Latest / Logic Library / 01 - Our Riches - The Conquest of Bread - Peter Kropotkin

Transcript

01 - Our Riches - The Conquest of Bread - Peter Kropotkin · Logic Library

0:00
The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin, Chapter one, Our Riches, Part
0:08
one. The human race has traveled far since those bygone ages when men used
0:13
to fashion their route implements of flint and lived on the precarious spoils of the
0:17
chase, leaving to their children for their only heritage as sheltered beneath the rocks,
0:22
some poor utensils, and nature vast, ununderstood and terrific, with whom
0:28
they had to fight for their wretched existence. During the agitated times which have
0:32
elapsed since, and which have lasted for many thousand years, mankind has nevertheless
0:37
a mass untold treasures. It has cleared the land, dried the marshes,
0:42
pierced the forests, made roads. It has been building, inventing, observing
0:47
reasoning. It has created a complex machinery, rested her secrets from nature,
0:53
and finally it has made a servant of steam. And the result is that
0:57
now the child of the civilized man finds ready at its birth to his hand
1:02
an immense capital accumulated by those who have gone before him. And this capital
1:06
enables him to acquire merely by his own labor, combined with the labor of
1:10
others riches surpassing the dreams of the Orient expressed in the fairy tales of one
1:15
thousand and one Nights. The soil is cleared to a great extent, fit
1:19
for the reception of the best seeds, ready to make a rich return for
1:23
the skill and labor spent upon it, a return more than sufficient for all
1:26
the wants of humanity. The methods of cultivation are known on the wide prairies
1:32
of America. Each hundred men, with the aid of powerful machinery, can
1:36
produce in a few months enough we to maintain ten thousand people for a whole
1:40
year. And where a man wishes to double his produce, to trouble it,
1:44
to multiply it one hundredfold. He makes the soil, gives to each
1:48
plant that requisite care, and thus obtains enormous returns. While the hunter of
1:53
old had to scour fifty or sixty square miles to find food for his family,
1:57
the civilized man supports his household with far less pains and far more certainty
2:02
on a thousandth part of that space. Climate is no longer an obstacle.
2:07
When the sun fails, man replaces it by artificial heat, and we see
2:12
the coming of a time when artificial light also will be used to stimulate vegetation.
2:16
Meanwhile, by the use of glass and hot water pipes, man renders
2:21
a given space ten and fifty times more productive than it was in its natural
2:23
state. The prodigies accomplished in industry are still more striking with the cooperation of
2:30
those intelligent beings modern machines themselves. The fruit of three or four generations of
2:36
inventors, mostly unknown, one hundred men manufacture now the stuff to cloth ten
2:40
thousand persons for a period of two years. In well managed coal mines,
2:45
the labor of one hundred miners furnishes each year enough fuel to warm ten thousand
2:49
families under an inclement sky. And we have lately witnessed twice the spectacle of
2:53
a wonderful city springing up in a few months at Paris, without interrupting in
2:58
the slightest degree the regular work of the French nation. And if in manufactures,
3:04
as in agriculture, and is indeed through our whole social system, the
3:07
labor, the discoveries and the inventions of our ancestors profit chiefly the few.
3:13
It is nonetheless certain that mankind in general, aided by the creatures of steel
3:16
and iron, which it already possesses, could already procure an existence of wealth
3:22
and ease for every one of its members. Truly, we are rich,
3:25
far richer than we think, rich in what we already possess. Richer still
3:30
in the possibilities of production of our actual mechanical outfit. Richest of all in
3:35
what we might win from our soil, from our manufactures, from our science,
3:39
from our technical knowledge, were they but applied to bring about the well
3:43
being of all? Chapter one, Part two, We in civilized societies are
3:53
rich. Why then, are the many poor? Why this painful drudgery for
3:57
the masses, Why even to the best paid workmen, this uncertainty for the
4:02
morrow, in the midst of all the wealth inherited from the past, and
4:05
in spite of the powerful means of production which could ensure comfort to all in
4:10
return for a few hours of daily toil. The socialists have said it,
4:15
and repeated it unwearingly. Daily. They reiterate it, demonstrating it by arguments
4:19
taken from all the sciences, is because all that is necessary for production,
4:25
the land, the mines, the highways, machinery, food, shelter,
4:29
education, knowledge, all have been seized by the few, in the course
4:32
of that long story of robbery, enforced migration, and wars of ignorance and
4:38
oppression, which has been the life of the human race before it had learned
4:42
to subdue the forces of nature. It is because, taking advantage of alleged
4:46
rights acquired in the past, these few appropriate today two thirds of the products
4:50
of human labor, and then squander them in the most stupid and shameful way.
4:56
It is because, having reduced the masses to a point at which they
4:59
have not the means of subsistence for a month or even a week in advance,
5:03
the few only allow the many to work on condition of themselves receiving the
5:06
lion's share. It is because these few prevent the remainder of men from producing
5:12
the things they need, and force them to produce not the necessaries of life
5:16
for all, but whatever offers the greatest profits to the monopolis. In this
5:21
is the substance of all socialism. Take indeed, a civilized country. The
5:28
forests which once covered it have been cleared, the marshes drained, the climate
5:31
improved. It has been made habitable. The soil which bore formerly only a
5:36
coarse vegetation, is covered today with rich harvests. The rock walls in the
5:42
valleys are laid out in terraces and covered with vines bearing golden fruit. The
5:46
wild plants, which yielded not but acrid berries or uneatable roots, have been
5:51
transformed by generations of culture into succulent vegetables or trees covered with delicious fruits.
5:58
Thousands of highways and railroads furrow the earth and pierce the mountains. The shriek
6:03
of the engine is heard in the wild gorges of the Alps, the Caucases,
6:08
and the Himalayas. The rivers have been made navigable. The coasts,
6:12
carefully surveyed, are easy of access. Artificial harbors, laboriously dug out and
6:17
protected against the fury of the sea, afford shelter to the ships. Deep
6:23
shafts have been sunk in the rocks. Labyrinths of underground galleries have been dug
6:27
out, where a coal may be raised or minerals extracted. At the crossings
6:30
of the highways, great cities have sprung up, and within their borders all
6:34
the treasures of industry, science and art have been accumulated. Whole generations that
6:41
lived and died in misery, oppressed and ill treated by their masters and worn
6:46
out by toil, have handed on this immense inheritance to our century. For
6:50
thousands of years, millions of men have labored to clear the forests, to
6:55
drain the marshes, and to open up highways by land and water. Every
6:59
root of soil we cultivate in Europe has been watered by the sweat of several
7:02
races of men. Every acre has its story of enforced labor, of intolerable
7:08
toil, of the people's sufferings. Every mile of railway, every yard of
7:13
tunnel has received its share of human blood. The shafts of the mine still
7:18
bear on their rocky walls the marks made by the pick of the workmen who
7:21
toiled to excavate them. The space between each prop and the underground galleries might
7:27
be marked as a miner's grave. And who can tell what each of these
7:30
graves has cost in tiers, in privations, and unspeakable wretchedness to the family
7:35
who depended on the scanty wage of the worker cut off and is primed by
7:40
fire, damp, rock fall, or flood. The cities bound together by
7:44
railroads and waterways, or organisms which have lived through centuries dig beneath them and
7:49
you find one above another. The foundations of streets, of houses, of
7:55
theaters, of public buildings. Search into their history and you will see how
7:59
the civilization of the town, its industry, its special characteristics have slowly grown
8:05
and ripened through the cooperation of generations of its inhabitants before it could become what
8:09
it is today. And even today, the value of each dwelling, factory,
8:13
and warehouse, which has been created by the accumulated labor of the millions
8:18
of workers now dead and buried, is only maintained by the very presence and
8:22
labor of legions of the men who now inhabit that special corner of the globe.
8:28
Each of the atoms composing what we call the wealth of nations owes its
8:31
value to the fact that it is part of the great whole. What would
8:35
a London dockyard or a great Paris warehouse be if they were not situated in
8:39
these great centers of international commerce. What would become of our minds, our
8:43
factories, our workshops, and our railways without the immense quantities of merchandise transported
8:48
every day by sea and land. Millions of human beings have labored to create
8:54
the civilization on which we pride ourselves today, Other millions scattered through the globe
9:00
labor to maintain it. Without them, nothing would be left in fifty years
9:03
but ruins. There is not even a thought or an invention which is not
9:09
common property born of the past and the present. Thousands of inventors, known
9:13
and unknown, who have died in poverty, have cooperated in the invention of
9:18
each of these machines, which embody the genius of man. Thousands of writers,
9:24
of poets, of scholars have labored to increase knowledge, to dissipate error,
9:28
and to create that atmospheric scientific thought without which the marvels of our century
9:33
could never have appeared. And these thousands of philosophers, of poets, of
9:39
scholars, of inventors have themselves been supported by the labor of past centuries.
9:45
They have been upheld and nourished through life, both physically and mentally, by
9:48
legions of workers and craftsmen of all sorts. They have drawn their motive force
9:54
from the environment. The genius of a sageine, a mayor a grove has
10:00
certainly done more to launch industry in new directions than all the capitalists in the
10:03
world. But men of genius are themselves the children of industry as well as
10:07
of science. Not until thousands of steam engines had been working for years before
10:13
all eyes constantly transforming heat into dynamic force, and this force into sound,
10:18
light, and electricity, could the insight of genius proclaim the mechanical origin in
10:24
the unity of the physical forces. And if we children of the nineteenth century
10:30
have at last grasped this idea, if we know now how to apply it,
10:35
it is again because daily experience has prepared the way the thinkers of the
10:39
eighteenth century saw and declared it. But the idea remained undeveloped, because the
10:43
eighteenth century had not grown up like ours, side by side with the steam
10:48
engine. Imagine that decades that might have passed while we remained in ignorance of
10:52
this law, which has revolutionized modern industry, had what not found at soho
10:58
skilled workmen to embody his ideas in metal, bringing all the parts of his
11:03
engine to perfection, so that steam pent in a complete mechanism and rendered more
11:07
docile than a horse, more manageable than water, became at last the very
11:13
soul of modern industry. Every machine has had the same history, a long
11:18
record of sleepless nights and of poverty, of disillusions, and of joys,
11:22
of partial improvements discovered by several generations of nameless workers who have added to the
11:28
original invention, these little nothings, without which the most fertile idea would remain
11:33
fruitless. More than that, every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant
11:39
of innumerable inventions which have preceded it. In the vast field of mechanics and
11:43
industry, science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realization leading
11:52
to new discoveries. Cunning of brain and of hand, toil of mind and
11:56
muscle, all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in
12:01
the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail
12:05
of the past and the present. By what right, then, can anyone
12:09
whatever, appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say this is mine,
12:16
not yours? Chapter one, Part three. It has come about,
12:24
however, in the course of the ages traversed by the human race, that
12:28
all that enables man to produce and to increase his power of production has been
12:33
seized by the few. Sometime, perhaps we will relate how this came to
12:37
pass. For the present, what it suffice to state the fact and analyze
12:41
its consequences. Today, the soil, which actually owes its value to the
12:46
needs of an ever increasing population, belongs to a minority who prevent the people
12:52
from cultivating it, or do not allow them to cultivate it according to modern
12:56
methods. The minds, though they represent the lad of several generations and derive
13:01
their sole value from the requirements of the industry of a nation and the density
13:05
of the population. The mines also belong to the few, and these few
13:09
restrict the output of coal or prevented entirely if they find more profitable investments for
13:16
their capital. Machinery, too, has become the exclusive property of the few,
13:20
and even when a machine incontestably represents the improvements added to the original rough
13:24
invention by three or four generations of workers, it nonetheless belongs to a few
13:30
owners. And if the descendants of the very inventor who constructed the first machine
13:35
for a lace making a century ago were to present themselves today in a lease
13:39
factory at Ball or Nottingham and demand their rights, they would be told hands
13:43
off, this machine is not yours, and they would be shot down if
13:46
they attempted to take possession of it, the railways, which would be useless
13:52
as so much old iron without the teeming population of Europe, its industry,
13:56
its commerce, and its marts, belonged to a few sharehold there is ignorant,
14:01
perhaps of the whereabouts of the lines of rails which yield them revenues greater
14:03
than those of medieval kings. And if the children of those who perished by
14:09
thousands while excavating the railway, cuttings and tunnels were to assemble one day,
14:13
crowding in their rags and hunger, to demand bread from the shareholders, they
14:18
would be met with bayonets and grape shot to disperse them in safeguard vested interests.
14:24
In virtue of this monstrous system, the son of the worker, on
14:26
entering life, finds no field which he may till, no machine which he
14:31
may tend, no mind in which he may dig. Without accepting to leave
14:35
a great part of what he will produce to a master. He must sell
14:39
his labor for a scant and uncertain wage. His father and his grandfather have
14:43
toiled to drain this field, to build this mill, to perfect this machine.
14:48
They gave to the work the full measure of their strength, and what
14:52
more could they give. But their heir comes into the world poorer than the
14:56
lowest savage. If he obtains leave to till the fields, it is on
15:01
condition of surrendering a quarter of the produce to his master, and another quarter
15:05
to the government and the middleman. And this tax levied upon him by the
15:09
state, the capitalist, the lord of the manor, and the middleman.
15:13
It is always increasing. It rarely leaves him the power to improve his system
15:18
of culture. If he turns to industry, he is allowed to work,
15:22
though not always even that, only on condition that he yield a half or
15:26
two thirds of the product to him whom the land recognizes as the owner of
15:30
the machine. We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to
15:35
turn a clot of earth unless he's surrendered to his lord a fourth of his
15:37
crop. We call those the barbarous times. But if the forms have changed,
15:43
the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under
15:46
the name of free contract to accept feudal obligations for turn where he will,
15:52
he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he
15:56
must accept or die of hunger. The result of this state of things is
16:02
that all our production tends in the wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for
16:06
the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of
16:10
the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises,
16:15
each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets. The working
16:21
people cannot purchase with their wages the wealth which they have produced, and industry
16:26
seeks foreign markets among the moneyed classes of other nations in the East, in
16:30
Africa, everywhere in Egypt, Tonkan or the Congo. The European is thus
16:36
bound to promote the growth of serfdom, and so he does. But soon
16:40
he finds everywhere similar competitors. All the nations evolve on the same lines,
16:45
and wars. Perpetual wars break out for the right of precedence in the market,
16:49
wars for the possession of the East, wars for the empire of the
16:53
sea, worse to impose duties on imports and to dictate conditions to neighboring states
17:00
against those blacks who revolved. The roar of the cannon never ceases in the
17:03
world. Full races are massacred. The states of Europe spend a third of
17:08
their budgets and armaments, and we know how heavily these taxes fall on the
17:12
workers. Education still remains the privilege of a small minority. For it is
17:18
idle to talk of education when the workman's child is forced at the age of
17:22
thirteen to go down into the mine or to help his father on the farm.
17:26
It is idle to talk of studies to the worker who comes home in
17:30
the evening crushed by excessive toil, with its brutalizing atmosphere. Society is thus
17:34
bound to remain divided into two hostile camps, and in such conditions, freedom
17:40
is a vain word. The radical begins by demanding a greater extension of political
17:45
rights, but he soon sees that the breadth of liberty leads to the uplifting
17:49
of the proletariat, and then he turns round, changes his opinions, and
17:55
reverts to repressive legislation and government by the sword. A vast are of courts,
18:00
judges, executioners, policemen and jailers is needed to uphold these privileges,
18:06
and this array gives rise, in its turn, to a whole system of
18:08
espionage, of false witness, of spies, of threats and corruption. The
18:14
system under which we live checks in its turn, the growth of the social
18:18
sentiment. We all know that without uprightness, without self respect, without sympathy
18:22
and mutual aid, humankind must perish, as perished the few races of animals
18:27
living by rapine or the slave keeping ants. But such ideas are not to
18:33
the taste of the ruling classes, and they have elaborated a whole system of
18:37
pseudoscience to teach the contrary. Fine sermons have been preached on the text that
18:41
those who have should share with those who have not. But he who would
18:45
act out this principle is speedily informed that these beautiful sentiments are all very well
18:49
in poetry, but not in practice. To lie is to degrade and besmirch
18:55
oneself, we say, and yet all civilized life becomes one huge lie.
19:00
We accustom ourselves and our children to hypocrisy, to the practice of a double
19:03
faced morality, And since the brain is ill at ease among lies, we
19:08
cheat ourselves with sophistry. Hypocrisy and sophistry become the second nature of the civilized
19:15
man. But a society cannot live, thus it must return to truth or
19:19
cease to exist. Thus the consequences which spring from the original act of monopoly,
19:25
spread through the whole of social life. Under pain of death, human
19:29
societies are forced to return to first principles, the means of production being the
19:33
collective work of humanity. The product should be the collective property of the race.
19:38
Individual appropriation is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to all. All
19:45
things are for all men, since all men have need of them, since
19:48
all men have worked, in the measure of their strength to produce them,
19:52
and since it is not possible to evaluate everyone's part in the production of the
19:56
world's wealth, all things are for all. Here is an immense stock of
20:02
tools and implements. Here are all those iron slaves, which we call machines,
20:07
which saw and plane spin, and wea for us unmaking and remaking,
20:11
working up raw matter to produce the marvels of our time. But nobody has
20:15
the right to seize a single one of these machines and say this is mine.
20:21
If you want to use it, you must pay me a tax on
20:22
each of your products, any more than the feudal lord of medieval times had
20:26
the right to say to the peasant, this hill, this meadow belongs to
20:30
me, and you must pay me a tax on every sheaf of corn you
20:33
reap, on every rick you build, All is for all. If the
20:38
man and the woman bear their fair share of work, they have a right
20:42
to their fair share of all that is produced by all, and that share
20:45
is enough to secure them well being. No more of such vague formulas as
20:51
the right to work, or to each the whole result of his labor.
20:55
What we proclaim is the right to well being, well being for all.
21:00
End of Chapter one