revolution. A rage at present
conditions is not enough.

XI.

Our farmers are already free. The problem with them is not now concerned
with freedom, but how they may be brought into a solidarity with each
other and the nation. To make our proletarians free and masters of their
own energies, in unison with each other and the national being, is the
most pressing labor of the many before us. Unless there be economic
freedom there can be no other freedom. The right of no individual to
subsistence should be at the good will of any other individual. More
than mere comfort depends on it. There are eternal and august rights of
the soul to be safeguarded, and the economic position of men should be
protected by organization and democratic law. I have already discussed
some of the avenues through which workers in our time have looked with
hope. I have little belief that these roads lead anywhere but back to
the old City of Slavery, however they may seem to curve away at the
outset. The strike, on whatever scale, is no way to freedom, though
the strike--or the threat of it--may bring wages nearer to subsistence
level. The art of warfare is too much in the hands of specialists for
trust to be placed in revolution. A machine-gun with a few experts
behind it is worth a thousand revolutionary workers, however maddened
they may be. Does political action, on which so many rely, promise more?
I do not believe it does. I believe that to appeal to legislatures is
to appeal to bodies dominated by those interested in maintaining the
present social order, although they may act so as to redress the worst
evils created by it. In Ireland, for this generation at least, it
would be impossible to secure in a legislative assembly majorities
representative of the class we wish to see emancipated. It may seem as
if I had closed all the paths out of the social labyrinth; but the
way to emancipation has, I think, already been surveyed by pioneers.
A policy of social reconstruction is practical, and needs but steady
persistence for its realization. That policy--I refer to co-operative
action--has been adopted in various forms by workers in many countries;
and what is needed here is to study and coordinate these applications of
co-working, and to form a general staff of labor who will, on behalf of
the workers, examine the weapons fashioned by their class elsewhere, and
who will draw up a plan of campaign as the staff of an army do previous