Or How Classical Liberals Became Socialists
Disclaimer: I am one of those people who knows a little bit about a lot of stuff, but who is not an expert at anything. I hope you forgive me if I and vague and mis-characterize philosophy and history at times, or even perhaps misspell the authors name*, but I do urge you to correct me. In a sense that is what this diary is about.
Recently I have been immersed in the writings of E. M. Forster. It was by accident really. Being by nature a cheapskate, I used by $.0.75 credit at Amazon on a complete works of E. M. Forster. When I reached the end of one of his novels, I simply swiped the page on my Kindle and started the next. At first what struck me was just how much of an Edwardian writer he was. In many ways he has more in common with Hardy than he does with Virginia Wolf. His novels seem to be about a society that is long since gone and foreign to me to begin with. My manners are atrocious and I don't drink tea. But there is something in his novels that still attracted me. So I decided to step back and examine what that attraction is.
What I arrived at is more philosophical than social, but it helps explain how Classic Liberalism in England came to embrace socialism.
If you have read this far, you might as well follow me below the fold...
E. M. Forster was born into the enviable condition of inheriting enough money to allow him to live without ever working. When he entered Kings College Cambridge be did so not seeking a profession but for the sake of enlightenment alone. While there he fell under the influence of the philosopher G. E Moore. G. E. Moore was an early voice that challenge Kant and the idea that the things outside of yourself are not knowable. G. E. Moore disagreed with Kant and in contrast believed that the space outside ourselves does indeed exist and in fact the outside world forms who we are, our self. That was profound, and forced intellectual Liberals to re-examine there believes against the real world. At the core of Liberalism is the belief in the individual, that all men are equal and deserve the same chance at happiness and liberty. In the classical evaluation laissez faire capitalism broke the binds of an aristocracy that would try to enforce the old notion of the great chain of being, every one was born into their lot. laissez faire capitalism was a means to obtain equality not the ends of the Liberal idea.
E. M. Forster was not alone in being captivated by G. E. Moore. He was joined in the Bloomsbury Group, that grow out of G. E. Moore's philosophical ideas, by such luminaries as, Virgina Wolf, John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry. The core of the group's beliefs was that their lives existed in a world that really does exist. Your ideas, or self, are not complete or fully formed unless they are challenged by the 'space', or as I will argue 'place', outside of them. The Liberal ideas of equality and justice when examined against the real world of Imperial England were found unattained. But before I get into examine E. M. Forster's Howards End, I want to empress upon you that the 'Bloombury' of the Bloombury Group is a place, a real place in London. This is essential to my approach. In E. M. Forster's world, places are the space outside of us, the real world where our ideas are tested.
[I am realizing early on in writing this that I am going to have to be briefer than I originally intended, so this is just a very rough sketch. My intent was an approach, not a full blown critique.]
Howards End begins with a letter from Helen announcing her engagement to Paul Wilcox. Helen is visiting the Wilcox at their home in a still rural England and she has fallen in love with the idea of the Wilcox. When Paul kisses her in a moment of passion she agrees to marry him, but in the light of day, when she comes down the stairs to find Paul and the entire family indulged in regrets and doubts, she relieves Paul of his obligation and breaks off the engagement. When her idea is confronted with the real world, her idea is found wanting. But she refuses to acknowledge that it is her idea that should change, and instead writes off the Wilcox as insincere Hippocrates.
Back home with her two siblings her ideas are safely ensconced in the dark home of the half-German Schlege's. Much like E. M. Forster the Schlege inherited more than enough money to secure their future without working. They engage in purely intellectual pursuits while entertaining all callers regardless of their station. While at the symphony they met the clerk Leonard Bast a struggling young man who is trying to better himself though self education. Leonard has his own idea of who he is, but also finds his idea threatened by the reality of the Schlege's. He can't keep up with the Schlege sisters superior education, and recedes to protect his idea against the reality of the Schlege's home, wishing to remember the brief meeting favorable without continuing it.
By chance the Wilcox moving into to the Schlege's London neighborhood. A house that had indeed been within their 'space', a space that could be ignored as not real in the Kantian sense, now becomes a 'place' that threatens to upturn Helen's self, or so her older sister Margaret thinks. Helen could care less and has no intention of confronting the real world again. Margaret visits the Wilcox's new house and becomes closes to Mrs. Wilcox. Mrs. Wilcox, Ruth, is Forster's symbol of the person who has rectified her ideas with the real world. She is neither intellectual nor particularly interesting, but she lives inside of her own skin, as we might say today, and takes on an almost mythical importance. Becomes of this, she becomes compelling to Margaret to the point of obsession. They become friends, but Ruth is dying. During her death Margaret gets closer to the Wilcox including Mr. Wilcox. After Ruth's death Margaret agrees to marry Henry. She does not love him, but believes she will learn to.
Mr. Wilcox has his own ideas of empire and the responsibilities of the proper Englishman. He has wealth from his hard work, and faithfully preforms the cultural rituals that his position requires. Even Margaret through out the book admits that Henry, Mr. Wilcox, is why England is great. He is the self made man of the classical laissez faire capitalism that was to ensure the Liberal idea. But Henry's idea world of self is also challenged when confronted with reality. His daughter's wedding requires all the pomp and circumstances his position requires. To that end he stages the Wedding in a house he bought in Oniton, a town in the West of England bordering Wales. Here too we find reality disappointing ideas. Henry bought the house thinking he could acquire legitimacy by buying an estate with a castle on the property, only to find it provincial and too far from London. But it is the perfect stage for the ideal wedding. His ideas are ruined when Helen, still the champion of her own ideas, brings Leonard Bast and his wife to Oniton. Margaret attempts to defuse the situation by sending her sister Helen and Lenard away, but the drunken wife of Lenard lingers on and recognizes Henry as her former lover.
Humiliated, Henry releases Margaret from the promise of marriage. His ideal self, which he had come to believe, is exposed as a fraud. But Margaret forgives him to keep the now glowingly fragile ideas alive. Reality is beginning to having a bad habit of assaulting their ideas.
Helen, the still most naive of the sisters, is forced to confront reality when in a moment of what she is sure is love sleeps with Lenard while his wife is passed out drunk. She was in love with the idea of Lenard, not Lenard. She becomes pregnant, but once again escapes reality by moving to Germany.
But a baby is not a reality you can escape. When the Schlege's aunt becomes sick, Helen returns to England and reveals to her sister Margaret her condition. Helen only wishes to retrieve her books, stored at the mystical Howards End, the place where reality meshes with ideas. Not just the books, but all of the furnishings of the sisters' old home are being stored at Howards End, and Helen wishes to spend on last night in the house with her old memories and ideas. Margaret stays with her.
Lenard has his own tortured ideas of making things right and after a long search chases down the Schlege sisters to Howards End. He has no idea about the baby, but wants to apologize. At the same time Henry's son has also found Howards End with the intention of defending the family's honor, and when Lenard arrives strikes him down with the blunt end of a sword. Lenard dies with books cascading over his body, he dies not from the blows directly but literally from a broken heart.
Margaret sides with her sister plans to leave Henry after the murder and go with her sister to Germany, a 'space' within the novel, but not a 'place'. She does not know Germany, so it is in the realm of the Kantian unknowable, a space where ideas are not challenged. She is confronted by Henry, whose son has been convicted of man slaughter and is sentenced to prison for defending his and his father's idea of honor, a Henry whose own ideas are now completely destroyed. Without his ideas he is lost. She has pity on him.
In the end Helen and her bastard child, Henry and Margaret all live together along with the local farmer's kid in Howards End. Their ideas, their self, have become one with reality...and the bastard son inherits Howards End.
That is what E. M. Forster is writing about, or at least a way to approach him. And it still has relevance to us today. Our ideas are all well and good, but we as individuals are not complete, we are not being fair to ourselves until with submit our ideas to the 'places' of the real world. For us liberals, and we are the heirs, the guardians of the Classical Liberal ideas, it means that we have inherited a righteous cause of liberty and justice, a cause which I hope we hold dear, and which we must always test against reality. I am not sure there really is an Howards End, that mythical place where ideas and reality converge, but we must never stop seeking it. Never retreat to your safe dark home of self. Never give up testing your ideas against the world.
[*Edited thanks to oblomov. I always wonder what happens to Jacky. She is the character I identified with most.]