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5 October 2010

From the 5 October 1912 issue of The Vote:

Great Protest Meeting Against the Imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks.

“No Government Can Stand Ridicule. The Position is Ridiculous!”

The great meeting of indignant protest against the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks, held at the Caxton Hall on September 25, under the auspices of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, will be not only memorable but epoch-making. The fight for woman’s citizenship in “free England” has led to the imprisonment of a man for failing to do what was impossible. Throughout the meeting the humor of the situation was frequently commented upon, but the serious aspect was most strongly emphasized. Sir John Cockburn, who presided, struck a serious note at the outset; for anything, he said, that touched the liberty of the citizen was of the gravest importance. He remarked that it was the first occasion on which he had attended a meeting to protest against the action of law.

The resolution of protest was proposed by Dr. Mansell Moullin, whose many and continued services to their Cause are warmly appreciated by all Suffragists, in a very able speech, and ran as follows:—

That this meeting indignantly protests against the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks for his inability to pay the tax on his wife’s earned income, and demands his immediate release. This meeting also calls for an amendment of the existing Income-tax law, which, contrary to the spirit of the Married Women’s Property Act, regards the wife’s income as one with that of her husband.

A Husband the Property of His Wife.

Dr. Moullin expressed his pleasure in supporting his colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, in the protest against the outrage on her husband. The case, he said, was not a chapter out of “Alice in Wonderland,” but a plain proof that, although imprisonment for debt has been abolished in England, a man may be deprived of his liberty for non-payment of money which was not his, and which he could not touch. The only argument that could be used was that Mr. Wilks was the property of his wife. Twice distraint had been made on the furniture of Mrs. Wilks, the third time the authorities carried off her husband; it is the first occasion on which it has been proved that a husband is the property of his wife. The law allows a man to put a halter round the neck of his wife, take her to the market-place and sell her, and this has been done within recent years; but there is no law which allows the Inland Revenue authorities to sell a husband for the benefit of his wife. Governments, he added, can stand abuse, but cannot stand ridicule, and the position with regard to Dr. Wilks and her husband is both ridiculous and anomalous. The serious question behind the whole matter was how far anyone is justified in resisting the law of the land. The resister for conscience’ sake is the martyr of one generation and the saint of the next. Dr. Moullin doubted whether the Hebrews or Romans of old would recognise what their laws had become; we are ashamed of the outrageous sentences for trivial offences passed by our forefathers; our children will be ashamed of the sentences passed to-day. Everything in the law connected with women required reconstruction from the very foundation, declared Dr. Moullin. Constitutional methods, like Royal Commissions, were an admirable device for postponing reform; all reformers were unconstitutional; they had to use unconstitutional methods or leave reform alone. The self-sacrifice of an individual makes a nation great; that nation is dead when reformers are unwilling to sacrifice themselves.

No Man Safe.

Mr. George Bernard Shaw was the next speaker, and gave a characteristically witty and autobiographical address. He said that this was the beginning of the revolt of his own unfortunate sex against the intolerable henpecking which had been brought upon them by the refusal of the Government to bring about a reform which everybody knew was going to come, and the delay of which was a mere piece of senseless stupidity. From the unfortunate Prime Minister downwards no man was safe. He never saw his wife reflecting in a corner without some fear that she was designing some method of putting him and his sex into a hopeless corner. He never spoke at suffrage gatherings. He steadily refused to join the ranks of ignominious and superfluous males who gave assistance which was altogether unnecessary to ladies who could well look after themselves.

“If my wife did that to me, the very moment I came out of prison I would get another wife. It is indefensible.” — George Bernard Shaw

Under the Married Women’s Property Act the husband retained the responsibility of the property and the woman had the property to herself. Mr. Wilks was not the first victim. The first victim was G.B.S. The Government put on a supertax. That fell on his wife’s income and on his own. The authorities said that he must pay his wife’s supertax. He said, “I do not happen to know the extent of her income.” When he got married he strongly recommended to his wife to have a separate banking account, and she took him at his word. He had no knowledge of what his wife’s income was. All he knew was that she had money at her command, and he frequently took advantage of that by borrowing it from her. The authorities said that they would have to guess at the income; then the Government passed an Act, he forgot the official title of it, but the popular title was the Bernard Shaw Relief Act. They passed an Act to allow women to pay their supertax. In spite of this Act, ordinary taxpayers were still apparently under the old regime, and as Mrs. Wilks would not pay the tax on her own income Mr. Wilks went to gaol. “If my wife did that to me,” said Mr. Shaw, “the very moment I came out of prison I would get another wife. It is indefensible.”

Women, he added, had got completely beyond the law at the present time. Mrs. [Mary] Leigh had been let out, but he presumed that after a brief interval for refreshments she would set fire to another theatre. He got his living by the theatre, and very probably when she read the report of that speech she would set fire to a theatre where his plays were being performed. The other day he practically challenged the Government to starve Mrs. Leigh, and in the course of the last fortnight he had received the most abusive letters which had ever reached him in his life. The Government should put an end to the difficulty at once by giving women the vote. As he resumed his seat Mr. Shaw said: “I feel glad I have been allowed to say the things I have here to-night without being lynched.”

Bullying Fails.

Mr. Laurence Housman laid stress on the fact that the Government was endeavouring to make Mrs. Wilks, through her affection, do something she did not consider right. Liberty could only be enjoyed when laws were not an offence to the moral conscience of a people. Laws were not broken in this country every day because they were not practicable. Every man, according to law, must go to church on Sunday morning, or sit two hours in the stocks; it was unlawful to wheel perambulators on the pavement. If the police were compelled to administer all the laws on the Statute Book, England would be a hell. To imprison Mr. Wilks for something which he had not done and could not do was as sane as if a servant were sent to prison because her employer objected to lick stamps under the Insurance Act. The Government had tried bullying, but women had shown that it did not pay. Self-respecting people break down a law by demonstrating that it is too expensive to carry.

Question for the Solicitor to the Treasury.

The legal aspect was the point specially dealt with by Mr. Herbert Jacobs, chairman of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage. He said that it was stupidity, not chivalry, which deprived the husband under the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 of the right to his wife’s earnings, but did not relieve him of responsibility to pay for her. Imprisonment for debt has been abolished; but if it could be shown that a man had the means to pay and refused to pay, he could be sent to prison for contempt of court. Mr. Jacobs suggested that the Solicitor to the Treasury should be asked to reply to the following question: “What has Mr. Wilks done or omitted to do that he should be imprisoned for life?” The law, he added, does not compel a man to do that which he cannot possibly perform. The action of the Internal Revenue authorities may be illegal; it certainly is barbarous and ridiculous.

Bad Bungling

Mr. H[enry].G[eorge]. Chancellor pointed out that the Married Women’s Property Act was an endeavour by men to remove injustice to women, but because they did not realise the injustices from which women suffer and avoided the woman’s point of view, they bungled badly. No one can respect a ridiculous law, and the means to be taken in the future to avoid making ridiculous laws, must be to give women the right to make their opinions effectively heard through the ballot-box. Mr. Chancellor said that he had investigated 240 Bill[s] laid on the table of the House, and had found that 123 were as interesting to women as much as to men; twenty-one affected women almost exclusively; six had relation to the franchise. “When we consider these Bills,” he added, “we rule out the whole experience and knowledge of women. We must abolish sex privilege as it affects legislation. I appeal to men who are Antis to consider the Wilks case, which is possible just so long as we perpetuate the huge wrong of the continued disenfranchisement of women.”

Refinement of Cruelty

In a moving speech Rev. Fleming Williams declared that the case of Dr. Wilks and her husband ought to appeal to men all over the country. He spoke of the personal interviews he had had with Mr. Wilks in the presence of the warder, and of the effect of imprisonment upon him. It was impossible to contemplate without horror the spectacle of the Government’s attempt to overcome the wife’s resistance by the spectacle of her husband’s sufferings. If she added to his pain by humiliating surrender, it would lower the high ideal he cherishes of her principles. “She dare not do it; she will not do it!” exclaimed Mr. Williams. He added that he had had an opportunity of waiting upon the Inland Revenue Board and tried to show them how their action appears to outside people. He had suggested that, in order to bring the law into harmony with justice, representative public men in co-operation with the Board should approach the Treasury to secure an alteration in the law. “But,” declared Mr. Williams, “if women are made responsible by law it will not bring the Government an inch nearer the solution of the difficulty. They may imprison women for tax resistance, but married men would not stand it. The only way is to say to Dr. Wilks, “We will give you the right to control the use we intend to make of your money.”

The resolution was passed unanimously with great enthusiasm, and thus ended a meeting that will be historic.

The Campaign.

A great campaign is being carried on for the release of Mr. Mark Wilks.

On Saturday afternoon, September 28, the Women’s Tax Resistance League held a meeting, followed by a procession in the neighborhood of the prison, and on Sunday there was a large and very sympathetic meeting in Hyde Park. Mrs. Mustard took the chair. Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard and Mrs. [Margaret] Parkes were the speakers. The resolution demanding the release of Mr. Wilks was carried unanomously. Nightly meetings are held in Brixton by the Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage.

A great demonstration will take place on Saturday afternoon next, at 3.30, in Trafalgar-square. Members of the Women’s Freedom League and all sympathisers are asked to come and to bring their friends. There will be a large attendance of London County Council teachers — more than 3,000 of whom have signed a petition against the arrest of Mr. Wilks.

A deputation of Members of Parliament and other influential men is being arranged by Sir John Cockburn to wait upon Mr. Lloyd George and to see him personally about the case.

Also from the same issue:

Ignominious Defeat of Law-Makers.

We hope earnestly that before this issue of our Vote appears, news of the relase of Mark Wilks will be brought to us. It seems to us impossible that the authorities of the country can persist in their foolish and cruel action. But, in the meantime and in any case, it may be well for us seriously to consider the situation. We are bound together, men and women, in a certain order. For the maintenance of that order, it has been found necessary for communities and nations all over the world to impose laws upon themselves. In countries that call themselves democratic, it is contended that the civil law is peculiarly binding, because the people not only consent, but, where they have sufficient understanding, demand that the laws which bind them shall, in certain contingencies, be made or changed or repealed according to their need, and because by their voice they place in seats of power the men whom they believe to be honest and wise enough to carry out their will.

That, at least, is the ideal of democracy. For several generations the British nation has claimed the honour of being foremost in the road that leads to its achievement. We (or rather the men of the country) boast of our free institutions, of our free speech, of the liberty of the individual within the law to which he has consented, of the right to fair trial and judgment by his peers when he is accused of offences against that law; above all — and now we have the difference between a democratically governed country and one under despotic rule — not to be liable to punishment for the omission of that which he is unable to perform.

It seems clear and simple enough — what any intelligent schoolboy knows; and yet our so-called Liberal Government, which flaunts in every direction the flag of democracy, which proclaims, here severely and there with dulcet persuasion, that liberty for all is their aim, and that “the will of the people shall prevail,” does not hesitate, when it is question of a reform movement which it dislikes and despises, to set itself in direct opposition to its own avowed principles.

For what do the arrest and imprisonment of Mark Wilks mean? We are perfectly certain that it will not last long. Stupid and inept as it has been, the Government, we are certain, will not risk the odium which would justly fall upon it if this outrage on liberty went on. A Government which has much at stake and which lives by the breath of popular opinion cannot afford to ignore such strong and healthy protest as is being poured out on all sides. To us, who are in the midst of it, that which seems most remarkable is the growth of public feeling. In the streets where processions are nightly held, we were met at first by banter and rowdyism. “A man in prison for the sake of Suffragettes!” To the boy-mind of the metropolis, on the outskirts of many an earnest crowd, that seemed irresistibly funny; but thoughtfulness is spreading; into even the boy-mind, the light of truth is creeping. If it had done nothing else, the imprisonment of Mark Wilks has certainly done this — it has educated the public mind. It is not we, the Suffragists alone — it is women and men in hosts who are asking, What do these things mean?

On the part of these in our movement they mean courage, determination, skilful generalship — aye, and speedy triumph. On the part of our opponents, perplexity and failure.

“This is defeat, fierce king, not victory,” said Shelly’s Prometheus, when from his rock of age-long pain he hurled heroic defiance at his tormentor.

The ills with which thou torturest gird my soul
To fresh resistance till the day arrive
When these shall be no types of things that are.

Woman, in this professedly liberty-loving country, may echo the hero’s words. Defeat, in very truth, for what can the authorities do? Their position is an extraordinary one. In a lucid interval, politicians — not clearly, it may be, understanding the issues involved — passed the Married Women’s Property Act. We believe there were no Antis then to guide and encourage woman-fearing man. This may partly account for it. In any case, the deed was done. Married, no less than single women and widows, became owners of their own property and lords of their own labour. It would have saved the country from much unnecessary trouble if, then, politicians had gone a step further, if they had recognised woman’s personal responsibility as mother, wage-earner or property-owner, and had dealt with her directly. Love of compromise, unfortunately, weighs too deeply on the soul of the modern politician for him to be able to take so wise a course, and it is left for his successor to unravel the tangle.

What are the authorities to do? While, with threats of violence and dark hints of disciplined, organised resistance, Ulster defies them, Suffragists by almost miraculous endurance are breaking open prison doors. While brutal men, under the very eyes of a Minister of the Crown, are torturing and insulting women, in token, we presume, of their devotion to him, the story of the wrongs of women — not only these but others — is being noised abroad. None of our recent publications has been bought so freely as “The White Slave Traffic.” While well-known women tax-resisters are left at large, a man who has not resisted, but who respects women and will not coerce his wife, is arrested and locked up in prison without trial, and, since he cannot pay, for an indeterminate time. A pretty mess indeed, which will take more than the subtlety of an Asquith, a Lloyd George or a McKenna to render palatable to the men on whose votes they depend for their continuance in power! In a few days they will be faced with a further difficult problem. Women are prepared to resist, not only the Income, but also the Insurance Tax.

Let us see what the alternatives are. Mark Wilks may be let out as Miss [Clemence] Housman was; but that will not help the Government. It is a poor satisfaction to a creditor of national importance to know that his debtor is or has been in prison. He wants his money, and the example of one resister may be followed by many others. If so, that big thing the Exchequer suffers. The creditor may, when Parliament comes together, pleading urgency, pass an Act which will make married women responsible for their own liabilities. That might result in a revolt of married women which would have serious consequences. Men who live at ease with their children, shepherded by admirable wives, would find it, to say the least, inconvenient to be deprived periodically of their services. And these men might be in the position of Mark Wilks. They might not be able to pay, while their wives might have no goods on which distraint could be made. Truly the position would be pitiable.

Over the Insurance Act the same difficulties will arise. What is a distraught Government to do?

The answer is clear. The one and only alternative that lies before our legislators is at once to take steps whereby women — workers, mothers, property-owners — shall become citizens. That done, we will pay our taxes with alacrity; we will bring our quota of service to the State that needs our aid, and the unmannerly strife between man and woman will cease.

In the meantime, the law and the legislator are defeated ignominiously, and it is becoming more and more evident that, in a very near future, “the will of the people shall prevail.”

C. Despard.

Also from the same issue:

The “Favouritism” of the Law.

It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to devise a situation which would show more clearly than does the Wilks’ case, how absolutely incapable is the average man of grasping a woman’s point of view, or of realising her grievances and legal disabilities. For seventy years men have been cooly appropriating the Income-tax refunded by the Inland Revenue on their wives incomes. Did anybody ever hear of a man raising a protest against the state of the law which made it possible and legal for a husband to do this? My own experience covers a good many years of Income-tax work, and the handling of some hundreds of cases, but the only complaints I have ever heard have come from the defrauded wives. I have observed that the men always accepted the position with the utmost equanimity. But now, when by the exercise of considerable ingenuity, women have contrived, for once in a way, to put the boot on the other leg, the Press and the public generally is filled with horror, and the air is rent with shrieks of protest from the male sex.

The Evening News sapiently remarks that women might have been expected to have more sense than to seek to show up a law which is “so obviously in their favour”! And The Scotsman says: “One would imagine that the last thing the Wilks’ case would be used for is to illustrate the grievance which woman suffers under the law. Here two laws combine to favour the wife and inflict wrong upon the husband.” And it goes on to deride women and “their inherent illogicality.” Here we see clearly manifest the absolute incapacity of man to realise the existence of any injustice until it touches himself or his fellow man. Nothing could well be more logical than the holding of a man responsible for non-payment of his wife’s Income-tax, since it is the necessary and inevitable corollary of the theory that a wife’s income belongs to her husband, and that all refunds of Income-tax must be made to him, and to him only. It is in accordance with logic and also with strict business principles that no person can claim the advantages of his legal position while repudiating its disadvantages. Thus if a man dies leaving money, his son cannot claim to take that money and at the same time repudiate his father’s debts. He must accept the one with the other. And in exactly the same way, women are no longer going to allow men to claim their legal right to demand re-payment of their wives’ Income-tax, unless they also accept their legal responsibility for its non-payment. The game of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose is played out, and the sooner men realise this fact the better it will be for everybody. The “logic” of The Scotsman and its contemporaries is no longer good enough for women. The law must be forced to take its course where men are concerned as it does where women are concerned.

As to the provisions of the Income-tax Act favouring the wife and wronging the husband, I can only say that Mr. Wilks’ case is the first in all my experience where these provisions acted adversely to the husband. And even in this case they only so acted because women had laid their heads together to bring it about, and thus show how little men relish a law of their own making when it begins to act on the boomerang principle, and they find themselves “hoist with their own petard.”

A few actual instances, casually selected out of a large number, will show how wives have hitherto been “favoured.” A man and his wife have £100 a year each, taxed (at 1s. 2d. in the £) by deduction before they receive it. There are four children, on each of whom the husband is entitled to claim a rebate of £10 a year. (The wife, it should be noted, can never claim any rebate whether she has a dozen or a score of children. And if a widow, having children, re-marries, the rebate on these children goes to thei step-father.) Consequently the husband can, and does, reclaim not only the tax deducted from his own income, i.e. £5 16s. 8d., but also the £5 16s. 8d. deducted from his wife’s income. So he really pays no tax at all, and gains £5 16s. 8d. while she loses a similar amount. Thus the actual position is, that the wife is only worth £94 a year, while he is worth £106 a year, though nominally their incomes are the same. If single, each could claim repayment of £5 16s. 8d., therefore marriage represents a loss to the wife, but a profit to her husband.

A member of the Women’s Freedom League was forced to leave her husband on account of his misconduct, and to bring up and educate her children without any financial aid from him. But for a number of years he regularly drew the “repayment” of her Income-tax, until a merciful Providence removed him from this mundane sphere, by which time it was calculated that she had lost, and he had gained, about £200. At his death she, of course, ceased to be a legal “idiot,” and was allowed to claim her repayment for herself. I may remark here that the Income-tax Act has a favourite method of classifying certain sections of the community, namely, as “idiots, married women, lunatics and insane persons.” I don’t know precisely what the difference is betwen a “lunatic” and an “insane person,” but doubtless there is a difference, though unintelligent persons might think they were synonymous terms.

As regards the point of resemblance between the “idiot” and the “married woman,” it is rather obscure, but after intense mental application I have succeeded in locating it; and really when somebody illuminates it for you it becomes clear as daylight. It is quite evident to me that our super-intelligent legislators are convinced that the woman who is capable of going and getting married is an utter “idiot,” and in fact next door to a “lunatic.” Well, men ought to know their own sex, and if they say that the women who marry them are idiots, it must be true, I suppose. We may therefore take it that a woman evinces her intelligence by remaining unmarried. I ought humbly to explain that, being married myself, I am only one of the idiots, and therefore my ideas on any subject must not be taken to have the slightest value. But to return to our instances of “favouritism,” another man has £230 a year and his wife £170 a year. She pays Income-tax (deducted before receipt) to the tune of £9 18s. 4d., and he pays 2s. 6d.. It sounds impossible, perhaps; but when you know the rules it is quite simple. To begin with, he gets an abatement of £160, which leaves him with £70. Then he gets a further abatement of £67 for insurance premiums, a great part of which premiums are paid by his wife on her own life. This leaves him with a taxable income of slightly over £3, on which he pays 9d. in the £1., amounting to half-a-crown. This couple have no children. If they had any he would begin not only to pay no tax himself, but to have some of hers repaid to him. She, however, under any circumstances, will always be mulcted of the £9 18s. 4d.; unless she becomes a widow, when she will be able to reclaim the whole amount. (The official forms supplied to those reclaiming Income-tax read: “A woman must state whether spinster or widow.”) If we reverse the financial position of this couple, and assume that she receives £230 and he only £170, she would then be paying £13 8s. 4d. Income-tax. Contrast this with his payment of half-a-crown in the same circumstances, and observe how highly she is “favoured.” He, however, would then pay nothing and would receive a “refund” of nearly £3 10s. a year.

A very enterprising and smart young fellow was able to treat himself to a really nice motor-cycle — not the sort that has a side-car for a lady — out of his wife’s “repaid” tax; repaid to him, I mean. He can’t support himself, but depends on her, as she has just about enough for them both to rub along on, though she can’t afford luxuries for herself, and wouldn’t have paid for his. But the Inland Revenue gave him her money quite cooly and without the slightest fuss.

The “Scotsman” will be pleased to hear that this poor husband manages to bear up quite bravely under his “wrongs,” and seems indeed to get a considerable amout of satisfaction out of them. His wife, I am truly sorry to say, doesn’t properly appreciate the favour shown to her by the law.

But then men are naturally brave, and women are by nature a thoroughly ungrateful lot I expect, if they could only see themselves as The Scotsman and The Evening News see them.

Ethel Ayers Purdie.

Another article from the same issue reads:

Forerunners.

In this connection it is interesting to note that three years ago two members of our Edinburgh Branch, the Misses N[annie]. and J[essie]. Brown, walked from Edinburgh to London, chatting of Woman Suffrage with the villagers all along the line of route southwards, many of whom had then not even heard about this question. They started from Edinburgh in June and reached London before the end of July. A further point of interest is that the father of these ladies was the last political prisoner in Claton Gaol in 1859. Mr. Brown’s offence was his refusal to pay the Annuity Tax which he considered an iniquitous imposition. He was imprisoned for one week, but received the treatment of a political prisoner; he had the satisfaction of knowing that his protest led to the repeal of the Annuity Tax. The next people who committed a political offence in Edinburgh were two Suffragettes, who last year — fifty-two years later than Mr. Brown’s incarceration — were imprisoned, but were not treated as political prisoners.

Another article from the same issue:

In Hyde Park.

Notwithstanding the showers a good crowd gathered on Sunday to hear Mrs. Despard, who spoke of the anomalies existing in our laws affecting women and taxation, and referred at length to the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks for his inability to pay his wife’s taxes on her earned income. A resolution expressing indignation at this and demanding Mr. Mark Wilks’ release was passed with only five dissentients. The chair was taken by Mrs. Mustard, who told the audience of the indignation felt by the Clapton neighbours and friends of Mr. and Dr. Elizabeth Wilks over his imprisonment.

A note in another article about the activities of local branches said, in part:

…On Friday evening we had our usual open-air meeting. Mr. Hawkins kindly chaired, and Mrs. Tanner spoke with her usual excellency, bringing in the “Wilks” case in her speech, as a specimen of anomaly in law in which the man suffers. The crowd was sympathetic as regarded “poor old Wilks,” but was swayed otherwise by mistaken ideas of our aims and motives.…

---

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Now available thanks to Shawn P. Wilbur at Two-Gun Mutualism & the Golden Rule:

FRATERNAL ASSOCIATION

OF THE

SOCIALIST DEMOCRATS

OF BOTH SEXES

FOR THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN

1849

----------------

DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES

In the name of God and the solidarity which links all the member of the great human family;

We affirm that women have the same right as men to liberty, equality and fraternity.

Liberty, for woman as for man, is the right and the power to develop and exercise freely and harmoniously all his physical, intellectual and moral faculties, without any limit but the respect of the rights of each. All liberties are solidary; one cannot undermine any without damaging the others.

Equality is, for man as for woman, he right and power to take part in all the acts of social life, to the degree that one’s faculties and aptitudes allow.

To split humanity into two unequal parts, to refuse to woman here rights to liberty and equality, is to undermine principle and sanction the right of the strongest and of privilege.

Fraternity is the practice and liberty and equality for all, male and female; it is the respect of the rights of all the members of the great human family, the dedication of all to each and each to all.

To refuse to woman her rights of liberty and equality is to perpetuate antagonism, to mistake the respect for human dignity and the principles of fraternity and solidarity which are the basis of universal harmony.

Humanity is male and female; the law formulated by man alone cannot satisfy the needs of humanity.

The law of God, the rights of the people and of woman are misunderstood; the woman, the child, the laborer are oppressed and exploited by incomplete, oppressive and foolish laws, to the profit of the strongest and of those privileged by birth or fortune.

We affirm, in the name of the holy law of solidarity, that no one has the right to be completely free and happy as long as there is one single being that is oppressed and suffering.

We affirm that social reform cannot be accomplished without the assistance of woman, of half of humanity. And just as the political emancipation of the proletarian is the first step towards his physical emancipation, just so the political emancipation of woman is the first step towards the complete liberation of all the oppressed.

That is why we appeal to all women and to all men of heart and intelligence, to all those (male and female) who have the courage of their opinions, respect for principles, and who never recoil from practice, to come to our aid, to enter into the real path of social reform, opening the gates of the city to the last of the pariahs, to woman, without whom we cannot accomplish the work of our social redemption.

1Ëš. The adherents of the association are all women and all men who accept our declaration of principles, and who commit themselves to assist, to the degree enabled by their faculties and aptitudes, in the propagation, teaching and realization of these principles.

2Ëš. The members of the association are either apostles, propagators or subscribers.

3Ëš. Three commissioners direct the labors of the association: an apostolic commission, a commission of propaganda, and a commission of administration.

4Ëš. The apostolic commission is composed of men and women who dedicate themselves to develop, teach and sustain by speech, in all the public meetings, and by their writings, the principles contained in our declaration.

5Ëš. The propaganda commission is composed of all the men and women who have for mission to collect the memberships, and to establish a center of correspondence in all the arrondissements of Paris and all the departments.

6Ëš. The administrative commission is composed of twelve members elected by he subscribers; it is occupied with all the details of administration; a regulation will fix its allocations.

7Ëš. The subscriptions will have for aim: to transform our monthly journal into a weekly journal, the publication of writings approved by the apostolic Pommission, the payment of travel expenses and of all the expenditures necessary for the propagation of principles.

For the members of the Apostolic Commission,

JEANNE DEROIN.
JEAN MACÉ.
HENRIETTE, ARTISTE.
DELBROUCK.
ANNETTE LAMY.
EUGÈNE STOURM.

The members of the Propaganda Commission send the lists of membership and subscription the first of each month to the seat of the Apostolic Commission, at the office of the journal l’Opinion des femmes, 29, grande rue verte.

[translation by Shawn P. Wilbur]

Read the whole thing at Two-Gun Mutualism & the Golden Rule.

Now available thanks to Shawn P. Wilbur at Two-Gun Mutualism & the Golden Rule:

[From P. R. Bennett, Ducdame; a book of verses. 1912.]

The Anarchist

[A critic in the New Age suggests that modern thought can
submit no longer to the tyranny of rhyme and metre.]

Ravachol Needham was a man of letters,
Who refused to submit to the wretched fetters
That sought by rules of rhyme and scansion
To prevent his soaring soul's expansion.

He had languished long on a dismal sonnet
And wasted his eagle spirit on it,
Till the poor old bird had been imprisoned
So long that it grew depressed and wizened,
Drooped its feathers and nearly moulted,
Could stand it no longer — and then revolted.

He rent his regular rhymes asunder
And cried to Heaven in a voice of thunder:
"From now henceforth I intend to go it
As a go-as-I-jolly-well-please prose poet."
He spread his wings as he gaily rose
On the relatively free fresh winds of prose,
And revelled in the rapture of rhymeless reason,
Soaking his soul in the same for a season.

He offered to match his prose style any day
Against such masters as Mr. Bart Kennedy,
And even modelled a few of his speeches
On an English translation of a book of Nietzsche's.
But a man's no better than a servile helot if
He doesn't understand that Freedom's relative,
And Liberty's a man-destroying ogress
If she isn't prepared for continual progress.

He soon discovered that the chains of syntax
Were chafing his mind like a thousand tin-tacks.
So he set to work with tongs and hammer
And freed himself from the gyves of grammar;
He expressed his message with astonishing rapidity;
What he lost in form he gained in fluidity.

But after a time it seemed absurd
To imprison his meaning in a wooden word ;
For what are words, after all, but traps
Set by the tyranny of other chaps, —
Cages from which they refuse to free us,
Ready-made coffins for dead ideas.

So he started on a course of total abstention
From any such cut-and-dried convention,
And poured out his soul in a gorgeous brand —
New language that none could understand.

And that was the way that Ravachol Needham
Attained in the end to perfect freedom.

Read the whole thing at Two-Gun Mutualism & the Golden Rule.

Now available thanks to Shawn P. Wilbur at Two-Gun Mutualism & the Golden Rule:

ANARCHISM: COMMUNIST OR INDIVIDUALIST?—BOTH

By Max Nettlau.

ANARCHISM is no longer young, and it may be time to ask ourselves why, with all the energy devoted to its propaganda, it does not spread more rapidly. For even where local activity is strongest, the results are limited, whilst immense spheres are as yet hardly touched by any propaganda at all. In discussing this question, I will not deal with the problem of Syndicalism, which, by absorbing so much of Anarchist activity and sympathies, cannot by that very fact be considered to advance the cause of Anarchism proper, whatever its other merits may be. I will also try not to repeat what I put forward in other articles in years gone by as possible means of increasing the activity of Anarchists. As my advice was not heeded, it cannot, in any case, be considered to have hampered the progress of our ideas.

I will consider the theories of Anarchism only; and here I have been struck for a long time by the contrast between the largeness of the aims of Anarchism—the greatest possible realization of freedom and well-being for all—and the narrowness, so to speak, of the economic program of Anarchism, be it Individualist or Communist. I am inclined to think that the feeling of the inadequacy of this economic basis—exclusive Communism or exclusive Individualism, according to the school—hinders people from acquiring practical confidence in Anarchism, the general aims of which appeal as a beautiful ideal to many. I feel myself that neither Communism nor Individualism, if it became the sole economic form, would realize freedom, which always demands a choice of ways, a plurality of possibilities. I know that Communists, when asked pointedly, will say that they should have no objection to Individualists who wished to live in their own way without creating new monopolies or authority, and vice versa. But this is seldom said in a really open and friendly way; both sections are far too much convinced that freedom is only possible if their particular scheme is carried out. I quite admit that there are Communists and Individualists to whom their respective doctrines, and these alone, give complete satisfaction and leave no problem unsolved (in their opinion); these would not be interfered with, in any case, in their lifelong constancy to one economic ideal. But they must not imagine that all people are constituted after their model and likely to come round to their views or remain "unreclaimed" adversaries on whom no sympathy is to be wasted. Let them but look on real life, which is bearable at all only by being varied and differentiated, in spite of all official uniformity. We all see the survivals of earlier Communism, the manifold workings of present-day solidarity, from which new forms of future Communism may develop—all this in the teeth of the cut-throat capitalist Individualism which predominates. But this miserable bourgeois Individualism, if it created a desire for solidarity, leading to Communism, certainly also created a desire for a genuine, free, unselfish Individualism, where freedom of action would no longer be misused to crush the weaker and to form monopolies, as to-day.

Neither Communism nor Individualism will ever disappear; and if by some mass action the foundations of some rough form of Communism were laid, Individualism would grow stronger than ever in opposition to this. Whenever a uniform system prevails, Anarchists, if they have their ideas at heart, will go ahead of it and never permit themselves to become fossilised upholders of a given system, be it that of the purest Communism.

Will they, then, be always dissatisfied, always struggling, never enjoying rest? They might feel at ease in a state of society where all economic possibilities had full scope, and then their energy might be applied to peaceful emulation and no longer to continuous struggle and demolition. This desirable state of things could be prepared from now, if it were once for all frankly understood among Anarchists that both Communism and Individualism are equally important, equally permanent; and that the exclusive predominance of either of them would be the greatest misfortune that could befall mankind. From isolation we take refuge in solidarity, from too much society we seek relief in isolation: both solidarity and isolation are, each at the right moment, freedom and help to us. All human life vibrates between these two poles in endless varieties of oscillations.

Let me imagine myself for a moment living in a free society. I should certainly have different occupations, manual and mental, requiring strength or skill. It would be very monotonous if the three or four groups with whom I would work (for I hope there will be no Syndicates then!) would be organized on exactly the same lines; I rather think that different degrees or forms of Communism will prevail in them. But might I not become tired of this, and wish for a spell of relative isolation, of Individualism? So I might turn to one of the many possible forms of "equal exchange" Individualism. Perhaps people will do one thing when they are young and another thing when they grow older. Those who are but indifferent workers may continue with their groups; those who are efficient will lose patience at always working with beginners and will go ahead by themselves, unless a very altruist disposition makes it a pleasure to them to act as teachers or advisers to younger people. I also think that at the beginning I should adopt Communism with friends and Individualism with strangers, and shape my future life according to experience. Thus, a free and easy change from one variety of Communism to another, thence to any variety of Individualism, and so on, would be the most obvious and elementary thing in a really free society; and if any group of people tried to check this, to make one system predominant, they would be as bitterly fought as revolutionists fight the present system.

Why, then, was Anarchism cut up into the two hostile sections of Communists and Individualists? I believe the ordinary factor of human shortcomings, from which nobody is exempt, accounts for this. It is quite natural that Communism should appeal more to some, Individualism to others. So each section would work out their economic hypothesis with full ardour and conviction, and by-and-by, strengthened in their belief by opposition, consider it the only solution, and remain faithful to it in the face of all. Hence the Individualist theories for about a century, the Collectivist and Communist theories for about fifty years, acquired a degree of settledness, certitude, apparent permanency, which they never ought to have assumed, for stagnation—this is the word—is the death of progress. Hardly any effort was made in favor of dropping the differences of schools; thus both had full freedom to grow, to become generalized, if they could. With what result?

Neither of them could vanquish the other. Wherever Communists are, Individualists will originate from their very midst; whilst no Individualist wave can overthrow the Communist strongholds. Whilst here aversion or enmity exists between people who are so near each other, we see Communist Anarchism almost effacing itself before Syndicalism, no longer scorning compromise by accepting more or less the Syndicalist solution as an inevitable stepping-stone. On the other hand, we see Individualists almost relapse into bourgeois fallacies —all this at a time when the misdeeds of authority, the growth of State encroachments, present a better occasion and a wider field than ever for real and outspoken Anarchist propaganda.

It has come to this, that at the French Communist Anarchist Congress held in Paris last year Individualism was regularly stigmatised and placed outside the pale of Anarchism by a formal resolution. If ever an international Anarchist Congress was held on these lines, endorsing a similar attitude, I should say good-bye to all hopes placed in this kind of sectarian Anarchism.

By this I intend neither to defend nor to combat Communism or Individualism. Personally, I see much good in Communism; but the idea of seeing it generalized makes me protest. I should not like to pledge my own future beforehand, much less that of anybody else. The Question remains entirely open for me; experience will show which of the extreme and of the many intermediate possibilities will be the best on each occasion, at each time. Anarchism is too dear to me that I should care to see it tied to an economic hypothesis, however plausible it may look to-day. Unique solutions will never do, and whilst everybody is free to believe in and to propagate his own cherished ideas, he ought not to feel it right to spread them except in the form of the merest hypothesis, and every one knows that the literature of Communist and Individualist Anarchism is far from keeping within these limits; we have all sinned in this respect.

In the above I have used the terms "Communist" and "Individualist" in a general way, wishing to show the useless and disastrous character of sectional exclusiveness among Anarchists. If any Individualists have said or done absurd things (are Communists impeccable?), to show these up would not mean to refute me. All I want is to see all those who revolt against authority work on lines of general solidarity instead of being divided into little chapels because each one is convinced he possesses a correct economic solution of the social problem. To fight authority in the capitalist system and in the coming system of State Socialism, or Syndicalism, or of both, or all the three combined, an immense wave of real Anarchist feeling is wanted, before ever the question of economic remedies comes in. Only recognize this, and a large sphere of solidarity will be created, which will make Communist Anarchism stand stronger and shine brighter before the world than it does now.

* * *

P. S.—Since writing the above I have found an early French Anarchist pamphlet, from which I translate the following:

"Thus, those who feel so inclined will unite for common life, duties, and work, whilst those to whom the slightest act of submission would give umbrage will remain individually independent. The real principle [of Anarchism] is this far from demanding integral Communism. But it is evident that for the benefit of certain kinds of work many producers will unite, enjoying the advantages of co-operation. But I say once more, Communism will never be a fundamental [meaning unique and obligatory] principle, on account of the diversity of our intellectual faculties, of our needs, and of our will."

This quotation (the words in brackets are mine) is taken from p. 72 of what may be one of the scarcest Anarchist publications, on which my eye lit on a bookstall ten days after writing the above article: "Philosophie de l'lnsoumission ou Pardon a Cain," par Felix P. (New York, 1854, iv. 74 pp., 12mo)—that is, "Philosophy of Non-Submission," the author's term for Anarchy. I do not know who Felix P. was; apparently one of the few French Socialists, like Dejacque, Bellegarrigue, Coeurderoy, and Claude Pelletier, whom the lessons of 1848 and other experiences caused to make a bold step forward and arrive at Anarchism by various ways and independent of Proudhon. In the passage quoted he put things into a nutshell, leaving an even balance between the claims of Communism and Individualism. This is exactly what I feel in 1914, sixty years after. The personal predilections of everybody would remain unchanged and unhurt, but exclusivism would be banished, the two vital principles of life allied instead of looking askance at each other.

[Source: Mother Earth. 9, 5 (July 1914) 170-175.]

Read the whole thing at Two-Gun Mutualism & the Golden Rule.

Now available thanks to Shawn P. Wilbur at Two-Gun Mutualism & the Golden Rule:

This short piece by Emile Armand appeared in Horace Traubel's The Conservator in 1910. It's an interesting piece to have appeared in a magazine dominated by the shadow of Walt Whitman—and an interesting example of Armand's thought.

THE GULF

All the societies of the vanguard—Social Democrats, revolutionaries of all shades, various communists—say that the individual is a "product of his environment." It would be more exact to say that individuals are products of their environment, adding that the individual person, more especially, is the end of an ancestral line, which traces its origin back into animal darkness, holding this fact accountable for certain individuals in whom essentially predominate the characteristics of temperament and disposition of a particular ancestry. All societies—religious, lay, collectivist revolutionaries or not—say that the individual is a composite, therefore a dependent upon his environment. The anarchist individualists wish to make the individual person an independent, therefore a decomposite of his environment. The societies see in the individual a stone of the structure, a member of the body. The anarchists aim to make each individual person a distinct organism, a unified freeman. Whence two conceptions of education and propaganda:

1st. The social conception, which regards the individual as a wheelwork of society, and in its most audacious dreams does not go beyond the idea of the tremendous final transformation or revolution of the environment. It regards evolution as a quantitative result, a question of numbers. It takes the child or the adult, and, a priori, fills him with the concept of binding solidarity, of necessary harmony, of a communal organization inevitable and universal. It proceeds by shaping the brain after a pattern arranged in advance. It prescribes a special education.

2nd. The anarchistic conception, which regards the individual as detached—as the cause or reason of all association—who opposes it to society, and who would daringly like to make each personal life a ferment destructive to the prescribed or submissive life of the environment. It considers that all emancipation is due to quality, to individual effort. It seeks to make the child or the adult more competent for resistance, better endowed, a being deciding for himself as much as he can his own needs, and supplying them as much as possible; a union now or to come of others more capable or better endowed in one way or another. Outside of all intervention, of all guardianship, of all protection of the state or the community. Anarchistic education does not proceed by force, but by free examination, by approved elimination. It suggests, it selects.

And these two points of view are irreconcilable.

E. Armand.

Read the whole thing at Two-Gun Mutualism & the Golden Rule.

Now available thanks to Roderick at Austro-Athenian Empire:

The great, ensuring power by purchased votes,
richly their so-called masters subsidise,
who, willingly enchained in gilded bonds,
are ruled by those they think that they control.

— Pierre Corneille, Cinna

Read the whole thing at Austro-Athenian Empire.

Now available thanks to bkmarcus at lowercase liberty:

The crickets sang in the grasses. They sang the song of summer’s ending, a sad, monotonous song. “Summer is over and gone,” they sang. “Over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying.”

The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year — the days when summer is changing into fall the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.

Everybody heard the song of the crickets. Avery and Fern Arable heard it as the walked the dusty road. They knew that school would soon begin again. The young geese heard it and knew that they would never be little goslings again. Charlotte heard it and knew that she hadn’t much time left. Mrs. Zuckerman, at work in the kitchen, heard the crickets, and a sadness came over her, too. “Another summer gone,” she sighed. Lurvy, at work building a crate for Wilbur, heard the song and knew it was time to dig potatoes.

“Summer is over and gone,” repeated the crickets. “How many nights till frost?” sang the crickets. “Good-bye, summer, good-bye, good-bye!”

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White, Chapter 15: “The Crickets”

Read the whole thing at lowercase liberty.

Now available thanks to bkmarcus at lowercase liberty:

This is from The Way of Herodotus: Travels with the Man Who Invented History by Justin Marozzi:

I entered Babylon with an invading army and now I leave in the last available Coalition convoy. The occupation forces are moving on. Camp Babylon is closing down and Polish and American forces are relocating south-east to the town of Diwaniyah. The desecration of Babylon, for the time being at least, is over.

I hitch a ride in one of the few unarmoured Humvees and immediately feel uncomfortably exposed. It’s too late to do anything about it. I’m lucky to get a seat. Body armour has been hung over the doors, almost as an afterthought, to provide a modicum of protection, but serves only to underline how vulnerable the vehicle is. We set off in an untidy straggle like a snake slithering away from trouble. The end-of-an-era atmosphere hangs heavily in the air. I am a short-term impostor but these men have been here for months in what will be a shameful footnote in Babylon’s history. Everyone knows the Iraqis can’t wait for the invaders to leave this place, the symbol of their country’s unrivalled history. Most of the soldiers couldn’t care less. They have just been doing their job.

[…]

‘Dudes, get this,’ says one of the sergeants in the Humvee, turning to me. I see a dusty self-portrait in his wraparound sunglasses. ‘Justin, you’ll like this, these guys are Brits. Check out our farewell-to-all-this-bullshit song.’

He pushes a button on his portable stereo and a tinny voice vibrates through the sand-smothered speakers. It is an anthem of my childhood. Boney M. 1978.

By the rivers of Babylon,
There we sat down
Ye-ah we wept,
When we remembered Zion …

The wind rushing through the Humvee snatches some of the music away, but I know the words. They have lodged in my memory and cannot be removed. The soldiers hoo-rah and whistle. ‘Rock ‘n’ roll, baby!’ one of them screams, kicking off another round of celebrations. Their time in Babylon has come to an end. They are a step nearer home.

The ‘Rivers of Babylon’ lyrics were directly lifted from Psalm 137, a melancholic meditation on slavery by the Jewish captives in Babylon, sitting on the banks of the Euphrates. They are enslaved in a foreign land, far from their home, where their captors mock their religion and demand they entertain them with ‘one of the songs of Zion’.

‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’ they reply, utterly bereft. The Babylonians are foreigners, no part of the covenant God made with Abraham. These barbarians have laid waste to Jerusalem, and the Jews, missing their religion, longing for their temples, urge each other not to forget what happened in their homeland, to remember their tormentors’ orders to raze the holy city to the ground -’Raze it, raze it, to its very foundation!’ Now they wish only vengeance upon their captors. This is no New Testament turn-the-other-cheek response to their humiliation and captivity because we are in the fire-and-brimstone Old Testament world of an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. But all this bloodlust proved too much for Boney M, otherwise so faithful to Psalm 137. The group wisely left out the final verses.

0 daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed,
Happy the one who repays you as you have served us!
Happy the one who takes and dashes
Your little ones against the rock!

Read the whole thing at lowercase liberty.

Now available thanks to Shawn P. Wilbur at Two-Gun Mutualism & the Golden Rule:

It's long, and the translation is still a little rough, but I would encourage folks to take the time to read Joseph Déjacque's The Circulus in Universality and to look at the other texts by him: "To the Ci-Devant Dynastics," Down with the Bosses!,  "The Theory of Infinitesimal Humanities," and the excerpt from The Humanisphere published as "Authority and Idleness." Once you have some sense of the terrain, you may also want to take a look at the in-progress translation of The Humanisphere that Jesse Cohn has posted.

Déjacque is another of those figures who deserves to be more than just a genealogical footnote in the histories of anarchism, an anarchist-communist predecessor whose work remains largely unknown. He called out Proudhon for being a sexist jerk (although his defense of Jenny d’Héricourt was itself a bit masculinist) and invited him to become "frankly and completely an anarchist" by giving up all forms of property—and of contract—demonstrating that he was a much more astute reader of Proudhon than many, then and since. He wrote a wild utopia incorporating lots of elements borrowed from Fourier and Leroux—all pushed to their libertarian extremes. I don't think anyone can get very far into any of Déjacque's works without sensing that the waters are deep—and rather uncharted for most of us.

It helps to know a bit about Fourier's theory, according to which the motive force of everything is the action of "the passions," which inspire not only human behavior, but the movement of animals, stars and planets, etc. (For "passional zoology," for instance, check out these translations from Toussenel's writings.) Fourier was convinced that the "civilized" tendency to treat the passions as opposed to reason and progress was entirely wrong-headed, and instead aimed towards a society where all the passions—even, or perhaps especially, those considered propagators of vice—would find harmonious outlets. When Proudhon claimed that there are "as many special rights as humans can raise different claims," and insisted on seeking the progressive "aims" of presently-despotic institutions like property, he was working on Fourier's turf. Fourier sketched out much of what Déjacque presents as "the circulus in universality," and certainly paved the way for the account of "humanities" ranging from the "infinitesimal" to the "multiversal," but Déjacque also drew inspiration from Pierre Leroux, who generalized from Fourier's hints. Leroux understood the constant movement and complex interconnection of everything in terms of a kind of general "communion." (For a taste of his secularized, neo-christian "gospel of humanity," see "What If the Gospel was Right?" or the "Aphorisms" compiled by Luc Désages, Auguste Desmoulins. For William B. Greene's take on all of this, see The Doctrine of Life.) Déjacque's fierce anti-clerical feelings didn't prevent him from picking up the sense of communion from Leroux, any more than his related anti-property position prevented him from placing the egoistic individual at the heart of his anarchist utopia.

What follows is one more section from The Humanisphere, which immediately precedes the section sometimes labeled "Authority and Idleness." It's strong stuff, in many ways, particularly in its treatment of all forms of "constraint."

… Constraint is the mother of all vices. And it is banished by reason from the Humanisphere. Of course egoism, intelligent egoism, is too well developed there for anyone to think of assaulting their neighbor. And it is by egoism that they make fair exchanges.

Man is egoism. Without egoism, man would not exist. It is egoism which is the motive of all his actions, the motor of all his thoughts. It is what makes him think of his own preservation, and of his development, which is also his preservation. It is egoism which teaches him to produce in order to consume, to care for others because they are in agreement, to like others because they like him, to work for others because those other have worked for him. It is egoism which stimulates his ambition and excites him to distinguish himself in all the careers where man employs his strength, skill, and intelligence. It is egoism which elevates him to the height of genius; it is to improve himself, to enlarge the circle of his influence, that man carries his head high and sets his gaze on the distance. It is for his own gratification that he marches off to win collective satisfactions. It is for himself, individually, that he wants to participate in the lively effervescence of the general good fortune; it is for his own sake that he dreads the thought of the suffering of others. His egoism, constantly goaded by the instinct of his gradual development, and by the sentiment of solidarity which ties him to his fellows, demands perpetual expression of his existence in the existence of others. It is what ancient society improperly called devotion, but which is only speculation—more humanitarian as it is more intelligent, and more humanicidal as it is more idiotic. Man in society only reaps what he sows. If he reaps disease, he sows disease. He reaps health if he sows health. Man is the social cause of all the effects he suffers in society. If he is brotherly, he will create fraternity among those around him, if he is fratricidal, he will create fratricide. It is not humanly possible to make a move, to act with the arms, the heart or the brain, without the sensation reflecting back from one to the other like an electric shock. And that takes place in the state of anarchic community, in the state of free and intelligent nature, as in the state of civilization, the state of domesticated man, of nature enchained. Only, in civilization, man being institutionally at war with man, he can only envy the good fortune of his neighbor, and howl and gnash his teeth at his expense. He is a mastiff, tied, crouching in his kennel and gnawing his bone, growling in ferocious and constant menace. Under anarchy, man, being harmonically at peace with his fellows, will know that competition with them, in the pursuit of their passions, will bring universal good fortune. In the Humanisphere, a hive where liberty is the queen, man gathering from men only perfumes, will know how to produce only honey. So don’t curse egoism, for to curse egoism is to curse man. The suppression of our passions is the sole cause of their disastrous effects. Man, like society, is perfectible. General ignorance has been the inevitable cause of our misfortunes; universal science will be the remedy. Let us educate ourselves, therefore, and let us spread the knowledge around us. Let us analyze, compare, contemplate and thus arrive at the scientific knowledge of our natural mechanisms.

In the Humanisphere, there is no government. An attractive organization takes the place of legislation. The liberty of sovereign individuals presides over all collective decisions. The authority of anarchy, the absence of all dictatorship of number or strength, replaces arbitrary authority, the despotism of the sword and the law. Faith in ourselves is the religion of the Humanisphereans. Gods and priests, religious superstitions will rouse against themselves universal disapproval. It is by their own laws that each governs themselves, and it is on that government of each by himself that the social order is founded.

Consult history, and see if authority has ever been anything but universal suicide. The destruction of man by man—do you call that order? Is it order that reigns in Paris, in Warsaw, in St. Petersburg, in Vienna, in Rome, in Naples and Madrid, in aristocratic England and democratic America? I tell you that it is murder! Order with dagger or cannon, gallows or guillotine; order with Siberia or Cayenne, with the knout or the bayonet, with the watchman’s baton or the sword of the policeman; order personified in that homicidal trinity: iron, gold, and holy water; the order of gunshots, or shots from bibles or bank-bills; the order which sits enthroned on corpses and feeds on them, that can pass for order in moribund civilizations, but it will never be anything but disorder, a gangrene in societies lacking the sentiment of life. Authorities are vampires, and vampires are monsters who only live in cemeteries and only walk in darkness.

Consult your memories and you will see that the greatest absence of authority has always produced the greatest amount of harmony. See the people atop their barricades, and say if in these passing moments anarchy, they do not testify, by their conduct, in favor of natural order. Among these men who are there, arms bare and black with powder, there are certainly no lack of ignorant natures, men hardly smoothed by the plane of social education, and capable, in their private life and as heads of families, of many brutalities towards their wives and children. See them, then, in the midst of the public insurrection and in the role of men momentarily free. Their brutality has been transformed as by magic into sweet courtesy. Let a woman pass by, and they will have only decent and polite words for her.

...

Now then the absence of orders is the true order. The law and the sword is only the order of bandits, the code of theft and murder that presides at the division of the spoils, at the massacre of the victims. It is on that bloody pivot that the civilized world turns. Anarchy is its antipode, and that antipode is the axis of the humanispherean world.

— Liberty is all their government.
— Liberty is all their constitution.
— Liberty is all their legislation.
— Liberty is all their regulation.
— Liberty is all their contracts.
— Everything that is not liberty is outside of morals.
— Liberty, all liberty, nothing but liberty — such is the formula engraved on the tablets of their conscience, the criterion of all their relations with one another.

  If I were presenting all of this in a classroom, I suspect my questions to students would be about what kind of "anarchist communism" is implied by Déjacque's work....

Read the whole thing at Two-Gun Mutualism & the Golden Rule.

Three months ago, I happily announced that the complete text of the November 1914 issue of Mother Earth had been made available at the Fair Use Repository. To-day, I’m pleased to follow up that announcement — with the announcement that the Fair Use Repository now features the complete text of three issues of Mother Earth. The two issues recently made available are:

Mother Earth, Vol. VI., No. 11 (January, 1912)

This issue is mainly occupied with the arts and revolution. It leads off with Blaming the Fester, a poem by Rebekah E. Raney. The New Year is a fundraising appeal on the occasion of Christmastime and the New Year, while Observation and Comments includes short reports on current events — delays in the publication of Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, the trial of the bosses who’d locked workers into the the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, strikes and conspiracy trials around the country, Big Bill Haywood’s feud with the Socialist Party of America, and more.

Paul Orleneff offers a celebratory review (unsigned, but probably written by Emma Goldman) of the actor’s performances in New York. A Review of the Year, by Harry Kelly, and the continuation of a serialized article by Voltairine de Cleyre on The Mexican Revolution, discuss revolutions and uprisings flaring up throughout the world in 1911. In The Right to Live M. B. argues that political rights are empty without workers’ material control over the means of their own survival (the organization of society in a manner to insure to each the material basis of life and make it as self-evident as breathing). Max Baginski reviews the Autobiography of Richard Wagner, taking it as evidence of the old commonplace that one can be a great artist and yet small as a man, and concluding that The suffocating dependence of artistic production upon wealth and patronage should cause the true artist–who is not content to produce mere market ware–to turn relentlessly rebel against the existing standards, to become a communist. … The dream that Wagner once dreamed in Art and Revolution will some day be realized by the people,–nor will they need the aid of philosopher or king. The issue concludes with a continuation of the serialized article Economy as Viewed by An Anarchist by C. L. James, on the historical emergence of the bourgeois system and its connections with past forms of economic hierarchy, as well as with the subjection of women.

Mother Earth, Vol. VII., No. 12 (February, 1913)

The February 1913 issue has a few things to say about the State and a lot to say about the union struggle, Syndicalism, and government repression of striking workers. The issue leads off with To Our Friends, an appeal for readers to help widen the circulation of the journal, followed by another monthly instalment of short reports in Observations and Comments — including remarks on the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, the futility of appeals to the law, the advantages of direct action, new strike arbitration laws in New Zealand (among the first such labor laws in the world), the legal repression of Anarchists in the U.S., police scandals in Denver, and the incorporation of the Rockefeller fund.

James Montgomery’s The Black Hundreds of Plutocracy and Government discusses the use of private security forces, with tacit or explicit government approval, to inflict large-scale violence on striking workers. The New Idol, a translation of an excerpt from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, declares the State the coldest of all cold monsters. Theodor Johnson’s Help Save These Comrades! reports on the case of a group of striking Swedish dock workers, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for a bomb plot, and calls for international solidarity to get their sentences commuted. Making a Strike a Crime government’s assault on the rights to picket and speak freely, with the imprisonment of dozens of peaceful picketers and speakers in Little Falls, New York during a textile mill strike. Intolerance in the Union comments on growing regimentation and bureaucratic control within conservative trade unions and reprints a letter from a comrade discussing his objections to a corrupt bargain made by his union’s labor bosses, which resulted in his being persecuted by the labor bosses and expelled from the union. Syndicalism: Its Theory and Practice concludes a long article by Emma Goldman on state-free Syndicalist organizing, with a discussion of Syndicalism’s characteristic methods — Direct Action, Sabotage, and the General Strike. The issue concludes with Anarchist writer and teacher Bayard Boyesen’s review of Alexander Berkman’s Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, and with an announcement of dates for Emma Goldman’s lecture tour through the Midwest.

Onward

These issues complete a set of three reprinted issues of Mother Earth that I picked up from a table at the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair. I’d very much like to make available more of Mother Earth’s print run online. A number of partial and complete issues — mostly earlier issues — are currently available from The Anarchy Archives, and a fair amount is available for browsing in Google Books. But I’d like to liberate the latter from the Google Books’s inaccurate automatic markup, often capricious behavior, and hypertext-unfriendly environment. And in any case, there are a lot of gaps to fill in. If you have any suggestions on issues to prioritize, or good lines on copies to be transcribed, please feel free to leave a comment here, or contact me with the details.

Read, cite, and enjoy!