Peter Kropotkin

“ Every one of you then, honest young people, men and women, peasants, labourers, artizans, and soldiers, you will understand what are your rights and you will come along with us; you will come in order to work with your brethern in the preparation of that Revolution which sweeping away every vestige of slavery, tearing the fetters asunder, breaking with the old worn-out traditions and opening to all mankind a new and wider scope of joyous existence, shall at length establish true Liberty, real Equality, ungrudging Fraternity throughout human society ”

“ You have devoted your youth to make a discovery destined to simplify production, and after many efforts, many sleepless nights, you have at last this valuable invention. You put it into practice and the result surpasses your expectations. Ten, twenty thousand beings are thrown out of work; those who remain, mostly children are reduced to the condition of mere machines! Three, four, or maybe ten capitalists will make a fortune and drink champagne by the bottlesfull. ”

“ That very day you will understand Socialism. You will wish to know it thoroughly, and if altruism is not a word devoid of significance for you, if you apply to the study of the social question the rigid induction of the natural philosopher, you will end by finding yourself in our ranks, and you will work, as we work, to bring about the Social Revolution.
But perhaps you will say, "Mere practical business may go to the devil! As an astronomer, a physiologist, a chemist, I will devote myself to science. Such work as that always bears fruit, if only for future generations." ”

“ The delight at having re-discovered the ancient world, of having bathed afresh in the springs of nature which created the masterpieces of the Renaissance no longer exists for the art of our time, the revolutionary ideal has left it cold until now, and, failing an ideal, our art fancies that it has found one in realism when it painfully photographs in colours the dewdrop on the leaf of a plant, imitates the muscles in the leg of a cow, or describes minutely in prose and in verse the suffocating filth of a sewer, the boudoir of a whore of high degree. ”

“ And you, young engineer, who dream of bettering the lot of the workers by applying the inventions of science to industry, what a sad disenchantment, what deceptions await you. You devote the youthful energy of your intellect to working out the plan of some railway which, winding round by the edges of precipices, and piercing the heart of huge mountains, will unite two countries separated by nature. ”

“ Do you not understand that history—which to-day is an old woman's tale about great kings, great statesmen and great parliaments—that history itself has to be written from the point of view of the people in the long evolution of mankind? That social economy—which to-day is merely the sanctification of capitalist robbery—has to be worked out afresh in its fundamental principles as well as in its innumerable applications? ”

“ Must you toil your life long to procure for others all the pleasures of well-being, of knowledge, of art, and keep for yourself only the eternal anxiety as to whether you can get a bit of bread? Will you forever give up all that makes life so beautiful to devote yourself to providing every luxury for a handful of idlers? Will you wear yourself out with toil and have in return only trouble, if not misery, when hard times—the fearful hard times—come upon you? ”

“ If you discuss social problems with the same independence of spirit which has guided you in your mechanical investigations, you necessarily come to the conclusion that under the domination of private property and wage-slavery, every new invention, far from increasing the well-being of the worker, only makes his slavery heavier, his labour more degrading, the periods of slack work more frequent, the crisis sharper, and that the man who already has every conceivable pleasure for himself is the only one who profits by it. ”

“ You stop me at last!
"What the devil!" you say. "But if abstract science is a luxury and practice of medicine mere chicane; if law spells injustice, and mechanical invention is but a means of robbery; if the school, at variance with the wisdom of the "practical man", is sure to be overcome, and art without the revolutionary idea can only degenerate, what remains for me to do?" ”

“ You who have worked at the application of science to industry, come and tell us frankly what has been the outcome of your discoveries. Convince those who dare not march boldly towards the future what new inventions the knowledge we have already acquired carries in its womb, what industry could do under better conditions, what man might easily produce if he produced always with a view to enhance his own productions. ”

“ Quit the environment in which you are placed and in which it is customary to speak of the workers as a lot of brutes, go amongst the people, and the question will solve itself.
You will find that everywhere, in England as in Germany, in Italy as in the United States, wherever there are privileged classes and oppressed, a tremendous movement is a-foot amongst the working classes, the aim of which is to destroy once and for ever the slavery imposed by the capitalist feudality, and to lay the foundations of a new society, based on the principles of justice and equality. ”

“ You lovers of pure science, if you are imbued with the principles of Socialism, if you have understood the real meaning of the revolution which is even now knocking at the door, do you not see that all science has to be recast in order to place it in harmony with the new principles; that it is your business to accomplish in this field a revolution far greater than that which was accomplished in every branch of science during the eighteenth century? ”

“ But then, if you are really thinking about humanity, if it is the good of mankind at which you aim, a formidable question arises before you; for, however little you may have of the critical spirit, you must at once note that in our society of to-day science is only an appendage to luxury, rendering life pleasanter for the few, but remaining absolutely inaccessible to the bulk of mankind. ”

“ Then discharged as you will be by the Education Department, you will leave your school and come among us and be of us; you will tell men of riper years but of smaller attainments than yourself how enticing knowledge is, what mankind ought to be, nay, what we could be. You will come and work with Socialists for the complete transformation of the existing system, will strive tide by side with us to attain true equality, true fraternity, never-ending liberty for the world. ”

“ Where are they, those professors who claim to possess the science of humanity, and in whose eyes mankind is not worth a rare species of caterpillar? Where are those men who preach of liberty and who never rise to defend ours, daily trodden under foot? ”

“ You, doctors, who have learnt Socialism by a bitter experience, never weary of telling us to-day, to-morrow, in and out of season, that humanity itself hurries onward to decay if man remain in the present conditions of existence and work; that all your medicaments must be powerless against disease while the majority of mankind vegetate in conditions absolutely contrary to those which science tells us are healthful ”

“ At the present moment we no longer need to accumulate scientific truths and discoveries. The most important is to spread the truths already acquired, to practice them in daily life, to make of them a common inheritance. We have to order things in such wise that all humanity may be capable of assimilating and applying them, so that science ceasing to be a luxury becomes the basis of every-day life. Justice requires this.
Furthermore, the very interests of science require it. Science only makes real progress when its truths find environments ready prepared for their reception. ”

“ In fact when a man is young he understands that after having studied a trade or a science for several years—at the cost of society, mark—he has not done this in order that he should make use of his acquirements as instruments of plunder for his own gain, and he must be depraved indeed and utterly cankered by vice, who has not dreamed that one day he would apply his intelligence, his abilities, his knowledge to help on the enfranchisement of those who to-day grovel in misery and in ignorance. ”

“ You return to little, dark, damp lodgings where five or six human beings pig together within a few square feet: where your mother, sick of life, aged by care rather than years, offers you dry bread and potatoes as your only food, washed down by a blackish fluid called, in irony tea; and to distract your thoughts you have ever the same never-ending question, "How shall I be able to pay the baker to-morrow, and the landlord the day after?" ”

“ The never-ceasing struggle for truth, justice, and equality among the people, whose gratitude you will earn—what nobler career can the youth of all nations desire than this?
It has taken me long to show you of the well-to-do classes that in view of the dilemna which life presents to you, you will be forced, if courageous and sincere, to come and work side by side with the Socialists, and champion in their ranks the cause of the social revolution. ”

“ The very pressure of events impels you to become Socialists, however little you may have the courage to reason and to act.
To rise from the ranks of the working people, and not devote oneself to bringing about the triumph of Socialism, is to misconceive the real interests at stake, to give up the cause and the true historic mission. ”

“ Either you will begin by silencing your conscience by sophisms; then one fine day you will bid farewell to the honest dreams of your youth and you will try to obtain, for yourself, what commands pleasure and enjoyment—you will then go over to the camp of the exploiters. Or, if you have a tender heart, you will say to yourself:—"No, this is not the time for inventions. Let us work first to transform the domain of production. ”

“ And the day when you are imbued with wide, deep, humane, and profoundly scientific truth, that day will you lose your taste for pure science. You will set to work to find out the means to effect this transformation, and if you bring to your investigations the impartiality which has guided you in your scientific researches you will of necessity adopt the cause of Socialism; you will make an end of sophisms and you will come amongst us. ”

“ And what shall I say to the schoolmaster—not to the man who looks upon his profession as a wearisome business, but to him who, when surrounded by a joyous band of young pickles, feels exhilarated by their cheery looks and in the midst of their happy laughter, to him, who tries to plant in their little heads those ideas of humanity which he cherished himself when he was young. ”

“ We peasants who work for others, and who mumble the straw while our master eats the wheat, we by ourselves are millions of men.
We workers who weave silks and velvet in order that we may be clothed in rags, we, too, are a great multitude: and when the clang of the factories permits us a moment's repose, we overflow the streets and squares like the sea in a spring tide. ”

“ The law, always on the side of property, is quite clear; the landlord is in the right. But you, whose feeling of justice has not yet been stifled by legal Fictions, what will you do? Will you contend that the farmer ought to be turned out upon the high road?—for that is what the law ordains—or will you urge that the landlord should pay back to the farmer the whole of the increase of value in his property which is due to the farmer's labour?—this is what equity decrees. ”

“ When private property is put an end to, then each new advance in industry will be made for the benefit of all mankind, and this mass of workers, mere machines as they are to-day, will then become thinking beings who apply to industry their intelligence, strengthened by study and skilled in manual labour, and thus mechanical progress will take a bound forward which will carry out in fifty years what now-a-days we cannot even dream of. ”

“ You will then understand how utterly revolting is this society; you will then reflect upon the causes of this crisis, and your examinations will scrutinize to the depths this abomination which puts millions of human beings at the mercy of the brutal greed of a handful of useless triflers; then you will understand that Socialists are right when they say that our present society can be, that it must be organized from top to bottom. ”

“ One does nothing but dream of becoming an officer; another in league with his master robs the workers of their slender wages; and you, who had such hopes of these young people, you now brood over the sad contrast between your ideal and life as it is. ”

“ One day a crisis comes, one of those crises which are no longer mere passing phenomena, as they were formerly, but a crises which destroys a whole industry, which plunges thousands of workers into misery, which crushes whole families. You struggle against the calamity like the rest. ”

“ These writers, these poets, these painters, all this band of hypocrites, in short, who speak of the people with tears in their eyes, and who nevertheless never come among us to help us in our work?"
Some complacently enjoy their condition of cowardly indifference, others, the majority, despise the "rabble" and are ever ready to pounce down on it if it dare to attack their privileges. ”

“ When too, one day—it is not far distant in any case, saving the presence of our professors—when one day, I say, the change for which you are working should have been brought about then, deriving new forces from collective scientific work, and from the powerful help of armies of labourers who will come to place their energies at its service, science will take a new bound forward, in comparison with which the slow progress of to-day will appear the simple exercise of tyros. ”