Andre Breton (19/2/1896-28/9/66) - Revolutionary, Poet and founder of Surrealism.

 
" In the world we live in everything militates in favour of things that have not yet happened, of things that will never happen again"

It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere"

"No one who has lived even for a fleeting moment for something other than life in its conventional sense and has experienced the exaltation that this feeling produces can then renounce his new freedom so easily."

"Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all" - Quotes by Andre Breton

Aptly described by playwright Eugene Ionesco as "one of the four or five great reformers of modern thought", Andre Breton (1896-1966) was the founder and prime mover of Surrealism, the most influential artistic and literary movement of the 20th century. Poet and theorist, artistic impresario anti-fascist and political agitator, Breton was a man of paradoxical character: inspiring one moment, crushingly tyrannical the next; embracing friends like Brunuel, Dali, Duchamp, Miro, Man Ray, Aragon and Eluard, only to exile them as enemies later. From its emergence from Dada after World War I through its culmination in the 1960s, here is his  Surrealist world..
André Breton was born  into a working-class family on February 19, 1896, in Tinchebray, a small town in Normandy, France, although his family relocated to a Parisian suburb soon after. He excelled in school and developed literary interests quite early. Breton read the French Decadents, such as Charles Baudelaire, J.K. Huysmans, Stephane Mallarme, and the German Romantic writers, all of whom informed his early thoughts on Avant-Gardism. By 1912, Breton had a cultivated knowledge of Contemporary art and begun to study Anarchism as a political movement. While he loved the French Decadent artists, such as Gustave Moreau, he began to separate himself from their belief in "art for art's sake," in favor of art that appealed to the masses.In 1916, Breton joined the group of artists associated with the subversive Dada movement in Paris, including Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray.
But he  moved away from Dadaism, which itself began during World War One as an irrational, nonsensical expression of anti-war rhetoric and along with Louis Aragon and Phillippe Soupault, Breton  in 1919 co-founded a journal called Littérature to showcase the first surrealist writing. His definition of surrealism was summed up as:" psychic automation in its pure state, by which one  proposes to express - verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner - The actual functioning of thought."  In 1924, he published Le Manifeste du Surréalisme (The Manifesto of Surrealism), a document announcing the new movement's embrace of all forms of liberated expression and its rejection of social and moral conventions.
Breton studied medicine and psychiatry and showed a particular interest in mental illnesses.His early interest was in being a psychoanalyst and met Freud in Vienna in 1921. During the first world war Breton served in the neurological ward in Nantes,as a nurse but never qualified as a psychoanalyst. But  no doubt this experience laid the foundations for his theories on the concept of the unconsciousness. His first poems, Decembre and Age, were written while he worked there.He developed a passion for psychiatric art, which informed his interest in Dada, and later surrealism. Here he met the devotee of Alfred Jarry,https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/alfed-jarry-891877-11107-life-as-riot.html Jacques Vache whose anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition influenced Breton considerably. Vaché committed suicide at the age 24 in 1919. Somewhat later Breton conducted his first experiments with the insane at a psychiatric center in aint-Dezier. He drew pictures of their dreams and committed their free associations to paper in order to nalyse the patients by Freudian methods. In 1919 he published a slim volume Les Chants magnifique, consisting of texts developed together with Phillipe Soupalt  by the free association method that is automatically.
He married Simone Kahn in 1921 and while they lived in Paris he amassed a massive collection of artwork, photographs and books. He went on to marry a further two times.
His Surrealist Manifesto, the first of three, was produced in 1924. This explained his definition of surrealism and sought to highlight the importance of dreams and the merging of realities in an absurdist way,which outlines surrealist preoccupations and is considered to be the beginning of the Surrealist Movement. It also established Breton as the spearhead of Surrealism, a role he would maintain for the entire duration of the movement. Breton credited several contemporaries in the work including Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard and others.And he became associated with a number of writers including Benjamin Peret, Antonin Artaud,https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/antonin-artaud-18961948-revolt-against.html
Robert Desnos https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/robert-desnos-47-00-paris-8645-some.html Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/paul-eluard-14121895-261152-poetic.html.and also associated with the Dadaist Tristan Tzara.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/tristan-tzara-441896-251263-radical.html

                                 Breton third on left pictured will fellow Surrealists

  
His second Manifesto came in 1930 but the third was never published. After writing his Manifestos he published poems and novels throughout the 1920s and 30s. His most acclaimed novel, from 1928, is Nadia, believed to be a semi-autobiographical story of his relationship with a mad woman who was a patient of Pierre Janet. It begins with the question “Who Am I” and ends with “beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all.”L'Amour Fou (Mad Love), published in 1937, is a poetic meditation on obsessive love.
Anxious to combine the themes of personal transformation found in the works of Arthur Rimbaud with the politics of Karl Marx, Breton joined the French Communist Party in 1927.The revolutionary aspiration is at the very source of Surrealism,it is not by accident that one of the movement’s first collective texts, written in 1925, is called “Revolution First and Always.” That same year, the desire to break with Western civilization led Breton to investigate the ideas of the October Revolution, for example, Trotsky’s  essay  Lenin. .In 1933 however Breton and Eluard were expelled from the party due to nonconformist behaviour. In 1935, there was a conflict between Breton and the Soviet writer and journalist Ilya Ehrenburg during the first "International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture" which opened in Paris in June. Breton had been insulted by Ehrenburg—along with  fellow surrealists—in a pamphlet which said, among other things, that surrealists were "pederasts". Breton slapped Ehrenburg several times on the street, which resulted in the  surrealists being expelled from the Congress.He also criticised Stalins repression of public opinion, and quoted from Lenin (1905) ; " Everyone is free to say and write whatever he pleases; freedom of the press must remain unimpeded."
Breton considered everything else reactionary, " Whether we move in the realm of politics or of art, there are always these two forces; the refusal to accept conditions as they are and the irresistable need to change them, on the one hand, there must be lasting loyalty to the moral precepts that have stood for progress. No one can suppress these forces for years, or fight against them in the name of messianic idea of what the Soviet Union is doing."
Now the break with the Soviet Union was official, Lenin and Trotsky had become the new heroes of the movement, not Stalin. A Militant Federation of Revolutionary Intellectuals , by a group that included Breton, Eluard and Peret. It was called Contre-Attaque and its aim was class struggle and the nationalisation of the means of production.
In April 1938 Breton accepted a cultural commission from the French government to travel to Mexico with his wife the painter Jacquline Lamba. After a conference  about surrealism, Breton told a story about getting lost in Mexico City (as no one was waiting for him at the airport) "I don't know why I came here. Mexico is the most surrealist country in the world". They stay with Guadalupe Marin, Diego Rivera's previous wife, and meet the Kahlo-Riveras. When Breton sees Kahlo's unfinished "What the Water Gave Me", the metaphorical self-portrait of what life had given her - floating on the water of her bathtub - he immediately labels her an innate "surrealist", and offers to show her work in Paris.

                                              Frida Kahlo's - What the Water Gave Me                                       

Immediately he circumscribed her as one part the essence of the surrealist movement and wrote an essay to her „a strip of silk around a pump”. This label of surrealism of the work of Frida Kahlo is one of the “mistakes” that have been continued between the massive public with respect to their classification and understanding.In her own words she said " They thought I was a surrealist , but I was not, I never painted my dreams, I only painted my own reality."
Visiting Mexico also provided the opportunity to meet Leon Trotsky. Breton and other surrealists traveled via a long boat ride from Patzcuaro to the town of Frongaricuaro. He Diego Riviera and Frida Kahlo were among the visitors to the hidden community of intellectuals and artists. Together, Breton and Trotsky wrote a manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art (published under the names of Breton and Diego Rivera) calling for "complete freedom of art", a call to arms, pens and brushes addressed to radical artists and writers. It denounced fascism and Stalinism, two dictatorships suffocating artistic expression as they were drowning workers’ opposition in blood. It was also a comment on the role of art and culture in class society, it contains  this famous passage:
The revolution must, from the very start, establish and assure an anarchist regime of individual liberty for cultural creation.  No authority, no constraint, not the slightest trace of commandment! On this issue Marxists can march hand in hand with anarchists…. https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/lit_crit/works/rivera/manifesto.htm 
The result was a manifesto that would be of  great importance for both Trotsky and  Breton . Communist and Surrealist met on their common ground of their reaction to Stalinism and their interest in the revolutionary function of art.

                                            Breton, Riviera and Trotsky            

 
At the start of the 1940s Breton had returned briefly to work in the medical wards in French hospitals but when the Nazis invaded and occupied France he fled to America along with his friends Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst. He lived in New York City at this time, and managed a Surrealist exhibition at Yale in 1942.In 1945 he married Elisa Bindhorf in Reno, Nevada.
He returned to Paris after the war in 1946, where he opposed French colonialism (for example as a signatory of the  Manifesto of the 121 against the Algerian war) and continued, until his death, to foster a second group of surrealists in the form of expositions or reviews (La Breche, 1961–1965). In 1959, he organized an exhibit in Paris.
 Breton’s anarchist sympathies manifested more clearly in the postwar years.By the end of World War11 the surrealist group led by Breton had decided to explicitly embrace anarchism. In the 1947 book Arcanum 17, he describes the emotion he felt when, still a child, he discovered in a cemetery a headstone with the simple inscription, “Neither God Nor Master.”  Commenting on these words, he raises a general reflection:  “Above art and poetry, whether we wish it or no, flies a flag alternately red and black”—two colors between which he refused to choose."
From October 1951 to January 1953, the Surrealist group in Paris regularly contributed articles and leaflets to the journal Le Libertaire, the organ of the French Anarchist Federation. Their principal correspondent in the Federation was, at that time, the libertarian communist George Fontenis.  It was during this time that Breton wrote the flamboyant 1952 text entitled “La claire tour/The Light Tower,” which gives the libertarian origins of Surrealism:
Surrealism first came into being in the black mirror of anarchism, well before it defined itself, when it was nothing more than a free association among individuals rejecting spontaneously and outright the social and moral constraints of their time. Breton was consistent in his support for the francophone Anarchist Federation and he continued to offer his solidarity after the Platformists  around Fontenis transformed the FA into the Federation Communiste Libertaire. He was one of the few intellectuals who continued to offer his support to the FCL during the  Algerian War (1954-1962) when the FCL suffered severe repression and was forced underground. He sheltered Fontenis whilst he was in hiding. He refused to take sides on the splits in the French anarchist movement and both he and Peret expressed solidarity as well with the new FA set up by the synthesist anarchists, and worked in the Antifascist Committees of the 1960s alongside the FA. His apartment at la Rue Fontaine #42 became the heart of Paris’s anarchist writers and artists, and home to his collection of over 5000 artworks, manuscripts, African masks and objects of Oceanic art.
This interest and active sympathy for anarchism did not at all  lead Breton to renounce his adhesion to the October Revolution and the ideas of Leon Trotsky.  In an intervention on November 17, 1957, André Breton insisted and signed, " Against winds and tides, I am among those who still find, in the memory of the October Revolution, a high degree of that unconditional enthusiasm which I bore toward it in my youth and which implies total self-sacrifice."
Finally, in 1962, in an homage to Natalia Sedova Trotsky, who had just died, he hoped that one day history would  accord Leon Trotsky “not only justice…but will be called to accept, in all their vigor and amplitude, the ideas to which his life was given.”
During his lifetime, Breton produced a tremendous body of work that contained poetry, novels, criticism, and theory. Of his oeuvre, the collection of poems Mad Love (1937), the novel Nadja (1928) and the critical text Communicating Vessels (1932) are considered to be his most valuable contributions to the literary world.He published three books of poetry, in all Arcane 17 in 1945, and a further Surrealist work in 1953 called The key to the fields. He also mentored young surrealist writers and artists.
Andre Breton died in Paris on September 28th 1966 at the age of 70 and was buried in the Cimetière des Batignolles in Paris. He remains  one of the most outstanding literary representatives of surrealism, who tried to link art with revolutionary politics. Who with single mindedness clung to his idea of Surrealism and the revolution of the mind.His rich contribution  to the idea of surrealism, art, and the meaningful poetry, that he left means his legacy lives on.After coming to New York during World War II, his ideas on Surrealism were essential to early Abstract Expressionists, like Arshile Gorky, Roberto Matta, and Yves Tanguy, as well as second generation Surrealists, like Joseph Cornell. He pioneered the concept of fusing art and culture, which became a basic tenet in Pop Art. Breton's use of the media as a tool of art practice also helped shape many contemporary artists who build personas as part of their work. In this way, he foresaw Performance Art, Fluxus, Conceptualism, and what has followed on from those movements. Perhaps above all, Breton's love of absurdist humor continues to inspire artists to the present day..
Here's a link to a previous post about him :-

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/andre-breton-1896-1966-surreallism-and.html

Freedom of Love

(Translated from the French by Edouard Rodti)

My wife with the hair of a wood fire
With the thoughts of heat lightning
With the waist of an hourglass
With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger
My wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitude
With the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earth
With the tongue of rubbed amber and glass
My wife with the tongue of a stabbed host
With the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyes
With the tongue of an unbelievable stone
My wife with the eyelashes of strokes of a child's writing
With brows of the edge of a swallow's nest
My wife with the brow of slates of a hothouse roof
And of steam on the panes
My wife with shoulders of champagne
And of a fountain with dolphin-heads beneath the ice
My wife with wrists of matches
My wife with fingers of luck and ace of hearts
With fingers of mown hay
My wife with armpits of marten and of beechnut
And of Midsummer Night
Of privet and of an angelfish nest
With arms of seafoam and of riverlocks
And of a mingling of the wheat and the mill
My wife with legs of flares
With the movements of clockwork and despair
My wife with calves of eldertree pith
My wife with feet of initials
With feet of rings of keys and Java sparrows drinking
My wife with a neck of unpearled barley
My wife with a throat of the valley of gold
Of a tryst in the very bed of the torrent
With breasts of night
My wife with breasts of a marine molehill
My wife with breasts of the ruby's crucible
With breasts of the rose's spectre beneath the dew
My wife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of days
With the belly of a gigantic claw
My wife with the back of a bird fleeing vertically
With a back of quicksilver
With a back of light
With a nape of rolled stone and wet chalk
And of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinking
My wife with hips of a skiff
With hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathers
And of shafts of white peacock plumes
Of an insensible pendulum
My wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestos
My wife with buttocks of swans' backs
My wife with buttocks of spring
With the sex of an iris
My wife with the sex of a mining-placer and of a platypus
My wife with a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeat
My wife with a sex of mirror
My wife with eyes full of tears
With eyes of purple panoply and of a magnetic needle
My wife with savanna eyes
My wife with eyes of water to he drunk in prison
My wife with eyes of wood always under the axe
My wife with eyes of water-level of level of air earth and fire

The Spectral Attitudes

I attach no importance to life
I pin not the least of life's butterflies to importance
I do not matter to life
But the branches of salt the white branches
All the shadow bubbles
And the sea-anemones
Come down and breathe within my thoughts
They come from tears that are not mine
From steps I do not take that are steps twice
And of which the sand remembers the flood-tide
The bars are in the cage
And the birds come down from far above to sing before these bars
A subterranean passage unites all perfumes
A woman pledged herself there one day
This woman became so bright that I could no longer see her
With these eyes which have seen my own self burning
I was then already as old as I am now
And I watched over myself and my thoughts like a night watchman in an immense factory Keeping watch alone
The circus always enchants the same tramlines
The plaster figures have lost nothing of their expression
They who bit the smile's fig
I know of a drapery in a forgotten town
If it pleased me to appear to you wrapped in this drapery
You would think that your end was approaching
Like mine
At last the fountains would understand that you must not say Fountain
The wolves are clothed in mirrors of snow
I have a boat detached from all climates
I am dragged along by an ice-pack with teeth of flame
I cut and cleave the wood of this tree that will always be green
A musician is caught up in the strings of his instrument
The skull and crossbones of the time of any childhood story
Goes on board a ship that is as yet its own ghost only
Perhaps there is a hilt to this sword
But already there is a duel in this hilt
During the duel the combatants are unarmed
Death is the least offence
The future never comes

The curtains that have never been raised
Float to the windows of houses that are to be built
The beds made of lilies
Slide beneath the lamps of dew
There will come an evening
The nuggets of light become still underneath the blue moss
The hands that tie and untie the knots of love and of air
Keep all their transparency for those who have eyes to see
They see the palms of hands
The crowns in eyes
But the brazier of crown and palms
Can scarcely be lit in the deepest part of the forest
There where the stags bend their heads to examine the years
Nothing more than a feeble beating is heard
From which sound a thousand louder or softer sounds proceed
And the beating goes on and on
There are dresses that vibrate
And their vibration is in unison with the beating
When I wish to see the faces of those that wear them
A great fog rises from the ground
At the bottom of the steeples behind the most elegant reservoirs of life and of wealth
In the gorges which hide themselves between two mountains
On the sea at the hour when the sun cools down
Those who make signs to me are separated by stars
And yet the carriage overturned at full speed
Carries as far as my last hesitation
That awaits me down there in the town where the statues of bronze
and of stone have changed places with statues of wax Banyans banyans.

  
Link to Less Time - Andre Breton

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/less-time-andre-breton-1921896-2891966.html

Further reading :-

Breton, “Homage to Natalia Sedova-Trotsky,” in What is Surrealism, pp.306-308.

Surrealism- Uwe M. Schneede ; Harry N Abrams, New York,

Surrealism -Patrick Waldberg ; Thames and Hudson

dada; art and anti art - Hans Richter; Thames and Hudson

The Poetry of Surrealism: An Anthology, ed. Michael Benedikt (Boston & Toronto: Little, Brown and Co., 1974).

Solidarity is so nourishing, but action needed too.

My partner currently very ill, but still carries so much strength, it's left me feeling rather wobbly, but this morning  I have got on laptop to find so many positive messages.
It really is so moving  to see so much humanity, to see so much kindness. Solidarity is so nourishing.
However despite this  and my gratitude please keep pressuring your Governments to acknowledge the plight of refugees, facing incredible difficulties too at this moment in time. This is after all what makes us human. Doing nothing is simply not an option anymore.It is more than time that our lazy Governments find some humanity too, so keep up the pressure.
At the end of the day, all the compassion and empathy in the bloody world, is useless without any actual change taking place. It is our duty as humans to achieve real change, not just for ourselves, but for every future generation. Collectively we have the power to do this, to shape the world and make sure better policies are actually put in place.
This winter will be especially cold and conditions enormously difficult for  people basically fleeing for their lives, we have to continue to speak out, defend and protect. This crisis that our own Govenments have created must be defeated. Everyday now because of no fault of their own thousands of ordinary people like you and me are forced to flee their homes, in search for a better future, escaping violence, they leave everything behind,everything except their hopes and dreams.
It is so important to continue to share the reality of the inherent violence and repression  that comes with the current existence of states and borders, so please continue to amplify your voices for those affected as active agents in the struggle for freedom and justice. Many thanks.

Well done Jeremy Corbyn: The fight continues

Like many people up and down the country I have been inspired by Jeremy Corbyn's radical vision. Today he has once again  won the Labour leadership election, winning convincingly by a large margin, taking 333,000 votes compared to rival Owen Smith's 193,000 votes, picking up .61.8% of the votes cast to beat his rival despite a media onslaught against him, and dirty tricks that saw many members losing their right to vote.An increase by the way  on the 59.5 percent he won last year in a crushing victory.
With this result comes an increased mandate for his leadership, who has won in every single group and sees the complete demolishment of the ideas of the Labour right from its grassroots movement. In the following speech he has vowed to wipe the slate clean, calling for unity. I wish him success in this endeavor, and hope people will  be energised by this victory, and sees people getting  behind his clear voice and continuing the job of opposition to the Tory's toxic policies and building a movement that continues to change society for the better, not just for the privileged few. That will continue to drive forth the complete opposition to the politics of austerity and spread the message of social justice at home and abroad and harness the energy and enthusiasm for real change for  the people across this land, that is so  needed in the current climate.

.
Here is his victory speech in full :-


"Thank you all for being here today. 
I want to thank the more than 300,000 supporters, who’ve given me their support and trust in this Labour leadership election.  
I’m honoured to have won the results of a majority of members, affiliated supporters and registered supporters, who’ve given me the second mandate in a year to lead our party.
I want to thank all the volunteers in our amazing campaign. The tens of thousands who’ve helped all over the country in my campaign. 
I also want to thank all those volunteers and worked so hard and helped in Owen Smith’s campaign as well.Volunteers and the work they put in are the very life blood of democracy and we both had amazing sets of volunteers. So I say thank you, to all of them, for all the work they did over the summer. 
And I want to say thank you to Owen Smith as well. Owen, we’ve had an interesting summer of debates all over the country, thank you very much for all of that, for the good discussions and good humoured debates that we’ve had. And no doubt it will continue, because we’re part of the same Labour family and that’s how it’s always going to be. Thank you. 
And it has been an amazing summer, we’ve had good weather of course, and we’ve had events and rallies and hustings all over the place. 
But it’s been about our Labour family facing the future of how we do things together in the future.
 I will do everything I can, to repay the trust and the support, to bring our party together. To make it an engine of progress for our country and the people that depend on the Labour party, to protect their interests and win power to deliver real change in this country. 
Elections are passionate and often partisan affairs and things are sometimes said in the heat of the debate on all sides which we sometimes later come to regret. 
But always remember in our party: We have much more in common than that which divides us. 
As far as I’m concerned, let’s wipe that slate clean, from today, and get on with the work we’ve got to do as a party together.
We are proud as a party to that we’re not afraid to discuss openly, to debate and disagree. That is essential for a party that wants to change people’s lives for the better. That isn’t prepared to accept things as they are. 
It’s also an essential part of what has drawn half a million people into membership of what is now the largest political party anywhere in Western Europe. We have almost tripled our membership since last spring. 
Those new members are part of a nationwide movement who can now take our message into ever community in the country. To win support for the election of a Labour government.  
Our party has a duty of care to our members. That means intervening to stop personal abuse and also abiding by the principles of natural justice in the way that we handle it. 
Politics is demeaned and corroded by intimidation and abuse. It’s not my way and it’s not the Labour way and never will be. 
Now, friends, is the time for all of us to focus every ounce of our energy on exposing and defeating the Tories and the damage they are doing to our country. 
Theresa May’s government isn’t a new government. It’s David Cameron’s government with a hard right edge, repacked with progressive slogans, but threatening to take the country backwards and dithering as we face the historic challenges of Brexit.
So, if you believe that education is better than segregation; that we need an NHS that isn’t threatened with breakdown and loaded with debt; that older people deserve dignity and  care they need in their own home; that we have a duty as a country to refugees and promote peace, rather than conflict; if like me, you believe that it’s a scandal that here in Britain, the sixth largest economy in the world, four million children are in poverty, six million workers are paid less than the living wage; and if like me, you believe we can do things far better, then help us build support for a genuine alternative that would invest in our future. 
A more prosperous future, in which the wealth we all create is shared more equally. 
Together, arguing for the real change this country needs, I’ve no doubt that this party can win the next general election, whenever the Prime Minister calls it, and form the next government.
To do that, we need to work together. This time next week, we’re all going to hit the streets, united as a party. I’m calling on Labour party members, all over the country, to join us in a national campaign for inclusive education for all, next Saturday. 
The Tories’ plans for grammar school segregation of our children exposed their divisive and damaging agenda for our country. 
My responsibility as Labour leader is to unite this party - at conference this week, here, in the wonderful city of Liverpool, in Parliament and in every community around the country. 
But it’s also the responsibility of the whole party - MPs, councillors, party members and our wonderful supporters across the country - to work together and respect the democratic choice that's been made.
Labour is a party brimming full of ideas, of talent, of creativity. And so is this country. Unleashing that potential is the job of all of us. 
Let us work together for real change in Britain. 
Thank you very much 

Solidarity Forever - Ralph Chaplin (1887-1961)

The  Labour Song ' Solidarity Forever' was  written by Industrial Workers of the World songwriter and their poet Laureatte Ralph Chaplin,wrote the song after a  big march by some 1,300  people against hunger and unemployment  which was led by IWW  organiser  Lucy Parsons in Chicago on  January17, 1915.,

He had begun writing the song back in 1914 during a miners strike in Huntington West Virginia, He wrote of the songs origins in Wobbly an IWW journal, ' I wanted the song to be full of revolutionary fervour and to have a chorus that was ringing and defiant.  It was sung to the tune of 'John Brown's Body'  and was inspired by 'the Battle Hymn of the Republic'. 

Ralph Chaplin was born in Ames, Kansas in 1887. The family moved to Chicago 1893, he did a variety of low-paid jobs before moving to Mexico  where he became a supporter of Emilliano Zapata He  joined the International Workers in 1913,but got distracted  after converting to Roman Catlolicism but  continued to back grass-roots activism and libertarian radicalism and to publish poetry. He died in Tacoma in 1961.
The following version of  his song was recorded in 1941 by Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers  and is contained on their album ' Talking Union'. It is still probably one of the most well known union anthems after the Internationale.
It is still being sung by people still at war against capitalism's tyranny, and by those who are convinced in nothing less than the solidarity of freedom. As austerity grips, its message resonates even more,as  the greedy still try to lay the blame at the doors of the ordinary man. The song still chimes today because it describes the realization that collective power of workers and unions is greater than those with armies or hoarded gold etc.
The wobblies and the IWW still going strong, standing as a dedicated force for social change, internationally across the globe. It is still a member led union, for all workers, (whatever your job, whether unemployed or not.) Their motto being 'an injury to one is an injury to all.
.

Solidarity Forever

When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yest what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
But the union makes us strong.

CHORUS:

Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
For the Union makes us strong.

Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organise and fight?
For the union makes us strong.

Chorus

It is we who plowed the prairies, built the cities where they  trade;
Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid;
Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made;
But the union makes  us strong.

Chorus

All the world that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.
We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.
It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.
While the union makes us strong.

Chorus

They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single whell can turn,
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
That the union makes us strong.

Chorus

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold,
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
For the union makes us strong.

Click on following to enlarge:-

you can connect at following link:-

http://www.iww.org/

Gresford Colliery Disaster

The Gresford  disaster took place this morning on September 22, 1934, at Gresford colliery near Wrexham, Denbighshire, Wales,  owned by the Westminster and United Collieries Group. which employed 2,220 men., with 1850 working underground and 350 on the surface.Some 19th century working practices were still in evidence in the pit although some mechanisation had been introduced.

At the time, 500 men were working down the mine on a night shift.men which was unusually high because some men had worked double shifts that night in order to be able to attend a carnival and football match the following day.

The mine operated in two main sections, the Dennis and the Slant. The explosion occurred in the Dennis, one of the deepest pits in the North Wales coalfields.

At 2.08 am, a violent explosion  occurred through the Dennis Section of the Gresford Collier mine one of the deepest pits in the North Wales coalfields.The Dennis Main Deep was ruptured by the explosions, and many miners would have been flung across the pit roads, some of them dying instantly. Others were burnt alive, gassed, asphyxiated or crushed to death. There is no doubt that there were others trapped alive with no means of escape who were the victims of later explosions and the release of more gas, and who were dead before they were entombed forever by the sealing of the mine by their colleagues.

In total 266 men and boys were killed with only 6 men surviving, caused by poor safety standards combined with poor management.Only eleven bodies were recovered from the mine. Inquests recorded the cause of death as carbon monoxide poisoning.
After a few hours of the first explosion, more than 1,000 men had assembled around the pithead standing silently in the cold and pouring rain, waiting to help their comrades who were trapped down below.For two days brave men fought to reach their entrapped colleagues, until came the terrible inhuman decision to withdraw and seal the pit shaft, with men still trapped inside. The roads and shafts were burnt and collapsed forever entombing the bodies of the victims closed.
With this some 800 children lost their fathers and more than 200 women lost their husbands and loved ones. It was not to be the worst mining disaster in the  history of  British mining though, Senghennyd holds that dubious privilege,https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/100th-anniversary-of-senghenydd-mine.html but still serves as a tragic reminder of how in a single day a community was to see and witness and feel the real price of coal, with every  member of the  community in Wrexham losing someone on this day. . 

Following the disaster there was a huge cover up,plus the wages of over 1,000 miners were docked by the owners adding further insult and injustice that would add much further pain and bringing muchf urther untold hardship to the area, with the result being that by the end of autumn, an estimated 1,100 Gresford men thrown on the dole. This combined with the fact that the management were never prosecuted,  because they  destroyed all records of this disaster was  an absolute betrayal of the men who perished. 
In its aftermath however following an inquiry numerous breaches of law were eventually exposed, The pit, it turned out, had a very erratic safety record and high levels of firedamp (methane gas) had been recorded and ignored. The enquiry that followed used the words, "neglect", "incompetence", "inadequate ventilation" and "lack of monthly reports". However, most of the blame centred on the management and colliery manager, William Bonsall, was branded the "villain", so deflecting the wrath originally directed at the owners, including Henry Dyke Dennis, who had not employed a mining engineer to check safety in the pit since 1932. Bonsall was fined £140, with costs of £350 and most of the other charges made against the colliery company were either withdrawn or dropped. Part of the problem had been that the miners themselves, the only really worthwhile witnesses, were reluctant to appear in court to give testimony against their bosses, fearing this would result in their instant dismissal and being thrown on the dole to add to an already swollen labour market. Furthermore, they would also have been blacklisted by all the other mine owners from ever working in the industry again.

However, the disaster became a symbol that, eventually, resulted in better and safer working conditions in the coal mining industry throughout the UK but it would be yet another twenty years before the lessons learned would bring fresh legislation in the form of the 1954 Mines and Quarries Act, but it all came too late for the Gresford dead

The colliery reopened after the disaster with coal production resuming in January 1936, but was to eventually be closed down for good for economic reasons in November 1973. Eventually in 1982 a memorial to the victims was erected nearby, constructed by using a wheel from the old pit-head winding gear. We should remember the desperate situation of those who were trapped, and their darkest hours just before dawn. An incident of national importance that should never be forgotten.As the late, great Ewan McColl put it, in his iconic song, The Gresford Disaster, it was "the terrible price that was paid" by your ancestors to keep the home fires burning. Cofiwch Gresffordd/ Remember Gresford.

Ewan Mac Coll - The Gresford Disaster

The Gresford Disaster

#

 

The names of the 266 men who died in the mining disaster in Wrexham on 22 September 1934.

Anders, John Thomas; Repairer; 31

Anders, John; Beltman; 27

Anderson, George; Repairer; 67

Andrews, Alfred (Owen); Cutter; 43

Archibald, Joseph (John)*; Metal; 47

Archibald, Thomas; Cutter; 30

Baines, David; Haulage; 26

Bateman, Maldwyn; Haulage; 15

Bather, (Edward) Wynne; Collier; 36

Beddoe(w)s, Edward; Collier; 63

Bew(d)ley, Thomas Lloyd; Collier; 58

Bow, (Bew) Arthur; Cutter; 45

Bowen, Alf (F); Borer; 53

Boycott, Henry; Packer; 38

Brain, Herbert; Repairer; 31

Bramwell, George; Haulage; 30

Brannan, John; Collier; 32

Brown, George*; Rescuer; 53

Brown, William Arthur; Rider Haulage; 22

Bryan, John A.H.; Packer; 20

Buckley, A.; Haulage; 21

Burns, Fred; Collier; 41

Capper John A.; Packer; 35

Cartwright, Albert Edward; Packer; 24

Cartwright, Charles; Filler; 25

Chadwick, Stephen; Filler; 21

Chesters, Edwin*; Fireman; 67

Clutton, Arthur; Packer; 29

Clutton, George (Albert); Packer; 20

Clutton, John Thomas*; Rider Haulage; 35

Collins, John ( Jos.); Shot Firer; 62

Cornwall, Thomas R.; Haulage; 30

Crump, William; Cutter-man; 36

Darlington, Thomas; Ripper; 28

Davies, Arthur; Filler; 24

Davies, Edward; Packer; 53

Davies, George (William); Haulage; 26

Davies, Hugh T.; Borer; 26

Davies, James; Repairer; 31

Davies, James; Repairer; 37

Davies, James (Edward); Filler; 21

Davies, John; Collier; 64

Davies, John; Repairer; 45

Davies, John E.; Collier; 32

Davies, E. R. (John R.); Repairer; 69

Davies, Matthias; Filler; 24

Davies, D. (Peter); Repairer; 50

Davies, Peter; Filler; 25

Davies, Peter; Borer; 21

Davies, Robert Thomas; Collier; 34

Davies, Samuel; Filler; 35

Davies, Thomas; Repairer; 31

Davies, William; Repairer; 33

Dodd, Thomas; Ripper; 39

Duckett, Fred; Collier; 29

Edge, Joseph (John); Haulage; 28

Edge, S. (T. Samuel); Collier; 30

Edwards, Albert; Repairer; 62

Edwards, Ernest; Haulage; 16

Edwards, I. (E. Glyn); Haulage; 23

Edwards, Ernest Thomas; Ripper; 53

Edwards, Frank; Pipe-man; 23

Edwards, James Sam; Haulage; -

Edwards E. (John Edward); Collier; 39

Edwards, John C.; Packer; 30

Edwards E. T. (Thomas David); Ripper; 40

Edwards, William; Ripper; 32

Edwardson, John; Beltman; 41

Ellis, George (Edward); Collier; 43

Evans, Fred; Collier; 50

Evans, Jos. (John); Cutterman; 32

Evans, Norman; Doggie; 45

Evans, Ralph; Cutter; 37

Fisher, Len; Haulage; 30

Foulkes, H. (Irwin); Haulage; 21

Gabriel, Richard George; Collier; 61

Gittens, Joseph (John Henry); Repairer; 42

Goodwin, John; Packer; 51

Griffiths, Edward; Filler; 21

Griffiths, Ellis; Packer; 50

Griffiths, Emmanuel; Packer; 53

Griffiths (E.) C.; Repairer; 25

Griffiths, Frank (John Francis); Repairer; 57

Griffiths, Walter; Repairer; 50

Hall, Walter; Packer; 49

Hallam, Thomas W.; Packer; 32

Hamlington, Arthur; Repairer; 62

Hampson, Frank (A.); Repairer; 32

Harrison, Arthur; Collier; 21

Harrison, Charles Edward; Haulage; 15

Hewitt, P. (Phillip J.); Repairer; 56

Higgins, W. (William Henry); Haulage; 27

Holt, Alfred (F); Cutter; 31

Hold (Houlden) John Henry; Haulage; 21

Hughes, Cecil; Packer; 23

Hughes, Daniel; Rescuer; 56

Hughes, Francis O.; Repairer; 60

Hughes, G. (Harry); Cutter-man; 44

Hughes, John; Repairer; 58

Hughes, Peter Joseph; Collier; 27

Hughes, Robert John; Collier; 29

Hughes, Walter Ellis; Packer; 24

Hughes, William; Collier; 43

Hughes, William; Rescuer; 54

Humphries, Ben; Collier; 34

Humphreys, Joseph (John); Cutter-man; 30

Husbands, Thomas; Collier; 40

Jarvis, Ernest; Cutter-man; 41

Jenkins, William T.; Collier; 25

Johns, Percy; Packer; 27

Jones, Albert Edward; Borer; 31

Jones, Azariah; Header; 37

Jones, Cyril; Collier; 26

Jones, Daniel; Repairer; 33

Jones, David L.; Cutter-man; 36

Jones, Edward; Repairer; 64

Jones, Edward; Repairer; 56

Jones, Edward George*; Haulage; 23

Jones, Eric; Filler; 23

Jones, Ernest; Packer; 36

Jones, Evan Hugh; Repairer; 55

Jones, Francis O.; Haulage; 27

Jones, Fred; Packer; 30

Jones, Frederick H.C.; Borer; 31

Jones, George; Beltman; 47

Jones, J. (George Humphrey); Haulage; 22

Jones, Gwilym; Repairer; 52

Jones, Henry; Collier; 59

Jones, Idris; Haulage; 37

Jones, Iorwerth; Haulage; 52

Jones, Jabez (James); Haulage; 43

Jones, John Dan; Repairer; 42

Jones, John Richard; Repairer; 33

Jones, John Robert; Repairer; 55

Jones, Llewellyn; Haulage; 40

Jones, Llewellyn; Repairer; 49

Jones, Llewellyn; Collier; 38

Jones, Neville; Beltman; 30

Jones, Richard Henry; Haulage; 21

Jones, Richard James ; Repairer; 34

Jones, Robert; Packer; 49

Jones, Robert; Deputy Fireman; 57

Jones, Thomas; Packer; 55

Jones, Thomas E.; Collier; -

Jones, Thomas John; Haulage; 58

Jones, Thomas O.; Collier; 59

Jones, William; Filler; 21

Jones, William; Haulage; 51

Kelsall, John (Jack); Packer; 37

Kelsall, James; Haulage; 30

Lawrence, William*; Haulage; 40 (43

Lee, John Thomas; Repairer; 30

Lee, Thomas; Repairer; 16

Lewis, David; Repairer; 44

Lewis, David Thomas; Cutter-man; 46

Lewis, Jack (John); Rescuer; 48

Lilly, Joel; Repairer; 41

Lloyd, Thomas; Packer; 55

Lloyd, William; Collier; 59

Lloyd, William Sydney; Haulage; 17

Lucas, John; Collier; 59

McKean, Joseph (John); Repairer; 30

Maggs, Colin V.; Haulage; 17

Mannion, Albert; Filler; 29

Manuel, S.A. (Thomas A.); Repairer; 33

Martin, William Henry; Ripper; 37

Mathews, William V.; Haulage; 18

Mathias, Samuel; Fireman; 42

Meades, William; Packer; 39

Mitchell, George; Haulage; 23

Monks, Ernest; Haulage; 23

Morley, Edward; Repairer; 57

Morris, Alfred; Haulage; 20

Nichols, Harry; Repairer; 32

Nichols, John; Collier; 29

Nichols, William (Henry); Collier; 25

Owens, Evan Henry; Packer; 54

Palmer, Alexander*; Haulage; 20

Parry, I. S. (Isaac); Repairer; 40

Parry, Joseph; Repairer; 65

Parry, John E.; Haulage; 31

Parry, F. J. (John Richard.); Haulage; 21

Penny, Stephen; Filler; 23

Penny, William H.; Ambulanceman; 32

Perrin, Frank C.; Haulage; 23

Peters, Henry; Packer; 38

Phillips, George; Haulage; 22

Phillips, Herbert; Filler; 30

Phillips, John; Filler; 40

Pickering, John Frederick; Haulage; 22

Powell, Charles; Railman; 57

Price, (Prince) Ernest; Cutter-man; 27

Price, Samuel; Cutter-man; 37

Prydding, John; Haulage; 32

Prince, Mark; Repairer; 59

Prince, William; Repairer; 30

Pritchard, I. S. (Isiah); Repairer; 54

Pugh, Ernest; Doggie; 49

Pugh, Thomas; Collier; 54

Ralphs, John; Cutter-man; 53

Rance, Thomas R.; Haulage; 21

Rees, Albert; Pipeman; 56

Reid, Lloyd; Haulage; 20

Roberts, Arthur A.; Repairer; 63

Roberts, Edward; Collier; 35

Roberts, Edward C.; Collier; 42

Roberts, Ernest; Filler; 26

Roberts, Frank; Haulage; 26

Roberts, George W.*; Repairer Filler; 28

Roberts, Idris; Haulage; 16

Roberts, John David; Collier; 47

Roberts, H. (John); Packer; 33

Roberts, Olwyn; Filler; 24

Roberts, Percy; Haulage; 26

Roberts, Robert John; Filler; -

Roberts, Robert Thomas; Railman; 57

Roberts, Robert William; Packer; 38

Roberts, Robert; Repairer; 33

Roberts Thomas James; Filler; 19

Roberts, William; Packer; 45

Roberts, William H. (T.); Collier; 40

Robertson, William; Cutter-man; 41

Rogers, Edward Llew.; Haulage; 20

Rogers, Grenville; Repairer; 29

Ross, Harry; Collier; 34

Rowland, John David; Haulage; 17 

 

Rowlands, John. Cutter-man; 36

Salisbury, William; Fireman; 36

Shaw, George; Collier; 63

Shone, James (John); Packer; 34

Shone, Richard; Doggie; 49

Slawson, Arthur; Haulage; 22

Smith, Leonard; Haulage; 20

Stratford, Stanley; Packer; 39

Stevens, Richard T.; Haulage; 22

Strange, Albert; Collier; 35

Tarran, John; Repairer; 50

Taylor, William Henry; Cutter; 53

Thomas, Berwyn; Haulage; 26

Thomas, John Elias; Repairer; 29

Thomas, Robert; Haulage; 22

Thomas, Tec; Collier; 26

Thornton, John; Repairer; 24

Tittle, Edward; Repairer; 44

Trow(e), Ernest; Collier; 41

Valentine S. (Fred) A; Haulage; 24

Vaughan John Edward; Repairer; 28

White John; Beltman; 38

Williams, George; Collier; 31

Williams, Harold; Collier; 37

Williams, Hugh (L. l.); Collier; 43

Williams, John; Repairer; 62

Williams, John Thos.; Packer; 33

Williams, J. T. (John D.); Repairer; 29

Williams, John; Repairer; 44

Williams, John; Collier; 29

Williams, Joseph (James); Collier; 66

Williams, N (Morris); Electrician; 24

Williams, Reg; Electrician; 29

Williams, Thomas; Repairer; 57

Williams, William A.; Cutter-man; 29

Wilson, John Walter; Haulage; 32

Witter, Henry; Repairer; 56

Wynn, Edward; Repairer; 68

Winyard, William Walter; Collier; -

Wynneyard; Repairer; 47

Yemm, Morgan (J.); Repairer; 28

* Indicates body recovered. All others, apart from rescuers, were sealed in the pit. 

Dripping with Hope (a poem for the autumn equinox)

Sept. 21st is a special day. A time to celebrate the final harvest of the season and the abundance that the Earth always gifts us with. As well, join 200 countries and over 75 million people who will be celebrating Peace on this International Day of Peace, established by the United Nations.The following is an old  poem updated to mark the occasion.

Dripping with Hope

     As geese flock above
     beginning long journeys home,
     rumors of war do not recede
     the guilty hiding on all sides,
     while the sky turns from blue 
                                          to grey.
    
    What is essential
    is invisible to our eyes,
    underneath branches
    the sap of peace,
    dripping with hope
    nurturing the restless,
    fostering friendliness
    delivering sustenance.    
    
   There is no need for panic
   no need for alarm,
   above the clouds, harmony's 
                                    roar,
   pouring raindrops to soothe
                                   the earth;     
   smouldering heartbeats,
   splintering divisions sore.

   So as summer recedes
   try to keep on turning
   tearing through the skies,
   spreading peaceful intention  
   making love not war,
   breathing in air
   breathing out light.
                                          
                                                      

Bertrand Russell (18/5/1872 -2/2/1970) - In Praise of Idleness

In 1932 Bertrand Russell, the philosopher wrote the following interesting essay ' In Praise of Idleness.' In it, Russell eloquently explains the actual benefits of idleness and criticises the idea that work is inherently virtuous and an end in itself.
I do however personally believe in the benefits of mutual aid and solidarity and greatly admire too all those that have to endure a tough 9-5 existence, but forced employment has led to two nervous breakdowns and paths of despair that I would not recommend to anyone. Beyond procrastinating to much, idleness though can actually be beneficial to all, as long as you don't waste the day sitting around doing bugger all, it can be a way of celebrating life that is extremely wholesome. Idleness is not a force to despise but an energy that can be a force for good and change, if like all things it is used in the right way. A positive essence that can be used to write poetry, learn a language, cultivate a garden, express feelings and emotions etc etc.
At the end of the day indulging in life's passions can actually be quite consuming, writing this blog for instance and searching for new things to write about is no simple task, but I see it though as a way of celebrating existence, even though some of the subject matters that I am drawn to, might not reflect this inner impulse. 
The system that compels people to work just in order to increase once wealth has been proven to be wrong and increasingly to many seems absurd and immoral,  and I believe to be far from emancipating and is seen by some as a form of consensus brainwashing. Surely there are other ways that can be of benefit to mankind that can be nourishing also for mind, body and spirit.
As The Idler Academy reminds us, http://idler.co.uk/ ( a fine resource by the way) the ancient Greek word for leisure, skhole, later turned into our word for school. We must also remember that the opposition between work and life is not inevitable: is a painter who lives for her art working or playing?
There is room for letting some gaps into our lives out of which creativity can grow. This might look just like idleness to someone in thrall to the work ethic. But it is a different, mindful kind of idleness: not numbing the mind but stilling it to allow the imagination to flourish.
Anyway enough of my lazy preamble, one that I actually had to rewrite again, because in my idleness I pressed a key on computer and my original thoughts were completely erased, so had to start again, so will leave you in the hands of Bertrand who explains these ideas much better than I ever could. Will be quite next few days off idling and generally mooching about.

Bertrand Russell - In Praise of Idleness, 1932

"Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: ‘Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.’ Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told, and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has controlled my actions, my opinions have undergone a revolution. I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached. Everyone knows the story of the traveler in Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days of Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them. Eleven of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the twelfth. this traveler was on the right lines. But in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be required to inaugurate it. I hope that, after reading the following pages, the leaders of the YMCA will start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing. If so, I shall not have lived in vain.

Before advancing my own arguments for laziness, I must dispose of one which I cannot accept. Whenever a person who already has enough to live on proposes to engage in some everyday kind of job, such as school-teaching or typing, he or she is told that such conduct takes the bread out of other people’s mouths, and is therefore wicked. If this argument were valid, it would only be necessary for us all to be idle in order that we should all have our mouths full of bread. What people who say such things forget is that what a man earns he usually spends, and in spending he gives employment. As long as a man spends his income, he puts just as much bread into people’s mouths in spending as he takes out of other people’s mouths in earning. The real villain, from this point of view, is the man who saves. If he merely puts his savings in a stocking, like the proverbial French peasant, it is obvious that they do not give employment. If he invests his savings, the matter is less obvious, and different cases arise.

One of the commonest things to do with savings is to lend them to some Government. In view of the fact that the bulk of the public expenditure of most civilized Governments consists in payment for past wars or preparation for future wars, the man who lends his money to a Government is in the same position as the bad men in Shakespeare who hire murderers. The net result of the man’s economical habits is to increase the armed forces of the State to which he lends his savings. Obviously it would be better if he spent the money, even if he spent it in drink or gambling.

But, I shall be told, the case is quite different when savings are invested in industrial enterprises. When such enterprises succeed, and produce something useful, this may be conceded. In these days, however, no one will deny that most enterprises fail. That means that a large amount of human labor, which might have been devoted to producing something that could be enjoyed, was expended on producing machines which, when produced, lay idle and did no good to anyone. The man who invests his savings in a concern that goes bankrupt is therefore injuring others as well as himself. If he spent his money, say, in giving parties for his friends, they (we may hope) would get pleasure, and so would all those upon whom he spent money, such as the butcher, the baker, and the bootlegger. But if he spends it (let us say) upon laying down rails for surface card in some place where surface cars turn out not to be wanted, he has diverted a mass of labor into channels where it gives pleasure to no one. Nevertheless, when he becomes poor through failure of his investment he will be regarded as a victim of undeserved misfortune, whereas the gay spendthrift, who has spent his money philanthropically, will be despised as a fool and a frivolous person.

All this is only preliminary. I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.

First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The second kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders, but those who give advice as to what orders should be given. Usually two opposite kinds of advice are given simultaneously by two organized bodies of men; this is called politics. The skill required for this kind of work is not knowledge of the subjects as to which advice is given, but knowledge of the art of persuasive speaking and writing, i.e. of advertising.

Throughout Europe, though not in America, there is a third class of men, more respected than either of the classes of workers. There are men who, through ownership of land, are able to make others pay for the privilege of being allowed to exist and to work. These landowners are idle, and I might therefore be expected to praise them. Unfortunately, their idleness is only rendered possible by the industry of others; indeed their desire for comfortable idleness is historically the source of the whole gospel of work. The last thing they have ever wished is that others should follow their example.

From the beginning of civilization until the Industrial Revolution, a man could, as a rule, produce by hard work little more than was required for the subsistence of himself and his family, although his wife worked at least as hard as he did, and his children added their labor as soon as they were old enough to do so. The small surplus above bare necessaries was not left to those who produced it, but was appropriated by warriors and priests. In times of famine there was no surplus; the warriors and priests, however, still secured as much as at other times, with the result that many of the workers died of hunger. This system persisted in Russia until 1917 , and still persists in the East; in England, in spite of the Industrial Revolution, it remained in full force throughout the Napoleonic wars, and until a hundred years ago, when the new class of manufacturers acquired power. In America, the system came to an end with the Revolution, except in the South, where it persisted until the Civil War. A system which lasted so long and ended so recently has naturally left a profound impress upon men’s thoughts and opinions. Much that we take for granted about the desirability of work is derived from this system, and, being pre-industrial, is not adapted to the modern world. Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.

It is obvious that, in primitive communities, peasants, left to themselves, would not have parted with the slender surplus upon which the warriors and priests subsisted, but would have either produced less or consumed more. At first, sheer force compelled them to produce and part with the surplus. Gradually, however, it was found possible to induce many of them to accept an ethic according to which it was their duty to work hard, although part of their work went to support others in idleness. By this means the amount of compulsion required was lessened, and the expenses of government were diminished. To this day, 99 per cent of British wage-earners would be genuinely shocked if it were proposed that the King should not have a larger income than a working man. The conception of duty, speaking historically, has been a means used by the holders of power to induce others to live for the interests of their masters rather than for their own. Of course the holders of power conceal this fact from themselves by managing to believe that their interests are identical with the larger interests of humanity. Sometimes this is true; Athenian slave-owners, for instance, employed part of their leisure in making a permanent contribution to civilization which would have been impossible under a just economic system. Leisure is essential to civilization, and in former times leisure for the few was only rendered possible by the labors of the many. But their labors were valuable, not because work is good, but because leisure is good. And with modern technique it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without injury to civilization.

Modern technique has made it possible to diminish enormously the amount of labor required to secure the necessaries of life for everyone. This was made obvious during the war. At that time all the men in the armed forces, and all the men and women engaged in the production of munitions, all the men and women engaged in spying, war propaganda, or Government offices connected with the war, were withdrawn from productive occupations. In spite of this, the general level of well-being among unskilled wage-earners on the side of the Allies was higher than before or since. The significance of this fact was concealed by finance: borrowing made it appear as if the future was nourishing the present. But that, of course, would have been impossible; a man cannot eat a loaf of bread that does not yet exist. The war showed conclusively that, by the scientific organization of production, it is possible to keep modern populations in fair comfort on a small part of the working capacity of the modern world. If, at the end of the war, the scientific organization, which had been created in order to liberate men for fighting and munition work, had been preserved, and the hours of the week had been cut down to four, all would have been well. Instead of that the old chaos was restored, those whose work was demanded were made to work long hours, and the rest were left to starve as unemployed. Why? Because work is a duty, and a man should not receive wages in proportion to what he has produced, but in proportion to his virtue as exemplified by his industry.

This is the morality of the Slave State, applied in circumstances totally unlike those in which it arose. No wonder the result has been disastrous. Let us take an illustration. Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. In England, in the early nineteenth century, fifteen hours was the ordinary day’s work for a man; children sometimes did as much, and very commonly did twelve hours a day. When meddlesome busybodies suggested that perhaps these hours were rather long, they were told that work kept adults from drink and children from mischief. When I was a child, shortly after urban working men had acquired the vote, certain public holidays were established by law, to the great indignation of the upper classes. I remember hearing an old Duchess say: ‘What do the poor want with holidays? They ought to work.’ People nowadays are less frank, but the sentiment persists, and is the source of much of our economic confusion.

Let us, for a moment, consider the ethics of work frankly, without superstition. Every human being, of necessity, consumes, in the course of his life, a certain amount of the produce of human labor. Assuming, as we may, that labor is on the whole disagreeable, it is unjust that a man should consume more than he produces. Of course he may provide services rather than commodities, like a medical man, for example; but he should provide something in return for his board and lodging. to this extent, the duty of work must be admitted, but to this extent only.

I shall not dwell upon the fact that, in all modern societies outside the USSR, many people escape even this minimum amount of work, namely all those who inherit money and all those who marry money. I do not think the fact that these people are allowed to be idle is nearly so harmful as the fact that wage-earners are expected to overwork or starve.

If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody and no unemployment — assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much leisure. In America men often work long hours even when they are well off; such men, naturally, are indignant at the idea of leisure for wage-earners, except as the grim punishment of unemployment; in fact, they dislike leisure even for their sons. Oddly enough, while they wish their sons to work so hard as to have no time to be civilized, they do not mind their wives and daughters having no work at all. the snobbish admiration of uselessness, which, in an aristocratic society, extends to both sexes, is, under a plutocracy, confined to women; this, however, does not make it any more in agreement with common sense.

The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of civilization and education. A man who has worked long hours all his life will become bored if he becomes suddenly idle. But without a considerable amount of leisure a man is cut off from many of the best things. There is no longer any reason why the bulk of the population should suffer this deprivation; only a foolish asceticism, usually vicarious, makes us continue to insist on work in excessive quantities now that the need no longer exists.

In the new creed which controls the government of Russia, while there is much that is very different from the traditional teaching of the West, there are some things that are quite unchanged. The attitude of the governing classes, and especially of those who conduct educational propaganda, on the subject of the dignity of labor, is almost exactly that which the governing classes of the world have always preached to what were called the ‘honest poor’. Industry, sobriety, willingness to work long hours for distant advantages, even submissiveness to authority, all these reappear; moreover authority still represents the will of the Ruler of the Universe, Who, however, is now called by a new name, Dialectical Materialism.

The victory of the proletariat in Russia has some points in common with the victory of the feminists in some other countries. For ages, men had conceded the superior saintliness of women, and had consoled women for their inferiority by maintaining that saintliness is more desirable than power. At last the feminists decided that they would have both, since the pioneers among them believed all that the men had told them about the desirability of virtue, but not what they had told them about the worthlessness of political power. A similar thing has happened in Russia as regards manual work. For ages, the rich and their sycophants have written in praise of ‘honest toil’, have praised the simple life, have professed a religion which teaches that the poor are much more likely to go to heaven than the rich, and in general have tried to make manual workers believe that there is some special nobility about altering the position of matter in space, just as men tried to make women believe that they derived some special nobility from their sexual enslavement. In Russia, all this teaching about the excellence of manual work has been taken seriously, with the result that the manual worker is more honored than anyone else. What are, in essence, revivalist appeals are made, but not for the old purposes: they are made to secure shock workers for special tasks. Manual work is the ideal which is held before the young, and is the basis of all ethical teaching.

For the present, possibly, this is all to the good. A large country, full of natural resources, awaits development, and has has to be developed with very little use of credit. In these circumstances, hard work is necessary, and is likely to bring a great reward. But what will happen when the point has been reached where everybody could be comfortable without working long hours?

In the West, we have various ways of dealing with this problem. We have no attempt at economic justice, so that a large proportion of the total produce goes to a small minority of the population, many of whom do no work at all. Owing to the absence of any central control over production, we produce hosts of things that are not wanted. We keep a large percentage of the working population idle, because we can dispense with their labor by making the others overwork. When all these methods prove inadequate, we have a war: we cause a number of people to manufacture high explosives, and a number of others to explode them, as if we were children who had just discovered fireworks. By a combination of all these devices we manage, though with difficulty, to keep alive the notion that a great deal of severe manual work must be the lot of the average man.

In Russia, owing to more economic justice and central control over production, the problem will have to be differently solved. the rational solution would be, as soon as the necessaries and elementary comforts can be provided for all, to reduce the hours of labor gradually, allowing a popular vote to decide, at each stage, whether more leisure or more goods were to be preferred. But, having taught the supreme virtue of hard work, it is difficult to see how the authorities can aim at a paradise in which there will be much leisure and little work. It seems more likely that they will find continually fresh schemes, by which present leisure is to be sacrificed to future productivity. I read recently of an ingenious plan put forward by Russian engineers, for making the White Sea and the northern coasts of Siberia warm, by putting a dam across the Kara Sea. An admirable project, but liable to postpone proletarian comfort for a generation, while the nobility of toil is being displayed amid the ice-fields and snowstorms of the Arctic Ocean. This sort of thing, if it happens, will be the result of regarding the virtue of hard work as an end in itself, rather than as a means to a state of affairs in which it is no longer needed.

The fact is that moving matter about, while a certain amount of it is necessary to our existence, is emphatically not one of the ends of human life. If it were, we should have to consider every navvy superior to Shakespeare. We have been misled in this matter by two causes. One is the necessity of keeping the poor contented, which has led the rich, for thousands of years, to preach the dignity of labor, while taking care themselves to remain undignified in this respect. The other is the new pleasure in mechanism, which makes us delight in the astonishingly clever changes that we can produce on the earth’s surface. Neither of these motives makes any great appeal to the actual worker. If you ask him what he thinks the best part of his life, he is not likely to say: ‘I enjoy manual work because it makes me feel that I am fulfilling man’s noblest task, and because I like to think how much man can transform his planet. It is true that my body demands periods of rest, which I have to fill in as best I may, but I am never so happy as when the morning comes and I can return to the toil from which my contentment springs.’ I have never heard working men say this sort of thing. They consider work, as it should be considered, a necessary means to a livelihood, and it is from their leisure that they derive whatever happiness they may enjoy.

It will be said that, while a little leisure is pleasant, men would not know how to fill their days if they had only four hours of work out of the twenty-four. In so far as this is true in the modern world, it is a condemnation of our civilization; it would not have been true at any earlier period. There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake. Serious-minded persons, for example, are continually condemning the habit of going to the cinema, and telling us that it leads the young into crime. But all the work that goes to producing a cinema is respectable, because it is work, and because it brings a money profit. The notion that the desirable activities are those that bring a profit has made everything topsy-turvy. The butcher who provides you with meat and the baker who provides you with bread are praiseworthy, because they are making money; but when you enjoy the food they have provided, you are merely frivolous, unless you eat only to get strength for your work. Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money is good and spending money is bad. Seeing that they are two sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as well maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad. Whatever merit there may be in the production of goods must be entirely derivative from the advantage to be obtained by consuming them. The individual, in our society, works for profit; but the social purpose of his work lies in the consumption of what he produces. It is this divorce between the individual and the social purpose of production that makes it so difficult for men to think clearly in a world in which profit-making is the incentive to industry. We think too much of production, and too little of consumption. One result is that we attach too little importance to enjoyment and simple happiness, and that we do not judge production by the pleasure that it gives to the consumer.

When I suggest that working hours should be reduced to four, I am not meaning to imply that all the remaining time should necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. I mean that four hours’ work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life, and that the rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit. It is an essential part of any such social system that education should be carried further than it usually is at present, and should aim, in part, at providing tastes which would enable a man to use leisure intelligently. I am not thinking mainly of the sort of things that would be considered ‘highbrow’. Peasant dances have died out except in remote rural areas, but the impulses which caused them to be cultivated must still exist in human nature. The pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive: seeing cinemas, watching football matches, listening to the radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their active energies are fully taken up with work; if they had more leisure, they would again enjoy pleasures in which they took an active part.

In the past, there was a small leisure class and a larger working class. The leisure class enjoyed advantages for which there was no basis in social justice; this necessarily made it oppressive, limited its sympathies, and caused it to invent theories by which to justify its privileges. These facts greatly diminished its excellence, but in spite of this drawback it contributed nearly the whole of what we call civilization. It cultivated the arts and discovered the sciences; it wrote the books, invented the philosophies, and refined social relations. Even the liberation of the oppressed has usually been inaugurated from above. Without the leisure class, mankind would never have emerged from barbarism.

The method of a leisure class without duties was, however, extraordinarily wasteful. None of the members of the class had to be taught to be industrious, and the class as a whole was not exceptionally intelligent. The class might produce one Darwin, but against him had to be set tens of thousands of country gentlemen who never thought of anything more intelligent than fox-hunting and punishing poachers. At present, the universities are supposed to provide, in a more systematic way, what the leisure class provided accidentally and as a by-product. This is a great improvement, but it has certain drawbacks. University life is so different from life in the world at large that men who live in academic milieu tend to be unaware of the preoccupations and problems of ordinary men and women; moreover their ways of expressing themselves are usually such as to rob their opinions of the influence that they ought to have upon the general public. Another disadvantage is that in universities studies are organized, and the man who thinks of some original line of research is likely to be discouraged. Academic institutions, therefore, useful as they are, are not adequate guardians of the interests of civilization in a world where everyone outside their walls is too busy for unutilitarian pursuits.

In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day, every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by sensational pot-boilers, with a view to acquiring the economic independence needed for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and capacity. Men who, in their professional work, have become interested in some phase of economics or government, will be able to develop their ideas without the academic detachment that makes the work of university economists often seem lacking in reality. Medical men will have the time to learn about the progress of medicine, teachers will not be exasperatedly struggling to teach by routine methods things which they learnt in their youth, which may, in the interval, have been proved to be untrue.

Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At least one per cent will probably devote the time not spent in professional work to pursuits of some public importance, and, since they will not depend upon these pursuits for their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered, and there will be no need to conform to the standards set by elderly pundits. But it is not only in these exceptional cases that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish forever."

Autumnal

 

 
My mind is restless today, one of my sisters celebrates her birthday today, the other one lies ill in bed, as summer ends and autumnal clouds drift overhead,tender our hearts full of sorrow, I pray to invisible gods to release healing to earth, to grant a better tomorrow, giddy is my futile hopes, in reality I curse and scream, but at least at moment a gentle hand touches mine, but the spectre of despair breathes as my words melt into the air....