Harangue Harangue

Harangue

The Trees Said to the Bramble Come Reign Over Us

    • 5.0 • 2 Ratings
    • $2.99
    • $2.99

Publisher Description

Garet Garrett wrote one last, and truly spectacular, novel: called Harangue: The Trees Said to the Bramble Come Reign Over Us. The subtitle comes from the Bible (Judges 9:15), and the metaphor here refers to the strange penchant of the rich to fund socialism, which kills the rich and consumes wealth.
Garrett illustrates the strange tendency in a story of politics, economic folly, conspiracy, ideology, and violence. Published in 1926, it deals directly with the real-life attempt to create a Workers Paradise in the United States, in North Dakota from 1918 to 1921.
The plot pits two socialist movements against each other in a battle for control. The I.W.W. was the American movement anarchosyndicalist reds — socialist "anarchists" who believed the violent strike would usher in utopia. Meanwhile, the Non-Partisan League was the American movement of pinks, the social democrats who wanted full socialism but with liberties (so long as they could be tolerated). They joined together in to lay siege to the governor's office, and then nationalized the mills and the banks. They raised taxes, nationalized insurance and did a thousand other dangerous things that sank the economy and led to the recall of the governor.
The setting for this novel, then, is dramatic, and the story is wonderfully fertile for economic insight. Garrett details what happens to an economy when central planners are in charge, with a special focus on pricing problems and production decisions. He explains what happens when a bank no longer deals with the problem of risk.
But what is especially interesting is his treatment of the sociology of the rich. Garrett has an enormously insightful take on what turns the rich into supporters of the reds.
In the precapitalistic age, the rich were distinguished for what they owned. But in the capitalistic age, this is hardly possible, since most of what the rich acquire becomes available to the middle class before long. So the super rich look elsewhere: to exotica in art, architecture, music, and, finally, ideology. Radical socialist theory is something the super rich can purchase and support that the middle class will not — and this is precisely what is so attractive about it.

GENRE
Fiction & Literature
RELEASED
2010
December 15
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
268
Pages
PUBLISHER
Ludwig von Mises
SELLER
Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics
SIZE
431.9
KB

Customer Reviews

Dr Kevin Bethel ,

The age of political correctness

It is hard to imagine in the vulgar world today, what a 'harangue' is? Maybe 'harassment' comes closest, but harassment is not politically correct today or in 1925 when Garrett wrote this study of human nature.
There are many subtle forms of harassment Garrett illustrates with his beautiful prose. If, I had to choose one theme of harassment best addressed in this novel, it would be the harassment the people who strive for success receive from the people who are too lazy to succeed...Or, people who harangue the successes of others because they are living with the subconscious guilt of unearned success and inherited success.

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