ResoluteReader: October 2023

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Ilan Pappe - Ten Myths About Israel

Israeli historian Ilan Pappe's work has been some of the most consistent in explaining the origins of the Israeli state and its war on the Palestinians. The recent military assault on Gaza by Israel, following the October 7th attacks by Hamas, prompted me to read Ten Myths About Israel. This is one of Pappe's most well known and popular works and one that is currently available for free download from publisher Verso's website. It is a very readable and accessible book that offers a straightforward explanation of Israel's history and the debates around Palestinian resistance to occupation.

Pappe begins with some historical myths. He explains that Palestine was not an "empty land", rather it was a "rich and fertile eastern Mediterranean world that in the nineteenth century underwent processes of modernization and nationalisation. It was not a desert waiting to come into bloom; it was a pastoral country on the verge of enterting the twentieth century as a modern society... Its colonization by the Zionist movement turned this process into a disaster for the majority of the native people living there."

The argument that Palestine was empty before colonisation is one that is remarkably similar to the descriptions of North America, Australia and New Zealand as empty spaces, and the legal concept of "Terra nullius" to argue that there were no claims on land in Australia by the indigneous people. It is one reason why Pappe argues that Israel is a Settler Colonial state.

The question of "what Zionism is" is a key theme of the book. Pappe makes it very clear that Zionism is not the same as Judaism, rather Zionism began in a particular historical context: "only one, inessential, expression of Jewish cultural life" at its birth. Pappe's history of Zionism is essential reading - he shows how it arose out of the "Jewish enlightenment movement" but was frequently critiqued by Jewish people themselves, particularly on the left. "Socialists and Orthodox Jews began to voice their criticisms of Zionism only in the 1890s, when Zionism became a more recognised political force very late in the decade." It was the "diligent" work of Theodore Herzl who repeatedly put the argument for a "modern Jewish state in Palestine" which began to get traction among Western political leaders, who saw in it a way of strengthening their own imperalist power in the Middle East.

A great strength of the book is that Pappe explores the historical and political context, but he does not ignore religious debate, particularly about whether the Bible contains a case for a Jewish state in Palstine. He writes:

The final reason offered for the ZIonist reclamation of the HOly Land as determined by the Bible, was the need of Jews around the world to find a safe haven, especially after the Holocaust. However, even if this as true, it might have bee possible to find a solution that was not restricted to the biblical map and that did not dispossess the Palestinians. This position was voiced by quite a few well-known personalitiies, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. These commentators tried to asuggest that the Palestinians should be asked to provide a safe haven for persecuted Jews alongside the native population, not in place of it. But the Zionist movement regarded such proposals as heresy.

The importance of Pappe's work is the place contemporary events in a historical context. As Pappe himself writes, and apologies for another extended quote, but hearing his arguments is important:

As long as the full implications of Israel's past and present ethnic cleansing policies are not recognised and tackled by the international community, there will be no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ignoring the issue of the Palestinian refugees will repeatedly undermine any attempt to reconcile the two conflicting parties. This is why it is so important to recognise the 1948 events as an ethnic cleansing operation, so as to ensure that a political solution will not evade the root of the conflict; namely, the expulsion of the Palestinians. Such evasions in the past are the main reason for the collapse of all previous peace accords.

The conclusion of Pappe's book, which argues that Israel is a Settler Colonial state is important. He makes no easy promises about how conflict can be avoided. But he does offer hope:

This barbarization of human relations in the Middle East can only be stopped by the poeple of the region themselves. However, they should be aided by the outside world. Together the region should return to its not so distant past, when th eguiding principle was "live and let live." No serious discussion about ending human rights abuses in the region as a whole can bypass a conversation abotu the 100 years of human rights abuses in Palestine.... Any discussion of the abuse of the Palestinians' human rights needs to include an understanding of the inevitable outcome of settler colonial projects such as Zionism. The Jewish settlers are now an organic and integral part of the land. They cannot, and will not, be removed. They should be part of the future, but not on the basis of the constant oppression and dispossession of the local Palestinians.

How we get to this future is not explored by Pappe in this work, but his reference to the "people of the region" offers us a glimpse. I would argue that it is the power of the working class, particularly the mass working class of Egypt that offers the strength to overturn social relations in the region and break the power of Imperialism. I don't know whether Pappe would agree with that specific argument. However his Ten Myths About Israel is an important, and very accessible contribution to understanding the history of Palestine and Israel. Readers will learn a great deal that puts current tragic events in context.

Related Reviews

Masalha - Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History
Alexander - 'Revolution is the Choice of the People': Crisis & Revolt in the Middle East & North Africa
Levi - If Not Now, When?
Rostami-Povey - Iran's Influence
El-Mahdi & Marfleet - Egypt: The Moment of Change

Monday, October 30, 2023

John Gardner - Licence Renewed

I will be honest. The only reason I picked up Licence Renewed was that I was ill and needed something easy. John Gardner was the author picked by Ian Fleming's estate and tasked with continuing the adventures of James Bond after Fleming's death. Gardner explains in the introduction that he wanted to bring Bond into the 1980s, and adds later that "everything provided by Q branch in this story is genuine". Readers might think this claim is rather laughable, particularly given Bond's reference to the "advanced Detectorscope" in the novel. A J-200 no less.

This comedy aside, the real reason for mentioning this is that the gadgets Bond uses, are constantly referenced by Gardner. Every few lines there's some clunky mention of a brand name, a model or some contemporary designer. One of Fleming's talents was that he could put Bond in an exotic environment and make him stylish, with oblique references and comments. Gardner lays it on with a trowel and it reads like an advertisment in the colour supplements.

Of course, this is the 1980s. And this, Gardner's first of the new Bonds, was on a mission in the shadow of Chernobyl, so his enemy is a nuclear scientist gone rogue. The fear of nuclear accident hangs heavy over this book, though the plot and the outcome is paper thin. Bond's love interest, the laughably named Lavendar Peacock is a stand in for every other Bond "girl". She's described as a young looking Lauren Bacall, which gives you some idea of Gardner's talents.

This Bond, greying at the temples, gadget rich and with a laughable enemy and ridiculously wooden henchmen is perhaps ideal for the 1980s. It was, however lapped up. Gardner's sequels were very popular - I know, I first read this as a teenager borrowed from Dad's shelf and loved it at the age of 12. Though oddly they have dated more than the originals. In this, Bond drives a Saab 900 Turbo - just Google a picture. The novels don't stand the test of time at all. Don't bother.

Friday, October 27, 2023

Robert Holdstock - Mythago Wood

Mythago Wood ought to have been a standout fantasy novel for me. It steers clear of the standard fantasy tropes of elves, wizards and quests and instead redefines the genre, taking as its starting point a strange forest outside Stephen Huxley's family home. This forest has obsessed his father, and in turn his elder brother, and eventually Stephen, returning home from World War Two and years in Europe, is also pulled in to its strangeness trying to understand his father's obession and his brother's disappearance.

The woods are far larger than the actual perimeter on the Huxley's land suggests and a series of strange events leads Stephen to believe there's something very odd about them. Unusually he employs modern technology to try and work it out, getting himself on board an aircraft to photograph them. This heighten's his curisoty further.

But what really gets him going is the appearance of a strange woman (though Holdstock insists on calling her a girl). This woman is some sort of warrior royalty, from Anglo-Saxon times, and turns out to have been the creation of the interaction of the Huxley's minds with the magic of the wood. When Stephen is nearly killed by an attack from the wood he decides to enter, and try to work out whats happening.

Its an interesting take on a genre were woods are normally places for mysterious elves to offer quests to travellers. Instead it becomes a story about mental health and obsession. But it turns out to be surprisingly thin, and sadly the novel fails to break from the other usual problem of fantasy, which is that female characters are paper thin, rare and sex objects.

All in all this was interesting, but I'm not sure I'll get drawn into the rest of the books.

Sunday, October 22, 2023

Tom Scott - Thomas Müntzer: Theology and Revolution in the German Reformation

Tom Scott is a distinguished historian of the German Peasant War and Reformation, and this, his biography of the radical Christian theologist and social revolutionary Thomas Müntzer is an excellent introduction to this fascinating figure.

Rather than the crude revolutionary and antithesis of Martin Luther beloved of many people who write about the period, Scott very much argues that Müntzer was an individual who evolved his ideas in the context of changing circumstances and the tactical needs of the moment. Pushing radical reformation ideas forward, going beyond those of Luther and those grouped around him in Wittenberg was very much Müntzer's ambition, but how he did this definitely evolved. This require Müntzer to evolve his own ideas, as this quote from Scott shows:

Müntzer's definition of the godless changed over the years. From the Prage Manifesto onwards, where he had identified the damned with the Catholic church and clergy, Müntzer gradually widened the category of those he called, from the German Church Service onwards, the godless, to include secular rulers who oppressed the Gospel, and, once the Saxon princes had ignored his exhjortations, latterly all rulers by virtue of their daily oppression of the common people, whose misery prevented them from achieving true faith. It was at that point that Müntzer's theology finally spilled over into secullar rebellion.

Thus Scott's Müntzer is not the fully formed revolutionary who set out on a life dedicated to overthrowing society and introducing a christian utopia. Rather he is a man whose ideas developed in counter-position to the ruling ideas - both Luther's Reformation and the social hierarchy dominant in Germany at the time. When these two forces came together to block his own radicalism, his closeness to the oppressed and exploited masses allowed him to develop far more revolutionary conclusions. But Scott also argues that Müntzer was never the spokesperson for the whole of the masses. Far from it.

the links between Müntzer's theological revolution and the mass of the peasants' aspirations and deamds were fitful, fragile and foruitoous. In the end the rebels saw well enough that Müntzer's religious ideology was inadequate to their cause: it suplied the framework for organised rebellion threough the Christian leagues, but it could not offer any detailed programme for those leagues to adopt. Only the lesser townsfolk, those whose grievances least reflectged entrenched social and economic relations of production, can be said to have embraced Müntzer's essentially amorphous vision in full measure. The peasantry, bu contrast, remained an uneasy ally in both its mentality and aspirations .The mass support with which Müntzer rekoned never materialised.

It is, perhaps, a fair conclusion of where Müntzer was in relation to the masses. Does it invalidate the position of those, like Friedrich Engels, who saw Müntzer as a revolutionary ahead of his time, unable to deliver the vision of the future because of the limited development of society? I don't think so. It perhaps is more realistic an appraisal of Müntzer's actual base which is often overestimated by those on the left. Nontheless Müntzer's programme was revolutionary, and also impossible at the time. Scott's work helps us understand why.

Friday, October 20, 2023

Angela Hui - Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter

I have been looking forward to reading Takeaway ever since I read an extract in the Guardian when it was first published. My attraction was several-fold. Firstly Angela Hui's takeaway where she spent her childhood and teens, and the subject of this book, is in the small Welsh village of Beddau. Some of my family live in a smaller villager very nearby which until recently also had a Chinese takeaway. Secondly I was intrigued by the combination of food and memoir, the idea of food being intrinsic to our lives, but conditioned by society and circumstance is not new. But it is an important one and this book covers that a great deal - not least with the author's inclusion of key recipes. Finally, but less importantly, I used to love Chinese takeaway food though I am unable to have it these days - it felt like an excuse to enjoy the dinner by proxy.

Takeaway is a great book. But it is not a homely food and family tale as the Guardian's extract will show. Angela Hui writes about being "robbed" of her childhood by the needs of the business. From a young age she and her brothers had to work, and work long and hard hours in the takeaway. They experienced racism and abuse - and the difficulties of that life. She also describes the family tensions - and domestic abuse - that accompanied the life, driven by stress and difficult economic circumstances.

The book also highlights the difficulties that children like Hui experience, trapped between two identities - that of their immigrant parents and their heritage and the culture that they grow up in. Hui writes about not being part of either, and being a conduit between the two. Translating for her parents, living in a immigrant household, and being part of the Welsh school and village. The situation is not helped by the economic circumstances of the village itself - a former mining town with few jobs and little money. She and her family are victims of abuse occasionally for that - scapegoated and blamed. In some regards her parents are insulated from this as they don't have the language. But they feel the pain of broken glass and smashed up gardens and the spitting hatred of the racists. I did cheer though, when her father finally snapped and chased a racist vandal with his cleaver. There was racism, but there was also kindness too. The regulars with their unchanging dishes, and the villagers who teach the family to sing the national anthem. But one always gets the impression of distance between Hui's family and those around them - only really broken down by Hui's generation as they make friends and then move on.

Food provides an anchor. Her father is not one for loving embraces and kind words. But he can cook a favourite dish, and food becomes in part the way that the family and the wider Chinese community are able to bond and link. But what comes through mostly is the way that life for this family, and likely for many, many other families working in this environment is that the work dominates life. There are few days out for Hui, no evenings at friends houses watching TV or doing homework, because she has to work in the shop. A visit to the Chinese supermarket in Birmingham is a big highlight. In essence, though Hui doesn't draw this out explicitly, there is a class basis to this situation - the position of Middle Class families - trapped by the economic logic of the need to run the business, shop or takeaway. Workers' can, at least occasionally, organise collectively and leave at the end of the day. People in Hui's family's position are trapped by the need to constantly labour to make money.

From a young age Hui and her brothers want out. They recognise that they are trapped, that there are better alternatives out there. It is only later that she comes to realise the sacrifices her parents have made. For them the takeaway is not a family business - it is a way to get the economic security so that their children can escape. As such, the background stories of Hui's parents life in China during the famine, are even more poignant. There too food is a factor, and some of the dishes relate to this period, not just the takeaway menu.

Takeaway is illuminating. It deserves to be widely read for in its subtle way it tells us alot about society, racism, food and family. It's not easy in places, and sadly the recipes are not ones that I will ever be able to make for myself, but other readers will. Enjoy.

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

J.P.D. Dunbabin - Rural Discontent in Nineteenth Century Britain

The nineteenth century was a time of great turmoil for rural communities in the British Isles. In Scotland the post enclosure era was being shaped by vicious struggles over land and Crofters' rights, in Wales battles of tithes and semi-rural protests such as the Rebecca Riots were causing a crisis for the rural authorities and in England the agricultural working class was making itself known - firstly in the wave of struggles around Captain Swing and then with the explosion of trade unionism in the 1870s and the strikes associated with that.

J.P.D. Dunbabin's Rural Discontent in Nineteenth Century Britain has long been a standard text for those trying to get their heads around the period and understand the dynamics of the struggles and their links to economic policies. I picked it up recently to read in preparation for a talk about Joseph Arch and I was impressed by several of the essays. The book is at its best in covering the struggles around trade unionism. While the book is authored by Dunbabin, two of the chapters are written by other authors, both giants in the field of rural history - Pamela Horn and A.J.Peacock. Peacock's essay on Vilage Radicalism in East Anglia is obviously focused, but there is a wealth of analysis of the Swing and other incenidary attacks localy. Pamela Horn's article on Oxfordshire and the agricultural trade union movement is superb. Her use of minute books from union branches and the details of the often angry fights between unions themselves, do not obscure a brilliant tale of deep rooted and brave trade union activism. She convincingly argues that the "Oxfordshire farm worker... was better off financially than he had been in the 1860s" as a result of trade unionism. It's an important, if contested argument, so Horn's conclusion:

it may be argued that the rise in wages which occurred in the 1870s would have come anyway as agriculture was prosperous and the demand for labour buoyant at a time when employment in urban industry was at a high level. But it must be remembered that such prosperity had existed before without the labourers deriving any great benefit from it. Union agitation pinpointed the need for some redistribution of agricultural income in favour of the farm worker.

It should also be noted that Horn's article includes a map of trade union branches in Oxfordshire which is remarkable in showing the scale of the movement.

The rest of the book belongs to Dunbabin and there is a real breadth here. Some of these are wider in their coverage, a general introduction to the nineteenth century and a chapter on tenant rights in general. Some of the other chapters are more niche - those on the tithe wars in Wales and the Crofters War in Scotland may appeal more to students of the topics rather than the general reader, though Dunbabin has a nack for putting interesting and illuminating anecdotes within the general analysis.

Dunbabin's conclusion though is interesting. Noting the disturbances in Wales and Scotland and the fact that local authorities there were unable to deal with the discontent, he makes the interesting point:

In ninetenth century Britain unrest sometimes passed beyond the control of the local establishments but never beyond that of central Government. So where concessions were made from weakness (as was the forced return of 10 per cent to Welsh tithe-payers), they wer emost likely to be the work of local men. Similarly the central Government did not frame its policies with a view to the avoidance of rural unrest. But such avoidance was one of the factors behing the southern English tendnency in the half-century after Waterloo, to spread work rather than to maximise productivity.

The authorities tended to react to events - dropping threshing machines after Captain Swing, or introducing farmers associations in response to strikes - rather than trying to prevent discontent - to their detriment. Dunbabin's general conclusions are also interesting. He notes the long drawn out struggle to get Parliament to agree a Land Act that would offer some form of justice. This was finally given a nail in the coffin by World War One, with Lloyd George failing to push it though. What might have happened had it "got under way" would "have provided an interesting bridge between the ideas and aspirations... [in the book] and the conditions of the new century."

That did not happen, but Dunbabin's book is a very useful, if a little dry in places, introduction to the swirl of struggle and ideology around rural communities and agriculture in this most fascinating of transitionary centuries.

Friday, October 13, 2023

Wu Ming - Thomas Müntzer: Sermon to the Princes

Thomas Müntzer was a radical theologian who, despite his short life, played a key role in the German Peasant War in the Thuringa region, eventually being one of the leaders of the peasant forces that faced the princes' armies at the battle of Frankenhausen in May 1525. The peasants were slaughtered at that battle and Müntzer was captured, tortured and eventually executed.

Müntzer has become, for many on the left, a radical precurssor figure of later socialist revolutionary movements. Part of the reason for that is the extensive role given to Müntzer in Engels' The Peasant War in Germany (1850). The bigger blame however lies in Müntzers' contemporary enemies, especially Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon who denounced him as a fanatic and a threat "to the orderly reproduction of society". There is much truth in this. Müntzer certainly did come to believe that society needed to be reshaped, particularly through a radical confrontation with the church and its authorities who had hidden the true pathway to God. Part of that was, an insistance, that rebellion was just and godly, if the authorities were a barrier. As Müntzer said, "the power of the sword as well as the key to realise sins is in the hands of the whole community".

This book, however, is a strange and perhaps unhelpful introduction to Thomas Müntzer. The preface by Alberto Toscano gives a good introduction to the afterlife of Müntzer, highlighting how his ressurgances have been associated with revolutionary upheavels, and giving some insights into his life, ideas and times. Wu Ming, the Italian cultural group behind the extraordinary novel Q and many other important radical cultural and political interventions have a framing essay that places Müntzer and their own interest in his work in the context of the post Seattle emergence of the anticapitalist movement. For veterens of Prague (2000), Genoa (2001) and various Social Forums like me this provided an interesting trip down memory lane, though there was a danger this review would slip into a detailed disagreement between Trotskyist and anarchosyndaclist analyses of that period.

Most of the book is however made up of a collection of Thomas Müntzer's most important works. These include his Prague Manifesto (here called the Prague Protest) and his Sermon to the Princes. Other letters and, perhaps controversially, his Confession are included. Problematically though these are not given anywhere near enough context and explanation. Müntzer's writing is seeped in mystical allusion, biblical reference and apocolyptic comment. It is hard to understand without a detailed context, and its not enough for the reader to skim for reference. I was quite surprised the publishers allowed this as I think most readers, not seeped in the history and bibliography of the period will be confused. Additionally the Confession is presented with only a passing mention in the endnotes that there are "doubts to its reliability". Indeed there are.

The endnotes and timeline of Müntzer's life are decent, but inadequate for the task they set themselves, and I would recommend readers find a decent biography of the subject before tackling these writings. Sadly given the state of radical publishing their likely to find Verso's collection first and I hope this doesn't put them off. Readers looking here for illumination might want to check out Tom Scott's 1989 biography of Müntzer, or Andrew Drummond's excellent forthcoming text (2024). The later will also be published by Verso.

Thursday, October 12, 2023

James Hunter - Glencoe and the Indians

This is a remarkable little book on history and autobiography, that uses the incredible story of the Scottish people who left Scotland and ended up in North America, to tell parallel stories about how the further development of capitalism in the 18th and 19th century transformed the lives of ordinary people. The book centres on the McDonald family, many of whom today live in the Flathead Reservation in West Montana. They ancestors arrived in North America, making a home and living forthemselves in the terroritories being opened up by the defeat and expulsion of the indigenous people. They themselves had left Scotland because of a similar process, that saw the defeat and decline of the Highland clans as a result of wider, social and economic changes in Scotland. These parallels are obvious, if only for their inherent violence, but they are not exact. As James Hunter explains:

By 1815... both Glencoe and the rest of the Highlands had witnessed the complete distintegratin of the clans which had for so long been central to the lives of Scotland's Gaelic-speaking communities. This disintegration was as inevitable - and had much the same causes - as the collapse, a hundred or so years later, of tribes like the Nez Perce. The civilisation which was coming into existence in eighteenth-century Britain... was utterly intolerent of older forms of social organisation. This civilisation... looked to the land primarily as a source of the commodities... which its burgeoning cities required in ever larger quantities... land had everywhere to be reorganised; that it was no longer sufgficient for the Scottish Highlands to be given over to subsistence agriculture of the sort which had been practised by the clans; that it was not longer sufficient either for the American West.

In other words, the development of industrial capitalism transformed relations on the land, from ownership to usage, in order to further develop capitalism. The people who lived on that land were dispossessed, killed or forced into emigration.

Hunter tells the story of what happened to the Highlanders and Native Americans in painful detail. He also shows how some, like Angus McDonald, the pivotable immigrant to Montana from the Highlands in this book, formed close and loving relations with Native Americans. Angus rose through a life working for the Hudson Bay Company, ironically, a company whose massive profits came from the systematic use and abuse of natural resources that Native Americans relied on. The fur trade that the Company developed becoming part of forcing transformation on to the indigenous communities, tying them into a global trading network which saw natural resources (like beaver fur) purely as commodities.

But Hunter shows that there was a fundamental difference between former Highland clan leaders and Native American chiefs. The former were white and could become integrated into a capitalist system that was based on white supremacy. The Native Americans could not. While Angus McDonald could form strong personal bonds, this was not the reality of the United States as a whole, where racism and white supremacy formed (and continues to form) an key part of its state ideology.

The links between native America and settler America... were always very tenuous. And though Highlanders were, from time to time, subjected to discrimination and persecution of a quasi-racial tyupe, Highlanders were white. Highland chiefs, by virtue of that fact alone, had many more options open to them thaan were available to men like Sitting Bull, Looking Glass or White Bird. Because there was no insurmountable racial obstable in their being assimilated into the upper echelonds of British society, and because it suited the Btirish government to hasten the destruction of clanship by thus subverting clanship's ruling elite, clan chiefs... found it surprsingly easy to take on what amounted to entirely new identifies.

Hunter makes a further important point about race in this context. He emphasises that not all former Highlanders treated Native Americans positively. In fact most didn't. "More typical" he writes, where those who in the Red River area in 1813, "made good the loss of heir lands back in Scotland by appropriating other lands which had previously been occupied by the Metis.... Right across the North American continunet... Highland refugees from eviction, clearance and other forms of oppression were to better themselves at the expense of the Indian peoples."

The point that Hunter returns to, is that the Highland people would have identified thjelseves as white, and the Indian people as iunferior. When Patrick Sellar, who enforced the Sutherland Clearances and has gone down in history as an evil representative of the class who did this to the Highlanders, called those he dispossed "aborigines", he did so to be deliberately insulting to his victims. Tragically "Most of Norht America's Highalnd settlers... were no less racist in their attitute to Indians that settlers from other places".

The tragedy, as Hunter draws out, is that many of the victims of the Clearances shared an understanding of the land and its use with the Native American people. Land as the "embodiment" of community. But this was not to stop them being drawn in to a violent confrontation which eventually saw the decimation and destruction of a way of life. This is shown, all the more tragically, through the book precisely because much of the McDonald clan and its descendents did become closely linked into the Native American communities and continue to play a central, and celebrated, role in those comunuities today.

James Hunter's work has long had an important role in highlighting how the destruction of the Highland communities had a global impact. This short book, by focusing on the story of one family, emphasises this and somehow makes it much more personal. He places the Highland Clearances and the dispossession inflicted on the Native American people as part and parcel of a tragic story that saw ecological destruction, genocide and dispossession as an essential part of the rise of capitalism. Today, the struggle to redress these historical consequences continues in both Scotland and North America.

Sunday, October 08, 2023

Gene Wolfe - The Fifth Head of Cerberus

***Warning Spoilers***

The Fifth Head of Cerberus is a complex novel told through three very distinct, but linked short stories. These are all set on the twin planets of Sainte Anne and Sainte Croix, colonised from France on Earth, but now very much independent. The original inhabitants of Sainte Anne, whose mode of production was a nomadic, hunter-gatherer type, vanished soon after the colonists arrived. Likely driven extinct, but according to some thinkers, their ability to shape-shift actually saw them take over the identies of the colonists meaning the actual planet's inhabitants are the original indigenous population.

The first story is set in the somewhat steampunk Victorian atmosphere of a brothel on Sainte Croix. The narrator tells the story of his boyhood, under tutaluge from a mechanical teacher, and with only the most distant of attention from his father the wealthy brothel owner. There he eventually discovers that he is not his father's son, but a clone. Killing him he is imprisoned, but eventually takes over his father's position and wealth. It is implied its happened before. The anthropologist who provides the clue to his real nature returns in the final story in the series.

The second book tells the story of the indigenous people, through a dreamlike and very alien account of the arrival of the colonists - though this is very much the final part of a longer account that is mostly focused on the hunting of food, and attempts to evade the dangerous marsh people.

The final tale, that of the fall of the anthropolist from part one, is an account of this man's attempt to understand and locate any information on the original inhabitants. His expedition and experiences are told through fragments from taped interviews, newspaper clippings and the remains of his journal - as well as the police recordings of his imprisonment when tried for being a spy. But it seems likely that the anthropologist at the end of the story, and indeed at the end of the book, is not the same person who he was at the start.

This summary is important because the book is confusing and some of the important detail that links the stories and tells the overarching account is easily missed, particularly as the final section is told in fragments. The reader needs to work hard and I was not invested enough in the book to keep track of the various hints to the bigger narrative. This is not escapist science fiction - this is a very clear example of the genre as literature, and if you aren't prepared you'll miss out on what is actually quite an interesting novel about colonisation, identity and indigenous experience under settler colonialism.

Monday, October 02, 2023

Joseph Lortz - The Reformation in Germany: Volume 1

Joseph Lortz's mammoth history of the German Reformation is viewed as one of the major accounts of the period, and definitive in its coverage of the material and scope. The book, and its author, are however problematic and indeed pose troublesome questions for the reader and reviewer. All books are shaped by the views of the author, but this is particularly true of this one. Lortz was a committed Catholic, and a historian of the Catholic Church. He was also a ecumenist, who belived that the different wings of the Christian Church should work together towards unity. He was also a member of the Nazi Party from May 1933.

His account of the Reformation, and particularly Martin Luther, are framed by the idea that the Reformation arose not out of deep seated, but gradual, social and economic changes reshaping Germany, but out of a crisis within Christianity. Lortz is a good enough historian that he acknowledges that there was a wider context, but he cannot really see beyond the internal problems of the Church. So he writes:

The immediate, like the remote, effects of the indulgence theses [of Martin Luther], the theological and politico-ecclesiastical discussion which now began concerning Luther, the emergence and first advance, that is of what we call 'the Reformation', was entirely dependent upon the widespread vagueness of the theology of the age, vagueness, indeed, in the mind of the Church... this vagueness was both expression and consequence of the general confusion of the Church, as presented in the western schism... in the whole late medieval political and intra-ecclesisastical battle against the papcy... in the contradictions of Occamism and... by the shocking disintegration of the Christian and priestly ideal in the worldliness of the curia and the clergy.

Lortz spares little in his criticism of the internal failings of the Church, but by viewing the origins of the Reformation solely in these terms, he is thus able to have his cake and eat it. He can explain the origins of the Reformation within the Church and blame Luther for starting it all. He can write of the "fatal errors of the popes" but have as his real target Luther and the reformers. It means that he can write, frankly incredible, statements. For instance,

The whole idea of th Church was under examination. Luther could not find a lawful basis for this Church in scripture as he interpreted scripture. In so far as he understood scripture he felt himself bound by scripture as by the voice of God. This, then, is the explosive point: he, an individual, claimed the right to determine the content of scripture.

But Luther would likely have responded that individuals in the Catholic Church had been doing precisely this, and getting extremely fat and wealthy on it, for centuries. The Reformation becomes, in this analysis, not the outcome of a process of fundamental social change, but rather an accident of history. This does not mean that Lortz ignores the mass nature of the German Reformation. Far from it. He sees in Worms in 1521, for instance, the moment when the extent to which "the Lutheran cause had become a popular movement" becomes visible to everyone. Luther, he declares, "was a revolutionary":

In the extraordinary inflammation of these months and years his moving utterances against a corrupt clergy, and against good works, and his views concerning the summary expiation of sin... might well precipirate revolution... Luther publicly threatened an imminent revolution.

A revolutionary, for Lortz, is not a good thing. In fact, Luther and his predecssors were extremely dangerous in this regard. Erasmus is dismissed as a "father to fanatics", and the impact of all this is best shown for Lortz, and critics of Luther in the 16th century, by the Peasant War:

At a deeeper level, the Reformation as a whole was a revoutionary phenomenon, breaking through centuries-old institutions and laws, regarding its own conviction as sufficient legitimation. By this means, and by preaching the liberty of the Chritisan man, and also through the spiritualist character o it sconcept of the Church, and its battle against good works and clerical privilege, Reformation doctrine supplied a welcome basis for every kind of revolutionary unrest.

It's not a bad analysis. But it lacks any real sense of the discontent at the bottom of German society that had driven numerous local revolts through the 15th and 16th centuries, and crucially was being inflammed by the development of capitalist relations in society. Lortz cannot see the outbreak of revolution in Germany as being driven by anything but ideas. Nor, to be fair, could Luther. But neither could really understand or explain the Peasant Revolution that exploded in 1524. For Lortz, "Luther was the German Reformation; and the German Reformation was Luther".

But this is a decidely unhelpful explanation. Luther may have opened the floodgates - and he had to actually do that - but the flood arose out of the nature of German society and a multitude of crises. But this focus on Luther's ideas alone means that Lortz can respond in the same way - through a close, and very dull, Catholic demolition of Luther's Protestantism. Readers not immersed in theological studies may struggle with this part of the book. But Lortz really is avoiding the wider questions.

Which brings me back to Lortz himself. There's a couple of very interesting points in his condemnation of the Peasant War when he refers to the violence of the movement and notes the pogroms against the Jews that happened on at least two occasions. He then writes:

we may cite Luther's fight with the Jews also. Because he regarded their interpretion of scripture as lies, and because they paid no heed to his more moderate demands, he dcommanded their synagogues and houses be burned, their books to be confiscated, and their rabbis prevented from teaching. Their freedom of movement should be impeded; better still, they should be exiled. He had severe decrees passed against them in Saxony and Hesse.

Here Lortz is criticising how Luther's tone allowed the masses to vent their "baser impulses, of hatred, intolerance". But it would be interesting to know when he wrote these words. Because the book was originally written, according to Lortz's introduction, in 1938-1939 and first published in 1939/1940 (for the two volumes). The English edition of 1968, was based on Lortz's updated German edition of 1949. So when Lortz was writing the original book, he was not only under the Nazi regime, he was also a member of the Nazi party. He maintained that he tried to leave the party in 1937, but couldn't leave, though he continued to pay dues until July 1944. Indeed his academic position in this time was solely due to the Nazis who had imposed him and kicked out his predecessor (who got the job back after the war when Lortz had to be denazified). I don't know the extent to which Lortz was a supporter of the regime, though he did write a treatise on the "Catholic accommodation with National Socialism" in 1933. But it is no doubt true that his politics in the 1930s would have coloured his account of the German Reformation.

Had I known this before I began reading I might not have started the book. Readers and reviewers have to grapple with this question. How trustworthy is an account of the German Reformation that was written by a card carrying Nazi, favourable to the regime and published at the point war broke out? Personally it is another reason to reject Lortz's account. Not because he is mistaken on historical detail, but because his political framework would not have allowed a genuine account of the period.

ResoluteReader