For those who maintain that we all see only those things, those 'facts' that we want to see, I believe this was true in the life of that socialist standard-bearer Tony Benn, equal longest-serving M.P., apparently, in Great Britain's House of Commons, and accordingly granted a privilege the Queen of England and the British Commonwealth has evidently accorded to only one other, ex-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher herself. Yes, like that esteemed lady Benn was allowed to lie in state (if for but a night) in (I believe) Winchester Cathedral.
But onto less symbolically significant and yet more essentially important matters. Confession time being upon me, I am forced to admit I suspect I've been way too generous towards Mr Benn. For it greatly stretches credulity, indeed it literally beggars belief, to believe that TB didn't, like so very many of his left-wing fellow-travellers - indeed as with my own parents, I strongly (and have every good reason) to suspect - realize that much worse things were actually 'going down' in at least the Chinese segment of the communist 'world' that he personally, publicly visited than were then being admitted by his political compatriots back home. To wit, how can I possibly, as I attested in my previous rather glowing eulogy to Wedgwood Benn's life and times, maintain that his publicly-expressed views upon Mao Tse-Tung and Marxism represent some merely minor, marginal, inconsequential blind spot upon his part to realities he sought vainly to hide from his own eyes?
For indeed that Tony Benn, in this regard, not only harboured a major - and arguably fatal - blind spot, nay, even paraded this quite openly as if he had absolute blinkers on, is hard to get away from. Quite apart from his ardent defence of the very theory of Marxism 'to the bitter end', far more tellingly, in my view, upon a visit to China while serving in the Government of Harold Wilson's Labour Party, he was said to have proclaimed Mao Tse-Tung "the greatest man of the 20th Century". And yet it is more than well-established these days that under Mao Zedung's bloodthirsty rule between 40 to 50 million people were killed, even more than Josef Stalin's 30-40 million victims and way more than those (six-some million) long since attributed to that justifiably-execrated mass murderer Adolf Hitler. And surely even 'way back then', i.e. in the 50s, 60s and 70s especially (let alone the 80s and 90s), sufficient of these facts had well and truly more than trickled out to give 'politicians incorporated' enough of an inkling that something foul and festering was indeed afoot in these 'marxist' lands.
As for defending Marx's own special theorem of social-political-economic life in post-feudal, capitalist societies, i.e. Marxism, one perceptive novelist, whose olden tome, Marjorie Morningstar, I happened to open at random just the other day (to clear our garage of a decades-long accumulated barracks of literary hoardings), reckoned, among other profundities therein (at least as represented by one of her protagonist's utterances), the theory would've and should've been known as Engelism. The reason? According to this account anyway, Friedrich Engels himself contributed as much of the 'quality' (if not sheer quantity) of the theory popularly known as Marxism today - but the title simply wouldn't have sounded as good and caught on. Anyhow, a varsity (that's kiwi, i.e. New Zealand, idiom for a university, 'higher centre of learning' or tertiary education provider) I myself attended - both in the early-to-mid 1980s and then again in the early-to-mid 2000s - had one particular Political Studies (Science) professor who had a quite different view from that normally associated with such modern-day bastions of liberality and 'leftism'.
This Jindra Tichy - not all that long ago voted in an international poll of her fellow ex-Czechoslovakians (the former Eastern Bloc nation now of course commonly known as the two nations of Slovakia and the Czech Republic) as among its (ten) most renowned former citizens - herself taught a university paper upon this selfsame subject entitled 'Marx and Nietzsche'. In this course she postulated her belief, nay heartfelt conviction, that the so-called 'Marxism' that was put into effect in the former U.S.S.R (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), or Soviet Union, across the former Eastern Bloc nations of Europe (also) comprising Albania (effectively if not in strict actuality), Bulgaria, (the then) Eastern Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the then Yugoslavia 'et al'(!), and later circulating throughout South-east Asia from China, through North Korea and Vietnam, Cambodia (now Kampuchea), Laos 'et al'(!), was indeed exactly what it (i.e. its self-anointed leadership) declared itself to be: i.e. Marxism, Marxist-Leninism, Communism. And not some bastardized, distorted, hand-me-down version of the same - as so many of Tichy's erstwhile colleagues so persistently seemed to assert and affirm. No ifs, buts or even maybes.
And to say that she was amazed at finding this 'logical' 'illogic' when she arrived in the West is quite an understatement. Leaving her native land of Czechoslovakia in fear for her life and that of her family, the then Communist leader of the land having evidently made it clear that they, or at least she, was under suspicion and accordingly might soon be up for some rather significant repercussions if she/they remained, after arrival in God's Own, i.e. Aotearoa-New Zealand, Ms Tichy was dumbfounded in what she discovered. It was that many of her (at least Political Studies and/or Humanities) professional colleagues were not only subscribers to that (barbarous) political ethic, in order to justify this they even maintained - incomprehensibly to her, and understandably so, for obvious reasons - that the actual sort of communism, or Marxism, practiced 'back home' (and throughout the Eastern Bloc etc) was simply not the genuine version: it was a sad parody of it. And therefore was not even fit to be classed alongside it much less cited in the selfsame breath.
And though Yours Truly on one or two occasions recalls - in some typical sort of grandstanding, self-righteous, self-important, student know-it-all expertise upon the matter - challenging Ms Tichy in relation to her own hearty and bona fide defence of capitalism (I imagine not far removed from the Act Party version thereof), while I somehow defended on some grounds some much-watered down version of 'socialism', it was probably more based upon personal pique at my inability to effectively critique her own arguments. If I'm honest enough to engage in some real self-reflection.
Which is perhaps the most important point of this entire discussion vis-a-vis Tony Benn's most conspicuous blind spot. Which is simply this - and I'd argue it applies to most if not all of us (at some time or other in our political life journey), if we're truly honest: what we end up eventually 'seeing' (whether literally or metaphorically) is often, yea usually (if not always) precisely what we want to see - or what serves or caters to our own deep-seated - if often subconscious - personal biases and leanings and even prejudices. Much like that fabled elephant whose blindfolded human 'inspectors' imagined or presumed they were touching just what their own impressions suggested - and yet incredibly, in some perverse realization of the maxim that impressions are the reality, they were each and every one - in their own way - right. What they saw was indeed precisely what they 'got', or a reflection of their view (however limited and obscured).
And - will wonders never cease? - the oft-berated field of modern sociological-psychological research now backs up this idea. As was revealed on yesterday's (Tuesday the 8th of April's) 'What the World Thinks' pre-Panel discussion upon New Zealand National's 'Afternoons with Jim Mora', with guest Michael Moynihan, politicians, in trying to convince 'unbelievers' of their own especial take upon the political landscape, so often waste the precious time of most of us (and themselves). For, as was expressed in much better, more articulate fashion upon selfsame show, "no matter how good [i.e. persuasive and ultimately correct] the information politicians give us, we [the great majority if not indeed all of us] don't really listen to it unless it [already] agrees with our own [pre-existing/ predetermined] views". However much we might seek to convince ourselves otherwise.
So - I'll readily and freely concede - Tony Benn wore major blinkers when and where it suited him...and indeed in an area where he really had little if any excuse. For Benn throughout his political career championed liberty, democracy and equality - for everyone - and so it was no small failing on his part to have overlooked/glossed over/disregarded/looked the other way - much like the infamous priest and levite in the famous parable of the Good Samaritan - when it came to Mao and his bloody butchery. Especially for someone who, among his famous witticisms, once remarked that he had only contempt for anyone who publicly expressed [political etc] views he didn't really personally subscribe to. And it seems unlikely (if also understandable as a consequence) that questions of personal safety didn't have a major influence upon what he said upon meeting China's renowned, infamous leader Mao, and yet it seems utterly inconceivable that he could've been uninformed upon the real state of play on what was going down under his despotic rule.
But then, perhaps one cannot help but add: there, but for the grace of God, go all of us essentially. Or to use the words of a truly great moral revolutionary who wielded no actual political power as such but tonnes, nay tons (it sounds so much better) of world-transforming spiritual influence and authority: let him who is without [such] sin [or moral blindness, in this case] cast the first stone. And as happened then, one would hope we all have enough personal honesty to take up our own collection of stones and wander away without further comment. For however much decried by one and all (at least among church folk) the Pharisees in His day invariably are, at least those religious hypocrites in Jesus Christ's own time had sufficient honesty to do as much.
Likewise I would suggest that those who today set themselves up as some sort of 'moral guardians', especially the likes of talkback hosts whose pronouncements upon 'each and every' issue of our own day carry all the gravity and seeming authority of those societal leaders of yesteryear, would do well, as that selfsame 'Leader of Men' suggested at the end of his aforementioned famous parable, to themselves henceforth 'go and do likewise'.Unless that is they actually happen to see themselves as modern-day popes, as those whose every utterance serves their fellows as some sort of inerrant, infallible moral compass and guide. That is, if they do actually see themselves as verily mini-gods and goddesses. If so, God help us all.
No comments:
Post a Comment