Will Durant on the Inevitability of Communism
As my life is dull, I have been laying awake nights lately thinking to myself: ". . . this Wisconsin Revolt thing has happened before. It is history repeating itself. Everyone has heard this maxim, but how is it relevant to all of these attacks by the rich against the poor?"
Okay, maybe the attacks are actually why I am laying awake at night.
Then, last night, your cabbie had nine hours of unforgiving taxi driving right here in your revolting capital city. Nine hours to let my historic reflections settle into a cogent thought. Nine hours in which your cabbie was confronted with a problem child at every call. Nine hours in which your cabbie was in fact feloniously relieved of $9.50 by what we cabbies call "runners." Waiters call them "dine-and-dashers." By the time I finally fell asleep last night, it had been a frustrating evening, indeed, for your Union hack.
"DURANT!"
"DURANT!" I thought, practically shouting myself awake (okay, well, not really).
How about this: Bolting upright out of a deep sleep (just so I could write that phrase here), I looked up the following awesomeness from Will Durant, an early favorite historian of mine. I think it puts what we are going through as a society in some historic relief by capturing succinctly in words what we have all been talking about here in Madison for the last three months.
Read it:
"Perhaps one reason why communism tends to appear chiefly at the beginning of civilization is that it flourishes most readily in times of dearth, when the common danger of starvation fuses the individual into the group. When abundance comes, and the danger subsides, social cohesion is lessened, and individualism increases; communism ends where luxury begins. As the life of a society becomes more complex, and the division of labor differentiates men into diverse occupations and trades, it becomes more and more unlikely that all these services will be equally valuable to the group; inevitably those whose greater ability enables them to perform the more vital functions will take more than their equal share of the rising wealth of the group. Every growing civilization is a scene of multiplying inequalities; the natural differences of human endowment unite with differences of opportunity to produce artificial differences of wealth and power; and where no laws or despots suppress these artificial inequalities they reach at least a bursting point where the poor have nothing to loose by violence, and the chaos of revolution levels men again into a community of destitution."
This is from the Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage, which Durant published in 1935. It's from Chapter II, which is entitled "Economic Elements of Civilization."
One of my favorite historians when I was a kid was Will Durant, who I actually first read in a Wisconsin high school. I think things like this quote are why rich people want to get rid of Wisconsin high schools. I got so hip to Durant that my mom went out and bought me his whole eleven volume set: The Story of Civilization. I have yet to read them all; it is my life's work--that and eating.
Okay, maybe the attacks are actually why I am laying awake at night.
Then, last night, your cabbie had nine hours of unforgiving taxi driving right here in your revolting capital city. Nine hours to let my historic reflections settle into a cogent thought. Nine hours in which your cabbie was confronted with a problem child at every call. Nine hours in which your cabbie was in fact feloniously relieved of $9.50 by what we cabbies call "runners." Waiters call them "dine-and-dashers." By the time I finally fell asleep last night, it had been a frustrating evening, indeed, for your Union hack.
"DURANT!"
"DURANT!" I thought, practically shouting myself awake (okay, well, not really).
How about this: Bolting upright out of a deep sleep (just so I could write that phrase here), I looked up the following awesomeness from Will Durant, an early favorite historian of mine. I think it puts what we are going through as a society in some historic relief by capturing succinctly in words what we have all been talking about here in Madison for the last three months.
Read it:
"Perhaps one reason why communism tends to appear chiefly at the beginning of civilization is that it flourishes most readily in times of dearth, when the common danger of starvation fuses the individual into the group. When abundance comes, and the danger subsides, social cohesion is lessened, and individualism increases; communism ends where luxury begins. As the life of a society becomes more complex, and the division of labor differentiates men into diverse occupations and trades, it becomes more and more unlikely that all these services will be equally valuable to the group; inevitably those whose greater ability enables them to perform the more vital functions will take more than their equal share of the rising wealth of the group. Every growing civilization is a scene of multiplying inequalities; the natural differences of human endowment unite with differences of opportunity to produce artificial differences of wealth and power; and where no laws or despots suppress these artificial inequalities they reach at least a bursting point where the poor have nothing to loose by violence, and the chaos of revolution levels men again into a community of destitution."
This is from the Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage, which Durant published in 1935. It's from Chapter II, which is entitled "Economic Elements of Civilization."
One of my favorite historians when I was a kid was Will Durant, who I actually first read in a Wisconsin high school. I think things like this quote are why rich people want to get rid of Wisconsin high schools. I got so hip to Durant that my mom went out and bought me his whole eleven volume set: The Story of Civilization. I have yet to read them all; it is my life's work--that and eating.