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The Lost Literature of Socialism, 2nd Edition, by George Watson
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In his hard-hitting and controversial book, George Watson examines the foundation texts of socialism to find out what they really say; the result is blasphemy against socialism's canon of saints. Marx and Engels publicly advocated genocide in 1849; Ruskin called himself a violent Tory and a King's man; and Shaw held the working classes in utter contempt. Drawing on an impressive range of sources from Robert Owen to Ken Livingstone, the author demonstrates that socialism was a conservative, nostalgic reaction to the radicalism of capitalism, and not always supposed to be advantageous to the poor. There have even been socialist monarchs - Napoleon III was one. Two chapters of the book study Hitler's claim that the whole of National Socialism was based on Marx, and bring to light the common theoretical basis of the beliefs of Stalin and Hitler which led to death camps. As a literary critic, George Watson's concern is to pay proper respect to the works of the founding fathers of socialism, to attend to what they say and not what their modern disciples wish they had said. The dust grows thick on many of these tomes, while present-day socialists follow a few ossified slogans plucked selectively from the best-known books. Socialist ideas are now rescued from priggish and woolly-thinking moralists so that genuine debate can be revived. This invigorating book forces the reader to abandon long-standing assumptions in political thought. It is certain to ruffle feathers, blue as well as red.
- Sales Rank: #807908 in Books
- Published on: 2010-03-22
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.21" h x .28" w x 6.14" l, .42 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 144 pages
Review
I highly recommend Watson's The Lost Literature of Socialism, especially to those socialists among us who wish to redistribute our lives, our property, and our futures. As a friend who has read it remarked, "there is a nugget on every page." (Edward Cline Rule of Reason Blog, May 12th, 2016)
About the Author
George Watson is Fellow in English at St. John’s College, Cambridge. He has published a number of books on literature and political thought, including 'The Literary Critics', its sequel, 'Never Ones for Theory?', 'The English Ideology', 'Lost Literature of Socialism' and 'Take Back the Past', also published by The Lutterworth Press. He has been Sandars Reader in Bibliography, and is editor of the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature.
Most helpful customer reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
A compact classic that punches above it's weight
By Earth that Was
When I first ordered this book I was expecting a prejudiced polemical potboiler. Those books are always fun, but this is really a compact classic.
It's short, barely a hundred pages of text, but it packs a punch. well above it's weight. It could have been edited better, there is some sloppy printing, but the writing and argument itself is excellent. The fact that such a quality book was available only via such a poor edition tells us something about the ongoing biases within our intelligentsia this volume addresses.
I studied political science and sociology for four years at university, the life and times of marx and socialism were a major theme in those studies. Despite that I probably learned more from George Watson in a hundred pages than a few hundred days of college. If only I had had "The Lost Literature of Socialism" way back then. Get this book, and recommend it to any undergraduate student in the social sciences. Help make an aging baby boomer leftist academic's slide into retirement deservedly unpleasant.
Watson, an expatriate Queenslander, is what used to call a Cambridge don. His scholarship, depth of learning, and breadth of reading are evident throughout. It's best to think of the book as a series of essays on a common theme. The title is slighty misleading. He does cover 'the lost literature of socialism' but his gaze is wider than that. At the same time, his definition of socialism is narrow. So the title doesn't help. If anything, Watson, a man of the centre-right, is also happy to defend of trade unionists and the more pragmatic, parliamentary, "Liberal Party" (in the UK sense) socialists out of the John Stuart Mill stable. So Labor, Labour and social democrat supporters don't need to get their knickers in a knot.
He introduces us to John Millar, a enlightenment scholar and theorist of social class, or 'rank' as Millar labelled it. No socialist Millar. He predated Marx by over a century but his insights penetrated deeper. Millar, well known amongst his fellow Scots, Ferguson, Smith and Hume, has vanished down the memory hole. A fascinating exploration into 'class' theory.
Watson then discusses the idea of conservative revolution. From 1875 to 1975 such a thing would have been considered as absurd as the platypus was before 1780. Yet Watson informs us that "revolution" was originally seen as "revolving", hence the term I presume. Think of this as the circus "ferris wheel" model of revolution, rather than the 'onward and upward' "escalator" model that dominated the progress obsessed late 19th century / early 20th century thought. "Progress" may be as intellectually dead as a stuffed platypus, but escalator revolution still colours our discussion today. The escalator approach, although pre-socialist in it's origin, was relegated "stairway to heaven" dialectical divinity amongst partisans of the left. The concept has still to fall from it's perch. Wheel or escalator. No prizes for guessing which model is historically more accurate.
From the conservative nature of revolution to Tory Socialism. Perhaps not the finest essay in the book, more of a joiner, it is still a useful reminder of the strange unrequited admiration high socialists often have for high tories.
He then gives us an intermission essay on Alexis de Tocqueville. Never a socialist, de Tocqueville was, as we often forget, a skeptical liberal. Thoroughly committed to liberal and democratic reform, A.d.T. noted that liberty too has it's dark side that future liberals need to heed. Fast forward to our times and the works of the great liberal - conservative sociologists Robert Nisbet, and we can see Tocqueville warnings were not just idle threats.
Watson returns us to his main theme with an exposition of two now largely unknown French writers on socialism. Writing in 1848 these writers were engaging with an existing socialist movement, not speculating on futures unwrit a la Millar and de Tocqueville. Enter Thiers and Sudre, both perceptive anti-socialist critics. One a well connected political conservative, the other a small time political radical. Both x-rayed the tyrannical tendencies of socialism. Sudre, the radical, exposed and opposed socialism for it's inherently reactionary core.
The loss of literature like this meant that 20th century apostates from communism, like Milovan Djilas, George Orwell, James Burnham and all the rest of the party poopers, had to relearn lessons already taught. They claimed novelty when they were merely following an older path.
Watson's "French" chapter is a beauty. But I was a tad disappointed. Neither the Saint-Simonians, who really were Tory socialists, or the pioneer 'class warfare' theories of Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer made the page. Still no worry. Readers interested in exploring the former will find what they want in James Billington's classic "Fire in the Minds of Men", and those interested in the latter, should best start with Ralph Raico. Watson's finds are more obscure but I suppose that was the point.
Moving along Watson reaches Adolf Hitler and "Marx and the Holocaust". Essentially Hitler was, at least in his own mind, a marxist dissident. Maybe he was the first eurocommunist. Instead of advocating domestic conflict and international brotherhood, he reversed the formula. To Hitler this was a short cut, presumably sensible considering the mess of Weimar Germany, to the same destination he believed he shared with his mainstream communist rivals.
Watson draws from the private discussions and diaries of Hitler and Goebbels to prove his point. He doesn't present this a "drop dead" argument, and acknowledges it is a slender rope. But when you consider the numbers of people who actually did drop dead it is certainly worth exploring.
As apostles for genocide he shows us that Marx, or more exactly Engels, saw the extermination of minor nations, and peoples, as an essential part of their fantasy world historical process. A part they had no qualms in wanting to accelerate. Watson says that there are few, if any, explicit exterminationist evangelists in the 19th century who are not socialists. I suppose General Sheridan doesn't really count, as he wasn't a high theorist.
In any event Engels' exterminationism was elucidated before eugenics enthralled the enlightened. That's not excluding the social darwinists cum social engineers like the Fabians' H G Wells, who had no qualms about population control for servile non-whites subordinated below eugenically enhanced white overlords, or Margaret Sanger who had similar ideas. So the late Victorians' eugenic fever provides no escape clause for Mr.Engels.
The eerie sequel to Engels' dusty footnotes was the pioneering of gas chamber execution by the bolesheviks and the criminal collaboration of Stalin and the Nazis, who spent their honeymoon, in barbaric acts against the Poles. The use of former nazi death camps by victorious Eastern communists, used in their original roles, shows another grim consequence.
There is another intermission near the end of the book. Watson has a chapter on the writing career of George Orwell. He uses this to speculate on why socialism became the opium of the western intelligentsia after the Great War. Perhaps, as he suggests, there was some kind of 'survivor guilt' thing happening.
This leads us to the question of why so much of the root structure of socialism has been buried so deep. Of course Watson's arguments are not perfect, but they are certainly better ordered and supported than the mass of limp marxoid nonsense piped around university campuses like ideological muzak. Watson here is quite sympathetic and empathetic to the intellectual mainstream. Perhaps he lets them off the hook too lightly. Even as he ends up page 107, he doesn't remind us of George Santayana's famous quote. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." That would seem to be more than enough reason to read George Watson's little book.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Interesting but overpromises
By Dalcassian
This book is more the author's ruminations about socialist literature and related socialist thought than a systematic takedown of them. Worse, we do not actually see that literature very much which is surprising given the title and the author's claim to venerate texts. And the relevant sexier stuff hidden in socialism's attic, such as Engels' embrace of genocide, only comes out a little near the end.
And then Watson reaches a bit.
There is an attempt to portray Naziism as a chiefly Marx-inspired socialism but that argument is based too much on Rauschning who is somewhat a suspect source. (Rauschning was also a person, not a text, and not a socialist, while the affinities between National Socialism and Marxist Socialism are often coincidental.)
A chapter on Orwell feels unnecessary, implying without much evidence (while also not even drawing much of a useful conclusion from the implication) that Orwell's non-fiction was partly exaggerated and at times outright false. Further, Watson's perspective that life is a lottery and that it should be one does not actually comport with the more classical liberal perspective he claims to have. With all that, the book contains quite a few gems of thought and phrasing, and Watson's rediscovery of a few writers and writings on class conflict (e.g. Millar) is noteworthy.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Watson does a fantastic job of correcting many misunderstandings and misconceptions about socialism
By Craigers1961
Watson does a fantastic job of correcting many misunderstandings and misconceptions about socialism. I only wish this book had been longer.
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