On Social Reform -Robert Fullarton Copyright 2017

On Social Reform
-Robert Fullarton Copyright 2017

While Marx wrote the communist Manifesto in Brussels of 1848 and Engels wrote of the horrid working class conditions of the poor in Britain, there was there was Anthony-Ashley Cooper, a great reformer, tackling the conditions of the poor, through legislation, to fight against child labour, lower the working hours of the poor and to give rights and adherence to those deemed to be insane and were sent off to the insane asylum. While Marx sought the end of all religion and to wage effectively a war on the upper classes, men like Cooper were fuelled by the passionate words of Jesus Christ in their century to give hope to those whom society had rejected and deemed to be unfit! Cooper too was the 7th Earl of Shaftsbury who used his position to pass legislation and give breadth of vision in the House of Lords. The vision of such compassion extended to men like Henri Dunant who was inspired by the impetus of his devout Calvinist upbringing was moved to feel horror and pathos under the conditions of war at the bloody battle of Solferino and in consequence there came the Red Cross, to grant dignity, and care to the sick and dying. Same too could be said for William Booth whose  "army" of salvationists went out unto the streets to bring food and comfort to the poor and the hungry. The Society of Friends (the Quakers) through the 1840's have remained in my minds as being part of the very few who gave alms and food through their soup kitchens to the starving people during the Irish famine! Today we see the homeless crisis (and I would rather call it the great drug epidemic) and we must examine the impetus, the reason, the motive, the altruistic mercy and power behind such action. It is not the violent roulette of the revolution and the pistol of violence that changes men, (it postpones and suspends their interest until violence resurges again, because men WANT MORE), change the heart and you have changed the entire body, work one mind at a time, through kindness to the sore points and fallacies of men and you make a great example, it comes down to the thought we all posit in time, "what kind of a world do we want to live in." Marx was wrong and has been proven wrong. Its is not for the suspension of power and transfer of power from one class unto another, it is not about the destruction of one group of peoples, but about untapping the peace within all men, by discovering the order which all men below answer to from above. Let us once again examine the roots of the radicals who spoke with, comforted and gave hope to the "untouchables" of the world, and we can see the life of Christ in emulation, carried by the exemplars of great men and women, these "little-christs" who carry a revolution of change and hope without violence and malice beyond the understanding of the ordinary mind!