I’m reading The Winter of Our Discontent by Communist author John Steinbeck. He was a Nobel Prize winner and majorly popular in the USSR. You can see bits of Marxist theory quoted inside his novels.
But here’s the funny thing that goes exactly to what I said in my previous post. The main character of the novel, Ethan Hawley, comes from a family that came to America in the times of the Mayflower. They lost all the money they made since then, though, and Ethan has to work behind the counter at a neighborhood grocery store. He works very leisurely hours but makes enough to support himself, a stay-at-home wife, and two children. He owns his house, has five suits, eats flounder for dinner, and has the equivalent of $50,000 in savings at the bank. A hired wage worker at a neighborhood store. Welcome to America of 60 years ago.
Once again, the author was a Communist who despised capitalism. And this is how he described the harsh, demanding reality of 1961 capitalism in the US.
We all know there’s been nothing but progress since 1961 but if somebody told us Ethan’s story as happening today, we’d laugh. How come, though? Where’s the progress?
The novel isn’t supposed to be funny but I’m heaving with laughter because the poor Marxist Steinbeck couldn’t have possibly anticipated that his story of a grocery store wage worker would sound like dispatches from the life of upper-middle classes a few decades later.
Clarissa's Blog 
It’s funny that he was beloved in the USSR, considering he seems to have turned on them at some point.
“Documents released by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2012 indicate that Steinbeck offered his services to the Agency in 1952, while planning a European tour, and the Director of Central Intelligence, Walter Bedell Smith, was eager to take him up on the offer.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Most of the Western supporters of the USSR changed their minds to some degree but we weren’t told about that behind the Iron Curtain. Otherwise, it would be very hard to explain why nobody supports us who is not an African dictator.
The right-wing supporters of Putin will follow the same trajectory after it gets boring to hate themselves so much.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In SA, the communists were successful, not because of any belief in Marxism, but because they formed the Leninist vanguard party of the anti-apartheid movement.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v13/n20/r.w.-johnson/the-past-and-future-of-the-south-african-communist-party
LikeLike
The joke that circulates about Steinbeck-the-commie and the USSR is that when the Grapes of Wrath was made into a movie, they showed it in the USSR because Steinbeck was such an ally… and what regular people saw in that movie was that *even poor people in America have cars*.
LikeLiked by 3 people
It’s not even a joke. We all felt that, wait, this is what dire poverty looks like in America? Erm…….
LikeLiked by 1 person
methylethyl
Nobody knew what do do then because capitalism appeared to have failed. Trade unionism was undermined by radical communists who were lying about conditions in russia. Some believed that fascism seemed to be working. Here is a quite possibly a photo of Hemmingway, Orwell, and Canadian Bethune apparently working with the Republican forces in Spain. The latter went on to die as a doctor helping the Chinese communists. Some antifascist Canadians and Americans went to fight Spain in the Mackenzie Papineau battalion and the Lincoln battalion respectively, many then fought in WW2, including Americans in the famous Second Marine Raider battalion in Guadalcanal. History is not always as advertised ;-D
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1gjrz31/til_that_george_orwell_participated_in_the/?rdt=40590
LikeLike