Something has come into our community, which is strong enough to save
our community; but which has not yet got a name. Let no one fancy I
confess any unreality when I confess the namelessness. The morality
called Puritanism, the tendency called Liberalism, the reaction called
Tory Democracy, had not only long been powerful, but had practically
done most of their work, before these actual names were attached to
them. Nevertheless, I think it would be a good thing to have some
portable and practicable way of referring to those who think as we do
in our main concern. Which is, that men in England are ruled, at this
minute by the clock, by brutes who refuse them bread, by liars who
refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern, and therefore wish to
enslave.
Let me explain first why I am not satisfied with the word commonly used,
which I have often used myself; and which, in some contexts, is quite
the right word to use. I mean the word “rebel.” Passing over the fact
that many who understand the justice of our cause (as a great many at
the Universities) would still use the word “rebel” in its old and strict
sense as meaning only a disturber of just rule. I pass to a much more
practical point. The word “rebel” understates our cause. It is much too
mild; it lets our enemies off much too easily. There is a tradition in
all western life and letters of Prometheus defying the stars, of man
at war with the Universe, and dreaming what nature had never dared to
dream. All this is valuable in its place and proportion. But it has
nothing whatever to do with our ease; or rather it very much weakens it.
The plutocrats will be only too pleased if we profess to preach a new
morality; for they know jolly well that they have broken the old one.
They will be only too pleased to be able to say that we, by our own
confession, are merely restless and negative; that we are only what we
call rebels and they call cranks. But it is not true; and we must not
concede it to them for a moment. The model millionaire is more of a
crank than the Socialists; just as Nero was more of a crank than the
Christians. And avarice has gone mad in the governing class to-day, just
as lust went mad in the circle of Nero. By all the working and orthodox
standards of sanity, capitalism is insane. I should not say to Mr.
Rockefeller “I am a rebel.” I should say “I am a respectable man: and
you are not.”