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THE LIBERTARIAN SOCIALIST REVOLUTIONor, as others would put it...THE ANARCHIST REVOLUTION+========================================================================+| || For more information on Anarchism, Collectivism, Syndicalism, and || the Social Revolution, please visit: || || AnarchyArchives - An expansive and ambitious collection of texts || from all the great Anarchist thinkers and theorists, such as Emma || Goldman, Peter Kropotkin, Alexander Berkman, Pierre Joseph || Proudhon, and best of all, Mikhail Bakunin. || || || texts on the subject of anarchism). || || world). || || (guides and texts on the practice of Syndicalism and || revolutionary worker action). || || collapse). || || is happening now). || || - The Allegorical Tale of the Satanist and the Queer - There is much || to learn from this story. || || || For protection while sharing files online, please use || Also, you can use BlockList Manager. Download it from afterdawn.org: || || the_blocklist_manager.cfm || || Enjoy the reading! || This document brought to you by BloodLogic; || |+========================================================================+The Wealth of Nations (1776) - An Excerpt from Chapter 8 of Vol. 1------------------------------------------------------------------by Adam Smith-------------What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contractusually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means thesame. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little aspossible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latterin order to lower the wages of labour.It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, uponall ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force theother into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number,can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at leastdoes not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen.We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work;but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters canhold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, a merchant,though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year ortwo upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could notsubsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year withoutemployment. In the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master ashis master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, thoughfrequently of those of workmen. BUT WHOEVER IMAGINES, UPON THIS ACCOUNT, THATMASTERS RARELY COMBINE, IS AS IGNORANT OF THE WORLD AS OF THE SUBJECT. MASTERSARE ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE IN A SORT OF TACIT, BUT CONSTANT AND UNIFORMCOMBINATION, NOT TO RAISE THE WAGES OF LABOUR ABOVE THEIR ACTUAL RATE. TOVIOLATE THIS COMBINATION IS EVERYWHERE A MOST UNPOPULAR ACTION, AND A SORT OFREPROACH TO A MASTER AMONG HIS NEIGHBOURS AND EQUALS. WE SELDOM, INDEED, HEAROF THIS COMBINATION, BECAUSE IT IS THE USUAL, AND ONE MAY SAY, THE NATURALSTATE OF THINGS, WHICH NOBODY EVER HEARS OF. Masters, too, sometimes enterinto particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate.These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till themoment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do, withoutresistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by otherpeople. Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrarydefensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes too, without anyprovocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price oftheir labour. Their usual pretences are, sometimes the high price ofprovisions; sometimes the great profit which their masters make by their work.But whether their combinations be offensive or defensive, they are alwaysabundantly heard of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, theyhave always recourse to the loudest clamour, and sometimes to the mostshocking violence and outrage. They are desperate, and act with the follyand extravagance of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten theirmasters into an immediate compliance with their demands. The masters uponthese occasions are just as clamorous upon the other side, and never ceaseto call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorousexecution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity againstthe combinations of servants, labourers, and journeymen. The workmen,accordingly, very seldom derive any advantage from the violence of thosetumultuous combinations, which, partly from the interposition of the civilmagistrate, partly from the necessity superior steadiness of the masters,partly from the necessity which the greater part of the workmen are under ofsubmitting for the sake of present subsistence, generally end in nothing, butthe punishment or ruin of the ringleaders.The Capitalist System---------------------By Mikhail Bakunin------------------Is it necessary to repeat here the irrefutable arguments of Socialism which nobourgeois economist has yet succeeded in disproving? What is property, whatis capital in their present form? For the capitalist and the property ownerthey mean the power and the right, guaranteed by the State, to live withoutworking. And since neither property nor capital produces anything when notfertilized by labor - that means the power and the right to live by exploitingthe work of someone else, the right to exploit the work of those who possessneither property nor capital and who thus are forced to sell their productivepower to the lucky owners of both. Note that I have left out of accountaltogether the following question: In what way did property and capital everfall into the hands of their present owners? This is a question which, whenenvisaged from the points of view of history, logic, and justice, cannot beanswered in any other way but one which would serve as an indictment againstthe present owners. I shall therefore confine myself here to the statementthat property owners and capitalists, inasmuch as they live not by their ownproductive labor but by getting land rent, house rent, interest upon theircapital, or by speculation on land, buildings, and capital, or by thecommercial and industrial exploitation of the manual labor of the proletariat,all live at the expense of the proletariat. (Speculation and exploitation nodoubt also constitute a sort of labor, but altogether non-productive labor.)I know only too well that this mode of life is highly esteemed in allcivilized countries, that it is expressly and tenderly protected by all theStates, and that the States, religions, and all the juridical laws, bothcriminal and civil, and all the political governments, monarchies andrepublican - with their immense judicial and police apparatuses and theirstanding ...
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