社会主义下人的灵魂（三）

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 anyone 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 those 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.

所谓慈善，在他们看来只是一种可笑的，不足的赔偿，或者只是一种富人为了更专制的统治他们，附带着无理企图的，感情用事的施舍。所以他们为什么需要对富人桌子上掉落的残渣感恩呢？富人就应该坐在董事会里，而他们也渐渐了解了这一点。至于不满，生活在这样的环境和这样的方式中，只有真正的牲畜才不会感到不满。反抗，在任何读过历史的人眼中，都是人类最本质的美德。正是反抗带来了进步。有时，穷人们会被人称赞节俭。但是就如同建议一个濒临饿死的人少吃一点一样，鼓励节俭，对穷人来说是荒诞和无礼的。人类不应该表现得像个吃不饱的禽兽一样。他们不应该这样生活，要么去偷，要么按比例付款（虽然这也被看作是偷窃）。至于乞讨，乞讨比接受更稳妥，但接受又优于乞讨。一个穷人，如果他不感恩，不节俭，不顺从，有反抗精神，这才是一个真的的人，他仍然拥有很多（宝贵的品质）。无论如何，他都是一个真正的斗士。至于那些“有道德”的穷人，你可以同情他们，但是绝不能称赞他们。他们和敌人签订秘密条款，出卖国家，只是为了得到一点腐坏的汤汁。他们是多么的愚蠢。我相当理解那些认可通过保护私有财产法律的人，并且承认它的累积，只要他本人能在这种情况下，认识到一些美好的，有才智的生活形式。但令我感到难以置信的是，一些人明明被这种可怕的律法摧毁了生活，却仍然默许它继续。

However, the explanation is not really 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.

当然，这种现象并不难以解释。不幸和贫穷是如此的丢人，以至于麻痹了他们的天性。没有哪一个阶级能够真正了解他们自身的痛苦，他们不得不受教于他人，但他人却并不信任他们。劳动人民所说的反对煽动者的行为无疑是真实的，煽动者是一群妨碍、干扰他人的人，他们发现了这一完美符合他们需求的社会阶层，然后在这个阶层中播下不满的种子。这就是为什么煽动者是必不可少的存在。按照我们当前不完整的情况，若没有他们，就不会有文明的进步。在美国，奴隶制度被废除了，这既不是由于一部分奴隶采取了行动，也不是因为他们表达了他们本应是自由的这一渴望。这只是一群在波士顿或者是其他什么地方的煽动者非法活动的结果。他们既不是奴隶，也不是奴隶主，和这个制度本身也没有什么关系。无疑，是这群“废奴主义者”点燃了火把，推动了整个事件。令人好奇的是，那些奴隶本身，却没有得到哪怕一点点的帮助和同情。当战争结束的时候，奴隶发现他们自由了，如此的自由却让他们几近饿死，他们甚至苦涩的后悔于这新的现状。对思考者而言，法国大革命中最大的惨剧并不是玛丽皇后上了断头台，而是那些在旺迪的快要饿死的农民，因为封建制度的黑暗，“自愿”赴死。