The impractical anarchist
This is from a letter I received from Brian Merrikin Hill in 1984. Reading the passage in 2007, I am struck by how dated the terms "delinquent" and "maladjusted" are. In New Zealand, at any rate, one never hears them today, and perhaps for good reason. As definitions, both are too vague, even subjective, to carry much meaning.
MOST of my life I have been a pacifist and an anarchist, conscious that governments are not now and never have been the creation of the people but the descendants of the imposed power of the violent and rich. I am not a practical anarchist because anarchism is impractical, but I think every effort should be made to use governments for the benefit of the poor, the oppressed and the deprived: governments have no other legitimate functions, anyway. Experience in the care and rescue of delinquent and maladjusted children has convinced me that few of them are to be blamed — few human beings are ever to be blamed, only those who wield power willingly or exalt fictions like the nation-state, the working classes, professionalism, 'the town', 'the country', etc. over the individual who should be left to live, love, suffer and rejoice in peace. Most organisations seem to prevent human beings from living on the earth, with it and recognising it as their home. The earth is man's hard home; the 'world' as made by man in his folly is becoming his prison.
It might have been possible for man emerging from the cruel Middle Ages to achieve life or the circumstances for living. But capitalism partly caused the Reformation — in any case it took it over (Luther was one of Europe's greatest misfortunes) — and history since then has largely been the record of a great mistake. I sympathise passionately with small nations (Armenians, Cornish, Bretons) partly as symbolic of human persons denied by invented 'sciences' like economics and by fettering puritanism the opportunity to live naturally in some kind of joyous but painful innocence before their death. Modern society seems to me mainly to be a machine for the elimination of mankind. I inherit the Methodist (and Shelleyan) urge for the salvation of man; I detest the Samuel-Smiles puritanism of denial, self-help and economic virtue...
In political and social, as in personal life, forgiveness and understanding, love, caring compassion, are all that matter. I will not give whole-hearted allegiance to any organisation that exalts 'justice', retributive and hard, over compassion. If told that hard cases make bad law, I reply that it would be better to have no law and no hard cases. Our duty (not a word I like) is to arrange to make the best of the situation we find: experience as an educator has taught me that retributive punishment for past acts never did anyone any good — to resort to it is a confession of failure and an excuse for not troubling to exercise understanding.
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