Christmas: Celebrating the Humbug

Abstract

There has always been a certain section amongst the Left who have been ill at ease with pleasure and enjoyment. It is almost as if poverty and pain were the essential ingredients in the fermentation of revolutionary fervour, as if, somehow, it was counterrevolutionary to laugh. Such activities that might lighten the load and make living more bearable are viewed with suspicion and more than an element of disdain. George Orwell for one, in his treatise on the working class The Road to Wigan Pier stated, ‘It is quite likely that fish-and-chips, art-silk stockings, tinned salmon, cut-price chocolate … the movies, the radio, strong tea and the Football Pools have between them averted revolution’.¹ Although I’ve never been entirely sure why strong tea should have been singled out in this way the message is clear enough. Watching ‘Eastenders’, listening to Boy George and reading Mills and Boon might well prevent you from building the barricades. They are thus consigned to the dustbin of false consciousness. Regarded as mere sops for the unaware and uninitiated they seem almost to have replaced religion as the opiate of the masses, at least in the minds of those most influenced by the Frankfurt School of aesthetics. As a consequence Socialism has become devoid of the ability to engage with those very aspects of living that people most enjoy.