Content area
Full text
Iain McKay, ed., Our Masters are Helpless: The Essays of George Barrett. AK Press, 2019.
George Barrett (1888-1917) was a British anarchist whose writings first appeared in Freedom, an anarchist journal founded in 1886 by Kropotkin. Barrett, unfortunately, passed away when he was quite young, at the age of 29. However, many of his works are still relevant for contemporary anarchists.
In "The Anarchist Revolution" (1915), Barrett discusses his conception of "Liberty." For Barrett, the state "controls and regulates... Invention and production were not in themselves orderly processes. It protects the property necessary for all this production, but with tragic imbecility, it protects it for the non-producer against the producer." (13) Barrett embraces the label "extremist," arguing change can only be accomplished by rudely disturbing, upsetting and overthrowing the institutions which belong to today, and establishing in their place those of a free society. ... In the future society, there will be no rich keeping the poor in poverty, since the authority and law by which the one forces the other to give up the wealth it produces will be swept away. (13)
Barrett notes that workers "are never given enough money to buy back the wealth they have produced." (14) "Profit, therefore, is that part of the wealth produced by the workers for which they are not paid." Barrett also writes about his opposition to parliamentary socialism, arguing against nationalization. (15-16) "The institution of Capitalism is wrong, and the institution of Government, which is a part of the capitalist...