Let me illustrate this by an example. Before a mutual services, and to
helping each other in a common object, and that all may be considered,
with respect to others, _intermediates_. If, for instance, in the course
of the operation, the conveyance becomes important enough to occupy one
person, the spinning another, the weaving another, why should the first
be considered a _parasite_ more than the other two? The conveyance must
be made, must it not? Does not he who performs it devote to it his time
and trouble? and by so doing does he not spare that of his colleagues?
Do these do more or other than this for him? Are they not equally
dependent for remuneration, that is, for the division of the produce,
upon the law of reduced price? Is it not in all liberty, for the common
good, that this separation of work takes place, and that these
arrangements are entered into? What do we want with a Socialist then,
who, under pretence of organising for us, comes despotically to break up
our voluntary arrangements, to check the division of labour, to
substitute isolated efforts for combined ones, and to send civilisation
back? Is association, as I describe it here, in itself less association,
because every one enters and leaves it freely, chooses his place in it,
judges and bargains for himself on his own responsibility, and brings
with him the spring and warrant of personal interest? That it may
deserve this name, is it necessary that a pretended reformer should come
and impose upon us his plan and his will, and, as it were, to
concentrate mankind in himself?
The more we examine these _advanced schools_, the more do we become
convinced that there is but one thing at the root of them: ignorance
proclaiming itself infallible, and claiming despotism in the name of
this infallibility.
Pages:
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94