheila | | Email | Homepage | 08.06.08 - 5:00 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, and I think a LOT of people at that time had a very difficult time of it - letting go of ideology, or the "idea", the abstraction. That is the whole danger with that kind of utopian fascistic thinking!
That's one of the reasons why Orwell was so excoriated - but why he is one of my favorites. Because he remained independent. Not wishy-washy - but a man who was able to look at his own idealogy, and really ask the tough questions. And make a break with his old comrades because he would not choose an abstraction over the human reality right in front of him.
He has still not been forgiven by many for that.
sheila | | Email | Homepage | 08.06.08 - 5:02 pm | #
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All of this is very a propos with this week's death of Solzhenitsyn, another one of my intellectual heroes - another guy who could not be used by the state no matter how hard they tried, who did not choose abstractions over humanity - until the last 10, 15 years of his life, perhaps) and whose writings mean more to me than I can ever say!
sheila | | Email | Homepage | 08.06.08 - 5:05 pm | #
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Sorry to babble on. But that decade or so of political thinking (and thinkers, mistaken or otherwise) is an ongoing passion of mine.
sheila | | Email | Homepage | 08.06.08 - 5:28 pm | #
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Sheila - Thanks for the insight. I love Orwell too and thought he was planted firmly on the ground. I do believe that most idealogies that do not focus on state control over the individual are not bad in and of themselves but can be twisted by the wrong person. I've never viewed the Soviet Union as anything close to actual communism so I think it's a shame that communism itself got such a bad rap due to the Soviet Union, China and Cuba which are all dictator states.
However, I don't believe pure communism can really work beyond a small village anyway due to the evergrowing needs of the growing populace that can only be handled with free enterprise, government services, entrepreneurialism and other things that come with democratic or socialist or parliamentary systems.
What annoys me about that era is all the "useful idiots" who aided the Soviet Union in perpetuating its myth. I remember reading the acceptance speech of Paul Robeson after receiving the Stalin Peace Prize and wondering how he could be praising the Soviet Union and Stalin so much. Was he that naive? Was the information just that hard to come by? What?
Yet for people like Orwell it didn't seem as if the truth about the Soviet Union was a mystery and so it lessens my view of all those who, by the late forties, especially after Berlin, still viewed the Soviet Union as a great nation run by a peace loving government.
greg | | Email | Homepage | 08.06.08 - 6:45 pm | #
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I've never heard of a government -- including ours -- that could be genuinely called peace-loving. Except, perhaps, Switzerland? When I see all the talk about "useful idiots" I think of all in the media who, over the past six years or so, have been skillfully manipulated by the powers that be, elected or not, to bolster this administration's war. Capitalism or communism, there's always been those useful idiots who are duped by the ruling elite who, strangely, never seem to change.
Rick Olson | | Email | Homepage | 08.07.08 - 3:01 pm | #
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Rick - Don't get me started on the "useful idiots" in the media, or for that matter the "useful idiots" in Congress who have (all apologies to readers for getting so political) let this administration get away with outright thuggery of the lowest order. I've had Presidents in the past where I did not agree with all of their policies but none until now that I felt had done as much damage to our country and its reputation. And that's saying a lot considering some of the things past administrations have done from Johnson to Nixon to Reagan to Clinton. Ironically, the first Bush is looking to have historically one of the most acceptable (that is scandal free) and relatively dignified administrations of the lot of them from LBJ on. Who'd a thunk it?
greg | | Email | Homepage | 08.07.08 - 5:32 pm | #
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Oh and Rick, you forgot to add, "Oh my god, Greg, totally awesome video!"
greg| | Email | Homepage | 08.07.08 - 5:37 pm | #
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Oh my God, Greg, totally awesome video. When will I get my check?
Rick | | Email | Homepage | 08.07.08 - 9:00 pm | #
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Sounds like The Dark Knight.
MovieMan0283 | | Email | Homepage | 08.07.08 - 9:27 pm | #
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Rick - The check was sent last week. You didn't get it?
MovieMan0283 - You've got the check don't you?
greg | | Email | Homepage | 08.07.08 - 10:10 pm | #
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Greg - I think people were so invested in socialism working that they were willing to write off millions of deaths - or to not believe it even happened ... because it somehow threatened their ideology.
That's why these folks went AFTER Orwell (and others) who saw what was going on, and spoke it out.
It was seen as a "betrayal" - know what I mean? The true believers needed the "idea" to work, and to be PERCEIVED to be working (which was even more important) - so: famine? What famine? There was no famine. Show trials? They were totally real trials and those people on trial were enemies of the state. Why else would they confess? Gulag? It's just a prison system, like every country has.
WILLFULLY not seeing what was going on. Or - basically eating up Soviet propaganda and reporting it back to the West.
It was naive, I think it was very naive.
BUT I want to make clear that I looove HG Wells' fiction and his writing!
He was a mixed bag, like all of us.
Thanks for the great discussion!
sheila | | Email | Homepage | 08.08.08 - 10:13 am | #
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Fascinating article and follow-up comments. I think a great deal of the Communist apologists on the Left and the Fascist/Nazi sympathizers on the Right were a product of the seeming failure of Capitalist Liberal Democracy in the US, Great Britain and France at the time. In 1936, most folks expected that Hitler or Stalin would be the face of the future, not FDR or Chamberlain (and poor old Winston was a non-factor at that time, even if he did correctly predict what would happen in Europe). So I think things have to be taken into context. Few thinkers were as clear eyed and grounded as Orwell, unfortunately. As for Wells's Liberal Fascism, isn't it pretty much the same thing as Marx and Engel's Dictatorship of the Proletariat which, once all has been achieved, would wither away leaving the proles free? In the end, it's all pie-in-the-sky optimism, since knowing what most of us do about human nature, it is the rare dictator or junta that ultimately resigns and frees its people of its own free will. Like the greatest philosopher of the latter half of the 20th Century said: "Don't follow leaders; watch your parking meters.
Fred | | Email | 08.08.08 - 2:27 pm | #
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Sheila and Fred - Thanks for the follow up comments. I think you both touch on the same thing, basically willful ignorance in the face of idealogically defeating truths. I can certainly understand wanting a better system in the face of a world in economic turmoil. I think what bothers me most about Wells' ideas, the reason I am admittedly a little harsh on them and condescending by calling them dimwitted is because of what I say in the post and Fred echoes here, which is anyone of intelligence should know that oppressive powers do not step aside when their "work" is done. The fact that that is a central tenet of Liberal Fascism makes the whole enterprise ridiculous in my eyes. How could Wells be that daft?
And Sheila, perhaps I should read more Wells. I like his stories but his prose numbs me. The last Wells I read was "The World Set Free" and I found it laborious to get through not because it was too loquacious but because it was stilted, to my eyes at least. I haven't read "The Invisible Man" since I was a teen but I do love the opening pages of "The War of the Worlds" and wish more of his novels had the kind of menacing eloquance that opens that story. It's beautiful.
greg | | Email | Homepage | 08.08.08 - 3:01 pm | #
