What We Have Lost and What we Have Forgotten

A Review of Gaither Stewart’s Recollection of Things Learned: Remembering Socialism 

By JP Miller

[I]f there ever was a time for recollection and remembrance, that time is now. With the world in a state of perpetual war and the hegemonic forces of capitalism destroying all that was good about our planet, Gaither Stewart, presents us with the lessons we should have learned in Recollection. Much like Lenin’s “What is to be done?”, Stewart again gives the reader a dilemma that cannot be resolved without revolutionary action. However, despite the majority of the laboring classes, revolutionary action is seen as impossible given that “the exploited classes are not only victims. They are also accomplices. Half victim, half accomplice. The historical paradox. The ruling class counts on this dichotomy to maintain the system. Divide and rule. Meritocracy. Rewards for obedience. Two cars and bigger houses for staying in line. A system based on money, domination, wholesale, constant political propaganda, and fear. Religion too, but especially FEAR. Fear of fear. Fear of change. Fear, fear, fear.”  The ruling class or the one percent determines our fate by a system of fear and hope. Fear of failing in the capitalist system and dropping into the rolls of the 99%, and the hope of hitting that lotto number, of improbable riches if we only stay in line.

The first section of Stewart’s primer is an incredibly rich resource of definitions and explanations. But it is much more than that. He informs us where the language of socialism comes from while teaching us the eventual development of the revolutionary cause. There is no book, article or monograph I have ever read that gives so much to the reader as does his Definitions. With the didactic method, Stewart takes us through the rise and fall of socialism, its methods and champions, and its ethos.

While Stewart argues that the positive influences of socialism and the left in general are in stasis or retreat and global and destructive forces of the right are dominant, he gives us hope. That hope resides in Stewart’s own recollections; his memory of what was good and how the promise of socialism was born out of the simple acts of enlightened people. It is not necessarily the intelligentsia that gave us socialism, while the giants of socialist justice are certainly part the impetus, but rather a collection and progression of committed individuals. “Sartre had flirted with terrorists of the German Baader-Meinhof Gang and Debray trained in guerrilla warfare in Bolivia with Che Guevara. Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Régis Debray and also André Gide…” with the everyday man or woman who acts as a socialist, combining their words with alacrity. “In Latin America the recently deceased Gabriel García Márquez (my journalistic model and master on the positive role of bias), the great writer Ernesto Sábato in Argentina who headed action against the military regime, and Pablo Neruda in Chile who joined the Socialist government of Salvador Allende, belong to the committed intelligentsia, as did the prototype of the man of action, Che Guevara, and certainly Fidel, whose role as a dedicated teacher of the masses, as Mao once saw himself, is also well established. (Presidents Chavez and Morales are now following the same route, as no mass revolutionary process can succeed without an alert and politically savvy populace.)”

Without the socialist, leftist work chronicled in Recollection, I am not sure we would have survived this long. Although Stewart points out that the story of socialism may be a sad one due to disunity within and repression from without, how could any progress have been made in any society where Social Darwinism is the status quo. This is socialism’s triumph. Incremental and diluted as the progress may be, socialism has had a real impact in all parts of the world.

It’s important to know where socialism was born and how it was born out of inequity. Recollection gives us that story in order to recognize the inequalities among mankind and their struggle to shake off exploitation by the capitalist system and its indifferent architects of division and inhuman use of labor. Marx and Lenin may be the rightful owners of the cause of socialism and certainly were committed individuals but the story of the monetary divide, the reality of the haves and have-nots is the impetus for the change that is recognized and needed. It’s a simple mathematical problem and an unnatural system.

Stewart takes us on a trip along a social and revolutionary history of socialism, its struggle, its success and its failures. But ultimately, the story is being rewritten by new generations, who have a nostalgia for the socialist ideals and an awakened need for social and economic justice. The cracks in capitalism are there. They are not hard to see. “Everyone knows we live in an unequal world. Half of the world’s population has nothing, a great majority struggles to make ends meet, while wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few. Strangely in the age of information few people realize how excessive the inequality has become under the reign of today’s super-Mammon. The world now counts 358 billionaires, whose net worth equals the combined net worth of the world’s 2.5 billion poorest people. The capitalization of some banks exceeds the total national production of 100 countries. This inequitable result is not unavoidable. The gap is not a natural human process.”

And, if we are to survive as a prudent, honorable and just society, we must heed the lessons that Recollection affords us. Stewart’s reminder of socialism’s struggles is poignant. The idealism of the 1960s and 1970s are gone but the next chapter is being written on the streets, slowly perhaps, but we can see it in the faces of the new generation. Will they choose to shake off their chains?

Recollection is one of those rare collections of remembrances, wisdom, guidance, and inescapable truth that have long escaped our consciousness. This book of remembrances should be required reading for University students and perhaps even more so for those of us that have simply forgotten.

Contributing writer JP Miller is a disabled veteran, journalist, and writer who lives in the Outer Banks of North Carolina beside the Atlantic Ocean. He has published short stories and political essays in The Literary Yard, The Southern Cross Review, The Greanville Post, Pravda, Countercurrents, and Cyrano’s Journal.

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NOTE: The print edition of Recollection, priced at $7.99, will be available soon. Buy it on Amazon and other leading booksellers.

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