Click On Title To Link To United States Golf Association web site. That is the golf part. The Zen and Socialism part you are on your own.
Commentary
Has old Markin finally gone off the deep end? Golf, Zen and socialism under the same headline. What gives? What gives is this. It is spring time in New England when a man’s thoughts (or at least this man’s thoughts) turn to the need to get to the great outdoor. To commune with nature. To smell the roses. In short, to get to the local public golf course and tempt fate and incur the ire of the golf gods. For those of a certain age though this thought may seem to place me in the category of “counter-revolutionary” Trotskyites that I have, more than once in my life, been accused of being. Why?
Back in the days, in the late 1960’s, “when to be young was very heaven” those of us who considered ourselves either politically or culturally radical would probably have heartily endorsed the slogan “burn down the country clubs”. And we would not have been too far off then, or now. The late Wobblie folk singer/songwriter Utah Phillips has spun more than one on-target line about the usual denizens of such haunts. Golf and its earliest manifestations in a conservative country club ethos were the stuff of bourgeois life, leisure and status and begged to be made fun of. The novelist John O’Hara made a literary career in the mid-20th century writing of the foibles and follies of the mainly conservative and status conscious American country club set, most notably in “Appointment In Samarra” That book is still a good read to get the feel of being trapped in that world. More recently and vividly the Ponzi artist supreme, Bernard Madoff, worked his financial ‘magic’ among a more contemporary section of that set down in Palm Beach, Florida.
All the above points are very true. As far as they go in our hatred of the ethos of the country club set. There is another aspect, however, that ‘corrects’ our youthful misunderstanding of the aims of socialism, our capacity to fight for it and our staying power in that struggle. I do not know if it was the old, somewhat dour, picture of what a Bolshevik existence was to be like that colored our perceptions, handed down by the old time Stalinists (except, of course, the conduct of the privileged bureaucrats). Or if it was the pressure to seem to be “at one” with the workers by scorning various bourgeois lifestyle traditions but somewhere along the line the sense of the need for more opportunities for rest and relaxation rather than less got thrown by the wayside. To the contrary the idea of socialism, at least any socialism worth fighting for and asking others to fight for as well, is to increase socially useful productive capacity, redistribute goods more equitably and thus allow for greater free time for creative activities. Or just hit golf balls, if one so desires.
Although, admittedly, we are far away from that socialist goal today those who fight under the banner of socialism need to keep some balance in their lives in order to stay with the struggle. Thus, a certified revolutionary leader like Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx’ life long co-thinker, liked to fox hunt while in his British exile. While I fully support Oscar Wilde’s comment about the ‘virtues’ of that endeavor that was Engels’ “thing”. The Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, after Vladimir Lenin the best and most well-known Bolshevik, liked to hunt, fish and later in life collect cacti. None of those hobbies are particularly associated with strictly proletarian social interests. In short, other than some patently illegal or outrageous activity, one’s personal forms of relaxation are no one’s concern. That, moreover, is probably the secret to the staying power of these great revolutionaries mentioned above. They were in it for the long haul and balanced their personal lives accordingly.
But why golf rather than, let us say, bowling or stamp collecting? Well, go back to that first paragraph about communing with nature. Most golf courses located near urban centers offer interesting natural sites like woods, ponds and sand that one can become very familiar with if one’s golf ball goes astray. Moreover, nobody should object to getting a little walking in and to get out in the sunshine and away from the damn computer for a bit. But here is the Zen part. For this average golfer there is nothing like hitting a golf shot from about 150 yards away and having it land on the green (the target area for the shot for those who do not know the game). That is what now passes for “very heaven”. And then make the putt (put it in the hole). Nirvana.
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