KARL MARX: Poverty, hatred shaped life of a great revolutionary.

 Does the spread of Communism menace world security? Is it a sane political doctrine, or a new form of Fascism? This study of Communist No. 1, Karl Marx, helps to answer these questions.

THIS week, Mr. Churchill told the British House of Commons: "It is in the Kremlin, if anywhere, that the seeds of a new World war are being sown."

 What are Russia's plans?

 How is the original doctrine of Communism, as defined by the intellectual father of the Soviet regime, Dr. Karl Marx, likely to affect our future?

 The world would like to know.

 Marx, the most influential political economist of the past century (if not of all time) died in London 63 years ago.

 Today he is a sort of demigod to Communists throughout the world; to them his doctrines, as interpreted by Lenin and currently by Stalin, are an official gospel with the force of a religion.

 To others, including some non-Marxian socialists as well as many believers in individual freedom, Marx is one of history's most wicked men, a brilliant but depraved apostle of hate whose doctrines would destroy most of the values of Western civilisation.

 Some people believe that the Russian Revolution and Soviet international policy are the living embodiments of Marx's doctrines. Others regard them as a complete negation of his doctrines.

 The truth lies somewhere between.

 But, however narrowly limited is the possibility of understanding current Soviet manoeuvres through Marxian texts, a study of Marx helps to illuminate some basic attributes of Soviet thought and behavior that have puzzled Western observers.

 Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, a Rhineland city near the French border, the son of a well-to-do lawyer and a descendant rabbis on both sides.

 Heinrich hoped that his son would follow in his respectable footsteps. He was overjoyed when at 18 Karl became engaged to the 22-year-old girl next door, Jenny von Westphalen, beautiful daughter of a baron.

 Although Heinrich died when his son was only 20, he had already foreseen disappointment.

 After Karl had gone to the university (first at Bonn, where he soon got in trouble for radical activities and "nocturnal drunkenness and riot," then at Berlin), the paternal letters were filled with foreboding and reproach; for the boy's egoism, for his neglect of his parents, for his extravagance and "wild frolics," for the "demon" that seemed possess him, for fear that his heart was not as great as his mind, for the "dangerous and uncertain future" he was preparing for Jenny.

 Despite occasional "frolics," Marx was already displaying a prodigious intellectual energy.

 In one of his infrequent letters to his father, he reported that during the past term, in addition to reading an astonishing variety of books and writing summaries and reflections on them, he had written three volumes of poems to Jenny, translated the "Germania" of Tacitus and the "Elegies" of Ovid, plus two volumes of the "Pandects" (Roman civil law), written a play and an original philosophy of law that he tore up as worthless, and, "while out of sorts," got to know Hegel "from beginning to end." 

Hegel, who had died only a few years before, was to remain a major influence on Marx's thinking.

 The first of Marx's political articles that got him into trouble was written early in 1842. It was a blast at the Prussian censorship.

 Soon the young rebel began writing for Cologne's liberal Rheinische Zeitung. In October he became its editor-in-chief.

 A few months later the paper was suppressed because it had criticised the Russian Czarist regime.

 Marx, after a seven-year engagement, married Jenny and went off to Paris to study socialism.

 In Paris he swiftly developed from rebellious youth to full-fledged revolutionary, resolved to destroy existing society and bring about a "complete rebirth of mankind." 

In Paris, too, began the great friendship and collaboration of Marx's life. Friedrich Engels, two years younger, was also a Rhinelander, the son of a prosperous textile manufacturer with mills in Prussia's Barmen and in England's Manchester.

 Friedrich Engels' revolutionary zeal had been spurred by the degradation of Barmen's industrial workers and by the harsh bigotry of his grimly Calvinistic father. 

Outwardly Marx and Engels were almost complete opposites.

 Marx was short, stocky, powerful-chested, with a swarthy skin and shaggy mane and beard of coal-black hair. Engels was tall, slender, blue-eyed, fair-haired.

 Marx was grim, brooding, academic, awkward, unconventional. Engels was gay, gregarious, a devotee of fencing, fox-hunting, and other sports, a lover of wine and music.

 But when Engels stopped in Paris to pay a call on Marx in 1844, the two found their ideas and sympathies so closely matched and mutually so stimulating that they talked steadily for 10 days. Thereafter, whether they wrote jointly or discussed and encouraged each other's individual efforts, their lives and work were indissolubly joined. 

Marx was no mere armchair revolutionist.

 In Brussels, after being expelled from Paris, he and Engels joined the League of the Just (soon renamed the Communist League and transformed from a hole-and-corner conspiracy into a propaganda society with unconcealed revolutionary aims) and set about fanning, by means of writing and speeches, the fires of revolt that were to sweep Europe in 1848.

 In 1847, in the "Communist Manifesto," they produced one of the most forceful pieces of propaganda ever written. 

The next year, after the beginning of the revolts and Marx's expulsion from Brussels (in the course of which Jenny, jailed over night, was forced to share a cell with a prostitute), they hurried to Cologne to publish a revolutionary newspaper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.

 Engels even fired some rifle shots against the Prussian Army when it invaded the Palatinate. The revolution failed.

 Marx brought out the last number of his paper in red ink; it sold 20,000 copies. 

Years later, in 1864, after the Communist League had broken up, the two friends helped found the International Workingmen's Association — the first International. 

One of his sons-in-law compared Marx's mind to a warship with steam up, always ready to move in any direction on the sea of thought.

 He won arguments — but never any large personal following. He was handicapped not only by his metallic voice and general lack of stage magnetism, but more seriously by his passion to dominate, his fierce intolerance of any ideas or leadership except his own.

 Sooner or later he quarrelled with nearly all of his fellow socialists and other radicals. The failure of the 1848 revolution and the suppression of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, into which he had poured all that he could raise on his and Jenny's inheritances, left Marx penniless.

 Banished from Germany, he abandoned his Prussian citizenship. Now, for the rest of his life, he was a man without a country.

 After a short time in Paris and one last expulsion, he went to London to stay. There, determined to follow his goal "through thick and thin," he resolutely refused to let "bourgeois society turn me into a money-making machine."

 Marx was not entirely "practical" in his private affairs; there was about him something of the absent-minded scholar (he had once hoped to become a professor). 

Only once during his 33-year exile in England did Marx grow desperate enough to try to get a regular job: then a railway company turned him down because of poor hand writing.

 Always Marx plodded ahead on his masterpiece, "Capital," reading enormously in many languages and piling up mountains of notes. He worked mostly in the British Museum, daily from ten to seven, and then at home far into the night.

 When Marx in 1867 published the book "to which I have sacrificed my health, my happiness, and my family," he firmly but quite wrongly hoped that he would soon be a "made man."

 In London, the Marx family's situation shortly grew so desperate that Engels felt compelled to go back to "filthy trade" in his father's Manchester mill in order to support them all. But the sums he was able to send from time to time were not enough to do more than keep the Marxes alive.

 After eviction from their first London home, the Marxes (with a German maid who stayed with them to the end) moved to a two-room tenement in the slums of Soho.

Sometimes Marx lacked money for writing paper or for postage. Sometimes, beset by dunning or distrustful tradesmen, the family lived for days on bread and potatoes. 

The evidence is surprisingly unanimous that under these circumstances Marx remained as devoted to his family as he was truculent in his relations with the bourgeoisie and rival revolutionists. A police agent, for example, regarded him as "the gentlest and mildest of men" in the home circle.

 Marx was plagued by ill-health during most of the last half of his life. He was tortured by chronic insomnia, inflammation of the eyes, racking headaches, rheumatism.

 THE great riddle of Karl Marx's personality will probably always be in dispute: how much was he driven to his extraordinary life and work by love of humanity, how much by hatred of capitalist society and of its more fortunate members?

 Certainly he kept himself personally remote from the proletariat he championed. 

The vivid accounts of English working-class miseries in the mid-19th century that help make "Capital" so heart-searing a document were drawn, not from personal observation, but in the main from Engels' "Condition of the English Working Class," and from reports of parliamentary investigations Marx read in the British Museum. 

"Working for the world" was one of Marx's favorite sayings, and occasionally he mentioned the service or the sufferings of humanity in his writings. But for every word of such explicit humanitarianism there are a thousand of hatred and appeals to hatred.

 He spoke the word "bourgeois" as though spitting out something evil-tasting.

 He asserted that the power of love had failed to better social conditions in the 1800 years since Christ, and that the "iron necessity" that drives the proletariat to destroy capitalism and capitalists "will open the way to socialist reforms by transformation of existing economic relations sooner than all the love that glows in all the feeling hearts of the world."

 He argued that what the proletariat needed was not Christian "self-abasement, resignation, submission and humility," but "courage, confidence, pride, and independence even more than it needs daily bread."

 Marxism is not to be found neatly packaged in "Capital" — and especially not in the first volume alone, which is all that most people read.

 His theories of history, politics, and revolution are scattered through the writings of 40 years.

 Some of the reasoning is difficult to follow, especially for those not steeped in the grandiose and mystical speculations of German philosophy.

 Sometimes the reasoning in one work contradicts in part, that in another. But Marxs' main conclusions, his fundamental principles, are reasonably clear.

 Marx called his theory "historical materialism." It was the application to history of what Engels called "dialectical materialism."

 From Hegel the team borrowed the notion that everything in the world is in constant flux; something new is always developing, something old is dying away. And sooner or later all this change is for the better.

 Progress is achieved by what Hegel called the dialectic: one force (thesis) is opposed by a second (antithesis), which has split from it, and from their conflict emerges a synthesis containing the best elements of both. 

When the unification is completed, then it gradually becomes old and the process is repeated. 

Hegel, a patriotic State-worshipper, believed that human progress had reached its apex in the Prussian State of Friedrich Wilhelm III.

 Marx held out for one more step.

 "Modern bourgeois society, rising from the ruins of feudal society," proclaimed the "Manifesto," "did not make an end of class antagonisms. It merely set up new classes in place of the old; new conditions of oppression, new embodiments of struggle. Our own age, the bourgeois age, is distinguished by this; that it has simplified class antagonisms. More and more society is splitting into two great hostile camps, into two great and directly contraposed classes: Bourgeois and Proletariat."

In "Capital," Marx set out to show how capitalism (thesis) must inevitably, by its own inner laws, become so increasingly intolerable to the proletariat as to produce revolt against the bourgeoisie (antithesis) and a classless society (synthesis).

 Marx, who scorned other socialists' neat blueprinted Utopias, said little about what the classless society would be like.

 He did not even find it necessary to assume that the revolution would wash away all human vice.

 For him it was enough that:

 ⬤ Most of the world's troubles have sprung from the exploitation of class by class.

 ⬤ The ascendancy of the working class would abolish classes by making every man a producer.

 ⬤ Abolition of private property in the means of production would mean that no one would have anything to exploit anyone with.

 To be sure, he predicted that after the revolution, while Communism was emerging from the womb of capitalism in a "long and painful travail," there would be a "political transition period" requiring a "revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat" and considerable inequality of living conditions.

 But after sufficient education and organisation, the no-longer-needed State would "wither away," and everyone would live in peace and plenty in a society devoted to "the full and free development of every individual," under the slogan, "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!"

 This vision, the end result of the continuous progress assured by the dialectic, is to almost all Marxists not a hope but a "certainty," for to them, as to Marx, dialectic materialism is not a philosophy but a science, a science of society comparable in exactness with the science of biology.

 Indeed, Marx fancied himself as the Darwin of the social sciences.

 In explaining why capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction, Marx begins with the theory, inconclusively advanced by Adam Smith and developed by David Ricardo that labor is the source of all value.

 He went on to develop his theory of surplus value, the keystone of his economic philosophy. According to this view, each worker spent only a fraction of his working hours earning his wages. The rest of the day he works for nothing.

 From this unpaid labor come all profits, providing those needed to pay interest and rent.

 Thus Marx arrived at his picture of society; a host of useless capitalists and landlords robbing the workers of the fruits of their labor.

 Every capitalist, he argued, necessarily likes to wring from his workers as much surplus value as he can; even if he is humane, his competitors force him to exploit. At first he may simply make his employees work longer hours. When the law forbids that, or the capitalist finds that it lessens efficiency, he may shorten the hours, but introduce the speed-up and stretch-out to make his workers work faster and harder. 

What do these things mean for the worker?

 Marx's summation: "They mutilate the laborer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labor process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labor process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his lifetime into working time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital."

 Machinery produces technological unemployment. The capitalist accumulates more and more of the profits of his unpaid labor, he buys more and more machinery, machines do more and more of the work, fewer and fewer human hands are needed to tend them.

 Besides, capitalism needs a large unemployed "industrial reserve army" for the times when it suddenly wants to hurl large amounts of its overflowing wealth into new industries, or into old ones whose markets have suddenly expanded.

 Finally comes the worst of capitalism's evils, the periodic recurrence of ruinous depressions.

Marx, although asserting that capitalism tends to give the working class less and less money to buy its products, flatly rejected the belief of labor leaders and other reformers that everything would be all right if employers would only pay their workers high enough wages to maintain a balance between production and consumption.

 Marx held that the prime cause of depression is overproduction, resulting from expanding capital's insatiable urge to find a profit and the compulsion upon invested capital to keep producing, regardless of demand, in a desperate effort to maintain itself.

 Marx predicted capitalism's trend toward concentration and monopoly. "One capitalist," he observed, "always kills many."

 He predicted the virtual disappearance of the middle class, as one ruined capitalist after another dropped into the proletariat.

 He believed that the end would come when a handful of great capitalists at last con-fronted a proletarian multitude, disciplined and united by enforced association in great industries, driven to despair by prolonged depression.

 By that time, too, capitalism would have reached its highest development, as Marx believed it must; its centralisation and productivity would be at a peak of ripeness for handy plucking by the proletariat.

 To Marx it made no difference whether Capitalists are good or bad: they are driven by forces they neither control nor understand.

 No matter how much the worker's lot may be improved, there can be no final compromise; the class war must be fought to the end. The end must be "a revolutionary change in the whole structure of society," or else "the common ruin of the contending classes." 

Marx taught his followers to harness for their ends the energy of class hatred wherever it existed.

 But he was aware that the conditions for revolution had not arrived. The only hope of a proletarian victory, as he saw it, was through a temporary alliance with the bourgeois democrats then revolting against monarchy and aristocracy.

 In 1850, Marx gave the Communist League significant strategic instructions in handling the bourgeoisie: "In the event of a struggle against a common foe . . the interests of both parties coincide for the moment . . .

 "During the struggle and after the struggle . . the workers must at every opportunity put forth their own demands alongside those of the bourgeois democrats. They must demand guarantees for the workers the moment the democratic citizens set about taking over the government . . . 

"From the first moment of victory our distrust must no longer be directed against the vanquished reactionary party, but against our previous allies, against the party which seeks to exploit the common victory for itself alone " 

The "Manifesto" laid out the goal: "The Communists . . . openly declare that their purpose can be achieved only by the forcible overthrow of the whole existing social order . . . Proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Proletarians of all lands, unite!"

 What Marx meant by some of his strategic and tactical statements has been a subject of bitter dispute among his disciples.

 Interestingly enough, Marx did not mention a party in his 1850 address. In the "Manifesto" he wrote that "Communists do not form a separate party conflicting with other working class parties."

 He never spoke of a dictatorship of the party. Of course, just as he believed in the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat as instruments of struggle toward his goal of the classless and stateless society, he believed in a party as an educational agency. 

But he had never seen nor could he have envisioned the kind of monolithic and omnipotent party that rules Russia today. 

As for the "dictatorship" idea, there has long been controversy as to the meaning he attached to this concept.

 But this much is clear: Marx defined freedom as a condition in which the state is subordinate to society, and Engels equated the dictatorship of the proletariat with "the democratic republic."

 What was meant by this seeming semantic outrage?

 Some followers have believed that it meant a political democracy in which the proletariat, grown to immense proportions, could by ballot dictate economic measures, furthering its interests against those of the capitalists. Then the task of the party would be not to rule, but to educate and lead the proletariat.

 Perhaps this sounds like nothing more than New Dealism, rather than violent revolution.

 THE fact is that Marx observed the failure of his frequent prophecies of early revolution and he shifted from the hot intransigency of youth to the involved economic and metaphysical abstractions that make "Capital" such hard going in spots.

 Without ceasing to be a revolutionist, he became more reconciled to waiting and even eschewed the dogma of the universal indispensability of violence, declaring that socialism had a good chance of a peaceful birth where indigenous democratic traditions were as tenaciously rooted as in the Netherlands, England, and the U.S. 

Eventually, struggles inside the First International put before Marx and Engels the unpleasant alternatives of concentrating on its affairs to the neglect of study and writing or of letting dominance pass to the Russian anarchist, Bakunin, an advocate of direct and violent action without reference to political conditions.

 Thereupon Marx and Engels sent the International to the U.S. to die, which it did.

 In 1889, with Engels' blessing and under the leadership of some of Marx's disciples, the Second International was founded. 

The Second International placed its faith in slow accretions of power by the proletariat, which would build a new socialist society inside the shell of the old. 

The socialist task, therefore, was to teach and preach the inevitable coming of a classless society by almost automatic evolution.

 World War I laid the Second International low.

 Another interpretation of Marx was made by V. I. Lenin for use in the country Marx had regarded as the least hopeful prospect for socialist revolution.

 By its use Lenin organised the Bolshevik Party, captured power, and founded the Soviet state, which he called the dictatorship of the proletariat, and, when he was being more accurate, the dictatorship of the Communist Party.

There is no record that he ever disputed a statement of Marx's. But to square all of Lenin with all of Marx is extremely difficult.

 Lenin regarded the party as an elite of hardened professional revolutionaries capable of knowing the relatively backward workers' interests better than the workers themselves. It must therefore be justified in using and means to make its will prevail. 

In contrast to Marx's contempt for concealment was Lenin's advice to members of the Communist Party that to capture strategic posts of power "it is necessary . . . to go the whole length of any sacrifice, if needed, to resort to strategy and adroitness, illegal proceedings, reticence, and subterfuge — to anything in order to penetrate ... at any cost, to carry on Communistic work. ..."

 When the saving revolutions that Lenin looked for in Germany and the industrially advanced west failed to develop, even with the sparkling of the Third International set-up in Moscow, he did not drop the power he got under such special conditions. He decided to dig in, build industry, await new tumults. 

War, he felt, must come — "the existence of the Soviet Republic side by side with the imperialist states for any length of time is inconceivable."

 Lenin was succeeded, after a struggle between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin, by the latter, whose removal from the party secretaryship had been the outstanding point in Lenin's political testament.

 After a series of purges, political trials, and executions of most of their surviving old comrades, Stalin and a small group around him consolidated their dictatorship of the Communist Party and through it of the Soviet state.

 From proclaiming the goal of building "socialism in one country"— a revision of Lenin as well as of Marx — the Bolsheviks went on to a nationalism so strong that they claimed, with much justice, the mantles of ancient Russian national heroes, such as Peter the Great and even Ivan the Terrible.

 Thus was Marx reinterpreted again.

 During the last years of Lenin's life, Russian writers began referring to their gospel as "Marxism-Leninism" rather than simply as Marxism.

 After Lenin's death, Trotsky, in his attacks on Stalin, began referring invidiously to the current gospel as "Stalinism."

 For a time the use of this word was regarded by the regime as a sign of opposition and disloyalty. Then Soviet writers began referring to official doctrine as "Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism," and later as simply "Stalinism."

 This is now an official Soviet term.

 Leninism has been called "the Marxism of the imperialist epoch"; Stalinism may be called the Leninism of the epoch of the party dictatorship.

 Last February, Stalin made a speech about capitalism's doom and socialist revolution.

 Until then he had not talked like a Marxist in any important public speech since 1939, when he said that Russians can expect to achieve a stateless society only when socialism is victorious in all or most countries and "there is no more danger of attack."

 Then Marxism went into a wartime eclipse. Neither during the pact with Nazi Germany nor during the "great patriotic war" did Marx make a happy Soviet symbol. 

No longer were huge posters showing Marx's head a dominant feature of Moscow parades and meetings. Throughout the war his name was taboo in the chief Army publication, Red Star.

 True, Marx's writings continue to be analysed, worked over, dissected, and classified by Soviet authorities.

 But basic Soviet policy is largely independent of Marx.

 For example, he declared that "we Communists do not deign to conceal our aims." But Moscow-controlled Communist parties conceal and disguise themselves, e.g., in Cuba where the Communists call themselves Popular Socialists.

 On the other hand, whereas Marx opposed all reformers, the Communist Party cannot be counted on to do so, as Australian Labor leaders learned when it so embarrassingly endorsed them at the last election.

 Such subterfuges and compromises are mightily modified forms of Marxism. 

Nevertheless, to Russians, Marxism, as interpreted by their leaders, has given some-thing important in addition to the wide variety of propaganda masks suitable for all eventualities of the changing world scene.

 It has given them reason, as the world's sole great "proletarian nation," to be suspicious of nations that are not only foreign, but capitalistic, and has given certainty that they are full sail in the main stream of history, while capitalistic outlanders stupidly row against the current.

 Has Marxism bound Russia to turn on her late allies and organise, agitate, and, if necessary, fight until the revolution has triumphed in all or at least some of the dominant countries of the world?

 Although Russian spokesmen may quote Marx on this point now and then, to try to find the answer to the question in Marx is futile. For Soviet policy is neither world revolution nor simple nationalism; the two aspects exist simultaneously.

 To Russia's revolutionary policy, the nationalist aspect lends a dynamism derived from propaganda about a holy socialist fatherland flowing with liberty and security; to the nationalist policy the revolutionary aspect brings the services of disciples in every foreign land, organised to do Moscow's bidding.

 None of this is simple Marxism.

 All of it ignores Marx's warning that the outcome of human struggle may be progress under socialism, but that it may also be — a striking phrase today— "the common ruin of the contending classes."

 Karl Marx has had an influence so great as to be difficult to explain in terms of his own theory of history.

 Somehow his personality and intellectual achievement seem to loom larger than they should according to his theory, with its stress on broad social forces.

 Few careers pose the problem of the relation of the individual personality to history so sharply as does that of this son of the bourgeoisie who sacrificed comfort and family to the intellectual goal of building a classless society.

 Marx's money worries lasted until 1869, when Engels sold out his interest in Ermen and Engels, moved to London, and gave his friend a settled income.

 Jenny died in 1881, Marx in 1883 at his dusty scholar's desk, Engels in 1895, after publishing the second and third volumes of "Capital."

 Marx's daughter Eleanor committed suicide in 1898 at the age of 43 because of a disappointment in love.

 Another daughter, Laura, and her husband, Dr. Paul Lafargue, committed suicide at the age of 70, feeling that their useful years were over and not wishing to be a burden in old age and illness.

 The third daughter, Jenny Longuet, alone left progeny; her son Jean was a leading French Socialist; her grandson, Robert-Jean Longuet, is a French Socialist writer.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article248500951

LEGISLATIVE INDEPENDENCE.

 Previously we took occasion to demonstrate, on the basis of documents collected by Mr. Bancroft, in his History of the United States, that modern British colonists have been deprived of their just rights, and that the present system of Colonial Government and legislation is essentially unconstitutional.

At this crisis it may be useful to recapitulate the principal facts and results of our former demonstration. The precedents and principles established in the older British colonies apply now in full force to the free colonies of Australia. A knowledge of them may save much unprofitable argument, and may lead to a more speedy settlement of the great questions now under discussion.

The grand principle established by Bancroft is, that the subjects of the British Crown who planted America carried with them the whole rights and liberties to which they were entitled by the English constitution, as fully and unreservedly as if they had remained in England; and they were consequently entitled to a representative assembly, self-government, and independent legislation.

The first colony of Great Britain was that of Virginia, established in 1606, under a charter by James I. The body of adventurers on whom the charter was conferred was composed of every rank and class in the community. They comprehended twenty-one peers, ninety-eight knights, and a multitude of esquires, gentlemen, merchants, and citizens. It was declared in the charter that all persons voyaging to and settling in the colony, and the children born within its precincts, should have and enjoy all liberties, franchises, and immunities, to all intents and purposes, as if they had been abiding and born within the realm of England. Twelve years after its settlement, when the colony possessed only six hundred inhabitants, it acquired a constitution which became the model for the subsequent settlements in North America.

Its terms (says Bancroft) are few and simple. A governor, to be appointed by the company; a permanent council, likewise to be appointed by the company ; a general assembly, to be convened yearly, and to consist of the members of the council, and of two burgesses to be chosen from each of the several plantations by their respective inhabitants. The assembly might exercise full legislative authority, a negative voice being reserved to the governor, but no law or ordinance would be valid unless ratified by the company in England. With singular Justice, and a liberality without example, it was further ordered that after the government of the colony shall have been framed, no orders of the court in London shall bind the colony, unless they be in like manner ratified by the General Assembly.

Henceforward might the historian well say, "the supreme power was held to reside in the hands of the Colonial Parliament, and of the King, as King of Virginia.''

Precisely the same system was adopted in Maryland in the year 1638. The third Assembly of that colony published a declaration of rights, which was therefore established to the following effect :—

Acknowledging the duty of allegiance to the English Monarch, and securing to Lord Baltimore his prerogatives, it likewise confirmed to the inhabitants of Maryland all the liberties which an Englishman can enjoy at home, established a system of representative government, and asserted for the general assemblies in the province all such powers as may be exercised by the Commons of England.

It should be observed that these early constitutions were recognised by James I. and Charles I., the most arbitrary of English monarchs. The latter even went so far as to recognise the Virginian Legislature as an independent body, by applying to it for a monopoly of tobacco, the staple produce of the colony.

By these monarchs, and by Charles II., similar and even greater privileges were granted to the New England States, which latter, under Charles II. and the wise Lord Clarendon, became more like friendly in-dependent states than subject provinces. The charter of Connecticut, framed in 1662 by Lord Clarendon,

Conferred on the colonists unqualified power to govern themselves. They were allowed to elect all their own officers, to enact their own laws, to administer justice without appeals to England, to inflict punishments, to confer pardons, and in a word to exercise every power deliberative and active. The King, far from reserving a negative on the acts of the colony, did not even require that the laws should be transmitted for his inspection, and no provision was made for the interference of the English government in any event whatever. Connecticut was independent except in name.

To Rhode Island even greater liberality was displayed.

The supreme power was committed—the rule continues to-day—to a governor, deputy - governor, ten assistants, now called senators, and deputies from the town. It marks a singular moderation that the scruples of the inhabitants were so respected that no oath of allegiance was required of them. The laws were to be agreeable to those of England, yet with kind reference to the constitution of the place and the nature of the people."

No wonder that the thanks of the colony were voted to, "King Charles of England for his high and inestimable, yea, incomparable favor," and to Clarendon the historian, the statesman, the prime minister, who had shewn " to the colony exceeding great care and love ;" and no wonder that the Rhode Islanders continued the most loyal and the best ordered community in the British dominions.

The last proof we shall adduce of the rights of British colonists is from " A state of the Case " proposed by James Otis, of Boston, in 1764, about a hundred years after the date of the Rhode Island Charter, at a time when the British Government and Parliament are commencing usurpations which are only now in course of partial abandonment.

By the laws of nature and of nations, the voice of universal reason and of God, by statute law, and the common law, this memorial claimed for the colonists the absolute rights of Englishmen personal security, and liberty, the rights of property, the power of local legislation, subject only to the king's negative, as in Ireland, and the sole power of taxing themselves. "The authority of the Parliament of Great Britain," such were the words of this paper, "is circumscribed by bounds, which, if exceeded, their acts becomes mere power without right, and consequently void. Acts of Parliament against natural equity are void. Acts against the fundamental principles of the British institutions are void." "The wild wastes of America have been turned into pleasant habitations ; little villages in Great Britain into manufacturing towns and opulent cities ; and London itself bids fair to become the metropolis of the world. These are the fruits or commerce and liberty. The British Empire, to be perpetuated, must be built on the principles of justice." Such were the views of Otis, sent by Massachusetts to its agent in London " to be improved as he might judge proper."

The series of precedents thus laid before our readers are at the present juncture of the deepest importance. It was mainly during the period from 1606 to 1764 that all the great principles of the British Constitution were agitated, debated, and settled. The rights and liberties of the people, the privileges of parliament, and the extent of the prerogative, were all in turns discussed and contested in the cabinet, in the houses of legislation, and on the battlefield. Yet in all these struggles there was no debate as to the claims of the colonists. Even the most despotic of monarchs recognised their right to self-government and independent legislation, and refrained from exercising an obnoxious and unconstitutional prerogative. It was not till one hundred and fifty years after the establishment of British colonies that the British Parliament and Government put forward a claim of despotic authority; and the enforcement of that illegal and unconstitutional claim cost the country the loss of an empire.

It is painful to think that in regard to all the weaker colonies that remained in possession of Britain, the new usurpation was continued. In North America, in South America, in the West Indies, at the Cape of Good Hope, in Australia, the incubus of Downing-street despotism was retained. For a long time it is true Britain kept her colonies under this yoke, by tempting monopolies. Discriminating duties in favor of timber, corn, sugar, wine, &c, were the bribes that kept the colonies quiet; but no sooner had the system of free trade put an end to these sugarplums than the colonies discovered that they lived under a virtual tyranny. Those that were sufficiently powerful immediately asserted and vindicated their rights. The Canadian and the Cape provinces already possess constitutions framed by themselves; the British Ministry have extended a similar privilege to the Australian colonists and our Constitution Bill is now before Parliament.

In our present circumstances it is of the greatest importance that our rights and our position should be precisely ascertained. Last year, in consequence of the liberal declarations of the British Ministry, we suspended the elaborate demonstration of these rights ; but the postponement of the Constitution Bill, and the arbitrary conduct of the Government in now enforcing unjust measures with the strong hand, compel us to enter again upon the controversy. The importance of the demonstration will be appreciated, when it is remembered that if the privileges for which we contend are birthrights never forfeited, and not favors to be conferred by a British Parliament, then the circumstance that the Constitution Bill is postponed can have no effect in justifying the arbitrary proceedings of the British Government.

We hold that our Legislature, imperfect as it is, occupies in this colony, and so far as the colonial interests are concerned, the position of the British Parliament with reference to Her Majesty. In this view it is entitled to act as the restrainer of the prerogative. The writer whom we quoted lately on this subject states that " when the King claims rights as falling within the scope of any part of his prerogative which are opposed to the common good, there are remedial powers which bring things right, and it is one of the most important functions of the two Houses of Parliament."

The conclusion, we trust, is now plain to the meanest capacity. Unless the people of this colony have forfeited their birthright, they are entitled to free and independent legislation, and their Legislature is entitled to restrain the exercise of the Queen's prerogative, when it is opposed to the common good. How much more are they entitled and bound so to act, when the exercise of that prerogative stultifies their own acts, sets at nought the decisions of our courts, tends to bring law and justice into contempt, increases the insecurity of life and property, and is destructive of the best interests of the community at large.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic.), 17 October 1854 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4799072

GOVERNMENT BY THE WISE.

 The Workers' Educational Association, whose purposes and methods were discussed in these columns last Thursday, may be said to represent one of the two competing ideals which have divided political thinkers since the days of Plato. It is true that neither ideal has ever come within measurable distance of realisation; but it is also true that neither of them has even been wholly suppressed; in the darkest times they have lived at least in the souls of such as see visions and dream glorious dreams of the perfect State. The first of these two ideas—the notion which is at the core of the above mentioned Association—is the idea that the many, to be fit for self-government, make themselves wise; and the opposing idea—expounded graciously and blandly by Plato, and with thunderous emphasis by Carlyle—is the idea that the many can never by the nature of things be fit for self-government, and that the secret of political perfection is to entrust the task of government to the wise few. The former is the idea of an enlightened democracy; the latter is the idea of a bureaucracy of saints and sages. The distinction is clear-cut, and it divides into two classes the imaginary commonwealths which have been painted by various inspired dreamers. For instance, the the "News from Nowhere" of William Morris is a poetic and persuasive picture of a community which has grown wise and good, and which is perfectly capable of managing its own affairs; and Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound" sketches, in vague outline, a similar happy state of things. In Plato's "Republic," on the other hand, and in the "Modern Utopia" of Mr. H. G. Wells, we are presented with pictures of a community governed by its philosophers. Shelley and William Morris, in short, believe in democracy, for which Mr. Wells can find no words too placidly contemptuous. He believes, with all his heart, in the principle of aristocracy—not a feudal aristocracy of birth, not a Nietzschean aristocracy of virile and violent persons, but an aristocracy of brains and character. In the world-state of the Wells Utopia the whole of the responsible business of government is in the hands of a "Samurai" class—a class which consists of all who are capable of living the pure, the austere, the minutely regular, the exclusively rational, the bodily and spiritually ennobling existence laid down for them by the "Rule" of their order. It is strange to find in so modern a writer as Mr. Wells—a writer, too, who has so often poured contempt on the study of Greek—so close an echo of Plato. Mr. Wells is perhaps a little unfortunate in the name—"Samurai"—which he gives to his ruling class: for the real Samurai, those heroes of Japan whose fellowship will stand throughout succeeding time among the world's grandest memories of moral achievement, lived in an age of faith and feudalism: we, on the contrary, are living in an age of doubt and democracy; and it is the problems of our own age that we are called upon to face. There is no reason to believe that Mr. Wells's vision, or anything like it, will ever be realised; it is highly improbable that any of the dominant nations will ever again acquiesce, for any long time, in the concentration of all political power in the hands of a class, however wise and good that class may be. The nations have tasted blood; they have assimilated the democratic idea. The democratic idea, once fully grasped, is only abjured by a people in the degradation of decay; yet to be able to produce a whole class of pure, austere, devoted, self-sacrificing governors, an entire bureaucracy of saints and sages, a people must be in a condition very far from decadence. The conception of the "Samurai," in fact, contradicts itself. Only a sound race could bring forth these thousands of splendid personalities; only a failing race would submit to their dominion. The fact is that Mr. Wells, like many other writers less brilliant than himself, falls into the mistake of treating democracy as a human plan—like, say, some particular nostrum for some particular malady—which has been made the subject of experiment and has been found useless or too dangerous. They speak of democracy as if it were a political device, like party government for example.

But democracy is not a mere piece of political machinery, it is a part of the material of politics. It is an instinct that comes to communities with growth, as puberty comes to individuals. Mr. Wells finds no difficulty whatever in proving to his own satisfaction that democracy is irrational and absurd; he repeats his demonstration, with a rather wearisome iteration, in half a dozen of his books. He finds it quite easy to show how much better the world would go on if only the people would leave government to the great of heart and strong of will. In like manner M. Emile Faguet, one of the wittiest and most brilliant of modern Frenchmen, has made in a book entitled "The Cult of Incompetence"—a slashing attack on democracy as he sees it in the France of to-day; his main thesis being, that whenever you catch a glimpse of democracy in action you invariably find it, distrusting ability and tending to put power in the hands of the inefficient mediocrity. Nothing could be more skilful than M. Faguet's manner of showing how incompetence in one field of government—the legislature—leads to incompetence every where else, till at last the whole body politic is saturated with inefficiency; how a country which begins by entrusting the duties of Prime Minister to mediocrity ends by entrusting the duties of rural postman to a paralytic. And M. Faguet's solution is the same as that of Mr.. Wells—an aristocracy of wise men; government by the philosophers. It is hopelessly impracticable. A healthy nation trusts its instincts—and, it may be added, distrusts its philosophers. And since no sane person will deny the peremptory need of wisdom in the work of governance, and since government by the wise few is incompatible with the democratic instinct of twentieth-century humanity, it seems to follow that the other idea—the idea of bringing wisdom to the many—is the only alternative, unless democracy is destined to lead the human race into the abyss. If it be objected that wisdom cannot be acquired, we may reply that at least knowledge, which is the basis of wisdom, can be acquired; and that is why such enterprises as the Workers' Educational Association deserve every support, and why the success of such enterprises must be reckoned among the hopefullest signs of the times.

West Australian (Perth, WA ), July 1913,

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article26879439

THE BALLARAT REFORM LEAGUE.

 — The following manifesto has been issued by the Ballarat League, and sanctioned by vast masses of the diggers, storekeepers, and general community:— "Principles and objects of the Ballarat Reform League:— That it is the inalienable right of every citizen to have a voice in making the laws he is called upon to obey. That taxation without representation is tyranny. 

"That being, as the people have hitherto been, unrepresented in the Legislative Council of the colony of Victoria, they have been tyrannised over, and it becomes their duty as well as their interest to resist, and if necessary, to remove the irresponsible Government which so tyrannises over them. That this colony has hitherto been governed by paid officials upon the false assumption that law is greater than justice, because, forsooth, it was made by them or their friends, and admirably suit their selfish ends and narrow-minded views. That it is the object of the League to place the power in the hands of responsible representatives of the people; to frame wholesome laws and carry on an honest Government.

 "That it is not the wish of the League to effect the immediate separation of the colony from the parent country, if equal laws and equal rights are dealt out to the whole free community; but that if Queen Victoria continued to act upon the ill advice of dishonest Ministers, and insists upon indirectly dictating obnoxious laws for this colony, under the assumed authority of Royal prerogative, the Reform League will endeavour to supersede such Royal prerogative by asserting that of the people, it being the most Royal of all Royal prerogatives, as the people are the only legitimate source of all political power. 

"The political changes contemplated by the League are —
1. A full and fair representation.
2. Manhood suffrage.
3. No property qualification of members for the Legislative Council
4. Payment of members; and
5. Short duration of Parliament.

" The immediate objects of the League are— a complete change in the management of the gold-fields by disbanding the Gold Commission; the total abolition of the diggers' and storekeepers' licence-tax, and a thorough agitation of the gold-fields and the towns. That, to carry out the foregoing objects, there should be a large tent erected, in which to meet and conduct the business of the Reform League. Cards of membership to be issued, and Ballarat to be divided into districts."

South Australian Register (Adelaide, SA : 1839 - 1900), Tuesday 5 December 1854, page 2

Eureka—Moving Force Of Tradition

 By Vance Palmer.

THE story of Eureka is well known. It is one of the few episodes of our past that have had the spotlight thrown on them, one of the few incidents of our history that have aroused our interest and curiosity.
In general we know less of our past than any people in the world. Perhaps it is the dulness of the way it has been presented to us; perhaps our usual national habit of looking everywhere for mental stimulus except to the particular world around us. At anyrate we are more familiar with other periods and other countries than with the special historical background out of which we have come.
But the story of Eureka has left a mark on our minds. It has obvious drama in it, even a touch of Hollywood. Redcoats, desperate men fighting behind a stockade, a rebel leader with a price upon his head. And to supply the proper school-book moral, the rebel leader being ultimately pardoned, raised to a high position in the State, presiding in bewigged splendor over parliament, and dying in the odor of sanctity.
What better example of liberal institutions and the way they work—Lalor as Speaker of the Victorian Parliament, Jan Smuts, the Boer guerilla chief, as a leader of the Empire!

•

UNFORTUNATELY the significance of Eureka has been largely lost in the personal story of Lalor, and the general air of romanticism that has come to surround it. Academic historians have been quick to seize on its picturesque points and to minimise its real importance.
To Professor Scott it was chiefly a rebellion of foreigners (a word that inferentially includes the Irish) and had no great effect on our social development. Even the self-government that was secured a few years afterwards had nothing to do with it. That was a generous gift from Downing Street!
It is a fad of academic historians to assume that popular movements have no influence on the course of history, which is, of course, shaped by wise and benevolent statesmen, sitting in council and making laws according to their inner light.
And so Eureka has become just a romantic incident to color the drab school books. But what meaning did it really have in our history? What was its cause? What was its general effect?

•

THE question won't be entirely answered by any statements of the men who gathered on that little hill at the base of the Melbourne road, 83 years ago, and fortified their camp with a rough stockade. They had certain definite things to fight for; but it is certain that the impulses that moved them were deeper than their demands.
In the nature of things they were mixed lot.
Apart from Lalor, there was certainly a strong foreign element in their leadership. Vera and Thonen were Germans; Ross, a Canadian-American; Raffaelo Carboni (who has left a brilliant and lively account of the episode) an Italian. And there was probably a fair sprinkling of French and Scandinavians.
These men were more familiar with the idea of armed rebellion than the others, for they had come from a Europe torn with revolution and counter-revolution. But it would be a mistake to assume that the English, Scotch and Irish were merely led into action by a lot of foreign hotheads. They had, after all, come from countries that had known the ferment of Chartism and the privations of famine. And the Victoria they found when they arrived here conflicted badly with the visions of a new Utopia they brought with them.

•

THE particular grievances the miners complained of were only part of a general oppression in the air.
It was bad enough for men to have to pay a heavy licence-fee for digging gold when the gold was nearly exhausted; it was rubbing salt into the sore place when officious "joeys" hunted them down and chained them to logs if they had not renewed their licences at the proper time.
Government on the goldfields was a form of martial law. The police took their cues from those in authority; and authority had never accepted the idea of Australia being a free community, with the equal rights for all men. Far from it; the traditions of the penal settlement were strong.
All over the country, stations were being run by pastoralists in a feudal way, with ticket-of-leave men and convicts as their chief supplies of labor. The general conception of Australia's future (on the part of those who had money and power) was that it should be governed by a rich landowning and official class with plenty of troops and police to keep the servile mass in order.

•

AND this image of a class-state had been thoroughly stamped on the country by a couple of generations of convictism. The pastoralist was supreme in his dominion. He exercised an arbitrary power in his own territory; he expected the officials and the police to play a similar role in the towns and on the goldfields.
All the records of the time show that the squatters were definitely distrustful of the crowds of free immigrants that were being attracted by the goldfields; they would have preferred their future labor supplies to continue coming to the country in chains.
The insolent troopers who hunted the miners like dingoes through the gullies of Ballarat would not have been so ruthless without the consciousness of a strong supporting power behind them.
It was this power that the rising at Eureka broke. I think it is no exaggeration to say that it liberated men's minds all over the country, creating a new spirit of independence, clearing the air of feudal tyrannies.
The masses in the towns were quick in their response. One of the rebels has said:—
"I could walk down Bourke Street with a price on my head, and no one would give me away."
And the "Not Guilty" verdict of the jury on the men charged with sedition was directed less by considerations of law than of justice and awakened sympathy.
This verdict, and the feeling aroused all over the country, is evidence that Eureka ended not in defeat for the men, but in victory. Something had been established when they took up their stand on Bakery Hill; it was not destroyed when they were overwhelmed in their stockade.
If it had not been for that assertion of will among the miners. Australia might have developed in the way the landowners desired, remaining for many years, like Mexico, under the cloud of a crude feudalism, with labor conditions not very far removed from the peonage.

•

EUREKA was a signal that the new masses who were populating the country meant to say goodbye to all that. It created a tradition that was to prove powerful later on.
A generation ago you could find all over the country—in shearing sheds, mining camps, political meetings—lively old men who claimed to have fought at Eureka. Probably there were a good many more of them than had taken the oath on Bakery Hill or gathered with their pikes behind the stockade. But their very romancings had an effect, carrying on the spirit of struggle and achievement. There is a moving force in tradition—even in myth.



Workers' Weekly (Sydney, NSW : 1923 - 1939), Tuesday 16 November 1937, page 2

Beginning to Reap.

 One of our cables to-day informs us that M. Pobyedonostseff, who represents the church in the councils of the Czar, wrote the manifesto which the Czar signed without consulting his Ministers. The terms of that manifesto are in fitting keeping with everything which preceded and has accompanied the present uprising in Russia. The action of the people of Russia in demanding a proper measure of political, social, and civic freedom, is described in the manifesto as " blind pride and insolence of evil-minded revolutionaries who are assailing the pillars of State." This is the stock jargon of tyrannical despots. It is as old as language and history itself ; and always it has proved as futile as mendacious. It is intended now, as always, to inflame the imagination of weaklings to pray or fight for "the divine right" of despots, and to arouse a world-wide storm of execration against the protesters. Already the revolutionary and sanguinary outrages which, particularly during the past few weeks, the people of Russia have committed, have caused a violent wave of blatant ignorance, or ineffable hypocrisy, or both, to sweep over many parts of the western world. The execration which has been poured on the assassins of De Plehve, Sergius, and others, exactly as is the above-quoted words from the Czar's manifesto, really is little better than hypochondriac hysterics. It is needless to say that every proper minded individual views such outrages with unbounded horror; but every such individual also will note that in this, as well as in other things, nothing can prevent due effect from following adequate cause. Enemies of the Long Parliament, with a senseless bigotry and profound hypocrisy which only the pen of a Macaulay can properly scathe, branded the participators in the crimes and follies of that momentous period with every epithet and expletive of opprobrium and infamy. Such crimes and follies are the price of liberty ; and the only question which will exert the philosophic mind will be, will the acquisition which the Russian people are seeking be comparable with the fearful sacrifices they are making for it? In other words, are the miseries of continued helotism less horrible than the sanguinary troubles of the tremendous emancipations? Has the acquisition of liberty in England compensated for and justified the fearful sacrifices which, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were made for it? Surely so. And those who now hold up hands with holy horror, and turn the whites of their puritanical eyes skyward, should think more and rave less.
The really terrible feature of these national commotions and popular excesses is that their tendency is to blunt the moral perceptions of those whom circumstances drag into the maelstrom. "If it were possible," wrote Macaulay, "that a people brought up under an intolerant and arbitrary system, could subvert that system without acts of cruelty and folly, half the objections to despotic power would be removed." And assuredly, the more violent and appalling the outrages which accompany revolution may be, no matter how much they may horrify us, the more assured may we feel that revolution, in its most terrific form, is the only possible course to amend the wrongs of the people. "The violence of those outrages," again to quote the authority mentioned, "always will be proportioned to the ferocity and the ignorance of the people, and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to live. And if the Russian bureaucracy, having prohibited free discussion of public wrongs, having by the most atrocious means, kept the people in darkest ignorance concerning their duties and their rights, their retribution is not only natural ; it is just. They have suffered from popular ignorance because they themselves have with held the key of knowledge ; they have been assailed with blind fury, because they have exacted an equally blind submission to the must frightful forms of oppression and degradation. In short, they have reaped the harvest of their own sowing.
The world is being told by sententious self-appointed constitutionalists, that the people of Russia are not yet fit to be in possession of popular freedom. That proposition is laid down with all the authority of a maxim. All will remember that famous fool, who resolved not to go near the water until he had learned to swim. The obvious inference to he drawn from the proposition above set out, that if the Russian people patiently remain in national slavery, the process will teach them to be wise and liberty loving; until finally, they will become eminently fitted for the possession and enjoyment of perfect freedom. If that inference is sound, Hampden was the worst enemy England ever had ; the barons at Runnymede were nothing but truculent ruffians ; and every great patriot known to history was merely a violent incendiary, trying to force on the inevitable evolution of the ages. Logicians have a derisive designation for individuals who argue on these lines. Bacon himself used it very frequently.
It is a mere platitude to say that the distinguishing characteristic of every great revolution is that the worst comes first. The immediate effects are atrocious outrages, and abhorrent crimes, awful errors of judgment, and conflicts of purpose. Till men have been for some time in possession of full freedom, they are unused how to make the most and best of it. But to see nothing but the present horrible confusion, to note nothing but the continued atrocities, and not to see beyond, where the permanent results in the form of liberty and wisdom, moderation and mercy await, were reprehensible obliquity. If those who, while admitting that the people of Russia have passed through a novitiate such as that described by Dante, yet execrate the methods by which they are trying to effect for themselves the fearful exorcism, will remember that only out of chaos can order be educed ; that the mightiest nations have risen on the blood and ashes of civil upheavals, they will begin to look with the eye of the stern philosopher, rather than with that of the mealy-mouthed moralist, on the events now sweeping on throughout Russia.

Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 - 1947), Monday 6 March 1905, page 6

MEN THE WORLD WILL NEVER FORGET— No. 2

 TROTSKY—THE MAN NOBODY WANTS

THE world war brought many changes in the affairs of men. The face of Europe was changed, monarchies crashed, kings and emperors lost their thrones. New ideas came. There was Russia . . . and the revolution. The Tsar lost his life, and a new social order was brought into being. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin — what parts they played. And with one of them, Lenin, gone, what roles there are for the other two! Of Trotsky, the brilliant Winston Churchill writes to-day a thrilling and entertaining description of the man.

By  Winston Churchill M.P.

LEON TROTSKY — alias Bronstein — must have been a difficult man to please. He did not like the Czar, so he got rid of him and his family. He did not like the Russian Imperial Government, so he blew it up. He did not like the Liberalism of Guchkov and Miliukov, so he overthrew them. He could not endure the Social Revolutionary moderation of Kerensky and Savinkov, so he seized their places. And when at last the Communist regime for which he had striven with might and main was established throughout the whole of Russia, when the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was supreme when the New Order of Society had passed from visions into reality, when the hateful culture and traditions of the individualistic period had been eradicated, when the secret police had become the servants of the Third International, when, in a word, his Utopia had been achieved, he was still discontented. He still turned, growled, snarled, bit, and plotted. He had raised the poor against the rich. He had raised the penniless against the poor. He had raised the criminal against the penniless.
ALL had fallen out as he had willed. But nevertheless the vices of human society required, it seemed, new scourgings. In the deepest depth he sought with desperate energy for a deeper. But — poor wretch— he had reached rock bottom. Nothing lower than the Communist criminal class could be found. In vain he turned his gaze upon the wild beasts. The apes could not appreciate his eloquence. He could not mobilise the wolves, whose numbers had so notably increased during his administration. So the criminals he had installed stood together, and put him outside.

* * *

IT is astonishing that a man of Trotsky's intelligence should not be able to understand the well-marked dislike of civilised governments for the leading exponents of Communism.
But Communism is not only a creed. It is a plan of campaign. A Communist is not only the holder of certain opinions; he is the pledged adept of a well-thought-out means of enforcing them. The anatomy of discontent and revolution has been studied in every phase and aspect, and a veritable drill book prepared in a scientific spirit for subverting all existing institutions. The method of enforcement is as much a part of the Communist faith as the doctrine itself.
At first the time-honored principles of Liberalism and Democracy are invoked to shelter the infant organism. Free speech, the right of public meeting, every form of lawful political agitation and constitutional right are paraded and asserted. Alliance is sought with every popular movement towards the Left.
The creation of a mild Liberal or Socialist regime in some period of convulsion is the first milestone. But no sooner has this been created than it is to be overthrown.
Woes and scarcity resulting from confusion must be exploited. Collisions, if possible attended with bloodshed, are to be arranged between the agents of the new government and the working people. Martyrs are to be manufactured. An apologetic altitude in the rulers should be turned to profit.
Pacific propaganda may be made the mask of hatreds never before manifested among men. No faith need be, indeed may be, kept with non-communists. Every act of goodwill, of tolerance, of conciliation, of mercy, of magnanimity on the part of governments or statesmen is to be utilised for their ruin.
Then when the time is ripe and the moment opportune, every form of lethal violence from mob revolt to private assassination must be used without stint or compunction.
The citadel will be stormed under the banners of Liberty and Democracy; and once the apparatus of power is in the hands of the brotherhood, all opposition, all contrary opinions, must be extinguished by death. Democracy is but a tool to be used and afterwards broken: liberty but a sentimental folly unworthy of the logician. The absolute rule of a self-chosen priesthood according to the dogmas it has learned by rote is to be imposed upon mankind without mitigation progressively for ever.
All this, set out in prosy textbooks, written also in blood in the history of several powerful nations, is the Communist's faith and purpose. To be forewarned should be forearmed! Is this not an exact account of the Communist plot which has plunged Spain into the present hideous welter against the desires of the overwhelming majority of Spaniards on both sides?

* * *

TROTSKY'S MISTAKE— HE WANTED TO RULE

IT is probable that Trotsky never comprehended the Marxian creed; but of its drillbook he was the incomparable master.
He possessed in his nature all the qualities requisite for the art of civic destruction — the organising command of a Carnot, the cold detached intelligence of a Machiavelli, the mob oratory of a Cleon, the ferocity of Jack the Ripper, the toughness of Titus Oates.
No trace of compassion, no sense of human kinship, no apprehension of the spiritual, weakened his high and tireless capacity for action.
Like the cancer bacillus, he grew, he fed, he tortured, he slew in fulfilment of his nature. He found a wife who shared the Communist faith. She worked and plotted at his side. She shared his first exile to Siberia in the days of the Czar. She bore him children. She aided his escape. He deserted her.
He found another kindred mind in a girl of good family who had been expelled from a school at Kharkov for persuading the pupils to refuse to attend prayers and to read Communist literature instead of the Bible. By her he had another family.
As one of his biographers (Max Eastman) puts it: "If you have a perfectly legal mind she is not Trotsky's wife, for Trotsky never divorced Alexandra Ivovna Sokolovski, who still uses the name of Bronstein."
Of his mother he writes in cold and chilling terms. His father— old Bronstein— died of typhus in 1920 at the age of 83. The triumphs of his son brought no comfort to this honest, hardworking and believing Jew. Persecuted by the Reds because he was a bourgeois; by the Whites because he was Trotsky's father, and deserted by his son he was left to sink or swim in the Russian deluge, and swam on steadfastly to the end. What else would you have?
Yet in Trotsky, in this being so removed from the ordinary affections and sentiments of human nature, so uplifted, shall we say, above the common herd, so superbly fitted to his task, there was an element of weakness especially serious from the Communist point of view.
Trotsky was ambitious, and ambitious in quite a common worldly way.
All the collectivism in the world could not rid him of an egoism which amounted to a disease, and to a fatal disease. He must not only ruin the State, he must rule the ruins thereafter. Every system of Government of which he was not the head or almost the head was odious to him. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat to him meant that he was to be obeyed without question. He was to do the dictating on behalf of the proletariat.
"The toiling masses," the "Councils of Workmen, Peasants and Soldiers," the gospel and revelation of Karl Marx, the Federal Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, etc., to him were all spelt in one word : Trotsky. This led to trouble. Comrades became jealous. They became suspicious. At the head of the Russian Army which he reconstructed amid indescribable difficulties and perils, Trotsky stood very near the vacant Throne of the Romanovs.

* * *

OBSTACLE THAT STOPPED HIM BEING A DICTATOR

THE Communist formulas he had used with devastating effect upon others, were now no impediment to him. He discarded them as readily as he had discarded his wife, or his father, or his name. The Army must be remade; victory must be won; and Trotsky must do it and Trotsky profit from it. To what other purpose should revolutions be made? He used his exceptional prowess to the full.
The officers and soldiers of the new model army were fed, clothed and treated better than anyone else in Russia. Officials of the old Czarist regime were wheedled back in thousands.
"To the devil with politics — let us save Russia."
The salute was reintroduced. The badges of rank and privilege were restored. The authority of commanders was re-established.
The abandonment by the Allies of the Russian Loyalist cause crowned these measures with a victory easy but complete.
In 1922 so great was the appreciation among the military for Trotsky's personal attitude and system that he might well have been made Dictator of Russia by the armed forces, but for one fatal obstacle.
He was a Jew. He was still a Jew. Nothing could get over that. Hard fortune when you have deserted your family, repudiated your race, spat upon the religion of your fathers, and lapped Jew and Gentile in a common malignity, to be baulked of so great a prize for so narrow-minded a reason.
Such intolerance, such pettiness, such bigotry were hard indeed to bear. And this disaster carried in its train a greater. In the wake of disappointment loomed catastrophe.
For meanwhile the comrades had not been idle. They, too, had heard the talk of the officers. They, too, saw the possibilities of a Russian army reconstituted from its old elements.
While Lenin lived, the danger seemed remote. Lenin, indeed, regarded Trotsky as his political heir. He sought to protect him.
But in 1924 Lenin died; and Trotsky, still busy with his army, still enjoying the day-to-day work of administering his department, still hailed with the acclamations which had last resounded for Nicholas II, turned to find a hard and toughly wrought opposition organised against him.

* * *

MAROONED BY THE MUTINEERS HE LED

STALIN THE GEORGIAN was a kind of general secretary to the governing instrument. He managed the caucus and manipulated the innumerable committees.
He gathered the wires together with patience and pulled them in accordance with a clearly perceived design.
When Trotsky advanced hopefully, confidently indeed, to accept the succession to Lenin, the party machine was found to be working in a different direction.
In the purely political arena of Communist activities Trotsky was speedily outmanoeuvred. He was accused on the strength of some of his voluminous writings of "Anti-Leninism."
He does not seem to have understood that Lenin had replaced God in the Communist mind. He remained for time under the impression that any such desirable substitution had been effected by Trotsky.
He admitted his heresy and eagerly explained to the soldiers and workers the very cogent reasons which had led him to it. His declarations were received with blank dismay. The Ogpu was set in motion.
Officers known to be under an obligation to Trotsky were removed from their appointments, After a period of silent tension he was advised to take a holiday. This holiday after some interruptions still continues.
Stalin used his success to build a greater. The Politbureau, without the spell of Lenin, or the force of Trotsky, was in its turn purged of its remaining elements of strength.
The politicians who had made the Revolution were dismissed and chastened and reduced to impotence by the party manager. The caucus swallowed the Cabinet, and with Stalin at its head became the present Government of Russia.

Trotsky was marooned by the very mutineers he had led so hardily to seize the ship.

What will be his place in history? For all its horrors, a glittering light plays over the scenes and actors of the French Revolution.
The careers and personalities of Robespierre, of Danton, even of Marat gleam luridly across a century.

* * *

PAYING THE PENALTY OF THEIR CRIMES

BUT the dull, squalid figures of the Russian Bolsheviks are not redeemed in interest even by the magnitude of their crimes.
All form and emphasis is lost in a vast process of Asiatic liquefaction. Even the slaughter of millions will not attract future generations to their uncouth lineaments and outlandish names.
And now most of them have paid the penalty of their crimes. They have emerged from the prison cells of the Cheka, to make their strange, unnatural confessions to the world. They have met the death in secret to which they had consigned so many better and braver men.
But Trotsky survives. He lingers on the stage in Mexico. He has forgotten his efforts, which Lenin restrained, to continue the war against Germany rather than submit to the conditions of Brest-Litovsk.
He has forgotten his own career as a war lord and the opportunist remaker of a Russian Army. In misfortune he has returned to Bolshevik Orthodoxy. Once again he has become the exponent of the purest sect of Communism.

Around his name gather the new extremists and doctrinaries of world-revolution. Upon him is turned the full blast of Soviet malignity.

The same vile propaganda which he used with so much ruthlessness upon the old regime is now concentrated upon himself by his sole-surviving former comrade.

* * *

BEST PUNISHMENT HE COULD HAVE

ALL Russia, from Poland to China, from the North Pole to the Himalayas, is taught to regard him as the supreme miscreant seeking in some way or other to add new chains to the workers, and bring the Nazi invader into their midst.
The name of Lenin, the doctrine of Karl Marx, are invoked against him at the moment when he frantically endeavors to exploit them.
Russia is regaining strength as the virulence of communism abates in her blood. The process may be cruel, but it is not morbid.
It is a need of self-preservation which impels the Soviet Government to extrude Trotsky and his fresh-distilled poisons.
In vain he screams his protests against a hurricane of lies in vain he denounces the bureaucratic tyranny of which he would so blithely be the head; in vain he strives to rally the underworld of Europe to the overthrow of the Russian Army he was once proud to animate. Russia has done with him, and done with him for ever. He will perhaps have leisure to contemplate his handiwork.

No one could wish him a better punishment than that his life should be prolonged, and that his keen intelligence and restless spirit should corrode each other in impotence and stultification.

Indeed we may forsee a day when his theories, exploded by their application, will have ceased even to be irritating to the active, hopeful world outside, and when the wide tolerance which follows from a sense of security will allow him to creep back, discredited and extinct, to the European and American haunts where so many of his early years were spent.
It may be that in these future years he will find as little comfort in the work which he has done as his father found in the son he had begotten.

Truth (Sydney, NSW : 1894 - 1954), Sunday 22 May 1938, page 33

Distracted "Demos,"

 And the Dogma of "Dictatorship,"

What is Happening in Russia.

NOT DEMOCRACY, BUT MILITARY DICTATORSHIP.

THE " PREDOMINANCE " OF ALLEGED "PROLETARIANS."

The Vote of one City Dweller Equal to the Votes of Five Poor Peasants.

What Happens to the Soviets that are " Declared Bogus " or "Counter Revolutionary."

What sort of Government has been set up In Soviet Russia? Is it a democracy? Very many people think that it is. Yet the truth is that it is not a system of government in which the people rule, but one in which a political party which is backed by a large and efficient army has installed itself as a dictatorship. If the governments of the world would not only withdraw all their troops from Russia, but also stop the blockade of that country, and facilitate the spread of knowledge (from the Bolsheviks themselves as well as from their enemies) as to what the Bolshevik dictators are actually doing, as well as saying, there would not long be much sympathy for Bolshevism, either in or out of Russia. Bolshevism is

MAINTAINED AND STRENGTHENED

by the fact that other nations are invading and blockading Russia. A similar course of action maintained in Revolutionary France, in 1793, the Jacobin Government, which declared that "Terror is the order of the day," and kept itself in power by the ruthless slaughter of its political enemies.
Democracy is rule by the people. Where the people cannot rule by direct means. (as they do in some small communities in the United States and Switzerland), they rule by means of representatives.  These should, at least, represent the majority of the people. The Russian Bolshevik system of government, however, is not a democracy; it is, the Bolsheviks themselves say, a dictatorship. A dictatorship is a condition of things in which

ABSOLUTE OR SUPREME POWER

is possessed by a person, or by persons. The Bolsheviks say that their system of government is a "dictatorship of the proletariat." Their exact words were recently published in what was called the "Programme of the Moscow (Communist) International. Draft Proposals for re-construction of the International Socialist Bureau. The Guiding Lines of the Communist International. (Adopted at the Congress of too Communist International, from the 2nd to the 6th March, 1919.)" Here is what it says about the "hegemony"

AND "PRIVILEGED POSITION"

of the "Industrial proletariat": —
The industrial proletariat enjoys under this system a privileged position, since it is the most advanced, the best organised, and politically the ripest class, under whose hegemony the semi-proletariat and the small peasant of the countryside are to be gradually raised to a higher level. These temporary privileges of the industrial proletariat must be made use of in order to withdraw the poorer lower middle-class masses of the countryside from under the  influence of the large farmers and bourgeoisie, and to organise and educate them as co-workers in the task of communist reconstruction.
"Hegemony" means leadership with preponderant authority. The "industrial proletariat" that is thus given preponderant authority over the "semi-proletariat and the small peasant" is, in Russia, a very small class. The estimated population of Russia in 1915 was, according to "The Statesman's Year Book." 132,000,000. It is probable that what is now Soviet Russia may have a population of 600.000,000. In 1915 the report of the Ministry of Finance showed that there were 1,960,800 work-people employed in "industrial establishments under the inspectors of factories" in European Russia and Caucasus, excluding  Poland.
Without going further into figures, the well-known fact maybe stated that, those whom the Bolsheviks call "the industrial proletariat" in Russia are enormously outnumbered by the peasants, over whom the so-called "proletariat" is

TO HAVE "HEGEMONY."

Under the Bolshevik system of government, only those councils (the Russian word for which is "Soviet") elected in accordance with the Constitution of Soviet Russia, have any right to say or do anything in connection with government. These councils elect higher councils, and' these again still higher councils, until the Government (called Commissaries) itself is elected. The constitution deliberately provides, however, that in the most Important Soviet, the vote of five provincials shall only count as equal to the vote of one city-dweller. This is thus admitted in "The Structure of the Soviet State" by Mr. John Reed, who says :—
At least twice a year delegates are elected from all over Russia to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Theoretically, these delegates are chosen by direct popular election, from the provinces, one for each one hundred and twenty-five thousand voters— from the cities; one for each twenty-five thousand; practically, however, they are all usually chosen by the provincial and the urban Soviets.
The basis of representation thus stated by Mr. Reed, is precisely laid down in the Bolshevik Constitution. This was published in full in New York "Current History" for September, 1918, and in Mr. Maurice Blackburn's pamphlet entitled "Bolshevism," which is published in Melbourne.
There is an extraordinary  rule mentioned by Mr. John Reed which would greatly please manipulators of

PARTY POLITICAL MACHINES

in this or any other country. This is thus stated on page 7 of "The Structure of the Soviet State":— It is designated by the central committees of the political parties, which can replace them by other party members.
Imagine the executives of the political parties of Australia given such a power as this! "Dictatorship"! We should think "so!
The Soviet Constitution disfranchises and disqualifies for office a considerable number of persons, such as employers of labor for "an increase of profits," merchants and trade intermediaries, persons living on interest or rent, employees of religious communities, persons formerly connected with the police or gendarmerie, persons who are not members of "trades associations," and numerous others. The intention is to disfranchise and disqualify the "bourgeoisie," and all suspected of being, by the nature of their vocations, likely to sympathise with that class. Much, depends, of course, upon, the interpretation of this provision. Some writers declare that it disfranchises medical practitioners and many other members of

THE PROFESSIONAL CLASSES.

The Constituent Assembly which the Bolshevik military forces overthrew was a thoroughly democratic body (with an overwhelmingly large majority of Socialist Revolutionists). It had been elected by equal, secret, adult suffrage. The Soviet authorities, however, only exist where people are willing to elect the local councils upon which the Government of Soviet Russia is based. Where there is no Soviet, the Bolshevik authority appoints a "commisary." As to a Soviet consisting of Socialists who do not approve of Bolshevism, the Bolshevik Government  declares it "counter-revolutionary," and may shoot its leaders. Mr. John Spargo is a well-known American Socialist, who does not approve of Bolshevism, and this is what he says about the

FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES

of Soviets under the Bolshevik Government :—
No one ever pretended that the Soviets represented all the workers of Russia — including peasants in that term — or even a majority of them.  No one ever pretended that the Soviet, as such, was a stable and constant factor. New Soviets were always springing up and others dying out. Many existed only in name, on paper. There never has been an accurate list of the Soviets, existing in Russia. Many lists have been made, but always by the time they could be tabulated and published there have been many changes.
At Kazan, where Lenine went to school, the Soviet was dissolved because it was controlled by Socialist Revolutionists of the Left, former Allies, now hostile to the Bolsheviki. Here are two paragraphs from "Izvestya." one of the Bolshevist official organs: —
"Kazan, July 26.—As the important offices in the Soviet were occupied by Socialist Revolutionists of the Left, the Extraordinary Commission has dissolved the Provisional Soviet. The Governmental power is now represented by a Revolutionary Committee. (Izvestya, July 28, 1918.) "Kazan, August 1. — The state of mind  of the workmen is revolutionary. If the Mensheviki dare to carry on their propaganda,

DEATH MENACES THEM.

(Idem, August 3;)"
And here is confirmation from another official organ of the Bolsheviki, "Pravda":—
"Kazan, August 4. — The Provisional Congress of the Soviets of the Peasants has been dissolved because of the absence from it of poor peasants and because its state of mind is obviously counter-revolutionary. (Pravda, August 6, 1918.)"
As early as April, 1918, the Soviet at Jaroslav was dissolved by the Bolshevik authorities and new elections ordered.  In these elections the Mensheviki and the Socialist-Revolutionists everywhere gained an absolute majority.  The population here wanted the Constituent Assembly; and they wanted Russia to fight on with the Allies. Attempts to suppress this majority led to insurrection, which the Bolsheviki crushed in the most brutal manner, and when the people, overpowered and helpless, sought to make peace, the Bolsheviki only

INCREASED THE ARTILLERY FIRE!

Here is an "Official Bulletin," published in "Izvestya," July 21, 1918:—
"At Jaroslav  the adversary, gripped in the iron ring of our troops, has tried to enter into negotiations. The reply has been given under the form of redoubled artillery fire."
As we have stated, the rule of the Bolsheviks is based upon the existence of a large, well-trained and well-paid army. This army is officered by some of the most efficient of those who officered the Czar's army.  Without the army, the Bolsheviks would probably lose their power.
The theory of the seizure of political power by a minority for the purpose of establishing a Communist State is not a new one. The famous French conspirator, Blanqui, repeatedly tried this, and the great insurrection in Paris in June, 1848, and that in March, 1871, were largely the outcome of Blanqui's conspiracies. Karl Marx himself was attracted by the idea of the insurrectionary

SEIZURE OF POWER

at the time when he and Engels drew up the Communist Manifesto (a little before the French Revolution of February, 1848); After witnessing the failures of 1848 and 1871, however, both Marx and Engels saw that an attempt by a minority of proletarians to seize political power, by means of it, to inaugurate Communism, was economically unsound, This was stated by Frederick Engels, as follows, in his 1895 preface to Marx's "Civil War In France":—
History proved that we were wrong — we and those who like us, in 1848, awaited the speedy success of the proletariat. It became perfectly clear that economic conditions all over the Continent, were by no means as yet sufficiently matured for superseding the capitalist organisation for production. This was proved by the economic revolution which commenced on the Continent of Europe after 1848 and developed in France, Austria-Hungary, Poland, and, recently, also in Russia, and made Germany into an Industrial state of the first rank— all on a capitalist basis, which shows that in 1848 the prevailing conditions were still capable of expansion. And to-day we have a huge international army of Socialists. . . If this mighty proletarian army has not yet reached its goal, if it is destined to gain its ends only in a

LONG DRAWN OUT STRUGGLE,

making headway but slowly, step by step, this only proves how impossible it was in 1848 to change social conditions by forcible means . . . the time for small minorities to place themselves at the head of the ignorant masses and resort to force in order to bring about revolutions is gone. A complete change in the organisation of Society can be brought about only the conscious co-operation of the masses; they must be alive to the aim in view; they must know what they want. The history of the last 50 years has taught us that.
New York "Current History," for May of this year, quotes from the "London Times" the statement that "quite recently the Bolsheviki have set up in the streets of Petrograd a statue of Blanqui, on which is inscribed Blanqui's famous motto, "Ni Dieu, ni Maitre." This motto means, "Neither God nor Master." The "London Times" adds to its information as to the erection of the statue of Blanqui the following comment "To present-day Russia, the words are pitifully inappropriate, Bolshevist Russia has a master, and in his secret heart every Bolshevist knows it."

Truth (Brisbane, Qld. : 1900 - 1954), Sunday 19 October 1919, page 9

RUSKIN'S CAREER VIEWED AS A TRAGEDY.

 It is twenty-one years since John Ruskin, the English writer, died and something over a century since he was born. The impression he left on his own generation was vivid and intense, but we of to-day hear only as faint reverberations the controversial storms in which his life was spent. In connection with the publication of a centenary volume, Ruskin the Prophet (Dutton). containing estimates by John Masefield, Dean Inge, C. F. G. Masterman, Lawrence Binyon, J. A. Hobson and others, the questions are worth asking; What does he mean to the men and women of the present time? How  is his message still a living message? and above all, What is the net result of the doctrines he preached?
The spirit of the new volume is strangely contradictory. While all of the contributors to it endeavour to emphasise the positive side of Ruskin's genius and to show that his influence is still an inspiration, the total impression conveyed is one of frustrated idealism. The moralistic art-philosophy he enunciated in matchless prose in " Modern Painters" and others of his works already seems old-fashioned. The social ideas that obsessed him during his later years were perverted by the war and are even identified with Bolshevism by one of the writers in the present volume. The fact is, as Dean Inge puts it, that Ruskin's teaching, like all other prophetical messages, is as leaven hid in three measures of meal. "There is no likelihood of its having any visible or palpable effect upon society at large." One of his fullest confessions of faith appears in a statement of principles written for an organisation that he called St. George's Guild. He was much of a Socialist, but his Socialism was anti-democratic and anti-libertarian. "Not merely," says J. A. Hobson, "did he repudiate with violence two out of the three terms of the revolutionary trinity, viz., liberty and equality, insisting that men were not equal and not intended to be free, but, following his master, Carlyle, he stretched to an extreme the rights of masterhood and authority."
Ruskin never explained where the masterhood and authority he believed in were to come from, and it is one of the ironies of history that his pure and idealistic theories, turned out, in practice, just the opposite of what he intended. "So far as I can learn," writes C. F. G. Masterman, "the whole apparatus of government in what is called Bolshevist Russia carries out almost in detail the ideals of St. George's Guild. You have the same contempt for democracy and liberty, and the same determination that the ordinary man must put himself absolutely under the control of those self-sacrificing leaders who are determined to direct him in the way that he should go. You have the same ideal of communist activity, and especially communist activity in land. You have the same high and almost austere ideal of the sacrifice of the whole citizens for the education of the coming generation. . . I think, when the story is told. . ." you will find that Lenin and his ideal community owe less to Karl Marx than to John Ruskin."
The tragedy of Ruskin, as Leo Stein views it in the New Republic, was a double tragedy, "for his failure was immediate as well as ultimate."
"He bitterly recognised that people would read him because he had the gift of gab, and because he could twist sonorous strings of beautiful words. He was well aware that little groups of serious thinkers would struggle thoughtfully with difficult passages, and, having solved them, would go forth in the conviction that he had not lived in vain, nor they either. But it was not for such ends as these that Ruskin had agonised. Ho had sweated blood in searching out the truth. Each time that he believed himself to have found one of its jewels, he had rushed forth eager to display it and to make the world partakers of his new-found wealth. He wanted people to see in Turner a revelation of the' beauty of nature. He had hoped to open their eyes and to make them value the revelation, and he sought to enrich their lives by making them active participants in it. His books were books of rapturous exposition that should lead men deeper into the understanding of the splendour that is the body of nature and the glory that is its soul. He found the art appreciation of his time to be, almost entirely, a concern with the charm of beauty, an indulgence for one's leisure moments, an affair essentially of the leisure classes. He thought that beauty was the birthright of all men, and that the greater part of mankind were being defrauded of their rights. He soon came to see that the bitterest enemy to beauty in life was the factory system and the modern industrial organisation ; and almost all the years of his maturer life were spent in a losing warfare against this monster."
Ruskin was a critic, according to Mr. Stein, but not a critic for the sake of criticism. He was a man with very definite convictions concerning things as they ought to be and as they were not, and he proceeded strenuously to set them right. "At the first he felt sure of himself, but, as he developed, his certainties were more and more displaced by uncertainties. He may have been a little mad in his assurances as in his doubts, but "his madness," Mr. Stein assures us, "was a noble thing, and not a submissive stupidity." The argument proceeds:
"Ruskin was a neurotic and he was honest, than which no worse fate is possible to man. He had a vision and his honesty compelled him to live in accord with it. Many men have some real beliefs, but most of them are far too clever to allow to those beliefs any part or function in the day's work. These men are the politicians of life, and to them belong the kingdoms of the earth. Others are the seekers after truth, those who reject the compromises of convenience and advantage, and follow the lead of what, to them, is evidence. Among these are the few who are privileged or fated to believe that faith moves mountains. Sometimes, indeed, it does, but the moved mountain is almost never stable, and after a little while, and in most cases, it comes rocking back, to crush the overenthusiastic disturber. Tho politician often will admit the mountain to be in the way. In fact, he may go further and admit that, in part, at least, it is not as sound a mountain as it seems, that it is indeed mostly a great heap of rubbish; but none the less he recommends that if one must get to the other side, a way around it may be found." It is the great historic tragedy of the truth-seeker, Mr. Stein declares, that he should be buried with honour by his enemies, and that he should find his tomb within the rubbish heap which he has tried to move with faith and works. "So is Jesus honoured by the princes of the church and of the state and of the market place. So was the humility of Francis conserved in the pride of the mendicant orders, and so was Ruskin celebrated in the disquisition of aesthetes and in the higher prices paid for Tintoretto and Fra Angelico." The article concludes:
"Of course, the seeker after truth is not without his share in the responsibility. Even though the mountain be a heap of rubbish it is a real heap and has a meaning in the world. Ruskin, like other seers, was honesty but he was mad and had the simple faith that the truth would set you free. And there in he ignored the lie that lives with truth at the heart of things.
"The neurotic is totally unable to evaluate the reality of that which is unreal to his experience. He cannot rightfully estimate the world's needs. The tragedy of the politician is to be hoisted with his own petard, to find his own cunning and adaptability recoil upon him, but the personal tragedy of the seeker after truth is to find that the world-context of his own passionate faith remains unknown to him, and therefore he becomes enmeshed, bewildered, and in the end strangled by the unknown which was to him a lie only, but which was only in part a lie, and which, to his undoing, his own half truth ignored."

Northern Champion (Taree, NSW : 1913 - 1954), Sunday 16 October 1921, page 7