Kipling’s The Mother Hive is a magnificent story. Here’s a comment from some guy, somewhere:
Sentimental talk and its consequences is seen in the story “The Mother Hive”, the young bees become contemptuous of the other bees who respect the Law, feed the Queen Bee and have a healthy fear of the Wax-moth. All this ends in the loss of the stored honey and the ruin of the hive. But it would be inaccurate to say that Kipling is anti-liberal minded., For him, liberty is essentially the daughter of Discipline and Law.
I’m having a hard time writing now because I’m reading the story again, heh! So here’s the first paragraph, in which Kipling sets the stage and anticipates the Cloward-Piven strategy, and pre-illustrates a healthy dose of Alinsky as well. What’s not to love?
If the stock had not been old and overcrowded, the Wax-moth would never have entered; but where bees are too thick on the comb there must be sickness or parasites. The heat of the hive had risen with the June honey-flow, and though the farmers worked, until their wings ached, to keep people cool, everybody suffered.
Tags: Cloward Piven Strategy
