Editing Joseph Conrad (section)

===Politics===
Biographer Zdzisław Najder wrote: {{blockquote|Conrad was passionately concerned with politics. [This] is confirmed by several of his works, starting with ''[[Almayer's Folly]]''.  [...]  ''[[Nostromo]]'' revealed his concern with these matters more fully; it was, of course, a concern quite natural for someone from a country [Poland] where politics was a matter not only of everyday existence but also of life and death.  Moreover, Conrad himself came from a social class that claimed exclusive responsibility for state affairs, and from a very politically active family. [[Norman Douglas]] sums it up:  "Conrad was first and foremost a Pole and like many Poles a politician and moralist ''malgré lui'' [French:  "in spite of himself"]. These are his fundamentals."  [What made] Conrad see political problems in terms of a continuous struggle between law and violence, anarchy and order, freedom and autocracy, material interests and the noble idealism of individuals [...] was Conrad's historical awareness.  His Polish experience endowed him with the perception, exceptional in the Western European literature of his time, of how winding and constantly changing were the front lines in these struggles.{{sfnp|Najder|2007|p=352}}}}

The most extensive and ambitious political statement that Conrad ever made was his 1905 essay, "Autocracy and War", whose starting point was the [[Russo-Japanese War]] (he finished the article a month before the [[Battle of Tsushima Strait]]). The essay begins with a statement about Russia's incurable weakness and ends with warnings against [[Prussia]], the dangerous aggressor in a future European war. For Russia he predicted a violent outburst in the near future, but Russia's lack of democratic traditions and the backwardness of her masses made it impossible for the revolution to have a salutary effect. Conrad regarded the formation of a representative government in Russia as unfeasible and foresaw a transition from autocracy to dictatorship. He saw western Europe as torn by antagonisms engendered by economic rivalry and commercial selfishness. In vain might a Russian revolution seek advice or help from a materialistic and egoistic western Europe that armed itself in preparation for wars far more brutal than those of the past.{{sfnp|Najder|2007|pp=351–54}}
[[File:Joseph Conrad, by Jacob Epstein.jpg|thumb|left|Conrad's bust by [[Jacob Epstein]], 1924. Conrad called it "a wonderful piece of work of a somewhat monumental dignity, and yet—everybody agrees—the likeness is striking"{{sfnp|Najder|2007|p=568}}]]
Conrad's distrust of democracy sprang from his doubts whether the propagation of democracy as an aim in itself could solve any problems. He thought that, in view of the weakness of [[human nature]] and of the "criminal" character of society, democracy offered boundless opportunities for [[demagogue]]s and [[charlatan]]s.{{sfnp|Najder|2007|p=290}}  Conrad kept his distance from partisan politics, and never voted in British national elections.{{sfnp|Najder|2007|p=570}}

He accused [[social democrats]] of his time of acting to weaken "the national sentiment, the preservation of which [was his] concern"—of attempting to dissolve national identities in an impersonal melting-pot.  "I look at the future from the depth of a very black past and I find that nothing is left for me except fidelity to a cause lost, to an idea without future."  It was Conrad's hopeless fidelity to the memory of Poland that prevented him from believing in the idea of "international fraternity", which he considered, under the circumstances, just a verbal exercise. He resented some socialists' talk of freedom and world brotherhood while keeping silent about his own partitioned and oppressed Poland.{{sfnp|Najder|2007|p=290}}

Before that, in the early 1880s, letters to Conrad from his uncle [[Tadeusz Bobrowski|Tadeusz]]{{NoteTag|Conrad's own letters to his uncle in Ukraine, writes Najder, were destroyed during World War I.}} show Conrad apparently having hoped for an improvement in Poland's situation not through a liberation movement but by establishing an alliance with neighbouring Slavic nations. This had been accompanied by a faith in the [[Panslavism|Panslavic]] ideology—"surprising", Najder writes, "in a man who was later to emphasize his hostility towards Russia, a conviction that... Poland's [superior] civilization and... historic... traditions would [let] her play a leading role... in the Panslavic community, [and his] doubts about Poland's chances of becoming a fully sovereign nation-state."{{sfnp|Najder|2007|pp=88–89}}

Conrad's alienation from ''partisan'' politics went together with an abiding sense of the thinking man's burden imposed by his personality, as described in an 1894 letter by Conrad to a relative-by-marriage and fellow author, [[Marguerite Poradowska]] (''née'' Gachet, and cousin of [[Vincent van Gogh]]'s physician, [[Paul Gachet]]) of Brussels:

{{blockquote|We must drag the chain and ball of our personality to the end. This is the price one pays for the infernal and divine privilege of thought; so in this life it is only the chosen who are convicts—a glorious band which understands and groans but which treads the earth amidst a multitude of phantoms with maniacal gestures and idiotic grimaces. Which would you rather be:  idiot or convict?{{sfnp|Najder|2007|p=195}} }}

Conrad wrote [[H. G. Wells]] that the latter's 1901 book, ''[[Anticipations]]'', an ambitious attempt to predict major social trends, "seems to presuppose... a sort of select circle to which you address yourself, leaving the rest of the world outside the pale. [In addition,] you do not take sufficient account of human imbecility which is cunning and perfidious."<ref>{{Cite book|last1=MacKenzie|first1=Norman|last2=MacKenzie|first2=Jeanne|author-link1=Norman MacKenzie (journalist)|author-link2=Jeanne MacKenzie|year=1973|title=H.G. Wells: a Biography|publisher=Simon and Schuster|location=New York|page=167}}</ref>{{NoteTag|In a second edition of ''Anticipations'' (1902), Wells included a note at the end of chapter 1 acknowledging a suggestion regarding "the possibility (which my friend Mr. Joseph Conrad has suggested to me) of sliding cars along practically frictionless rails."}}

In a 23 October 1922 letter to mathematician-philosopher [[Bertrand Russell]], in response to the latter's book, ''The Problem of China'', which advocated socialist reforms and an [[oligarchy]] of sages who would reshape Chinese society, Conrad explained his own distrust of political panaceas:

{{blockquote|I have never [found] in any man's book or... talk anything... to stand up... against my deep-seated sense of fatality governing this man-inhabited world.... The only remedy for Chinamen and for the rest of us is [a] change of hearts, but looking at the history of the last 2000 years there is not much reason to expect [it], even if man has taken to flying—a great "uplift" no doubt but no great change....{{sfnp|Najder|2007|pp=548–49}} }}

Leo Robson writes:

{{blockquote|Conrad... adopted a broader [[irony|ironic]] stance—a sort of blanket incredulity, defined by a character in ''[[Under Western Eyes (novel)|Under Western Eyes]]'' as the negation of all faith, devotion, and action.  Through control of tone and narrative detail... Conrad exposes what he considered to be the naïveté of movements like [[anarchism]] and socialism, and the self-serving logic of such historical but "naturalized" phenomena as capitalism (piracy with good [[Public relations|PR]]), [[rationalism]] (an elaborate defense against our innate irrationality), and [[imperialism]] (a grandiose front for old-school rape and pillage).  To be ironic is to be awake—and alert to the prevailing "somnolence."  In ''[[Nostromo]]''... the journalist Martin Decoud... ridicul[es] the idea that people "believe themselves to be influencing the fate of the universe."  ([[H. G. Wells]] recalled Conrad's astonishment that "I could take social and political issues seriously."){{sfnp|Robson|2017|pp=93–94}}}}

But, writes Robson, Conrad is no moral nihilist:

{{blockquote|If irony exists to suggest that there's more to things than meets the eye, Conrad further insists that, when we pay close enough attention, the "more" can be endless.  He doesn't reject what [his character] [[Charles Marlow|Marlow]] [introduced in ''[[Youth (Conrad short story)|Youth]]''] calls "the haggard utilitarian lies of our civilisation" in favor of nothing; he rejects them in favor of "something", "some saving truth", "some exorcism against the ghost of doubt"—an intimation of a deeper order, one not easily reduced to words.  Authentic, self-aware emotion—feeling that doesn't call itself "theory" or "wisdom"—becomes a kind of standard-bearer, with "impressions" or "sensations" the nearest you get to solid proof.{{sfnp|Robson|2017|p=94}}}}

In an August 1901 letter to the editor of ''The New York Times Saturday Book Review'', Conrad wrote:  "Egoism, which is the moving force of the world, and altruism, which is its morality, these two contradictory instincts, of which one is so plain and the other so mysterious, cannot serve us unless in the incomprehensible alliance of their irreconcilable antagonism."{{sfnp|Najder|2007|p=315}}{{NoteTag|This may have been Conrad's central insight that so enthralled Lady Ottoline Morrell and Bertrand Russell (see [[#Impressions|"Impressions"]]).{{sfnp|Najder|2007|pp=447–48}}}}