67 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
67 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
Extracts from _The Soul of Man Under Socialism_
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by Oscar Wilde (1891).
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The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much to be
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regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity.
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Some of them are, no doubt, but the best among them are never grateful.
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They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are
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quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode
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of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some
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impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalists to tyrannize
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over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the
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crumbs that fall from the rich man's table? They should be seated
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at the board and are beginning to know it. As for being discontented,
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a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings, and such a
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low mode of life, would be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in the eyes of
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anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through
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disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through
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rebellion. Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to
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recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like
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advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town and country
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laborer to practice thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should
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not be ready to show that he can live like a badly fed animal. He
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should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on
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the rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing.
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As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to
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take than to beg. No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented
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and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much to him.
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He is at any rate a healthy protest. As for the virtuous poor, one can pity
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them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private
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terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They
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must be extraordinarily stupid. I can quite understand a man accepting
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laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation,
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as long as he himself is able under those conditions to realize
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some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is almost
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incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by
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such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.
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However, the explanation is not really difficult to find. It is
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simply this. Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and
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exercise such a paralyzing effect over the nature of men, that no
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class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to
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be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve
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them. What is said by great employers of labor against agitators
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is unquestionably true. Agitators are a set of interfering,
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meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of
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the community, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That
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is the reason why agitators are so abundantly necessary. Without
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them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards
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civilization. Slavery was put down in America, not in consequence
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of any action on the part of the slaves, or even expressed desire on
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their own part that they should be free. It was put down entirely
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through the grossly illegal conduct of certain agitators in Boston
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and elsewhere, who were not slaves themselves, nor owners of slaves,
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nor had anything to do with the question really. It was, undoubtedly,
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the Abolitionists who set the torch alight, who began the whole thing.
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And it is curious to note that from the slaves themselves they received,
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not merely very little assistance, but hardly any sympathy even; and
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when at the close of the war the slaves found themselves free, found
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themselves indeed so absolutely free that they were free to starve,
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many of them bitterly regretted the new state of things. To the thinker,
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the most tragic fact in the whole of the French Revolution is not that
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Marie Antoinette was killed for being a queen, but that the starved peasant
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of the Vendee voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause of feudalism.
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