The People's History & the Cold War

[Michael Bailey]

>
> Howard Zinn: Well, the Transcendentalism is, we might say, an early
> form of anarchism. The Transcendentalists also did not call themselves
> anarchists, but there are anarchist ideas in their thinking and in
> their literature. In many ways Herman Melville shows some of those
> anarchist ideas. They were all suspicious of authority. We might say
> that the Transcendentalism played a role in creating an atmosphere of
> skepticism towards authority, towards government.
>
>

hmm, well, with Melville's Bartleby, you get the sort of endlessly
ramifiable thought-form that I was trying to elucidate a bit with the
Pynchon Zeitsuss gestalt...

It's not just an oversimplification to say Melville was pointing to
anarchism with the tale of Bartleby, it's, well, a gross
oversimplification and somewhat of a point-missing.  imho...

the thing I like in principle about Howard Zinn, without actually
having read him, is that he specifically withholds approval from
specious accounting schemes that say, for instance - the industrial
revolution is a worthy rubric under which we may count the lives
ruined in dark Satanic mills, and the burnings of cottages with people
in them as the commons were fenced, to have been well-spent.

and instead focuses attention on the sheer villainy of so called
heroes like frickin' Steve Jobs and his penny-pinching outsourcing to
achieve a 40% gross margin. or JP Morgan selling faulty guns to the
Army to 'stablish his fortune, or IG Farben doing, well, we know what
they did.  Are these pools of capital so desirable as to outshine the
pools of blood entailed in their accumulation?  Hellz no, sez Zinn...

but such an approach preaches to the choir, whereas with Bartleby you
tend to see the plights a little more winsomely...

like (to expand, probably equally artlessly as on Zeitsuss), well -
capitalism (as exemplified by the surroundings of Bartleby and the
narrator dude) fails to satisfy all human needs

or, maybe, there is something in a person that might be so uninspired
by all the so-called opportunities afforded by his station in life,
that he would value telling the truth - "I prefer not" - to the
exclusion of any other response, even unto his own demise!

so as we see the attempts on the part of the narrator-dude to shunt
Bartleby into some kind of productive endeavor, the consistency of his
responses finds a certain amount of agreement in the narrator and (in
my case, anyway, somewhat grudgingly) in the reader.


but is this any kind of inducement to anarchy?
indeed, what is it?

Is it a cautionary tale or reductio - fake some enthusiasm if you have to?

Is it an indictment of capitalism - so uninspiring, when you ask
yourself if you really care to do what it requires, that even an
unseemly death is preferable?

Is it a simple thought experiment in refusal?  seems a bit like the
spirit of '68...

Is the point that some people just can't adjust?  That sympathy is lost on them?
or is the point that even sympathetic maneuverings within the
heartless framework are powerlessness to overcome the negativity it
can engender?

I don't think it's any one thing, but it's a fertile tale, thought-wise...