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Title: Notes [Nov, 1886] Author: Freedom Press (London) Date: November, 1886 Language: en Source: Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Vol. 1, No. 2, online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3074, retrieved on April 14, 2020.
The Social Democrats have hit on a brilliant idea in turning the Lord
Mayor's Show into a graphic picture of the existing inequality in the
condition of Englishmen. It is not only telling but showing, the people
their strength and their wrongs. Tens of thousands without even the
necessaries of life, a few hundreds with wealth to throw away in costly
tomfoolery; and the first waiting on the good pleasure of the second for
even the right to labor: that is not a thing to be borne in abject
patience once it is seen as well as heard. Realized by the oppressed, it
means revolt.
Revolt; not half-measures of palliation---Eight-hour Bills, Government
relief works and the like. Such measures, if they were brought about,
could only give unsatisfactory temporary relief to a certain number,
whilst they served to break up the forces of the Revolution.
Governments, especially representative governments, give all to fear,
nothing to justice. They yield to popular pressure just so far as to
weaken and split up the force which threatens their existence. This is
the under side of all measures of social reform. They are like
provisions thrown out of the sledge by a traveler across Siberian
steppes, when the wolves are upon his track. Piece by piece the
possessors of power fling their privileges to the wolves of the
proletariat, and each morsel temporarily stops the pack, or diverts a
portion of it from the chase. Middle-class newspapers, and manipulators
of democracy openly preach concession for that very reason; it is the
one chance for the maintenance of authority.
Probably, however, our Jack o' Lanthorn of Tory Democracy will think the
times not yet ripe for "dishing" the Socialists, and so allow his
colleagues in office to pursue the congenial Conservative policy of
masterly inaction. And the Tories are right. It is not the business of
governments to provide work and food for their subjects; only to insist
that they starve peaceably.
Yet such appeals as this to the fears and compassion of property-holders
might bring present help to the unemployed, help which created no evil
greater than it alleviated, if the workers were ready to seize the
occasion. After last year's riots the rich realized their monopoly was
seriously threatened, and some of the more rational individuals and
corporations bethought them of marshes undrained, open spaces in
disorder, town improvements waiting for the Greek Kalends -- and the
rest of the endless things that want doing and am left undone. When the
fear and sympathy of these persons (for there is some honest sympathy in
the movement too) are freshly stirred, and the owners of capital now
idle feel the sting of remorse, why should not the workers be ready to
take advantage of the chance and offer to undertake the work on band
without the interference of contractors, vestries, guardians,
middle-men, local or central government officials, to "organize" them?
Why cannot English trades' unions, for instance, offer to undertake any
job that may be going, as some of the American unions do, kicking out
the contractor, his tyranny and his profits? 'They would get some good
practice in organizing themselves for work, ready, for the days when
they will have free use of all the capital in the country.
No doubt the majority of the unemployed are not union men, and draining
marshes and making embankments is mostly unskilled labor. But in
improvements and such like the trades-unionists might set the. example
of voluntary associations of workmen claiming the right And the capacity
to direct their own labor. Associations of unskilled laborers would very
quickly grow up in imitation. The work of draining the Roman marshes has
lately been undertaken by just such, a voluntary association of
laborers, and the English harvest this year was in many places gathered
in by free hands of workers. Men given the use of harvesting machinery,
paid a Jump sum for the job, and left by the farmers to arrange the work
among at themselves as they please. Country folks say it was never
better done. The workers can organize, their own labor, without any
government to do it for them.