XIX

Efficacy of Reforms

In treating of the question “Why we are revolutionists,” we endeavored to show that the poverty and discontent engendered by our bad social organization leads directly to revolt, and that since we are constrained by the force of circumstances to take part in this revolution we have every interest in preparing ourselves for it. There is another reason which we have mentioned only incidentally and which is also very important, for it explains why the Anarchists decline to struggle to obtain some of the reforms offered to the workers as panaceas or as evolutional means for achieving their emancipation gradually. We have to show that the capitalistic organization being given, the separation of society into two classes, one of which lives at the expense of the other, no melioration can be granted to the exploited class without lessening the privileges of the exploiting class; consequently either the reform is illusory, a decoy used for the purpose of lulling the worker to sleep and making him exhaust his energies in the conquest of soap-bubbles which burst in his hands when he seeks to grasp them, or, if it really might alter the situation, the privileged class, which is in possession of the power, will put forth every effort to prevent its application or turn it to their own profit; hence we must always come to the same ultima ratio⁠—force. We do not intend to review all the reforms invented by hard-up politicians, nor to criticize all the electoral canards hatched in the brains of office-seekers; we should have to write hundreds of volumes. We believe we have amply demonstrated that the sources of misery lie in our bad economic organization; the reader will therefore understand that we leave aside all those remedies which embody political changes only. As to economic reforms worth the trouble of discussing, they are very few, and easy to enumerate:

An income tax! For a considerable period this panacea was extolled, but of late it seems to have lost slightly in favor. It is one of those which the politicians use to dazzle the eyes of the workers; one of those also which have enjoyed most credit, for it appeared to aim to make the rich support the expenses of the State; it seemed intended to reestablish the equilibrium between citizens by making each defray the expenses of society according to the services received therefrom. But to study the mechanism of society and find the sources of riches is sufficient to enable one to understand that the pretended reform would reform nothing, that it is nothing but a miserable bait designed to lure the workers astray by leading them to hope for improvements which will never take place, at the same time preventing them from discovering the true means of emancipating themselves. Undoubtedly there are some capitalists who are really frightened at the bare mention of this reform, already seeing themselves “despoiled” for the benefit of “the vile multitude;” the bourgeoisie is full of just such tremblers, frightened at the least noise, hiding at the slightest alarm, but bawling like calves when anyone speaks of touching their privileges. It may also be that among those who propose it there are some who actually believe in its efficacy. The outcries of the former and the naivete of the latter admirably contribute to the deception of the workers, making them take in dead earnest this child’s play which prevents them from giving ear when someone shows them that they have nothing to hope from their exploiters, that their emancipation can be real only on the day there are no more privileges.

Under the regime of tithes the workers “knew where they were at” concerning what they paid to their masters and tyrants: so much for the lord, so much for the priest, so much for this one, so much for that one. At the end they perceived there was not much for themselves. This made a revolution; the bourgeoisie seized the power; the people having fought to abolish the tithes it would not have been politic to reestablish them; the bourgeoisie therefore invented the tax and indirect tribute. After this plan the tithe is always deducted beforehand, but it is the capitalists, traders, and other middlemen who advance the sums thus deducted for the benefit of the State, and who are thus left with a free hand to reimburse themselves royally from the pockets of producers and consumers; and as these latter have no business directly with the treasury they can form no exact estimate of what share they have to pay, and all goes for the best in this best of all possible bourgeois worlds.

It is said we have to pay an annual tax of one hundred and thirty to one hundred and forty francs a head, in France: what is that?⁠—Why deny oneself the pleasure of having a government which busies itself with your happiness for so modest a sum? Really it is nothing at all and one would be stupid to do without such a blessing for the sake of a little thing like that! It is, indeed, nothing; and the worker does not perceive that being the only one to produce he is the only one to pay; he has not only his own bill to settle but that of all the parasites who already live from the product of his labor.

By whatever sophisms the bourgeois economists seek to prop up their system in order to justify the existence of capitalists, one thing is sure: Capital does not reproduce itself and can be nothing but the product of labor; now, as the capitalists themselves do not work their capital is therefore the fruit of others’ work. All this commerce between individual and individual, nation and nation, all these exchanges, all this transit, is the result of labor only; and the profit which remains to the middleman is the tithe torn from the labor of the producers by the owners of capital. Is it by means of the money spent that the earth produces the grain, vegetables, and fruits we need for our nourishment; the flax and hemp we must have to clothe ourselves; the pasturage necessary to fatten the cattle on which we feed? Is it by the power of capital alone that the mines yield us the metals used in our industries, or in making the machines and tools we require? Is it capital which transforms raw material and fashions it into objects for consumption?⁠—Who would dare make the claim! Political economy itself, the object of whose existence is to ascribe everything to capital, does not go so far; it merely tries to prove that capital being indispensable to the putting of all sorts of exploitation into operation, it deserves a share⁠—the biggest share⁠—for the dangers and casualties it is considered to have risked in the enterprise. To demonstrate the relative unimportance of capital it is sufficient to repeat the oft-quoted hypothesis, “Let us imagine the disappearance of all monetary values, gold, silver, banknotes, commercial paper, drafts, checks, and all other bills of exchange; should we therefore stop producing?” Would the peasant therefore cease to till his bit of ground, the miner to extract his subsistence from the mine, the mechanic to fabricate articles for consumption? Would not the workers find some means of getting along without cash in exchanging their products, and to continue to live and produce without money?

The rational answer to these questions leads us to conclude that capital is but a means by which the parasites mask the superfluousness of their presence and justify the middleman whom they thrust upon the producers for the purpose of deducting in advance their tithe of the labor of others. Thus whatever means the State may employ to attack their incomes, these attacks must in the end recoil upon the producers, since the incomes themselves come only from labor. So much the greater will be the burden with which they are freighted; so much the more heavily will it fall upon the workers, swelled as it will be by the middleman; and in the final reckoning this boasted reform will be transformed, through the facts of our bad social organization, into a still greater means of exploitation and robbery.

Next after the income tax, which has had its day, the most vaunted reform of the present time is reduction of the hours of labor and the fixing of a minimum wage. To regulate the relations of capital and labor in favor of the workers, to obtain an eight-hour day instead of one of twelve, seems at first sight a tremendous progress; and it is not surprising that many allow themselves to be caught by it, using all their energies to obtain this palliative, believing themselves to be thus working for the emancipation of the proletarian class. In the chapter on authority, however, we observed that it has but one role⁠—to defend the existing order of things; therefore to ask that the State interfere with the social relations between labor and capital is to give proof of the greatest want of logic, for its interference can turn out profitably only to him whose defender it is. In examining the tax-reform we noted that the role of the capitalist is to live at the expense of the producer; now, to counsel the workers to go and ask the capitalists to curtail their profits at the same time they are using every means to increase them is to make most abominable sport of those you advise. Simple political changes, very far from having an importance equal to this, have required revolutions to be effected.

If the working day were reduced to eight hours, say the defenders of this reform, it would diminish the periods of enforced idleness which result from overproduction; everybody would work, and the workers would be enabled to increase their wages in consequence. At first sight this reasoning seems logical, but nothing can be falser to him who has thoroughly considered the phenomena engendered by the vicious organization which today is by courtesy called society. In the chapter on property we have shown that if the stores are glutted with products it is not because production is too great but because the majority of the producers are reduced to poverty and cannot consume according to their needs. The most logical means therefore for the laborer to secure work for himself would be to take possession of the products he has created and of which he has been cheated, and consume them. We will expatiate no further in this direction; it remains to us to show that the application of the proposed reform would not bring the slightest pecuniary advantage to the workers.

When a capitalist invests his capital in some industry he does so because he hopes thereby to make it fruitful. Now, in the present conditions the employer calculates that he must have the workman ten, eleven, or twelve hours, in order to get out of him the estimated profit. Reduce the working day to eight hours and the employer will find himself injured, his calculations upset; but as his capital must bring him in so much percent, (his special labor as a capitalist consisting of getting his profit⁠—buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market possible⁠—in short robbing all those with whom he has dealings⁠—such being his business) he will hunt up some new device to reimburse himself for what it has been endeavored to take away from him. Three ways will present themselves to him: to increase the price of his products, to reduce the wages of his workmen, or to make them produce in eight hours the same amount they now do in twelve. The promoters of the reform have guarded against one of these by asking for the fixing of a minimum wage. It is not likely that the employers would resort to an increase in the price of goods, embarrassed as they are by competition; at any rate the dearness of the cost of living keeping pace with the rise of wages proves to us that it would not be long before the worker carried all the burdens of the reform; and though his present daily wages were maintained for the eight-hour day he would be still poorer than now, for the increase in the price of articles of consumption would make his wages actually less. Have not North and South America shown us that wherever the workman has succeeded in getting higher wages, articles of consumption have increased proportionately? And wherever he has succeeded in making twenty francs a day he needs twenty-five to live after the style a workman getting a good living is supposed to live, so that he has always remained in the same place.

But in these days of steam and electricity competition does not permit delay; one must produce “quick and cheap.” It will not, then, be by increasing the price of their goods that the exploiters will try to “catch up.” The last method, that of producing in eight hours what is now produced in twelve is the one always pointed out to the exploiters anxious to keep their profits intact. The workman must therefore produce faster; consequently the encumbering of the market with products which the reform is intended to prevent, the periods of idleness sought to be avoided, would recur just as before, since production would remain the same and the worker would not have been put in a position to consume more.

But the inconveniences of the so-called improvement would not be limited to this failure alone; there would be others more serious. First, the reduction of the working day would have the effect of stimulating the perfection of mechanical appliances and hastening the displacement of the workman of flesh by the workman of iron, which in a well-organized society would be progress, but would be found to be an aggravation of misery to the worker in our present society. Moreover, being compelled to produce faster the workman would consequently be obliged to accelerate all his movements, to concentrate his attention more and more upon his work; all his energies would thus be in a state of continual tension more injurious to his health than longer hours of work. The time is shorter, but being bound to expend more strength in less time he would become fatigued more and more rapidly. If we consider England, which is given as an example by the partisans of this project, and where the nine-hour day is in operation, we shall see that far from being an improvement the shorter day is on the contrary an aggravation to the workers. It is to Karl Marx, the oracle of those who put forward this fine scheme, that we turn for proofs to support our assertion. For instance if we open Marx’s Capital we find, on page 105, this extract from the report of a factory inspector:

“ ‘To maintain the quantity of our products,’ says the firm of Cochrane, British Pottery, Glasgow, ‘we have had recourse to the usage, on a large scale, of machines which render skilled workmen superfluous, and every day demonstrates that we can produce much more than by the old method. The nine-hour factory law has had the effect of hastening the introduction of machinery.’ ”

On page 180 of the same book:

“Although the factory inspectors never weary, and rightly too, of setting forth the favorable results of the legislation of 1844 and 1850, they are nevertheless forced to admit that the shortening of the day has already caused an intensification of labor which attacks the health of the worker and, of course, his productive energy itself.

“In the majority of cotton and silk manufactures the excessive strain exacted by machine work, (the speed of machinery having been accelerated to an extraordinary degree of late years), appears to be one of the causes of the extreme mortality resulting from pulmonary affections which Dr. Grennhown has noted in his last admirable report. There is not the slightest doubt that the tendency of capital to catch up, through the systematic intensification of labor, for what it has had to relinquish (since the lengthening of the day is forbidden by law), and to transform every improvement in mechanical contrivance into a new means of exploitation, must lead to a condition in which a fresh diminution of hours will be inevitable.”

The displacing of the worker by the machine, increase of liability to sickness for those who remain in the workshop, annihilation of the reform to the point of bringing back the situation to the identical place it started from⁠—without counting additional aggravations⁠—such are the advantages of this blessed reform! Is this sufficiently conclusive?

But the advocates of the eight-hour system interrupt us, saying: “Yes, but this progress in mechanics would go on just the same if we were working twelve hours; and since the shortening of the day must bring about some temporary relief, enabling us to stay only eight hours in the workshop instead of twelve, there is in fact some moral progress with which we content ourselves while waiting for more.”⁠—This evinces their natural kindheartedness and proves that the partisans of this so-called reform are not hard to please; but we Anarchists, who are more exacting, consider it a waste of time to bother with reforms which can reform nothing. What is the use of becoming propagandists of a thing which is good only so long as it is not applied, and when it is, is bound to turn against its proposed object? Of course the development of machinery will go on, but at present it is fettered by the everlasting red tape it encounters, forever dragging out its weary length. Everybody knows what an amount of effort it requires to get a new invention adopted. The exploiters being put into the dilemma of losing their profits or doing away with the red tape, the result will be to hasten the march of events and further the social revolution which we feel to be near. Now, as this revolution is inevitable we do not want to be surprised by it, but to be ready to profit by it to the best of our knowledge when it comes. We therefore seek to make the workers understand that they have nothing to gain by such childish efforts, and that society is transformable only on condition that the institutions which govern it be destroyed.

Oh, the organization of this exploiting society which is crushing us is too well combined! It is not enough to modify its machinery, to improve its mode of acting, for us to believe its results can thereby be changed. Have we not seen how every new improvement, every development of machinery immediately turns against those who toil, becoming a means of exploitation to those who have set themselves up as masters of social wealth? If you desire progress to benefit all, if you want the worker to succeed in emancipating himself, commence by destroying the cause of those effects you would suppress. The poverty of the workers is caused by their being obliged to produce for a lot of parasites who have been clever enough to turn the best part of all products to their own profit. If you are sincere do not waste time in trying to conciliate antagonistic interests; do not seek to ameliorate a condition which can never be productive of good; destroy parasitism. But as this cannot be expected on the part of those who are parasites themselves; as it cannot be the work of any law, the whole system of exploitation must be destroyed, not modified.

Aside from these two reforms there is a third to which certain thinkers, enlightened at that, attach some efficacy, viz., an increase of the tax upon inheritances, where collateral heirs are concerned. Increase this tax and the same effects heretofore stated as regards the progressive income tax would speedily manifest themselves. Moreover such a measure would scarcely be possible outside of real estate, and even then it would be rendered perfectly useless by the impetus it could not fail to give to anonymous societies and to the system of “stock held in trust.” Property-owners would get around it by renouncing family domains, contenting themselves with becoming lessees or tenants of their castles, mansions, and hunting-grounds, while anonymous associations would spring up to take charge of the leasing or renting of such immovable property, and have the laugh on the State. It is readily understood that under this system the number of inherited estates over which the State would have control would be very much reduced, and the law rendered useless. Consequently the suppression of collateral heirships would be likewise restricted, seeing that a lot of previous agreements between the testator and those whom he wishes to favor, may accord the latter certain claims upon the fortune of the former otherwise than by way of inheritance. To prevent this hundreds of laws would be required⁠—laws which would interfere with every act, with every relation of life, depriving people of the free disposition of their fortune; and, worse still, under such an inquisitorial system should we not inevitably come to the inquisition itself? Either a revolution or a coup d’état would be necessary to make people submit to measures so vexatious. Revolution upon revolution; would it not be better to have one that would make us go forward than one which would establish meddlesome laws?

Furthermore, admitting that these laws might have some influence upon the regime of property, in what way would the situation of the worker be improved? Property would again change hands, but it would not be put into the hands of the workers. The State would become the proprietor. The State would be transformed into a syndicate for exploitation; and we have already seen, in treating of authority, that nothing in favor of the workers must be expected from it. So long as money remains the level of the social organism those who possess it will know how to use it for their own profit. Whether the State will directly exploit those estates that fall into its hands, or sublet them to private persons, it will always be to the profit of those who already possess. Let us even suppose, which might possibly be, that it should be to the profit of a new caste; in any event it could not be but detrimental to the generality of the people.

But if we admit the possibility of the application of this reform, this other hypothesis must also be admitted. The bourgeoisie, which set up the dogma of the infallibility of private property; the bourgeoisie, whose whole penal code is based solely upon the legitimacy of this property, and with a view to its defense, will then have allowed an attack to be made upon this proprietary organization which it claims on the contrary to be immutable. Will somebody tell us how much time it would take to bring the bourgeoisie to allow what they would consider an attack upon their rights; how much time it would take afterwards before it would be discovered, upon application thereof, that the so-called reform had reformed nothing at all; and finally whether the time so lost would not equal in length that judged necessary for the realization of our “utopias?”

It would be useless here to make a criticism of the “societies for production and consumption;” we have shown that we are in pursuit of general enfranchisement; the complete and separate enfranchisement of the individual cannot be effected save by the integral enfranchisement of all. Of what moment to us, then, are these petty means for the enfranchisement of a few persons? For the rest, with the concentration of capital, the continuous development of machinery, ever demanding the putting of more and more enormous capital into operation, these same means of enfranchising small groups of persons break to pieces in their hands before they have produced any results.

Other reformers seek to contribute their quota to the labor of human emancipation by urging the development of that branch of knowledge they have taken up with; but quickly carried away by the violence of the struggle, the difficulties to solve, they end by transforming their fixed idea into a hobbyhorse to which they attribute every desirable quality, outside of which they see nothing worthy of acceptance, and which they offer as a panacea bound to cure all the ills from which our unhappy invalid, society, suffers. And how many sincere persons are found among these fanatics! Amongst this jumble of ideas how many good ones there are, which might produce excellent results in humanity’s favor if applied in a sanely constituted society! But applied separately in a corrupt society, they only yield results contrary to those expected when they are not nipped in the bud before anyone has succeeded in applying them. Among these people, convinced of a fixed idea, we may instance one who is typical in affording the conclusion we wish to draw⁠—M. G. Ville, with his system of chemical fertilizers. We do not wish to enter into a detailed explanation of the said system. Let it suffice to say that M. Ville, having made an analysis of plants, found that they were invariably composed of fourteen elements, but varying in quantity in each different family. On subsequent analysis of the air and soil, he found that the plant takes ten of its component elements from them; that it therefore only remained to him to supply, in the shape of manures, the other four elements lacking, which are lime, potassium, phosphorus, and azote: Thereupon he established a whole series of chemical fertilizers, based upon the soils to be cultivated and the plant to be produced. By quoting the figures and exhibiting the results he shows that with our present state of knowledge four or five times the regular harvest may be reaped from the same soil, with but a slight outlay for fertilizers compared with ordinary manures; that more cattle can be raised on a smaller area of prairie, and the price of meat thus lowered. But at this point he darts off into the conclusion that the solution of the social question lies in the improvement of agriculture.

“Alimentary products becoming abundant,” says he, “everyone will profit thereby; the proprietors by reaping harvests whose abundance will enable them to sell at a low price, the workers, who by purchasing cheaply will be enabled to live more comfortably, to economize their wages, and become capitalists in turn”⁠ ⁠… and everything will be for the best in this best of all possible societies!

We are satisfied of the sincerity of M. Ville; as far as our slight knowledge of the matter entitles us to judge, his system appears perfectly rational; we do not deny the good effects which the general application of his method would produce in the condition of the workers, if the workers could benefit by anything at all in the present society. On the contrary his figures support the Anarchists’ assertion that according to the data of science products might, with much less labor, be rendered so abundant that there would be no need of apportioning them; that everyone might consume out of the common fund according to his needs or desires, without fear of scarcity, as certain pessimists who can see nothing for humanity but weighing, measuring, and balancing, seem to fear, though they go so far as to concede to you that they themselves could of course get along without authority, but that it is necessary to repress the evil instincts by which the rest of humanity are possessed.

In a little pamphlet, The Products of the Earth, one of our friends has shown from official figures that even in its present infantile state of agriculture, its entire product is very considerably in excess of consumption. M. Ville shows that by the judicious use of chemical products, without additional labor, the earth may be made to return four or five times as much as at present. Is not this a triumphant confirmation of what we say? But he is mistaken in seeing in his system the solution of the social question, and in believing that products rendered thus abundant will be so cheap that the workers will be able to live by spending little and saving much. If M. Ville had read the bourgeois economists, among others M. de Molinari, he would have learned that “the superabundance of products in the market has the effect of so lowering the price of these products that their production being no longer remunerative to the capitalist drives capital out of these branches of production until the equilibrium is reestablished and things brought back to where they started from.” If M. Ville had been less absorbed in his learned calculations, and had taken some slight account of the functioning of society, he would have seen that, although there is now an enormous excess of production over consumption, there are people dying of hunger; he would have seen that the very best theoretical calculations are defeated of their aims in our present social practice. Nature aided by intelligence and human labor may indeed succeed in producing, at small cost, the wherewithal to nourish the human race; but commerce and stock-gambling, the proprietor and the capitalist, will also succeed in getting their discount thereon, in making goods scarce in order to sell them at a dearer price, and, in an emergency, in preventing their production altogether in order to raise the fictitious prices still further, and maintain them at a fixed rate through rapacity, greed for lucre, and parasitism. For example let us take coal; coal is a ready-made product. It has only to be extracted from the soil; the beds are so abundant that they are spread all over the surface of the globe and are practically inexhaustible. And yet its price is kept at a relatively high rate; not everyone can be warm according to the requirements of temperature; its abundance has not made it accessible to the workers. This is because the mines have been monopolized by powerful companies which limit the output of coal, and which, in order to escape competition, have ruined or bought up small operators, preferring to leave such acquisitions unworked rather than encumber the market and reduce the price, which would reduce their incomes.

What has happened with coal is likewise taking place with the land. Is not the small proprietor, eaten up, squeezed to the wall by usury, daily expropriated for the benefit of the capitalist? Does not property on a big scale constantly tend to reconstitute itself? Does not the use of agricultural machines result in giving impetus to the formation of agricultural syndicates and establishing those powerful anonymous companies already dominant in the manufacturing world, as they are the invariable rule in the mining world?⁠—If we should succeed in making the earth yield four or five times as much, they would reduce by so much the area of cultivated lands, and the rest would be transformed into hunting grounds or pleasure parks for our exploiters. This is already beginning to take place in France, and is an accomplished fact on the estates of the English lords in Scotland and Ireland, the populations whereof are trampled upon and decimated for the benefit of the deer and foxes whose spirited death agonies will serve as pastime to a “select” public similar to that which applauded the lectures in which M. George Ville uttered the philanthropic harangues mentioned above!

Ah, it is because society is so constituted that he who possesses is master of the world! The exchange of products taking place only by the help of capital, money becomes their sole dispenser. All the improvements, all the progress created by labor, industry, and science, go on ever accumulating in the hands of those who already possess, becoming a means of still severer exploitation, weighing down those who possess nothing with still more frightful poverty. The perfecting of the processes of production renders the laborers less and less necessary to the capitalist, increases competition among them, forces them to offer their services at a lower price. Behold, then, how in dreaming you do the workers a service! The social organization reverses your intent so that you work for their exploitation, riveting more firmly the chain whose formidable weight is crushing them.

Certainly, M. G. Ville, you pictured there a beautiful dream: to work and multiply products so that everybody might have enough to eat; to enable the worker to save up a few cents to ward off the incertitudes of the morrow, though scarcely the perfection of human ideals, is as much as could be expected from one whose situation does not expose him to suffer the physical and moral evils that overwhelm the disinherited. Yes, even that is much; but it is only a dream, alas! so long as you have not destroyed the system of exploitation which renders all its promise deceptive and illusory. Capitalism has more than one string to its bow; and admitting that the multiplicity of products would reduce them to a relatively low price, that the worker could save his wages, there would come in another factor, at this point, which you have yourself mentioned: the increase of population. At the present moment the industrial market is encumbered with products; the development of machinery daily increases the number of the unemployed. These, in order to obtain employment, are forced to compete with each other, to work for a lower wage. Now, as progress fulfils its task and ever continues growing, as each man can in reality produce for ten, when the population shall have doubled, production will have increased twenty-fold, and this prosperity which you figure on creating for the workers, will go to swell the income of the manufacturer, who will pay his slaves so much the less when they have become more numerous in the market.

You say that the demands of the workers are in a certain measure justified, as long as they do not assume a violent form; but have you reflected that they have been struggling for thousands of years; that these ever fruitless demands were born together with the historic period? Know, then, that if they do take violent form, it is because all satisfaction has been denied them. Must they remain upon their knees repeating, “Thank you,” when they have never obtained anything save by laying their masters low at their feet and taking the liberties they wanted? Our masters thinking they were addressing slaves might disdainfully say, “Couch your demands politely; we will then consider whether we ought to grant them.” But those who behold in the enfranchisement of the workers nothing but an act of justice and not a concession, will say, “We want” so-and-so. So much the worse for the dudes whom such language offends.

Everything is linked together in this system which is crushing us. To be animated with good intentions is not enough to obtain the result desired; no amelioration is possible save by the destruction of the system. It is established solely for exploitation and oppression. We do not want to modify exploitation and oppression but to destroy them. To this conclusion all who are capable of lifting themselves above the narrow standpoint of the circumstances in which they themselves are placed, must inevitably come⁠—those who are capable of facing a question in its entirety and understanding that revolutions are not the creations of men alone, but of institutions which bar the path of progress, and that consequently they are necessary and inevitable. Let all those who sincerely desire to work for the future of humanity understand, once for all, that if they would succeed in realizing their particular ideals they must not traduce nor seek to fetter the Revolution; it alone can enable them to attain their goal by preventing parasitism from stifling progress or twisting it to the profit of vampires.

Reforms! Reforms! When will men discover that they have exhausted their best energies upon reforms without ever getting anything by it? The people are tired of struggling for utopias more futile than that of individual enfranchisement, since the only objection which can be raised against the latter is that it is unrealizable⁠—a purely gratuitous assertion, seeing that it has never been tried, while the realization of any reform is sufficient to demonstrate its ineffectualness. The Anarchists are reproached with being a hindrance to the peaceful emancipation of the workers, with being opposed to reforms. Double mistake! The Anarchists are not at all opposed to reforms; it is not the reforms themselves which we fight, but the lies of those who would set them up as an ultimate goal for the workers, knowing as we do that where they are not lies such reforms are but plasters for social ulcers. Let those who believe in reforms work for their realization; we see nothing wrong in that. On the contrary the more the bourgeoisie try them the sooner the workers will see that in spite of continual changes they still retain the same old thing, The point where we rebel is when people offer these reforms to us as panaceas, and say to the workers: “Be very good, very mild, very calm, and we will see whether we can do anything for you!”⁠—Then we who understand how illusory these reforms are, and that the exploiters are occupying a usurped position, we say: “Workers, they are making fools of you! Their promised reforms are only snares, and they want to make you beg for such things as alms into the bargain, while you really have the right to obtain much more. You are at liberty to try the means they offer you; but knowing beforehand that they can in no way contribute to your emancipation, do not tarry in the vicious circle into which they wish to drag you, but organize for the purpose of taking possession of what is your due. Leave the laggards to amuse themselves with such deceptions; the Revolution engendered by the evil social organization, is here, advancing, growing formidable, and compelling you, in spite of yourselves, to take up arms and make good your right to live. Once having taken them up, do not be simple enough to content yourselves with reforms which will leave the cause of your ills still in existence. Behold the trap that has fooled you, behold the ideal towards which you should strive! It rests with you not to lose time with sops and to know enough to help on the overthrow of this worm-eaten and everywhere cracking edifice which they still presume to call society. Do not stay it by stopping up the holes with these plasters they propose to you; make a clean sweep, that you may not be trammeled in the reconstruction of a better society.”