Notes On Socialist Helen Keller

Posted: 8/8/2015

Trigger

Someone just (re)posted this video of Helen Keller with her long time teacher Annie Sullivan. This got me interested to find out quickly more about her. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to do more research on her, so I might do her some injustice with this blog post.

Here is a description in her own words “How I Became a Socialist” (I suppose, the source is credible). Didn’t quite have the time to read it entirely.

Coincidences In Life

“One of Helen's Swiss ancestors was the first teacher for the deaf in Zurich. ” (Wikipedia) Was Helen Keller predestined to become successful the way she was.

Her Appeal And Memory To This Day

Her great appeal to many to this day should not cloud the fact that she was a dedicated supporter of socialism.

A Marxist Take On Helen Keller

This is a quote from marxist.org (emphasis added):

“Her own self image was that of a Blind woman who also could not hear. Helen Keller never learned the sign language of the North American Deaf community. Instead she had English sentences manually spelled into her hand and then vocalized her responses. This effectively cut her off from the largely working class Deaf population whose native sign language has a grammar all its own. Blindness at that time often meant unemployment, whereas Deaf workers were integrated into the largely non-English speaking ranks of manual laborers. One can only wonder what might have been if Comrade Keller had found a place in the ranks of politically unorganised Deaf workers in the heady years of the late '20s and '30s.”

Full Of Contradictions

Her accomplishments to overcome her dual handicap are most wonderful and exemplary. Those, who helped her along and succeed are heroes. Her life is an inspiring story, no doubt, but …

She was apparently an ardent supporter of socialism and probably for the same naive reasons as most other supporters of socialism. However, her college education was financed by a greedy capitalist, i.e. Henry Huttleston Rogers (industrialist and oil magnate). She also met another capitalist early in life, i.e. Alexander Graham Bell, who helped her. She attended the Perkins Institute for the Blind, founded by a capitalist and slave trader, i.e. Thomas Handasyd Perkins.

If Keller was introduced to Mr. Rogers by Mark Twain, then she possibly should have known Mr. Rogers long-term business partner, i.e. Charles Pratt, who founded the Pratt Institute (which still exists today) and “wanted to provide the opportunity for working men and women to better their lives through education” (Wikipedia).

Like so many other socialists, Hellen Keller was highly selective in her perception of reality and she was committed to the wrong solution to improve the lives of people living in poverty.