is a necessity of life to the producer. The shirt and trousers in which
he goes to his work, the jacket he slips on after the day's toil is
over, are as necessary to him as the hammer to the anvil.

Whether we like it or not, this is what the people mean by a revolution.
As soon as they have made a clean sweep of the Government, they will
seek first of all to ensure to themselves decent dwellings and
sufficient food and clothes--free of capitalist rent.

And the people will be right. The methods of the people will be much
more in accordance with science than those of the economists who draw so
many distinctions between instruments of production and articles of
consumption. The people understand that this is just the point where the
Revolution ought to begin; and they will lay the foundations of the only
economic science worthy the name--a science which might be called: "_The
Study of the Needs of Humanity, and of the Economic Means to satisfy
them_."

FOOTNOTE:

[2] "Shabble of a Duke" is an expression coined by Carlyle; it is a
somewhat free rendering of Kropotkine's "Monsieur le Vicomte," but I
think it expresses his meaning.--_Trans._

CHAPTER V

FOOD

I

If the coming Revolution is to be a Social Revolution, it will be
distinguished from all former uprisings not only by its aim, but also by
its methods. To attain a new end, new means are required.

The three great popular movements which we have seen in France during
the last hundred years differ from each other in many ways, but they
have one common feature.

In each case the people strove to overturn the old regime, and spent
their heart's blood for the cause. Then, after having borne the brunt of
the battle, they sank again into obscurity. A Government, composed of
men more or less honest, was formed and undertook to organize a new
regime: the Republic in 1793, Labour in 1848, the Free Commune in 1871.
Imbued with Jacobin ideas, this Government occupied itself first of all
with political questions, such as the reorganization of the machinery of
government, the purifying of the administration, the separation of
Church and State, civic liberty, and such matters. It is true the
workmen's clubs kept an eye on the members of the new Government, and
often imposed their ideas on them. But even in these clubs, whether the
leaders belonged to the middle or the working classes, it was always
middle-class ideas which prevailed. They discussed various