The Conquest of Bread Peter Kropotkin (best summer reads of all time .txt) 📖

labour-notes, this new form of wagedom, when we admit that the houses, the fields, and the factories will no longer be private property⁠—that they will belong to the commune or the nation? II

Let us closely examine this system of remuneration for work done, preached by the French, German, English, and Italian collectivists (the Spanish anarchists, who still call themselves collectivists, imply by Collectivism the possession in common of all instruments of production, and the “liberty of each group to divide the produce, as they think fit, according to communist or any other principles”).

It amounts to this: Everybody works in field, factory, school, hospital, etc. The working-day is fixed by the State, which owns the land, the factories, the roads, etc. Every workday is paid for with a labour-note, which is inscribed with these words: Eight hours’ work. With this cheque the worker can procure all sorts of merchandise in the stores owned by the State or by diverse corporations. The cheque is divisible, so that you can buy an hour’s-work worth of meat, ten minutes’ worth of matches, or half an hour of tobacco. After the Collectivist Revolution, instead of saying “twopence worth of soap,” we shall say “five minutes’ worth of soap.”

Most collectivists, true to the distinction laid down by middle-class economists (and by Marx as well) between qualified work and simple work, tell us, moreover, that qualified or professional work must be paid a certain quantity more than simple work. Thus one hour’s work of a doctor will have to be considered as equivalent to two or three hours’ work of a hospital nurse, or to three or five hours’ work of a navvy. “Professional, or qualified work, will be a multiple of simple work,” says the collectivist Grönlund, “because this kind of work needs a more or less long apprenticeship.”

Some other collectivists, such as the French Marxist, Guesde, do not make this distinction. They proclaim the “Equality of Wages.” The doctor, the schoolmaster, and the professor will be paid (in labour-cheques) at the same rate as the navvy. Eight hours visiting the sick in a hospital will be worth the same as eight hours spent in earthworks or else in mines or factories.

Some make a greater concession; they admit that disagreeable or unhealthy work⁠—such as sewerage⁠—could be paid for at a higher rate than agreeable work. One hour’s work of a sewerman would be worth, they say, two hours of a professor’s work.

Let us add that certain collectivists admit of corporations being paid a lump sum for work done. Thus a corporation would say: “Here are a hundred tons of steel. A hundred workmen were required to produce them, and it took them ten days. Their workday being an eight-hours day, it has taken them 8,000 working hours to produce a hundred tons of steel⁠—eight hours a ton.” For this the State would pay them 8,000 labour-notes of one hour each, and these 8,000 cheques would be divided among the members of the ironworks as they themselves thought proper.

On the other hand, a hundred miners having taken twenty days to extract 8,000 tons of coal, coal would be worth two hours a ton, and the 16,000 cheques of one hour each, received by the Guild of Miners, would be divided among their members according to their own appreciation.

If the miners protested and said that a ton of steel should only cost six hours’ work instead of eight; if the professor wished to have his day paid four times more than the nurse, then the State would interfere and would settle their differences.

Such is, in a few words, the organization the collectivists wish to see arise out of the Social Revolution. As we see, their principles are: Collective property of the instruments of production, and remuneration to each according to the time spent in producing, while taking into account the productivity of his labour. As to the political system, it would be the Parliamentary system, modified by positive instructions given to those elected, and by the Referendum⁠—a vote, taken by noes or ayes by the nation.

Let us own that this system appears to us simply unrealizable.

Collectivists begin by proclaiming a revolutionary principle⁠—the abolition of private property⁠—and then they deny it, no sooner than proclaimed, by upholding an organization of production and consumption which originated in private property.

They proclaim a revolutionary principle, and ignore the consequences that this principle will inevitably bring about. They forget that the very fact of abolishing individual property in the instruments of work⁠—land, factories, road, capital⁠—must launch society into absolutely new channels; must completely overthrow the present system of production, both in its aim as well as in its means; must modify daily relations between individuals, as soon as land, machinery, and all other instruments of production are considered common property.

They say, “No private property,” and immediately after strive to maintain private property in its daily manifestations. “You shall be a Commune as far as regards production: fields, tools, machinery, all that has been invented up till now⁠—factories, railways, harbours, mines, etc., all are yours. Not the slightest distinction will be made concerning the share of each in this collective property.

“But from tomorrow you will minutely debate the share you are going to take in the creation of new machinery, in the digging of new mines. You will carefully weigh what part of the new produce belongs to you. You will count your minutes of work, and you will take care that a minute of your neighbours should not buy more than yours.

“And as an hour measures nothing, as in some factories a worker can see to six power-looms at a time, while in another he only tends two, you will weigh the muscular force, the brain energy, and the nervous energy you have expended. You will accurately calculate the years of apprenticeship in order to appraise the amount each will contribute to future production. And this⁠—after having declared that you do not take into account his share in