"Division of Labour" is the law pervading everything that exists,
therefore it must exist in human societies too. That may be so; but the
question still remains, whether the existing division of labour in human
society is the division which ought to exist. And when men consider a
certain division of labour unreasonable and unjust, no science whatever
can prove to men that what they consider unreasonable and unjust ought
to continue.
The theological theory demonstrated that "Power is of God"; and it very
well may be so. But the question still remains, To whom is the power
given, to Catherine the Empress, or to the rebel Pugatchof? And no
theological subtleties whatever can solve this difficulty. Moral
philosophy demonstrates that "A State is merely a form of the social
development of the individual"; but the question still remains,--Can the
state of a Nero or that of a Gengis Khan be considered a form of such
development? And no transcendentalism whatever can solve that
difficulty.
It is the same with Scientific Science also. Division of Labour is the
condition of the life of organisms and of human societies; but what have
we to consider in these human societies as an organic division of
labour? However much science studies the division of labour in the
molecules of a tape-worm, all the observations cannot compel men to
acknowledge as correct a division of labour which is repudiated by their
reason and conscience. However convincing the proofs of the division of
labour in the cells of investigated organisms may be, a man who has not
yet lost his reason will say it is wrong that some should only weave
cloth all their long life, and that this is not division of labour, but
oppression of human beings.
Herbert Spencer and others affirm that as there is a whole population of
weavers, the weaver's activity is in organic division of labour. In
saying this they use a similar line of reasoning to the theologians:
There is a power, therefore it is of God, whatever it may be: there are
weavers, therefore they exist as a result of the law of division of
labour. There might be some sense in this if the power and the position
of weavers were created by themselves; but we know that they are not but
that it is we who create them. Well, then, we ought to ascertain whether
we have established this power according to the will of God or of
ourselves, and whether we have called these weavers into being by virtue
of some organic law or from some other cause.
Here are men earning their living by agriculture, as it is proper for
all men to do: one man has set up a smith's forge and mended his plough;
his neighbour comes to him and asks him to mend his plough, too, and
promises to give labour or money in return. A second comes with a
similar request; others follow; and in the society of these men a form
of division of labour arises. Thus, one man becomes a smith.
Another man has taught his children well; his neighbour brings him his
children and asks him to teach them, and thus a teacher is formed: but
the smith as well as the teacher become, and continue to be, a smith and
a teacher, only because they were asked, and they remain a smith and a
teacher only as long as people require their trades. If it happens that
too many smiths and teachers appear, or if their labour is no longer
wanted, they at once, according to common sense, throw aside their trade
and become labourers again, as it everywhere and always happens where
there is no cause for the violation of a right division of labour.
Men who behave in such a way are directed both by their reason and their
conscience; and therefore we who are endowed with reason and conscience,
all agree that such a division of labour is a right one. But if it were
to happen that smiths, having the possibility of compelling other men to
labour for them, were to continue to make horseshoes when there was no
longer a demand for them, and teachers were to wish to continue to teach
when there was nobody to be taught, then, to every impartial man endowed
with reason and conscience, it would be obvious that this is not real
division of labour but a usurpation of other men's labour; because such
a division could no longer be tested satisfactorily by the sole standard
by which we may know whether it is right or not,--the demand of such
labour by other men, and a voluntary compensation offered for it by
them. But exactly such a surplus, however, is what Scientific Science
terms "a division of labour."
Men do what is not required, and they ask to be fed for it, and say it
is just, because it is division of labour. The chief _social_ evil of a
people,--not with us alone,--is the countless horde of State officials.
The chief cause of the _economical_ misery of our days, is what is
called in England "over-production" (that is, the production of an
enormous quantity of articles, wanted by nobody, and which no one knows
how to get rid of). All this comes simply from the strange idea about
the "division of labour?"
It would be very strange to see a boot-maker who considered that men
were bound to feed him because, forsooth, he continued to produce boots
wanted by no one; but what shall we say about those men in government,
church, science, and art, who not only do not produce any thing tangibly
useful for the people but whose produce is wanted by nobody, yet who as
boldly require to be well fed and clothed on account of "The division of
labour."
There may be magicians for whose activity there is a demand and to whom
men give casks and spirits; but we cannot even imagine the existence of
magicians who, while their magic is not wanted by anybody, require to be
fed simply because they wish to practice their art. Yet in our world
this is the very position of the men in church and state, of the men of
science and art. And it all proceeds from that false conception of the
division of labour, defined, not by reason and conscience, but by
deductions to which these scientists so unanimously resort.
Division of labour, indeed, has always existed; but it is correct only
when man decides it by his reason and conscience, and not by his making
observations on it. And the conscience and the reason of all men solve
this question in the simplest and surest way. They always decide the
question by recognizing the division of labour to be right only when the
special activity of a man is so necessary to others, that they freely
offer to feed him in compensation for what they ask him to do for them.
But when a man from his infancy up to his thirtieth year lives on the
shoulders of other men, promising to do, when he finishes his studies,
something very useful, which nobody has ever asked him for, and then for
the rest of his life lives in the same way, promising only to do
presently something which nobody asks him to do, this would not be a
true division of labour, but, as it really is, only the violation by a
strong man of the labour of others; the same appropriation of other
men's labour by a strong man, which formerly Theology called Divine
predestination; Philosophy, Inevitable Conditions of Life; and now
Scientific Science, the Organic Division of Labour.
The entire importance of the ruling science consists in this alone. This
science is now the dispenser of diplomas for idleness, because in her
temples she alone analyzes and determines what activity in the social
organism is parasitic and what organic. As if each man could not decide
much better and more quickly, too, by consulting his own reason and
conscience.
As formerly, both for clergy and for statesmen, there could have been no
doubt as to who were most necessary to other people, so now for the
believers in Positive Science it seems that there can be no doubt about
this, that their own activity is undoubtedly an organic one: they, the
factors of science and art, are the cells of the brain, the most
precious cells of all the human organism.
Let us leave them to reign, eat, drink, and be feasted, as priests and
sophists of old have before them, so long as they do not deprave men!
Since men are reasonable creatures they have discriminated good from
evil, making use of what has been done in this direction before them by
others, have struggled with evil, seeking a true and better way, and
slowly but unceasingly have advanced in this way. But always across the
road different deceptions stood before them, trying to assure them that
this struggle was not at all necessary, and that they should submit to
the tide of life. First the awful deceptions of the old Church; little
by little with dreadful struggle and effort men got rid of them: but
scarcely had they done so when in their place arose new ones--state and
philosophical deceptions.
Men freed themselves from these too, and now a new deceit, a still worse
one, has sprung up in their path,--the scientific deception.
This new deception is exactly what the old ones were: its essence
consists in the substitution of an externality for reason and
conscience, and this externality is _observation_, as in theology it was
_revelation_.
The snare of this science consists in this, that having exposed some
bare-faced perversions of the activity of reason and conscience, it
destroys men's confidence in both reason and conscience. Hiding their
lie clothed in a scientific theory, scientists assure men that by
studying external phenomena they study undeniable facts which will
reveal to them the law of man's life. Things which are the property of
conscience and reason are now to be discovered by observation alone.
These men lose the conception of good and evil and thus become unable to
understand those expressions and definitions of good and evil which have
been worked out during the entire former existence of mankind.
All that reason and conscience say to them, all that they have said to
the highest representatives of men since the world has existed, all
this, in their slang, is "conditional and subjective." All this must be
left behind.
It is said that by reason one cannot apprehend the truth, because reason
is liable to error: there is another way, unmistakable and almost
mechanical,--one must study facts on the ground of science; that is, on
two groundless suppositions, Positivism and Evolution, which are offered
as the most undoubted truths. With mock solemnity the ruling science
asserts that the solution of all the questions of life is only possible
through studying the facts of nature, and especially those of organisms.
The credulous crowd of youth, overwhelmed by the novelty of this
authority,--not only not destroyed, not yet even touched by
critics,--rush to the study of these facts of natural sciences, to that
"only way" which, according to the assertion of the ruling doctrine,
alone can lead to the elucidation of all questions of life. But the
farther the students proceed in this study, the farther do they remove
not only the possibility of solving the questions of life, but even the
very thought of this solution. The more they grow accustomed, not so
much to observe themselves, as to believe other men's observations on
their word (to believe in cells, in protoplasm, in the fourth dimension
of matter, and so on), the more the form hides from them the contents.
The more they lose the consciousness of good and evil and the capacity
of understanding those expressions and definitions of good and evil
which have been worked out in all the former career of mankind, the more
they appropriate to themselves that special scientific slang of
"conditional" expressions which have no common human meaning in them.
The farther and farther they get into the thick forest of observations
lighted by anything, the more they lose the capacity, not only of
independent thought, but even of understanding other men's fresh human
ideas which are not included in their Talmud. But chiefly they pass
their best years in losing the habit of life, that is, of labour, and
accustom themselves to consider their own position justified, and thus
become, physically, good-for-nothing parasites, and, mentally, dislocate
their brains and lose all power of thought-production.
So, their capacities more and more blunted, they acquire by degrees
self-assurance which deprives them forever of the possibility of
returning to a simple, laborious life, and to any plain, clear, common,
human manner of thinking.