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Title: The Conquest of Bread Author: Pëtr Kropotkin Date: 1892 Language: en Topics: agriculture, classical Source: Retrieved on February 15th, 2009 from http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/kropotkin/conquest/toc.html Notes: English translation first published in 1907.
One of the current objections to Communism and Socialism altogether, is
that the idea is so old, and yet it could never be realized. Schemes of
ideal States haunted the thinkers of Ancient Greece; later on, the early
Christians joined in communist groups; centuries later, large communist
brotherhoods came into existence during the Reform movement. Then, the
same ideals were revived during the great English and French
Revolutions; and finally, quite lately, in 1848, a revolution, inspired
to a great extent with Socialist ideals, took place in France. “And yet,
you see,” we are told, “how far away is still the realization of your
schemes. Don’t you think that there is some fundamental error in your
understanding of human nature and its needs?”
At first sight this objection seems very serious. However, the moment we
consider human history more attentively, it loses its strength. We see,
first, that hundreds of millions of men have succeeded in maintaining
amongst themselves, in their village communities, for many hundreds of
years, one of the main elements of Socialism the common ownership of the
chief instrument of production, the land, and the apportionment of the
same according to the labour capacities of the different families; and
we learn that if the communal possession of the land has been destroyed
in Western Europe, it was not from within, but from without, by the
governments which created a land monopoly in favour of the nobility and
the middle classes. We learn, moreover, that the mediæval cities
succeeded in maintaining in their midst for several centuries in
succession a certain socialized organization of production and trade;
that these centuries were periods of a rapid intellectual, industrial,
and artistic progress; and that the decay of these communal institutions
came mainly from the incapacity of men of combining the village with the
city, the peasant with the citizen, so as jointly to oppose the growth
of the military states, which destroyed the free cities.
The history of mankind, thus understood, does not offer, then, an
argument against Communism. It appears, on the contrary, as a succession
of endeavours to realize some sort of communist organization, endeavours
which were crowned with a partial success of a certain duration; and all
we are authorized to conclude is, that mankind has not yet found the
proper form for combining, on communistic principles, agriculture with a
suddenly developed industry and a rapidly growing international trade.
The latter appears especially as a disturbing element, since it is no
longer individuals only, or cities, that enrich themselves by distant
commerce and export; but whole nations grow rich at the cost of those
nations which lag behind in their industrial development.
These conditions, which began to appear by the end of the eighteenth
century, took, however, their full swing in the nineteenth century only,
after the Napoleonic wars came to an end. And modern Communism had to
take them into account.
It is now known that the French Revolution apart from its political
significance, was an attempt made by the French people, in 1793 and
1794, in three different directions more or less akin to Socialism. It
was, first, the equalization of fortunes, by means of an income tax and
succession duties, both heavily progressive, as also by a direct
confiscation of the land in order to subdivide it, and by heavy war
taxes levied upon the rich only. The second attempt was to introduce a
wide national system of rationally established prices of all
commodities, for which the real cost of production and moderate trade
profits had to be taken into account. The Convention worked hard at this
scheme, and had nearly completed its work, when reaction took the
overhand. And the third was a sort of Municipal Communism as regards the
consumption of some objects of first necessity, bought by the
municipalities, and sold by them at cost price.
It was during this remarkable movement, which has never yet been
properly studied, that modern Socialism was born — Fourierism with
L’Ange, at Lyons, and authoritarian Communism with Buonarotti, Babeuf,
and their comrades. And it was immediately after the Great Revolution
that the three great theoretical founders of modern Socialism — Fourier,
Saint Simon, and Robert Owen, as well as Godwin (the No-State Socialism)
— came forward; while the secret communist societies, originated from
those of Buonarotti and Babeuf, gave their stamp to militant Communism
for the next fifty years.
To be correct, then, we must say that modern Socialism is not yet a
hundred years old, and that, for the first half of these hundred years,
two nations only, which stood at the head of the industrial movement,
i.e. Britain and France, took part in its elaboration. Both — bleeding
at that time from the terrible wounds inflicted upon them by fifteen
years of Napoleonic wars, and both enveloped in the great European
reaction that had come from the East.
In fact, it was only after the Revolution of July, 1830, in France, and
the Reform movement of 1830–32, in England, had shaken off that terrible
reaction, that the discussion of Socialism became possible for the next
sixteen to eighteen years. And it was during those years that the
aspirations of Fourier, Saint Simon, and Robert Owen, worked out by
their followers, took a definite shape, and the different schools of
Socialism which exist nowadays were defined.
In Britain, Robert Owen and his followers worked out their schemes of
communist villages, agricultural and industrial at the same time;
immense co-operative associations were started for creating with their
dividends more communist colonies; and the Great Consolidated Trades’
Union was founded — the forerunner of the Labour Parties of our days and
the International Workingmen’s Association.
In France, the Fourierist Considérant issued his remarkable manifesto,
which contains, beautifully developed, all the theoretical
considerations upon the growth of Capitalism, which are now described as
“Scientific Socialism.” Proudhon worked out his idea of Anarchism, and
Mutualism, without State interference. Louis Blanc published his
Organization of Labour, which became later on the programme of Lassalle,
in Germany. Vidal in France and Lorenz Stein in Germany further
developed, in two remarkable works, published in 1846 and 1847
respectively, the theoretical conceptions of Considerant; and finally
Vidal, and especially Pecqueur — the latter in a very elaborate work, as
also in a series of Reports — developed in detail the system of
Collectivism, which he wanted the Assembly of 1848 to vote in the shape
of laws.
However, there is one feature, common to all Socialist schemes, of the
period, which must be noted. The three great founders of Socialism who
wrote at the dawn of the nineteenth century were so entranced by the
wide horizons which it opened before them, that they looked upon it as a
new revelation, and upon themselves as upon the founders of a new
religion. Socialism had to be a religion, and they had to regulate its
march, as the heads of a new church. Besides, writing during the period
of reaction which had followed the French Revolution, and seeing more
its failures than its successes, they did not trust the masses, and they
did not appeal to them for bringing about the changes which they thought
necessary. They put their faith, on the contrary, in some great ruler.
He would understand the new revelation; he would be convinced of its
desirability by the successful experiments of their phalansteries, or
associations; and he would peacefully accomplish by the means of his own
authority the revolution which would bring well-being and happiness to
mankind. A military genius, Napoleon, had just been ruling Europe....
Why should not a social genius come forward and carry Europe with him
and transfer the new Gospel into life?... That faith was rooted very
deep, and it stood for a long time in the way of Socialism; its traces
are ever seen amongst us, down to the present day.
It was only during the years 1840–48, when the approach of the
Revolution was felt everywhere, and the proletarians were beginning to
plant the banner of Socialism on the barricades, that faith in the
people began to enter once more the hearts of the social schemers:
faith, on the one side, in Republican Democracy, and on the other side
in free association and the organizing powers of the working men
themselves.
But then came the Revolution of February, 1848, the middle-class
Republic, and — with it, broken hopes. Four months only after the
proclamation of the Republic, the June insurrection of the Paris
proletarians broke out, and it was crushed in blood. The wholesale
shooting of the working-men, the mass deportations to New Guinea, and
finally the Napoleonian coup d’état followed. The Socialists were
prosecuted with fury, and the weeding out was so terrible and so
thorough that for the next twelve or fifteen years the very traces of
Socialism disappeared; its literature vanished so completely that even
names, once so familiar before 1848, were entirely forgotten; ideas
which were then current — the stock ideas of the Socialists before 1848
— were wiped out of the memories and were taken, later on, by the
present generation, for new discoveries.
However, when a new revival came, about 1866, when Communism and
Collectivism once more came forward, the conception as to the means of
their realization had undergone a deep change. The old faith in
Political Democracy was gone, and the first principles upon which the
Paris working men agreed with the British trade-unionists and Owenites,
when they met in 1866 at London, was that “the emancipation of the
working-men must be accomplished by the working-men themselves.” Upon
another point they also fell in. It was that the labour unions
themselves would have to get hold of the instruments of production, and
organize production themselves. The French idea of the Fourierist and
Mutualist “Association” thus joined hands with Robert Owen’s idea of
“The Great Consolidated Trades’ Union,” which was extended now, so as to
become an International Working-men’s Association.
Again this new revival of Socialism lasted but a few years. Soon came
the war of 1870–1871, the uprising of the Paris Commune — and again: the
free development of Socialism was rendered impossible in France. But
while Germany accepted now from the hands of its German teachers, Marx
and Engels, the Socialism of the French “forty-eighters” — the Socialism
of Considérant and Louis Blanc, and the Collectivism of Pecqueur, —
France made a further step forward.
In March, 1871, Paris had proclaimed that hence forward it would not
wait for the retardatory portions of France, and intended to start
within its Commune its own social development.
The movement was too short-lived to give any positive result. It
remained communalist only. But the working-classes of the old
International saw at once its historical significance. They understood
that the free commune would be henceforth the medium in which the ideas
of modern Socialism may come to realization. The free agro-industrial
communes, of which so much was spoken in 1848, need not be small
phalansteries, or small communities of 2000 persons. They must be vast
agglomerations, like Paris, or, still better, small territories. These
communes would federate, even irrespectively of national frontiers (like
the Cinque Ports, or the Hansa); and large labour associations might
come into existence for the inter-communal service of the railways, the
docks, and so on. Such were the ideas which began vaguely to circulate
after 1871 amongst the thinking working-men, especially in the Latin
countries. In some such organization, the details of which life itself
would settle, the labour circles of these countries saw the medium
through which Socialist forms of life could find a much easier
realization than through the Collectivist system of the State
Socialists.
These are the ideas to which I have endeavoured to give a more or less
definite expression in this book.
Looking back now at the years that have passed since this book was
written, I can say in full conscience that its leading ideas must have
been correct. The State Socialism of the collectivist system has
certainly made some progress. State railways, State banking, and State
trade in spirits have been introduced here and there. But every step
made in this direction, even though it resulted in the cheapening of a
given commodity, was found to be a new obstacle in the struggle of the
working-men for their emancipation. So that we find now amongst the
working-men, especially in England, the idea that even the working of
such a vast national property as a railway-net could be much better
handled by a Federated Union of railway employés, than by a State
organization.
On the other side, we see that countless attempts have been made all
over Europe and America, the leading idea of which is, on the one side,
to get into the hands of the working-men themselves wide branches of
production, and, on the other side, always to widen in the cities the
circles of the functions which the city performs in the interest of its
inhabitants. Trade-unionism, with a growing tendency towards organizing
the different trades internationally, and of being not only an
instrument for improving the conditions of labour, but also to become an
organization which might, at a given moment, take into its hands the
management of production; Co-operativism, both for production and for
distribution, both in industry and agriculture, and attempts at
combining both sorts of co-operation in experimental colonies; and
finally, the immensely varied field of the so-called Municipal Socialism
— these are the three directions in which the greatest amount of
creative power has been developed lately.
Of course, none of these may, in any degree, be taken as a substitute
for Communism, or even for Socialism, both of which imply the common
possession of the instruments of production. But we certainly must look
at all the just-mentioned attempts as upon experiments — like those
which Owen, Fourier, and Saint Simon tried in their colonies —
experiments which prepare human thought to conceive some of the
practical forms in which a communist society might find its expression.
The synthesis of all these partial experiments will have to be made some
day by the constructive genius of some one of the civilized nations, and
it will be done. But samples of the bricks out of which the great
synthetic building will have to be built, and even samples of some of
its rooms, are being prepared by the immense effort of the constructive
genius of man.
Bromley, Kent.
October, 1906.
The human race has travelled far, since those bygone ages when men used
to fashion their rude implements of flint, and lived on the precarious
spoils of the chase, leaving to their children for their only heritage a
shelter beneath the rocks, some poor utensils — and Nature, vast,
ununderstood, and terrific, with whom they had to fight for their
wretched existence.
During the agitated times which have elapsed since, and which have
lasted for many thousand years, mankind has nevertheless amassed untold
treasures. It has cleared the land, dried the marshes, pierced the
forests, made roads; it has been building, inventing, observing,
reasoning; it has created a complex machinery, wrested her secrets from
Nature, and finally it has made a servant of steam. And the result is,
that now the child of the civilized man finds ready, at its birth, to
his hand an immense capital accumulated by those who have gone before
him. And this capital enables him to acquire, merely by his own labour,
combined with the labour of others, riches surpassing the dreams of the
Orient, expressed in the fairy tales of the Thousand and One Nights.
The soil is cleared to a great extent, fit for the reception of the best
seeds, ready to make a rich return for the skill and labour spent upon
it — a return more than sufficient for all the wants of humanity. The
methods of cultivation are known.
On the wide prairies of America each hundred men, with the aid of
powerful machinery, can produce in a few months enough wheat to maintain
ten thousand people for a whole year. And where man wishes to double his
produce, to treble it, to multiply it a hundred-fold, he makes the soil,
gives to each plant the requisite care, and thus obtains enormous
returns. While the hunter of old had to scour fifty or sixty square
miles to find food for his family, the civilized man supports his
household, with far less pains, and far more certainty, on a thousandth
part of that space. Climate is no longer an obstacle. When the sun
fails, man replaces it by artificial heat; and we see the coming of a
time when artificial light also will be used to stimulate vegetation.
Meanwhile, by the use of glass and hot water pipes, man renders a given
space ten and fifty times more productive than it was in its natural
state.
The prodigies accomplished in industry are still more striking. With the
co-operation of those intelligent beings, modern machines — themselves
the fruit of three or four generations of inventors, mostly unknown — a
hundred men manufacture now the stuff to clothe ten thousand persons for
a period of two years. In well-managed coal mines the labour of a
hundred miners furnishes each year enough fuel to warm ten thousand
families under an inclement sky. And we have lately witnessed twice the
spectacle of a wonderful city springing up in a few months at Paris,[1]
without interrupting in the slightest degree the regular work of the
French nation.
And if in manufactures as in agriculture, and as indeed through our
whole social system, the labour, the discoveries, and the inventions of
our ancestors profit chiefly the few, it is none the less certain that
mankind in general, aided by the creatures of steel and iron which it
already possesses, could already procure an existence of wealth and ease
for every one of its members.
Truly, we are rich, far richer than we think; rich in what we already
possess, richer still in the possibilities of production of our actual
mechanical outfit; richest of all in what we might win from our soil,
from our manufactures, from our science, from our technical knowledge,
were they but applied to bringing about the well-being of all.
We, in civilized societies, are rich. Why then are the many poor? Why
this painful drudgery for the masses? Why, even to the best paid
workman, this uncertainty for the morrow, in the midst of all the wealth
inherited from the past, and in spite of the powerful means of
production, which could ensure comfort to all in return for a few hours
of daily toil?
The Socialists have said it and repeated it unwearyingly. Daily they
reiterate it, demonstrating it by arguments taken from all the sciences.
It is because all that is necessary for production — the land, the
mines, the highways, machinery, food, shelter, education, knowledge —
all have been seized by the few in the course of that long story of
robbery, enforced migration and wars, of ignorance and oppression, which
has been the life of the human race before it had learned to subdue the
forces of Nature. It is because, taking advantage of alleged rights
acquired in the past, these few appropriate to-day two-thirds of the
products of human labour, and then squander them in the most stupid and
shameful way. It is because, having reduced the masses to a point at
which they have not the means of subsistence for a month, or even for a
week in advance, the few only allow the many to work on condition of
themselves receiving the lion’s share. It is because these few prevent
the remainder of men from producing the things they need, and force them
to produce, not the necessaries of life for all, but whatever offers the
greatest profits to the monopolists. In this is the substance of all
Socialism.
Take, indeed, a civilized country. The forests which once covered it
have been cleared, the marshes drained, the climate improved. It has
been made habitable. The soil, which bore formerly only a coarse
vegetation, is covered to-day with rich harvests. The rock-walls in the
valleys are laid out in terraces and covered with vines bearing golden
fruit. The wild plants, which yielded nought but acrid berries, or
uneatable roots, have been transformed by generations of culture into
succulent vegetables, or trees covered with delicious fruits. Thousands
of highways and railroads furrow the earth, and pierce the mountains.
The shriek of the engine is heard in the wild gorges of the Alps, the
Caucasus, and the Himalayas. The rivers have been made navigable; the
coasts, carefully surveyed, are easy of access; artificial harbours,
laboriously dug out and protected against the fury of the sea, afford
shelter to the ships. Deep shafts have been sunk in the rocks;
labyrinths of underground galleries have been dug out where coal may be
raised or minerals extracted. At the crossings of the highways great
cities have sprung up, and within their borders all the treasures of
industry, science, and art have been accumulated.
Whole generations, that lived and died in misery, oppressed and
ill-treated by their masters, and worn out by toil, have handed on this
immense inheritance to our century.
For thousands of years millions of men have laboured to clear the
forests, to drain the marshes, and to open up highways by land and
water. Every rood of soil we cultivate in Europe has been watered by the
sweat of several races of men. Every acre has its story of enforced
labour, of intolerable toil, of the people’s sufferings. Every mile of
railway, every yard of tunnel, has received its share of human blood.
The shafts of the mine still bear on their rocky walls the marks made by
the pick of the workman who toiled to excavate them. The space between
each prop in the underground galleries might be marked as a miner’s
grave; and who can tell what each of these graves has cost, in tears, in
privations, in unspeakable wretchedness to the family who depended on
the scanty wage of the worker cut off in his prime by fire-damp,
rock-fall, or flood?
The cities, bound together by railroads and waterways, are organisms
which have lived through centuries. Dig beneath them and you find, one
above another, the foundations of streets, of houses, of theatres, of
public buildings. Search into their history and you will see how the
civilization of the town, its industry, its special characteristics,
have slowly grown and ripened through the co-operation of generations of
its inhabitants before it could become what it is to-day. And even
to-day; the value of each dwelling, factory, and warehouse, which has
been created by the accumulated labour of the millions of workers, now
dead and buried, is only maintained by the very presence and labour of
legions of the men who now inhabit that special corner of the globe.
Each of the atoms composing what we call the Wealth of Nations owes its
value to the fact that it is a part of the great whole. What would a
London dockyard or a great Paris warehouse be if they were not situated
in these great centres of international commerce? What would become of
our mines, our factories, our workshops, and our railways, without the
immense quantities of merchandise transported every day by sea and land?
Millions of human beings have laboured to create this civilization on
which we pride ourselves to-day. Other millions, scattered through the
globe, labour to maintain it. Without them nothing would be left in
fifty years but ruins.
There is not even a thought, or an invention, which is not common
property, born of the past and the present. Thousands of inventors,
known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have co-operated in the
invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of man.
Thousands of writers, of poets, of scholars, have laboured to increase
knowledge, to dissipate error, and to create that atmosphere of
scientific thought, without which the marvels of our century could never
have appeared. And these thousands of philosophers, of poets, of
scholars, of inventors, have themselves been supported by the labour of
past centuries. They have been upheld and nourished through life, both
physically and mentally, by legions of workers and craftsmen of all
sorts. They have drawn their motive force from the environment.
The genius of a Séguin, a Mayer, a Grove, has certainly done more to
launch industry in new directions than all the capitalists in the world.
But men of genius are themselves the children of industry as well as of
science. Not until thousands of steam-engines had been working for years
before all eyes, constantly transforming heat into dynamic force, and
this force into sound, light, and electricity, could the insight of
genius proclaim the mechanical origin and the unity of the physical
forces. And if we, children of the nineteenth century, have at last
grasped this idea, if we know now how to apply it, it is again because
daily experience has prepared the way. The thinkers of the eighteenth
century saw and declared it, but the idea remained undeveloped, because
the eighteenth century had not grown up like ours, side by side with the
steam-engine. Imagine the decades that might have passed while we
remained in ignorance of this law, which has revolutionized modern
industry, had Watt not found at Soho skilled workmen to embody his ideas
in metal, bringing all the parts of his engine to perfection, so that
steam, pent in a complete mechanism, and rendered more docile than a
horse, more manageable than water, became at last the very soul of
modern industry.
Every machine has had the same history — a long record of sleepless
nights and of poverty, of disillusions and of joys, of partial
improvements discovered by several generations of nameless workers, who
have added to the original invention these little nothings, without
which the most fertile idea would remain fruitless. More than that:
every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant of innumerable
inventions which have preceded it in the vast field of mechanics and
industry.
Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical
realization leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and of hand,
toil of mind and muscle — all work together. Each discovery, each
advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the
physical and mental travail of the past and the present.
By what right then can any one whatever appropriate the least morsel of
this immense whole and say — This is mine, not yours?
It has come about, however, in the course of the ages traversed by the
human race, that all that enables man to produce, and to increase his
power of production, has been seized by the few. Sometime, perhaps, we
will relate how this came to pass. For the present let it suffice to
state the fact and analyse its consequences.
To-day the soil, which actually owes its value to the needs of an
ever-increasing population, belongs to a minority who prevent the people
from cultivating it — or do not allow them to cultivate it according to
modern methods.
The mines, though they represent the labour of several generations, and
derive their sole value from the requirements of the industry of a
nation and the density of the population — the mines also belong to the
few; and these few restrict the output of coal, or prevent it entirely,
if they find more profitable investments for their capital. Machinery,
too, has become the exclusive property of the few, and even when a
machine incontestably represents the improvements added to the original
rough invention by three or four generations of workers, it none the
less belongs to a few owners. And if the descendants of the very
inventor who constructed the first machine for lace-making, a century
ago, were to present themselves to-day in a lace factory at Bâle or
Nottingham, and demand their rights, they would be told: “Hands off!
this machine is not yours,” and they would be shot down if they
attempted to take possession of it.
The railways, which would be useless as so much old iron without the
teeming population of Europe, its industry, its commerce, and its marts,
belong to a few shareholders, ignorant perhaps of the whereabouts of the
lines of rails which yield them revenues greater than those of medieval
kings. And if the children of those who perished by thousands while
excavating the railway cuttings and tunnels were to assemble one day,
crowding in their rags and hunger, to demand bread from the
shareholders, they would be met with bayonets and grape-shot, to
disperse them and safeguard “vested interests.”
In virtue of this monstrous system, the son of the worker, on entering
life, finds no field which he may till, no machine which he may tend, no
mine in which he may dig, without accepting to leave a great part of
what he will produce to a master. He must sell his labour for a scant
and uncertain wage. His father and his grandfather have toiled to drain
this field, to build this mill, to perfect this machine. They gave to
the work the full measure of their strength, and what more could they
give? But their heir comes into the world poorer than the lowest savage.
If he obtains leave to till the fields, it is on condition of
surrendering a quarter of the produce to his master, and another quarter
to the government and the middlemen. And this tax, levied upon him by
the State, the capitalist, the lord of the manor, and the middleman, is
always increasing; it rarely leaves him the power to improve his system
of culture. If he turns to industry, he is allowed to work — though not
always even that — only on condition that he yield a half or two-thirds
of the product to him whom the land recognizes as the owner of the
machine.
We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod
of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We call
those the barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations
have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free
contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can
find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and
he must accept, or die of hunger.
The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a
wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the
community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator.
Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial
crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the
streets.
The working people cannot purchase with their wages the wealth which
they have produced, and industry seeks foreign markets among the monied
classes of other nations. In the East, in Africa, everywhere, in Egypt,
Tonkin or the Congo, the European is thus bound to promote the growth of
serfdom. And so he does. But soon he finds everywhere similar
competitors. All the nations evolve on the same lines, and wars,
perpetual wars, break out for the right of precedence in the market.
Wars for the possession of the East, wars for the empire of the sea,
wars to impose duties on imports and to dictate conditions to
neighbouring states; wars against those “blacks” who revolt! The roar of
the cannon never ceases in the world, whole races are massacred, the
states of Europe spend a third of their budgets in armaments; and we
know how heavily these taxes fall on the workers.
Education still remains the privilege of a small minority, for it is
idle to talk of education when the workman’s child is forced, at the age
of thirteen, to go down into the mine or to help his father on the farm.
It is idle to talk of studies to the worker, who comes home in the
evening crushed by excessive toil with its brutalizing atmosphere.
Society is thus bound to remain divided into two hostile camps, and in
such conditions freedom is a vain word. The Radical begins by demanding
a greater extension of political rights, but he soon sees that the
breath of liberty leads to the uplifting of the proletariat, and then he
turns round, changes his opinions, and reverts to repressive legislation
and government by the sword.
A vast array of courts, judges, executioners, policemen, and gaolers is
needed to uphold these privileges; and this array gives rise in its turn
to a whole system of espionage, of false witness, of spies, of threats
and corruption.
The system under which we live checks in its turn the growth of the
social sentiment. We all know that without uprightness, without
self-respect, without sympathy and mutual aid, human kind must perish,
as perish the few races of animals living by rapine, or the
slave-keeping ants. But such ideas are not to the taste of the ruling
classes, and they have elaborated a whole system of pseudo-science to
teach the contrary.
Fine sermons have been preached on the text that those who have should
share with those who have not, but he who would act out this principle
is speedily informed that these beautiful sentiments are all very well
in poetry, but not in practice. “To lie is to degrade and besmirch
oneself,” we say, and yet all civilized life becomes one huge lie. We
accustom ourselves and our children to hypocrisy, to the practice of a
double-faced morality. And since the brain is ill at ease among lies, we
cheat ourselves with sophistry. Hypocrisy and sophistry become the
second nature of the civilized man.
But a society cannot live thus; it must return to truth or cease to
exist.
Thus the consequences which spring from the original act of monopoly
spread through the whole of social life. Under pain of death, human
societies are forced to return to first principles: the means of
production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be
the collective property of the race. Individual appropriation is neither
just nor serviceable. All belongs to all. All things are for all men,
since all men have need of them, since all men have worked in the
measure of their strength to produce them, and since it is not possible
to evaluate every one’s part in the production of the world’s wealth.
All things are for all. Here is an immense stock of tools and
implements; here are all those iron slaves which we call machines, which
saw and plane, spin and weave for us, unmaking and remaking, working up
raw matter to produce the marvels of our time. But nobody has the right
to seize a single one of these machines and say, “This is mine; if you
want to use it you must pay me a tax on each of your products,” any more
than the feudal lord of medieval times had the right to say to the
peasant, “This hill, this meadow belong to me, and you must pay me a tax
on every sheaf of corn you reap, on every rick you build.”
All is for all! If the man and the woman bear their fair share of work,
they have a right to their fair share of all that is produced by all,
and that share is enough to secure them well-being. No more of such
vague formulas as “The Right to work,” or “To each the whole result of
his labour.” What we proclaim is THE RIGHT TO WELL-BEING: WELL-BEING FOR
ALL!
Well-being for all is not a dream. It is possible, realizable, owing to
all that our ancestors have done to increase our powers of production.
We know, indeed, that the producers, although they constitute hardly
one-third of the inhabitants of civilized countries, even now produce
such quantities of goods that a certain degree of comfort could be
brought to every hearth. We know further that if all those who squander
to-day the fruits of others’ toil were forced to employ their leisure in
useful work, our wealth would increase in proportion to the number of
producers, and more. Finally, we know that contrary to the theory
enunciated by Malthus — that Oracle of middle-class Economics — the
productive powers of the human race increase at a much more rapid ratio
than its powers of reproduction. The more thickly men are crowded on the
soil, the more rapid is the growth of their wealth-creating power.
Thus, although the population of England has only increased from 1844 to
1890 by 62 per cent, its production has grown, to say the least, at
double that rate — to wit, by 130 per cent. In France, where the
population has grown more slowly, the increase in production is
nevertheless very rapid. Notwithstanding the crises through which
agriculture is frequently passing, notwithstanding State interference,
the blood-tax (conscription), and speculative commerce and finance, the
production of wheat in France has increased fourfold, and industrial
production more than tenfold, in the course of the last eighty years. In
the United States the progress is still more striking. In spite of
immigration, or rather precisely because of the influx of surplus
European labour, the United States have multiplied their wealth tenfold.
However, these figures give yet a very faint idea of what our wealth
might become under better conditions. For alongside of the rapid
development of our wealth-producing powers we have an overwhelming
increase in the ranks of the idlers and middlemen. Instead of capital
gradually concentrating itself in a few hands, so that it would only be
necessary for the community to dispossess a few millionaires and enter
upon its lawful heritage — instead of this Socialist forecast proving
true, the exact reverse is coming to pass: the swarm of parasites is
ever increasing.
In France there are not ten actual producers to every thirty
inhabitants. The whole agricultural wealth of the country is the work of
less than seven millions of men, and in the two great industries, mining
and the textile trade, you will find that the workers number less than
two and one-half millions. But the exploiters of labour, how many are
they? — In England (exclusive of Scotland and Ireland), only one million
workers — men, women, and children — are employed in all the textile
trades, rather more than half a million work the mines, rather less than
half a million till the ground, and the statisticians have to exaggerate
all the figures in order to establish a maximum of eight million
producers to twenty-six million inhabitants. Strictly speaking the
creators of the goods exported from Britain to all the ends of the earth
comprise only from six to seven million workers. And what is the sum of
the shareholders and middlemen who levy the first fruits of labour from
far and near, and heap up unearned gains by thrusting themselves between
the producer and the consumer, paying the former not a fifth, nay, not a
twentieth, of the price they exact from the latter?
Nor is this all. Those who withhold capital constantly reduce the output
by restraining production. We need not speak of the cartloads of oysters
thrown into the sea to prevent a dainty, hitherto reserved for the rich,
from becoming a food for the people. We need not speak of the thousand
and one luxuries — stuffs, foods, etc. etc. — treated after the same
fashion as the oysters. It is enough to remember the way in which the
production of the most necessary things is limited. Legions of miners
are ready and willing to dig out coal every day, and send it to those
who are shivering with cold; but too often a third, or even two-thirds,
of their number are forbidden to work more than three days a week,
because, forsooth, the price of coal must be kept up? Thousands of
weavers are forbidden to work the looms, though their wives and children
go in rags, and though three-quarters of the population of Europe have
no clothing worthy the name.
Hundreds of blast-furnaces, thousands of factories periodically stand
idle, others only work half-time — and in every civilized nation there
is a permanent population of about two million individuals who ask only
for work, but to whom work is denied.
How gladly would these millions of men set to work to reclaim waste
lands, or to transform illcultivated land into fertile fields, rich in
harvests! A year of well-directed toil would suffice to multiply
fivefold the produce of dry lands in the south of France which now yield
only about eight bushels of wheat per acre. But these men, who would be
happy to become hardy pioneers in so many branches of wealth-producing
activity, must stay their hands because the owners of the soil, the
mines, and the factories prefer to invest their capital — stolen in the
first place from the community — in Turkish or Egyptian bonds, or in
Patagonian gold mines, and so make Egyptian fellahs, Italian exiles, and
Chinese coolies their wage-slaves.
So much for the direct and deliberate limitation of production; but
there is also a limitation indirect and not of set purpose, which
consists in spending human toil on objects absolutely useless, or
destined only to satisfy the dull vanity of the rich.
It is impossible to reckon in figures the extent to which wealth is
restricted indirectly, the extent to which energy is squandered, that
might have served to produce, and above all to prepare the machinery
necessary to production. It is enough to cite the immense sums spent by
Europe in armaments for the sole purpose of acquiring control of the
markets, and so forcing her own commercial standards on neighbouring
territories and making exploitation easier at home; the millions paid
every year to officials of all sorts, whose function it is to maintain
the rights of minorities — the right, that is, of a few rich men — to
manipulate the economic activities of the nation; the millions spent on
judges, prisons, policemen, and all the paraphernalia of so-called
justice — spent to no purpose, because we know that every alleviation,
however slight, of the wretchedness of our great cities is followed by a
very considerable diminution of crime; lastly, the millions spent on
propagating pernicious doctrines by means of the press, and news
“cooked” in the interest of this or that party, of this politician or of
that company of exploiters.
But over and above this we must take into account all the labour that
goes to sheer waste, in keeping up the stables, the kennels, and the
retinue of the rich, for instance; in pandering to the caprices of
society and to the depraved tastes of the fashionable mob; in forcing
the consumer on the one hand to buy what he does not need, or foisting
an inferior article upon him by means of puffery, and in producing on
the other hand wares which are absolutely injurious, but profitable to
the manufacturer. What is squandered in this manner would be enough to
double our real wealth, or so to plenish our mills and factories with
machinery that they would soon flood the shops with all that is now
lacking to two-thirds of the nation. Under our present system a full
quarter of the producers in every nation are forced to be idle for three
or four months in the year, and the labour of another quarter, if not of
the half, has no better results than the amusement of the rich or the
exploitation of the public.
Thus, if we consider on the one hand the rapidity with which civilized
nations augment their powers of production, and on the other hand the
limits set to that production, be it directly or indirectly, by existing
conditions, one cannot but conclude that an economic system a trifle
more enlightened would permit them to heap up in a few years so many
useful products that they would be constrained to cry — “Enough! We have
enough coal and bread and raiment ! Let us rest and consider how best to
use our powers, how best to employ our leisure.”
No, plenty for all is not a dream — though it was a dream indeed in
those old days when man, for all his pains, could hardly win a bushel of
wheat from an acre of land, and had to fashion by hand all the
implements he used in agriculture and industry. Now it is no longer a
dream, because man has invented a motor which, with a little iron and a
few pounds of coal, gives him the mastery of a creature strong and
docile as a horse, and capable of setting the most complicated machinery
in motion.
But, if plenty for all is to become a reality, this immense capital —
cities, houses, pastures, arable lands, factories, highways, education —
must cease to be regarded as private property, for the monopolist to
dispose of at his pleasure.
This rich endowment, painfully won, builded, fashioned, or invented by
our ancestors, must become common property, so that the collective
interests of men may gain from it the greatest good for all.
There must be EXPROPRIATION. The well-being of all — the end;
expropriation — the means.
Expropriation, such then is the problem which History has put before the
men of the twentieth century: the return to Communism in all that
ministers to the well-being of man.
But this problem cannot be solved by means of legislation. No one
imagines that. The poor, no less than the rich, understand that neither
the existing Governments, nor any which might arise out of possible
political changes, would be capable of finding a solution. We feel the
necessity of a social revolution; rich and poor alike recognize that
this revolution is imminent, that it may break out in a very few years.
A great change in thought has been accomplished during the last half of
the nineteenth century; but suppressed, as it was, by the propertied
classes, and denied its natural development, this new spirit must break
now its bonds by violence and realize itself in a revolution.
Whence comes the revolution, and how will it announce its coming? None
can answer these questions. The future is hidden. But those who watch
and think do not misinterpret the signs: workers and exploiters,
Revolutionists and Conservatives, thinkers and men of action, all feel
that the revolution is at our doors.
Well! What are we to do when the thunderbolt has fallen?
We have all been studying the dramatic side of revolution so much, and
the practical work of revolution so little, that we are apt to see only
the stage effects, so to speak, of these great movements; the fight of
the first days; the barricades. But this fight, this first skirmish, is
soon ended, and it is only after the overthrow of the old constitution
that the real work of revolution can be said to begin.
Effete and powerless, attacked on all sides, the old rulers are soon
swept away by the breath of insurrection. In a few days the middle-class
monarchy of 1848 was no more, and while Louis Philippe was making good
his escape in a cab, Paris had already forgotten her “citizen king.” The
government of Thiers disappeared, on the 18th of March, 1871, in a few
hours, leaving Paris mistress of her destinies. Yet 1848 and 1871 were
only insurrections. Before a popular revolution the masters of “the old
order” disappear with a surprising rapidity. Its upholders fly the
country, to plot in safety elsewhere and to devise measures for their
return.
The former Government having disappeared, the army, hesitating before
the tide of popular opinion, no longer obeys its commanders, who have
also prudently decamped. The troops stand by without interfering, or
join the rebels. The police, standing at ease, are uncertain whether to
belabour the crowd or to cry: “Long live the Commune!” while some retire
to their quarters “to await the pleasure of the new Government.” Wealthy
citizens pack their trunks and betake themselves to places of safety.
The people remain. This is how a revolution is ushered in. In several
large towns the Commune is proclaimed. In the streets wander thousands
of men, who in the evening crowd into improvised clubs asking: “What
shall we do?” and ardently discuss public affairs, in which all take an
interest; those who yesterday were most indifferent are perhaps the most
zealous. Everywhere there is plenty of goodwill and a keen desire to
make victory certain. It is a time of supreme devotion. The people are
ready to go forward.
All this is splendid, sublime; but still, it is not a revolution. Nay,
it is only now that-the work of the revolutionist begins.
Doubtless the thirst for vengeance will be satisfied. The Watrins and
the Thomases will pay the penalty of their unpopularity, but that is
only an incident of the struggle and not a revolution.
Socialist politicians, radicals, neglected geniuses of journalism, stump
orators, middle-class citizens, and workmen hurry to the Town Hall to
the Government offices, and take possession of the vacant seats. Some
rejoice their hearts with galloon, admire themselves in ministerial
mirrors, and study to give orders with an air of importance appropriate
to their new position. They must have a red sash, an embroidered cap,
and magisterial gestures to impress their comrades of the office or the
workshop! Others bury themselves in official papers, trying, with the
best of wills, to make head or tail of them. They indite laws and issue
high-flown worded decrees that nobody takes the trouble to carry out —
because the revolution has come. To give themselves an authority which
is lacking they seek the sanction of old forms of Government. They take
the names of “Provisional Government,” “Committee of Public Safety,”
“Mayor,” “Governor of the Town Hall,” “Commissioner of Public Weal,” and
what not. Elected or acclaimed, they assemble in Boards or in Communal
Councils. These bodies include men of ten or twenty different schools,
which, if not exactly “private chapels,” are at least so many sects
which represent as many ways of regarding the scope, the bearing, and
the goal of the revolution. Possibilists, Collectivists, Radicals,
Jacobins, Blanquists, are thrust together, and waste time in wordy
warfare. Honest men come into contact with ambitious ones, whose only
dream is power and who spurn the crowd whence they sprung. Coming
together with diametrically opposed views, they are forced to form
arbitrary alliances in order to create majorities that can but last a
day. Wrangling, calling each other reactionaries, authoritarians, and
rascals, incapable of coming to an understanding on any serious measure,
dragged into discussions about trifles, producing nothing better than
bombastic proclamations, yet taking themselves seriously, unwitting that
the real strength of the movement is in the streets.
All this may please those who like the theatre, but it is not
revolution. Nothing yet has been accomplished. Meanwhile the people
suffer. The factories are idle, the workshops closed; industry is at a
standstill. The worker does not even earn the meagre wage which was his
before. Food goes up in price. With that heroic devotion which has
always characterized them, and which in great crises reaches the
sublime, the people wait patiently. “We place these three months of want
at the service of the Republic,” they said in 1848, while “their
representatives” and the gentlemen of the new Government, down to the
meanest Jack-in-office, received their salary regularly.
The people suffer. With the childlike faith, with the good humour of the
masses who believe in their leaders, they think that “yonder,” in the
House, in the Town Hall, in the Committee of Public Safety, their
welfare is being considered. But “yonder” they are discussing everything
under the sun except the welfare of the people. In 1793, while famine
ravaged France and crippled the Revolution; whilst the people were
reduced to the depths of misery, whilst the Champs Élysée were lined
with luxurious carriages where women displayed their jewels and
splendour, Robespierre was urging the Jacobins to discuss his treatise
on the English Constitution. While the worker was suffering in 1848 from
the general stoppage of trade the Provisional Government and the House
were wrangling over military pensions and prison labour, without
troubling how the people were to live during this crisis. And could one
cast a reproach at the Paris Commune, which was born beneath the
Prussian cannon, and lasted only seventy days, it would be for this same
error — this failure to understand that the Revolution could not triumph
unless those who fought on its side were fed, that on fifteen pence a
day a man cannot fight on the ramparts and at the same time support a
family.
The people suffer and say: “How to find the way out of these
difficulties?”
It seems to us that there is only one answer to this question: We must
recognize, and loudly proclaim, that every one, whatever his grade in
the old society, whether strong or weak, capable or incapable, has,
before everything, THE RIGHT TO LIVE, and that society is bound to share
amongst all, without exception, the means of existence at its disposal.
We must acknowledge this, and proclaim it aloud, and act up to it.
It must be so contrived that from the first day of the revolution the
worker shall know that a new era is opening before him; that
henceforward none need crouch under the bridges, with palaces hard by,
none need fast in the midst of food, none need perish with cold near
shops full of furs; that all is for all, in practice as well as in
theory, and that at last, for the first time in history, a revolution
has been accomplished which considers the NEEDS of the people before
schooling them in their DUTIES.
This cannot be brought about by Acts of Parliament, but only by taking
immediate and effective possession of all that is necessary to ensure
the well-being of all; this is the only really scientific way of going
to work, the only way to be understood and desired by the mass of the
people. We must take possession, in the name of the people, of the
granaries, the shops full of clothing, and the dwelling houses. Nothing
must be wasted. We must organize without delay to feed the hungry, to
satisfy all wants, to meet all needs, to produce, not for the special
benefit of this one or that one, but to ensure that society as a whole
will live and grow.
Enough of ambiguous words like “the right to work,” with which the
people were misled in 1848, and which are still used to mislead them.
Let us have the courage to recognize that Well-being for all,
henceforward possible, must be realized.
When the workers claimed the right to work in 1848, national and
municipal workshops were organized, and workmen were sent to drudge
there at the rate of 1s. 8d. a day! When they asked that labour should
be organized, the reply was: “Patience, friends, the Government will see
to it; meantime here is your 1s. 8d. Rest now, brave toiler, after your
lifelong struggle for food!” Meantime the cannons were trained, the
reserves called out, and the workers themselves disorganized by the many
methods well known to the middle classes, till one fine day they were
told to go and colonize Africa or be shot down.
Very different will be the result if the workers claim the right to
well-being! In claiming that right they claim the right to possess the
wealth of the community — to take the houses to dwell in, according to
the needs of each family; to seize the stores of food and learn the
meaning of plenty, after having known famine too well. They proclaim
their right to all wealth — fruit of the labour of past and present
generations — and learn by its means to enjoy those higher pleasures of
art and science too long monopolized by the middle classes.
And while asserting their right to live in comfort, they assert, what is
still more important, their right to decide for themselves what this
comfort shall be, what must be produced to ensure it, and what discarded
as no longer of value.
The “right to well-being” means the possibility of living like human
beings, and of bringing up children to be members of a society better
than ours, whilst the “right to work” only means the right to be always
a wage-slave, a drudge, ruled over and exploited by the middle class of
the future. The right to well-being is the Social Revolution, the right
to work means nothing but the Treadmill of Commercialism. It is high
time for the worker to assert his right to the common inheritance and to
enter into possession.
Every society which has abolished private property will be forced, we
maintain, to organize itself on the lines of Communistic Anarchy.
Anarchy leads to Communism, and Communism to Anarchy, both alike being
expressions of the predominant tendency in modern societies, the pursuit
of equality.
Time was when a peasant family could consider the corn which it grew, or
the woollen garments woven in the cottage, as the products of its own
toil. But even then this way of looking at things was not quite correct.
There were the roads and the bridges made in common, the swamps drained
by common toil, and the communal pastures enclosed by hedges which were
kept in repair by each and all. If the looms for weaving or the dyes for
colouring fabrics were improved, all profited; so even in those days a
peasant family could not live alone, but was dependent in a thousand
ways on the village or the commune.
But nowadays, in the present state of industry, when everything is
interdependent, when each branch of production is knit up with all the
rest, the attempt to claim an Individualist origin for the products of
industry is absolutely untenable. The astonishing perfection attained by
the textile or mining industries in civilized countries is due to the
simultaneous development of a thousand other industries, great and
small, to the extension of the railroad system, to inter-oceanic
navigation, to the manual skill of thousands of workers, to a certain
standard of culture reached by the working classes as a whole, to the
labours, in short, of men in every corner of the globe.
The Italians who died of cholera while making the Suez Canal, or of
anchylosis in the St. Gothard Tunnel, and the Americans mowed down by
shot and shell while fighting for the abolition of slavery have helped
to develop the cotton industry in France and England, as well as the
work-girls who languish in the factories of Manchester and Rouen, and
the inventor who (following the suggestion of some worker) succeeds in
improving the looms.
How, then, shall we estimate the share of each in the riches which ALL
contribute to amass?
Looking at production from this general, synthetic point of view, we
cannot hold with the Collectivists that payment proportionate to the
hours of labour rendered by each would be an ideal arrangement, or even
a step in the right direction.
Without discussing whether exchange value of goods is really measured in
existing societies by the amount of work necessary to produce it —
according to the doctrine of Smith and Ricardo, in whose footsteps Marx
has followed — suffice it to say here, leaving ourselves free to return
to the subject later, that the Collectivist ideal appears to us
untenable in a society which considers the instruments of labour as a
common inheritance. Starting from this principle, such a society would
find itself forced from the very outset to abandon all forms of wages.
The mitigated individualism of the collectivist system certainly could
not maintain itself alongside a partial communism — the socialization of
land and the instruments of production. A new form of property requires
a new form of remuneration. A new method of production cannot exist side
by side with the old forms of consumption, any more than it can adapt
itself to the old forms of political organization.
The wage system arises out of the individual ownership of the land and
the instruments of labour. It was the necessary condition for the
development of capitalist production, and will perish with it, in spite
of the attempt to disguise it as “profit-sharing.” The common possession
of the instruments of labour must necessarily bring with it the
enjoyment in common of the fruits of common labour.
We hold further that Communism is not only desirable, but that existing
societies, founded on Individualism, are inevitably impelled in the
direction of Communism. The development of Individualism during the last
three centuries is explained by the efforts of the individual to protect
himself from the tyranny of Capital and of the State. For a time he
imagined, and those who expressed his thought for him declared, that he
could free himself entirely from the State and from society. “By means
of money,” he said, “I can buy all that I need.” But the individual was
on a wrong tack, and modern history has taught him to recognize that,
without the help of all, he can do nothing, although his strong-boxes
are full of gold.
In fact, alongside this current of Individualism, we find in all modern
history a tendency, on the one hand, to retain all that remains of the
partial Communism of antiquity, and, on the other, to establish the
Communist principle in the thousand developments of modern life.
As soon as the communes of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries
had succeeded in emancipating themselves from their lords,
ecclesiastical or lay, their communal labour and communal consumption
began to extend and develop rapidly. The township — and not private
persons — freighted ships and equipped expeditions, and the benefit
arising from the foreign trade did not accrue to individuals, but was
shared by all. The townships also bought provisions for their citizens.
Traces of these institutions have lingered on into the nineteenth
century, and the folk piously cherish the memory of them in their
legends.
All that has disappeared. But the rural township still struggles to
preserve the last traces of this Communism, and it succeeds — except
when the State throws its heavy sword into the balance.
Meanwhile new organizations, based on the same principle — to every man
according to his needs — spring up under a thousand different forms; for
without a certain leaven of Communism the present societies could not
exist. In spite of the narrowly egoistic turn given to men’s minds by
the commercial system, the tendency towards Communism is constantly
appearing, and influences our activities in a variety of ways.
The bridges, for the use of which a toll was levied in the old days, are
now become public property and free to all; so are the high roads,
except in the East, where a toll is still exacted from the traveller for
every mile of his journey. Museums, free libraries, free schools, free
meals for children; parks and gardens open to all; streets paved and
lighted, free to all; water supplied to every house without measure or
stint — all such arrangements are founded on the principle: “Take what
you need.”
The tramways and railways have already introduced monthly and annual
season tickets, without limiting the number of journeys taken; and two
nations, Hungary and Russia, have introduced on their railways the zone
system, which permits the holder to travel five hundred or a thousand
miles for the same price. It is but a short step from that to a uniform
charge, such as already prevails in the postal service. In all these
innovations, and a thousand others, the tendency is not to measure the
individual consumption. One man wants to travel a thousand miles,
another five hundred. These are personal requirements. There is no
sufficient reason why one should pay twice as much as the other because
his need is twice as great. Such are the signs which appear even now in
our individualist societies.
Moreover, there is a tendency, though still a feeble one, to consider
the needs of the individual, irrespective of his past or possible
services to the community. We are beginning to think of society as a
whole, each part of which is so intimately bound up with the others that
a service rendered to one is a service rendered to all.
When you go into a public library — not indeed the National Library of
Paris, but, say, into the British Museum or the Berlin Library — the
librarian does not ask what services you have rendered to society before
giving you the book, or the fifty books which you require, and he comes
to your assistance if you do not know how to manage the catalogue. By
means of uniform credentials — and very often a contribution of work is
preferred — the scientific society opens its museums, its gardens, its
library, its laboratories, and its annual conversaziones to each of its
members, whether he be a Darwin, or a simple amateur.
At St. Petersburg, if you are pursuing an invention, you go into a
special laboratory or a workshop, where you are given a place, a
carpenter’s bench, a turning lathe, all the necessary tools and
scientific instruments, provided only you know how to use them; and you
are allowed to work there as long as you please. There are the tools;
interest others in your idea, join with fellow workers skilled in
various crafts, or work alone if you prefer it. Invent a flying machine,
or invent nothing — that is your own affair. You are pursuing an idea —
that is enough.
In the same way, those who man the lifeboat do not ask credentials from
the crew of a sinking ship; they launch their boat, risk their lives in
the raging waves, and sometimes perish, all to save men whom they do not
even know. And what need to know them? “They are human beings, and they
need our aid — that is enough, that establishes their right — To the
rescue!
Thus we find a tendency, eminently communistic, springing up on all
sides, and in various guises, in the very heart of theoretically
individualist societies.”
Suppose that one of our great cities, so egotistic in ordinary times,
were visited to-morrow by some calamity — a siege, for instance — that
same selfish city would decide that the first needs to satisfy were
those of the children and the aged. Without asking what services they
had rendered, or were likely to render to society, it would first of all
feed them. Then the combatants would be cared for, irrespective of the
courage or the intelligence which each has displayed, and thousands of
men and women would outvie each other in unselfish devotion to the
wounded.
This tendency exists and is felt as soon as the most pressing needs of
each are satisfied, and in proportion as the productive power of the
race increases. It becomes an active force every time a great idea comes
to oust the mean preoccupations of everyday life.
How can we doubt, then, that when the instruments of production are
placed at the service of all, when business is conducted on Communist
principles, when labour, having recovered its place of honour in
society, produces much more than is necessary to all — how can we doubt
but that this force (already so powerful) will enlarge its sphere of
action till it becomes the ruling principle of social life?
Following these indications, and considering further the practical side
of expropriation, of which we shall speak in the following chapters, we
are convinced that our first obligation, when the revolution shall have
broken the power upholding the present system, will be to realize
Communism without delay.
But ours is neither the Communism of Fourier and the Phalansteriens, nor
of the German State-Socialists. It is Anarchist Communism, — Communism
without government — the Communism of the Free. It is the synthesis of
the two ideals pursued by humanity throughout the ages — Economic and
Political Liberty.
In taking “Anarchy” for our ideal of political organization we are only
giving expression to another marked tendency of human progress. Whenever
European societies have developed up to a certain point they have shaken
off the yoke of authority and substituted a system founded roughly more
or less on the principles of individual liberty. And history shows us
that these periods of partial or general revolution, when the
governments were overthrown, were also periods of sudden progress both
in the economic and the intellectual field. Now it is the
enfranchisement of the communes, whose monuments, produced by the free
labour of the guilds, have never been surpassed; now it is the peasant
rising which brought about the Reformation and imperilled the papacy;
and then again it is the society, free for a brief space, which was
created at the other side of the Atlantic by the malcontents from the
Old World.
Further, if we observe the present development of civilized peoples we
see, most unmistakably, a movement ever more and more marked to limit
the sphere of action of the Government, and to allow more and more
liberty to the individual. This evolution is going on before our eyes,
though cumbered by the ruins and rubbish of old institutions and old
superstitions. Like all evolutions, it only waits a revolution to
overthrow the old obstacles which block the way, that it may find free
scope in a regenerated society.
After having striven long in vain to solve the insoluble problem — the
problem of constructing a government “which will constrain the
individual to obedience without itself ceasing to be the servant of
society,” men at last attempt to free themselves from every form of
government and to satisfy their need for organization by a free contract
between individuals and groups pursuing the same aim. The independence
of each small territorial unit becomes a pressing need; mutual agreement
replaces law, and everywhere regulates individual interests in view of a
common object.
All that was once looked on as a function of the Government is to-day
called in question. Things are arranged more easily and more
satisfactorily without the intervention of the State. And in studying
the progress made in this direction, we are led to conclude that the
tendency of the human race is to reduce Government interference to zero;
in fact, to abolish the State, the personification of injustice,
oppression, and monopoly.
We can already catch glimpses of a world in which the bonds which bind
the individual are no longer laws, but social habits — the result of the
need felt by each one of us to seek the support, the co-operation, the
sympathy of his neighbours.
Assuredly the idea of a society without a State will give rise to at
least as many objections as the political economy of a society without
private capital. We have all been brought up from our childhood to
regard the State as a sort of Providence; all our education, the Roman
history we learned at school, the Byzantine code which we studied later
under the name of Roman law, and the various sciences taught at the
universities, accustom us to believe in Government and in the virtues of
the State providential.
To maintain this superstition whole systems of philosophy have been
elaborated and taught; all politics are based on this principle; and
each politician, whatever his colours, comes forward and says to the
people, “Give me the power, and I both can and will free you from the
miseries which press so heavily upon you.”
From the cradle to the grave all our actions are guided by this
principle. Open any book on sociology or jurisprudence, and you will
find there the Government, its organization, its acts, filling so large
a place that we come to believe that there is nothing outside the
Government and the world of statesmen.
The press teaches us the same in every conceivable way. Whole columns
are devoted to parliamentary debates and to political intrigues. The
vast every day life of a nation is barely mentioned in a few lines when
dealing with economic subjects, law, or in “divers facts” relating to
police cases. And when you read these newspapers, you hardly think of
the incalculable number of beings — all humanity, so to say — who grow
up and die, who know sorrow, who work and consume, think and create
outside the few encumbering personages who have been so magnified that
humanity is hidden by their shadows enlarged by our ignorance.
And yet as soon as we pass from printed matter; to life itself, as soon
as we throw a glance at society, we are struck by the infinitesimal part
played by the Government. Balzac already remarked how millions of
peasants spend the whole of their lives without knowing anything about
the State, save the heavy taxes they are compelled to pay. Every day
millions of transactions are made without Government intervention, and
the greatest of them — those of commerce and of the Exchange — are
carried on in such a way that the Government could not be appealed to if
one of the contracting parties had the intention of not fulfilling his
agreement. Should you speak to a man who understands commerce he will
tell you that the everyday business transacted by merchants would be
absolutely impossible were it not based on mutual confidence. The habit
of keeping his word, the desire not to lose his credit, amply suffice to
maintain this relative honesty. The man who does not feel the slightest
remorse when poisoning his customers with noxious drugs covered with
pompous labels thinks he is in honour bound to keep his engagements.
Now, if this relative morality has developed under present conditions,
when enrichment is the only incentive and the only aim, can we doubt its
rapid progress when appropriation of the fruits of others’ labour will
no longer be the basis of society?
Another striking fact, which especially characterizes our generation,
speaks still more in favour of our ideas. It is the continual extension
of the field of enterprise due to private initiative, and the prodigious
development of free groups of all kinds. We shall discuss this more at
length in the chapter devoted to Free Agreement. Suffice it to mention
that the facts are so numerous and so customary that they are the
essence of the second half of the nineteenth century, even though
political and socialist writers ignore them, always preferring to talk
to us about the functions of Government.
These organizations, free and infinitely varied, are so natural an
outcome of our civilization; they expand so rapidly and group themselves
with so much ease; they are so necessary a result of the continual
growth of the needs of civilized man; and lastly, they so advantageously
replace governmental interference that we must recognize in them a
factor of growing importance in the life of societies. If they do not
yet spread over the whole of the manifestations of life, it is that they
find an insurmountable obstacle in the poverty of the worker, in the
casts of present society, in the private appropriation of capital, and
in the State. Abolish these obstacles and you will see them covering the
immense field of civilized man’s activity.
The history of the last fifty years furnishes a living proof that
Representative Government is impotent to discharge the functions we have
sought to assign to it. In days to come the nineteenth century will be
quoted as having witnessed the failure of parliamentarianism.
But this impotence is becoming evident to all; the faults of
parliamentarianism, and the inherent vices of the representative
principle, are self-evident, and the few thinkers who have made a
critical study of them (J. S. Mill and Leverdays) did but give literary
form to the popular dissatisfaction. It is not difficult, indeed, to see
the absurdity of naming a few men and saying to them, “Make laws
regulating all our spheres of activity, although not one of you knows
anything about them!”
We are beginning to see that government by majorities means abandoning
all the affairs of the country to the tide-waiters who make up the
majorities in the House and in election committees; to those, in a word,
who have no opinion of their own. But mankind is seeking and already
finding new issues.
The International Postal Union, the railway unions, and the learned
societies give us examples of solutions based on free agreement in place
and stead of law.
To-day, when groups scattered far and wide wish to organize themselves
for some object or other, they no longer elect an international
parliament of Jacks-of-all-trades. No, where it is not possible to meet
directly or come to an agreement by correspondence, delegates versed in
the question at issue are sent to treat, with the instructions:
“Endeavour to come to an agreement on such or such a question and then
return not with a law in your pocket, but with a proposition of
agreement which we may or may not accept.”
Such is the method of the great industrial companies, the learned
societies, and the associations of every description, which already
cover Europe and the United States. And such should be the method of an
emancipated society. While bringing about expropriation, society cannot
continue to organize itself on the principle of parliamentary
representation. A society founded on serfdom is in keeping with absolute
monarchy; a society based on the wage system and the exploitation of the
masses by the capitalists finds its political expression in
parliamentarianism. But a free society, regaining possession of the
common inheritance, must seek, in free groups and free federations of
groups, a new organization, in harmony with the new economic phase of
history.
Every economic phase has a political phase corresponding to it, and it
would be impossible to touch property without finding at the same time a
new mode of political life.
It is told of Rothschild that, seeing his fortune threatened by the
Revolution of 1848, he hit upon the following stratagem: “I am quite
willing to admit,” said he, “that my fortune has been accumulated at the
expense of others, but if it were divided to-morrow among the millions
of Europe, the share of each would only amount to five shillings. Very
well, then, I undertake to render to each his five shillings if he asks
me for it.”
Having given due publicity to his promise, our millionaire proceeded as
usual to stroll quietly through the streets of Frankfort. Three or four
passers-by asked for their five shillings, which he disbursed with a
sardonic smile. His stratagem succeeded, and the family of the
millionaire is still in possession of its wealth.
It is in much the same fashion that the shrewd heads among the middle
classes reason when they say, “Ah, Expropriation! I know what that
means. You take all the overcoats and lay them in a heap, and every one
is free to help himself and fight for the best.”
But such jests are irrelevant as well as flippant. What we want is not a
redistribution of overcoats, although it must be said that even in such
a case, the shivering folk would see advantage in it. Nor do we want to
divide up the wealth of the Rothschilds. What we do want is so to
arrange things that every human being born into the world shall be
ensured the opportunity in the first instance of learning some useful
occupation, and of becoming skilled in it; next, that he shall be free
to work at his trade without asking leave of master or owner, and
without handing over to landlord or capitalist the lion’s share of what
he produces. As to the wealth held by the Rothschilds or the
Vanderbilts, it will serve us to organize our system of communal
production.
The day when the labourer may till the ground without paying away half
of what he produces, the day when the machines necessary to prepare the
soil for rich harvests are at the free disposal of the cultivators, the
day when the worker in the factory produces for the community and not
the monopolist — that day will see the workers clothed and fed, and
there will be no more Rothschilds or other exploiters.
No one will then have to sell his working power for a wage that only
represents a fraction of what he produces.
“So far so good,” say our critics, “but you will have Rothschilds coming
in from outside. How are you to prevent a person from amassing millions
in China and then settling amongst you? How are you going to prevent
such a one from surrounding himself with lackeys and wage-slaves — from
exploiting them and enriching himself at their expense?”
“You cannot bring about a revolution all over the world at the same
time. Well, then, are you going to establish custom-houses on your
frontiers to search all who enter your country and confiscate the money
they bring with them? — Anarchist policemen firing on travellers would
be a fine spectacle!”
But at the root of this argument there is a great error. Those who
propound it have never paused to inquire whence come the fortunes of the
rich. A little thought would, however, suffice to show them that these
fortunes have their beginnings in the poverty of the poor. When there
are no longer any destitute there will no longer be any rich to exploit
them.
Let us glance for a moment at the Middle Ages, when great fortunes began
to spring up.
A feudal baron seizes on a fertile valley. But as long as the fertile
valley is empty of folk our baron is not rich. His land brings him in
nothing; he might as well possess a property in the moon.
What does our baron do to enrich himself? He looks out for peasants —
for poor peasants!
If every peasant-farmer had a piece of land, free from rent and taxes,
if he had in addition the tools and the stock necessary for farm labour,
who would plough the lands of the baron? Everyone would look after his
own. But there are thousands of destitute persons ruined by wars, or
drought, or pestilence. They have neither horse nor plough. (Iron was
costly in the Middle Ages, and a draughthorse still more so.)
All these destitute creatures are trying to better their condition. One
day they see on the road at the confines of our baron’s estate a
notice-board indicating by certain signs adapted to their comprehension
that the labourer who is willing to settle on this estate will receive
the tools and materials to build his cottage and sow his fields, and a
portion of land rent free for a certain number of years. The number of
years is represented by so many crosses on the sign-board, and the
peasant understands the meaning of these crosses.
So the poor wretches swarm over the baron’s lands, making roads,
draining marshes, building villages. In nine years he begins to tax
them. Five years later he increases the rent. Then he doubles it. The
peasant accepts these new conditions because he cannot find better ones
elsewhere; and little by little, with the aid of laws made by the
barons, the poverty of the peasant becomes the source of the landlord’s
wealth. And it is not only the lord of the manor who preys upon him. A
whole host of usurers swoop down upon the villages, multiplying as the
wretchedness of the peasants increases. That is how things went in the
Middle Ages. And to-day is it not still the same thing? If there were
free lands which the peasant could cultivate if he pleased, would he pay
£50 to some “shabble of a duke”[2] for condescending to sell him a
scrap? Would he burden himself with a lease which absorbed a third of
the produce? Would he — on the métayer system — consent to give the half
of his harvest to the landowner?
But he has nothing. So he will accept any conditions, if only he can
keep body and soul together, while he tills the soil and enriches the
landlord.
So in the nineteenth century, just as in the Middle Ages, the poverty of
the peasant is a source of wealth to the landed proprietor.
The landlord owes his riches to the poverty of the peasants, and the
wealth of the capitalist comes from the same source.
Take the case of a citizen of the middle class, who somehow or other
finds himself in possession of £20,000. He could, of course, spend his
money at the rate of £2,000 a year, a mere bagatelle in these days of
fantastic, senseless luxury. But then he would have nothing left at the
end of ten years. So, being a “practical person,” he prefers to keep his
fortune intact, and win for himself a snug little annual income as well.
This is very easy in our society, for the good reason that the towns and
villages swarm with workers who have not the wherewithal to live for a
month, or even a fortnight. So our worthy citizen starts a factory. The
banks hasten to lend him another £20,000, especially if he has a
reputation for “business ability”; and with this round sum he can
command the labour of five hundred hands.
If all the men and women in the country-side had their daily bread sure
and their daily needs already satisfied, who would work for our
capitalist at a wage of half a crown a day, while the commodities one
produces in a day sell in the market for a crown or more?
Unhappily — we know it all too well — the poor quarters of our towns and
the neighbouring villages are full of needy wretches, whose children
clamour for bread. So, before the factory is well finished, the workers
hasten to offer themselves. Where a hundred are required three hundred
besiege the doors, and from the time his mill is started the owner, if
he only has average business capacities, will clear £40 a year out of
each mill-hand he employs.
He is thus able to lay by a snug little fortune; and if he chooses a
lucrative trade and has “business talents” he will soon increase his
income by doubling the number of the men he exploits.
So he becomes a personage of importance. He can afford to give dinners
to others personages — to the local magnates, the civic, legal, and
political dignitaries. With his money he can “marry money”; by and by he
may pick and choose places for his children, and later on perhaps get
something good from the Government — a contract for the army or for the
police. His gold breeds gold; till at last a war, or even a rumour of
war, or a speculation on the Stock Exchange, gives him his great
opportunity.
Nine-tenths of the great fortunes made in the United States are (as
Henry George has shown in this “Social Problems”) the result of knavery
on a large scale, assisted by the State. In Europe, nine-tenths of the
fortunes made in our monarchies and republics have the same origin.
There are not two ways of becoming a millionaire.
This is the secret of wealth; find the starving and destitute, pay them
half a crown, and make them produce five shillings worth in the day,
amass a fortune by these means, and then increase it by some lucky hit,
made with the help of the State.
Need we go on to speak of small fortunes attributed by the economists to
forethought and frugality, when we know that mere saving in itself
brings in nothing, so long as the pence saved are not used to exploit
the famishing?
Take a shoemaker, for instance. Grant that his work is well paid, that
he has plenty of custom, and that by dint of strict frugality he
contrives to lay by from eighteen pence to two shillings a day, perhaps
two pounds a month.
Grant that our shoemaker is never ill, that he does not half starve
himself, in spite of his passion for economy; that he does not marry or
that he has no children; that he does not die of consumption; suppose
anything and everything you please!
Well, at the age of fifty he will not have scraped together £800; and he
will not have enough to live on during his old age, when he is past
work. Assuredly this is not how great fortunes are made. But suppose our
shoemaker, as soon as he has laid by a few pence, thriftily conveys them
to the savings bank, and that the savings bank lends them to the
capitalist who is just about to “employ labour,” i.e. to exploit the
poor. Then our shoemaker takes an apprentice, the child of some poor
wretch, who will think himself lucky if in five years time his son has
learned the trade and is able to earn his living.
Meanwhile our shoemaker does not lose by him, and if trade is brisk he
soon takes a second, and then a third apprentice. By and by he will take
two or three working men — poor wretches, thankful to receive half a
crown a day for work that is worth five shillings, and if our shoemaker
is “in luck,” that is to say, if he is keen enough and mean enough, his
working men and apprentices will bring him in nearly one pound a day,
over and above the product of his own toil. He can then enlarge his
business. He will gradually become rich, and no longer have any need to
stint himself in the necessaries of life. He will leave a snug little
fortune to his son.
That is what people call “being economical and having frugal, temperate
habits.” At bottom it is nothing more nor less than grinding the face of
the poor.
Commerce seems an exception to this rule. “Such a man,” we are told,
“buys tea in China, brings it to France, and realizes a profit of thirty
per cent on his original outlay. He has exploited nobody.”
Nevertheless the case is analogous. If our merchant had carried his
bales on his back, well and good! In early medieval times that was
exactly how foreign trade was conducted, and so no one reached such
giddy heights of fortune as in our days. Very few and very hardly earned
were the gold coins which the medieval merchant gained from a long and
dangerous voyage. It was less the love of money than the thirst of
travel and adventure that inspired his undertakings.
Nowadays the method is simpler. A merchant who has some capital need not
stir from his desk to become wealthy. He telegraphs to an agent telling
him to buy a hundred tons of tea; he freights a ship, and in a few
weeks, in three months if it is a sailing ship, the vessel brings him
his cargo. He does not even take the risks of the voyage, for his tea
and his vessel are insured, and if he has expended four thousand pounds
he will receive more than five thousand; that is to say, if he has not
attempted to speculate in some novel commodities, in which case he runs
a chance of either doubling his fortune or losing it altogether.
Now, how could he find men willing to cross the sea, to travel to China
and back, to endure hardship and slavish toil and to risk their lives
for a miserable pittance? How could he find dock labourers willing to
load and unload his ships for “starvation wages”? How? Because they are
needy and starving. Go to the seaports, visit the cook-shops and taverns
on the quays, and look at these men who have come to hire themselves,
crowding round the dock-gates, which they besiege from early dawn,
hoping to be allowed to work on the vessels. Look at these sailors,
happy to be hired for a long voyage, after weeks and months of waiting.
All their lives long they have gone to the sea in ships, and they will
sail in others still, until they have perished in the waves.
Enter their homes, look at their wives and children in rags, living one
knows not how till the father’s return, and you will have the answer to
the question. Multiply examples, choose them where you will, consider
the origin of all fortunes, large or small, whether arising out of
commerce, finance, manufactures, or the land. Everywhere you will find
that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor.
This is why an anarchist society need not fear the advent of a
Rothschild who would settle in its midst. If every member of the
community knows that after a few hours of productive toil he will have a
right to all the pleasures that civilization procures, and to those
deeper sources of enjoyment which art and science offer to all who seek
them, he will not sell his strength for a starvation wage. No one will
volunteer to work for the enrichment of your Rothschild. His golden
guineas will be only so many pieces of metal — useful for various
purposes, but incapable of breeding more.
In answering the above objection we have at the same time indicated the
scope of Expropriation. It must apply to everything that enables any man
— be he financier, mill-owner, or landlord — to appropriate the product
of others’ toil. Our formula is simple and comprehensive.
We do not want to rob any one of his coat, but we wish to give to the
workers all those things the lack of which makes them fall an easy prey
to the exploiter, and we will do our utmost that none shall lack aught,
that not a single man shall be forced to sell the strength of his right
arm to obtain a bare subsistence for himself and his babes. This is what
we mean when we talk of Expropriation; this will be our duty during the
Revolution, for whose coming we look, not two hundred years hence, but
soon, very soon.
The ideas of Anarchism in general and of Expropriation in particular
find much more sympathy than we are apt to imagine among men of
independent character, and those for whom idleness is not the supreme
ideal. “Still,” our friends often warn us, “take care you do not go too
far! Humanity cannot be changed in a day, so do not be in too great a
hurry with your schemes of Expropriation and Anarchy, or you will be in
danger of achieving no permanent result.”
Now, what we fear with regard to Expropriation is exactly the contrary.
We are afraid of not going far enough, of carrying out Expropriation on
too small a scale to be lasting. We would not have the revolutionary
impulse arrested in mid-career, to exhaust itself in half measures,
which would content no one, and while producing a tremendous confusion
in society, and stopping its customary activities, would have no vital
power — would merely spread general discontent and inevitably prepare
the way for the triumph of reaction.
There are, in fact, in a modern State established relations which it is
practically impossible to modify if one attacks them only in detail.
There are wheels within wheels in our economic organization — the
machinery is so complex and interdependent that no one part can be
modified without disturbing the whole. This becomes clear as soon as an
attempt is made to expropriate anything.
Let us suppose that in a certain country a limited form of expropriation
is effected. For example, that, as it has been suggested more than once,
only the property of the great landlords is socialized, whilst the
factories are left untouched; or that, in a certain city, house property
is taken over by the Commune, but everything else is left in private
ownership; or that, in some manufacturing centre, the factories are
communalized, but the land is not interfered with.
The same result would follow in each case — a terrible shattering of the
industrial system, without the means of reorganizing it on new lines.
Industry and finance would be at a deadlock, yet a return to the first
principles of justice would not have been achieved, and society would
find itself powerless to construct a harmonious whole.
If agriculture could free itself from great landowners, while industry
still remained the bondslave of the capitalist, the merchant, and the
banker, nothing would be accomplished. The peasant suffers to-day not
only in having to pay rent to the landlord; he is oppressed on all hands
by existing conditions. He is exploited by the tradesman, who makes him
pay half a crown for a spade which, measured by tile labour spent on it,
is not worth more than sixpence. He is taxed by the State, which cannot
do without its formidable hierarchy of officials, and finds it necessary
to maintain an expensive army, because the traders of all nations are
perpetually fighting for the markets, and any day a little quarrel
arising from the exploitation of some part of Asia or Africa may result
in war.
Then again the peasant suffers from the depopulation of country places:
the young people are attracted to the large manufacturing towns by the
bait of high wages paid temporarily by the producers of articles of
luxury, or by the attractions of a more stirring life. The artificial
protection of industry, the industrial exploitation of foreign
countries, the prevalence of stock-jobbing, the difficulty of improving
the soil and the machinery of production — all these agencies combine
nowadays to work against agriculture, which is burdened not only by
rent, but by the whole complex of conditions in a society based on
exploitation. Thus, even if the expropriation of land were accomplished,
and every one were free to till the soil and cultivate it to the best
advantage, without paying rent, agriculture, even though it should enjoy
— which can by no means be taken for granted — a momentary prosperity,
would soon fall back into the slough in which it finds itself to-day.
The whole thing would have to be begun over again, with increased
difficulties.
The same holds true of industry. Take the converse case: instead of
turning the agricultural labourers into peasant-proprietors, make over
the factories to those who work in them. Abolish the
master-manufacturers, but leave the landlord his land, the banker his
money, the merchant his Exchange, maintain the swarm of idlers who live
on the toil of the workmen, the thousand and one middlemen, the State
with its numberless officials, and industry would come to a standstill.
Finding no purchasers in the mass of peasants who would remain poor; not
possessing the raw material, and unable to export their produce, partly
on account of the stoppage of trade, and still more so because
industries spread all over the world, the manufacturers would feel
unable to struggle, and thousands of workers would be thrown upon the
streets. These starving crowds would be ready and willing to submit to
the first schemer who came to exploit them; they would even consent to
return to the old slavery, if only under promise of work.
Or, finally, suppose you oust the landowners, and hand over the mills
and factories to the worker, without interfering with the swarm of
middlemen who drain the product of our manufacturers, and speculate in
corn and flour, meat and groceries, in our great centres of commerce.
Then, as soon as exchange is arrested, the great cities are left without
bread, and others find no buyers for their articles of luxury, a
terrible counter-revolution will take place — a counter-revolution
treading upon the slain, sweeping the towns and villages with shot and
shell; there would be proscriptions, panic, flight, tend all the terrors
of the guillotine, as it was in France in 1815, 1848, and 1871.
All is interdependent in a civilized society; it is impossible to reform
any one thing without altering the whole. Therefore, on the day we
strike at private property, under any one of its forms, territorial or
industrial, we shall be obliged to attack them all. The very success of
the Revolution will demand it.
Besides, we could not, if we would, confine ourselves to a partial
expropriation. Once the principle of the “Divine Right of Property” is
shaken, no amount of theorizing will prevent its overthrow, here by the
slaves of the toil, there by the slaves of the machine.
If a great town, Paris for example, were to confine itself to taking
possession of the dwelling houses or the factories, it would be forced
also to deny the right of the bankers to levy upon the Commune a tax
amounting to £2,000,000 in the form of interest for former loans. The
great city would be obliged to put itself in touch with the rural
districts, and its influence would inevitably urge the peasants to free
themselves from the landowner. It would be necessary to communalize the
railways, that the citizens might get food and work, and lastly, to
prevent the waste of supplies, and to guard against the trust of
corn-speculators, like those to whom the Commune of 1793 fell a prey, it
would have to place in the hands of the City the work of stocking its
warehouses with commodities, and apportioning the produce.
Nevertheless, some Socialists still seek to establish a distinction. “Of
course,” they say, “the soil, the mines, the mills, and manufactures
must be expropriated, these are the instruments of production, and it is
right we should consider them public property. But articles of
consumption — food, clothes, and dwellings — should remain private
property.”
Popular common sense has got the better of this subtle distinction. We
are not savages who can live in the woods, without other shelter than
the branches. The civilized man needs a roof, a room, a hearth, and a
bed. It is true that the bed, the room, and the house is a home of
idleness for the non-producer. But for the worker, a room, properly
heated and lighted, is as much an instrument of production as the tool
or the machine. It is the place where the nerves and sinews gather
strength for the work of the morrow. The rest of the workman is the
daily repairing of the machine.
The same argument applies even more obviously to food. The so-called
economists of whom we speak would hardly deny that the coal burnt in a
machine is as necessary to production as the raw material itself. How
then can food, without which the human machine could do no work, be
excluded from the list of things indispensable to the producer? Can this
be a relic of religious metaphysics? The rich man’s feast is indeed a
matter of luxury, but the food of the worker is just as much a part of
production as the fuel burnt by the steam-engine.
The same with clothing. If the economists who draw this distinction
between articles of production and of consumption dressed themselves in
the fashion of New Guinea, we could understand their objection. But men
who could not write a word without a shirt on their back are not in a
position to draw such a hard and fast line between their shirt and their
pen. And though the dainty gowns of their dames must certainly rank as
objects of luxury, there is nevertheless a certain quantity of linen,
cotton, and woollen stuff which is a necessity of life to the producer.
The shirt and shoes in which he goes to his work, his cap and the jacket
he slips on after the day’s toil is over, these are as necessary to him
as the hammer to the anvil.
Whether we like it or not, this is what the people mean by a revolution.
As soon as they have made a clean sweep of the Government, they will
seek first of all to ensure to themselves decent dwellings and
sufficient food and clothes — free of capitalist rent.
And the people will be right. The methods of the people will be much
more in accordance with science than those of the economists who draw so
many distinctions between instruments of production and articles of
consumption. The people understand that this is just the point where the
Revolution ought to begin; and they will lay the foundations of the only
economic science worthy the name — a science which might be called “The
Study of the Needs of Humanity, and of the Economic Means to satisfy
them.”
If the coming Revolution is to be a Social Revolution it will be
distinguished from all former uprisings not only by its aim, but also by
its methods. To attain a new end, new means are required.
The three great popular movements which we have seen in France during
the last hundred years differ from each other in many ways, but they
have one common feature.
In each case the people strove to overturn the old regime, and spent
their heart’s blood for the cause. Then, after having borne the brunt of
the battle, they sank again into obscurity. A Government, composed of
men more or less honest, was formed and undertook to organize — the
Republic in 1793, Labour in 1848, and the Free Commune in 1871. Imbued
with Jacobin ideas, this Government occupied itself first of all with
political questions, such as the reorganization of the machinery of
government, the purifying of the administration, the separation of
Church and State, civic liberty, and such matters. It is true the
workmen’s clubs kept an eye on the members of the new Government, and
often imposed their ideas on them. But even in these clubs, whether the
leaders belonged to the middle or to the working classes, it was always
middle-class ideas which prevailed. They discussed various political
questions at great length, but forgot to discuss the question of bread.
Great ideas sprang up at such times, ideas that have moved the world;
words were spoken which still stir our hearts, at the interval of a
century. But the people were starving in the slums.
From the very commencement of the Revolution industry inevitably came to
a stop — the circulation of produce was checked, and capital concealed
itself. The master — the employer — had nothing to fear at such times,
he battened on his dividends, if indeed he did not speculate on the
wretchedness around; but the wage-earner was reduced to live from hand
to mouth. Want knocked at the door.
Famine was abroad in the land — such famine as had hardly been seen
under the old regime.
“The Girondists are starving us!” was the cry in the workmen’s quarters
in 1793, and thereupon the Girondists were guillotined, and full powers
were given to “the Mountain” and to the Commune. The Commune indeed
concerned itself with the question of bread, and made heroic efforts to
feed Paris. At Lyons, Fouché and Collot d’Herbois established city
granaries, but the sums spent on filling them were woefully
insufficient. The town councils made great efforts to procure corn; the
bakers who hoarded flour were hanged — and still the people lacked
bread.
Then they turned on the royalist conspirators and laid the blame at
their door. They guillotined a dozen or fifteen a day — servants and
duchesses alike, especially servants, for the duchesses had gone to
Coblentz. But if they had guillotined a hundred dukes and viscounts
every day, it would have been equally hopeless.
The want only grew. For the wage-earner can not live without his wage,
and the wage was not forthcoming. What difference could a thousand
corpses more or less make to him?
Then the people began to grow weary. “So much for your vaunted
Revolution! You are more wretched than ever before,” whispered the
reactionary in the ears of the worker. And little by little the rich
took courage, emerged from their hiding-places, and flaunted their
luxury in the face of the starving multitude. They dressed up like
scented fops and said to the workers: “Come, enough of this foolery!
What have you gained by rebellion?”
Sick at heart, his patience at an end, the revolutionary had at last to
admit to himself that the cause was lost once more. He retreated into
his hovel and awaited the worst.
Then reaction proudly asserted itself, and accomplished a politic
stroke. The Revolution dead, nothing remained but to trample its corpse
under foot.
The White Terror began. Blood flowed like water, the guillotine was
never idle, the prisons were crowded, while the pageant of rank and
fashion resumed its old course, and went on as merrily as before.
This picture is typical of all our revolutions. In 1848 the workers of
Paris placed “three months of starvation” at the service of the
Republic, and then, having reached the limit of their powers, they made
one last desperate effort — an effort which was drowned in blood. In
1871 the Commune perished for lack of combatants. It had taken measures
for the separation of Church and State, but it neglected, alas, until
too late, to take measures for providing the people with bread. And so
it came to pass in Paris that élégantes and fine gentlemen could spurn
the confederates, and bid them go sell their lives for a miserable
pittance, and leave their “betters” to feast at their ease in
fashionable restaurants.
At last the Commune saw its mistake, and opened communal kitchens. But
it was too late. Its days were already numbered, and the troops of
Versailles were on the ramparts.
“Bread, it is bread that the Revolution needs!”
Let others spend their time in issuing pompous proclamations, in
decorating themselves lavishly with official gold lace, and in talking
about political liberty!...
Be it ours to see, from the first day of the Revolution to the last, in
all the provinces fighting for freedom, that there is not a single man
who lacks bread, not a single woman compelled to stand with the weariful
crowd outside the bake-house-door, that haply a coarse loaf may be
thrown to her in charity, not a single child pining for want of food.
It has always been the middle-class idea to harangue about “great
principles” — great lies rather!
The idea of the people will be to provide bread for all. And while
middle-class citizens, and workmen infested with middle-class ideas
admire their own rhetoric in the “Talking Shops,” and “practical people”
are engaged in endless discussions on forms of government, we, the
“Utopian dreamers” — we shall have to consider the question of daily
bread.
We have the temerity to declare that all have a right to bread, that
there is bread enough for all, and that with this watchword of Bread for
All the Revolution will triumph.
That we are Utopians is well known. So Utopian are we that we go the
length of believing that the Revolution can and ought to assure shelter,
food, and clothes to all — an idea extremely displeasing to middle-class
citizens, whatever their party colour, for they are quite alive to the
fact that it is not easy to keep the upper hand of a people whose hunger
is satisfied.
All the same, we maintain our contention: bread must be found for the
people of the Revolution, and the question of bread must take precedence
of all other questions. If it is settled in the interests of the people,
the Revolution will be on the right road; for in solving the question of
Bread we must accept the principle of equality, which will force itself
upon us to the exclusion of every other solution.
It is certain that the coming Revolution — like in that respect to the
Revolution of 1848 — will burst upon us in the middle of a great
industrial crisis. Things have been seething for half a century now, and
can only go from bad to worse. Everything tends that way — new nations
entering the, lists of international trade and fighting for possession
of the world’s markets, wars, taxes ever increasing. National debts, the
insecurity of the morrow, and huge colonial undertakings in every corner
of the globe.
There are millions of unemployed workers in Europe at this moment. It
will be still worse when Revolution has burst upon us and spread like
fire laid to a train of gunpowder. The number of the out-of-works will
be doubled as soon as barricades are erected in Europe and the United
States. What is to be done to provide these multitudes with bread?
We do not know whether the folk who call them selves “practical people”
have ever asked themselves this question in all its nakedness. But we do
know that they wish to maintain the wage system, and we must therefore
expect to have “national workshops” and “public works” vaunted as a
means of giving food to the unemployed.
Because national workshops were opened in 1789 and in 1793; because the
same means were resorted to in 1848; because Napoleon III succeeded in
contenting the Parisian proletariat for eighteen years by giving them
public works — which cost Paris to-day its debt of £80,000,000 — and its
municipal tax of three or four pounds a-head;[3] because this excellent
method of “taming the beast” was customary in Rome, and even in Egypt
four thousand years ago; and lastly, because despots, kings, and
emperors have always employed the ruse of throwing a scrap of food to
the people to gain time to snatch up the whip — it is natural that
“practical” men should extol this method of perpetuating the wage
system. What need to rack our brains when we have the time-honoured
method of the Pharaohs at our disposal?
Yet should the Revolution be so misguided as to start on this path, it
would be lost.
In 1848, when the national workshops were opened on February 27, the
unemployed of Paris numbered only 800; a fortnight later they had
already increased to 49,000. They would soon have been 100,000, without
counting those who crowded in from the provinces.
Yet at that time trade and manufacturers in France only employed half as
many hands as to-day. And we know that in time of Revolution exchange
and industry suffer most from the general upheaval.
To realize this we have only to think for a moment of the number of
workmen whose labour depends directly or indirectly upon export trade,
or of the number of hands employed in producing luxuries, whose
consumers are the middle-class minority.
A revolution in Europe means the unavoidable stoppage of at least half
the factories and workshops. It means millions of workers and their
families thrown on the streets.
And our “practical men” would seek to avert this truly terrible
situation by means of national relief works; that is to say, by means of
new industries created on the spot to give work to the unemployed!
It is evident, as Proudhon has already pointed out, that the smallest
attack upon property will bring in its train the complete
disorganization of the system based upon private enterprise and wage
labour. Society itself will be forced to take production in hand, in its
entirety, and to reorganize it to meet the needs of the whole people.
But this cannot be accomplished in a day or a month; it must take a
certain time thus to reorganize the system of production, and during
this time millions of men will be deprived of the means of subsistence.
What then is to be done ?
There is only one really practical solution of the problem — boldly to
face the great task which awaits us, and instead of trying to patch up a
situation which we ourselves have made untenable, to proceed to
reorganize production on a new basis.
Thus the really practical course of action, in our view, would be that
the people should take immediate possession of all the food of the
insurgent districts, keeping strict account of it all, that none might
be wasted, and that by the aid of these accumulated resources every one
might be able to tide over the crisis. During that time an agreement
would have to be made with the factory workers, the necessary raw
material given them and the means of subsistence assured to them while
they worked to supply the needs of the agriculture population. For we
must not forget that while France weaves silks and satins to deck the
wives of German financiers, the Empress of Russia, and the Queen of the
Sandwich Islands, and while Paris fashions wonderful trinkets and
playthings for rich folk all the world over, two-thirds of the French
peasantry have not proper lamps to give them light, or the implements
necessary for modern agriculture. Lastly, unproductive land, of which
there is plenty, would have to be turned to the best advantage, poor
soils enriched, and rich soils, which yet, under the present system, do
not yield a quarter, no, nor a tenth of what they might produce,
submitted to intensive culture and tilled with as much care as a market
garden or a flower plot. It is impossible to imagine any other practical
solution of the problem; and, whether we like it or not, sheer force of
circumstances will bring it to pass.
The most prominent characteristic of capitalism is the wage system,
which in brief amounts to this: — A man, or a group of men, possessing
the necessary capital, starts some industrial enterprise; he undertakes
to supply the factory or workshops with raw material, to organize
production, to pay the employés a fixed wage, and lastly, to pocket the
surplus value or profits, under pretext of recouping himself for
managing the concern, for running the risks it may involve, and for the
fluctuations of price in the market value of the wares.
To preserve this system, those who now monopolize capital would be ready
to make certain concessions; to share, for example, a part of the
profits with the workers, or rather to establish a “sliding scale,”
which would oblige them to raise wages when prices were high; in brief,
they would consent to certain sacrifices on condition that they were
still allowed to direct industry and to take its first fruits.
Collectivism, as we know, does not abolish wages, though it introduces
considerable modifications into the existing order of things. It only
substitutes the State, that is to say, Representative Government,
national or local, for the individual employer of labour. Under
Collectivism it is the representatives of the nation, or of the
district, and their deputies and officials who are to have the control
of industry. It is they who reserve to themselves the right of employing
the surplus of; production — in the interests of all. Moreover,
Collectivism draws a very subtle but very far reaching distinction
between the work of the labourer and of the man who has learned a craft.
Unskilled labour in the eyes of the collectivist is simple labour, while
the work of the craftsman, the mechanic, the engineer, the man of
science, etc., is what Marx calls complex labour, and is entitled to a
higher wage. But labourers and craftsmen, weavers and men of science,
are all wage-servants of the State — “all officials,” as was said
lately, to gild the pill.
The coming Revolution can render no greater service to humanity than to
make the wage system, in all its forms, an impossibility, and to render
Communism, which is the negation of wage-slavery, the only possible
solution.
For even admitting that the Collectivist modification of the present
system is possible, if introduced gradually during a period of
prosperity and peace — though for my part I question its practicability
even under such conditions — it would become impossible in a period of
Revolution, when the need of feeding hungry millions springs up with the
first call to arms. A political revolution can be accomplished without
shaking the foundations of industry, but a revolution where the people
lay hands upon property will inevitably paralyse exchange and
production. Millions of public money would not suffice for wages to the
millions of out-of-works.
This point cannot be too much insisted upon; the reorganization of
industry on a new basis (and we shall presently show how tremendous this
problem is) cannot be accomplished in a few days, nor, on the other
hand, will the people submit to be half starved for years in order to
oblige the theorists who uphold the wage system. To tide over the period
of stress they will demand what they have always demanded in such cases
— communization of supplies — the giving of rations.
It will be in vain to preach patience. The people will be patient no
longer, and if food is not put in common they will plunder the bakeries.
If the people are not strong enough to carry all before them, they will
be shot down to give Collectivism a fair field for experiment. To this
end “order” must be maintained at any price — order, discipline,
obedience! And as the capitalists will soon realize that when the people
are shot down by those who call themselves Revolutionists, the
Revolution itself will become hateful in the eyes of the masses; they
will certainly lend their support to the champions of order — even
though they are collectivists. In such a line of conduct, the
capitalists will see a means of hereafter crushing the collectivists in
their turn. If “order is established” in this fashion, the consequences
are easy to foresee. Not content with shooting down the “marauders,” the
faction of “order” will search out the “ringleaders of the mob.” They
will set up again the law courts and reinstate the hangman. The most
ardent revolutionists will be sent to the scaffold. It will be 1793 over
again.
Do not let us forget how reaction triumphed in the last century. First
the “Hébertists,” “the madmen,” were guillotined — those whom Mignet,
with the memory of the struggle fresh upon him, still called
“Anarchists.” The Dantonists soon followed them; and when the party of
Robespierre had guillotined these revolutionaries, they in their turn
had to mount the scaffold; whereupon the people, sick of bloodshed, and
seeing the revolution lost, threw up the sponge, and let the
reactionaries do their worst.
If “order is restored,” we say, the social democrats will hang the
anarchists; the Fabians will hang the social democrats, and will in
their turn be hanged by the reactionaries; and the Revolution will come
to an end.
But everything confirms us in the belief that the energy of the people
will carry them far enough, and that, when the Revolution takes place,
the idea of anarchist Communism will have gained ground. It is not an
artificial idea. The people themselves have breathed it in our ear, and
the number of communists is ever increasing, as the impossibility of any
other solution becomes more and more evident.
And if the impetus of the people is strong enough, affairs will take a
very different turn. Instead of plundering the bakers’ shops one day,
and starving the next, the people of the insurgent cities will take
possession of the warehouses, the cattle markets, — in fact of all the
provision stores and of all the food to be had. The well-intentioned
citizens, men and women both, will form themselves into bands of
volunteers and address themselves to the task of making a rough general
inventory of the contents, of each shop and warehouse. In twenty-four
hours the revolted town or district will know what Paris has not found
out yet, in spite of its statistical committees, and what it never did
find out during the siege — the quantity of provisions it contains. In
forty-eight hours millions of copies will be printed of the tables
giving a sufficiently exact account of the available food, the places
where it is stored, and the means of distribution.
In every block of houses, in every street, in every town ward, bands of
volunteers will have been organized. These commissariat volunteers will
work in unison and keep in touch with each other. If only the Jacobin
bayonets do not get in the way; if only the self-styled “scientific”
theorists do not thrust themselves in to darken counsel! Or rather let
then expound their muddle-headed theories as much as they like, provided
they have no authority, no power! And that admirable spirit of
organization inherent in the people, above all in every social grade of
the French nation,[4] but which they have so seldom been allowed to
exercise, will initiate, even in so huge a city as Paris, and in the
midst of a Revolution, an immense guild of free workers, ready to
furnish to each and all the necessary food.
Give the people a free hand, and in ten days the food service will be
conducted with admirable regularity. Only those who have never seen the
people hard at work, only those who have passed their lives buried among
documents, can doubt it. Speak of the organizing genius of the “Great
Misunderstood,” the people, to those who have seen it in Paris in the
days of the barricades, or in London during the great dockers strike,
when half a million of starving folk had to be fed, and they will tell
you how superior it is to the official ineptness of Bumbledom.
And even supposing we had to endure a certain amount of discomfort and
confusion for a fortnight or a month, surely that would not matter very
much. For the mass of the people it would still be an improvement on
their former condition; and, besides, in times of Revolution one can
dine contentedly enough on a bit of bread and cheese while eagerly
discussing events.
In any case, a system which springs up spontaneously, under stress of
immediate need, will be infinitely preferable to anything invented
between four walls by hide-bound theorists sitting on any number of
committees.
The people of the great towns will be driven by force of circumstances
to take possession of all the provisions, beginning with the barest
necessaries, and gradually extending Communism to other things, in order
to satisfy the needs of all the citizens.
The sooner it is done the better; the sooner it is done the less misery
there will be and the less strife.
But upon what basis must society be organized in order that all may
share and share alike? This is the question that meets us at the outset.
We answer that there are no two ways of it. There is only one way in
which Communism can be established equitably, only one way which
satisfies our instincts of justice and is at the same time practical,
namely, the system already adopted by the agrarian communes of Europe.
Take for example a peasant commune, no matter where, even in France,
where the Jacobins have, done their best to destroy all communal usage.
If the commune possesses woods and copses, then, so long as there is
plenty of wood for all, every one can take as much as he wants, without
other let or hindrance than the public opinion of his neighbours. As to
the timber-trees, which are always scarce, they have to be carefully
apportioned.
The same with the communal pasture land; while there is enough and to
spare, no limit is put to what the cattle of each homestead may consume,
nor to the number of beasts grazing upon the pastures. Grazing grounds
are not divided, nor is fodder doled out, unless there is scarcity. All
the Swiss communes, and many of those in France and Germany too,
wherever there is communal pasture land, practice this system.
And in the countries of Eastern Europe, where there are great forests
and no scarcity of land, you find the peasants felling the trees as they
need them, and cultivating as much of the soil as they require, without
any thought of limiting each man’s share of timber or of land. But the
timber will be divided, and the land parcelled out, to each household
according to its needs, as soon as either becomes scarce, as is already
the case in Russia.
In a word, the system is this: no stint or limit to what the community
possesses in abundance, but equal sharing and dividing of those
commodities which are scarce or apt to run short. Of the three hundred
and fifty millions who inhabit Europe, two hundred millions still follow
this system of natural Communism.
It is a fact worth remarking that the same system prevails in the great
towns in the distribution of one commodity at least, which is found in
abundance, the water supplied to each house.
As long as there is no fear of the supply running short, no water
company thinks of checking the consumption of water in each house. Take
what you please! But during the great droughts, if there is any fear of
supply failing, the water companies know that all they have to do is to
make known the fact, by means of a short advertisement in the papers,
and the citizens will reduce their consumption of water and not let it
run to waste.
But if water were actually scarce, what would be done? Recourse would be
had to a system of rations. Such a measure is so natural, so inherent in
common sense, that Paris twice asked to be put on rations during the two
sieges which it underwent in 1871.
Is it necessary to go into details, to prepare tables showing how the
distribution of rations may work, to prove that it is just and
equitable, infinitely more just and equitable than the existing state of
things? All these tables and details will not serve to convince those of
the middle classes, nor, alas, those of the workers tainted with
middle-class prejudices, who regard the people as a mob of savages ready
to fall upon and devour each other, directly the Government ceases to
direct affairs. But those only who have never seen the people resolve
and act on their own initiative could doubt for a moment that if the
masses were masters of the situation, they would distribute rations to
each and all in strictest accordance with justice and equity.
If you were to give utterance, in any gathering of people, to the
opinion that delicacies — game and such-like — should be reserved for
the fastidious palates of aristocratic idlers, and black bread given to
the sick in the hospitals, you would be hissed. But say at the same
gathering, preach at the street corners and in the market places, that
the most tempting delicacies ought to be kept for the sick and feeble —
especially for the sick. Say that if there are only five brace of
partridge in the entire city, and only one case of sherry wine, they
should go to sick people and convalescents. Say that after the sick come
the children. For them the milk of the cows and goats should be reserved
if there is not enough for all. To the children and the aged the last
piece of meat, and to the strong man dry bread, if the community be
reduced to that extremity.
Say, in a word, that if this or that article of consumption runs short,
and has to be doled out, to those who have most need most should be
given. Say that and see if you do not meet with universal agreement.
The man who is full-fed does not understand this, but the people do
understand, have always understood it; and even the child of luxury, if
he is thrown on the street and comes into contact with the masses, even
he will learn to understand.
The theorists — for whom the soldier’s uniform and the barrack mess
table are civilization’s last word — would like no doubt to start a
regime of National Kitchens and “Spartan Broth.” They would point out
the advantages thereby gained, the economy in fuel and food, if such
huge kitchens were established, where every one could come for their
rations of soup and bread and vegetables.
We do not question these advantages. We are well aware that important
economies have already been achieved in this direction — as, for
instance, when the handmill, or quern, and the baker’s oven attached to
each house were abandoned. We can see perfectly well that it would be
more economical to cook broth for a hundred families at once, instead of
lighting a hundred separate fires. We know, besides, that there are a
thousand ways of doing up potatoes, but that cooked in one huge pot for
a hundred families they would be just as good.
We know, in fact, that variety in cooking being a matter of the
seasoning introduced by each cook or housewife, the cooking together of
a hundred weight of potatoes would not prevent each cook or housewife
from dressing and serving them in any way she pleased. And we know that
stock made from meat can be converted into a hundred different soups to
suit a hundred different tastes.
But though we are quite aware of all these facts, we still maintain that
no one has a right to force the housewife to take her potatoes from the
communal kitchen ready cooked if she prefers to cook them herself in her
own pot on her own fire. And, above all, we should wish each one to be
free to take his meals with his family, or with his friends, or even in
a restaurant, if so it seemed good to him.
Naturally large public kitchens will spring up to take the place of the
restaurants, where people are poisoned nowadays. Already the Parisian
housewife gets the stock for her soup from the butcher and transforms it
into whatever soup she likes, and London housekeepers know that they can
have a joint roasted, or an apple or rhubarb tart baked at the baker’s
for a trifling sum, thus economizing time and fuel. And when the
communal kitchen — the common bakehouse of the future — is established,
and people can get their food cooked without the risk of being cheated
or poisoned, the custom will no doubt become general of going to the
communal kitchen for the fundamental parts of the meal, leaving the last
touches to be added as individual taste shall suggest.
But to make a hard and fast rule of this, to make a duty of taking home
our food ready cooked, that would be as repugnant to our modern minds as
the ideas of the convent or the barrack — morbid ideas born in brains
warped by tyranny or superstition.
Who will have a right to the food of the commune? will assuredly be the
first question which we shall have to ask ourselves. Every township will
answer for itself, and we are convinced that the answers will all be
dictated by the sentiment of justice. Until labour is reorganized, as
long as the disturbed period lasts, and while it is impossible to
distinguish between inveterate idlers and genuine workers thrown out of
work, the available food ought to be shared by all without exception.
Those who have been enemies to the new order will hasten of their own
accord to rid the commune of their presence. But it seems to us that the
masses of the people, which have always been magnanimous, and have
nothing of vindictiveness in their disposition, will be ready to share
their bread with all who remain with them, conquered and conquerors
alike. It will be no loss to the Revolution to be inspired by such an
idea, and, when work is set agoing again, the antagonists of yesterday
will stand side by side in the same workshops. A society where work is
free will have nothing to fear from idlers.
“But provisions will run short in a month!” our critics at once exclaim.
“So much the better,” say we. It will prove that for the first time on
record the people have had enough to eat. As to the question of
obtaining fresh supplies, we shall discuss the means in our next
chapter.
By what means could a city in a state of revolution be supplied with
food? We shall answer this question, but it is obvious that the means
resorted to will depend on the character of the Revolution in the
provinces, and in neighbouring countries. If the entire nation, or,
better still, if all Europe should accomplish the Social Revolution
simultaneously, and start with thorough-going Communism, our procedure
would be simplified; but if only a few communities in Europe make the
attempt, other means will have to be chosen. The circumstances will
dictate the measures.
We are thus led, before we proceed further, to glance at the state of
Europe, and, without pretending to prophesy, we may try to foresee what
course the Revolution will take, or at least what will be its essential
features.
Certainly it would be very desirable that all Europe should rise at
once, that expropriation should be general, and that communistic
principles should inspire all and sundry. Such a universal rising would
do much to simplify the task of our century.
But all the signs lead us to believe that it will not take place. That
the Revolution will embrace Europe we do not doubt. If one of the four
great continental capitals — Paris, Vienna, Brussels, or Berlin — rises
in revolution and overturns its Government, it is almost certain that
the three others will follow its example within a few weeks’ time. It
is, moreover, highly probable that the Peninsulas and even London and
St. Petersburg would not be long in following suit. But whether the
Revolution would everywhere exhibit the same characteristics is
doubtful.
Though it is more than probable that expropriation will be everywhere
carried into effect on a larger or smaller scale, and that this policy
carried out by any one of the great nations of Europe will influence all
the rest; yet the beginnings of the Revolution will exhibit great local
differences, and its course will vary in different countries. In
1789–93, the French peasantry took four years to finally rid themselves
of the redemption of feudal rights, and the bourgeois to overthrow
royalty. Let us keep that in mind, therefore, and be prepared to see the
Revolution develop itself somewhat gradually. Let us not be disheartened
if here and there its steps should move less rapidly. Whether it would
take an avowedly socialist character in all European nations, at any
rate at the beginning, is doubtful. Germany, be it remembered, is still
realizing its dream of a United Empire. Its advanced parties see visions
of a Jacobin Republic like that of 1848, and of the organization of
labour according to Louis Blanc; while the French people, on the other
hand, want above all things a free Commune, whether it be a communist
Commune or not.
There is every reason to believe that, when the coming Revolution takes
place, Germany will go further than France went in 1793. The eighteenth
century Revolution in France was an advance on the English Revolution of
the seventeenth, abolishing as it did at one stroke the power of the
throne and the landed aristocracy, whose influence still survives in
England. But, if Germany goes further and does greater things than
France did in 1793, there can be no doubt that the ideas which will
foster the birth of her Revolution will be those of 1848, as the ideas
which will inspire the Revolution in Russia will be those of 1789,
modified somewhat by the intellectual movements of our own century.
Without, however, attaching to these forecast a greater importance than
they merit, we may safely conclude this much: the Revolution will take a
different character in each of the different European nations; the point
attained in the socialization of wealth will not be everywhere the same.
Will it therefore be necessary, as is sometimes suggested, that the
nations in the vanguard of the movement should adapt their pace to those
who lag behind? Must we wait till the Communist Revolution is ripe in
all civilized countries? Clearly not! Even if it were a thing to be
desired it is not possible. History does not wait for the laggards.
Besides, we do not believe that in any one country the Revolution will
be accomplished at a stroke, in the twinkling of an eye, as some
socialists dream. It is highly probable that if one of the five or six
large towns of France — Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Lille, Saint-Etienne,
Bordeaux — were to proclaim the Commune, the others would follow its
example, and that many, smaller towns would do the same. Probably also
various mining districts and industrial centres would hasten to rid
themselves of “owners” and “masters,” and form themselves into free
groups.
But many country places have not advanced to that point. Side by side
with the revolutionized communes such places would remain in an
expectant attitude, and would go on living on the Individualist system.
Undisturbed by visits of the bailiff or the tax-collector, the peasants
would not be hostile to the revolutionaries, and thus, while profiting
by the new state of affairs they would defer the settlement of accounts
with the local exploiters: But with that practical enthusiasm which
always characterizes agrarian uprisings (witness the passionate toil of
1792) they would throw themselves into the task of cultivating the land,
which, freed from taxes and mortgages, would become so much dearer to
them.
As to abroad, revolution would break out every where, but revolution
under divers aspects, in one country State Socialism, in another
Federation; everywhere more or less Socialism, not conforming to any
particular rule.
Let us now return to our city in revolt, and consider how its citizens
can provide foodstuffs for themselves. How are the necessary provisions
to be obtained if the nation as a whole has not accepted Communism? This
is the question to be solved. Take, for example, one of the large French
towns — take the capital itself, for that matter. Paris consumes every
year thousands of tons of grain, 350,000 head of oxen, 200,000 calves,
300,000 swine, and more than two millions of sheep, besides great
quantities of game. This huge city devours, besides, 18 million pounds
of butter, 172 million eggs, and other produce in like proportion.
It imports flour and grain from the United States and from Russia,
Hungary, Italy, Egypt, and the Indies; live stock from Germany, Italy,
Spain — even Roumania and Russia; and as for groceries, there is not a
country in the world that it does not lay under contribution. Now, let
us see how Paris or any other great town could be revictualled by
home-grown produce, supplies of which could be readily and willingly
sent in from the provinces.
To those who put their trust in “authority” the question will appear
quite simple. They would begin by establishing a strongly centralized
Government, furnished with all the machinery of coercion — the police,
the army, the guillotine. This Government would draw up a statement of
all the produce contained in France. It would divide the country into
districts of supply, and then command that a prescribed quantity of some
particular foodstuff be sent to such a place on such a day, and
delivered at such a station, to be there received on a given day by a
specified official and stored in particular warehouses.
Now, we declare with the fullest conviction, not merely that such a
solution is undesirable, but that it never could by any possibility be
put into practice. It is wildly Utopian!
Pen in hand, one may dream such a dream in the study, but in contact
with reality it comes to nothing; for, like all such theories, it leaves
out of account the spirit of independence that is in man. The attempt
would lead to a universal uprising, to three or four Vendées, to the
villages rising against the towns, all the country up in arms defying
the city for its arrogance in attempting to impose such a system upon
the country.
We have already had too much of Jacobin Utopias! Let us see if some
other form of organization will meet the case.
In 1793 the provinces starved the large towns, and killed the
Revolution. And yet it is a known fact that the production of grain in
France during 1792–93 had not diminished; indeed the evidence goes to
show that it had increased. But after having taken possession of the
manorial lands, after having reaped a harvest from them, the peasants
would not part with their grain for paper-money. They withheld their
produce, waiting for a rise in the price, or the introduction of gold.
The most rigorous measures of the National Convention were without
avail, and even the fear of death failed to break up the ring, or force
its members to sell their corn. For it is matter of history that the
commissaries of the Convention did not scruple to guillotine those who
withheld their grain from the market, and pitilessly executed those who
speculated in foodstuffs. All the same, the corn was not forthcoming,
and the townsfolk suffered from famine.
But what was offered to the husbandman in exchange for his hard toil?
Assignats, scraps of paper decreasing in value every day, promises of
payment, which could not be kept. A forty-pound note would not purchase
a pair of boots, and the peasant, very naturally, was not anxious to
barter a year’s toil for a piece of paper with which he could not even
buy a shirt.
As long as worthless paper money — whether called assignats or labour
notes — is offered to the peasant-producer it will always be the same.
The country will withhold its produce, and the towns will suffer want,
even if the recalcitrant peasants are guillotined as before.
We must offer to the peasant in exchange for his toil not worthless
paper money, but the manufactured articles of which he stands in
immediate need. He lacks the proper implements to till the land, clothes
to protect him properly from the inclemencies of the weather, lamps and
oil to replace his miserable rushlight or tallow dip, spades, rakes,
ploughs. All these things, under present conditions, the peasant is
forced to do without, not because he does not feel the need of them, but
because, in his life of struggle and privation, a thousand useful things
are beyond his reach; because he has no money to buy them.
Let the town apply itself, without loss of time, to manufacturing all
that the peasant needs, instead of fashioning gewgaws for the wives of
rich citizens. Let the sewing machines of Paris be set to work on
clothes for the country-folk: workaday clothes and clothes for Sunday
too, instead of costly evening dresses. Let the factories and foundries
turn out agricultural implements, spades, rakes, and such-like, instead
of waiting till the English send them to France, in exchange for French
wines!
Let the towns send no more inspectors to the villages, wearing red,
blue, or rainbow-coloured scarves, to convey to the peasant orders to
take his produce to this place or that, but let them send friendly
embassies to the country-folk and bid them in brotherly fashion: “Bring
us your produce, and take from our stores and shops all the manufactured
articles you please.” Then provisions would pour in on every side. The
peasant would only withhold what he needed for his own use, and would
send the rest into the cities, feeling for the first time in the course
of history that these toiling townsfolk were his comrades — his
brethren, and not his exploiters.
We shall be told, perhaps, that this would necessitate a complete
transformation of industry. Well, yes, that is true of certain
departments; but there are other branches which could be rapidly
modified in such a way as to furnish the peasant with clothes, watches,
furniture, and the simple implements for which the towns make him pay
such exorbitant prices at the present time. Weavers, tailors,
shoemakers, tinsmiths, cabinet-makers, and many other trades and crafts
could easily direct their energies to the manufacture of useful and
necessary articles, and abstain from producing mere luxuries. All that
is needed is that the public mind should be thoroughly convinced of the
necessity of this transformation, and should come to look upon it as an
act of justice and of progress, and that it should no longer allow
itself to be cheated by that dream, so dear to the theorists — the dream
of a revolution which confines itself to taking possession of the
profits of industry, and leaves production and commerce just as they are
now.
This, then, is our view of the whole question. Cheat the peasant no
longer with scraps of paper — be the sums inscribed upon them ever so
large; but offer him in exchange for his produce the very things of
which he, the tiller of the soil, stands in need. Then the fruits of the
land will be poured into the towns. If this is not done there will be
famine in our cities, and reaction and despair will follow in its train.
All the great towns, we have said, buy their grain, their flour, and
their meat, not only from the provinces, but also from abroad. Foreign
countries send Paris spices, fish, and various dainties, besides immense
quantities of corn and meat.
But when the Revolution comes we must depend on foreign countries as
little as possible. If Russian wheat, Italian or Indian rice, and
Spanish or Hungarian wines abound in the markets of western Europe, it
is not that the countries which export them have a superabundance, or
that such a produce grows there of itself, like the dandelion in the
meadows. In Russia, for instance, the peasant works sixteen hours a day,
and half starves from three to six months every year, in order to export
the grain with which he pays the landlord and the State. To-day the
police appears in the Russian village as soon as the harvest is gathered
in, and sells the peasant’s last horse and last cow for arrears of taxes
and rent due to the landlord, unless the victim immolates himself of his
own accord by selling the grain to the exporters. Usually, rather than
part with his live stock at a disadvantage, he keeps only a nine months’
supply of grain, and sells the rest. Then, in order to sustain life
until the next harvest, he mixes birch-bark and tares with his flour for
three months, if it has been a good year, and for six if it has been
bad, while in London they are eating biscuits made of his wheat.
But as soon as the Revolution comes, the Russian peasant will keep bread
enough for himself and his children; the Italian and Hungarian peasants
will do the same; and the Hindoo, let us hope, will profit by these good
examples; and the farmers of America will hardly be able to cover all
the deficit in grain which Europe will experience. So it will not do to
count on their contributions of wheat and maize satisfying all the
wants.
Since all our middle-class civilization is based on the exploitation of
inferior races and countries with less advanced industrial systems, the
Revolution will confer a boon at the very outset, by menacing that
“civilization,” and allowing the so-called inferior races to free
themselves.
But this great benefit will manifest itself by a steady and marked
diminution of the food supplies pouring into the great cities of western
Europe.
It is difficult to predict the course of affairs in the provinces. On
the one hand the slave of the soil will take advantage of the Revolution
to straighten his bowed back. Instead of working fourteen or fifteen
hours a day, as he does at present, he will be at liberty to work only
half that time, which of course would have the effect of decreasing the
production of the principal articles of consumption — grain and meat.
But, on the other hand, there will be an increase of production as soon
as the peasant realizes that he is no longer forced to support the idle
rich by his toil. New tracts of land will be cleared, new and improved
machines set a-going.
“Never was the land so energetically cultivated as in 1792, when the
peasant had taken back from the landlord the soil which he had coveted
so long,” Michelet tells us, speaking of the Great Revolution.
Before long, intensive culture would be within the reach of all.
Improved machinery, chemical manures, and all such matters would be
common property. But everything tends to indicate that at the outset
there would be a falling off in agricultural products, in France as
elsewhere.
In any case it would be wisest to count upon such a falling off of
contributions from the provinces as well as from abroad.
And how is this falling off to be made good? Why, in heaven’s name, by
setting to work ourselves! No need to rack our brains for far-fetched
panaceas when the remedy lies close at hand!
The large towns must undertake to till the soil, like the country
districts. We must return to what biology calls “the integration of
functions” — after the division of labour the taking up of it as a whole
— this is the course followed throughout Nature.
Besides, philosophy apart, the force of circumstances would bring about
this result. Let Paris see that at the end of eight months it will be
running short of bread, and Paris will set to work to grow wheat.
“What about land?” It will not be wanting, for it is round the great
towns, and round Paris especially, that the parks and pleasure grounds
of the landed gentry are to be found. These thousands of acres only
await the skilled labour of the husbandman to surround Paris with fields
infinitely more fertile and productive than the steppes of southern
Russia, where the soil is dried up by the sun. Nor will labour be
lacking. To what should the two million citizens of Paris turn their
attention when they would be no longer catering for the luxurious fads
and amusements of Russian princes, Roumanian grandees, and wives of
Berlin financiers?
With all the mechanical inventions of the century; with all the
intelligence and technical skill of the worker accustomed to deal with
complicated machinery; with inventors, chemists, professors of botany,
practical botanists like the market gardeners of Gennevilliers; with all
the plant that they could use for multiplying and improving machinery,
and, finally, with the organizing spirit of the Parisian people, their
pluck and energy — with all these at its command, the agriculture of the
anarchist Commune of Paris would be a very different thing from the rude
husbandry of the Ardennes.
Steam, electricity, the heat of the sun, and the breath of the wind,
will ere long be pressed into service. The steam harrow and the steam
plough will quickly do the rough work of preparation, and the soil, thus
cleaned and enriched, will only need the intelligent care of man, and of
woman even more than man, to be clothed with luxuriant vegetation — not
once but three or four times in the year.
Thus, learning the art of horticulture from experts, and trying
experiments in different methods on small patches of soil reserved for
the purpose, vying with each other to obtain the best returns, finding
in physical exercise, without exhaustion or overwork, the health and
strength which so often flags in cities, — men, women, and children will
gladly turn to the labour of the fields, when it is no longer a slavish
drudgery, but has become pleasure, a festival, a renewal of health and
joy.
“There are no barren lands; the earth is worth what man is worth” — that
is the last word of modern agriculture. Ask of the earth and she will
give you bread, provided that you ask aright.
A district, though it were as small as the departments of the Seine and
the Seine-et-Oise, and with so great a city as Paris to feed, would be
practically sufficient to grow upon it all the food supplies, which
otherwise might fail to reach it.
The combination of agriculture and industry, the husbandman and the
mechanic in the same individual — this is what anarchist communism will
inevitably lead us to, if it starts fair with expropriation.
Let the Revolution only get so far, and famine is not the enemy it will
have to fear. No, the danger which will menace it lies in timidity,
prejudice, and half-measures. The danger is where Danton saw it when he
cried to France: “Dare, dare, and yet again, dare!” The bold thought
first, and the bold deed will not fail to follow.
Those who have closely watched the growth of certain ideas among the
workers must have noticed that on one momentous question — the housing
of the people, namely — a definite conclusion is being imperceptibly
arrived at. It is a known fact that in the large towns of France, and in
many of the smaller ones also, the workers are coming gradually to the
conclusion that dwelling-houses are in no sense the property of those
whom the State recognizes as their owners.
This idea has evolved naturally in the minds of the people, and nothing
will ever convince them again that the “rights of property” ought to
extend to houses.
The house was not built by its owner. It was erected, decorated, and
furnished by innumerable workers — in the timber yard, the brick field,
and the workshop, toiling for dear life at a minimum wage.
The money spent by the owner was not the product of his own toil. It was
amassed, like all other riches, by paying the workers two-thirds or only
a half of what was their due.
Moreover — and it is here that the enormity of the whole proceeding
becomes most glaring — the house owes its actual value to the profit
which the owner can make out of it. Now, this profit results from the
fact that his house is built in a town possessing bridges, quays, and
fine public buildings, and affording to its inhabitants a thousand
comforts and conveniences unknown in villages; a town well paved,
lighted with gas, in regular communication with other towns, and itself
a centre of industry, commerce, science, and art; a town which the work
of twenty or thirty generations has gone to render habitable, healthy,
and beautiful.
A house in certain parts of Paris may be valued at thousands of pounds
sterling, not because thousands of pounds’ worth of labour have been
expended on that particular house, but because it is in Paris; because
for centuries workmen, artists, thinkers, and men of learning and
letters have contributed to make Paris what it is to-day — a centre of
industry, commerce, politics, art, and science; because Paris has a
past; because, thanks to literature, the names of its streets are
household words in foreign countries as well as at home; because it is
the fruit of eighteen centuries of toil, the work of fifty generations
of the whole French nation.
Who, then, can appropriate to himself the tiniest plot of ground, or the
meanest building, without committing a flagrant injustice? Who, then,
has the right to sell to any bidder the smallest portion of the common
heritage?
On that point, as we have said, the workers are agreed. The idea of free
dwellings showed its existence very plainly during the siege of Paris,
when the cry was for an abatement pure and simple of the terms demanded
by the landlords. It appeared again during the Commune of 1871, when the
Paris workmen expected the Communal Council to decide boldly on the
abolition of rent. And when the New Revolution comes, it will be the
first question with which the poor will concern themselves.
Whether in time of revolution or in time of peace, the worker must be
housed somehow or other; he must have some sort of roof over his head.
But, however tumble-down and squalid your dwelling may be, there is
always a landlord who can evict you. True, during the Revolution he
cannot find bailiffs and police-serjeants to throw your rags and
chattels into the street, but who knows what the new Government will do
to-morrow? Who can say that it will not call in the aid of force again,
and set the police pack upon you to hound you out of your hovels? We
have seen the Commune proclaim the remission of rents due up to the
first of April only![5] After that rent had to be paid, though Paris was
in a state of chaos, and industry at a standstill; so that the
revolutionist had absolutely nothing to depend upon but his allowance of
fifteen pence a day!
Now the worker must be made to see clearly that in refusing to pay rent
to a landlord or owner he is not simply profiting by the disorganization
of authority. He must understand that the abolition of rent is a
recognized principle, sanctioned, so to speak, by popular assent; that
to be housed rent-free is a right proclaimed aloud by the people.
Are we going to wait till this measure, which is in harmony with every
honest man’s sense of justice, is taken up by the few socialists
scattered among the middle-class elements, of which the Provisionary
Government will be composed? We should have to wait long — till the
return of reaction, in fact!
This is why, refusing uniforms and badges — those outward signs of
authority and servitude — and remaining people among the people, the
earnest revolutionists will work side by side with the masses, that the
abolition of rent, the expropriation of houses, may become an
accomplished fact. They will prepare the ground and encourage ideas to
grow in this direction; and when the fruit of their labours is ripe, the
people will proceed to expropriate the houses without giving heed to the
theories which will certainly be thrust in their way — theories about
paying compensation to landlords, and finding first the necessary funds.
On the day that the expropriation of houses takes place, on that day,
the exploited workers will have realized that the new times have come,
that Labour will no longer have to bear the yoke of the rich and
powerful, that Equality has been openly proclaimed, that this Revolution
is a real fact, and not a theatrical make-believe, like so many others
preceding it.
If the idea of expropriation be adopted by the people it will be carried
into effect in spite of all the “insurmountable” obstacles with which we
are menaced.
Of course, the good folk in new uniforms, seated in the official
arm-chairs of the Hôtel de Ville, will be sure to busy themselves in
heaping up obstacles. They will talk of giving compensation to the
landlords, of preparing statistics, and drawing up long reports. Yes,
they would be capable of drawing up reports long enough to outlast the
hopes of the people, who, after waiting and starving in enforced
idleness, and seeing nothing come of all these official researches,
would lose heart and faith in the Revolution and abandon the field to
the reactionaries. The new bureaucracy would end by making expropriation
hateful in the eyes of all.
Here, indeed, is a rock which might shipwreck our hopes. But if the
people turn a deaf ear to the specious arguments used to dazzle them,
and realize that new life needs new conditions, and if they undertake
the task themselves, then expropriation can be effected without any
great difficulty.
“But how? How can it be done?” you ask us. We shall try to reply to this
question, but with a reservation. We have no intention of tracing out
the plans of expropriation in their smallest details. We know beforehand
that all that any man, or group of men, could suggest to-day would be
far surpassed by the reality when it comes. Man will accomplish greater
things, and accomplish them better and by simpler methods than those
dictated to him beforehand. Thus we are content to indicate the manner
by which expropriation might be accomplished without the intervention of
Government. We do not propose to go out of our way to answer those who
declare that the thing is impossible. We confine ourselves to replying
that we are not the upholders of any particular method of organization.
We are only concerned to demonstrate that expropriation could be
effected by popular initiative, and could not be effected by any other
means whatever.
It seems very likely that, as soon as expropriation is fairly started,
groups of volunteers will spring up in every district, street, and block
of houses, and undertake to inquire into the number of flats and houses
which are empty and of those which are overcrowded, the unwholesome
slums and the houses which are too spacious for their occupants and
might well be used to house those who are stifled in swarming tenements.
In a few days these volunteers would have drawn up complete lists for
the street and the district of all the flats, tenements, family mansions
and villa residences, all the rooms and suites of rooms, healthy and
unhealthy, small and large, foetid dens and homes of luxury.
Freely communicating with each other, these volunteers would soon have
their statistics complete. False statistics can be manufactured in board
rooms and offices, but true and exact statistics must begin with the
individual and mount up from the simple to the complex.
Then, without waiting for any one’s leave, those citizens will probably
go and find their comrades who were living in miserable garrets and
hovels and will say to them simply: “It is a real Revolution this time,
comrades, and no mistake about it. Come to such a place this evening;
all the neighbourhood will be there; we are going to redistribute the
dwelling-houses. If you are tired of your slum-garret, come and choose
one of the flats of five rooms that are to be disposed of, and when you
have once moved in you shall stay, never fear. The people are up in
arms, and he who would venture to evict you will have to answer to
them.”
“But every one will want a fine house or a spacious flat!” we are told.
No, you are mistaken. It is not the people’s way to clamour for the
moon. On the contrary, every time we have seen them set about repairing
a wrong we have been struck by the good sense and instinct for justice
which animates the masses. Have we ever known them demand the
impossible? Have we ever seen the people of Paris fighting among
themselves while waiting for their rations of bread or firewood during
the two sieges? The patience and resignation which prevailed among them
was constantly held up to admiration by the foreign press
correspondents; and yet these patient waiters knew full well that the
last comers would have to pass the day without food or fire.
We do not deny that there are plenty of egotistic instincts in isolated
individuals in our societies. We are quite aware of it. But we contend
that the very way to revive and nourish these instincts would be to
confine such questions as the housing of the people to any board or
committee, in fact, to the tender mercies of officialism in any shape or
form. Then indeed all the evil passions spring up, and it becomes a case
of who is the most influential person on the board. The least inequality
causes wranglings and recriminations. If the smallest advantage is given
to any one, a tremendous hue and cry is raised — and not without reason.
But if the people themselves, organized by streets, districts, and
parishes, undertake to move the inhabitants of the slums into the
half-empty dwellings of the middle classes, the trifling inconveniences,
the little inequalities will be easily tided over. Rarely has appeal
been made to the good instincts of the masses — only as a last resort,
to save the sinking ship in times of revolution — but never has such an
appeal been made in vain; the heroism, the self-devotion of the toiler
has never failed to respond to it. And thus it will be in the coming
Revolution.
But, when all is said and done, some inequalities, some inevitable
injustices, will remain. There are individuals in our societies whom no
great crisis can lift out of the deep ruts of egoism in which they are
sunk. The question, however, is not whether there will be injustices or
no, but rather how to limit the number of them.
Now all history, all the experience of the human race, and all social
psychology, unite in showing that the best and fairest way is to trust
the decision to those whom it concerns most nearly. It is they alone who
can consider and allow for the hundred and one details which must
necessarily be overlooked in any merely official redistribution.
Moreover, it is by no means necessary to make straightway an absolutely
equal redistribution of all the dwellings. There will no doubt be some
inconveniences at first, but matters will soon be righted in a society
which has adopted expropriation.
When the masons, and carpenters, and all who are concerned in house
building, know that their daily bread is secured to them, they will ask
nothing better than to work at their old trades a few hours a day. They
will adapt the fine houses which absorbed the time of a whole staff of
servants, and in a few months homes will have sprung up, infinitely
healthier and more conveniently arranged than those of to-day. And to
those who are not yet comfortably housed the anarchist Commune will be
able to say: “Patience, comrades! Palaces fairer and finer than any the
capitalists built for themselves will spring from the ground of our
enfranchised city. They will belong to those who have most need of them.
The anarchist Commune does not build with an eye to revenues. These
monuments erected to its citizens, products of the collective spirit,
will serve as models to all humanity; they will be yours.”
If the people of the Revolution expropriate the houses and proclaim free
lodgings — the communalizing of houses and the right of each family to a
decent dwelling — then the Revolution will have assumed a communistic
character from the first, and started on a course from which it will be
by no means easy to turn it. It will have struck a fatal blow at
individual property.
For the expropriation of dwellings contains in germ the whole social
revolution. On the manner of its accomplishment depends the character of
all that follows. Either we shall start on a good road leading straight
to anarchist communism, or we shall remain sticking in the mud of
despotic individualism.
It is easy to see the numerous objections — theoretic on the one hand,
practical on the other — with which we are sure to be met. As it will be
a question of maintaining iniquity at any price, our opponents will of
course protest “in the name of justice.” “Is it not a crying shame,”
they will exclaim, “that the people of Paris should take possession of
all these fine houses, while the peasants in the country have only
tumble-down huts to live in?” But do not let us make a mistake. These
enthusiasts for justice forget, by a lapse of memory to which they are
subject, the “crying shame” which they themselves are tacitly defending.
They forget that in this same city the worker, with his wife and
children, suffocates in a noisome garret, while from his window he sees
the rich man’s palace. They forget that whole generations perish in
crowded slums, starving for air and sunlight, and that to redress this
injustice ought to be the first task of the Revolution.
Do not let these disingenuous protests hold us back. We know that any
inequality which may exist between town and country in the early days of
the Revolution will be transitory and of a nature to right itself from
day to day; for the village will not fail to improve its dwellings as
soon as the peasant has ceased to be the beast of burden of the farmer,
the merchant, the money-lender, and the State. In order to avoid an
accidental and transitory inequality, shall we stay our hand from
righting an ancient wrong?
The so-called practical objections are not very formidable either. We
are bidden to consider the hard case of some poor fellow who by dint of
privation has contrived to buy a house just large enough to hold his
family. And we are going to deprive him of his hard-earned happiness, to
turn him into the street! Certainly not. If his house is only just large
enough for his family, by all means let him stay there. Let him work in
his little garden too; our “boys” will not hinder him — nay, they will
lend him a helping hand if need be. But suppose he lets lodgings,
suppose he has empty rooms in his house; then the people will make the
lodger understand that he need not pay his former landlord any more
rent. Stay where you are, but rent free. No more duns and collectors;
Socialism has abolished all that!
Or again, suppose that the landlord has a score of rooms all to himself,
and some poor woman lives near by with five children in one room. In
that case the people would see whether, with some alterations, these
empty rooms could not be converted into a suitable home for the poor
woman and her five children. Would not that be more just and fair than
to leave the mother and her five little ones languishing in a garret,
while Sir Gorgeous Midas sat at his ease in an empty mansion? Besides,
good Sir Gorgeous would probably hasten to do it of his own accord; his
wife will be delighted to be freed from half her big, unwieldy house
when there is no longer a staff of servants to keep it in order.
“So you are going to turn everything upside down.” say the defenders of
law and order. “There will be no end to the evictions and removals.
Would it not be better to start fresh by turning everybody out of doors
and redistributing the houses by lot?” Thus our critics; but we are
firmly persuaded that if no Government interferes in the matter, if all
the changes are entrusted to those free groups which have sprung up to
undertake the work, the evictions and removals will be less numerous
than those which take place in one year under the present system, owing
to the rapacity of landlords.
In the first place, there are in all large towns almost enough empty
houses and flats to lodge all the inhabitants of the slums. As to the
palaces and suites of fine apartments, many working people would not
live in them if they could. One could not “keep up” such houses without
a large staff of servants. Their occupants would soon find themselves
forced to seek less luxurious dwellings. The fine ladies would find that
palaces were not well adapted to self-help in the kitchen. Gradually
people would shake down. There would be no need to conduct Dives to a
garret at the bayonet’s point, or install Lazarus in Dives’s palace by
the help of an armed escort. People would shake down amicably into the
available dwellings with the least possible friction and disturbance.
Have we not the example of the village communes redistributing fields
and disturbing the owners of the allotments so little that one can only
praise the intelligence and good sense of the methods they employ. Fewer
fields change hands under the management of the Russian Commune than
where personal property holds sway, and is for ever carrying its
quarrels into courts of law. And are we to believe that the inhabitants
of a great European city would be less intelligent and less capable of
organization than Russian or Hindoo peasants?
Moreover, we must not blink the fact that every revolution means a
certain disturbance to everyday life, and those who expect this
tremendous lift out of the old grooves to be accomplished without so
much as jarring the dishes on their dinner tables will find themselves
mistaken. It is true that Governments can change without disturbing
worthy citizens at dinner, but the crimes of society towards those who
have nourished and supported it are not to be redressed by any such
political sleight of parties.
Undoubtedly there will be a disturbance, but it must not be of pure
destruction; it must be minimized. And again — it is impossible to lay
too much stress on this maxim — it will be by addressing ourselves to
the interested parties, and not to boards and committees, that we shall
best succeed in reducing the sum of inconveniences for everybody.
The people commit blunder on blunder when they have to choose by ballot
some hare-brained candidate who solicits the honour of representing
them, and takes upon himself to know all, to do all, and to organize
all. But when they take upon themselves to organize what they know, what
touches them directly, they do it better than all the “talking-shops”
put together. Is not the Paris Commune an instance in point? and the
great dockers’ strike? and have we not constant evidence of this fact in
every village commune?
When the houses have become the common heritage of the citizens, and
when each man has his daily supply of food, another forward step will
have to be taken. The question of clothing will of course demand
consideration next, and again the only possible solution will be to take
possession, in the name of the people, of all the shops and warehouses
where clothing is sold or stored, and to throw open the doors to all, so
that each can take what he needs. The communalization of clothing — the
right of each to take what he needs from the communal stores, or to have
it made for him at the tailors and outfitters — is a necessary corollary
of the communalization of houses and food.
Obviously we shall not need for that to despoil all citizens of their
coats, to put all the garments in a heap and draw lots for them, as our
critics, with equal wit and ingenuity, suggest. Let him who has a coat
keep it still — nay, if he have ten coats it is highly improbable that
any one will want to deprive him of them, for most folk would prefer a
new coat to one that has already graced the shoulders of some fat
bourgeois; and there will be enough new garments and to spare, without
having recourse to second-hand wardrobes.
If we were to take an inventory of all the clothes and stuff for
clothing accumulated in the shops and stores of the large towns, we
should find probably that in Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux, and Marseilles,
there was enough to enable the commune to offer garments to all the
citizens, of both sexes; and if all were not suited at once, the
communal outfitters would soon make good these shortcomings. We know how
rapidly our great tailoring and dressmaking establishments work
nowadays, provided as they are with machinery specially adapted for
production on a large scale.
“But every one will want a sable-lined coat or a velvet gown!” exclaim
our adversaries.
Frankly, we do not believe it. Every woman does not dote on velvet, nor
does every man dream of sable linings. Even now, if we were to ask each
woman to choose her gown, we should find some to prefer a simple,
practical garment to all the fantastic trimmings the fashionable world
affects.
Tastes change with the times, and the fashion in vogue at the time of
the Revolution will certainly make for simplicity. Societies, like
individuals, have their hours of cowardice, but also their heroic
moments; and though the society of to-day cuts a very poor figure sunk
in the pursuit of narrow personal interests and second-rate ideas, it
wears a different air when great crises come. It has its moments of
greatness and enthusiasm. Men of generous nature will gain the power
which to-day is in the hand of jobbers. Self-devotion will spring up,
and noble deeds beget their like; even the egotists will be ashamed of
hanging back, and will be drawn in spite of themselves to admire, if not
to imitate, the generous and brave.
The great Revolution of 1793 abounds in examples of this kind, and it is
ever during such times of spiritual revival — as natural to societies as
to individuals — that the spring-tide of enthusiasm sweeps humanity
onwards.
We do not wish to exaggerate the part played by such noble passions, nor
is it upon them that we would found our ideal of society. But we are not
asking too much if we expect their aid in tiding over the first and most
difficult moments. We cannot hope that our daily life will be
continuously inspired by such exalted enthusiasms, but we may expect
their aid at the first, and that is all we need.
It is just to wash the earth clean, to sweep away the shards and refuse,
accumulated by centuries of slavery and oppression, that the new
anarchist society will have need of this wave of brotherly love. Later
on it can exist without appealing to the spirit of self-sacrifice,
because it will have eliminated oppression, and thus created a new world
instinct with all the feelings of solidarity.
Besides, should the character of the Revolution be such as we have
sketched here, the free initiative of individuals would find an
extensive field of action in thwarting the efforts of the egotists.
Groups would spring up in every street and quarter to undertake the
charge of the clothing. They would make inventories of all that the city
possessed, and would find out approximately what were the resources at
their disposal. It is more than likely that in the matter of clothing
the citizens would adopt the same principle as in the matter of
provisions — that is to say, they would offer freely from the common
store everything which was to be found in abundance, and dole out
whatever was limited in quantity.
Not being able to offer to each man a sable-lined coat, and to every
woman a velvet gown, society would probably distinguish between the
superfluous and the necessary, and, provisionally, at least, class sable
and velvet among the superfluities of life, ready to let time prove
whether what is a luxury to-day may not become common to all to-morrow.
While the necessary clothing would be guaranteed to each inhabitant of
the anarchist city, it would be left to private activity to provide for
the sick and feeble those things, provisionally considered as luxuries,
and to procure for the less robust such special articles, as would not
enter into the daily consumption of ordinary citizens.
“But,” it may be urged, “this grey uniformity means the end of
everything beautiful in life and art.”
“Certainly not!” we reply; and we still base our opinion on what already
exists. We propose to show presently how an Anarchist society could
satisfy the most artistic tastes of its citizens without allowing them
to amass the fortunes of millionaires.
If a society, a city, or a territory, were to guarantee the necessaries
of life to its inhabitants (and we shall see how the conception of the
necessaries of life can be so extended as to include luxuries), it would
be compelled to take possession of what is absolutely needed for
production; that is to say — land, machinery, factories, means of
transport, etc. Capital in the hands of private owners would be
expropriated and returned to the community.
The great harm done by bourgeois society, as we have already mentioned,
is not only that capitalists seize a large share of the profits of each
industrial and commercial enterprise, thus enabling them to live without
working, but that all production has taken a wrong direction, as it is
not carried on with a view to securing well-being to all. For this
reason we condemn it.
Moreover, it is impossible to carry on mercantile production in
everybody’s interest. To wish it would be to expect the capitalist to go
beyond his province and to fulfill duties that he cannot fulfill without
ceasing to be what he is — a private manufacturer seeking his own
enrichment. Capitalist organization, based on the personal interest of
each individual trader, has given all that could be expected of it to
society — it has increased the productive force of work. The capitalist,
profiting by the revolution effected in industry by steam, by the sudden
development of chemistry and machinery, and by other inventions of our
century, has endeavoured in his own interest to increase the yield of
work, and in a great measure he has succeeded. But to attribute other
duties to him would be unreasonable. For example, to expect that he
should use this superior yield of work in the interest of society as a
whole, would be to ask philanthropy and charity of him, and a capitalist
enterprise cannot be based on charity.
It now remains for society to extend this greater productivity, which is
limited to certain industries, and to apply it to the general good. But
it is evident that to guarantee well-being to all, society must take
back possession of all means of production.
Economists, as is their wont, will not fail to remind us of the
comparative well-being of a certain category of young robust workmen,
skilled in certain special branches of industry. It is always this
minority that is pointed out to us with pride. But is this well-being,
which is the exclusive right of a few, secure? To-morrow, maybe,
negligence, improvidence, or the greed of their employers, will deprive
these privileged men of their work, and they will pay for the period of
comfort they have enjoyed with months and years of poverty or
destitution. How many important industries — woven goods, iron, sugar,
etc. — without mentioning short-lived trades, have we not seen decline
or come to a standstill alternately on account of speculations, or in
consequence of natural displacement of work, and lastly from the effects
of competition due to capitalists them selves! If the chief weaving and
mechanical industries had to pass through such a crisis as they have
passed through in 1886, we hardly need mention the small trades, all of
which come periodically to a standstill.
What, too, shall we say to the price which is paid for the relative
well-being of certain categories of workmen? Unfortunately, it is paid
for by the ruin of agriculture, the shameless exploitation of the
peasants, the misery of the masses. In comparison with the feeble
minority of workers who enjoy a certain comfort, how many millions of
human beings live from hand to mouth, without a secure wage, ready to go
wherever they are wanted; how many peasants work fourteen hours a day
for a poor pittance! Capital depopulates the country, exploits the
colonies and the countries where industries are but little developed,
dooms the immense majority of workmen to remain without technical
education, to remain mediocre even in their own trade.
This is not merely accidental, it is a necessity of the capitalist
system. In order to remunerate certain classes of workmen, peasants must
become the beasts of burden of society; the country must be deserted for
the town; small trades must agglomerate in the foul suburbs of large
cities, and manufacture a thousand things of little value for next to
nothing, so as to bring the goods of the greater industries within reach
of buyers with small salaries. That bad cloth may sell, garments are
made for ill-paid workers by tailors who are satisfied with a starvation
wage! Eastern lands in a backward state are exploited by the West, in
order that, under the capitalist system, workers in a few privileged
industries may obtain certain limited comforts of life.
The evil of the present system is therefore not that the “surplus-value”
of production goes to the capitalist, as Rodbertus and Marx said, thus
narrowing the Socialist conception and the general view of the
capitalist system; the surplus-value itself is but a consequence of
deeper causes. The evil lies in the possibility of a surplus-value
existing, instead of a simple surplus not consumed by each generation;
for, that a surplus-value should exist, means that men, women, and
children are compelled by hunger to sell their labour for a small part
of what this labour produces, and, above all, of what their labour is
capable of producing. But this evil will last as long as the instruments
of production belong to a few. As long as men are compelled to pay
tribute to property holders for the right of cultivating land or putting
machinery into action, and the property holder is free to produce what
bids fair to bring him in the greatest profits, rather than the greatest
amount of useful commodities — well-being can only be temporarily
guaranteed to a very few, and is only to be bought by the poverty of a
section of society. It is not sufficient to distribute the profits
realized by a trade in equal parts, if at the same time thousands of
other workers are exploited. It is a case of PRODUCING THE GREATEST
AMOUNT OF GOODS NECESSARY TO THE WELL-BEING OF ALL, WITH THE LEAST
POSSIBLE WASTE OF HUMAN ENERGY.
This cannot be the aim of a private owner; and this is why society as a
whole, taking this view of production as its ideal, will be compelled to
expropriate all that enhances well-being while producing wealth. It will
have to take possession of land, factories, mines, means of
communication, etc., and besides, it will have to study what products
will promote general well-being, as well as the ways and means of
production.
How many hours a day will man have to work to produce nourishing food, a
comfortable home, and necessary clothing for his family? This question
has often preoccupied Socialists, and they generally came to the
conclusion that four or five hours a day would suffice, on condition, be
it well understood, that all men work. At the end of last century,
Benjamin Franklin fixed the limit at five hours; and if the need of
comfort is greater now, the power of production has augmented too, and
far more rapidly.
In speaking of agriculture further on, we shall see what the earth can
be made to yield to man when he cultivates it scientifically, instead of
throwing seed haphazard in a badly ploughed soil as he mostly does
to-day. In the great farms of Western America, some of which cover 30
square miles, but have a poorer soil than the manured soil of civilized
countries, only 10 to 15 English bushels per English acre are obtained;
that is to say, half the yield of European farms or of American farms in
Eastern States. And nevertheless, thanks to machines which enable 2 men
to plough 4 English acres a day, 100 men can produce in a year all that
is necessary to deliver the bread of 10,000 people at their homes during
a whole year.
Thus it would suffice for a man to work under the same conditions for 30
hours, say 6 half-days of five hours each, to have bread for a whole
year; and to work 30 half-days to guarantee the same to a family of 5
people.
We shall also prove by results obtained nowadays that if we had recourse
to intensive agriculture, less than 6 half-days’ work could procure
bread, meat, vegetables, and even luxurious fruit for a whole family.
And again, if we study the cost of workmen’s dwellings, built in large
towns to-day, we can ascertain that to obtain, in a large English city,
a detached little house, as they are built for workmen, from 1400 to
1800 half-days’ work of 5 hours would be sufficient. As a house of that
kind lasts 50 years at least, it follows that 28 to 36 half-days’ work a
year would provide well-furnished, healthy quarters, with all necessary
comfort for a family. Whereas when hiring the same apartment from an
employer, a workman pays 75 to 100 days’ work per year.
Mark that these figures represent the maximum of what a house costs in
England to-day, being given the defective organization of our societies.
In Belgium, workmen’s cities have been built far cheaper. Taking
everything into consideration, we are justified in affirming that in a
well-organized society 30 or 40 half-days’ work a year will suffice to
guarantee a perfectly comfortable home.
There now remains clothing, the exact value of which is almost
impossible to fix, because the profits realized by a swarm of middlemen
cannot be estimated. Let us take cloth, for example, and add up all the
deductions made by landowners, sheep owners, wool merchants, and all
their intermediate agents, then by railway companies, mill-owners,
weavers, dealers in ready-made clothes, sellers and commission agents,
and you will get an idea of what is paid to a whole swarm of capitalists
for each article of clothing. That is why it is perfectly impossible to
say how many days’ work an overcoat that you pay £3 or £4 in a. large
London shop represents.
What is certain is that with present machinery they no doubt manage to
manufacture an incredible amount of goods.
A few examples will suffice. Thus in the United States, in 751 cotton
mills (for spinning and weaving), 175,000 men and women produce
2,033,000,000 yards of cotton goods, besides a great quantity of thread.
On the average, more than 12,000 yards of cotton goods alone are
obtained by a 300 days’ work of 9½ hours each, say 40 yards of cotton in
10 hours. Admitting that a family needs 200 yards a year at most, this
would be equivalent to 50 hours’ work, say 10 half-days of 5 hours each.
And we should have thread besides; that is to say, cotton to sew with,
and thread to weave cloth with, so as to manufacture woolen stuffs mixed
with cotton.
As to the results obtained by weaving alone, the official statistics of
the United States teach us that in 1870 if workmen worked 13 to 14 hours
a day, they made 10,000 yards of white cotton goods in a year; thirteen
years later (1886) they wove 30,000 yards by working only 55 hours a
week.
Even in printed cotton goods they obtained, weaving and printing
included, 32,000 yards in 2670 hours of work a year — say about 12 yards
an hour. Thus to have your 200 yards of white and printed cotton goods
17 hours’ work a year would suffice. It is necessary to remark that raw
material reaches these factories in about the same state as it comes
from the fields, and that the transformations gone through by the piece
before it is converted into goods are completed in the course of these
17 hours. But to buy these 200 yards from the tradesman, a well-paid
workman must give at the very least 10 to 15 days’ work of 10 hours
each, say 100 to 150 hours. find as to the English peasant, he would
have to toil for a month, or a little more, to obtain this luxury. By
this example we already see that by working 50 half-days per year in a
well-organized society we could dress better than the lower middle
classes do to-day.
But with all this we have only required 60 half-days’ work of 5 hours
each to obtain the fruits of the earth, 40 for housing, and 50 for
clothing, which only makes half a year’s work, as the year consists of
300 working-days if we deduct holidays.
There remain still 150 half-days’ work which could be made use of for
other necessaries of life — wine, sugar, coffee, tea, furniture,
transport, etc. etc.
It is evident that these calculations are only approximative, but they
can also be proved in an other way. When we take into account how many,
in the so-called civilized nations, produce nothing, how many work at
harmful trades, doomed to disappear, and lastly, how many are only
useless middlemen, we see that in each nation the number of real
producers could be doubled. And if, instead of every 10 men, 20 were
occupied in producing useful commodities, and if society took the
trouble to economize human energy, those 20 people would only have to
work 5 hours a day without production decreasing. And it would suffice
to reduce the waste of human energy at the service of wealthy families,
or of those administrations that have one official to every ten
inhabitants, and to utilize those forces, to augment the productivity of
the nation, to limit work to four or even to three hours, on condition
that we should be satisfied with present production.
After studying all these facts together, we may arrive, then, at the
following conclusion: Imagine a society, comprising a few million
inhabitants, engaged in agriculture and a great variety of industries —
Paris, for example, with the Department of Seine-et-Oise. Suppose that
in this society all children learn to work with their hands as well as
with their brains. Admit that all adults, save women, engaged in the
education of their children, bind themselves to work 5 hours a day from
the age of twenty or twenty-two to forty-five or fifty, and that they
follow occupations they have chosen in any one branch of human work
considered necessary. Such a society could in return guarantee
well-being to all its members; that is to say, a more substantial
well-being than that enjoyed to-day by the middle classes. And,
moreover, each worker belonging to this society would have at his
disposal at least 5 hours a day which he could devote to science, art,
and individual needs which do not come under the category of
necessities, but will probably do so later on, when man’s productivity
will have augmented, and those objects will no longer appear luxurious
or inaccessible.
Man, however, is not a being whose exclusive purpose in life is eating,
drinking, and providing a shelter for himself. As soon as his material
wants are satisfied, other needs, of an artistic character, will thrust
themselves forward the more ardently. Aims of life vary with each and
every individual; and the more society is civilized, the more will
individuality be developed, and the more will desires be varied.
Even to-day we see men and women denying themselves necessaries to
acquire mere trifles, to obtain some particular gratification, or some
intellectual or material enjoyment. A Christian or an ascetic may
disapprove of these desires for luxury; but it is precisely these
trifles that break the monotony of existence and make it agreeable.
Would life, with all its inevitable sorrows, be worth living, if besides
daily work man could never obtain a single pleasure according to his
individual tastes?
If we wish for a Social Revolution, it is no doubt in the first place to
give bread to all; to transform this execrable society, in which we can
every day see robust workmen dangling their arms for want of an employer
who will exploit them; women and children wandering shelterless at
night; whole families reduced to dry bread; men, women, and children
dying for want of care and even for want of food. It is to put an end to
these iniquities that we rebel.
But we expect more from the Revolution. We see that the worker compelled
to struggle painfully for bare existence, is reduced to ignorance of
these higher delights, the highest within man’s reach, of science, and
especially of scientific discovery; of art, and especially of artistic
creation. It is in order to obtain these joys for all, which are now
reserved to a few; in order to give leisure and the possibility of
developing intellectual capacities, that the social revolution must
guarantee daily bread to all. After bread has been secured, leisure is
the supreme aim.
No doubt, nowadays, when hundreds and thousands of human beings are in
need of bread, coal, clothing, and shelter, luxury is a crime; to
satisfy it the worker’s child must go without bread! But in a society in
which all can eat sufficiently the needs which we consider luxuries
to-day will be the more keenly felt. And as all men do not and cannot
resemble one another (the variety of tastes and needs is the chief
guarantee of human progress) there will always be, and it is desirable
that there should always be, men and women whose desire will go beyond
those of ordinary individuals in some particular direction.
Everybody does not need a telescope, because, even if learning were
general, there are people who prefer examining things through a
microscope to studying the starry heavens. Some like statues, some
pictures. A particular individual has no other ambition than to possess
an excellent piano, while another is pleased with an accordion. The
tastes vary, but the artistic needs exist in all. In our present, poor
capitalistic society, the man who has artistic needs cannot satisfy them
unless he is heir to a large fortune, or by dint of hard work
appropriates to himself an intellectual capital which will enable him to
take up a liberal profession. Still he cherishes the hope of some day
satisfying his tastes more or less, and for this reason he reproaches
the idealist Communist societies with having the material life of each
individual as their sole aim. — “In your communal stores you may perhaps
have bread for all,” he says to us, “but you will not have beautiful
pictures, optical instruments, luxurious furniture, artistic jewelry —
in short, the many things that minister to the infinite variety of human
tastes. And in this way you suppress the possibility of obtaining
anything besides the bread and meat which the commune can offer to all,
and the grey linen in which all your lady citizens will be dressed.”
These are the objections which all communist systems have to consider,
and which the founders of new societies, established in American
deserts, never understood. They believed that if the community could
procure sufficient cloth to dress all its members, a music hall in which
the “brothers” could strum a piece of music, or act a play from time to
time, it was enough. They forgot that the feeling for art existed in the
agriculturist as well as in the burgher, and, notwithstanding that the
expression of artistic feeling varies according to the difference in
culture, in the main it remains the same. In vain did the community
guarantee the common necessaries of life, in vain did it suppress all
education that would tend to develop individuality, in vain did it
eliminate all reading save the Bible. Individual tastes broke forth, and
caused general discontent; quarrels arose when somebody proposed to buy
a piano or scientific instruments; and the elements of progress flagged.
The society could only exist on condition that it crushed all individual
feeling, all artistic tendency, and all development.
Will the anarchist Commune be impelled by the same direction? Evidently
not, if it understands that while it produces all that is necessary to
material life, it must also strive to satisfy all manifestations of the
human mind.
We frankly confess that when we think of the abyss of poverty and
suffering that surrounds us, when we hear the heartrending cry of the
worker walking the streets begging for work, we are loth to discuss the
question: How will men act in a society, whose members are properly fed,
to satisfy certain individuals desirous of possessing a piece of Sèvres
china or a velvet dress?
We are tempted to answer: Let us make sure of bread to begin with, we
shall see to china and velvet later on.
But as we must recognize that man has other needs besides food, and as
the strength of Anarchy lies precisely in that it understands all human
faculties and all passions, and ignores none, we shall, in a few words,
explain how man can contrive to satisfy all his intellectual and
artistic needs.
We have already mentioned that by working 4 or 5 hours a day till the
age of forty-five or fifty, man could easily produce all that is
necessary to guarantee comfort to society.
But the day’s work of a man accustomed to toil does not consist of;
hours; it is a 10 hours’ day for 300 days a year, and lasts all his
life. Of course, when a man is harnessed to a machine, his health is
soon undermined and his intelligence is blunted; but when man has the
possibility of varying occupations, and especially of alternating manual
with intellectual work, he can remain occupied without fatigue, and even
with pleasure, for 10 or 12 hours a day. Consequently the man who will
have done 4 or 5 hours of manual work necessary for his existence, will
have before him 5 or 6 hours which he will seek to employ according to
his tastes. And these 5 or 6 hours a day will fully enable him to
procure for himself, if he associates with others, all he wishes for, in
addition to the necessaries guaranteed to all.
He will discharge first his task in the field, the factory, and so on,
which he owes to society as his contribution to the general production.
And he will employ the second half of his day, his week, or his year, to
satisfy his artistic or scientific needs, or his hobbies.
Thousands of societies will spring up to gratify every taste and every
possible fancy.
Some, for example, will give their hours of leisure to literature. They
will then form groups comprising authors, compositors, printers,
engravers, draughtsmen, all pursuing a common aim — the propagation of
ideas that are dear to them.
Nowadays an author knows that there is a beast of burden, the worker, to
whom, for the sum of a few shillings a day, he can entrust the printing
of his books; but he hardly cares to know what a printing office is
like. If the compositor suffers from lead-poisoning, and if the child
who sees to the machine dies of anæmia, are there not other poor
wretches to replace them?
But when there will be no more starvelings ready to sell their work for
a pittance, when the exploited worker of to-day will be educated and
will have his own ideas to put down in black and white and to
communicate to others, then the authors and scientific men will be
compelled to combine among themselves and with the printers, in order to
bring out their prose and their poetry.
So long as men consider fustian and manual labour as a mark of
inferiority, it will appear amazing to them to see an author setting up
his own book in type, for has he not a gymnasium or games by way of
diversion? But when the opprobrium connected with manual labour has
disappeared, when all will have to work with their hands, there being no
one to do it for them, then the authors as well as their admirers will
soon learn the art of handling composing-sticks and type; they will know
the pleasure of coming together — all admirers of the work to be printed
— to set up the type, to shape it into pages, to take it in its virginal
purity from the press. These beautiful machines, instruments of torture
to the child who attends on them from morn till night, will be a source
of enjoyment for those who will make use of them in order to give voice
to the thoughts of their favourite author.
Will literature lose by it? Will the poet be less a poet after having
worked out of doors or helped with his hands to multiply his work? Will
the novelist lose his knowledge of human nature after having rubbed
shoulders with other men in the forest or the factory, in the laying out
of a road or on a railway line? Can there be two answers to these
questions?
Maybe some books will be less voluminous; but then, more will be said on
fewer pages. Maybe fewer waste-sheets will be published; but the matter
printed will be more attentively read and more appreciated. The book
will appeal to a larger circle of better educated readers, who will be
more competent to judge.
Moreover, the art of printing, that has so little progressed since
Gutenberg, is still in its infancy. It takes two hours to compose in
type what is written in ten minutes, but more expeditious methods of
multiplying thought are being sought after and will be discovered.
What a pity every author does not have to take his share in the printing
of his works! What progress printing would have already made! We should
no longer be using the movable letters, as in the seventeenth century.
Is it a dream to conceive a society in which — all having become
producers, all having received an education that enables them to
cultivate science or art, and all having leisure to do so — men would
combine to publish the works of their choice, by contributing each his
share of manual work? We have already hundreds of learned, literary, and
other societies; and these societies are nothing but voluntary groups of
men, interested in certain branches of learning, and associated for the
purpose of publishing their works. The authors who write for the
periodicals of these societies are not paid, and the periodicals are not
for sale; they are sent gratis to all quarters of the globe, to other
societies, cultivating the same branches of learning. This member of the
society may insert in its review a one-page note summarizing his
observations; another may publish therein an extensive work, the results
of long years of study; while others will confine themselves to
consulting the review as a starting point for further research. It does
not matter: all these authors and readers are associated for the
production of works in which all of them take an interest.
It is true that a learned society, like the individual author, goes to a
printing office where workmen are engaged to do the printing. Nowadays,
those who belong to the learned societies despise manual labour; which
indeed is carried on under very bad conditions; but a community which
would give a generous philosophic and scientific education to all its
members, would know how to organize manual labour in such a way that it
would be the pride of humanity. Its learned societies would become
associations of explorers, lovers of science, and workers — all knowing
a manual trade and all interested in science.
If, for example, the society is studying geology, all will contribute to
the exploration of the earth’s strata; each member will take his share
in research, and ten thousand observers where we have now only a
hundred, will do more in a year than we can do in twenty years. And when
their works are to be published, ten thousand men and women, skilled in
different trades, will be ready to draw maps, engrave designs, compose,
and print the books. With gladness will they give their leisure — in
summer to exploration in winter to indoor work And when their works
appear, they will find not only a hundred, but ten thousand readers
interested in their common work.
This is the direction in which progress is already moving. Even to-day,
when England felt the need of a complete dictionary of the English
language, the birth of a Littré, who would devote his life to this work,
was not waited for. Volunteers were appealed to, and a thousand men
offered their services, spontaneously and gratuitously, to ransack the
libraries, to take notes, and to accomplish in a few years a work which
one man could not complete in his lifetime. In all branches of human
intelligence the same spirit is breaking forth, and we should have a
very limited knowledge of humanity could we not guess that the future is
announcing itself in such tentative co-operation, which is gradually
taking the place of individual work.
For this dictionary to be a really collective work, it would have
required that many volunteer authors, printers and printers’ readers
should have worked in common; but something in this direction is done
already in the Socialist Press, which offers us examples of manual and
intellectual work combined. It happens in our newspapers that a
Socialist author composes in lead his own article. True, such attempts
are rare, but they indicate in which direction evolution is going.
They show the road of liberty. In future, when a man will have something
useful to say-a word that goes beyond the thoughts of his century, he
will not have to look for an editor who might advance the necessary
capital. He will look for collaborators among those who know the
printing trade, and who approve the idea of his new work. Together they
will publish the new book or journal.
Literature and journalism will cease to be a means of money-making and
living at the cost of others. But is there any one who knows literature
and journalism from within, and who does not ardently desire that
literature should at last be able to free itself from those who formerly
protected it, and who now exploit it, and from the multitude which with
rare exceptions pays it in proportion to its mediocrity, or to the ease
with which it adapts itself to the bad taste of the greater number?
Letters and science will only take their proper place in the work of
human development when, freed from all mercenary bondage, they will be
exclusively cultivated by those that love them, and for those that love
them.
Literature, science, and art must be cultivated by free men. Only on
this condition will they succeed in emancipating themselves from the
yoke of the State, of Capital, and of the bourgeois mediocrity which
stifles them.
What means has the scientist of to-day to make researches that interest
him? Should he ask help of the State, which can only be given to one
candidate in a hundred, and which none may obtain who does not
ostensibly promise to keep to the beaten track? Let us remember how the
Institute of France censured Darwin how the Academy of St. Petersburg
treated Mendeléeff with contempt, and how the Royal Society of London
refused to publish Joule’s paper, in which he determined the mechanical
equivalent of heat, finding it “unscientific.”[6]
It is why all great researches, all discoveries revolutionizing science,
have been made outside academies and universities, either by men rich
enough to remain independent, like Darwin and Lyell, or by men who
undermined their health by working in poverty and often in great
straits, losing no end of time for want of a laboratory, and unable to
procure the instruments or books necessary to continue their researches,
but persevering against hope and often dying before they had reached the
end in view Their name is legion.
Altogether, the system of help granted by the State is so bad that
science has always endeavoured to emancipate itself from it. For this
very reason there are thousands of learned societies organized and
maintained by volunteers in Europe and America, — some having developed
to such a degree that all the resources of subventioned societies, and
the wealth of millionaires would not buy their treasures. No
governmental institution is as rich as the Zoological Society of London,
which is supported by voluntary contributions.
It does not buy the animals which in thousands people its gardens: they
are sent by other societies and by collectors of the entire world. The
Zoological Society of Bombay will send an elephant as a gift; another
time a hippopotamus or a rhinoceros is offered by Egyptian naturalists.
And these magnificent presents are pouring in every day, arriving from
all quarters of the globe — birds, reptiles, collections of insects,
etc. These consignments often comprise animals that could not be bought
for all the gold in the world; thus, a traveller who has captured an
animal at life’s peril, and now loves it as he would love a child, will
give it to the Society because he is sure it will be cared for. The
entrance fee paid by visitors and they are numberless, suffices for the
maintenance of that immense institution.
What is defective in the Zoological Society of London, and in other
kindred societies, is that the member’s fee cannot be paid in work: that
the keepers and numerous employés of this Large institution are not
recognized as members of the Society, while many have no other incentive
to joining the society than to put the cabalistic letters F.Z.S. (Fellow
of the Zoological Society) on their cards. In a word, what is needed is
a more perfect co-operation.
We may say the same about inventors that we have said of scientists. Who
does not know what sufferings nearly all great inventions that have come
to light have cost? Sleepless nights, families deprived of bread, want
of tools and materials for experiments, is the history of nearly all
those who have enriched industry with inventions which are the truly
legitimate pride of our civilization.
But what are we to do to alter conditions that everybody is convinced
are bad? Patents have been tried, and we know with what results. The
inventor sells his patent for a few shillings, and the man who has only
lent the capital pockets the often enormous profits resulting from the
invention. Besides, patents isolate the inventor. They compel him to
keep secret his researches which therefore end in failure; whereas the
simplest suggestion, coming from a brain less absorbed in the
fundamental idea, sometimes suffices to fertilize the invention and make
it practical. Like all State control, patents hamper the progress of
industry. Thought being incapable of being patented, patents are a
crying injustice in theory, and in practice they result in one of the
great obstacles to the rapid development of invention.
What is needed to promote the spirit of invention is, first of all, the
awakening of thought, the boldness of conception, which our entire
education causes to languish; it is the spreading of a scientific
education, which would increase the number of inquirers a hundred-fold;
it is faith that humanity is going to take a step forward, because it is
enthusiasm, the hope of doing good, that has inspired all the great
inventors. The Social Revolution alone can give this impulse to thought,
this boldness, this knowledge, this conviction of working for all.
Then we shall have vast institutes supplied with motor-power and tools
of all sorts, immense industrial laboratories open to all inquirers,
where men will be able to work out their dreams, after having acquitted
themselves of their duty towards society; where they will spend their
five or six hours of leisure; where they will make their experiments;
where they will find other comrades, experts in other branches of
industry, likewise coming to study some difficult problem, and therefore
able to help and enlighten each other, the encounter of their ideas and
experience causing the longed-for solution to be found. And yet again,
this is no dream. Solanoy Gorodok, in Petersburg, has already partially
realized it as regards technical matters. It is a factory well furnished
with tools and free to all; tools and motor-power are supplied gratis,
only metals and wood are charged for at cost price. Unfortunately
workmen only go there at night when worn out by ten hours’ labour in the
workshop. Moreover, they carefully hide their inventions from each
other, as they are hampered by patents and Capitalism, that bane of
present society, that stumbling-block in the path of intellectual and
moral progress.
And what about art? From all sides we hear lamentations about the
decadence of art. We are, indeed, far behind the great masters of the
Renaissance. The technicalities of art have recently made great
progress; thousands of people gifted with a certain amount of talent
cultivate every branch, but art seems to fly from civilization!
Technicalities make headway, but inspiration frequents artists’ studios
less than ever.
Where, indeed, should it come from? Only a grand idea can inspire art.
Art is in our ideal synonymous with creation, it must look ahead; but
save a few rare, very rare exceptions, the professional artist remains
too philistine to perceive new horizons.
Moreover, this inspiration cannot come from books; it must be drawn from
life, and present society cannot arouse it.
Raphael and Murillo painted at a time when the search of a new ideal
could adapt itself to old religious traditions. They painted to decorate
great churches which represented the pious work of several generations.
The basilic with its mysterious aspect, its grandeur, was connected with
the life itself of the city and could inspire a painter. He worked for a
popular monument; he spoke to his fellow-citizens, and in return he
received inspiration; he appealed to the multitude in the same way as
did the nave, the pillars, the stained windows, the statues, and the
carved doors. Nowadays the greatest honour a painter can aspire to is to
see his canvas, framed in gilded wood, hung in a museum, a sort of old
curiosity shop, where you see, as in the Prado, Murillo’s Ascension next
to a beggar of Velasquez and the dogs of Philip II. Poor Velasquez and
poor Murillo! Poor Greek statues which lived in the Acropolis of their
cities, and are now stifled beneath the red cloth hangings of the
Louvre!
When a Greek sculptor chiselled his marble he endeavoured to express the
spirit and heart of the city. All its passions, all its traditions of
glory, were to live again in the work. But to-day the united city has
ceased to exist; there is no more communion of ideas. The town is a
chance agglomeration of people who do not know one another, who have no
common interest, save the of enriching themselves at the expense of one
another. The fatherland does not exist.... What fatherland can the
international banker and the rag-picker have in common? Only when
cities, territories, nations, or groups of nations, will have renewed
their harmonious life, will art be able to draw its inspiration from
ideals held in common. Then will the architect conceive the city’s
monument which will no longer be a temple, a prison, or a fortress; then
will the painter, the sculptor, the carver, the ornament; worker know
where to put their canvases, their statues, and their decorations;
deriving their power of execution from the same vital source, and
gloriously marching all together towards the future.
But till then art can only vegetate. The best canvases of modern artists
are those that represent nature, villages, valleys, the sea with its
dangers, the mountain with its splendours. But how can the painter
express the poetry of work in the fields if he has only contemplated it,
imagined it, if he has never delighted in it himself? If he only knows
it as a bird of passage knows the country he soars over on his
migrations? If, in the vigour of early youth, he has not followed the
plough at dawn and enjoyed mowing grass with a large swathe of the
scythe next to hardly haymakers vying in energy with lively young girls
who fill the air with their songs? The love of the soil and of what
grows on it is not acquired by sketching with a paint brush — it is only
in its service; and without loving it, how paint it. This is why all
that the best painters have produced in this direction is still so
imperfect, not true to life, nearly always merely sentimental. There is
no strength in it.
You must have seen a sunset when returning from work. You must have been
a peasant among peasants to keep the splendour of it in your eye. You
must have been at sea with fishermen at all hours of the day and night,
have fished yourself, struggled with the waves faced the storm, and
after rough work experienced the joy of hauling a heavy net, or the
disappointment of seeing it empty, to understand the poetry of fishing.
You must have spent time in a factory, known the fatigues and the joys
of creative work, forged metals by the vivid light of a blast furnace,
have felt the life in a machine, to understand the power of man and to
express it in a work of art. You must in fact, be permeated with popular
feelings, to describe them. Besides, the works of future artists who
will have lived the life of the people, like the great artists of the
past, will not be destined for sale. They will be an integrant part of a
living whole that would not be complete without them, any more than they
would be complete without it. Men will go to the artist’s own city to
gaze at his work, and the spirited and serene beauty of such creations
will produce its beneficial effect on heart and mind.
Art, in order to develop, must be bound up with industry by a thousand
intermediate degrees blended, so to say, as Ruskin and the great
Socialist poet Morris have proved so often and so well. Everything that
surrounds man, in the street, in the interior and exterior of public
monuments, must be of a pure artistic form.
But this will only be capable of realization in a society in which all
enjoy comfort and leisure. Then we shall see art associations, in which
each can find room for his capacity, for art cannot dispense with an
infinity of purely manual and technical supplementary works. These
artistic associations will undertake to embellish the houses of their
members, as those kind volunteers, the young painters of Edinburgh, did
in decorating the walls and ceilings of the great hospital for the poor
in their city.
A painter or sculptor who has produced a work of personal feeling will
offer it to the woman he loves, or to a friend. Executed for love’s
sake, will his work, inspired by love, be inferior to the art that
to-day satisfies the vanity of the philistine because it has cost much
money?
The same will be done as regards all pleasure not comprised in the
necessaries of life. He who wishes for a grand piano will enter the
association of musical instrument makers. And by giving the association
part of his half-days’ leisure, he will soon possess the piano of his
dreams. If he is passionately fond of astronomical studies he will join
the association of astronomers, with it philosophers, its observers, its
calculators, with its artists in astronomical instruments, its
scientists and amateurs, and he will have the telescope he desires by
taking his share of the associated work, for it is especially the rough
work that is needed in an astronomical observatory bricklayer’s,
carpenter’s, founder’s, mechanic’s work, the last touch being given to
the instrument of precision by the artist.
In short, the five or seven hours a day which each will have at his
disposal, after having consecrated several hours to the production of
necessities, will amply suffice to satisfy all longings for luxury
however varied. Thousands of associations would undertake to supply
them. What is now the privilege of an insignificant minority would be
accessible to all. Luxury, ceasing to be a foolish and ostentatious
display of the bourgeois class, would become an artistic pleasure.
Every one would be the happier for it. In collective work, performed
with a light heart to attain a desired end, a book, a work of art, or an
object of luxury, each will find an incentive, and the necessary
relaxation that makes life pleasant.
In working to put an end to the division between master and slave we
work for the happiness of both, for the happiness of humanity.
When Socialists declare that a society, emancipated from Capital, would
make work agreeable, and would suppress all repugnant and unhealthy
drudgery, they get laughed at. And yet even to-day we can see the
striking progress made in this direction; and wherever this progress has
been achieved, employers congratulate themselves on the economy of
energy obtained thereby.
It is evident that a factory could be made as healthy and pleasant as a
scientific laboratory. And it is no less evident that it would be
advantageous to make it so. In a spacious and well-ventilated factory
work is better; it is easy to introduce small ameliorations, of which
each represents an economy of time or of manual labour. And if most of
the workshops we know are foul and unhealthy, it is because the workers
are of no account in the organization of factories, and because the most
absurd waste of human energy is its distinctive feature.
Nevertheless, now and again, we already find some factories so well
managed that it would be a real pleasure to work in them, if the work,
be it well understood, were not to last more than four or five hours a
day, and if every one had the possibility of varying it according to his
tastes.
Look at this factory, unfortunately consecrated to engines of war. It is
perfect as far as regards sanitary and intelligent organization. It
occupies fifty English acres of land, fifteen of which are roofed with
glass. The pavement of fire-proof bricks is as clean as that of a
miner’s cottage, and the glass roof is carefully cleaned by a gang of
workmen who do nothing else. In this factory are forged steel ingots or
blooms weighing as much as twenty tons; and when you stand thirty feet
from the immense furnace, whose flames have a temperature of more than a
thousand degrees, you do not guess its presence save when its great jaws
open to let out a steel monster. And the monster is handled by only
three or four workmen, who now here, now there, open a tap, causing
immense cranes to move by pressure of water in the pipes.
You enter expecting to hear the deafening noise of stampers, and you
find that there are no stampers. The immense hundred-ton guns and the
crank-shafts of transatlantic steamers are forged by hydraulic pressure,
and instead of forging steel, the worker has but to turn a tap to give
it shape, which makes a far more homogeneous metal, without crack or
flaw, of the blooms, whatever be their thickness.
We expect an infernal grating, and we find machines which cut blocks of
steel thirty feet long with no more noise than is needed to cut cheese.
And when we expressed our admiration to the engineer who showed us
round, he answered —
“It is a mere question of economy! This machine, that planes steel, has
been in use for forty-two years. It would not have lasted ten years if
its component parts, badly adjusted, lacking in cohesive strength,
‘interfered’ and creaked at each movement of the plane!”
“And the blast-furnaces? It would be a waste to let heat escape instead
of utilizing it. Why roast the founders, when heat lost by radiation
represents tons of coal?”
“The stampers that made buildings shake five leagues off were also
waste! It is better to forge by pressure than by impact, and it costs
less — there is less loss.”
“In a factory, light, cleanliness, the space allotted to each bench, is
but a simple question of economy. Work is better done when you can see
and you have elbow-room.”
“It is true,”; he said, “we were very cramped before coming here. Land
is so expensive in the vicinity of large towns — landlords are so
grasping!”
It is even so in mines. We know what mines are like nowadays from Zola’s
descriptions and from newspaper reports. But the mine of the future will
be well ventilated, with a temperature as easily regulated as that of a
library; there will be no horses doomed to die below the earth:
underground traction will be carried on by means of an automatic cable
put in motion at the pit’s mouth. Ventilators will be always working,
and there will never be explosions. This is no dream. Such a mine is
already to be seen in England; we went down it. Here again this
organization is simply a question of economy. The mine of which we
speak, in spite of its immense depth (466 yards), has an output of a
thousand tons of coal a day, with only two hundred miners — five tons a
day per each worker, whereas the average for the two thousand pits in
England is hardly three hundred tons a year per man.
If necessary, we could multiply examples proving that Fourier’s dream
regarding material organization was not a Utopia.
This question has, however, been so frequently discussed in Socialist
newspapers that public opinion might have been educated. Factory, forge,
and mine can be as healthy and magnificent as the finest laboratories in
modern universities, and the better the organization the more will man’s
labour produce.
If it be so, can we doubt that work will become a pleasure and a
relaxation in a society of equals, in which “hands” will not be
compelled to sell themselves to toil, and to accept work under any
conditions? Repugnant tasks will disappear, because it is evident that
these unhealthy conditions are harmful to society as a whole. Slaves can
submit to them, but free men will create new conditions, and their work
will be pleasant and infinitely more productive. The exceptions of
to-day will be the rule of to-morrow.
The same will come to pass as regards domestic work, which to-day
society lays on the shoulders of that drudge of humanity — woman.
A society regenerated by the Revolution will make domestic slavery
disappear — this last form of slavery, perhaps the most tenacious,
because it is also the most ancient. Only it will not come about in the
way dreamt of by Phalansterians, nor in the manner often imagined by
authoritarian Communists.
Phalansteries are repugnant to millions of human beings. The most
reserved man certainly feels the necessity of meeting his fellows for
the purpose of common work, which becomes the more attractive the more
he feels himself a part of an immense whole. But it is not so for the
hours of leisure, reserved for rest and intimacy. The phalanstery and
the familystery do not take this into account, or else they endeavour to
supply this need by artificial groupings.
A phalanstery, which is in fact nothing but an immense hotel, can please
some, and even all at a certain period of their life, but the great mass
prefers family life (family life of the future, be it understood). They
prefer isolated apartments, Normans and Anglo-Saxons even going as far
as to prefer houses of from six to eight rooms, in which the family, or
an agglomeration of friends, can live apart. Sometimes a phalanstery is
a necessity, but it would be hateful, were it the general rule.
Isolation, alternating with time spent in society, is the normal desire
of human nature. This is why one of the greatest tortures in prison is
the impossibility of isolation, much as solitary confinement becomes
torture in its turn, when not alternated with hours of social life.
As to considerations of economy, which are sometimes laid stress on in
favour of phalansteries, they are those of a petty tradesman. The most
important economy, the only reasonable one, is to make life pleasant for
all, because the man who is satisfied with his life produces infinitely
more than the man who curses his surroundings.[7]
Other Socialists reject the phalanstery. But when you ask them how
domestic work can be organized, they answer: “Each can do ‘his own
work.’ My wife manages the house; the wives of bourgeois will do as
much.” And if it is a bourgeois playing at Socialism who speaks, he will
add, with a gracious smile to his wife: “Is it not true, darling, that
you would do without a servant in a Socialist society? You would work
like the wife of our good comrade Paul or the wife of John the
carpenter?”
Servant or wife, man always reckons on woman to do the house-work.
But woman, too, at last claims her share — in the emancipation of
humanity. She no longer wants to be the beast of burden of the house.
She considers it sufficient work to give many years of her life to the
rearing of her children. She no longer wants to be the cook, the mender,
the sweeper of the house! And, owing to American women taking the lead
in obtaining their claims, there is a general complaint of the dearth of
women who will condescend to domestic work in the United States. My lady
prefers art, politics, literature, or the gaming tables; as to the
work-girls, they are few, those who consent to submit to apron-slavery,
and servants are only found with difficulty in the States. Consequently,
the solution, a very simple one, is pointed out by life itself.
Machinery undertakes three-quarters of the household cares.
You black your boots, and you know how ridiculous this work is. What can
be more stupid than rubbing a boot twenty or thirty times with a brush?
A tenth of the European population must be compelled to sell itself in
exchange for a miserable shelter and insufficient food, and woman must
consider herself a slave, in order that millions of her sex should go
through this performance every morning.
But hairdressers have already machines for brushing glossy or woolly
heads of hair. Why should we not apply, then, the same principle to the
other extremity? So it has been done, and nowadays the machine for
blacking boots is in general use in big American and European hotels.
Its use is spreading outside hotels. In large English schools, where the
pupils are boarding in the houses of the teachers, it has been found
easier to have one single establishment which undertakes to brush a
thousand pairs of boots every morning.
As to washing up! Where can we find a housewife who has not a horror of
this long and dirty work, that is usually done by hand, solely because
the work of the domestic slave is of no account.
In America they do better. There are already a number of cities in which
hot water is conveyed to the houses as cold water is in Europe. Under
these conditions the problem was a simple one, and a woman — Mrs.
Cochrane — solved it. Her machine washes twelve dozen plates or dishes,
wipes them and dries them, in less than three minutes. A factory in
Illinois manufactures these machines and sells them at a price within
reach of the average middle-class purse. And why should not small
households send their crockery to an establishment as well as their
boots? It is even probable that the two functions, brushing and washing
up, will be undertaken by the same association.
Cleaning, rubbing the skin off your hands when washing and wringing
linen; sweeping floors and brushing carpets, thereby raising clouds of
dust which afterwards occasion much trouble to dislodge from the places
where they have settled down, all this work is still done because woman
remains a slave, but it tends to disappear as it can be infinitely
better done by machinery. Machines of all kinds will be introduced into
households, and the distribution of motor-power in private houses will
enable people to work them without muscular effort.
Such machines cost little to manufacture. If we still pay very much for
them, it is because they are not in general use, and chiefly because an
exorbitant tax is levied upon every machine by the gentlemen who wish to
live in grand style and who have speculated on land, raw material,
manufacture, sale, patents, and duties.
But emancipation from domestic toil will not be brought about by small
machines only. Households are emerging from their present state of
isolation; they begin to associate with other households to do in common
what they did separately.
In fact, in the future we shall not have a brushing machine, a machine
for washing up plates, a third for washing linen, and so on, in each
house. To the future, on the contrary, belongs the common heating
apparatus that sends heat into each room of a whole district and spares
the lighting of fires. It is already so in a few American cities. A
great central furnace supplies all houses and all rooms with hot water,
which circulates in pipes; and to regulate the temperature you need only
turn a tap. And should you care to have a blazing fire in any particular
room you can light the gas specially supplied for heating purposes from
a central reservoir. All the immense work of cleaning chimneys and
keeping up fires — and woman knows what time it takes — is disappearing.
Candles, lamps, and even gas have had their day. There are entire cities
in which it is sufficient to press a button for light to burst forth,
and, indeed, it is a simple question of economy and of knowledge to give
yourself the luxury of electric light. And lastly, also in America, they
speak of forming societies for the almost complete suppression of
household work. It would only be necessary to create a department for
every block of houses. A cart would come to each door and take the boots
to be blacked, the crockery to be washed up, the linen to be washed, the
small things to be mended (if it were worth while), the carpets to be
brushed, and the next morning would bring back the things entrusted to
it all well cleaned. A few hours later your hot coffee and your eggs
done to a nicety would appear on your table. It is a fact that between
twelve and two o’clock there are more than twenty million Americans and
as many Englishmen who eat roast beef or mutton, boiled pork, potatoes,
and a seasonable vegetable. And at the lowest figure eight million fires
burn during two or three hours to roast this meat and cook these
vegetables; eight million women spend their time to prepare this meal,
that perhaps consists at most of ten different dishes.
“Fifty fires burn,” wrote an American woman the other day, “where one
would suffice!” Dine at home, at your own table, with your children, if
you like; but only think yourself, why should these fifty women waste
their whole morning to prepare a few cups of coffee and a simple meal!
Why fifty fires, when two people and one single fire would suffice to
cook all these pieces of meat and all these vegetables? Choose your own
beef or mutton to be roasted if you are particular. Season the
vegetables to your taste if you prefer a particular sauce! But have a
single kitchen with a single fire, and organize it as beautifully as you
are able to.
Why has woman’s work never been of any account? Why in every family are
the mother and three or four servants obliged to spend so much time at
what pertains to cooking? Because those who want to emancipate mankind
have not included woman in their dream of emancipation, and consider it
beneath their superior masculine dignity to think “of those kitchen
arrangements,” which they have rayed on the shoulders of that
drudge-woman.
To emancipate woman is not only to open the gates of the university, the
law courts, or the parliaments, for her, for the “emancipated” woman
will always throw domestic toil on to another woman. To emancipate woman
is to free her from the brutalizing toil of kitchen and washhouse; it is
to organize your household in such a way as to enable her to rear her
children, if she be so minded, while still retaining sufficient leisure
to take her share of social life.
It will come to pass. As we have said, things are already improving.
Only let us fully understand that a revolution, intoxicated with the
beautiful words Liberty, Equality, Solidarity would not be a revolution
if it maintained slavery at home. Half humanity subjected to the slavery
of the hearth would still have to rebel against the other half.
Accustomed as we are by hereditary prejudices and absolutely unsound
education and training to see Government, legislation and magistracy
everywhere around, we have come to believe that man would tear his
fellow man to pieces like a wild beast the day the police took his eye
off him; that chaos would come about if authority were overthrown during
a revolution. And with our eyes shut we pass by thousands and thousands
of human groupings which form themselves freely, without any
intervention of the law, and attain results infinitely superior to those
achieved under governmental tutelage.
If you open a daily paper you find its pages are entirely devoted to
Government transactions and to political jobbery. A Chinaman reading it
would believe that in Europe nothing gets done save by order of some
master. You find nothing in them about institutions that spring up, grow
up, and develop without ministerial prescription. Nothing — or hardly
nothing! Even when there is a heading — “Sundry Events” — it is because
they are connected with the police. A family drama, an act of rebellion,
will only be mentioned if the police have appeared on the scene.
Three hundred and fifty million Europeans love or hate one another,
work, or live on their incomes; but, apart from literature, theatre, or
sport, their lives remain ignored by newspapers if Governments have not
intervened in some way or other. It is even so with history. We know the
least details of the life of a king or of a parliament; all good and bad
speeches pronounced by the politicians have been preserved. “Speeches
that have never had the least influence on the vote of a single member,”
as an old parliamentarian said. Royal visits, good or bad humour of
politicians, jokes or intrigues, are all carefully recorded for
posterity. But we have the greatest difficulty to reconstitute a city of
the Middle Ages, to understand the mechanism of that immense commerce
that was carried on between Hanseatic cities, or to know how the city of
Rouen built its cathedral. If a scholar spends his life in studying
these questions, his works remain unknown, and parliamentary histories —
that is to say, the defective ones, as they only treat of one side of
social life — multiply, are circulated, are taught in schools.
And we do not even perceive the prodigious work accomplished every day
by spontaneous groups of men, which constitutes the chief work of our
century.
We therefore propose to point out some of these most striking
manifestations, and to prove that men, as soon as their interests do not
absolutely clash, act in concert, harmoniously, and perform collective
work of a very complex nature.
It is evident that in present society, based on individual property —
that is to say, on plunder, and on a narrow minded and therefore foolish
individualism — facts of this kind are necessarily few in number;
agreements are not always perfectly free, and often have a mean, if not
execrable aim.
But what concerns us is not to give examples which we could blindly
follow, and which, moreover, present society could not possibly give us.
What we have to do is to prove that, in spite of the authoritarian
individualism which stifles us, there remains in our life, taken as a
whole, a great part in which we only act by free agreement, and that it
would be much easier than we think to dispense with Government.
In support of our view we have already mentioned railways, and we are
about to return to them.
We know that Europe has a system of railways, 175,000 miles long, and
that on this network you can nowadays travel from north to south, from
east to west, from Madrid to Petersburg, and from Calais to
Constantinople, without stoppages, without even changing carriages (when
you travel by express). More than that: a parcel thrown into a station
will find its addressee anywhere, in Turkey or in Central Asia, without
more formality needed for sending it than writing its destination on a
bit of paper.
This result might have been obtained in two ways. A Napoleon, a
Bismarck, or some potentate having conquered Europe, would from Paris,
Berlin, or Rome, draw a railway map and regulate the hours of the
trains. The Russian Tsar Nicholas I dreamt of taking such action. When
he was shown rough drafts of railways between Moscow and Petersburg, he
seized a ruler and drew on the map of Russia a straight line between
these two capitals, saying, “Here is the plan.” And the road ad was
built in a straight line, filling in deep ravines, building bridges of a
giddy height, which had to be abandoned a few years later, at a cost of
about £120,000 to £150,000 per English mile.
This is one way, but happily things were managed differently. Railways
were constructed piece by piece, the pieces were joined together, and
the hundred divers companies, to whom these pieces belonged, came to an
understanding concerning the arrival and departure of their trains, and
the running of carriages on their rails, from all countries, without
unloading merchandise as it passes from one network to another.
All this was done by free agreement, by exchange of letters and
proposals, by congresses at which relegates met to discuss certain
special subjects, but not to make laws; after the congress, the
delegates returned to their companies, not with a law, but with the
draft of a contract to be accepted or rejected.
There were certainly obstinate men who would not be convinced. But a
common interest compelled them to agree without invoking the help of
armies against the refractory members.
This immense network of railways connected together, and the enormous
traffic it has given rise to, no doubt constitutes the most striking
trait of our century; and it is the result of free agreement. If a man
had foreseen or predicted it fifty years ago, our grandfathers would
have thought him idiotic or mad. They would have said: “Never will you
be able to make the shareholders of a hundred companies listen to
reason! It is a Utopia, a fairy tale. A central Government, with an
‘iron’ director, can alone enforce it.”
And the most interesting thing in this organization is, that there is no
European Central Government of Railways! Nothing! No minister of
railways, no dictator, not even a continental parliament, not even a
directing committee! Everything is done by contract.
So we ask the believers in the State, who pretend that “we can never do
without a central Government, were it only for regulating the traffic,”
we ask them: “But how do European railways manage without them? How do
they continue to convey millions of travelers and mountains of luggage
across a continent? If companies owning railways have been able to
agree, why should railway workers, who would take possession of
railways, not agree likewise? And if the Petersburg Warsaw Company and
that of Paris Belfort can act in harmony, without giving themselves the
luxury of a common commander, why, in the midst of our societies,
consisting of groups of free workers, should we need a Government?”
When we endeavour to prove by examples that even to-day, in spite of the
iniquitous organization of society as a whole, men, provided their
instincts be not diametrically opposed, agree without the intervention
of authority, we do not ignore the objections that will be put forth.
These examples have their defective side, because it is impossible to
quote a single organization exempt from the exploitation of the weak by
the strong, the poor by the rich. That is why Statists will not fail to
tell us with their wonted logic: “You see that the intervention of the
State necessary to put an end to this exploitation!”
Only they forget the lessons of history; they do not tell us to what
extent the State itself has contributed towards the existing order by
creating proletarians and delivering them up to exploiters. They also
forget to tell us if it is possible to put an end to exploitation while
the primal causes -- private capital and poverty, two-thirds of which
are artificially created by the State -- continue to exist.
As regards the complete harmony among railway companies, we expect them
to say: “Do you not see railway companies oppress and ill-use their
employers and their travellers! The State must intervene to protect the
public!”
But have we not often repeated that as long as there are capitalists,
this abuse of power will be perpetuated It is precisely the State, the
would-be benefactor, that has given to the companies that monopoly which
they possess to-day. Has it not created concessions, guarantees? Has it
not sent its soldiers against railwaymen on strike? And during the first
trials (we see it in Russia), has it not extended the privilege to
forbidding the press mentioning railway accidents, so as not to
depreciate the shares it guaranteed? Has it not favoured the monopoly
which has anointed the Vanderbilts and the Polyakoffs, the directors of
the P.L.M., the C.P.R., the St. Gothard, “the kings of the times”?
Therefore, if we give as an example the tacit agreement come to between
railway companies, it is by no means as an ideal of economical
management, nor even an ideal of technical organization. It is to show
that if capitalists, without any other aim than that of augmenting their
dividends at other people's expense, can exploit railways successfully
without establishing an International Department, societies of working
men will be able to do it just as well, and even better, without
nominating a Ministry of European railways.
Another objection is raised that is more serious at first sight. We may
be told that the agreement we speak of is not perfectly free, that the
large companies lay down the law to the small ones. They might, for
example, quote a certain rich company compelling travellers who go from
Berlin to Bâle to pass via Cologne and Frankfort, instead of taking the
Leipzig route; a second, carrying goods sixty or a hundred and thirty
miles in a roundabout way (on long distances) to favour influential
shareholders; a third, ruining secondary lines. In the United States
travellers and goods are sometimes compelled to travel impossibly
circuitous routes so that dollars may flow into the pocket of a
Vanderbilt.
Our answer will be the same: As long as Capital exists, the greater'
Capital will oppress the lesser. But oppression does not result from
Capital only. It is also owing to the support given them by the State,
to monopoly created by the State in their favour, that certain large
companies oppress the little ones. The early Socialists have shown how
English legislation did all in its powers to ruin small industries,
drive the peasant to poverty, and deliver over to wealthy industrial
employers battalions of men, compelled to work for no matter what
salary. Railway legislation did exactly the same. Strategic lines,
subsidized lines, companies which received the International Mail
monopoly, everything was brought into play to forward wealthy
financiers' interests. When Rothschild, creditor to all European States,
puts capital in a railway, his faithful subjects, the ministers, will do
their best to make him earn more.
In the United States, in the Democracy that authoritarians hold up to us
as an ideal, the most scandalous fraudulency has crept into everything
that concerns railroads. Thus, if a company ruins its competitors by
cheap fares, it is often enabled to do so because it is reimbursed by
land given to it by the State for a gratuity. Documents recently
published concerning the American wheat trade have fully shown up the
part played by the State in the exploitation of the weak by the strong.
Here, too, the power of accumulated capital has grown tenfold and a
hundredfold by State help. So that, when we see syndicates of railway
companies (a product of free agreement) succeeding in protecting their
small companies against big ones, we are astonished at the intrinsic
force of free agreement that can hold its own against all-powerful
Capital favoured by the State. It is a fact that little companies exist,
in spite of the State's partiality. If in France, land of
centralization, we only see five or six large companies, there are more
than a hundred and ten in Great Britain who agree remarkably well, and
who are certainly better organized for the rapid transit of travellers
and goods than the French and German companies.
Moreover, that is not the question. Large Capital, favoured by the
State, can always, if it be to its advantage, crush the lesser one. What
is of importance to us is this: The agreement between hundreds of
companies to whom the railways of Europe belong, was established without
intervention of a central government laying down the law to the divers
societies; it has subsisted by means of congresses composed of
delegates, who discuss among themselves, and submit proposals, not laws,
to their constituents. It is a new principle that differs completely
from all governmental principle, monarchical or republican, absolute or
parliamentarian. It is an innovation that has been timidly introduced
into the customs of Europe, but has come to stay.
How often have we not read in the writings of State-loving Socialists:
“Who, then, will undertake the regulation of canal traffic in future
society? Should it enter the mind of one of your Anarchist 'comrades' to
put his barge across a canal and obstruct thousands of boats, who will
force him to yield to reason?”
Let us confess the supposition to be somewhat fanciful, yet it might be
said, for instance: “Should a certain commune, or a group of communes,
want to make their barges pass before others, they might perhaps block
the canal in order to carry stones, while wheat, needed in another
commune, would have to stand by. Who, then, would regulate the barge
traffic if not the Government?”
But real life has again demonstrated that Government can be very well
dispensed with here as elsewhere. Free agreement, free organization,
replace that noxious and costly system, and do better.
We know what canals mean to Holland. They are its highways. We also know
how much traffic there is on the canals. What is carried along our
highroads and railroads is transported on canal boats in Holland. There
you could find cause to fight, to make your boats pass before others.
There the Government might really interfere to keep the traffic in
order.
Yet it is not so. The Dutch settled matters in a more practical way,
long ago, by founding a kind of guilds, or syndicates of boatmen. These
were free associations sprung from the very needs of navigation. The
right of way for the boats was adjusted by a certain registered order;
they followed one another in turn. None were allowed to get ahead of the
others under pain of being excluded from the guild. None could station
more than a certain number of days along the quay, and if the owner
found no goods to carry during that time, so much the worse for him; he
had to depart with his empty barge to leave room for newcomers.
Obstruction was thus avoided, even though the competition between the
private owners of the boats continued to exist. Were the latter
suppressed, the agreement would have been only the more cordial. It is
unnecessary to add that the ship-owners could adhere or not to the
syndicate. That was their business, but most of them elected to join it.
Moreover, these syndicates offered such great advantages that they
spread also along the Rhine, the Weser, the Oder, and as far as Berlin.
The boatmen did not wait for a great Bismarck to annex Holland to
Germany, and to appoint an Ober Haupt General Staats Canal Navigations
Rath (Supreme Head Councillor of the General States Canal Navigation),
with a number of stripes corresponding to the length of the title. They
preferred coming to an international understanding. Besides, a number of
ship-owners, whose sailing vessels ply between Germany and Scandinavia,
as well as Russia, have also joined these syndicates, in order to
regulate traffic in the Baltic and to bring about a certain harmony in
the chassé-croisé of vessels. These associations have sprung up freely,
recruiting volunteer adherents, and have nought in common with
governments.
It is, however, more than probable that here too greater capital
oppresses lesser. Maybe the syndicate has also a tendency to become a
monopoly, especially where it receives the precious patronage of the
State that will not fail to interfere with it. Let us not forget either
that these syndicates represent associations whose members have only
private interests at stake, and that if at the same time each ship-owner
were compelled -- by the socializing of production, consumption, and
exchange -- to belong to a hundred other associations for the satisfying
of his needs, things would have a different aspect. A group of
ship-owners, powerful on sea, would feel weak on land, and they would be
obliged to lessen their claims in order to come to terms with railways,
factories, and other groups.
At any rate, without discussing the future, here is another spontaneous
association that has dispensed with Government. Let us quote more
examples. As we are talking of ships and boats, let us mention one of
the most splendid organizations that our century has brought forth, one
of those we may with right be proud of -- the English Lifeboat
Association.
It is known that every year more than a thousand ships are wrecked on
the shores of England. At sea a good ship seldom fears a storm. It is
near the coasts that danger threatens -- rough seas that shatter her
stem-post, squalls that carry off her masts and sails, currents that
render her unmanageable, reefs and sand banks on which she runs aground.
Even in olden times, when it was a custom among inhabitants of the
coasts to light fires in order to attract vessels on to reefs, and to
seize their cargoes, they always strove to save the crew. Seeing a ship
in distress, they launched their nutshells and went to the rescue of
shipwrecked sailors, only too often finding a watery grave themselves.
Every hamlet along the seashore has its legends of heroism, displayed by
woman as well as by man, to save crews in distress.
No doubt the State and men of science have done something to diminish
the number of casualties. Lighthouses, signals, charts, meteorological
warnings have diminished them greatly, but there remain a thousand ships
and several thousand human lives to be saved every year.
To this end a few men of goodwill put their shoulders to the wheel.
Being good sailors and navigators themselves, they invented a lifeboat
that could weather a storm without being torn to pieces or capsizing,
and they set to work to interest the public in their venture, to collect
the necessary funds for constructing boats, and for stationing them
along the coasts, wherever they could be of use.
These men, not being Jacobins, did not turn to the Government. They
understood that to bring their enterprise to a successful issue they
must have the co-operation, the enthusiasm, the local knowledge, and
especially the self-sacrifice of sailors. They also understood that to
find men who at the first signal would launch their boat at night, in a
chaos of waves, not suffering themselves to be deterred by darkness or
breakers, and struggling five, six, ten hours against the tide before
reaching a vessel in distress — men ready to risk their lives to save
those of others, there must be a feeling of solidarity, a spirit of
sacrifice not to be bought with galloon. It was therefore a perfectly
spontaneous movement, sprung from agreement and individual initiative.
Hundreds of local groups arose along the coasts. The initiators had the
common sense not to pose as masters. They looked for sagacity in the
fishermen's hamlets, and when a lord sent £1000 to a village on the
coast to erect a lifeboat station, and his offer was accepted, he left
the choice of a site to the local fishermen and sailors.
Models of new boats were not submitted to the Admiralty. We read in a
Report of the Association: “As it is of importance that lifeboatmen
should have full confidence in the vessel they man, the Committee will
make a point of constructing and equipping the boats according to the
lifeboatmen's expressed wish.” In consequence every year brings with it
new improvements.
The work is wholly conducted by volunteers organizing in committees and
local groups; by mutual aid and agreement! -- "Oh, Anarchists! --
Moreover, they ask nothing of ratepayers, and in a year they may receive
£40,000 in spontaneous subscriptions.
As to the results, here they are: In 1891 the Association possessed 293
lifeboats. The same year it saved 601 shipwrecked sailors and 33
vessels. Since its foundation it has saved 32,671 human beings. In 1886,
three lifeboats with all their men having perished at sea, hundreds of
new volunteers entered their names, organized themselves into local
groups, and the agitation resulted in the construction of twenty
additional boats. As we proceed, let us note that every year the
Association sends to the fishermen and sailors excellent barometers, at
a price three times less than their sale price. It propagates
meteorological knowledge, and warns the parties concerned of the sudden
changes predicted by men of science.
Let us repeat that these hundreds of committees and local groups are not
organized hierarchically, and are composed exclusively of volunteers,
life boatmen, and people interested in the work. The Central Committee,
which is more of a centre for correspondence, in no wise interferes.
It is true that when voting on a question of education or local taxation
takes place in a district, these committees do not, as such, take part
in the deliberations, a modesty, which unfortunately the members of
elected bodies do not imitate. But, on the other hand, these brave men
do not allow those who have never faced a storm to legislate for them
about saving life. At the first signal of distress they rush forth,
concert, and go ahead. There are no galloons, but much goodwill.
Let us take another society of the same kind that of the Red Cross. The
name matters little; let us examine it.
Imagine somebody saying twenty-five years ago: “The State, capable as it
is of massacring twenty thousand men in a day, and of wounding fifty
thousand more, is incapable of helping its own victims; as long as war
exists private initiative must intervene, and men of goodwill must
organize internationally for this humane work!” What mockery would not
have met the man who would have dared thus to speak! To begin with he
would have been called Utopian, and if that did not silence him he would
have been told: “Volunteers will be found wanting precisely where they
are most needed, your hospitals will be centralized in a safe place,
while what is indispensable will be wanting in the ambulances. National
rivalry will cause poor soldiers to die without help.” Disheartening
remarks are only equalled by the number of speakers. Who of us has not
heard men hold forth in this strain?
Now we know what happened. Red Cross societies organized themselves
freely, everywhere, in all countries, in thousands of localities; and
when the war of 1870-1 broke out, the volunteers set to work. Men and
women offered their services. Thousands of hospitals and ambulances were
organized; trains were started carrying ambulances, provisions, linen,
and medicaments for the wounded. The English committees sent entire
convoys of food, clothing, tools, grain to sow, beasts of draught, even
steam-ploughs with their attendants to help in the tillage of
departments devastated by the war! Only consult La Croix Rouge, by
Gustave Moynier, and you will be really struck by the immensity of the
work performed.
As to the prophets ever ready to deny other men's courage, good sense,
and intelligence, and believing themselves to be the only ones capable
of ruling the world with a rod, none of their predictions were realized.
The devotion of the Red Cross volunteers was beyond all praise. They
were only too glad to occupy the most dangerous posts; and whereas the
salaried doctors of the State fled with their staff when the Prussians
approached, the Red Cross volunteers continued their work under fire,
enduring the brutalities of Bismarck's and Napoleon's officers,
lavishing their care on the wounded of all nationalities. Dutch,
Italians, Swedes, Belgians, even Japanese and Chinese agreed remarkably
well. They distributed their hospitals and their ambulances according to
the needs of the occasion. They vied with one another especially in the
hygiene of their hospitals And there is many a Frenchman who still
speaks with deep gratitude of the tender care he received from a Dutch
or German volunteer in the Red Cross ambulances. But what is this to an
authoritarian? His ideal is the regiment doctor, salaried by the State.
What does he care for the Red Cross and its hygienic hospitals, if the
nurses be not functionaries?
Here is then an organization, sprung up but yesterday, and which reckons
its members by hundreds of thousands; possesses ambulances, hospital
trains, elaborates new processes for treating wounds, and so on, and is
due to the spontaneous initiative of a few devoted men.
Perhaps we shall be told that the State has something to do with this
organization. Yes, States have laid hands on it to seize it. The
directing committees are presided over by those whom flunkeys call
princes of the blood. Emperors and queens lavishly patronize the
national committees. But it is not to this patronage that the success of
the organization is due. It is to the thousand local committees of each
nation; to the activity of individuals, to the devotion of all those who
try to help the victims of war. And this devotion would be far greater
if the State did not meddle with it.
In any case, it was not by the order of an International Directing
Committee that Englishmen and Japanese, Swedes and Chinamen, bestirred
themselves to send help to the wounded in 1871. It was not by order of
an international ministry that hospitals rose on the invaded territory
and that ambulances were carried on to the battlefield. It was by the
initiative of volunteers from each country. Once on the spot, they did
not get hold of one another by the hair as foreseen by Jacobins; they
all set to work without distinction of nationality.
We may regret that such great efforts should be put to the service of so
bad a cause, and ask ourselves like the poet's child: “Why inflict
wounds if you are to heal them afterwards?” In striving to destroy the
power of capital and bourgeois authority, we work to put an end to
massacres, and we would far rather see the Red Cross volunteers put
forth their activity to bring about (with us) the suppression of war;
but we had to mention this immense organization as another illustration
of results produced by free agreement and free aid.
If we wished to multiply examples taken from the art of exterminating
men we should never end. Suffice to quote the numerous societies to
which the German army owes its force, that does not only depend on
discipline, as is generally believed. I mean the societies whose aim is
to propagate military knowledge.
At one of the last congresses of the Military Alliance (Kriegerbund),
delegates from 2452 federated societies, comprising 151,712 members,
were present. But there are besides very numerous Shooting, Military
Games, Strategical Games, Topographical Studies Societies "these are the
workshops in which the technical knowledge of the German army is
developed, not in regimental schools. It is a formidable network of all
kinds of societies, including military men and civilians, geographers
and gymnasts, sportsmen and technologists, which rise up spontaneously,
organize, federate, discuss, and explore the country. It is these
voluntary and free associations that make up the real backbone of the
German army.
Their aim is execrable. It is the maintenance of the Empire. But what
concerns us, is to point out that, in spite of military organization
being the “Great mission” of the State, success in this branch is the
more certain the more it is left to the free agreement of groups and to
the free initiative of individuals. Even in matters pertaining to war,
free agreement is thus appealed to; and to further prove our assertion
let us mention the three hundred thousand British volunteers, the
British National Artillery Association, and the Society, now in course
of organization, for the defence of England's coasts, as well as the
appeals made to the commercial fleet, the Bicyclists' Corps, and the new
organizations of private motor-cars and steam launches.
The State is abdicating and appealing in its holy functions to private
individuals. Everywhere free organization trespasses on its domain. And
yet, the facts we have quoted let us catch only a glimpse of what free
agreement has in store for us in the future, when there will be no more
State.
Let us now examine the principal objections put forth against Communism.
Most of them are evidently caused by a simple misunderstanding, yet they
raise important questions and merit our attention.
It is not for us to answer the objections raised by authoritarian
Communism — we ourselves hold with them. Civilized nations have suffered
too much in the long, hard struggle for the emancipation of the
individual, to disown their past work and to tolerate a Government that
would make itself felt in the smallest details of a citizen’s life, even
if that Government had no other aim than the good of the community.
Should an authoritarian Socialist society ever succeed in establishing
itself, it could not last; general discontent would soon force it to
break up, or to reorganize itself on principles of liberty.
It is of an Anarchist-Communist society we are about to speak, a society
that recognizes the absolute liberty of the individual, that does not
admit of any authority, and makes use of no compulsion to drive men to
work. Limiting our studies to the economic side of the question, let us
see if such a society, composed of men as they are to-day, neither
better nor worse, neither more nor less industrious, would have a chance
of successful development.
The objection is known. “If the existence of each is guaranteed, and if
the necessity of earning wages does not compel men to work, nobody will
work. Every man will lay the burden of his work on another if he is not
forced to do it himself.” Let us first remark the incredible levity with
which this objection is raised, without taking into consideration that
the question is in reality merely to know, on the one hand, whether you
effectively obtain by wage-work the results you aim at; and, on the
other hand, whether voluntary work is not already more productive to-day
than work stimulated by wages. A question which would require profound
study. But whereas in exact sciences men give their opinion on subjects
infinitely less important and less complicated after serious research,
after carefully collecting and analyzing facts, on this question they
will pronounce judgment without appeal, resting satisfied with any one
particular event, such as, for example, the want of success of a
communist association in America. They act like the barrister, who does
not see in the council for the opposite side a representative of a
cause, or an opinion contrary to his own, but a simple adversary in an
oratorical debate; and if he be lucky enough to find a repartee, does
not otherwise care to justify his cause. Therefore the study of this
essential basis of all Political Economy, the study of the most
favourable conditions for giving society the greatest amount of useful
products with the least waste of human energy, does not advance. They
limit themselves to repeating commonplace assertions, or else they
pretend ignorance of our assertions.
What is most striking in this levity is that even in capitalist
Political Economy you already find a few writers compelled by facts to
doubt the axiom put forth by the founders of their science, that the
threat of hunger is man’s best stimulant for productive work. They begin
to perceive that in production a certain collective element is
introduced which has been too much neglected up till now, and which
might be more important than personal gain. The inferior quality of
wage-work, the terrible waste of human energy in modern agricultural and
industrial labour, the ever growing quantity of pleasure-seekers, who
to-day load their burden on others’ shoulders, the absence of a certain
animation in production that is becoming more and more apparent; all
this begins to preoccupy the economists of the “classical” school. Some
of them ask themselves if they have not got on the wrong track: if the
imaginary evil being, that was supposed to be tempted exclusively by a
bait of lucre or wages, really exists. This heresy penetrates even into
universities; it is found in books of orthodox economy.
This does not hinder a great many Socialist reformers to remain
partisans of individual remuneration, and defending the old citadel of
wagedom, notwithstanding that it is being delivered over stone by stone
to the assailants by its former defenders.
They fear that without compulsion the masses will not work.
But during our own lifetime have we not heard the same fears expressed
twice? By the anti-abolitionists in America before Negro emancipation,
and by the Russian nobility before the liberation of the serfs? “Without
the whip the Negro will not work,” said the anti-abolitionist. “Free
from their master’s supervision the serfs will leave the fields
uncultivated,” said the Russian serf-owners. It was the refrain of the
French noblemen in 1789, the refrain of the Middle Ages, a refrain as
old as the world, and we shall hear it every time there is a question of
sweeping away an injustice. And each time actual facts give it the lie.
The liberated peasant of 1792 ploughed with a wild energy unknown to his
ancestors, the emancipated Negro works more than his fathers, and the
Russian peasant, after having honoured the honeymoon of his emancipation
by celebrating Fridays as well as Sundays, has taken up work with as
much eagerness as his liberation was the more complete. There, where the
soil is his, he works desperately; that is the exact word for it. The
anti-abolitionist refrain can be of value to slave-owners; as to the
slaves themselves, they know what it is worth, as they know its motive.
Moreover, Who but economists taught us that if a wage-earner’s work is
but indifferent, an intense and productive work is only obtained from a
man who sees his wealth increase in proportion to his efforts? All hymns
sung in honour of private property can be reduced to this axiom.
For it is remarkable that when economists, wishing to celebrate the
blessings of property, show us how an unproductive, marshy, or stony
soil is clothed with rich harvests when cultivated by the peasant
proprietor, they in nowise prove their thesis in favour of private
property. By admitting: that the only guarantee not to be robbed of the
fruits of your labour is to possess the instruments of labour — which is
true — the economists only prove that man really produces most when he
works in freedom, when he has a certain choice in his occupations, when
he has no overseer to impede him, and lastly, when he sees his work
bringing in a profit to him and to others who work like him, but
bringing in nothing to idlers. This is all we can deduct from their
argumentation, and we maintain the same ourselves.
As to the form of possession of the instruments of labour, they only
mention it indirectly in their demonstration, as a guarantee to the
cultivator that he shall not be robbed of the profits of his yield nor
of his improvements. Besides, in support of their thesis in favour of
private property against all other forms of possession, should not the
economists demonstrate that under the form of communal property land
never produces such rich harvests as when the possession is private? But
it is not so; in fact, the contrary has been observed.
Take for example a commune in the canton of Vaud, in the winter time,
when all the men of the village go to fell wood in the forest, which
belongs to them all. It is precisely during these festivals of toil that
the greatest ardour for work and the most considerable display of human
energy are apparent. No salaried labour, no effort of a private owner
can bear comparison with it.
Or let us take a Russian village, when all its inhabitants mow a field
belonging to the commune, or farmed by it. There you will see what man
can produce when he works in common for communal production. Comrades
vie with one another in cutting the widest swath; women bestir
themselves in their wake so as not to be distanced by the mowers. It is
a festival of labour, in which a hundred people do work in a few hours
that would not have been finished in a few days had they worked
separately. What a sad contrast compared to the work of the isolated
owner!
In fact, we might quote scores of examples among the pioneers of
America, in Swiss, German, Russian, and in certain French villages; or
the work done in Russia by gangs (artels) of masons, carpenters,
boatmen, fishermen, etc., who undertake a task and divide the produce or
the remuneration among themselves, without it passing through the
intermediary of middlemen. We could also mention the great communal
hunts of nomadic tribes, and an infinite number of successful collective
enterprises. And in every case we could show the unquestionable
superiority of communal work compared to that of the wage-earner or the
isolated private owner.
Well-being, that is to say, the satisfaction of physical, artistic, and
moral needs, has always been the most powerful stimulant to work. And
when a hireling produces bare necessities with difficulty, a free
worker, who sees ease and luxury increasing for him and for others in
proportion to his efforts, spends infinitely far more energy and
intelligence, and obtains first-class products in far greater abundance.
The one feels riveted to misery, the other hopes for ease and luxury in
the future. In this lies the whole secret. Therefore a society aiming at
the well-being of all, and at the possibility of all enjoying life in
all its manifestations, will supply voluntary work which will be
infinitely superior and yield far more than work has produced up till
now under the goad of slavery, serfdom, or wagedom.
Nowadays, whoever can load on others his share of labour indispensable
to existence, does so, and it is admitted that it will always be so.
Now work indispensable to existence is essentially manual. We may be
artists or scientists; but none of us can do without things obtained by
manual work — bread, clothes, roads, ships, light, heat, etc. And,
moreover, however highly artistic or however subtly metaphysical are our
pleasures, they all depend on manual labour. And it is precisely this
labour — basis of life — that every one tries to avoid.
We understand perfectly well that it must be so nowadays.
Because, to do manual work now, means in reality to shut yourself up for
ten or twelve hours a day in an unhealthy workshop, and to remain
riveted to the same task for twenty or thirty years, and maybe for your
whole life.
It means to be doomed to a paltry wage, to the uncertainty of the
morrow, to want of work, often to destitution, more often than not to
death in a hospital, after having worked forty years to feed, clothe,
amuse, and instruct others than yourself and your children.
It means to bear the stamp of inferiority all your life, because,
whatever the politicians tell us, the manual worker is always considered
inferior to the brain worker, and the one who has toiled ten hours in a
workshop has not the time, and still less the means, to give himself the
high delights of science and art, nor even to prepare himself to
appreciate them; he must be content with the crumbs from the table of
privileged persons.
We understand that under these conditions manual labour is considered a
curse of fate.
We understand that all men have but one dream — that of emerging from,
or enabling their children to emerge from this inferior state; to create
for themselves an “independent” position, which means what? — To also
live by other men’s work!
As long as there will be a class of manual workers and a class of
“brain” workers, black hands and white hands, it will be thus.
What interest, in fact, can this depressing work have for the worker,
when he knows that the fate awaiting him from the cradle to the grave
will be to live in mediocrity, poverty, and insecurity of the morrow?
Therefore, when we see the immense majority of men take up their
wretched task every morning, we are surprised at their perseverance, at
their zeal for work, at the habit that enables them, like machines
blindly obeying an impetus given, to lead this life of misery without
hope for the morrow; without foreseeing ever so vaguely that some day
they, or at least their children, will be part of a humanity rich in all
the treasures of a bountiful nature, in all the enjoyments of knowledge,
scientific and artistic creation, reserved to-day to a few privileged
favourites.
It is precisely to put an end to this separation between manual and
brain work that we want to abolish wagedom, that we want the Social
Revolution. Then work will no longer appear a curse of fate: it will
become what it should be — the free exercise of all the faculties of
man.
Moreover, it is time to submit to a serious analysis this legend about
superior work, supposed to be obtained under the lash of wagedom.
It is enough to visit, not the model factory and workshop that we find
now and again, but ordinary factories, to conceive the immense waste of
human energy that characterizes modern industry. For one factory more or
less rationally organized, there are a hundred or more which waste man’s
labour, without a more substantial motive than that of perhaps bringing
in a few pounds more per day to the employer.
Here you see youths from twenty to twenty five years of age, sitting all
day long on a bench, their chests sunken in, feverishly shaking their
heads and bodies to tie, with the speed of conjurers, the two ends of
worthless scraps of cotton, the refuse of the lace-looms. What progeny
will these trembling and rickety bodies bequeath to their country? “But
they occupy so little room in the factory, and each of them brings me in
sixpence a day,” will say the employer.
In an immense London factory you could see girls, bald at seventeen from
carrying trays of matches on their heads from one room to another, when
the simplest machine could wheel the matches to their tables. But...it
costs so little, the work of women who have no special trade! What is
the use of a machine? When these can do no more, they will be easily
replaced...there are so many in the street.
On the steps of a mansion on an icy night you will find a bare-footed
child asleep, with its bundle of papers in its arms...child-labour costs
so little that it may well be employed, every evening, to sell
tenpenny-worth of papers, of which the poor boy will receive a penny, or
a penny half-penny. And lastly, you may see a robust man tramping,
dangling his arms; he has been out of work for months. Meanwhile his
daughter grows pale in the overheated vapours of the workshop for
dressing stuffs, and his son fills blacking pots by hand, or waits hours
at the corner of a street till a passer-by enables him to earn a penny.
And so it is everywhere, from San Francisco to Moscow, and from Naples
to Stockholm. The waste of human energy is the distinguishing and
predominant trait of industry, not to mention trade where it attains
still more colossal proportions.
What a sad satire is that name, Political Economy, given to the science
of waste of energy under the system of wagedom!
This is not all. If you speak to the director of a well-organized
factory, he will naively explain to you that it is difficult nowadays to
find a skilful, vigorous, and energetic workman, who works with a will.
“Should such a man present himself among the twenty or thirty who call
every Monday asking us for work, he is sure to be received, even if we
are reducing the number of our hands. We recognize him at the first
glance, and he is always accepted, even though we have to get rid of an
older and less active worker the next day.” And the one who has just
received notice to quit, and all those who receive it to-morrow, go to
reinforce that immense reserve army of capital — workmen out of work —
who are only called to the loom or the bench when there is pressure of
work, or to oppose strikers. And those others, the average workers that
are the refuse of the better-class factories? They join the equally
formidable army of aged and indifferent workers that continually
circulates between the second-class factories — those which barely cover
their expenses and make their way in the world by trickery and snares
laid for the buyer, and especially for the consumer in distant
countries.
And if you talk to the workmen themselves, you will soon learn that the
rule in such factories is — never to do entirely what you are capable
of. “Shoddy pay — shoddy work!” this is the advice which the working man
receives from his comrades upon entering such a factory.
For the workers know that if in a moment of generosity they give way to
the entreaties of an employer and consent to intensify the work in order
to carry out a pressing order, this nervous work will be exacted in the
future as a rule in the scale of wages. Therefore in all such factories
they prefer never to produce as much as they can. In certain industries
production is limited so as to keep up high prices, and sometimes the
password, “Go-canny,” is given, which signifies, “Bad work for bad pay!”
Wage-work is serf-work; it cannot, it must not, produce all that it
could produce. And it is high time to disbelieve the legend which
represents wagedom as the best incentive to productive work. If industry
nowadays brings in a hundred times more than it did in the days of our
grandfathers, it is due to the sudden awakening of physical and chemical
sciences towards the end of last century; not to the capitalist
organization of wagedom, but in spite of that organization.
Those who have seriously studied the question do not deny any of the
advantages of Communism, on condition, be it well understood, that
Communism be perfectly free, that is to say, Anarchist. They recognize
that work paid with money, even disguised under the name of “labour
notes,” to Workers’ associations governed by the State, would keep up
the characteristics of wagedom and would retain its disadvantages. They
agree that the whole system would soon suffer from it, even if society
came into possession of the instruments of production. And they admit
that, thanks to integral education given to all children, to the
laborious habits of civilized societies, with the liberty of choosing
and varying their occupations and the attractions of work done by equals
for the well-being of all, a Communist society would not be wanting in
producers who would soon make the fertility of the soil triple and
tenfold, and give a new impulse to industry.
This our opponents agree to. “But the danger,” they say, “will come from
that minority of loafers who will not work, and will not have regular
habits in spite of excellent conditions that make work pleasant. To-day
the prospect of hunger compels the most refractory to move along with
the others. The one who does not arrive in time is dismissed. But a
black sheep suffices to contaminate the whole flock, and two or three
sluggish or refractory workmen lead the others astray and bring a spirit
of disorder and rebellion into the workshop that makes work impossible;
so that in the end we shall have to return to a system of compulsion
that forces the ringleaders back into the ranks. And is not the system
of wages paid in proportion to work performed, the only one that enables
compulsion to be employed, without hurting the feelings of the worker?
Because all other means would imply the continual intervention of an
authority that would be repugnant to free men.” This, we believe, is the
objection fairly stated.
It belongs to the category of arguments which try to justify the State,
the Penal Law, the Judge, and the Gaoler.
“As there are people, a feeble minority, who will not submit to social
customs,” the authoritarians say, “we must maintain magistrates,
tribunals and prisons, although these institutions become a source of
new evils of all kinds.”
Therefore we can only repeat what we have so often said concerning
authority in general: “To avoid a possible evil you have recourse to
means which in themselves are a greater evil, and become the source of
those same abuses that you wish to remedy. For do not forget that it is
wagedom, the impossibility of living otherwise than by selling your
labour, which has created the present Capitalist system, whose vices you
begin to recognize.” Let us also remark that this authoritarian way of
reasoning is but a justification of what is wrong in the present system.
Wagedom was not instituted to remove the disadvantages of Communism; its
origin, like that of the State and private ownership, is to be found
elsewhere. It is born of slavery and serfdom imposed by force, and only
wears a more modern garb. Thus the argument in favour of wagedom is as
valueless as those by which they seek to apologize for private property
and the State.
We are, nevertheless, going to examine the objection, and see if there
is any truth in it.
To begin with, Is it not evident that if a society, founded on the
principle of free work, were really menaced by loafers, it could protect
itself without an authoritarian organization and without having recourse
to wagedom?
Let us take a group of volunteers, combining for some particular
enterprise. Having its success at heart, they all work with a will, save
one of the associates, who is frequently absent from his post. Must they
on his account dissolve the group, elect a president to impose fines, or
maybe distribute markers for work done, as is customary in the Academy?
It is evident that neither the one nor the other will be done, but that
some day the comrade who imperils their enterprise will be told:
“Friend, we should like to work with you; but as you are often absent
from your post, and you do your work negligently, we must part. Go and
find other comrades who will put up with your indifference!”
This way is so natural that it is practiced everywhere nowadays, in all
industries, in competition with all possible systems of fines, docking
of wages, supervison, etc.; a workman may enter the factory at the
appointed time, but if he does his work badly, if he hinders his
comrades by his laziness or other defects, and they quarrel with him on
that account, there is an end of it; he is compelled to leave the
workshop.
Authoritarians pretend that it is the almighty employer and his
overseers who maintain regularity and quality of work in factories. In
fact, in a somewhat complicated enterprise, in which the wares produced
pass through many hands before being finished, it is the factory itself,
the workmen as a unity, who see to the good quality of the work.
Therefore the best factories of British private industry have few
overseers, far less on an average than the French factories, and less
than the British State factories.
A certain standard of public morals is maintained in the same way.
Authoritarians say it is due to rural guards, judges, and policemen,
whereas in reality it is maintained in spite of judges, policemen, and
rural guards. “Many are the laws producing crimirials!” has been said
long ago.
Not only in industrial workshops do things go on in this way; it happens
everywhere, every day, on a scale that only bookworms have as yet no
notion of. When a railway company, federated with other companies, fails
to fulfil its engagements, when its trains are late and goods lie
neglected at the stations, the other companies threaten to cancel the
contract, and that threat usually suffices.
It is generally believed, at any rate it is taught, that commerce only
keeps to its engagements from fear of lawsuits. Nothing of the sort;
nine times in ten the trader who has not kept his word will not appear
before a judge. There, where trade is very great, as in London, the sole
fact of having driven a creditor to bring a lawsuit suffices for the
immense majority of merchants to refuse for good to have any dealings
with a man who has compelled one of them to go to law.
Then, why should means that are used to-day among mates in the workshop,
traders, and railway companies, not be made use of in a society based on
voluntary work?
Take, for example, an association stipulating that each of its members
should carry out the following contract: “We undertake to give you the
use of our houses, stores, streets, means of transport, schools,
museums, etc., on condition that, from twenty to forty-five or fifty
years of age, you consecrate four or five hours a day to some work
recognized as necessary to existence. Choose yourself the producing
groups which you wish to join, or organize a new group, provided that it
will undertake to produce necessaries. And as for the remainder of your
time, combine together with those you like for recreation, art, or
science, according to the bent of your taste.
“Twelve or fifteen hundred hours of work a year, in a group producing
food, clothes, or houses, or employed in public health, transport, etc.,
is all we ask of you. For this work we guarantee to you all that these
groups produce or will produce. But if not one, of the thousands of
groups of our federation, will receive you, whatever be their motive; if
you are absolutely incapable of producing anything useful, or if you
refuse to do it, then live like an isolated man or like an invalid. If
we are rich enough to give you the necessaries of life we shall be
delighted to give them to you. You are a man, and you have the right to
live. But as you wish to live under special conditions, and leave the
ranks, it is more than probable that you will suffer for it in your
daily relations with other citizens. You will be looked upon as a ghost
of bourgeois society, unless some friends of yours, discovering you to
be a talent, kindly free you from all moral obligation towards society
by doing necessary work for you.
“And lastly, if it does not please you, go and look for other conditions
else where in the wide world, or else seek adherents and organize with
them on novel principles. We prefer our own.”
That is what could be done in a communal society in order to turn away
sluggards if they became too numerous.
We very much doubt that we need fear this contingency in a society
really based on the entire freedom of the individual.
In fact, in spite of the premium on idleness offered by private
ownership of capital, the really lazy man, unless he is ill, is
comparatively rare.
Among workmen it is often said that bourgeois are idlers. There are
certainly enough of them, but they, too, are the exception. On the
contrary, in every industrial enterprise, you are sure to find one or
more bourgeois who work very hard. It is true that the majority of
bourgeois profit by their privileged position to award themselves the
least unpleasant tasks, and that they work under hygienic conditions of
air, food, etc., which permit them to do their business without too much
fatigue. But these are precisely the conditions which we claim for all
workers, without exception. We must also say that if, thanks to their
privileged position, rich people often make absolutely useless or even
harmful work in society, nevertheless the Ministers, Heads of
Departments, factory owners, traders, bankers, etc., subject themselves
for a few hours a day to work which they find more or less tiresome, all
preferring their hours of leisure to this obligatory work. And if in
nine cases out of ten this work is fateful, they find it none the less
tiring for that. But it is precisely because the middle class put forth
a great energy, even in doing harm (knowingly or not) and defending
their privileged position, that they have succeeded in defeating the
landed nobility, and that they continue to rule the masses. If they were
idlers they would long since have ceased. to exist, and would have
disappeared like the aristocrats. In a society that would expect only
four or five hours a day of useful, pleasant, and hygienic work, they
would perform their task perfectly, and they certainly would not put up
with the horrible conditions in which men toil nowadays without
reforming them. If a Huxley spent only five hours in the sewers of
London, rest assured that he would have found the means of making them
as sanitary as his physiological laboratory.
As to the laziness of the great majority of workers, only philistine
economists and philanthropists say such nonsense.
If you ask an intelligent manufacturer, he will tell you that if workmen
only put it into their heads to be lazy, all factories would have to be
closed, for no measure of severity, no system of spying would be of any
use. You should have seen the terror caused in 1887 among British
employers when a few agitators started preaching the “go-canny” theory —
“for bad pay bad work”; “take it easy, do not overwork yourselves, and
waste all you can.” — “They demoralize the worker, they want to kill
industry!” cried those who formerly inveighed against the immorality of
the worker and the bad quality of his work. But if the worker were what
he is represented to be — namely, the idler whom you have continually to
threaten with dismissal from the workshop — what would the word
“demoralization” signify?
So when we speak of a possible idleness, we must well understand that it
is a question of a small minority in society; and before legislating for
that minority, would it not be wise to study its origin? Whoever
observes with an intelligent eye sees well enough that the child reputed
lazy at school is often the one which does not understand what he is
badly taught. Very often, too, it is suffering from cerebral anæmia,
caused by poverty and an anti-hygienic education. A boy who is lazy at
Greek or Latin would work admirably were he taught in science,
especially if taught by the medium of manual labour. A girl reputed
nought at mathematics becomes the first mathematician of her class if
she by chance meets somebody who can explain to her the elements of
arithmetic she did not understand. And a workman, lazy in the workshop,
cultivates his garden at dawn, while gazing at the rising sun, and will
be at work again at nightfall, when all nature goes to its rest.
Somebody said that dirt is matter in the wrong place. The same
definition applies to nine-tenths of those called lazy. They are people
gone astray in a direction that does not answer to their temperament nor
to their capacities. In reading the biography of great men, we are
struck with the number of “idlers” among them. They were lazy as long as
they had not found the right path, and afterwards laborious to excess.
Darwin, Stephenson, and many others belonged to this category of idlers.
Very often the idler is but a man to whom it is repugnant to make all
his life the eighteenth part of a pin, or the hundredth part of a watch,
while he feels he has exuberant energy which he would like to expend
elsewhere. Often, too, he is a rebel who cannot submit to being fixed
all his life to a work-bench in order to procure a thousand pleasures
for his emulover, while knowing himself to be far the less stupid of the
two, and knowing his only fault to be that of having been born in hovel
instead of coming into the world in a castle.
Lastly, a good many “idlers” do not know the trade by which they are
compelled to earn their living. Seeing the imperfect thing made by their
own hands, striving vainly to do better, and perceiving that they never
will succeed on account of the bad habits of work already acquired, they
begin to hate their trade, and, not knowing any other, hate work in
general. Thousands of workmen and artists who are failures suffer from
this cause.
On the other hand, he who since his youth has learned to play the piano
well, to handle the plans well, the chisel, the brush, or the file, so
that he feels that what he does is beautiful, will never give up the
piano, the chisel, or the file. He will find pleasure in his work which
does not tire him, as long as he is not overdriven.
Under the one name, idleness, a series of results due to different
causes have been grouped, of which each one could be a source of good,
instead of being a source of evil to society. Like all questions
concerning criminality and related to human faculties, facts have been
collected having nothing in common with one another. They say laziness
or crime, without giving themselves the trouble to analyse their cause.
They are in haste to punish them, without inquiring if the punishment
itself does not contain a premium on “laziness” or “crime.”[8]
This is why a free society, seeing the number of idlers increasing in
its midst, would no doubt think of looking for the cause of laziness, in
order to suppress it, before having recourse to punishment. When it is a
case, as we have already mentioned, of simple bloodlessness, then,
before stuffing the brain of a child with science, nourish his system so
as to produce blood, strengthen him, and, that he shall not waste his
time, take him to the country or to the seaside; there, teach him in the
open air, not in books — geometry, by measuring the distance to a spire,
or the height of a tree; natural sciences, while picking flowers and
fishing in the sea; physical science, while building the boat he will go
to fish in. But for mercy’s sake do not fill his brain with sentences
and dead languages. Do not make an idler of him!...
Such a child has neither order nor regular habits. Let first the
children inculcate order among themselves, and later on, the laboratory,
the workshop, work done in a limited space, with many tools about, will
teach them method. But do not make disorderly beings out of them by your
school, whose only order is the symmetry of its benches, and which —
true image of the chaos in its teachings — will never inspire anybody
with the love of harmony, of consistency, and method in work.
Do not you see that by your methods of teaching, framed by a Ministry
for eight million scholars, who represent eight million different
capacities, you only impose a system good for mediocrities, conceived by
an average of mediocrities? Your school becomes a University of
laziness, as your prison is a University of crime. Make the school free,
abolish your University grades, appeal to the volunteers of teaching;
begin that way, instead of making laws against laziness which only serve
to increase it.
Give the workman who is compelled to make a minute particle of some
object, who is stifled at his little tapping machine, which he ends by
loathing, give him the chance of tilling the soil, felling trees in the
forest, sailing the seas in the teeth of a storm, dashing through space
on an engine, but do not make an idler of him by forcing him all his
life to attend to a small machine, to plough the head of a screw, or to
drill the eye of a needle.
Suppress the cause of idleness, and you may take it for granted that few
individuals will really hate work, especially voluntary work, and that
there will be no need to manufacture a code of laws on their account.
It is our opinion that collectivists commit a twofold error in their
plans for the reconstruction of society. While speaking of abolishing
capitalist rule, they intend nevertheless to retain two institutions
which are the very basis of this rule — Representative Government and
the Wages System.
As regards so-called representative government, we have often spoken
about it. It is absolutely incomprehensible to us that intelligent men —
and such are not wanting in the collectivist party — can remain
partisans of national or municipal parliaments after all the lessons
history has given them — in France, in England, in Germany, or in the
United States.
While we see parliamentary rule breaking up, and from all sides
criticism of this rule growing louder — not only of its results, but
also of its principles — how is it that revolutionary socialists defend
a system already condemned to die?
Built up by the middle classes to hold their own against royalty,
sanctioning, and at the same time strengthening, their sway over the
workers, parliamentary rule is pre-eminently a middle-class rule. The
upholders of this system have never seriously affirmed that a parliament
or a municipal council represent a nation or a city. The most
intelligent among them know that this is impossible. The middle class
has simply used the parliamentary system to raise a barrier between
itself and royalty, without giving the people liberty. But gradually, as
the people become conscious of their interests and the variety of their
interests multiply, the system can no longer work. Therefore democrats
of all countries vainly imagine (livers) palliatives. The Referendum is
tried and found to be a failure; proportional representation is spoken
of, so is representation of minorities, and other parliamentary Utopias.
In a word, they strive to find what is not to be found, and they are
compelled to recognize that they are in a wrong way, and confidence in a
Representative Government disappears.
It is the same with the wages system; for after having proclaimed the
abolition of private property, and the possession in common of all means
of production, how can they uphold the wages system in any form? It is,
nevertheless, what collectivists are doing when they recommend
labour-cheques.
It is easy to understand why the early English socialists came to the
system of labour-cheques. They simply tried to make Capital and Labour
agree. They repudiated the idea of violently laying hands on capitalist
property.
It is also easily understood why Proudhon took up the idea later on. In
his Mutualist system he tried to make Capital less offensive,
notwithstanding the retaining of private property, which he detested
from the bottom of his heart, but which he believed to be necessary to
guarantee individuals against the State.
Neither is it astonishing that certain economists, more or less
bourgeois, admit labour-cheques. They care little whether the worker is
paid in labour-notes or in coin stamped with the effigy of the Republic
or the Empire. They only care to save from destruction individual
ownership of dwelling-houses, of land, of factories; in any case that of
dwelling-houses and the capital that is necessary for manufacturing. And
labour-notes would just answer the purpose of upholding this private
property.
As long as labour-notes can be exchanged for Jewels or carriages, the
owner of the house will willingly accept them for rent. And as long as
dwelling-houses, fields, and factories belong to isolated owners, men
will have to pay them, in one way or another, for being allowed to work
in the fields or factories, or for living in the houses. The owners will
accept to be paid by the workers in gold, in paper-money, or in cheques
exchangeable for all sorts of commodities. But how can we defend
labour-notes, this new form of wagedom, when we admit that houses,
fields, and factories will no longer be private property, and that they
will belong to the commune or the nation?
Let us closely examine this system of remuneration for work done,
preached by French, German, English, and Italian collectivists (Spanish
anarchists, who still call themselves collectivists, imply by
Collectivism the possession in common of all instruments of production,
and the “liberty of each group to divide the produce, as they think fit,
according to communist or any other principles”). It amounts to this:
Everybody works in field, factory, school, hospital, etc. The
working-day is fixed by the State, which owns land, factories, roads,
etc. Every work-day is paid for with a labour-note, which is inscribed
with these words: Eight hours work. With this cheque the worker can
procure all sorts of merchandise in the stores owned by the State or by
divers corporations. The cheque is divisible, so that you can buy an
hour’s-work worth of meat, ten minutes worth of matches, or half an hour
of tobacco. After the Collectivist Revolution, instead of saying
“two-pence worth of soap,” we shall say “five minutes worth of soap.”
Most collectivists, true to the distinction laid down by middle-class
economists (and by Marx) between qualified work and simple work, tell
us, moreover, that qualified or professional work must be paid a certain
quantity more than simple work. Thus an hour’s work of a doctor will
have to be considered as equivalent to two or three hours’ work of a
hospital nurse, or to three hours’ work of a navvy. “Professional, or
qualified work, will be a multiple of simple work,” says the
collectivist Grönlund, “because this kind of work needs a more or less
long apprenticeship.”
Other collectivists, such as the French Marxists, do not make this
distinction. They proclaim “Equality of Wages.” The doctor, the
schoolmaster, and the professor will be paid (in labour-cheques) at the
same rate as the navvy. Eight hours visiting the sick in a hospital will
be worth the same as eight hours spent in earth-works or else in mines
or factories.
Some make a greater concession; they admit that disagreeable or
unhealthy work — such as sewerage — could be paid for at a higher rate
than agreeable work. One hour’s work of a sewerman would be worth, they
say, two hours of a professor’s work.
Let us add that certain collectivists admit of corporations paying a
lump sum for work done. Thus a corporation would say: “Here are a
hundred tons of steel. A hundred workmen were required to produce them,
and it took them ten days. Their work-day being an eight-hours day, it
has taken them eight thousand working hours to produce a hundred tons of
steed eight hours a ton.” For this the State would pay them eight
thousand labour-notes of one hour each, and these eight thousand cheques
would be divided among the members of the iron-works as they themselves
thought proper.
On the other hand, a hundred miners having taken twenty days to extract
eight thousand tons of coal, coal would be worth two hours a ton, and
the sixteen thousand cheques of one hour each, received by the Guild of
Miners, would be divided among their members according to their own
appreciation.
If the miners protested, and said that a ton of steel should only cost
six hours’ work instead of eight; if the professor wished to have his
day paid twice more than the nurse, then the State would interfere and
would settle their differences.
Such is, in a few words, the organization collectivists wish to see
arise out of the Social Revolution. As we see, their principles are:
Collective property of the instruments of production, and remuneration
to each according to the time spent in producing, while taking into
account the productivity of his labour. As to the political system, it
would be Parliamentarianism modified by positive instructions given to
those elected, by the Referendum — a vote, taken by noes or ayes by the
nation.
Let us own that this system appears to us unrealizable.
Collectivists begin by proclaiming a revolutionary principle — the
abolition of private property — then they deny it no sooner than
proclaimed by upholding an organization of production and consumption
that originated in private property.
They proclaim a revolutionary principle, and ignore the consequences
that this principle will inevitably bring about. They forget that the
very fact of abolishing individual property in the instruments of work —
land, factories, road, capital, — must launch society into absolutly new
chanels; must completely overthrow the present system of production,
both in its aim as well as in its means; must modify daily relations
between individuals, as soon as land, machinery, and all other
instruments of production are considered common property.
They say, “No private property,” and immediately after strive to
maintain private property in its daily manifestations. “You shall be a
Commune as far as regards production: fields, tools, machinery, all that
has been invented up till now — factories, railways, harbours, mines,
etc., all are yours. Not the slightest distinction will be made
concerning the share of each in this collective property.
“But from to-morrow you will minutely debate the share you are going to
take in the creation of new machinery, in the digging of new mines. You
will carefully weigh what part of the new produce belongs to you. You
will count your minutes of work, and you will take care that a minute of
your neighbours cannot buy more than yours.
“And as an hour measures nothing, as in some factories a worker can see
to six power-looms at a time, while in another he only tends two, you
will weigh the muscular force, the brain energy, and the nervous energy
you have expended. You will accurately calculate the years of
apprenticeship in order to appraise the amount each will contribute to
future production. And this — after having declared that you do not take
into account his share in past production.”
Well, for us it is evident that a society cannot be based on two
absolutely opposed principles, two principles that contradict one
another continually. And a nation or a commune that would have such an
organization would be compelled to revert to private property in the
instruments of production, or to transform itself immediately into a
communist society.
We have said that certain collectivist writers desire that a distinction
should be made between qualified or professional work and simple work.
They pretend that an hour’s work of an engineer, an architect, or a
doctor, must be considered as two or three hours’ work of a blacksmith,
a mason, or a hospital nurse. And the same distinction must be made
between all sorts of trades necessitating a more or less long
apprenticeship and the simple toil of day labourers.
Well, to establish this distinction would be to maintain all the
inequalities of present society. It would mean fixing a dividing line,
from the beginning, between the workers and those who pretend to govern
them. It would mean dividing society into two very distinct classes —
the aristocracy of knowledge above the horny-handed lower orders — the
one doomed to serve the other; the one working with its hands to feed
and clothe those who, profiting by their leisure, study how to govern
their fosterers.
It would mean reviving one of the distinct peculiarities of present
society and giving it the sanction of the Social Revolution. It would
mean setting up as a principle an abuse already condemned in our ancient
crumbling society.
We know the answer we shall get. They will speak of “Scientific
Socialism”; they will quote bourgeois economists, and Marx too, to prove
that a scale of wages has its raison d’être, as “the labour-force” of
the engineer will have cost more to society than the “labour-force” of
the navvy. In fact, — have not economists tried to prove to us that if
an engineer is paid twenty times more than a navvy it is because the
“necessary” outlay to make an engineer is greater than that necessary to
make a navvy? And has not Marx asserted that the same distinction is
equally logical between two branches of manual labour? He could not
conclude otherwise, having on his own account taken up Ricardo’s theory
of value, and upheld that goods are exchanged in proportion to the
quantity of work socially necessary for their production.
But we know what to think of this. We know that if engineers,
scientists, or doctors are paid ten or a hundred times more than a
labourer, and that a weaver earns three times more than an agricultural
labourer, and ten times more than a girl in a match factory, it is not
by reason of their “cost of production,” but by reason of a monopoly of
education, or a monopoly of industry. Engineers, scientists, and doctors
merely exploit their capital — their diplomas — as middle-class
employers exploit a factory, or as nobles used to exploit their titles
of nobility.
As to the employer who pays an engineer twenty times more than a
labourer, it is simply due to personal interest; if the engineer can
economize £4000 a year on the cost of production, the employer pays him
£800 And if the employer has a foreman who saves £400 on the work by
cleverly sweating workmen, he gladly gives him £80 or £120 a year. He
parts with an extra £40 when he expects to gain £400 by it; and this is
the essence of the Capitalist system. The same differences obtain among
divers manual trades.
Let them, therefore, not talk to us of “the cost of production” which
raises the cost of skilled labour, and tell us that a student who has
gaily spent his youth in a university has a right to a wage ten times
greater than the son of a miner who has grown pale in a mine since the
age of eleven; or that a weaver has a right to a wage three or four
times greater than that of an agricultural labourer. The cost of
teaching a weaver his work is not four times greater than the cost of
teaching a peasant his. The weaver simply benefits by the advantages his
industry reaps in Europe, in comparison with countries that have as yet
no industries.
Nobody has ever calculated the cost of production and if a loafer costs
far more to society than a worker, it remains to be seen whether a
robust day-labourer does not cost more to society than a skilled
artisan, when we have taken into account infant-mortality among the
poor, the ravages of anæmia, and premature deaths.
Could they, for example, make us believe that the 1s. 3d. paid to a
Paris workwoman, the 3d. paid to an Auvergne peasant girl who grows
blind at lace-making, or the 1s. 8d. paid to the peasant represent their
“cost of production.” We know full well that people work for less, but
we also know that they do so exclusively because, thanks to our
wonderful organization, they would die of hunger did they not accept
these mock wages.
For us the scale of remuneration is a complex result of taxes, of
governmental tutelage, of Capitalist monopoly. In a word, of State and
Capital. Therefore, we say that all wages theories have been invented
after the event to justify injustices at present existing, and that we
need not take them into consideration.
Neither will they fail to tell us that the Collectivist scale of wages
would be an improvement. “It would be better,” so they say, “to see
certain artisans receiving a wage two or three times higher than common
labourers, than to see a minister receiving in a day what a workman
cannot earn in a year. It would be a great step towards equality.”
For us this step would be the reverse of progress. To make a distinction
between simple and professional work in a new society would result in
the Revolution sanctioning and recognizing as a principle a brutal fact
we submit to nowadays, but that we nevertheless find unjust. It would
mean imitating those gentlemen of the French Assembly who proclaimed
August 4^(th), 1789, the abolition of feudal rights, but who on August
8^(th) sanctioned these same rights by imposing dues on the peasants to
compensate the noblemen, placing these dues under the protection of the
Revolution. It would mean imitating the Russian Government, which
proclaimed, at the time of the emancipation of the serfs, that the land
should henceforth belong to the nobility, while formerly the lands were
considered belonging to the serfs.
Or else, to take a better known example, when the Commune of 1871
decided to pay members of the Commune Council 12s. 6d. a day, while the
Federates on the ramparts received only 1s. 3d., this decision was
hailed as an act of superior democratic equality. In reality, the
Commune only ratified the former inequality between functionary and
soldier, Government and governed. Coming from an Opportunist Chamber of
Deputies, such a decision would have appeared admirable, but the Commune
doomed her revolutionary principles because she failed to put them into
practice.
Under our existing social system, when a minister gets paid £4000 a
year, while a workman must content himself with £40 or less; when a
foreman is paid two or three times more than a workman, and among
workmen there is every gradation, from 8s. a day down to the peasant
girl’s 3d.; we disapprove of the high salary of the minister as well as
of the difference between the 8s. of the workman and the 3d. of the poor
woman. And we say, “Down with the privileges of education, as well as
with those of birth!” We are anarchists precisely because these
privileges revolt us.
They revolt us already in this authoritarian society. Could we endure
them in a society that began by proclaiming equality?
That is why some collectivists, understanding the impossibility of
maintaining a scale of wages in a society inspired by the breath of the
Revolution, hasten to proclaim equality of wage. But they meet with new
difficulties, and their equality of wages becomes the same unrealizable
Utopia as the scale of wages of other collectivists.
A society having taken possession of all social wealth, having boldly
proclaimed the right of all to this wealth — whatever share they may
have taken in producing it will be compelled to abandon any system of
wages, whether in currency or labour-notes.
The collectivists say, “To each according to his deeds”; or, in other
terms, according to his share of services rendered to society. They
think it expedient to put this principle into practice as soon as the
Social Revolution will have made all instruments of production common
property. But we think that if the Social Revolution had the misfortune
of proclaiming such a principle, it would mean its necessary failure; it
would mean leaving the social problem, which past centuries have
burdened us with, unsolved. In fact, in a society like ours, in which
the more a man works the less he is remunerated, this principle, at
first sight, may appear to be a yearning for justice. But it is really
only the perpetuation of past injustice. It was by virtue of this
principle that wagedom began, to end in the glaring inequalities and all
the abominations of present society; because, from the moment work done
was appraised in currency or in any other form of wage; the day it was
agreed upon that man would only receive the wage he could secure to
himself, the whole history of State-aided Capitalist Society was as good
as written; it germinated in this principle.
Shall we, then, return to our starting-point and go through the same
evolution again ? Our theorists desire it, but fortunately it is
impossible. The Revolution will be communist; if not, it will be drowned
in blood, and have to be begun over again.
Services rendered to society, be they work in factory or field, or
mental services, cannot be valued in money. There can be no exact
measure of value (of what has been wrongly-termed exchange value), nor
of use value, with regard to production. If two individuals work for the
community five hours a day, year in year out, at different work which is
equally agreeable to them, we may say that on the whole their labour is
equivalent. But we cannot divide their work, and say that the result of
any particular day, hour, or minute of work of the one is worth the
result of a minute or hour of the other.
We may roughly say that the man who during his lifetime has deprived
himself of leisure during ten hours a day has given far more to society
than the one who has only deprived himself of leisure during five hours
a day, or who has not deprived himself at all. But we cannot take what
he has done during two hours and say that the yield is worth twice as
much as the yield of another individual, working only one hour, and
remunerate him in proportion. It would be disregarding all that is
complex in industry, in agriculture, in the whole life of present
society; it would be ignoring to what extent all individual work is the
result of past and present labour of society as a whole. It would mean
believing ourselves to be living in the Stone Age, whereas we are living
in an age of steel.
If you enter a coal-mine you will see a man in charge of a huge machine
that raises and lowers a cage. In his hand he holds a lever that stops
and reverses the course of the machine; he lowers it and the cage turns
back in the twinkling of an eye; he raises it, he lowers it again with a
giddy swiftness. All attention, he follows with his eyes fixed on the
wall an indicator that shows him On a small scale, at which point of the
shaft the cage is at each second of its progress; as soon as the
indicator has reached a certain level he suddenly stops the course of
the cage, not a yard higher nor lower than the required spot. And no
sooner have the colliers unloaded their coal-wagons, and pushed empty
ones instead, than he reverses the lever and again sends the cage back
into space.
During eight or ten consecutive hours he must pay the closest attention.
Should his brain relax for a moment, the cage would inevitably strike
against the gear, break its wheels, snap the rope, crush men, and
obstruct work in the mine. Should he waste three seconds at each touch
of the lever, in our modern perfected mines, the extraction would be
reduced from twenty to fifty tons a day.
Is it he who is of greatest use in the mine? Or, is it perhaps the boy
who signals to him from below to raise the cage? Is it the miner at the
bottom of the shaft, who risks his life every instant, and who will some
day be killed by fire-damp? Or is it the engineer, who would lose the
layer of coal, and would cause the miners to dig on rock by a simple
mistake in his calculations? And lastly, is it the mine owner who has
put all his capital into the mine, and who has perhaps, contrary to
expert advice asserted that excellent coal would be found there?
All the miners engaged in this mine contribute to the extraction of coal
in proportion to their strength, their energy, their knowledge, their
intelligence, and their skill. And we may say that all have the right to
live, to satisfy their needs, and even their whims, when the necessaries
of life have been secured for all. But how can we appraise their work?
And, moreover, Is the coal they have extracted their work? Is it not
also the work of men who have built the railway leading to the mine and
the roads that radiate from all its stations? Is it not also the work of
those that have tilled and sown the fields, extracted iron, cut wood in
the forests, built the machines that burn coal, and so on?
No distinction can be drawn between the work of each man. Measuring the
work by its results leads us to absurdity; dividing and measuring them
by hours spent on the work also leads us to absurdity. One thing
remains: put the needs above the works, and first of all recognize the
right to live, and later on, to the comforts of life, for all those who
take their share in production.
But take any other branch of human activity — take the manifestations of
life as a whole. Which one of us can claim the higher remuneration for
his work? Is it the doctor who has found out the illness, or the nurse
who has brought about recovery by her hygienic care? Is it the inventor
of the first steam-engine, or the boy, who, one day getting tired of
pulling the rope that formerly opened the valve to let steam enter under
the piston, tied the rope to the lever of the machine, without
suspecting that he had invented the essential mechanical part of all
modern machinery — the automatic valve.
Is it the inventor of the locomotive, or the work man of Newcastle, who
suggested replacing the stones formerly laid under the rails by wooden
sleepers, as the stones, for want of elasticity, caused the trains to
derail? Is it the engineer on the locomotive? The signalman who can stop
trains? The switchman who transfers a train from one line to another? —
To whom do we owe the transatlantic cable? Is it to the engineer who
obstinately affirmed that the cable would transmit messages when learned
electricians declared it to be impossible? Is it to Maury, the
scientist, who advised that thick cables should be set aside for others
as thin as canes? Or else to those volunteers, come from nobody knows
where, who spent their days and nights on deck minutely examining every
yard of the cable, and removed the nails that the stockholders of
steamship companies stupidly caused to be driven into the non-conducting
wrapper of the cable, so as to make it unserviceable.
And in a wider sphere, the true sphere of life, with its joys, its
sufferings, and its accidents, can not each one of us recall some one
who has rendered him so great a service that we should be indignant if
its equivalent in coin were mentioned? The service may have been but a
word, nothing but a word spoken at the right time, or else it may have
been months and years of devotion, and are we going to appraise these
“incalculable” services in “labour-notes”?
“The works of each!” But human society would not exist for more than two
consecutive generations if every one did not give infinitely more than
that for which he is paid in coin, in “cheques,” or in civic rewards.
The race would soon become extinct if mothers did not sacrifice their
lives to take care of their children, if men did not give all the time,
without demanding an equivalent, if men did not give just to those from
whom they expect no reward.
If middle-class society is decaying, if we have got into a blind alley
from which we cannot emerge without attacking past institutions with
torch and hatchet, it is precisely because we have calculated too much.
It is because we have let ourselves be influenced into giving only to
receive. It is because we have aimed at turning society into a
commercial company based on debit and credit.
Collectivists know this. They vaguely under stand that a society could
not exist if it carried out the principle of “Each according to his
deeds.” They have a notion that necessaries — we do not speak of whims —
the needs of the individual, do not always correspond to his works. Thus
De Paepe tells us: “The principle — the eminently Individualist
principle — would, however, be tempered by social intervention, for the
education of children and young persons (including maintenance and
lodging), and by the social organization for assisting the infirm and
the sick, for retreats for aged workers, etc.” They understand that a
man of forty, father of three children, has other needs than young man
of twenty. They know that the woman who suckles her infant and spends
sleepless nights at its bedside, cannot do as much work as the man who
has slept peacefully. They seem to take in that men and women, worn out
maybe by dint of overwork for society, may be incapable of doing as much
work as those who have spent their time leisurely and pocketed their
“labour-notes” in the privileged career of State functionaries.
They are eager to temper their principle. They say: “Society will not
fail to maintain and bring up its children; to help both aged and
infirm. Without doubt needs will be the measure of the cost that society
will burden itself with, to temper the principle of deeds.”
Charity, charity, always Christian charity, organized by the State this
time. They believe in improving asylums for foundlings, in effecting
old-age and sick insurances — so as to temper their principle. But they
cannot yet throw aside the idea of “wounding first and healing
afterwards!”
Thus, after having denied Communism, after having laughed at their ease
at the formula — “To each according to his needs” these great economists
discover that they have forgotten something, the needs of the producers,
which they now admit. Only it is for the State to estimate them, for the
State to verify if the needs are not disproportionate to the work.
The State will dole out charity. Thence to the English poor-law and the
workhouse is but a step.
There is but a degree, because even this stepmother of a society against
whom we are in revolt has also been compelled to temper her
individualist principles; she, too, has had to make concessions in a
communist direction and under the same form of charity.
She, too, distributes halfpenny dinners to prevent the pillaging of her
shops; builds hospital — often very bad ones, though sometimes splendid
ones — to prevent the ravages of contagious diseases. She, too, after
having paid the hours of labour, shelters the children of those she has
wrecked. She takes their needs into consideration and doles out charity.
Poverty, we have said elsewhere, was the primary cause of wealth. It was
poverty that created the first capitalist; because, before accumulating
“surplus value,” of which we hear so much, men had to be sufficiently
destitute to consent to sell their labour, so as not to die of hunger.
It was poverty that made capitalists. And if the number of poor rapidly
increased during the Middle Ages, it was due to the invasions and wars
that followed the founding of States, and to the increase of riches
resulting from the exploitation of the East, that tore the bonds asunder
which once united agrarian and urban communities, and taught them to
proclaim the principle of wages, so dear to exploiters, instead of the
solidarity they formerly practised.
And it is this principle that is to spring from a revolution which men
dare to call by the name of Social Revolution, a name so clear to the
starved, the oppressed, and the sufferers?
It can never be. For the day on which old institutions will fall under
the proletarian axe, voices will cry out: “Bread, shelter, ease for
all!” And those voices will be listened to; the people will say: “Let us
begin by allaying our thirst for life, for happiness, for liberty, that
we have never quenched. And when we shall have tasted of this joy we
will set to work to demolish the last vestiges of middle-class rule, its
morality drawn from account-books, its ‘debit and credit’ philosophy,
its ‘mine and yours’ institutions. ‘In demolishing we shall build,’ as
Proudhon said; and we shall build in the name of Communism and Anarchy.”
Looking at society and its political organization from a different
standpoint than that of authoritarian schools — for we start from a free
individual to reach a free society, instead of beginning by the State to
come down to the individual — we follow the same method in economic
questions. We study the needs of individuals, and the means by which
they satisfy them, before discussing Production, Exchange, Taxation,
Government, etc.
To begin with, the difference may appear trifling, but in reality it
upsets official Political Economy.
If you open the works of any economist you will find that he begins with
PRODUCTION, the analysis of means employed nowadays for the creation of
wealth; division of labour, manufacture, machinery, accumulation of
capital. From Adam Smith to Marx, all have proceeded along these lines.
Only in the latter parts of their books do they treat of CONSUMPTION,
that is to say, of the means necessary to satisfy the needs of
individuals; and, moreover, they confine themselves to explaining how
riches are divided among those who vie with one another for their
possession.
Perhaps you will say this is logical. Before satisfying needs you must
create the wherewithal to satisfy them. But before producing anything,
must you not feel the need of it? Is it not necessity that first drove
man to hunt, to raise cattle, to cultivate land, to make implements, and
later on to invent machinery? Is it not the study of needs that should
govern production? It would therefore be quite as logical to begin by
considering needs and afterwards to discuss the means of production in
order to satisfy these needs.
This is precisely what we mean to do.
But as soon as we look at it from this point of view, Political Economy
entirely changes its aspect. It ceases to be a simple description of
facts, and becomes a science. We can define it as: The study of the
needs of humanity,and the means of satisfying them with the least
possible waste of human energy. Its true name should be, Physiology of
Society. It constitutes a parallel science to the physiology of plants
and animals, which also is the study of the needs of plants and animals,
and the most advantageous ways of satisfying them. In the series of
social sciences, the economy of human societies takes the place,
occupied in the series of biological sciences by the physiology of
organic bodies.
We say, here are human beings, united in a society. All feel the need of
living in healthy houses. The savage’s hut no longer satisfies them;
they require a more or less comfortable solid shelter. The question is,
then: whether, man’s capacity for production being given, every man can
have a house of his own? and what is hindering him from having it?
And we are soon convinced that every family in Europe could perfectly
well have a comfortable house, such as are built in England, in Belgium,
or in Pullman City, or else an equivalent set of rooms. A certain number
of days’ work would suffice to build a pretty little airy house, well
fitted up and lighted by gas.
But nine-tenths of Europeans have never possessed a healthy house,
because at all times common people have had to work day after day to
satisfy the needs of their rulers, and have never had the necessary
leisure or money to build, or to have built, the home of their dreams.
And they can have no houses, and will inhabit hovels as long as present
conditions remain unchanged.
As you see, we proceed contrary to economists, who immortalize the
so-called laws of production, and reckoning up the number of houses
built every year, demonstrate by statistics, that the new built houses
not sufficing to meet all demands, nine-tenths of Europeans must live in
hovels.
Let us pass on to food. After having enumerated the benefits accruing
from the division of labour economists tell us the division of labour
requires that some men should work at agriculture and others at
manufacture. Farmers producing so much, factories so much, exchange
being carried on in such a way, they analyze the sale, the profit the
net gain or the surplus value,the wages, the taxes, banking, and so on.
But after having followed them so far, we are none the wiser, and if we
ask them: “How is it that millions of human beings are in want of bread,
when every family could grow sufficient wheat to feed ten, twenty, and
even a hundred people annually?” they answer us by droning the same
anthem — division of labour, wages, surplus value, capital, etc. —
arriving at the same conclusion, that production is insufficient to
satisfy all needs; a conclusion which, if true, does not answer the
question: “Can or cannot man by his labour produce the bread he needs?
And if he cannot, what is hindering him?”
Here are 350 million Europeans. They need so much bread, so much meat,
wine, milk, eggs, and butter every year. They need so many houses, so
much clothing. This is the minimum of their needs. Can they produce all
this? and if they can, will there then be left sufficient leisure for
art,science, and amusement? — in a word, for everything that is not
comprised in the category of absolute necessities? If the answer is in
the affirmative, — What hinders them going ahead? What must they do to
remove obstacles? Is time needed? Let them take it! But let us not lose
sight of the aim of production — the satisfaction of needs.
If the most imperious needs of man remain unsatisfied, what must he do
to increase the productivity of his work? And is there no other cause?
Might it not be that production, having lost sight of the needs of man,
has strayed in an absolutely wrong direction, and that its organization
is at fault? And as we can prove that such is the case, let us see how
to reorganize production so as to really satisfy all needs.
This seems to us the only right way of facing things. The only way that
would allow of Political Economy becoming a science — the Science of
Social Physiology.
It is evident that when this science will treat of production, as it is
at present carried on by civilized nations, by Hindoo communes, or by
savages, it will hardly state facts otherwise than the economists state
them now; that is to say as a simple descriptive chapter, analogous to
descriptive chapters of Zoology and Botany. But if this chapter were
written to throw light on the economy of energy, necessary to satisfy
human needs, the chapter would gain in precision, as well as in
descriptive value. It would clearly prove the frightful waste of human
energy under the present system, and would admit, as we do, that as long
as this system exists,the needs of humanity will never be satisfied.
The point of view, we see, would be entirely changed. Behind the loom
that weaves so many yards of cloth, behind the steel-plate perforator,
and behind the safe in which dividends are hoarded, we should see man,
the artisan of production, more often than not excluded from the feast
he has prepared for others. We should also understand that the
standpoint being wrong, so-called laws of value and exchange are but a
very false explanation of events, as they happen nowadays; and that
things will come to pass very differently when production is organized
in such a manner as to meet all needs of society.
There is not one single principle of Political Economy that does not
change its aspect if you look at it from our point of view.
Take, for instance, over-production, a word which every day re-echoes in
our ears. Is there a single economist, academician, or candidate for
academical honours, who has not supported arguments, proving that
economic crises are due to overproduction — that at a given moment more
cotton, more cloth, more watches are produced than are needed! Have not
men accused of “rapacity” the capitalists who are obstinately bent on
producing more than can possibly be consumed! But on careful examination
all these reasonings prove unsound. In fact, Is there a commodity among
those in universal use which is produced in greater quantity than need
be? Examine one by one all commodities sent out by countries exporting
on a large scale,and you will see that nearly all are produced in
insufficient quantities for the inhabitants of the countries exporting
them.
It is not a surplus of wheat that the Russian peasant sends to Europe.
The most plentiful harvests of wheat and rye in European Russia only
yield enough for the population. And as a rule the peasant deprives
himself of what he actually needs when he sells his wheat or rye to pay
rent and taxes.
It is not a surplus of coal that England sends to the four corners of
the globe, because only three-quarters of a ton, per head of population,
annually, remain for home domestic consumption, and millions of
Englishmen are deprived of fire in the winter, or have only just enough
to boil a few vegetables. In fact, setting aside useless luxuries, there
is in England, which exports more than any other country, but a single
commodity in universal use — cottons — whose production is sufficiently
great to perhaps exceed the needs of the community. Yet when we look
upon the rags that pass for wearing apparel worn by over a third of the
inhabitants of the United Kingdom, we are led to ask ourselves whether
the cottons exported would not, within a trifle, suit the real needs of
the population?
As a rule it is not a surplus that is exported, though it may have been
so originally. The fable of the barefooted shoemaker is as true of
nations as it was formerly of artisans. We export the necessary
commodities. And we do so, because the workmen cannot buy with their
wages what they have produced, and pay besides the rent and interest to
the capitalist and the banker.
Not only does the ever-growing need of comfort remain unsatisfied, but
strict necessaries are often wanting. “Surplus production” does,
therefore, not exist, at least not in the sense which is given to it by
the theorists of Political Economy.
Taking another point — all economists tell us that there is a
well-proved law: “Man produces more than he consumes.” After he has
lived on the proceeds of his toil, there remains a surplus. Thus, a
family of cultivators produces enough to feed several families, and so
forth.
For us, this oft-repeated sentence has no sense. If it meant that each
generation leaves something to future generations, it would be true;
thus, for example, a farmer plants a tree that will live, maybe, for
thirty, forty, or a hundred years, and whose fruits will still be
gathered by the farmer’s grandchildren. Or he clears a few acres of
virgin soil, and we say that the heritage of future generations has been
increased by that much. Roads, bridges, canals, his house and his
furniture are so much wealth bequeathed to succeeding generations.
But this is not what is meant. We are told that the cultivator produces
more than he need consume. Rather should they say that, the State having
always taken from him a large share of his produce for taxes, the priest
for tithe, and the landlord for rent, a whole class of men has been
created, who formerly consumed what they produced — save what was set
aside for unforeseen accidents, or expenses incurred in afforestation,
roads, etc. — but who to-day are compelled to live very poorly, from
hand to mouth, the remainder having been taken from them by the State,
the landlord, the priest, and the usurer.
Let us also observe that if the needs of the individual are our
starting-point, we cannot fail to reach Communism, an organization which
enables us to satisfy all needs in the most thorough and economical way.
While if we start from our present method of production, and aim at gain
and surplus value, without taking into account if production corresponds
to the satisfaction of needs, we necessarily arrive at Capitalism, or at
most at Collectivism — both being but divers forms of our wages’ system.
In fact, when we consider the needs of the individual and of society,
and the means which man has resorted to in order to satisfy them during
his varied phases of development, we are convinced of the necessity of
systematizing our efforts, instead of producing haphazard as we do
nowadays. It grows evident that the appropriation by a few of all riches
not consumed, and transmitted from one generation to another, is not in
the general interest.We can state as a fact that owing to these methods
the needs of three-quarters of society are not satisfied, and that the
present waste of human strength is the more useless and the more
criminal.
We discover, moreover, that the most advantageous use of all commodities
would be, for each of them, to go, first, for satisfying those needs
which are the most pressing: that, in other words, the so-called “value
in use” of a commodity does not depend on a simple whim, as has often
been affirmed, but on the satisfaction it brings to real needs.
Communism — that is to say, an organization which would correspond to a
view of Consumption, Production, and Exchange, taken as; a whole —
therefore becomes the logical consequence of the comprehension of
things, the only one, in our opinion, that is really scientific.
A society that will satisfy the needs of all, and which will know how to
organize production, will also have to make a clean sweep of several
prejudices concerning industry, and first of all of the theory often
preached by economists — The Division of Labour theory — which we are
going to discuss in the next chapter.
Political Economy has always confined itself to stating facts occurring
in society, and justifying them in the interest of the dominant class.
Thus it is in favour of the division of labour created by industry.
Having found it profitable to capitalists it has set it up as a
principle.
Look at the village smith, said Adam Smith, the father of modern
Political Economy. If he has never been accustomed to making nails he
will only succeed by hard toil in forging two to three hundred a day,
and even then they will be bad. But if this same smith has never done
anything but nails, he will easily supply as many as two thousand three
hundred in the course of a day. And Smith hastened to the conclusion —
“Divide labour, specialize, go on specializing; let us have smiths who
only know how to make heads or points of nails, and by this means we
shall produce more. We shall grow rich.”
That a smith sentenced for life to the making of heads of nails would
lose all interest in his work, would be entirely at the mercy of his
employer with his limited handicraft, would be out of work four months
out of twelve, and that his wages would decrease when he could be easily
replaced by an apprentice, Smith did not think of it when he exclaimed —
“Long live the division of labour. This is the real gold-mine that will
enrich the nation!” And all joined in the cry.
And later on, when a Sismondi or a J. B. Say began to understand that
the division of labour, instead of enriching the whole nation, only
enriches the rich, and that the worker, who for life is doomed to making
the eighteenth part of a pin, grows stupid and sinks into poverty — what
did official economists propose? Nothing! They did not say to themselves
that by a lifelong grind at one and the same mechanical toil the worker
would lose his intelligence and his spirit of invention, and that, on
the contrary, a variety of occupations would result in considerably
augmenting the productivity of a nation. But this is the very issue now
before us.
If, however, only economists preached the permanent and often hereditary
division of labour, we might allow them to preach it as much as they
pleased. But ideas taught by doctors of science filter into men’s minds
and pervert them; and from repeatedly hearing the division of labour,
profits, interest, credit, etc., spoken of as problems long since
solved, men, and workers too, end by arguing like economists, and by
venerating the same fetishes.
Thus we see a number of socialists, even those who have not feared to
point out the mistakes of science, justifying the division of labour.
Talk to them about the organization of work during the Revolution, and
they answer that the division of labour must be maintained; that if you
sharpened pins before the Revolution you must go on sharpening them
after. True, you will not have to work more than five hours a day, but
you will have to sharpen pins all your life, while others will make
designs for machines that will enable you to sharpen hundreds of
millions of pins during your lifetime; and others again will be
specialists in the higher branches of literature, science, and art, etc.
You were born to sharpen pins while Pasteur was born to invent the
inoculation against anthrax, and the Revolution will leave you both to
your respective employments. Well, it is this horrible principle, so
noxious to society, so brutalizing to the individual, source of so much
harm, that we propose to discuss in its divers manifestations.
We know the consequences of the division of labour full well. It is
evident that we are divided into two classes: on the one hand, producers
who consume very little and are exempt from thinking because they only
do physical work, and who work badly because their brains remain
inactive; and on the other hand, the consumers, who, producing little or
hardly anything, have the privilege of thinking for the others, and who
think badly because the whole world of those who toil with their hands
is unknown to them. The labourers of the soil know nothing of machinery
those who work at machinery ignore everything about agriculture. The
ideal of modern industry is a child tending a machine that he cannot and
must not understand, and a foreman who fines him if his attention flags
for a moment. The ideal of industrial agriculture is to do away with the
agricultural labourer altogether and to set a man who does odd jobs to
tend a steam-plough or a threshing-machine. The division of labour means
labelling and stamping men for life — some to splice ropes in factories,
some to be foremen in a business, others to shove huge coal-baskets in a
particular part of a mine; but none of them to have any idea of
machinery as a whole, nor of business, nor of mines. And thereby they
destroy the love of work and the capacity for invention that, at the
beginning of modern industry, created the machinery on which we pride
ourselves so much.
What they have done for individuals, they also wanted to do for nations.
Humanity was to be divided into national workshops, having each its
speciality. Russia, we were taught, was destined by nature to grow corn;
England to spin cotton; Belgium to weave cloth; while Switzerland was to
train nurses and governesses. Moreover, each separate city was to
establish a speciality. Lyons was to weave silk, Auvergne to make lace,
and Paris fancy articles. Economists believed that specialization opened
an immense field for production and consumption, and that an era of
limitless wealth for mankind was at hand.
But these great hopes vanished as fast as technical knowledge spread
abroad. As long as England stood alone as a weaver of cotton, and as a
metal-worker on a large scale; as long as only Paris made artistic fancy
articles, etc., all went well, economists could preach so-called
division of labour without being refuted.
But a new current of thought induced all civilized nations to
manufacture for themselves. They found it advantageous to produce what
they formerly received from other countries, or from their colonies,
which in their turn aimed at emancipating themselves from the
mother-country. Scientific discoveries universalized the methods of
production and henceforth it was useless to pay an exorbitant price
abroad for what could easily be produced at home. Does not then this
industrial revolution strike a crushing blow at the theory of the
division of labour which was supposed to be so sound?
After the Napoleonic wars Britain all but succeeded in ruining the main
industries which had sprung up in France at the end of the preceding
century. She became also mistress of the seas and had no rivals of
importance. She took in the situation, and knew how to turn its
privileges and advantages to account. She established an industrial
monopoly, and, imposing upon her neighbours her prices for the goods she
alone could manufacture, accumulated riches upon riches.
But as the middle-class Revolution of the eighteenth century abolished
serfdom and created a proletariat in France, industry, hampered for a
time in its flight, soared again, and from the second half of the
nineteenth century France ceased to be a tributary of England for
manufactured goods. To-day she too has grown into a nation with an
export trade. She sells far more than sixty million pounds’ worth of
manufactured goods, and two-thirds of these goods are fabrics. The
number of Frenchmen working for export or living by their foreign trade,
is estimated at three millions.
France is therefore no longer England’s tributary. In her turn she has
striven to monopolize certain branches of foreign industry, such as
silks and ready-made clothes, and has reaped immense profits therefrom;
but she is on the point of losing this monopoly for ever, as England is
on the point of losing the monopoly of cotton goods.
Travelling eastwards, industry has reached Germany. Fifty years ago
Germany was a tributary of England and France for most manufactured
commodities in the higher branches of industry. It is no longer so. In
the course of the last forty-five years, and especially since the
Franco-German war, Germany has completely reorganized her industry. The
new factories are stocked with the best machinery; the latest creations
of industrial art in cotton goods from Manchester, or in silks from
Lyons, etc., are now realized in recent German factories. It took two or
three generations of workers, at Lyons and Manchester, to construct the
modern machinery; but Germany adopted it in its perfected state.
Technical schools, adapted to the needs of industry, supply the
factories with an army of intelligent workmen — practical engineers, who
can work with hand and brain. German industry starts at the point which
was only reached by Manchester and Lyons after fifty years of groping in
the dark, of exertion and experiments.
It follows that as Germany manufactures as well at home, she diminishes
her imports from France and England year by year. She has not only
become their rival in manufactured goods in Asia and in Africa, but also
in London and in Paris. Shortsighted people may cry out against the
Frankfort Treaty, they may explain German competition by little
differences in railway tariffs; they may linger on the petty side of
questions and neglect great historical facts. But it is none the less
certain that the main industries, formerly in the hands of England and
France, have progressed eastward, and in Germany they found a country,
young, full of energy, possessing an intelligent middle class, and eager
in its turn to enrich itself by foreign trade.
While Germany freed itself from subjection to France and England,
manufactured her own cotton cloth, constructed her own machines — in
fact, manufactured all commodities — the main industries took also root
in Russia, where the development of manufacture is the more surprising
as it sprang up but yesterday.
At the time of the abolition of serfdom in 1861, Russia hardly had any
factories. Everything they needed — machines, rails, railway-engines,
rich materials — came from the West. Twenty years later she possessed
already 85,000 factories, and the goods from these factories had
increased fourfold in value.
The old machinery was superseded, and now nearly all the steel in use in
Russia, three-quarters of the iron, two-thirds of the coal, all railway
engines, railway-carriages, rails, nearly all steamers, are made in
Russia.
Russia, destined — so wrote economists — to remain an agricultural
territory, has rapidly developed into a manufacturing country. She
orders hardly anything from England, and very little from Germany.
Economists hold the customs responsible for these facts, and yet cottons
manufactured in Russia are sold at the same price as in London. Capital
taking no cognizance of fatherland, German and English capitalists,
accompanied by engineers and foremen of their own nationalities, have
introduced in Russia and in Poland manufactories, the excellence of
whose goods compete with the best from England. If customs were
abolished to-morrow, manufacture would only gain by it. Not long ago the
British manufacturers delivered another hard blow to the imports of
cloth and woollens from the West. They set up in southern and middle
Russia immense wool factories, stocked with the most perfect machinery
from Bradford, and already now Russia hardly imports more than a few
pieces of English cloth and French woollen fabrics as samples.
The main industries not only move eastward, they are spreading to the
southern peninsulas. The Turin Exhibition of 1884 has already shown the
progress made in Italian manufactured produce, and, let us not make any
mistake about it, the mutual hatred of the French and Italian middle
classes has no other origin than their industrial rivalry. Spain is also
becoming an industrial country; while in the East, Bohemia has suddenly
sprung up to importance as a new centre of manufactures, provided with
perfected machinery and applying the best scientific methods.
We might also mention Hungary’s rapid progress in the main industries,
but let us rather take Brazil as an example. Economists sentenced Brazil
to cultivate cotton for ever, to export it in its raw state, and to
receive cotton-cloth from Europe in exchange. In fact, forty years ago
Brazil had only nine wretched little cotton factories with 385 spindles.
To-day there are 108 cotton-mills, possessing 715,000 spindles and
26,050 looms, which throw 234 million yards of textiles on the market
annually.
Even Mexico is setting about manufacturing cotton-cloth, instead of
importing it from Europe. As to the United States they have quite freed
themselves from European tutelage, and have triumphally developed their
manufacturing powers.
But it was India which gave the most striking proof against the
specialization of national industry.
We all know the theory: the great European nations need colonies, for
colonies send raw material — cotton fibre, unwashed wool, spices, etc.,
to the mother-land. And the mother-land, under pretence of sending them
manufactured wares, gets rid of her burnt stuffs, her machine scrap-iron
and every thing which she no longer has use for. It costs her little or
nothing, and none the less the articles are sold at exorbitant prices.
Such was the theory — such was the practice for a long time. In London
and Manchester fortunes were made while India was being ruined. In the
India Museum in London unheard-of riches, collected in Calcutta and
Bombay by English merchants, are to be seen.
But other English merchants and capitalists conceived the very simple
idea that it would be more expedient to exploit the natives of India by
making cotton-cloth in India itself, than to import from twenty to
twenty-four million pounds’ worth of goods annually.
At first a series of experiments ended in failure. Indian weavers —
artists and experts in their own craft — could not inure themselves to
factory life; the machinery sent from Liverpool was bad; the climate had
to be taken into account; and merchants had to adapt themselves to new
conditions, now fully observed, before British India could become the
menacing rival of the Mother-land she is to-day.
She now possesses 200 cotton factories which employ about 196,400
workmen, and contain 5,231,000 spindles and 48,400 looms, and 38 jute
mills, with 409,000 spindles. She exports annually to China, to the
Dutch Indies, and to Africa, nearly eight million pounds’ worth of the
same white cotton-cloth, said to be England’s speciality. And while
English workmen are unemployed and in great want, Indian women weave
cotton by machinery for the Far East at the rate of sixpence a day. In
short, intelligent manufacturers are fully aware that the day is not far
off when they will not know what to do with the “factory hands” who
formerly weaved cotton-cloth exported from England. Besides which it is
becoming more and more evident that India will not import a single ton
of iron from England. The initial difficulties in using the coal and the
iron ore obtained in India have been overcome; and foundries, rivalling
those in England, have been built on the shores of the Indian Ocean.
Colonies competing with the mother-land in its production of
manufactured goods, such is the factor which will regulate economy in
the twentieth century.
And why should India not manufacture ? What should be the hindrance ?
Capital? — But capital goes wherever there are men, poor enough to be
exploited. Knowledge? — But knowledge recognizes no national barriers.
Technical skill of the worker? — No. Are, then, Hindoo workmen inferior
to the 237,000 boys and girls, not eighteen years old, at present
working in the English textile factories?
After having glanced at national industries it would be very interesting
to turn to special industries.
Let us take silk, for example, an eminently French product in the first
half of the nineteenth century. We all know how Lyons became the
emporium of the silk trade. At first raw silk was gathered in southern
France, till little by little they ordered it from Italy, from Spain,
from Austria, from the Caucasus, and from Japan, for the manufacture of
their silk fabrics. In 1875, out of five million kilos of raw silk
converted into stuffs in the vicinity of Lyons, there were only four
hundred thousand kilos of French silk. But if Lyons manufactured
imported silk, why should not Switzerland, Germany, Russia, do as much?
Silk weaving developed indeed in the villages round Zurich. Bâle became
a great centre of the silk trade. The Caucasian Administration engaged
women from Marseilles and workmen from Lyons to teach Georgians the
perfected rearing of silkworms, and the art of converting silk into
fabrics to the Caucasian peasants. Austria followed. Then Germany, with
the help of Lyons workmen, built great silk factories. The United States
did likewise in Paterson.
And to-day the silk trade is no longer a French monopoly. Silks are made
in Germany, in Austria, in the United States, and in England. In winter,
Caucasian peasants weave silk handkerchiefs at a wage that would mean
starvation to the silkweavers of Lyons. Italy sends silks to France; and
Lyons, which in 1870–4 exported 460 million francs’ worth of silk
fabrics, exports now only one-half of that amount. In fact, the time is
not far off when Lyons will only send higher class goods and a few
novelties as patterns to Germany, Russia, and Japan.
And so it is in all industries. Belgium has no longer the cloth
monopoly; cloth is made in Germany, in Russia, in Austria, in the United
States. Switzerland and the French Jura have no longer a clockwork
monopoly: watches are made everywhere. Scotland no longer refines sugar
for Russia: Russian sugar is imported into England. Italy, although
neither possessing coal nor iron, makes its own ironclads and engines
for her steamers. Chemical industry is no longer an English monopoly;
sulphuric acid and soda are made even in the Urals. Steam-engines, made
at Winterthur, have acquired everywhere a wide reputation, and at the
present moment, Switzerland, that has neither coal nor iron — nothing
but excellent technical schools — makes machinery better and cheaper
than England. So ends the theory of Exchange.
The tendency of trade, as for all else, is toward decentralization.
Every nation finds it advantageous to combine agriculture with the
greatest possible variety of foundries and manufactories. The
specialization, of which economists spoke so highly, enriched a number
of capitalists but is now of no use. On the contrary, it is to the
advantage of every region, every nation, to grow their own wheat, their
own vegetables, and to manufacture all produce they consume at home.
This diversity is the surest pledge of the complete development of
production by mutual co-operation, and the moving cause of progress,
while specialization is a hindrance to progress.
Agriculture can only prosper in proximity to factories. And no sooner
does a single factory appear than an infinite variety of other factories
must spring up around, so that, mutually supporting and stimulating one
another by their inventions, they increase their productivity.
It is foolish indeed to export wheat and import flour, to export wool
and import cloth, to export iron and import machinery; not only because
transportation is a waste of time and money, but, above all, because a
country with no developed industry inevitably remains behind the times
in agriculture; because a country with no large factories to bring steel
to a finished condition is also backward in all other industries; and
lastly, because the industrial and technical capacities of the nation
remain undeveloped.
In the world of production everything holds together nowadays.
Cultivation of the soil is no longer possible without machinery, without
great irrigation works, without railways, without manure factories. And
to adapt this machinery, these railways, these irrigation engines, etc.,
to local conditions, a certain spirit of invention, a certain amount of
technical skill, that lie dormant as long as spades and ploughshares are
the only implements of cultivation, must be developed.
If fields are to be properly cultivated, and are to yield the abundant
harvests man has the right to expect, it is essential that workshops,
foundries, and factories develop within the reach of the fields. A
variety of occupations, a variety of skill arising therefrom end working
together for a common aim — these are the genuine forces of progress.
And now let us imagine the inhabitants of a city or a territory —
whether vast or small — stepping for the first time on to the path of
the Social Revolution.
We are sometimes told that “nothing will have changed”: that the mines,
the factories, etc., will be expropriated, and proclaimed national or
communal property, that every man will go back to his usual work, and
that the Revolution will then be accomplished.
But this is a dream: the Social Revolution cannot take place so simply.
We have already mentioned that should the Revolution break out to-morrow
in Paris, Lyons, or any other city — should the workers lay hands on
factories, houses, and banks, present production would be completely
revolutionized by this simple fact.
International commerce will come to a standstill; so also will the
importation of foreign bread-stuffs; the circulation of commodities and
of provisions will be paralyzed. And then, the city or territory in
revolt will be compelled to provide for itself, and to reorganize
production. If it fails to do so, it is death. If it succeeds, it will
revolutionize the economic life of the country.
The quantity of imported provisions having decreased, consumption having
increased, one million Parisians working for exportation purposes having
been thrown out of work, a great number of things imported to-day from
distant or neighbouring countries not reaching their destination,
fancy-trade being temporarily at a standstill, What will the inhabitants
have to eat six months after the Revolution?
We think that when the stores are empty, the masses will seek to obtain
their food from the land. They will be compelled to cultivate the soil,
to combine agricultural production with industrial production in Paris
and its environs. They will have to abandon the merely ornamental trades
and consider the most urgent need — bread.
Citizens will be obliged to become agriculturists. Not in the same
manner as peasants who wear themselves out, ploughing for a wage that
barely provides them with sufficient food for the year’ but by following
the principles of market-gardeners’ intensive agriculture, applied on a
large scale by means of the best machinery that man has invented or can
invent. They will till the land — not, how ever, like the country beast
of burden a Paris jeweller would object to that. They will reorganize
cultivation, not in ten years’ time, but at once, during the
revolutionary struggles, from fear of being worsted by the enemy.
Agriculture will have to be carried on by intelligent beings; availing
themselves of their knowledge, organizing themselves in joyous gangs for
pleasant work, like the men who, a hundred years ago, worked in the
Champ de Mars for the Feast of the Federation — a work of delight, when
not carried to excess, when scientifically organized, when man invents
and improves his tools and is conscious of being a useful member of the
community.
Of course, they will not only cultivate, they will also produce those
things which they formerly used to order from foreign parts. And let us
not forget that for the inhabitants of a revolted territory, “foreign
parts” may include all districts that have not joined in the
revolutionary movement. During the Revolutions of 1793 and 1871 Paris
was made to feel that “foreign parts” meant even the country district at
her very gates. The speculator in grains at Troyes starved the
sansculottes of Paris more effectually than the German armies brought on
French soil by the Versailles conspirators. The revolted city will be
compelled to do without “foreigners,” and why not? France invented
beetroot sugar when sugar-cane ran short during the continental
blockade. Parisians discovered salt petre in their cellars when they no
longer received any from abroad. Shall we be inferior to our
grandfathers, who with difficulty lisped the first words of science?
A revolution is more than the destruction of a political system. It
implies the awakening of human intelligence, the increasing of the
inventive spirit tenfold, a hundredfold; it is the dawn of a new,
science — the science of men like Laplace, Lamarck, Lavoisier. It is a
revolution in the minds of men, more than in their institutions.
And economists tell us to return to our workshops, as if passing through
a revolution were going home after a walk in the Epping forest!
To begin with, the sole fact of having laid hands on middle-class
property implies the necessity of completely reorganizing the whole of
economic life in workshops, in dockyards, and in factories.
And the revolution will not fail to act in this direction. Should Paris,
during the social revolution, be cut off from the world for a year or
two by the supporters of middle-class rule, its millions of intellects,
not yet depressed by factory life — that City of little trades which
stimulate the spirit of invention — will show the world what man’s brain
can accomplish without asking any help from without, but the motor force
of the sun that gives light, the power of the wind that sweeps away
impurities, and the silent life-forces at work in the earth we tread on.
We shall see then what a variety of trades, mutually co-operating on a
spot of the globe and animated by the social revolution, can do to feed,
clothe, house, and supply with all manner of luxuries millions of
intelligent men.
We need write no fiction to prove this. What we are sure of, what has
already been experimented upon, and recognized as practical, would
suffice to carry it into effect, if the attempt were fertilized,
vivified by the daring inspiration of the Revolution and the spontaneous
impulse of the masses.
Political Economy has often been reproached with drawing all its
deductions from the decidedly false principle, that the only incentive
capable of forcing a man to augment his power of production is personal
interest in its narrowest sense.
The reproach is perfectly true; so true that epochs of great industrial
discoveries and true progress in industry are precisely those in which
the happiness of all was the aim pursued, and in which personal
enrichment was least thought of. Great investigators and great inventors
aimed, without doubt, at the emancipation of mankind. And if Watt,
Stephenson, Jacquard, etc., could have only foreseen what a state of
misery their sleepless nights would bring to the workers, they would
probably have burned their designs and broken their models.
Another principle that pervades Political Economy is just as false. It
is the tacit admission, common to all economists, that if there is often
over-production in certain branches, a society will nevertheless never
have sufficient products to satisfy the wants of all, and that
consequently the day will never come when nobody will be forced to sell
his labour in exchange for wages. This tacit admission is found at the
basis of all theories and the so-called “laws” taught by economists.
And yet it is certain that the day when any civilized association of
individuals would ask itself, what are the needs of all, and the means
of satisfying them, it would see that, in industry as in agriculture, it
already possesses sufficient to provide abundantly for all needs, on
condition that it knows how to apply these means to satisfy real needs.
That this is true as regards industry no one can contest. Indeed, it
suffices to study the processes already in use to extract coals and ore,
to obtain steel and work it, to manufacture what is used for clothing,
etc., in large industrial establishments, in order to perceive that we
could already increase our production fourfold and yet economize work.
We go further. We assert that agriculture is in the same position: the
labourer, like the manufacturer, already possesses the means to increase
his production, not only fourfold but tenfold, and he will be able to
put it into practice as soon as he feels the need of it, as soon as the
socialist organization of work will be established instead of the
present capitalistic one.
Each time agriculture is spoken of, men imagine a peasant bending over
the plough, throwing badly sorted corn haphazard into the ground and
waiting anxiously for what the good or bad season will bring forth; or a
family working from morn to night and reaping as reward a rude bed, dry
bread, and coarse beverage. In a word, they picture “the wild beast” of
La Bruyère.
And for this man, thus subjected to misery, the utmost relief society
proposes is to reduce his taxes or his rent. But they do not even dare
to imagine a cultivator standing erect, taking leisure, and producing by
a few hours’ work per day sufficient food to nourish, not only his own
family, but a hundred men more at the least. In their most glowing
dreams of the future Socialists do not go beyond American extensive
culture, which, after all, is but the infancy of agricultural art.
The agriculturist has broader ideas to-day — his conceptions are on a
far grander scale. He only asks for a fraction of an acre in order to
produce sufficient vegetables for a family; and to feed twenty-five
horned beasts he needs no more space than he formerly required to feed
one; his aim is to make his own soil, to defy seasons and climate, to
warm both air and earth around the young plant; to produce, in a word,
on one acre what he used to crop on fifty acres, and that without any
excessive fatigue — by greatly reducing, on the contrary, the total of
former labour. He knows that we will be able to feed everybody by giving
to the culture of the fields no more time than what each can give with
pleasure and joy.
This is the present tendency of agriculture.
While scientific men, led by Liebig, the creator of the chemical theory
of agriculture, often got on the wrong tack in their love of mere
theories, unlettered agriculturists opened up new roads to prosperity.
Market-gardeners of Paris, Troyes, Rouen, Scotch and English gardeners,
Flemish farmers, peasants of Jersey, Guernsey, and farmers on the Scilly
Isles have opened up such large horizons that the mind hesitates to
grasp them. While up till lately a family of peasants needed at least
seventeen to twenty acres to live on the produce of the soil — and we
know how peasants live — we can no longer say what is the minimum area
on which all that is necessary to a family can be grown, even including
articles of luxury, if the soil is worked by means of intensive culture.
Ten years ago it could already be asserted that a population of thirty
million individuals could live very well, without importing anything, on
what could be grown in Great Britain. But now, when we see the progress
recently made in France as well as in England, and when we contemplate
the new horizons which open before us, we can say that in cultivating
the earth as it is already cultivated in many places, even on poor
soils, fifty or sixty million inhabitants to the territory of Great
Britain would still be a very feeble proportion to what man could exact
from the soil.
In any case (as we are about to demonstrate) we may consider it as
absolutely proved that if to-morrow Paris and the two departments of
Seine and of Seine-et-Oise organized themselves as an Anarchist commune,
in which all worked with their hands, and if the entire universe refused
to send them a single bushel of wheat, a single head of cattle, a single
basket of fruit, and left them only the territory of the two
departments, they could not only produce corn, meat, and vegetables
necessary for themselves, but also articles of luxury in sufficient
quantities for all.
And, in addition, we affirm that the sum total of this labour would be
far less than that expended at present to feed these people with corn
harvested in Auvergne and Russia, with vegetables produced a little
everywhere by extensive agriculture, and with fruit grown in the South.
It is self-evident that we in nowise desire “all” exchange to be
suppressed, nor that each region should strive to produce that which
will only grow in its climate by a more or less artificial culture. But
we care to draw attention to the fact that the theory of exchange, such
as is understood to-day, is strangely exaggerated — that exchange is
often useless and even harmful. We assert, moreover, that people have
never had a right conception of the immense labour of Southern wine
growers, nor of that of Russian and Hungarian corn growers, whose
excessive labour could also be very much reduced if they adopted
intensive culture, instead of their present system of extensive
agriculture.
It would be impossible to quote here the mass of facts on which we base
our assertions. We are therefore obliged to refer our readers who want
further information to another book, “Fields, Factories, and Workshops.”
Above all we earnestly invite those who are interested in the question
to read several excellent works published in France and elsewhere, and
of which we give a list at the close of this book [9]. As to the
inhabitants of large towns, who have as yet no real notion of what
agriculture can be, we advise them to explore the surrounding
market-gardens and study the cultivation. They need but observe and
question market-gardeners, and a new world will be open to them. They
will thus be able to see what European agriculture may be in the
twentieth century; and they will understand with what force the social
revolution will be armed when we know the secret of taking everything we
need from the soil.
A few facts will suffice to show that our assertions are in no way
exaggerated. We only wish them to be preceded by a few general remarks.
We know in what a wretched condition European agriculture is. If the
cultivator of the soil is not plundered by the landowner, he is robbed
by the State. If the State taxes him moderately, the money-lender
enslaves him by means of promissory notes, and soon turns him into the
simple tenant of a soil belonging in reality to a financial company. The
landlord, the State, and the banker thus plunder the cultivator by means
of rent, taxes, and interest. The sum varies in each country, but it
never falls below the quarter, very often the half of the raw produce.
In France agriculturists paid the State quite recently as much as 44 per
cent of the gross produce.
Moreover, the share of the owner and the State always goes on
increasing. As soon as the cultivator has obtained more plentiful crops
by prodigies of labour, invention, or initiative, the tribute he will
owe to the landowner, the State, and the banker will augment in
proportion. If he doubles the number of bushels reaped per acre, rent
will be doubled and taxes too, and the State will take care to raise
them still more if the prices go up. And so on. In short, everywhere the
cultivator of the soil works twelve to sixteen hours a day; these three
vultures take from him everything he might lay by; they rob him
everywhere of what would enable him to improve his culture. This is why
agriculture progresses so slowly.
The cultivator can only occasionally make some progress, in some
exceptional regions, under quite exceptional circumstances, following
upon a quarrel between the three vampires. And yet we have said nothing
about the tribute every cultivator pays to the manufacturer. Every
machine, every spade, every barrel of chemical manure, is sold to him at
three or four times its real cost. Nor let us forget the middleman, who
levies the lion’s share of the earth’s produce.
This is why, during all this century of invention and progress,
agriculture has only improved from time to time on very limited areas.
Happily there have always been small oases, neglected for some time by
the vultures; and here we learn what intensive agriculture can produce
for mankind. Let us mention a few examples.
In the American prairies (which, however, only yield meagre spring wheat
crops, from 7 to 15 bushels an acre, and even these are often marred by
periodical droughts), 500 men, working only during eight months, produce
the annual food of 50,000 people. With all the improvements of the last
few years, one man’s yearly labour (300 days) yields, delivered in
Chicago as flour, the yearly food of 250 men. Here the result is
obtained by a great economy in manual labour: on those vast plains,
which the eye cannot encompass, ploughing, harvesting, thrashing, are
organized in almost military fashion. There is no useless running to and
fro, no loss of time — all is done with parade-like precision.
This is agriculture on a large scale — extensive agriculture, which
takes the soil from nature without seeking to improve it. When the earth
has yielded ail it can, they leave it; they seek elsewhere for a virgin
soil, to be exhausted in its turn. But there is also “intensive”
agriculture, which is already worked, and will be more and more so, by
machinery. Its object is to cultivate a limited space well, to manure,
to improve, to concentrate work, and to obtain the largest crop
possible. This kind of culture spreads every year, and whereas
agriculturists in the south of France and on the fertile plains of
Western America are content with an average crop of 11 to 15 bushels per
acre by extensive culture, they reap regularly 39 even 55, and sometimes
60 bushels per acre in the north of France. The annual consumption of a
man is thus obtained from less than a quarter of an acre.
And the more intense the culture is, the less work is expended to obtain
a bushel of wheat. Machinery replaces man at the preliminary work and
for the improvements needed by the land — such as draining, clearing of
stones — which will double the crops in future, once and for ever.
Sometimes nothing but keeping the soil free of weeds without manuring,
allows an average soil to yield excellent crops from year to year. It
has been done for twenty years in succession at Rothamstead, in
Hertfordshire.
Let us not write an agricultural romance, but be satisfied with a crop
of 44 bushels per acre. That needs no exceptional soil, but merely a
rational culture; and let us see what it means.
The 3,600,000 individuals who inhabit the two departments of Seine and
Seine-et-Oise consume yearly for their food a little less than 22
million bushels of cereals, chiefly wheat; and in our hypothesis they
would have to cultivate, in order to obtain this crop, 494,200 acres out
of the 1,507,300 acres which they possess. It is evident they would not
cultivate them with spades. That would need too much time — 96 work-days
of 5 hours per acre. It would be preferable to improve the soil once for
all — to drain what needed to be drained to level what needed levelling,
to clear the soil of stones, were it even necessary to spend 5 million
days of 5 hours in this preparatory work — an average of 10 work-days to
each acre.
Then they would plough with the steam-digger, which would take one and
three-fifths of a day per acre, and they would give another one and
three-fifths of a day for working with the double plough. Seeds would be
sorted by steam instead of taken haphazard, and they would be carefully
sown in rows instead of being thrown to the four winds. Now all this
work would not take 10 days of 5 hours per acre if the work were done
under good conditions. But if 10 million work-days are given to good
culture during 3 or 4 years, the result will be later on crops of 44 to
55 bushels per acre by only working half the time.
Fifteen million work-days will have thus been spent to give bread to a
population of 3,600,000 inhabitants. And the work would be such that
each could do it without having muscles of steel, or without having even
worked the ground before. The initiative and the general distribution of
work would come from those who know the soil. As to the work itself,
there is no townsman of either sex so enfeebled as to be incapable of
looking after machines and of contributing his share to agrarian work
after a few hours’ apprenticeship.
Well, when we consider that in the present chaos there are, in a city
like Paris, without counting the unemployed of the upper classes, about
100,000 men out of work in their several trades, we see that the power
lost in our present organization would alone suffice to give, with a
rational culture, bread necessary to the three or four million
inhabitants of the two departments.
We repeat, this is no fancy dream, and we have not spoken of the truly
intensive agriculture. We have not depended upon the wheat (obtained in
three years by Mr. Hallett) of which one grain, replanted, produced 5000
or 6000, and occasionally 10,000 grains, which would give the wheat
necessary for a family of five individuals on an area of 120 square
yards. On the contrary, we have only mentioned what has been already
achieved by numerous farmers in France, England, Belgium, etc., and what
might be done to-morrow with the experience and knowledge acquired
already by practice on a large scale.
But without a revolution, neither to-morrow, nor after to-morrow will
see it done, because it is not to the interest of landowners and
capitalists; and because peasants who would find their profit in it have
neither the knowledge nor the money, nor the time to obtain what is
necessary to go ahead.
The present society has not yet reached this stage. But let Parisians
proclaim an Anarchist Commune, and they will of necessity come to it,
because they will not be foolish enough to continue making luxurious
toys (which Vienna, Warsaw, and Berlin make as well already) and to run
the risk of being left without bread.
Moreover, agricultural work, by the help of machinery, would soon become
the most attractive and the most joyful of all occupations.
“We have had enough jewellery and enough dolls’ clothes,” they would
say; “it is high time for the workers to recruit their strength in
agriculture, to go in search of vigour, of impressions of nature, of the
joy of life, that they have forgotten in the dark factories of the
suburbs.”
In the Middle Ages it was Alpine pasture lands, rather than guns, which
allowed the Swiss to shake off lords and kings. Modern agriculture will
allow a city in revolt to free itself from the combined bourgeois
forces.
We have seen how the 3½ million inhabitants of the two departments round
Paris could find ample bread by cultivating only a third of their
territory. Let us now pass on to cattle.
Englishmen, who eat much meat, consume on an average a little less than
220 lb. a year per adult. Supposing all meats consumed were oxen, that
makes a little less than the third of an ox. An ox a year for 5
individuals (including children) is already a sufficient ration. For 3½
million inhabitants this would make an annual consumption of 700,000
head of cattle.
To-day, with the pasture system, we need at least 5 million acres to
nourish 660,000 head of cattle. This makes 9 acres per each head of
horned cattle. Nevertheless, with prairies moderately watered by spring
water (as recently done on thousands of acres in the south-west of
France), 1¼ million acres already suffice. But if intensive culture is
practiced, and beetroot is grown for fodder, you only need a quarter of
that area, that is to say, about 310,000 acres. And if we have recourse
to maize and practice ensilage (the compression of fodder while green)
like Arabs, we obtain fodder on an area of 217,500 acres.
In the environs of Milan, where sewer water is used to irrigate the
fields, fodder for 2 to 3 horned cattle per each acre is obtained on an
area of 22,000 acres; and on a few favoured fields, up to 177 tons of
hay to the 10 acres have been cropped, the yearly provender of 36 milch
cows. Nearly nine acres per head of cattle are needed under the pasture
system, and only 2½ acres for 9 oxen or cows under the new system. These
are the opposite extremes in modern agriculture.
In Guernsey, on a total of 9884 acres utilized, nearly half (4695 acres)
are covered with cereals and kitchen-gardens; only 5189 acres remain as
meadows. On these 5189 acres, 1480 horses, 7260 head of cattle, 900
sheep, and 4200 pigs are fed, which makes more than 3 head of cattle per
2 acres, without reckoning the sheep or the pigs. It is needless to add
that the fertility of the soil is made by seaweed and chemical manures.
Returning to our 3½ million inhabitants belonging to Paris and its
environs, we see that the land necessary for the rearing of cattle comes
down from 5 million acres to 197,000. Well, then, let us not stop at the
lowest figures, let us take those of ordinary intensive culture; let us
liberally add to the land necessary for smaller cattle which must
replace some of the horned beasts and allow 395,000 acres for the
rearing of cattle — 494,000 if you like, on the 1,013,000 acres
remaining after bread has been provided for the people.
Let us be generous and give 5 million work-days to put this landinto a
productive state.
After having therefore employed in the course of a year 20 million
work-days, half of which are for permanent improvements, we shall have
bread and meat assured to us, without including all the extra meat
obtainable in the shape of fowls, pigs, rabbits, etc.; without taking
into consideration that a population provided with excellent vegetables
and fruit consumes less meat than Englishmen, who supplement their poor
supply of vegetables by animal food. Now, how much do 20 million
work-days of 5 hours make per inhabitant? Very little indeed. A
population of 3½ millions must have at least 1,200,000 adult men, and as
many women capable of work. Well, then, to give bread and meat to all,
it would need only 17 half-days of work a year per man. Add 3 million
work-days, or double that number if you like, in order to obtain milk.
That will make 25 work-days of 5 hours in all — nothing more than a
little pleasurable country exercise — to obtain the three principal
products bread, meat, and milk. The three products which, after housing,
cause daily anxiety to nine-tenths of mankind.
And yet — let us not tire of repeating — these are not fancy dreams. We
have only told what is, what has been, obtained by experience on a large
scale. Agriculture could be reorganized in this way to-morrow if
property laws and general ignorance did not offer opposition.
The day Paris has understood that to know what you eat and how it is
produced, is a question of public interest; the day when everybody will
have understood that this questions is infinitely more important than
all the parliamentary debates of the present times — on that day the
Revolution will be an accomplished fact. Paris will take possession of
the two departments and cultivate them. And then the Parisian worker,
after having laboured a third of his existence in order to buy bad and
insufficient food, will produce it himself, under his walls, within the
enclosure of his forts (if they still exist), in a few hours of healthy
and attractive work.
And now we pass on to fruit and vegetables. Let us go outside Paris and
visit the establishment of a market-gardener who accomplishes wonders
(ignored by learned economists) at a few miles from the academies.
Let us visit, suppose, M. Ponce, the author of a work on
market-gardening, who makes no secret of what the earth yields him, and
who has published it all along.
M. Ponce, and especially his workmen, work like niggers. It takes eight
men to cultivate a plot a little less than 3 acres (27/10). They work
12, and even 15 hours a day, that is to say, three times more than is
needed. Twenty-four of them would not be too many. To which M. Ponce
will probably answer that as he pays the terrible sum of £100 rent a
year for his 27/10 acres of land, and £100 for manure bought in the
barracks, he is obliged to exploit. He would no doubt answer, “Being
exploited, I exploit in my turn.” His installation has also cost him
£1200, of which certainly more than half went as tribute to the idle
barons of industry. In reality, this establishment represents at most
3000 work-days, probably much less.
But let us examine his crops: nearly 10 tons of carrots, nearly 10 tons
of onions, radishes, and small vegetables, 6000 heads of cabbage, 3000
heads of cauliflower, 5000 baskets of tomatoes, 5000 dozen of choice
fruit, 154,000 salads; in short, a total of 123 tons of vegetables and
fruit to 27/10 acres — 120 yards long by 109 yards broad, which makes
more than 44 tons of vegetables to the acre.
But a man does not eat more than 660 lb. of vegetables and fruit a year,
and 2½ acres of a market-garden yield enough vegetables and fruit to
richly supply the table of 350 adults during the year. Thus 24 persons
employed a whole year in cultivating 27/10 acres of land, and only
working 5 hours a day, would produce sufficient vegetables and fruit for
350 adults, which is equivalent at least to 500 individuals.
To put it in another way: in cultivating like M. Ponce — and his results
have already been surpassed — 350 adults should each give a little more
than 100 hours a year (103) to produce vegetables and fruit necessary
for 500 people.
Let us mention that such a production is not the exception. It takes
place, under the walls of Paris, on an area of 2220 acres, by 5000
market-gardeners. Only these market-gardeners are reduced nowadays to a
state of beasts of burden, in order to pay an average rent of £32 per
acre.
But do not these facts, which can be verified by every one, prove that
17,300 acres (of the 519,000 remaining to us) would suffice to give all
necessary vegetables, as well as a liberal amount of fruit to the 3½
millions inhabitants of our two departments?
As to the quantity of work necessary to produce these fruits and
vegetables, it would amount to 50 million work-days of 5 hours (50 days
per adult male), if we measure by the market-gardeners’ standard of
work. But we could reduce this quantity if we had recourse to the
process in vogue in Jersey and Guernsey. We must also remember that the
Paris market-gardener is forced to work so hard because he mostly
produces early season fruits, the high prices of which have to pay for
fabulous rents, and that this system of culture entails more work than
is really necessary. The market-gardeners of Paris, not having the means
to make a great outlay on their gardens, and being obliged to pay
heavily for glass, wood, iron, an coal, obtain their artificial heat out
of manure, while it can be had at much less cost in hothouses.
The market-gardeners, we say, are forced to become machines and to
renounce all joys of lift to obtain their marvellous crops. But these
hard grinders have rendered a great service to humanity in teaching us
that the soil can be “made.” They make it with old hotbeds of manure,
which have already served to give the necessary warmth to young plants
and to early fruit; and they make it in such great quantity that they
are compelled to sell it in part, otherwise it would raise the level of
their gardens by one inch every year. They do it so well (so Barral
teaches us, in his “Dictionary of Agriculture,” in an article on
market-gardeners) that in recent contracts, the market-gardener
stipulates that he will carry away his soil with him when he leaves the
bit of ground he is cultivating. Loam carried away on carts, with
furniture and glass frames — that is the answer of practical cultivators
to the learned treatises of a Ricardo, who represented rent as a means
of equalizing the natural advantages of the soil. “The soil is worth
what man is worth,” that is the gardeners’ motto.
And yet the market-gardeners of Paris and Rouen labour three times as
hard to obtain the same results as their fellow-workers in Guernscy or
in England. Applying industry to agriculture these last make their
climate in addition to their soil, by means of the greenhouse.
Fifty years ago the greenhouse was the luxury of the rich. It was kept
to grow exotic plants for pleasure. But nowadays its use begins to be
generalized. A tremendous industry has grown up lately in Guernsey and
Jersey, where hundreds of acres are already covered with glass — to say
nothing of the countless small greenhouses kept in every little farm
garden. Acres and acres of greenhouses have lately been built also at
Worthing, in the suburbs of London, and in several other parts of
England and Scotland.
They are built of all qualities, beginning with those which have granite
walls, down to those which represent mere shelters made in planks and
glass frames, which cost, even now, with all the tribute paid to
capitalists and middlemen, less than 3s. 6d. per square yard under
glass. Most of them are heated for at least three or four months every
year; but even the cool greenhouses, which are not heated at all, give
excellent results — of course, not for growing grapes and tropical
plants, but for potatoes, carrots, peas, tomatoes, and so on.
In this way man emancipates himself from climate, and at the same time
he avoids also the heavy work with the hot-beds, and he saves both in
buying much less manure and in work. Three men to the acre, each of them
working less than sixty hours a week, grow on very small spaces what
formerly required acres and acres of land.
The result of all these recent conquests of culture is, that if one half
only of the adults of a city gave each about fifty half-days for the
culture of the finest fruit and vegetables out of season, they would
have all the year round an unlimited supply of that sort of fruit and
vegetables for the whole population.
But there is a still more important fact to notice. The greenhouse has
nowadays a tendency to become a mere kitchen garden under glass. And
when it is used to such a purpose, the simplest plank-and-glass unheated
shelters already give fabulous crops — such as, for instance, 500
bushels of potatoes per acre as a first crop, ready by the end of April;
after which a second and a third crop are obtained in the extremely high
temperature which prevails in the summer under glass.
I gave in my “Fields, Factories, and Workshops,” most striking facts in
this direction. Sufficient to say here, that at Jersey, 34 men, with one
trained gardener only, cultivate 13 acres under glass, from which they
obtain 143 tons of fruit and early vegetables, using for this
extraordinary culture less than 1000 tons of coal.
And this is done now in Guernsey and Jersey on a very large scale, quite
a number of steamers constantly plying between Guernsey and London, only
to export the crops of the greenhouses.
Nowadays, in order to obtain that same crop of 500 bushels of potatoes,
we must plough every year a surface of 4 acres, plant it, cultivate it,
weed it, and so on; whereas with the glass, even if we shall have to
give perhaps, to start with, half a day’s work per square yard in order
to build the greenhouse — we shall save afterwards at least one-half,
and probably three-quarters of the formerly required yearly labour.
These are facts, results which every one can verify himself. And these
facts are already a hint as to what man could obtain from the earth if
he treated it with intelligence.
In all the above we have reasoned upon what already withstood the test
of experience. Intensive culture of the fields, irrigated meadows, the
hothouse, and finally the kitchen garden under glass are realities.
Moreover, the tendency is to extend and to generalize these methods of
culture, because they allow of obtaining more produce with less work and
with more certainty.
In fact, after having studied the most simple glass shelters of
Guernsey, we affirm that, taking all in all, far less work is expended
for obtaining potatoes under glass in April, than in growing them in the
open air, which requires digging a space four times as large, watering
it, weeding it, etc. Work is likewise economized in employing a
perfected tool or machine, even when an initial expense had to be
incurred to buy the tool.
Complete figures concerning the culture of common vegetables under glass
are still wanting. This culture is of recent origin, and is only carried
out on small areas. But we have already figures concerning the fifty
years old culture of early season grapes, and these figures are
conclusive.
In the north of England, on the Scotch frontier, where coal only costs
3s. a ton at the pit’s mouth, they have long since taken to growing
hothouse grapes. Thirty years ago these grapes, ripe in January, were
sold by the grower at 20s. per lb. and resold at 40s. per lb. for
Napoleon III’s table. To-day the same grower sells them at only 2s. 6d.
per lb. He tells us so himself in a horticultural journal. The fall is
caused by tons and tons of grapes arriving in January to London and
Paris.
Thanks to the cheapness of coal and an intelligent culture, grapes from
the north travel now southwards, in a contrary direction to ordinary
fruit. They cost so little that in May, English and Jersey grapes are
sold at 1s. 8d. per lb. by the gardeners, and yet this price, like that
of 40s. thirty years ago, is only kept up by slack production.
In March, Belgium grapes are sold at from 6d. to 8d., while in October,
grapes cultivated in immense quantities — under glass, and with a little
artificial heating in the environs of London — are sold at the same
price as grapes bought by the pound in the vineyards of Switzerland and
the Rhine, that is to say, for a few halfpence. Yet they still cost
two-thirds too much, by reason of the excessive rent of the soil and the
cost of installation and heating, on which the gardener pays a
formidable tribute to the manufacturer and middleman. This being
understood, we may say that it costs “next to nothing” to have delicious
grapes under the latitude of, and in our misty London in autumn. In one
of the suburbs, for instance, a wretched glass and plaster shelter, 9
ft. 10 in. long by 6½ ft. wide, resting against our cottage, gave us
about fifty pounds of grapes of an exquisite taste in October, for nine
consecutive years. The crop came from a Hamburg vine-stalk, six years
old. And the shelter was so bad that the rain came through. At night the
temperature was always that of outside. It was evidently not heated, for
that would be as useless as to heat the street! And the cares to be
given were: pruning the vine half an hour every year; and bringing a
wheelbarrowful of manure, which is thrown over the stalk of the vine,
planted in red clay outside the shelter.
On the other hand, if we estimate the amount of care given to the vine
on the borders of the Rhine or Lake Leman, the terraces constructed
stone upon stone on the slopes of the hills, the transport of manure and
also of earth to a height of two or three hundred feet, we come to the
conclusion that on the whole the expenditure of work necessary to
cultivate vines is more considerable in Switzerland or on the banks of
the Rhine than it is under glass in London suburbs.
This may seem paradoxical, because it is generally believed that vines
grow of themselves in the south of Europe, and that the vinegrower’s
work costs nothing. But gardeners and horticulturists, far from
contradicting us, confirm our assertions. “The most advantageous culture
in England is vine culture,” wrote a practical gardener, editor of the
“English Journal of Horticulture.” Prices speak eloquently for
themselves, as we know.
Translating these facts into communist language, we may assert that the
man or woman who takes twenty hours a year from his leisure time to give
some little care — very pleasant in the main — to two or three
vine-stalks sheltered by simple glass under any European climate, will
gather as many grapes as their family and friends can eat. And that
applies not only to vines, but to all fruit trees.
The Commune that will put the processes of intensive culture into
practice on a large scale will have all possible vegetables, indigenous
or exotic, and all desirable fruits, without employing more than about
ten hours a year per inhabitant.
In fact, nothing would be easier than to verify the above statements by
direct experiment. Suppose 100 acres of a light loam (such as we have at
Worthing) are transformed into a number of market gardens, each one with
its glass houses for the rearing of the seedlings and young plants.
Suppose also that 50 more acres are covered with glass, houses, and the
organization of the whole is left to practical experienced French
maraîchers, and Guernsey or Worthing greenhouse gardeners.
In basing the maintenance of these 150 acres on the Jersey average,
requiring the work of three men per acre under glass — which makes less
than 8,600 hours of work a year — it would need about 1,300,000 hours
for the 150 acres. Fifty competent gardeners could give five hours a day
to this work, and the rest would be simply done by people who, without
being gardeners by profession, would soon learn how to use a spade, and
to handle the plants. But this work would yield at least — we have seen
it in a preceding chapter — all necessaries and articles of luxury in
the way of fruit and vegetables for at least 40,000 or 50,000 people.
Let us admit that among this number there are 13,500 adults, willing to
work at the kitchen-garden; then, each one would have to give 100 hours
a year distributed over the whole year. These hours of work would become
hours of recreation spent among friends and children in beautiful
gardens, more beautiful probably than those of the legendary Semiramis.
This is the balance sheet of the labour to be spent in order to be able
to eat to satiety fruit which we are deprived of to-day, and to have
vegetables in abundance, now so scrupulously rationed out by the
housewife, when she has to reckon each halfpenny which must go to enrich
capitalists and landowners [10].
If only humanity had the consciousness of what it CAN, and if that
consciousness only gave it the power to will!
If it only knew that cowardice of the spirit is the rock on which all
revolutions have stranded until now.
We can easily perceive the new horizons opening before the social
revolution.
Each time we speak of revolution the worker who has seen children
wanting food lowers his brow and repeats obstinately — “What of bread?
Will there be sufficient if everyone eats according to his appetite?
What if the peasants, ignorant tools of reaction, starve our towns as
the black bands did in France in 1793 — what shall we do?”
Let them do their worst! The large cities will have to do without them.
At what, then, should the hundreds of thousands of workers, who are
asphyxiated to-day in small workshops and factories, be employed on the
day they regain their liberty? Will they continue locking themselves up
in factories after the Revolution? Will they continue to make luxurious
toys for export when they see their stock of corn getting exhausted,
meat becoming scarce, and vegetables disappearing without being
replaced?
Evidently not! They will leave the town and go into the fields! Aided by
a machinery which will enable the weakest of us to put a shoulder to the
wheel, they will carry revolution into previously enslaved culture as
they will have carried it into institutions and ideas.
Hundreds of acres will be covered with glass, and men, and women with
delicate fingers, will foster the growth of young plants. Hundreds of
other acres will be ploughed by steam, improved by manures, or enriched
by artificial soil obtained by the pulverization of rocks. Happy crowds
of occasional labourers will cover these acres with crops, guided in the
work and experiments partly by those who know agriculture, but
especially by the great and practical spirit of a people roused from
long slumber and illumined by that bright beacon — the happiness of all.
And in two or three months the early crops will relieve the most
pressing wants, and provide food for a people who, after so many
centuries of expectation, will at least be able to appease their hunger
and eat according to their appetite.
In the meanwhile, popular genius, the genius of a nation which revolts
and knows its wants, will work at experimenting with new processes of
culture that we already catch a glimpse of, and that only need the
baptism of experience to become universal. Light will be experimented
with — that unknown agent of culture which makes barley ripen in
forty-five days under the latitude of Yakutsk; light, concentrated or
artificial, will rival heat in hastening the growth of plants. A Mouchot
of the future will invent a machine to guide the rays of the sun and
make them work, so that we shall no longer seek sun-heat stored in coal
in the depths of the earth. They will experiment the watering of the
soil with cultures of micro-organisms — a rational idea, conceived but
yesterday, which will permit us to give to the soil those little living
beings, necessary to feed the rootless, to decompose and assimilate the
component parts of the soil.
They will experiment.... But let us stop here or we shall enter into the
realm of fancy. Let us remain in the reality of acquired facts. With the
processes of culture in use, applied on a large scale, and already
victorious in the struggle against industrial competition, we can give
ourselves ease and luxury in return for agreeable work. The near future
will show what is practical in the processes that recent scientific
discoveries give us a glimpse of. Let us limit ourselves at present to
opening up the new path that consists in the study of the needs of man,
and the means of satisfying them.
The only thing that may be wanting to the Revolution is the boldness of
initiative.
With our minds already narrowed in our youth, enslaved by the past in
our mature age and till the grave, we hardly dare to think. If a new
idea is mentioned — before venturing on an opinion of our own, we
consult musty books a hundred years old, to know what ancient masters
thought on the subject.
It is not food that will fail, if boldness of thought and initiative are
not wanting to the revolution.
Of all the great days of the French Revolution, the most beautiful, the
greatest, was the one on which delegates who had come from all parts of
France to Paris, worked all with the spade to plane the ground of the
Champ de Mars, preparing it for the fête of the Federation.
That day France was united: animated by the new spirit, she had a vision
of the future in the working in common of the soil.
And it will again be by the working in common of the soil that the
enfranchized societies will find their unity and will obliterate hatred
and oppression which had divided them.
Henceforth, able to conceive solidarity — that immense power which
increases man’s energy and creative forces a hundredfold — the new
society will march to the conquest of the future with all the vigour of
youth.
Leaving off production for unknown buyers, and looking in its midst for
needs and tastes to be satisfied, society will liberally assure the life
and ease of each of its members, as well as that moral satisfaction
which work gives when freely chosen and freely accomplished, and the joy
of living without encroaching on the life of others.
Inspired by a new daring — thanks to the sentiment of solidarity — all
will march together to the conquest of the high joys of knowledge and
artistic creation.
A society thus inspired will fear neither dissensions within nor enemies
without. To the coalitions of the past it will oppose a new harmony, the
initiative of each and all, the daring which springs from the awakening
of a people’s genius.
Before such an irresistible force “conspiring kings” will be powerless.
Nothing will remain for them but to bow before it, and to harness
themselves to the chariot of humanity, rolling towards new horizons
opened up by the Social Revolution.
DEPARTMENTS OF SEINE AND SEINE-ET-OISE
Areas to be cultivated to feed the inhabitants (in acres):
Quantity of annual work necessary to improve and cultivate the above
surfaces in five-hour work-days:
[1] For the International Paris Exhibitions of 1889 and 1900.
[2] “Shabble of a Duke” is an expression coined by Carlyle; it is a
somewhat free rendering of Kropotkine’s “Monsieur le Vicomte,” but I
think it expresses his meaning. — Trans.
[3] The municipal debt of Paris amounted in 1904 to 2,266,579,100
francs, and the charges for it were 121,000,000 francs.
[4] Kropotkine is here supposing the Revolution to break out first in
France. — Trans.
[5] The decree of the 30 March: by this decree rents due up to the terms
of October, 1870, and January and April, 1871, were annulled.
[6] We know this from Playfair, who mentioned it at Joule’s death.
[7] It seems that the Communists of Young Icaria had understood the
importance of a free choice in their daily relations apart from work.
The ideal of religious Communists has always been to have meals in
common; it is by meals in common that early Christians manifested their
adhesion to Christianity. Communion is still a vestige of it. Young
Icarians had given up this religious tradition. They dined in a common
dining-room, but at small separate tables, at which they sat according
to the attractions of the moment. The Communists of Amana have each
their house and dine at home, while taking their provisions at will at
the communal stores.
[8] See my book, “In Russian and French Prisons.” London 1887
[9] Consult “La Répartition métrique des impôts,” by A. Toubeau, two
vols., published by Guillaumin in 1880. (We do not in the least agree
with Toubeau’s conclusions, but it is a real encyclopædia, indicating
the sources which prove what can be obtained from the soil.) “La Culture
maraîchere,” by M. Ponce, Paris, 1869. “Le Potager Gressent,” Paris,
1885, an excellent practical work. “Physiologie et culture du blé,” by
Risler, Paris, 1881. “Le blé, sa culture intensive et extensive,” by
Lecouteux, Paris, 1883. “La Cité Chinoise,” by Eugène Simon. “Le
dictionnaire d’agriculture,” by Barral (Hachette, editor). “The
Rothamstead Experiments,” by Wm. Fream, London, 1888 — culture without
manure, etc. (the “Field” office, editor). “Fields, Factories, and
Workshops,” by the author. London (Swan Sonnenschein); cheap editions at
6d. and 1s.
[10] Summing up the figures given on agriculture, figures proving that
the inhabitants of the two départements of Seine and Seine-et-Oise can
perfectly well live on their own territory by employing very little time
annually to obtain food, we have: [see table 1 at the end of the
document]. If we suppose that half only of the able-bodied adults (men
and women) are willing to work at agriculture, we see that 70 million
work-days must be divided among 1,200,000 individuals, which gives us 58
work-days of 5 hours for each of these workers. With that the population
of the two departments would have all necessary bread, meat, milk,
vegetables, and fruit, both ordinary and luxury. To-day a workman spends
for the necessary food of his family (generally less than what is
necessary) at least one-third of his 300 work-days a year, about 1000
hours be it, instead of 290. That is, he thus gives about 700 hours too
much to fatten the idle and the would-be administrators, because he does
not produce his own food, but buys it of middlemen, who in their turn
buy it of peasants who exhaust themselves by working with bad tools,
because, being robbed by the landowners and the State, they cannot
procure better ones.