Post by Admin on Jan 12, 2023 22:27:57 GMT
A Marxist View of Tolkien’s Middle Earth
BY
JOHN MOLYNEUX
J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy world is a medieval utopia with poverty and oppression airbrushed out of the picture. But Tolkien’s work also contains a romantic critique of industrial capitalism that is an important part of its vast popular appeal.
jacobin.com/2023/01/jrr-tolkein-lord-of-the-rings-marxist-critique
John Molyneux, who died suddenly at the end of last year, was a veteran socialist activist in Britain and Ireland, and the author of many books and articles about Marxist politics. He was also a prolific writer on the subject of artists like Michelangelo and Rembrandt. In this essay, first published in 2010, Molyneux discussed the fantasy world of J. R. R Tolkien and tried to account for the popular appeal of his books to countless readers (including Molyneux himself, who was clearly a huge fan).
The writings of J. R. R. Tolkien might seem a somewhat unusual subject for Marxist analysis, and indeed for me. I usually write about visual art or politics rather than literature, and when Marxists write about literature they are more likely to focus on issues of method, or on figures from the canon of high culture (William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy), or modernism (Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett), or with avowed radical politics (Maxim Gorky, Bertolt Brecht, Seán O’Casey, John Steinbeck).
Tolkien fits none of these categories. Indeed he is a writer to whom many Marxists would take an instant dislike, who some would decline to read altogether (as not serious literature) or who, if they did like him, they might be slightly shamefaced about, almost as if they had a private taste for James Bond or Mills and Boon, for if Tolkien is not pulp fiction, he is not quite regarded as high culture either.
Nevertheless there already exists a small body of Marxist writing on Tolkien. Moreover there is a serious justification for writing seriously about Tolkien; namely, his exceptional popularity and the need to account for that popularity. The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy are among the highest-selling novels of all time, having sold hundreds of millions of copies, and the film adaptations based upon those books have also reached a vast audience.
Popularity on this scale means that the ideological content of this work is a factor of at least some significance in the consciousness of many millions of people, and thus worthy of analysis. Moreover this popularity bears with it a conundrum.
It is clear that Tolkien’s worldview is in many respects right-wing and reactionary, but if this is the case, how come his work is so popular? Is it despite or because of this reactionary outlook? Or what is the relation between Tolkien’s worldview and his audience?
Investigating, and hopefully resolving, this puzzle is one of the main aims of this essay. It also throws up a number of interesting points about history, ideology, and art.
Tolkien’s Worldview
When I refer to Tolkien’s worldview, I mean not his personal political opinions, but his outlook as embodied in his novels. Although personal opinions undoubtedly influenced the outlook of the novels, it is the latter, not the former, that matters. The latter has influenced many, many millions; the former are known only to a tiny minority. Moreover, that worldview is expressed primarily not in the details of the plot of either The Hobbit or The Lord of The Rings but in the overall vision of Middle Earth as an imagined society.
Tolkien’s worldview is in many respects right-wing and reactionary, but if this is the case, how come his work is so popular?
The Lord of the Rings is not, in my opinion, an allegory. In this I concur with Tolkien who was most insistent on this point in the foreword to the Second Edition. Unlike, say, Animal Farm, which is manifestly an allegory for the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalin, the story of the War of the Rings does not correspond to — and still less is it an elaborate code for — World War I, or World War II, or any other actual historical episode. The real history it most closely resembles is that of the Cold War, but we know that it was conceived long before the Cold War began.
The plot of The Lord of the Rings, therefore, is largely sui generis. The social relations of Middle Earth, however, are not and could not be. It is very easy to imagine futuristic technology — intergalactic spaceships, death stars, transporter beams and the like — and it is relatively easy to imagine strange nonexistent creatures — Orcs, Ents, insect people, Cactacae — but it is close to impossible to invent nonexistent social relations, and the social relations of Middle Earth are readily recognizable.
The reason the social relations of Middle Earth can be so easily recognized is that they are (with one important exception) essentially feudal. We do not live in a feudal society, but feudalism is the social order that immediately preceded capitalism in Europe, and that existed alongside capitalism in many parts of the world until well into the twentieth century.
Moreover, there still survive, even in the twenty-first century, hangovers of feudalism such as the British monarchy, aristocracy, and the House of Lords. In addition, feudal social relations permeate a large part of our classic literature (Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, Beowulf), our mythology (the Arthurian legends, Robin Hood), and our children’s fairy tales (Jack and the Beanstalk, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White).
According to Karl Marx, social relations correspond to a certain level of development of the forces of production (technology, plus labor, plus science). The productive forces of Middle Earth are resolutely medieval. Not only are they preindustrial, they are pre–early modern — no steam engines or power-driven machinery, no printing, no transport more advanced than the ship and the horse (except eagles in extremis), importantly no guns or cannon (the only explosions or fireworks are courtesy of wizardry or sorcery).
Actually very little attention is paid to production at all. It is clear that Middle Earth is overwhelmingly rural — Minas Tirith in Gondor is the only real city we encounter in the whole epic — and therefore it is more or less assumed that most people are farmers of some sort and not worthy of much mention.
BY
JOHN MOLYNEUX
J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy world is a medieval utopia with poverty and oppression airbrushed out of the picture. But Tolkien’s work also contains a romantic critique of industrial capitalism that is an important part of its vast popular appeal.
jacobin.com/2023/01/jrr-tolkein-lord-of-the-rings-marxist-critique
John Molyneux, who died suddenly at the end of last year, was a veteran socialist activist in Britain and Ireland, and the author of many books and articles about Marxist politics. He was also a prolific writer on the subject of artists like Michelangelo and Rembrandt. In this essay, first published in 2010, Molyneux discussed the fantasy world of J. R. R Tolkien and tried to account for the popular appeal of his books to countless readers (including Molyneux himself, who was clearly a huge fan).
The writings of J. R. R. Tolkien might seem a somewhat unusual subject for Marxist analysis, and indeed for me. I usually write about visual art or politics rather than literature, and when Marxists write about literature they are more likely to focus on issues of method, or on figures from the canon of high culture (William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy), or modernism (Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett), or with avowed radical politics (Maxim Gorky, Bertolt Brecht, Seán O’Casey, John Steinbeck).
Tolkien fits none of these categories. Indeed he is a writer to whom many Marxists would take an instant dislike, who some would decline to read altogether (as not serious literature) or who, if they did like him, they might be slightly shamefaced about, almost as if they had a private taste for James Bond or Mills and Boon, for if Tolkien is not pulp fiction, he is not quite regarded as high culture either.
Nevertheless there already exists a small body of Marxist writing on Tolkien. Moreover there is a serious justification for writing seriously about Tolkien; namely, his exceptional popularity and the need to account for that popularity. The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy are among the highest-selling novels of all time, having sold hundreds of millions of copies, and the film adaptations based upon those books have also reached a vast audience.
Popularity on this scale means that the ideological content of this work is a factor of at least some significance in the consciousness of many millions of people, and thus worthy of analysis. Moreover this popularity bears with it a conundrum.
It is clear that Tolkien’s worldview is in many respects right-wing and reactionary, but if this is the case, how come his work is so popular? Is it despite or because of this reactionary outlook? Or what is the relation between Tolkien’s worldview and his audience?
Investigating, and hopefully resolving, this puzzle is one of the main aims of this essay. It also throws up a number of interesting points about history, ideology, and art.
Tolkien’s Worldview
When I refer to Tolkien’s worldview, I mean not his personal political opinions, but his outlook as embodied in his novels. Although personal opinions undoubtedly influenced the outlook of the novels, it is the latter, not the former, that matters. The latter has influenced many, many millions; the former are known only to a tiny minority. Moreover, that worldview is expressed primarily not in the details of the plot of either The Hobbit or The Lord of The Rings but in the overall vision of Middle Earth as an imagined society.
Tolkien’s worldview is in many respects right-wing and reactionary, but if this is the case, how come his work is so popular?
The Lord of the Rings is not, in my opinion, an allegory. In this I concur with Tolkien who was most insistent on this point in the foreword to the Second Edition. Unlike, say, Animal Farm, which is manifestly an allegory for the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalin, the story of the War of the Rings does not correspond to — and still less is it an elaborate code for — World War I, or World War II, or any other actual historical episode. The real history it most closely resembles is that of the Cold War, but we know that it was conceived long before the Cold War began.
The plot of The Lord of the Rings, therefore, is largely sui generis. The social relations of Middle Earth, however, are not and could not be. It is very easy to imagine futuristic technology — intergalactic spaceships, death stars, transporter beams and the like — and it is relatively easy to imagine strange nonexistent creatures — Orcs, Ents, insect people, Cactacae — but it is close to impossible to invent nonexistent social relations, and the social relations of Middle Earth are readily recognizable.
The reason the social relations of Middle Earth can be so easily recognized is that they are (with one important exception) essentially feudal. We do not live in a feudal society, but feudalism is the social order that immediately preceded capitalism in Europe, and that existed alongside capitalism in many parts of the world until well into the twentieth century.
Moreover, there still survive, even in the twenty-first century, hangovers of feudalism such as the British monarchy, aristocracy, and the House of Lords. In addition, feudal social relations permeate a large part of our classic literature (Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, Beowulf), our mythology (the Arthurian legends, Robin Hood), and our children’s fairy tales (Jack and the Beanstalk, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White).
According to Karl Marx, social relations correspond to a certain level of development of the forces of production (technology, plus labor, plus science). The productive forces of Middle Earth are resolutely medieval. Not only are they preindustrial, they are pre–early modern — no steam engines or power-driven machinery, no printing, no transport more advanced than the ship and the horse (except eagles in extremis), importantly no guns or cannon (the only explosions or fireworks are courtesy of wizardry or sorcery).
Actually very little attention is paid to production at all. It is clear that Middle Earth is overwhelmingly rural — Minas Tirith in Gondor is the only real city we encounter in the whole epic — and therefore it is more or less assumed that most people are farmers of some sort and not worthy of much mention.