Alexander Berkman

“ You know very well that it is the capitalistic class which owns the greatest part of the world's wealth. Must we therefore not conclude that the working people have lost the wealth they created, or that somehow it was taken away from them? ”

“ But you know that it is not at all that way in life. You know that we do not live like brothers. You know that the world is full of strife and war, of misery, injustice, and wrong, of crime, poverty, and oppression. ”

“ You can see then that no person can by his own efforts alone make the things he needs to exist. In early times the primitive man who lived in a cave could hammer a hatchet out of stone or make himself a bow and arrow, and live by that. But those days are gone. To-day no man can live by his own work: he must be helped by the labor of others. ”

“ Those who cannot make profits are poor. The only people who cannot make any profits are the workers. You can therefore understand that the interests of the workers cannot be the same as the interests of the other people. That is why you will find in every country several classes of people with entirely different interests.
Everywhere you will find:
(1) a comparatively small class of persons who make big profits and who are very rich, such as bankers, great manufacturers and land owners - people who have much capital and who are therefore called capitalists. ”

“ Then why should we not all seek it together, by joint effort, helping each other in it?
Why should we cheat and rob, kill and murder each other, if we all seek the same thing? Aren't you entitled to the things you want as well as the next man? ”

“ What's important, they say, is not you, but 'the whole', all the people together. This 'whole' they call 'society', 'the commonwealth', or 'the State', and the wiseacres have actually decided that it makes no difference if you, the individual, are miserable so long as 'society' is all right. Somehow they forget to explain how 'society' or 'the whole' can be all right if the single members of it are wretched. ”

“ Does it not stand to reason that if we all want the same thing in life, if we have the same aim, then our interests must also be the same? In that case we should live like brothers, in peace and friendship; we should be good to each other, and help each other all we can. ”

“ You want to be well and healthy; you want to be free, to serve no master, to crawl and humiliate yourself before no man; you want to have well-being for yourself, your family, and those near and dear to you. ”

“ Whoever you be - man or woman, rich or poor, aristocrat or tramp, white, yellow, red or black, of whatever land, nationality, or religion - we are all alike in feeling cold and hunger, love and hate; we all fear disaster and disease, and try to keep away from harm and death. ”

“ Learned men have written big books, many of them, on sociology, psychology, and many other 'ologies', to tell you what you want, but no two of those books ever agree. And yet I think that you know very well without them what you want. ”

“ That is, to those who have worked with their hands or with their heads to create it - the manual worker and the brain worker.
Everybody agrees that a person has a right to own the thing that he himself has made. ”

“ But no one person has made or can make anything all by himself. It takes many men, of different trades and professions, to create something. The carpenter, for instance, cannot make a simple chair or bench all by himself ”

“ He could do nothing without paper and pencil and measuring tools, and these things other people have to make for him. Not to mention that first he has to learn his profession and spend many years in study, while others enable him to live in the meantime. This applies to every human being in the world to- day. ”

“ He needs a saw and a hammer, nails and tools, which he cannot make himself. And even if he should make these himself, he would first have to have the raw materials - steel and iron - which other men would have to supply. ”