THE COMMON ENEMY 87 86 THE CLASS STRUGGLE Abbott Samson and William Conqueror times, the arrangement they had made of their Governing Classes. Highly interesting to observe how the sincere insight on their part, into what did, of prime necessity, behoove to be accomplished, had led them to the way of accomplishing it, and in the course of time to get it accomplished! No imaginary Aristocracy could serve their turn; and accordingly they attained a real one. The bravest men, who, it is ever to be repeated and remembered, are also on the whole the Wisest, Strongest, everyway Best, had here, with a respectable degree of accuracy, been got selected; seated each on his piece of territory, which was lent him, then gradually given him, that he might govern it. These Vice Kings, each on his portion of the common soil of England, with a Head King over all, were a Virtuality perfected into an Actuality really to an astonishing extent. Doubtless there was much harshness of operation, much severity; as indeed government and surgery are often somewhat severe. Gurth, born thrall of Cedric, it is like got cuffs as often as pork parings, if he misdemeaned himself; but Gurth did belong to Cedric: no human creature then went about connected with nobody; left to go his way into Bastilles or worse, under Laissez faire.
Evidently there is only one way of escape from the intolerable present: a return to the past. If the convulsive struggles of the past half century, says Carlyle, have taught poor struggling, convulsed Europe any truth, it may perhaps be this as the essence of innumerable othThat Europe requires a real Aristocracy, a real Priesthood, or it cannot continue to exist. All this may have taught us, that False Aristocracies are insupportable; that NoAristocracies, Liberty and Equalities are impossible; that true Aristocracies are at once indispensable and not easily attained.
The great problem is the combination of real authority with real freedom, which is the essence of all real social order, and which can only be obtained under a true Aristocracy. But we need not despair. We must have it, and will have it! To reconcile Despotism with Freedom: well, is that such a mystery? Do you not already know the way? It is to make your Despotism just. Rigorous as Destiny; but just, too, as Destiny and its Laws.
Such was the reaction against capitalism in the early stages of the Labor Movement, particularly among theorists intellectuals. With the progress of the movement, along with its growth in power and self consciousness, this reactionary frame of mind gradually lost its hold. With the development of a really scientific theory of the Labor Movement, the poetising of the past gave way to a real understanding of history and with it of the historic mission of the proletariat. But the harking back to the past in order to join hands with it in a fight against the common enemy the present never completely disappeared. curious illustration of its survival into what might be called scientificsocialism days is furnished by two incidents in the life of Hyndman and his leadership in the Socialist Movement of England.
In his autobiography Hyndman tells the story of a visit which he paid in 1881 to Lord Beaconsfield in order to enlist his sympathies for Hyndman Socialist ideas for the reconstruction of society. Writing some thirty years later, Hyndman feels the absurdity of such a mission and the need of an explanation to his latter day readers and comrades. And here is the explanation. knew had to deal with a man of imagination, who had conceptions far above the level of the miserable buy cheap andsell dear school which had so long prevailed over our policy, wholly regardless of the well being of the people so long as the capitalist and profit making class gained wealth.
The incident and the explanation are significant. Hyndman would never have thought even in his dreams of approaching Mr. Gladstone, the great liberal statesman of the day, with his project of socializing the world. And for a very good reason: Liberalism meant laissez faire. Its whole philosophy was contained in the miserable buy cheap and sell dear formula. They could therefore neither understand the deficiencies of the present social system, nor rise to the vision of a world with real ers: