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Title: Notes [Apr, 1888] Author: Freedom Press (London) Date: April, 1888 Language: en Source: Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Vol. 2, No. 19, online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3056, retrieved on April 14, 2020.
The Father of rulers, property and lies, has lately inspired his
children with some skill in playing to the gallery and creating the
delusions by which the victims of oppression are diverted from their
wrongs. On the one side, Mr. Goschen conjures so cleverly with his items
of finance that the admiring crowd are ready to forget that all taxes,
however distributed, are a tribute wrung by force from the workers to
support the Government that guarantees property and poverty. On the
other hand, Mr. Ritchie produces such dazzling effects of democratic
local administration that we are inclined to forget that, in the first
place, the Local Government Bill will never be carried out in its
present imposing form; and in the second, that if it were, it would only
shift authority from one set of men to another, leaving the propertiless
workers slaves as before. The object of the whole farce is to smother
the social question in a fog of politics. The old, stale trick. Will it
succeed once more 7
Mr. Justice Day's remarks about the harmful effects of long imprisonment
on the criminal, and through him on others, have just received terrible
confirmation in Hungary. An unhappy man suffered seventeen years of
penal servitude for the murder of his mother. He was looked on by the
prison authorities as entirely 11 reformed," but on his release his
first act was an attempt to kill the judge who had condemned him.
Failing to find the judge, he revenged himself by murdering the judge's
wife, a passerby in the street, and his own wife and child, and severely
wounding a lawyer's clerk and a gardener who tried to stop him. During
these seventeen years of " reform " the miserable man's whole mental
energy had been concentrated in a growing monomania of revenge upon
society for the suffering inflicted on himself.
This year's commemoration of the Paris Commune was the largest and most
enthusiastic which has yet taken place in London. For that reason, no
doubt, it was boycotted by the whole daily press except the three
evening half-pennies. The speakers were-Social Democratic Federation: H.
M. Hyndman (in the chair), John Burns, Mrs. Hicks; Socialist League:
William Morris, Mrs. Marx-Aveling, F. Kitz, H. H. Sparling; Fabian
Society: Mrs. Besant; Freedom Group: P. Kropotkin, Dr. Merlino, and C.
M. Wilson. Karl Kautsky expressed the sympathy of German workers, and La
Vache sang 11 La Carmagnole." The whole character of the speeches was
revolutionary, and their tone more decided than in any previous year;
and the more thorough-going the Socialism, the more enthusiastically it
was received.
This is the first time that English Socialists of all shades of opinion
have united to honor the heroes of the vanguard of Social Revolution. As
the great struggle approaches, the army of freedom draws its ranks
closer. Note too the increasing number of women taking active part in
the movement. Two years ago one. woman spoke; last year two addressed
the meeting; this year four women were included among the speakers, one
representing each shade of Socialist opinion.
Most English and French workmen are less favorably impressed with
existing profit-sharing and cooperative enterprises than our
correspondent, the well-known American Mutualist-Anarchist who signs
himself Edgeworth, Probably distance, in his case, lends enchantment to
the view. But we would draw our readers' attention to his admission that
the "constructive idea" of Proudhon, the solution of the social problem
by Mutual Banking, is inapplicable in present conditions. Mutualist
"cooperative unions are feasible only when the means of production are
owned by the producers," Certainly the producers do not own the means of
production to-day, and have no prospect under our present economic
system of owning them. We fully agree with Edgeworth that nothing less
than expropriation will meet the exigencies of the case."
Revolutionary Anarchism and the expropriation of property monopolists
are preached by the Chicago Alarm; but the other American Mutualist
papers zealously repudiate all but passive resistance to oppression, and
cling to the peace-at-all costs doctrine of George Fox, Godwin, Shelley,
Proudhon, Leo Tolstoy, and many another spirit touched to fine issues,
but blind to the fact that domination is still an aggressive force in
society, only to be destroyed by an outburst of energy more active and
powerful than itself.
Can one do a greater wrong to any human being than consciously to allow
him to domineer over oneself or any one else without offering the most
vigorous protest within one's power.
We Revolutionary Communist-Anarchists differ from our Revolutionary
Mutualist comrades in their theory that after the workers have destroyed
the existing monopoly of property they will set about creating it
afresh-by attempting to secure to every individual neither more nor less
than the exact amount of wealth resulting from the exercise of his own
capacities. Are not the scandalous inequalities in the distribution of
wealth to-day merely the cumulative effect of the principle that every
man is justified in securing to himself everything that his chances and
capacities enable him to lay hands on I
If the social revolution amid which we are living means anything, it
means the destruction of this detestable economic principle, which
delivers over the more social members of the community to the domination
of the most unsocial and self-interested.
Jus died last month, singing the swan-song of English Individualism. The
hopes of the people are set on Socialism, and the privileged classes
have no heart to defy them-so moans the expiring organ of the Liberty
and Property Defense League. The whole attention of the propertied
classes and their government is strained towards evading social
revolution by skillful conjuring with timely concessions. The L. P. D.
L. contains fewer conscientious Individualists than could be
accommodated in a four-wheeled cab; in fact, it is merely " The Harassed
Interests Defense League." It 11 is extremely unpopular among working
class audiences." It "is credited, justly or unjustly, with a lively
respect for the liberty of the wolf to devour the lamb, and a cynical
admission of the equal right of the lamb to devour the wolf." A just
charge, apparently, to the minds of the aforesaid single-minded
Individualists of the staff of Jus, who have thus publicly shaken the
dust of the League from their feet.
It is reported that they are preparing to revive the paper as an
Exponent of Individualist Anarchism. As comrade Hicks says, " We are all
Anarchists now," and the defenders of " Liberty and Property," like many
State Socialists, believe 11 that the society of the remote future will
be held together on the principle of absolute philosophical anarchy."
But---also like State Socialists---they are perfectly prepared to pursue
a policy in utter contradiction with their profession of faith -vide Mr.
Auberon Herbert's 11 Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State," and
Mr. W. Donnistborpe's criticism thereon in the last two numbers of Jus.
Surely an Anarchist is one who adopts Anarchism as the guiding principle
of his life, who takes the moral attitude of an Anarchist towards his
fellows here and now-not one who believes in a possible Anarchist
Millennium in the dim future.