EXPROPRIATION
I
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 four shillings. Very
well, then, I undertake to render to each his four 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 four 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 shrewed 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; and 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 the 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 very costly in the Middle Ages, and a draught-horse 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 his 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 come to settle on the baron's lands. They make
roads, drain the marshes, build villages. In nine or ten years the baron
begins to tax them. Five years later he increases the rent. Then he
doubles it, and the peasant accepts these new conditions because he
cannot find better ones elsewhere. 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
these things happened 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 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.
II
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 countryside had their daily bread
assured, 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 men he exploits.
So he becomes a personage of importance. He can afford to give dinners
to other 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 his "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
speculation, 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 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 quite similar. 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 vessels 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 or six 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,
manufacturers, 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.
III
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 to 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 to 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 were freed from great landowners, while industry still
remained the bond-slave 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 the 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, under promise of guaranteed 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 the exchange of produce is slackened; as soon as the
great cities are left without bread, while the great manufacturing
centres find no buyers for the articles of luxury they produce,--the
counter-revolution is bound to take place, and it would come, treading
upon the slain, sweeping the towns and villages with shot and shell;
indulging in orgies of proscriptions and deportations, such as were seen
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 a nation
will strike at private property, under any one of its forms, territorial
or industrial, it will be obliged to attack them all. The very success
of the Revolution will impose it.
Besides, even if it were desired, it would be impossible to confine the
change 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 field, 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 of 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 trusts of
corn-speculators, like those to whom the Paris 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.
Some Socialists still seek, however, to establish a distinction. "Of
course," they say, "the soil, the mines, the mills, and manufacturers
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, who make the just-mentioned distinction, 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. We are not New Guinea savages. And if the dainty
gowns of our ladies must rank as objects of luxury, there is
nevertheless a certain quantity of linen, cotton, and woolen stuff which
is a necessity of life to the producer. The shirt and trousers in which
he goes to his work, the jacket he slips on after the day's toil is
over, 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_."
FOOTNOTE:
[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._