Marxist Moments

HIS DARK MATERIALS

 

          My Uncle Gerald has reached a dangerous time: approaching 78, and in reasonably good health, he is not old enough to be gaga but of an age to consider himself authoritative by dint of all the years he has lived. To compound this Gerald is a widower and so now denied the moderating (i.e. sceptical) voice of many years that gave him pause before uttering his more idiosyncratic statements. When his beloved was alive Gerald could opine freely only down at the pub but under doctor’s orders he found that ginger beer and the tendency of his ageing male companions to nod off before he had come to the point had an alienating effect: now, with her gone and he more or less alone at home, he is a free agent once more – but with only the occasional respectful visitor to fall back in wonder at his profundity. Such am I, the devoted nephew. At his urgent request, I blog the following:

          Uncle Gerald’s researches have become prodigious if unselective. Just recently he discovered through extensive reading that John Milton (1608-74) may have learned the art of divination from Nostradamus (1503-66) and what’s more concealed this in various passages of his later verses. ‘As with Nostradamus,’ says Uncle Gerald, ‘ the divinations of Milton are not literally exact but one soon gets the gist.’ For instance, in Samson Agonistes there is this passage describing Donald Trump:

          As to his own edicts, found contradicting,

          Then give the reins to wandr’ng thought,

          Regardless of his glory’s diminution;

          Till by their own perplexities involved

          They ravel more, still less resolved,

          But never find self-satisfying solution.  (Lines 301-307)

But Uncle Gerald’s real treasure-trove is Paradise Lost, particularly the earlier Books. Himself absorbed in the twin convoluted debates surrounding both Brexit and internal Labour Party opposition to Jeremy Corbyn, Uncle Gerald has uncovered (I hope, for his sake) some remarkably prophetic passages. Let me begin with Milton’s alleged description of Tony Blair:

          …in act more graceful and humane;

          A fairer person lost not heav’n; he seemed

          For dignity composed and high exploit:

          But all was false and hollow, though his tongue

          Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear

          The better reason, to perplex and dash

          Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were low;

          To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds

          Timorous and slothful: yet he pleased the ear….  (Book II l. 109-117)

 

With Jeremy Corbyn’s elevation to the Labour leadership a formidable group of Labour Right MPs came together to oppose his dangerously Leftwing agenda and restore the Party to its proper place in the Centre within which they had either held  high positions of responsibility or sought to re-create the means to get them; in this they were as one, the question being only of tactics:

                   With this advantage then

          To union, and firm faith, and firm accord,

          More than can be in  heav’n, we now return

          To claim our just inheritance of old,

          Surer to prosper than prosperity

          Could have assured us; and by what best way,

          Whether of open war or covert guile,

          We now debate…                                                   (II  l. 35-41)

 

There have been some, however, who feel a guilty conscience over what they are planning to do, as one plotter, reflecting on Jeremy’s leadership thus far and not unmindful of his popularity both inside and outside the Labour Party, has conflicting thoughts: that is, thoughts that conflict with his own sense of morality, namely of ambition:

                   …He deserved no such return

          From me, whom he created what I was

          In that bright eminence, and with his good

          Upbraided none; nor was his service hard.

          What could be less than to afford him praise,

          The easiest recompense, and pay him thanks,

          How due! Yet all his good proved ill in me,

          And wrought but malice, lifted up so high

          I sdained subjection, and thought one step higher

          Would set me highest, and in a moment quit

          The debt immense of endless gratitude,

          So burthensome still paying, still to owe;

          Forgetful what from him I still received,

          And understood not that a grateful mind

          By owing owes not, but still pays, at once

          Indebted and discharged; what burden then?   (IV  l. 42-57)

         

          Meanwhile, on the Brexit front and what with storm-clouds gathering over any sort of worthwhile ‘deal’ with the EU while our exit creeps on apace, dreams of a new British ‘empire’ of free trade are somewhat marred by the likelihood that not only will we depend utterly in the long run on the United States, but also that its ‘King of Heav’n’ Donald Trump is playing somewhat fast and loose with swingeing tariffs on foreign goods without any particular regard for one country or another but only to appease his hard-hat voters at home whatever the economic outcome:

                   …For so the popular vote

          Inclines, here to continue, and build up here

          A growing empire; doubtless! While we dream

          And know not that the King of Heav’n hath doomed

          This place our dungeon, not our safe retreat

          Beyond his potent arm, to live exempt

          From Heav’n’s high jurisdiction, in new league

          Banded against his throne, but to remain

          In strictest bondage, though thus removed,

          Under th’inevitable curb, reserved

          His captive multitude…                               (II, l. 315-323)

 

Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, with terrorist backlash, come into this:

          War hath determined us, and foiled with loss

          Irreparable; terms of peace yet none

          Vouchsafed or sought; for what peace will be giv’n

          To us enslaved, but custody severe,

          And stripes, and arbitrary punishment

          Inflicted?                                                             (II,  l. 330-336)

 

So whether in terms of Brexit or Trump, it seems to be a matter of crossing our fingers (‘supreme Foe’ here might be either Trump or the EU):

                             …This is now

          Our doom; which if we can sustain and bear,

          Our supreme Foe in time may much remit

          His anger, and perhaps, thus far removed,

          Not mind us not offending, satisfied

          With what is punished; whence these raging fires

          Will slacken, if his breath stir not their flames.

          Our purer essence then will overcome

          Their noxious vapour, or inured not feel,

          Or changed at length, and to the place conformed

          In temper and in nature, will receive

          Familiar the fierce heat, and void of pain;

          This horror will grow mild, this darkness light,

          Besides what  hope the never-ending flight

          Of future days may bring, what chance, what change

          Worth waiting, since our present lot appears

          For happy though but ill, for ill not worst,

          If we procure not to ourselves more woe…    (II,  l. 208-227)

 

          Nor does Milton omit from his prophecies a dig at the ever-present commentariat: representatives of the chattering classes whether as economists, think-tanks, philosophers, psephologists, psychologists, clergy, political journalist hacks, denizens of Question Time and Today etc., specialising

          In thoughts more elevate and reasoned high

          Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate,

          Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,

          And found no end, in wandr’ng mazes lost.

          Of good and evil much they argued then,

          Of happiness and final misery,

          Passion and apathy, and glory and shame,

          Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy;

          Yet with a pleasing sorcery could charm

          Pain for a while or anguish, and excite

          Fallacious hope, or arm th’obdured breast

          With stubborn patience as with triple steel.    (II, l. 558-569)

 

          In his remarks about one of the lesser devils in Satan’s entourage, Belial, we gain from Milton a broad description of the morals of our time, taking in the clergy of various faiths and a measure of sexual abuse from high and low:

          Belial came last, than whom a Spirit more lewd

          Fell not from heaven, or more gross to love

          Vice for itself. To him no temple stood

          Or altar smoked,  yet who more oft than he

          In temples and at altars, when the priest

          Turns atheist, as did Eli’s sons, who filled

          With lust and violence the house of God?     

          In courts and palaces he also reigns

          And in luxurious cities, where the noise

          Of riot ascends above their loftiest tow’rs,

          And injury and outrage, and when night

          Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons

          Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.

          Witness the streets of Sodom, and that night

          In Gibeah when the hospitable door

          Exposed a matron to avoid worse rape.  (I, l. 490-505)

 

          In Book II Satan, needing to get out of hell in order to pursue his ambition to conquer heaven, arrives at its gates – mighty and built of six layers of metal – through which he must pass; but the gates are locked against him, and, as he discovers, only the gatekeeper has the key. The gatekeeper is a fearsome yet beguiling creature, half woman and half snake, whom he learns is his daughter of long ago (and later his lover) and whom he persuades to open the gates for him. As he and his devilish throng pour through they are met with smoke and ‘ruddy flame’.

          Before their eyes in sudden view appear

          The secrets of the hoary deep, a dark

          Illimitable ocean without bound

          Without dimension; where length, breadth, and highth,

          And time and place are lost; where eldest Night

          And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold

          Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise

          Of endless wars, and by confusion stand.    (II, l. 890-898)

 

Uncle Gerald contends that Milton was the (poetic) founder of quantum theory; what we have here is a depiction of no less than the quantum or subatomic world of endless and seemingly chaotic activity, the stuff out of which all our familiar matter is made. It took mathematics and the more prosaic figure of Max Planck to give the idea scientific flesh, 200-odd years later. (Of course atomic theory had been around for centuries, since Democritus in fact: but Milton appears to have stumbled upon a vision of quanta for the first time, according to my eager Uncle Gerald.)

                   …Chaos umpire sits,

          And by decision more embroils the fray

          By which he reigns; next to him high arbiter

          Chance governs all. Into this wild abyss,

          The womb of Nature and perhaps her grave,

          Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,

          But all these in their pregnant causes mixed

          Confus’dly, and which thus must ever fight,

          Unless th’Almighty Maker them ordain

          His dark materials to create more worlds…          (II l. 907-915)

 

But Uncle Gerald has another gloss on this, for the anarchic rule of Chaos and Chance is also the rule of capitalism, which must engender endless fighting and war, until socialism comes to prevail with a rational and ordered society built on co-operation for the common good rather than insatiable greed and endless ‘growth’ which in the end will destroy the planet we know. In Milton’s terms, unless or until God is prevailed upon to use ‘His dark materials’ – presumably these ‘dark materials’ – to create more – and better? – worlds. And do not scientists theorise on the existence of ‘dark matter’ in the universe?

          At this point I steady my Uncle Gerald who is almost foaming at the mouth with excitement over these and other discoveries, calming him with another ginger beer. Thus Milton, whom we thought merely our co-greatest poet along with Shakespeare turns out to have been seer, quantum physicist and socialist visionary as well.

          The ageing process notwithstanding, Uncle Gerald is going to write a book. Reader, I love him. In the words of Mr Spock: ‘Live long and prosper.’

 

 

BREAKING FAKE NEWS ON JEREMY CORBYN

 

          The ‘historian’ Dominique Sandbank of the Daily Moil came up with an article the other day denoting an early work by Jeremy Corbyn’s god Karl Marx of 1843, On the Jewish Question, as an anti-Semitic tract. Odd that this insight has been overlooked by both Marxist and anti-Marxist scholars for the past 150 years, and since the works of Marxologists are voluminous this is a striking discovery indeed.  In fact the young Marx’s article is both critical of the-then German backwardness and anachronistic politics that rejected Jewish emancipation (Marx’s father was a Jewish convert to Christianity, a prudent move in those days to – apart from anything else – allow for a middle-class professional career in Rhineland Germany) and a study of the role of Judaism in the history of capitalism. It will be recalled that the medieval Catholic proscription of usury, as opposed to a token interest on loans, meant that only Jews were permitted to charge more interest on them. Thus providing the spearhead for the growth of banking and merchant capital prior to industrialisation. Marx parallels the alienation of Jews from gentile society with capital as the alienating factor in modern life. It is a remarkable feat indeed on the part of Ms Sandbank to interpret discussion on all this as ‘anti-Semitic’.

          But wait! Is Jeremy Corbyn a Marxist? Does he pour over Das Kapital or even the Communist Manifesto on a regular basis? Does he adhere to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall? (For example.) If the latter then he and John McDonnell would scarcely be advocating policies for preserving the present private enterprise system with government intervention – and even state capital is still capital. To all appearances, Corbyn is about as ‘Marxist’ as was Clement Attlee, and that was not very much.  So, Ms Sandbank’s attack on Marx to get at Corbyn is beside the point. But was Marx  a Marxist? ‘All I know is that I am not a Marxist,’ he once said to his friend and collaborator Engels, in rueful response to various shenanigans that French ‘Marxists’ were getting up to at the time.

          So we may have to play another card, for if showing that Corbyn is both a communist and a fascist (who may be growing cannabis on his allotment) and who does not respond respectfully towards Ms Hodge’s judgment to his face that he is ‘a fucking racist’, we must resort to informing the world that Corbyn is in point of fact a paedophile as well. For he has had sexual relations with girls as young as 36, marrying the Mexican bi-sexual Frida Kahlo, previously married to the communist wall-painter Diego Rivera who stabbed Leon Trotsky to death in Mexico on Stalin’s orders in 1940: that is, a mere ten years before Jeremy Corbyn was born. But there’s more. Corbyn once rode on a Central Line Tube train that also carried three Muslim terrorists (Ms Sandbank does not mention that this was on different days on different trains), so we may add terrorist  to his perfidious infamy.

          Anything – please – anything!