Bongo's Aesthetics

[Paul Nightingale]

Sidney Webb was a leading fabian socialist of the time. I don't know the
book Pynchon refers to, but I imagine it would have addressed trade unions
rights, social reform etc. Parliamentary representation for working people
(in Britain the Labour Party). HBS reading a work of socialism makes perfect
sense - apparently, the bright young things in the CIA used to read Marx and
Mao to better understand what the free world was fighting against. Hence,
the story asks who the enemy is, who is said to threaten national security -
colonial rivals in Paris and Berlin (or, conversely, London)? Or working
people, whose allegiances are, by definition, class-based? The Second
International never recovered from the support given by many socialists to
the war effort in 1914: up to that point, it had been argued, within
socialist circles, that war was impossible because workers would refuse to
fight other workers. So once again questions of identity challenge national
boundaries: working people have a shared experience/identity, as do
Porpentine and Moldweorp.