CHAPTER 30
PRODUCTION
"WHAT about production," you ask; "how is it to be
managed?
We have already seen what principles must underlie the activities
of the revolution if it is to be social and accomplish its aims. The
same principles of freedom and voluntary cooperation must also direct
the reorganization of the industries.
The first effect of the revolution is reduced production. The
general strike, which I have forecast as the starting point of the
social revolution, itself constitutes a suspension of industry. The
workers lay down their tools, demonstrate in the streets, and thus
temporarily stop production.
But life goes on. The essential needs of the people must be
satisfied. In that stage the revolution lives on the supplies,
already on hand. But to exhaust those supplies would be disastrous.
The situation rests in the hands of labor: the immediate resumption
of industry is imperative. The organized agricultural and industrial
proletariat takes possession of the land, factories, shops, mines and
mills. Most energetic application is now the order of the day.
It should be clearly understood that the social revolution
necessitates more intensive production than under capitalism in
order to supply the needs of the large masses who till then had lived
in penury. This greater production can be achieved only by the
workers having previously prepared themselves for the new situation.
Familiarity with the processes of industry, knowledge of the sources
of supply, and determination to succeed will accomplish the task. The
enthusiasm generated by the revolution, the energies liberated, and
the inventiveness stimulated by it must be given full freedom and
scope to find creative channels. Revolution always wakens a high
degree of responsibility. Together with the new atmosphere of liberty
and brotherhood it creates the realization that hard work and severe
self-discipline are necessary to bring production up to the
requirements of consumption.
On the other hand, the new situation will greatly simplify the
present very complex problems of industry. For you must consider that
capitalism, because of its competitive character and contradictory
financial and commercial interests, involves many intricate and
perplexing issues which would be entirely eliminated by the abolition
of the conditions of to-day. Questions of wage scales and selling
prices; the requirements of the existing markets and the hunt for new
ones; the scarcity of capital for large operations and the heavy
interest to be paid on it; new investments, the effects of
speculation and monopoly, and a score of related problems which worry
the capitalist and make industry such a difficult and cumbersome
network to-day would all disappear. At present these require divers
departments of study and highly trained men to keep unraveling the
tangled skein of plutocratic cross purposes, many specialists to
calculate the actualities and possibilities of profit and loss, and a
large force of aids to help steer the industrial ship between the
perilous rocks which beset the chaotic course of capitalist
competition, national and international.
All this would be automatically done away with by the
socialization of industry and the termination of the competitive
system; and thereby the problems of production will be immensely
lightened. The knotted complexity of capitalist industry need
therefore inspire no undue fear for the future. Those who talk of
labor not being equal to manage "modern" industry fail to
take into account the factors referred to above. The industrial
labyrinth will turn out to be far less formidable on the day of the
social reconstruction.
In passing it may be mentioned that all the other phases of life
would also be very much simplified as a result of the indicated
changes: various present-day habits, customs, compulsory and
unwholesome modes of living will naturally fall into disuse.
Furthermore it must be considered that the task of increased
production would be enormously facilitated by the addition to the
ranks of labor of vast numbers whom the altered economic conditions
will liberate for work.
Recent statistics show that in 1920 there were in the United
States over 41 million persons of both sexes engaged in gainful
occupations out of a total population of over 105 millions.1
Out of chose 41 millions only 26 millions were actually employed in
the industries, including transportation and agriculture, the balance
of 15 millions consisting mostly of persons engaged in trade, of
commercial travelers, advertisers, and various other middlemen of the
present system In other words, 15 million 2
persons would be released for useful work by a revolution in the
United Seates. A similar situation, proportionate to population,
would develop in other countries.
The greater production necessitated by the social revolution would
therefore have an additional army of many million persons at its
disposal. The systematic incorporation of chose millions into
industry and agriculture, aided by modern scientific methods of
organization and production, will go a long way coward helping to
solve the problems of supply.
Capitalist production is for profit; more labor is used today to
sell things than to produce them. The social revolution reorganizes
the industries on the basis of the needs of the populace.
Essential needs come first, naturally. Food, clothing, shelter -
these are the primal requirements of man. The first step in this
direction is the ascertaining of the available supply of provisions
and ocher commodities. The labor associations in every city and
community take this work in hand for the purpose of equitable
distribution. Workers' committees in every street and district assume
charge, cooperating with similar committees in the city and State,
and federating their efforts throughout the country by means of
general councils of producers and consumers.
Great events and upheavals bring to the fore the most active and
energetic elements. The social revolution will crystallize the
class-conscious labor ranks. By whatever name they will be known-as
industrial unions, revolutionary syndicalist bodies, cooperative
associations, leagues of producers and consumers-they will represent
the most enlightened and advanced part of labor, the organized
workers aware of their aims and how to attain them. It is they who
will be the moving spirit of the revolution.
With the aid of industrial machinery and by scientific cultivation
of the land freed from monopoly the revolution must first of all
supply the elemental wanes of society. In farming and gardening
intensive cultivation and modern methods have made us practically
independent of natural soil quality and climate. To a very
considerable extent man now makes his own soil and his own climate,
thanks to the achievements of chemistry. Exotic fruits can be raised
in the north to be supplied to the warm south, as is being done in
France. Science is the wizard who enables man to master all
difficulties and overcome all obstacles. The future, liberated from
the incubus of the profit system and enriched by the work of the
millions of non-producers of to-day, holds the greatest welfare for
society. That future must be the objective point of the social
revolution; its motto: bread and well-being for all. First bread,
then well-being and luxury. Even luxury, for luxury is a deep-felt
need of man, a need of his physical as of his spiritual being.
Intense application to this purpose must be the continuous effort
of the revolution: not something to be postponed for a distant day
but of immediate practice. The revolution must strive to enable every
community to sustain itself, to become materially independent. No
country should have to rely on outside help or exploit colonies for
its support. That is the way of capitalism. The aim of Anarchism, on
the contrary, is material independence, not only for the individual,
but for every community.
This means gradual decentralization instead of centralization.
Even under capitalism we see the decentralization tendency manifest
itself in spite of the essentially centralistic character of the
present-day industrial system. Countries which were before entirely
dependent on foreign manufactures, as Germany in the last quarter of
the nineteenth century, later Italy and Japan, and now Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, etc., are gradually emancipating themselves
industrially, working their own natural resources, building their own
factories and mills, and attaining economic independence from other
lands. International finance does not welcome this development and
tries its utmost to retard its progress, because it is more
profitable for the Morgans and Rockefellers to keep such countries as
Mexico, China, India, Ireland, or Egypt industrially backward, in
order to exploit their natural resources and at the same time be
assured of foreign markets for "overproduction" at home.
The governments of the great financiers and lords of industry help
them secure chose foreign natural resources and markets, even at the
point of the bayonet. Thus Great Britain by force of arms compels
China to permit English opium to poison the Chinese, at a good
profit, and exploits every means to dispose in that country of the
greater part of its textile products. For the same reason Egypt,
India, Ireland, and other dependencies and colonies are not permitted
to develop their home industries.
In short, capitalism seeks centralization. But a free country
needs decentralization, independence not only political but also
industrial, economic.
Russia strikingly illustrates how imperative economic independence
is, particularly to the social revolution. For years following the
October upheaval the Bolshevik Government concentrated its efforts on
currying favor with bourgeois governments for "recognition"
and inviting foreign capitalists to help exploit the resources of
Russia. But capital, afraid to make large investments under the
insecure conditions of the dictatorship, failed to respond with any
degree of enthusiasm. Meanwhile Russia was approaching economic
breakdown. The situation finally compelled the Bolsheviki to
understand that the country must depend on her own efforts for
maintenance. Russia began to look around for means to help herself;
and thereby she acquired greater confidence in her own abilities,
learned to exercise self-reliance and initiative, and started to
develop her own industries; a slow and painful process, but a
wholesome necessity which will ultimately make Russia economically
self-supporting and independent.
The social revolution in any given country must from the very
first determine to make itself self-supporting. It must help
itself. This principle of self-help is not to be understood as a
lack of solidarity with other lands. On the contrary, mutual aid and
cooperation between countries, as among individuals, can exist only
on the basis of equality, among equals. Dependence is the very
reverse of it.
Should the social revolution take place in several countries at
the same time -- in France and Germany, for instance -- then joint
effort would be a matter of course and would make the task of
revolutionary reorganization much easier.
Fortunately the workers are learning to understand that their
cause is international: the organization of labor is now developing
beyond national boundaries. It is to be hoped that the time is not
far away when the entire proletariat of Europe may combine in a
general strike, which is to be the prelude to the social revolution.
That is emphatically a consummation to h striven for with the
greatest earnestness. But at the same time the probability is not to
be discounted that the revolution may break out in one country sooner
than in another -- let us say in France earlier than in Germany --
and in such a case it would become imperative for France not to wait
for possible aid from outside but immediately to exert all her
energies to help herself, to supply the most essential needs of her
people by her own efforts.
Every country in revolution must seek to achieve agricultural
independence no less than political, industrial self-help no less
than agricultural. This process is going on to a certain extent even
under capitalism. It should be one of the main objects of the social
revolution. Modern methods make it possible. The manufacture of
watches and clocks, for example, which was formerly a monopoly of
Switzerland, is now carried on in every country. Production of silk,
previously limited to France, is among the great industries of
various countries to-day. Italy, without sources of coal or iron,
constructs steel-clad ships. Switzerland, no richer, also makes them.
Decentralization will cure society of many evils of the
centralized principle. Politically decentralization means freedom;
industrially, material independence; socially it implies security and
well-being for the small communities; individually it results in
manhood and liberty.
Equally important to the social revolution as independence from
foreign lands is decentralization within the country itself. Internal
decentralization means making the larger regions, even every
community, so far as possible, self-supporting. In his very
illuminating and suggestive work, Fields, Factories, and
Workshops, Peter Kropotkin has convincingly shown how a city like
Paris even, now almost exclusively commercial, could raise enough
food in its own environs to support its population abundantly. By
using modern agricultural machinery and intensive cultivation London
and New York could subsist upon the products raised in their own
immediate vicinity. It is a face that "our means of obtaining
from the soil whatever we wane, under any climate and upon any
soil, have lately been improved at such a rate that we cannot
foresee yet what is the limit of productivity of a few acres of land.
The limit vanishes in proportion to our better study of the subject,
and every year makes it vanish further and further from our sight."
When the social revolution begins in any land, its foreign
commerce stops: the importation of raw materials and finished
products is suspended. The country may even be blockaded by the
bourgeois governments, as was the case with Russia. Thus the
revolution is compelled to become self-supporting and provide
for its own wanes. Even various parts of the same country may have to
face such an eventuality. They would have to produce what they need
within their own area, by their own efforts. Only decentralization
could solve this problem. The country would have to reorganize its
activities in such a manner as to be able to feed itself. It would
have to revert to production on a small scale, to home industry, and
to intensive agriculture and horticulture. Man's initiative freed by
the revolution and his wits sharpened by necessity will rise to the
situation.
It must therefore be clearly understood that it would be
disastrous to the interests of the revolution to suppress or
interfere with the small-scale industries which are even now
practiced to such a great extent in various European countries.
Numerous articles of every-day use are produced by the peasants of
Continental Europe during their leisure winter hours. Those home
manufactures total up tremendous figures and fill a great need. It
would be most harmful to the revolution to destroy them, as Russia so
foolishly did in her mad Bolshevik passion for centralization. When a
country in revolution is attacked by foreign governments, when it is
blockaded and deprived of imports, when its large-scale industries
threaten to break down or the railroads actually do break down, then
it is just the small home industries which become the vital nerve of
economic life: they alone can feed and save the revolution.
Moreover, such home industries are not only a potent economic
factor; they are also of the greatest social value. They serve to
cultivate friendly intercourse between the farm and the city,
bringing the two into closer and more solidaric contact. In face, the
home industries are themselves an expression of a most wholesome
social spirit which from earliest times has manifested itself in
village gatherings, in communal efforts, in folk dance and song. This
normal and healthy tendency, in its various aspects, should be
encouraged and stimulated by the revolution for the greater weal of
the community.
The role of industrial decentralization in the revolution is
unfortunately too little appreciated. Even in progressive labor ranks
there is a dangerous tendency to ignore or minimize its importance.
Most people are still in the thraldom of the Marxian dogma that
centralization is "more efficient and economical." They
close their eyes to the face that the alleged "economy" is
achieved at the cost of the worker's limb and life, that the
"efficiency" degrades him to a mere industrial cog, deadens
his soul, and 1`ills his body. Furthermore, in a system of
centralization the administration of industry becomes constantly
merged in fewer hands, producing a powerful bureaucracy of industrial
overlords. It would indeed be the sheerest irony if the revolution
were to aim at such a result. It would mean the creation of a new
master class.
The revolution can accomplish the emancipation of labor only by
gradual decentralization, by developing the individual worker into a
more conscious and determining factor in the processes of industry,
by making him the impulse whence proceeds all industrial and social
activity. The deep significance of the social revolution lies in the
abolition of the mastery of man over man, putting in its place the
management of things. Only thus can be achieved industrial and social
freedom.
"Are you sure it would work?" you demand.
I am sure of this: if that will not work, nothing else will. The
plan I have outlined is a free communism, a life of voluntary
cooperation and equal sharing. There is no other way of securing
economic equality which alone is liberty. Any other system must lead
back to capitalism.
It is likely, of course, that a country in social revolution may
try various economic experiments. A limited capitalism might be
introduced in one part of the land or collectivism in another. But
collectivism is only another form of the wage system and it would
speedily tend to become the capitalism of the present day. For
collectivism begins by abolishing private ownership of the means of
production and immediately reverses itself by returning to the system
of remuneration according to work performed; which means the
reintroduction of inequality.
Man learns by doing. The social revolution in different countries
and regions will probably try out various methods, and by practical
experience learn the best way. The revolution is at the same time the
opportunity and justification for it. I am not attempting to prophesy
what this or that country is going to do, what particular course it
will follow. Nor do I presume to dictate to the future, to prescribe
its mode of conduct. My purpose is to suggest, in broad outline, the
principles which must animate the revolution, the general lines of
action it should follow if it is to accomplish its aim- the
reconstruction of society on a foundation of freedom and equality.
We know that previous revolutions for the most part failed of
their objects; they degenerated into dictatorship and despotism, and
thus reestablished the old institutions of oppression and
exploitation. We know it from past and recent history. We therefore
draw the conclusion that the old way will not do. A new way muse be
cried in the coming social revolution. What new way, The only one so
far known to man: the way of liberty and equality, the way of free
communism, of Anarchy.
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