The inhabitant of Naples is as much interested in the amelioration
of the hygienic condition of the peoples on the banks of the Ganges,
from whence the cholera is brought to him, as in the improvement of
the sewerage of his own town. The well-being, liberty, or fortune
of the mountaineer, lost among the precipices of the Appenines, does
not depend alone on the state of well-being or of misery in which
the inhabitants of his own village live, or even on the general
condition of the Italian people, but also on the condition of the
workers in America, or Australia, on the discovery of a Swedish
scientist, on the moral and material conditions of the Chinese, on
war or peace in Africa; in short, it depends on all the great and
small circumstances which affect the human being in any spot
whatever of the world.
In the present condition of society, the vast solidarity which
unites all men is in a great degree unconscious, since it arises
spontaneously from the friction of particular interests, while
men occupy themselves little or not at all with general interests.
And this is the most evident proof that solidarity is the natural
law of human life, which imposes itself, so to speak, in spite of
all obstacles, and even those artificially created by society as at
present constituted.
On the other hand, the oppressed masses, never wholly resigned
to oppression and misery, who today more than ever show themselves
ardent for justice, liberty, and well-being, are beginning
to understand that they cannot emancipate themselves except
by uniting, through solidarity with all the oppressed and exploited
over the whole world. And they understand also that the
indispensable condition of their emancipation is the possession
of the means of production, of the soil and of the instruments of
labor, and further the abolition of private property. Science
and the observation of social phenomena show that this abolition
would be of immense advantage in the end, even to the privileged
classes, if only they could bring themselves to renounce the spirit
of domination, and concur with all their fellow men in laboring for
the common good.
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Now, should the oppressed masses some day refuse to work for their
oppressors, should they take possession of the soil and the
instruments of labor, and apply them for their own use and
advantage, and that of all who work, should they no longer submit
to the domination, either of brute force or economic privilege;
should the spirit of human fellowship and the sentiment of human
solidarity, strengthened by common interests, grow among the
people, and put an end to strife between nations; then what ground
would there be for the existence of a government?
Private property abolished, government--which is its defender
--must disappear. Should it survive, it would continually tend
to reconstruct, under one form or another, a privileged and
oppressive class.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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