A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF EDWIN JAMES BRADY - Mallacoota ...

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Comrades, be assured that what I write in this journal is written of mine own
inward convictions and desires for expression. I do not claim to be infallible..
What some people apparently fail to realise is the Industrial Civilisation has
entered a phase when either the complete subjection of the working-class or
its absolute supremacy must result…Personally, I am convinced that the
theory of proletarian dictatorship, under a collectivist form of ownership, is
logical, ultimate and just; but I am by no means certain of the method whereby
it can be achieved…I have my own idiosyncrasies – one of which may be a
curious conviction that if the daily bread of mankind is assured, the cultural or
spiritual bread of mankind will also be assured, and for all future time…I
remain a sort of Christian-Agnostic-Laborite. 1
In addition there is the evidence of his ideas and opinions on this topic as he
expressed them in his letters to friends and in his manuscripts.
There is no doubt that Brady saw the Labor movement as the best and perhaps only
means of achieving economic and spiritual liberation of the masses from the
traditional class-structured, capitalistic domination in which they found themselves.
While hoping that this amelioration would come about by evolutionary and
educational means and as a result of successes at democratically controlled elections,
in his less guarded moments his did not rule out the possibility of force and revolution
if all other methods failed. But he had also leaned that revolution and anarchy were
not the effective answer – men’s hearts and minds had to be changed, and he placed
his hope in indoctrination and political processes. Referring to a militant poem, “The
Vision of Anarchy” which he wrote in 1890, he confided to Muir Holburn that it was
“crude and ferocious” and continued:
Why I escaped the hangman round that time I don’t know. Maybe there is a
God and if so, he must be a Bolshevik. After witnessing a double execution at
Darlinghust gaol, I damped down the revolutionary fires that were consuming
my young heart, sub-edited myself and gave anarchy a wide berth. 2
In spite of his diatribes against the established powers and his rabble-rousing, some
this at least, being due to his own sheet ebullience, there is no real evidence that he
advocated force in any foreseeable circumstance, although he did cite the events of
the 1930’s in Italy, Germany, Poland and Russia as evidence that in some societies
force alone was the solution. His main concern was to avert the “dehumanisation” of
the people, many of whom were little better than slaves in their necessity for complete
obedience to sometimes-unreasonable masters, where Brady considered should be
lords of their own circumstances. His scientific knowledge, as well as his visionary
sense, informed him that the resources of the world were sufficient for all its
inhabitants provided they were efficiently distributed. And so he asked readers of
Anderson’s book to consolidate their knowledge and consider seriously his arguments
at at time “when nervous urge for acquisition, for power, for money, for all the more
selfish, but less important gains of human existence are affecting nations and
individuals alike”.
1 “Scrutator in Explanation”, The Labor Call, 31.8.1933.
2 Brady to Muir and Marjorie Holburn, 21.8.1944, in Mitchell Library.