Why do socialists all use walls of text?

[Optiow]

This just occurred to me today. When reading the words of Connolly, it struck me that he used a lot of language most Irishmen reading his work would not understand. For example I quote this from his work:

The Irish Socialist Federation is composed of members of the Irish race in America, and is organised to assist the revolutionary working-class movement in Ireland by a dissemination of its literature, to educate the working-class Irish of this country into a knowledge of Socialist principles and to prepare them to co-operate with the workers of all other races, colours and nationalities in the emancipation of labour.

Now both you probably know what that means, but back in those days people were not very well educated, and they did not read or write very well. And this applies to all socialists back in those days. Why did they use such big words, such long sentences, and such walls of text?

Surely it would have been more productive to dot down a few words and say them, and not publish big, massive works about the working class that they can not even comprehend. I doubt if any socialist worker who picked up some of Lenin's, or Trotsky's, or Marx's works would have any idea what they were going on about.

Could someone please explain to me why they did this?

Thank you.

[StoneFrog]

It depends on who the text is designed for, most pamphlets seem to be written to be read very easily. But books and formal essays are meant for other political theorists.

[mikelepore]

That quotation comes from an organization's official "Declaration of Principles" document. Such documents are usually more formal than ordinary pamphlets and speeches.

Also, it was more customary in those old days (in this case, 1908) to use long sentences. Look at the third paragraph of Engels' comments at Marx's grave (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/death/burial.htm) (1883), which is also one long sentence. Today, teachers will mark up students' compositions with the red pen, and tell them to cut each run-on sentences into several sentences. In the old days, long sentences with many dependent clauses were believed to make you sound more fancy.

[ContrarianLemming]

That quotation comes from an organization's official "Declaration of Principles" document. Such documents are usually more formal than ordinary pamphlets and speeches.

Also, it was more customary in those old days (in this case, 1908) to use long sentences. Look at the third paragraph of Engels' comments at Marx's grave (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/death/burial.htm) (1883), which is also one long sentence. Today, teachers will mark up students' compositions with the red pen, and thell them to cut each run-on sentences into several sentences. In the old days, long sentences with many dependent clauses were believed to make you sound more fancy.

Marx was the fanciest pranciest man who ever lived clearly.

[Invincible Summer]

Also, in regards to Marx & Engels, they originally wrote in German and their texts were subsequently translated, no?

In German, you can write really long sentences and still have it grammatically correct. Perhaps this could also be a reason why Marx, Engels, Nietzsche, etc were translated into long English sentences?

[Adi Shankara]

Just because the proletariat may not be well educated, does not mean they are not intelligent, perhaps even more so, than your average CEO.

[Kléber]

Lenin wrote a good wall of text on this subject:

This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no part in creating such an ideology. They take part, however, not as workers, but as socialist theoreticians, as Proudhons and Weitlings; in other words, they take part only when they are able, and to the extent that they are able, more or less, to acquire the knowledge of their age and develop that knowledge. But in order that working men may succeed in this more often, every effort must be made to raise the level of the consciousness of the workers in general; it is necessary that the workers do not confine themselves to the artificially restricted limits of “literature for workers” but that they learn to an increasing degree to master general literature. It would be even truer to say “are not confined”, instead of “do not confine themselves”, because the workers themselves wish to read and do read all that is written for the intelligentsia, and only a few (bad) intellectuals believe that it is enough “for workers” to be told a few things about factory conditions and to have repeated to them over and over again what has long been known.http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm

[fa2991]

This kind of thinking is the reason people think leftists are elitists. :rolleyes:

[Theoneontheleft]

I would think that people who wrote long text, were simply just writing things down in the same manner, as they would verbally be speaking it.

[NecroCommie]

One also has to understand that the concepts used in economics and philosophy are not very simple themselves. Some finer words exist for a reason, which is to make speech and writing a million times shorter. You try talking about dialectics without using terribly long and complex descriptions every time you want to say "dialectics". Sooner or later people would start to hate your guts.

[ComradeOm]

Now both you probably know what that means, but back in those days people were not very well educated, and they did not read or write very well. And this applies to all socialists back in those days. Why did they use such big words, such long sentences, and such walls of text? Who is to say that people did not understand? Connolly and others* maintained an almost constant discourse with the working class. They elaborated on these concepts over countless newspaper articles and years. In doing so they introduced these terms and ideas to the working class as part of the political education of the latter. Which is not, I hurry to add, that the Irish worker was ignorant of class struggle but that Connolly et al provided the political framework and language for his readers to frame their experiences

And then there is also, as has been noted, the question of style. Check out the first sentence of the second paragraph is this article (http://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1900/12/lesson.htm). Plenty of people today, educated or not, would struggle to follow that syntax (relatively tame compared to some contemporary examples) but that was common style 'back in the day'. People who read (and by 1900 we're talking around 90%+ of the population) were entirely used to this sort of language

*Depending on circumstances of course. Many of Lenin's works, for example, were written and published specifically for Marxist intellectuals. On the other hand he was also a prolific contributor to many newspapers read by ordinary workers. The language would be slightly different in both of course but there's no suggestion that workers in 1917 couldn't understand or struggled with his words or concepts

[Theoneontheleft]

Sometimes longer sentences will allow for more thorough and concise descriptions, which will get to the point much quicker.

[The Idler]

Walls of text are bad. If you want to read a book which is transcribed on the internet, then buy the book.

[chegitz guevara]

Ernest Hemingway hadn't come along yet to teach us about writing briefly.

[Nachie]

A lot of it I think can be explained by translations from other languages. German, French, Italian... all of it can be pretty tricky.

Some of it is just our own perceptions, though. Mass culture has gotten dumbed down at a cumulative rate, so what seems for us to be incomprehensibly highfalutin language actually just reflects the way a lot of literate people thought and spoke at the time when it was written, before TV or other mass media.

[Theoneontheleft]

Walls of text are bad. If you want to read a book which is transcribed on the internet, then buy the book.

Looking at the screen for hours is probably bad on the eyes too!:D

[StoneFrog]

Looking at the screen for hours is probably bad on the eyes too!:D

I got myself a eReader, best thing ever! Uses e-ink instead of light pixels like your monitor, so your eyes don't get screwed up, no more blurry eyes for me :thumbup1:
plus now i can get fresh air :rolleyes:

[MarxSchmarx]

Socialists started writing in the victorian times when godawful long prose was considered entertaining, and when book publishers/newspaper people felt that their duty was to deluge the public with information. If you read just about anybook from that time it is a major chore.

Not to mention academics and even "popular" novelists wrote long, repetitive and dreadfully unreadable treatises, and got away with it in the publishing world. This was largely because the reading classes really had nothing better to do in their idle hours. On the whole the writing has improved over the decades, but we now don't read things as carefully.

Anyway the point is this was dumb legacy of the 19th century that we need to transcend. There is no excuse for writing as if our audience were stuck in the 1850s anymore. Frankly it is a sign of how lazy some activists are that they seek to emulate the tools of that time.


As CG put it,


Ernest Hemingway hadn't come along yet to teach us about writing briefly.

Neither had Madison Ave. or Twitter.

[Theoneontheleft]

I got myself a eReader, best thing ever! Uses e-ink instead of light pixels like your monitor, so your eyes don't get screwed up, no more blurry eyes for me :thumbup1:
plus now i can get fresh air :rolleyes:

Thanks for the advice.:thumbup1:

I sometimes adjust my monitor to a darker setting, then I attach my book light on top of the monitor. That sometimes helps with my near sightedness.:)

[Comrade Marxist Bro]

I always try to use really long sentences because I want to sound really smart.

[Optiow]

Ah I understand now.
Thanks for the help guys:)

[Blackscare]

when book publishers/newspaper people felt that their duty was to deluge the public with information.

Thank god they cut that out.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Oh shit, when I saw the title of this topic, I thought it was about the length of my posts on RevLeft... or maybe Sam B's posts.:blushing:

[ComradeOm]

Oh shit, when I saw the title of this topic, I thought it was about the length of my posts on RevLeft... or maybe Sam B's posts.:blushing:I miss Bobkindles. Like most great things, I didn't come to appreciate him, and his intelligent if hopelessly formatted posts, until he was gone :blushing:

[Jimmie Higgins]

I miss Bobkindles. Like most great things, I didn't come to miss him, and his intelligent if hopelessly formatted posts, until he was gone :blushing:Oh yeah, sorry I got the comrades confused - you're right I meant Bobkindle$. One has the awesomely long blocks of text, the other has the awesomely sarcastic wit. My apologies.

[MarxSchmarx]

when book publishers/newspaper people felt that their duty was to deluge the public with information.
Thank god they cut that out.

Well, we now have the internet doing this work.

In all seriousness, a major problem today is that we have too much information. back in the day there was this attitude that they could just dump the information out there and let someone else sort it out. And generating all this information was not a good use of human potential. many mathematicians for example would spend their entire lives drawing up logarithm tables. And it was a pain the neck to do so. As the generation of information became automated, the need for publishers to be the generators declined.

A deluge of information, and publishing information for the sake of publishing information, makes it really hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Responsible publishers and journalists should help people sort through the information, help them make sense of it, not just regurgitate more of it out there. Being selective about information has always been for example what educators and librarians do.