I want to focus on the young Dutch historian, Rutger Bregman, who created media attention at the 2019 Davos World Economic Forum by focusing on the problem that the rich are allowed to avoid paying a
fair share of taxes. His additional position is that there should be a universal Basic Income.
In the first video below is the discussion at Davos in which Bregman made his points.
In the second video, The Young Turks (TYT) comment on the exchange between Tucker Carlson and Rutger Bregman. Carlson invited Bregman to talk about the phenomenon of tax avoidance . . . but it never got there. Instead, Bregman focused on the problem of why such an issue as tax avoidance is not discussed by the major media, and his own answer was it is because billionaires pay millionaires — like Tucker Carlson — not to discuss it. At that point Carlson lost his composure with an emotive reaction of “go fuck yourself!”
The third video is the full exchange between Carlson and Bregman.
Video 1:
Video 2:
Video 3:
In the following clip, Noam Chomsky made the same charge against an interviewer as did Bregman against Carlson.
I have always been wary of political labels such as “fascism,” “nazism,” “communism,” “liberalism,” “socialism,” “Marxism,” — in fact, all “isms.” I never know what people mean by these words. I am suspicious that they themselves don’t know what they mean by them. I think they use them emotively to say something equivalent to Daffy Duck’s “you’re despicable.”
Take, for example, the label “fascism.” Stuart Chase, in his book, appropriately titled The Tyranny of Words, 1938,
asked many people to tell him what “fascism” meant for them. Below is his take on “fascism,” and the result of his survey.
Pursuit of “fascism.” As a specific illustration, let us inquire into the term “fascism” from the semantic point of view. Ever since Mussolini popularized it soon after the World War, the word has been finding its way into conversations and printed matter, until now one can hardly go out to dinner, open a newspaper, turn on the radio, without encountering it. It is constantly employed as a weighty test for affairs in Spain, for affairs in Europe, for affairs all over the world. Sinclair Lewis tells us that it can happen here. His wife, Dorothy Thompson, never tires of drawing deadly parallels between European fascism and incipient fascism in America. If you call a professional communist a fascist, he turns pale with anger. If you call yourself a fascist, as does Lawrence Dennis, friends begin
to avoid you as though you had the plague.
In ancient Rome, fasces were carried by lictors in imperial processions and ceremonies. They were bundles of birch rods, fastened together by a red strap, from which the head of an axe projected. The fasces were symbols of authority, first used by the Roman kings, then by the consuls, then by the emperors, A victorious general, saluted as “Imperator” by his soldiers, had his fasces crowned with laurel.
Mussolini picked up the word to symbolize the unity in a squad of his black-shirted followers. It was also helpful as propaganda to identify Italy in 1920 with the glories of imperial Rome. The programme of the early fascists was derived in part from the nationalist movement of 1910, and from syndicalism. The fascist squadrons fought the communist squadrons up and down Italy in a series of riots and disturbances, and vanquished them. Labour unions were broken up and crushed.
People outside of Italy who favoured labour unions, especially socialists, began to hate fascism. In due time Hitler appeared in Germany with his brand of National Socialism, but he too crushed labour unions, and so he was called a fascist. (Note the confusion caused by the
appearance of Hitler’s “socialism” among the more orthodox brands.) By this time radicals had begun to label anyone they did not like as a fascist. I have been called a “social fascist” by the left press because I have ideas of my own. Meanwhile, if the test of fascism is breaking up labour unions, certain American communists should be presented with fasces crowned with laurel.
Well, what does “fascism” mean? Obviously the term by itself means nothing. In one context it has some meaning as a tag for Mussolini, his political party, and his activities in Italy. In another context it might be used as a tag for Hitler, his party, and his political activities in Germany. The two contexts are clearly not identical, and if they are to be used one ought to speak of the Italian and German varieties as facism1 and fascism2.
More important than trying to find meaning in a vague abstraction is an analysis of what people believe it means. Do they agree? Are they thinking about the same referent when they hear the term or use it? I collected nearly a hundred reactions from friends and chance acquaintances during the early summer cf 1937. I did not ask for a definition, but asked them to tell me what “fascism” meant to them, what kind of a picture came into their minds when they heard the term. Here are sample reactions:
Schoolteacher: A dictator suppressing all opposition.
Author: One-party government. “Outs” unrepresented.
Governess: Obtaining one’s desires by sacrifice of human lives.
Lawyer: A state where the individual has no rights, hope, or future.
College Student: Hitler and Mussolini.
United Stales senator: Deception, duplicity, and professing to do what one is not doing.
Schoolboy: War. Concentration camps. Bad treatment of workers. Something that’s got to be licked.
Lawyer: A coercive capitalistic state.
Teacher: A government where you can live comfortably if you never disagree with it.
Lawyer; I don’t know.
Musician: Empiricism, forced control, quackery.
Editor: Domination of big business hiding behind Hitler and Mussolini.
Short story writer: A form of government where socialism is used to perpetuate capitalism.
Housewife: Dictatorship by a man not always intelligent.
Taxi-driver: What Hitler’s trying to put over. I don’t like it.
Housewife: Same thing as communism.
College student: Exaggerated nationalism. The creation of artificial hatreds.
Housewife: A large Florida rattlesnake in summer.
Author: I can only answer in cuss words.
Housewife: The corporate state. Against women and workers.
Librarian: They overturn things.
Farmer: Lawlessness.
Italian hairdresser: A bunch, all together.
Elevator starter: I never heard of it.
Businessman: The equivalent of the ARA.
Stenographer: Terrorism, religious intolerance, bigotry.
Social worker: Government in the interest of the majority for the purpose of accomplishing things democracy cannot do.
Businessman: Egotism. One person thinks he can run everything.
Clerk: II Duce, Oneness. Ugh!
Clerk: Mussolini’s racket. All business not making money taken over by the state.
Secretary: Blackshirts. I don’t like it.
Author: A totalitarian state which does not pretend to aim at equalization of wealth.
Housewife: Oppression. No worse than communism.
Author: An all-powerful police force to hold up a decaying society.
Housewife: Dictatorship. President Roosevelt is a dictator, but he’s not a fascist.
Journalist: Undesired government of masses by a self-seeking, fanatical minority.
Clerk: Me, one and only, and a lot of blind sheep following.
Sculptor: Chauvinism made into a religious cult and the consequent suppression of other races and religions.
Artist: An attitude toward life which I hate as violently as anything I know. Why? Because it destroys everything in
life I value.
Lawyer: A group which does not believe in government interference, and will overthrow the government if necessary.
Journalist: A left-wing group prepared to use force.
Advertising man: A governmental form which regards the individual as the property of the state.
Further comment is really unnecessary. It is safe to say that kindred abstractions, such as “democracy,” “communism,””totalitarianism,” would show a like reaction. The persons interviewed showed a dislike of “fascism,” but there was little agreement as to what it
meant. A number skipped the description level and jumped to the inference level, thus indicating that they did not know what they were disliking. Some specific referents were provided when Hitler and Mussolini were mentioned. The Italian hairdresser went back to the bundle of birch rods in imperial Rome.
There are at least fifteen distinguishable concepts in the answers quoted. The ideas of “dictatorship” and “repression” are in evidence but by no means uniform. It is easy to lump these answers in one’s mind because of a dangerous illusion of agreement. If one is opposed to
fascism, he feels that because these answers indicate people also opposed, then all agree. Observe that the agreement, such as it is, is on the inference level, with little or no agreement on the objective level. The abstract phrases given are loose and hazy enough to fit our loose and hazy conceptions interchangeably. Notice also how readily a collection like this can be classified by abstract concepts; how neatly the pigeonholes hold answers tying fascism up with capitalism, with communism, with oppressive laws, or with lawlessness. Multiply the sample by ten million and picture if you can the aggregate mental chaos. Yet this is the word which is soberly treated as a definite thing by newspapers, authors, orators, statesmen, talkers, the world over.
Using such words as “fascism” without knowing what they mean, is an example of the linguistic habit of “psittacism.” Take a look at Walter Laqueur’s chapter “Foreign Policy and the English Language” in his America, Europe, and the Soviet Union, 1983.
The concept of “catch-22” comes from Joseph Heller’s novel “Catch-22” (1961). In the novel, American pilots who fly combat missions must be crazy to do so. Now, the army has a rule that if one is crazy, one does not have to fly the missions. But to be excused, a pilot has to declare himself to be crazy. But by making the declaration, one demonstrates that one is not crazy, and therefore, has to fly the combat missions. So, crazy or not, one has to fly the combat missions.
So, “catch-22” is applicable to any self-defeating rule or situation. In the Wikipedia article, an example is given of trying to look for one’s lost eyeglasses. But to see your eyeglasses, you have to have eyeglasses, which you don’t have: catch-22.
What comes to my political mind are such matters as secessions. For example, Catalonia wanted to secede from Spain. To do so, by the Spanish Constitution, it needed a national referendum. And to have a national referendum, it needed a vote of Parliament, which was not forthcoming. It resorted to an “illegal” Catalonian referendum, which, in fact, favored secession. But the Spanish Supreme Court ruled this unconstitutional. So, for Catalonia to have a legal chance of secession, it would have to change the Constitution . . . a practical impossibility — hence, a catch-22 situation.
Generally, any radical change in politics, requires a change in the constitution. But constitutions are extremely hard to change. They are secured by catch-22 situations. Consider how difficult it is to amend the US Constitution.
The only country which has allowed relatively easy democratic changes to its Constitution is Switzerland through national initiatives and referendums. See Switzerland
In order to determine the origins of the State, one must have some conception of the nature of a State. Let us start with the Wikipedia
entry for “State (polity).”
“A state is a compulsory political organization with a centralized government that maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a certain geographical territory.”
For my purposes, this definition will do. However, from my individual perspective, what is important to me and to everyone else, is the
fact that we cannot occupy a piece of subsistence land for free, but must submit to the dictates of a centralized government.
How is the “State” different from a tribe, which also may prevent me from occupying a piece of land? Let us express the difference in the
following way. If I am a member of a tribe, then I will be allowed to occupy a piece of land for free. But, if I am a member of a State, I
will not be allowed to occupy a piece of land for free.
From this perspective, the question is: how is this transition from tribal free occupancy to a State non-free occupancy possible? This is the problem which has been labeled the problem of “primitive accumulation.”
One approach is to point out the differences in human natures. Some are gifted (i.e., intelligent, diligent, thrifty, etc.); others are not. OK, so the gifted will do better with their land holding than the less-gifted. Still, the less gifted will not work for the gifted unless their reward is equal or better than what they can accomplish on their own piece of land.
But the situation in a State is that many would be better off if they had access to free subsistence land; but they do not.
Despite the different theories of “State formation,”, only one is, for me, convincing. This is the conquest theory,
which has been best formulated by Franz Oppenheimer in his book The State
I urge the reader to read the book. The author is clear, brief, reasonable, and convincing. I will only focus on what to me is
the convincing, deductive argument for the conquest theory of the State.
He starts with the following assumption:
“No one will work for another if he can do as well or better by living off subsistence land. All teachers of natural law, etc., have unanimously declared that the differentiation into income-
receiving classes and propertyless classes can only take place when all fertile lands have been occupied. For so long as man has ample
opportunity to take up unoccupied land, "no one," says Turgot, "would think of entering the service of another";
we may add, "at least for wages, which are not apt to be higher than the earnings of an independent peasant working an unmortgaged and sufficiently large property"; while mortgaging is not
possible as long as land is yet free for the working or taking, as free as air and water. Matter that is obtainable for the taking has no value that enables it to be pledged, since no one loans on things that can be had for
nothing.
Let me formulate this as an explicit argument:
1. Person x will not work for person y, if x can do as well or better on his own.
2. x can do as well or better on his own, if he has free access to subsistence land
3. There are z acres of available fertile land in the world.
4. There are m number of people in the world
5. z/m = g
6. In order to subsist, x must have access to h acres of land
7. g > h
9. Therefore, there is enough subsistence land for each person
Oppenheimer gives us the statistics for available land in Germany as well as in the world, at the time when he wrote (1914); concluding that there is ample land for everyone. But despite this, we are prevented
from taking free occupancy by States.
The rest of the book is a narrative of conquests of one group of people by another. I need no further convincing, since the history of man is a history of war and conquest.
I want to conclude with the observation that since Oppenheimer wrote, we have a massive increase in populations and a decrease in available subsistence land. When Oppenheimer wrote, he gave 1.8 billion as the number of people in the world, and estimated 181 billion acres of available land, which would give each person roughly 100 acres. We have now 7.7 billion people, which, if that same amount of land were
available, would give each person about 23 acres, which is still sufficient for subsistence.
But the amount of land available for agriculture has dropped substantially . . .
***
Let me add the following:
“Private property in land has no justification except historically through power of the sword. In the beginning of feudal times, certain men had enough military strength to be able to force those whom they disliked not to live in a certain area. Those whom they chose to leave on the land became their serf’s, and were forced to work for them in return for the gracious permission to stay. In order to establish law in place of private force, it was necessary, in the main, to leave undisturbed the rights which had been acquired by the sword. The land became the property, of those who had conquered it, and the serfs were allowed to give rent instead of service. There is no justification for private property in land, except the historical necessity to conciliate turbulent robbers who would not otherwise have obeyed the law. This necessity arose in Europe many centuries ago, but in Africa the whole process is often quite recent. It is by this process, slightly disguised, that the Kimberley diamond mines and the Rand gold-mines were acquired in spite of prior native rights. It is a singular example of human inertia that men should have continued until now to endure the tyranny and extortion which a small minority are able to inflict by their possession of the land. No good to the community, of any sort or kind, results from the private ownership of land. If men were reasonable, they would decree that it should cease to-morrow, with no compensation beyond a moderate life income to the present holders.”
I look at the history of the United States from the perspective of a person who is forced, in one way or another, to work for a living, as contrasted, for example, to an American Indian who could go anywhere and do anything he wanted. As Rousseau put it: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Why is this so?
I see myself as a wage-slave. Because some may think I am exaggerating, let me explain. There is a broad sense of the term “slave” such that anyone who is forced to do anything by anyone else is a slave to that person. In this broad sense, children are normally slaves of their parents; wives are often slaves of their husbands; soldier are slaves to their superiors; worker are slaves to their employers; prostitutes are slaves to their pimps.
Slavery, in a narrow or technical sense, applies to the condition of people who are, in some sense, the property of some other person — with or without the possibility of gaining freedom. The severest form of this condition is chattel slavery in which the master is free to kill the slave.
Slavery is, then, a continuum of conditions, with degrees of restrictions, degrees of penalties, and degrees of freedoms.
In general, as I view it, slavery consists of being forced to do work for someone else. This forcing can be direct or indirect. In civilized societies, all forms of slavery are the results of laws.
Direct slavery occurs where the law stipulates that a particular person is the slave, serf, servant, laborer, or apprentice of another. Some laws allowed people to sell themselves into bondage. An example of this is the American Colonial practice of indentured servitude, whereby for the price of passage to America an immigrant sold himself into servitude for a period ranging from 2 to 7 years.
Indirect slavery occurs when the penalty for not working for someone else is a deprivation of the means for existence — a deprivation of access to subsistence land.
In the American colonies, it was unlawful to be a vagabond, i.e., a homeless person. Such people were arrested and made into laborers for someone or other. If no one could be found to take them, they were whipped and branded through the right ear. For a third offence, they were executed. As remnants of this policy, the United States still has vagrancy laws.
Direct slavery still exists in the United States in the form of military induction (when invoked). In such an event, a civilian is being forced to become a soldier. If he refuses, he will be imprisoned or, under some circumstances, executed. On the other hand, enlistment into the military is like indentured servitude — one makes an agreement with the government to serve a number of years (technically it is eight years), and the punishment for breaking such an agreement (with exceptions) is normally imprisonment.
Indirect slavery is the result of a deprivation of access to free subsistence land. The United States does not provide for free access to subsistence land, and in this manner forces everyone to get money for subsistence. Even if one manages to buy some land (or even get it for a nominal fee as was provided by the Homestead Act of 1862), one cannot simply subsist on it, because there are always state property taxes to be paid. And if these taxes are not paid, the land is confiscated by the state.
For this reason alone, it is proper to call the present economic and government system of the United States one of wage-slavery. The ultimate land owner is the government which collects property, sales, income, and other taxes as it sees fit.
In addition, because the government does have an enormous amount of money, it is also the largest employer and buyer. The bulk of its budget — about half a trillion dollars — is spent on military agents and tools of enforcement — airplanes, warships, tanks, bombs, missiles, bullets, and such. Often, the youth who are lured into the military are those who cannot afford to pay for education or job training. This is an “economic draft” which ensures that the United States government will have a steady supply of enforcers and canon fodder, drawn largely from the poor.
Capitalism, as I understand it, is the economic system which makes all land into a sellable and taxable commodity. It is a system which does not recognize an unalienable (unsellable) right to free land — though such a right is implict in the Declaration of Independence as the unalienable (unsellable) right to the pursuit of happiness. Happiness, in this instance, is nothing more than subsistence, and one cannot subsist in an independent and self-sufficient manner without access to land.
All major peasant uprisings and peasant revolutions have recognized the connection between liberty and free land. And this sentiment was expressed by peasants; not by landlords or merchants (bourgeoise). Landlords simply wanted to maintain possession of their lands, while merchants wanted to purchase land. It was to the advantage of peasants only to have access to free land.
The English, the American, and the French Revolutions were not peasant revolutions — they were revolutions of the aristocracy against a monarchy. Though there were many peasant and slave revolts throughout history, the first successful revolution of slaves was the Haitian Revolution of 1804. In the 20th century, the Mexican, the Russian, and the Spanish Revolutions are examples of three major peasant revolutions — and it is not surprising that their slogans were “Tierra y Libertad,” “Zemlya y Volya,” Land and Liberty.
The purpose of Political Liberty is to foster Economic Liberty. Political liberty is needed to get agreement for economic policies. And although the United States allows more political freedom than any other country, because of media control by corporations, it is extremely hard to get a political consensus about better economic policies. Right now, both domestically and internationally, the United States is against any policy which would give away land for free to anyone, without also making it a sellable commodity. Consequently, the following may be a true generalization of U.S. foreign policy: it is a suffecient reason for U.S. intervention in another country, if that country adopts an agrarian policy of giving away land for free. The underlying reason is that a country of self-sufficient and independent land owners will not yield a pool of cheap wage-slaves, including soldiers, for capitalists.
“In former times the marauding minority of mankind, by means of physical violence, compelled the working majority to render feudal services, or reduced them to a state of slavery or serfdom, or at least made them pay a tribute. Nowadays the dependence of the working classes is secured in a less direct but equally efficacious manner, viz. by means of the superior power of capital; the labourer being forced, in order to get his subsistence, to place his labour power entirely at the disposal of the capitalist. So there is a semblance of liberty; but in reality the labourer is exploited and subjected, because, all the land having been appropriated, he cannot procure his subsistence directly from nature, and, goods being produced for the market and not for the producer’s own use, he cannot subsist without capital. Wages will rise above what is wanted for the necessaries of life, where the labourer is able to earn his subsistence on free land, which has not yet become private property. But wherever, in an old and totally occupied country, a body of labouring poor is employed in manufactures, the same law, which we see at work in the struggle for life throughout the organized world, will keep wages at the absolute minimum”
F. A. Lange, Die Arbeiterfrage. Ihre Bedeutung fur Gegenwart und Zukunft. Vierte Auflage. 1861, pp. 12, 13. Quoted by H. J. Nieboer, Slavery: As an Industrial System (Ethnological Researches), 2d edition, 1909, p. 421.
Solution to the Unemployment Problem
A Free Land Amendment to the Constitution of the United States
Each person has a right to free and non-taxable subsistence land.
“. . . every man has, by the law of nature, a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence.” Thomas More, Utopia
If a person has no access to land, then that person
must work for someone, or
get charity from someone, or
live by criminal activity, or
starve.
If a person is unemployed and does not want to starve and does not want charity, then that person must live by criminal activity.
Economic Democracy = everyone has a right to free private (subsistence) land
Caveat
“. . . overpopulation is critical today and may well make the distribution question moot tomorrow.” Paul and Anne Ehrlich, The Population Explosion (1990), p. 21.
My speech on May 1, 2018 at the Haymarket Monument, Forest Home Cemetery, Forest Park, IL
Democracy can be either Direct or Indirect. Direct democracy is suitable to deciding matters which are of direct relevance to a small community. But still experts have to be chosen to carry out projects, and someone or some committee has to be chosen to see to the implementation and execution of these projects. But there are also matters which concern inter-communal matters, and here some form of delegation or representation is needed — hence a need for indirect democracy.
Indirect democracy can be either in a bottom-up manner, by electing delegates from a small community of about 150; or in a top-down manner, by masses of people (of thousands or millions) electing representatives. [I call this Mass Democracy]
Most of the world practices [Mass] Representative Democracy, giving executive power to a single individual — be it a mayor, a governor, a monarch, a president, or a prime-minister (except for Switzerland, which places executive power in the hands of a council of seven individuals).
Below are two videos. The first explains some of the detrimental features of [Mass] Representative Democracy. [See also Peter Kropotkin’s “Representative Government” (1885)] The second is about the benefits of a bottom-up democracy.
Harry Fankfurt must be given credit for initiating an interest in clarifying the concepts of “bullshit,”
“bullshitter.” and “bull session.” His essay — which became a small best-selling book — gave rise to other
efforts at clarification. and now my own. My overall assessment is that although all the efforts capture
aspects of bullshit and bullshitters, none have captured the genus and differentia. For one, starting with
Frankfurt, most think that a bullshitter is, by definition, a conveyor of bullshit; or, conversely, wherever
there is bullshit, there is a bullshitter. My thesis is that this is wrong. The concepts of a bullshitter and
that of bullshit are independent concepts, i.e., one does not imply the other. To the Frankfurts, I make
what to them is a paradoxical claim that a bullshitter does not have to resort to bullshit. In fact, the more
sophisticated bullshitter will never use bullshit. And conversely, the more bullshit we detect, the less
likely is it coming from a sophisticated bullshiter.
To make these claims plausible, I have to clarify the concepts of “bullshit” and “bullshitter.”
Bullshit
Those who say “bullshit” do so in reaction to some utterance or group of utterances. Saying “bullshit” is
a dysphemistic way of expressing a rejection. Only in this sense, is “bullshit” a unitary concept. But the
things to which a rejection applies are varied. This requires a listing. The first thing that comes to mind is
a determination that a claim is false. If we used a neutral expression, i.e., neither a euphemism nor a
dysphemism, we would say “That is false.” But resorting to a dysphemism — for whatever reason — we
say “That is bullshit.”
What I have written above indicates the pattern for various other rejections. So, to save space, all I need
do is present a table with neutral rejections and equivalent dysphemistic rejections.
Object of Rejection
Neutral Rejection
Dysphemistic Rejection
Statement
False
Bullshit
Statement or Group of Statements
Nonsensical or Meaningless
Bullshit
Subject of Discourse
Trivial or Unimportant
Bullshit
Argument
Invalid or Weak
Bullshit
Proposal
Impractical, Unworkable, Unrealistic
Bullshit
[Demand to do something
“No”
“Bullshit”
Bullshitter
What all the writer on the nature of a bullshitter have missed is the identification of the bullshitter with
Plato’s portrayal of a Sophist, and his contemporary embodiments in the lawyer, the politician, and the
salesman. The essential trait of a bullshitter is not, as Frankfurt thinks, with a sloviness towards truth.
but in the fact that he is more interested is winning or succeeding at whatever that he is trying to
accomplish. And, the better he is at bullshitting, the more he is interested in knowing what the truth is.
But his interest in the truth is not to express it, but to manipulate it to his advantage.
The goal of a lawyer is to win. He may take a case in which he is indifferent to the guilt or innocence of
his client (an indifference to the truth), and his goal is for his client to prevail. Now, in his arsenal of
techniques for winning, he may resort to using bullshit — meaning making false statement, pursuing a trivial matter, or using the panopoly of fallacies, such as ad hominem, red herring, appeal to emotions, etc. But if he is a sophisticated lawyer facing a sophisticated prosecutor, jury. and judge, then he may
decide not to use bullshit of any kind. He will resort to various omissions of relevant material, and to
selectively focus on issues to his advantage. Exactly the same strategy could be used by a politician and
salesman. They are all bullshitters because they use language for the sake of winning (and not for
gaining knowledge or finding the truth) — and depending on the context, they will resort to or refrain
from using bullshit.
Bull Session
I think that Frankfurt is right in thinking of a bull session as a sort of explorations of hypotheses. This
exploration can be done in a frivolous or a serious manner. Participant can pretend to hold particular
views, and see what the reaction is. This can be done for sheer entertainment or to learn mind-sets of
others. or whatnot. A bull session does not have to include any bullshitters or bullshit — though it may
include both.
Below, Cameron Watt reads the first chapter, “Our Riches”, from Peter Kropotkin’s Conquest of Bread. Below the video, I have reprinted the text so that you can read it as you listen to him.
CHAPTER I
Our Riches
I
THE human race has travelled far since, those bygone ages when men used to fashion their rude implements of flint, and lived on the precarious spoils of the chase, leaving to their children for their only heritage a shelter beneath the rocks, some poor utensils–and Nature, vast, ununderstood, and terrific, with whom they had to fight for their wretched existence.
During the agitated times which have elapsed since, and which have lasted for many thousand years, mankind has nevertheless amassed untold treasures. It has cleared the land, dried the marshes, pierced the forests, made roads; it has been building, inventing, observing, reasoning; it has created a complex machinery, wrested her secrets from Nature, and finally it has made a servant of steam. And the result is, that now the child of the civilized man finds ready, at its birth, to his hand an immense capital accumulated by those who have gone before him. And this capital enables him to acquire, merely by his own labour, combined with the labour of others, riches surpassing the dreams of the Orient, expressed in the fairy tales of the Thousand and One Nights.
The soil is cleared to a great extent, fit for the reception of the best seeds, ready to make a rich return for the skill and labour spent upon it– a return more than sufficient for all the wants of humanity. The methods of cultivation are known.
On the wide prairies of America each hundred men, with the aid of powerful machinery, can produce in a few months enough wheat to maintain ten thousand people for a whole year. And where man wishes to double his produce, to treble it, to multiply it a hundred-fold, he makes the soil, gives to each plant the requisite care, and thus obtains enormous returns. While the hunter of old had to scour fifty or sixty square miles to find food for his family, the civilized man supports his household, with far less pains, and far more certainty, on a thousandth part of that space. Climate is no longer an obstacle. When the sun fails, man replaces it by artificial heat; and we see the coming of a time when artificial light also will be used to stimulate vegetation. Meanwhile, by the use of glass and hot water pipes, man renders a given space ten and fifty times more productive than it was in its natural state.
The prodigies accomplished in industry are still more striking. With the co-operation of those intelligent beings, modern machines–themselves the fruit of three or four generations of inventors, mostly unknown–a hundred men manufacture now the stuff to clothe ten thousand persons for a period of two years. In well-managed coal mines the labour of a hundred miners furnishes each year enough fuel to warm ten thousand families under an inclement sky. And we have lately witnessed twice the spectacle of a wonderful city springing up in a few months at Paris,1 without interrupting in the slightest degree the regular work of the French nation.
And if in manufactures as in agriculture, and as indeed through our whole social system, the labour, the discoveries, and the inventions of our ancestors profit chiefly the few, it is none the less certain that mankind in general, aided by the creatures of steel and iron which it already possesses, could already procure an existence of wealth and ease for every one of its members.
Truly, we are rich, far richer than we think; rich in what we already possess, richer still in the possibilities of production of our actual mechanical outfit; richest of all in what we might win from our soil, from our manufactures, from our science, from our technical knowledge, were they but applied to bringing about the well-being of all.
II
We, in civilized societies, are rich. Why then are the many poor? Why this painful drudgery for the masses? Why, even to the best paid workman, this uncertainty for the morrow, in the midst of all the wealth inherited from the past, and in spite of the powerful means of production, which could ensure comfort to all in return for a few hours of daily toil?
The Socialists have said it and repeated it unwearyingly. Daily they reiterate it, demonstrating it by arguments taken from all the sciences. It is because all that is necessary for production– the land, the mines, the highways, machinery, food, shelter, education, knowledge–all have been seized by the few in the course of that long story of robbery, enforced migration and wars, of ignorance and oppression, which has been the life of the human race before it had learned to subdue the forces of Nature. It is because, taking advantage of alleged rights acquired in the past, these few appropriate to-day two-thirds of the products of human labour, and then squander them in the most stupid and shameful way. It is because, having reduced the masses to a point at which they have not the means of subsistence for a month, or even for a week in advance, the few only allow the many to work on condition of themselves receiving the lion’s share. It is because these few prevent the remainder of men from producing the things they need, and force them to produce, not the necessaries of life for all, but whatever offers the greatest profits to the monopolists. In this is the substance of all Socialism.
Take, indeed, a civilized country. The forests which once covered it have been cleared, the marshes drained, the climate improved. It has been made habitable. The soil, which bore formerly only a coarse vegetation, is covered to-day with rich harvests. The rock-walls in the valleys are laid out in terraces and covered with vines bearing golden fruit. The wild plants, which yielded nought but acrid berries, or uneatable roots, have been transformed by generations of culture into succulent vegetables, or trees covered with delicious fruits. Thousands of highways and railroads furrow the earth, and pierce the mountains. The shriek of the engine is heard in the wild gorges of the Alps, the Caucasus, and the Himalayas. The rivers have been made navigable; the coasts, carefully surveyed, are easy of access; art)ficial harbours, laboriously dug out and protected against the fury of the sea, afford shelter to the ships. Deep shafts have been sunk in the rocks; labyrinths of underground galleries have been dug out where coal may be raised or minerals extracted. At the crossings of the highways great cities have sprung up, and within their borders all the treasures of industry, science, and art have been accumulated.
Whole generations, that lived and died in misery, oppressed and ill-treated by their masters, and worn out by toil, have handed on this immense inheritance to our century.
For thousands of years millions of men have laboured to clear the forests, to drain the marshes, and to open up highways by land and water. Every rood of soil we cultivate in Europe has been watered by the sweat of several races of men. Every acre has its story of enforced labour, of intolerable toil, of the people’s sufferings. Every mile of railway, every yard of tunnel, has received its share of human blood.
The shafts of the mine still bear on their rocky walls the marks made by the pick of the workman who toiled to excavate them. The space between each prop in the underground galleries might be marked as a miner’s grave; and who can tell what each of these graves has cost, in tears, in privations, in unspeakable wretchedness to the family who depended on the scanty wage of the worker cut off in his prime by fire-damp, rock-fall, or flood?
The cities, bound together by railroads and waterways, are organisms which have lived through centuries. Dig beneath them and you find, one above another, the foundations of streets, of houses, of theatres, of public buildings. Search into their history and you will see how the civilization of the town, its industry, its special characteristics, have slowly grown and ripened through the co-operation of generations of its inhabitants before it could become what it is to-day. And even to-day; the value of each dwelling, factory, and warehouse, which has been created by the accumulated labour of the millions of workers, now dead and buried, is only maintained by the very presence and labour of legions of the men who now inhabit that special corner of the globe. Each of the atoms composing what we call the Wealth of Nations owes its value to the fact that it is a part of the great whole. What would a London dockyard or a great Paris warehouse be if they were not situated in these great centres of international commerce? What would become of our mines, our factories, our workshops, and our railways, without the immense quantities of merchandise transported every day by sea and land?
Millions of human beings have laboured to create this civilization on which we pride ourselves to-day. Other millions, scattered through the globe, labour to maintain it. Without them nothing would be left in fifty years but ruins.
There is not even a thought, or an invention, which is not common property, born of the past and the present. Thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have co-operated in the invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of man.
Thousands of writers, of poets, of scholars, have laboured to increase knowledge, to dissipate error, and to create that atmosphere of scientific thought, without which the marvels of our century could never have appeared. And these thousands of philosophers, of poets, of scholars, of inventors, have themselves been supported by the labour of past centuries. They have been upheld and nourished through life, both physically and mentally, by legions of workers and craftsmen of all sorts. They have drawn their motive force from the environment.
The genius of a Séguin, a Mayer, a Grove, has certainly done more to launch industry in new directions than all the capitalists in the world. But men of genius are themselves the children of industry as well as of science. Not until thousands of steam-engines had been working for years before all eyes, constantly transforming heat into dynamic force, and this force into sound, light, and electricity, could the insight of genius proclaim the mechanical origin and the unity of the physical forces. And if we, children of the nineteenth century, have at last grasped this idea, if we know now how to apply it, it is again because daily experience has prepared the way. The thinkers of the eighteenth century saw and declared it, but the idea remained undeveloped, because the eighteenth century had not grown up like ours, side by side with the steam-engine. Imagine the decades that might have passed while we remained in ignorance of this law, which has revolutionized modern industry, had Watt not found at Soho skilled workmen to embody his ideas in metal, bringing all the parts of his engine to perfection, so that steam, pent in a complete mechanism, and rendered more docile than a horse, more manageable than water, became at last the very soul of modern industry.
Every machine has had the same history–a long record of sleepless nights and of poverty, of disillusions and of joys, of partial improvements discovered by several generations of nameless workers, who have added to the original invention these little nothings, without which the most fertile idea would remain fruitless. More than that: every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant of innumerable inventions which have preceded it in the vast field of mechanics and industry.
Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realization leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and of hand, toil of mind and muscle–all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail of the past and the present.
By what right then can any one whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say–This is mine, not yours?
III
It has come about, however, in the course of the ages traversed by the human race, that all that enables man to produce, and to increase his power of production, has been seized by the few. Sometime, perhaps, we will relate how this came to pass. For the present let it suffice to state the fact and analyse its consequences.
To-day the soil, which actually owes its value to the needs of an ever-increasing population, belongs to a minority who prevent the people from cultivating it–or do not allow them to cultivate it according to modern methods.
The mines, though they represent the labour of several generations, and derive their sole value from the requirements of the industry of a nation and the clensity of the population–the mines also belong to the few; and these few restrict the output of coal, or prevent it entirely, if they find more profitable investments for their capital. Machinery, too, has become the exclusive property of the few, and even when a machine incontestably represents the improvements added to the original rough invention by three or four generations of workers, it none the less belongs to a few owners. And if the descendants of the very inventor who constructed the first machine for lace-making, a century ago, were to present themselves to-day in a lace factory at Bâle or Nottingham, and demand their rights, they would be told: “Hands off! this machine is not yours,” and they would be shot down if they attempted to take possession of it.
The railways, which would be useless as so much old iron without the teeming population of Europe, its industry, its commerce, and its marts, belong to a few shareholders, ignorant perhaps of the whereabouts of the lines of rails which yield them revenues greater than those of medieval kings. And if the children of those who perished by thousands while excavating the railway cuttings and tunnels were to assemble one day, crowding in their rags and hunger, to demand bread from the shareholders, they would be met with bayonets and grape-shot, to disperse them and safeguard “vested interests.”
In virtue of this monstrous system, the son of the worker, on entering life, finds no field which he may till, no machine which he may tend, no mine in which he may dig, without accepting to leave a great part of what he will produce to a master. He must sell his labour for a scant and uncertain wage. His father and his grandfather have toiled to drain this field, to build this mill, to perfect this machine. They gave to the work the full measure of their strength, and what more could they give? But their heir comes into the world poorer than the lowest savage. If he obtains leave to till the fields, it is on condition of surrendering a quarter of the produce to his master, and another quarter to the government and the middlemen. And this tax, levied upon him by the State, the capitalist, the lord of the manor, and the middleman, is always increasing; it rarely leaves him the power to improve his system of culture. If he turns to industry, he is allowed to work–though not always even that –only on condition that he yield a half or two-thirds of the product to him whom the land recognizes as the owner of the machine.
We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We call those the barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die of hunger.
The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets.
The working people cannot purchase with their wages the wealth which they have produced, and industry seeks foreign markets among the monied classes of other nations. In the East, in Africa, everywhere, in Egypt, Tonkin or the Congo, the European is thus bound to promote the growth of serfdom. And so he does. But soon he finds everywhere similar competitors. All the nations evolve on the same lines, and wars, perpetual wars, break out for the right of precedence in the market. Wars for the possession of the East, wars for the empire of the sea, wars to impose duties on imports and to dictate conditions to neighbouring states; wars against those “blacks” who revolt! The roar of the cannon never ceases in the world, whole races are massacred, the states of Europe spend a third of their budgets in armaments; and we know how heavily these taxes fall on the workers.
Education still remains the privilege of a small minority, for it is idle to talk of education when the workman’s child is forced, at the age of thirteen, to go down into the mine or to help his father on the farm. It is idle to talk of studies to the worker, who comes home in the evening crushed by excessive toil with its brutalizing atmosphere. Society is thus bound to remain divided into two hostile camps, and in such conditions freedom is a vain word. The Radical begins by demanding a greater extension of political rights, but he soon sees that the breath of liberty leads to the uplifting of the proletariat, and then he turns round, changes his opinions, and reverts to repressive legislation and government by the sword.
A vast array of courts, judges, executioners, policemen, and gaolers is needed to uphold these privileges; and this array gives rise in its turn to a whole system of espionage, of false witness, of spies, of threats and corruption.
The system under which we live checks in its turn the growth of the social sentiment. We all know that without uprightness, without self-respect, without sympathy and mutual aid, human kind must perish, as perish the few races of animals living by rapine, or the slave-keeping ants. But such ideas are not to the taste of the ruling classes, and they have elaborated a whole system of pseudo-science to teach the contrary.
Fine sermons have been preached on the text that those who have should share with those who have not, but he who would act out this principle is speedily informed that these beautiful sentiments are all very well in poetry, but not in practice. “To lie is to degrade and besmirch oneself,” we say, and yet all civilized life becomes one huge lie. We accustom ourselves and our children to hypocrisy, to the practice of a double-faced morality. And since the brain is ill at ease among lies, we cheat ourselves with sophistry. Hypocrisy and sophistry become the second nature of the civilized man.
But a society cannot live thus; it must return to truth or cease to exist.
Thus the consequences which spring from the original act of monopoly spread through the whole of social life. Under pain of death, human societies are forced to return to first principles: the means of production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be the collective property of the race. Individual appropriation is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to all. All things are for all men, since all men have need of them, since all men have worked in the measure of their strength to produce them, and since it is not possible to evaluate every one’s part in the production of the world’s wealth.
All things are for all. Here is an immense stock of tools and implements; here are all those iron slaves which we call machines, which saw and plane, spin and weave for us, unmaking and remaking, working up raw matter to produce the marvels of our time. But nobody has the right to seize a single one of these machines and say, “This is mine; if you want to use it you must pay me a tax on each of your products,” any more than the feudal lord of medieval times had the right to say to the peasant, “This hill, this meadow belong to me, and you must pay me a tax on every sheaf of corn you reap, on every rick you build.”
All is for all! If the man and the woman bear their fair share of work, they have a right to their fair share of all that is produced by all, and that share is enough to secure them well-being. No more of such vague formulas as “The Right to work,” or “To each the whole result of his labour.” What we proclaim is THE RIGHT TO WELL-BEING: WELL-BEING FOR ALL!
Footnotes
For the International Paris Exhibitions of 1889 and 1900.
Footnotes were written by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel, the editors.
The following excerpt appears on pp. 227-8 of Chapter Seven: Intellectuals and Social Change
. . .
Marxist “Theory” and Intellectual Fakery
WOMAN: Noam, apart from the idea of the “vanguard,” I’m interested why you’re so critical of the whole broader category of Marxist analysis in general-like people in the universities and so on who refer to themselves as “Marxists.” I’ve noticed you’re never very happy with it.
CHOMSKY: Well, I guess one thing that’s unattractive to me about “Marxism” is the very idea that there is such a thing. It’s a rather striking fact that you don’t find things like “Marxism” in the sciences — like, there isn’t any part of physics which is “Einsteinianism,” let’s say, or “Planckianism” or something like that. It doesn’t make any sense –because people aren’t gods: they just discover things, and they make mistakes, and their graduate students tell them why they’re wrong, and then they go on and do things better the next time. But there are no gods around. I mean, scientists do use the terms “Newtonianism” and “Darwinism,” but nobody thinks of those as doctrines that you’ve got to somehow be loyal to, and figure out what the Master thought, and what he would have said in this new circumstance and so on. That sort of thing is just completely alien to rational existence, it only shows up in irrational domains.
So Marxism, Freudianism: anyone of these things I think is an irrational cult. They’re theology, so they’re whatever you think of theology; I don’t think much of it. In fact, in my view that’s exactly the right analogy: notions like Marxism and Freudianism belong to the history of organized religion. So part of my problem is just its existence: it seems to me that even to discuss something like “Marxism” is already making a mistake. Like, we don’t discuss “Planckism.” Why not? Because it would be crazy. Planck [German
physicist] had some things to say, and some of them are right, and those were absorbed into later science, and some of them are wrong, and they were improved on. It’s not that Planck wasn’t a great man-all kinds of great discoveries, very smart, mistakes, this and that. That’s really the way we ought to look at it, I think. As soon as you set up the idea of “Marxism” or “Freudianism” or something, you’ve already abandoned rationality.
It seems to me the question a rational person ought to ask is, what is there in Marx’s work that’s worth saving and modifying, and what is there that ought to be abandoned? Okay, then you look and you find things. I think Marx did some very interesting descriptive work on nineteenth century history. He was a very good journalist. When he describes the British in India, or the Paris Commune [70-day French workers’ revolution in 1871], or the parts of Capital that talk about industrial London, a lot of that is kind of interesting — I think later scholarship has improved it and changed it, but it’s quite interesting.5
He had an abstract model of capitalism which — I’m not sure how valuable it is, to tell you the truth. It was an abstract model, and like any abstract model, it’s not really intended to be descriptively accurate in detail, it’s intended to sort of pull out some crucial features and study those. And you have to ask in the case of an abstract model, how much of the complex reality does it really capture? That’s questionable in this case — first of all, it’s questionable how much of nineteenth-century capitalism it captured, and I think it’s even more questionable how much of late-twentieth-century capitalism it captures.
There are supposed to be laws [i.e. of history and economics]. I can’t understand them, that’s all I can say; it doesn’t seem to me that there are any laws that follow from it. Not that I know of any better laws, I just don’t think we know about “laws” in history.
There’s nothing about socialism in Marx, he wasn’t a socialist philosopher — there are about five sentences in Marx’s whole work that refer to socialism.6 He was a theorist of capitalism. I think he introduced some interesting concepts at least, which every sensible person ought to have
mastered and employ, notions like class, and relations of production …
NOTES
5. For Marx’s works that are mentioned in the text, see Karl Marx, “The Civil War in France” (1871)(on the Paris Commune); “On Imperialism in India” (1853)(on the British in India); Capital, Vol. I (1867)(on industrial London).
6. On the lack of discussion of socialism in Marx’s work, see for example, Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, New York: Free Press, 1960, pp. 355-392 (“Two Roads from Marx”). An excerpt (pp. 368-369):
The paucity is extraordinary. In an address to the General Council of the International Workingman’s Association, published as The Civil War in France, Marx said, at one point in passing, that communism would be a system under which “united cooperative societies are to regulate the national production under a common plan,” but nothing more. . . . In only one other place did Marx elaborate any remarks about the future society — the testy letter which came to be known as The Critique of the Gotha Programme. In 1875 the rival Lasallean and Eisenacher (Liebknecht, Bebel, Bernstein) factions met in Gotha to form the German Socialist Workers Party (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands). As a political party, the socialists were confronted, for the first time, with the task of stating a political program on transition to socialism. Taking its cue from the [1871 Paris] Commune, the Gotha program emphasized two demands: the organization of producers’ co-operatives with state aid and equality.
Marx’s criticism was savage. The demand for producers’ co-operatives, he said, smacked of the Catholic socialism of Buchez (the president of the Constitutional Assembly of 1848), while the demand for the “equitable distribution of the proceeds of labour” was simply a bourgeois right, since in any other society than pure communism the granting of equal shares to individuals with unequal needs would simply lead to renewed inequality. A transitional society, Marx said, could not be completely communal. In the co-operative society, based on collective ownership, “the producers do not interchange their products.” There would still be need for a
state machinery, since certain social needs would have to be met. The central directing agency would make deductions from the social product: for administrative costs, schools, health services, and the like. Only under communism would the State, as a government over persons, be replaced by an “administration of things. . . .” [D]espite his theoretical criticisms of the transitional program, there is little in the Critique of a concrete nature regarding the mechanics of socialist economics either in the transitional or the pure communist society.
