Published: Commonweal, Vol. 6 No. 233, Saturday 28th June 1900, p. 201
Source:: Commonweal
Transcribed: by Graham Seaman for the Marxists' Internet Archive in August 2025
Last edited: August 2025.
Six years ago we could not foretell how Socialist propaganda would fare in this country whether it would at the outset provoke fierce antagonism and repressive measures from the privileged classes against us, or whether it would be reckoned as of no little account, or of such visionary aim, that few would care to trouble themselves about us.
It is pleasant now to know that our propaganda has so far escaped both those fates, and that in quite a marvellous way it has converted men and women of all classes, and has become a formidable and threatening power against the existing order of things almost without encountering serious resistance or repression. Useless conflict with the authorities over trivial matters of tactics, the wholesale discharge of workmen for participating in propaganda work, general ostracism in social and commercial life those and many other pains and penalties, which most of us then in the movement expected would be rife if our cause achieved much success or publicity, have been comparatively rare.
It is true that several tragic incidents, such as the Trafalgar Square murders and a goodly number of fine and imprisonment cases, have accompanied our efforts; but considering the extreme character of our teaching, its total and unequivocal subversiveness of every existing privilege and power, and remembering also the brutal treatment meted to our comrades in Continental countries, we must frankly admit that our career has been singularly free from many of the difficulties and dangers which we beforehand considered we would have to face and overcome.
We are not, of course, out of the wood yet — far indeed from it — so we must not holloa; but we have, at least, passed almost unscathed one of its most perilous thickets. So far as we have yet gone we have had more fun than fighting, and have spilt more money than blood. Our enemies, too conceited perhaps of their own strength and our weakness, and too busily engaged in over-reaching and plundering each other, have allowed us to pass into and establish ourselves in a portion of their territory which they can never regain, and draw a vast number of their followers to our banner who will never desert us.
But a danger lies ahead, which, if we be not wary, will mar our further progress, and probably make all our efforts of no avail for long years. It is that our enemies, seeing they cannot now undo our success, affect to favour it, and are attempting to so magnify the advantages of our triumph that we and their own disaffected followers may rest satisfied with the little that has been done, or is about to be done, and cease striving for more. They are, in fact, attempting to exploit Socialism as they exploit all other useful and good effort. This is apparent from the drift of all recent political utterances. Socialists are being patted on the back, and told that they are not altogether bad fellows, that they mean well, and that many of their ideas can be put into practice with advantage to everybody. Politicians are vying with each other in hastening to legalise the scraps and fringes of Socialistic propaganda; and as things are at present going on we shall have at no distant date a Parliament of Socialist-Radicals, with Sir William Harcourt or John Morley at its head, using the blessed name of Socialism to cover a mass of ill-reasoned and utterly futile legislation.
Never, therefore, was it more imperative than it is now that the true and complete aim of Socialism should be held before the people's «yes. Never was it more the bounden duty of Socialists to refuse to identify their principles with any mere passing political or mere trades union struggle. Loudly and more loudly should it be proclaimed that .Socialism is not peace but war to Capitalism and class ascendency, and that by no conceivable jugglery of names or masking of features can any form of Capitalism be made tolerable to us.
Perhaps in our anxiety to win the sympathy of timorous and unimaginative people, we have too frequently associated our ideal with the proposals of those who desire to make the existing system less patently brutal and less unendurable, and may be our teaching in future will appear somewhat vindictive in these people's eyes. Perhaps, also, many Opportunist Socialists, strong in the confidence of their own faithfulness and in their conviction that Socialism cannot be kept back, will regard us as somewhat doctrinaire and intolerant, But, surely, it is sufficient for us to say that our vision becomes clearer with the dawn, and that the nearer we approach the time of achievement the more certain and definite should be our aim. We do not say that all men are knaves or fools who do not see as we see; but we do say that we certainly would be knaves or fools if we said we saw otherwise than we do. And we see now that everything that tends to appease the people's discontent, everything that entices them aside from direct revolutionary effort, is wrong, and it is our duty at all times to say that it is wrong. We are not compelled to equivocate; we have no "authorisation," divine or human, to teach what we do not believe; and it is the most repulsive egotism on our part to assume that we can better serve the cause by becoming hypo- crites than remaining honest men.
The seaman who knew from his chart that a certain land lay not far distant across the mid-ocean, and who from fear of the ignorance and cowardice of his fellows pretended it lay by some circuitous and apparently pleasanter route, but where he knew were many hazardous straits and barren and pestilent islands, would not be more culpable than we, who, seeing Communism certain of attainment right ahead of us, if we go forward bravely and patiently, should yet pretend that it would be better to turn aside to innumerable Parliamentary devices, and that we ought to rest awhile on this and that little barren measure of reform, losing uselessly many valuable years and countless lives.
There is no dearth of Opportunists in the world, and there is little a dearth in the immediate future. We shall always have more than enough of "practical men " eager to perform the duty of camp-followers to our movement pretty far in the rear. We know, too, that these people will reap the first fruits of our efforts, just as the crows that follow the ploughshare alight on the furrows and feast on the fresh upturning of the soil. Let them do so perhaps — perhaps they are fulfilling some humble function in the eternal economy of human progress; but let us, regardless of all these little things, do what alone we can do honestly and without misgiving, preach Socialism, and endeavour to achieve it and nothing else. The chief difficulty we have to overcome is the cowardice of the people, and if we would teach them to act bravely we must act bravely ourselves. We can only hasten the Revolution by marching boldly towards it.
J. Bruce Glasier