How Not to Revolution

Maoriland Worker, Volume 12, Issue 294, 18 October 1922, Page 10

How Not to Revolution

Mr. C. W. Daniel /he publisher, recently sent mc a copy of a book he has just published, "Against ihe Red hSky," by a Mr. H. R. Barbor, and in an accompanying letter he suggested that Mr. Barber's name would be well-known to mc, My misfortune, Mr. Daniel but I never before have heard of Mr. Barbor, and I fear me— if I may judge from Ms book, which I have read carefully on its merits—Mr. Barfcor is of such an hectic and bloodthirsty and adventurous disposition as to steer mc clear of his trade routes. The book is well written: more, it is cleverly written: it has all the phrase polish of the word craftsman: /all the fine daring of the free thinker who has thrown clear the shackles of his time. But in hs extravagance it repels, in its ferocity it revolts, the reader; and it is for all practical purposes more likely to serve as bourgeois .than as proletarian propaganda, though clearly this last is Its author's intention and motive. "Against the Red Sky" is the story of the Communist Revolution iv England, a few years hence, after a Lib-eral-Labour Government b&s failed. A shop-steward is murdered by policemen: a London brawi develops into an insurrect'on: the -mob accepts Communist leadership end, the Communist leaders capturing a police barracks are supplied with arms: the police are defeated in open battle in the streets: the. Army div'des, and regiments murder their officers and join the Proletarians: there are Red Guards, Extraordinary Commi~,sluriK, sabotage of. railway trains, shootings and blood galore, general strikes, ■poStToonery of the Labour Party In Parliament, thinly d'sguised Ramsay Mac Donalds (and Winston ChurchiHs, the burning of aeroplanes and their establishment stations, the def«at cf the Government troops, flight of the Govcrumemt to France, and finally a Proletarian triumph /and the Work*re' Republic- is successfully established. A good bold "Blood" this. Eeglnn with a description of an illicit aristocrat amour and how the young hero (who 1/ater becomes Chief of the Soviet Extraordinary Commission) wakens up in a countess' bed—"h-S hiand had touched the "warm bare hanit 01 the woman ly-ng aX hie Bide'* — «ftd how he went out in the early morning and falling in with a Party of rioters he suddenly pounced upon a policeman and dashed "the blue-cap-ped Mad on the pavement with a terrible and insensate vigour." And there " ; is ever so much purple and risque stuff like that all mixed up with Communist propaganda on proletarian heroism and self-sacrifice, and with appeals of impelling dignity and ideialism and swift ironic flashes at 'the sordid degrading stupidities of the Capitalist system against wh eh the Proletarians war is waged. As a shocker—tres Men, but as a reliable Bedecker for the working class it is about tlfe most pernicious nonsense one can imagine. Take it coldly upon its reliability ns a pen picture of what would hap pen in a Bloody Revolution and it becomes romantic drivel. Here is a revolution in London — I<ondon which has three days' supply of food, and which is situate in a country which depends hand-to-mouih upon foreign imports of corn stuffs, a Proletarian revolution which, by a general strike and by sabotage, para-lyses-the railway systems and must viitrefcre starve out London on the fourth day. Yet not a dim glimmer -of a conception of London's food difficulties on the fourth day of a, revolution, seems to have >■ dawned upon our author. On page 131 one of the r«volutionaries declaims: "I know they've got guns on their side, but wove go>t food on ours, and what's more, we've got' time."

But that's just what tlwy wouldn't havo —food and time. The proletarians would starve first: their larders are empty to begin with, and as do food is coming into London, it is obvious that they have neither food nor time. A Government wireless meesage would stop the importation of foreign foodstuffs, the railways would cease to function, and the Bloody devolution would collapse. Mr. Uarbor, in hie enthusiasm for the Russian model, hasn't probably- thought of that, buit thero it is, and the first Revolution leader to gefc to business and who makes no allowance rur trifles ot that kind, will find him--speedily tlanfii'mg 'at a lamp-jxiSt and an ang_ry proletarian mob throwing, iiot flowers, btft Gobble slone» at carcase- Russia is a .different category altogether Russia grew her own food; hers waa.not an Industrial populace fed from overseas, a.id yo.t even in wheat-growfiiig Russia w-tn MOSM. .tit £aod_stufts lA every YiU»S«» y

the paralysis of the railway oystom nwant serious provisioning- 1 roubles which the Soviet leaders just tvitly siirmouUfted. "Against the Red Sky" \a not iPt&lism: ii is Romanticism, but a romance .which may serve a useful j>urnoao in toe world a s a double warning post— an uaintended warning to the workers as tp how not to " Revolutionise, and a perhaps e&ually unintentional, but none ths lees emphatic, wariiing to political Xabour guides, #& to the Hell's-Brotn that may await us all If Political Labour, when its chance comes, does not courageously assault the citadels of -Privilege rand making great and notable improvement!} iv the condition of the masses.—T.J., in "Forward."