Vol. 1 -- No. 10 | JULY, 1887 | MONTHLY; ONE PENNY |
THE LAND WAR.IT is a very common remark amongst the rank and file of Liberal Unionists that whilst it is only too true that the past history of English rule in Ireland is written in fire and blood, it is also a fact that the English Government has of late years devoted its best energies to promoting the welfare of the Irish people, and the said Irish people are a thankless crew not to acknowledge the blessings they have received, and therewith rest content.
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years: Don't commit any outrage, don't be guilty of any violence, don't break the law . . . . . I am heartily ashamed of ever having given such advice to the Irish people . . . . . Just look at the example that has been set us now by the farmers of North Wales. They are defending their rights-aye, as men with hearts in their bosoms which claim to have the courage in their manhood ought to stand by such rights . . . . ."
PRACTICAL QUESTIONS. WE said in our last issue that "Nationalisation of Land." if it becomes the watchword of the next movement in this country, will simply mean nothing more than the expropriation of the landed aristocracy, and the seizure of land by the middle classes; the creation of middle-class land proprietors who may prosper for a number of years, and even increase the amount of agricultural produce raised in this country, who will monopolise the land in their turn; while the small land-proprietor will be ruined by competition, taxes, and mortgages. In short, something like what happened in France by the end of the last century, when the soil was also transferred on a large scale from the landed aristocracy to the wealthier farmers and peasants.
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agreed to; some leading principles, so important that not to settle them would simply mean to move without knowing where to go, and thus prepare the indubitable failure of the undertaking.
EVICTION. STRETCH'D a score of straggling hovels scatter'd down the mountain --From 'The Dawning Grey,' by J. H DELL. |
WOMEN'S LABOUR. MANY Socialists have joined in the outcry of certain Trade Unionists and Radicals against the employment of women in work which the women think suitable and the men do not. They have done so on the plea that the women's labour is simply used by capitalists to reduce men's wages. Their argument is perfectly correct as far as it goes, but it goes a very little way. Roughly speaking, it is probably true that the total of men's wages is decreased by something like the amount they would require to support the said women as their chattel-slaves. The women become the wage-slaves of the capitalist, and the workman is deprived of his dependent domestic serf. A man and woman both working often earn between them only about as much as the man alone could earn before the competition of women came into his labour market; or, putting it in another way, about as small a share of the fruit of their labour falls into the hands of the wage-workers as a class, if women are employed in productive labour, or if they were not so occupied. But if the women work outside their homes, they become independent of their lovers and male relatives, and the family is broken up.
"Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity, self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but mariners and custorns."--Emerson. |
THE LOGIC OF COMMUNISM IT is a Common cant with many of those who are on the road to Socialism that in the renovated order which they contemplate, each worker shall enjoy the full fruits of his own labour. (Even our comrades of the Socialist League, while preaching on one page of the Commonweal pure Communist doctrine, have on others held out this promise to the proletariat). It is a promise that in reality is meaningless, and in the meaning commonly attached to it, delusive and impossible to be fulfilled. That the phrase should be used is intelligible enough. We charge against the prevailing social system that by it the workers are robbed of the wealth which they produce, by the exaction of rents for the opportunities of working. And it seems merely restating the same truth to say that when we have destroyed that system, each man shall reap the full product of his own activity. It is necessary to recognise clearly that the proposition cannot be connected in this manner, and that Socialism cannot, if it would, make any such promise.
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point of view, for moralised, developed, socialized human beings, there can be but one rule for work and wages-- "From each according to his ability, S.O.
PRISONS AND THEIR EFFECTS. THERE is no question with which Anarchists are more commonly met than, "What is to be done with criminals in a society where there is no government? You say that the present system of coercion is a cruel wrong to human nature; you say that the masses, when they rise to overthrow the economic tyranny of the property owners, will destroy all this elaborate machinery of law-court and prison, and indeed it is a fact that the opening of prison doors has been a prominent feature of popular revolts; but surely you cannot wish and intend to let the criminal class loose upon society?" And the most selfish and brutal of respectable objectors will go on discoursing about the "criminal class" in the tone of the Pharisee of all ages when be has occasion to allude to the Publican.
1 In Russian and French Prisons.' By P. Kropotkine. Ward and Downey. |
The absence of all passing impressions upon the brain such as crowd upon and freshen the life of a free man, and the absence of all opportunity to exercise the will generally, already too weak in the criminal, are regarded by Kropotkine as two great causes of the moral and physical deterioration of imprisoned men, and both are essentially the outcome of our highly organised penal system. Moreover everything is done in our prisons to destroy a man's self-respect. "He is a numbered thing, which must move about according to regulations. . . . A rancorous feeling against a society which always was but a step-mother to him grows within the prisoner. He accustoms himself to hate-cordially to hate-all those I respectable' people who so wickedly kill his best feelings in him."
LAW AND ORDER IN IRELAND. THE most scathing indictments of the proceedings of successive English Governments in Ireland may be found in the hearty condemnations which the new men in office passed upon the actions of their predecessors.
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guilds. The ruck of the people were disposed of variously. Gangs were despatched to Kerry, Tipperary and Roscommon, where let us hope they became the progenitors of the sons of the soil who are to-day resisting legal tyranny. Many were drafted off to Sweden and "induced," to enlist under the swashbuckler, Gustavus Adolphus.
THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM. ANARCHISTS are credited by their opponents with many dire vices and crimes, but it is generally admitted that they have at least one good quality--they stick to their principles.
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