This is the 24th installment of Alexander Berkman's book, What is Communist Anarchism, it can be found in the Anarchists' Library.
Chapter 22: Will Communist Anarchism Work?
As we have seen in the preceding chapter, no life can be free and secure, harmonious and satisfactory unless it is built on principles of justice and fair play.
The first requirement of justice is equal liberty and opportunity.
Under government and exploitation there can be neither equal liberty nor equal opportunity — hence all the evils and troubles of present-day society.
Communist Anarchism is based on the understanding of this incontrovertible truth.
It is founded on the principle of non-invasiveness and non-coercion; in other words, on liberty and opportunity.
Life on such a basis fully satisfies the demands of justice.
You are to be entirely free, and everybody else is to enjoy equal liberty, which means that no one has a right to compel or force another, for coercion of any kind is interference with your liberty.
Similarly equal opportunity is the heritage of all.
Monopoly and the private ownership of the means of existence are therefore eliminated as an abridgement of the equal opportunity of all.
If we keep in mind this simple principle of equal liberty and opportunity, we shall be able to solve the questions involved in building a society of Communist Anarchism.
Politically, then, man will recognize no authority which can force or coerce him.
Government will be abolished.
Economically he will permit no exclusive possession of the sources of life in order to preserve his opportunity of free access.
Monopoly of land, private ownership of the machinery of production, distribution, and communication can therefore not be tolerated under Anarchy.
Opportunity to use what every one needs in order to live must be free to all.
In a nutshell, then, the meaning of Communist Anarchism is this: the abolition of government, of coercive authority and all its agencies, and joint ownership-which means free and equal participation in the general work and welfare.
“You said that Anarchy will secure economic equality,” remarks your friend.
“Does that mean equal pay for all?”
It does.
Or, what amounts to the same, equal participation in the public welfare.
Because, as we already know, labor is social.
No man can create anything all by himself, by his own efforts.
Now, then, if labor is social, it stands to reason that the results of it, the wealth produced, must also be social, belong to the collectivity.
No person can therefore justly lay claim to the exclusive ownership of the social wealth.
It is to be enjoyed by all alike.
“But why not give each according to the value of his work?” you ask.
Because there is no way by which value can be measured.
That is the difference between value and price.
Value is what a thing is worth, while price is what it can be sold or bought for in the market.
What a thing is worth no one really can tell.
Political economists generally claim that the value of a commodity is the amount of labor required to produce it, of “socially necessary labor,” as Marx says.
But evidently it is not a just standard of measurement.
Suppose the carpenter worked three hours to make a kitchen chair, while the surgeon took only half an hour to perform an operation that saved your life.
If the amount of labor used determines value, then the chair is worth more than your life.
Obvious nonsense, of course.
Even if you should count in the years of study and practice the surgeon needed to make him capable of performing the operation, how are you going to decide what “an hour of operating” is worth?
The carpenter and mason also had to be trained before they could do their work properly, but you don’t figure in those years of apprenticeship when you contract for some work with them.
Besides, there is also to be considered the particular ability and aptitude that every worker, writer, artist or physician must exercise in his labors.
That is a purely individual, personal factor.
How are you going to estimate its value?
That is why value cannot be determined.
The same thing may be worth a lot to one person while it is worth nothing or very little to another.
It may be worth much or little even to the same person, at different times.
A diamond, a painting, or a book may be worth a great deal to one man and very little to another.
A loaf of bread will be worth a great deal to you when you are hungry, and much less when you are not.
Therefore the real value of a thing cannot be ascertained; it is an unknown quantity.
But the price is easily found out.
If there are five loaves of bread to be had and ten persons want to get a loaf each, the price of bread will rise.
If there are ten loaves and only five buyers, then it will fall.
Price depends on supply and demand.
The exchange of commodities by means of prices leads to profit making, to taking advantage and exploitation; in short, to some form of capitalism.
If you do away with profits, you cannot have any price system, nor any system of wages or payment.
That means that exchange must be according to value.
But as value is uncertain or not ascertainable, exchange must consequently be free, without “equal” value, since such does not exist.
In other words, labor and its products must be exchanged without price, without profit, freely, according to necessity.
This logically leads to ownership in common and to joint use.
Which is a sensible, just, and equitable system, and is known as Communism.
“But is it just that all should share alike?” you demand.
“The man of brains and the dullard, the efficient and the inefficient, all the same?
Should there be no distinction, no special recognition for those of ability?”
Let me in turn ask you, my friend, shall we punish the man whom nature has not endowed as generously as his stronger or more talented neighbor?
Shall we add injustice to the handicap nature has put upon him?
All we can reasonably expect from any man is that he do his best — can any one do more?
And if John’s best is not as good as his brother Jim’s, it is his misfortune, but in no case a fault to be punished.
There is nothing more dangerous than discrimination.
The moment you begin discriminating against the less capable, you establish conditions that breed dissatisfaction and resentment: you invite envy, discord, and strife.
You would think it brutal to withhold from the less capable the air or water they need.
Should not the same principle apply to the other wants of man?
After all, the matter of food, clothing, and shelter is the smallest item in the world’s economy.
The surest way to get one to do his best is not by discriminating against him, but by treating him on an equal footing with others.
That is the most effective encouragement and stimulus. It is just and human.
“But what will you do with the lazy man, the man who does not want to work?” inquires your friend.
That is an interesting question, and you will probably be very much surprised when I say that there is really no such thing as laziness.
What we call a lazy man is generally a square man in a round hole.
That is, the right man in the wrong place.
And you will always find that when a fellow is in the wrong place, he will be inefficient or shiftless.
For so-called laziness and a good deal of inefficiency are merely unfitness, misplacement.
If you are compelled to do the thing you are unfitted for by your inclinations or temperament, you will be inefficient at it; if you are forced to do work you are not interested in, you will be lazy at it.
Every one who has managed affairs in which large numbers of men were employed can substantiate this.
Life in prison is a particularly convincing proof of the truth of it — and, after all, present-day existence for most people is but that of a larger jail.
Every prison warden will tell you that inmates put to tasks for which they have no ability or interest are always lazy and subject to continuous punishment.
But as soon as these “refractory convicts” are assigned to work that appeals to their leanings, they become “model men,” as the jailers term them.
Russia has also signally demonstrated the verity of it.
It has shown how little we know of human potentialities and of the effect of environment upon them — how we mistake wrong conditions for bad conduct.
Russian refugees, leading a miserable and insignificant life in foreign lands, on returning home and finding in the Revolution a proper field for their activities, have accomplished most wonderful work in their right sphere, have developed into brilliant organizers, builders of railroads and creators of industry.
Among the Russian names best known abroad to-day are those of men considered shiftless and inefficient under conditions where their ability and energies could not find proper application.
That is human nature: efficiency in a certain direction means inclination and capability for it; industry and application signify interest.
That is why there is so much inefficiency and laziness in the world to-day.
For who indeed is nowadays in his right place?
Who works at what he really likes and is interested in?
Under present conditions there is little choice given the average man to devote himself to the tasks that appeal to his leanings and preferences.
The accident of your birth and social station generally predetermines your trade or profession.
The son of the financier does not, as a rule, become a woodchopper, though he may be more fit to handle logs than bank accounts.
The middle classes send their children to colleges which turn them into doctors, lawyers, or engineers.
But if your parents were workers who could not afford to let you study, the chances are that you will take any job which is offered you, or enter some trade that happens to afford you an apprenticeship.
Your particular situation will decide your work or profession, not your natural preferences, inclinations, or abilities.
Is it any wonder, then, that most people, the overwhelming majority, in fact, are misplaced?
Ask the first hundred men you meet whether they would have selected the work they are doing, or whether they would continue in it, if they were free to choose, and ninety-nine of them will admit that they would prefer some other occupation.
Necessity and material advantages, or the hope of them, keep most people in the wrong place.
It stands to reason that a person can give the best of himself only when his interest is in his work, when he feels a natural attraction to it, when he likes it.
Then he will be industrious and efficient.
The things the craftsman produced in the days before modern capitalism were objects of joy and beauty, because the artisan loved his work.
Can you expect the modern drudge in the ugly huge factory to make beautiful things?
He is part of the machine, a cog in the soulless industry, his labor mechanical, forced.
Add to this his feeling that he is not working for himself but for the benefit of some one else, and that he hates his job or at best has no interest in it except that it secures his weekly wage.
The result is shirking, inefficiency, laziness.
The need of activity is one of the most fundamental urges of man. Watch the child and see how strong is his instinct for action, for movement, for doing something.
Strong and continuous.
It is the same with the healthy man.
His energy and vitality demand expression.
Permit him to do the work of his choice, the thing he loves, and his application will know neither weariness nor shirking.
You can observe this in the factory worker when he is lucky enough to own a garden or a patch of ground to raise some flowers or vegetables on.
Tired from his toil as he is, he enjoys the hardest labor for his own benefit, done from free choice.
Under Anarchism each will have the opportunity of following whatever occupation will appeal to his natural inclinations and aptitude.
Work will become a pleasure instead of the deadening drudgery it is to-day.
Laziness will be unknown, and the things created by interest and love will be objects of beauty and joy.
“But can labor ever become a pleasure?” you demand.
Labor is toil to-day, unpleasant, exhausting, and wearisome.
But usually it is not the work itself that is so hard: it is the conditions under which you are compelled to labor that make it so.
Particularly the long hours, unsanitary workshops, bad treatment, insufficient pay, and so on.
Yet the most unpleasant work could be made lighter by improving the environment.
Take gutter cleaning, for instance.
It is dirty work and poorly paid for.
But suppose, for example, that you should get 20 dollars a day instead of 5 dollars for such work.
You will immediately find your job much lighter and pleasanter.
The number of applicants for the work would increase at once.
Which means that men are not lazy, not afraid of hard and unpleasant labor if it is properly rewarded.
But such work is considered menial and is looked down upon.
Why is it considered menial?
Is it not most useful and absolutely necessary?
Would not epidemics sweep our city but for the street and gutter cleaners?
Surely, the men who keep our town clean and sanitary are real benefactors, more vital to our health and welfare than the family physician.
From the viewpoint of social usefulness the street cleaner is the professional colleague of the doctor: the latter treats us when we are ill, but the former helps us keep well.
Yet the physician is looked up to and respected, while the street cleaner is slighted.
Why?
Is it because the street cleaner’s work is dirty?
But the surgeon often has much “dirtier” jobs to perform.
Then why is the street cleaner scorned?
Because he earns little.
In our perverse civilization things are valued according to money standards.
Persons doing the most useful work are lowest in the social scale when their employment is ill paid.
Should something happen, however, that would cause the street cleaner to get 100 dollars a day, while the physician earns so, the “dirty” street cleaner would immediately rise in estimation and social station, and from the “filthy laborer” he would become the much-sought man of good income.
You see that it is pay, remuneration, the wage scale, not worth or merit, that to-day-under our system of profit determines the value of work as well as the “worth” of a man.
A sensible society — under Anarchist conditions — would have entirely different standards of judging such matters.
People will then be appreciated according to their willingness to be socially useful.
Can you perceive what great changes such a new attitude would produce?
Every one yearns for the respect and admiration of his fellow men; it is a tonic we cannot live without.
Even in prison I have seen how the clever pickpocket or safe blower longs for the appreciation of his friends and how hard he tries to earn their good estimate of him.
The opinions of our circle rule our behavior.
The social atmosphere to a profound degree determines our values and our attitude.
Your personal experience will tell you how true this is, and therefore you will not be surprised when I say that in an Anarchist society it will be the most useful and difficult toil that men will seek rather than the lighter job.
If you consider this, you will have no more fear of laziness or shirking.
But the hardest and most onerous task could be made easier and cleaner than is the case today.
The capitalist employer does not care to spend money, if he can help it, to make the toil of his employees pleasanter and brighter.
He will introduce improvements only when he hopes to gain larger profits thereby, but he will not go to extra expense out of purely humanitarian reasons.
Though here I must remind you that the more intelligent employers are beginning to see that it pays to improve their factories, make them more sanitary and hygienic, and generally better the conditions of labor.
They realize it is a good investment: it results in the increased contentment and consequent greater efficiency of their workers.
The principle is sound.
To-day, of course, it is being exploited for the sole purpose of bigger profits.
But under Anarchism it would be applied not for the sake of personal gain, but in the interest of the workers’ health, for the lightening of labor.
Our progress in mechanics is so great and continually advancing that most of the hard toil could be eliminated by the use of modern machinery and labor saving devices.
In many industries, as in coal mining, for instance, new safety and sanitary appliances are not introduced because of the masters’ indifference to the welfare of their employees and on account of the expenditure involved.
But in a non-profit system technical science would work exclusively with the aim of making labor safer, healthier, lighter, and more pleasant.
“But however light you’ll make work, eight hours a day of it is no pleasure,” objects your friend.
You are perfectly right.
But did you ever stop to consider why we have to work eight hours a day?
Do you know that not so long ago people used to slave twelve and fourteen hours, and that it is still the case in backward countries like China and India?
It can be statistically proven that three hours’ work a day, at most, is sufficient to feed, shelter, and clothe the world and supply it not only with necessities but also with all modern comforts of life.
The point is that not one man in five is to-day doing any productive work.
The entire world is supported by a small minority of toilers.
First of all, consider the amount of work done in present-day society that would become unnecessary under Anarchist conditions.
Take the armies and navies of the world, and think how many millions of men would be released for useful and productive effort once war is abolished, as would of course be the case under Anarchy.
In every country to-day labor supports the millions who contribute nothing to the welfare of the country, who create nothing, and perform no useful work whatever.
Those millions are only consumers, without being producers.
In the United States, for instance, out of a population of 120 millions there are less than 30 million workers, farmers included. [16]
A similar situation is the rule in every land.
Is it any wonder that labor has to toil long hours, since there are only 30 workers to every 120 persons?
The large business classes with their clerks, assistants, agents, and commercial travelers; the courts with their judges, record keepers, bailiffs, etc.; the legion of attorneys with their staffs; the militia and police forces; the churches and monasteries; the charity institutions and poorhouses; the prisons with their wardens, officers, keepers, and the non-productive convict population; the army of advertisers and their helpers, whose business it is to persuade you to buy what you don’t want or need, not to speak of the numerous elements that live luxuriously in entire idleness.
All these mount into the millions in every country.
Now, if all those millions would apply themselves to useful labor, would the worker have to drudge eight hours a day?
If 30 men have to put in eight hours to perform a certain task, how much less time would it ‘take 120 men to accomplish the same thing?
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 labor?
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 labor 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 China or India.
In the latter countries they toil long hours to secure the barest necessities of existence, while in America even the average laborer enjoys a much higher standard of living with fewer hours of work.
The advance of science and invention signifies more leisure for the pursuits we love.
I have sketched in large, broad outline the possibilities of i e 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 labor 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 question the sanity of a generation that suffered less than one fifth of its population to earn the bread for the rest by the sweat of their brow while those others idled and wasted their time, their health, and the people’s wealth.
They will wonder that the freest satisfaction of man’s needs could have ever been considered as anything but self-evident, or that people naturally seeking the same objects insisted on making life hard and miserable by mutual strife.
They will refuse to believe that the whole existence of man was a continuous struggle for food in a world rich with luxuries, a struggle that left the great majority neither time nor strength for the higher quest of the heart and mind.
“But will not life under Anarchy, in economic and social equality mean general leveling?” you ask.
No, my friend, quite the contrary.
Because equality does not mean an equal amount but equal opportunity.
It does not mean, for instance, that if Smith needs five meals a day, Johnson also must have as many.
If Johnson wants only three meals while Smith requires five, the quantity each consumes may be unequal, but both men are perfectly equal in the opportunity each has to consume as much as he needs, as much as his particular nature demands.
Do not make the mistake of identifying equality in liberty with the forced equality of the convict camp.
True Anarchist equality implies freedom, not quantity.
It does not mean that every one must eat, drink, or wear the same things, do the same work, or live in the same manner.
Far from it; the very reverse, in fact.
Individual needs and tastes differ, as appetites differ.
It is equal opportunity to satisfy them that constitutes true equality.
Far from leveling, such equality opens the door for the greatest possible variety of activity and development.
For human character is diverse, and only the repression of this diversity results in leveling, in uniformity and sameness.
Free opportunity of expressing and acting out your individuality means development of natural dissimilarities and variations.
It is said that no two blades of grass are alike.
Much less so are human beings.
In the whole wide world no two persons are exactly similar even in physical appearance; still more dissimilar are they in their physiological, mental, and psychical make-up.
Yet in spite of this diversity and of a thousand and one differentiations of character we compel people to be alike to-day.
Our life and habits, our behavior and manners, even our thoughts and feelings are pressed into a uniform mold and fashioned into sameness.
The spirit of authority, law, written and unwritten, tradition and custom force us into a common groove and make of man a will-less automaton without independence or individuality.
This moral and intellectual bondage is more compelling than any physical coercion, more devastating to our manhood and development.
All of us are its victims, and only the exceptionally strong succeed in breaking its chains, and that only partly.
The authority of the past and of the present dictates not only our behavior but dominates our very minds and souls, and is continuously at work to stifle every symptom of non-conformity, of independent attitude and unorthodox opinion.
The whole weight of social condemnation comes down upon the head of the man or woman who dares defy conventional codes.
Ruthless vengeance is wreaked upon the protestant who refuses to follow the beaten track, or upon the heretic who disbelieves in the accepted formulas.
In science and art, in literature, poetry, and painting this spirit compels adaptation and adjustment, resulting in imitation of the established and approved, in uniformity and sameness, in stereotyped expression.
But more terribly still is punished non-conformity in actual life, in our every-day relationships and behavior.
The painter and writer may occasionally be forgiven for defiance of custom and precedent because, after all, their rebellion is limited to paper or canvas: it affects only a comparatively small circle.
They may be disregarded or labeled cranks who can do little harm, but not so with the man of action who carries his challenge of accepted standards into social life.
Not harmless he.
He is dangerous by the power of example, by his very presence.
His infraction of social canons can be neither ignored nor forgiven.
He will be denounced as an enemy of society.
It is for this reason that revolutionary feeling or thought expressed in exotic poetry or masked in high-brow philosophic dissertations may be condoned, may pass the official and unofficial censor, because it is neither accessible to nor understood by the public at large.
But give voice to the same dissenting attitude in a popular manner, and immediately you will face the frothing denunciation of all the forces that stand for the preservation of the established.
More vicious and deadening is compulsory compliance than the most virulent poison.
Throughout the ages it has been the greatest impediment to man’s advance, hedging him in with a thousand prohibitions and taboos, weighting his mind and heart down with outlived canons and codes, thwarting his will with imperatives of thought and feeling, with “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not” of behavior and action.
Life, the art of living, has become a dull formula, flat and inert.
Yet so strong is the innate diversity of man’s nature that centuries of this stultification have not succeeded in entirely eradicating his originality and uniqueness.
True, the great majority have fallen into ruts so deepened by countless feet that they cannot get back to the broad spaces.
But some do break away from the beaten track and find the open road where new vistas of beauty and inspiration beckon to heart and spirit.
These the world condemns, but little by little it follows their example and lead, and finally it comes up abreast of them.
In the meantime those pathfinders have gone much further or died, and then we build monuments to them and glorify the men we have vilified and crucified as we go on crucifying their brothers in spirit, the pioneers of our own day.
Beneath this spirit of intolerance and persecution is the habit of authority: coercion to conform to dominant standards, compulsion — moral and legal — to be and act as others, according to precedent and rule.
But the general view that conformity is a natural trait is entirely false.
On the contrary, given the least chance, unimpeded by the mental habits instilled from the very cradle, man evidences uniqueness and originality.
Observe children, for instance, and you will see most varied differentiation in manner and attitude, in mental and psychic expression.
You will discover an instinctive tendency to individuality and independence, to non-conformity, manifested in open and secret defiance of the will imposed from the outside, in rebellion against the authority of parent and teacher.
The whole training and “education” of the child is a continuous process of stifling and crushing this tendency, the eradication of his distinctive characteristics, of his unlikeness to others, of his personality and originality.
Yet even in spite of year-long repression, suppression, and molding, some originality persists in the child when it reaches maturity, which shows how deep are the springs of individuality.
Take any two persons, for example, who have witnessed some tragedy, a big fire, let us say, at the same time and place.
Each will tell the story in a different manner, each will be original in his way of relating it and in the impression he will produce, because of his naturally different psychology.
But talk to the same two persons on some fundamental social matter, about life and government, for instance, and immediately you hear expressed an exactly similar attitude, the accepted view, the dominant mentality.
Why?
Because where man is left free to think and feel for himself, unhindered by precept and rule, and not restrained by the fear of being “different” and unorthodox, with the unpleasant consequences it involves, he will be independent and free.
But the moment the conversation touches matters within the sphere of our social imperatives, one is in the clutches of the taboos and becomes a copy and a parrot.
Life in freedom, in Anarchy, will do more than liberate man merely from his present political and economic bondage.
That will be only the first step, the preliminary to a truly human existence.
Far greater and more significant will be the results of such liberty, its effects upon man’s mind, upon his personality.
The abolition of the coercive external will, and with it of the fear of authority, will loosen the bonds of moral compulsion no less than of economic and physical.
Man’s spirit will breathe freely, and that mental emancipation will be the birth of a new culture, of a new humanity.
Imperatives and taboos will disappear, and man will begin to be himself, to develop and express his individual tendencies and uniqueness.
Instead of “thou shalt not,” the public conscience will say “thou mayest, taking full responsibility.”
That will be a training in human dignity and self-reliance, beginning at home and in school, which will produce a new race with a new attitude to life.
The man of the coming day will see and feel existence on an entirely different plane.
Living to him will be an art and a joy.
He will cease to consider it as a race where every one must try to become as good a runner as the fastest.
He will regard leisure as more important than work, and work will fall into its proper, subordinate place as the means to leisure, to the enjoyment of life.
Life will mean the striving for finer cultural values, the penetration of nature’s mysteries, the attainment of higher truth.
Free to exercise the limitless possibilities of his mind, to pursue his love of knowledge, to apply his inventive genius, to create, and to soar on the wings of imagination, man will reach his full stature and become man indeed.
He will grow and develop according to his nature.
He will scorn uniformity, and human diversity will give him increased interest in, and a more satisfying sense of, the richness of being.
Life to him will not consist in functioning but in living, and he will attain the greatest kind of freedom man is capable of, freedom in joy.
“That day lies far in the future,” you say; “how shall we bring it about?”
Far in the future, maybe; yet perhaps not so far — one cannot tell.
At any rate we should always hold our ultimate object in view if we are to remain on the right road.
The change I have described will not come over night; nothing ever does.
It will be a gradual development, as everything in nature and social life is.
But a logical, necessary, and, I dare say, an inevitable development.
Inevitable, because the whole trend of man’s growth has been in that direction; even if in zigzags, often losing its way, yet always returning to the right path.
How, then, might it be brought about?
