孤狼的长嗥
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摘要
对杰克·伦敦社会主义的理解应该从他的青少年时期的苦难经历着手,尤其是当他快要滑落到社会的最底层,人间地狱的景象具体地活生生地浮现在他眼前的那一刻, 对自己正在落进社会深渊的恐惧,增强了他逃离这种地狱般生活的决心,促使他重新审视他生活的这个社会。
    从达尔文和斯宾塞的学说中,他学到了适者生存的理论,这使他更加相信社会就是一个人与人之间为了求生存而互相斗争,强者主宰弱者的舞台,为了逃离社会深渊底层生活的噩梦,伦敦不遗余力,拼死搏斗。虽然出身卑贱,他却从来未向命运妥协。十五岁的蚝贼之王,十七岁的远洋水手,曾经的流浪汉和工厂工人,加入失业工人队伍向华盛顿进军的请愿者,阿拉斯加荒原雪域的淘金者,直至通过写作一举成名的传奇作家,杰克· 伦敦自己与命运的斗争,对于他来说就是一场达尔文式的为生存而斗争的奋斗史,他的个人成功,就是斯宾塞适者生存理论的最好范例。
    生活就是一场斗争,其中的优胜者就是超人,在他冷酷地追逐自己的成功盛宴的过程中,这个金发碧眼的巨人,把弱者踩在脚下,把凡夫俗子推向两旁,以其不可阻挡的力量加快了社会进化的过程,推进了社会的进步。尼采的超人与斯宾塞的思维相得益彰,互相辉映,其吸引力对伦敦来说自然无法抗拒。这个活力四射,雄心勃勃的超人在伦敦的作品中傲视群雄,具有伦敦的无穷力量和俊美外表,虽然超人哲学与伦敦的社会主义思想性质迥异,他却能让他们同时并存。伦敦是一个个人主义者,同时又是一个社会主义者;他信奉个人主义是因为他相信自己是一个出类拔萃的超人,能够征服一切;同时他拥抱社会主义是因为他相信劳苦大众力量单薄,需要超人保护。从这个意义上来说,伦敦的社会主义本质上其实是一种潜意识的屈尊俯就,他满足于自己是一个具有民主思想的超人,其满溢的力量和无尽的智慧可以赐于民众,并带领他们摧城拔寨,向资产阶级的堡垒发起冲锋。伦敦对普通人民的同情是发自肺腑的,因为他来自于他们中间,然而这种同情却带有一种怜悯施恩的成分,一种对自己苦难过去的回眸思顾,一种很容易动摇的脆弱的认同感。
    与伦敦的超人思想一脉相承的还有他的白人至上情结。本杰明· 基德的种
    
    族理论使他相信白种人的文明是最好的文明,白种人的民族是最优秀的民族,因此在他看来,社会主义并不是为所有人而是为白种人谋幸福的一种制度。伦敦认为,普通民众必须满足于为少数人所统治,社会主义应由盎格鲁·萨克森的民族传统进化而来,也只有在这个民族的统治之下,才能真正建立起一个公正的社会,而为广大人民谋幸福。伦敦这种白人优越论显然使他不能够成为一个真正的社会主义者。
    在伦敦的社会主义形成过程中,他也接触到了马克思的社会主义思想,在《共产主义宣言》中马克思明确提出了阶级斗争的理论,并且号召全世界的工人阶级——斯宾塞进化理论中的弱势群体——联合起来共同推翻他们的剥削者和压迫者。按照这种革命理论,普通的工人阶级而不是杰出的个人必须承担起革命进程中的重大责任,杰克·伦敦因为马克思提出了一个强者支持弱者的美好世界,而热情地接受了宣言的阶级分析理论,但是对于伦敦来说,马克思的更重要的吸引力在于他预示出了一个即将到来的蓬勃发展的革命斗争。在工人阶级对资产阶级发动的这场世界范围内的宏大的斗争中,伦敦看到了自己能够逃离社会苦难深渊的机会和希望。这种斗争对于他的最终意义在于能使他消除对于他自己早期命运的担心和恐惧。因此,在他早期的社会主义思想的形成的动机中,已经深深地埋下了日后背离社会主义信仰的悲剧种子。
    正是这些错综复杂的思想和矛盾构成了杰克·伦敦的作品和他的社会主义思想的主体,决定了伦敦的社会主义思想发展的走向,如果我们能对伦敦早期在穷与富,机遇与无助的挣扎求生过程有一个清楚的了解,我们就会对他的社会主义有更全面和更深刻的认识。他的个人奋斗史,其实就是社会达尔文与社会公正,个人主义与社会主义的结合体,伦敦有强健的体力和智慧,使他认同适者生存的理论及其超人哲学, 而努力爬到社会的顶峰;同时他的苦难经历,又使他难以释怀,而对造成这种痛苦本身的资本主义社会恨之入骨,难以妥协。也因此对与他有相同命运的劳苦人民抱有深刻的同情和理解而为他们呐喊、呼号。
    从整体来说,杰克·伦敦首先是一个白人主义者,然后才是社会主义者;首先是一个个人主义者,然后才是一个有革命情义的同志。他的社会主义内部固有的矛盾在他出于极端个人化的改变自己命运的动机而选择了社会主义时业已形成。这也就是他的社会主义的理论中充斥了过多的个人主义的原因之所在,也可以解释为什么他在拥抱社会主义的同时也欣赏种族主义,在信奉超人哲学的同时,而又为劳苦大众的兄弟般的情谊而大唱赞歌。
    杰克·伦敦的社会主义不是一种系统的思想,而是对堕入社会深渊的恐惧所产生的一种反应,因此,伦敦对社会主义的信仰和对资本主义的仇恨可以看作是他性格中的驱动因素。然而,作为美国的第一位无产阶级作家,他对社会主义的
    
    贡献也是不可否认的,他对社会公正的呼吁反映在他的小说、政论和演讲里。不管他的社会主义思想多么矛
The clue to Jack London's socialism can be found in his proletarian youth, in the important, germinal movement in his life when he viewed the picture of the social pit, wherein he saw himself hanging on to the slippery wall by main strength, not far above the shambles at the bottom. The vision stood as a central, generative image in the shaping of his attitude toward society and enhanced his determination to escape from the social pit. From his reading of Darwin, Spencer, he picked out the survival of the fittest theory, which explained or reinforced his vision of society as a struggle for existence in the pit, as the conflict of man against man, as the domination of the weak by the strong. In order to struggle upward away from the nightmare of the pit, Jack London strove desperately to become top dog. Despite an illegitimate son, he became an prince of oyster pirates at fifteen, an able-bodied sailor at seventeen, a tramp and a work beast, a trudger after Coxey's Army, a prospector in Alaska, and at last he became rich by means of writing and made big fortunes. It might be said that London's real private struggle with life for him became an epitome of the Darwinian struggle for existence, his success an example of the Spencerian survival of the fittest. The follower of Herbert Spencer by instinct made his socialism always interpenetrated by his individualism. This can explain why he became a landed gentleman rather than a great revolutionary socialist in the end when he became the best-known and highest-paid writer in the world.
    For many, a central figure in the social struggle came to be the superman. In his ruthless quest for power this giant among men would help along the selection of the fittest by crushing the weak and helpless. The superman so appealed to Spencerian thinking that surely he would have been invented by someone else if not by the German philosopher Nietzsche. Temperamentally, London was the closest to Nietzsche, as his supermen and superdogs attest. It is the man of power, the aspirant superman, who bestrides London's books, always a blond beast strangely bearing Jack London's own strength and Jack London's good looks. Therefore, his socialism was in truth unconscious condescension; he rejoiced in the consciousness of a power, which could be shared by the masses, a power that spilled over from the leader, as in The
    
    Iron Heel. His deep sympathy for the class from which he sprang was deep enough, but it was a kind of sympathy founded on pity, the consciousness of common sufferings in the past; his own loyalty to it was capricious because London's strongest ambition was to escape from the working class himself.
    At the same time the role of unbridled individualism in the evolution of society was being challenged by the philosophy of socialism provided by Marx and Engles. In The Communist Manifesto Karl Marx had called upon the workingmen of the world-the supposedly weak and helpless victims of natural selection-to unite and overthrow their exploiters and oppressors, the industrialist ruling classes. According to the followers of Marx, not the superman individualist but the socialist community of workers must be the instrument of evolutionary progress. Jack London enthusiastically accepted the social analysis of The Communist Manifesto. He was drawn to Marx partly by the Marxian vision of a better world, where, London usually agreed, the strong would support the weak instead of thrusting them downwards; but even more was he drawn by the violence of the class war and of the developing revolutionary struggle, which Marx predicted. The struggle of the workers against a capitalist class for him was a reproduction on world scale of his own intense drive to struggle upward lest he drop into the shambles at the bottom of the pit. Thus, it can be seen that his fear and his consequent drive to power, which was the fear's positive reaction, played a key role in the shaping of his socialism in his formative period.
    Benjamin Kidd, the British popularizer of the philosophy of Herbert Spencer also deeply im
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