Memoirs of a Revolutionist

each other. So it was, at least, in the years 1876⁠–⁠85. When I was in Switzerland I could say that during my three or four years’ stay in the country I was acquainted with none but workers. I hardly knew more than a couple of middle-class men. In England this would have been impossible. We found quite a number of middle-class men and women who did not hesitate to appear openly, both in London and in the provinces, as helpers organizing socialist meetings, or in going about during a strike with boxes to collect coppers in the parks. Besides, we saw a movement similar to what we had had in Russia in the early seventies, when our youth rushed “to the people,” though by no means so intense, so full of self-sacrifice, and so utterly devoid of the idea of “charity.” Here also, in England, a considerable number of people went in all sorts of capacities to live near the workers, in the slums, in people’s palaces, in Toynbee Hall, and the like. It must be said that there was a great deal of enthusiasm at that time. Many probably thought that a social revolution had already commenced. As always happens, however, with such enthusiasts, when they saw that in England, as everywhere, there was a long, tedious, preparatory uphill work to be done, very many of them retired from active work, and now stand outside of it as mere sympathetic onlookers.

XVII

I took a lively part in this movement, and with a few English comrades I started, in addition to the three socialist papers already in existence, an anarchist-communist monthly, Freedom, which continues to live up to the present hour. At the same time I resumed my work on anarchism where I had had to interrupt it at the time of my arrest. The critical part of it was published by Elisée Reclus, during my Clairvaux imprisonment, under the title, Paroles d’un Révolté. Now I began to work out the constructive part of an anarchist-communist society⁠—so far as it could be forecast⁠—in a series of articles published at Paris in La Révolte. “Our boy,” prosecuted for anti-militarist propaganda, had been compelled to change its title page, and now appeared under a feminine name. Later on these articles were published in a more elaborate form in a book, La Conquête du Pain.

These researches caused me to study more thoroughly certain points in the economic life of the civilized nations of today. Most socialists had hitherto said that in our present civilized societies we actually produce much more than is necessary for guaranteeing full well-being to all; that it was only the distribution which was defective; and, if a social revolution took place, all that was required would be for everyone to return to his factory or workshop⁠—society taking possession for itself of the “surplus value,” or benefits, which now went to the capitalist. I thought, on the contrary, that under the present conditions of private ownership production itself had taken a wrong turn, and was entirely inadequate even as regards the very necessaries of life. None of these necessaries are produced in greater quantities than would be required to secure well-being for all; and the overproduction, so often spoken of, means nothing but that the masses are too poor to buy even what is now considered as necessary for a decent existence. But in all civilized countries the production, both agricultural and industrial, ought to and easily might be immensely increased, so as to secure a reign of plenty for all. This brought me to consider the possibilities of modern agriculture, as well as those of an education which would give to everyone the possibility of carrying on at the same time both enjoyable manual work and brain work. I developed these ideas in a series of articles in the Nineteenth Century, which are now published as a book under the title of Fields, Factories, and Workshops.

Another great question also engrossed my attention. It is known to what conclusions Darwin’s formula, the “struggle for existence,” had been developed by his followers generally, even the most intelligent of them, such as Huxley. There is no infamy in civilized society, or in the relations of the whites towards the so-called lower races, or of the strong towards the weak, which would not have found its excuse in this formula.

Even during my stay at Clairvaux I saw the necessity of completely revising the formula itself and its applications to human affairs. The attempts which had been made by a few socialists in this direction did not satisfy me, but I found in a lecture by a Russian zoologist, Professor Kessler, a true expression of the law of struggle for life. “Mutual aid,” he said in that lecture, “is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle; but for the progressive evolution of the species the former is far more important than the latter.” These few words⁠—confirmed unfortunately by only a couple of illustrations (to which Severtzov, the zoologist of whom I have spoken in an earlier chapter, added one or two more)⁠—contained for me the key of the whole problem. When Huxley published in 1888 his atrocious article, “The Struggle for Existence; a Program,” I decided to put in a readable form my objections to his way of understanding the struggle for life, among animals as well as among men, the materials for which I had been accumulating for two years. I spoke of it to my friends. However, I found that the interpretration of “struggle for life” in the sense of a war-cry of “Woe to the Weak,” raised to the height of a commandment of nature revealed by science, was so deeply rooted in this country that it had become almost a matter of religion. Two persons only supported me in my revolt against this misinterpretation of the facts of nature. The editor of the