Reactions and Reactionaries-Part Three

From December 2017, updated for 2026.

There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.

--V.I. Lenin

Although H.P. Lovecraft was a materialist, his reach, especially in his own lifetime, was fairly limited. For example, he never had a hardbound book or collection published while he was alive. (He's lucky--maybe--to have had August Derleth as a friend and admirer, otherwise he might have been forgotten.) On the other hand, two of the most well-known and influential fantasies of the twentieth century, the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien and the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, were by distinctly Christian writers. Both men were also of course conservative, especially in the original, non-political or anti-political sense of the word.

If I had to summarize the difference between the Conservative and the Progressive, it might be that the former understands that we as human beings are fallen in our nature, while the latter believes that we and our society are perfectible. Whether you throw in religion, especially Judaism or Christianity, or not, conservatives tend to believe in the infinite, the eternal, and the absolute. Progressives, on the other hand, tend to believe in the relative, the arbitrary, the conditional, what they call "complex" or "nuanced" views of things. They see gray areas where conservatives tend to see only black and white. I have dated the first proliferation of genres to 1919 when the first specialized pulp magazines arrived on the newsstand. Well, British historian Paul Johnson dated the advent of the twentieth century and its moral relativism to 1919 when the Eddington experiment confirmed Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. Another convergence--or a leaping-off point.

In the quote I used to close a previous entry in this series, Steph Swainston stated her non-belief in evil. Here is a long quote from an interview with China Miéville from The Believer #23, dated April 1, 2005, link here:

Pinochet is very likely to die in his bed surrounded by a grieving family. That's not fair. [Can you hear the whining?] Pinochet should be held to account. Kissinger should not be able to eat pâté de foie gras. You know, the worst thing that seems to have happened to Kissinger in the last few years is that his travel plans have become a little bit more complicated because he's worried about being tried, but the fact is he's likely to die in his bed. This is not a fair, moral world. [More whining.] Sometimes the guilty do get punished and the good do get rewarded, and that's fantastic and I'm always delighted when that happens, but I do want to try to make Bas Lag as socially realistic a world as I can and as morally realistic a world as I can. And the fact that I reject abstract morality doesn't mean that I'm immoral or amoral--I feel very moral--but it means that the morality is concrete and is related to politics rather than being a kind of schema that you slap on top of the world and then judge the world according to. I should say that I feel there is a danger in all this, in that I think there is sometimes a cheap gravitas to be accrued by being cruel to your characters. That there is a certain tendency in some kinds of fiction to say, "Look, I haven't rewarded the good and I haven't punished the bad. This must be gritty, realistic hard fiction." In fact, it can degenerate into a kind of aesthetic sadism. I am mindful that there is a line to be walked between really, really pat and fairytale and trite, and being sadistic and willfully unpleasant to your characters, and I don't want to get into a position of being spiteful to the characters just to appear to be unflinching. [Boldface added.]

Let's give the author credit for the sentiments he expressed in the last part of that quote. Now let's have another look at the first part:

And the fact that I reject abstract morality doesn't mean that I'm immoral or amoral--I feel very moral--but it means that the morality is concrete and is related to politics rather than being a kind of schema that you slap on top of the world and then judge the world according to. [Emphasis added.]

Morality is concrete and is related to politics. I take that to mean that, in Mr. Miéville's view, morality is relative rather than absolute because what is moral and what is not moral is decided not by God, nor by resorting to anything infinite, eternal, or absolute, but by individual human beings, who are by nature--whether he realizes it or not--weak, frail, imperfect, contingent, trapped in time, and sure to die. These people doing the deciding are actors in politics, the politically powerful, ultimately, I suppose, the State. I take it also to mean that morality, being concrete, is material and based on material ends or outcomes rather than on anything abstract or non-material. Is China Miéville being merely coy here? I don't know. There was no pussyfooting by V.I. Lenin, though. On the same topic, he said, "There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience."

Speaking of the founder of Bolshevism, Lenin died in bed. Is that fair or moral by China Miéville's standards? In the one hundred and nine years since Lenin and his followers seized power, tens of millions of people--perhaps 100 million or more--have perished under the system he created. Countless millions more have been imprisoned, tortured, enslaved, exiled, or otherwise tormented or made to suffer in one way or another under that same system. Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, the Khmer Rouge, and others under varying brands of communism and socialism have started and waged wars of extraordinary cruelty. (Two points: First, when it comes to developing brandnames, Marxists are as prolific as capitalists. Second, the surname Marx refers to Mars, god of war, and the Communist's flag is the color of blood and fire.) What of that? Why should Henry Kissinger be an especial focus for China Miéville's ire? Does he turn a blind eye to the sins and depredations of his co-religionists? If so, why? What moral system is it exactly that allows for such a thing?

Further questions: Why is the focus of the Leftist always on the ideological opposition? Why is Henry Kissinger a villain but V.I. Lenin is not? Why is it fair that one should die in bed but not the other? In this age of critical theory, we know the answer: it is because criticism against the opposition must be forever fierce and relentless. We on the near side of critical theory are absolved of our sins. You over there must forever be condemned. Remember that critical theory is a product of the Frankfurt School and an extension of Marxism. Although it came from Europe (It Came from Europe--sounds like a monster movie from the 1950s), critical theory developed in this country during the 1960s, the same decade during which academics began looking at and evaluating American popular culture of previous eras, including the pulp fiction-era. Critical theory is now rampant in academia, as is the study and exploitation of popular culture for political and propagandistic ends.

Still more questions: Why should China Miéville as a Marxist author write fantasies about anything that is non-material in its nature or being? Is it because he understands the limits of materialism and would rather not work within the constraints imposed by his own belief system? Or is it because he is secretly (or not so secretly) something more than a mere materialist? Put another way, why does any author who claims to be a materialist write anything other than science fiction of the strictest and most materialistic kind? Maybe Mr. Miéville isn't so strict in his views after all. Maybe he can allow for the non-material to operate in his works. (I assume here that there are non-material things in his works.) Then again, maybe he's up to something else: maybe he and certain other writers of the so-called "New Weird" are (or were) trying to expand materialism, atheism, and Marxism into genres where they had previously gained little traction. Maybe that is what was "new" about "the New Weird": a weird fiction--or more broadly, a literature of fantasy--previously dominated by conservatives, non-materialists, even Christians, now taken over by the political opposition. Maybe "the New Weird" and related movements and trends are the train carrying the revolutionary across an old and war-torn land, its final stop, the frontier and the Finland Station.

An anti-commie cover of the men's magazine For Men Only, published in May and perfect for May. Year and cover artist unknown. I don't know about you, but I think being an anti-commie is way more fun than being a commie. 

Original text copyright 2017, 2026 Terence E. Hanley