Practical Politics; or, the Liberalism of To-day

by Alfred Farthing Robbins

Against any such method of dealing with public questions all fair-minded men should strongly, and without ceasing, protest. And as Socialism is spreading among the masses, it is in the highest degree important that the fact should be studied calmly and without prejudice. Hard words break no bones, and contumely tends to strengthen any cause in which there is an atom of good.

Socialism, therefore, should be dealt with in an inquiring and not an abusive spirit, and with the determination to accept from it whatever of good to the community we may find it to contain. There is another method which Prince Bismarck has been trying for years, and with the signal lack of success that always comes from trying to stamp out an opinion by force of law. In presumed defence of “society” and “order”—two excellent things, but often the excuse for despots to perpetrate cruel injustice upon the liberty-loving and the poor—he has secured law after law for the purpose of “putting down Socialism;” men have been torn from their homes because of their opinions; the right of public meeting has been placed at the mercy of the police; the press has been gagged, and every means taken to stamp out a body of opinions some of which even the German Chancellor himself cannot help sharing. And with what result? That, after ten years of this wretched work, the Socialists—though prevented from public meeting, speaking, or writing—are multiplying in Germany in an ever-growing proportion; that in Berlin, the capital of the empire, they number tens of thousands of electors as their adherents; and that Prince Bismarck is ever asking for extended powers to crush a force which, in its free state, as yielding to the touch as water, is mighty when compressed.

With an even greater power of police, and no restriction at all from the laws, the Czar has failed as signally to extirpate Nihilism. Ideas cannot be killed in this fashion, though their holders can be and are rendered more dangerous. Mill certainly considered that “the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes;” and he was of opinion that “no reasonable person can doubt that Christianity might have been extirpated in the Roman Empire.” But it may be submitted that, when arguing about the persecution of ideas to-day, we must not forget the immense additional force given to them by means of printing. The secret presses of Germany and Russia “spread the light;” and there is nothing so certain as that the very charm which comes from the possession of that which is prohibited aids in strengthening a movement which is under the ban of the law.

But, it may be said, the efforts of those who would attempt to put down Socialism are not to be considered in the light of political persecution, and are not to be compared with religious persecution, for they are directed solely to the suppression of “anti-social” doctrines, the adoption of which would be fatal not only to States as they now exist, but to society itself. A more precise definition must be asked, however, of the doctrines thus described. Though opposed to an eight hours’ bill, to land nationalization, and to national workshops, leading points in the Socialist programme, I cannot conceive how, if they were all adopted within the next year, such dire results could from them flow.

Every new body of doctrine which gives hope to the masses and threatens the domination of the privileged among men has been described with equal virulence by its antagonists. Read the charges upon which Christians were condemned under the Roman Empire; read those brought against Luther and his co-reformers when first Protestantism threatened the Church of Rome; remember those thrown at the Puritans when they tried to secure for Englishmen liberty of thought and action. They were in every case that the doctrines were anti-social; that if adopted they would wreck the then condition of society; and that they were in the highest degree perilous to the State. For it is the fate of all preachers of a new doctrine to be treated as rogues until their persecutors are proved to be fools.

Admittedly there are some theories advanced by men calling themselves Socialists which, if adopted, would seriously conflict with the existing order of society; but to condemn every proposal put forward as Socialist because there are Socialists who have said strange, and sometimes stupid, things would be monstrous. It is a controversial trick of a peculiarly poor order to attempt to hold the leaders of any movement responsible for the hare-brained ideas of some of their followers. Not to repudiate them is not to signify agreement, or our party leaders would possess some of the most extravagant doctrines ever conceived by man.

Besides, one must always sever the conventional beliefs from the real. No sensible person considers Christianity untrue because even the churches would regard him as a madman who literally adopted the injunction to sell all that he had to give to the poor. In any body of doctrines there are always some which its adherents hold, but do not stand by.

And, therefore, charity as well as common sense demands that the tall talk on both sides—for there is not a great deal to choose between them in this respect—should cease; but the trick is too easily learned to be quickly dropped. The idea of the well-to-do that all would go smoothly if it were not for “agitators” and “mob-orators” is as absurd as the contention of the Socialist that most of our ills are due to the “profit-monger.” Your “agitator” or your “mob-orator” would have not the least influence if he did not voice the feelings, the longings, and the hopes of his silent friends. And as for the “profit-monger,” is not the workman who is better off than the poorest among his fellows deserving the name?

Let us have fair play all round to ideas as well as to men. If, in the supposed interests of society, every movement designed to upraise the poor is suppressed, the tendency must be to force men towards Anarchism and Nihilism, by causing them to wish to destroy that order of things which to them acts so unjustly. Despair is a fatal counsellor, and those who would identify the welfare of the State with that of the mere money-getter are its frequent cause. It is easier to raise the devil than to lay him, and appeals to the merely animal instinct in man—whether to protect his own property or to take that of others, with a complete ignoring of his duties as well as his rights—must end in ruin and shame.