Men who work to fulfil the joyous law of their life, that is, who work to fulfil the law of labour, will free themselves from the superstition of personal property so pregnant with calamities, and all the world’s institutions which exist to maintain that supposed property outside one’s own body will become for them not merely unnecessary but irksome; and it will become clear to all that these institutions are not indispensable, but are harmful, artificial, and false conditions of life.
For a man who regards work not as a curse but as a joy, property outside his own body, that is, the right or power to use another man’s labour, will be not merely useless but irksome.
If I like to prepare my dinner and am accustomed to doing so, the fact of another man doing it for me deprives me of an accustomed occupation and does not give me the satisfaction I gave myself: besides which the acquisition of imaginary property will be useless to a man who regards labour as life itself, fills his life with it, and so is less and less in need of the labour of others, that is, less and less in need of property to fill his idle time-for pleasure and for the adornment of his life.
If a man’s life is filled with labour he does not need apartments, furniture, and a variety of handsome clothes: he needs less expensive food and does not need conveyances and distractions.
Above all, a man who regards labour as the business and joy of his life will not seek to lessen his labour at the cost of other people’s work.
A man who regards his life as work, will make it his aim, in proportion as he acquires skill and endurance, to accomplish more and more work and so fill his life ever more and more completely.
For such a man, placing the meaning of his life in labour and not in its results, not in acquiring property, that is, the labour of others, there can never be any question about implements of labour.
Though such a man will always choose the most productive implement, he will get the same satisfaction from work even if he has to use the least productive.
If there is a steam-plough he will plough with it, if there is none he will plough with a horse plough, and if that also is lacking he will use a wooden peasant-plough, or for lack of that will dig with a spade, and under all conditions equally he will attain his aim of spending his life in work useful for others, and so will obtain full satisfaction.
And the condition of such a man, both in external and internal respects, will be happier than that of one who makes the acquisition of property the aim of his life.
Externally such a man will never be in want, for people seeing his desire to work will always try to make his work as productive as possible-as they do with the water power that turns a mill-wheel-and that it should be as productive as possible they will make his material existence secure, which they do not do for one who strives after property. And security of material conditions is all that a man needs.
Inwardly such a man will always be happier than one who seeks property, because the latter will never obtain what he strives for, while the former will always do so to the measure of his strength: feeble, old, dying as the proverb has it ‘with a tool in his hand’, he will obtain full satisfaction, and the love and sympathy of other people.
So that is what will come of it if a few mad cranks plough, make boots, and so forth, instead of smoking cigarettes, playing bridge, and driving about everywhere carrying their ennui with them during the ten hours a day that all mental workers have to spare.
The result will be that these crazy people will show in practice that the imaginary property on account of which people suffer and. make others suffer, is not necessary for happiness, but is hampering and nothing more than a superstition; that property, real property, exists only m one’s own head, hands, and feet, and that actually to exploit that real property usefully and joyfully, it is necessary to reject the false conception of property outside one’s own body, in the service of which we expend the best forces of our life.
It will result that these people will show that a man will only cease to believe in imaginary property when he has developed his real property-his capacities, his body-so that it yields him fruit a hundredfold, and happiness of which we have no conception, and becomes such a useful, strong, kindly man that wherever he may be thrown he will always fall on his feet, will everywhere be brother to everyone, and will be understood and needed and prized by all. And people, seeing this one or that dozen lunatics, will understand what they all should do to untie the terrible knot in which the superstition of property has involved them, and to free themselves from the unfortunate position about which they now all groan, not knowing how to escape from it.
But what can one man do amid a crowd who do not agree with him?
No reflection shows the insincerity of those who employ it more obviously than this.
Bargees tow a barge up-stream. Can one find a single bargee stupid enough to refuse to haul at his tow-rope because by himself he is not strong enough to pull the barge upstream?
He who recognizes that beside his rights to an animal life, to food and sleep, he has some human duties, knows very well wherein his duty lies, just as the bargee does who shoulders the tow-rope. The bargee knows very well that he has only to haul and pull upstream. He will only look for something to do and ask how to do it when he has dropped the tow-rope. And as with the bargees and with all men engaged on a common task, so with all humanity: each man has not to unhitch the tow-rope but to haul at it in the direction up-stream shown by the master. And that the direction may always be the same we have been endowed with reason.
And that direction has been given so clearly and indubitably in the life of all men about us and in the conscience of each man, and in all the expressions of human wisdom, that only he who does not wish to work can say that he does not see it.
So what will come of this?
This, that one or two men will haul, and seeing them a third, and so the best people will join up until the matter moves and goes along as of itself, pushing and inviting even those to join up who do not understand what is done or why.
At first those who consciously work to fulfil the law of God will be joined by others who accept it semi-consciously and half on trust; afterwards a large number will join them merely from faith in those advanced men who acknowledge it, and finally the majority will acknowledge it, and then men will cease to destroy themselves and will find happiness.
That would happen very soon if the people of our circle, and following them the whole great majority of the workers, no longer considered it shameful to clean out privies and cart away the contents, but not shameful to fill them for others, their brothers to cleanse’ no longer considered it shameful to call on their neighbours in boots they have made themselves, while not considering it shameful to walk in boots and goloshes past people who have nothing to put on their feet; no longer felt it shameful not to know French or the latest news, but not shameful to eat bread without knowing how to make it-or shameful not to wear a starched shirt and clean clothes, but not shameful to go about in clean clothes which show one’s idleness, and shameful to have dirty hands, but not shameful to have hands unhardened by toil.
All this will happen when public opinion demands it. And public opinion will demand it when those delusions in people’s minds have been destroyed which hide the truth from them. Within my own recollection great changes have been accomplished in this sense. And those changes were only accomplished because public opinion changed. I can remember the time when rich people were ashamed to drive out with less than four horses and two lackeys; were ashamed not to have a lackey or a chambermaid to dress them, put their boots on for them, wash them, hold the po for them, and so on; and now people have suddenly become ashamed not to dress themselves, not to put on their own boots, and to drive out with lackeys. All these changes were caused by public opinion.
Are not the changes obvious that are now being prepared in public consciousness? It was only necessary twenty-five years ago to destroy the sophistry which justified serfdom, and public opinion as to what was praiseworthy and what was shameful changed, and life changed.
It is now only necessary to destroy the sophistry which justifies the power money has over men, and public opinion as to what is praiseworthy and what is shameful will change and life will change with it.
And the destruction of the sophistry justifying the monetary power, and the change of public opinion in that respect, is already rapidly taking place. That sophistry is
