Socialism and Modern Science | Page 6

individual.
The peasant who digs the earth performs a kind of labor in appearance more modest, but just as necessary, useful and meritorious as that of the workman who builds a locomotive, of the mechanical engineer who improves it or of the savant who strives to extend the bounds of human knowledge in his study or laboratory.
The one essential thing is that all the members of society work, just as in the individual organism all the cells perform their different functions, more or less modest in appearance--for example, the nerve-cells, the bone-cells or the muscular cells--but all biological functions, or sorts of labor, equally useful and necessary to the life of the organism as a whole.
In the biological organism no living cell remains inactive, and the cell obtains nourishment by material exchanges only in proportion to its labor; in the social organism no individual ought to live without working, whatever form his labor may take.
In this way the majority of the artificial difficulties that our opponents raise against socialism may be swept aside.
"Who, then, will black the boots under the socialist regime?" demands M. Richter in his book so poor in ideas, but which becomes positively grotesque when it assumes that, in the name of social equality the "grand chancellor" of the socialist society will be obliged, before attending to the public business, to black his own boots and mind his own clothes! In truth, if the adversaries of socialism had nothing but arguments of this sort, discussion would indeed be needless.
But all will want to do the least fatiguing and most agreeable kinds of work, says some one with a greater show of seriousness.
I will answer that this is equivalent to demanding to-day the promulgation of a decree as follows: Henceforth all men shall be born painters or surgeons!
The distribution to the proper persons of the different kinds of mental and manual labor will be effected in fact by the anthropological variations in temperament and character, and there will be no need to resort to monkish regulations (another baseless objection to socialism).
Propose to a peasant of average intelligence to devote himself to the study of anatomy or of the penal code or, inversely, tell him whose brain is more highly developed than his muscles to dig the earth, instead of observing with the microscope. They will each prefer the labor for which they feel themselves best fitted.
The changes of occupation or profession will not be as considerable as many imagine when society shall be organized under the collectivist regime. When once the industries ministering to purely personal luxury shall be suppressed--luxury which in most cases insults and aggravates the misery of the masses--the quantity and variety of work will adapt themselves gradually, that is to say naturally, to the socialist phase of civilization just as they now conform to the bourgeois phase.
Moreover, under the socialist regime, every one will have the fullest liberty to declare and make manifest his personal aptitudes, and it will not happen, as it does to-day, that many peasants, sons of the people and of the lower middle class, gifted with natural talents, will be compelled to allow their talents to atrophy while they toil as peasants, workingmen or employees, when they would be able to furnish society a different and more fruitful kind of labor, because it would be more in Harmony with their peculiar genius.
The one essential point is this: In exchange for the labor that they furnish to society, society must guarantee to the peasant and the artisan, as well as to the one who devotes himself to the liberal careers, conditions of existence worthy of a human being. Then we will no longer be affronted by the spectacle of a ballet girl, for instance, earning as much in one evening by whirling on her toes as a scientist, a doctor, a lawyer, etc., in a year's work. In fact to-day the latter are in luck if they do that well.
Certainly, the arts will not be neglected under the socialist regime, because socialism wishes life to be agreeable for all, instead of for a privileged few only, as it is to-day; it will, on the contrary, give to all the arts a marvelous impulse, and if it abolishes private luxury this will be all the more favorable to the splendor of the public edifices.
More attention will be paid to assuring to each one remuneration in proportion to the labor performed. This ratio will be ascertained by taking the difficulty and danger of the labor into account and allowing them to reduce the time required for a given compensation. If a peasant in the open air can work seven or eight hours a day, a miner ought not to work more than three or four hours. And, indeed, when everybody shall work, when much