Eliot published Silas Marner in 1861, a good thirteen years after Marx and Engels hit the bookshelves with The Communist Manifesto. I had been reading various statements about class without very little recognition of what Eliot was subtly trying to suggest. Then, all of a sudden, she came out and said it.
...there's never a garden in all the parish but what there's endless waste in it for want o' somebody as could use everything up. It's what I think to myself sometimes, as there need nobody run short o' victuals if the land was made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what could find its way to a mouth. It sets one thinking o' that—gardening does.Aaron's comment on the possibility of finding pretty much anything Eppie wants for her new garden betrays Eliot's thinking about the haves and have nots of England in the nineteenth century. If only those who have so much would give to those who have very little, there would surely be plenty to go around.
The socialism is subtle, and undeveloped, which actually makes it more dangerous. If Eliot threw it out there very obviously, the novel might be dismissed as extremist ranting. However, if Eliot simply subtly suggests the ideas and lets them develop in the mind of her reader, then eventually the fruit will come. Socialism won't look so bad once we think about how nice it would be if everyone could eat all they wanted.
No one initiating something as dangerous as Socialism goes around talking about the bad parts of the plan. That would be dumb. They use the strategy of Eliot and suggest what might be better if things were done just a little differently. Who could argue against wasted fruits and vegetables, after all?
Remember this the next time our leaders suggest Smart Meters so that everyone will have enough electricity to heat them and keep them cool.
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