Evening star., 1927-09-04
BY H. G. WELLS

anxietv It terrifes more often than it stimuli
lates. Want of any possessions leaves people
spiritless, driven desperate. A sense OF
secure earning power is at the same time the
basis for the satisfaction of most people who
are satisfied in the modern state and the thing
most conducive to activity.
It is across the seethng swarming stir of
miscellaneous modern life that these great
collective hallucinations of patriotism and OF
class assertion sweep. We are worried or
out of sorts, and suddenly under their infiu.
ence, we see ourselves threatened or oppressed
and the victims Of a malignant conspiracy to
keep us down. If we get the patriotic delusion,
this inclines to war; If the capital and labor
notion, to revolution. When Labor days and
labor holidays come round a certain number
of us gather in meetings and professions to
menace the phantoms that suppose afflict
or threaten us and our kind.
X X X X
Menaces find a billet somewhere. mum.
ber of rich and well-off people, secretly
scous Of a poor contribution to the general
we'll being, struggle not only against their
conscience but against gnawing fear OF
reributon and appropriation. They have a
lingering and troublesome belief that God may
be righteous and that these vague threatenings
of the uncomfortable and limited may fore.
shadow the method of His judgment.
They probably wrong upon the latter
count, at any rate. I do not believe that un.
der modern conditions, in modern mechani.
Called state, common, low-grade labor is
capable Of carrying through revolution, much
less a big social reconstruction. Something
like world revolution may occur in the smash
that may follow another great war-a greater
Soviet experiment, for example-but it will not
be in reality a constructive revolution, but
merely phase in the process of that human
collapse to which must surely bring us
all II we do not head off war. There will be
no labor-ruled world, because, as I have sa
is mia MT
posed upon great complex of forces
But these rich and well off idle sort of
people do believe that the phantom is real
and multitude of politicians, journalists and
organization running rogues prey on their
fears to extract subsidies for political groups
newspapers and "anti Socialist" propaganda
and to conduct persecution of Left" opin-
ion. They embody the Capitalist" antagonist
to labor" and give it voice and a counter
vailing crazy group of ideas, fears, loyalties
and motives. They frame up" cases to mur-
der talkative fish peddlers and the like and
feel much safer for bit after such squalid
acts of defense against these absurd but i'm
potent threats to their comfort and self
complacency
Meanwhile the mills of God are grinding
against them in a manner they do not un-
derstand nor suspect. They really believe
they are a beneficent Capitalist system" ma
lgnantly pursued by the unsuccessful, and
as sincerely do a great multitude of excellent
people believe that they are labor" i'm
placably oppressed by Capitalist system"
1t is just as though we classified all the color
in the world as either pink or green.
The more We clear our minds of this prev
alent hallucination about capitalism versus
labor, the more clearly we shall be able to
distinguish the real process at work in our
world now. SO far from there having been
a progressive enslavement of the masses of
mankind during the past hundred years there
has been a great release from toll In the
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