Revolt Against Civilization : The Menace of the Under Man by Theodore Lothrop Stoddard

Author:Theodore Lothrop Stoddard [Stoddard, Theodore Lothrop]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
Publisher: http://inclibuql666c5c4.onion
Published: 1922-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER V—THE GROUNDSWELL OF REVOLT

REVOLUTIONARY unrest is not new. Every age has had its discontented dreamers preaching utopia, its fervid agitators urging the overthrow of the existing social order, and its restless rabble stirred by false hopes to ugly moods and violent action. Utopian literature is very extensive, going back to Plato; revolutionary agitators have run true to type since Spartacus; while “proletarian” risings have varied little in basic character from the servile revolts of antiquity and the “jacqueries” of the Middle Ages down to the mob upheavals of Paris and Petrograd.

In all these social revolutionary phenomena there is nothing essentially novel. There is always the same violent revolt of the unadaptable, inferior, and degenerate elements against civilized society, in atavistic reaction to lower planes; the same hatred of superiors and fierce desire for absolute equality; finally, the same tendency of revolutionary leaders to become tyrants and to transform anarchy into barbarous despotism.

As Harold Cox justly remarks; “Jack Cade, as described by Shakespeare, is the perfect type of revolutionary, and his ideas coincide closely with those of the modern school of Socialism. He tells his followers that ‘all the realm shall be in common,’ that ‘there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score and I will apparel them all in one livery that they may agree like brothers. A little later a member of the bourgeoisie is brought before him—a clerk who confesses that he can read and write. Jack Cade orders him at once to be hanged ‘with his pen and inkhorn about his neck.’ Possibly the intellectual Socialists of Great Britain might hesitate at this point; the danger would be getting uncomfortably near to themselves. But the Russian Bolsheviks have followed Jack Cade’s example on a colossal scale. In another direction Jack Cade was a prototype of present-day revolutionists; for while preaching equality he practised autocracy. ‘Away,’ he cries to the mob. ‘Burn all the records of the realm. My mouth shall be the Parliament of England.’”

Nevertheless, despite its lack of basic originality the revolutionary unrest of modern times is very different from, and infinitely more formidable than, the kindred movements of the past. There is to-day a close alliance between the theoretical and the practical elements, a clever fitting of means to ends, a consistent elaboration of plausible doctrines and persuasive propaganda, and a syndication of power, such as was never known before. In former times revolutionary theorists and men of action were unable or unwilling to get together. The early utopian philosophers did not write for the proletariat, which in turn quite ignored their existence. Furthermore, most of the utopians, however revolutionary in theory, were not revolutionary in practice. They seldom believed in violent methods. It is rather difficult to imagine Plato or Sir Thomas More planning the massacre of the bourgeoisie or heading a dictatorship of the proletariat. In fact, so convinced were these utopian idealists of the truth of their theories that they believed that if their theories were

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