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Title: Agitators and Rebels Author: Dora Marsden Date: 1914 Language: en Topics: egoism, agitation, rebellion, The Egoist Source: Retrieved on 9/26/2021 from https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr520295/ Notes: Originally published in The Egoist Volume I Number 06 (March 16, 1914). Title is unofficial and derived from the text.
Let us speak of agitators. The conviction dawns it were high time we
held a few words of prayer together. For nowadays it is counted as being
not merely worthy to be an agitator: since Oscar Wilde let the mark of
intelligence rest on this label, it has become the only smart thing, so
much so that not to agitate and be agitated is to be guilty of immoral
conduct of the worst brand: to be dowdy, to wit. It is as bad as not
eating your father where the correct mode is that you should eat him: or
wearing clothes where the fashion is that you shouldn't. So oppressive
indeed among the advanced is the weight of authority demanding that you
should be a "rebel," so provocative is the air of immutable rectitude
which is now petrifying about the brows of the agitator: that we
personally find ourselves in the eventful instant when "Moral" conceives
"Schism," when "evolution" is as it were suspended in the act: when the
procreating power of undocile temper impregnates the "customary" with
the germ which, developed, will devour its maternal parent.
---
The foregoing sentence was tall: let us step down: — In the old days
when the "agitator" was wholly without repute, and the common-sense of
the people was fed on grandmotherly adages such as "Mind your own
business," "Help yourself and heaven will help you," rebellion among the
"meaner sort"—those of no possessions—cut no ice at all. Aristocratic
and middle-class revolutions have succeeded and failed according as
chance circumstances had it: but the record of rebellion among the
unpropertied makes a doleful story, and the propertyless rebel has been
written down a scurvy knave. When, therefore, opinion turns turtle so
rapidly that a reputable thinker can ask whether one is not a rebel in a
tone in which one silk-hatted stockbroker might ask another whether it
were his habit not to wear shirts; or in which one person might be
scandalised by another who walked abroad knowing himself to be infected
with smallpox, it is advisable one should assert one's intention to
withhold one's neck from the block for such a period of time as will
enable the assumptions which are in the minds of persons who call
themselves "rebels " to be sized up. Persons who have become enthused
under the influence of assumptions are quite liable to become a danger
to one's existence if they are permitted to assume in addition that one
agrees with them.
One of this week's correspondents, for instance, has been struck by the
notion it is possible we are not rebels, and immediately concludes there
can be no other adequate reason for our continued existence." "Why not
put up the shutters?" it begins, amiably. "If" ... etc., "there seems to
be no raison d'etre for a paper"... like this one. "Against what is THE
EGOIST rebelling? Against Rebellion? Having discovered that you are not
an Anarchist am I now to discover you are not even a rebel?" This letter
is to us truly revealing. It had not occurred to us that our pampered
existence was being prolonged through time on the understanding that we
were rebels and always rebels. We had come to regard the foibles of
these rebels as part of our native sport. As for our reason for existing
it was only, to our way of viewing it, to bear true witness—to the
extreme limit to which our ability to do so admits—regarding the things
and persons and relations between these as our whim and haphazard line
of interest suggests. We find that in journalism, as in literature
generally and the rest of the "arts" it is the most fertilising,
illuminating, provocative and pugnacious thing to do.
---
But let us return to agitators and rebels. We once defined a rebel as a
"Webbite ashamed of the Webbs," and doubtless thought it true enough and
smart to boot. Hence what we now suffer in the shape of
misunderstanding: the discipline of consequences Spenser would have
called it. We imagined that to call a rebel a Webbite would have been
effectual not merely in irritating vastly the "rebels," but would have
made it clear to the world that the rebels and we were as worlds apart.
We prove merely that to the "provinces"—overseas London is provincial,
and that its slang like any other slang is limited to itself: that
beyond a ten-mile radius from Charing Cross (to which area the "Fabian
News" will link up a number of intellectualised crick-necked
debating-societies in Manchester and Glasgow) the Webbs are
non-existent; and that to the rest of the world a "Webbite" might be a
new species of teetotaller or herb-eater. So the task awaits us to
define it afresh. A rebel, we take it, is a person who either for
himself or others is dissatisfied with the condition of
things—especially things connected with the possession of wealth—in
which he finds himself situated; one who therefore concerns himself to
alter those conditions. An agitator we might add is a rebel either
"born" or "made," who from one motive or another takes it upon himself
to make persons who are in the conditions to which he objects, also
dissatisfied with those conditions with a view ultimately to induce them
to alter them.
---
Well, very estimable: what is there to cavil at in all that? Let us look
at it. The characteristic of the "rebel" position is a feeling of angry
temper against—something: i.e. conditions, presumably static. Now as a
matter of fact "conditions" of a relative degree—precisely in that
relative degree under which the agitator conceives them, are an
illusion. There are conditions which men would find absolute, as for
instance an explorer without food in Arctic territory: but in a "land of
plenty" such as these in which the "rebel movement" is trying to make
headway: conditions—static—hard and fast—are illusory, and impermanent
as the blocking out of light from a room by a night's frost is
impermanent. Heat the room and the window-panes clear and the light
streams in. Now seemingly-harsh conditions of wealth- acquiring in
fertile lands with instruments of production such as we possess are as
formidable as an army of snow warriors exposed in the glare of warm
sunlight. Conditions dissolve under the thawing influence of human
initiative, energy, and temper. What is amiss, in the worst (of these
relative) conditions human eye has rested upon, is not the condition:
but the conditioning human quantity which has enabled it to take shape.
The condition was not there first: it followed in the trail of the human
beings who allowed it to settle round them as an aura; and altering the
condition is not the first concern: the seat of the agitator's offending
lies in his trying to persuade the "poor" that it is: the folly of the
rebels is that they believe it so to be.
---
Consider the "rebel" movement in England, which, one is not unhappy to
note, evidently reached its high-water mark some considerable time ago,
and is at present rapidly receding. The most spirited and distinguishing
feature of its campaign was its onslaught on "Fat." Even its artist—one
whose ability to English rebels must have appeared almost incredible,
Mr. Dyson the cartoonist, spent his virtue in picturing the foibles and
physical protuberances of the "Man of Wealth," thereby putting the
"rebels" in great fettle. At the same time it must have been a source of
the most genial diversion to the "Fat" themselves. The traditional gibe
at the girth of an imaginary waistband can only be a piquant addition to
the satisfaction of those who are well aware that it is a symbolic, what
though envious, acknowledgment of the stoutness of their purse—an
acknowledgment of their importance from a source which they could well
understand being the most loth to furnish it. The hypothesis upon which
the rebel leaders—the agitators—press their propaganda is that
"something" is amiss: therefore that it is a "duty" for those of us who
are not pleased with things, to be prepared to attack persons and
institutions. An egoist would say that such an hypothesis is erroneous
and that hopes built on working it out will end in failure and
disappointment. He would regard the "poor" man (whom later we shall
perhaps be able to distinguish further) i.e. the man who cannot engineer
his abilities to the point where what he can get comes within measurable
distance of what he wants, one analogous to the sick man in a community.
Now for a sick man the first obvious necessity is to get well. If he
were to spend what little vital power is left him in raging against
those whom he sees around him who are well it would be concluded that
his sickness had affected his brain as well as the less sensitive part
of his person. If the sick man sees that a man in full health is getting
ahead of him in the attaining of the things which the former wants, he
may conclude that partially it is because the healthy man had a
walk-over. Again, the only obvious thing for the sick one is—to get
well.
Where the analogy between the sick man and the poor man is particularly
important and altogether parallel and sound is in this point. The first
necessities of both respectively, i.e. health and power, are not limited
quantities: they are not monopolies in the gift of someone else: only in
a very remote degree and under exceptional circumstances can they be
conferred: they must in some mysterious manner—in the mysterious and
miraculous manner which is the way of all life, be culled from within
one's self. What the way is for each individual, he finds out not by
rebelling but by acquiescing in the "make-up" of his own nature and in
that of those with whom he will be in competition. Just as a student in
a laboratory could get no way by being a rebel, by asserting that it
would be better and safer all round if nitrogen became oxygen, if
mercury and gold sank their differences and in the interests of the
larger Unity became identical, so social rebels will get no way until
they acquiesce willingly in men and women being what they are: accept
their oddities and wayward differences and then make the best and most
of them to serve their individual ends. It is comical that it should
appear necessary to say things so elementary and obvious: one feels like
the advocate of the lady anent whom Carlyle ejaculated "Egad, she'd
better," when told that after due deliberation she had decided that "for
herself, she accepted the Universe." Modern rebels are that lady's
intellectual descendants. The "poor" man is the one who lacks the power
to get what he wants. This definition should meet the objections of a
correspondent in this current issue, who points out that a
non-aggressive man who does not desire wealth and power is quite as
likely to be aware of what he wants and of getting it as is the
aggressive person who desires "wealth and power." The confusion is
caused by putting wealth and power together as though they were terms of
equal weight: whereas they are quite other. "Wealth " takes its place
alongside a thousand other things desired, which "power" can attain if
its desires are set in its direction. Power is the first requisite no
matter what the "want." Even to lead the quiet non-aggressive retired
life, one must have power to insist on these conditions coming into
being. Unless a man—even the most peaceful—has power to resist, one kind
of spy or another with an armed force to support him will invade his
privacy—the tax-collector, the sanitary inspector, the school attendance
officer, and in the predictable future the recruiting-officer, the
state-doctor and so on from little to more. The necessity for power can
never be laid aside, if there be any wants left: aggressive wants or
peaceful wants. With it, peace or aggression are available at will:
without it, one must accept what is given. Which explains the speaking
difference in the positions of Sir Edward Carson and his Ulster handful,
and the nine South African "leaders" with the working population of
South Africa behind them. The situation is plain as a pikestaff:
explaining it is like "explaining" the fact that most persons have noses
somewhere near the centres of their faces: the basis of all concessions,
whether from men, governments, or nature itself rests on the power to
compel them. The "concession" is the mere act of grace which prefers to
assume the pose of giving something, which withheld, would be taken.
"Sing a song of liberty," forsooth! Every one is at "liberty" to do what
he can. A man's "liberty" is always at his elbow: always as much of it
as he has of "power." Then what is the value of rebelling? It is an
irrelevance, a waste of attention, time and energy.
---
"Why not put up the shutters?" The query emanates from Mr. Tucker. Our
view of course is that the shutters, i.e. those things which a friendly
neighbour can handle in the interests of another, are just these
catchwords of the "rebel" army: liberty, justice, what not. By removing
their influence, we remove the obstruction which separates the mind from
the light, of one who has eyes to see. The growth of the eye is beyond
any external power to effect: but something can be done—always has been
done since men became self-conscious—became artists, that is—to remove
the uncouth growths, the scales which gather round the senses where they
become external. All language is an art-form: much of it a rotten bad
form: bad, being untrue to the experience it purports to tell forth. How
then should we put up the shutters? It is our pleasure even more than we
consider it our business to take them down.
---
How the misconception regarding what this "problem (forsooth) of the
poor" is concerned with, is likely to end—the misconception that its
remedy has to be sought in the "system" rather than with the individual
"poor" — is becoming clear. It fosters in the weak and hitherto unknown
arrogance concerning what they may regard as their just dues which
ultimately will lead them into a position they at present are incapable
of imagining. Because they are "told" that the powerful have wrongly
taken advantage of an "unfair system," the feeble-tempered conceive
themselves as holding claims of Right and Justice against them. These
claims are the actual instruments of their undoing: they are the
stumbling-block in their line of comprehension. They imagine that with
these as defenders, ultimately to appear as another Castor and Pollux in
the heat of the battle, any mouldering stick is sufficient to fill out
their armoury for the struggle. Indeed, with the assistance of
"Conscience—working-on-the-other-side"—whom they postulate as necessary
to Right and Justice, they have come to a conclusion which suits them:
that in a "well-regulated" world there is no struggle: the libertarian
trinity, Conscience, Right and Justice, can just conceive how it might
be possible to muzzle the powerful in their varying degrees until the
"pull" of every member of the community should just equal that of the
sickest invalid on the list. "If only the powerful would be persuaded
and give the system a run it was for their pleasure as well as for their
good!" Meantime, while they are theorising, with their eyes in the ends
of the earth, the already powerful are using their very theories against
them. Under the delusion that in a community of brotherly democrats,
each is going to govern all, the "poor" are submitting to a degree of
governing which would never have been attempted had it not been glozed
over by the fact that it was done with their consent. The deluge of
powerful men's laws—arrangements to suit the schemes of order which will
best suit them, has fallen on the meek little democrats, by request.
They imagined they were contracting with men of their own weight: that
in fact they were all to become equal, before the law. They imagined
that having proved themselves inferior in the open lists, they would be
allowed to draw up the rules for contests.
The "poor" cannot have it every way: they cannot fail in the fight and
then dictate the manner of fighting. How are they going to persuade
those who have beaten them all round that the latters' needs are not
what they think they are, but what it is right they should be? How are
they going to persuade them that the "Morals" which serve them so badly
are better ways than the "Immorals" which serve their conquerors so
well? By talking, gush, pious sentiment and rhetoric? They delude
themselves. They have either to be prepared to tug at the bundle of
power and possessions or take what is given them — if anything is given
them—and be thankful. Their dislike for tugging is not going to stop it:
simply because better men than they like it and intend going on with it.
To lay too much count on the sensitiveness which is fretted by their
discomfiture is to make an enormous miscalculation, for no man is his
brother's keeper except in the sense that he is his gaoler: a fact which
the working out of all these philanthropic tendencies most unmistakeably
reveals. That enjoyment of struggle can be diminished by the awareness
that one is trampling on someone is due to a repugnance at the "feel"
that one's foot is on something which writhes and not on solid earth;
but not even the dislike of the sensation of squelching one's boots into
another's vitals is likely to stop the struggle: for the simple reason
that healthy people can't exist happily without it. What then will
happen to those who prove themselves incapable, in spite of much
friendly aid and substantial ends thrown, of maintaining their foothold
will be that they will be carried out of the way, "employed" in a
protected irresponsible position, legislated for and controlled. For
such as are useful, a legal status will be guaranteed: they will be
well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed, by means of a "legal" minimum wage:
of the highest rank among the domesticated beasts of burden. This as
long as they remain useful and well-regulated, hard-working and moral,
that is. If they become too useless or too troublesome, they will,
according to the degree in which they offend, be confined or killed off.
The staggeringly rapid increase in the number of indictable offences
shows what direction governments and social reformers consider the line
of efficiency in the confinement department will take. The eugenics
movement on the other hand illustrates the line of efficiency in the
extinction department. Segregation, castration, lethal chambers,
elimination of "criminal" types along with the "feeble-minded"—these
things although their advocates are mostly only sub-consciously aware of
it, are the steady bearing out of the "principle" whereby the "tuggers"
despatch the non-strugglers.
The responsible party of course are these latter: and in their arrogant
setting towards disaster they are supported by the counsels of rebels,
reformers, moralists and masters alike.