DEAR EDITOR,--I beg to call your attention to pages 2 and 5 of the Pall Mall Gazette of October 22nd. On page 2, Mr. Samuel Laing gives an account of an Irishman and his family, seven in all, managing to exist on food that cost "2 1/2d. per day."
Page 5 contains a statement taken down from the lips of a Mr. Cross, that he had just been to the Zoo to see the newly imported gorilla, and found that the keepers were tempting the brute's delicate appetite with a 15s. pine-apple "and the finest English hothouse grapes were to follow."
But for the moralizing influence of Mr. Morris's play, which I witnessed last Saturday evening, I would suggest the feeding of the lions and tigers through the winter with selections from the Zoological Societ... (From: AnarchyArchives.) (BY A NON-ANARCHIST CORRESPONDENT.)
"When Anarchism was first heard of in the Socialist movement in England, it was welcomed & a protest against the insane disregard of the lessons of political experience a& to personal liberty apparent in some Collectivist ideals. But it ha& since developed into a doctrine of unmitigated individualism, having for it& economic basis an invincible ignorance of the late of Rent. As such it i& no longer welcome, or even tolerable, to Socialists."
The above appears as a note to an article by G. Bernard Shaw in the September number of To-Day. The fact that the article in question "A Word for War," is written for the furtherance of the policy which Mr. Shaw has for some time past been u... (From: AnarchyArchives.) Democracy is the political theory that assumes that all members of a community meet as equals on equal terms, but that nevertheless the majority have an absolute right to over-rule the minority. And it is worthwhile to look closely into the real significance of this curious non sequitur, which starting with the formula of free association ends with the formula of authority.
Where does the majority get its absolute right from? Right is a dubious word that one gets in the way of using without explanation; but I suppose that we mean by it in a general way, a claim put forward by members of a society and allowed by the rest, either because they feel it to be just or because they are afraid or unwilling to contest it - a socially recogniz... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) I was at the Hague, casually drifting for a few days' holiday through Holland. I had seen Paul Potter's Bull, and Rembrandt's "Anatomy"; all the Princes of Orange, and the prison where De Witt was torn to pieces by the mob. I was a little tired of the sleepy beauty of the Hague, and was languidly scanning the advertisement bills, in choice for the evening's entertainment between a Dutch tragedy and a Parisian operette. Suddenly my eyes rested on the announcement of a Socialist lecture, and my indecision and langour came to an end.
I had some trouble in finding Westerbaenstraat 154, where the "Walhalla," the Socialist meeting hall is situated, and I place on record that it is marked as "Westerlaanstraat" on Baedeker's plan. The hall was a... (From: AnarchyArchives.) The London School Board have for years past been making themselves generally odious to the people whom they nominally exist to serve, the working classes. When a family can barely scrape together enough to buy food and clothes, and too little of those, it seems hard that the bigger children should be carried off forcibly to school just when they could be earning a shilling or two and so getting something better than bread and tea every day for dinner, something more to nourish their bodies. For after all, in these days of machinery and unskilled labor, it is bodies that count more than minds in getting a job-bodily strength, and that sort of sharpness which does not come from book-learning so much as from knocking about at home and in the ... (From: AnarchyArchives.) He possessed everything necessary to render him the scourge of his family.
He came into the world healthy and rich-and healthy and rich he remained during the whole of his long life. No offense was ever brought home to him; he committed no fault whatever either in word or in deed.
He was of stainless character. And proud in the consciousness of his character, he pressed with it every one to earth--relations, friends, acquaintances.
His character was to him capital. And with this capital he dealt at usurious interest.
This character gave him the right to be pitiless, and to do nothing beyond the good ordained by law.
And pitiless he was, and did no good. For benevolence prescribed by law is not benevolence.
He never p... (From: AnarchyArchives.) When the approach of serious revolutionary movements is generally felt, it is very difficult to hold back from trying to raise a corner of the veil which conceals the future,--from trying to foresee what may be the possible issue of the approaching disturbances. Of course, historical forecasts as a rule are exceedingly difficult. We know that the keenest minds who lived, in times past, on the eve of great revolutions, failed to foresee the probable issues of the coming events. Some of their predictions went too far; but some others were rapidly distanced by the revolution. It must be avowed, however, that those forecasts were too often mere expressions of the personal wishes of the prophets; and that they very seldom had the character of re... (From: AnarchyArchives.) The death of Michael Katkoff has deprived Russian despotism of its ablest supporter; the one man who by his strong logic and marvelous facility in self-deception had skill and audacity to make meanness seem great and a lie truth.
Time was when young Katkoff was a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Moscow, so enlightened in his opinions that the suspicions of Czar Nicholas obliged him to resign his post. And when, amid the national outburst of liberal thought and zeal for reform which marked the earliest years of the reign of Alexander II., Katkoff turned his attention to journalism, he founded the Russian .Messenger, a magazine favoring English forms of self-government.
In 1861 when he became editor of the celebrated Moscow ... (From: AnarchyArchives.) [We have received the following from a non-Anarchist correspondent. "We insert it in the belief that the measured and quiet words in which our contributor describes how the ancient customs and sense of mutual responsibility of the English people have been turned in the hands of evil men and ruling classes into an instrument of cruelty and oppression, may stir some of our readers to think for themselves what is the true meaning of that blind subservience to the law, to which they are daily exhorted by their pastors and masters.--ED.]
Not by argument, but by mere dogged pressure of a class-majority, fighting in its old dull method the fight for its proprietary monopolies, the Jubilee Coercion Bill is being forced through Parliament. But... (From: AnarchyArchives.) The little book containing 'England's Ideal and other Papers on Social Subjects," by Edward Carpenter (price 1s., .. cloth edition 2s. 6d, Swan Sonnenschein and Co.) should be read by every one. Ii is impossible for man or woman to do so without self-application of a wholesome kind. To those who are of the writer's way of thinking, his vigorous sentences will be so many trumpet notes of encouragement, To those halting between two opinions the record of his personal experiences will give the necessary impetus to join the ranks of Socialism, for the way is marked out too plainly to be mistaken. While to the adversaries of the new development, if any such should have the good luck to come across the book, tee laying bare in all its ugliness t... (From: AnarchyArchives.) (From our Paris correspondent)
There is little change to record in the general situation. The opening of the Exhibition has been brilliant, it is true, but it is only the last glimmer of a lamp soon about to be extinguished altogether, for everything goes to show that the end of the year will be tumultuous. in spite of the appeals of the government and of the middle-class press, the people have shown little real warmth. Certainly the streets of Paris have displayed plenty of flags and illuminations-the shopkeepers especially, those eternal friends of order and property, have distinguished themselves by their zeal-but at heart it is felt to be only an artificial gaiety, an intoxication succeeding drunkenness. The laughter has a false ri... (From: AnarchyArchives.) Stretch'd a score of straggling hovels scatter'd down the mountain side,
Throng'd the tenants at each threshold famine-stricken, terror-eyed;
Age in every shape of suffering, feebleness, decrepitude--
Manhood fire-eyed, husky-throated,--tear-brimm'd, wan-faced woman- hood,
Youth wild-wondering, expectant, awestruck in an unknown dread,--
Infancy, eye wonder lacking in the sharper lack of bread;
All a hamlet watching, waiting; terror-stricken, dazed, aghast;
Such a night upon the moor-side, roofless in the winter-blast!
All the straggling, scattered hamlet waiting, watching through the snow,
For the crowning act of "justice,"-for--Rent's lawful murder-blow!
Scatter'd, huddled... (From: AnarchyArchives.) [An American correspondent sends us the following interesting picture of life in the agricultural districts of Alabama]: DURING the fifteen years of my residence here settlers have multiplied twenty to one, chiefly from the adjacent State of Georgia, and of late Northern companies have bought up on speculation all land that was for sale. The process is to offer the farmer a few dollars for the option of buying his place within a specified time. When a large enough tract has been thus hypothecated, the agent advertises it for sale in the North. The booming is done with, by, and for Northern capitalists. The fertility of the soil and advantages of climate are praised to the skies, whereas time truth is that except in the valleys, which are a... (From: AnarchyArchives.) A haggard old woman, with a countenance of iron and a dull fixed stare, is striding steadily forward with Ion- steps, driving before her with her withered arm a second female figure.
This second figure is of majestic stature and well nourished, with herculean muscles and massive head upon her strong neck. But, alas! she is blind. Before her she is driving a lovely maiden.
The maiden has bright and sparkling eyes. She resists, turns back, raises her delicate hands. Impatience and courage are marked upon her countenance. She hates to obey, hates to go whither the other is driving her; and nevertheless she is compelled to yield, and she goes onward.
Necessitas-Vis-Libertas.
Let him translate who cares to do so.
Translated from... (From: AnarchyArchives.) The pastor of a Congregational church writes to us:
"I find in your issue of this mouth you say in your article on Reason-Worship: 'Christian theology and pessimist philosophy are agreed in condemning the nature of man as essentially evil.' As a regular reader of your paper, I was sorry to find such a mistake. This may be some people's impression of the teaching of theology, or it may actually be taught by some ignorant preachers. It is not the doctrine of theology, but on the contrary has been specially condemned, and I believe never revived. Theology teaches that sin is in the will but not in the essential nature of man. These views are distinct. Man is created in the image of God: this is the teaching of the Bible and of theology. The... (From: AnarchyArchives.) Whatever turn, pacific or warlike, events may take when the time has come for a thorough modification of present conditions, those who will take an active part in the movement will find two different courses open to them; and upon their choice will depend the success or the failure of the attempt.
Deeply imbued with the teachings of Political Economy, which has devoted its chief attention to the best means of increasing the intensity of the present capitalist production; accustomed to reason under the open or unspoken presumption that the economical life of a Society cannot but be organized on some kind of wage-system, –most social reformers have built up their schemes of reform on the supposition that our endeavors must be merely d... (From: AnarchyArchives.) Rousseau was not a Socialist in any scientific and definite way, simply because he was not a political economist. Yet there was in himself amid to a great extent in his works also, all the emotional material of Socialism. And, inasmuch as the Anarchist faith and formula distinguish themselves from general Socialism, in that they affirm entire equality and freedom in association, not merely saying of the members of society that each is for the whole, but adding with the same emphasis that the whole is for each one, and that he, in and through the whole in which he lives and moves and has his being, is an end to himself and never merely a means to any alien end or good that does not include him and is not his very own: this being Anarchism in... (From: AnarchyArchives.) We have been speaking of the spontaneous action of human energy as a great fact, which it is foolish and dangerous to overlook or ignore. But there are two ways of accepting the existence of a fact. We may rejoice in it and welcome it as a good, or find it distasteful and repel it as an evil. We may use our conscious exercise of will to give it free play, or we may set ourselves to counteract or evade its action.
How do we look upon the spontaneous upleaping of energy in man whether it take shape in thought, feeling, or action, The common answer now-a days is, It is good or evil according to the circumstances like the manifestation of energy in fire, which we say is a good servant but a bad master. Au answer characteristic of our epoch ... (From: AnarchyArchives.) After the summer's apparent listlessness and inaction, the Revolutionary movement has started into fresh life, and, with that awakening, has entered upon a new phase of development.
The keynote of the new departure was struck last month by the unemployed of Norwich in the little placard, written and posted by unknown hands, which so seriously alarmed the local authorities that they swore in 200 special constables. "NOTICE TO ALL CONCERNED: The unemployed do not intend to starve any longer. If employment is not found for them, they will soon make some."
As the result of the Government house-to-house inquiries at the close of the slack season last winter, it appears that among 29,451 men 8008 were out of work. At the beginning of Septem... (From: AnarchyArchives.) [From a Speech delivered by James Blackwell at the Central Democratic Club, November 6, 1889.]
It is a very common error on the part of a large section of the public to confound Socialism with a particular method proposed for its realization. With these people any trifling Act of Parliament which proposes to protect the worker against the rapacity of the Capitalist or the Landlord is termed Socialistic, and a condition of society in which the State--meaning Parliament and the Government--will control and direct industry in the interest of the workers, is looked upon by them as the goal of Socialist ambition.
Socialists themselves, however, know very well that Socialism is something quite apart from any particular plan of action; that... (From: AnarchyArchives.) Through the long ages of grinding slavery behind us, Freedom, that unknown goal of human pilgrimage, has hovered, a veiled splendor, upon the horizon of men's hopes. Veiled in the trembling ignorance of mankind, their misty unreasoning terror of all that revealed itself as power, whether it were an apparently incomprehensible and uncontrollable natural force, or the ascendancy of superior strength, ability or cunning in human society t he inward attitude of slavish adoration towards what imposes itself from without as a fact beyond our understanding, that is the veil which hides Freedom from the eyes of men sometimes it takes the form of the blind fear of a savage of his medicine or his fetish, sometimes of the equally blind reverence of an... (From: AnarchyArchives.) The producer has an acknowledged claim on the produce, we have said: A claim rendered confused and vague by the wage system and by the property law of to-day, but still generally recognized among civilized men as having theoretically some justice in it. Why? To discover we must make a careful analysis of the relation between producer and produce. It is a relationship not quite so simple as may appear at the first glance to those who have been accustomed to take it for granted without thinking much about it. As there is no question which leads us more directly to the root of the Anarchist position, we propose to dwell upon it at some length.
When a man claims a thing on the ground that he is its producer, be certainly does not mean that ... (From: AnarchyArchives.) Over 200 people crowded the little hall at 13, Farringdon Road, at our second meeting, on March 15th. The debate was to have been on Individualist and Communist Anarchism; but as no Individualists or Mutualists appeared to state their side of the question, the discussion turned chiefly on Free Communism.
Comrade Kropotkin opened the proceedings with an hour's speech, which we print elsewhere. When he resumed his seat, the audience showed their interest in the subject by a brisk fire of questions, and then engaged in a somewhat desultory debate.
The chief result of the discussion was to show that we Socialists of all shades of opinion are a long way yet from a thorough common understanding. 11 Nature is not slow to equip us in the p... (From: AnarchyArchives.) On July 13th, P. Kropotkin opened the second discussion on work and the distribution of wealth, by pointing out the essential injustice of the wage system as a method of distribution, and showing how even under present economic conditions social feeling has supplemented it by a certain amount of distribution according to needs. The Social Democrats propose to do this to a far larger extent, the Communist-Anarchists to base distribution on needs only. The first part of our comrade's paper will be found in another column.
The discussion which followed was even more discursive than usual because the Social Democrats animated by the strongest sense of opposition came too late to hear the opening speech and consequently were reduced to the ne... (From: AnarchyArchives.) On November 20th, the discussion on the organization of labor under Free Communism was opened by T. Pearson in a paper the substance of which will be found in another column.
The only opposition was offered by Mr. Harrigon (Individualist Anarchist) who contended that the working classes were miserable worms from whom it was hopeless to expect any good; but that all they wanted was to destroy all governments and drive away all monopolists, leaving the instruments of labor to the laborer and the produce to the producer. As for organization we were already organized quite enough.
To which Comrade Richardson replied that it might be true that we are now organized quite enough, but are we organized in the right way? The subject of discu... (From: AnarchyArchives.) The discussion on May 10th was very well attended. It was opened by Comrade Merlino.
Communist Anarchism, he pointed out, is the logical outcome of the tendencies of the thought of our century, especially of the theory of evolution as applied to social development. As illustrations, he alluded to the growth of the new scientific attitude towards crime, and the practical modifications in an Anarchist direction which it is slowly beginning to introduce in the treatment of criminals; also to the growing tendency to criticize and distrust the system of representative government.
The main objections generally raised to Socialism are based on the opposition of these obvious anti-authoritative tendencies of our time to the idea of time ext... (From: AnarchyArchives.) We had a rough and ready sort of meeting on April 12, for the opener mistook the date and did not appear, and the notices were sent too late to Justice and the 'Weal. So Comrade Kropotkin opened the debate with some general remarks on voluntary association.
A common objection, he said, to Communist-Anarchism is that men are not yet good enough to organize themselves on a basis of perfect freedom, or to behave like social beings without government control. But in truth, authority in itself has a depressing influence, corrupting even good men, and already more of our social life is founded on voluntary association than we at all realize. If it is true that among the workers to-day there are many men who are as ready as any bourgeois to c... (From: AnarchyArchives.) On October 12 Dr. Merlino opened the meeting by reading a paper on "The Organization of Labor." He dwelt upon the necessity of revising the whole system of the production of the necessaries of life, and pointed out that if this was done by a government it would be an artificial organization of labor, whereas in a period of the development of society a free-handed policy was a necessity. Of course the usual objection would be made to this opinion. It would be asked, How without a central government can the workmen organize themselves? What would be their guides? He replied, reason and interest. People would begin to use their reason and to trust in it more than they do at the present day. It was necessary that people should know something of... (From: AnarchyArchives.) The meeting on September 14 was opened by Comrade Marsh with a paper on "Work and Social Utility," the substance of which will be found in another column. There was no direct opposition to the opener's contention that a share in work of social utility, such as providing food, clothing, shelter, etc, ought to be taken by every able-bodied person, and that such work, if fairly shared by all members of the community, would not fall so heavily on any individual as to prevent him or her from exercising special artistic or intellectual capacities at least as fully and as beneficially as they are exercised to-day, when brain and hand labor are almost entirely divided and brain workers are considered as a superior class.
Comrade Kropotkin said t... (From: AnarchyArchives.) A man condemned to lifelong imprisonment had escaped from his confinement and was seeking safety in headlong flight. His pursuers were close at his heels. He was running with all his might, and the distance between him and them was becoming steadily greater.
Suddenly he sees before him a stream with precipitous banks, a narrow but deep torrent, . . . . and he cannot swim.
But the stream is bridged by a thin plank, half-rotten with age. The fugitive has already one foot upon it. And there, by chance, stand his dearest friend and his bitterest foe.
The enemy uttered no sound, and merely folded his arms. The friend, on the contrary, cried out at the top of his voice:
"For God's sake, consider, foolhardy man, what you are doing! Do ... (From: AnarchyArchives.)
