Shipwreck by Tom Stoppard

Author:Tom Stoppard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2002-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

ACT TWO

JANUARY 1849

Paris.

George has been reading to Herzen and Natalie. Natalie sits with George at her feet. Herzen lies on the couch with a silk handkerchief over his face. The book—or booklet—is The Communist Manifesto in its yellow wrapper.

NATALIE Why have you stopped?

George closes the book and lets it fall. Natalie smoothes George’s hair.

GEORGE I don’t see the point.

NATALIE He’s saying that all history up to now is the history of class struggle. And by sheer luck, Marx himself, the discoverer of this fact, is living in the very place, at the very time, when, thanks to industrialisation, these centuries of class struggle, from feudal times onwards—

GEORGE Yes, I’ve got that.

NATALIE Well, then. It’s all now arriving at the end of history, with the final—

GEORGE But there’s no point if, every time you want to argue back, Karl just says, ‘Well you would think that, because as a product of your class, you can’t think anything else.’ In my opinion, that’s cheating.

NATALIE I agree. But then I would, wouldn’t I, because—

GEORGE You think what you are! You say, ‘Karl, I don’t agree good and evil are to be defined entirely by our economic relations,’ and Karl replies—

NATALIE ‘Well, you would think that—’

GEORGE ‘—because you’re not a member of the proletariat!’

Natalie and George delightedly clasp hands in mutual congratulation. Herzen removes the handkerchief from his face. Natalie continues to smooth George’s hair.

HERZEN But Marx is a bourgeois from the anus up.

NATALIE Alexander! I won’t have that word …

HERZEN Sorry, middle-class.

GEORGE It’s German genius, that’s what it is.

NATALIE What is?

GEORGE That if you’re a miserable exploited worker, you’re playing a vital role in a historical process that’ll put you on top as sure as omelettes was eggs. Everything’s functioning perfectly, you see! With the French geniuses, your miserable exploited no-accountness means there’s a fault in the plumbing, and they’re here to fix it because you’re too stupid to do it for yourself … So the workers have to hope the plumber knows what he’s doing and won’t cheat them. No wonder it didn’t catch on.

HERZEN But how can Communism catch on? It asks a worker to give up his … aristocracy. A cobbler with his own last is an aristocrat compared with the worker in a factory. A minimum of control over your own life, even to make a mess of it, is something necessarily human. What do you think goes wrong with those experimental societies? It’s not the mosquitoes. It’s something human refusing to erase itself.

Still, at least Marx is an honest-to-God materialist. Those ‘Marseillaise’-singing orators of the left won’t let go of nurse. I feel sorry for them. They’re preparing for themselves a life of bewilderment and grief … because the republic they want to bring back is the last delirium of two thousand years of metaphysics … the elevation of spirit over matter … brotherhood before bread, equality by obedience, salvation through sacrifice. To save this tepid bathwater, they’ll chuck out the baby and wonder where it went. Marx gets it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.