PDF-file (The same edition. Another cover. 2.2 Mb)

Self-Determination 625by some at the expense of others. It has amounted usually to therule of the majority by a minority, and many strange things havebeen done in its name. Ancient liberty and democracy meant inGreece the self-rule — variegated by periodical orgies of mutualthroat-cutting — of a smaller number of freemen of all rankswho lived by the labour of a great mass of slaves. In recenttimes liberty and democracy have been, and still are, a cantassertion which veils under a skilfully moderated plutocraticsystem the rule of an organised successful bourgeoisie over aproletariate at first submissive, afterwards increasingly dissatisfiedand combined for recalcitrant self-assertion. The earliestuse of liberty and democracy by the emancipated proletariatehas been the crude forceful tyranny of an ill-organised labouroligarchy over a quite disorganised peasantry and an impotentlyrecalcitrant bourgeoisie. And just as the glorious possession ofliberty by the community has been held to be consistent withthe oppression of four-fifths or three-fifths of the populationby the remaining fraction, so it has till lately been held to bequite consistent with the complete subjection of one half ofmankind, the woman half, to the physically stronger male. Theseries continues through a whole volume of anomalies, includingof course the gloriously beneficent and profitable exploitationof subject peoples by emancipated nations who, it seems, areentitled to that domination by their priesthood of the sacred cultof freedom. They mean no doubt to extend it to the exploited atsome distant date, but take care meanwhile to pay themselves thefull price of their holy office before they deliver the article. Eventhe best machinery of this mechanical freedom yet discoveredamounts to the unmodified will of a bare majority, or ratherto its selection of a body of rulers who coerce in its name allminorities and lead it to issues of which it has itself no clearperception.These anomalies, — anomalies of many kinds are inseparablefrom the mechanical method, — are a sign that the realmeaning of liberty has not yet been understood. Neverthelessthe aspiration and the effort itself towards the realisation of agreat idea cannot fail to bear some fruit, and modern liberty and