British Socialism: An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical ProposalsBarker, J. Ellis
History
British Socialism: An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals
Barker, J. Ellis
Socialism; Socialism -- Great Britain
The Socialist-Anarchist hates State government in every form. To him a
Social-Democratic State is quite as hateful as any other form of
government: "The State is the evil, the inveterate foe of labour--be
the Government Autocratic, Bureaucratic, or Social-Democratic. For
what, after all, is our vaunted nose-counting, majority-ridden
Democracy but an expansion of the old-time tyranny of monarch and
oligarch, inasmuch as the Governmentalist, whatever his stripe, is
doomed to act on the two root principles of statecraft--force and
fraud? And, obviously, so long as that is so, his particular profession
of political faith is almost a matter of indifference."[1078] "What
was, what is the State, wherever it exists, but a community of human
beings barbarically held together by a well-drilled gang of
magistrates, soldiers, policemen, gaolers, and hangmen?"[1079] Mr.
Blatchford, who is apparently never quite sure in his mind whether he
is a Socialist, a Communist, or an Anarchist, gives voice to his
Anarchist sentiments in the words: "Rightly or wrongly, I am opposed to
godship, kingship, lordship, priestship. Rightly or wrongly, I am
opposed to imperialism, militarism, and conquest. Rightly or wrongly, I
am for universal brotherhood and universal freedom."[1080]
Another influential Socialist writer exclaims: "What is freedom but
the unfettered use of all the powers which God for use has
given?"[1081]--a sentiment which is heartily endorsed by all
Anarchists. However, the unfettered use of all powers means that the
will of the individual, not the will of society, is the supreme law.
It means the denial of the supremacy of society, the State,
government. Similar sentiments are expressed with greater energy and
greater fulness by many Socialist writers. Mr. Davidson, for instance,
says: "In the new order every man (woman, of course, included) will be
his own legislator. In the state of ultimate and universal freedom to
which we aspire, when the greatest of all tyrants, poverty, is slain
and plenty sits on the throne which the lean monster has so long
usurped--it may well be that there shall be no necessity for any law
except that which the purified conscience of every individual man and
woman will readily supply. Then will have come the true Golden Age,
the millennium of Christian Anarchism."[1082]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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