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12 - Objections - The Conquest of Bread · Philosophy and Faith

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twelve, Objections, Part one. Let us now examine the
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  Speaker 1: principal objections put forth against communism. Most of them are
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  Speaker 1: evidently caused by a simple misunderstanding, yet they raise important
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  Speaker 1: questions and merit our attention. It is not for us
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  Speaker 1: to answer the objections raised by authoritarian communism. We ourselves
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  Speaker 1: hold with them. Civilized nations have suffered too much in
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  Speaker 1: the long, hard struggle for the emancipation of the individual,
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  Speaker 1: to disown their past work and to tolerate a government
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  Speaker 1: that would make itself felt in the smallest details of
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  Speaker 1: a citizen's life, even if that government had no other
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  Speaker 1: aim than the good of the community. Should authoritarian socialist
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  Speaker 1: society ever succeed in establishing itself, it could not last.
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  Speaker 1: General discontent would soon force it to break up or
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  Speaker 1: to reorganize itself on principles of liberty. It is of
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  Speaker 1: an anarchist communist society we are about to speak, a
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  Speaker 1: society that recognizes the absolute liberty of the individual, that
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  Speaker 1: does not admit of any any authority, and makes use
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  Speaker 1: of no compulsion to drive men to work. Limiting our
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  Speaker 1: studies to the economic side of the question, let us
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  Speaker 1: see if such a society composed of men as they
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  Speaker 1: are today, neither better nor worse, neither more nor less industrious,
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  Speaker 1: would have a chance of successful development. The objection is
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  Speaker 1: known quote. If the existence of each is guaranteed, and
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  Speaker 1: if the necessity of earning wages does not compel men
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  Speaker 1: to work, nobody will work. Every man will lay the
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  Speaker 1: burden of his work on another if he's not forced
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  Speaker 1: to do it himself. Unquote. Let us first remark the
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  Speaker 1: incredible levity which this objection is raised, without taking into
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  Speaker 1: consideration that the question is in reality merely to know,
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  Speaker 1: on the one hand, whether you effectively obtained by wage
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  Speaker 1: work the results you aim at, and on the other hand,
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  Speaker 1: whether voluntary work is not already more productive today than
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  Speaker 1: work stimulated by wages, a question which would require profound study.
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  Speaker 1: But whereas in exact sciences, men give their opinion on
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  Speaker 1: subjects infinitely less important and less complicated after serious research,
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  Speaker 1: after carefully collecting and analyzing facts, on this question, they
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  Speaker 1: will pronounce judgment without appeal, resting satisfied with any one
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  Speaker 1: particular event, such as, for example, the want of success
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  Speaker 1: of a communist association in America. They act like the
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  Speaker 1: barrister who does not see in the council for the
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  Speaker 1: opposite side. A representative of a cause or an opinion
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  Speaker 1: contrary to his own, but a simple adversary in an
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  Speaker 1: oratorical debate, and if he be lucky enough to find
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  Speaker 1: a repartee, does not otherwise care to justify his cause. Therefore,
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  Speaker 1: the study of this essential basis of all political economy,
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  Speaker 1: the study of the most favorable conditions for giving society
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  Speaker 1: the greatest amount of useful products with the least waste
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  Speaker 1: of human energy, does not advance. They limit themselves to
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  Speaker 1: repeating commonplace assertions, or else they pretend ignorance of our assertions.
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  Speaker 1: What is most striking in this levity is that even
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  Speaker 1: in capitalist political economy, you will already find a few
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  Speaker 1: writers compelled by the facts to doubt the axiom put
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  Speaker 1: forth by the founders of their science that the threat
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  Speaker 1: of hunger is man's best stimulant for productive work. They
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  Speaker 1: begin to perceive that in production a certain collective element
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  Speaker 1: is introduced, which has been too much neglected up till now,
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  Speaker 1: and which might be more important than personal gain. The
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  Speaker 1: inferior quality of wage work, the terrible waste of human
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  Speaker 1: energy in modern agricultural and industrial labor, the ever growing
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  Speaker 1: quantity of pleasure seekers who today load their burden on
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  Speaker 1: others shoulders, the absence of a certain animation in production
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  Speaker 1: that is becoming more and more apparent. All this begins
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  Speaker 1: to preoccupy the economists of the classical school. Some of
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  Speaker 1: them ask themselves if they have not got on the
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  Speaker 1: wrong track, if the imaginary evil being that was supposed
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  Speaker 1: to be tempted exclusively by bait of lucre or wages
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  Speaker 1: really exists. This heresy penetrates even into their universities. It
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  Speaker 1: is found in books of orthodox economy. This does not
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  Speaker 1: hinder a great many socialist reformers to remain partisans of
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  Speaker 1: individual remuneration and defending the old citadel of wagdom, notwithstanding
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  Speaker 1: that it is being delivered over stone by stone to
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  Speaker 1: the assailants by its former defenders. They fear that without compulsion,
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  Speaker 1: the masses will not work. But during our own lifetime
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  Speaker 1: have we not heard the same fears expressed twice by
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  Speaker 1: the anti abolitionists in America before Negro emancipation, and by
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  Speaker 1: the Russian nobility before the liberation of the serfs. Without
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  Speaker 1: the whip, the Negro will not work, said the anti abolitionist.
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  Speaker 1: Free from their master's supervision, the serfs will leave the
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  Speaker 1: fields uncultivated, said the Russian serf owners. It was the
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  Speaker 1: refrain of the French noblemen in seventeen eighty nine, the
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  Speaker 1: refrain of the Middle Ages, a refrain as old as
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  Speaker 1: the world, and we shall hear it every time there
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  Speaker 1: is a question of sweeping away and injustice. In each
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  Speaker 1: time the actual facts give it the lie. The liberated
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  Speaker 1: peasant of seventeen ninety two plowed with a wild energy
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  Speaker 1: unknown to his ancestors. The emansive paid Negro works more
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  Speaker 1: than his father's, and the Russian peasant, after having honored
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  Speaker 1: the huntingmoon of his emancipation by celebrating Fridays as well
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  Speaker 1: as Sunday's, has taken up work with as much eagerness
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  Speaker 1: as his liberation was, the more complete. There where the
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  Speaker 1: soil is his, he works desperately. That is the exact
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  Speaker 1: word for it. The anti abolitionists refrained can be of
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  Speaker 1: value to slave owners as to the slaves themselves. They
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  Speaker 1: know what it is worth, as they know its motive. Moreover,
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  Speaker 1: who but economists taught us that if a wage earner's
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  Speaker 1: work is but indifferent, an intense and productive work is
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  Speaker 1: only obtained from a man who sees his wealth increase
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  Speaker 1: in proportions to his efforts. All hymns sung in honor
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  Speaker 1: of private property can be reduced to this axiom. For
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  Speaker 1: it is remarkable that when economists, wishing to celebrate the
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  Speaker 1: blessings of property, show us how an unproductive marshy or
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  Speaker 1: stony soil is clothed with rich harvests when cultivated by
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  Speaker 1: the peasant proprietor, they in no wise prove their theat
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  Speaker 1: in favor of private property by admitting that the only
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  Speaker 1: guarantee not to be robbed of the fruits of your
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  Speaker 1: labor is to possess the instruments of labor, which is true.
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  Speaker 1: The economists only prove that man really produces most when
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  Speaker 1: he works in freedom, when he has a certain choice
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  Speaker 1: in his occupations, when he has no overseer to impede him,
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  Speaker 1: and lastly, when he sees his work bringing in a
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  Speaker 1: profit to him and others who work like him, but
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  Speaker 1: bringing in nothing to idlers. This is all we can
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  Speaker 1: deduct from their argumentation, and we maintain the same ourselves
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  Speaker 1: as to the form of possession of the instruments of labor.
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  Speaker 1: They only mention it indirectly in their demonstration, as a
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  Speaker 1: guarantee to the cultivator that he shall not be robbed
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  Speaker 1: of the profits of his yield nor of his improvements. Besides,
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  Speaker 1: in support of the thesis in favor of private property
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  Speaker 1: against all other forms of possession, should not the economists
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  Speaker 1: demonstrate that under the form of communal property, land never
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  Speaker 1: produces such rich harvests as one the possession is private.
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  Speaker 1: But it is not so. In fact, the contrary has
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  Speaker 1: been observed. Take, for example, a commune in the Canton
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  Speaker 1: of Vaud in the winter time, when all the men
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  Speaker 1: of the village go to fellwood in the forest which
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  Speaker 1: belongs to them all. It is precisely during these festivals
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  Speaker 1: of toil that the greatest ardor for work and the
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  Speaker 1: most considerable display of human energy are apparent. No salaried labor,
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  Speaker 1: no effort a private owner can bear comparison with it.
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  Speaker 1: Or let us take a Russian village when all its
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  Speaker 1: inhabitants mow a field belonging to the commune or farmed
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  Speaker 1: by it. There you will see what a man can
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  Speaker 1: produce when he works in common for communal production. Comrades
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  Speaker 1: vie with one another in cutting the whitest swath. Women
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  Speaker 1: bestir themselves in their wake so as not to be
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  Speaker 1: distanced by the mowers. It is a festival of labor
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  Speaker 1: in which a hundred people do work in a few
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  Speaker 1: hours that would not have been finished in a few
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  Speaker 1: days had they worked separately. What a sad contrast compared
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  Speaker 1: to the work of the isolated owner. In fact, we
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  Speaker 1: might quote scores of examples among the pioneers of America
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  Speaker 1: in Swiss, German, Russian, and certain French villages, or the
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  Speaker 1: work done in Russia by gangs, or tells of masons, carpenters, boatmen, fishermen, etc.
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  Speaker 1: Who undertake a task and divide the produce or the
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  Speaker 1: remuneration among themselves without it passing through the intermediary or middlemen.
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  Speaker 1: We could also mention the great communal hunts of nomadic
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  Speaker 1: tribes and an infinite number of successful collective enterprises, and
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  Speaker 1: in every case we could show the unquestionable superiority of
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  Speaker 1: communal work compared to that of the wage orner or
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  Speaker 1: the isolated private owner. Well being, that is to say,
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  Speaker 1: the satisfaction of physical, artistic, and moral needs, has always
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  Speaker 1: been the most powerful stimulant to work. And when a
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  Speaker 1: hireling produces bare necessities with difficulty, a free worker who
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  Speaker 1: sees ease and luxury increasing for him and for others
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  Speaker 1: in proportion to his efforts, spends infinitely far more energy
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  Speaker 1: and intelligence, and obtains first class products in far greater abundance.
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  Speaker 1: The one feels riveted to misery. The other hopes for
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  Speaker 1: ease and luxury in the future, and this lies the
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  Speaker 1: whole secret. Therefore, a society aiming at the well being
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  Speaker 1: of all, and at the possibility of all enjoying life
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  Speaker 1: in all its manifestations, will supply voluntary work, which will
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  Speaker 1: be infinitely superior and yield far more than work has
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  Speaker 1: produced up until now under the god of slavery, serf
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  Speaker 1: done or wage done. Part two. Nowadays, whoever can load
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  Speaker 1: on others his share of labor indispensable to existence, does so,
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  Speaker 1: and it is omitted that it will always be so. Now,
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  Speaker 1: work indispensable to existence is essentially manual. We may be
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  Speaker 1: artists or scientists, but none of us can do without
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  Speaker 1: things obtained by manual work. Bread, clothes, roads, ships, light, heat,
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  Speaker 1: et cetera. And moreover. However highly artistic or however subtly metaphysical,
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  Speaker 1: are our pleasures. They all depend on manual labor. And
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  Speaker 1: it is precisely this labor basis of life that everyone
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  Speaker 1: tries to avoid. We understand perfectly well that it must
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  Speaker 1: be so nowadays, because to do manual work now means,
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  Speaker 1: in reality, to shut yourself up for ten or twelve
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  Speaker 1: hours a day in an unhealthy workshop, and to remain
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  Speaker 1: riveted to the same task for twenty or thirty years,
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  Speaker 1: and maybe for your whole life. It means to be
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  Speaker 1: doomed to a paltry wage, to the uncertainty of the morrow,
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  Speaker 1: to want of work, often, to destitution, more often than not,
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  Speaker 1: to death in a hospital after having worked forty years
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  Speaker 1: to feed, clothe, amuse, and instruct others than yourself and
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  Speaker 1: your children. It means to bear the stamp of inferiority
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  Speaker 1: all your life, because whatever the politicians tell us, the
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  Speaker 1: manual worker is always considered inferior to the brain worker.
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  Speaker 1: And the one who has toiled ten hours in a
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  Speaker 1: workshop has not the time, and still less the means
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  Speaker 1: to give himself the high delights of science and art,
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  Speaker 1: or even to prepare himself to appreciate them. He must
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  Speaker 1: be content with the crumbs from the table of privileged persons.
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  Speaker 1: We understand that under these conditions, manual labor is considered
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  Speaker 1: a curse of fate. We understand that all men have
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  Speaker 1: but one dream, that of emerging from, or enabling their
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  Speaker 1: children to emerge from, this inferior state, to great for
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  Speaker 1: themselves an independent position, which means what to also live
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  Speaker 1: by other men's work. As long as there will be
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  Speaker 1: a class of manual workers and a class of brain workers,
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  Speaker 1: black hands and white hands, it will be thus, what interest,
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  Speaker 1: in fact, can this depressing work have for the worker,
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  Speaker 1: when he knows that the fate awaiting him, from the
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  Speaker 1: cradle to the grave will be to live in metureaucracy, poverty,
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  Speaker 1: and insecurity of the morrow. Therefore, when we see the
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  Speaker 1: immense majority of men take up their wretched task every morning,
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  Speaker 1: we are surprised at their perseverance, at their zeal for work,
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  Speaker 1: at the habitat that enables them like machines, blindly obeying
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  Speaker 1: an impetus, given to lead this life of misery without
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  Speaker 1: the hope for the morrow, without foreseeing ever so vaguely
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  Speaker 1: that some day they, or at least their children, will
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  Speaker 1: be part of a humanity rich in all the treasures
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  Speaker 1: of a bountiful nature in all the enjoyments of knowledge,
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  Speaker 1: scientific and artistic creation, reserved to day to a few
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  Speaker 1: privileged favorites. It is precisely to put an end to
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  Speaker 1: the separation between manual and brain work that we want
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  Speaker 1: to abolish wage them that we want the social revolution.
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  Speaker 1: Then work will no longer appear a curse of fate.
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  Speaker 1: It will become what it should be, the free exercise
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  Speaker 1: of all the faculties of man. Moreover, it is time
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  Speaker 1: to submit to a serious analysis this legend about superior
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  Speaker 1: work supposed to be obtained under the lash of wage them.
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  Speaker 1: It is enough to visit not the model factory and
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  Speaker 1: the worship that we find now and again, but the
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  Speaker 1: ordinary factories to conceive the immense waste of human energy
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  Speaker 1: that characterizes modern industry. For one factory more or less
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  Speaker 1: rationally organized, there are one hundred or more which wastes
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  Speaker 1: man's labor without a more substantial motive than that of
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  Speaker 1: perhaps bringing in a few pounds more per day to
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  Speaker 1: the employer. Here you see youths from twenty to twenty
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  Speaker 1: five years of age, sitting all day long on a bench,
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  Speaker 1: their chests sunken in feverishly shaking their heads and bodies
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  Speaker 1: to tie with the speed of conjurers, the two ends
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  Speaker 1: of worthless scraps of cotton, the refuse of the lace looms.
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  Speaker 1: What progeny will these trembling and rickety bodies bequeathed to
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  Speaker 1: their country? But they occupy so little room in the factory,
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  Speaker 1: and each of them brings me sixpence a day, will
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  Speaker 1: say the employer. In an immense London factory, you could
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  Speaker 1: see girls balled at seventeen from carrying trays of matches
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  Speaker 1: on their heads from one room to another, when the
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  Speaker 1: simplest machine could wield the matches to their tables. But
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  Speaker 1: it costs so little the work of women who have
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  Speaker 1: no special trade. What is the use of a machine?
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  Speaker 1: When these can do no more? They will be easily replaced.
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  Speaker 1: There are so many in the street. On the steps
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  Speaker 1: of the mansion. On an icy night, we will find
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  Speaker 1: a barefooted child asleep with its bundle of papers in
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  Speaker 1: its arm. Child labor costs so little that it may
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  Speaker 1: well be employed every evening to sell tenpenny worth of papers,
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  Speaker 1: at which the poor boy will receive a penny or
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  Speaker 1: a penny halfpenny. And lastly, you may see a robust
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  Speaker 1: man tramping, dangling his arms. He has been out of
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  Speaker 1: work for months. Meanwhile, his daughter grows pale in the
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  Speaker 1: overheated vapors of the workshop for dressing stuffs, and his
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  Speaker 1: son fils blacking pots by hand, or waits hours at
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  Speaker 1: the corner of a street till a passer by enables
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  Speaker 1: him to earn a penny. And so it is everywhere,
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  Speaker 1: from San Francisco to Moscow, and from Napali to Stockholm.
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  Speaker 1: The waste of human energy is the distinguishing and predominant
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  Speaker 1: trade of industry, not to mention trade where it attains
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  Speaker 1: still more colossal proportions. What a sad satire is that
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  Speaker 1: name political economy given to the science of waste of
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  Speaker 1: energy under the system of wage them This is not all.
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  Speaker 1: If you speak to the director of a well organized factory,
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  Speaker 1: he will naively explain to you that it is difficult
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  Speaker 1: nowadays to find a skillful, vigorous and energetic workman who
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  Speaker 1: works with a will. Quote. Should such a man present
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  Speaker 1: himself among the twenty or thirty who call every Monday
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  Speaker 1: asking us for work, he is sure to be received.
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  Speaker 1: Even if we are reducing the number of our hands.
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  Speaker 1: We recognize him at the first glance, and he is
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  Speaker 1: always accepted, even though we have to get rid of
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  Speaker 1: an older and less active worker the next day unquote,
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  Speaker 1: and the one who has just received notice to quit,
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  Speaker 1: and all those who receive it tomorrow go to reinforce
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  Speaker 1: that immense reserve army workmen out of work, who are
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  Speaker 1: only called to the loom or the bench when there
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  Speaker 1: is pressure of work, or to oppose strikers, and those others,
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  Speaker 1: the average workers that are the refuse of the better
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  Speaker 1: class factories. They join the equally formidable army of age
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  Speaker 1: and indifferent workers that continually circulates between the second class factories,
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  Speaker 1: those which barely cover their expenses and make their way
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  Speaker 1: in the world by trickery and snares laid for the
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  Speaker 1: buyer and especially for the consumer in distant countries. And
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: if you talk to the workmen themselves, you will soon
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  Speaker 1: learn that the rule in such factories is never to
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  Speaker 1: do entirely what you are capable of. Shoddy pay shoddy work.
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  Speaker 1: This is the advice which the workingman receives from his
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  Speaker 1: comrades upon entering such a factory. For the workers know
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: that if in a moment of generosity they give way
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  Speaker 1: to the entreaties of an employer and consent to intensify
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  Speaker 1: the work in order to carry out a pressing order.
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  Speaker 1: This nervous work will be exacted in the future as
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  Speaker 1: a rule in the scale of wages. Therefore, in all
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  Speaker 1: such factories they prefer never to produce as much as
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  Speaker 1: they can. In certain industries, production is limited so as
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  Speaker 1: to keep up high prices, and sometimes the password go
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  Speaker 1: canny is given. Who signifies bad work for bad pay.
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  Speaker 1: Wage work is serf work. It cannot, it must not
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  Speaker 1: produce all that it could produce. And it is high
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  Speaker 1: time to disbelieve the legend which represents wage them as
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  Speaker 1: the best incentive to productive work. If industry nowadays brings
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  Speaker 1: in one hundred times more than it did in the
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  Speaker 1: days of her grandfathers, it is due to the sudden
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  Speaker 1: awakening of physical and chemical sciences towards the end of
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  Speaker 1: last century, not to the capitalist organization of wage them,
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  Speaker 1: But in spite of that organization. Part three. Those who
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  Speaker 1: have seriously studied the question do not deny any of
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  Speaker 1: the advantages of communism, on condition be it well understood
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  Speaker 1: that communism is perfectly free, that is to say, anarchist.
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  Speaker 1: They recognize that work paid with money, even disguised under
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: the name of labor notes to workers' associations governed by
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  Speaker 1: the state, would keep up the characteristics of wage them
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  Speaker 1: and would retain its disadvantages. They agreed that the whole
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  Speaker 1: system would soon suffer from it, even if society came
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  Speaker 1: into possession of the instruments of production. And they admit
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  Speaker 1: that thanks to integral education given to all children, to
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  Speaker 1: the laborious habits of civilized societies, with the liberty of
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  Speaker 1: choosing and varying their occupations, and the attractions of work
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  Speaker 1: done by equals for the well being of all, a
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  Speaker 1: communist society would not be wanting in producers who would
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  Speaker 1: soon make the fertility of the soil triple and tenfold
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  Speaker 1: and give a new impulse to industry. This our opponents
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  Speaker 1: agreed to, they say, quote, but the danger will come
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  Speaker 1: from that minority of loafers who will not work and
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  Speaker 1: will not have regular habits. In spite of excellent conditions
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  Speaker 1: that make work pleasant today, the prospect of hunger compels
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  Speaker 1: the most refactory to move along with the others. The
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  Speaker 1: one who does not arrive in time is dismissed, But
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  Speaker 1: the black sheep suffices to contaminate the whole flock, and
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: two or three sluggish or refactory workmen lead the others
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: astray and bring a spirit of disorder and rebellion into
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: the workshop that makes work impossible, so that in the
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: end we shall have to return to a system of
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: compulsion that forces the ringleaders back into the ranks, and
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: is not the system of wages paid in proportion of
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: work performed, the only one that enables compulsion to be
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: employed without hurting the feelings of the worker, because all
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: other means would imply the continual intervention of an authority
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: that would be repugnant to free men unquote. This we
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: believe is the objection fairly stated. It belongs to the
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: category of arguments which justify the state, the penal law,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: the judge, and the gallower. The authoritarians say, quote, as
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: there are people, a feeble min minority who will not
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: submit to social customs, we must maintain magistrates, tribunals and prisons,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: although these institutions become a source of new evils of
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: all kinds unquote. Therefore, we can only repeat what we
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: have so often said concerning authority in general. Quote, to
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: avoid a possible evil, you have to recourse to means
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: in which themselves are a greater evil, and become the
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: source of those same abuses that you wish to remedy for.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Do not forget that it is wage them the impossibility
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: of living otherwise than selling your labor, which has created
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: the present capitalist system, whose vices you begin to recognize. Unquote.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Let us also remark that this authoritarian way of reasoning
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: is but a justification of what is wrong in the
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: present system. Wage them was not instituted to remove the
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: disadvantage of communism. Its origin, like that of the state
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: and private ownership, is to be found elsewhere. It is
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: born of slavery and serfdom, imposed by force, and only
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: where is a more modern garb. Thus, the argument in
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: favor of wage them is as valueless as those by
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: which they seek to apologize for private property and the state.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: We are nevertheless going to examine the objection and see
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: if there is any truth in it. To begin with,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: it is not evident that if a society founded on
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: the principle of free work were really menaced by loafers,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: it could protect itself without an authoritarian organization and without
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: having recourse to wage them. Let us take a group
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: of volunteers combining for some particular enterprise having its success
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: at heart. They all work with a will, save for
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: one of the associates, who is frequently absent from his post.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Must they, on his account dissolve the group elect a
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: president to impose fines or maybe distribute markers for work done,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: as is customary in the academy. It is evident that
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: neither the one nor the other will be done, but
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: that someday the comrade who imperils their enterprise will be told, quote, friend,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: we should like to work with you, but as you
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: are often absent from your post and you do your
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: work negligently, we must part go and find other comrades
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: who will put up with your indifference. This way is
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: so natural that it is practiced everywhere nowadays in all industries,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: in competition with all possible systems of fines, docking of wages, supervision, etc.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Our workman may enter the factory at the appointed time,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: But if he does his work badly, if he hinders
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: his comrades by his laziness or other defects, and they
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: quarrel with him on that account, there is end of it.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: He is compelled to leave the workshop. Authoritarians pretend that
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: it is the almighty employer and his overseers who maintain
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: regularity and quality of work in factories. In fact, in
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: a somewhat complicated enterprise in which the wares produce passed
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: through many hands before being finished, it is the factory
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: itself the workmen as a unity who see to the
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: good quality of the work. Therefore, the best factories of
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: British private industry few overseers, far less on an average
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: than for the French factories, and less than the British
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: state factories. A certain standard of public morals is maintained
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: in the same way authoritarians say it is due to
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: rule guards, judges and policemen, whereas in reality it is
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: maintained in spite of judges, policemen and rural guards. Many
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: are the laws producing criminals, has been said long ago,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: not only in industrial workshops do things go on in
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: this way. It happens everywhere every day, on a scale
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: that only bookworms have as yet no notion of. When
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: a railway company federated with other companies fails to fulfill
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: its engagements, when its trains are late and goods line
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: neglected at the stations, the other companies threatened to cancel
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the contract, and that threat usually suffices. It is generally believed.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: At any rate, it is taught that commerce only keeps
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: to its engagements from fear of lawsuits. Nothing of the sort.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Nine times in ten the trader who is not kept
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: his word will not appear before a judge. There Where
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: trade is very great, as in London, the sole fact
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: of having driven a creditor to bring a lawsuit suffices
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: for the immense majority of merchants to refuse for good
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: to have any dealings with a man who has compelled
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: one of them to go to law. Then why should
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: means that are used today among mates in the workshop,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: traders and railway companies not be made use of in
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: a society based on voluntary work. Take, for example, and
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: associating stipulating that each of its members should carry out
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: the following contract quote. We undertake to give you the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: use of our houses, stores, streets, means of transport, schools, museums, etc.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: On a condition that from twenty to forty five or
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: fifty years of age, you consecrate four or five hours
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: a day to some work recognized as necessary to existence.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Choose yourself the producing groups which you wish to join,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: or organize a new group, provided that they will undertake
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: to produce necessaries. And as for the remainder of your time,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: combine together with those you like for recreation, art, or science,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: according to the bent of your taste. Twelve or fifteen
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: hundred hours of work a year in a group producing food, clothes,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: or houses, or employed in public health, transport, et cetera
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: is all we ask of you for this work. We
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: guarantee to you all that these groups produce or will produce.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: But if not, one of the thousands of group of
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: our federation will receive you, whatever be their motive. If
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: you are absolutely incapable of producing anything useful, or if
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: you refuse to do it, then live like an isolated man,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: or liken it invalid. If we are rich enough to
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: give you the necessaries of life, we shall be delighted
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: to give them to you. You are a man, and
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: you have the right to live. But as you wish
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: to live under special conditions and leave the ranks, it
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: is more than probable that you will suffer for it.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: In your daily relations with other citizens, you will be
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: looked upon as a ghost of bourgeois society. Unless some
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: friends of yours, discovering you to be a talent, kindly
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: free you from all moral obligation towards society by doing
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: necessary work for you. And lastly, if it does not
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: please you, go and look for other conditions elsewhere in
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: the wide world, or else seek adherents and organize with
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: them on novel principles. We prefer our own unquote. This
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: is what could be done in a communal society in
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: order to turn away sluggards if they become too numerous.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Part four. We very much doubt that we need fear
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: this contingency in a society really based on the entire
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: freedom of the individual. In fact, in spite of the
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: premium of idleness offered by private ownership of capital, the
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: really lazy man, unless he is ill, is comparatively rare
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: among workmen. It is often said that the bourgeois are idlers.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: There are certainly enough of them, but they too are
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: the exception. On the contrary, in every industrial enterprise you
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: are sure to find one or more bourgeois who work
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: very hard. It is true that the majority of bourgeois
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: profit by their privileged position to award themselves the least
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: unpleasant tasks, and that they work under hygienic conditions of air, food, etc.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Which permit them to do their business without too much fatigue.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: But these are precisely the conditions which we claim for
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: all workers without exception. We may also say that, if,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: thanks to their privileged position, rich people often make absolutely
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: useless or even harmful work in society, nevertheless, the ministers,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: heads of departments, factory owners, traders, bankers, etc. Subject themselves
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: for a few hours a day to work which they
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: find themselves more or less tiresome, all preferring their hours
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: of leisure to this obligatory work. And if in nine
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: cases out of ten this work is faithful, they find
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: it nonetheless hiring. For that. But it is precisely because
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: the middle class put forth a great energy, even in
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: doing harm knowingly or not, and defending their privileged position,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: that they have succeeded in defeating the landed nobility, and
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: that they continue to rule the masses. If they were idlers,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: they would long since have ceased to exist and would
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: have disappeared, like the aristocrats in a society that would
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: expect only four or five hours a day of useful
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: pleasant and hygienic work. They would perform their task perfectly,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: and they certainly would not put up with horrible conditions
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: in which men toil nowadays without reforming them. If a
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Huxley spent only five hours in the sewers of London,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: rest assured that he would have found the means of
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: making them as sanitary as his physiological laboratory. As to
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: the laziness of the great majority of workers, only philistine
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: economists and philanthropists say such nonsense. If you ask an
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: intelligent manufacturer, he will tell you that if workmen only
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: put it into their heads to be lazy, all factories
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: would have to be closed for no measure of severity.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: No system of spying would be of any use. You
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: should as seen the terror cause in eighteen eighty seven
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: among British employers when a few agitators started preaching the
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: quote go canny theory quote for bad pay, bad work,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: quote take it easy, do not overwork yourselves and waste
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: all you can quote. They demoralize the worker. They want
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: to kill industry unquote, cried those who formerly invade against
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: the morality of the worker and the bad quality of
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: his work. But if the worker were what he is
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: represented it to be, namely the idler whom you have
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: to continually threaten with dismissal from the workshop. What would
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: the word demoralization signify? So when we speak of possible idleness,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: we must well understand that it is a question of
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: a small minority in society. And before legis for that minority,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: would it not be wise to study its origin? Whoever
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: observes with Anhalton eye sees well enough that the child
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: reputed lazy at school is often the one which does
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: not understand what he is badly taught. Very often, too,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: it is suffering from cerebral anemia caused by poverty and
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: an anti hygienic education. A boy who is lazy at
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Greek or Latin would work admirably where he taught in science,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: especially if taught by the medium of manual labor. A
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: girl reputed not at mathematics becomes the first mathematician of
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: her class if she, by chance meets someone who can
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: explain to her the elements of arithmetic she did not understand.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: And a workman lazy in the workshop cultivates his garden
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: at dawn while gazing at the rising sun, and will
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: be at work again at nightfall, when all nature goes
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: to rest. Somebody said that dirt is matter in the
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: wrong place. The same definition applies to nine tenths of
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: those called lazy. They are people gone astray in a
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: direction that does not answer to their temperament nor to
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: their capacities. In reading the biography of great men, we
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: are struck with a number of idlers. Among them. They
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: were lazy as long as they had not found the
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: right path, and afterwards laborious to excess. Darwin Stevenson and
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: many others belong to this category of idlers. Very often
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: the idler is but a man to whom it is
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: repungent to make all his life the eighteenth part of
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: a pin or the hundredth part of a watch, while
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: he feels he has exuberant energy which he would like
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: to expend elsewhere. Often, too, he is a rebel who
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: cannot submit to being fixed all his life to a
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: work bench in order to procure a thousand pleasures for
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: his employer, while knowing himself to be the far less
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: stupid of the two, and knowing his only fault to
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: be that of having been born in a hovel instead
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: of coming into the world in a castle, lastly a good.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Many idlers do not know the trade by which they
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: are compelled to earn for their living. Seeing the imperfect
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: thing made by their own hands, striving vainly to do better,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: and perceiving that they never will succeed on account of
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: the bad habits of work already acquired, they begin to
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: hate their trade, and, not knowing any other, hate work
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: in general. Thousands of workmen and artists who are failures
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: suffer from this cause. On the other hand, he who
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: since his youth has learned to play the piano well,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: to handle the plans well, the chisel, the brush, or
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: the file, so that he feels that what he does
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: is beautiful, will never give up the piano, the chisel,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: or the file. He will find pleasure in his work
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: which does not tire him, as long as he is
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: not overdriven. Under the one name idleness, a series of
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: results due to different causes have been grouped, of which
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: each one could be a source of good instead of
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: being a source of evil to society. Like all questions
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: concerning criminality and related to human faculties, facts have been collected,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: having nothing in common with one another. They say laziness
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: or crime without giving themselves the trouble to analyze their cause.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: They are in haste to punish them without inquiring if
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: the punishment itself does not contain a premium on laziness
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: or crime. This is why a free society, seeing the
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: number of idlers increasing in its myths, would no doubt
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: think of looking for the cause of laziness in order
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: to suppress it before having recourse to punishment. When it
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: is the case, as we have already mentioned, of simple bloodlessness,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: then before stuffing a brain of a child with science,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: nourish the system so as to produce blood, strengthen him,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: and that he shall not waste his time. Take him
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: to the country or to the sea side. There, teach
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: him in the open air, non in books, geometry by
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: measuring the distance to aspire or the height of a tree,
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Natural sciences while picking flowers, and fishing in the sea,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: physical science while building the boat. He will go fishing,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: But for mercy's sake, do not fill his brain with
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: sentences and dead languages. Do not make an idler of him.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Such a child has neither order nor regular habits. Let
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: first the children inculate order among themselves, and later on
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: the laboratory. The workshop. Work done in a limited space
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: with many tools about, will teach them method, but do
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: not make them disorderly beings out of them by your school,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: whose only order is the symmetry of its benches, and
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: which true image of the chaos and his teachings will
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: never inspire anyone with the love of harmony, of consistency
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: and method in work. Do you not see that by
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: your methods of teaching, frame by a ministry of eight
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: million scholars who represent eight million different capacities, you only
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: impose a system good for his mediocracies. Conceived by an
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: average of mediocracies. Your school becomes a university of laziness,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: as your prison is a university of crime. Make the
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: school free, abolish your university grades. Appeal to the volunteers
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: of teaching. Begin that way, instead of making laws against laziness,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: which only serve to increase it. Give the workman who
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: is compelled to make a minute particle of some object,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: who is stifled at his little tapping machine, which he
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: ends by loathing, Give him a chance of tilling the soil,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: felling trees in the forest, sailing the seas in the
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: teeth of a storm, dashing through space on an engine.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: But do not make him an idler of him by
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: forcing him all his life to attend to a small machine,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: to plow the head of a screw, or to drill
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: the eye of a needle. Suppress the cause of idleness,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: and you may take it for granted that a few
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: individuals will really hate work, especially voluntary work, and that
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: there will be no need to manufacture a code of
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: laws on their account. End of Chapter twelve.