 Chapter 5 of the Conquest of Bread This is a Library of Works recording. All Library of Works recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Library of Works.org Recording by Enko, the Conquest of Bread, by Peter Propotkin, third part 1. 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 whole regime, and spend 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 than us was formed and undertook to organize a new regime. The Republic in 1793, labor in 1848, the Free Commune in 1871, imbued with Jacobine 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 through the workmen's club that I and the members of the new government had often imposed their ideas on them. But even in these clubs, whether the leaders belonged to the middle of 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 sprung up at such times, ideas that have moved the world. Words were spoken which still stir our hearts at the interval of more than 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 most of the employer had nothing to fear at such times. He fattened his dividends, if indeed he did not speculate under wretchedness around, but the wage earner was reduced to leave from hand to mouth, more knocked at the door. Famine was abroad in the land. Such famine has hardly been seen under the old regime. The Girondists or starving us was the cry in the workmen quarters in 1793, and thereupon the Girondists were guillotined, and full powers were given to the mountain and the commune. The commune indeed concerned itself with the question of bread, and made heroic efforts to feed Paris. At Lyon, Fouchier and Coulee des Bois established city granaries, but the sum spent on feeding them were woefully insufficient. The town councils made great efforts to procure corn, the beggars who hoarded flour were hanged, and still the people lacked bread. Then they turned on the royalists, conspirators, and laid the blame at their door. The guillotine ate dozens or fifteen a day. Servants and duchesses are like, especially servants, for the duchesses had gone to coblents, but if they had guillotined a hundred jugues and viscounts, every day, it would have been equally hopeless. The want only grew, for the wage earner cannot 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 wary, so much for your vented revolution. You are more rich than ever before. We spent 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 a starving multitude. The dressed up like scented fobs and said to the workers, Come, enough of this fury. What have you gained by your revolution? And 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 havel, and awaited the worst. Then reaction proudly asserted itself, and accomplished a counter-revolutionary stroke. The revolution did nothing remain but to trample its corpse underfoot. The white terror began, blood flowed like water, the guillotine was never idle, the prisons were crowded, while the pageant of rite and fashion resumed its all course, and went on as merely 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 in June one lost disparity thought, and a thought 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 post in Paris that elegance and fine gentlemen could spend the confederates, and bid them go sell their lives for immeasurable 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 deals were already numbered, and the troops of their side 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 lathes, and in talking about political liberty, bid hours 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 a varied crowd outside the big house door, that happily a coarse loaf may be thrown to her in charity, not a single child pining for water or food. It has always been the middle-cloth idea to harrowing about great principles, great lies rather. The idea of a people will be to provide bread for all, and while middle-clothed citizens and workmen infested with middle-clothed ideas admire their own rhetoric in the talking shops and practical people are engaging 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. 2. That we are utopians is well known, so utopian are we that we go the land for believing that the revolution can and ought to assure sheltered food and clovers to all, an idea extremely displeasing to middle-clothed citizens, whatever their particular, for we are quite alive to the fact that it is not easy to keep the upper hand of the 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 the revolution of 1848, will burst upon us in the middle of the great industrial crisis. Things have been sifting for half a century now, and can only go from bread to worse. Everything tends that way. Unions entering the list of international trade and fighting for possession of the world's markets, wars, taxes ever increasing, national debts, the insecurity of a 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 to a train of gunpowder. The number of the out-of-works will be doubled as soon as the 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 themselves 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 vaulted as a means of giving food to the unemployed. Because national workshops were opened in 1789 and 1793, because the same means were resorted during 1848, because Napoleon III succeeded in contending the Parisian proletariat for 18 years by giving them public works, which cost Paris today its debt of 80 million pounds and its municipal tax of 3 or 4 pounds ahead, open-footnotes, the municipal debt of Paris amounted in 1942 to 2,266,579,100 francs and the charges for it were 121,000,000 francs close-footnotes. Because this excellent method of taming the beast was customary in Rome and even in Egypt 4000 years ago, and lastly because despots, kings and emperors have always employed the rules 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-honored method of the pharaohs at our disposal. Yet should the revolution be so misguided as to start and despoth, it would be lost. In 1848 when the national workshops were opened on February 27, the unemployed of Paris numbered only 8,000. 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 employed half as many hands as today, and we know that in time of revolution, exchange and industry suffer most from the general upheaval. We have only to think indeed of our number of workmen whose labor depends directly or indirectly upon export trade, or of the number of hands employed in producing luxuries whose consumers of a middle-class minority. In revolution in Europe means then, 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 avoid 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 had already pointed out more than 50 years ago, that the smallest attack open property would bring in its strain the complete disorganization of a system based upon private enterprise and wage labor. 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 even in a month. It must take a certain time 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 rarely practical solution of a problem, but will lead to face the great thoughts 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. That's 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 communes, keeping strict account of it all, that none might be wasted, and that by the aid of these accumulated resources, everyone might be able to tide over the crisis. During that time, an agreement would have to be made with the factory workers, with the necessary raw material given them, and the needs of subsistence assured to them, while they work to supply the needs of the agricultural population. Though we must not forget that while France, with silks and satins, to take 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 for all the world over, two thirds of our friends presently have not proper lamps to give them light, over implements necessary for modern agriculture. Lastly, a productive land, of which there is plenty, would have to be turned to the best advantage. Poor soils and rich soils, which yet under a present system do not yield a quarter, no a tenth of what they might produce, would be submitted to intensive culture, and till be there as much care as a market garden or a flower pot. It is impossible to imagine any other practical solution of a problem, and whether we like it or not, sheer force of circumstances will bring it to pause. Part 3 The most prominent characteristic of our present capitalism is the wage system, which in brief amounts to this. A man or a group of men, possessing the necessary capital, stores some industrial enterprise. He undertakes to supply the factory or workshops with raw material, to organize production, to pay the employees a fixed wage, and lastly, to pocket the surplus value or profits, and the predicts of recouping himself or 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 manipulate as capital would be ready to make certain concessions, to share for example a pot of 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 consign to certain sacrifices, unconditioned that they were still allowed to direct industry, and to take its first fruits. Collectivism as we know does not abolish the wage system, though it introduces considerable modifications into the existing order of things. It only substitutes the state, that is to say some former representative government, national or local, for the individual employer of labour. Under collectivism, it is the representatives of the nation, or of the commune and the 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 a labourer and of a man who has learned aircraft. Unskilled labour in the eyes of a collectivist is simple labour, while the work of a 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, leaders and men of science, are all wage servants of the state, all officials, as was said lately, to guild the pill. Well then, the coming revolution could render no greater service to humanity than by making the wage system in all its forms and impossibility and by rendering 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 would spring up with the first call to arms. A political revolution can be accomplished without checking the foundations of the industry. But a revolution where the people enhance open property will inevitably paralyze exchange and production. The millions of public money flowing into the treasury would not suffice for paying wages to the millions of artworks. This point cannot be too much insisted upon. The reorganization of industry on a new basis, open bracket, and we shall presently show how tremendous this problem is, close bracket, 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 furious 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 forthcoming, they will plunder the bakeries. Then if the people are not strong enough to carry all before them, they will be shut 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 shut 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 hero first crushing the collectivists in their turn, and 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 under ringleaders of the mob. They will set up again the law courts and reinstate the hangmen. The most ordered revolutionists will be sent to the scaffold. It will be 1793 over again. Do not let us forget how reaction triggered in the last century. First, the Hebiathists and the madmen were guillotined, those whom Migné, with the memory of a 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 mar the scaffold, whereupon the people, sick of bloodshed, and seeing the revolutionists threw up the sponge and let the reactionaries to their worst. If orders restored we say, the social democrats will hang the anarchists, the Thabians 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 conforms us in the belief that the energy of the people will carry them far enough, and that when the revolutions takes place, the idea of anarchist communism will have gained ground. It is not an artificial idea, the people themselves are breathed in our ear, and the number of communists is ever increasing, as the impossibility of any other solutions becomes more and more evident. And if the impetus of the people is strong enough, fears will take a very different turn. Instead of plundering the baker's 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 torts of making a rough general inventory of the contents of each shop and warehouse. If such a revolution breaks out in France, namely in Paris, then in 24 hours, the commune will know what Paris has not found out yet, in spite of its statistical committees, and it what never did find out during the siege of 1871. The quantity of provisions it contains. In 48 hours, millions of copies will be printed over 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, groups of volunteers will have been organized, and these commissariat volunteers will find it easy to 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 trust themselves into dog and council, or rather let them expound their muddled-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, but which we have so seldom been allowed to exercise, will initiate even in so huge a city as Paris, and in the midst of a revolution, and evens guild of free workers ready to furnish to each and all the necessary food. To 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 bought their lives buried among the documents, can doubt it, speak of the organizing genius of the great misunderstood, but people to those who have seen it in Paris in the days of the barricades, or in London during the great Ducal 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 bum-belldom, 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 spring up spontaneously under stress of immediate need will be infinitely preferable to anything invented between four walls by high-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 their provisions, beginning with the barest necessary. 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 have their due share of food produced? 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, the 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 Jacobines have done their best to destroy all communal usage. If the commune possesses woods and corpses, then so long as there is plenty of wood for all, everyone can take as much as he wants, without overlet or hindrance than the public opinion of his neighbors. As to the timber trees which are always scarce, they have to be carefully apportioned, the same with the communal pastureland. While there is enough into spare, no limit is put toward the cattle of which homestead may consume, nor to the number of bees grazing upon the pastures. Grasing grounds are not divided, nor is food a doled out, unless they are scarce. All the Swiss communes and schools of thousands in France and Germany, whereas there is communal pastureland, practice this system. And in the countries of Eastern Europe, where there are great forests and no scarcity of land, you will find the peasants failing the trees as they need them, and cultivating as much as 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 allowance, and the land will sell 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 slit or limit toward the community possesses in abundance, but equal sharing and dividing of those communities which were scarce or up to run short. Of the 350 million who inhabit Europe, 200 million 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 community at least, which is far 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 that you please, but during the great droughts, if there is a fear of the 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 the 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 tries ours 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, if finally 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, no alas those of the workers. Stay in touch with middle class prejudices who regard the people as immobile savages, ready to fall open and devour each other, as soon as 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 fast palates of aristocratic idlers and black bread given to the sick in the hospitals, you would be heathed. But at the same gathering, preach at the street corners and in the marketplaces, that the most tempting delicacies ought to be kept for the sick and freebear, especially for the sick, say that if there are only five braids of portraits in the entire city, and only one case of sherry, they should go to sick people and convalescents. Say that after the sick come the children, for them the milk of the cows and goods should be reserved if there is not enough for all, to the children and the age, the lost piece of meat, and to the strong men 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 dulled out to those who have most need, most should be given, say that and see if you did not meet with universal agreement, the man who is full fed does not understand this, but the people do understand and 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 theorist for whom the soldiers uniform and the barrack mess table or civilizations lost word, would lack no doubt to start the regime of national kitchens and sport and broth. They would point out the advantages they are by gain, the economy in fuel and food, if such huge kitchens were established, where everyone could come through variations 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 hen meal occurred 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 firefighters, we know besides that there are a thousand ways of preparing potatoes, but that cook 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 a seasoning introduced by each cook or house wife, the cooking together of a hundred weight of potatoes would not prevent each cook or house wife 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 shoot a hundred different tastes, but though we are quite aware of all these facts, we still maintain that no one has the right to force a housewife to take her potatoes from the communal kitchen, ready cook 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 it seemed good to him. Naturally, large public kitchens will spring up to take the place of the restaurants where people are poisoned down the days, already the Parisian housewife gets the stock for her soup from the butcher and transform it into whatever soup she likes, and London housekeepers know that they can have a joint restaurant, or an apple, or a bob-tort, bake 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 through the fundamental parts of a meal, leaving the lost touches to be added as individual tastes should suggest, but to make a hard and forceful of this, to make a duty of taking home our food ready cooked, that would be as repugnant to our Buddha and minds as the ideas of a convent of a 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 labor 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 enlist to the new order will hostern of their own accord to read 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 are like, it will be nullice to the revolution to be inspired by such an idea, and when work is said aggoing 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 one explain, so much better say we, it will prove that for the first time on record, the people have had enough to eat, asked the question of obtaining fresh supplies, we shall discuss the means in our next chapter, part 5 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 neighboring countries, if the entire nation or better still, if all Europe should accomplish the social revolution simultaneously and start with the roguing 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 sun-dry, such a universal rising would do much to simplify the torts of our century, but all the science 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, were thus in revolution and overturned its government, it is almost certain that the three others will follow its example within a few weeks time, it is more over highly probable that the peninsula and even London and St. Petersburg would not belong in following suit, but whether the revolution would everywhere exhibit the same characteristics is highly doubtful, it is more than probable that expropriation will be everywhere carried into effect on a larger 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 to 93, the French peace entry took four years to finally read themselves over redemption of feudal rights and the bourgeois to overthrow royalty, let us keep that in mind, and therefore we prepare 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 remembered is still realizing its dream of a united empire, its advent parties see visions of the Jacobean republic like that of 1848, and of the organization of labor 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 18th century revolution in France was an advance on the English revolution of the 17th abolishing as it did at once through 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, while the ideas which will inspire the revolution in Russia will probably be a combination of those of 1789 with those of 1848, without however attaching to these four course 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 part attained in the socialization of wealth will not be everywhere the same, will it therefore be necessary as it sometimes suggested that the nations in the vanguard of the movement should add up their pace to those who lag behind, must we wait till the communist revolution is wrapped 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 socialist dream, point foot note, no fallacy more homeful has ever been spread than the fallacy of the one day revolution, which is propagated in superficial socialist pamphlets speaking of the revolution of the 18th of March at Berlin, suppose open bracket, which is absolutely wrong, close bracket, to have given Russia its representative government, we saw well the home made by such fallacies in Russia in 1905-1907, the truth is that up to 1871, Russia, like Russia of the present day, had a scrap of paper which could be described as a constitution, but it had no representative government, the ministry imposed upon the nation up till 1870, the budget it chose to propose close foot note, it is highly probable that if one of the five or six large towns of France, Paris, Lyon, Morsay, Lille, Saint-Étienne, 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 host them to rid themselves of owners and masters, and form themselves into three groups, but many country places have not advanced to that point, side by side with the revolution as communes, such places would remain in an expected attitude, and would go on living on the individualist system, undisturbed by visits of a belief over 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 their practical enthusiasm, which always characterizes agrarian uprisings, pun bracket, witness the passionate toil of 1792, they would throw themselves into the tors of cultivating the land, which freed from taxes and mortgages, would become so much dearer to them, as to other countries, revolution would break out everywhere, but revolution and the diverse aspects in one country state socialism, in another federation, everywhere more or less socialism, not conforming to any particular role, let us now return to our city in revolt, and consider how its citizen can provide foodstuffs for themselves, how of 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, 400,000 head of oxen, 300,000 coles, 100,000 swine, and more than 2 millions of sheep, besides great quantities of game, this huge devours, besides more than 20 million pounds of butter, 200 million eggs, and overproducing like proportion, it imposed flour and grain from the United States and from Russia, Hungary, Italy, Egypt, and the Indies, livestock from Germany, Italy, Spain, even Romania 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 re-victualed by homegrown 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 food stuff 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, this was proved in 1793, for like all such theories, it lives out of account the spirit of independence that is in man, the attempt would lead to a universal uprising to three or four vandals, 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 of the former organizations will meet the case, during the great French revolution, the Provincials stormed the large towns and killed the revolution and yet it is a known fact that the production of grain in France during 1792-3 had not diminished, indeed the evidence goes to show that it had increased, but after having taken possession of the manual lands, after having ripped a harvest from them, the peasants would not port with their grain for paper money, they withheld their produce waiting for a rise in the price over introduction of gold, the most rigorous measures of the national convention were without unveil, and her execution failed to break up the ring or force the former to sell their corn, for it is a 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 food stuffs, all the same the corn was not forthcoming and the townsfolk suffered from famine, but what was offered to the husband men in exchange for his hard toil, assignments, scraps of paper decreasing in value every day, promises of payment which could not be kept, a 40-pound note would not purchase a pair of boots and the peasants, very naturally, was not anxious to bought a U.S. tile for a piece of paper, with which he could not even buy his shirt, as long as worthless paper money, whether called assignments or labor notes, is offered to the peasants producer, it will always be the same, the country will withhold its produce and the towns will suffer want, even if the recalcitrant peasants or guillotine as before, we must offer to the peasants 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, the worth to protect him from the inclementies of the weather, labs and oil to replace his miserable hard slide, otalu dip, spades, rakes, pluff, all these things and the present conditions, the peasants is forced to do without, that 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 not money to buy them, let the town apply itself, without loss of time, to manufacturing all that the peasants need, instead of fashioning, he goes for the wives of rich citizens, let the suing machines of Paris be set to work on clovers for the country folk, work eddy clovers and clovers for Sunday too, instead of costly evening dresses for the English and Russian landlords and the African gold magnates' wives, 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 town send no more inspectors to the villagers wearing red, blue or rainbow coloured scarves, to convict the peasants orders to take his produce to this place of that, but let them send friendly embassies to the country folk, and beat them in brotherly fashion, bring us your produce, and take from our stores and shops all the manufactured article supplies, then provisions would pour in on every side, the peasants would only withhold what he needed for his own use, and would send the rest into the cities, feeding for the first time in the course of history, that these toiling townsfolk or 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 peasants 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, tin smiths, 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 very convinced of the necessity of this transformation, and should come to look upon it as a knack 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 news, production and commerce, just as they are now, this then is our view of the whole question, cheat the peasants no longer with scraps of paper, be there some since crab upon them, ever so large, but offer him in exchange for his produce, the very things of which he, the till 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 strain, part 7, 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 and paris not only spices, fish and various tainties, but also immense quantities of corn and meat, but when the revolution comes, these cities will have to depend on foreign countries as little as possible, if Russian wheat, Italian or Indian rice, and Spanish or Hungarian ones, are bound in the markets of western Europe, it is not the countries which export them have a super abundance, or that such a produce grows there of itself, like the dandelion in the meadows, in Russia for instance, the peasants works 16 hours a day, and half starts from 3 to 6 months every year, in order to export the grain, with which he pays the landlord and the state, today the police appears in the Russian village, as soon as the harvest is gathered in, and sells the peasants, lost horse and lost cow, for areas 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 livestock at a disadvantage, he keeps only a 9 month supply of grain and sells the rest, then in order to sustain life until the next harvest, he mixes a beech bark and tears with his flour for 3 months, if it has been a good year, and for 6 months 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 peasants will keep bread enough for himself and his children, the Italian and Hungarian peasants will do the same, the Hindu 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 mocked diminution of the food supplies pouring into a 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 boat back, instead of working 14 or 15 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 peasants realise that he is no longer forced to support the other rich by his soil, new tracks of land will be cleared, new and improved machines set a going, never was the land so energetically cultivated as in 1792, when the peasants had taken back from the land load the soil which he had converted Michelet as speaking of a great revolution, of course before long intensive culture would be within the reach of all, improved machinery, chemical manures and all such matters would soon be supplied by the commune, but everything tends to indicate that at the outset there would be a falling of agricultural products in France and elsewhere, in any case it would be wise to carve upon such a failing of contributions from the provinces as well as from abroad, how is this feeling of to be made good wine by setting to work ourselves, no need to rack our brains for four fetch panaceas when the remedy lies close at hand, the large towns as well as the villages must undertake to till the soil, we must return to what biology calls the integration of functions, after the division of labour by 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 8 months it will be running short of bread and Paris will set to work to grow wheat, Len will not be wanting, for it is around the great towns and around Paris especially, but the porcs and pleasure grounds of the landed gentry ought to be found, these thousands of acres only are with the skilled labour of the husband meant to surround Paris, we feel infinitely more fertile and productive than the steps of southern Russia where the soil is dried up by the sun, nor will labour be lacking, to watch 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, Romanian grandees and wives of Berlin financiers, with all the mechanical inventions of the century, with all the intelligence and technical skill of a worker accustomed to deal with complicated machinery, with inventors, chemists, professors of botany, practical botanists like the market gardeners of Jean Villiers, with all the plant that they could use for multiplying and improving machinery, and finally with the organising spirit of the Parisian people, their pluck and energy, with all these as its command, the agriculture of the anarchist commune of Paris, would be a very different thing from the rude husbandry of the hordes, steam electricity, the heat of the sun and the breath of the wind, will ealong be pressed into service, the steam plow and the steam harrow will quickly do the rough work of preparation, and the soil, the skin and energy will only need the intelligent care of men and of women, even more than men, 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 and sport patches of soil, reserve for the purpose of vying with each other to obtain the best returns, finding in physical exercise, without exhaustion or overwork, the health and strength which so often flux in cities, men, women and children, will gladly turn to the labor of the fields, when it is no longer a slavish drudgery, but has become a 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 lost word of modern agriculture, also the earth and she will give you bread, provided that you also are right, a district where it were as small as the two deportments of the scene and the scene it was, and with so great a city as Paris to feed, would be practically sufficient to grow open it all the food supplies, which otherwise might fail to reach it, the combination of agriculture and industry, the husband men and the mechanic and 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 downtown saw it when he cried to France, the leudas, the leudas, he encore the leudas, the bull fought first, and the bull did will not fail to follow, and of food, recording by anchor. Chapter 6 of the conquest of bread, this is a library of works recording, all library of works recordings are in the public domain, for more information or to volunteer, please visit libraryworks.org, recording by anchor. The conquest of bread by Peter Cropotkin, dwellings. Part 1, those who have closely watched the growth of socialist ideas among the workers, must have noticed that on one momentous question, the housing of the people, a defining conclusion is being imperceptibly arrived at. It is a fact that in the large towns of France, and in many of the smaller ones, 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, tolling 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 2,000 or only a half of what was their due. Moreover, and it is here that the anonymity of the whole proceeding becomes more 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, that is, in an agglomeration of thousands of other houses, possessing paved streets, bridges, caves, and fine public buildings, well-lighted and affording to its inhabitants a thousand comforts and conveniences in many villages, a town in regular communication with other towns, and itself a center of industry, commerce, science, and art, a town which the work of 20 or 30 generations has made habitable, healthy, and beautiful. A house in certain parts of Paris is valued at many 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 today, a center of industry, commerce, politics, art, and science, because Paris has a post, 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 18th centuries of toil, the work of 50 generations of the whole French nation, who then can appropriate to himself the tiniest plot of ground or the meanest building in such a city, 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 begin to be agreed. The idea of three dwellings showed its existence very plainly during the siege of Paris. When the crime 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 council of the commune 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 templeed down and squalid his dwelling may be, there is always a landlord who can evict him. True, during the revolution, the landlord cannot find bailiffs and police sergeants to throw the workman rags and chattels into the street, but who knows what the new government will do tomorrow. Who can say that it will not call coercion to its aid again, and set the police back upon the tenant to hound him out of his hovers. Have we not seen the commune of Paris proclaim the remission of rent due up to the first of April only? Open footnote. The decree of the 30th March, by this decree, rent due up to the terms of October 1870 and January and April 1871, were annulled. Close footnote. After that rent had to be paid, though Paris was in a state of chaos, and industry at its tensile, so that the failure rate who had taken all to defend the independence of Paris had absolutely nothing to depend upon, he and his family, but an allowance of 15 pence a day. Now the worker must be made to see clearly that in refusing to pay rent to a landowner or owner, he is not simply profiting by the disorganization of the authority. He must understand that the abolition of rent is a recognized principle, sanctioned so to speak by a popular asset that to be hounds rent free is the right proclaim allowed by the people. Are we going to wait till this measure, which is in harmony with every honest man's sense of justice, is thickened up by the few socialists scattered among the middle class elements, of which the provisionary government will be composed. If it was so, the people 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, will become an accomplished fact. They will prepare the ground and encourage ideas to grow in this direction, and when the fruit of their labor is ripe, the people will proceed to expropriate the houses, without giving heed to their 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 new times have come, that labor will no longer have to bear the yoke of a rich and powerful, that equality has been openly proclaimed, that this revolution is a real fact, and not a theoretical make-believe, like so many others preceding Epoch 2. 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 and new uniforms, seated in the official armchairs of the Hotel 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 outlaw the hopes of the people, who, after waiting and starving in enforced idleness and seeing nothing come of all these official researchers, would lose heart and faith in the revolution and abandon the field to their reactionaries. The new bureaucracy would end by making expropriation hateful in the eyes of all. Here indeed is a rock which much shipwreck our hopes. But if the people turn a deaf ear to their specious arguments used to dissolve them and realize that new life needs new conditions, and if they undertake the thoughts themselves, then expropriation can be effected without any great difficulty. But how? How can it be done? You asked us. We shall try to reply to this question, but with your 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 today would be forced to oppose by the reality when it comes. Men will accomplish greater things and accomplish them better and by simpler methods than those dictated to him beforehand. Thus we shall merely 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 a popular initiative and could not be effected by any of the 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 unhaul some slums and the houses which are too spacious for their occupants and might well be used to house those who are stifled in swarming tenants. In a few days, these volunteers would have drawn up complete lists for the street and the district of all the flats, tenants, family mansions and villa residences, all the rooms and chute of rooms, healthy and under healthy, small and large, fitted, dense and home subluxury. Really communicating with each other, these volunteers would soon have their statistics complete. All 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 anyone's leave, those citizens will probably go and find their comrades who are living in measurable garrets and hovels and will set them simply. It is a real revolution this time comrades, and no mistake about it. Come to such a place this evening, all the neighborhood 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 ought 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 then show to evict you will have to answer to them. But everyone will want a fine house or a spacious flatbed at all. No, you are quite mistaken. It is not the people's way to claim up over the moon, and the contrary, every time we have seen them set about repairing a room, 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 the orations of bread or firewood during the two sieges or during the terrible years of 1792 to 1794? The patience and resignation which prevailed among them in 1871 was constantly presented for admiration by the foreign press correspondents, and yet these patient-eaters knew full well that the lost commerce would have to pause the day without food or fire. We do not deny that there are plenty of egotistic instincts in isolated individuals. We are quite aware of it, but we content that the very way to revive and nourish these instincts would be to confine such questions as the housing of the people to any border committee. In fact, the tendermisces 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 wrong links and recommendations. If the smallest advantage is given to anyone, 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 tidied over. Rarely has appeal been made to the good instincts of the masses, only as a lost resort to save the sinking ship in times of revolution. But never has such an appeal been made in vain. The heroism, the self-division of a 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, undoubtedly will remain. There are individuals in our societies whom no great crisis can live out of a deep mire of egoism in which we all sink. 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 a 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 aloof over 101 details, which must necessarily be overlooked in any merely official redistribution. Moreover, it is by no means necessary to make straight away 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 absorb the time of the whole staff of servants, for giving shelter to several families, and in a few months homes will have sprung up, infinitely healthier and more conveniently arranged than those of today. 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 of the capitalists built for themselves, will spring from the ground of our infantile 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 a 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 a new 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, and 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 inequality 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 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 source of the revolution. Do not let this disingenuous protest 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 the nature that will write itself from day to day. For the village will not fail to improve its dwellings, as soon as the peasants have ceased to be the beast of burden of the former, the merchant, the moneylender, and the state. In order to avoid an accidental and transitory inequality, shall we stay our hand from writing and unsharing, the so-called practical objections are not very formidable either. We are beaten to consider the hard case of some poor fellow who by deed of privation has come to try to buy a house just large enough to hold his family, and we are going to deprive him of his own unhappiness, to turn him into a 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 did not pay his formal and load any more rank, stay where you are, but rent free, no more woodlands and collectors. Socialism has abolished all that, for again suppose that the landlord has a score of rooms all to himself, and some poor woman lives nearby 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 so gorgeous midas that at his ease in an empty mansion. Besides, good sir Gorgeous would probably house turn to do it of his own accord. His wife shall be delighted to be freed from half a big, unwieldy house when there is no longer his 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 everyone out of doors and redistributing the houses by lot? That's our critics, but we are firmly persuaded that if no government interferes in the matter, if all the changes are entrusted to these three 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 a prison 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 inheritance of the slums. As to the palaces and streets 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 Garrett at the bayonet's point or install Lazarus in Daris Palace by the help of an armed escort. People would shake down amicably into the available dwellings with the least possible friction and disturbance, having that 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 forever carrying its quarrels into courts of law and orbit to believe that the inhabitants of a great European city would be less intelligent and less capable of organization than Russian or Hindu peasants. Moreover, we must not blink at the fact that every revolution means a certain disturbance to everyday life and those who expect this tremendous climb out of the old groups to be accomplished without so much as jeering the dishes on their dinner tables. We'll find themselves mistaken. It is true that government can change without disturbing where these citizens are 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 one of pure loss. It must be minimized, and again, it is impossible to lead too much stress on this maxim. It will be by addressing ourselves to the interested parties and not to boats and committees that we shall best succeed in reducing the sum of inconveniences for everybody. The people commit blunder and blunder when they have to choose by ballot some harebrained candidate who solicits the owner of representing them and takes upon himself to do all and to organize all. But when they take upon themselves to organize what they do, what touches them directly, they do it better than all the talking shop together. Is that the Paris commune and instance in point and the Great Ducal strike and how we not can stand evidence of this fact in every village commune? End of Duelings, Recording by Enko Chapter 7 of the Conquest of Bread This is a library of books recording. All library of books recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit libraryofbooks.org. Recording by Enko. The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin, Cloving 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 Cloving 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 Cloving is sold or stored and to open the doors to all so that each can take what he needs. The communalization of Cloving, the right of each to take what he needs from the communal stores or to have it made for him at the tillers and artfitters, is a necessary corollary of the communalization of houses and food. Obviously, we shall not need for that to dispel all citizens of their goods, to put all the governments in a heap and rollers for them. As our critics, with equal wit and ingenuity, suggests that him who has a good keep it still, nay, if he have 10 goods, it is highly improbable that anyone will want to deprive him of them. For most folk would prefer a new coat to one that has already grazed the shoulders of some fat bourgeois and there will be enough new governments and to spare without having recourse to second hand war droves. If we were to take an inventory of all the clovers and stuff for Cloving, accumulated in the shops and stores of the large towns, we should find probably that in Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux and Marseille, there was enough to enable the commune to offer governments 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, especially adapted for production on a large scale. But everyone will want a sable line coat or a velvet gown exclaim our adversaries. Frankly, we do not believe it. Every woman does not do it in velvet and orders 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 format to all the fantastic trimmings the fashionable world affects. Days change with the times, and the fashion in vogue at the time of the revolution will certainly make for simplicity. Societies like individuals have the hours of cowardice, but also their heroic moments, and though the society of today cuts a very poor figure, stuck 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. Man of generous nature will gain the power which today is in the hands of jobbers. Safe devotion will spring up and noble deeds beget their lack. 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 always 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 port 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 tidying over the first and most difficult moments. We cannot hope that our daily life will be continuously inspired by such exalted enthusiasm, 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 shorts and refuses accumulated by centuries of slavery and oppression, that the new anarchist society will have neither this way but 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 a revolution be such as we have sketch here, the free initiative of individuals would find an extensive field of action in sorting 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 possess and would find out approximately what were the resources at their disposal. It is more than likely than 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 do out whatever was limited in quantity, not being able to offer to each man a sable line code, and to every woman a velvet gown, society would probably distinguish between the superfluous and the necessary, and provisionally at least color sable and velvet among the superfluities of life, ready to let time prove whether what is the luxury today may that become common to all tomorrow. While the necessary clothing would be guaranteed to each inhabitant of anarchy 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 urge. This means great uniformity and the end of everything beautiful enough and odd, certainly that we reply, and still basing our reasonings on what already exists, we are going to show how an anarchist society could satisfy the most artistic taste of its citizens, without allowing them to amass the fortunes of millionaires, and of clothing, recording by Enko. Chapter 8 of the Conquest of Bread This is a Library of Works recording, all Library of Works recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit libraryofworks.org, recording by Enko. The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin Ways and Means Part 1 If a society, a city or a territory were to guarantee the necessaries of life to its inhabitants, open bracket, and we shall see how the conception of the necessaries of life can be so extended as to include luxuries, cause bracket, 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 to be returned to the community. The great hope done by bourgeois society, as we have already mentioned, is not only that capitalists sees a large share of the profits of each industrial and commercial enterprise, thus enabling themselves 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. There is a reason why it must be condemned. It is absolutely impossible that mercantile production should be carried on in the interests of all. To desire it would be to expect the capitalist to go beyond his province and to fulfill duties that he cannot fulfill without seizing to be what he is, a private manufacturer seeking his own enrichment. Capitalist organization, based on the personal interests of each individual employer of labour, has given to society all that could be expected of it. It has increased the productive force of labour. The capitalist, profiting by the revolution effected an industry by steam, by the sudden development of chemistry and machinery, and by other inventions of our century, has worked in his own interest to increase the yield of human labour, and in a great measure he has succeeded so far, but to attribute other duties to him would be unreasonable. For example, to expect that he should use this superior yield of labour in the interests of society as a whole, would be to horse philanthropy and charity of him, and a capitalist enterprise cannot be based on charity. It now remains for society first to extend this greater productivity, which is limited to certain industries and to apply it to a general good, but it is evident that to utilize this high productivity of labour, so as to guarantee well-being to all, society must itself take possession of all means of production. Economists, as is their want, will not fail to remind us of a comparative well-being of a certain category of young robust workmen, skilled in certain special branches of industry, which has been obtained under the present system. It is always this minority that is pointed out to us with pride, but even this well-being, which is the exclusive right of the few, is it secure? Tomorrow may be negligence, improvidence, over greed of their employers, will deprive this privilegement 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, the textiles, iron, sugar, etc, without mentioning all sorts of short-lived trades, have we not seen decline or come to a standstill on account of speculations or in consequence of natural displacement of work, or from the effects of competition amongst the capitalists themselves? If the chief textile 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 have their periods of standstill. What do 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 reign of agriculture, the shameless exploitation of the peasants, the misery of the masses. In comparison with the feeble minority 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 were 14 hours a day for a poor peasants? Capital depipulates the country, exploit 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 a capitalist system. In order well to remenurate 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 little things 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 be sold to ill-paid workers, garments are made by tailors who are satisfied with the 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 Ruth Bertus and Mark said, thus narrowing the socialist conception and the general view of the capitalist system, the surplus value itself is but a consequence of deep accusers. The evil lies in the possibility of the surplus value existing, instead of a simple surplus not consumed by each generation. For that the surplus value should exist means that men, women and children are compelled by hunger to sell their labor for a small part of what this labor produces, and still more so of what their labor is capable of producing. But this evil will last as long as the instruments of production belong to the few, as long as men are compelled to pay heavy tribute to property holders for the right of cultivating man or putting machinery into action, and the owners of the land and the machines are free to produce what needs fair to bring them in the largest profits, rather than the greatest amount of youthful commodities, while being can only be temporarily guaranteed to very few. It is only to be bought by the poverty of a large 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 quiz of producing the greatest amount of goods necessary to the well-being of all, with the least possible waste of human energy. This generalized aim cannot be the aim of a private owner. And this is why society as a whole, if it takes 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 an adequate production. How many hours a day will men 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. Unconditioned, beat 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 four more rapidly. And speaking of agriculture, however, we shall see what the earth can be made to yield to men. When he cultivates it in a reasonable way, instead of throwing seed half a sod in a badly plough soil, as he mostly does today. In the great forms 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 forms of American forms in the eastern states. And nevertheless, thanks to machines which enable two men to plough for 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 men to work under the same conditions for 30 hours, say six 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 five people. We shall also prove that results obtained nowadays, that if we took recourse to intensive agriculture, less than six half days work could procure bread, meat, vegetables, and even luxurious food for a whole family. Again, if we study the cost of workmen's dwelling built in large towns today, we can ascertain that to obtain in a large English city a semi-detached little house, as they are built for workmen for 250 pounds, from 1400 to 1800 half days work of five hours would be sufficient, and as a house of that kind lost 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 from 75 to 100 days work per year. Mark that these figures represent the maximum of what a house costs in England today, being given the defective organization of our societies. In Belgium, workmen's houses in the city over a year have been built at a much smaller cost, so that 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 perfectly comfortable home. They are now remains clothing, the exact value of which is almost impossible to fix, because the profits realized by its form of middlemen cannot be estimated. Let us take cloth for example, and add up all the tribute levied on every yard of it by the landowners, the sheep owners, the wool merchants, and all their intermediate agents, then by the railway companies, mill owners, weavers, dealers in ready-made clothes, sellers and commission agents, and we shall get then an idea of what we pay to a whole sum of capitalists for each article of clothing. That is why it is perfectly impossible to see how many days work and other good that you pay three pounds or four pounds for in a large London shop represents. What is certain is that with present machinery, it is possible to manufacture an incredible amount of goods both cheaply and quickly. A few examples will suffice, thus in the United States, in 751 cotton mills, open bracket for spinning and weaving close bracket, 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 300 days work of 9 and 1 half 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 shoe weave and thread to weave cloth weave, 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 work 13 or 14 hours a day, they made 10,000 yards of white cotton goods in a year. 16 years later, open bracket 1886 close bracket, they were 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 2,670 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 transformation 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 tradesmen, a well-paid workman must give at the very least 10 to 15 days work of 10 hours each, say 100 to 150 hours, and as to the English PZ, he would have to turn 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 due to day, but with all this, we have only required 60 half days work or 5 hours each to obtain the foods of the earth, 44 housing, and 54 clothing, which only makes half a year's work as the year consists of 300 working days if we did the quality days. There remains still 150 half days work which could be made useful 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 another way. When we take into account how many in the so-called civilized nations produce nothing, how many work at home for 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, which is going on in the rich families with the scores of users' servants, or in the administrations which occupy one official to every 10 or even 6 inhabitants, and to utilize those forces to augment immensely the productivity of a nation. In fact, work could be reduced to 4 or even 3 hours a day to produce all the goods that are produced now. 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 deportment of Saint-Ioas, suppose that in this society, all children learn to work with their hands as well as with their brains. Admit that all adults, safe women, engage in the education of their children, burn themselves to work 5 hours a day from the age of 20 or 22 to 45 or 50, and that they follow occupations they have chosen themselves in any one of those branches of human work, which in this city are considered necessary. Such a society could in return guarantee well-being to all its members, a well-being more substantial than that enjoyed today 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, and of ways and means. Recording by Enko Many is not a being whose exclusive purpose in life is eating, drinking and providing a shelter for himself, as soon as his material wants or satisfied other needs, which generally speaking may be described as of an autistic character, will thrust themselves forward. These needs are of the greatest variety, they 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 today, we see men and women denying themselves necessities to acquire mere trifles, to obtain some particular gratification or some intellectual or material enjoyment, a question or an ascetic may disprove 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 judge and sorrows, be worth living if misused daily work? Men could never obtain a single pleasure according to his individual tastes, if we wish for a social revolution, it is a dark first of all to give bread to everyone, to transform this executable society in which we can everyday see capable 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 ignore the higher delights, the highest within men's reach of science, and especially of scientific discovery of art and especially of artistic creation. It is in order to update for all of us joys that are now reserved to a few, in order to give leisure and the possibility of developing everyone's intellectual capacities, that the social revolution must guarantee daily bread to all. After bread has been secured, leisure is the supreme aim. In 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 choice must go without bread, but in a society in which all have the necessary food and shelter. The needs which we consider luxuries today will be the more keenly felt, and as women do not and cannot resemble one another. Open bracket, the variety of tastes and needs is the chief guarantee of human progress. Close bracket, 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 the general, there are people who prefer to examine things through a microscope to studying the theory heavens. Some like statues, some like pictures. A particular individual has no other ambition than to possess a good piano, while another is pleased with an accordion. The taste vary, but the artistic needs exist in all. In our present poor capitalistic society, the men who have artistic needs cannot satisfy them unless he is here to enlarge fortune or by deed 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 dissatisfying his days more or less, and for this reason, he repurchases the idealist communists, 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 taste and you suppress the possibility of obtaining anything besides the bread and meat which the commune can offer to all and the drab linen in which all your lady citizens will be dressed, these are the objections which all communist systems have to consider and which founders of new societies established in American deserts never understood. They believe that if a community could procure sufficient cloth to dress all its members, a music room in which the brothers could strum a piece of music or hack a play from time to time, it was enough. They forgot that the feeling for art existed in the agriculturists as well as in the burger and notwithstanding that the expression of artistic feeling varies according to the difference in culture, in the many 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 taste broke forth and cause general discontent. Carrals arose when somebody proposed to buy a piano or scientific instruments and the elements of progress flag. The society could only exist on condition that it crush all individual feeling, all artistic tendency and all development. Will the anarchist community impale by the same direction? Evidently not if it understands that while it produce all that is necessary to material life, it must also strive to satisfy all manifestations of a human mind. Part 2. We frankly confess that when we think of the abyss of poverty and suffering that surrounds us, when we hear the heart-rending cry of the worker walking the streets begging for work, we are left 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 severest 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 veil that later on. But thus we must recognize that man has open needs besides food and as the strength of Anarchy lies precisely in that it understands all human faculties and all patients 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 four or five hours a day till the age of 45 or 50, man could easily produce all that is necessary to guarantee comfort to society. But the days work of a man accustomed to toil does not consist of five hours. It is a 10 hours day for 300 days a year and lost all his life. Of course when a man is harnessed to a machine, his health is sued and demand 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 the four or five hours of manual work that are necessary for his existence will have before him five or six hours which he will seek to employ according to his days. And these five or six hours a day will fully enable him to procure for himself if he associates with others all he wishes for in addition to the necessary is guaranteed to all. He will discharge first his talk in the field, the factor 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 learn from groups comprising authors, composers, printers, angrivers, drovesmen or 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 composer suffers from lead poisoning and if a child who sees to the machine dies of anemia or they are not overpoorishers to replace them but when there will be no more strawberries ready to sell their work for impedance, when the exploited work of today 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 first-gen and manual labor a mark of inferiority, it will appear amazing to them to see an author setting up his own booking type who has seen not a gymnasium or games by way of diversion but when the opprogram connected with manual labor 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 morning to 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 favorite author. Will literature lose by it? Will the poet be less a poet after having worked out of doors or help 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 will be more competent to judge moreover the art of printing that has so little progress since Gutenberg is still in its infancy it takes two hours to compose in type what is written in 10 minutes but more expeditious methods of multiplying thought or being sought after and will be discovered open footnote they have already been discovered since the above lines were written close footnote 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 movable letters as in the 17th century Part 3 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 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 through the periodicals of these societies are not paid and their periodicals apart from a limited number of copies 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 his review a one-page note summarizing his observations another may publish their in 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 doesn't matter all these authors and readers are associated with 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 labor which indeed is carried on under very bad conditions but a community which would give a generous philosophical and scientific education to all its members would know how to organize manual labor 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 10 000 observers where we have now only a hundred will do more in a year than we can do in 20 years and when their works are to be published 10 000 men and women skilled in different trades will be ready to grow maps and growth 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 100 but 10 000 readers interested in their common work this is the direction in which progress is already moving even today when england felt the need of a complete dictionary of the english language the birth of illiterate 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 cooperation which is gradually taking the place of individual work for this dictionary to be a really collective work it would have been necessary that many volunteer authors printers and printers readers should have work 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 composers in led his own article truth 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 thought 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 anyone who knows literature and journalism from within and who does not ordinarily desire that literature should at least be able to free itself from those who formerly protected it and who now exploits it and from the multitude which with rare exceptions pays for it in proportion to its mediocrity or to the ease with which it adapts itself to the bad days of a greater number letters and science will only take the proper place in the work of human development when freed from all mercenary bondage they will be exclusively cultivated by those who love them and for those who love them part four literature science and art must be cultivated by freemen only on this condition will they succeed in emancipating themselves from the yoke of a state of capital and of a bourgeois mediocrity which stifles them what means have the scientists of today to make researchers that interest him should he or his help of a state which can only be given to one candidate in a hundred and which only he may obtain who promises ostensibly to keep to the beaten track let us remember how the academy of sciences of france repeated Darwin how the academy of Saint Petersburg treated Mandy left with contempt and how the Royal Society of London refused to publish Joel's paper in which he determined the mechanical equivalent of heat finding it unscientific open-footed we know this from play fair who mentioned it at Joel's death closed-footed it was why all great researchers all discoveries revolutionizing science have been made outside academies and universities either by men rich enough to remain independent like Darwin and Lyall or by men who undermine their health by working in poverty and opening great streets losing endless time for want of a laboratory and unable to procure the instruments or books necessary to continue the researchers 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 and the other 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 but all the resources of some ventured societies and all the wealth of millionaires would not by their treasures no governmental institution is as rich as the Zoological Society of London which is supported by voluntary contributions it does not by the animals which in thousand peoples its gardens they are signed 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 this magnificent presence or pouring in every day arriving from all quarters of the globe birds, reptiles, collections of insects etc such consignments often comprise animals that could not be bought for all the gold in the world thus a traveler 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 country societies is that the members fee cannot be paid in work but the keepers and numerous employees 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 FZS the bracket fellow of the Zoological Society close bracket on their cords in a word what is needed is a more perfect corporation we may say the same about inventors but we have said of scientists who does not know what's suffering because nearly all great inventions have cause sleepless nights, families deep breath of bread want of tools and materials for experiments this 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 the conditions that everybody is convinced or bad patents have been tried and we know with what results the inventor sells his patent for a few pounds and the man who has only lent the capital pockets the enormous profits often resulting from the invention besides, patents isolate the inventor they compel him to keep secret his researchers which therefore end in failure we have 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 presented 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 hundredfold it is fair 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 these 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 machinery palaces 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 like whilst coming to study some difficult problems and therefore able to help and enlighten each other the encounter of their ideas and experience causing the long-for solution to be found and yet again this is no dream Sulayani Gurudak 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 10 hours labor in the workshop moreover they carefully hide their invention from each other as they are hampered by patents and capitalism that being a prison society that's stopping blocking the path of intellectual and moral progress part five and what about art from all sides which are 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 that art seems to fly from civilization technicalities make headway but inspiration frequents artists just less than ever where indeed should it come from only grand idea can inspire art art is in our ideal scene in a mess with creation it must look ahead but save a few rare very rare exceptions the professional artist remains too fully signed to perceive new horizons moreover this inspiration cannot come from books it must be drawn from life and prison society cannot arrive Raphael and Murillo painted at a time when the search of a new idea could be pursued while retaining the old religious traditions they painted to decorate churches which themselves represented the pious work of several generations of a given city 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 core of doors nowadays the greatest hunter a painter can aspire to is to see his canvas framing gilded wood hanging a museum a sort of old courier city shop where you see as in the Prado Murillo's ascension next to a beggar of Velasquez and the docks of Philip II poor Velasquez and poor Murillo poor Greek statues which live in the acropolis of their cities and are now stifled beneath the red cloth hangings of a loof when a Greek sculptor jizzled his mobile 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 today 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 interests see that of enriching themselves at the expense of one another the forerun does not exist what forerun 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 imparation from ideas 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 owner, the worker know where to put their canvassers, their statues and their decoration 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 canvassers of modern artists or those that represent nature villages, valleys, the sea with its dangers, the mountain with its splendors but how can the painter express the poetry of work in the fields if he has only contemplated it, imagine it if he has never delighted in it himself if he only knows it as a bird of passage knows the country he saws over in his migrations if in the vaguer of early youth he has not followed the plough at dawn and enjoy moving rough with a large sweep of the scythe next to hardy haymakers vying in energy with lively long 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 paintbrush 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 splendor of the heat 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 of the rough work experienced the joy of hauling a heavy net over the disappointment of seeing it empty to understand the poetry of fishing you must have spent time in a factory and learned the fatigues and the joys of creative work forged metals by the vivid light of a blouse 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 artist of the past will not be designed for sale there will be an integral part of a living whole that would not be complete without them any more than they would be complete without it man will go to the artist's own city to gaze at his work and the spirited 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 rushkin and the great socialist poet Maurice 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 can only be realized in a society in which all enjoy comfort and leisure then only shall we see art associations of which each member will 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 edenberg did in decorating the walls and ceilings of a 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 old that today satisfies the vanity of a fiddlestine because it has cost much money the same will be done as regards all pleasures not comprised in the necessary 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 day's leisure he will soon possess the piano of his dreams if he is fond of astronomical studies he will join our association of astronomers with its 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 associated work for it is especially the rough work that is needed in an astronomical observatory bricklayers carpenters founders mechanics work the lost 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 would amplify 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 luxuries using to be a foolish and ostentatious display of a bourgeois class would become an artistic pleasure everyone 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 a division between most enslaved we work for the happiness of both for the happiness of humanity end of the need for luxury recording that ankle