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Title: Work and Organisation Author: Freedom Press, Anonymous Date: November, 1888 Language: en Topics: Freedom Press, Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism Source: Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Vol. 3, No. 26, online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3176, retrieved on May 8, 2020. Notes: Freedom Press
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
(A Paper read by Dr. Merlino at the October Freedom Discussion Meeting.)
WE now enter upon the crucial point of all socialistic systems-the
Organization of Labor-the great problem with which we shall be
confronted at the breakdown of the capitalistic system. We will first
take a general view of what the future organization of labor may be.
If we allow a central government, or any authority whatever, to exist
and regulate our affairs, we have no natural but an artificial system of
production and distribution enforced, a system which will be held by the
men who profit by it, as consented to by all members of society,
irrevocable at least for a time, and vesting rights in themselves. These
rights they will be by and by prone to defend even by force, under color
of assuring the "stability of society" (another name for law and order)
against changes demanded by the very class who will be made to support
the whole weight of the system, of which the requirements of the central
government or administration will form not the lesser part.
But how can we bind our future, when we have no definite idea of' what
our situation, our wants, our feelings will be? We should sell our
birth-right blindly. One thing only is certain ; and that is, that this
government or administration would be an enormous and therefore also a
very powerful one. Progress can never thrive under such a nightmare; it
can but plow its way once more through revolution. We must therefore
strive for the right to pacific and untrammeled progress-for the right
to find the best social system. This is a most precious right-a right
which was said to have been acquired long since as political freedom,
but which has been really enfeebled and suppressed under the ever
growing tyranny of the parliamentary system. In the development of
society, the free-handed policy is a sheer necessity. No young man
beginning his career would pledge his future life to the will and
direction of any individual or body of men, however wise they were
reputed, and yet it is proposed that society, as it emerges from the
next revolution, should elect a body of politicians and let them act as
her representatives, then fold her arms in blind confidence. Surely we
must dismiss any such idea as hopeless and reactionary.
Of course the usual objection will here be made. It will be urged how,
failing the wisdom of a central government, the workers can organize
labor for themselves? who will be their guides in the immense and
complex task they will have to accomplish? These will be the
guides-reason and a common interest. People will begin to exercise their
reason and to trust in it far more than they have hitherto done. They
will learn the arts of life, of labor, as well as hygiene. A man must
know how to preserve and further his health, and he must be the sole
director of his own labor. Those two principles are in close
correlation. Is it credible that alimentation, the most important
function of animal life, should be secured in excess for the idle few
and the workers be denied? Here is a man idle in luxury, useless to
himself and to society, and yet this man eats perhaps six times a day,
and his food is the most luxurious and the most delicate. Here is a
workman slowly starving on insufficient diet. But by a cruel paradox the
workman must give in work what he has not got in nutrition. No wonder
then that there is always a deficit in his animal budget. We see
children half famished, growing up weak men; then, the weaker they are,
the harder is the work. These are the irrationalities of the present
system, causing an enormous waste of forces in the shape of premature
death, inefficient labor, diseases and crime. Now if we were the
rational animals we boast to be, we should not permit this to go on to
our hurt. We should understand the necessity of adjusting food to
work-of feeding everybody according to his needs-that is, according to
the labor he contribute; to society, because the more a man works the
more he requires food, and even the different quality of the work
differentiates the qualities of nourishment required. This point is so
important that we must dwell on it a little longer. Do we realize the
harm done to workmen by insufficient nourishment? We know both from
experience and from theory that insufficiency or badness of food have
just the same effects as absolute inanition ; the process although
slower is the game, and the result is the same when the organism has
been reduced to the same conditions. The only difference consists in the
intensity and duration of the phenomena preceding death; for death
occurs when the body has lost four-tenths of its original weight.
On the other side we know equally well the evils of food in immoderate
quantities. Over-feeding is a kind of drunkenness, which inspires with
egoism and causes them to lose the sentiment of riot find justice, and
even of humanity, only to satisfy their greedy appetite for material
enjoyments, in which they grow insatiable. We also know the effect of
work on the quantity and even the quality of the food required.
Diminution of food may be sustained without great evil in a sate of
relative rest, as in prison, and is compensated then by the diminution
in he expenses of the organism. But the quantity of food becomes a
highly important question for men who lead a very active life and are
called to execute hard work. Thus in the Crimean war the English
soldiers who in time of peace received 16 ounces of bread or 12 of
biscuit and 6 of meat, were served with double rations beside rice,
sugar, coffee and spirits. The very few cases of illness in the American
army during he War of Secession and the unusually large number of
recoveries from wounds were attributed to the excellent food supplied.
The influence of diet on the capacity for work is illustrated by a
comparison of the quantity of work done by French and English workmen in
1841, a railway from Paris to Rouen. The French workman executed but
two-thirds of the work of Englishmen. It was surmised that this
difference was caused from the more substantial food of the Englishmen,
and the justice of this theory was proved. When the French workman were
treated to an equal règime they carried out an equal quantity of work
(Longet, 'Traité de Physiologie,' Paris 1861, tom. 1, p. 897).
Now we may apply the same reasoning to another important problem of
social organization, that of house room. Here also science supplies us
with necessary data. We are told by physiologists that the volume of
oxygen absorbed by the lungs is five percent, or the twentieth part of
the volume of the air drawn in by respiration (Milne Edwards;
'Physiologie,' tom. 2, p. 510). Assuming that the average respirations
per minute are 18, and that with each breath 20 cubic inches of air are
changed, 15 cubic feet of oxygen are consumed in the 24 hours, which
represents 300 cubic feet of pure air. This is a minimum quantity, not
allowing for any augmentation in the intensity of the respiratory
processes, which may take place from different causes. To meet the
requirements of the system it hag been found necessary in hospitals,
prisons, etc., to allow at least 800 cubic feet of air for each person,
unless the situation is such that the air is changed with unusual
frequency. For, beside the actual loss of oxygen in the air exhaled,
constant emanations from both the pulmonary and cutaneous surfaces are
taking place, which must be removed. In some institutions as much as
2500 cubic feet of air are allowed to each person (Longet, I 'Traité de
Physiologie,' tom. 1, p. 526). We have here some data for deciding the
size of our future houses. workshops, recreation grounds, music-halls,
and so on. For all these we must have; and care will be taken that
nothing which may contribute to the well-being of the workers shall be
missing.
It is necessary to realize what, a revolution these requirements will
bring in the organization of labor; what an immense amount of work now
employed to amuse social parasites, and often really to endanger the
lives of millions of men, will be spared; and what comfort will accrue
to the workman. How the old order will be changed! Whole towns will be
pulled down, there being no more capitalists interested in making 20
percent profit out of the horrible dungeons let for abodes to the poor;
no model lodging-house company whose manager says to an unfortunate
woman like Annie Chapman, go and find the money for your rent or we
shall turn you out. No sweaters, no big stores, no landlord monopolists,
no merchants, no bankers or financial speculators to raise rents and to
make to-day a famine, to-morrow an abundance, in order to gain by
difference of prices. We will have nothing of the sort, nothing of the
enterprising ability, so much prized by the economists of the
capitalistic class; no more of these numberless middle men who work hard
at nothing but to enrich themselves. All this will be changed. All the
useless toil and turmoil of the present economic system will be
converted into good and useful work. Workshops will be no more, like the
old prisons, hells on earth. There will be no longer houses for the
poor, and palaces, Belgravian squares and dens adjoining; everywhere
will be abodes fit for human beings. The beauties of nature will be open
to the workman, no longer mewed up in darkness and filth.
But now to the question of production. We can hardly realize the
greatness of the changes involved, for we hardly realize the extent to
which the cupidity of capitalism, the profit race, the adulteration
system and the advertising system pervert the natural ways and means of
production. Production instead of being regulated by the wants of the
producers, takes its direction from the interest of a third person, the
capitalist, who only cares for profit. The consumer as well as the
producer, are at the capitalist's mercy. We, the producers on the one
hand, are made to work against our inclinations, in inverse ratio, as it
were, to our forces, and under slave-like conditions; on the other hand
we are made to consume what is left after the capitalist has satisfied
himself, anything rotting in the shops, anything the speculator has
found convenient to bring over from some distant place, in exchange for
what we have produced ourselves. We are deprived of what our soil could
produce. Why? Because it may not be the interest of our all-powerful
capitalists that it be produced at all. Our cities, our towns, our
public buildings, etc., are made altogether for the benefit of the
capitalistic class. Who ever inquires of a workman how he would prefer
to live? or where? He is lodged where it pleases his master ; far away
from the fashionable districts, in the same way as the barbarians are
driven far from the territory that civilization invades. The workman is
cheaply fed and clothed; but the cheapness is only in name. He has to
pay twice over for everything. Usury feeds itself on his very blood,
whilst it takes for the upper ten of society the milder form of credit.
All this is good in the eyes of the economists, because the principle of
"free trade" is safe. The starving man transacts his poor business with
the greedy capitalist; and if the nut in struggle with the stone gets
broken, the fault lies obviously with the nut.
In fact, existing society is just the reverse of a rational one. You
must leave at the door your reason on entering; as in Dante's 'Inferno'
souls coming to hell leave hope behind. Every time you attempt to use
your reason on existing social facts, you are baffled by the
contradictions and anomalies you discover.
One of the most important changes which will be brought about in the
organization of labor when we advance through revolution to a society in
accordance with reason, will be that we shall redeem agriculture, the
mother of all arts, from the degraded state in which it has fallen. The
decadence of agriculture is the most marked feature of the capitalistic
reign. Take the following as to France from a writer in the Revue
Socialiste, June 1888, Mr. Toubeau. The figures he gives us are highly
interesting. Whoever opens the volume of the Agricultural Inquiry
(Statistique décennale de 1882) is struck at the first glance by the
immense extent of land withdrawn from cultivation and given up either to
entire neglect as fallow ground or only sparsely cultivated. This
amounts to no less than three quarters, of all woods and forests, of all
meadows, pasture-grounds, and soil formerly cultivated. Of fifty
millions of hectares, which if in the hands of cultivators would be
covered with rich crops, some eight millions are unreclaimed, though
capable of cultivation. Of course without mentioning the really barren
parts of the soil, such as rocks, glaciers, the summits of mountains,
etc.
To these eight million hectares of uncultivated soil we must make some
additions; There are in France 9,455,225 hectares of woods and forests.
Of these not less than six millions are little if at all cultivated,
full of dead wood, bushes, brambles, destructive animals; without roads,
untouched by the labor and industry of man, but exclusively confined to
the preservation of game for shooting and hunting. These six millions of
hectares could be restored to agriculture without diminishing to any
extent the supply of wood; this supply could be even increased, if the
remaining three millions and half hectares were better cultivated and
were provided with good roads.
In short, the uncultivated or partially cultivated soil amounts to
eighteen millions of hectares, more than the third part of France
itself.
Now to this enormous figure we must add the soil which gives a quarter
of a crop or a half because it is insufficiently manured or worked. This
partial neglect of the soil spreads, according to statistics, over a
considerable surface. Wheat gives as an average 18 hectoliters per
hectare; which is a very low proportion, easily surpassed, on even 'the
worst land by good deep tilling and manuring.
Good cultivation gives easily 40 hectoliters a hectare. Even 60 and, 70
hectoliters have been obtained, and this is not the highest figure
possible. Now the minimum figure of 18 hectoliters, the actual average
of French agriculture, is only surpassed in 31 departments. It is not
even reached in 56 departments. This Mr. Toubeau holds to be because the
soil does not receive sufficient care; that the number of hands employed
to work it is not large enough; and that manure is scarce: 10 millions
out of these 20 millions of hectares must really be considered as
uncultivated.
In short, 27 millions of hectares, or more than half the soil of France,
is according to the calculation of Mr. Toubeau, unredeemed. He then goes
on to explain the causes: how the owner is interested in the
unproductiveness of the soil; how he says to the peasant, "I shall keep
the soil, not in order to cultivate it, but only that you may not
cultivate it, lest you become your own master and cease to be my slave";
and so forth.
But here we must stop, Enough has been said to show the necessity for a
great revolution in agriculture, compared too which even our political
revolution, that is, our revolt against government and class rule, will
fall into insignificance, Equal changes will be introduced in the
breeding of cattle and in other agricultural work, and by-and-by in all
industries. Industry indeed will become an appendage of agriculture,
whilst now it is just the reverse; and not only the soil will be
utilized, but water and every power in nature will be utilized ten-fold.
Production will be redistributed and localized; it will answer to local
needs and no more serve the greed of capitalists and speculators for
their own enrichment. We shall no more hear of rings and syndicates .in
copper, salt, coffee, wheat, coal, and what not. The new world (because
it will be, as Owen foresaw, a new world) will slide in a new groove.
The man will be there, not the master or the serf, not the coercing or
the coerced man, but the free and intelligent human being.
But who will undertake the organization of labor? Will it be a
government concern or the concern of the workmen themselves freely
associated? Here we come back to the point from which we started. Will
people go on without any knowledge of practical hygiene and let their
daily life be settled by a council of doctors very little acquainted
with the temperaments and needs of their numberless patients, or wait
until they become ill, and then put themselves in the hands of those
specialists, whose appearance at the death-bed of the sick man
foreshadows that of death itself? In this case they will follow the
advice of our Democratic friends and work for a Democratic Constitution
and Parliament. If, however, they begin to understand that no man can
take care of us so well as we can care for ourselves, that the best
medicine and also the best protection for every wise man is found in
following the advice of the Greek philosopher, "Know thyself," and, we
may add, "Act for thyself," then they will no longer look for salvation
in authority, but will trust to reason and to individual initiative,
living a free life, whilst fraternizing together in a common
brotherhood.