******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
Great article, Michael. I have the ex post facto 'claim-to-fame' of having known Abbey. We had several one-on-one extensive debates over socialism (me) vs. anarchism (Abbey) at his residence during the 1969-70 winter he spent in Logan, Utah. I saw him occasionally over the next decade+ because of his visits to Salt Lake and mainly because of his relationship with my sister Susan (who he at one time asked to marry him). He had agreed to come up from Oracle, AZ to speak at the newly-founded Central America Solidarity Coalition's first march and rally in spring 1983 but then backed out and sent a written greeting to be read at the rally. (There is a possibility that document is still in my possession somewhere.) As long as i'm boasting about acquaintances, i also met Leonard Arrington (friend of my father's) who was the premier Mormon historian, especially economic historian [Arrington, Leonard J., Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900. Harvard University Press., 1958]. It was an influential intellectual experience for me (1969/1970?) when i came across a small booklet Arrington had written (maybe text of a speech) which was in the Special Collections/Archive section of the Utah State University library (Arrington was on the faculty of USU from 1946-72). It was a brief history of Orderville which made it clear that the Mormon "United Order" version of utopian socialism there had been quite successful from the mid-1870s until the mid-1980s. Brigham Young's successor (Young died in 1877) John Taylor had difficulty extinguishing Orderville and some other community socialism experiments because of their success and grass-roots popularity. Taylor's successor Wilford Woodruff had to grapple with the task of stamping out the other major Mormon heresy that was preventing Utah's integration into the United States, polygamy. On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 12:36 PM, michael yates via Marxism <marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > > The Salon essay Louis linked us to is well worth reading. Stegner and Abbey > are great writers of the U.S. West. I have promoted their work on various > lists, but the response of people from the eastern U.S. cities is typically > one of "who are they." Sometimes they are dismissive, as if Abbey, for > example, was some sort of primitive Luddite, rather than a highly skilled > writer and a person who, as the Salon essay says, could, through his writing, > get us to act. Desert Solitaire is one book that got us to move West and stay > there. Stegner's book, Mormon Country, was where I learned about Orderville, > a communal enclave established by poor Mormon settlers sent there by Brigham > Young in one of his efforts to get the Saints to reinvigorate the original > Mormon precept to live simply and to share. Orderville was more or less a > communist society, with no private property, no money, and communal living. > Here is something I wrote in 2005: > http://monthlyreview.org/2005/03/01/the-ghosts-of-karl-marx-and-edward-abbey/ > BTW, Abbey was born in Western Pennsylvania, a few miles from my hometown. We > played baseball on some of the same rural fields, though not at the same time. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
