I've read it before and I hope to read it many times more, everything about it I love. The sentiment of course is spot on, the quality of the writing is sheer genius. Post it over and over again I say.
Bill Bartlett Beacknell Tas
At 8:01 PM -0500 5/3/08, Sean Andrews wrote:
>
>In this, I think the idea of Feuerbach that realizing our
>individuality is only possible through our consciousness of our
>species being is more eloquently stated (and the means of its
>realization more forcefully advocated) by Oscar Wilde in his essay,
>"The Soul of Man Under Socialism." [apologies if this is some
>fantastic faux pas in the history of Marxian debates, but I like the
>essay] After criticizing charity as the "use [of] private property in
>order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution
>of private property" he speaks of what would be better about
>socialism. The first part is just a nice passage of Wilde's wit, but
>I am mostly thinking in general about his declaration that "Socialism
>itself will be of value simply because it will lead to Individualism"
>and his demand that people be told that their lives are relatively
>miserable (or at least that people are getting rich off their backs)
>if they don't already realize it.
>
>BLOCKQUOTE:
>At present, in consequence of the existence of private property, a
>great many people are enabled to develop a certain very limited amount
>of individualism. They are either under no necessity to work for their
>living, or are enabled to choose the sphere of activity that is really
>congenial to them and gives them pleasure. These are the poets, the
>philosophers, the men of science, the men of culture - in a word, the
>real men, the men who have realised themselves, and in whom all
>Humanity gains a partial realisation. Upon the other hand, there are a
>great many people who, having no private property of their own, and
>being always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled to do the
>work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to
>them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable,
>degrading Tyranny of want. These are the poor, and amongst them there
>is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or civilisation, or
>culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life. From their
>collective force Humanity gains much in material prosperity. But it is
>only the material result that it gains, and the man who is poor is in
>himself absolutely of no importance. He is merely the infinitesimal
>atom of a force that, so far from regarding him, crushes him: indeed,
>prefers him crushed, as in that case he is far more obedient.
>
>Of course, it might be said that the Individualism generated under
>conditions of private property is not always, or even as a rule of a
>fine or wonderful type, and that the poor, if they have not culture
>and charm, have still many virtues. Both these statements would be
>quite true. The possession of private property is very often extremely
>demoralising, and that is, of course, one of the reasons why Socialism
>wants to get rid of the institution. In fact, property is really a
>nuisance. Some years ago people went about the country saying that
>property has duties. They said it so often and so tediously that, at
>last, the Church has begun to say it. One hears it now from every
>pulpit. It is perfectly true. Property not merely has duties, but has
>so many duties that its possession to any large extent is a bore. It
>involves endless claims upon one, endless attention to business,
>endless bother. If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it;
>but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must
>get rid of it. The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and
>are much to be regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful
>for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor
>are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient,
>and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be
>a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a
>sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on
>the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives.
>Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich
>man's table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to
>know it. As for being discontented, a man who would not be
>discontented with such surroundings and such a low mode of life would
>be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read
>history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that
>progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
>Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend
>thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like
>advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or country
>labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should
>not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He
>should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the
>rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As for
>begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than
>to beg. No; a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and
>rebellious is probably a real personality, and has much in him. He is
>at any rate a healthy protest. As for the virtuous poor, one can pity
>them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made
>private terms with the enemy and sold their birthright for very bad
>pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid. I can quite
>understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and
>admit of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under these
>conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life.
>But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and
>made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.
>
>However, the explanation is not really so difficult to find. It is
>simply this. Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and
>exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no
>class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be
>told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them.
>What is said by great employers of labour against agitators is
>unquestionably true. Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling
>people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the
>community, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the
>reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our
>incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilisation.
>Slavery was put down in America, not in consequence of any action on
>the part of the slaves, or even any express desire on their part that
>they should be free. It was put down entirely through the grossly
>illegal conduct of certain agitators in Boston and elsewhere, who were
>not slaves themselves, nor owners of slaves, nor had anything to do
>with the question really. It was, undoubtedly, the Abolitionists who
>set the torch alight, who began the whole thing. And it is curious to
>note that from the slaves themselves they received, not merely very
>little assistance, but hardly any sympathy even; and when at the close
>of the war the slaves found themselves free, found themselves indeed
>so absolutely free that they were free to starve, many of them
>bitterly regretted the new state of things. To the thinker, the most
>tragic fact in the whole of the French Revolution is not that Marie
>Antoinette was killed for being a queen, but that the starved peasant
>of the Vendee voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause of
>feudalism.
>END BLOCKQUOTE
>
>http://libcom.org/library/soul-of-man-under-socialism-oscar-wilde
>
>Perhaps he gives a bit too much credit to the agitators, but in any
>case, if there is a group that Badiou should be preaching about common
>humanity to it isn't the exploiters--who'll likely just see it as
>either a charming philosophical quandary or further shocking proof of
>the need to build those walls higher--but the exploited, that is, if
>he hopes to do anything more than practice a thought experiment with
>us. I understand fully the cultural problems of this--i.e. the
>imposition of a certain "western" notion of standards, for instance,
>that activists asking for labor and environmental standards in trade
>agreements are imposing their belief system on a different culture.
>But since this kind of claim is usually made alongside the imposition
>of a model of wage labor, export oriented commodity production, and
>finance driven foreign direct investment, it seems like a bit of a
>disingenuous critique.
>
>I find it strange that, despite his supposed attention to the problem
>of capitalism in labor, the difference he sees between himself and the
>people who are serving him is in terms of everything but economic
>class:
>"These people, different from me in terms of language, clothes,
>religion, food, education..." I'm not saying that should be the only
>category, but it does seem odd that he'd leave it out.
>
>I obviously wasn't writing enough on my dissertation today.
>
>s
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