Paul Bryant's Reviews > The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

I figured I would never read this famous socialist novel because every other review says it’s repetitive, didactic and contrived and those are its fans talking! And it’s SIX hundred pages long. So I thought well, if I’m ever reincarnated, I’ll put it at the top of my reading list. Until then, sorry Robert. But then I saw this graphic novel version (a mere 352 pages!) and it was love at first sight – the art is really gorgeous, and proved once again that Mary Poppins was so right to say that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down in the most delightful way. In this case several pounds of sugar help gallons and gallons of medicine go down.

Five stars for the art & story editing & general spiffiness.

But only 3.5 stars for Robert Tressell’s actual story.

Even in this truncated & compressed form the characters & dialogue & painful twists of fate hammer you over the head with a pure undiluted socialist message. And then the story pauses while we listen to a ten page illustrated lecture on socialism. This is exactly what I expected but still…. Whew….




IS IT IN ANY WAY STILL RELEVANT? OF COURSE

Written round about 110 years ago some of the bosses-grinding-the-faces-of-the-poor stuff might sound a little over the top. Because one of the developments of capitalism that RT did not foresee was the increasing affluence of Western societies. When I was a tiny infant there were only about five or six cars on the street where I lived. Kids played football in the road all day long, no problem. Now the same street is jammed bumper to bumper with cars, some 4 by 4s, and no kids ever play in the street. There is no comparison between the material wealth of an ordinary English working class family in 1910 and one in 2022*. But we just need to raise our eyes to more distant horizons to find very similar ragged trousered philanthropists working 16 hour days in other countries making stuff for Western people to sell to each other. They have not yet got their big cars. A lot of them don’t even have running water and sanitation.




NAILS HIT ON HEAD; READER SQUIRMS

RT is very good on the painful subject of working class stupidity, meaning their limitless capacity to vote for the parties of the rich and view any leftwing socialist parties as limbs of Satan. Most of this book is made up of a series of very uncomfortable debates between a couple of goodlyhearted socialist guys and their hostile fellow workers. They say stuff like

There’s always been rich and poor, you’ll never change it.

Socialism means “What’s yours is mine”

Socialism means atheism and free love.

It’s a beautiful idea but it’s too good to be practical because human nature is too mean and selfish.

What about the jobs nobody wants to do? Who will you make do them if everybody’s equal?

RT was also not around to observe the progress of the Russian experiment in socialism. I wonder what he would have said to that.

Soundtrack :

Which Side Are you On? By Natalie Merchant

This World Is Not Fair : Randy Newman

Banquet : Joni Mitchell

Get Up Stand Up : Wailers

Dear Mrs Roosevelt : Bob Dylan

Hard Times : De Dannan

The Sun Never Shines On The Poor : Richard Thompson

Poor And Needy : Misty In Roots

We Poor Labouring Men : Waterson Carthy

and

Pete Seeger’s entire album entitled CAN’T YOU SEE THIS SYSTEM IS ROTTEN THROUGH AND THROUGH which features songs such as My Sweetheart’s the Mule in the Mines and I Hate the Capitalist System

*But on the news in the UK just now there is a constant flow of stories about energy price rises, and it’s often said that this coming winter there will be many who will have to choose between “heating or eating”. And right now in the UK we have a system of food banks which dish out free (tinned) food for those deemed as poor. RT would have said plus ca change, plus le meme chose.