Dogmas Discarded

Speech for the Defense
“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. Bodkin, for the Treasury described as the accepted definition of sedition. That definition reads as follows:—'Sedition is the publication verbally or in a document of any matter intended t6, or calculated to bring into hatred or contempt or e... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)

Author's Trial for Sedition (1909)
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 and as a writer of some of the seditious matter contained in the publication. The defendant was connected with the Bakunin Press. He held Anarchistic views, as appeared from the issue of August, 1909, I'll respect of which this prosecuti... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)

A Partly Discarded Egotism (1908)
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 emerged into the temporary egotist and egoist, not entirely removed from an occupancy of so large a place in the revolutionary movement as to see in myself the possessor of virtues which, if found in a weaker soul, could only pass for vice... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)

Chapter 9
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 personal revolt, this individual vigor of Anarchism, is good in many ways. It makes for free love unions, it emphasizes contempt for the legal and moral reflexes of the system. And it gives Anarchism a psychological power bee cause Socialism t... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)

Chapter 8
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 involve Parliamentary action, as so many think. Finally, Anarchists, non-class war Unionists, and Socialists having been brought into this unripe organization, a split occurred. The Chicago section with Vincent St. John at its head, took po... (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. It ... (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.)

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 possi... (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, and ... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)

“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 at the Hugh ... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)