“To state correctly what I now am, it is necessary that I should state the means which I have had to acquire knowledge; and though this will set me to speak of myself from infancy upwards, it is a story which none can tell as well as myself. But this speaking of one's self is a pleasure at all times, whatever affectation might have affected to the contrary; particularly, where a man is not ashamed to expose his past career to the knowledge of all."
— Richard Carlile.
“Wait not to be backed by numbers. Wait not till you are sure of an echo from the crowd. The fewer the voices on the side of truth, the more distinct and strong must be your own." — Channing.
I.
I was born on November 5th, 1886, and educated ... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
During the same month I became acquainted with a system of belief expressedly antagonistic to Christianity. This was Theism as promoted by the now late Rev. Charles Voysey, B.A., the minister and founder of the Theistic Church, and former Vicar of Healaugh, whose indictment before Privy Council shook the Anglican Church to its foundations. A reply to the Times advertisement of the Theistic Church—offering a free batch of literature to truthseekers, etc.—led to the receipt of several printed sermons by Mr. Voysey, and his “Lecture on the Theistic Church, its Foundation and the Bible." Their author invited criticism. So I read the "Lectures," and addressed to him a closely-written, forty-eight paged foolscap criticism of the... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
Although oppressed with an ever-widening antagonism to the entire Christian scheme of salvation, and a deepening sense of the absurdity of belief in an infallible Bible, I continued Christian missionary work down to February, 1903. On the 2nd of this month I withdrew from the Holloway Mission, and definitely rejected the Christian religion in a letter addressed to my former pastor, the Rev. S. Buss, LL.B.
I had now learned to look upon life more spiritually than I had known now to do as a Christian. God had become a living and affectionate father. He was no longer the fiend who-created and allowed to come to life a soul which he foreknew would be damned eternally. Had he been, he deserved of such a monster. Fear he might inspire in the m... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
Owing to certain questions which I now put with some timidity to Christian evidence lecturers, I was invited to attend the Sunday Morning Adult School Meetings of the Peel Institute, in order to refind Christ. I accepted the invitation only to lose God instead.
In addresses delivered before the members of this local Quaker Brotherhood during the ensuing twelve months, I insisted that man was truly religious only in so far as his outwardly expressed views concurred with his inward outlook on life, and his beliefs were scientifically trained and cultivated. The earlier lectures maintained that the Bible records were historically untrustworthy. Also that the bodily resurrection and divinity of Christ were absurdities. But Theism was true, a... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
The Peel Institute was a hotbed of political Liberalism of the Daily News variety. Membership of it converted me from Toryism to advanced Radicalism. This was early in 1904, when I was finding Huxley's lectures and essays of absorbing interest. His Romane’s address of 1893 on “Evolution and Ethics" were responsible for my development into a Socialist.
In this lecture, Huxley insisted that “the influence of the cosmic process on society is the greater, the more rudimentary its civilization." He spoke of social progress checking the cosmic process at every step, and substituting for it the ethical process. The influence of the latter was directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest, as the fitting of as many as po... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
“On the ground of the class struggle," said Leibknecht, “we are invincible. If we leave it we are lost, because we are no longer Socialists. The strength and power of Socialism rests in the fact that we are leading a class struggle; that the laboring class is exploited and oppressed by the capitalist class, and that within capitalist society effectual reforms, which will put an end to class government and class exploitation, are impossible." Yes, I felt this to be true, but I had not yet become clear in my outlook. I did not fully realize that all government was class, as was all exploitation. I had not studied Marx sufficiently to see in the parliamentary republic but the republic of the propertied class—a joint stock aff... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
There is no more virtue in the term “Anarchy" than in its companion, “Socialism." Readers should bear this fact in mind. And just as much fakirism is imposed on a long-suffering proletariat in the name of the one as the other. With its pretense to being “a movement" and not “a party," the Anarchist group federation can prove as narrow and as reactionary and sectarian an organization as any section of the social democracy, or pretensions signify nothing, and we live in a real, not an ideal world.
Socialists, so called, have degraded Marx's declaration of a political class struggle to mean something which it never did and never can mean, namely, parliamentary action. The Anarchist movement has thrived on this fact. ... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
Industrial Unionism is one of the most important propagandas of our time, and no such pamphlet as the present would be complete without a statement of the writer's attitude towards it. I came in contact with its literature towards the end of my membership of the S.D.F., and have remained a keen student of it ever since. My mind was quickly made up, and, for all practical purposes, remains unchanged on the subject. I am not an Industrial Unionist, although sympathetic towards many of the latter's contentions.
The original constitution of the I.W.W. asserted that the workers must come together on the industrial and political fields. I do not think there can be any doubt about the soundness of this contention only it does not necessarily in... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
Although he does not suspect it, the Anarchist usually lives in the ideal world, the world of reflexes. He battles against an abstraction called “Authority,” and imagines it to be the creator of the real world, the world of production and industrial exploitation. Too often he becomes crankish and endeavors to isolate himself from his fellows. He buries his head in the sand, leads the “simple life," and imagines that he has escaped from the evils of capitalism, and that everyone else can follow his example. He applauds his own mental greatness, and forgets that it is a parasite growth. He puts his own shoulder in the limelight, and forgets the amount of social labor-power necessary to produce his mental vigor.
This perso... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
The highest heights to which ever man can attain are those of liberty of thought, freedom of action, and the service of one's fellows. The successful ascent of these heights alone brings the happiness which makes for human betterment. As yet, they have been climbed only by those who have realized that short of an Atheistic basis, and Communistically expressed aspirations after individual freedom, there can be no social progress. “And I am such. ln my heresy rests my salvation. My happiness is assured. Can the same be said of all my readers happiness?
For the rest, let me add that I have come to look partly upon the world with the critical, if at times passionately remorseful, eyes of the cynic and from the sincere reformer I have e... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
Guy Alfred Aldred, the author of the present pamphlet, was charged on a warrant before Mr. Curtis Bennett, at the Bow Street Police Court, on Thursday, August 26th, 1909, with writing, printing, and publishing "a certain scandalous and seditious libel" in the Indian Sociologist for August, 1900. The defendant conducted his own case throughout, whilst A H. Bodkin appeared for the Treasury.
In opening the case for the prosecution, Bodkin stated that the prosecution was one that had been commenced by the Attorney—General for an offense of a public character and of a serious and important nature. It was committed deliberately by the defendant after warning, and not committed by him merely as a printer, but committed by him as a printer... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
“In the first place, I wish to plead ‘Not Guilty" to all counts in this indictment. In the second place, I desire, if I may, to point out, so far as the evidence already adduced is concerned, and also the opening remarks for the Treasury, that the prosecution is one of malice, conspiracy, and calculated misdirection; and I object to an immediate committal to the sessions on the ground that such committal would be one of indecent haste, likely to make for a non-securement of justice. So far as the question of malice and conspiracy is concerned, I will pass that, but for the moment, to return to it immediately. So far as the question of calculated misdirection is concerned, I will direct the Court’s attention to what Mr. Bod... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
