Just a Thought

Perhaps, I can begin with a couple of quotes from Hobsbawn's, 'Interesting Times':
"The proletarian experience was novel in other respects. I think it fair to say that in 1940 few Kingsmen had the occassion to operate a road drill, and I found the experience of doing so tiring but exhilarating." p158
"By and large in my days as a Sapper I lived among workers - overwhelmingly English workers (The author of this post can only say, suprise, surprise English workers in the Royal Engineers) - and in doing so acquired a permanent, if often exasperated, admiration for their uprightness, their distrust of bullshit, their sense of class, comradeship and mutual help. They were good people. I know that communists are supposed to believe in the virtues of the proletariat, but I was relieved to find myself doing so in practice as well as in theory." p159 How condescending!
Working on the roads with a drill, "exilarating".....brrrrrrrrrrbrrrrrrrrrrrrbrrrrrrrrrbrrrr.... and the band played believe it if you like. Oh, and by the way in China I have discovered the noble peasant, the spitting man with the PRC flag stuck into his forehead, who whacks his wife around the head and who would betray his neighbour at the drop of a hat to the party but of course there are some wonderfully decent and humane peasants. Nevertheless, I can say this in all sincerity, there were good people and there were bad people in my Glasgwegian working class just as there are in all classes. One wonders Mr Hobsbawn did the Sappers' distrust of bullshit extend to your person? The more I think about it that is possibly one of the reasons I have never been a communist; the wooly thinking not thinking things through pseudo intellectuals and working class leaders who want to "help" the working class. They are as difficult to take seriously, as difficult to listen to in the west, and as alienated from the working class as the little colony who lived the good life in the woods near Wandlitz must have been from the workers in the GDR. However, there is probably a more important reason why I have never become a communist.
Marx never actually came up with a model of how the new socialist society would function and while his analysis of the world was essentially correct, it was left to later Marxists and Communists to implement the new society. This was always going to be difficult and as early as 1883 Marx was to criticise his own son-in-law Paul Lafargue, when accusing him of a lack of faith in the working class, by saying, "If that is Marxism then I am not a Marxist." It goes without saying how he would have ajudged the model implemented after 1917; the "Bolshevisation" and later "Stalinisation" of the party and the mediocrities that ushered in 'Democratic Centralism' which made you swallow your argument, your doubts, and consequently your beliefs for the sake of party unity and action. Yes, that is why I never became a Marxist or indeed a member of any party; I am just not prepared to consciously act on something I know to be wrong or at least not when those actions can have very serious consequences.
That conclusion should, however, offer us some hope. When we know something to be wrong, we should try to right that wrong or, if we are not in a position to do that, to at least address it. However, no more sentimental romantic rubbish concerning the labouring classes, please. For the intelligent peasant or worker who really is struggling every day, it is just adding insult to injury.