Crowds / A Moving-Picture of Democracy

by Gerald Stanley Lee

First, the dockers are desperate. I take their desperation as conclusive and imperative. It must be obeyed.

Second, I do not care what they think.

What they think must not be obeyed. Men who are in the act of being scared or hateful, whether it be for five minutes, jive months, or sixty years, who have given up their courage for others, or for their enemies, are not practical. What a man who despairs of everybody except himself thinks, does not work and cannot be made to work. The fact that the dockers have no courage about their employers may be largely the employers' fault. It is largely the fault of society, of the churches, the schools, the daily press. But the fact remains, and whichever side in the contest has, or is able to have, first, the most courage for the other side, whichever side wants the most for the other side, will be the side that will get the most control.

If Labour, in the form of syndicalism, wants to grasp the raw materials, machinery, and management of modern industry out of the hands of the capitalists and run the world, the one shrewd, invincible way for Labour to do it is going to be to want more things for more people than capitalists can want.

The only people, to-day, who are going to be competent to run a world, or who can get hold of even one end of it to try to run it, are going to be the people who want a world, who have a habit, who may be said to be almost in a rut, of wanting things all day, every day, for a world—men who cannot keep narrowed down very long at a time to wanting things for themselves.

There will be little need of our all falling into a panic, or all being obliged to rely on policemen, or to call out troops to stave off an uprising of the labour classes as long as the labour classes are merely wanting things for themselves. It is the men who have the bigger hungers who are getting the bigger sorts of things—things like worlds into their hands. The me-man and the class-man, under our modern conditions, are being more and more kept back and held under in the smaller places, the me-places and class-places, by the men who want more things than they can want, who lap over into wanting things for others.

The me-man often may see what he wants clearly and may say what he wants.

But he does not get it. It is the class-man who gets it for him.

The class-man may see what he wants for his class clearly and may say what he wants.

But he does not get it. It is the crowd-man who gets it for him.