> There is an excellent review in the May 22 LRB of
> a biography of George Lansbury that makes a very
> persuasive case that, for better or worse, Christian
> socialism was one of the dominant forces shaping
> the labor party from Lansbury through Tony Blair.
> (I emphasize "for better or worse." The point is that
> it was this current of thought eventually became
> the common sense of the majority British left voter.
> It didn't just give rise to lost grouplets on the right.)
> And I would be willing to argue in that in America
> there was a similar direct line of succession from
> the Christian socialists of the turn of the century
> through progressivism and the New Deal into the
> mainstream of anti-communist liberalism. A
> large set of defining beliefs stayed remarkably
> constant throughout.
Shifting topics a bit, there's also the fact that so much of the off-campus anti-war and "antiglobalization" activism is done through churches and church-based groups. That's neither a lament nor a "Hurray churchies!", but it must leave some ideological residue. I'm just not sure what.
> Lastly, there is something off about Orwell accusing
> other people of a nostalgia for a simpler past. Nostalgia
> for small communities and outrage at all this
> deracinating modern crassness play a central roles
> in his novels of British life.
True. The "malaise" from "machine civilization" is something that certainly wasn't alien to Orwell. He faults socialists for not addressing it intelligently in _The Road To Wigan Pier_.
-- Shane
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