The Conquest of Bread | Page 8

does. But soon he finds that everywhere
there are similar competitors. All the nations evolve on the same lines,
and wars, perpetual wars, break out for the right of precedence in the
market. Wars for the possession of the East, wars for the empire of the
sea, wars to impose duties on imports and to dictate conditions to
neighbouring states; wars against those "blacks" who revolt! The roar
of the cannon never ceases in the world, whole races are massacred, the
states of Europe spend a third of their budgets in armaments; and we
know how heavily these taxes fall on the workers.
Education still remains the privilege of a small minority, for it is idle to
talk of education when the workman's child is forced, at the age of
thirteen, to go down into the mine or to help his father on the farm. It is
idle to talk of studying to the worker, who comes home in the evening
wearied by excessive toil, and its brutalizing atmosphere. Society is
thus bound to remain divided into two hostile camps, and in such
conditions freedom is a vain word. The Radical begins by demanding a
greater extension of political rights, but he soon sees that the breath of
liberty leads to the uplifting of the proletariat, and then he turns round,
changes his opinions, and reverts to repressive legislation and
government by the sword.

A vast array of courts, judges, executioners, policemen, and gaolers is
needed to uphold these privileges; and this array gives rise in its turn to
a whole system of espionage, of false witness, of spies, of threats and
corruption.
The system under which we live checks in its turn the growth of the
social sentiment. We all know that without uprightness, without
self-respect, without sympathy and mutual aid, human kind must perish,
as perish the few races of animals living by rapine, or the slave-keeping
ants. But such ideas are not to the taste of the ruling classes, and they
have elaborated a whole system of pseudo-science to teach the
contrary.
Fine sermons have been preached on the text that those who have
should share with those who have not, but he who would carry out this
principle would be speedily informed that these beautiful sentiments
are all very well in poetry, but not in practice. "To lie is to degrade and
besmirch oneself," we say, and yet all civilized life becomes one huge
lie. We accustom ourselves and our children to hypocrisy, to the
practice of a double-faced morality. And since the brain is ill at ease
among lies, we cheat ourselves with sophistry. Hypocrisy and sophistry
become the second nature of the civilized man.
But a society cannot live thus; it must return to truth, or cease to exist.
Thus the consequences which spring from the original act of monopoly
spread through the whole of social life. Under pain of death, human
societies are forced to return to first principles: the means of production
being the collective work of humanity, the product should be the
collective property of the race. Individual appropriation is neither just
nor serviceable. All belongs to all. All things are for all men, since all
men have need of them, since all men have worked in the measure of
their strength to produce them, and since it is not possible to evaluate
every one's part in the production of the world's wealth.
All things for all. Here is an immense stock of tools and implements;
here are all those iron slaves which we call machines, which saw and
plane, spin and weave for us, unmaking and remaking, working up raw

matter to produce the marvels of our time. But nobody has the right to
seize a single one of these machines and say: "This is mine; if you want
to use it you must pay me a tax on each of your products," any more
than the feudal lord of medieval times had the right to say to the
peasant: "This hill, this meadow belong to me, and you must pay me a
tax on every sheaf of corn you reap, on every brick you build."
All is for all! If the man and the woman bear their fair share of work,
they have a right to their fair share of all that is produced by all, and
that share is enough to secure them well-being. No more of such vague
formulas as "The right to work," or "To each the whole result of his
labour." What we proclaim is THE RIGHT TO WELL-BEING:
WELL-BEING FOR ALL!
CHAPTER II
WELL-BEING FOR ALL
I
Well-being for all is not a dream. It is possible, realizable, owing to all
that our ancestors have done to increase our powers of production.
We know, indeed, that