The Devil in a Forest

James Wynn · 17 May 2009, 03:52 · from 2009-May.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 22:52:15 -0500
Subject: (urth) The Devil in a Forest
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>Robin Dunn said:
> I do believe Wolfe to be a friend of
> authoritarianism, and like Plato, he longs for the good king who can
> destroy and create with a Christ-like wisdom, a wisdom borne of a deep
> humanity and humility.

I emphatically disagree with statement; especially the first half. You might 
as well say that Wolfe is a friend of cruel, unjust penal systems simply 
because they occur with regularity in his stories. He often presents 
characters who are recognized as "kings" solely due to their manner and 
bearing. But Able, Latro, and Horn are never "rulers" of anything. The 
philosopher kings, Silk and the Rajan,  are--by choice--not official rulers 
for long.

> America is an idea, one molded from lots of different peoples, not
> exclusively from the godlike founding fathers.  Private property is
> absolutely essential in understanding past and contemporary America,
> but Wolfe is too smart in my opinion to embrace any kind of oligarchy,
> which is what the founding fathers were.

Once again, not true. If anyone was part of an oligarchy it was the colonial 
government established by the English crown who were displaced by the system 
that the founders helped set up. The leadership of the states, even under 
the Articles of the Confederation, were elected. I suppose if you believe 
that limiting the vote to land-owning Americans an oligarchy, then it's an 
oligarchy. But the term usually refers to a more closed, tightly knitted 
club that is much harder to join. The founders established the system they 
eventually did through the power of their ideas (for example, the Federalist 
Papers), not through insiders' influence. They definitely tended to be 
successful merchants, but that is a position that one can easily lose or 
gain, unlike that of a nobility or a insiders cabal.

>Denying class in America is a shibboleth now.

Errr...it's nothing new. It is something that has commonly been marked by 
Europeans that Americans always say they are "middle class". To Americans, 
the "rich" are people like Thurston Howell III: people who don't work for a 
living and never had to. That's very rare among Americans.  The term "class" 
is imported from the Old World.  In America, it's merely an arbitrary amount 
of money that a family makes per year. People move in and out of poverty, 
middle class, wealthy, all the time. Since most of the top 1% families moved 
into that percentage within their own lifetimes, this is not the sort of 
thing Marx thought of when he referred to "class". De Tocqueville carefully 
explained why this tends to be so in the U.S.

>No Wolfe story leaves class absent, in fact,
>and insofar as his best protagonists often embrace
>the best aspects of Christianity, they militate against
>inequity in all forms.

Inequality of opportunity? Yes. Inequality of results? Absolutely not.

> Socialism is about equity.  It's about diminishing the gap between
> rich and poor.

Okay.

>I would say this is an attractive idea to Wolfe,
> insofar as he does valorize so many Christ-like figures who fight
> various forms of injustice, while sometimes perpetuating other forms
> of it, either knowingly or unknowingly.

I don't find your implied definition of "justice" (the legislated equality 
of wealth) to be recognized as such in Wolfe's stories. tDiaF is a good 
example. The tradesmen are presented as hard-working and deserving, albeit 
imperfect and entirely corruptible (especially by a demagogue like Wat) . 
There is never a sense that somehow the poverty of the charcoal burners 
created either Wat or Ganelon or the soldiers.

>Your scare quotes around "community" are
> troubling indeed.  I take your point that the "community" is a broad
> term, and it is often misused by politicians when what they really
> mean is "a few of my good buddies."

They weren't intended as "scare quotes" (neither were those). They were 
meant to imply (as you acknowledged) that "community" is a term that 
politicians love to use because it can mean almost anything: up to including 
a single well-connected contributor. General Motors President, Charles 
Wilson, famously opined that "what is good for GM is good for America". 
So --to his mind-- money, considerations, and protections going to his 
company actually went straight to the community chest. By the same token, I 
put the words "those who don't need it" in quotes to imply that their 
meaning was also up for grabs.

>But revolution comes when that
>rich/ poor gap gets too high.  And revolutions have very, very high
>costs.  Wolfe knows that too, I bet.

Wolfe has said that bad governments are subject to revolution. He has not 
opined that unequal societies are subject to revolution. In fact, his heroes 
are the epitome of inequality. They rise to the top because they deserve to 
and everyone around them recognizes it. Like the Hero in "The Tale of the 
Student and his Son" they where an invisible crown that is visible to 
everyone around them.

>Again I think it's a real tribute to Wolfe that his stories are so
>rich, varied, and in the end, non-ideological, that many different
>political philosophies can be tolerated in his fictional universe. ;)

I agree they are rich and varied. As I said, tDiaF is about many things. And 
it can be enjoyed on many levels, I think. However, I think it is intended 
to unequivocally strip the bark off the concept of the goodness of "robbing 
from the rich to give to the poor."

J.

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