Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

Three evenings a week Freddi and Rahel went to the school which they helped to support. Freddi taught a class in the history of economic theory and Rahel taught one in singing, both subjects important for German workers. Lanny went along more than once, and when the students old and young discovered that he lived in France and had helped with a school there, they wanted to hear about conditions in that country and what the workers were thinking and doing. Discussions arose, and Lanny discovered that the disciplined and orderly working people of Germany were not so different from the independent and free-spoken bunch in the Midi. The same problems vexed them, the same splits turned every discussion into a miniature war.

Could the workers "take over" by peaceable processes? You could tell the answer by the very words in which the speaker put the question. If he said "by parliamentary action," he was some sort of Socialist; if he said "by electing politicians," he was some sort of Communist. The former had the prestige of the greatest party of the Fatherland behind him, and quoted Marx, Bebel, and Kautsky. His opponent in the controversy took the Soviet Union for his model, and quoted Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. Between the two extremes were those who followed the recently exiled Trotsky, or the martyred Karl Liebknecht and "Red Rosa" Luxemburg. There were various "splinter groups" that Lanny hadn’t heard of; indeed, it appeared that the nearer the rebel workers came to danger, the more they fought among themselves. Lanny compared them to people on a sinking ship trying to throw one another overboard.

At the school the "Sozis" were in a majority; and Lanny would explain to them his amiable idea that all groups ought to unite against the threat of National Socialism. Since he was a stranger, and Freddi’s brother-in-law, they would be patient and explain that nobody could co-operate with the Communists, because they wouldn’t let you. Nobody talked more about co-operating than the Communists, but when you tried it you found that what they meant was undermining your organization and poisoning the minds of your followers, the process known as "boring from within." Any Socialist you talked to was ready with a score of illustrations— and also with citations from Lenin, to prove that it was no accident, but a policy.

Members of the Social-Democratic party went even further; they charged that the Communists were co-operating with the Nazis against the coalition government in which the Social-Democrats were participating. That too was a policy; the Bolsheviks believed in making chaos, because they hoped to profit from it; chaos had given them their chance to seize power in Russia, and the fact that it hadn’t in Italy did not cause them to revise the theory. It was easy for them to co-operate with Nazis, because both believed in force, in dictatorship; the one great danger that the friends of peaceful change confronted was a deal, more or less open, between the second and third largest parties of Germany. To Lanny that seemed a sort of nightmare—not the idea that it might happen, but the fact that the Socialists should have got themselves into such a state of hatred of another working-class party that they were willing to believe such a deal might be made. Once more he had to sink back into the role of listener, keep his thoughts to himself, and not tell Hansi and Bess what the friends of Freddi and Rahel were teaching in their school.

Once a week the institution gave a reception; the' Left intellectuals came, and drank coffee and ate great quantities of Leberivurst and Schweizerkase sandwiches, and discussed the policies of the school and the events of the time. Then indeed the forces of chaos and old night were released. Lanny decided that every Berlin intellectual was a new political party, and every two Berlin intellectuals were a political conflict. Some of them wore long hair because it looked picturesque, and others because they didn’t own a pair of scissors. Some came because they wanted an audience, and others because it was a chance to get a meal. But whatever their reason, nothing could keep them quiet, and nothing could get them to agree. Lanny had always thought that loud voices and vehement gestures marked the Latin races, but now he decided that it wasn’t a matter of race at all, but of economic determinism. The nearer a country came to a crisis, the more noise its intellectuals made in drawing-rooms!

Lanny made the mistake of taking his wife to one of these gatherings, and she didn’t enjoy it. In the first place, most of the arguing was done in German, which is rarely a very pleasant-sounding language unless it has been written by Heine; it appears to the outsider to involve a great deal of coughing, spitting, and rumbling in the back of the throat. Of course there were many who were able to speak English of a sort, and were willing to try it on Lanny’s wife; but they wished to talk about personalities, events, and doctrines which were for the most part strange to her. Irma’s great forte in social life was serenity, and somehow this wasn’t the place to show it off.

She commented on this to her husband, who said: "You must understand that most of these people are having a hard time keeping alive. Many of them don’t get enough to eat, and that is disturbing to one’s peace of mind."

He went on to explain what was called the "intellectual proletariat": a mass of persons who had acquired education at heavy cost of both mind and body, but who now found no market for what they had to offer to the world. They made a rather miserable livelihood by hack-writing, or teaching—whatever odd jobs they could pick up. Naturally they were discontented, and felt themselves in sympathy with the dispossessed workers.

"But why don’t they go and get regular jobs, Lanny?"

"What sort of jobs, dear? Digging ditches, or clerking in a store, or waiting on table?"

"Anything, I should think, so long as they can earn an honest living."

"Many of them have to do it, but it’s not so easy as it sounds.

There are four million unemployed in Germany right now, and a job usually goes to somebody who has been trained for that kind of work."

Thus patiently Lanny would explain matters, as if to a child. The trouble was, he had to explain it many times, for Irma appeared reluctant to believe it. He was trying to persuade her that the time was cruelly out of joint, whereas she had been brought up to believe that everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. If people didn’t get jobs and keep them, it must be because there was something wrong with those people; they didn’t really want to work; they wanted to criticize and sneer at others who had been successful, who had worked hard, as Irma’s father had done. He had left her secure. Who could blame her for wanting to stay that way, and resenting people who pulled her about, clamored in her ears, upset her mind with arguments?

It wasn’t that she was hard of heart, not at all. Some pitiful beggar would come up to her on the street, and tears would start into her eyes, and she would want to give him the contents of her well-filled purse. But that was charity, and she learned that Lanny’s friends all spurned this; they wanted a thing they called "justice." They required you to agree that the social system was fundamentally wrong, and that most of what Irma’s parents and teachers and friends had taught her was false. They demanded that the world be turned upside down and that they, the rebels, be put in charge of making it over. Irma decided that she didn’t trust either their capacity or their motives. She watched them, and announced her decision to her too credulous husband: "They are jealous, and want what we’ve got, and if we gave it to them they wouldn’t even say thank you!"