The Dictatorship of the Etonariat

[rauschwerk]

Many on here have been kind enough to offer links to sites that offer a corrective to the News that we are offered. It's only fair, then, to be reminded of the system that has kept the majority of us fed and housed and in employment: https://www.capitalism.org/

For about 30 years after WW2 (which will soon be regarded as a mere blip in human history), thanks largely to the genius of John Maynard Keynes, there was a time when capitalism worked as well as it has ever done for everybody. The Bretton Woods system required the US$ to be pegged to the gold standard, and when in 1971 Richard Nixon took it off (partly to help the US pay for the Vietnam war), the rot set in (the oil price shock did not help). Who can possibly pretend nowadays that capitalism really works for more than the richest 1 per cent?

[gradus]

For about 30 years after WW2 (which will soon be regarded as a mere blip in human history), thanks largely to the genius of John Maynard Keynes, there was a time when capitalism worked as well as it has ever done for everybody. The Bretton Woods system required the US$ to be pegged to the gold standard, and when in 1971 Richard Nixon took it off (partly to help the US pay for the Vietnam war), the rot set in (the oil price shock did not help). Who can possibly pretend nowadays that capitalism really works for more than the richest 1 per cent?

Some blip.

[Joseph K]

Joseph, I only asked because I wondered what message you drew from Homage to Catalonia - I couldn't see why you had cited it. George Orwell went to Spain to fight Fascism, but the organisation he fought with, the broadly Trotskyist POUM, ended up being persecuted by the mainstream Stalinist forces who came to control the forces of the left - as he wrote to Victor Gollancz in 1937, Owing partly to an accident I joined the P.O.U.M. militia instead of the International Brigade, which was a pity in one way because it meant I have never seen the Madrid front; on the other hand it has brought me into contact with Spaniards rather than Englishmen & especially with genuine revolutionaries. I hope I shall get a chance to write the truth about what I have seen. The stuff appearing in the English papers is largely the most appalling lies – more I can’t say, owing to the censorship. If I can get back in August I hope to have a book ready for you about the beginning of next year.

In the event, of course, Orwell's narrative was so disturbing and contrary to the received narrative of the Civil War on the left in England that Gollancz refused to publish it, and it ended up being published by Secker and Warburg.

Anyway, I logged off as it was heading for bedtime, late night disputations keep me awake and you didn't respond anyway, so there we are. Still curious, though.

Well, I wasn't entirely sure what John Locke meant by overthrowing the Etonariat, but thought it was worth mentioning that Orwell was a democratic socialist/anarchist, since he is often used by reactionary people as warning about the horrors of communism; Orwell was all for communism as it found itself in Catalonia, that is, a society that was egalitarian and under worker control, he was just against totalitarianism.

Some of the vivid descriptions of revolutionary Catalonia are excellent.

[John Locke]

Well, I wasn't entirely sure what John Locke meant by overthrowing the Etonariat

Some points:

My response was to the previous mention of Animal Farm: Orwell may have been a democratic socialist, but Animal Farm is not an illustration of democratic socialism, or of 'libertarian socialism' (your phrase). It passes from the overthrow of one dictator (Mr Jones/Tsar Nicholas) by a group with the noble intention of achieving freedom and equality (All animals are equal) and ends with (But some animals are more equal than others). There were many young men in this country who joined the Communist Party out of socialist conviction but became disillusioned when the realities of Stalinism became known. I was not certain what relevance your reference to Orwell as a democratic socialist had to the Animal Farm reference.

The reference to the Dictatorship of the Etonariat was a reference to the discussion title, and with the emphasis on dictatorship rather than specifically to an 'Etonariat': did Orwell attack his old school in any of his works? I don't know.

A good review of a biography of Orwell https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...well.biography

[Richard Tarleton]

Well, I wasn't entirely sure what John Locke meant by overthrowing the Etonariat, but thought it was worth mentioning that Orwell was a democratic socialist/anarchist, since he is often used by reactionary people as warning about the horrors of communism; Orwell was all for communism as it found itself in Catalonia, that is, a society that was egalitarian and under worker control, he was just against totalitarianism.

Some of the vivid descriptions of revolutionary Catalonia are excellent.

Sorry this is all getting away from the Etonariat...

As I suspected - a highly selective, and oversimplified, reading - I'm tempted to say misunderstanding - of the book. It was a deeply uncomfortable read for the left in the UK at the time, to the extent that Victor Gollancz declined to publish it. There wasn't "a society" in Catalonia, the left was deeply riven with factions and internecine strife which Orwell witnesses and describes. The rebels (army, falangists, monarchists, etc. etc.) were also riven by factions, but were better at concentrating on the main business in hand, which was fighting the enemy rather than eachother. Homage to Catalonia is a lament, as much as a personal testament.

I've travelled the ground covered by the Ebro Offensive, spending half a day in the ruins of Belchite on the Aragonese steppe which are preserved unchanged as a monument. On our first visit to the Pyrenees in the 1980s we stayed in a tiny inn in Aragón (another tiny inn, actually in the Pyrenees but no straw, or fleas that tease ) run by an ex-GP from Zaragoza who had heard Ramón Sender lecture in Zaragoza (Sender's Requiem por un campesino español was the first novel I read in Spanish). Another, fascinating, guest was an old Basque Communist electrician called Jesús who had fled Spain at the end of the Civil War, was still living in France but had returned for a holiday with his much younger companion. As the four of us were the only guests, and as we all ate round the same table, I passed two or three fascinating, and deeply educational, evenings in their company.

[Stanfordian]

The aggressive shouting and yelling needs to be eradiated and a new speaker should make this their target. It's nothing but a bear-pit.

[MrGongGong]

The aggressive shouting and yelling needs to be eradiated and a new speaker should make this their target. It's nothing but a bear-pit.

I think it's a good thing that the faux politeness that allows folks to get away with lying is going

BUT one solution to part of the problem is this

(From Mark Thomas)

Only one person from any school (such as Eton) can serve in the Cabinet at any time

[Joseph K]

Sorry this is all getting away from the Etonariat...

As I suspected - a highly selective, and oversimplified, reading - I'm tempted to say misunderstanding - of the book. It was a deeply uncomfortable read for the left in the UK at the time, to the extent that Victor Gollancz declined to publish it. There wasn't "a society" in Catalonia, the left was deeply riven with factions and internecine strife which Orwell witnesses and describes. The rebels (army, falangists, monarchists, etc. etc.) were also riven by factions, but were better at concentrating on the main business in hand, which was fighting the enemy rather than eachother. Homage to Catalonia is a lament, as much as a personal testament.

I've travelled the ground covered by the Ebro Offensive, spending half a day in the ruins of Belchite on the Aragonese steppe which are preserved unchanged as a monument. On our first visit to the Pyrenees in the 1980s we stayed in a tiny inn in Aragón (another tiny inn, actually in the Pyrenees but no straw, or fleas that tease ) run by an ex-GP from Zaragoza who had heard Ramón Sender lecture in Zaragoza (Sender's Requiem por un campesino español was the first novel I read in Spanish). Another, fascinating, guest was an old Basque Communist electrician called Jesús who had fled Spain at the end of the Civil War, was still living in France but had returned for a holiday with his much younger companion. As the four of us were the only guests, and as we all ate round the same table, I passed two or three fascinating, and deeply educational, evenings in their company.

What did I misunderstand? Orwell thought the revolutionary society of Catalonia was worth - literally - fighting for. His actions speak for themselves.

[Richard Tarleton]

What did I misunderstand? Orwell thought the revolutionary society of Catalonia was worth - literally - fighting for. His actions speak for themselves.

Joseph, you're still doing it. There wasn't a "revolutionary society of Catalonia". It was a lot more complicated than that. And as he told Gollancz, in 1937, he'd meant to join the International Brigade, not POUM, and to fight on the Madrid front. He did his fighting in Aragón, not Catalonia (Zaragoza, Huesca). It was in Barcelona that he witnessed the internecine strife on the left, when he was in personal danger through his association with POUM from the Stalinist mainstream.

[Joseph K]

Joseph, you're still doing it. There wasn't a "revolutionary society of Catalonia". It was a lot more complicated than that. And as he told Gollancz, in 1937, he'd meant to join the International Brigade, not POUM, and to fight on the Madrid front. He did his fighting in Aragón, not Catalonia (Zaragoza, Huesca). It was in Barcelona that he witnessed the internecine strife on the left, when he was in personal danger through his association with POUM from the Stalinist mainstream.

You're cavilling. Catalonia was revolutionary in Orwell's description at the beginning of the book, and that is where he said 'this is worth fighting for'; he may not have been fighting there, but it was what he was fighting on behalf of.

[Richard Tarleton]

I'm not cavilling - that is insulting. He went to Spain to fight fascism. I don't think you've absorbed the message of the book, and your understanding of the Spanish Civil War is simplistic. In a previous discussion, you were trying to fit it into a Marxist narrative of revolution and counter-revolution.

[vinteuil]

.

... Joseph : yes, Catalonia was in revolt. But Orwell's (and Richd: T's) point is that it was not a 'revolutionary society' ...

.

[Richard Tarleton]

I have to go out now.

[Serial_Apologist]

There will always be small groups on the far left, notwithstanding the hilarious if, for satirical purposes, simplistic representation of the sectarianism I was too well aware of in the late 1970s, presented in "The Life of Brian". In this country, at least, the Trotskyist or now more generally post-Trotskyist left of today is having its arguments out in and through the Labour Party. Two things which in some senses are an improvement on the 1970s, when I was active, are that some tacit, if unacknowledged theoretical changes in thinking that are not just tactical, but, I think, strategic changes in terms of political objectives, are an acceptance that speaking of "smashing the state" - still back then commonly unquestioned, though at that time should have been seen as relevant (probably) in the situation of Russia ca. 1917, whose experience of what the Leninist-Trotskyist left thought of as "bourgeois (ie parliamentary representative) democracy was no way comparable with how Britain's relatively privileged colonial postion, however reluctantly, "permitted" reform, such as the vote. Secondly, no one on the left prior to WW2 could have anticipated the manner in which US aid towards rebuilding capitalism in Britain and Europe as a viable tradeworthy bloc would cement parliamentary legitimacy in the working class collective psyche. Today, with some whose echoing of Trotsky's predictions of either the imminent collapse of capitalism or the coming of barbarism seeming like a reality in prospect, and the irony of the reawakening of the political class's awareness of its own powers post-2008 banking crisis, (the state having been used to bail them out) - when for decades mainstream politicians had been speaking of national political impotence in the face of the power of global economics and the mega corporations - a further ingredient promising to eclipse all other considerations, given that if unaddressed threatens the previous impregnability of the ruling class, is of course climate change, and its role in radicalising an entire generation of youth literally facing no future at all short of drastic change in how we do things.

Thankfully the rhetoric of smashing all the institutions of the state has now come up against the realities of the state as enabler as well as protector, and that if anyone wants to undermine it the threat comes from the right and rar right. The situation cries out for thinking in terms of a coalition: in the first place ideological, but in the nearest possible future practicable, between Greens and socialists. For that to happen, I believe that the Green parties have to question their ostensible commitment to capitalism, at the same time as not ditching their promulgation of lifestyle options for centuries advocated by the "best" spiritual/religious traditions, and summed up in the concept of anti-materialism - not it should be said in the Marxist sense of materialism! - while at the same time the traditional socialist left has to re-think the wholesale assumption that for decades if not centuries held with the idea of the earth as an inexhaustible, exploitable source of wealth, in whoever's hands such wealth is held, and however equitably it is shared.

[Bella Kemp]

There will always be small groups on the far left, notwithstanding the hilarious if, for satirical purposes, simplistic representation of the sectarianism I was too well aware of in the late 1970s, presented in "The Life of Brian". In this country, at least, the Trotskyist or now more generally post-Trotskyist left of today is having its arguments out in and through the Labour Party. Two things which in some senses are an improvement on the 1970s, when I was active, are that some tacit, if unacknowledged theoretical changes in thinking that have not just tactical, but I think strategic changes in terms of political objectives, are an acceptance that speaking of "smashing the state" - still back then commonly unquestioned, though at that time should have been seen as relevant (probably) in the situation of Russia ca. 1917, whose experience of what the Leninist-Trotskyist left thought of as "bourgeois (ie parliamentary representative) democracy was no way comparable with how Britain's relatively privileged colonial postion, however reluctantly, "permitted" reform, such as the vote. Secondly, no one on the left prior to WW2 could have anticipated the manner in which US aid towards rebuilding capitalism in Britain and Europe as a viable tradeworthy bloc would cement parliamentary legitimacy in the working class collective psyche. Today, with some whose echoing of Trotsky's predictions of either the imminent collapse of capitalism or the coming of barbarism seeming like a reality in prospect, and the irony of the reawakening of the political class's awareness of its own powers post-2008 banking crisis, (the state having been used to bail them out) - when for decades mainstream politicians had been speaking of national political impotence in the face of the power of global economics and the mega corporations - a further ingredient promising to eclipse all other considerations, given that if unaddressed threatens the previous impregnability of the ruling class, is of course climate change, and its role in radicalising an entire generation of youth literally facing no future at all short of drastic change in how we do things. The situation cries out for thinking in terms of a coalition: in the first place ideological, but in the nearest possible future practicable, between Greens and socialists. For that to happen, I believe that the Green parties have to question their ostensible commitment to capitalism, at the same time as not ditching their promulgation of lifestyle options for centuries advocated by the "best" spiritual/religious traditions, and summed up in the concept of anti-materialism - not it should be said in the Marxist sense of materialism! - while at the same time the traditional socialist left has to re-think the wholesale assumption that for decades if not centuries held with the idea of the earth as an inexhaustible, exploitable source of wealth, in whoever's hands such wealth is held, and however equitably it is shared.

I completely agree - except that we need a partner in the coalition alongside the socialists and the greens. Socialism is indeed a force for good but where it presents itself undiluted it always morphs back into the very worst form of capitalism - as evidenced most clearly by all the various forms exhibited under the Soviet Union and in China. To further the debate on Orwell above I believe this to be his message.