I’ve spent a lot of time on public transport this month, without the internet. I always leave the house with a book, a Kit Kat, and an emergency bag of peanuts.
Today’s read was E B White’s Writings from The New Yorker 1927-1976, a collection of his Notes and Queries contributions.
White is one of my favourite writers and I thought I knew him well, so it came as a bit of a shock to find him quoting Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a 19th century crackpot anarchist that only Marxists of a certain age would know about, but only because the old beardy bore wrote a tedious polemic berating him for not being Marxist enough. Mostly Proudhon is viewed through the proletarian patriarchs disapproval.
White quoted this…
Liberty, like Reason, does not exist or manifest itself except by the constant disdain of its own works; it perishes as soon as it is filled with self-approval. That is why humor has always been a characteristic of philosophical and liberal genius, the seal of the human spirit, the irresistible instrument of progress. Stagnant peoples are always solemn peoples: the man of a people that laughs is a thousand times closer to reason and liberty than the anchorite who prays or the philosopher who argues.
Humour – true Liberty! – it is you who deliver me from ambition for power, from servitude to party, from respect for routine, from the pedantry of science, from admiration for celebrities, from the mystifications of politics, from the fanaticism of the reformers, from fear of this great universe, and from self-admiration.
Come, sovereign, turn a ray of your light on my fellow citizens, kindle in their soul a spark of your spirit, so that my confession may reconcile them to each other and so that this inevitable revolution may come about with serenity and joy.
I have to admit I haven’t read a word of Marx in years but this made me want to read some more Proudhon. He’d get my vote. Not that he’d want it.
Here’s to serenity and joy and the humorous revolution.