Omaha daily bee., 1906-11-25

recognizes at all the steady develop
ment Of socialist thought during the
last two decades. Directly one comes
into close contact with contemporary
socialists one discovers in all sorts of
ways the evidence Of the synthetic work
that has been and still is in process, the
clearing and growth of guiding ideas, the
qualification of primitive statements, the
consideration, the adaptation to meet this
OF that adequate criticism.
A quarter of a century ago socialism
was still to a very large extent a doctrine
Of negatives, a passionate criticism and
denial of the theories that sustained and
excused the injustices OF contemporary
life, a reputation of social and economic
methods then held to be indispensable
and in the very nature Of things. It's
positive proposals were as sketchy as they
were enthusiastic: sketchy and, it must be
confessed, fuctuating.
One needs to turn back to the files of its
everyday publications to realize the prog
ress that has been made the secular emer-
gence Of a consistent AMI continually more
nearly complete and directive scheme of
social reconstruction from the chaotic .
propositions and hopes and denials of the /
earlier time.
In no direction is this more evident than
IN the steady clearing of the socialist at
titude toward marriage and the family in /
the acknowledgement of socialism frum
much idealist and irrelevant matter with
which it was once ciOSely associated audI
encumbered in the orderly incurpOra tiun /
OF conceptions that at one time seemed !
not only outside of, but hostile to, social
list ways of thinking.
Nothing could have brought out this /
more clearly than the comical attempt
made recently by the Daily Express of /,
London to suggest that Mr.. Keir Hardie /
and the party he leads were mysteriously |
involved with my unfortunate self i'm /
teaching free love to respectable working !
men. l have dealt with that prepOsterous /
attack as far as | am personally CON (
cerned elsewhere, and l won't discuss it |
again here, but when my heat and indig- |
nation had presently q little subsided | !
found myself asking how it came about
that any one could bring together such
dlscrepant things as the orderly proposals |
OF socialism as they shape themselves in
the projects of Mr.. Keir Hardie and the
doctrine OF sexual go as you please.
GOODWIN AND SHELLEY.
And so inquiring, my mind drifted back
20 the days-it is a hazy period to me-
when Goodwin and Mary Wollstonecraft
were alive, when Shelley explained his
views to Harriet These people were in a
sort of way -palaco-socialists !
They professed also very distinctly an
uncovenanted freedom of action in sex
ual matters that is, | suppose free love
My assailant remembered Ito his undoing)
what l had forgotten-that large undif-
terentlated past when all sorts of ideas,
as yet too i'll defined to eliminate one an
other-socialist IDEAS communist ideas
anarchist ideas, Rousseaulsm-seethed to-
gether and seemed akin. In a sense they
were akin in that they were the condem-
nation OF the existing order, the outcome
OF the destructive criticism of this of ITS
aspects or that They were all breccia
But in all else, directly they began to find
definite statement, they were fatty CON
Trajectory one with another. Or they stood
az least upon different levels of assump-
uon and application.
And the nature of the attack upon nv
self, II happened, served to remind me
that there is, after all, something more
tnan the necessary association of those
who are "agin the government to link
anarchism and socialism. The formulate
OF anarchiSm and socialism are. no doubt
almost Numerically opposed; anarchism
denies government, socialism would con-
centrate all controls in the State; but il
IS, after all, possible, in different rela-
tlons and different aspects, to entertain
the two.
When one comes TO dreams, when one
tries TO imagine ones finest sort Of peo-
pie, one must surely imagine them too
hne for control and prohibitions, doing
right by sort of inner impulse, "above
the law" Ones dreamland perfection is
anarchy. just as no one would imagine
policeman Tor, for the matter of that,
drain pipe) in heaven.
But come down to earth, to men the
descendants of apes to men competing TO
1.-Two and paSSiOnatey jealous and eHer-
getic, and for the highways aud market
places of life, at any rare, one asks for
law and convention. In heaven, or any
perfection. there will be no socialism. just
as there will be no bimetallism OF no dis
count; there is the sphere of communism,
anarchsm, universal love and service
IL is in the workaday world that social
ism has its place. All men who dream at
all of noble things are anarchists in their
dreams, and half at least of the people
who are much in love, l believe, want to
be this much anarchistic, that they do not
want to feel under law or cOmpulsiOn
one with another. They may want to
possess or be wholly POSSESSED, but they
do not want law court or public opinion
10 protect their possession as right"
But it's still not clearly recognized how
distinct are the spheres of anarchism and
socialism. The last instance of this con
fusion that has seriously affected the
common idea of the socialist was as re-
cent as the late Mr.. Grant Allen. He
was not, i think, even in his time, a very
representative socialist, but certainly he
did present as If it were a counsel OF per
lection for this harsh and grmy world,
something very like reckless abandon
ment to the passion or mood of the mo-
ment. / doubt il he would have found a
dozen supporters i'm the Fabian Society az
that date; i should think his teaching
would have appealed far more powerfully
10 extreme individualists of the type Of
Mr.. Auberon Herbert.
EPOCH OF FREEDOM
However that may be, l do not think
there is at present among English and
American socialists any representative
figure at all cOunselhng free love. The
modern tendency is all toward an amount
of control over the function Of reprOduc
ton il anything in excess Of that exer-
cised by the State and public usage to
day. Let me make a brief comparison OF
existing conditions with what | believe
10 be the ideals of most of my fellow so,
cialists i'm this matter. and the reader ear
then Judge for himself between the two
systems Of Intervention.
And first let me run over the outline OF
the thing we are most likely u forget anC
have wrong in such a discussion. tn,
thing directly under our noses, the thinl
that is. People have an odd way Of as
suming in such a comparison that we ar,
living under an obligation TO conform L
the moral code OF the Christian Churcl
fha Tina