Urth Digest, Vol 57, Issue 13

It strikes me as fascinating that Wolfe has his finger to the pulse of the country so strongly. 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. (Wolfe might be willing to let the artists stay in Athens, though . . .) But I don't think Wolfe will ever be so fast as to to endorse this paragraph: I suspect Wolfe does not believe socialism deserves a trial. The reason

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. Denying class in America is a shibboleth now. 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. Socialism is about equity. It's about diminishing the gap between rich and poor. 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. You are absolutely right, however, that socialism is about taking wealth from the few to fund the needs of the group, thus perpetuating a diminished rich/ poor gap, which most democracies consider essential for their survival. 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." But revolution comes when that rich/ poor gap gets too high. And revolutions have very, very high costs. Wolfe knows that too, I bet. -Robin Dunn P.S. 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 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.

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.

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.

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

Okay.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There's more to it, like how poor the poor are to begin with, than how far the rich are above them. The Lydians didn't revolt against Croesus, after all. Socialism needs to borrow more from communalism before it has enough of a chance to be worth a trial. An adversarial system that where many have-nots stand to gain at the expense of a few haves by definition is going to be opposed by all the wealth and power the haves can bring to bear. If you can arrange things so that Capital gets a return, even a modest one, as well as Labor, then you'll get some takers among the haves.

Wolfe believes, as a "libertarian," that the way to bring more equality between rich and poor is to get the state out of the redistribution business and back into the contract-enforcement business. The poor can rise when contracts are honored and they can count on pay. They can also rise when the state refuses to grant monopolistic privileges to the "haves" against the "have nots." Anyway, without going into economic theory, that's how Wolfe would see it. Yes, the goal is for the poor to rise and more equality to ensue; the means to that end, however, is never socialism or fascism or monopoly capitalism, because inevitably the state (i.e., certain men and women) then decides who wins and who loses. The USA today is a looooong way from the kind of "servant capitalism" that someone like Wolfe believes in. Nutria

Brief responses below, because I think we are not necessarily in disagreement:

I think you're both right. However: (1) I'd say more precisely (I hope) that the novel demolishes the idea of a Robin Hood as any kind of ideal, and makes it clear that such benevolence is neither simple and straightforward nor likely, either philosophically or otherwise. Let alone 'good': if it's not achievable without destruction, it can't be that 'good,' even if in the long run it is the better ideal. Religion works in exactly the same manner, doesn't it? We can't trust anyone, not priests nor politicians. To me, the novel reminds us that there is no free lunch, that's all. Since actual socialism does not propose that such a thing exists, I don't see that it is harmed as an idea---rather, strengthened. (2) Let's say not that Wolfe favors authoritarianism but that he favors a unitary authority, as long as it's a good one. Since there is only one permanently good unitary authority, don't expect to find it anywhere else but there. This is always the main point. Speaking of this, I recall reading that the idea behind the fasces (those rods bound around an axe head and carried by lictors) is not just that the Republic (or its predecessor, but not a King) binds the people to make them stronger, but also that it is more just and merciful. The lictor (he who binds) also had the power to unbind, and when this was done---if it ever was done---it meant that the rods would be used to beat you to death. Better to die by a single swift stroke after a fair trial than to be beaten to death by a mob. Also recall that in imperial times, the lictors were merely bodyguards of the powerful. All in all a perfect symbol of non-ideal and all-too-human/real execution of the ideal.

All of which is perfectly correct but has little to do with actual socialism and more to do with paranoid Randian fantasies of it. In short, a straw man.

He's unwittingly controlled by evil Mother Cloot, but he's not a psychopath. He's a demagogue. He cleverly pits one group against another to enrich himself and to undermine any coalition against him. How does he live safely in the woods as a thief? He pays out a portion of his robberies from "the rich" (peddlers, tradesmen, and pilgrims) to "the poor" (the charcoal burners and such who live in the forest). When it seems that the villagers will unite against him, he approaches them and announces that it is not necessary for them to go to the trouble of forming a private militia. He has decided to leave their forest to rob other places. But, oh wait, he's going to need "a stake" in order to leave, and so that means a small robbery of some pilgrim the villagers don't know who his richer than themselves. Why would they agree to this? Because he's going to give them a cut of the robbery. They don't even have to do more than stand there while he does the work. Not everyone is willing to accept this corrupt bargain, but enough are that the coalition against him is destroyed. But as soon as everyone has signed on, Wat tells them that there is no pilgrim after all. His plan is to rob one of the villagers--in fact, one of those who signed on to the robbery. But since that neighbor will never realize it is THEY who robbed him, they needn't be ashamed of the act. And the neighbors fall in. Whether or nor not you agree with the analogy, tDiaF is --I contend-- intended as a demonstration of how social welfare is sold to the public. The argument is that if your neighbor came to your door and said "I need a retirement or guaranteed health care or financial support when I'm not making enough. So I've decided that you and some other neighbors will pay me a monthly stipend." You'd throw the guy out. If he came said, "I need these things and you might too; so we're going to go to the better off neighborhood and demand they pay into a kitty to support us", you'd consider it dishonorable to join in a plan like that. But when some third party says "I'm going to take from your neighbor to supply this kitty, and you'll never have to demand it from them and you'll never have to face them. You don't even have to do anything. All you have to do is support me in the privacy of your voting booth. And, after all, you know they can afford it"; in that case, enough people can be convinced to throw in with the plan. But many of the people who think it is someone else getting taken are actually the victims. Just as Wat admitted privately that there were not enough pilgrims and they would never be stupid enough to carry large sums through his forest, (the argument goes) there are not enough "rich" to make a viable social plan that is worth putting together in the first place. You don't think this is a fair analogy of socialism/welfare state. Okay. Your disagreement is within the debate between libertarian/liberal economics and socialist economics over the last century and a half (see my final response below). The point is that Wolfe does, and has attempted to illustrate it in tDiaF. The bare majority of Americans who (directly) pay any federal income taxes at all today is the sort of arrangement that Wolfe is warning about here. It's an ingenious little fable. Is it propaganda? Sure. Propaganda can be well done. It can even be on the right side. I noted on this list not so long ago that I considered "Pan's Labyrinth" to be the best propaganda I'd seen in years (in that case for the Spanish Socialist Party of which I am no fan).

How does the government know that Wat is roving in the forest? Because the villagers have complained. Why does the government take the trouble and risk of rooting him out? Public beneficience (which is more extensive than public benevolence). It is Wat, not the soldiers, that is analogy of public "benevolence". It is a canny distinction on Wolfe's part to divide the activity of Wat from the activity of Ganelon while making them the same person.

I appreciate that you don't approve of characterizing socialism as "robbing from the rich to give to the poor". I confess I'm not conversant with the various denominations of socialism. I offer the Wikipedia definition as currency: "Socialists mainly share the belief that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital, creates an unequal society, and does not provide equal opportunities for everyone in society. Therefore socialists advocate the creation of a society in which wealth and power are distributed more evenly based on the amount of work expended in production, although there is considerable disagreement among socialists over how and to what extent this could be achieved." In the movie "Time Bandits", Terry Gilliam (no laizzes faire capitalist) has Robin Hood say, "Won't you stay and help us with our work? There's so much wealth to redistribute." So I don't think I (or Wolfe) have made a weird conclusive leap in associating Robin Hood with socialism. J.

I have witnessed more than one self-identified socialist state that their goal was the transfer of ownership of productive enterprises to their employees by constitutional amendment. So if it's an effigy, it's not one I built. I'll readily admit there are more realistic forms of socialism. One of particular interest to those here may be the brand espoused by Steve Brust, author of the Vlad Taltos books. He's blogging a reading of WEALTH OF NATIONS at http://dreamcafe.com/words/ and no one's died horribly, yet.

And some people in the US would like to call the US a Christian state. What a state calls itself, especially a revolutionary state, is often a lie---but at least kingdoms don't put on fig leaves. So-called socialist states are based on force and a fundamentalist reading of Marx. Thus, the USSR, which was never socialist in the slightest, did not have "Communist" anywhere in its name. If you want an example of socialism, look at Sweden. I doubt your example comes from there.