T BERKELEY
> I had never understood why Socialism need imply the arraying of oneself
> in a green curtain or a terra-cotta rug, or the cultivation of flowing
> locks, blue shirts, and a peculiar cut of clothes.
>
> …
>
> I entertained scant sympathy for what I regarded as hygenic fads; and
> the emphasis with which the lady averred that she touched neither flesh
> nor alcohol, and felt that by this abstinence she was not “besotting her
> brain nor befouling her soul,” amused me much.
>
> …
>
> “It is you bourgeois socialists, with your talk of helping us, and your
> anxiety about using your property ‘to the best advantage,’ who are the
> ruin of every movement,” he said, addressing me in an uncompromising
> spirit. “What is wanted is enthusiasm, whole-hearted labour, and where
> that is, no thought is taken as to whether everything is being used to the
> best advantage. If you are prepared to enter the movement in this spirit,
> without any backward notion that you are conferring a favour upon
> anyone—for indeed the contrary is the case—well and good; but if not,
> you had better side with your own class and enjoy your privileges as long
> as the workers put up with you.”
>
> It was what I had all along instinctively felt. Private property was, after
> all, but the outcome of theft, and there can be no virtue in restoring
> what we have come by unrighteously.
>
>
— Isabel Meredith, A Girl Among the Anarchists
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