{"id":13291,"date":"2022-03-02T19:21:31","date_gmt":"2022-03-02T19:21:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=13291"},"modified":"2022-03-02T19:21:31","modified_gmt":"2022-03-02T19:21:31","slug":"lessons-from-the-great-depression-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2022\/03\/02\/lessons-from-the-great-depression-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from the Great Depression III"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don\u2019t you ever read the papers? Roderick Spode is the founder and head of the Saviours of Britain, a Fascist organization better known as the Black Shorts. His general idea, if he doesn\u2019t get knocked on the head with a bottle in one of the frequent brawls in which he and his followers indulge, is to make himself a Dictator.\u2019 \u2018Well, I\u2019m blowed!\u2019 I was astounded at my keenness of perception. The moment I had set eyes on Spode, if you remember, I had said to myself \u2018What Ho! A Dictator!\u2019 and a Dictator he had proved to be. I could not have made a better shot, if I had been one of those detectives who see a chap walking along the street and deduce that he is a retired manufacturer of poppet valves named Robinson with rheumatism in one arm, living at Clapham. \u2018Well, I\u2019m dashed! I thought he was something of that sort. That chin\u2026Those eyes\u2026And, for the matter of that, that moustache. When you say \u201cshorts,\u201d you mean \u201cshirts,\u201d of course.\u2019 \u2018No. By the time Spode formed his association, there were no shirts left. He and his adherents wear black shorts.\u2019 \u2018Footer bags, you mean?\u2019 \u2018Yes.\u2019 \u2018How perfectly foul.<\/em><\/span><\/strong>
\nP.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters<\/em> (1938).<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The above quote may offer a certain hope for those of us who see in each crisis a<\/span> foretaste of worse to come; that hope is that Fascism can be undermined by ridicule \u2013 even while it is gaining traction \u2013 as long as a Dworkinian right to freedom of speech abides.<\/p>\n

But I next turn to a writer not noted for his sense of humour, George Orwell<\/a><\/span>, who is central to our understanding the Great Depression, at least from a British vantage. His 1946 essay \u2018How the Poor Die\u2019<\/a> <\/span>is a also crucial text for this<\/em> austerity period, when social supports are being steadily withdrawn and a public health crisis looms large. Such are the consequences, unintended or otherwise, of an awful ideology that has put the NHS into freefall, and the Irish health service<\/a><\/span> into near collapse.<\/p>\n

Animal Farm<\/em> and 1984<\/em>, with their simplification of language and distortion of truth from 2 =2 =5 to Newspeak \u2013 or in present parlance News International \u2013 are curiously prescient for our age. The Communist dystopia Orwell envisaged is not what we have now. Our own is of a different character altogether.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Lowry, Laurence Stephen; Coming from the Mill; The L. S. Lowry Collection; http:\/\/www.artuk.org\/artworks\/coming-from-the-mill-162324<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Army of Managers<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The great painter of the Depression-era L.S. Lowry once remarked:<\/p>\n

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. <\/em><\/p>\n

This is the kind of Stockholm Syndrome that we have witnessed throughout the pandemic, when even left wing parties previously noted for their resistance to corporate authority, rolled over to have their bellies tickled, as the one percent almost doubled their wealth<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

Lowry, as much as Grosz and Dix, chronicled working-class existences in painting, but as a prose artist he also captured the era beautifully in Coming From the Mill<\/em> (1930). \u2018As I left [Pendlebury] station I saw the Acme Spinning Company\u2019s mill,\u2019 Lowry would later recall. Describing:<\/p>\n

The huge black framework of rows of yellow-lit windows standing up against the sad, damp charged afternoon sky. The mill was turning out hundreds of little pinched, black figures, heads bent down. I watched this scene \u2013 which I\u2019d looked at many times without seeing \u2013 with rapture.<\/em><\/p>\n

His matchstick men and women are best seen in the Lowry Gallery in Salford near Manchester, an area much gentrified now but still recognisably working class. And if you turn away from the main paintings, one still finds the bitter fruits of economic depressions: drunken brawls and young children in virtual rags.<\/p>\n

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@DLangwallner<\/a> rejects the motion that 'the Covid pandemic demonstrates that we should prioritise security and safety over individual liberty\u2019, at the ESU, Dartmouth House, London on Sunday, 27th of October, 2022.https:\/\/t.co\/JRD3foErZy<\/a>@broadsheet_ie<\/a> @danieleidiniph1<\/a> @BowesChay<\/a><\/p>\n

— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) February 28, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n