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Objection has been made to the use of the word “Communism” to express fully-developed Socialism, on the ground that it has been used for the Community-Building, which played so great a part in some of the phases of Utopian Socialism, and is still heard of from time to time nowadays. Of Communism in this sense I am not writing now; it may merely be said in passing that such experiments are of their nature non-progressive; at their best they are but another form of the Mediæval monastery, withdrawals from the Society of the day, really implying hopelessness of a general change; which is only attainable by the development of Society as it is; by the development of the consequences of its faults and anomalies, as well as of what germ of real Society it contains.
This point of mistaken nomenclature being cleared off, it remains to ask
what real Communism is, and the answer is simple: it is a state of
Society the essence of which is
I am a Communist, therefore, because—1st, it seems to me that mankind is not thinkable outside of Society; and 2ndly, because there is no other basis, economical and ethical, save that above stated, on which a true Society can be formed; any other basis makes waste and unnecessary suffering an essential part of the system. In short I can see no other system under which men can live together except these two, Slavery and Equality.
The first of these two says, some standard of worth having been
determined (of course not as a result of the immediate agreement of men
living under such and such a system, but of the long development of many
centuries) those who have attained to that standard are the masters of
those who have not so attained, and live as well as surrounding
circumstances, together with a quasi-equitable arrangement amongst the
worthy, will allow them, by
Now this theory of society has been that held for the most part from
early historical periods till our own days, though from time to time
there have been protests raised against it. The standard of worthiness
has varied, but the essential assertion of the necessity for inequality
has always been there. In its two earlier phases; birth and race, i.e.,
the belonging, really or theoretically, to
It would not be very profitable to discuss which of these three systems
of inequality, to wit, Chattel Slavery, Serfdom, or Wage-Earning, is
This theory is Communism; which says: In a true Society the capacities of
all men can be used for their mutual well being; the due unwasteful use
of those capacities produces wealth in the proper sense of the word and
cannot fail to produce it; this wealth produced by the Community can
only be fully used by the Community; for if some get more than they
need, that portion which cannot be used must of necessity be wasted, and
the whole Community is impoverished thereby; and again further
impoverished by the necessity for the producers having to work harder
than they otherwise need; which in its turn brings about grievous and
burdensome inequality; for all men feel unnecessary work to be slavish
work. Again, though men's desires for wealth vary, yet certain needs all
men have, and since we have seen that it is the
Communism, therefore can see no reason for inequality of condition: to each one according to his needs, from each one according to his capacities, must always be its motto. And if it be challenged to answer the question, what are the needs of such and such a man, how are they to be estimated? The answer is that the habitual regard towards Society as the real unit, will make it impossible for any man to think of claiming more than his genuine needs. I say that it will not come into his mind that it is possible for him to advance himself by injuring someone else. While, on the other hand, it will be well understood that unless you satisfy a man's needs, yon cannot make the best of his capacities. We are sometimes asked by people who do not understand either the present state of society or what Communism aims at, as to how we shall get people to be doctors, learned scientists, etc., in the new condition of things.
The answer is clear; by affording opportunities to those who have the
capacity for doctoring etc.; the necessary cost of such opportunities
being borne by the Community; and as the position of a doctor who has
mistaken his vocation would clearly be an uncomfortable one in a society
where people knew their real wants, and as he could earn his livelihood
by engaging himself to do what be
I might go through a long series of objections which ignorant persons
make to the only reasonable form of Society, but that is scarcely my
business here. I will
I believe in the final realization of this state of things, and now I come to the method by which they are to be reached. And here I feel I shall be dealing in matter about which there may be and must be divers opinions even amongst those who are consciously trying to bring about Communal conditions.
In the first place I do not (who does really) believe in Catastrophical
Communism. That we shall go to sleep on Saturday in a Capitalistic
Society and wake on Monday into a Communistic Society is clearly an
impossibility. Again I do not believe that our end will be gained by
open war; for the executive will be
What we have to do first is to make Socialists. That we shall always have
to do until the change is come. Some time ago we seemed to have nothing
else to do than that, and could only do it by preaching; but the
This will bring us at last to the period of what is now understood by the
word Socialism when the means of production and the markets will be in
the hands of those who can use them, i.e., the operatives
of various kinds; when great accumulations of wealth will be
By that time also we shall have learned the true secret of happiness, to
wit, that it is brought about by the pleasurable exercise of our
energies; and since opportunity will be given for everyone to do the
work he is fitted for under pleasant and unburdensome conditions, there
will be no drudgery to escape from, and consequently no competition to
thrust
As to what may be called the business conduct of Communism, it has been
said often, and rightly as I think, that it will concern itself with the
administration of things rather than the government of men. But this
administration must take form, and that form must of necessity be
democratic and federative; that is to say there will be certain units of
administration, ward, parish, commune, whatever they may be called,
and
This is a brief sketch of what I am looking forward to as a Communist: to sum up, it is Freedom from artificial disabilities; the development of each man's capacities for the benefit of each and all. Abolition of waste by taking care that one man does not get more than he can use, and another less than he needs; consequent condition of general well-being and fulness of life, neither idle and vacant, nor over burdened with toil.
All this I believe we can and shall reach directly by insisting on the
claim for the communization of the means of production; and that claim
will be made by the workers when they are fully convinced of its
necessity; I believe further that they are growing convinced of it, and
will one day make their claim good by using the means which the
incomplete democracy of the day puts within their reach. That is they
will at last form
I advocate and I look forward to wholesale expropriation because I do not believe there is any such thing as a right to property, and because I hold that it is disastrous, nay, fatal, to the welfare of all individuals composing the community, to have to regulate their lives and affairs in accordance with a fictitious abstraction which has no warrant and no basis in the natural laws of life. I desire universal expropriation, not merely because the power that property-holding gives to man over man is in wrong hands, and consequently abused, but because it seems clear to me that property-holding is all abuse in itself, and that to hold property is to make wrong use of anyone's hands at all. I desire to see the bottom knocked out of the noxious property idea itself, for good and all.
“The love of money is the root of all evil.” Why ? Because the love of
money is the love of domination. Property is government. Property—that
is, the prohibitive custody by particular persons of any part of the
general resources—cannot be shown to have any value at all for any one,
merely as “owner,”
No true, nature-based title to property as merely such can be shown to
exist. Perhaps even some Anarchists will demur to this. The belief still
lingers that there is such a thing as a man's natural right to “own,” to
have the prohibitive custody and disposal of, whatever his industry or
skill may have produced or constructed out of the raw material provided
by Nature. “There is one true title to property—to custody of
superfluity—and that is the Labor title;” so say many. It is a delusion.
There can be no such thing as a natural title to what is after all an
artificial and merely nominal relation between a man and his product; a
relation having no basis in reality. That which at the outset is not
anybody's cannot be made anybody's by manipulation. This is not a mere
metaphysical quibble. He who produces anything useful has, other things
equal, a
As to the modern cry, “the product to the producer,” it is surely all
right economically and ethically, so far as it goes. But directly it is
insisted on that “the whole of the product belongs to the producer as
his property” (to use, waste, sell, or hoard at his pleasure) and
directly it is insinuated that human faculties and the wealth the
faculties (help to) win are of equal inviolability, then we are face to
face with the worst of social superstitions once more. The property
holder will remain dominator, the property-holding class will remain the
dominating class and its weapon, the Government, will remain in
existence until the idea that things or privileges can “belong” to
persons or groups of persons, is seen for the figment it actually is.
Government is only another name for property. You can make Government
hop from one leg to another, and on the standing leg hop from one point
to another. But it will wink at you and evade you, so long as Property
exists. You can
At the present hour the notion that it is only the existing title to
possession and not the institution of property itself which cries for
abolition is fraught with social danger. I am very sure indeed that in a
community regulated in recognition of individual ownership, or even
I see as much danger in taking property from one class only to give it
another, as in taking Government out of the hands of one class only to
give it to another. Nay, it is the identical danger under another name.
The prohibitive custody of superfluous wealth, as now maintained in the
case of landlords and capitalists, all Socialists see to be evil. To
land this prohibitive custody in the hands of an official class, as
would be
A man who has made such use of material that a hat is the result, has
made a hat. That is all he has made. He has not made a “right to
property” in the hat, either for himself or anybody else. Before this
exercise of his faculty there existed the materials, tools, and himself.
There exist now, the tools, and himself, and the hat. He is related to
the hat as its
The hatter's product is his product, not his
“Property is Robbery,” said Proudhon. That is not the bottom truth about property. François Guy in his work on
I have in this article done no more than just step on the threshold of
the subject. Space does not now allow me to justify the position. But I
am an Expropriationist in the fullest sense that can be given to this
clumsy word, because I