=The Lumpenproletariat=
In trying to use these indices of group behavior it is no longer
possible to deal in general terms such as “the poor.” Though
“proletariat” may be precise enough for Marxism, even this term is
too inclusive for close analysis of the material in these novels.
Several gradations are possible within this least fortunate group on
the economic scale. Professor Ambrogio Donini’s introduction to the
Italian edition of _The Pine Tree and the Mole_ identifies the lowest
group in that novel as members of the _lumpenproletariat_. These people
are not the workers whose taking of the factories Taddei fleetingly
mentions. They are the lowest stratum of Livorno’s life, the drifters
and criminals from whom the Fascists recruited members for their Black
Shirt squads. It is their motivation as much as their behavior which
differentiates them from the workers. While groups of militant workers
are usually presented as trying to better the lot of their whole group,
these members of the _lumpenproletariat_ seem to be entrepreneurs.
Rubachiuchi becomes an agent provocateur for the Fascists not to
help the poverty-stricken, but simply to help himself. After he
infiltrates an anarchist group, he aids in its destruction, not because
he is personally opposed to anarchism, but because this is the job
his employers are paying him to do. Very often in these novels one
encounters Communists trying to destroy Socialists ostensibly because
Socialism is thought to be a palliative rather than a solution to the
worker’s problems. But these underworld figures do not have even this
theoretical justification.
Although this group is not nearly so numerous in the novel as many
others, its representatives occasionally appear. In _Fontamara_,
Peppino Goriano returns to Fontamara after thirty-five years, some of
them spent in a “political career” in Rome. A good man, he had been
forced by starvation to become an agent _provocateur_ for the police.
He had earned five lire a day plus a twenty-five lire bonus each time a
job resulted in his going to the hospital. For a brief time he had been
a hero after a picture of him helping to wreck a Communist newspaper
office had appeared in a newspaper. But the “Hero of Porta Pia” lost
the honest job he had finally found when it was decided that “fascism
could no longer shelter in its bosom such delinquents as had been
convicted several times for theft.” Pablo in _For Whom the Bell Tolls_
is a study in deterioration. A cruel but effective anti-Fascist at
the beginning of the war, he is found by Robert Jordan to be a sotted
semi-bandit who opposes Jordan’s blowing of the bridge. Having lost
control of the band to his woman Pilar, Pablo tries unsuccessfully
to forestall the demolition by stealing part of Jordan’s equipment.
Although he leads the retreat after the bridge is blown, Pablo is no
longer one of the “illusioned ones.” He is a guerrilla who retains only
his violence and a dominating desire for survival. Old Zaccaria in
_A Handful of Blackberries_ is a bandit first and a partisan second.
He had received a decoration for a crippling encounter with a German
patrol, but the source of the battle was a truckload of cheese which he
intended for the black market rather than a desire to free Italy. These
characters are not nearly such low forms of life as some of the members
of Taddei’s _lumpenproletariat_, but they are a part of that group
to be found on the fringes of most political conflicts, individuals
motivated by desire for personal gain rather than by principle.
=Peasants=
Almost as submerged in the economic structure is the peasant class.
Here too there are extra-national similarities. The _paisans_ of
Silone and Taddei and the _muzhiks_ of Turgenev and Dostoyevsky have
characteristics in common. Ground down by oppression and exploitation,
they engage in political action only as a result of outside stimulation
rather than as a result of spontaneous desire among themselves. Often
they may be too devitalized even to do that. When Bazarov in _Fathers
and Sons_ tells the peasants that they are the hope of Russia, he
does not suspect “that in their eyes he was all the while something
of the nature of a buffooning clown.” In a more subtle way Don Paolo
tries to awaken the peasants of Pietrasecca in _Bread and Wine_. He
has a little success with parables, but a direct attack upon issues
produces nothing. When he goes to Fossa he asks the lawyer Zabaglione
about peasant participation in the now disbanded Socialist Leagues.
Zabaglione tells him:
What Socialism meant to most of them was a chance to work and eat
till their stomachs were full, to work and sleep in peace, without
having to be afraid of the morrow. In the league premises at Fossa,
next to the bearded portrait of Karl Marx, there was a picture of
Christ in a red shirt. On Saturday nights the peasants came to
the league to sing “Up, brothers! Brothers, arise!” and on Sunday
morning they went to Mass to say “Amen.” The permanent occupation
of a Socialist leader was writing recommendations.
The American representatives of this class seem much the same.
Garland’s _A Spoil of Office_ follows the abortive political careers of
the Grange and the Farmer’s Alliance. Bradley Talcott sees this latter
movement as “the most pathetic, tragic, and desperate revolt against
oppression and wrong ever made by the American farmer.” His guiding
star Ida puts it even more simply: “While our great politicians split
hairs on the tariff, people starve. The time has come for rebellion.”
Conditions in Iowa have changed eighty years later, but in the deep
South they are almost as bad. William Russell’s _A Wind Is Rising_
(1950) focuses on Negro tenant farmers charged 500 per cent interest by
the landowners and cheated of part of the cotton crop they succeed in
raising.
Whether he is Prince Torlonia or a Russian noble, the large landholder
is most often seen in the novel as the embodiment of the forces which
keep the peasant class in subjection. Men like Nikolai Kirsanov
in _Fathers and Sons_ may attempt to improve conditions, but the
predominant pattern is one of exploitation which eventually produces
violence. At the end of _A Handful of Blackberries_ the peasants kill a
bailiff when they invade the Tarocchi pasture lands they believe to be
rightfully theirs. Debased and deprived, lacking political awareness,
and incited by members of other classes, the peasant group turns to
violence. In some areas of the world, particularly the United States
and England, a steady economic evolution has tended to eliminate
large segments of this group. The Russian peasant appears still to
be a peasant, even though he may be a Stakhanovite worker in a large
_kolkhoz_. But where the class still exists in a society in which
violent protest is still possible, the pattern appears unchanged.
=Labor=
Commenting on one of the causes of the failure of the farmers’
movements of the seventies, Garland said: “They had made the mistake of
supposing that the interests of merchant, artisan, and mechanic were
also inimical.” In the novel these interests are not at all inimical.
They are rather parallel, for the labor movement (which includes the
last two groups mentioned by Garland) has as its natural antagonist the
moneyed class to which the peasants’ adversaries belong. And in the
novel the laborer is treated as sympathetically as the peasant, with
the single exception of Disraeli’s _Sybil_, which gives an antagonistic
picture of the trade unions. But there are two significant differences
between the peasant class and the industrial labor class. The latter
has adopted different methods and has met with a large degree of
success.
The political behavior and history of the labor movement emerges very
clearly in the novel. This group fought its first violent battles to
achieve organization. When this was accomplished, concerted action
in which the strike was the principal weapon was begun to attain
better working standards. In societies in which unions are still
free, the strike has retained its tactical importance, but it has
been accompanied by progressively less violence. And as strife has
decreased, a more effective technique has taken its place. The labor
movement has gone into politics. The most overt form of this policy is
the formation of a labor party like the one so successful in England.
Less direct but still effective is the method used by American unions
of supporting the party which seems most likely to serve labor’s
interests. Peasants’ leagues and farmers’ groups had been formed to
take direct political action, but none achieved such spectacular
success as these labor groups. Unlike the peasants, the laborers had
to a large extent provided their own leadership. Indicative of their
more cohesive and militant nature is the frequently expressed distrust
of people in the movement coming from non-labor classes. In _Marcella_
the radical Nemiah Wilkins is suspicious of Socialist Harry Wharton.
He feels that he is too well dressed and educated to lead a labor
movement, and he looks forward to the day when they “would be able to
show these young aristocrats the door.” Penelope Muff, a dedicated
organizer in _Fame Is the Spur_, has the same feeling toward two women
who work actively in the Socialist cause. They give both time and
money, but to Pen they are outsiders taking a dilettante interest in
the poor.
That labor’s energies would be channeled into politics rather than
violence seemed at one time impossible. Looking back at his youth,
Tom Wilcher recalls in _To Be a Pilgrim_ that then “the rich men were
still boundless in wealth and arrogance; the poor were in misery,
and neither saw any possibility of change without the overthrow of
society.” But the labor movement made the transition from a mob to a
party. Pen Muff and Hamer Shawcross had seen it achieved when Keir
Hardie, wearing a cloth cap rather than a top hat, drove down London’s
streets in a wagonette instead of a brougham to take his seat in the
House of Commons. And labor remained so conscious of its class origins
that Shawcross seemed guilty almost of blasphemy years later when, as
a Labourite minister, he wore his ceremonial uniform with its sword
and cocked hat. Figures in the novel recall the lines from Browning’s
_The Lost Leader_ about the man who had betrayed his group “just for a
riband to stick in his coat.” Such a one is Hamer Shawcross. Another
is Chester Nimmo. Their supposed betrayal seems more heinous because
of this class consciousness. Dick Remington may change from Liberal to
Tory with a minimum of obloquy, but when Shawcross enters a wartime
coalition government he is a Judas.
When Sinclair published _Oil!_ in 1926 he saw the activities of the
labor movement almost completely in terms of a class struggle. But
it was an index of the relative progress of the American movement as
compared with the English that strike violence remained the chief
weapon on this side of the Atlantic. Two years later, in _Boston_,
the situation was worse. He wrote that Massachusetts had “evolved
a complete technique of labor smashing” in which a strike-breaking
department developed in the Boston police force was rented out to
manufacturers in neighboring towns. He concluded that Sacco and
Vanzetti were not convicted and executed for a fatal armed robbery.
They were killed because they represented the forces of social
revolt to the banking and industrial interests which felt themselves
critically threatened. Even eight years later, _In Dubious Battle_
represented large segments of the labor group as ill-treated men whose
efforts to attain better wages and working conditions were opposed, not
only by the employers, but by the forces of the state as well. It is in
Dos Passos’ books that the American labor movement is seen making the
transition from economic to political action. In _Adventures of a Young
Man_ the pecan-shellers, the miners, the auto-workers are organized as
forces which will obtain concessions through direct economic action
rather than legislation. But _The Grand Design_ shows labor at work
within the Democratic Party. There is no nationwide labor party, but
the votes of the labor group are marshalled in support of candidates
whose programs will provide them with legislative relief.
The continental labor movements, particularly the Italian, are
portrayed in the novel as having a greater history of violence and
misfortune than those in either England or the United States. Taddei’s
Socialist workers take over their factories at gun point. Silone’s
laborers are victimized by The Promoter. Koestler’s Rubashov recalls
his mission of telling Little Loewy that the interests of his Belgian
dock workers were to be subordinated to those of Russia. Similarly,
the Fascists had destroyed the Italian labor movement for the purposes
of the corporate state. And, of course, the classic irony was the full
name for which “Nazi” stood: National Socialist German Workers Party.
The behavior patterns of the labor movement traced in the novel reveal
gradual change. A more homogeneous and dynamic group than the peasants,
labor has just as extensive a heritage of exploitation and strife.
Although leadership has sometimes come from outside their class, it
has been provided to a large extent by a dedicated and indigenous
elite. Whole national labor movements have been submerged under
totalitarianism; others have appeared to be sacrificed as pawns by
leaders intent upon personal aggrandizement. But as the movement has
matured, old weapons have been used with increasing moderation and new
ones have been added to the arsenal. Organs such as the CIO Political
Action Committee appear in none of the novels in this study, but such
instruments typify the new tactics by which gains are obtained through
political pressure. The archetype, of course, is England’s Labour
Party, which, in assuming national power, has had to make the final
transition by directing legislation which should benefit not only its
own members but those of all classes of the nation. This represents an
evolutionary development which is a reflection of some of the English
national characteristics seen in the novel. Perhaps one ends not with
a conclusion but with a question. The conservatives and liberals, the
Republicans and Democrats, derive their strength from areas which are
fairly well defined but which to some extent cut across economic and
occupational lines. Can an instrument forged in hottest partisan
conflict discharge the responsibility which comes with the attainment
of the goal of political power? Can it legislate for a society, or will
its antecedents compel it to serve a special interest group?
=Proletarians=
During the thirties members of the peasant and labor groups were the
subject of a literary movement which produced the proletarian novel.
This type of novel is generally unsatisfactory for the study of group
behavior patterns considered here since its emphasis is much more
sociological than political. There are some exceptions, however. _The
Iron Heel_, _Man’s Fate_, and _In Dubious Battle_ have been called
proletarian novels. Other proletarian novels not included in this study
were written by Dos Passos, Farrell, Shaw, and Silone. The two novels
by Malraux and Steinbeck straddle the line between the political and
the proletarian. This is also true of _A Wind Is Rising_, which came
after the movement as such had spent itself but which concentrated
upon one of its favorite subjects, the southern sharecropper. Some of
the proletarian novels have political overtones. Sherwood Anderson’s
_Beyond Desire_ (1932), which was meant as his contribution to the
proletarian cause, followed the career of Red Oliver as a Communist
labor organizer in southern textile mills. Like Jim Nolan, he is shot
to death. But this novel does not reveal as fully as Steinbeck’s book
the part of the Communist Party’s labor strategy in its overall plan.
The men of Liam O’Flaherty’s _The Informer_ are proletarians, members
of the Irish Republican Army fighting the British. But in its most
common form, the proletarian novel stopped just short of political
action. It would present in dramatic fashion the conditions under
which the members of this actually diverse group lived. If they took
positive action, it was usually to join a union or the Communist
Party. Steinbeck’s _The Grapes of Wrath_ shows the broad scale social
delineation the proletarian novel permits; it also shows clearly that
though its ultimate aim may be political, its primary textual emphasis
is not.
=The Middle Class=
The middle class is not as well represented as other groups in the
political novel. Of course, definition is a problem. In terms of
economics, Glenn Spotswood and Robert Jordan are members of the middle
class. In terms of politics, however, they are not bourgeois but
intellectuals, Jordan a liberal and Spotswood a radical. Perhaps the
true middle class does not provide enough drama for the novelist who
deals with politics. Most of the people in _It Can’t Happen Here_ are
middle class citizens, but they do not move and act in their normal
environment. Their apathy has permitted the rise of a dictatorship,
forcing them into the role of the persecuted or the underground
fighter. Most often a novelist using a middle class hero will work a
transformation upon him in which he changes his class identity. He
will, like Glenn Spotswood, cast his lot with the class economically
below his. Or, like Harvey Sayler in _The Plum Tree_, he will rise
above it through political advancement which brings him power and
wealth. In rare cases, the hero will manage to ride both horses at
once. Peter Stirling, in Ford’s novel, will obviously be a successful
candidate for the governorship of New York. But his stepping stone has
been nearly twenty years of work in New York City’s tenement-ridden
Sixth Ward. Ford’s style virtually guarantees that Stirling will be
neither fish, flesh, nor fowl by the end of the book, but his career
too makes it impossible to label him a member of the middle class from
which he started. In _The Grand Design_ Dos Passos sometimes shows
the middle class Washington office worker. Throughout _District of
Columbia_, particularly in his prose poems, he refers to or quotes
members of this class along with the executives and laborers. But there
is such diversity that it is difficult to draw conclusions. Perhaps
this difficulty in discerning pronounced patterns is in itself an
indication of the nature of this class. Midway between the economic and
political extremes, it has a leavening of the characteristics of both.
But the political figure who comes from the middle class most often
leaves it. If he does not, he apparently has less interest for the
political novelist.
=The Rich and Well Born=
The economic and social upper classes appear in more different hues
than any other class. They vary all the way from “red” millionaires
like _Oil!_'s Bunny Ross to the same novel’s many “malefactors of
great wealth.” Except for Disraeli’s heroes, his aristocrats are very
often those usually described as “the product of exhausted loins.”
Unless members of the English aristocracy take an active interest in
the welfare of the classes below their own, they are usually portrayed
as despising them. George Meredith’s aristocrat appears to hate these
occupants of a world different from his. The Debarry family in _Felix
Holt_ has humanitarian impulses, but its political action is directed
toward maintaining its elevated position. Trollope’s aristocratic
Liberals make efforts toward legislation which will reduce inequities,
but far more typical is the old Earl, “Buck” Lostwithiel in _Fame Is
the Spur_. A wringer of the poor and accident-maker for inconvenient
opponents, he is deterred from horsewhipping Hamer Shawcross only by a
raised sabre.
The evil aristocrat is not so common in the American novel as in the
English. Mrs. Stowe and Tourgée portray him during the latter half of
the nineteenth century in the South. Sinclair’s Back Bay Brahmins,
years later, take violent action, sticking neither at hypocrisy nor
dishonesty, to assert a form of slavery which is more economic than
legislative. But aside from villains such as those in _The Plum
Tree_, whose power actually comes more from money than lineage, the
villainous role is usually assigned to the industrialist rather than
the blueblood. This may be a substantiation of the charge that the
primary aristocracy of America is one of wealth rather than breeding
or cultivation. The Italian noble class is consistently portrayed
as an oppressor no matter what the form of government under which
it operates. Serfs are freed and reforms are instituted in _Fathers
and Sons_, but offstage are the sounds of floggings and the murmurs
of oppressed victims. The Marchesa Raversi’s Liberal Party in _The
Charterhouse of Parma_ is anything but liberal. Individuals like the
radical poet Ferrante Palla find as little favor with her as they do
with the absolutist Ernesto IV. Separated from these nobles by time and
space, Malraux’s Ferral and his backers have as little sympathy for the
Chinese on whom they thrive as does Fabio Conti for Parma’s commoners.
There are some good aristocrats in the political novel. All of
Disraeli’s Young England heroes approach politics with high seriousness
and dedication. Coningsby is so suffused with virtue that he keeps his
purity unsullied at the expense of losing his inheritance. Tancred’s
politics are intermingled with a religious mysticism that leads him
to the Holy Land. Meredith’s Beauchamp is such an emotional firebrand
in his radical convictions that he makes Disraeli’s young men look
like mild and high minded Rover Boys. But he belongs to their class.
A little farther down on the social and economic scale is Cary’s
Edward Wilcher. A politician of entirely different kidney from these
zealous young men, he is a sophisticated and cynical careerist who
writes embarrassing epigrams about members of his own party. But
he is like the others in his concern for progressive legislation
rather than perpetuation of the privileges of his own social group.
Augustine St. Clare is one of Mrs. Stowe’s better slave-owners. He
is obviously on his way to salvation, partly through the influence
of saintly Uncle Tom, when he is untimely carved by a bowie-knife
wielded in a fight he has attempted to stop. It is this accident
which prevents him from freeing Tom. Churchill’s Humphrey Crewe is an
eccentric and fatuous ass, but his intentions are pure gold. He seeks
office because he believes he can benefit the state. In _The Grand
Design_, Jed Farrington refers to “the Squire in the White House and
his big business friends.” But it is clear in the book that though
Big Business may conceivably have derived some benefits from the
Roosevelt administrations, this descendant of New York state patroons
was politically oriented toward less pedigreed groups. If one were to
compile a balance sheet for this class, however, the villains would far
outnumber the heroes.
Good men of wealth are even harder to find in this group of novels
than good aristocrats. Disraeli’s magnates are the type who in modern
America receive awards from chambers of commerce and engraved gold
watches from deputations of employees. Elsewhere, the industrialist
is a top-hatted advocate of _laissez-faire_ economics whose wealth is
acquired more through the sweat of his underprivileged workers than
by his own acumen. Millbank in _Coningsby_ and Trafford in _Sybil_
are rising merchant princes who are considerate of their workers and
industrially progressive. But either they are ahead of their time
or the industrialists who follow them in the novel are throwbacks
to a more primitive industrial era. In _The New Machiavelli_ Dick
Remington’s uncle is presented as a reactionary beast. His Newcastle
pottery factory produces death as well as cups and saucers. He is as
unwilling to install fans that will carry off the deadly fumes from
the lead glaze as he is to concede any rights at all to his workers.
The Rhondda Valley, where Pen Muff goes as the bride of union official
Arnold Ryerson, has more than its share of Welsh women widowed by the
coal mines. The management group remains in the background of this
novel, but the miners’ efforts to obtain concessions which would now
seem minimal are evidence of an attitude not dissimilar to that of Dick
Remington’s uncle. In Conrad’s _Nostromo_ Charles Gould has justified
his decisive intervention in Costaguanan politics by declaring that he
was providing order which would benefit the natives as well as himself.
Gould’s political commitment gives rise to one of the central problems
of the novel--the extent to which his soul has been eroded to insure
the undisturbed flow of the bright silver ingots from the San Tomas
mine. Gould is not the only victim of his obsession. The other is his
wife, who is all but shut out of vital areas of his life and thought.
Early in the book he gives her his rationale:
I pin my faith to material interests. Only let the material
interests once get a firm footing, and they are bound to impose the
conditions on which alone they can continue to exist. That’s how
your money-making is justified here in the face of lawlessness and
disorder. It is justified because the security which it demands
must be shared with an oppressed people. A better justice will come
afterwards. That’s your ray of hope.
All of the lobbying groups in the American novels are financed by
industrial wealth. Whether the checks are signed by railroaders,
utilities operators, or oil men, their purpose is the same: to apply
pressure which will gain concessions. And, of course, in many cases
these concessions cause a direct or indirect loss to citizens in lower
income brackets. In _The Plum Tree_ Harvey Sayler uses his power to
make an example of one of these men, “the greediest and cruelest
‘robber baron’ in the West.” The lords of Jack London’s Oligarchy
specialize in the repression of workers with frequent resort to
calculated mass murder. The climate had changed by the time Dos Passos
wrote _The Grand Design_, but he included the lineal descendant of
these predators. Jerry Evans retains a substantial interest in his
economic welfare even as coordinator of Roosevelt’s War Procurement
Board. Columnist Ed James’s off-the-record analysis is that
All Jerry can think of in the emergency is to use it to turn things
back into the business as usual channels an’ we all know that
in the southeast at least business as usual means Jerry Evans’
business. Of course he has cleared his skirts technically by
resignin’ from the directorates of most of his corporations.... But
they are still his corporations.
Individuals of wealth in the novel may derive their money from farming
rather than industry, but unenlightened self-interest is still the
chief motivating factor. This is the case with the powerful ones in
_A Wind Is Rising_. Mulcting their sharecroppers, they derive added
revenue from convenient prohibition laws. Other Dos Passos characters
like Jerry Evans retain their natural roles even within the New
Deal. Driving through impoverished Southern counties, Paul Graves
is told that “relief is in the hands of the politicians and the
politicians are mostly landlords who save it for their own tenants.”
Steinbeck’s Fruit Growers Association serves its own interests in a
more spectacular way. After an offer of twenty cents an hour fails
to satisfy the apple pickers, the fruit growers use strikebreakers,
vigilantes, sheriff’s deputies, and then troops to insure a harvest on
their terms.
It is curious that one of the American industrialists who approaches
goodness should be found in Sinclair’s _Oil!_ As in his other novels,
the industrialists are the blackest of the black, but J. Arnold Ross
is an exception. An independent oil tycoon who conscientiously tries
to see his workers’ point of view, his rapacity is expressed in
acquisition of oil lands by varied methods rather than iron-handed
labor relations. After his death it is discovered that his business has
deteriorated and his assets have melted, partly because of the naval
oil lands scandal. But there is also a missing bundle of one million
dollars, and at one point suspicion is cast upon his closest associate
and friend. The implied moral is probably that Ross’s few unsuppressed
humanitarian instincts rendered him less able to survive in this
particular jungle. The other sympathetically portrayed man of wealth in
this novel is Arnold’s son Bunny. Like Yevgeny Bazarov and his father
Vassily, these representatives of two generations are never quite able
to bridge the gap which separates them. Bunny loves his father, but his
symbolic rejection of him appears on page after page in which he almost
frantically disposes of his share of the oil money in subsidizing
a leftist paper or attempting to found a labor college. Sinclair’s
Cagoulards in _Presidential Agent_ are quite willing to weaken France
in order to retain the Skoda munitions works. These Frenchmen are
blood brothers of Malraux’s Ferral, who does not see the consequences
of his economic interpretation of current history. The aristocrats
and the wealthy are united in the Thornewell family in _Boston_.
Fighting on two fronts, they eliminate anarchists and liquidate a
parvenu entrepreneur in parallel actions. Sinclair’s judgments of
these representatives of the upper class are violent and condemnatory.
Sinclair’s condemnation is not quite typical of the political novelists
who treat the rich, although more of them approach his position than
Disraeli’s. When one compares the literary treatment of the lower
classes with that of the upper, the difference is striking. One might
explain this superficially on the grounds of distortion for dramatic
emphasis, or the use of ready-made heroes and villains. But whatever
the reasons, the majority of political novelists have been impelled to
sympathize with the lower classes and condemn the upper.