Latest / Sacred Texts Archive / 04 - Expropiation - The Conquest of Bread

Transcript

04 - Expropiation - The Conquest of Bread · Sacred Texts Archive

0:00
Chapter four, Expropriation, Part one, it is told of Rothschild that,
0:08
seeing his fortune threatened by the Revolution of eighteen forty eight, he hit upon
0:12
the following stratagem. I am quite willing to admit, said he, that
0:18
my fortune has been accumulated at the expense of others. But if it were
0:22
divided tomorrow among the millions of Europe, the share of each would only amount
0:26
to five shillings. Very well, then I undertake to render to each his
0:31
five shillings if he asked me for it. Having given due publicity to his
0:36
promise, our millionaire proceeded, as usual to stroll quietly through the streets of
0:40
frankfort Three or four passive eyes asked for their five shillings, which he dispersed
0:45
with a sardonic smile. His stratagem succeeded, and the family of the millionaire
0:51
is still in possession of his wealth. It is in much the same fashion
0:57
that the shrewd heads among the middle classes reason when they say, ah,
1:02
expropriation, I know what that means. You take all the overcoats and lay
1:07
them in a heap, and everyone is free to help himself and fight for
1:11
the best. But such jests are irrelevant as well as flippant. What we
1:17
want is not a redistribution of overcoats, although it must be said that even
1:22
in such a case, the shivering folk would see advantage in it. Nor
1:26
do we want to divide up the wealth of the Rothschilds. What we do
1:32
want is so to arrange things, that every human being born into the world
1:36
shall be insured the opportunity, in the first instance, of learning some useful
1:41
occupation and of becoming skilled in it. Next, that he shall be free
1:46
to work at his trade without asking leave of master or owner, and without
1:51
handing over to landlord or capitalists the lion's share of what he produces, as
1:56
to the wealth held by the Rothschilds or the Vanderbilts. It will serve us
2:00
to organize our system of communal production. The day when the laborer may chill
2:05
the ground without paying away half of what he produces. The day when the
2:08
machines necessary to prepare the soil for rich harvests are at the free disposal of
2:14
the cultivators. The day when the workers in the factories produces for the community
2:19
and not the monopolist. That day will see the workers clothed and fed,
2:23
and there will be no more Rothschilds or other exploiters. No one will then
2:29
have to sell his working power for a wage that only represents a fraction of
2:32
what he produces. So far, so good, say our critics. But
2:38
you will have Rothschilds coming in from outside. How are you to prevent a
2:42
person from amassing millions in China and then settling amongst you. How are you
2:46
going to prevent such a one from surrounding himself with lackeys and wage slaves,
2:51
from exploiting them and enriching himself at their expense. You cannot bring about a
2:57
revolution all over the world at the same time. Well, then, are
3:00
you going to establish custom houses on your frontiers to search all who enter your
3:05
country and confiscate the money they bring with them? Anarchist policemen firing on travelers
3:10
would be a fine spectacle. But at the root of this argument there is
3:15
a great error. Those who propound it have never paused to inquire whence comes
3:22
the fortune of the rich. A little thought would, however, suffice to
3:25
show them that these fortunes have their beginning in the poverty of the poor.
3:30
When there are no longer any destitute there will no longer be any rich to
3:35
exploit them. Let us glance for a moment at the Middle Ages, when
3:39
great fortunes began to spring up. A feutile baron seizes on a fertile valley.
3:46
But as long as the fertile valley is empty of folk, our baron
3:51
is not rich. His land brings him in nothing. He might as well
3:55
possess a property on the moon. What does our baron due to enrich himself.
4:01
He looks out for peasants for poor peasants. If every peasant farmer had
4:08
a piece of land free from rent and taxes, if he had, in
4:12
addition the tools and the stock necessary for farm labor, who would plow the
4:15
land of the baron? Everyone would look after his own. But there are
4:19
thousands of destitute persons, ruined by wars, or drought or pestilence. They
4:26
have neither horse nor plow. Iron was costly in the Middle Ages, and
4:30
a drought horse still more so. All these destitute creatures are trying to better
4:35
their conditions. One day they see on the road at the confines of our
4:40
baron's estate a notice board indicating by certain signs adapted to their comprehension that the
4:46
laborer who is willing to settle on this estate will receive the tools and materials
4:50
to build his cottage and sow his fields, and a portion of the land
4:55
rent free for a certain number of years. The number of years is represented
5:00
by so many crosses on the sign board, and the peasant understands the meaning
5:04
of these crosses. So the poor wretches swarm over the baron's lands, making
5:10
roads, draining marshes, building villages. In nine years he begins to tax
5:15
them. Five years later he increases the rent, then he doubles it.
5:21
The peasant accepts these new conditions because he cannot find better ones elsewhere, And
5:27
little by little, the aid of laws made by the barons, the poverty
5:31
of the peasant becomes the source of the landlord's wealth. And it is not
5:36
only the lord of the manor who preys upon him. A whole host of
5:41
usurers swooped down upon the villages, multiplying as the wretchedness of the peasants increases.
5:48
That is how things went in the Middle Ages, And today is it
5:51
not still the same thing? If there were free lands which the peasant could
5:57
cultivate if he pleased would he pay for fifty pounds to some chapel of a
6:00
duke for condescending to sell him a scrap? Would he burden himself with the
6:05
lease which absorbed a third of the produce? Would he, on the mataie
6:11
system, consent to give half of his harvest to the landowner? But he
6:15
has nothing, so he will accept any conditions if only he can keep body
6:21
and soul together while he tills the soil and enriches the landlord. So,
6:29
in the nineteenth century, just as the Middle Ages, the poverty of the
6:31
peasant is a source of wealth to the landed proprietor Part two. The landlord
6:44
owes his riches to the poverty of the peasant, and the wealth of the
6:47
capitalists comes from the same source. Take the case of a citizen of the
6:53
middle class who somehow or other finds himself in possession of twenty thousand pounds.
6:59
He could, of course spend his money at the rate of two thousand pounds
7:01
a year, a mere bagatel in these days of fantastic senseless luxury, but
7:09
then he would have nothing left at the end of ten years. So,
7:13
being a practical person who prefers to keep his fortune intact and win for himself
7:18
a snug little annual income as well. This is very easy in our society
7:26
for the good reason that the towns and villages swarm with workers who have not
7:30
the wherewithal to live for a month or even a fortnight. So our worthy
7:34
citizen starts a factory, the banks hasten to lend him another twenty thousand pounds,
7:41
especially if he has a reputation for business ability, and with his found
7:46
sum he can command the labor of five hundred hands. If all the men
7:51
and women in the countryside had their daily bread sure and their daily needs already
7:57
satisfied, who would work for our capitalist at a wage of half a crown
8:01
a day, while the commodities one produces in a day selling the market for
8:05
a crown or more. Unhappily, we know it all too well. The
8:11
poor quarters of our towns and the neighboring villages are full of needy wretches whose
8:16
children clamor for bread. So before the factory is well finished, the workers
8:22
hasten to often themselves. Where a hundred are required, three hundred besieged the
8:28
doors. From the time his mill is started. The owner, if he
8:31
only has average business capacity will clear forty towns a year out of each mill
8:37
hand he employs. He is thus able to lay by a snug little fortune.
8:43
And if he chooses a lucrative trade and has business talents, he will
8:46
soon increase his income by doubling the number of men he exploits, and so
8:52
he becomes a personage of importance. He can afford to give dinners to other
8:58
persons, to the local magnets, the civic, legal, political dignitaries.
9:05
With his money, he can marry money. By and by he may pick
9:09
and use places for his children, and later on perhaps get something good from
9:13
the government, a contract for the army or for the police. His gold
9:18
breeds gold till at last a war, or even a rumor of a war,
9:22
or a speculation on the stock exchange gives him great opportunity. Nine tenths
9:28
of the great fortunes in the United States are as Henry George has shown in
9:35
The Social Problems, the result of knavery on a large scale, assisted by
9:39
the state. In Europe, nine tenths of the fortunes made in our monarchies
9:45
and republics have the same origin. There are not two ways of becoming a
9:50
millionaire. This is the secret of wealth. Find the starving and destitute,
9:58
pay them half a crown, and make produce five shillings worth in a day
10:01
a mass of fortune by these means, and then increase it by some lucky
10:05
hit made with the help of the state. Need we go on to speak
10:09
of small fortunes attributed by economists to forethought and frugality, when we know that
10:15
mere saving in itself brings in nothing so long as the pence saved are not
10:18
used to exploit the fabishing. Take a shoemaker, for instance. Grant that
10:26
his work is well paid, that he has plenty of custom, and that
10:31
by dint of strict frugality, he contrives to lay by from eighteen pence to
10:35
two shillings a day, perhaps two pounds a month. Grant that our shoemaker
10:41
is never ill, that he does not half starve himself in spite of his
10:46
passion for economy, That he does not marry, or that he has no
10:50
children, that he does not die of consumption. Suppose anything and everything you
10:54
please well, at the age of fifty, he will not have scraped together
11:00
eight hundred pounds, and he will not have enough to live on during his
11:03
old age, when he is past work. Assuredly, this is not how
11:07
great fortunes are made. But suppose our shoemaker, as soon as he is
11:11
laid by a few pence fifthly conveys them to the savings bank, and that
11:16
the savings bank lends them to the capitalist, who is just about to employ
11:20
labor i e. To exploit the poor. Then our shoemaker takes an apprentice,
11:26
the child of some poor wretch, who will think himself lucky. In
11:31
five years time his son had learned the trade and is able to earn his
11:35
living. Meanwhile, our shoemaker does not lose by him, and his trade
11:41
is brisk. He soon takes a second, and then a third apprentice.
11:46
By and by he will take two or three working men poor wretches, thankful
11:50
to receive half a crown a day for work that is worth five shillings.
11:54
And if our shoemaker is in luck, that is to say, if he
11:58
is keen enough, mean enough, his working men and apprentices will bring him
12:03
in nearly one pound a day over and above the product of his own toil.
12:07
He can then enlarge his business. He will gradually become rich and no
12:11
longer have any need to stint himself in the necessities of life, he will
12:16
leave a snug little fortune to his son. That is what people call being
12:20
economical and having frugal, temperate habits. At bottom, it is nothing more
12:26
nor less than grinding the face of the poor. Commerce seems an exception to
12:30
this rule. Such a man, we are told, buys tea in China,
12:35
brings it to France, and realizes a prophet of thirty percent on his
12:39
original outlay. He has exploited nobody. Nevertheless, the case is analogist.
12:46
If our merchant has carried his bales on his back, well and good.
12:50
In early medieval times, this was exactly how foreign trade was conducted, and
12:54
so no one reached such giddy heights of fortune as in our days. Very
12:58
few and very hardily earned were the gold coins which the medieval merchant gained from
13:05
a long and dangerous voyage. It was less the love of money than the
13:09
thirst of travel and adventure that inspired his undertakings. Nowadays, the method is
13:15
simpler. A merchant who has some capital need not stir from his desk to
13:20
become wealthy. He telegraphs to an agent telling him to buy a hundred tons
13:24
of tea he freights a ship, and in a few weeks, in three
13:28
months, if it is a shailing ship, the vessel brings him his cargo.
13:33
He does not even take the risks of the voyage, for his tea
13:37
and his vessel are insured. And if he has expended four thousand pounds,
13:41
he will receive more than five thousand, that is to say, if he
13:46
has not attempted to speculate in some novel commodities, in which case he runs
13:50
a chance of either doubling his fortune or losing it altogether. Now, how
13:54
could he find men willing to cross the sea to travel to China a bat,
14:00
to endure hardship and slavish toil, and to risk their lives for a
14:03
miserable pittance. How could he find doc laborers willing the load and unload his
14:09
ships for starvation wages? How because they are needy and starving, go to
14:16
the sea ports, visit the cook shops and taverns on the caves. Look
14:20
at these men who have come to hire themselves, crowding round the dock gades,
14:26
which they besiege from early dawn, hoping to be allowed to work on
14:30
the vessel. Look at these sailors happy to be hired for a long voyage.
14:35
After weeks and months of waiting all their lives long, they have gone
14:41
to the sea in ships, and they will sail another still until they have
14:45
perished in the waves. Enter their home. Look at their wives and children
14:50
in rags living. One knows not how till the father returns, and you
14:56
will have the answer to the question. Multiply examine, choose them. Where
15:01
you will consider the origin of all fortunes, large or small, whether arising
15:05
out of commerce, finance, manufactures, or the land. Everywhere you will
15:11
find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty at the poor.
15:16
This is why an anarchist society need not fear the advent of a rothschild,
15:20
who would settle in its myth. If every member of the community knows that
15:26
after a few hours of productive toil, he will have a right to all
15:28
the pleasures as civilization procures into those deeper sources of enjoyment which art and science
15:35
offer to all who seek them. He will not sell his strength for a
15:39
starvation wage. Not one will volunteer to work for the enrichment of your rothschild.
15:43
His guineas will be only so many pieces of metal useful for various purposes,
15:50
but incapable of breeding more. In answering the above objection, we have
15:56
at the same time indicated the scope of our experts. It must apply to
16:03
everything that enables any man, be he financier, mill owner, or landlord,
16:07
to appropriate the product of others toil. Our formula is simple and comprehensive.
16:15
We do not want to rob any one of his coat, but we
16:18
wish to give to the workers all those things the lack of which make them
16:22
fall as easy prey to the exploiter. And we will do our utmost that
16:27
none shall lack aught, and that not a single man shall be forced to
16:32
sell the strength of his right arm to obtain a bare subsistence for himself and
16:36
his babes. This is what we mean when we talk of expropriation. This
16:41
will be our duty during the revolution for whose coming we look not two hundred
16:45
years hence, but soon, very soon. Part three. The ideas of
16:56
anarchism in general and of expropriation in particular, find much more soonpathy than we
17:00
are apt to imagine, among mens of intelligent character, and those for whom
17:03
idleness is not the supreme ideal. Still, our friends, offen Wana.
17:10
Take care you do not go too far. Humanity cannot be changed in a
17:15
day, so do not be in too great a hurry with your schemes of
17:18
expropriation and anarchy, or you will be in danger of achieving no permanent results.
17:25
Now, what we fear with regard to expropriation is exactly the contrary.
17:30
We are afraid of not going far enough, of carrying out expropriation on too
17:34
small a scale to be lasting. We would not have the revolutionary impulse arrested
17:41
in big career to exhaust itself in half measures which would content no one,
17:47
and, while producing a tremendous confusion in society, as stopping its customary activities,
17:52
would have no vital power, would merely spread general discontent and inevitably prepare
17:57
the way for the triumph of reaction. There are, in fact, in
18:02
a modern state, established relations which it is practically impossible to modify if one
18:07
attacks them only in detail. There are wheels within wheels in our economic organization.
18:15
The machinery is so complex and interdependent that no one part can be modified
18:19
without disturbing the whole. This becomes clear as soon as an attempt is made
18:25
to expropriate anything. Let us suppose that in a certain country a limited form
18:32
of expropriation is effected. For example, that, as it has been suggested
18:37
more than once, only the property of the great landlords is socialized, whilst
18:41
the factories are left untouched. Or that in a certain city, house property
18:47
is taken over by the commune, but everything else is left in private ownership,
18:52
Or that in some manufacturing center the factories are communalized the land is not
18:57
interfered with the same result would follow in each case a terrible shattering of the
19:04
industrial system. Without the means of reorganizing it on new lines, industry and
19:11
finance would be at a dead lack. Yet a return to the first principles
19:14
of justice would not have been achieved, and society would find itself powerless to
19:18
construct a harmonious whole. If agriculture could free itself from great landowners, while
19:26
industries still remained the bond slave of the capitalist, the merchant, and the
19:30
banker, nothing would be accomplished. The peasant suffers to day not only in
19:37
having to pay rent to the landlord. He is oppressed on all hands by
19:41
existing conditions. He is exploited by the tradesman who makes him pay half a
19:45
crown for a spade, which, measured by the labor spent on it,
19:49
is not worth more than a sixpence. He is taxed by the state,
19:52
who cannot do without its formidable hierarchy of officials, and finds it necessary to
19:59
maintain an expensive army because the traders of all nations are perpetually fighting for the
20:03
markets, and any day a little coral arising from the exploitation of some part
20:08
of Asia or Africa may result in war. Then again, the peasants suffer
20:14
from the dispopulation of country places. The young people are attracted to the large
20:18
manufacturing towns by debate of high wages paid temporarily by the producers of articles of
20:25
luxury, or by the attractions of more stirring life. The artificial protection of
20:30
industry, the industrial exploitation of foreign countries, the prevalence of stock jobbing,
20:37
the difficulty of improving the soil, and the machinery of production. All these
20:41
agencies combine nowadays to work against agriculture, which is burdened not only by rent
20:48
but by the whole complex of conditions in a society based on exploitation. Thus,
20:55
even if the expropriation of land were accomplished, and everyone were free to
20:59
till the soil and cultivated to the best advantage without paying rent. Agriculture,
21:03
even though it should enjoy, which can by no means be taken for granted,
21:08
a momentary prosperity, would soon fall back into the sloughs in which it
21:12
would find itself today. The whole thing would have to be begun over again,
21:18
with increased difficulties. The same holds true of industry. Take the converse
21:25
case. Instead of turning the agricultural laborers into peasant proprietors, make over the
21:30
factories to those who work in them. Abolish the master manufacturers, but leave
21:36
the landlord his land, the banker his money, the merchant his exchange.
21:41
Maintain the swarm of idlers who live on the toil of the workmen, the
21:45
thousand and one middlemen, the state, with its numberless officials. An industry
21:48
would come to a standstill, finding no purchaser in the mass of peasants who
21:52
would remain poor, not possessing the raw material, and unable to export their
21:57
produce, partly on to the stoppage of trade. Is still more so because
22:03
industry spread all over the world, The manufacturers would feel unable to struggle,
22:07
and thousands of workers would be thrown upon the street. These starving crowds would
22:12
be ready and willing to submit to the first schemer who came to exploit them.
22:17
They would even consent to return to the old slavery, if only under
22:21
promise of work. Or finally, suppose you oust the landlords and hand over
22:27
the mills and factories to the workers without interfering with the swarms of middle men
22:32
who drained the product of our manufacturers and speculate in corn and flour, meat
22:37
and groceries in our great centers of commerce. Then as soon as exchanges arrest
22:44
it, the great cities are left without bread, and others find no buyers
22:48
for their articles of luxury. A terrible counter revolution will take place, a
22:52
counter revolution treading upon the slains, sweeping the town and villages were shot and
22:56
shell there would be prescription, panic flight, tend all the terrors of the
23:03
guillotine, as it was in France in eighteen fifteen, eighteen forty eight and
23:07
eighteen seventy one. All is interdependent. In a civilized society. It is
23:15
impossible to reform any one thing without altering the whole. Therefore, on the
23:19
day we strike at private property, under any one of its forms, territorial
23:25
or industrial, we shall be obligated to attack them all. The very success
23:30
of the revolution will demand it. Besides, we could not if we would
23:34
confine ourselves to a partial expropriation. Once the principle of the divine right of
23:40
property is shaken, no amount of theorizing will prevent its overthrow. Here by
23:45
the slaves of the toil, there by the slaves of the machine. If
23:51
a great town, Paris, for example, were to confine itself to taking
23:56
possession of the dwelling houses of the factories, it would be forced all so
24:00
to deny the right of the bankers to levy upon the commune attacks amounting to
24:03
two million pounds in the form of interest for former loans. The great city
24:07
would be obliged to put it self in touch with the rural districts, and
24:11
its influence would inevitably urge the peasants to free themselves from the landowner. It
24:17
would be necessary to communalize the railways that the citizens might get food and work,
24:22
and lastly, to prevent the waste of supplies and to guard against the
24:26
trust of corn speculators, like those to whom the Commune of seventeen ninety three
24:30
fell a prey. It would have to place in the hands of the city
24:34
the works of stocking its warehouse with commodities and apportioning the produce. Nevertheless,
24:41
some socialists still seek to establish a distinction. Of course, they say,
24:47
the soil, the mines, the mills, and manufactures must be expropriated.
24:52
These are the instruments of production, and it is right we should consider them
24:55
public property. But articles of consumption, food, clothes, anddwellings should remain
25:00
private property. Popular common sense has got the better of this subtle distinction.
25:06
We are not savages who can live in the woods without other shelter than the
25:10
branches. The civilized man needs a roof, a room, a hearth,
25:14
and a bed. It is true that the bed, the room, and
25:18
the house is a home of idleness for the non producer. But for the
25:21
worker, a room properly heated and lighted is as much an instrument of production
25:26
as the tool of the machine. It is the place where the nerves and
25:29
sinews gather strength for the work of the morrow. The rest of the workmen
25:33
is the daily repairing of the machine. The same argument applies even more obviously
25:38
to food. The so called economists of whom we speak would hardly deny that
25:42
the coal burnt in a machine is as necessary to produce as the raw material
25:48
itself. How then, can food without which the human machine could do no
25:52
work be excluded from the list of things indispensable to the producer? Can this
25:59
be a relic of religious metaphysics. The rich man's feast is indeed a matter
26:03
of luxury, but the food of the worker is just as much a part
26:07
of production as the fuel burnt by the steam engine. The same with clothing.
26:11
If the economist who draws this distinction between articles of production and of consumption
26:15
dress themselves in the fashion of New Guinea, we could understand their objection.
26:21
But men who could not write a word without a shirt on their back are
26:23
not in a position to draw such a hard and fast line between their shirt
26:27
and their pen. And though the dainty gowns of their dames must certainly rank
26:32
as objects of luxury, there is nevertheless a certain quantity of linen, cotton,
26:36
and woolen stuff which is a necessity of life to the producer. The
26:40
shirt ensoes in which he goes to his work, his cap and the jacket
26:44
he slips on after the day's toil is over. These are as necessary to
26:48
him as a hammer to the anvil. Whether we like it or not,
26:52
this is what the people mean by a revolution. As soon as they have
26:56
made a clean sweep of the government, they will seek first of all to
27:00
insure to themselves decent dwellings, in sufficient food and clothes, free of capitalist
27:06
rent. And the people will be right. The method of the people will
27:10
be much more in accordance with science than those of the economists, who draw
27:14
so many distinctions between instruments of production and articles of consumption. The people who
27:18
understand that this is just the point where the revolution ought to begin, and
27:23
they will lay the foundations of the only economic science worthy of the name,
27:27
a science which might be called the study of the need of humanity and of
27:32
the economic means to satisfy them. End of Chapter four