The Lost Literature of Socialism [Paperback]

George Watson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 18, 1998

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. Read the Preface here.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The merits of Watson's book are its admonition to socialists ignorant of what has been done in the name of their creed - The Review of English Studies 'George Watson has been re-reading this literature with strong interests in both political affairs and the history of ideas. Many of his findings are astonishing' - Antony Flew --The Freeman --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

George Watson has taught almost every elementary and junior high school subject during his 28 years of teaching. He most recently taught special education classes for grades 8 and 9 at Alexander Junior High School in the North Battleford (Saskatchewan) Public School Division. Mr. Watson also conducts inservice programs for teachers, and parent-teacher organizations and speaks at local conventions. He is the author of "Teacher Smart: 125 Tested Techniques for Classroom Management "and" Control and The Classroom Discipline Problem Solver," both from Jossey-Bass.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Lutterworth Press (November 18, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0718829867
• ISBN-13: 978-0718829865
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,753,301 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scratches the Surface of an Historiographical Land Mine, August 15, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Lost Literature of Socialism (Paperback)

....The most powerful indictment I've seen of contemporary historiography has got to be the studied ignorance in the West of the evidence brought to light in this slim little bombshell of a book. You will never be able to look at Marx, Hitler, socialism, fascism, National Socialism, or the Holocaust the same way again.

Watson, a fellow in English at St. John's College, Cambridge, has been Sandars Reader in Bibliography and is editor of the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature.

What Watson has quietly pointed out should shame an awful lot of history professors. What were you taught about Nazism? If you're like me, it was that Nazism was opposed to socialism. Indeed, it was socialism's "opposite": Nazism and Marxism constitute the two polar opposite ends of the spectrum of political thought. That they may sometimes seem to resemble each other is supposed to show only that opposite extremes may wrap around until they meet on the other side, or that fascism is a "confusing" ideology, too vague and elusive to explain or categorize. Hitler, as Ian Kearnshaw and many others claim, "was never a socialist." The Nazis' name: "National Socialist German Workers' Party", is supposed to be somehow a "misnomer"----some kind of "false advertising."

Or so we've been told. Watson's little book basically explodes this fable.

In fact, Fascism and National Socialism were thoroughly socialist movements. They bitterly opposed the "bourgeois" ideology of capitalism: they bitterly opposed individualism, free trade, private property, free enterprise, limited government, and classical laissez-faire liberalism. Moreover, "almost the whole of National Socialism," as Hitler would freely admit (at least in private) was based on Marx. He explained in Mein Kampf: "As National Socialists we see our program in our flag. In the red we see the social idea of the movement."

How can this be?

First of all, as even social-democrat Sidney Hook has admitted, "Anti-Semitism was rife in almost all varieties of socialism." (Commentary, Sept. 1978)

Listen to Proudhon, socialist founding father and mentor of Marx: "The Jew is the enemy of the human race. One must send this race back to Asia or exterminate it...By fire or fusion or by expulsion, the Jew must disappear... What the people of the Middle Ages hated by instinct I hate upon reflection, and irrevocably. ...The hatred of the Jew, as that of the English, must be an article of our political faith." (1847, Carnets)

Remember that the most central, fundamental, and essential tenet of socialism is that moneylenders ("capitalists") are evil economic "parasites." "Vampires," "bloodsuckers," Marx called them. The Devil of the socialist catechism is the "bourgeoisie." Indeed, Marx had another word which he used as an equivalent term for "bourgeoisie,"----"Jews." And in place of the word "capitalism," we find the early Marx using the word 'Judentum,' i.e., "Jewry." As early as 1843----a hundred years before the Holocaust----Marx published one of his first and most sensational newspaper articles, a vituperative anti-Semitic temper tantrum "On the Jewish Question," makes Hitler's own tirades look mild. Its thesis is that "mankind will never be emancipated until it is emancipated from Jews and Jewry." It concludes: "The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Jewry." Period. End of essay.

Understand that this popular piece was written and published five years before the Communist Manifesto (1848) and long before Das Kapital attempted to rationalize this as an economic theory in the 1860s. Rather than that Marx's dubious economic theory of exploitation accidentally drove him to anti-Semitism, it appears things must be more the other way around: that Marx's anti-Semitism drove him to cook up the dubious economic theory.

"If we are socialists, then we must definitely be anti-Semites," Hitler explained during a party speech in Munich, August 1920, "How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-Semite?"

Note also that even the idea that Germany should wage a "world war" against Russia and the "barbaric" Slavs, and that the Slavs should be annhilated during this German "world storm," was an idea proposed by none other than Fredrich Engels, writing with Marx's approval in Marx's newspaper, in 1849. Both the advocation of genocide, and of coercive state eugenics generally, were originally a widespread aspect of the socialist movement before WWII.

"I have learned a great deal from Marxism, as I do not hesitate to admit." Hitler expalined, "I have really put into practice what these peddlers and pen-pushers have timidly begun."

That the Bolsheviks, German Social Democrats, and National Socialists all hated each other, fought each other, and accused each other of being capitalist sell-outs can never serve to demonstrate that any of them were not thoroughly socialist. Their mutual hatred is no more significant than the fact that various Christian sects often will deny that other Christian sects are at all Christian in any way, and indeed accuse them of being agents of Satan. To anyone who happens to stand outside of Christianity and/or socialism, the hyperbole of such internal quarrels among sects is hardly to be taken seriously.

That the Nazis supressed union violence no more means they weren't socialists than the fact that the Soviets did the same. Socialism is the public ownership (right of control and disposal) of the means of production, and there is a difference between union control and public control. Orthodox socialism----public ownership by the state or "society as a whole" collectively----is incompatible with syndicalism, which is ownership by labor unions.

Watson's unjustly marginalized book provides a fine introduction to a subject on which more needs to be written....

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A compact classic that punches above it's weight, June 22, 2006

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Earth that Was - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Lost Literature of Socialism (Paperback)

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.

11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars interesting subject - poorly written, August 25, 2003

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Gurius Masterson "gurius_masterson" (Oslo Norway) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lost Literature of Socialism (Paperback)

george watson has set about to explore the unexplored; the link between socialist thought and the racism and genocide of the 20th century. his thesis is that socialism was and always has been a conservative ideology as opposed to the radical social system of capitalism. he shows how marx and engels among other leading socialists advocated genocide. (he only touches the surface though of the great paradox of marx being an antisemite semite.) this points directly to the later horrors of the concentration camps of bolshevik russia and hitler germany. he also debases the myth that nazism was somehow right wing by pointing to conversations where hitler confessed himself to being a marxist. however interesting the subject of this book, the author is unfortunately not very good at concvincing the reader. as a literary study i expected a lot more quotes and source notes. however watson seems to be more preoccupied with his personal opinions rather than building valid and documented arguments. i would rather reccomend muravchiks 'heaven on earth' which clearly shows the link between socalled right wing fascism and the communism of the left. he defines fascism as revisionist marxism/socialism. for the even more interesting link between german conservative nationalism and german socialism see the illuminating book 'against the dead hand' by brink lindsey of the cato institute.