To study the mechanism of capitalistic society is sufficient to discover that it can produce nothing good. Aspirations towards the good and the beautiful must be perennial in the human race, not to have been choked by the rapacity and narrow, unreasoning egoism which official society has inculcated in it from the cradle. This society, as we have observed in the preceding chapter, is based upon the antagonism of interests, and makes every individual the enemy of his neighbor. The seller’s interest is opposed to the buyer’s; the stock-raiser and the agriculturist ask for nothing better than a “good epidemic and a good hailstorm” among their neighbors, in order to raise the price of their commodities, when they do not have recourse to the State which “protects” them, while seizing, by virtue of “superior right,” the products of their competitors; the development of mechanical appliances tends to greater and greater division of the workers, throwing them out of employment and leading them to disputes among themselves for the chance to take each other’s jobs, and the number of these is increasing largely beyond the demand. In fine, everything in our traditional “society” tends to split up mankind.
Why is there idleness and misery at the present moment? Because the stores are glutted with products. How is it that it has not yet occurred to anybody to set them on fire or take possession of them, and thus procure that employment which is refused, by creating among the workers themselves the markets which their exploiters go so far to seek?—“Because we are afraid of the soldiers and militia,” does someone say? This fear is real, but it does not of itself suffice to explain the apathy of the starving. How many occasions present themselves in the course of one’s life to do wrong without the slightest risk, and yet one does not commit it for other reasons than for fear of the soldiery. And besides, the starving, if they should all unite, are numerous enough, in Paris, for instance, not to be afraid of the troops, to hold the police-force in check for a whole day, empty the stores, and have a good feast for once. In the case of those who go to prison for tramping and begging, is it in reality the fear of prison which makes them beg for that which it would cost them no more to take? It is because in addition to cowardice there is a sentiment of sociability which prevents people from returning evil for evil, and makes them submit to the heaviest shackles in the belief that these are necessary to the functioning of society. Does anyone believe that force alone would suffice to ensure respect for property, were it not mingled in the people’s minds with a character of legitimacy which makes them accept it as the result of individual labor? Have the severest penalties ever prevented those who, without troubling themselves whether it were legitimate or not, have wished to live at the expense of others, from carrying out their intents? What would it be, then, if people, studying over their misery and discovering its cause in property, were of a nature so given to evil as is popularly alleged? Society would not endure another moment; there would then be “the struggle for existence” in its most ferocious expression, a return to pure barbarism. It is precisely because man has tended towards what is better, that he has allowed himself to be ruled, enslaved, deceived, exploited, and still repudiates violent measures to effect his final enfranchisement.
This declaration that “man is born to evil,” and that there is no change to hope for, means, when analyzed: “Man is bad society is therefore bad, and there is nothing to hope for, either from one or the other. What is the use of losing one’s time in seeking for a perfection which humanity cannot attain? Let us look out for ourselves as best we can. If the sum of gratifications we obtain is made up of the tears and blood of the victim we have sown along our route, what does it matter to us? One must crush others to escape being crushed himself. So much the worse for those who fall.”—Well, let the privileged ones, who have thus far managed to bolster up their sway, to send the workers to sleep, to transform them into defenders of their masters’ privileges, first by promising them a better life in the other world, then, when they ceased to believe in God, by preaching to them morality, patriotism, social utility, etc., and today by making them hope to gain, through universal suffrage, a multitude of reforms and improvements impossible to effect, (for the ills which flow from the very essence of the social organization cannot be prevented so long as we attack the effects only, without finding the cause, so long as society itself be not transformed)—let the exploiters of the poor, then, proclaim the unadulterated right of force, and we shall see how long their sway will last! Force will balance force.
When man first began to group together with his fellows, he must still have been much more of an animal than a human being; ideas of morality and justice did not exist in him. Having had to struggle against other animals, against all nature, his first groups were formed out of the necessity for an association of forces, not by the desire for solidarity. No doubt these associations were, as we have already said, temporary at the start, limited to the capture of the game to be hunted or the overthrow
