The Virtual Stoa

It’s from Face the Nation and is moderately engaging, over at moveon.org.

Well, there are two today. And they’re from the usual suspects. First, Stephen Pollard explains why he’s not going to be soiling himself with the Guardian any more. Second, Melanie Phillips takes issue with Jonathan Freedland’s piece in today’s Guardian. This is a more complicated effort. I’ll just note that in her second sentence she mischaracterises Freedland’s use of the “McCarthyite” label, and that she never engages with his main claim about rightist views of the Spanish elections, which is their implication “that when terrorists strike political choice must end”. The rest of the post is the usual hyperbolical nonsense.Oh, except that Stephen Pollard has said that this is a “withering response” to Freedland.

So there must have been something in there that I missed.

Matthew Turner Reads The Real Scraping-of-the-Bottom-of-the-Barrel Drivel So You Don’t Have To: Over here. It’s a service of sorts.

It’s easier to steal other people’s posts than to write my own, especially when they’re so much funnier than anything I could come up with. I think that Backword Dave has worked out what’s really going on:

I can reveal the true horror of al-Qaeda’s plans. They do, indeed, intend to bring down Western civilisation. As with 9/11, they plan to use our own technology, our trusting nature, and our culture against us. The plan is simple: with only a few attacks (they probably only have a few handfuls of men) they generate news, this news in turn generates comment, the comment stirs up the blogosphere. Bloggers write posts. Other people comment, then write their own. In a matter of days, civilisation grinds to a halt while nobody does any work at all, being too busy arguing with each other.Not with a bang, but a whimper.

As he concludes, this is “utterly, utterly fiendish”.UPDATE [11.30am]: Matthew Turner is on the case: “Indeed in the three years before InstaPundit started blogging (taking him as the first (no emails please)) US gdp growth averaged 4.2% a year. In the three years since it has been 1.9%.”

If you haven’t emailed Norm with your top five Bob Dylan songs, you’ve got two more weeks in which to do so… [Details here or here.]

The problem I’m wrestling with right now is that while John Wesley Harding is easily my favourite Dylan album, I’m not so sure it contains any of my very favourite Dylan songs. (But then I’m predisposed to like a record that contains a song called, “I Dreamed I Saw Saint Augustine”.)

The comments threads are getting alarmingly long at the Virtual Stoa, so here’s a chunk of Wilde for you to read and ponder in dignified silence. Notice the use of the word “ochlocracies” in what follows. A good, Polybian word, and one which we might use more frequently than we do.

Previous bits: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII.

“The Soul of Man Under Socialism” by Oscar Wilde, Ninth Chunk

Individualism, then, is what through Socialism we are to attain. As a natural result the State must give up all idea of government. It must give it up because, as a wise man once said many centuries before Christ, there is such a thing as leaving mankind alone; there is no such thing as governing mankind. All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. It has been found out. I must say that it was high time, for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and Individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralizing. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realizing that they are probably thinking other people’s thoughts, living by other people’s standards, wearing practically what one may call other people’s second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment. “He who would be free”, says a fine thinker, “must not conform.” And authority, by bribing people to conform, produces a very gross kind of overfed barbarism amongst us.

With authority, punishment will pass away. This will be a great gain — a gain, in fact, of incalculable value. As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime. It obviously follows that the more punishment is inflicted the more crime is produced, and most modern legislation has clearly recognized this, and has made it its task to diminish punishment as far as it thinks it can. Wherever it has really diminished, it the results have always been extremely good. The less punishment, the less crime. When there is no punishment at all, crime will either cease to exist, or, if it occurs, will be treated by physicians as a very distressing form of dementia, to be cured by care and kindness. For what are called criminals nowadays are not criminals at all. Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime. That indeed is the reason why our criminals are, as a class, so absolutely uninteresting from any psychological point of view. They are not marvellous Macbeths and terrible Vautrins. They are merely what ordinary respectable, commonplace people would be if they had not got enough to eat. When private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist. Of course, all crimes are not crimes against property, though such are the crimes that the English law, valuing what a man has more than what a man is, punishes with the harshest and most horrible severity (if we except the crime of murder, and regard death as worse than penal servitude, a point on which our criminals, I believe, disagree). But though a crime may not be against property, it may spring from the misery and rage and depression produced by our wrong system of property-holding, and so, when that system is abolished, will disappear. When each member of the community has sufficient for his wants, and is not interfered with by his neighbour, it will not be an object of any interest to him to interfere with any one else. Jealousy, which is an extraordinary source of crime in modern life, is an emotion closely bound up with our conceptions of property, and under Socialism and Individualism will die out. It is remarkable that in communistic tribes jealousy is entirely unknown.

It’s not often that I lift other people’s posts in toto for republication at the Stoa (usually it’s just essays by Oscar Wilde, that kind of thing). But I liked this piece by Chris Bertram over at Crooked Timber, it seems to follow on nicely from the posts and the discussion below, and it’s funny.

If there were a British general election tomorrow I’d probably vote Labour, as I nearly always have done. I�d think about Iraq, the “war on terror”, Northern Ireland, the EU constitution, asylum seekers, taxes, prisons, higher education policy, Tony Blair, poverty, the environment, local government and a whole host of things. And I’d probably still vote Labour. If there were a terrorist attack which killed 200 of my compatriots, and the government, suspecting Al-Quaida, chose nevertheless to spin a story that the Real IRA were to blame, I might, just might, change my mind. But I’d still probably vote Labour. I certainly wouldn’t take kindly to commentators from other countries — themselves basically ignorant of my country’s politics and history — telling me that my task, in casting my vote, is to “send a message” to Osama bin Laden or anyone else. I’d be upset if such pundits told me that voting other than they way they recommended amounted to dishonouring the dead. And if a Spanish person, encountering such a commentator were to punch them on the nose, I’m not saying they’d be right, but I’d understand.

Does anyone take Steyn seriously any more? (I think some people did once. But no more, surely?) And — if there are any Telegraph watchers out there: will Steyn disappear from the Telegraph’s pages when the sale goes through, along with the current editor (who seems useless) and Barbara Amiel, or will we have them around for longer?

Wilde Serial, #8: Previous Episodes: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII.

“The Soul of Man Under Socialism” by Oscar Wilde, Eighth Instalment

There was a woman who was taken in adultery. We are not told the history of her love, but that love must have been very great; for Jesus said that her sins were forgiven her, not because she repented, but because her love was so intense and wonderful. Later on, a short time before his death, as he sat at a feast, the woman came in and poured costly perfumes on his hair. His friends tried to interfere with her, and said that it was extravagance, and that the money that the perfume cost should have been expended on charitable relief of people in want, or something of that kind. Jesus did not accept that view. He pointed out that the material needs of Man were great and very permanent, but that the spiritual needs of Man were greater still, and that in one divine moment, and by selecting its own mode of expression, a personality might make itself perfect. The world worships the woman, even now, as a saint.

Yes, there are suggestive things in Individualism. Socialism annihilates family life, for instance. With the abolition of private property, marriage in its present form must disappear. This is part of the programme. Individualism accepts this and makes it fine. It converts the abolition of legal restraint into a form of freedom that will help the full development of personality, and make the love of man and woman more wonderful, more beautiful, and more ennobling. Jesus knew this. He rejected the claims of family life, although they existed in his day and community in a very marked form. “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” he said, when he was told that they wished to speak to him. When one of his followers asked leave to go and bury his father, “Let the dead bury the dead,” was his terrible answer. He would allow no claim whatsoever to be made on personality.

And so he who would lead a Christlike life is he who is perfectly and absolutely himself. He may be a great poet, or a great man of science, or a young student at a University, or one who watches sheep upon a moor; or a maker of dramas, like Shakespeare, or a thinker about God, like Spinoza; or a child who plays in a garden, or a fisherman who throws his nets into the sea. It does not matter what he is, as long as he realizes the perfection of the soul that is within him. All imitation in morals and in life is wrong. Through the streets of Jerusalem at the present day crawls one who is mad and carries a wooden cross on his shoulders. He is a symbol of the lives that are marred by imitation. Father Damien was Christlike when he went out to live with the lepers, because in such service he realized fully what was best in him. But he was not more Christlike than Wagner when he realized his soul in music; or than Shelley, when he realized his soul in song. There is no one type for man. There are as many perfections as there are imperfect men. And while to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all.

Yes, it’s the Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld Set To Music… [Via Raj].

(Actually, the barking’s been going on for quite a while now, and the echo-chamber’s becoming quite oppressive.) Over on the other side of the Atlantic, MaxSpeak reads drivel so you don’t have to. Below are a few links to some of the more diverse contributions from the right-wing Brit-bloggers…

Leading the way, Andrew Sullivan: “BIN LADEN’S VICTORY IN SPAIN: It’s a spectacular result for Islamist terrorism, and a chilling portent of Europe’s future…”

Laban Tall, by contrast, reckons it was a “Victory for Murder“: “Whether or not the Madrid bombings turn out to have been the work of Islamic terrorists, the results of the Spanish elections will undoubtedly be seen by Al Quaeda as a sign that Western democracies don’t have the stomach for the fight”.

For Peter Cuthbertson, on the other hand, it was “A terrible day for democracy” Why? Because “The aftermath of mass murder ought to be a time when ordinary, decent people recover their inherent sense of moral absolutism and feel an unshakeable determination for the ruthless assertion of justice.” OK. And what does that make the Spanish electorate? They are “selfish, myopic dupes”.

And, finally, Melanie Phillips, of course, is a commentator who is well-known for her balanced, nuanced judgements. She calls it a “Victory for terror“. “The Spanish general election result is a disaster. The Spanish have reacted to the atrocity in Madrid by dumping a government that was committed to fight terror and replacing it by a government that will appease it. Eleven million Spaniards took to the streets last weekend to show their solidarity in the face of terror, and two days later voted to abase themselves before it. Al Q’aeda could not have more perfectly choreographed a result that serves its cause…”

Perhaps Chris Lightfoot or the guy who wrote the Daily Mail headline generator could write a useful Rightwing-Bloggerage Generator to save us all time in the future?

UPDATE [10.30pm]: Graham (see comments) points us all towards this very useful site which might one day replace Sullivan, Tall, Cuthbertson, Phillips et al. Thanks, Graham.

UPDATE [16.3.2004]: Peter Cuthbertson rightly notes in the comments that he only ever said that those “who let the events of 3/11 swing their vote in favour of the party they thought would antagonise Bin Laden less” were SMDs, not the entire electorate. Apologies.

Isn’t the simplest explanation for what happened in Spain just that the splendid response of the population — with eight million on the streets in protest against last week’s bombings and in defence of Spanish democracy — had the effect of raising the electoral turnout; and that when turnout rates rise in the context of a general democratic mobilisation, Left parties are more likely to benefit, given that it’s the poor, the unemployed, the working class, the less well educated and so on who are, other things being equal, those who are less likely to cast a ballot? And that all the witterings about whether the Socialists are craven defeatists in the struggle against terrorism (they probably aren’t) or whether Mr. Aznar was opportunistic in attempting to pin the blame on Eta for short-term electoral reasons (he probably was) pale into relative insignificance beside this fact?

I conclude that yesterday was a great day for Spanish democracy.

UPDATE [2pm]: Via SIAW, I see that there’s a much better treatment of the PSOE vote over at AFOE…

UPDATE [17.3.2004]: Chris Lightfoot has crunched a few numbers, and the provisional conclusion to draw is that I’m barking up the wrong tree here. The data’s very imperfect, however. On the other hand, as Harry is pointing out, there’s some evidence that the PSOE was moving ahead of the PP even before the bombs went off.

Nikolai Bukharin, Old Bolshevik, born 27 September 1888, shot 15 March 1938.

Earlier parts: I, II, III, IV, V, VI.

“The Soul of Man Under Socialism” by Oscar Wilde, Part Seven

In its development it will be assisted by Christianity, if men desire that; but if men do not desire that, it will develop none the less surely. For it will not worry itself about the past, nor care whether things happened or did not happen. Nor will it admit any laws but its own laws; nor any authority but its own authority. Yet it will love those who sought to intensify it, and speak often of them. And of these Christ was one.

“Know Thyself!” was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world “Be Thyself” shall be written. And the message of Christ to man was simply “Be Thyself.” That is the secret of Christ.

When Jesus talks about the poor he simply means personalities, just as when he talks about the rich he simply means people who have not developed their personalities. Jesus moved in a community that allowed the accumulation of private property just as ours does, and the gospel that he preached was, not that in such a community it is an advantage for a man to live on scanty, unwholesome food, to wear ragged, unwholesome clothes, to sleep in horrid, unwholesome dwellings, and a disadvantage for a man to live under healthy, pleasant, and decent conditions. Such a view would have been wrong there and then, and would, of course, be still more wrong now and in England; for as man moves northwards the material necessities of life become of more vital importance, and our society is infinitely more complex, and displays far greater extremes of luxury and pauperism than any society of the antique world. What Jesus meant was this. He said to man, “You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be yourself. Don’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your perfection is inside of you. If only you could realize that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-home of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal property. It involves sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong. Personal property hinders Individualism at every step.” It is to be noted that Jesus never says that impoverished people are necessarily good, or wealthy people necessarily bad. That would not have been true. Wealthy people are, as a class, better than impoverished people, more moral, more intellectual, more well-behaved. There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being poor. What Jesus does say, is that man reaches his perfection, not through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through what he is. And so the wealthy young man who comes to Jesus is represented as a thoroughly good citizen, who has broken none of the laws of his state, none of the commandments of his religion. He is quite respectable, in the ordinary sense of that extraordinary word. Jesus says to him, “You should give up private property. It hinders you from realizing your perfection. It is a drag upon you. It is a burden. Your personality does not need it. It is within you, and not outside of you, that you will find what you really are, and what you really want.” To his own friends he says the same thing. He tells them to be themselves, and not to be always worrying about other things. What do other things matter? Man is complete in himself. When they go into the world, the world will disagree with them. That is inevitable. The world hates Individualism. But that is not to trouble them. They are to be calm and self-centred. If a man takes their cloak, they are to give him their coat, just to show that material things are of no importance. If people abuse them, they are not to answer back. What does it signify ? The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to beviolent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realize through that sin his true perfection.

[To be continued.]

Karl Marx, born 5 May 1818, died 14 February March 1883. Friedrich Engels’ funeral oration is here, and, for the dwindling band who haven’t already read it, you should also go and have a look at Karl Marx’s “Confession“. It’s fun.

I said something about this a couple of weeks ago. Here’s the recap and update: Bob Torres, who has blogged for longer than pretty much any of us over at the Bobblog, and who is one of the sociology professors at Saint Lawrence University, expressed some negative opinions about Republicans in his blog. Local Republican students then stuck lots of flyers around the campus drawing attention to his opinions and complaining about the attack on “political diversity” which they supposedly represented, and the local newspaper covered the story (such as it was). And, no surprises here, the university administration decided that it wasn’t going to sack or otherwise discipline Bob for expressing his opinions about the Republican Party on his blog, and his department issued a statement which, among other things, provides some useful excerpts which give a sense of Bob’s approach to pedagogy. Bob blogged some of his thoughts about all of this here, and the new development in the story is that the Wall Street Journal has weighed in on the matter, with an Op-Ed by John J. Miller, which has prompted another set of reflections from Bob here.

The Virtual Stoa stands in solidarity with the Bobblog.

As if that needed to be said.

At least two regular readers of the Virtual Stoa were at yesterday’s conference in Manchester to celebrate the academic career of Emeritus Professor of Government Norman Geras. So I’ll ask them here: how did it go?

I should have liked to have gone along and said hello to the man, whom I’ve never met (though we’ve exchanged quite a lot of email in the six months since the normblog started), but it was the last day of term here in Oxford, and the last day of term is always the busiest of all.

UPDATE [6pm, 14.3.2004]: Reports from the frontlines here and here.

Christopher Hitchens once wrote this of Wilde:

“The kernel of his [socialist] credo, however, is to be found in the offhand remark made by Algernon Moncrieff at the opening of The Importance, where he reflects, “Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility.” Here, in a well-turned aside, is the cruelty and thoughtlessness of all theorising about the deserving rather than the undeserving poor. Wilde never lost his revulsion against sermonising of this kind, and maintained that it was finer to steal rather than to beg; just as it was morally deaf to preach strict dieting to those suffering from malnutrition. It was for guessing at the secret hatred and coldness, which at all times underlay the English profession of charity and moral hygiene, that he made the enemies who rejoiced in his abjection.”(From “Oscar Wilde’s Socialism”, Dissent, Fall 1995, reprinted in Unacknowledged Legislation, pp.11-12.

Right, back to the serialisation. The earlier instalments below: I, II, III, IV, V.”The Soul of Man Under Socialism” by Oscar Wilde, Part Six

With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

It is a question whether we have ever seen the full expression of a personality, except on the imaginative plane of art. In action, we never have. Caesar, says Mommsen, was the complete and perfect man. But how tragically insecure was Caesar! Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority. Caesar was very perfect, but his perfection travelled by too dangerous a road. Marcus Aurelius was the perfect man, says Renan. Yes, the great emperor was a perfect man. But how intolerable were the endless claims upon him! He staggered under the burden of the empire. He was conscious how inadequate one man was to bear the weight of that Titan and too vast orb. What I mean by a perfect man is one who develops under perfect conditions; one who is not wounded, or worried, or maimed, or in danger. Most personalities have been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in friction. Byron’s personality, for instance, was terribly wasted in its battle with the stupidity, and hypocrisy, and Philistinism of the English. Such battles do not always intensify strength: they often exaggerate weakness. Byron was never able to give us what he might have given us. Shelley escaped better. Like Byron, he got out of England as soon as possible. But he was not so well known. If the English had realizes what a great poet he really was, they would have fallen on him with tooth and nail, and made his life as unbearable to him as they possibly could. But he was not a remarkable figure in society, and consequently he escaped, to a certain degree. Still, even in Shelley the note of rebellion is sometimes too strong. The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.

It will be a marvellous thing — the true personality of man — when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flower-like, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet, while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us by being what it is. The personality of man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four. And without further ado, here’s Part Five:

“The Soul of Man Under Socialism” by Oscar Wilde, Part Five

I hardly think that any Socialist, nowadays, would seriously propose that an inspector should call every morning at each house to see that each citizen rose up and did manual labour for eight hours. Humanity has got beyond that stage, and reserves such a form of life for the people whom, in a very arbitrary manner, it chooses to call criminals. But I confess that many of the socialistic views that I have come across seem to me to be tainted with ideas of authority, if not of actual compulsion. Of course, authority and compulsion are out of the question. All association must be quite voluntary. It is only in voluntary associations that man is fine.

But it may be asked how Individualism, which is now more or less dependent on the existence of private property for its development, will benefit by the abolition of such private property. The answer is very simple. It is true that, under existing conditions, a few men who have had private means of their own, such as Byron, Shelley, Browning, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, and others, have been able to realize their personality more or less completely. Not one of these men ever did a single day’s work for hire. They were relieved from poverty. They had an immense advantage. The question is whether it would be for the good of Individualism that such an advantage should be taken away. Let us suppose that it is taken away. What happens then to Individualism? How will it benefit?

It will benefit in this way. Under the new conditions Individualism will be far freer, far finer, and far more intensified than it is now. I am not talking of the great imaginatively realised Individualism of such poets as I have mentioned, but of the great actual Individualism latent and potential in mankind generally. For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is. Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up an Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the community from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the other part of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road, and encumbering them. Indeed, so completely has man’s personality been absorbed by his possessions that the English law has always treated offences against a man’s property with far more severity than offences against his person, and property is still the test of complete citizenship. The industry necessary for the making of money is also very demoralizing. In a community like ours, where property confers immense distinction, social position, honour, respect, titles, and other pleasant things of the kind, man, being naturally ambitious, makes it his aim to accumulate this property, and goes on wearily and tediously accumulating it long after he has got far more than he wants, or can use, or enjoy, or perhaps even know of. Man will kill himself by overwork in order to secure property, and really, considering the enormous advantages that property brings, one is hardly surprised. One’s regret is that society should be constructed on such a basis that man has been forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop what is wonderful, and fascinating, and delightful in him — in which, in fact, he misses the true pleasure and joy of living. He is also, under existing conditions, very insecure. An enormously wealthy merchant may be — often is — at every moment of his life at the mercy of things that are not under his control. If the wind blows an extra point or so, or the weather suddenly changes, or some trivial thing happens, his ship may go down, his speculations may go wrong, and he finds himself a poor man, with his social position quite gone. Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.

[More later]

A cautious welcome to the new blog over at Media Lies, who have been kind enough to link back to the Virtual Stoa. The people over there say they’re going to be putting the arguments of people like Harry and Norm under scrutiny, and scrutiny is generally a good thing, and that’s why they’re welcome.

So why the caution? Well, the site doesn’t seem to have got off to an especially good start. If they call themselves “Media Lies” — and I’m assuming here that the title isn’t meant as an accurate description of the contents of the blog — then they’d better have a scrupulous regard for the truth themselves. (Much as a blogger who calls himself The Thinker had better have more respect for Thought than that evinced by Paul “The Thinker” Richards: see the Virtual Stoa, passim.) Yet no evidence is presented to justify the assertion paraded in the first headline (”Harry’s Compulsive anti-Stopperism Loses Readers“); rather, they just link to Harry’s own report that “some readers appeared to be irritated by some of the more strident criticisms of the anti-war movement on here”, which isn’t the same thing at all. And the, um, lack of precision in the remarks that follow do tend to suggest that it’s this site that’s going to be the chief home of “compulsive” and “hysterical” commentary on the war and its aftermath. We shall see if things get a bit better as time passes. Let’s hope so.

A very interesting set of writings on the war, incidentally, exists over at the See Why? blog, which seems to me to deserve more attention than it gets. The Chris who blogs over there has written a fine take-down of the silly and overhyped piece by Paul Berman in Dissent magazine, and sensible commentary on some of Norm’s blogposts, most recently here.

Not much from me this week, I’m afraid. The last week of term is always a particularly busy one. But there’s more from Oscar Wilde, with the fourth instalment of “The Soul of Man…” appearing below. There earlier parts are here: one, two, three. And thanks are owed to Marc for the plug in today’s Daily Moider. Thanks, Marc. And if you’d like to comment on the historical argument Wilde makes in this snippet, we’d all be grateful… (We’re still waiting, incidentally, for you to post the pics of your excellent birthday cake. Don’t think we’ve forgotten.)

“The Soul of Man Under Socialism” by Oscar Wilde, Part Four

However, the explanation is not really difficult to find. It is simply this. Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them. What is said by great employers of labour against agitators is unquestionably true. Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilization. Slavery was put down in America, not in consequence of any action on the part of the slaves, or even any express desire on their part that they should be free. It was put down entirely through the grossly illegal conduct of certain agitators in Boston and elsewhere, who were not slaves themselves, nor owners of slaves, nor had anything to do with the question really. It was, undoubtedly, the Abolitionists who set the torch alight, who began the whole thing. And it is curious to note that from the slaves themselves they received, not merely very little assistance, but hardly any sympathy even; and when at the close of the war the slaves found themselves free, found themselves indeed so absolutely free that they were free to starve, many of them bitterly regretted the new state of things. To the thinker, the most tragic fact in the whole of the French Revolution is not that Marie Antoinette was killed for being a queen, but that the starved peasant of the Vend�e voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause of feudalism.

It is clear, then, that no Authoritarian Socialism will do. For while under the present system a very large number of people can lead lives of a certain amount of freedom and expression and happiness, under an industrial-barrack system, or a system of economic tyranny, nobody would be able to have any such freedom at all. It is to be regretted that a portion of our community should be practically in slavery, but to propose to solve the problem by enslaving the entire community is childish. Every man must be left quite free to choose his own work. No form of compulsion must he exercised over him. If there is, his work will not be good for him, will not be good in itself, and will not be good for others. And by work I simply mean activity of any kind.

[More soon.]

Alexandra Kollontai, born in St Petersburg, 31 March 1872, died in Moscow, 9 March 1952. Old Bolshevik.

Here’s the third instalment of the Virtual Stoa’s serialisation of Oscar Wilde’s classic essay, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” (here’s part one, and here’s part two), with thanks to SIAW (back posting again after a week’s silence) for saying nice things about this effort. There’s a remark often attributed to Wilde (though not, as far as I’ve ever been able to tell, properly sourced to him) that the trouble with socialism is that it would take too many evenings. As remarks go, it’s both reasonably witty and reasonably insightful — but those who think that that’s the sum total of Wilde’s thinking on the subject reckon without the excellent essay whose serialisation continues below.

“The Soul of Man Under Socialism” by Oscar Wilde, Episode Three

Of course, it might be said that the Individualism generated under conditions of private property is not always, or even as a rule, of a fine or wonderful type, and that the poor, if they have not culture and charm, have still many virtues. Both these statements would be quite true. The possession of private property is very often extremely demoralizing, and that is, of course, one of the reasons why Socialism wants to get rid of the institution. In fact, property is really a nuisance. Some years ago people went about the country saying that property has duties. They said it so often and so tediously that, at last, the Church has begun to say it. One hears it now from every pulpit. It is perfectly true. Property not merely has duties, but has so many duties that its possession to any large extent is a bore. It involves endless claims upon one, endless attention to business, endless bother. If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it. The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much to be regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannize over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it. As for being discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg. No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him. He is at any rate a healthy protest. As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid. I can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under these conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.

[To be continued.]

They say that a well-placed bomb at Twickenham on the day of the Varsity match would set back the cause of Fascism in Britain by a generation or so, and it’s a dangerously plausible thought. One the other hand, I’ve just spent a happy afternoon at the Women’s Rugby Oxford - Cambridge encounter at which only three banners were visible. One was the inexplicable (to me, at least) one that read, “Don’t Mess With Texas“, and the others contributed to a happy nostalgia trip, being the blue Balliol JCR Women and the red Balliol Left Caucus banners, which thoughtful people had brought along for the occasion.

Oxford won a very exciting match 10-7, the drama in the second half being supplemented by the freak weather: it began raining at half time, the rain turned to ten minutes of hard hail a few minutes after kick-off, which eventually gave way to ten minutes of heavy snowfall, before clearing up again towards the end.

Congratulations then, to Zahler Bryan, the Oxford captain (and one of the Politics students at Magdalen, hence my interest in the game), and to her fine team — with stirring performances in particular from full-back Bethan Walsh, outside centre Christina Laciaga, zippy winger Jennie Clapperton, horizontal-running outside half Rebecca Young, No.8 Jessica Gretton (the only Balliol player in the team, who clearly has the right friends — see above), and second row forward Rosie Collins. Good stuff, and an excellent afternoon.

The second instalment of the Virtual Stoa’s presentation of Oscar Wilde’s classic essay, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” continues below (part one was posted yesterday). Just for a bit of background orientation, Wilde first published this piece in The Fortnightly Review in February 1891, composing the essay after hearing Bernard Shaw lecturing on socialism, and not much liking what he heard. Shaw didn’t like this essay much either, remarking that it was witty and entertaining but had nothing whatever to do with socialism. But that’s enough from me for now; let’s go over to Episode Two.

The Soul of Man Under Socialism, by Oscar Wilde, Part Two

There is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair.

Under Socialism all this will, of course, be altered. There will be no people living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up unhealthy, hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely repulsive surroundings. The security of society will not depend, as it does now, on the state of the weather. If a frost comes we shall not have a hundred thousand men out of work, tramping about the streets in a state of disgusting misery, or whining to their neighbours for alms, or crowding round the doors of loathsome shelters to try and secure a hunch of bread and a night’s unclean lodging. Each member of the society will share in the general prosperity and happiness of the society, and if a frost comes no one will practically be anything the worse.

Upon the other hand, Socialism itself will be of value simply because it will lead to Individualism.

Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and ensure the material well-being of each member of the community. It will, in fact, give Life its proper basis and its proper environment. But, for the full development of Life to its highest mode of perfection, something more is needed. What is needed is Individualism. If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first. At present, in consequence of the existence of private property, a great many people are enabled to develop a certain very limited amount of Individualism. They are either under no necessity to work for their living, or are enabled to choose the sphere of activity that is really congenial to them and gives them pleasure. These are the poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the men of culture — in a word, the real men, the men who have realized themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realization. Upon the other hand, there are a great many people who, having no private property of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want. These are the poor, and amongst them there is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or civilization, or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life. From their collective force Humanity gains much in material prosperity. But it is only the material result that it gains, and the man who is poor is in himself absolutely of no importance. He is merely the infinitesimal atom of a force that, so far from regarding him, crushes him: indeed, prefers him crushed, as in that case he is far more obedient.