15 Questions on "My Confession," by Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy (1912-1989)

Why is it that McCarthy says that "Speaking for myself, I cannot remember a single broad altruistic emotion visiting me  -- the kind of emotion the simpler comrades, with their shining eyes and exalted faces seemed to have in copious secretion" during the period she and her first husband took part in left-wing life.  What, then was their motivation?
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Why does McCarthy say "I see no reason to disavow my actions, which were perfectly all right, but my motives give me a little embarrassment, and just because I cannot disavow them: that fevered, contentious, trivial show off in the May Day parade is still recognizably me." (455)+

Why was "to be a Communist to possess a source of privilege?" (456)

What do you make of the hierarchy she proposes from most to least esteemed: (1) underground worker, (2) theoreticians and oracles, (3) activists (who worked on the waterfront). Last: rank and file, who made speeches, distributed leaflets, attended party and faction meetings, joining front organizations, marched in parades and demos, and that a low opinion was held of "fellow travelers"  (457)

Why would being critical of the party be a compelling reason for joining it? (458)

What is significant about the story of Ansel, who learns to drive and takes a car to California to work as an organizer for the Party?

How did McCarthy unwittingly co-sponsor a letter calling for Trotsky to have the right of asylum and his day in court? (462)

What ensued when McCarthy demanded that her name be taken off the letter? What makes this a key turning point in McCarthy's "confession."  How did it "change her life"? (465)

McCarthy says (p.467) of the majority of those who became anti-Communists during the year 1936-7 that "our anti-Communism came to us neither as the fruit of a special wisdom nor as a humiliating awakening from a prolonged deception, but as a natural event, the product of chance and propinquity. One thing followed another, and the will had little to say about it."  Have your political leanings ever followed a similar path?

Do you agree that Marxism is something you have to take up young, like ballet dancing? (467)

"I joined the anti-Communist movement without meaning to and only found out afterward, through others, the meaning or "name" assigned to what I had done.  This occurred in the late fall of 1936."  What is that "name"?  (page 450)

Why does McCarthy call a "surprise witness," Trotsky, to her side at the end of the piece? (464)

What is the role of chance in life, both in Trotsky's and McCarthy's (469)?

McCarthy ends with this quote from Trotsky, "One can foresee the consequences of a revolution or a war, but it is impossible to foresee the consequences of an autumn shooting-trip for wild ducks", and then she writes, "This shrug before the unforeseen implies an acceptance of consequences that is a far cry from penance and prophecy."  Does this statement give philosophical reassurance to the reader?

Is this a great book?

"R.U.R." as Humanist Manifesto

Silkscreen poster for a WPA production of
"R.U.R." from the mid-1930s

On June 27th, we had a group of seventeen discussants for "R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots," by Karel Čapek. The more you think about the layers of ideas in "R.U.R," the more the play comes into focus as a deeply philosophical reflection on the human condition.

"R.U.R. is set on an island on which has been established a factory to produce robots.  "R.U.R." became an international sensation in the 1920s. Čapek's robots, in contrast to the characteristic robots of subsequent science fiction, are not metallic machines.  Old man Rossum, the original founder of the company, had done extensive experiments on protoplasm in order to render his creations biologically human-like. What they lack are human emotions.

In Act II, the head of physiological research at the plant, Gall, reveals that he has done research to change the robots: "I transformed them into people.  I altered them. In some ways they're already superior to us. They're stronger than we are."

The robots stage a rebellion, and kill all of the humans on the island except for the chief construction officer Alquist.  They spare his life because, the robots say, he knows how to build things. As he attempts to figure out the lost formula for the robots, two robots, Primus, a male, and Helena, a female, appear on the scene.  In a ploy worthy of Solomon, Alquist states his intention to dissect Helena, and Primus asks to be sacrificed instead.  Helena in turn offers her life in exchange for his.

Alquist knows the robots have reached a new level of existence because they demonstrate the human drive to love and be loved in return. At the end of the play, Alquist says that he, the last human, may depart the earth in peace because he has beheld the Lord's "deliverance through love, and life shall not perish."