Is it easy to dream? To hope and to persevere with that hope when all around you is a miasma of dark, incoherent dogmatic mutterings of the unwilling. To persevere with the ideal when the tutors of life, the upholders of a false ‘real’, condemn you to an existence of pure desolation. Will you gaze at them with gradually deadening eyes, speak to them quivering lips and faltering voice about hope, when perhaps in a day or so you’re sure to starve in a dinghy flat because you will have lost your job and any scope of livelihood for this season. Is this an alien scenario, I’ve painted? Are people free of poverty? Is the blood owed to the landowner no longer called rent? Have we somehow entered an era where workers are not cheated out of their money and work, just so their employers can gain a pretty penny out of every starved stomach?

Do we dare to dream?

This, I believe, should have been the subtitle of the work The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. While excellent discourses on trickle-down economics, surplus value or profit-making through scamping, wage slavery, consumerism and useless toil add to the breadth of this book; deep down, it is a depiction of the purposeless human toil for the sake of the worst sort of parasites, the defense of such parasites by the toiling humans being drained and infected and finally, the war waged by some on the ideology that has followed us to this century that there is no alternative, things are and shall remain as they are.

The book resonates with the truth of human existence. In depicting the needless toil of the workers, for their undeserving employers, it touches upon not only the individual character but also the nature of oppression itself. It is dialectic in motion. From Rushton (the capitalist), to Hunter (the overseer), Crass (the foreman) and Sawkins (the worker ready to be underpaid); what it reveals is not merely the plight of the working classes but the entire condition of the system of production that allows exploitation.

Let me illustrate. Sawkins’ readiness to work for less puts a pressure on his fellow workers, the painters working for Rushton and Co., to either scamp their work or work for less themselves. They have no choice, for there is an army of unemployed outside desperate enough to slave away at the lowest wage offered to them. All seems to be upon the whims and fancies of Rushton and Hunter, who are but the symptoms of the disease. For even Hunter is hardpressed to make the numbers work. In a world governed by capitalist greed, the most important treasure seems to be profit. None, however, ask this most pertinent question. None dare to inquire into the true nature of profit itself, lest they find the entire mass, the oppressed and the oppressor, ready to strangle them into submission. I need not explain how a rival firm offering the same good at a lower price will get more work. It is the basis on which any capitalist education works. For better or worse, this is Capitalism 101. To compete in such a market, the compromise has to come from the workers. But consider this. Say, Sawkins one day becomes an entrepreneur and gets out of the miserable working class existence. Will he not have lived happily ever after? The fairy tale of any rags to riches story, isn’t it? But is this a true picture? Nay, is this the picture we need? While this scenario is not in the book, Tressell understood. Sawkins would have been a worse taskmaster, for he, so to speak, knew the tricks of trade. Infact any worker, no matter how loving and understanding towards his fellow workmen, would have been a harsh taskmaster. This is what a capitalist has to do. As simple as the air we breathe. Our system rewards selfishness, cruelty and greed. It eschews kindness as naivety, rewards selflessness with destitution and there is nothing one can do about it.

How eloquently does Tressell depict workings of the system that allows the perpetuation of such evil! Sunday schools and other charitable organisations in the name of religion fostered by capitalist masters. Indeed it is the meek who shall inherit the earth. After all, any kind of total ownership is only possible when the many are truly rendered meek and the wolf in the clothing of the sheep leads the herd while the pack thins it with such efficiency that it is almost unnoticeable. Are not, then, these sheep truly generous? One must appreciate the ingenuity of Tressell’s title. Where is hope in all this, you ask? Is there a hero, you ask? That’s precisely it. There’s none. I can say that Socialism is the true hero of this tale. But my task is not to paint a pretty picture. While Tressell did write to present an accurate picture of the working class and to make the anti-socialists truly understand the meaning of socialism; he was not writing an “essay” but a “novel”. Owen, in my view, while a protagonist, is not your typical hero who gets his happily ever after. If to survive is to be victorious, then he did win. But there is none more miserable than Frank Owen in this tale of unending despair. It stems from a very simple root. He knows. Owen knows that the system is broken. Owen knows that the true end of his poverty is not suddenly becoming rich. On the contrary, money is the true cause of poverty. There’s a quaint little chapter, sequestered innocuously, called The Great Money Trick, where he explains the nature of the bondage called money to his fellow workmen. He is jeered, as he usually is. Some who listen and come to an uncomfortable realization of their circumstance shrug and busy themselves with work. There were poor before them and poverty shall outlive them and their grandchildren; nothing to be done. This is the true condition of the working class, now and then. Nay, this is our condition, working class or no. We are all slaves to the ideology of despair. Now more than ever. We live without hope, without spirit, without utopia. Our only drive is to somehow rise above our station; from oppressed to oppressor, the only feasible dream, we think. Rest is idealism, a curse of indolence; and in all conviviality we look down upon the fellow who dares. We are realists, after all. Owen is the victim, not only of the capitalist class, but also of such realists, such defenders of the capitalist truth.

Near the end, there is a chapter called The Wise Men of the East. I won’t say much about it, lest I spoil the fun but it is a haunting reminder of our own elections (be it Trump vs Hillary or Modi vs Rahul). Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur. Nothing, however, prepares you for the discussion between two socialists. One, Barrington (also a worker at Rushton and Co.), distributing pamphlets and the other campaigning for the liberal candidate during election. The distinct lack of the adjective ‘former’ while describing the renegade is for a good reason. In his own words, “no man who has once been a socialist can ever cease to be one. It is impossible for a man who has once acquired knowledge ever to relinquish it.” Then why the betrayal, you ask? Truth be told there is no betrayal, not really. I shall not recount the events that led to it, for to summarise is not my intent. But I shall offer you his words.

“Well, go and try to undeceive them. Go and try to teach them that the Supreme Being made the earth and all its fulness for the use and benefit of all His children. Go and try to explain to them that they are poor in body and mind and social condition, not because of any natural inferiority, but because they have been robbed of their inheritance. Go and try to show them how to secure that inheritance for themselves and their children––and see how grateful they’ll be to you.“

Words of an embittered, broken man perhaps. Of a man so outraged by the sheer incoherence and uncooperative nature of his fellows that he gave in. Or may be he had to give in. We all know, deep down, what happens to those who fight the system. The dangers they subject themselves to. And I am not talking about state action against dissent. It is much insidious than that. Mob action and kangaroo courts incited through misinformation and misrepresentation of truth to suit the needs to the dominant. What does the man fear the most – not the oppressor, I assure you – if not the censure of the people he wants to work for, especially when it is violent enough to rob him of his life.

Let me ask the question again.
Do we dare to dream?

– upanshu

29 July 2020