WILL COMMUNIST ANARCHISM WORK? the courts with their j_udges,record ke~J?:rs, bailiffs, _etc; the legion of attorneys with theu staffs; the rruhtia and. pohce forces; the churches and monasteries; the charity institutions and poorhouses; the prisons with their ward~ns, officers, and. the non-productive convict population ; the army of advertisers apd their helpers, whose business it is to persuade you to buy what you don't want or noed,. not to speak of the numerous ekments that live luxuriously in entire idlen~s!\.. All these mount into the millions in every .country. Now if all those millions would apply themselves to useful labour, would the worker have to drudge eight hours a day ? If 30 men. have to put in eight houi;s to perform ~ certain task, ?ow much less time would it take 120 men to accomphsh the same thmg ? I don't want to burden you with statistics, but there are ,enough data to prove that less than 3 hours of daily physical effort would be· sufficient to do the world's work. Can you doubt that even the hardest toil would become a pleasure· instead of the cursed slavery it is at present, if only three hours a day were required, and that under the most sanitary and hygienic conditions, in an atmosphere of brotherhood and respect for labour ? But it is not difficult to foresee the day when even those short hours would be still further reduced. For we are constantly improving our technical methods, and new labour-saving machinery is being· invented all the time. Mechanical progress means less work and greater comforts, as you can see by comparing life in the United· States with that in Chin~ or India.. In -the latter countries they toil' long hours to secure the barest necessities of existence, while in. America even the average labourer enjoys a much higher standard of living with fewer hours ·of work. The advance of science and· invention signifiesmore leisure for the pursuits we love. I have sketched in large, broad outline the possibilities· of life· under a sensible system where profit is abolished. It is not necessary to go into the minute details of such a social condition : sufficient has been said to show that Communist Anarchism means the greatest material welfare with a life of liberty for each and all. We can visualize the time when labour will have become a pleasant exercise, a joyous application of physical effort to the needs of the world. Man will. then look back at our present day and wonder that work_could ever have been slavery, and que.;tion the sanity of·. a generation that suffered less than one-fifth of its population to earn t~e bread for the rest by the sweat of their browywhile those others idled and wast,ed their time, their health, and the people's wealth. They will wonder that the freest satisfaction of man's needs could have even been considered as anything but self-evident,. 35 B1blloteca G ro B1a'lc1.;1
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTExMDY2NQ==