Writing Radical Fiction Part 1

(Theme) (DOWNLOAD FULL SHOW)

Welcome to Back in the USSR, comrades and friends, this is Siegfried and thank you for joining me here on CFRU, so very late on this Monday evening.  This episode of the show is going to be a little different.  Last week, in my first show in this new time slot (11 PM Monday nights), I talked about Marxism-Leninism, self-determination and how essential it is for anyone who calls themselves a socialist or communist to stand in solidarity with the anti-colonial struggles of indigenous people – whether in the struggle against the Muskrat Falls dam project here in Canada, which threatens to destroy an entire way of life, or against the Mauna Kea super-telescope in Hawaii or anywhere in the world – and how struggles for self-determination intersect with struggles around the environment and with class struggle itself.  Communists and socialists fight against capitalism, colonialism and imperialism, the forces that oppress and exploit working class and downtrodden peoples the world over, and standing with indigenous people defending their ancestral lands from colonial takeover and capitalist plunder is a massive part of that, especially in a settler-colonial country like Canada where genocide is an ongoing reality.  We stand against the same enemies all over the world and are ultimately part of the same global struggle for liberation.

Now, that understanding of the world forms a major part of who I am, otherwise I wouldn’t be here doing this show.  And naturally it’s going to affect the different aspects of my life: the people I associate with, the organizations I’m part of, the interests I have, the books I read, and especially what I choose to write.  I am a writer.  I am currently working on my first novel and, although it may come as a surprise to some of you, that novel is dark fantasy and I write mainly within the fantasy genre.  The reason that might come as a surprise is because the broad categories of revolutionary and fantasy nerd have been rarely known to mix.  But, nevertheless, I’m living proof that it can and does happen.

Another reason why people might be surprised that a guy like me would write fantasy is that fantasy has traditionally been a very conservative genre.  It effectively originated in the European fairy tales and romantic fiction of the early 19^th Century which explicitly rejected the societal upheaval of the Industrial Revolution and painted an idealized, pastoral picture of a pre-modern medieval world in which everyone was happy, everyone knew their place, kings and queens were benevolent, the lines between good and evil were clearly defined and everything was, in a word, “simpler”.  Does any of that sound familiar? Right-wing political rhetoric has remained remarkably consistent in many ways over the past few hundred years.  Of course there’s no room in J.R.R. Tolkien, or C.S. Lewis, or Lord Dunsany, or Arthur Machin for the downtrodden peasant, or the exploited worker, or the slave fighting for freedom, or the colonized person fighting for liberation, or the woman fighting for control of her own body, or anyone who is gay, queer, lesbian, trans etc. And frankly there’s also no room for the real history of medieval Europe in the extremely Eurocentric fantasy worlds created by these authors.  In short, fantasy emerged as a kind of right-wing literary backlash against progressive change.

Of course fantasy hasn’t stayed the same.  21^st Century fantasy is far more diverse and less confined than it was in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, but a lot of the central themes remain.  You’ll notice that Game of Thrones is not about revolutionary change or the creation of a new society in the place of a thoroughly oppressive and rotten feudal order that is tearing itself apart and threatening to take everyone down with it.  No, it’s ultimately about restoring the “rightful” rulers of Westeros, House Targaryen, to the Iron Throne in King’s Landing.  Just as in Tolkien's “The Return of the King”, the “true king” is going to come back and restore order and make everything right again.  A very conservative message, even if Dany Targaryen, “the mother of dragons”, is a woman, unlike Aragorn.  Even when progressive writers, who really want to push the envelope, write fantasy they can fall into a similar pattern.  I mean Ursula La Guin’s Earthsea trilogy, even though she does things like make the main inhabitants of her world black and tries to move away from certain Eurocentric themes, is ultimately about the restoration of a monarchy through the efforts of the exceptional young wizard, Ged.

This conservative theme of restoration and the idealization of feudalism, which to give George R.R. Martin credit he does at least expose some of feudalism’s brutalities, is what the British fantasy-writer Michael Moorcock challenged in the 1960s, identifying it with Tory-style politics.  Of course Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were British Tories as well as hardcore Christians, and, like Lord Dunsany before them, were supporters of the British Empire.  But Moorcock’s response to this, and authors like Neil Gaiman have largely followed his lead on this, was existential experience rather than class struggle.  His fantasy worlds are far more morally ambiguous, his heroes are more dynamic and they’re more like social critics as they move through the flawed, imperfect and even horrific societies they inhabit, which includes the UK under Margaret Thatcher by the way.  But, while Moorcock isn’t interested in restoration or indulging in conservative fantasies about an idealized past that never was, he also doesn’t allow room for radical change.  I’ve read quite a lot of his work recently, especially his short stories, and they’re all about the experience of a central character.  There’s no collective action, no mobilization of oppressed people to change their circumstances, the people don’t organize to fight back against elites and exploiters.  The stories are all very individualistic and personal.  And that to me is the notable characteristic of fantasy writers that have challenged the dominant narrative in the genre, they challenge the conservative grand narratives about “the return of the king”, not by building new narratives but by retreating into individual personal experience.  That’s not enough.  And I think this clip from the beginning of Michael Parenti’s talk “Rambo and the Swarthy Hordes” about Hollywood propaganda is enough to explain why Moorcock’s position is inadequate:

Michael Parenti – “Rambo and the Swarthy Hordes”

Everything Michael Parenti talks about there is present in the literary world as well, and needs to be challenged just as forcefully.  I grew up on Tolkien, “The Hobbit”, “The Lord of the Rings”, even “The Silmarillion”.  I even have a copy of “The Atlas of Middle Earth”.  I was into fantasy long before I became a communist.  But now that I am a communist and a budding fantasy writer, I had to decide what my approach would be to this traditionally conservative literary genre.  How to I deal with the conventions of the genre while remaining true to myself and the socialist ideological and moral framework that I’ve committed myself to? It was something I really had think hard about, even before I started writing my current novel back in 2016.  I ended up taking a lot of inspiration from the German communist poet and playwright, Bertolt Brecht and came to understand that a lot of his ideas about plays could be applied to writing fantasy – albeit in different ways.  I ended up writing an essay to myself, entitled “Take the Fight to Them”, in an effort to clarify my position on being a radical fantasy writer and what that means.

It starts out with a quote from George Habash, the founder of the Marxist-Leninist organization The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which has long struggled for the self-determination of the Palestinian people against the settler-colonial state of Israel.

“In today’s world no one is innocent, no one a neutral. A man is either with the oppressed or he is with the oppressors. He who takes no interest in politics gives his blessing to the prevailing order, that of the ruling classes and exploiting forces.”

This, in a nutshell, is the approach I take to writing fantasy novels.  Even in the most gaudy fantasy world or far-future society, dialectics remain and the battle between exploiters and exploited continues.  Fantasy must not be about escapism.  No small imaginary world or idealistic mental playground can protect you from the reality of class struggle, and the philosophy of “Take the fight to them” aims to demolish all of these escapist cul-de-sacs fostered by advanced capitalism in this digital age of endless diversions and neverending barrages of propaganda.  Literature should inspire people to confront harsh and oppressive realities together rather than retreat from them alone.  Only in this way can the crippling atomization of life under advanced capitalism be overcome and solidarity and collective empowerment constructed upon strong foundations that the capitalist state cannot destroy.  Therefore the class struggle must be brought into every medium of expression, every venue, every genre of literature, music, film, theatre, even video games.  The audience must be linked with real world struggles and not cut off from them, and this was and remains central to the radical literary theory of “Alienation” developed by Bertolt Brecht.

Brecht did not seek to immerse his audience in make-believe.  He wanted them to see the bigger picture and the real issues at play without being side-tracked by the plot or fixated on the problems of individual characters.  The focus was on the systemic issues and structures which ruled the character’s worlds and shaped their every action. 

This alienation, the distancing of the audience from the world of the characters so as to allow for critical thought and analysis about real world issues, works perfectly with the themes of science-fiction and fantasy.  Fantasy in particular is ideal because the setting is so far removed from the world as we know it that the audience is capable of opening its mind to ideas that it might otherwise resist and to embrace a deeper point and message.  The readers of fantasy are distanced from what is going on in the story, they are not immersed in it that environment in their daily lives, so therefore it becomes possible to make statements about the real world, contemporary politics and contemporary conflicts and struggle that are much more subversive, provocative and powerful than if they are made directly through political literature or some other medium of non-fiction.

The rampant escapism and illusion that we see in the environment of late capitalist society can only be combated by a continuous infusion of reality into fantasy; smashing the barriers that the escapist tries to erect around them like a battering ram against a castle gate.  Reality is radical amid this sea of lies and must be relentless enough to smash through all attempts to block it out.  It follows that even the most outlandish science-fiction and fantasy visions must take a strong political stance about events and issues in the real world if they are to have any purpose and value beyond serving as safety valves for the status quo.

In these genres, radical realism expresses itself through satire; boldly turning convention on its head.  A traditional fantasy writer glorifies the monarch and the aristocrat and encourages the proletarian to dream riding alongside these gallant highborn heroes or fantasize about standing in their finely-made riding boots knowing their power, glory, and adventure, all of which contrasts so grandly with their mundane lives and struggles.  The radical realist shatters these illusions by again and again exposing these feudal potentates for the monsters that they are, along with their brutal contempt for the common people that they live off like parasites.  The radical realist does not allow the proletarian to dream of anything but his or her own emancipation as a proletarian, along with the true heroism that is inherent in that struggle for liberation and in those who fight to see it realized.  It is proletarian literature with proletarian heroes, who, though low-born, are more heroic and far more interesting than the grandest prince, king, or emperor.

Brecht himself was a master satirist of the capitalist society in which he lived, along with its literature.  In his famous anti-war play “Mother Courage and her Children”, he makes the point that if ordinary people can only get by and survive through extraordinary virtues, it means that something is wrong with how society is organized and with the forces and people that control it.  This is very familiar to us who live under the rubric of late capitalism in the dying embers of the post-war boom: if you have to go crazy marketing yourself, presenting yourself, selling yourself, being a “go getter” and a “hustler”, and displaying tremendous amounts of entrepreneurial talent just to get a steady job that pays the bills and provides for your family than there is a serious problem with society.  In the context of 21st Century late capitalism, ordinary is no longer enough, revealing a social order that is rotten to the core.

It follows that the criticism that Brecht would no doubt make of a series like Game of Thrones is that it draws the reader to become emotionally attached to and invested in the fates of specific aristocratic characters that are competing for power or struggling to survive the power struggle they are caught up in as unwilling participants.  Readers are encouraged to lose themselves in the vividly developed characters rather than critically examining and questioning the socio-political parameters of the world of Westeros as defined in deeply conservative terms by George R.R. Martin.  Readers are ruled by their emotions and driven by their sub-conscious, immersing themselves in the story rather than standing back and critically analyzing its implications.  Thus they do not ask questions like why do the ordinary people of Westeros put up with the aristocratic feuds that are destroying their livelihoods and tearing their land apart? Why do they tolerate this parasitical feudal order which is so clearly built upon exploitation and abuse? Why do the “low-born” not rise up and become active agents of their own destiny? Why are there no peasant revolts, urban uprisings or township rebellions (common features of feudal societies the world over)?

George R.R. Martin’s decision to keep the common people in his novels passive and atomized almost reminds me of Margaret Thatcher’s statement that there is “no such thing as society, there are only individuals and their families”.  Indeed, much of Game of Thrones reads almost like a celebrity gossip column in essence: who is sleeping with who, and who is so and so’s child.  I am not surprised that modern day consumers of Hollywood/celebrity/royal soap operas and tabloids find George R.R. Martin’s work to very juicy indeed.  It is a grotesque caricature, and yet another feature that firmly places Martin in the literary landscape of late capitalism, where reality is distorted beyond recognition in service of the profit motive.  The common people in his stories are effectively at the mercy of the aristocrats and are given no agency or collective interests at all.  Historical examples of the common people taking their destiny into their own hands, such as the English Peasants’ Revolt, the Hussite Rebellion, the German Peasants War, and similar popular uprisings by the “lower orders” have no place in the world of Westeros, where non-aristocrats are quite openly reduced to the status of pawns and onlookers.  This is hardly a progressive literary vision, and yet Martin’s working class readers have not yet learned to ask questions. 

But as the 21st Century marches on, even the most escapist members of the working class are discovering that they have nowhere to run.  In this age of austerity, war and environmental catastrophe, it is clear that they must fight against their oppressors and exploiters.  Not only must they fight, they must know what it means to fight.  This is where mainstream literature has failed the proletarian.  Fantasy in particular has blinded them to reality with regard to the nature of struggle, the nature of sacrifice, the nature of heroism, the nature of victory, and, above all, the true nature of good and evil. 

To draw upon the popular example of Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, if the evil forces of Middle Earth are so dangerous, if Sauron is so dangerous, if Smaug is so dangerous, and if the forces of good and righteousness are truly beset from all sides and facing destruction, than how is it that Tolkien’s heroes can hack their way through legions of Orcs, Goblins, Easterlings, Southrons, Dunlendings, and Nazgul, often without taking a single casualty? There is no historical example, from the Palestinian liberation struggle to the Cuban Revolution to Spartacus’s slave rebellion, to say nothing of the Soviet Union’s exceptionally bloody and heroic struggle against fascism, of a besieged people challenging a mighty and evil empire without paying the cost in blood.  In the real world heroes die and good guys bleed.  Evil is never defeated without the ability to sacrifice and the willingness to suffer, take casualties, and accept death. 

Hollywood, like most bourgeois cultural institutions, teaches people that it is possible for “chosen people” to win without cost and to enjoy the fruits of victory without suffering.  Thus it stands in total defiance of reality.  In fact that’s the whole point of all these superhero movies.

Real suffering and real victories are to be found in the USSR’s life and death struggle against Hitler’s legions between 1941 and 1945.  Real heroes are people like the female Soviet bomber pilot Yevgenia Zhigulenko, who flew 968 low-level night bombing missions against Nazi troops in World War II, sometimes operating 10-15 sorties per night in an open-cockpit light bomber aircraft, and was twice shot down.   Such true heroes are far more real than Tolkien’s literary and movie portrayals of Aragorn, who can wade through all the dangers of The Lord of the Rings without suffering so much as a scratch.  True heroes are not “chosen ones”, but ordinary people responding, with all their fears and imperfections, to extraordinary circumstances.

It is therefore vital that working class and oppressed people see themselves in science fiction and fantasy literature.  And for this literature to show them that real victories can be won no matter how hard the struggle might be.  Nor is it enough for this literature to criticize and satirize the status quo.  This literature must always involve the struggle for power and the seizure of power by working class and oppressed people.  As such it must include a strong sense of historical memory on the part of the oppressed; a repressed yet still burning desire for vengeance against their oppressors on behalf of present and past generations, in addition to a yearning for redemption on the part of future generations.  Self-determination and the struggle for self-determination must underpin everything.  And anyone who would write this literature must have respect for the real world struggles of those resisting capitalism, colonialism and empire.  Anything less, as George Habash rightly pointed out, would be submission to the forces of exploitation and oppression tearing the world apart.  Reality is radical.  Reality is struggle.  And this must permeate any world that an author would create, along with the hard-fought victories that can and must be won in the name of the just and livable future that we all strive for as progressive-minded people.  Writing is never non-political.

Dropkick Murphys – “Worker's Song”

Thank you for listening to Back in the USSR, brothers and sisters.  That was Truth Is, one of my favorite spoken word poets of all time, capturing a lot of the themes I’ve been talking about tonight in that wonderful poem entitled “Alone”.  This is the first of two episodes where I’ll be discussing radical fiction.  Next week I’ll focus a little more on my own writing and experience with my own work, while continuing to expand on this discussion.  Take care, comrades and friends and I hope you’ll join me this time next week for more.