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Late Post – Long Night.

I read an article in the Nation Magazine yesterday about democratic socialism.  I’ll leave Bernie Sanders out of it for now.  John Nichols did get me thinking about something. 

When I begin talking about socialism, I get blown off because they are ready for the Karl Marx, Friederich Engels, Leon Trotsky, etc.  Their defenses are up.

When I start talking Thomas Paine, Jack London, and Upton Sinclair – They get lost.  They have no idea on what to say or how to handle it.

They are unprepared for American Socialism.  In John Nichols The S Word: History of an American Tradition – Socialism he runs over the roots of socialism in America, starting with that “patron saint” of the conservative movement, Thomas Paine.  If they actually read Thomas Paine’s entire body of work, The Rights of Man, Agrarian Justice, and other writings, they would stay away from him because he advocates many socialist ideas.  Unfortunately, we focus on Common Sense, and lose the bigger picture of what he was aiming for.  And heaven help us if they actually read The Age ofReason (Parts I and II), which is a critique of organized religion, they would lose it because it does not conform to their caricature of him.

And we all know Jack London.  Call of the Wild, and all his nature stories.  Try Revolution and Other Essays and Warof the Classes.   People know of the sanitized stories.  The ones that are ok to read.  Animals, survival stories, and the science fiction.  Try his political works.  These are not the heavy theoretical works of Marx, et al.  They are more personal reads.  I think some of them would have a better appeal to people and, given the familiarity of people with his other writings, this adds a bit of depth to him.  And I think the curiosity of “there’s more to Jack London than that?” is an extra hook.

Jack London also wrote The Iron Heel which is about what fascism would look like in America.  Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can’t Happen Here about the same topic.  Read them and see the correlations to what is happening now in our country.  Almost prophetic.

Then there’s Upton Sinclair and The Jungle.  After reading all the articles about factory farming and animal cruelty that have been in my news feed lately (and in the corporate media), how is this novel not relevant?  The polluted food, atrocious working conditions, treatment of immigrant, workers, etc.  Tons of things for us to work with.  And yet, do we use it?

Sometimes I think we get so bogged down in theory and analysis that we forget how to best communicate what we know.  Or the best way to reach out to people.  What other writers, early and modern, could we use as tools to communicate our messages? 

People remember stories.  All the ancient myths and legends that we discuss are all stories.  We remember them better.  Can we use stories to get our ideas out of our circles and into people’s minds?

What do we want them to remember?