William Rodney Herring

Scott’s loss—though it’s now been found—had me thinking as I read through Annie Kilburn this weekend. During the pivotal delivery of Rev. Peck's sermon, he claims:

There is an evolution…in the moral as well as in the material world, and good unfolds in greater good; that which was once best ceases to be in that which is better.

This is really quite extraordinary, as is Peck’s argument moments later, “There has been much anxiety in the Church for the future of the world abandoned to the godlessness of science, but I cannot share it.” He finds no anxiety because in contrast to the hypocritical churchgoers who profit by their relation to “monopolies...founded upon ruin” and that “prophesy the end of competition,” at least the evolutionist—the religious “sceptic”—even if his “words perhaps deny Christ” “affirm Him” with his “works.” For Peck, monopoly is just one more step to be churned in the dialectical process (though of course he doesn’t use that taxonomy). This is what separates him from the capitalist—who sees monopoly (or the elimination of competition) as a sort of telos. (Note that this also separates him from Bellamy [or Leete]—albeit in a different way—who tells us that monopoly was the solution, if we could only have seen it—it just needed to be controlled by the state. State capitalism! Too bad Bellamy didn’t live to see the Soviet version…) And this is Peck's twist on the scripture, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” Evolution equals resurrection and more life.

And yet…I’m not sure if this counts as an instance of “the complacent attitude toward what was then considered the scientific certainty of ameliorative social evolution,” which Scott describes. Peck’s rhetoric is certainly considered an imminent threat to some, like Mr. Gerrish who quickly thereafter proposes Peck’s dismissal from the pulpit. And Peck himself is thinking of being active in the evolutionary process. He says:

we find that liberty is only a means and not an end, and that we shall abuse it as a means if we do not use it, even sacrifice it, to promote equality; or in other words, equality is the perfect work, the evolution of liberty.

And using liberty to promote equality is just what he intends in resigning from the pulpit and returning to the Fall River cotton mills to live with the workers, to teach, and to labor himself if necessary (he wants his daughter Idella to “be brought up to work and to be helpful to herself”).

There is perhaps more to say regarding his reasons for returning to Fall River, where he can “find instruction in the working-men” since “they alone have the light and the truth, and know the meaning of life.” What allows the proletariat to occupy the privileged space of enlightenment? Workers intervene precisely at the point in the process of production where the greatest contradiction and injustice (alienation) occurs.

But not only does this position privilege the worker, as Peck seems to think, by providing her with a closer view of that fundamental contradiction of the system, but it also positions her to be the agent of change: she can withhold her labor; she can, in concert with her fellow workers, direct the object of her labor toward another end. Which is why, I’d suggest, Peck must take the action he does. Working with the workers is a way of working on evolution (of speeding it up or something). Peck’s vision, his work toward “justice,” seems to include what Eagleton has written: “The working class is the ‘universal’ class not necessarily because it is the most numerous, but because for it to achieve justice would mean a global or universal transformation of the system.”

But I guess what I’m really saying is: more people should read this book.