Finish up. Sometimes questions. Return not altogether hopeless.<\/em><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\nOver a century later, it is easy to imagine exactly what it felt like to stand on that orange-box and try to rouse a listless group of passersby to rise up in support of revolutionary politics.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\nE. Belfort Bax, early British Marxist whose glorious moustache cannot make up for the fact that he wrote a book called “The Fraud of Feminism” (1913) and embodied every terrible toxic tendency of the macho leftist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nHyndman appears to have been a good political speaker, but his encounters with the actual working class suggest that he better served his movement as a polemicist and journalist. He quotes a wonderful little fable from the socialist weekly newspaper he helped found, Justice<\/em>, called \u201cThe Monkeys and the Nuts\u201d: <\/p>\n\n\n\nA Colony of monkeys, having gathered a store of nuts for the winter, begged their Wise Ones to distribute them. The Wise Ones reserved a good half for themselves, and distributed the remainder amongst the rest of the community, giving to some twenty nuts, to others ten, to others five, and to a considerable number none. Now, When those to whom twenty had been given complained that the Wise Ones had kept so many for themselves the Wise Ones answered, \u201cPeace, foolish ones, are ye not much better off than those who have ten?\u201d And they were pacified. And to those who objected, having only ten, they said, \u201cBe satisfied, are there not many who have but five?\u201d and they kept silence. And they answered those who had five, saying, \u201cNay, but see ye not the number who have none?\u201d Now when these last made complaint of the unjust division and demanded a share, the Wise Ones stepped forward and exclaimed to those who had twenty, and ten, and five, \u201cBehold the wickedness of these monkeys. Because they have no nuts they are dissatisfied, and would fain rob you of those which are yours!\u201d And they all fell on the portionless monkeys and beat them sorely. <\/em>Moral. The selfishness of the moderately well-to-do blinds them to the rapacity of the rich.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nSome of the questions that Hyndman asks are still being asked today. For instance: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why is it, by the way, that Liberals are so strongly addicted to \u201cterminological inexactitudes\u201d in politics? Why is it that their special party creed renders it incumbent upon them to play tricks with the truth whenever it suits their purpose? How does it come about that no sane man would think of placing the slightest reliance upon the Liberal Party carrying out when in office the pledges made at the polls in order to obtain a majority?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nHe is outraged by those who say that \u201cSocialists are necessarily ignorant folk\u2026 actuated only by envy,\u201d and when the Home Secretary says that \u201cnobody joins the Socialist movement except for what he can get out of it,\u201d Hyndman writes to demand an apology and laments that he cannot duel the man. (\u201cDuelling has its drawbacks, I am well aware, but it has a tendency to check unseemly misrepresentation on the part of people who are inclined by nature to calumniate, and who allow free course to their malignity when they feel that they are safeguarded from all danger.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One passage in the book offers a vital caution for leftists of all times. Hyndman recounts a meeting with one Lady Dorothy Nevill, a Conservative who warned him that all of his rabble-rousing on behalf of the workers was useless. He says that she delivered the following monologue, or something like it, which previewed the strategy of many an elite class and the fate of many a radical working-class movement: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe believe you to be honest in what you are doing, because we have offered you all a man can hope to get in this country, and you have not chosen to take it. But you will never succeed, at any rate in your own lifetime. We [the bourgeoisie] have had an excellent innings, I don\u2019t deny that for a moment: an excellent innings, and the turn of the people will come some day. I see that quite as clearly as you do. But not yet, not yet. You will educate some of the working class, that is all you can hope to do for them. And when you have educated them we shall buy them, or, if we don\u2019t, the Liberals will, and that will be just the same for you. Besides, we shall never offer any obstinate or bitter resistance to what is asked for. When your agitation becomes really serious we shall give way a little, and grant something of no great importance, but sufficient to satisfy the majority for the time being. Our object is to avoid any direct conflict in order to gain time. This concession will gain, let us say, ten years: it won\u2019t be less. Then at the expiration of that period you will have worked up probably another threatening demonstration on the part of the masses against what you call the class monopoly of the means and instruments of production. We shall meet you in quite an equitable and friendly spirit and again surrender a point from which we all along meant to retire, but which we have defended with so much vigour that our resistance has seemed to be quite genuine, and our surrender has for your friends all the appearance of triumph. Yet another ten years are thus put behind us, and once more you start afresh with, whatever you may expect to-day, a somewhat disheartened and disintegrated array. Once more we meet you with the same tactics of partial surrender and pleasing procrastination. But now, remember, thirty years have passed and you have another generation to deal with, to stir up, and educate, whilst, if I may venture to say so, you yourself will not be so young nor perhaps quite so hopeful as you are to-day. Not yet, Mr. Hyndman, your great changes will not come yet, and in the meanwhile you will be engaged on a very thankless task indeed. Far better throw in your lot with men whom you know and like, and do your best to serve the people whom you wish to benefit from the top instead of from the bottom.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nHyndman comments that \u201ca quarter of a century has passed since this utterance, and it seems to me the aristocracy, to say nothing of the capitalists, have given way considerably less than Lady Dorothy herself believed they were prepared to surrender.\u201d The more things change, the more they stay the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Record of An Adventurous Life <\/em>and Further Reminiscences <\/em>are not widely read today, and I suspect they will never be. Hyndman\u2019s reputation is not going to experience a revival, and it shouldn\u2019t, as he was often ludicrously wrong and pig-headed (H.G. Wells praised his \u201cmagnificent obstinancy\u201d), and at his worst was outright bigoted. In parts, his books might as well be titled All Of The Places I Went, The Arguments I Had In Them, and The People I Annoyed.<\/em> But these memoirs are also a storehouse of historical curiosities, and preserve people and events that should not be forgotten. The 19th century was fascinating and is worth studying closely. The past seems to be disappearing faster and faster these days, and I was pleased to learn about interesting people like Jessie Craigen<\/a>, Walter Crane<\/a>, Joseph Arch<\/a>, Tim Healy<\/a>, Ettore Ciccotti<\/a>, Bronterre O\u2019Brien<\/a>, Marcus Clarke<\/a>, and to be told about the London Dock Strike of 1889<\/a> and West End Riots<\/a>. Hyndman offers a beautiful tribute to the socialist aristocrat Lady Warwick<\/a>, who hosted social democratic gatherings on the sumptuous grounds of her estate. It was, he says, her \u201cenjoyment of life and unwearying appreciation of all that is most exciting and delightful and exhilarating in the world [that] render her the more intolerant of a social system in which\u2014though the power to produce wealth is so great that it becomes under existing conditions a direct cause of crisis and poverty\u2014there is no hope that the mass of the actual producers will ever obtain any considerable share of it.\u201d Certain historical facts become distorted over time, and it is useful to be reminded of the truth\u2014for instance, Hyndman reminds us that John Stuart Mill, often presented as a libertarian, accepted the basic tenets of socialism by the end of his life. Reading these books can also remind one of just how similar human beings are across many centuries. The arguments being had then are the arguments being had now, the flaws in people then are their flaws now.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\nDaisy, Countess of Warwick<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nHyndman also saw himself as being at the beginning of a struggle that would last across generations, and saw that leftist politics are an important way to make sure you do something valuable during the brief time you are alive on Earth. He recalls seeing Eleanor Marx speak one night of \u201cthe eternal life gained by those who fought and fell in the great cause of the uplifting of humanity.\u201d That eternal life consists in the \u201cmaterial and intellectual improvement of countless generations of mankind.\u201d Eleanor Marx was one of those who had left Hyndman\u2019s organization in the ugly schism, but he recalls of this particular meeting, \u201cit was a bitter, snow-swept night in the street outside, but in the Hall the warmth of comradeship exceeded that of any Commune celebration I have ever attended. We were one that night.\u201d Unfortunately, the day after, \u201cthe antagonism recommenced.\u201d (I recall similar feelings when I attended<\/a> the 2019 DSA convention. Again, the more things change.)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\nEleanor Marx<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nAt the end of his life, Hyndman was disappointed by how little the socialists had managed to accomplish in Britain. In 1881, he had given a talk on \u201cPractical Remedies for Pressing Needs,\u201d advocating \u201cthe Feeding of Children in the Board Schools; the Organisation Co-operatively of Unemployed Labour; the Eight Hour Law; the Nationalisation of Railways and Mines; and the Construction and Maintenance of wholesome Homes for the People by public bodies, national and municipal, at public cost.\u201d When he wrote his memoirs, he said it was \u201csad to recognize, after twenty-nine years of assiduous agitations, that not one of these remedial measures has yet been passed into law, and that the physical, mental and moral degeneration of large masses of our population, which they were specially intended to check, has gone steadily on ever since,\u201d and \u201cthe capitalist class and their hangers-on in this country will not accept admittedly beneficial palliatives of their anarchical system.\u201d 100 years later, the progress made both in Britain and elsewhere is still disappointing. But in his preface, Hyndman writes beautifully of why he can still find peace:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo when we, the small men of our time, pass unregarded to the rest of the tomb, this only consolation shall close our eyelids in their never-ending sleep: that though our names may be forgotten our memory will ever be green in the work that we have done and the eternal justice we have striven for.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nEveryone dies, often sooner than they expect. Hyndman, having founded the British Marxist movement, died and was almost entirely forgotten. But as he says, while those like him may be small and unregarded, they can take consolation that they did some small part in working toward justice. We should feel the same in our time. Political action is a way of making your life count, and makes it easier to accept your mortality, knowing that you have contributed something, however small, that will last beyond your lifetime. Hyndman, flawed, possibly beyond redemption, nevertheless helped begin a valuable project that is being worked on to this day. Let us each strive to make our own contribution during the time we have here.<\/p>\n\n