Theosophy - The Future or Socialism by Annie Besant - Adyar Pamphlet No. 18
Adyar
Pamphlet No 18
THE
FUTURE SOCIALISM
by ANNIE
BESANT
Reprinted from Bibby's Annual 1908 of
August 1912 and reprinted Nov.1916
Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Chennai.
India
THOSE
who study carefully the tendencies of the times, must recognize
the increasing power of the Socialist movement in this land,
as well as in lands where it is a more militant force than
it is here; and such thinkers will do well to consider along
what lines it will work in days to come, and what will be
the outlines of the Socialism which it is proposed to establish.
Now in dealing with that question, there is one idea that will dominate
all that I say. Just as every Socialist declares that politics
alone are utterly insufficient to make a happy and prosperous
nation, just as he truly says that economics must be rightly
understood and rightly applied, and that without that an understanding
and application of political reform must fail and crumble,
so I believe that economics alone are not enough to make a
nation prosperous and free. Important as economics may be and
are, behind economics lie men and women, and unless those men
and women are trained into a noble humanity, economic schemes
will fail as hopelessly as any political schemes can possibly
do. For while it is true that the politician is building a
house without a foundation, while it is true that Socialists
are trying to make that foundation, still the foundation must
be of good materials, or a rotten foundation will be as unfortunate to the house as no foundation at all.
And there is a danger - a danger the more pressing the more
successful the Socialist propaganda proves - that as the State
takes over one thing after another, and tries to guide the
great industries of the country for the common good, unless
there are at the head of those industries, and unless there
are as workers in those industries, trustworthy, upright, unselfish
men. Socialism will inevitably fail. And if there is one thing
more clear than another in looking through the efforts of the
proletariat through the country, it is that they do not trust
each other, either their leaders or their comrades. They have
not that trust which alone can make success in any enterprise;
and they need, not only trust in upright leaders, but they
need the discipline, the subordination based on self-control,
without which no undertaking can, in the long run, be successful. For if it is true, as it unfortunately
is, that individualistic enterprises of production have been
far more successful than co-operative production has proved
itself to be, experimental and local as the whole thing has
been, it is also true that when there is one vast co-operative
body called the State, it will want the virtues that make good
citizens, otherwise the Socialist State will crumble into pieces,
as other States have done. And it is this point which seems
to me to be lacking in Socialistic propaganda. It is this point
which, more than anything else, led me outside the paths of
Socialist propaganda into trying to form the material which
the Socialist needs for the building of his State. For without
that material, all efforts must fail, and the material cannot
be made by outer organization alone. There is the tendency
of advancing thought though growing less and less, I think, with every year, to regard the environment as everything,
and the man as nothing, to think that the good environment
will make the good man. It is forgotten that environment and
living organism react the one upon the other; and though it
is true that we need a better environment. though the environment
of many men and women today is so unutterably vile that it
is almost impossible that healthy plants can grow therein,
still the fact that the man is a living creature, who more
than any other adapts his environment to himself, is too much
forgotten in the ordinary teaching of Socialism. And yet it
is an essential part of a real Socialist propaganda. Now, I
believe that the next great stage of civilisation will be Socialistic;
that in the centuries that lie before us there will be realized
many of the economic conditions, probably all, that the Socialists
of the day demand; but I see, at the same time, that unless the leaders of the Socialist party are
educated far beyond the masses that they lead, and unless those
masses understand that wisdom should give authority, all schemes
must be wrecked; unless it be possible to have a Socialism
where the wisest shall guide, and plan, and direct, I do not
see that the mere change of economic conditions will make things
so enormously better than they are today. For although it is
true that by better economics we may change the outer conditions,
man wants something more than food to eat and raiment to put
on; man demands more and more, as he unfolds his inner powers,
not only what the body demands imperatively, but that which
the mind, and conscience, and Spirit, no less imperatively
demand; and I fear lest this movement should be wrecked on
the lack of recognition of the real nature of man, that he
will be treated as a body only and not as a spiritual intelligence, and that against that rock all schemes will
break; for we cannot ignore the real nature of man.
Now,
in order to put before my readers some ideas
that may lead to thought, I want to tell them
the story of an ancient Socialism. They may
take it as they please.
I tell it as history; they may treat it as a fairy
tale if they like. While I do not believe that
history,
for I call
it history, repeats itself, while I do not think that
the great lesson of Democracy is without its
meaning to humanity,
and has not to be learned by the nations of the world,
I do believe that ancient Socialism also has
lessons for the
future, and that out of the Autocracy that is dead,
and the Democracy that is trying to live, the
nations will have to
find some blend, which will give to the future civilization
the advantages of both experiences; we shall not bring
back the child state, for the man cannot
go back into the child, but we may learn something of the
benefits
of the rule
of that time, and see whether modern Democracy
may not fashion in some way a method for calling
the wisest to the helm of the State, instead
of governing by numbers, which
means governing by ignorance. Let me, then, tell my
fairy tale. It
was such a long time ago that
I had better begin “once upon a time”. Once upon a time, then, the masses of the people, undeveloped, unevolved,
were literally in what we may call the child condition, ready
to be governed, ready to admit the superiority of their elders;
and these proletariats of the past were ruled by men of a
far higher humanity, a more advanced humanity than their
own. We see traces of that remaining in the civilization
of ancient Egypt; we see traces of it in the civilization
of Peru which was destroyed by Pizarro; we see traces of
it still existing in India, that country which has not died
where all its contemporaries have. We still may find in the
village organization of India, in the village pañchayât - the village council of elders - the village ownership of land,
the common responsibility of the village for every one of
its members, and in many other ways, traces of that very
ancient Socialism existing in our modern times. And it is
because the rulers of the Empire do not understand the meaning
of those ancient things, that they often make such serious
blunders in their government of India at the present time.
Trying to do right, they inevitably go wrong, and plunge
the people into a far more hopeless condition than would
be the case if they would look a little at the traditions
which have come down from that ancient form of Socialism.
To give one illustration: The old Socialism, that of which
I am writing, vested all the land in the King, and that idea
came down through all changes and conquests in India, until
the Englishman began a new settlement in various great provinces; then, not realizing that this
village ownership of the land was really part of the old
system in which the land did not belong to any private person,
he changed the ancient type of landlord who had no power
to drive out the tenant, into a landlord of a modern kind,
who was no longer representative of the monarch; the King
technically owned the land, and took part of the profits
from the tiller, so that the amount varied up and down, according
to greatness or dearth of the harvest, and the “rent” thus did not starve the cultivator, because his food was the first
claim to be satisfied; he changed all
that into the English system of landlord
and tenant, with a
fixed
money rent, and
power of alienation to the tenant,
and thus has reduced to a miserable
condition of non-cultivation and poverty
vast tracts of land, and thousands
of people
that were before in a comfortable and
happy state. I mention those traces
of the past still existing, that readers
may not think
the
fairy tale quite as fanciful as if
those traces did not exist to bear
witness that I do not wholly invent.
Now,
with regard to this ancient Socialism,
the King stood as an autocrat at the head ;around
him a number of nobles,
of priests
- names that are well beloved
among Socialists, but I must tell my story
truly. That King,
those nobles, those
priests,
were of a more developed humanity than
the great labouring populations of the time,
and the whole arrangement
of the State was the arrangement
of
the family. Now, I believe that
the arrangement of the family is the
model for all healthy human organization,
and that that great phrase: “From every one according to his capacities, to every one according
to his needs” is the last, as it was the earliest word, of social organization.
That was the rule which guided my Fairy State. Of that
position of the King, again, there are many traces in Indian
and Chinese
books. He was the hardest-working man in the land,
not simply in opening one institution or another, or in laying
foundation-stones,
but really the hardest worked man. The old law was: “Let the King wake that other men may sleep; let the King labour in
order that other men may enjoy; let the King rule in
order that the people may be happy.” And behind the King in those old statutes - and here again the old
legal institutes will help us - behind the King there
was one power, given different names among different
people, amongst the Indians they call it Justice - and that
power
was beyond the King, above the King, ruled the King,
and he was only the administrator of the great Divine
Law,
in
which King, nobles, priests and people all equally
believed. So that we find it written that an evil King
will be destroyed
by Justice, with his house; and so in many another
saying of the ancient books; and that principle ran
through the
whole of the theory of government. The governor was
the responsible person, the criminal - there were few
in those days, because
crime mostly springs out of want and misery and want
and misery were not common in those times - was the
result
of
the errors of the ruler; the King was held ruler responsible
for good government, and it was held, as Confucius
once said to a King who complained
about robbers: “If you, O King, did not rob, there would be fewer robberies in your
land.” And this was a practical, not only a theoretical idea in that old
day; for in those days if a man lost anything by thieves,
the King was bound to restore it fourfold - an admirable
rule. In those days it was held that if the King did
his duty in the training and teaching of his people, nobody
would
be inclined to thieve, so that the King’s treasury was the place whence all restitutions were made to those
who had suffered by theft. And that treasury, filled
with the overflowings of the prosperity of the nation, was
the
place to which all men turned who were wronged, and
the wrong had to be made right. And it was another admirable
rule of
the ancient time that when the religious teachers,
who in these days would be called bishops, went round the
land,
and came to the King’s Court, the first questions they asked were all practical questions.
Have you looked after the widows and
orphans in your country? Have you seen
that the tiller of the soil
has seed to sow
his land? Have you seen that the artisan
has the materials
with which to work? And so on through
every question on which the
prosperity of the State depended.
Now,
in the earliest days the Kings were
what we call Divine Kings. By that we mean
that they were men in whom the spiritual
nature was developed, that duty was
their guiding law;
duty was really then
the backbone of the monarch’s authority, and the principles they laid down as to ownership, rule,
and labour were very clear. In ownership, the whole of the
land of the country technically belonged to the King and
was administered for the common good; there were no taxes,
for the revenue of the land met all public purposes. Out
of one part of the land the whole of the nobles, and the
whole of the law-making people, and the whole of the governors
of the nation lived - one third of the land went for the
support of the administrative class. The second third of
the land went to the priesthood. What were they to do with
it? They were bound to educate every child without charge
of any sort. That was the first call of the priestly revenues.
They were bound to support every sick person, every old person,
every orphan, every one who was in need, who was suffering
- hospitals, almshouses, asylums, everything wanted for the helpless was kept up out
of this part. And the result was that there was no idea of “Charity”. Hence, “Charity” has always remained a religious duty. It was understood that that
part of the national property was put aside for the helpless
and the ignorant. Not for priestly pomp of priestly power,
but for the service of humanity, was that third of the nation’s land set aside. On them lay the whole burden of the support of the
helpless; they administered, they did
not own. The remaining third of the
land was the property assigned
for the support
of the people, divided up into villages,
townships, and so on. All those areas
were held by the people
who lived on
them, and they could not be turned
away from
them. The land could not be alienated,
because, theoretically, it was not
theirs to sell; it could not be lost
by debt or mortgage,
for they had no right in it beyond
the right of use - not the technical
right of property. And that
reminds
me again,
how, in India, that old principle has
been lost sight of in modern land-legislation.
Thousands of
labourers
have been
turned into tramps of the road, because
the land has become property as land,
instead of only the use
of
the land being
the property of the people
Thus
was the land divided in my Fairy-State.
The people tilled the whole of the land and
pursued all manual occupations.
That was their contribution
to the State. They
tilled their own
land first. That was the most necessary
tillage of all; after that the land of the
priests, which was administered for
the children, the sick, and the helpless;
lastly;
the land of the rulers. For the burden
was always to come most heavily
on the ruling class; and if seed ran
short, or water ran short, first the land of
the people was
sown and watered, then the
land of the priests, and lastly only the land
of
the rulers. And that was the principle
that ran through the whole. For the man must
give what he had
to give, and the ignorant - not ignorant as people are
ignorant now,
for all were educated, but
comparatively ignorant,
because undeveloped
in intelligence - gave the strength
of their bodies, that was their capacity; and
the priestly class
gave the strength of their
minds, for
they were teachers, nurses, physicians;
and the ruling class gave
all their time and thought and energy
to guiding the State, and planning its welfare,
and defending it
from attack.
One other purpose was served by the land of the priests. All great
agricultural and other scientific experiments were made thereon;
farms were kept up where experiments might be carried on,
and all improvements might at once be scattered over the
whole of the agricultural population; laboratories were maintained
for scientific experiments, and anything that was discovered
by intelligence became freely available for all, for the
intellectual gave the strength of their minds; that was their
capacity. There were no patent laws in those days, and no
right claimed by any to live idly on the support of labour.
It was a fair exchange of power all round - a division of
duties; but all had duty, and all had some kind of work.
Now,
another point on which things were
very different then from now, was one which
may seem to many wild and foolish;
the
higher the people in intelligence,
the less need they have of wealth
and amusement. Yet it was a rational
idea; for the argument ran in this way: a man
who is very undeveloped as to intelligence
has few resources within himself; therefore,
you must give him everything from outside
which it is
possible to give,
to refine, to elevate, to train, and
to make his life happy; the highly developed
have endless resources
within themselves.
Therefore, all the amusements were
freely open to the
masses of the people. Every
form of art was used in order to brighten
and make happy their lives. If any one ran short of material good things, it must
not be the people.
They had nothing
else except these outer things, which gradually drew
out their sleeping powers, and raised them in the scale of intelligence. So,
whoever else went short of amusement, they must be sure to
have it placed within their reach. And the result was that
they grew up far more refined than the masses of the people
in any so-called civilized country today. We may measure
very often the class of people that go to any place of amusement,
by the vulgarity of the entertainment that is given. Now
I have been through all the typical London amusements many
years ago; therefore, I know whereof I write. If you go,
say, to a theatre in the East End, you will generally find
fair ethics - the hero who is good always coming to the top,
and the villain coming to grief. But the inanity of it! The
lack of a real higher thought in it! That is a thing which
makes one’s heart weep on seeing the stones with which the ignorant are put off
for bread, in the place which is the
only place where they are able to learn,
the places to which they
go
for so-called amusement. Now it is
the people who want the best of
everything
that art can give. It is they who,
because their homes are least artistic,
need to have the beauty
of art
in order to
refine them, and make them more human
than too many of them are now. It is
a remarkable thing that
the
Anglo-Saxon poor
are more brutalized than the poor of
any other nation, and I believe it
is chiefly because of the utter
absence
of refinement
in the amusements with which they try
to fill the hours that are left over
from labour. Moreover, where
labour
is too
hard, amusement cannot really be healthy.
Only by limited labour can you
leave intelligence enough to profit
by all that art is able to give the
mind. And in my Fairy State no man
or woman was overworked; and
no
child worked at all; and no
man did compulsory work after forty-five
years of age, whatever class
he belonged to.
As either side of these age limits he worked, but before the lower,
at education, and after the later, at any employment - literary,
artistic, scientific - to which his abilities and tastes
led him. So there was time for education, and time for art,
and time for people to grow up into intelligent and useful
life. But there is no time for such life now, where the child
begins to labour as a half-timer and the old man is only
grieved because at sixty or sixty-five he is too old to get
something with which to fill his mouth. Far better for the
labouring classes were those days, for they were not starved,
nor overworked, nor under-amused. The State was shaped so
that all might be happy, it being considered that happiness
was the natural atmosphere for man. And so things went on
for a long time.
Why
did they change? Because humanity had
to grow; and that was really the nursery stage,
where the children were taken
care
of and cosseted up, and made
much of, and humanity had to learn
to be grown up, and had to go through
the rough time of finding its own feet, and
learning to walk.
And gradually, as these
greater men passed away, men of lower
moral type took their places, men who began
gradually to rule
for themselves, and
not for the people, to use their power
for self-aggrandisement,
and not for service. And under the
deterioration of the ruling and the teaching
classes, the whole
of the nations began
to go downhill, and the great Slave
States arose - States based on chattel slavery,
serf slavery, and wage slavery
- on the ruins of these ancient Socialist
States.
Always with the ruling classes deterioration begins. They
have power, and they begin to misuse it. And so came about, not autocracy for the sake of
the people, but tyranny for the plundering of the people.
And we come now within “historical” times, when to rule did not mean to serve, as it ought to mean. “Let the greatest among you be he that doth serve”; that is the word of one great Teacher, and it is the word which marks
the condition for the higher degrees of
humanity.
The
moment strength is used for the little
self, and not for the larger Self, that moment
it becomes tyranny and oppression,
becomes a means of destruction,
and not a pillar
of support. And
so with the coming of lesser men into
the powers that the great men had used, there
came the gradual
decline of the
State, and ignorance began to be a
reason for being cheated and oppressed, and
betrayed, instead of being, as in the
old family idea, a reason for being
protected,
cherished and guided. The whole spirit
of the time changed, and
we have all the different phases
of individualism that are seen
in the more modern States. Individualism
began with the rulers and the priests, they
who should have been the servants of all, and it passed on, doing a good
work along its own line, for it was necessary
that the individual should
be developed,
in order that a permanently nobler State might
ultimately grow out of the strife.
It
is a short-sighted eye which sees in
any great phase of human growth and evolution
only evil and not good. Something
comes
out of every great human experience,
however much at first sight
it may seem to be revolting; and it
was necessary that the individual should develop
despite all the
war, social and
national, that the developing of the
individual necessarily meant. And so the changes
went forward, and “duty” ceased to be the law of the State, and the claim to “rights” took its place. Inevitably, where the law of duty has perished as
a binding force, men are bound to claim
their rights and appeal to legal justice. And
so the nations came
into the
phase of imaginary Social Contracts
and State
arrangements, and all the other fictions
on which modern Democracy
has gradually been built up - that
we were all born free, and
that we gave up some of our rights
in order to preserve the others, and so on
- we all know the whole
of it
- a fiction, and a fiction is not a
good thing on which to base
the growth
of a civilization. We must found on
facts, not on fictions, if we want Society
to grow and to be healthy.
The great
watchword of the Eighteenth Century,
that man was born free and is in chains everywhere, is a pure fiction.
He was never born free, but is ever born helpless,
and dependent
for his life
in his younger days on the guiding
and the nurture of his elders. That
is as true of humanity, as
it is
true of every baby that is born into
the world. And because man is thus
born helpless, duty needs to be the
law of human life and human growth.
Only by the
recognition of the law of duty can
humanity progress
towards perfection.
In
this growth to Democracy much that
we see now seems to be full of menace for the future. For
the Democracy into
whose
hands the power has slipped,
is the Democracy brought up under
conditions that make it impossible
that it should wisely guide a State. How should a number
of men,
knowing
practically very little outside
the mine or the forge, or the mill, be
able to deal with all the subtler questions
on which the prosperity of a nation
depends? They can know only what their
class wants - relief from the pressure
that is crushing them down. And surely they are not to
blame
if they try to use
political power to lift something of
the burden under
which they, their forefathers,
and their children live. They would be less than human, if they did not use it
so. But class rule is not better, when
it is the class rule of Democracy, than when it is the
class rule of the
aristocracy.
In some senses it is worse
because more ignorant,
in some senses worse because less refined.
Civilization cannot risk the loss of all that it has won during thousands
of years of labour and study, and there is the danger that
numbers may swamp brains, that ignorance may swamp knowledge
- even if the knowledge is limited - a danger lest a triumphant
Democracy should pull down instead of constructing, and sacrifice
all that humanity has won, under the mere pressure of suffering,
and the bitter need for food and leisure. Now, as long as
a man is under that pressure he cannot judge fairly; as long
as he is bitterly suffering, he cannot weigh what is necessary,
what is possible.
How should Society be re-organized? That it must be re-organized is
clear. But how? I suggest - I do not know how far my readers
will agree with me - that there is much in these old principles
that might form the chart of modern Socialism, that the moral
training which should make men and women understand that
growing knowledge and power is duty, is one of the most vital
lessons for these modern days.
In our upper or middle classes, all who are not engaged in the bitter
strife for bread, should carry on a propaganda of duty far
more than a propaganda of rights, and should set the example
of doing duty; we must try to teach the men and women whose
lives are comparatively easy, that the only way in which
Society can be re-organized without a catastrophe in which
the results of civilization will perish, is that they should
take up the rule of self-denial, voluntarily and willingly,
which has so long been imposed involuntarily on the poor
and the miserable. That seems to me the first lesson that
all have to learn who are not fighting for bread; that no
one has the right to live and enjoy save as he gives, whether
he gives time, thought, money, training - and that the more
he possesses, the more he is bound to give.
Only in that way can we gain time to make economic changes. And these
changes will not be made successfully in the storm of revolution,
because in revolution the men who come to the top are not
the wisest men, but the most exaggerated men; and the man
who can promise most is the one who comes to the top, and
each one tries to outbid the other, in order to secure his
own power, and avoid suspicion from the great masses of the
people. The lesson of the French Revolution is a lesson which
it is well to learn. Notice the waves of the Revolution as
they came on, and notice how every moderate party in turn
was swallowed up, and how each extreme party was guillotined
by a still more extreme, until the military power put an
end to all.
And
it is of no use to ignore the lessons
of history. Hardest of all for the younger
amongst us in this to understand,
for
they naturally think that everything
can be done so quickly, and
do not see the difficulties, and do
not realize the obstacles that have to be overcome,
and the
riddles that have to be
solved. And we need a preaching of
the doctrine of self-sacrifice, not in order
to win an individual
heaven, for that is not
self-sacrifice at all, but only self-seeking;
but the self-sacrifice of duty, which
says: “Because I have more to give, I must give more.” “From every one according to his capacities”; it is the word of Socialism, but it is the word that is forgotten
now.
Because
idleness has been the prize of success,
the masses of the people look on idleness as
that for which they ought to
strive.
None should blame them. They are only
following where those who are called “upper classes” have led the way. But till the upper classes learn duty, first of
all - noblesse oblige - we cannot expect
that the lesson of duty should be learned by
those who have
naught
to give, who have everything
to gain by uproar and by tumult. And
so I suggest that we should hold up
an ideal of a Socialist State in which the
wisest should be the
rulers; and
the claim of the child, of
the ignorant, should be the right to be
educated, to be trained, to be disciplined,
in order that they may be free. The
ignorant are never free.
I
have sometimes thought of a scheme
outside the question of the great ideal, which
I believe to be the most inspiring
force
of all; and without an ideal,
clearly planned and definitely approached,
we shall never do
anything really worth
the doing
- or rather of certain lines of re-organization
which are well worthy of consideration
and discussion. Let me put it
quite briefly. That a small area should
be the unit of administration - a village,
a township, any small area that may be
named, so long as it is small. Then, that the
people in that area should have the right
to elect those who are to guide; but
only people over a certain age, or
with a certain definite experience of
life - the “elders” in the old sense of the term. That it should be their right to choose
those who immediately should guide
their little polity, so that the administration
of the small area may
be
always under
the control of the people who have to live
in it.
The head of the council of the area should be chosen out of those elected
by the people living therein, but chosen by the authority
immediately above it. That has not been tried for many thousands
of years, but it is a sound system; out of those elected
by the people, one should be chosen as the President - or
Chairman of the Board, as we may say - by the authority next
above the people themselves. But the choice of the higher
authority should be limited to those elected by the people.
The whole life of the people as regards agriculture, crafts, amusements,
libraries and sanatoriums, should be in the hands of these
local councils; so that the life of the unit in each state
should be self-contained to a very great extent. The next
area would be the area in which many of these were gathered
together into a single organization, say a province.
All the primary councils would advise the Provincial council, and only
those would have the right to rule in that larger organization,
who had proved themselves good rulers in the small organization
below - not fresh from ignorance, but partly trained, would
be the rulers of this next greater area, and their chief,
again, selected by the authority next above.
A parliament of the nation, which should guide national affairs, would
be chosen again only by and from those who had shown themselves
efficient in provincial politics. And international affairs
I would not give to the ordinary parliament at all, but to
the ruler of the State, the Monarch, and to the men old in
knowledge and experience, the best of the nation, who should
be round him as his council; to the hands of that body only
should international politics be trusted. That is a rough
sketch, but it may serve as a basis for discussion, to be
worked out very much more fully, of course, than I am putting
it now.
But
the general idea is that each man should
have power according to his knowledge and capacity.
None should be without
some share, but the power that
he has should be limited to his knowledge,
experience and capacity; and only those
should rule the nation who have won their spurs
in good administration of national
affairs. In this way, we should restore
to
the State something of the knowledge
that it wants, and we should take away from
the State the danger of allowing a
mass of ignorant
electors - who are really fighting
to elect a man who will look after
their mines, their drains, their local
interests, matters they understand - to upset
international arrangements,
and possibly plunge us into
war - or worse,
into dishonour. Those
are the general principles which might
be worked out, and might be applied to
modern days. And the
key-note is that
of my fairy tale: “From every man according to his capacity; to every man according to
his needs.”
A democratic Socialism, controlled by majority votes, guided by numbers,
can never succeed; a truly aristocratic Socialism, controlled
by duty, guided by wisdom, is the next step upwards in civilization.
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