The club in this sense is representative also of many other monster-slayers, not least Saint George, the patron saint of England and of Ruskin’s guild, an educational charity for the arts, crafts and the rural economy.
It is important to state upfront that Ruskin’s use of the club is not about violence – quite the contrary. In this sense the club does serve as something of a paradoxical symbol, but intentionally so, seeking to subvert and re-appropriate its accepted use.
The Force of Fors Clavigera is in the power of doing good work. Though Charitas is the title of Ruskin’s seventh letter, which we shall occupy ourselves with here, this is not a reference to charitable deeds, but in committing yourself honestly, excellently and innocently to your craft. A sense of destiny haunts the entirety of Fors Clavigera, be it fortune, fate or accident – timing is vital. There is a sense of carpe diem about this Force. There is a time to strike with your good work. And what better time than now?
It is in Letter Seven that Ruskin makes most reference to his Communism. It is a communism, as we have mentioned earlier, that Ruskin is at pains to insist is of the ‘old school’. He points to the continuing revolutions in neighbouring France, taking hold of their slogan “Vive le République”, and playing off the word Republic in particular. Res means ‘thing’. So, to authentically sound that revolutionary cry means to grasp hold of the thing you wish to be publicly alive.
The true revolutionary will strive to make that thing a common-wealth for all. This is a productive, creative revolution, not the destructive riot Ruskin perceives to be occurring in Paris. As it happens, the rumours he’d heard of the Louvre being burned had been dramatically overstated.
I’m reminded of some other communists, depicted in the BBC’s 2003 miniseries on the Cambridge Five. “Don’t you hate it? Don’t you want to tear it all down?” exclaims Guy Burgess in the halls of Cambridge University. “No,” replies Anthony Blunt, “I want it to be for everybody.”
Ruskin would hate being compared to the Cambridge Spies, but here he and Blunt share the same creative revolutionary sentiment.
Ruskin then distinguishes between a rose-red and vermillion-red communism. The rosey communist will defend his neighbour’s property as if it were his own. But the deep-red revolutionary will not be content until he has given all he can spare of his own; the more precious the better! We cannot truly relish beauty, Ruskin claims, unless others are able to enjoy it also.
The prime cause of war and suffering for Ruskin is thievery, a greed for your neighbour’s goods, land and fame. Worse still in his eyes is something he refers to as Occult Theft, the practice of making money from money, thus profiting from the labour of others.
Though it probably encompasses everything from ISAs to financial trading, I find myself increasingly referring to crypto-currency and non-fungible-tokens as Occult Theft. They seem an enormously overblown satire of the predatory nonsense Ruskin was railing against that would be hilarious were they not taken so seriously and distributed so widely, despite being, to quote Luke Evans in the Jacobin, ‘worse than useless.’
The profligate trading of them (as with all pyramid schemes) only creates increasing disembodiment, alienation and inequality as people compete for clout, race to stay ahead of each other and inevitably succumb to despair when the promise of becoming The Richest Man Alive fails and the deck of cards collapses.
The amount of people confessing to feelings of hopelessness and suicide on Reddit’s crypto forums, only to have their pleas silenced or erased so that everyone else can keep the wheel spinning is terrifying and heart-breakingly familiar.
Ruskin would have decried this Theft as yet another form of usury, the only discernible difference between his time and ours being the global spread of the perpetrators, who Ruskin had defined as simply the Capitalists of Europe.
Ruskin contrasts invidia, envy, the cause of all contention on Earth, with charitas, the desire to do your neighbour grace, which is the wellspring of good.
This is the central, enduring message of Letter Seven, and of the clava. But Ruskin goes further, leaving us with three lessons he considers vital in the act of Force, of completing good work which does your neighbour grace.
Ruskin urges the workers of England to do good work, “whether you live or die”. Many have died for England doing no good, and Ruskin reckons it is high time than if men must die, they do so doing good for all peoples. “You must simply die,” he says, before making with one’s hands “any destroying mechanism or compound”.
Cultivate the Earth. Prioritise corn and sweet peas over gunpowder and arsenic. Make useful things and carry them wherever they are wanted. Nations may go mad, Ruskin cedes. “But you who hand them carving-knives in exchange for a dropped sixpence; what mercy is there for you?”
A depiction of Charity by the artist Giotto was included in the original publication of Letter Seven. Ruskin notes that Giotto’s version does not show Charity nursing children or giving out money, as is tradition, but depicted her trampling gold, and distributing corn and flowers. Labour for these things only, urges Ruskin.
The second lesson is to seek to revenge no injury. The temptation may be great, admits Ruskin – noting that many rich people succumb to violence even though the cause for the poor be greater.
Thirdly, and most challenging of all, seek to obey good laws and good people. Ruskin believes good laws must first be obeyed before bad laws can be altered. For him it follows that good laws and people belong ultimately to an everlasting Kingdom extending from generation to generation, advancing forcefully by the extending of grace to one’s neighbour and not by violence.