SOCIALISM AND POLITICAL LIBERTY

 ——:o:——

(By J. BRUCE GLASIER in the "Labor Leader.")

Many years ago—I need not count how many—I read in the newspaper that the late Joseph Cowan, M.P., then in the height of his Radical-Republican fame, in opening the Free Library at Newcastle, chose as the first book to be taken from its shelves John Stuart Mill's essay "On Liberty."

 Holding the little book up, he remarked to those around him that he regarded the book and its subject as being, above all others, worthy of honor and deserving the careful study of his fellow citizens, especially the young men. The incident, made a deep impression on me, for like many other young men who afterwards became Socialists, I was early aflame with enthusiasm for liberty. 

When, however, a few years later, the vision splendid of Socialism burst upon us young libertads, "mere" political freedom lost its potency and lustre in our eyes; and I remember now, not without some self-reproach, how on the early Socialist platform I used this very incident of the choice of Mill's book by the veteran friend of Mazzini and Garibaldi as an example of the fetish-worship of political liberty which betrayed the deep individualistic bent of the old liassez faire school of Radicalism. The point was an effective one when driven home with the fact that Mr Cowan and his great political friends, John Morley, Charles Bradlaugh, Professor Fawcett, Admiral Maxse, Frederick Harrison, and even John Stuart Mill himself (though Mill, changed his mind somewhat in his latter days), were not only implacably opposed to Socialism but to all economic legislation designed to destroy Capitalism or liberate the working class from its tyranny.

 WHAT IS FREEDOM?

 That line of attack was sustained vigorously by us against the Radicals, who were keenest opponents in those days. We contrasted what we called the "negative and barren freedom"—the mere absence of restraint upon political and religious opinions—So glorified by the Radicals, with the positive and fruitful conception of freedom—freedom from poverty and industrial oppression, freedom of access to the land, freedom to the workers to enjoy the wealth they produced—which was the first aim of our Socialist agitation. We quoted with zest the ringing lines of Shelley in the "Masque of Anarchy," in which he portrays the misery of the workers of England, and asks:— 

What are thou, Freedom? . .. 

For the laborer thou are bread 

And a comely table spread,

 From the daily labor come,

 In a neat and happy home.

 Thou are clothes and fire and food

 For the trampled multitude—

 No—in countries that are free

 Such starvation cannot be

 As in England now we see.

 It was an easy platform victory, especially with a working class audience largely leavened with unemployed. But later events have rather modified our dogmatism about the "futility" of political liberty, even when inspired by Socialist idealism. The overwhelming defeat and almost complete extinction of Radicalism at the general election in 1886, followed by 20 years of Toryism (broken only by the brief and precarious Liberal Administration of 1892-5), and the sinister emergence of Imperialism, the South African war, the Tariff Reform agitation, the balance of power alliances with France and Russia, the Big Navy and Conscriptionist agitation, caused many of us to look back with some regret upon the disappearance of the stalwarts—even of doctrinaire Radicalism of earlier days. We began to realise, I think, that, negative as political liberty might be towards Socialism, it was at least positive in its assertions of principles without which Socialism is unattainable.

 WHY FREEDOM MATTERS.

 Political liberty is indeed, not bread; and without bread men die. But political liberty is not on that account valueless or unimportant. Literature, music, and art are not bread, but without them, in some degree, bread and life would have no savor and little desirableness. Sunshine and air are not bread, but lacking them bread would not avail to keep life in; we and all living things would die. Political liberty, therefore, may be a very great—is indeed a very great—possession, though it be but the outer gate to the whole freedom of which Shelley sang, and to which only Socialism can lead us.

 Thoughts of this kind have, I say, been in the minds of many of us, especially since the South African war. The present war, which, as our Labor Ministers pathetically plead, has altered so many things (including, and that, too, quite marvellously, their own political opinions and social status), has not lessened but deepened our apprehensions concerning the peril of public liberty under the rule of recreant politicians, poised on the pinnacles of power by the conscriptionist press.

 For that reason, as well as for its own special merits, Mr Norman Angell's timely book pamphlet, "Why Freedom Matters," deserves to be warmly welcomed by us, and commended, on our platforms. To those who hitherto have not thought seriously about the growing militarist tendency of capitalism, and the bearings of recent war legislation on democracy, its statement will be as a clarion trump of alarm. It is a really important and powerful predication.

 Mr Angell quotes as a foreword John Milton's famous saying, "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to urge freely according to conscience above all other liberties," and very splendidly does he reaffirm that principle and apply it to our present situation. I have just been re-reading Milton's "Aeropagitica," and have been afresh lifted upon the mighty wave of his great argument: and yet I avow, fearless of all academic scorn, that in point of intensity of thought and persuasiveness of teaching, Mr Angell's tract is full worthy of a place both in our minds and on liberty shelves with Milton's great utterance and Mill's famous Essay. As a majestic appeal to the intellectual emotions, Milton's tract is unsurpassed in prose or rhyme, and Mills's Essay is without rival as an exposition of the utilitarian principles of Liberty in both its ethical and political ranges. But if Mr Angell's book lacks the lofty eloquence and vehement force of the one, and the philosophical scope of the other, it is excelled by neither in its perception of the vital importance of freedom to democracy and progress, and in the dialectical competence and convincingness of its reasoning. Besides, his pages reflect the light of our own times, and the hot glow of our present struggle with military autocracy at home and abroad.

 MR ANGELL'S ARGUMENT. 

The task which Mr Angell sets himself is to answer the pleas advanced for the suspension of the historic guarantees of British liberty. Briefly stated, his propositions are:— 

(1) That, many of the most dangerous measures taken in restraint of freedom during the war are not indicated by military necessity at all.

 "(2) Their motive is political, and their introduction is prompted not so much by the needs of the present as by a desire to render permanent those institutions that  the temper which war usually provokes.

 "(3) Their gravity does not arise from the individual hardship which they inflict, but from the fact that the habit of subservience to State authority in matters of opinion tends to destroy the capacity for private judgment in politics by which alone democracy is able to rule itself.

 "(4) Unless the temper of freedom which these measures tend so powerfully to undermine can be maintained and developed, the better world-order which was (the alleged) object of the war to bring about cannot be established or made permanent." 

But no mere summary of Mr Angell's propositions can convey a just impression of the largeness of the field of controversy over which he bears his argument, and the closeness of reasoning and fulness of evidence with which he enforces it. Nor, had I space, should I be able to extract the essence of his pages. My object is not to offer a second-hand exposition of his thesis, but to urge my readers to get "Why Freedom Matters'' and read it for themselves. Only two passages will I venture to quote—and these to show the integrity and "searchingness" of his thought. Speaking of the past struggles against tyranny, he points out that it is usual for us to picture these struggles as that of the great mass of the people held down by the superior force of the tyrant. This, he points out, is an illusion, for, as he says:—

 "In that picture which we make of the mass of mankind struggling against the force of tyranny, we must remember that the force against which they struggled was not in the last analysis physical force at all; they themselves furnished the instrument which was used against them. It was their own weight from which they desire to be liberated." How important that is, and how constantly it is forgotten in our democratic orations! Dealing with the "political heretic as the savior of society" (e.g., the pacifist, the conscientious objector, Bertrand Russell, etc.). he remarks:— 

"It is not the mind of the heretic which suffers most, as Mill has reminded us, in the suppression of heretical opinion. "The greatest harm done, is to those who are not heretics, but whose mental development is cramped and cowed by fear of heresy." You cannot have sound political opinion without stubborn and scrupulous private opinion. You cannot have enough liberty without having too much of it. If the English race has developed the capacity for freedom, democracy, and Parliamentary Government a little perhaps ahead of that shown by other peoples, it is because that kind of obstinacy and stubbornness have been found among us, and our Government heretofore has never been quite able, even in the very highest causes, to stamp it out.

 MR CLUTTON BLOCK'S PAMPHLET.

 I shall link with Mr Angell's book another pamphlet—Mr Clutton Block's "Philosophy of Socialism." It has a common bearing on the question of freedom and democracy with much that Mr Angell, and Mr Bertrand Russell in his "Principles of Socialism Reconstruction" put forward. It seeks to disentangle Socialism from the meshes of State autocracy and exalt its aim high above the sphere of economies. In this we see reflected the growing apprehension which militarism and State capitalism is arousing in reflective minds. And this is, I think, a sign of good hope for the Socialist cause. Mr Clutton Brock approaches Socialism from the literary and artistic rather than the political side. He drank early from the fountain of idealism which William Morris' genius enshrined for us. To him Socialism is the hope not only of Labor, but of art, literature, and all the nobler desires of the spirit. His tract is an admirable statement, to put into the hands of our many friends whose pacifist and anti-military sympathies have drawn them into the communion of the I.L.P.

Evening Echo (Ballarat, Vic. : 1914 - 1918), Saturday 29 December 1917, page 3