Edward Aveling (1886)
Source: Commonweal, March 1886, p. 21
Transcription: by Graham Seaman, March 2021
A meeting of the unemployed took place in Trafalgar Square on Monday February 8, 1886. After it rioting, exaggerated as it has been by the literary proletariat at the bidding of their own and their masters' fear, certainly occurred. Since then in more than one town there has been similar rioting.
All Socialists are in most ardent sympathy with the unemployed of this and of all other countries. Nor is that sympathy in any way lessened by the fact that they recognise the reasons of the unemployment, recognise that it is inevitable under present conditions, and that it is hopeless to expect any serious and lasting relief, apart from a revolutionary change in the conditions of production and ef distribution, under which we live and die.
Further, all Socialists are in complete harmony with the idea of calling together mass meetings of men out of work, and of those sympathising with them — mass meetings that by their vast size may show, at once, how widely-spread is that suffering which is the necessary outcome of our capitalistic method of production, how general is the feeling that a momentous change must come, and is even at hand, and how great is the. force at the command of those recognising that change as inevitable. Nor must another use of these large assemblages of the working class be forgotten. They give unequalled opportunity of preaching the doctrine. It is I think better to seize that opportunity than to incite to discursive and aimless pillage.
But most Socialists must feel that the scattered, unorganised use of force is of little use. Further some are of opinion that those who broke windows, and broke into a few shops on Monday February 8, were to a large extent not the active, intelligent members of the working class, to whom especially Socialism appeals, but those unhappy members of the working class, whom the accursed system of capital has forced into the ranks of the rough and of the criminal.
Socialists are seriously conscious of the fact that the great revolution towards which they work will not be brought about in any other fashion than that in which all revolutions have been wrought — viz., by force. The force may be that of mind or, at worst, that of the show of numbers. But the student of history is bound to expect that other force — that commonly known as physical — will come into action. The time for this, however, in England is, I think, not yet. And when the time comes, the source of that force-outburst will be probably not the proletariat, but the capitalistic class, with their human machines, the police and soldiery.
That this will be the way in which the physical struggle will initiate has been seen by the eye of poet and philosopher alike. Shelley in his “Masque of Anarchy,” figures a time when the great assembly of the fearless and the free, gathered together to declare itself free, will be attacked by the charged artillery, the horseman's scimitar, the fixed bayonet. Whether we agree with Shelley that then we are to suffer and be strong, until wrath dying away, the assailants are ashamed, or whether we hold, as I do, that other than passive resistance then becomes a duty — we can, in either case, feel with him that the first serious use of physical force must come from the capitalists. And that feeling is intensified when we see the philosopher taking the same line of thought. Marx constantly points out that the first serious aggression must come from the possessors of the means of production. Once let us show them that Socialism is a power, that the workers are practically unanimous in the determination to end the present system, and the force-outburst will come assuredly.
In any case, I think that such unsystematic, isolated action as that of Monday February 8, is to be deprecated. For even supposing that the easily-frightened Government of an easily-frightened nation, subsidises certain individuals of certain classes of labourers — that some temporary employment is found for a small fraction of the unemployed; the real question is not touched. This remedy partakes too muchg of the nature of an ordinary Radical measure. It affords a passing, relief to a handful of people. It does not get at the real heart of the matter — the relations of capital and labour. Even if every man and woman out of work to-day could be employed by the State to-morrow, yet the essential principle on which our present capitalistic system with all its misery rests, would not have been touched.
From that which has occurred, however, Socialists in England can learn at once their weakness and their strength. Their weakness is want of completeness of organisation; their strength is in the numbers of the people and the abject cowardice of their oppressors. We must have an organisation co-extensive with the working-classes. Once let us be able to gather together a crowd like that of Monday February 8 in numbers, but unlike it in unanimity as to the reasons and the remedies for misery, and our cause is won.
It is for that end that Socialists work. Always conscious that the ultimate solution of the social problem will be by means of force, many of us yet feel the time for that solution is not yet, and that the present work is to educate and organise the workers until they form a mass of Socialists so earnest, so overwhelming that the end must come.
This feeling in no way prevents our sympathy with the speakers whom the Government are foolish enough to prosecute. We must do our best for all in whom is attacked the right of openly declaring wrongs, their causes and their remedies. They must be defended and supported in this and we must continue to preach Socialism, in season, and out of season, to educate and to organise, until out of the few voices yet articulate grows the cry of “an exceeding great nation.”