The Conquest of Bread
_By_ PETER KROPOTKIN
_Author of "Fields, Factories, and Workshops"
"The Memoirs of a Revolutionist," Etc._
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
VANGUARD PRESS
MCMXXVI
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
THE MAN (1842-1921):
_Prince Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin_, revolutionary and scientist, was
descended from the old Russian nobility, but decided, at the age of
thirty, to throw in his lot with the social rebels not only of his own
country, but of the entire world. He became the intellectual leader of
Anarchist-Communism; took part in the labor movement; wrote many books
and pamphlets; established _Le Révolté_ in Geneva and _Freedom_ in
London; contributed to the _Encyclopedia Britannica_; was twice
imprisoned because of his radical activities; and twice visited America.
After the Bolshevist revolution he returned to Russia, kept himself
apart from Soviet activities, and died true to his ideals.
THE BOOK:
_The Conquest of Bread_ is a revolutionary idyl, a beautiful outline
sketch of a future society based on liberty, equality and fraternity. It
is, in Kropotkin's own words, "a study of the needs of humanity, and of
the economic means to satisfy them." Read in conjunction with the same
author's "Fields, Factories and Workshops," it meets all the
difficulties of the social inquirer who says: "The Anarchist ideal is
alluring, but how could you work it out?"
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. OUR RICHES 1
II. WELL-BEING FOR ALL 12
III. ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 23
IV. EXPROPRIATION 34
V. FOOD 47
VI. DWELLINGS 73
VII. CLOTHING 84
VIII. WAYS AND MEANS 87
IX. THE NEED FOR LUXURY 95
X. AGREEABLE WORK 110
XI. FREE AGREEMENT 119
XII. OBJECTIONS 134
XIII. THE COLLECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM 152
XIV. CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION 168
XV. THE DIVISION OF LABOUR 176
XVI. THE DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY 180
XVII. AGRICULTURE 191
NOTES 213
PREFACE
One of the current objections to Communism, and Socialism altogether, is
that the idea is so old, and yet it has never been 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 medieval
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; while 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 here and there 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 development in the nineteenth century
only, after the Napoleonic wars came to an end. And modern Communism has
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 sub-divide it, and by heavy war
taxes levied upon the rich only. The second attempt 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. And the third 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 upper hand.
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 Buonarroti, 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 Buonarroti and Babeuf, gave their stamp to
militant, authoritarian 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 1830-1832 in this country, had begun to shake off
that terrible reaction, that the discussion of Socialism became possible
for a few years before the revolution of 1848. And it was during those
years that the aspirations of Fourier, St. 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 both the Labour Parties of our
days and the International Working-men'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. Vidal in France and Lorenz Stein in Germany further developed,
in two remarkable works, published in 1846 and 1847 respectively, the
theoretical conceptions of Considérant; and finally Vidal, and
especially Pecqueur, developed in detail the system of Collectivism,
which the former wanted the National Assembly of 1848 to vote in the
shape of laws.
However, there is one feature, common to all Socialist schemes of that
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, into some great ruler,
some Socialist Napoleon. 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 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, carry Europe with
him and translate 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 even 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, in the organizing powers of the working-men
themselves.
But then came the Revolution of February, 1848, the middle-class
Republic, and--with it, shattered 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'êtat_ 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 so wiped out as to be taken, later on, by our generation, for
new discoveries.
However, when a new revival began, about 1866, when Communism and
Collectivism once more came forward, it appeared that the conception as
to the means of their realization had undergone a deep change. The old
faith in Political Democracy was dying out, and the first principles
upon which the Paris working-men agreed with the British trade-unionists
and Owenites, when they met in 1862 and 1864, at London, was that "the
emancipation of the working-men must be accomplished by the working-men
themselves." Upon another point they also were agreed. 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 1870-71, 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" that is, 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 henceforward it would not wait
for the retardatory portions of France: that it 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; it merely asserted the rights of the Commune
to its full autonomy. 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 England and France before 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 to constitute nations in some cases, even
irrespectively of the present national frontiers (like the Cinque Ports,
or the Hansa). At the same time large labour associations would 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 saw the medium through which Socialist forms of life
could find a much easier realization than through the seizure of all
industrial property by the State, and the State organization of
agriculture and industry.
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. State Socialism has certainly made considerable 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 growing amongst the working-men,
especially in Western Europe, 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, to always 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 the improvement of the conditions of labour, but also of
becoming an organization which might, at a given moment, take into its
hands the management of production; Co-operation, 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 these 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. 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.
BRIGHTON.
_January, 1913._
THE CONQUEST OF BREAD
CHAPTER I
OUR RICHES
I
The human race has travelled a long way, since those remote ages when
men fashioned their rude implements of flint and lived on the precarious
spoils of hunting, leaving to their children for their only heritage a
shelter beneath the rocks, some poor utensils--and Nature, vast,
unknown, and terrific, with whom they had to fight for their wretched
existence.
During the long succession of agitated ages which have elapsed since,
mankind has nevertheless amassed untold treasures. It has cleared the
land, dried the marshes, hewn down forests, made roads, pierced
mountains; it has been building, inventing, observing, reasoning; it has
created a complex machinery, wrested her secrets from Nature, and
finally it pressed steam and electricity into its service. And the
result is, that now the child of the civilized man finds at its birth,
ready for its use, an immense capital accumulated by those who have gone
before him. And this capital enables man to acquire, merely by his own
labour combined with the labour of others, riches surpassing the dreams
of 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 give 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 rational 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 provide ten thousand persons
with clothing for 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 the
spectacle of wonderful cities springing up in a few months for
international exhibitions, without interrupting in the slightest degree
the regular work of the nations.
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.
II
In our civilized societies we 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 can allow the many to work, only on the 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. 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?
III
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. Some time, perhaps, we
will relate how this came to pass. For the present let it suffice to
state the fact and analyze 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 claim 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 grapeshot, 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
called 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 that everywhere there are
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 studying to the worker, who comes home in the
evening wearied by excessive toil, and 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 carry out this principle
would be 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 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 brick 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!