H.P. Lovecraft's socialism in a few eloquent sentences

      S.T. Joshi's " Providence Pals ", Ron Marshall and Herb Marshall. A bunch of them were living together in an upper floor apartment on Observatory Ave. in Providence, not far from Swan Point Cemetery where H.P.L 's remains are buried in an unquiet grave (made so not by eerie undead things but by a few of his fans devoted to all things OCCULT).

http://www.stjoshi.org/news.html

Most readers associate the Providence Rhode Island legend H.P. Lovecraft with his weird fiction and his sometimes silly horror cult fans. I was introduced to this amazing character way back in 1984 ( the year itself associated in my mind with Orwellian nightmares ).  I was particularly close to

            Oddly enough, H.P. Lovecraft was, in his correspondence, a pure materialist, but hardly a disciple of crude Marxism.  In that last grim year of his life - a very depressing Depression year, 1937 - he was living on Campell's Soup  and expressing in his precious LETTERS his contempt for the capitalist system. He was quite pleased with " aristocrat " FDR's re-election in 1936. He was often at odds with his own social class on the question of socialism.  Imagine a gentleman of the Yankee upper class ( before family economic ruin ) going over to those subhuman proles ?

         I  was delighted with his criticism of capitalism: "But the chief indictment of a capitalist ideal is perhaps something deeper even than humanitarian principle-something which concerns the profound, subtle and pervasive hostility of capitalism, and of the whole essence of mercantilism, to all that is finest in and most creative in the human spirit."

    ..... " business and capital are the fundamental enemies of human worth in that they exalt and reward the shrewdly acquisitive rather than the intrinsically superior and creative ". ( page 319, " Lord of a Visible World " , edited by S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz )

             To be sure H.P. Lovecraft himself- who could have made millions in today's popular author market- was punished with real economic misery in his lifetime. At one point  in a letter he is contemplating suicide if he cannot find a tolerable menial job paying at least ten dollars per week.  Poor HPL -  a true literary genius ORIGINAL - was just not " shrewdly acquisitive " enough for philistine success in those  Great Depression " years.

        For me and millions of his readers H.P. Lovecraft represents " all that is finest in and most creative in the human spirit . ".  Even in the shadow of " cosmic horror ", humanity might triumph over dark, irrational social-economic forces that still enslave it. And let us hope that we not come to grief - and insanity- with a deeper knowledge of the universe.