THE TURMOIL OF INDIAN POLITICS

 The problem of India has been for the last five or six years second only in importance to that of Ireland in the eyes of British statesmen. It was believed that, as Mr. Montagu was regarded as a Zionist of liberal political tendencies, he would favourably impress the Indians, and would be able to withdraw them from the path of non-co-operation by reconciling their aspirations with the amount of freedom England would be prepared to grant. The appointment of such a man ten years or fifteen years ago might have worked wonderfully towards the continuance of British rule in India ; as it was, Mr. Montagu took office too late, and had a heartbreaking task in view of the extension of the non-co-operative movement led and directed by Ghandi. He was instructed, or rather permitted, to introduce reforms along certain lines at a time when the Indians had decided that they wanted change along a totally different line. It is somewhat similar to the position in Ireland in 1919, when the British Government (after fighting and suppressing Home Rule since O'Connell's days) tried to thrust it on the Irish when they themselves had conceived a different and a nobler ideal, and were bent on its attainment. The fatal words, "Too late," to quote Lloyd George, seem to sum up the external politics of England under all administrations since Gladstone's time.

 Montagu, the Jew, was dismissed on some pretext, so slight and so palpably "framed up" as to be quite frivolous. His forced resignation took effect just as the Prince left India, and there followed closely the sentencing of India's national hero and leader. The cumulation of so many mistakes in tactics suggests a complete reversal of policy at Downing street, and a return to the old plan of ignoring the inhabitants, or, at the best, hectoring them. '"There is nothing," says Belloc, "so unfortunate as to be born a native;" and this has always been the superior and not even kindly attitude of the India office. Our interpretation of Mr. Montagu's retirement is that he refused to agree to the prosecution of Ghandi, and expressed himself as opposed to the infliction of any penalty on the Nationalist leader. What happened in the Cabinet was either that the conservative method of treating India triumphed, or that some past administrator, such as Lord Curzon, accomplished the fall of Montagu out of personal jealousy and pique. The usual long story about the publication of a dispatch has been given to the public; the real story is well beyond our reach. One of the most annoying features of the Indian question is the manifest censorship which is being exercised over the news sent to the outside world from Delhi. If we are returning to the compulsory silences and suppressions of the ghastly lustrum, 1914 to 1918, it is clear that war, openly or tacitly, is being declared on the mass of Indians who have accepted the propaganda of non-co-operation and the lead of Ghandi. . . . Mr. Montagu's vision may have been, from the point of view of the Indians, somewhat limited, but, at any rate, he had progressive ideas as regards self-government for India, and he was not hampered by the ordinary English prejudices against the East. British rule will not prosper by his fall.

 Freedom depends not so much on the material possessions or economic potentialities of a people, as on their mental state. Keep the mind free and independent, self-reliant, and even defiant, and you are not far from the achievement of liberty. Once let the mind accept bondage and remain compliant under it, there are no depths to which a people may not sink; and any return to a state of freedom becomes infinitely difficult and painful. There is no doubt that for a long time Indian inferiority was accepted by the natives. The "slave mind," to use a phrase of Arthur Griffith, became a commonplace, and on it was built the theory of the ability of far-off England to govern those countless millions. The caste system keeps great sections of the people from having any dealings with one another, and that; naturally, was used to their disadvantage.

 For a long time no word of revolt was heard from India. But it could clearly be seen by men of historical knowledge that the Indians, with their immemorial culture and their scholarship of at least two thousand years, would never definitely accept the sway of a power that had no new thing to teach in literature, or philosophy, or, art. . . . . The old centres of learning, twice as old as Oxford and Cambridge, would never accept any theory of the intellectual inferiority of India. Then came the troops of Indian students to the Universities of England and to her Inns of Court: they not only competed with the English students, but easily vanquished them at their studies. It would be impossible for these men to go back to their people and peacefully accept the domination of the men with whom they had successfully crossed swords in the examination halls. We must observe, moreover, that there was no inducement for them to stop in England or any of her oversea possessions, since in those places they were looked on as social inferiors on account of their colour. The intellectuals are the élite of the army of peaceful revolutionaries, who aim at securing control of their country by their campaign of non-co-operation.

 We have remarked in these columns before that the only chance which the British Empire has of lasting for a further span of time is to grant to all its component parts the measure of freedom which they desire, or at least a great part of that measure. Any measure short of independence would thus be granted to a country in rebellion or agitation. These tactics have been followed in Ireland and in Egypt. We foretold that they would be seen in England's dealings with India, and then suddenly comes the news of Mr. Montagu's dismissal, and, much more unfortunate, the tidings of Ghandi's imprisonment. The patriot's work and life will doubtless continue as a source of example and inspiration to millions of his countrymen, who will cherish and safeguard the ideals for which he is suffering.

Advocate (Melbourne, Vic.), 23 March 1922 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article171062768

AN INDIAN TOLSTOY.

 A representative of the "Daily News" had a conversation on January with Mr. Kellermacher, well-known architect of Johannesburg, who is in very close touch with M. K. Ghandi, the leader of the British Indians, in the Transvaal against the pass law. 

Mr. Ghandi, who so unselfishly suffered violence and imprisonment in the passive resistance movement in behalf of the rights of British Indians, has also given up his little fortune of six or seven thousand pounds for social causes like that for which Tolstoy laboured. The hundred acre farm of Phoenix, near Durban, was some time ago handed over by him to tho trustees of the colony, and this son and grandson of Indian Prime Ministers, and eloquent and successful practitioner at the Indian bar is at present penniless. 

"He is," said Mr. Kellermacher, "an extremely modest man, as you know, a man of the highest courage, and he is the happiest man I have seen. He lives on a farm of eleven hundred acres near Johannesburg, which by coincidence belongs to me. Only about fifty acres are at present cultivated, the rest is virgin soil, and we have proved a good supply of water through three bore-holes. General Smuts has promised to visit us, and in the next Parliament the law in resistance to which 2500 people have fol lowed Mr, Ghandi to prison will be abolished." 

"And what is Mr. Ghandi doing on the farm?"

 "He teaches a school of fifteen Indians, and he is a shoemaker. He insists upon doing the hardest and the meanest work upon the land, and he does the work of 10 men, sitting up all night with some one sick, and beginning manual work as early in the morning as anyone. There is no one in the world, I imagine, who carries out so vigorously the principles of Tolstoy, and you must remember that the Hindoo temperament and belief do not tend so much in the direction of work as ours do.

 "Mr. Ghandi believes that politics and religion are not activities apart from life, but must be put into active effect in every phase and detail of life. He teaches not by words, but by deeds. Words can be misunderstood, but not deeds. Men who come in contact with Mr. Ghandi gain a new idea of the value of life and of human relationship. He is the one man who fought the cause of his countrymen in South Africa, He did it by throwing away all rights and privileges, and insisting upon sharing the hardest blows that were going. He is doing just the same in the work of the farm." 

"Tolstyism," ventured our representative, "must be far more difficult in Africa, where the colour prejudice is so strong," 

"Colour prejudice," said Mr. Kellermacher, "is all rot. There is only misunderstanding with the blacks when you are seeking to get everything out of them that you can. As soon as you take up the attitude that you must not exploit them the colour prejudice vanishes."

Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate (NSW ), 14 February 1912

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article133960536

WILLIAM MORRIS.

 ————<>———— 

HIS PLACE IN LITERATURE.

Few, if any of the contributors to Macmillan's " English Men of Letters" library have had a more difficult task to perform than Mr. Alfred Noyes, who has just produced the volume on "William Morris." For such a series it is naturally but one aspect of Morris's many sided nature and career that has to be kept immediately in view. It is as a man of letters that Mr. Noyes has to deal with him, and in many respects Mr. Noyes should have been just the man for this delicate piece of work. He is himself an epic poet of no mean repute. He has entered into the rich literary heritage bequeathed by the great writers of the past century, among whom Morris must always take high rank, and he is a critic of considerable insight, though as it now appears, of somewhat limited sympathies.

Despite his undoubted qualifications, Mr. Noyes, it must be confessed, has just missed what was really a great opportunity. His monograph is full of valuable comment, and it contains illuminating pages which will be most welcome to Morris's many lovers, but it fails to be what it might have been, because Mr. Noyes is patently not of the Morris school, but a devotee of the Tennysonian tradition. He admires Morris unfeignedly, but his ideal is the polished elaborate perfection of phrase which is so characteristic of Tennyson and Virgil, and he cannot do justice to the "native wood notes wild," the blithe Chaucerian spirit of the beautiful tapestry by a narration of Morris. Moreover, he is too prone to take Morris's literary work as something apart from Morris's life, as the creation of mediæval dreams, rather than as the expression of the living man's active existence. We miss in Mr. Noyes's criticism appreciation of the real unity of the poet and the man of action in Morris. In his poetry, in his art designs —wall-papers bookbinding and stained windows— in his militant socialism, and in his daily life Morris was one and the same, not, as Mr. Noyes implies, the visionary who strove to escape to things of beauty through mediæval fancies, but a strenuous reformer who sought to bring beauty into the world of facts.

His position in the great "renascence of wonder," of which Mr. Watts-Dunton has written, cannot yet be defined, but his "Life and Death of Jason," his "Earthly Paradise," his Sigurd, and his exquisite lines make him something far more than his own modest estimate, "The idle singer of an empty day." He viewed life as a great epic struggle of right with wrong, or what to him was the same thing, of beauty with ugliness. Compared with Tennyson, a comparison which Mr. Noyes makes "ad nauseum," and often irrelevantly, Morris was undoubtedly pagan and sensuous, rather than Christian and spiritual in his attitude to life. Fear of death was from his earliest days his great horror, but it was not the morbid fear of the sin-oppressed fanatic, but the ancient tragic sense of a short existence amid light and warmth, flowers, songs, bright colours, and human affections, lived between two dark, shadowy eternities—the long past before birth, and the long future after death. This sense of life's tragedy did not make him sad or pessimistic. On the contrary, it made him, like the Greeks of old time, determined to make the most of his little span, to enter into it all the joy and all the beauty he could, and to help, as far as in him lay, to make the world a place of joy and beauty for his fellow-men. He was the artist in action, and therein is found the key to his poetry, his arts and craft work, and his socialism. Impossible is his socialistic dreams were, as he himself sometimes realised when he had to work with ordinary socialists, they were part and parcel of his love of beauty. He hated the ugliness of the squalid slum, of the dull factory life, of the home without taste, and he wanted to turn the whole social edifice into a piece of art. His "News from Nowhere" is socially and economically all wrong, but its artistic beauty has coloured our whole view of the world. As long as he was dealing with art his reforms were effective, and no man has done more than he to make homes beautiful, while few poets have given more unalloyed joy of life to their readers.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Saturday 30 January 1909, page 4

Bakunin's Criticism of Marxism

Idealists of all sorts, metaphysicians, positivists, those who uphold the priority of science over life, the doctrinaire revolutionists— all of them champion, with equal zeal although differing in their argumentation, the idea of the State and State power, seeing in them, quite logically from their point of view, the only salvation of society. Quite logically, I say, having taken as their basis the tenet—a fallacious tenet in our opinion—that thought is prior to life, and abstract theory is prior to social practice, and that therefore sociological science must become the starting point for social upheavals and social reconstruction— they necessarily arrived at the conclusion that since thought, theory, and science are, for the present at least, the property of only a very few people, those few should direct social life, and not only foment and stimulate but rule all movements of the people; and that on the morrow of the Revolution the new social organization should be set up not by the free integration of workers' associations, villages, communes, and regions from below upward, conforming to the needs and instincts of the people, but solely by the dictatorial power of this learned minority, allegedly expressing the general will of the people.

It is upon this fiction of people's representation and upon the actual fact of the masses of people being ruled by a small handful of privileged individuals elected, or for that matter not even elected, by throngs herded together on election day and ever ignorant of why and whom they elect; it is upon this fictitious and abstract expression of the fancied general will and thought of the people, of which the living and real people have not the slightest conception—that the theory of the State and that of revolutionary dictatorship are based in equal measure.

Between revolutionary dictatorship and the State principle the difference is only in the external situation. In substance both are one and the same: the ruling of the majority by the minority in the name of the alleged stupidity of the first and the alleged superior intelligence of the second. Therefore both are equally reactionary, both having as their result the invariable consolidation of the political and economic privileges of the ruling minority and the political and economic enslavement of the masses of people.

Now it is clear why the doctrinaire Socialists who have for their aim the overthrow of the existing authorities and regimes in order to build upon the ruins of the latter a dictatorship of their own, never were and never will be enemies of the State, but on the contrary that they were and ever will be its zealous champions. They are enemies of the powers-that-be only because they cannot take their places. They are enemies of the existing political institutions because such institutions preclude the possibility of carrying out their own dictatorship, but they are at the same time the most ardent friends of State power, without which the Revolution, by freeing the toiling masses, would deprive this would-be revolutionary minority of all hope of putting the people into a new harness and heap upon them the blessings of their governmental measures.

This is true to such an extent that at the present time, when reaction is triumphing all over Europe, when all the States, moved by the wicked spirit of self-preservation and oppression, clad in the triple armor of military, police, and financial power, and getting ready, under the supreme leadership of Prince Bismarck to wage a desperate struggle against social revolution; when all sincere revolutionists should, as it seems proper to us, unite in order to repulse the desperate assaults of international reaction, we see, on the contrary, that the doctrinaire revolutionists, under the leadership of Marx, are ever taking the side of the State protagonists against the people's revolution.

No one, outside of Lassalle, could explain and prove so convincingly to the German workers that under the given economic conditions of today the situation of the proletariat not only cannot be radically changed, but, on the contrary, by virtue of inevitable economic law, it must and will become worse every year, notwithstanding the efforts of the co-operatives, which can benefit only a small number of workers and only for a very brief period.

Thus far we agree with Lassalle. But from this point on, we begin to differ with him. As against Schulze-Delitzsch, who advised the workers to seek salvation only through their own energy and not to expect nor demand anything from the State, Lassalle, having proved, first, that under the economic conditions of today the workers cannot expect even the mitigation of their lot, and second, that so long as the bourgeois State exists, bourgeois privileges will remain impregnable—having proved that, he arrived at the following conclusion: in order to attain freedom, real freedom, based upon economic equality, the proletariat must capture the State and turn the power of the State against the bourgeoisie for the benefit of the workers, in the same manner in which this power is now turned against the workers by the bourgeoisie for the benefit of the exploiting class.

How is the proletariat to capture the State? There are but two means available for that purpose: a political revolution or a lawful agitation on behalf of a peaceful reform. Lassalle chose the second course.

In this sense, and for that purpose, he formed a political party of German workers possessing considerable strength, having organized it along hierarchical lines and submitted it to rigorous discipline and to a sort of personal dictatorship; in other words, he did what M. Marx had tried to do to the International during the last three years. Marx's attempt proved to be a failure, while Lassalle was wholly successful. As his direct aim Lassalle set himself the task of impelling a popular movement and agitation for the winning of universal suffrage, for the right of the people to elect State representatives and authorities.

Having won this right, the people would send their own representatives to the Parliament, which in turn, by various decrees and enactments, would transform the given State into a People's State (Volks-Staat). And the first task of this People's State would be to open unlimited credit to the producers' and consumers' associations, which only then will be able to combat bourgeois capital, finally succeeding in conquering and assimilating it. When this process of absorption has been completed, then the period of the radical change of society will dawn upon mankind.

Such is the program of Lassalle, such is the program of the Social-Democratic Party. Properly speaking, it belongs not to Lassalle but to Marx, who fully expressed it in the well-known Manifesto of the Communist Party published by Marx and Engels in 1848. This program is likewise alluded to in the first Manifesto of the International Association written by Marx in 1864, in the words: "The first duty of the working class should be to conquer for itself political power," or as the Manifesto of the Communist Party says in that respect:  "The first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of a ruling class. . . . The proletariat will centralize the instruments of production in the hands of the State, that is, the proletariat raised to the position of a ruling class."

We already have expressed our abhorrence for the theories of Lassalle and Marx, theories which counselled the workers—if not as their ultimate ideal, at least as their next chief aim—to form a People's State, which, according to their interpretation, will only be "the proletariat raised to the position of a ruling class."

One may ask then: if the proletariat is to be the ruling class, over whom will it rule? The answer is that there will remain another proletariat which will be subjected to this new domination, this new State. It may be, for example, the peasant "rabble," which, as we know, does not stand in great favor with the Marxists, and who, finding themselves on a lower level of culture, probably will be ruled by the city and factory proletariat; or considered from the national point of view, the Slavs, for instance, will assume, for precisely the same reason, the same position of slavish subjection to the victorious German proletariat which the latter now holds with respect to its own bourgeoisie.

If there is a State, there must necessarily be domination, and therefore slavery; a State without slavery, overt or concealed, is unthinkable—and that is why we are enemies of the State.

What does it mean: "the proletariat raised into a ruling class?" Will the proletariat as a whole be at the head of the government? There are about forty million Germans. Will all the forty million be members of the government? The whole people will govern and there will be no one to be governed. It means that there will be no government, no State, but if there is a State in existence there will be people who are governed, and there will be slaves.

This dilemma is solved very simply in the Marxist theory. By a people's government they mean the governing of people by means of a small number of representatives elected by the people. Universal suffrage —the right of the whole people to elect its so-called representatives and rulers of the State—this is the last word of the Marxists as well as of the democratic school. And this is a falsehood behind which lurks the despotism of a governing minority, a falsehood which is all the more dangerous in that it appears as the ostensible expression of a people's will.

Thus, from whatever angle we approach the problem, we arrive at the same sorry result: the rule of great masses of people by a small privileged minority. But, the Marxists say, this minority will consist of workers. Yes, indeed, of ex-workers, who, once they become rulers or representatives of the people, cease to be workers and begin to look down upon the toiling people. From that time on they represent not the people but themselves and their own claims to govern the people. Those who doubt this know precious little about human nature.

But these elected representatives will be convinced Socialists, and learned Socialists at that. The words "learned Socialist" and "scientific Socialism" which are met  with constantly in the works and speeches of the Lassalleans and Marxists, prove only that this would-be people's State will be nothing else but despotic rule over the toiling masses by a new, numerically small aristocracy of genuine or sham scientists. The people lack learning and so they will be freed from the cares of government, will be wholly regimented into one common herd of governed people. Emancipation indeed!

The Marxists are aware of this contradiction, and, realizing that government by scientists (the most distressing, offensive, and despicable type of government in the world) will be, notwithstanding its democratic form, a veritable dictatorship,—console themselves with the thought that this dictatorship will be only temporary and of brief duration. They say that the only care and aim of this government will be to educate and uplift the people—economically and politically—to such an extent that no government will be necessary, and that the State, having lost its political character, that is, its character of rule and domination, will turn all by itself into an altogether free organization of economic interests and communes.

Here we have an obvious contradiction. If their State is going to be a genuine people's State, why should it then dissolve itself—and if its rule is necessary for the real emancipation of the people, how dare they call it a people's State? Our polemic had the effect of making them realize that freedom or Anarchism, that is, the free organization of workers form below upward, is the ultimate aim of social development, and that every State, their own people's State included, is a yoke, which means that it begets despotism on one hand and slavery on the other.

They say that this State yoke—the dictatorship—is a necessary transitional means in order to attain the emancipation of the people: Anarchism or freedom is the goal, the State or dictatorship is the means. Thus to free the working masses, it is first necessary to enslave them.

That is as far as our polemic went. They maintain that only a dictatorship—their dictatorship, of course—can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up.

While the political and social theory of the anti-State Socialists or Anarchists leads them steadily toward  a full break with all governments, and with all varieties of bourgeois policy, leaving no other way out but a social revolution, the opposite theory of the State Communists and scientific authority also inevitably draws and enmeshes its partisans, under the pretext of political tactics, into ceaseless compromises with governments and political parties; that is, it pushes them toward downright reaction.

The basic point of Lassalle's politico-social program and the Communist theory of Marx is the (imaginary) emancipation of the proletariat by means of the State. But for  that it is necessary that the State consent to take upon itself the task of emancipating the proletariat from the yoke of bourgeois capital. How can the State be imbued with such a will? There are only two means whereby that can be done.

The proletariat ought to wage a revolution in order to capture the State—a rather heroic undertaking. And in our opinion, once the proletariat captures the State, it should immediately proceed with its destruction as the everlasting prison for the toiling masses. Yet according to the theory of M. Marx, the people not only should not destroy the State but should strengthen and reinforce it, and transfer it in this form into the hands of its benefactors, guardians, and teachers, the chiefs of the Communist Party—in a word, to M. Marx and his friends, who will begin to emancipate it in their own fashion.

They will concentrate all the powers of government in strong hands, because the very fact that the people are ignorant necessitates strong, solicitous care by the government. They will create a single State bank, concentrating in its hands all the commercial, industrial, agricultural, and even scientific production; and they will divide the mass of people into two armies—industrial and agricultural armies under the direct command of the State engineers who will constitute the new privileged scientific-political class. 

One can see then what a shining goal the German communist school has set up before the people.

1873

The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism. Edited by G.P. Maximoff. 1953

THE ANTI-SOCIAL FORCES OF TO-DAY.

 [By the Bishop of Melbourne.]

Lawless force is now again taking form, and it is too ominously like that awful symbol of St. John. As before, it shows itself as a wild beast of human idleness, lust, and cruelty. But now, instead of seven, it has ten myriad head. It is the mass of the demoralised proletariate of Europe. This wild beast of our own time is like its apostolic prototype, idle, lustful, cruel, and unbelieving ; knowing nothing but that it has five senses, seeking nothing but the means of their enjoyment. There is nothing on earth that it hates so much as to see another with richer sense-food than it possesses itself. Rather than suffer that, it will pull down all institutions, burn down all buildings, ravage all lands, and wipe out a civilisation which is the inheritance of ages. Envy longing to get tries to pass itself off as the love which longs to give. These, too, as opposite in nature and aim as heaven and hell, are everywhere confused. The beast apes the God, and is worshipped.
Do not suppose that I am here referring to socialism as such. With the aims of the higher socialism I have the heartiest sympathy. I believe with it that the present condition of the poor is intolerable, and that the alleviation of the misery of the poor is the one question of the day. I agree with the author of "Gesta Christi" that a "condition of society in which an enormous pass of human beings are born to an almost inevitable lot of squalor, penury, and ignorance, and still other multitudes to incessant labor with few alleviations or enjoyments ; a society which presents on one side enormous fortunes and endless accumulations of wealth, while on the other it offers classes ground down by poverty and pinched with want, is certainly not the Christian ideal of society, or any approach to 'the kingdom of God' on earth." It is not only Mario, the communist, who calls "the granting the few enjoyment at the expense of many" a " heathenish principle ;" such a state of things is called "a new heathenism, and that of the most flagrant kind," by a bishop no less venerated than the profound Martensen. It is certain that the task of the statesmen of the future is to devise such a system of distributing wealth that a greater share of the products of industry shall fall to the lot of the producers. So far I am heartily in accord with the socialists. Nay, I go further. I freely own that the methods of thoughtful modern socialists like Lassalle, Marx, and Treischke, have been widely misunderstood. They do not advocate confiscation, nor even in the strict sense, community of goods. It is Lassalle, who says, "The artisan must and ought never to forget that all property once acquired is unassailable and legitimate." And the socialists give the true ground of this position. " Its accumulation was justified by the laws which allowed it." It is those laws which they would alter, so as to dispose differently of the wealth of the future. Again, it is unjust to accuse philosophic German communists of holding the doctrine of free love. They emphatically repudiate it. "We recognise and prize," says says Herr Treischke, " the moral right of marriage more than you do, and it is on this ground that we are such implacable foes to the modern constitution of society," with its inevitable fruits of prostitution and concubinage. Very many of the socialists again appeal to the moral authority of the Christian religion, recognising with M. Laveleye that in such a state of society as the present, Christianity must create socialistic aspirations. Nay, the old canon law even is on the side of the socialists. The canons lay it down that no man might sell goods for more than what they cost him. All profit in merchandise was robbery. Again, if a man borrowed money of another it was enough if he paid the capital ; for interest was robbery. I think these principles of the canonists and communists as little justified by Christianity as by reason, and that such a life as they recommend would not only diminish production and injure character, but also make life intolerably monotonous and commonplace. I have said so much that you may not suppose that the charge I am about to bring is levelled at socialism generally.
I say, then, in spite of all my admissions, that a power is growing and gathering its forces in the depths of European society which is an exact counterpart of the wild beast of the Apocalypse. It is as blasphemous and sensual wherever it be found, whether in France, Spain, Germany, Russia, or Ireland. At an immense meeting of women in Berlin in 1878 the president cried, amidst stormy applause, "I want no Bible, no pastor, and no law. If you want a belief, invent one for yourselves." The notorious Most exclaimed at the same meeting, with the same kind of tumultuous approval, " We will have our heaven upon earth, for that which is future we believe not in. Here on earth will we enjoy ourselves. Here we will revel and not rot." "No God, no church, no master," is the common cry at the anarchist meetings in Paris ; and we are told by the anonymous author of "Underground Russia," who traces the belligerent phase of Nihilism to the influence of the Paris Commune, that the Russian Nihilist " has no longer any religious feeling in his disposition," and he describes one of the leaders of that movement as "full of that cold fanaticism which stops before no human consideration," and as ready "to hold out his hand to the devil himself, if the devil could have been of any use to him." Of the foul blasphemies of Foote and his fellows — men with whom the Melbourne Secularist Society has just been condoling— we have heard from Rev. S. Hansard, one of the most large-minded and earnest friends of the poor who ever worked in the east of London. He says he will not foul his pen by retailing the worst parts of the "Comic History of Christ," published by those men ; but he does tell us of caricatures of the most Sacred Figure in all human history " pulling Peter out of the water by his big nose ;" and of God— one almost hesitates to repeat the horror — "as a fat ugly man, with spectacles on, sitting on a cloud cross-legged, sewing a pair of trousers." Covered with names of blasphemy, filled, oh heaven, with hate of the eternal love, with scorn of the tender fatherly pity which is pleading with all hearts ; what can save men who are in such a state as that? Who can wonder that the souls which have made themselves so hard against God should sink into the foulnesses of a beastly lust and a merciless ferocity; that we should read of Irish assassins trying their victim in a brothel, and writing the order for his murder on the curl-paper of a courtesan ; that we should near the Russian terrorist boasting that he made himself the demon he was " by nourishing sanguinary projects in his mind," and by constantly reminding himself "that bullets were better than words;" or that as M. Laveleye tells us, " working men of London, Pesth, Vienna, and Berlin, applauded the struggles and excused all the crimes of the Commune in Paris?" The "Mano Nera" organisation in Spain openly declare that " the rich are to participate no longer in the rights of man, and that to combat them all means are good and necessary, not excepting steel, fire, and even slander." That last infernal touch is even more devilish than the programme of Bakounine himself, requiring, as this does, absolute and universal anarchy, the destruction of everything that has come down to us from the past till " not one stone shall be left upon another, in all Europe first, and afterwards in the entire world."
Let no one comfort himself with the idea that these are the mere ravings of madmen. The wild beast of savage godless force has broken loose. It has committed its cowardly murders in Ireland by scores. In Russia it has murdered one Emperor, and imprisoned another for months in a fortress in spite of the hosts of mailed warriors who protect him. It is combating to-day in Spain, straining savagely at its chains in France and Russia, and threatening every moment scenes of horror such as history has never witnessed. It may be very true that all these sanguinary dreams are as stupid as they are criminal, and that if ever the dreamers tried to realise them, they would only drive society to seek shelter beneath the shield of some despotic ruler from that vilest and cruellest tyranny— the tyranny of a godless mob. But meanwhile the danger threatens, and it is the duty of every man among us to consider how best we may preserve the people from the consequences of their own madness. Not by callous agnosticism, not by sentimental culture, not by a heedless headlong plunging into the mad riot of sensual pleasure ; but, as of old, by the patience, the purity, and the heroism of a true faith in the Son of God, is the wild beast to be overcome and cast into perdition.

South Australian Weekly Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1881 - 1889), Saturday 1 September 1883, page 16

The State and The Worker.

 BY AJAX.

"Whatever the State saith is a lie, whatever it hath is theft, all is counterfeit in it, the gnawing, sanguinary insatiate monster. It even bites with stolen teeth. Its very bowels are counterfeit." — Nietzsche.
Not without good reason did Nietzsche and other thinkers speak scornfully of the State. In this short essay one cannot enter into the history of the State. Sufficient to say the State (so-called) is here, and having since the war interfered to a large extent with the liberties of individuals and associations of workers it is well to understand the significance of this metaphysical entity called the State. In the past we have heard much about State control, church and State, the necessity of a military, political, or industrial State, as the case may be; but the most significant fact is that all those who arrogate to themselves certain powers and functions as servants of the State fail to explain who and what the State really is. In the schools (which are mostly State-controlled) the children are taught to believe that the State is a sort of paternal father who watches over the interests of society and does everything for the best. This false idea is reflected in the political institutions of to-day where such ideas as "obedience and duty to the State," "the necessity of supporting the State, in everything," "the infallibility of statesmen," and similar theories which have for their object the inculcating of slavish subservience to this fetish of authority called the State. Like God, the State defies reason, the more we examine this nonentity the more nebulous and visionary the State appears. Shorn of its glitter and fine phrases, the State stands unmasked as a metaphysical abstraction, a mere jingo swindle, a political bogey whose only justification is that it is in the interests of rulers to keep the people looking up to some higher authority. As the vision of Christ and the saints in Glory, benignly watching over us, loses its force, and is fading from the imagination of the people, a new fetish of authority becomes an economic necessity to the rich. The ignorant who look to political Messiahs to do something for them are obsessed by the idea of the political State which, even if it existed, has had to give way to the industrial State.
The two States, however, differ in aims and expression. The political State aims at perpetuating competition and bourgeois institutions. The new force, the industrial State, seeks to keep pace with machine production and scientific exploitation. While the adherents of the former shriek about trust busting and regulating the economic system by law, the latter, led by the captains of industry, is busy on the job and is out for industrial supremacy. In advanced countries the squabble for power between the two States is practically over in every case; the industrial State being victorious, thus fulfilling Marx's prophecy of industrial consolidation and the growth of the trust. This bickering between sections of the exploiting class does not abate one iota the hostility of rulers to the workers ; these political wrangles are really only the quarrels of thieves over the wealth they have stolen from the proletariat. The State does not represent society, but only tries to administer things in the interests of the ruling minority. This can only be done by oppressing the workers. The economic system or capitalism requires a servile poverty-stricken populace to maintain itself. Unless this state of affairs is maintained, soldiers, prostitutes, child slaves, and others who perforce do the dirty work of capitalism could not be obtained in sufficient quantities to cope with the fearful waste and special emergencies of employers. Statists try hard to blind us to this fact, and point to the long list of laws which were supposed to benefit the worker. Unfortunately, those who have studied history know that most of these laws were passed in the interests of the exploiters and the few laws of any benefit to the workers were made only when the militancy of the mass forced the hands of Statesmen.
The class state, irrespective of its form of expression, takes by force and only gives way before force. The State knows no sentiment, no law or rule for itself. It keeps no promise when inconvenient to do so. It is out for exploitation and oppression of the workers; this is the purpose for which the State exists. The State in all its actions is animated with "the will to oppress," and the end—exploitation — justifies the means.
This attitude explains why the State allows many social evils to exist and takes so serious steps to cope with the evils. Any drastic effort to put down vice or sweating would damage the economic interests of those the State represents. For instance, in some countries the government has taken generations to wake up to the fact that drunkenness is a social evil, it is only when military and industrial efficiency are impaired that legislation supposed to cure the malady is enacted. The State assiduously cultivates idolatry in Bill its forms as a useful adjunct to exploitation. It is for this reason that sacerdotal institutions are patronised and privileged at law. Quackery and charlatanism are for State reasons upheld, for the State is not only concerned to perpetuate class rule, but also to keep back the scientific knowledge from the people. The growth of intellect is the greatest menace to the State, therefore any political nostrum that will keep back the wolves of Socialism, Syndicalism and Anarchism is countenanced.
Some workers denounce the church, others rail at parliament, while another section is up against militarism; but the point we fail to see clearly is that all established institutions are adjuncts to the scheme of exploitation which is centred and functions in and through the medium of the State. All the political changes, religious wrangles, and military differences are incidental; the State harmonises these squabbles as far as possible, and is only interested in exploitation. Under the paternalism of the State we have a state of society implying anarchy at law for the rich and injustice for the poor. Economically, we observe a form of socialism for the favoured few at the expense of the many. Industrially, the capitalists are fast amalgamating into one big union, while the flunkeys of the class state, from platform, press and pulpit, endeavour to educate people in the opposite direction.
The State and all that it stands for is of no use to the worker. The life of the State is not essential to the workers, thought statists try hard to justify its existence because the worker is essential to the State. Labor has but to stop production or refuse to recognise the State's authority to cause the whole machinery of exploitation and domination, built upon the metaphysical idea of the State, to crumple up, and government cannot function. The class state always was and ever will be hostile to the workers, for its economic interests force it to endeavour to keep the masses in that state in which it has pleased plutocracy in its wickedness and greed to ordain. Indeed, of late, the activities of the State threaten us with a worse form of oppression than has been known before. Such catch-cries as "National Service," "Industrial Efficiency," "Military Necessity," and so forth show clearly that the aim of statists is the supremacy of "the servile state," a combination of the worst features of the military, financial and industrial state, a monstrosity that the workers will have to beware of.

Direct Action (Sydney, NSW : 1914 - 1930), Saturday 10 June 1916, page 3

ANARCHISM IN VICTORIA

 It is interesting to know that there is a little group of Anarchists among us who study the martyrology of their brotherhood at Chicago and in all other parts of the world where a brutal executive maintains order, and who sympathise profoundly with constitutional reform by dynamite. The interest, however, it must be admitted, is purely philosophical. No one feels his pulse quickened by a beat at the prospect that some attempt may be made to establish a millennium of universal chaos by force ; and Mr. Chomley's brigade undoubtedly honors the meanest pickpocket about our streets with more attention than it is disposed to lavish on the Head Centre of the Anarchists. The only quarrel these gentlemen can succeed in picking is with a section of the community that is held in quite as light account as themselves, and the spectacle of Secularist and Anarchist excommunicating one another is the last touch that was needed to make their joint existences supremely ridiculous. All the same, it is well to remember that the Anarchists of the Continent are not only formidable by their numbers, but in many instances respectable by the character and position of their leading men. The Commune of Paris, to quote an unfavorable instance, had several very blameless chiefs, such as Rossel and Flourens and Courbet; and the Nihilists of Russia have certainly had more than their fair share of intelligence and character among the youth of the last fifteen years. It may be said that the Carbonari of Italy were even richer in the quality of the men they recruited ; but then the Carbonari were really patriots, plotting for a distinct aim — the liberation of the country ; while the Anarchist as a rule, is independent of national sympathies, and proposes nothing more than to upset everything existing on the chance that it will then be possible to see clearly how a better order can be inaugurated. Now, to an outsider at least, it is possible to understand how a great many wild Utopias may be framed. The maxim of Proudhon, that property is theft, loses a good deal of its explosiveness if it merely means that all property is to be held in common, and that the State is to provide labor and assure a subsistence to every one. The doctrine of emancipated French women, that the law ought to forbid indissoluble contracts between husband and wife as it forbids them between employer and laborer, loses a great deal of its intensity when it is translated into a law making divorce possible for incompatibility of temper. The Anarchist, however, is by principle as much opposed to good as to bad laws. He wishes to make a clean sweep of everything, and to be thoroughly consistent ought to, and no doubt would, destroy every book and work of art that embodied a mischievous idea, as Courbet demolished the column in the Place Vendome because it was built to commemorate homicidal wars. We might therefore expect existing institutions in religion, law and education to be pitilessly doomed, as the French revolutionists destroyed everything connected with the idea of royalty, and the early Protestants everything connected with image worship. What does seem curious is that the men who intend all this, and who are undoubtedly working from definite principles, should not put forward some programme of a future government and of laws to provide for the security of the person. If Anarchy expects to disband the standing armies and the police of the civilised world, and to abolish property and afterwards to see the lives of its own adherents respected, it must be the creed of unusually sanguine men, unless it be the day dream of those who are so hopelessly crazed or brutalised that they cannot understand the world they are living in, or so desperate that they only wish to close with their oppressors.
Probably the last reasons are the true ones. The conditions of a belief in Anarchy appear to be that a society should be over-governed, or at least living at high pressure. We all have enough of the primæval savage about us to resent anything that seems like unnecessary restraint. Every now and again a peer divests himself of a rank which he finds cumbrous, and contracts the comparative liberty of a working man, or a millionaire sets the moral code of society at defiance, or a few thousands of men and women go out into the wilderness to practise polygamy. In England, however, the laws are lax, and restraints are mostly imposed by public opinion, which has not a throat to be cut or a house to be blown up. In Germany the citizen is branded and certificated and drilled and overlooked by the police till almost the idea of spontaneous action disappears. Were there not the outlet of emigration to America, it is certain that the Socialist movement in North Germany would be incomparably stronger than it is. Nevertheless, the German Government recommends itself by certain qualities of a very high kind. It is well meaning, it is intelligent, it has the prestige of success, and it is not corrupt. Naturally, where all these advantages are wanting, as in Russia, the feeling of desperation among all who are educated enough to resent tyranny, and who do not belong to the privileged class that is exempted from it, becomes intolerable and drives men upon extremities. Nevertheless, when we consider that Russia and North Germany possess everything that our wealthy classes and our religious leaders declare to be most desirable, it seems unaccountable that discontent should exist. In neither of those countries have the old landmarks been seriously unsettled. They have courts and aristocracies and a hierarchy of officials, and the people are taught religion in their daily schools, and are shot down or imprisoned if they meet and talk seditiously about the public policy, or try to raise the rate of their daily wage, or to abridge the hours of labor. The philosophical Conservative, who revolts against popular government, and who is never weary of caricaturing the working man for his self-assertion, will find it hard to explain how it is that the Anarchist seems to be the natural and rank product of despotisms. It is certainly curious in one way, because the tendency of men in the United States and the British colonies is not in any way to relax the obligations of law. Englishmen who crossed the seas to escape from feudalism, Irishmen who carried with them a burning hatred of their landlords and English law, unite with German Socialists in enlarging the sphere of the State and subordinating the rights of the individual to the common good. Nevertheless, Anarchists do not thrive either in America or Australia. The reason, surely, is that democratic institutions, by associating every man in the government of the country, deprive all who are commonly reasonable of a sense of injury when they are governed after a fashion which they do not approve. We have not even learned from the recent quarrel among themselves what it is the Victorian Anarchists wish to destroy, and whether they would begin with the Governor and the Houses of Parliament, or would level the churches or blow up the Stock Exchange. Our civilisation is very young, and many of us will admit that it is not yet very perfect. Nevertheless, it is curious to imagine what would become of us if the Anarchists succeeded in wiping out all that has been built up during the last fifty years, so that we were left with no property except what we carried about our persons, and no fruits of accumulated experience except in our minds. We can afford to dismiss the idea as a jest, but to several nations of the Continent it is an ever present possibility, haunting the dreams of statesmen, now and again paralysing the energies of the industrial classes and animating the dreams of fanatics. We may surely claim it as some gain for Liberalism that where it triumphs the Red Spectre cannot exist.

Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), Saturday 28 April 1888, page 8

THE FORM AND SUBSTANCE OF GOVERNMENT.

 By M.

NO. IV.—SOCIALISM AND ANARCHY.

It can hardly be doubted that the raison d'etre of Socialism is the longing which exists in a certain class of philanthropic minds to relieve the chronic distress prevailing, especially in congested populations. In so far, consequently, as the theory is prompted by this cause it does not altogether repel our sympathy. But what Socialists apparently fail to perceive is that, without the least intention to do injustice to any section of the community, they may advocate a cure for social distress which is worse than the disease. There is a species of " practical " politicians who would convert the State into an Earthly Providence, and invest it with absolute power to set right what ever may go wrong in the individual and domestic, as well as the social, life of the citizens. The unhappy experience of certain countries in past generations, from the ubiquity and persistence of State interference, is lost upon such men for want of historic intelligence, They are quite content with the proximate results of a quasi-State Socialism, which they have reason to believe is at least immediately beneficial. They never stop to consider the remote effects of the political momentum they are setting up, and what type of social structure the line of action they are taking will ultimately establish. "With more emotion than philosophy they meet us with the exclamation, " Surely, you would not have this suffering continue ! " But State Socialism takes for granted, as Mr. Herbert Spencer has said, "first that all suffering ought to be prevented, which is not true ; much suffering is curative, and prevention of it is prevention of a remedy. In the second place, it takes for granted that every evil can be removed, the truth being that with the existing defects of human nature many evils can only be thrust out of one place or form into another place, often being increased by the change. There is also implied the unhesitating belief that evils of all kinds should be dealt with by the State. There does not occur the inquiry whether there are at work other agencies capable of dealing with evils, and whether the evils in question may not be among those which are best dealt with by these other agencies. Obviously, the more numerous Governmental interventions become the more confirmed does this habit of thought grow, and the more loud and perpetual the demands for intervention."
History exhibits instances of political slavery having insidiously crept into States, and assumed the detestable forms of despotism as really under the guise of a benevolent democracy as under that of a benevolent autocracy. There is no meritorious statesmanship in desiring to sweep away institutions or influences hostile to the public well-being. The true test of political wisdom in rulers lies rather in their ability to discern what barriers to social progress can best be removed by individual or collective enterprise outside the domain of State administration, even though their removal maybe more slowly effected than under the operation of Governmental force. Socialism being by its very nature a highly centralised system directly controlled by State officialism, there is grave danger of the power with which its official organisation is invested becoming sooner or later absolute. If Socialism should ever triumph, the State will become entrusted with the proprietorship of all dwellings and factories, the enforcement of rigid sanitary laws, the regulation of morals, the determination of what literature shall he permitted, and what shall be relegated to a State Index Expurgatorius, what periodicals shall be allowed to be conveyed through the post office and what shall be stopped in transit ; at what rate of expenditure the citizens shall live, what description of food and drink shall be legal, what size of house they shall occupy, and what shall be the quality and shape of their garments. Let the thin end of the wedge be introduced, and the sequel of universal State interference is ultimately inevitable. The tentacala of the tyrannical Octopus may take generations to coil round all the personal and social interests of the population, but that every citizen will in the end find himself more or less in its folds is certain.
It is a leading tenet of Socialism that private property and the incentives to individual exertion which it sets in motion are an unmitigated curse to society. In a Socialistic community the power and influence which money and land command would cease ; but not so the passion of talented and ambitious minds to wield authority over their fellows. In the absence of property, then, as a passport to the gratification of this undying aspiration of strong natures, an outlet for it would be found in the only other possible channel. Office under Government would be eagerly sought after as a ladder of social promotion, "and so vast and importunate would be the number of eligible candidates that we should have enacted — only on a more gigantic scale— the state of affairs a Russian play quoted by Mr. Mackenzie Wallace describes as existing under the rule of the Czar: "All men, even shopkeepers and cobblers, aim at becoming officers, and the man who has passed his whole life without official rank seems to be not a human being." Once the enslaving régime of Socialism is inaugurated, and the organisation of officialism has passed a certain stage of development, it first grows less and less resistible, and then become positively attractive to the superior order of people in the community as affording a great multiplication of respectable bureaucratic careers for their families. If an opponent of an established Socialistic Government should eventually arise and plead for a relaxation of the chains of State tyranny he would be promptly silenced by a host of precedents being quoted against him. As Mr. Herbert Spencer truly observes : "Increasing power of a growing administrative organisation is accompanied by a decreasing power of the rest of society to resist its further growth and control. The numerous socialistic changes made by Act of Parliament, joined with numerous others presently to be made, will by-and-by be all merged in State Socialism — swallowed in the vast wave which they have, little by little, raised." It was its elaborately centralised system of State officialism that brought the Roman Empire to ruin. According to Lactantius, " so numerous were the receivers in Gaul (during the decline of the Empire) in comparison with the payers, and so enormous the weight of taxation, that the laborer broke down. The plains became deserts, and woods grow where the plough had been."
State ownership and appropriation of a given class of public works often, doubtless, contribute to public convenience within certain limits. But the area of Government control must be carefully restricted, lest it should answer to the metaphorical description of fire, which, although a good servant, may easily become a bad master. It is obvious that under the proposed arrangements of Socialism, the liberties of the population must be surrendered in proportion as its physical welfare is cared for. It was this fact which the Bishop of Peterborough had in view when he startled the religious world some years ago with the suggestive paradox in reference to the proposed local option scheme for closing public houses, that "he would rather see England free than England sober." To refer to a modern case we have in France, coincidently with a Republican Government, an arbitrary disregard of legitimate liberty, trampling on the rights of citizens to an extent which is a disgrace to a nation glorying in popular self government. Pure socialism would, in the end, prove immeasurably more despotic, carrying the repression of individualism even to the utter paralysation of distinctive personal characteristics. Socialists, while intense admirers of the bright side of their scheme, for which they are mainly indebted to their own imaginations, are generally indisposed to consider the obverse of the picture. The system would be hopelessly fatal to family life. The hon. Auberon Herbert has with justice said, " This system would create men without affections, without home feelings and without virtues. But they would have the fiercest passions burning round the centre of power. There is not a single man in the whole nation who would be able to use the elements of production except under the regulations laid down by the control authority." In short, Socialism is the baseless fabric of a delusive vision. As with each of the other methods of government I have presented, Socialism, viewed as a mere instrument of government, is impotent to keep the defective natures of average citizens under complete restraint. A great philosopher has wisely remarked, "There is no political alchemy by which you can get golden conduct out of leaden instincts."
Passing to the consideration of anarchy, it may be stated that while that theory, in common with Socialism, aims at planting society on a new basis, it may fairly be regarded as the antithesis of the latter. Socialism, as we have seen, is a system founded on the principle of co-operation for the equal good of all, and regulated by a central government, in which everyone is rewarded according to his labor. Anarchy, on the other hand, is a negation of government, or a reducing of government to nil, which accounts for the term Nihilism, and the family likeness which that bears to Anarchy. In Socialism we have perfect organisation ; in anarchy or Nihilism we have a complete abandonment of organisation. The Nihilists maintain that organised society, though theoretically existing for the good of the individuals composing it, is perverted into a weapon for oppression, hence they insist that society must be reconstructed, and government annihilated. The Hon. Auberon Herbert, although sternly opposed to Socialism, refuses to be called an Anarchist or a Nihilist ; preferring to be regarded as an "individualist." He professes respect for the reasonable as distinguished from the violent section of Anarchists, and goes with them hand in hand up to a certain point. Like them, he detests great systems of authority and control, and contends that nothing should be done for the people, but that everything should be done by the people. With the Anarchists, he believes in the power of voluntary association, but parts company with them when they insist on destroying as mischievous the whole machinery of State government ; he, as an individualist, being in favor of keeping the State for the one simple purpose of self-defence. Mr. John A. Henry, one of the Chicago Anarchists, who have recently come in collision with the law, lecturing recently at Boston, propounded the following version of Anarchy: — "The man without property has no use for law, and the law is his enemy. The man who first suggested law was a robber, for he felt the need of something being secured to himself by general consent. The law has grown to be a devil. It is the only support that private property has. By means of it one man controls the work of many men. The reservation of private property makes thieves. Anarchy means the wish and the intention to wipe out laws made by man, for there is not one of them that is not a contradiction and a hindrance to natural law. If, however, it should be found that any statute law is for the good of all the people, an Anarchist would be the last person who could desire its repeal. Anarchists see force coming more intense than ever before, and the resistance is not of any man's choice. It is the necessity of self-defence ; it is the impulse of humanity. People look at the bomb explosion and call it murder. They do not see what compelled the bomb. What is capital but a process of killing." Speaking of his confrères in Chicago doomed to the gallows, he adds, "They never thirsted for blood. They saw that labor was prostrate under the heel of capital, and they told the slave to rise. Anarchists are not bringing on the revolt ; capital is doing that. It has its claws upon the life of society, and it is the duty of society to rebel."

 It has been falsely supposed that anarchy is altogether incompatible with communism, and certainly some exponents of the creed do so express themselves. But Prince Krapotkin declares himself to be an adherent of "the School of Anarchist Communism," and although anarchists would combine to resist co-operative organisations, worked chiefly in the interests of capital, they would in no case object to co-operate when they think the general good can be promoted. They would protest, however, against all co-operation associated with compulsion, and would even oppose voluntary co-operation which in any way infringed upon individual rights. Perhaps the most determined anarchist of the Russian type is Michael Bakounine, who, in his work, God and the State, writes : " We reject all legislation, all authority, and all privileged, licensed, official and legal influence, even though arising from universal suffrage, convinced that it can turn only to the advantage of a dominant minority of exploiters against the interests of the immense majority in subjection to them. Such is the sense in which we are really anarchists."
As a demonstration against reckless law making, which has not the concurrence or appreciation of the bulk of the Parliamentary electors, but is, nevertheless, believed in by crude legislators as an agency of social reformation, I am willing to acknowledge that the anarchist theory has some show of plausibility. It is, in fact, a national reaction from undue Government interference, and in that light it has its useful lessons. But when it is seriously affirmed that society, as a whole, will never reach high intellectual, moral and social elevation and satisfaction until law and Government are entirely abolished, it is impossible to view such an idea otherwise than as an utterly visionary conception. So long as crime originates from malformed brains, and is fostered by evil associations, the lives and property of private citizens require common protection from murderers, thieves and swindlers. How far civilised mankind could dispense with the apparatus of Government if their external surroundings were thoroughly ameliorated, and present adverse influences had become inoperative, is a matter of conjecture. We have to take society as we find it, and however voluntary associations for good and useful objects may be commended, I unhesitatingly assert that there is at present no such indication of the perfectibility of humanity as would lead us to believe that law and Government can ever be dispensed with, every citizen being permitted to be a law to himself. That the tendency of parliaments and governments is increasingly to over-legislate and place private citizens in mischievous leading strings cannot for a moment be doubted, But there ought to be readily found a via media between that extreme and anarchy. Is it not the most rational course for society to aim at limiting the function and scope of legislation and government ? It is barely 200 years since the English nation were obliged to protest by force of the headsman's axe against the occupant of the throne exercising authority of too paternal a character. It is by no means impossible that the time may come when the growing extension of legislative and governmental authority, under limited monarchies and republics, may call for the imposition of a check equally emphatic if less severe. Anarchy only furnishes another illustration of the vain idolatry of a governmental form. The part of wisdom is to rely upon no form of government whatever for social regeneration, but to make the best of the system it is our lot to live under, and seek to reform it, not so much through Parliamentary efforts as by intelligent appeals to the reason and sentiment of the public.

Leader (Melbourne, Vic. : 1862 - 1918, 1935), Saturday 29 January 1887, page 16

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM

 By MOSES BARITZ.

The unitiated have been misled in thinking that Anarchism is an advance on Socialism. That the former is a system that will come after Socialism and will be on a higher plane, etc., etc.
There never was a greater delusion. The facts are the other way. First, their is no anarchist system as such; secondly, the evolution of society points the opposite way.

There is not a solitary point in the Marxian system, that in any manner is in harmony with the views of the multitude of individuals who proclaim the (greatness) of Anarchism. Socialism is scientific, Anarchism is the reverse. Socialism is in line with the evolutionary theory of society; Anarchism is not. Socialism based upon the materialist conception of history. Anarchism upon the bourgeois system. Socialism proclaims the existence of a class struggle; Anarchism opposes that view. Marxism demonstrates the concentration of capital; Anarchism stands by the decentralisation theory.
Marxism proves the growth of the proletariat and the dissolution of the middle class; Anarchism contends that the small owners are growing.
Socialism predicates a democratic system ; Anarchism advocates the abolition of authority. Marxism lays the basis of working class exploitation to surplus values; Anarchists deny it.
Marxism shows the fact that classes exist, arising from the social system, the system producing these men; Anarchism states the opposite. And now to prove the case.
The scientific basis of Socialism is the materialist conception of history. It formulates the propelling forces operating in society, and deals with the development of masses, and NOT individuals. With social classes and not with isolated beings. Its essence may be summed up in the two following  sentences.
"The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of mankind that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness."
Any person but an unthinking anarchist will realise the potency of those lines. It means that the ideas in any given stage of society are a product of the method of production, which, develops them. It means that ideas emanate from the social process, and that the social conditions produce the classes. The material foundation of society brings with it the reflex, of those conditions. But above all, it shows that morals are the result, of social conditions, instead of social conditions being the outcome of a system of morality.
This is in contrast and opposition to the Anarchist who, being unscientific, thinks that conditions, such as they are, are the result of the act of one or two individuals. Which naturally draws them to the conclusion that if you remove the individual, by death or any such means, that the system they were the product of, would thereby be destroyed. It is because of the ignorance of the Anarchist of the SOCIAL forces operating in human society that he becomes an assassin, or inflames others to perform like deeds AND ASSASSINATIONS HAVE BEEN PART OF THE VERY ESSENCE OF PROPAGANDA BY THE ANARCHISTS.
The science of Marxism is clear when the question of the class struggle is taken under advisement. There it was that both Marx and Engels predated the discovery of Darwin and Wallace, in that the former had already shown the law of development in human society. Or, as Engels said, at the grave of Marx,
"Just as Darwin discovered the law of development in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development in human society."
And the law of human development is the struggle of the classes throughout history, the work of Darwin and Wallace was to show the struggle for existence on the biological field.
And NO Anarchist accepts the materialist conception of history, for if they did, they would not advocate killing individuals as a means of getting rid of a system. If they do advocate violence, it is only because they do NOT understand the social forces.
It is very curious to have to deal with Bakunin, for he was the first to translate the "Communist Manifesto" into Russian, and it was published at his friend Alexander Herzen's newspaper office at Geneva in 1863. Bakunin, though he translated the work which is the foundation of Socialist literature, and the most illuminating document in history, did not realise the importance of it. For he lays down in his "Revolutionary Catechism,"
"The revolutionist is a man under a vow. He ought to have no personal interests, no business, no feelings, no property. He ought to be ready to die, to endure torment, and with HIS OWN HANDS TO KILL ALL who place obstacles in the way of Revolution."
Can there be anything so perverted? Here is an individual, who thinks that his social status in society is the result of a desire. If that were so, there would be no poverty and most likely nothing else. We have interests, but they are class interests. If Bakunin were correct, there is no such thing as a class struggle. But that is not all. Bakunin's opposition to Marx was originally provoked because of an article Marx wrote in the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" on Feb. 14th. 1849. where Marx stated, that a section of the Slavs had no future, because they lacked historical, geographical, political and industrial conditions. This incensed Bakunin who in the simplicity of his ignorance, asked "What has that to do with the matter?" An evidence that Bakunin did not understand the influence of social conditions upon a nation or people.
Bakunin was always an advocate of force, and was good enough to admit to his friend Alexander Herzen that Marx and Engels were right after all. This was after Bakunin wanted what he called the "equalisation of classes." It was in 1869 when Bakunin got into the International. Marx was  not present at that meeting, and he soon demonstrated the ignorance of Bakunin, by writing the famous letter dealing with the class struggle. Marx pointed out that what was wanted was the ABOLITION of classes, not, as Bakunin wanted, their "Equalisation."
Bakunin soon found himself beaten and admitted it too. His friend Herzen, had a surprise one day by getting a letter from Bakunin, in which he stated that Marx was 'a giant.' Herzen replied asking if he meant it. Bakunin sent this answer:
August 28th. 1869.
"Why did I call him a giant? Because in justice it is impossible to deny him greatness. I cannot deny his immense service in the cause of Socialism which he has served wisely, energetically, and truly for the 25 years of my acquaintance with him, and in which he undoubtedly excelled us all. He was one of the founders of the International Society, and that is in my opinion an excellent merit, which I will always acknowledge, his attitude towards me notwithstanding."
Later, about two years afterwards, Bakunin again wrote to Herzen, regarding the armed insurrection, He said: "When I think of it now, I must say frankly that Marx and Engels were right. They truly estimated the affairs of those days."
Bakunin was an advocate of organisation, and favored a system of electing delegates to form a central council which would have an "imperative mandate."
As Marx pointed out in a reply to Bakunin, that a central authority with an inoperative mandate would be leaving the power in the hands of an executive committee to which Bakunin had always been opposed. For did not Bakunin write in his "The Socialism of Mazzini" that "the possession of power transformed into a tyrant the most devoted friend of liberty." The Anarchists have always protested against "authority," as against the system of social democracy, but that did not prevent them from forming an ELECTED international committee when the Anarchist Congress was held in Amsterdam.
Perhaps now we will deal with others who cannot understand the development of society. The famous bourgeois idol of America, Emma Goldman, has time after time, denied the existence of social forces, though she talks of it in her "Social Significance of the Modern Drama." In her first essay on Anarchism, in her book on "Anarchism and other Essays," she actually has the nerve to tell her reader that there would have been no abolition of slavery in the United States if it had not been for John Brown, (He was lynched by a crowd of slave-owners and their sympathisers at Harper's Ferry in 1859.)
To Emma Goldman as with most anarchists, the Civil War in America was not the outcome of the growth of capitalist industry, which necessitated a free market for the obtaining of labor power, but due to the ethical actions of Wendell, Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, and the other abolitionists. In fact anarchists like Emma Goldman, cannot be expected to realise the significance of that question when the reader will note that Lewis Henry Morgan, the author of the greatest work of Ethnology, yet printed, "Ancient Society," and the "League of the Iroquois," etc., actually supported the Southerners in the interpretation of Constitution dealing with the holding of slaves.
(Morgan was elected as a Republican in the -New York State Assembly in November 1860, and the writer has seen the resolution he moved in January, 1861 in the 'Journals of the Assembly.' But it maybe pointed out that Morgan's work on 'Ancient Society' had not yet been compiled.)
Though Emma Goldman does not and will not believe in "authority" it is significant that she has lent herself to agitations that have had for their basis the release of prisoners from various gaols, etc.
Another woman anarchist, by far more illustrious than Emma Goldman, was Louise Michel, the 'Red Virgin.' She believed in the 'deed' and was responsible for this view : 'To strike down men personally responsible for the slavery and oppression of a whole nation there can be no more hesitation than to destroy a viper, or knock the poor shewolf with her young ones. Tyrants are doomed to die, no pity can be shown them.
The constantly recurring assassination of monarchs, and 'rulers,' is due to this kind of foolish propaganda. Even political assassination is (nothing but) the work of a destitute brain, inflamed by the ridiculous propaganda of the Anarchists. They fail to learn that the system of society is a growth in the evolutionary process, and that we are the products of the process. The remedy lies not in the hands of a few individuals, but by the action of a social class acting for its CLASS interests. To the anarchist there is NO class struggle, and consequently he seeks to wreak vengeance upon an individual who like himself is a product of the system.
Then, as if not to try and understand the system, the anarchists wilfuly advocate all kinds of silly notions regarding the amelioration of conditions. No anarchist yet, except it be Prince Peter Kropotkin, has endeavoured to give a system of 'economies.' and even he makes a botch of it. Kropotkin his 'Conquest of Bread' he tries to show that there is no such thing as Surplus Value. And further that it is not an evil of this system.
This is, of course, in opposition to Marxian economics. To understand this, we must ask the question what is Surplus Value? It is the portion in the means of life that the workers create, that causes their destitution. IT IS THE VERY BASE OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION. It is the taking of the surplus value, that distinguishes this system from any other. Surplus Value is that portion of production in capitalist Society that the workers create, but for which they receive no equivalent. - Hit of it are sustained the master class- their armies, navies, and their "charitable institutions. "
As soon as the workers dispossess the master class, there will be no surplus value created. Social production will be socially owned. The existence of surplus value permits of the retention of a parasite class, who live by taking the pro ducts from I he working class. Robbery within the system, is only possible by the creation of surplus value. YET KROPOTKIN SAYS THAT THERE IS NO EVIL IN IT!
Proudhon, who was —according to the anarchists—the 'Father of Anarchism,' was so scientific, that he told the electors when he was standing for Deputy — taking political action mind you— that the interests of the masters and slaves were identical. He told them that, they ought shake hands, etc.
Other advocates have taught the policy of anarchists acting as petty thieves, such as Netchajeff. Nor is he by any means alone.
Others, though anarchists believe in voluntary (?) organisation, have openly avowed the necessity of organisation such as Malatesta. who at the debate in Amsterdam at the International Anarchist Congress in 1907, said the poor should have an organisation greater even than the 'rich.' Emma Goldman attacked him, but> . . . .illegible . . .< The fact remains, however, that industry is being developed to such an extent, that it now rests in a few hands. The growth of monopolies in trade, cannot exist without its social equivalent, namely, the greater degradation of the working class. The constant effort by the workers to get more out of what they create, is only an evidence NOT OF THE BETTERMENT OF SOCIAL CONDITIONS, but of the deterioration of those conditions. To the thinker, the result is plain. Emancipation from a system that is based on the socialisation of labour, can only be accomplished by a social class. The activities of a social class can only be determined by the majority of the consensus of opinion of that class. That makes the whole project of Anarchism superfluous and — ridiculous.

International Socialist (Sydney, NSW : 1910 - 1920), Saturday 5 April 1919, page 1

MINISTERS' CONFERENCE

The morning's proceedings were devoted to a paper on "The Relation of our Churches to the Social and Political Questions of the Day," by the Rev. F. E. HARRY, of Sydney, The following is an abstract: —


" 'The greatest of all questions for statesmen and Churchmen, wrote Dr, Chalmers in 1823, 'is the condition of those untaught and degraded thousands who swarm around the base of the social edifice, and whose brawny arms may yet grasp its pillars to shake or destroy.' The same problem, the same possible danger faces us, but with this difference. The multitudes around are no longer untaught, for Education Acts have been in operation, and public schools abound. But their spiritual destitution still remains the greatest of all problems. Shall we be candid with ourselves to-day and admit some of our short comings ? Shall we acknowledge the existing and manifest need for improvement in our Church life and organization? We cannot overlook the fact that there is a deep-rooted suspicion in the minds of many earnest men that the pulpit is gradually losing its power—that this is owing to a defective culture, to the repetition of stereotyped formulas, and to tho lack of interest in the affairs of this life manifested by those who stand up to plead for God. We have only ourselves to blame if the masses of men turn away from us because we are merely 'sky-pilots,' because we keep heaven far away instead of bringing it down to earth. Some of us have yet to learn how to interest men as veil as to instruct how to apply moral and spiritual principles to the details of daily life; how to present old truths concerning God, eternity, life, duty, with freshness, freedom, and power. Enthusiastic dreamers have drawn pictures for us of probable social life a century hence, and it is perhaps our own fault, the penalty of past neglect, that in these pictures no scope is given for the work of the pulpit. No consideration is permitted to the claims of a higher life and Christianity, which has really contributed so largely to all great social achievements. Christianity, which alone could make such a harmonious system possible, is left out in the cold. It will have had its day, for the millennium of luxury will have dawned. Individuality will have been repressed, and every man will be only a helpless fragment of a gigantic piece of mechanism. All true advances have come through the simple earnest preaching of the Gospel of Christ. Many run to and fro in these days with now legislative schemes and social inventions and political dreams. Doubtless God will use them to some purpose. But all social, political, and financial remedies not born out of the redemptive heart of God are but new Babel towers, from which men will flee in dispute and confusion to renew their sad and vain efforts towards a peaceful millennium. Shall we confess to having too spasmodic an interest in passing events? Of course we don't want to be 'down criers,' and it is not given to some of us to announce sermons upon great calamities; yet while we may not be able to discuss such themes as 'strikes' without giving offence or without falling between two stools, we can wisely teach principles which must influence those who are directly interested in such social questions. We are not to echo public opinion, but to lead it. If we are not keenly interested in the movements of the day how can we bring the spirit of Christ to bear upon the laws and customs of society? Ethical principles may be taught, but the application of them to the details of daily life and to the conduct of public affairs must be left to the individual judgment.
In some cities it is left to the pulpit and to that alone to counteract the insidious influence of a poisoned Press. You know what I mean. The new journalism, with its great interest for us all, with its piquant paragraphs, its personalities, its anonymous articles often with subtle insinuations approaching the very verge of libel, with its titbits of society news, its news concerning the turf and various sports, constitutes almost the sole reading of thousands of men and women to-day. And will any one dare say that such reading has no penetrating power for evil? It is for us to counteract this evil influence in every possible way by creating a healthier literary appetite, by fostering a pure taste, by training tho young to read only those books and periodicals which minister to their intellectual and spiritual welfare. Ministers are often advised to keep out of politics, but no reasons of any weight have been given for such a strange course. Ministers ought to take their share in public life like merchants, lawyers, tradesmen, and other citizens. Let us keep party politics out of the pulpit by all means, unless the questions in debate have a direct bearing on the religious life of the people. Then speak without fear of man. We must show how religious principles bear upon social and national life, for nothing is outside the scope of Christianity. When all men strive to be alike progress is impossible, for the world moves forward in proportion to the clear expression and impression of separate individualities. I know that this doctrine is not largely held in these days of levelling, in this 'millennium of Smiths.' Yet if the pulpit is decaying it is owing to cowardice and conventionality.
Let me briefly touch upon some of the chief of our social and political problems. I believe that our attitude towards the poor will be ever an index to our character, whether as individuals or Churches. Let us impress upon our Churches in these days of distress and destitution the need for considering the poor, not in foolish ways of indiscriminate giving, but with a wise charity. Let each family in comfortable circumstances take a destitute family in charge, not in a patronising way, but with wise love. What attitude should the Churches assume towards Socialism ? Who can look at the sufferings and struggles of men, the anxieties of the poor over food, the terrible social inequalities which prevail, without feeling that a change must come soon. Apart from all the frothy and foolish talk of Anarchists and political demagogues we must recognise the discontent that prevails among the masses of men. We must consider the schemes of social reform put forward by thoughtful and earnest men. Now, Christianity utterly disagrees with the methods of socialism. Christianity maintains that all cardinal changes must come from within; the mischief lies in the heart of man. Let us build soup kitchens for the starving; let us give as God has blessed us to every worthy object; but let us not imagine that passing an Act of Parliament, digging good drains, or creating a protective tariff will destroy human selfishness. Let us improve social conditions in every possible way, but at the same time remember that the permanent and powerful reform of society can only come from the leavening influence of the spirit of Christ. Christianity ever strikes at selfishness as the root of earth's evils; it cannot be silent before the greed and cruelty of men. At the same time we must beware of being hard upon the rich merely to please the poor. There is that in the gospel which can rectify all ills, and 'make the wilderness to blossom as the rose.' Christ, and Christ alone, can solve every social problem.
 In concluding let me briefly allude to the relation of our Churches to political questions. We ought to have more influence on legislation than we possess at present. Our indifference accounts largely for the fact that atheistic agitators secure seats in our legislative chambers. If we want good legislation we must send better men to Parliament. We used legislation against the terrible and unblushing vice of our streets. One can hardly move in this matter without feeling assailed by that large section of the Press which sneers at virtue and condemns as prudery every attempt to check vice. There are those in our community who try to overwhelm with slander and abuse the men and women, who make any sacrifice to save the young and the wretched from doing down to the pit, who endeavour to break down the present agreement with death and covenant with hell. Our Churches must speak out plainly in this matter. Dr. Parkhurst, of New York, has illustrated what can be done by a man of vigilance and courage to purify the horrible dens of a large city. We must have legislation against all places of questionable amusement, where the innocent are allured by those three allied curses—gambling, drink, and impurity. It is a matter of life and death to thousands that our places of public amusement should at all costs be kept pure and free, from all incentives to vice and crime. Those devil's dens for the promotion of loose living must be abolished. We ought not to tolerate so many places of temptation in our cities — hotels and private bars at every street corner, betting-rooms, and foul music halls. In spite of all the sneers of a worldly and cynical Press the ultimate analysis of all history is that which we find upon the sacred page, and upon it all the history, of the nations is but one continuous comment that 'Righteousness exalteth a nation, and sin is the reproach of any people.' "

Adelaide Observer (SA : 1843 - 1904), Saturday 28 October 1893, page 14

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.

CONFLICT OF INTERESTS.

Happiness may be defined as the feeling we have that we (including any friend or cause with which we identify ourselves) have more than enough energy to handle any situation that confronts us. That we may he happy in spite of experiencing keen want or pain (within certain limits) is shown, for instance, by the pleasure it is to be hungry when we know that a good dinner is not far away, or to receive a blow that given us a long awaited excuse to crush the enemy who struck it, or to ponder over our own or the world's woes, if we believe we have the best possible solution for them (writes Prince Hopkins in "The Labor Age").

The implications, then, of our aim of promoting the greatest happiness to the greatest number present these alternatives: Either the world must be freed from problems too difficult for people as at present constituted to meet successfully, or else people must be made more capable of handling them.

EFFECT OF SCIENCE.

The progress of science will undoubtedly make it possible to overcome some of our present day evils. But the equable distribution of those benefits of science among the many predicates an industrial revolution in society. A world mechanically productive of so much wealth that certain groups can have everything they want, is the ideal of the present generation. Unfortunately, men's wants are not stationary; the satisfaction of one want opens up new desires, and capitalist society is becoming a mad scramble of each to have more than his neighbor. This condition is teaching mankind the lesson that "man does not live by bread alone." Attention is thus being directed from the attempt to provide an easy physical berth for the race— especially for a select few of the race —toward a hope for making the mass of mankind more intelligent and capable, more able to control their industrial machines and themselves.

"CAN'T CHANGE HUMAN NATURE."

But this attempt is far from easy "You can't change human nature unless you change the institutions in which it is moulded. That it is changed and profoundly, under the influence of differing institutions is shown by the great difference in thought as expressed in the writings or the men who lived in savage, barbarian, classic, feudal, and modern times. Their whole outlook on life is in each case incomprehensible to those who lived in a later age. Whenever we send a child to school, we tacitly admit that we believe that human nature can be modified. When, however, we deliberately attempt to change mankind en masse, we must make sure that we understand of what sort of psychological stuff men are made.

 THE NATURE OF LIVING BEINGS.

Let us turn from further examination of the physical material available to make a new world to the nature of feeling and thinking creatures. We find that all are organised out of a substance called protoplasm which is characterised by its relatively great tendency to put forth movements of its own and to modify the nature of these movements because of consequent experience. These qualities of protoplasm become accentuated in the more highly evolved kinds of animals. The latter may react in one way so long as the result is pleasurable to them; but if the result is displeasable, they often turn and react oppositely. In short, successful acts are repeated, while unsuccessful ones are repressed. A child meeting and overcoming moderate obstacles develops into a man of "strong will," endowed with an optimism that moves others. Another child who is balked at every turn is likely to develop into a pessimist and a foredoomed failure. A whole nation, victorious in war, expands into a policy of mad imperialism; or crushed utterly, it loses its grip and degenerates. A social class gains psychological power in the confidence born of an advancing economic condition, but too many defeats sap its morale and lead to an utter rout.

RESULTS OF FREEDOM.

Whole ages of our race's development are characterised by the predominance of one or other of these types of character. The pictures left in their prehistoric caves by the men of the neolithic period indicate a freedom of stroke which excites our admiration to-day; the paintings by the men of the later paleolithic culture are cramped in comparison. Similarly the days of ancient Greece and Rome were days of freedom, amounting to license, which we correctly associate with the name pagan. Christianity, as a movement born on the crest of men's reaction to this lack of restraint, has for two thousand years swamped western culture with a puritanical strain of however fluctuating intensity.

Now, Christianity is losing its grip and an era of greater freedom is again developing. The economic interpretation of history is supplemented thus by its psychological interpretation of why men will no longer submit with patience to the chains their fathers bore. In the political, as earlier in the religious field, autocratic authority, absolutism, has had to give way to democracy and freedom, and to-day the victorious war is being carried into the field of industry.

ADAPTATION TO ENVIRONMENT.

What specific impulses develop out of this tendency of protoplasm to be active and to react with some adaptation to every stimulus? By experiments of a most interesting nature, Loeb, the noted American biologist, has shown that the conduct of low forms of animal life as well as of plant life is strikingly like that of the sunflower, which always turns its head toward the source of light. He shows how nervous connections from the eyes of certain water animals to swimming muscles on the opposite sides or their bodies cause these animals to swing themselves until both eyes face equally into the light. Two other low lives, Bacterium termo and Spirillum undula, face about in a mechanical fashion toward the source from which an infusion of 0.001 per cent of peptone or of meat extract comes to them. Nereis, a marine worm, is stimulated by the contact of glass against its skin to enter tiny glass tubes, even if against strong sunlight, which kills it.

Now, asks Loeb, in effect, have we not in the turning of Bacterium termo toward a chemical infusion the beginning of the impulse which draws the small boy toward home when he smells dinner cooking? And have we not in Nereis the explanation of the boy's love of crawling into the cave he has dug for himself? It is interesting to note that the same stimulus may, under slightly different circumstances, cause quite different reactions. Thus, by seeing a small animal of its own kind, an animal may he moved by the protective impulse, whereas, if the stranger had slightly larger, the combative impulse would have been aroused, and if larger still, then the impulse of flight. Similarly, an employer of labor may feel benevolence toward a small company union, but when it joins the trade union movement, he fights it, and this quite aside from its having actually demonstrated hostile intent toward him.

Of the four great drives of human beings, two corresponding to hunger and love obviously are derived from Loeb's tropians; the other two, fighting and flight, are defensive mechanisms aroused chiefly when the first two are threatened. Then, there are the inhibitive impulses corresponding to each of these.

THE HUMAN IMPULSES.

Some psychologists stop here, fearing to enumerate the human impulses more minutely, until science has made more certain of them. But most authorities give at least a tentative listing of special instincts.* You will find long lists of them given by James Thorndike, and others. Carleton Parker, the economist and student of labor, says (Casual Laborer. p. 125):

*The definition of an instinct is that it is a tendency born in us and inherited from thousands of ancestors, without any need of training at all, to act in vary definite ways when certain situations occur.

"Those instinctive tendencies are persistent—are far less warped and modified by the environment than we believe; . . they function quite as they have for a thousand years; . . . they as motives in their various normal or perverted habit form can at times dominate singly the entire behavior and act as if they were a clean character dominant."

Parker gives the "following catalogue of instincts"; 1. Gregariousness; 2. parental bent, motherly behavior, kindliness; 3. curiosity, manipulation, workmanship; 4. acquisition collecting ownership; 5. fear and flight; 6. mental activity: 7 housing or settling; 8. migration, homing: 9. hunting; 10. anger, pugnacity; 11. revolt at confinement, at being limited in liberty of action and choice; 12. revulsion; 13. leadership and mastery; 14. subordination, submission; 15. display, vanity, ostentation; 16. sex.

It is possible, while taking a position more conservative than that of those who list in detail the instincts, yet to follow their indications of direction in impulsive tendency.

These motives, of course, are shared in common by man and the lower animals. In the lives of at least the undomesticated animals they are fairly adequate to assure their happiness, because they have been evolved through hundreds of generations, during which those animals have lived in essentially the same kind of environment as that which they still inhabit today. Man, however, lives in an artificial world, which he alters continually, and faster than new instincts can possibly be evolved in himself.

CONFLICT OF IMPULSES.

When one of the lower animals is hungry, it is proper for it to seize food and eat; when sexually attracted, to mate; when afraid, to run away; or when enraged, to kill. But a man's hunger may find itself conflict with his habit of respecting the property of others, or his desire not to appear greedy: his love may go counter to his social or economic ambition; his fear may threaten to lose him the respect of his fellows; and to kill his enemy may cost him his own life. As a result, there is a tremendous conflict going on within the breast of every civilised man or woman, all the time, between the instincts which our complex civilisation constantly stimulates.

"SUBLIMATION,"

The inner conflicts which are bred by even quite necessary social restrictions would blow society to atoms, but for adaptive mechanism which mankind has evolved. This consists in "sublimation" (literally, vaporising), our impulses into expressions which symbolise, or stand for the original instincts, without really being them. Thus, under some conditions, "hunger" for books may take the energy that naturally would flow into physical hunger; or a widow may sublimate her love for her late husband into religious "love." Unfortunately, this process of sublimation isn't so simple that we can easily bring it about when ever we wish. Nevertheless, much may be effected if we make a habit of always "reasoning through" to its final causes each situation which disturbs us. Thus, for example, when we are angry at an individual, we can at least recall to what extent he is the result of the forces of heredity and environment. Not to punish this man, but to free all men, is the remedy.

REVOLT AGAINST PRESENT SYSTEM.

The tendency to "sublimate" his passions into higher forms of expression is never quite absent in mankind. That is why every age of license has been followed by one of "spiritual" striving. America, precisely because she is one of the most luxurious and crass of nations, has been the most prolific of new-fangled religious cults, of well-meaning philanthropists and of sentimental literature; and some day she will produce a movement true and fine, surpassing anything the world has known. This will be a revolt against the whole system whereby human values are subordinated to commercial values. It will proclaim, as the first essential of an endurable society, that it should not provoke, by unnecessary repressions, a war of passions in the breasts of its citizens, sure presently to find expression in literal warfare; and that it should cease to put a premium upon the lowest human motives for production of goods, but should so organise its machinery as to stimulate instead the impulses of workmanship, creativeness, self-respect, co-operation, and mutual aid.

Daily Standard (Brisbane, Qld. : 1912 - 1936), Saturday 22 April 1922, page 4