things of the kind, man, being naturally ambitious, makes it his aim to
accumulate this property, and goes on wearily and tediously accumulating
it long after he has got far more than he wants, or can use, or enjoy, or
perhaps even know of. Man will kill himself by overwork in order to
secure property, and really, considering the enormous advantages that
property brings, one is hardly surprised. One’s regret is that society
should be constructed on such a basis that man has been forced into a
groove in which he cannot freely develop what is wonderful, and
fascinating, and delightful in him—in which, in fact, he misses the true
pleasure and joy of living. He is also, under existing conditions, very
insecure. An enormously wealthy merchant may be—often is—at every moment
of his life at the mercy of things that are not under his control. If
the wind blows an extra point or so, or the weather suddenly changes, or
some trivial thing happens, his ship may go down, his speculations may go
wrong, and he finds himself a poor man, with his social position quite
gone. Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing
should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is what is in
him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.
With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true,
beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in
accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live
is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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