"Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaires": Steinbeck vs. Ilf, Petrov, Trone

September 28, 2017 1:52 PM

I'm reading Ilf and Petrov's One-Story America (a.k.a. Little Golden America or American Road Trip), and I was struck by a quote that closely resembles the famous saying, "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

This quote is from Chapter 25, wherein the gang drives across the Arizona desert and picks up a down-on-his-luck hitchhiker:

When we were driving out of Flagstaff, holding the course on the Grand Canyon, Mr. Adams said: "Well, what do you think? Why does this unfortunate man insist on leaving five million apiece to the millionaires? Don't you know? Well, then, I will tell you. In his heart of hearts he is still hoping that some day he himself will become a millionaire. American upbringing is a frightful thing, gentlemen!"

(The paragraph reads exactly the same in the original Russian. Mr. Adams, incidentally, is one Solomon Abramovich Trone.)

I was struck by how closely this passage resembles the (paraphrased, possibly misattributed) Steinbeck quote, "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." However, the (presumed) source of this quote is a Steinbeck article from 1960, whereas One-Story America was published in 1937!

Is there a connection between the "Steinbeck" quote and Mr. Trone's possible remark? Or is the gist of it generic enough for this to be a case of simultaneous discovery?

posted by archagon to Media & Arts (2 answers total)

Response by poster: Maybe it's a stretch, but it definitely caught my ear. Here's the full quote, in context:

A man had fallen out of society. Naturally, he felt that the social order should be changed. But what should be done about it?

"You must take the wealth from the rich."

We began to listen even more attentively. He angrily struck the back of his seat with his large dirty fist and repeated:

"Take away their money! Take away their money and leave them only five million apiece! Give the unemployed a piece of land, so they can raise their own food and eat it. And leave the others only five million apiece!"

We asked him whether five million was not perhaps too much. But he was adamant.

"No, they must have at least five million apiece. You can't make it any less."

"But who will take the wealth away from them?" "It'll be taken away! Roosevelt will take it away! If we only reelect him president for the second time, he will do it!" "But suppose Congress won't let him?" "Nevermind. Congress will agree to it! It's a fair thing to do. How can they fail to agree to it? It's perfectly obvious."

He was so carried away by this primitive idea, he was so desirous that injustice should disappear of its own accord and that everybody should be well off, that he did not even care to think how all of this should come about. He was a child who wanted everything to be made of chocolate. It seemed to him that all he had to do was to ask kindly, good-natured Santa Claus, and everything would be magically transformed. Santa Claus would come racing in on his cardboard, silvered deer, would arrange a warm snowstorm and everything would come about. Congress will agree. Roosevelt will politely take away the billions, and the rich men with meek smiles will give up those billions. Millions of Americans are in the throes of such childish ideas.

...

When someone sells him a refrigerator or an electric stove or a vacuum cleaner, the salesman never goes into abstract discussions. With precision and in a businesslike way he explains how many cents an hour the electric energy will cost, what cash payment he will have to make, and how much will be economized by this arrangement. The purchaser wants to know figures, advantages, expressed in dollars.

A political idea is sold to him in the same manner. Nothing abstract, no philosophy. He votes, and he is promised two hundred dollars a month or the equalization of wealth. These are figures. That is understandable. He will agree to that. Of course, he will be very much surprised to discover that these ideas do not work out as conscientiously as a refrigerator and a vacuum cleaner. But for the present he still believes in them.

In Flagstaff we parted with our fellow traveller. When he left our automobile, we noticed the low level of poverty to which the man had sunk. His worn coat was in tatters. His greenish cheeks had not been shaved for a long time, and in his ears was gathered the dust of Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Oklahoma. When he said goodbye an optimistic smile lit up his sorrowing face.

"Soon everything will go well," he said. "But they get only five millions, and not another cent!"

When we were driving out of Flagstaff, holding the course on the Grand Canyon, Mr. Adams said:

"Well, what do you think? Why does this unfortunate man insist on leaving five million apiece to the millionaires? Don't you know? Well, then, I will tell you. In his heart of hearts he is still hoping that some day he himself will become a millionaire. American upbringing is a frightful thing, gentlemen!"

posted by archagon at 2:13 PM on September 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires

his heart of hearts he is still hoping that some day he himself will become a millionaire.

I haven't heard of / read either source but this is a popular sentiment among my leftist friends, so I'm going to say 'generic gist'. It's possible, of course, that one was inspired by the other but the sentiment seems to fall logically and easily from the tension between conservatism, democracy and capitalism's inevitable creation of an underclass, and so I can see how the same view would be discovered independently:

- the left rejects the idea of a meritocracy; success is the outcome of privilege, and imposes a moral duty to support those without said privilege;

- the right upholds the idea of a meritocracy, but this creates a risk in a capitalist democracy: the former will create haves and have nots, but if you demonise people who are unsuccessful as inferior / lazy, they're not likely to vote for you under the latter. It is necessary, then, to create other demons - the unseen forces that are keeping hardworking, worthy conservatives below the poverty line (take your pick - blacks, Jews, feminists, communists, LGBQTI+ people, immigrants...);

- poor conservatives are therefore convinced that they, too, are millionaire material, and would be millionaires now, were it not for the nefarious 'them' who keep them down; only the conservative right has the guts to stand up to these forces on behalf of the downtrodden; vote for the right.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 7:27 PM on September 28, 2017 [1 favorite]