I make quite a few references to Koestler in the last decade or so. I was a big fan of his 1959 “The Sleepwalkers” for my #MoreThanScience agenda, so most of my references are back to this and to other second-hand quotes by others – including Peter Corning in our Systems Thinking space. [First mentioned Sleepwalkers here, and reviewed my reading of it here.]
I also acquired, but have so far only skim read in parts, his 1948 collection of essays that starts with “The Yogi and the Commissar”. Interesting to see in other translated works, which include novels, drama and autobiography as well as non-fiction, includes that 600 page Sleepwalkers listed as an “Essay”(!)
Koestler was a fully-paid-up Marxist-Leninist Communist under Stalin, but like Orwell who cited Koestler as a major influence and also experienced the Spanish civil war, wrote about the corrupting pitfalls of totalitarian forms of Socialism from first-hand experience.
Strange connection with both my last two posts – labels and values in the context of Socialism and the alternatives in David Harding’s Pirsigian space, and the work of Mike Jackson and Dave Snowden in the Complex Systems Thinking space. I was prompted to revisit Koestler today, thanks to Dave Snowden on LinkedIn recommending Koestler’s 1940 novel “Darkness at Noon” as the best of the dystopian novels out there. [I‘m already reading a Kindle copy. Fascinating, to say the least.]
Democracy, lest there be any doubt!
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[Post Note – Another “Socialist” who fell out with Stalin’s ways and contributed seminally to Complex Systems Thinking – via both the novel and non-fiction forms – was Aleksandr Bogdanov. Another Mike Jackson / Hull Centre for Systems Studies source – and the connection of both Science and Social Systems thinking with Eastern thought with Nagarjuna as well as Bogdanov in Rovelli’s book Helgoland – it’s all connected.]
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My father was a fan of Koestler. I liked *Darkness at Noon* when I read
it during grad school. I’ve got *The Yogi and the Commissar,* I’m not
sure why, but I see the copy was inscribed to my mother’s father, May
27, 1945. (My grandfather had crossed the Channel on D-Day as a war
correspondent, then stayed in France a while, but apparently was en
route back across the Atlantic during the Battle of the Bulge.)
I must have read at least the title essay in Koestler’s book, but
perhaps its ideas have been mixed in my mind with Orwell’s “Reflections
on Gandhi,” with its wise observation that love is actually hard work.