There is a fundamental difference between Socialism
and Anarchism as regards the question of distribution.
Socialism, at any rate in most of its
forms, would retain payment for work done or for
willingness to work, and, except in the case of persons
incapacitated by age or infirmity, would make
willingness to work a condition of subsistence, or at
any rate of subsistence above a certain very low
minimum. Anarchism, on the other hand, aims at
granting to everyone, without any conditions whatever,
just as much of all ordinary commodities as
he or she may care to consume, while the rarer com-
modities, of which the supply cannot easily be
indefinitely increased, would be rationed and divided
equally among the population. Thus Anarchism
would not impose any OBLIGATIONS of work, though
Anarchists believe that the necessary work could be
made sufficiently agreeable for the vast majority of
the population to undertake it voluntarily. Socialists,
on the other hand, would exact work. Some of
them would make the incomes of all workers equal,
while others would retain higher pay for the work
which is considered more valuable. All these different
systems are compatible with the common ownership
of land and capital, though they differ greatly
as regards the kind of society which they would
produce.
Socialism with inequality of income would not
differ greatly as regards the economic stimulus to
work from the society in which we live. Such differences
as it would entail would undoubtedly be to the
good from our present point of view. Under the
existing system many people enjoy idleness and
affluence through the mere accident of inheriting land
or capital. Many others, through their activities in
industry or finance, enjoy an income which is certainly
very far in excess of anything to which their
social utility entitles them. On the other hand, it
often happens that inventors and discoverers, whose
work has the very greatest social utility, are robbed
of their reward either by capitalists or by the failure
of the public to appreciate their work until too
late. The better paid work is only open to those who
have been able to afford an expensive training, and
these men are selected in the main not by merit but
by luck. The wage earner is not paid for his willingness
to work, but only for his utility to the employer.
Consequently, he may be plunged into destitution by
causes over which he has no control. Such destitution
is a constant fear, and when it occurs it produces
undeserved suffering, and often deterioration
in the social value of the sufferer. These are a few
among the evils of our existing system from the
standpoint of production. All these evils we might
expect to see remedied under any system of Socialism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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