Things Past

by Malcolm Muggeridge

A collection of Muggeridge's writings. Demonstrates that his preoccupation with might broadly be called "religious" questions is no recent quirk, but a theme running through all his writings.

252 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1978

About the author

Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy. In the aftermath of the war, as a hugely influential London journalist, he converted to Christianity and helped bring Mother Teresa to popular attention in the West. He was also a critic of the sexual revolution and of drug use.

Reviews

[Paul Gosselin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished this book and I feel there is a lot to like. Muggeridge of course had a privileged view of the 20th century and its political/ideological debates. Born into a socialist family (his father being founding member of the Fabian Society), as young man he was influenced by communism and as a journalist in 1932 he was posted to Moscow as a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. There Muggeridge was confronted with the reality of life under communism and came back not only rejecting communism, but questioning the basic Enlightenment dogma of “Progress”. Here’s a prescient titbit from Past Things (originally published, 1978):

There is a nightmare which often assails me. I imagine myself waking up one morning and finding that England has become overnight a monolithic, totalitarian state, without anyone noticing; without revolution of the Left or of the Right, or any large constitutional controversy or last stand by defenders of individual liberty.

I wonder if Muggeridge were still around if he’d consider this fulfilled in 2021 England, Canada or (more brutally) in Australia?? Now some may object of course, but I feel this is only because many are under the impression that a totalitarian State can only take the shape of openly brutal regime such as Stalinist communism (as expressed in Orwell’s 1984 for example). But that is a serious mistake as in his Brave New World Revisited Aldous Huxley offered another prescient observation (prophecy?) regarding totalitarianism.

Under the relentless thrust of accelerating overpopulation and increasing overorganization, and by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms — elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest — will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial — but democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit." (pp. 393-394)

I think this rather aptly describes the real situation we face in much of the West now...

[Jonathan]

Contains the brilliant essay, "The Great Liberal Death Wish"