Besides this, such activity is always connected with harm to the labourers and violence, which though less direct than the violence of government is equally cruel in its consequences, since industrial and commercial activities are all founded on taking advantage of want in every form: taking advantage of it to compel the workers to do hard and undesirable labour; taking advantage of it again to purchase materials at cheap prices and to sell things the people need at the highest possible prices; and taking advantage of it to exact interest for money lent. From whatever side we view their activity, we see that the benefit rendered by the industrialists is not acknowledged by those for whom it is exerted, either in principle or in particular cases, and for the most part is considered simply harmful.
If we apply the second test and ask what is the impelling motive of the activity of the industrialists, we receive a yet more definite answer than on the activity of those who govern.
If a man employed by government says that besides his personal advantage he has the public welfare in view, one has to believe him, and we all know such men; but an industrialist by the very raison d’etre of his business cannot have the public welfare for his aim, but will appear ridiculous to his fellows if in his business he pursues any other aim than the increase or maintenance of his wealth.
So the working people do not consider the activity of the industrialists useful to them.
That activity is accompanied by violence employed against the workers, and its aim is not to benefit the working people but is always personal advantage; and yet-strange to say-these industrialists are so convinced of the benefit they confer on people by their activity, that for the sake of that imaginary benefit they inflict undoubted and obvious harm on the workers by exempting themselves from labour and consuming what the workers produce by labour.
The scientists and artists have exempted themselves from labour and have imposed that labour on others, and live with calm consciences, firmly convinced that they confer on others benefits compensating for all that.
On what is their conviction based?
Let us ask them as we asked the government men and the industrialists: do all or even a majority of working folk acknowledge the benefit science and art confers on them?
The reply will be a most lamentable one.
The activity of the rulers and the Church people is, in principle, considered useful by nearly everybody and in its application is so considered by more than half the working people on whom it is directed; the activity of the industrialists is considered useful by a small number of working people; but the activity of the men of science and art is not recognized as useful by any working people. The utility of that activity is recognized only by those who carry it on or wish to carry it on. The working people-those who bear on their shoulders the whole labour of life, and feed and clothe the scientists and artists-cannot recognize the activity of those men as being of use to them, for they cannot even have any conception of this activity which is so useful to them. That activity appears to the working folk to be useless and even corrupting.
That is how all working folk regard the universities, libraries, conservatories, picture-and sculpture-galleries, and the theatres, which are built at their expense. A labouring man so definitely regards this activity as an evil that he does not send his children to school, and to compel the masses to accept this activity it has everywhere been necessary to pass laws to compel school attendance. A labouring man always regards this activity with hostility, and will only cease so to regard it when he himself ceases to be a labourer and, by gain and afterwards by what is called education, passes from the ranks. of labour into the ranks of those who live on the backs of others. Yet despite the fact that the activity of the scientists and artists is not recognized and cannot be recognized by any of the workers, the latter are nevertheless compelled to make sacrifices for the benefit of that activity.
A man of the executive sends another directly to the guillotine or to jail; a trader exploiting the labour of another takes all he possesses from him, leaving him to choose between starvation or pernicious work; but a scientist or artist does not seem to compel others, he only offers his wares to those who wish to take them; but to produce his wares, which the working man does not want, he takes from them by force, through government agents, a large part of their labour for the erection and maintenance of academies, universities, high schools, primary schools, museums, libraries, conservatories, and for the support of the scientists and artists.
If we ask the scientists and artists about the aim they pursue in their activities, we get most remarkable replies. A man belonging to the government can reply that his aim is the common good, and in such a reply there is a measure of truth confirmed by public opinion. In the reply of an industrialist that his aim is the common good there would be less probability, but even that might be affirmed.
But the reply made by the scientists and artists is startlingly unproven and audacious.
The scientists and artists, without offering any proofs of it, say just what the priests of old said, that their activity is most important and necessary for all men and that without this activity all humanity would perish. They affirm this although no one but they understands or recognizes their activity and despite the fact that true science and true art, by their own definition, ought not to aim at utility. And scientists and artists devote themselves to their favourite occupation regardless of what benefit people may derive from it, and are always convinced that they are doing most important and necessary work for humanity. So that while a sincere man engaged in the government, acknowledging the chief motive of his activity to be a personal impulse, tries as far as possible to be useful to the working people, and an industrialist, admitting the selfishness of his activity, tries to give it a character of public utility, scientists and artists do not even consider it necessary to appear to try to be useful, and even reject the aim of utility, so confident are they not merely of the utility but even of the sanctity of their avocations.
And so it turns out that a third division people, having exempted themselves from labour and imposed it on others, are busying themselves with things quite incomprehensible to the workers, which the latter regard as rubbish and often as harmful rubbish; and they busy themselves with these things without any thought of being useful to the people, merely for their own pleasure, being for some reason fully convinced that their activity will always be such as is essential for the life of the working folk.
Men have exempted themselves from labour for life and have thrown that work onto others who perish in their toil. They exploit such labour, and assert that their own occupations, incomprehensible to the people and not directed towards the service of others, redeem all the harm they inflict by exempting themselves from labour for the maintenance of life and by consuming the labour of others.
The men engaged in the government, to compensate for the ‘undoubted and evident evil they inflict by exploiting other people’s work and exempting themselves from the struggle with nature, add another evident and undoubted evil-that of inflicting all sorts of violence.
The industrialists, to redeem the undoubted and evident evil they cause by using up the fruits of their toil, strive to obtain for themselves and consequently to take from others as much wealth as possible, that is, as much of people’s labour as possible.
Scientists and artists, in return for the unquestionable and obvious harm they do to the labouring people, occupy themselves with things that are incomprehensible to the labourers and which, on their own assertion, to be real must not aim at utility-but to which they feel drawn. And so all these people are quite convinced that their right to consume other people’s labour is impregnable.
It would seem obvious that all these people who have exempted themselves from labour to maintain life, have no ground for this. But amazing to say, they firmly behave in their own integrity and live as they do with a calm conscience.
There must be some ground-there must be some false doctrine-underlying such a terrible delusion!
CHAPTER XXVIII
AND indeed, underlying the position of people who live on work done by others there lies not only a belief but a whole doctrine, and not one doctrine but three, which during
