Ideological conflict

“ No more appropriate work could have been done at the present time than to write the history of that long and terrible conflict between the agencies of intolerance and of liberalization which has given rise to modern civilization, and triumphed in that large measure of free opinion which the present age enjoys. ”

“ In their very differences they are the definite, the "public" expression of a conflict, or division, that inwardly affects every individual member, whatever his class or profession, which the society contains. In the day and generation of Democritus and Plato were there not well-defined parties, manifest in all the different and separately organized phases of life—moral, industrial, political or religious, namely, the parties of the conservatives and the radicals? ”

“ The controversies of old and new organization, nonresistance and political action, may now be looked upon by the parties to them, who still survive, with the philosophic calmness which follows the subsidence of prejudice and passion. ”

“ However our present conflict may seem at first sight to do violence, in certain respects, to the principles of self-government, everybody knows that it is a strife of democratic against oligarchic institutions, of a progressive against a stationary civilization, of the rights of manhood against the claims of a class, of a national order representing the will of a people against a conspiracy organized by a sectional minority. ”

“ Changing social systems, new political ideas, the labor cause, all movements for religious, social or political change have their zealots; they are met by the force of convention and conservatism ready to defend itself, and the clash is inevitable. ”

“ It is of the utmost importance that all reflecting persons should take into early consideration what these popular political creeds are likely to be, and that every single article of them should be brought under the fullest light of investigation and discussion, so that, if possible, when the time shall be ripe, whatever is right in them may be adopted, and what is wrong [13] rejected by general consent, and that instead of a hostile conflict, physical or only moral, between the old and the new, the best parts of both may be combined in a renovated social fabric. ”

“ And I saw the world-wide war which is waged in every land against freedom and union—the fight of caste against caste, of class against class, of masters with slaves, of the state against its citizens, of the thousand and one Frankenstein monsters of commerce and industry and politics and religion, fighting against the human beings who have created them. ”

“ Socialistic ideas made tremendous progress among the class I speak of, and these, by writing, by the circulation of prohibited papers, and so on, carried on a sort of crusade against the government, and indeed against all governments, carrying their ideas of liberty to the most extreme point and waging war against religion as well as against society. ”

“ If our difference of opinion is so inclusive that we can agree on nothing political, our differences have gone from mere opinion into the depths of ideology. Here the institutional framework is affected. ”

“ Is not the tendency everywhere the opposite way? What permanent claim has party on the allegiance of a moral being? What is it but a soft name for faction, the bane of States? Why should a good citizen surrender his conscience to it? Why should good citizens for ever divide themselves into two hostile camps, and wage political war against each other? Is an unpatriotic and anti-social principle to be accepted as the last word of politics? The supply of organic questions cannot be inexhaustible. ”

“ What is it, on the other hand, but traditions that represent the ignorance and accidents and injustice of former ages,—what is it but authority usurped and then consecrated, social superstitions hardened into political creeds,—that is now proving the weakness and peril of European nationalities, and imperial or monarchical governments? Knowledge, science, literature, progress, truth, liberty, become sooner or later the enemies of all governments, and all social institutions, not founded in abstract justice and equal rights. ”

“ Yet this is the very policy which the socialists have announced in their declaration of war against present-day society--to capture the political machinery of society and by that machinery destroy present-day society. ”

“ Doctrines that set group against group, faith against faith, race against race, class against class, fanning the fires of hatred in men too despondent, too desperate to think for themselves, were used as rabble-rousing slogans on which dictators could ride to power. ”

“ The war revealed at once the immense power and the immense dangers of public opinion when its full force is aroused and one hundred million people come to think—thinking is not the word—to [Pg 89] feel, as one man. Minorities, the great corrective in democracy, disappeared. ”

“ Hence every ecclesiastical, governmental, or social institution which is based on the idea of demanding conformity or likeness in any thing, has ever been, and ever will be, frustrated by the operation of this subtile, all-pervading, principle of individuality. Hence, human society has ever been, and is still, in the turmoil of revolution. The only alternative known has been between revolutions and despotism. Revolutions violently burst the bonds, and explode the foundations [129] of existing institutions. The institution falls before the individual. ”

“ He would urge us onward in our merely intellectual career, unmindful of the lesson, which the pages of history logically teach, which the principles we have pointed out unerringly confirm, that intellectual development, religious liberty, civil freedom, social equality, unbalanced and unregulated by the centralization, consolidation, moral force, religious responsibility, and the tendencies which belong to the principle of unity, push irresistibly toward disintegration, and end inevitably in political revolution, national disruption, and social anarchy. ”

“ Recognizing the social antagonism of classes at the bottom of all political struggles, it applied itself to the study of the conditions under which one class of society can and must be called on to represent the whole of the interests of a nation, and thus politically to rule over it. ”

“ The one unvarying factor of the human mind,” he went on, “is the firm, unbiased conviction that I am right, and all opposition necessarily, consciously and wilfully wrong. This belief is the base and foundation of all human institutions, of sectionalism, caste, creeds, parties, states, of patriotism itself. ”

“ Why should we resort to violence, or invoke it, or even countenance it, when our cardinal principle is the sovereignty of reason, and our hope of progress lies in the free play of mind on every subject? We are perhaps more profoundly impressed than others with the idea that all institutions are the outward expression of inward thoughts and feelings, and that it is impossible to forestall the advance of public sentiment by the most cunningly-devised machinery. ”

“ Far otherwise: the history of the present century shows all too clearly that such ideologies and the partisan agendas to which they give rise have been themselves the principal enemies of the interests they purport to serve. ”

“ In other words, in the fight of press, parties, factions, groups, the political doctrines of the classes definitely crystalize themselves; there the classes forge the proper ideo-political weapons for the coming battles. ”

“ But, where a nation is once divided, interest and animosity will keep open the breach, without being supported by any other principles; or, at worst, a body of discontented people can change, and take up what principles they please. ”

“ They can see intestine discords, our government disorganized, our wrongs aggravated, multiplied, and un-redressed, peace with dishonor, or war without justice, union, or resources, in 'the calm lights of mild philosophy.' ... ”

“ The violent struggle between an imperious dogmatism and an unintelligent and mistaken attempt at a retrogressive movement is resolved into a higher view, which permits the union of conservatism and progress. Violent attempts and rash endeavors made, threatened to bring contempt on the noblest teachings of philosophy, and to make them repulsive to man; and, on the other hand, a blind respect for the institutions consecrated by history threatened to stifle all examination and all freedom of judgment. ”

“ At the outset we must realize that in any complex society there are wide ranges of ideology, from the body of ideas held by small uninfluential sects to the purposes, ideas, policy declarations and actions of governing oligarchies. We do not wish to defend or attack the ideas, but to summarize them and understand them in a way that will give a group picture of the purposes, ideas, policies and day-to-day activities of the civilizations in question. ”

“ How fashion a civilization that shall absorb and assimilate those blood-strains and traditional beliefs? I think the one clear answer lies in the creation of free institutions, which shall answer a common need, and which shall violate the instinctive life and traditions of none. ”

“ Where could oppression hide itself? Where could the lusts of the flesh plot their treason against the sovereignty of the spirit, beyond the range of spirit vigilance—this new safeguard of human society, the eternal law of progress, which is now unfolding? ”

“ Moreover, we always find that institutions, even the best of them, that were built up to maintain equality, peace, and mutual aid, become petrified as they grow old. They lose their original purpose, they fall under the domination of an ambitious minority, and gradually they become an obstacle to the ulterior development of society. Then individuals, more or less isolated, rebel against these institutions. ”

“ They will have, at first, to disguise their views, to conceal their favourite doctrines, and even to cherish those national prejudices, which, were their real views known, would crush them to atoms. The mass of the people may acquiesce for a time in the new order of things, partly from a vague desire of change and improvement, partly from the passive political habits which a dull and deadening despotism has bred and rooted in the course of ages. ”

“ All classes and schools of thought, the peoples of all nations alities, differing in language, tradition, civilisation, and religion, united against the common enemy, displaying a splendid natural unity in face of the unnaturalness of theocratic despotism. ”

“ The so-called “Real”-politicians, whenever it suits them, are ready to accept things as they are, substituting facts for what is right; but what has been or what exists is not thereby made right—history and social life is the constant struggle of those who defend right and justice against those who adhere to convenient facts. ”

“ Thus, while the direct movement of society gives rise to two opposing parties, absolutism and socialism; the oscillatory movement produces two other parties hostile to each other and to the other two, which I call, by their historical names, the first, golden mean or doctrine, the second, demagogy, Jacobinism, or radicalism.
The golden mean, known to philosophers by the name of eclecticism, comes from this egotistical and lazy state of mind, which prefers to frank solutions impossible compromises; which accepts religion, but made to its convenience; which wants philosophy, but with reservation ”

“ Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas. Sharp definitions and unsparing analysis would displace the veil beneath which society dissembles its divisions, would make political disputes too violent for compromise and political alliances too precarious for use, and would embitter politics with all the passion of social and religious strife. Sir Erskine May writes for all who take their stand within the broad lines of our constitution. ”

“ The perplexing languages, religions, customs and ideologies between the people of your nations, are incentives to enmity, turmoil, revolutions, and wars. Even now black clouds of dissensions and differences in your ideologies are looming on your horizon, seriously dividing the nations of your globe into two different camps and menacing your world peace. ”

“ We must not be misled by "false, specious idealism masquerading as progress". The fight is one for God as well as country, in which all forms of radicalism, materialism, and anarchy should be fiercely and promptly stamped out. ”

“ You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all
joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. ”

“ So they find themselves mobilizing one class of oppressors (The Wind) against another — neither of which understands egoism, individualism, labor and revolution as expressions of a single principle: the viability and desirability of the sovereignty of the individual and the destruction of every social institution that impedes it. ”

“ Where the vital needs of submerged classes are unfulfilled, where conflicts of interest are so deep that they cannot be negotiated without cutting into the vested powers of men who are firmly convinced of their divine or social right to those powers, where customary political rule becomes increasingly inept or oppressive, where the moral professions of those in the saddle sound hollow in the light of actualities—we can already feel the vibrations of discontent that may suddenly erupt into a cataclysmic flood. ”

“ But how shall we convince men, "how popularize the idea, if the bourgeoisie remains hostile; if the populace, brutalized by servitude, full of prejudices and bad instincts, remains plunged in indifference; if the professors, the academicians, the press, are calumniating you; if the courts are truculent; if the powers that be muffle your voice? Don't worry. Just as the lack of ideas makes one lose the most promising games, war against ideas can only push forward the Revolution. ”