FOUNDED ON LIBERTY.

*THE WORKER*

Brisbane, January 5, 1895.

Bystanders' Notebook.

SOCIALISM IN OUR TIME.

Capitalism, being an historic category, must be superseded by Socialism. This is my view. To all those who find an echo of their hearts in the motto engraven on the Labour oriflamme, “Socialism in our time;” to all who agree with me that Socialism is the policy of men who think for themselves, I have a few words to say. “Many flattering pictures have hitherto been placed before you; I come to announce a few useful truths.” To those who condemn, who vilify, traduce and strive to blast the sincerity of all who advocate the new doctrine, let us extend our pity; to those whose eyes are filled with the dust wherein they grovel round the money fald stools of the modern Moloch let us give our disgust; but to those whose ears are open to “the sad music of humanity” ringing forever in an immeasurable moan of starving men, women, and children who suffer hopelessly let us give our assistance and our aid in all ways that conduce to speeding the advent of the better time. To the anti-reformers, the toute and buttoners of the political thimble-riggers and Monte de Piete men Socialism is anarchism differently spelled, and in this belief they are daily educated by the “right thinking” variety of newspaper, whose existence depends upon the expertness and luck of the thimbleriggers aforesaid, whose proprietary are the high priests of the image on the fald stool,whose god is piusde and whose gospel is humbug.

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WHY NOT!

“Socialism in our time” Why not! What is to prevent it? Nothing but the decay of intellect. Wherever there is brains there is also a possibility of reform. Lasalle, the epoch-maker, “the messiah of the nineteenth century, “as Heine called him, proved this, and who shall say that there are not many mute and as yet inglorious Lasalles among us to-day. The era of the “fourth estate,” the people, has only begun; it has not yet ended. It is only the Helene Von Domniges who are dying out. The world, swinging sluggishly to the beat of time since 1848, has evolved and demonstrated many unassailable truths, and one of these is the often derided “majesty of the people.” “I give no weight to the signification of words according to the absurd language of prejudice, “ says Mirabean in one of his discourses. “I here speak the language of liberty. When Chatham compressed the charter of nations in a single expression and pronounced the 'majesty of the people'; when the Americans opposed the 'natural rights' of the people to all the trash published against them, they showed they understood the true signification and full energy of an expression to which freedom given so great a value.”

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THE MAJESTY OF THE PEOPLE.

In this one expression, “the majesty of the people,” is found a direct answer to the craven utterances of the pessimistic crowd who deride the soundness of the motto “Socialism in our time.” Pessimism is the faith of cowards, and no one recognising the true value of liberty will allow it a place in his vocabulary. It is only for those who are content to resign all claims to that responsibility which is said to belong only to the wealthy (a new chapter in the gospel of cant). Responsibility has no foundation except that of right, and the rights of wealth are as arbitrary and conventional as those of poverty. In the broad and far-reaching motto of “The Three Musketeers” - “One for all; all for one” - the real definition of right is found. That is the grand responsibility which every man has for the welfare of his fellow man. This also is the keynote of Socialism, and must necessarily find a place in the gospel of all who desire the coming of the new regime. As to the manner in which this new state of existence shall be arrived at, whether peaceably or otherwise, it is a matter which rests as much with the classes themselves as with the people. The projection of such a state, that is the reason which prompts the declaration of a motto such as that adopted by the apostles of the New Order is in itself conclusive proof that a pressing want, a genuine grievance exists.

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FOUNDED ON LIBERTY.

Movements of this kind are not alone, as the impecunious literary slaves of a servile press sweepingly assert, founded on such catch phrases as “ living wage,” tyrannous suppression,” “equality,” &c. They are founded on the one grand principle that animates the hearts of all true men – that of liberty. They are the physical expression of protest on the part of those who find themselves being slowly and surely ousted from participation in that part of their colony's progress which they themselves have helped to establish – i.e. its wealth. It is their recognition of the fact that they are being forced into the condition of mere slaves, and are therefore compelled as a last resource to unite in order that they may be true to their manhood and sell their liberty as dearly as possible. And it is the recognition of this latter fact that causes the rabid organs of so-called public opinion to rave at the heretical doctrines of those who dare to blazon forth the true condition of the people in the motto “Socialism in our time.” As to whether Socialism means Iconoclasm, Anarchism, Nihilism, or even Theurgism, it does not apparently trouble these grovelsome individuals and their toadies. They are too much engrossed expounding, for the enlightenment of the ignorant, an unwholesomely hashed-up mixture of lamely expressed excuses for the “depression” to do more than hurl nasty epathetic at the party whose real offence in the prosselytism of the workers who while licked the dust from the shoes of the Moloch who sits on the fald stool stuffed with bank notes.