(urth) The Devil in a Forest

[James Wynn]

>>I said:
>>This novel is "about" many
>>things, but the shadow of economic/social commentary lies long and dark
>>over it. Wolfe starts with a hero of folklore known for "robbing the rich to give
>>to the poor". But he starts the story from the perspective of "the rich".

>David Sackhoff:
>My only objection is that there doesn't seem to be any
>philosophical structure to Wat's thieving. He's a psychopath.

He's unwittingly controlled by evil Mother Cloot, but he's not a
psychopath. He's a demagogue. He cleverly pits one group against
another to enrich himself and to undermine any coalition against him.

How does he live safely in the woods as a thief? He pays out a portion
of his robberies from "the rich" (peddlers, tradesmen, and pilgrims)
to "the poor" (the charcoal burners and such who live in the forest).
When it seems that the villagers will unite against him, he approaches
them and announces that it is not necessary for them to go to the
trouble of forming a private militia. He has decided to leave their
forest to rob other places. But, oh wait, he's going to need "a stake"
in order to leave, and so that means a small robbery of some pilgrim
the villagers don't know who his richer than themselves. Why would
they agree to this? Because he's going to give them a cut of the
robbery. They don't even have to do more than stand there while he
does the work. Not everyone is willing to accept this corrupt bargain,
but enough are that the coalition against him is destroyed. But as
soon as everyone has signed on, Wat tells them that there is no
pilgrim after all. His plan is to rob one of the villagers--in fact,
one of those who signed on to the robbery. But since that neighbor
will never realize it is THEY who robbed him, they needn't be ashamed
of the act. And the neighbors fall in.

Whether or nor not you agree with the analogy, tDiaF is --I contend--
intended as a demonstration of how social welfare is sold to the
public. The argument is that if your neighbor came to your door and
said "I need a retirement or guaranteed health care or financial
support when I'm not making enough. So I've decided that you and some
other neighbors will pay me a monthly stipend." You'd throw the guy
out. If he came said, "I need these things and you might too; so we're
going to go to the better off neighborhood and demand they pay into a
kitty to support us", you'd consider it dishonorable to join in a plan
like that. But when some third party says "I'm going to take from your
neighbor to supply this kitty, and you'll never have to demand it from
them and you'll never have to face them. You don't even have to *do*
anything. All you have to do is support me in the privacy of your
voting booth. And, after all, you know they can afford it"; in that
case, enough people can be convinced to throw in with the plan. But
many of the people who think it is someone else getting taken are
actually the victims. Just as Wat admitted privately that there were
not enough pilgrims and they would never be stupid enough to carry
large sums through his forest, (the argument goes) there are not
enough "rich" to make a viable social plan that is worth putting
together in the first place.

You don't think this is a fair analogy of socialism/welfare state.
Okay. Your disagreement is within the debate between
libertarian/liberal economics and socialist economics over the last
century and a half (see my final response below). The point is that
Wolfe does, and has attempted to illustrate it in tDiaF. The bare
majority of Americans who (directly) pay any federal income taxes at
all today is the sort of arrangement that Wolfe is warning about here.
It's an ingenious little fable. Is it propaganda? Sure. Propaganda can
be well done. It can even be on the right side. I noted on this list
not so long ago that I considered "Pan's Labyrinth" to be the best
propaganda I'd seen in years (in that case for the Spanish Socialist
Party of which I am no fan).

>>I said:
>>If this isn't a fable about the foolishness of depending on the beneficence
of  the government, I can't imagine what would be.

>David says:
>Here, "government" = the people hired by the noblemen to keep order.
>No more. I don't see any pretense of benevolence.

How does the government know that Wat is roving in the forest? Because
the villagers have complained. Why does the government take the
trouble and risk of rooting him out? Public beneficience (which is
more extensive than public benevolence). It is Wat, not the soldiers,
that is analogy of public "benevolence". It is a canny distinction on
Wolfe's part to divide the activity of Wat from the activity of
Ganelon while making them the same person.

>David Sackhoff said:
>First of all, by the time you've equated socialism with
>"robbing from the rich and giving to the poor," you've already hanged
>socialism without a trial, because that means you don't know what it is.

>All of which is perfectly correct but has little to do with actual socialism
>and more to do with paranoid Randian fantasies of it. In short, a straw man.

I appreciate that you don't approve of characterizing socialism as
"robbing from the rich to give to the poor". I confess I'm not
conversant with the various denominations of socialism. I offer the
Wikipedia definition as currency:

"Socialists mainly share the belief that capitalism unfairly
concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that
controls capital, creates an unequal society, and does not provide
equal opportunities for everyone in society. Therefore socialists
advocate the creation of a society in which wealth and power are
distributed more evenly based on the amount of work expended in
production, although there is considerable disagreement among
socialists over how and to what extent this could be achieved."

In the movie "Time Bandits", Terry Gilliam (no laizzes faire
capitalist) has Robin Hood say, "Won't you stay and help us with our
work? There's so much wealth to redistribute." So I don't think I (or
Wolfe) have made a weird conclusive leap in associating Robin Hood
with socialism.

J.