[45] ``While holding this synthetic view on production, the
Anarchists cannot consider, like the Collectivists, that a
remuneration which would be proportionate to the hours of labor
spent by each person in the production of riches may be an
ideal, or even an approach to an ideal, society.'' Kropotkin,
``Anarchist Communism,'' p. 20.
It would seem, then, that if the Anarchist plan
has its dangers, the Socialist plan has at least equal
dangers. It is true that the evils we have been foreseeing
under Socialism exist at present, but the purpose
of Socialists is to cure the evils of the world
as it is; they cannot be content with the argument
that they would make things no worse.
Anarchism has the advantage as regards liberty,
Socialism as regards the inducements to work. Can
we not find a method of combining these two advantages?
It seems to me that we can.
We saw that, provided most people work in
moderation, and their work is rendered as productive
as science and organization can make it, there is no
good reason why the necessaries of life should not be
supplied freely to all. Our only serious doubt was
as to whether, in an Anarchist regime, the motives for
work would be sufficiently powerful to prevent a dan-
gerously large amount of idleness. But it would be
easy to decree that, though necessaries should be free
to all, whatever went beyond necessaries should only
be given to those who were willing to work--not, as
is usual at present, only to those in work at any
moment, but also to all those who, when they happened
not to be working, were idle through no fault
of their own. We find at present that a man who
has a small income from investments, just sufficient
to keep him from actual want, almost always prefers
to find some paid work in order to be able to afford
luxuries. So it would be, presumably, in such a
community as we are imagining. At the same time, the
man who felt a vocation for some unrecognized work
of art or science or thought would be free to follow his
desire, provided he were willing to ``scorn delights
and live laborious days.'' And the comparatively
small number of men with an invincible horror of
work--the sort of men who now become tramps--
might lead a harmless existence, without any grave
danger of their becoming sufficiently numerous to be
a serious burden upon the more industrious. In this
ways the claims of freedom could be combined with
the need of some economic stimulus to work. Such
a system, it seems to me, would have a far greater
chance of success than either pure Anarchism or pure
orthodox Socialism.
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