In his much-discussed essay, Koestler is generally assumed to have come down heavily on the side of the Yogi. Actually, if one assumes the Yogi and the Commissar to be at opposite points of the scale, Koestler is somewhat nearer to the Commissar’s end. He believes in action, in violence where necessary, in government, and consequently in the shifts and compromises that are inseparable from government. He supported the war, and the Popular Front before it. Since the appearance of Fascism he has struggled against it to the best of his ability, and for many years he was a member of the Communist Party. The long chapter in his book in which he criticises the USSR is even vitiated by a lingering loyalty to his old Party and by a resulting tendency to make all bad developments date from the rise of Stalin: whereas one ought, I believe, to admit that all the seeds of evil were there from the start and that things would not have been substantially different if Lenin or Trotsky had remained in control. No one is less likely than Koestler to claim that we can put everything right by watching our navels in California. Nor is he claiming, as religious thinkers usually do, that a “change of heart” must come before any genuine political improvement. To quote his own words:
Neither the saint nor the revolutionary can save us; only the synthesis of the two. Whether we are capable of achieving it I do not know. But if the answer is in the negative, there seems to be no reasonable hope of preventing the destruction of European civilisation, either by total war’s successor Absolute War, or by Byzantine conquest—within the next few decades.
That is to say, the “change of heart” must happen, but it is not really happening unless at each step it issues in action. On the other hand, no change in the structure of society can by itself effect a real improvement. Socialism used to be defined as “common ownership of the means of production”, but it is now seen that if common ownership means no more than centralised control, it merely paves the way for a new form of oligarchy. Centralised control is a necessary pre-condition of Socialism, but it no more produces Socialism than my typewriter would of itself produce this article I am writing. Throughout history, one revolution after another—although usually producing a temporary relief, such as a sick man gets by turning over in bed—has simply led to a change of masters, because no serious effort has been made to eliminate the power instinct: or if such an effort has been made, it has been made only by the saint, the Yogi, the man who saves his own soul at the expense of ignoring the community. In the minds of active revolutionaries, at any rate the ones who “got there”, the longing for a just society has always been fatally mixed up with the intention to secure power for themselves.
Koestler says that we must learn once again the technique of contemplation, which “remains the only source of guidance in ethical dilemmas where the rule-of-thumb criteria of social utility fail”. By “contemplation” he means “the will not to will”, the conquest of the desire for power. The practical men have led us to the edge of the abyss, and the intellectuals in whom acceptance of power politics has killed first the moral sense, and then the sense of reality, are urging us to march rapidly forward without changing direction. Koestler maintains that history is not at all moments predetermined, but that there are turning-points at which humanity is free to choose the better or the worse road. One such turning-point (which had not appeared when he wrote the book), is the atomic bomb. Either we renounce it, or it destroys us. But renouncing it is both a moral effort and a political effort. Koestler calls for “a new fraternity in a new spiritual climate, whose leaders are tied by a vow of poverty to share the life of the masses, and debarred by the laws of the fraternity from attaining unchecked power”. He adds: “If this seems Utopian, then Socialism is a Utopia.” It may not even be a Utopia—its very name may in a couple of generations have ceased to be a memory—unless we can escape from the folly of “realism”. But that will not happen without a change in the individual heart. To that extent, though no further, the Yogi is right as against the Commissar.
Freedom of the Park
(1945)
A few weeks ago, five people who were selling papers outside Hyde Park were arrested by the police for obstruction. When taken before the magistartes, they were all found guilty, four of them being bound over for six months and the other sentenced to forty shillings fine or a month’s imprisonments. He preferred to serve his term.
The papers these people were selling were PEACE NEWS, FORWARD and FREEDOM, besides other kindred literature. PEACE NEWS is the organ of the Peace Pledge Union, FREEDOM (till recently called WAR COMMENTARY) is that of the Anarchists; as for FORWARD, its politics defy definition, but at any rate it is violently Left. The magistrate, in passing sentence, stated that he was not influenced by the nature of the literature that was being sold; he was concerned merely with the fact of obstruction, and that this offence had technically been committed.
This raises several important points. To begin with, how does the law stand on the subject? As far as I can discover, selling newspapers in the street is technically an obstruction, at any rate if you fail to move when the police tell you to. So it would be legally possible for any policeman who felt like it to arrest any newsboy for selling the EVENING NEWS. Obviously this doesn’t happen, so that the enforcement of the law depends on the discretion of the police.
And what makes the police decide to arrest one man rather than another? However it may be with the magistrate, I find it hard to believe that in this case the police were not influenced by political considerations. It is a bit too much of a coincidence that they should have picked on people selling just those papers.
If they had also arrested someone selling TRUTH, or the TABLET, or the SPECTATOR, or even the CHURCH TIMES, their impartiality would be easier to believe in.
The British police are not like the continental GENDARMERIE or Gestapo, but I do not think [sic] one maligns them in saying that, in the past, they have been unfriendly to Left-wing activities. They have generally shown a tendency to side with those whom they regarded as the defenders of private property. Till quite recently “red” and “illegal” were almost synonymous, and it was always the seller of, say the DAILY WORKER, never the seller of say, the DAILY TELEGRAPH, who was moved on and generally harassed. Apparently it can be the same, at any rate at moments, under a Labour Government.
A thing I would like to know — it is a thing we hear very little about — is what changes are made in the administrative personnel when there has been a change of government.. Does a police officer who has a vague notion that “Socialism” means something against the law carry on just the same when the government itself is Socialist?
When a Labour government takes over, I wonder what happens to Scotland Yard Special Branch? To Military Intelligence? We are not told, but such symptoms as there are do not suggest that any very extensive shuffling is going on.
However, the main point of this episode is that the sellers of newspapers and pamphlets should be interfered with at all. Which particular minority is singled out — whether Pacifists, Communists, Anarchists, Jehovah’s Witness of the Legion of Christian Reformers who recently declared Hitler to be Jesus Christ — is a secondary matter. It is of symptomatic importance that these people should have been arrested at that particular spot. You are not allowed to sell literature inside Hyde Park, but for many years past it has been usual for the paper-sellers to station themselves outside the gates