Barbary Shore

by Norman Mailer

  “He’s absolutely right,” Lannie exclaimed. “But then he isn’t. I mean …” she finished lamely, jerkily, the outburst of her private thought amputated as she heard her voice. And flushing at her inability to express what she would say, she continued to stare at her hands, and in a morose energy pulled cuticle from her nail.

  McLeod smiled wanly.

  “Have you got a cigarette?” he asked. “It seems I’m out of them.”

  “I’d be delighted,” Hollingsworth said, furnishing tobacco and flame in what was almost a single gesture.

  “Would you call yourself a realist?” McLeod asked almost dreamily.

  “That’s the word a fellow would employ for me.”

  “Then, philosophically speaking, you believe in a real world.”

  “More words,” Hollingsworth sighed. “I’ll say yes.”

  “A world which exists separately from ourselves.”

  “Oh, yes, that was what I wanted to say.”

  “You didn’t,” McLeod told him. “I want to point out to you that no one may be disqualified from coming close to a knowledge of the relations of such a world. One’s psychological warp, upon which you harp so greedily, may be precisely the peculiar lens necessary to see those relations most clearly.”

  “You’re trying to confuse me,” Hollingsworth said.

  McLeod was silent for almost a minute, and as if the brief foray had encouraged him by its success, he looked up at last with a grin. “I would like to make a speech in my defense.”

  “No.” Hollingsworth almost stood up. “We’ve gotten nowhere today, and none of the practical issues have been decided. You don’t need a speech.”

  “I insist upon my right.”

  “First you must fulfill conditions.”

  The muscle quivering, the eye blinking, McLeod held up his hand and watched it tremble independently of himself. “I am prepared to,” he said. “But I want to know whether it goes to you directly or to your organization?”

  “I haven’t made up my mind,” Hollingsworth said, “but that shouldn’t affect you. You have to be willing to concede either way, or no speech.”

  “Either way,” McLeod said with a shrug. “May I proceed?”

  Hollingsworth nodded.

  “You know,” McLeod said, “there was a time when I thought the last speech I might make would begin in quite another way. Once, I even composed it. ‘Citizen comrades,’ I began, ‘there seems small justification possible that a renegade like myself, a wrecking dog of the lowest litter should even open his mouth.’ ” McLeod’s mouth opened in a soundless laugh.

  “One of the small benefits I can permit myself is to spend no time apologizing for my past. It is what it is, and in the time permitted me here, I should prefer to indulge in the only meaningful defense, to transmit the intellectual conclusions of my life, and thus give dignity to my experience. I shall not treat the past as personal history, and I will attempt to delineate what I believe to be the future, for it is only as ideas are transmitted to someone else that they attain existence.”

  Hollingsworth interrupted him. “You talk like a fellow who doesn’t think he’s going to live long.”

  “You misunderstand. I speak metaphorically.”

  “All I care about is that you concede,” Hollingsworth said sullenly.

  “I told you I would. Now, may I go ahead?”

  “Who are you making this speech for?” Hollingsworth asked peevishly. “Me? Miss Madison?” His eyes met mine, and he shrugged. “Well, if you think it’s worth your waste of time, go right ahead, but I don’t hold the high opinion of your friend that you seem to.” He looked away and tapped his fingers. “Go ahead, make your speech,” he said in what was almost a womanish voice.

  TWENTY-NINE

  “MAY I begin,” McLeod asked rhetorically, “by discussing the argument of the sophisticated apologist? When I discover myself in a mood of assessment, I’m often struck by the number of brothers I once had, and how different are the roads we’ve taken. Yet of them all, the apologist is the only one who flourishes today. You might even say he has a vogue.

  “This gentleman admits everything. He will agree that state capitalism is not to be confused with socialism; he will even grant, although his language will differ, that the new society is not without privilege. But, look, McLeod, he is always in a rush to tell me, it is time to take an accounting. And he will shake his head wisely. The revolution has failed to come. The proletariat has never gained political consciousness in sufficient degree. It is very doubtful they ever will. What is important, says the apologist, is that civilization be saved and human life not cease. The problem of our generation is not to make a revolution, nor is it to bewail standardization, militarization, and all the trends which you and I have found distasteful. We must agree, if we are historians, that equality has not existed since primitive man, and freedom has occurred only in the context of wealth and leisure. Probably that is the only way it may ever appear. It is a luxury, and equality is a dream. What we must accept today is, precisely, standardization, even the temporary abdication of the best in human potentiality. Periods like ours will pass. The problem for today is to end the crippling conflicts of the economic system. You see, McLeod, my mythical brother is always declaiming, you have never understood anything at all. Your problems are not the problems of the world. Bellies must be fed in Africa and for that production must follow a world plan. We have overestimated human nature. It is impossible for such a plan to provide the equality of socialism, but what matter? It’s the mass who must be fed and in an orderly fashion or the world is destroyed. Our problem is not to end exploitation but to resolve contradictions in the economic structure. Indeed, we may have been wrong all the time, and the bourgeoisie have been right. Man is only capable of founding societies based on privilege and inequality.

  “As I have said,” McLeod went on, “the apologist admits everything. It is true, he tells me, there may be a war, but it is also true it may be avoided. You cannot know, McLeod. History is unpredictable. How can you say that war must come definitely? But even if it should come, there is no reason to suppose that everything is lost. We find moderation in everything, even in war, and after all, no matter what the cost, no matter how severe, one side finally will win and will control the world. Permanent peace will then be possible. The winners will administer the spoils of exploitation in a rational manner. Why shouldn’t they? All the contradictions will have been resolved.”

  Hollingsworth seemed interested. “You know, if you don’t mind my saying so,” he interrupted, “I think that’s been very well put. I’m not a political fellow, although I’ve always considered myself sort of liberal, but it’s often occurred to me, if I think on those lines, that it’s real democracy if you can make the stupid people happy, cause if you’re not stupid you’re never happy anyway. Now, I know you’d say,” he murmured as McLeod began to frown, “that the stupid can’t be happy because they’re, if I may use your word, swindled, but it seems to me that people don’t mind being swindled if only they’re told the opposite. It’s when you tell them they’re being swindled that they can’t stand it.” Hollingsworth giggled. “You know, I’ve been talking too much.” A quick look at his watch. “I wonder if your remarks could be more brief?”

  McLeod looked at Hollingsworth almost without recognition. His eyes knitted together to form a vertical line between, and with a sigh, as though to hew to the line of the argument were even more demanding upon himself than upon us, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a pack of small papers upon which he had scribbled some notes.

  “The plausibility of the apologist’s argument depends upon a logic which is as attractive as it is superficial. Everything he said was complete nonsense.” This was worth a pause. “It may be noted that the apologist was an abstract conception. In life, since he claims to be a realist, he finds himself inevitably espousing the cause of one side or the other. He can hardly argue for both. Need I add that he hopes the bloc for
which he pleads will win in the war which is to come. And if one asks him what will happen if the other side wins, he will answer: disaster, complete disaster. So, by adding two separate halves of the truth, one arrives at the conclusion.”

  For the first time McLeod’s voice showed some animation. He remained still seated formally in his chair, hands before him on the table to examine the notes, his spectacles set resolutely upon his nose, but in completing the introduction he seemed to have purged his fatigue. “I need hardly depend, however, upon such legerdemain. I prefer to answer more fully. My political formulations are based on the thesis that war is inevitable, and I think it is reasonable to assert that if either of the two powers is unable to solve its economic problems without going to war, it must follow that war will come. But what if both of the Colossi suffer such contradictions? A fortiori, the inevitability of war receives its double guarantee.

  “Proper analysis must be virtually exhaustive. I have been reminded that my time is not without limit and so I will confine my remarks to assertions. The situation of the bloc which may be called ‘monopoly capitalism’ is critical.” McLeod went on to repeat what I had already analyzed for myself. The productive capacity of monopoly had become so tremendous, its investment in machinery so great in comparison to the labor force it could exploit, that only the opening of the entire world market could solve its search for investment and profit even temporarily. “Those backward areas of the globe so necessary to monopoly cannot be lost,” McLeod droned. “Without them, monopoly cannot continue its operations on an adequate scale, without them there is no choice but to engage in the production of armaments or to suffer economic collapse. Yet those same backward regions, finding their own development to capitalism blocked by monopoly, whose interest it is to keep them retarded, are obliged to move at one historic bound from feudalism to state capitalism. Thus, half the world is now closed to monopoly, and the other half, still nominally in its possession, has moved a long way on the road to nationalization.

  “The crisis of the major state capitalist power is even graver. Upon the mountains of rhetoric which have been deposited, it is not my intention to add more than a stone. I wish merely to underline the notion that socialism does not come about by an act of will. It should be axiomatic that, where conditions do not exist which make it possible to raise the standard of living, a socialist revolution can only degenerate into its opposite, and when the events of 1917 failed to induce similar proletarian uprisings in the countries of the West, the revolution was doomed. Surrounded by enemies, forced into the herculean labor of raising production by the bootstrap, all possibility for socialism was lost in the necessity for survival. The portion of the economy devoted to goods and services for the mass of people had to be limited. The more production which went into the creation of the tools, elements, and articles making possible further production, the less could be provided for human consumption. Such a project of expanding one’s industrial capacity has potential enrichment only if it is not necessary to continue it too long. For, mark you, the results. If benefits do not follow deprivation, the proletariat diminishes its rate of productivity. A man is capable of participating efficiently in the modern industrial process, with all its demands for skill, intelligence, and intense labor, only if there is a reward possible, to wit an adequate scale of living and the promise of an improved future. Deprived of the minimum of comfort and hope, workmanship must degenerate. Little balm for the laborer if factories swallow the earth, when they fail to provide him with creature comfort, and less balm for the bureaucrat when the failure to produce what is socially possible becomes increasingly more serious.

  “Do you find this hard to follow, Leroy?” McLeod interjected suddenly. Hollingsworth answered by yawning in his face.

  “Witness the problem the bureaucrats of state capitalism must face. If they are to retain their power and privilege, there is a limit beyond which they cannot depress the standard of living or they are left only with slave labor and the complete deterioration of their economy. Yet the working class can be neither coerced nor driven to begin to match the productivity of monopoly. Their morale is too low. Only the adrenalin of the last war with the incentive to fight against a foreign invader could solve that problem temporarily. Therefore, no matter how they suffered in that war, no matter how the mass may want peace, peace is impossible.

  “The inescapable corollary is that state capitalism as a social organism has lost hope in its own ability to improve productivity. It must now depend upon seizing new countries, stripping them of their wealth, and converting their economy to war. In short, plunder. Alas for the project, this plunder is a flask which contains no bottom. The wealth newly acquired must be immediately converted into armament, the living standard fails to rise, and the process must be repeated. Thus, each bloc from its own necessity to survive prepares for war. The process is irreversible.

  “It is a war fought by two different exploitative systems, a system vigorous in the fever of death, and another monstrous in the swelling of anemia. One doesn’t predict the time precisely, but regardless of the temporary flux of military situation, it is a war which ends as a conflict between two virtually identical forms of exploitation. State capitalism occupies the historical seat. The state, the sole exploiter capable of supporting the ultra war economy and the regimentation of the proletariat, absorbs monopoly either peaceably or by a short internal conflict. There is no alternative. The historical imperative is to reduce to the minimum the production of consumer goods in order to expand the critical needs for armament. Such a change occurs against the background of military losses and military destruction. To a people who depended upon commodities as the opium which gave meaning to their lives, the last of the luxuries is inexorably wiped from the board. Problems permitting of only a single solution follow upon this in quick order. More money than goods to buy, an inflation of vast proportions can be prevented only if wages are reduced and exploitation increased. The result is a diminishment of the will to work and a drop in the velocity of industrial performance. Discontent is everywhere. The first examples of random sabotage, motivated by no more than brute exasperation, begin to multiply. The police system which had been already expanded at the moment of entering the war, when hundreds of thousands of people politically suspect had to be found and imprisoned, now receives a new levy. The police are everywhere, within the unions, in the military, at the seats of government power; they have almost reached the point where they co-exist with all of society. State profit and state surveillance, state-enforced poverty and state-endowed wealth. The bureaucrat drives his limousine and he is the only one. Poor proletariat. Cheated still another time. They are fed the turnips their masters would have them become.”

  McLeod was speaking in a mournful cadence, so slow, so spaced, so sad that emotion was betrayed by irony and he was almost mocking himself. Across the desk Hollingsworth sat in the perfect pose of boredom, one arm supporting the elbow of the other while with his free hand he picked languidly at his nose, much as if he lay upon a couch and plucked grapes from a bowl. Lannie seemed to have fallen asleep, or was she in coma? Her legs stretched out before her, breath rattled from her throat, and her eyes, pressed tightly closed, twitched with the anxiety of the hand that holds a lizard.

  “Very well,” McLeod sighed. “The process takes surprisingly little time. Nations which come late to a new organization of society seldom take as long to trace the history of their predecessors. Moreover, the character of economic production must undergo so profound a change that little will remain of the bastard civilization we now possess. Consider it carefully. For the first time in history, the intent of society will be to produce wholly for death, and men will be kept alive merely to further that aim. Through the worst excesses and inequities of every culture which has preceded us, the natural function of economy was to produce for life. Even capitalism in its search for profit assumed automatically that life and profit were compatible. Perhaps a little less life and a little mo
re profit, but nonetheless the body of man’s production served to keep him alive. In the advanced stages of state capitalism this natural function must be discarded. Hereafter the aim of society is no longer to keep its members alive, but quite the contrary, the question is how to dispose of them. With your permission”—a nod at Hollingsworth—“I should like to illustrate my remarks.”

  “Do as you wish,” Hollingsworth said sullenly.

  “The factor never to be forgotten is that the economic crisis is now permanent. If the parasitical layers of capitalism have been destroyed, they are replaced by the elephantiasis of the bureaucracy. From that moment the rate of production is never again capable of steady increase. The search begins for methods to stimulate it. State competition becomes substituted, and artificial campaigns between state corporations, accompanied by all the machinery of propaganda, make exhaustive efforts to match the requirements of armament. Piecework reappears. Such a process is narcotic. The injection must become progressively more intense, until the price for losing a competition becomes the neck of a bureaucrat. The first stage of cannibalism has been reached, and the bureaucracy finds itself obliged to dispose of the same personnel it needs so desperately. They are a class which comes to power at the very moment they are in the act of destroying themselves.”