Re: Ralph Schoenman

[Jim Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 19 Jun 2002 09:04:50 -0700 Sam Pawlett <gusm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
writes:
>
>
> Jim Farmelant wrote:
>
> > Ralph Schoenman was greately disliked by many of Bertrand
> Russell's
> > old friends, who in reaction began to spread rumors about
> Russell's
> > alleged senility.
>
> Bryan Magee in his autobiography alleges that Schoenman actually cut
> off
> many of Russell's friends from him. You had to go through Schoenman
> to
> speak to Bertie. Magee was never able to even speak to Russell after
> Schoenman became his secretary. Magee wondered what attracted
> Russell to
> Schoenman, since S was not much interested in philosophy and wasn''t
> a very
> good intellectual.  Magee concludes that either R was senile or S
> was a CIA
> agent trying to isolate Russell from the intellectual establishment
> and
> ruin Bertie's reputation by getting him to adopt far left stances.

As Sam probably knows, Schoenman successfully sued Magee
over the charge that he was a CIA agent.  And as a result of the
lawsuit, Magee's publisher was forced to withdraw and pulp its
stock of the first edition of Magee's autobiography.  I think that
what attracted Russell to Schoenman, was that Schoenman
was quite willing to undertake all the tasks connected with
political activism that Russell found to be tedious but necessary.
I also suspect that the fact that Schoenman was willing make
enemies and piss off many of Russell's old friends, was a
point in his favor from Russell's standpoint.

> But who
> knows? Maybe it was the other way around: Russell was serious about
> politics and political activism and didn't want 'third way'
> accolytes like
> Magee ruining his influence on the New Left.

I suspect that may well have been the case.  I think that
what people forget is that for many years Russell had been on
the outs with the British Establishment.  After all Russell went
to jail during WW I because of his outspoken opposition to
that war.  It wasn't really until WW II that Russell became a
darling of the Establishment.  And Russell was in the early
years of the Cold War a partisan of the West, to the point
of supporting the threatening of the  Soviet Union with
nuclear attack to force Moscow to submit to international
control of nuclear weapons.  However, by the mid-1950s
Russell began to change his mind concerning Cold War
politics, and he became increasingly critical of the US
which he saw a pushing the arms race and putting forth
potentially destabilizing inititiatives.  The Soviet Union
in contrast, he saw as attempting to promote more
constructive policies.  Russell was like many progressives
of the time shocked and dismayed with Britain's behavior
in the Suez Crisis in 1956, and by the early 1960s he
had become staunchly anti-imperialist in his outlook.
So it is perhaps not so surprising that he was willing
to associate himself with a Trot like Schoenman.

>Whatever their merits,
> Russells writings of the time are not the product of a senile mind.

Russell's Autobiography was hardly the product of a man with
a failing intellect.

> Whatever Schoenman was, the notion that he was a CIA agent is
> preposterous.
> He would have been 'outed' long ago. I see Ray Monk in the final
> installment of his Russell biography only mentions Schoenman in
> passing and
> takes Russell's politics of the time at face value. I really think
> Russell's friends saw him as senile because only a crazy person
> could hold
> anti-imperialist views.

Russell's old friends were IMO unwilling to accept the fact that
Russell was willing to change his mind on political matters,
and they also fail to appreciate the continuities between his
later political stances and his earlier ones.


>
> Sam Pawlett
>
>
>

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