to the general
good. But it is evident that to utilize this high productivity of
labour, so as to guarantee well-being to all, Society must itself take
possession of all means of production.

Economists, as is their wont, will not fail to remind us of the
comparative well-being of a certain category of young robust workmen,
skilled in certain special branches of industry which has been obtained
under the present system. It is always this minority that is pointed out
to us with pride. But even this well-being, which is the exclusive right
of a few, is it secure? To-morrow, maybe, negligence, improvidence, or
the greed of their employers, will deprive these privileged men of their
work, and they will pay for the period of comfort they have enjoyed with
months and years of poverty or destitution. How many important
industries--the textiles, iron, sugar, etc.--without mentioning all
sorts of short-lived trades, have we not seen decline or come to a
standstill on account of speculations, or in consequence of natural
displacement of work, or from the effects of competition amongst the
capitalists themselves! If the chief textile and mechanical industries
had to pass through such a crisis as they have passed through in 1886,
we hardly need mention the small trades, all of which have their periods
of standstill.

What, too, shall we say to the price which is paid for the relative
well-being of certain categories of workmen? Unfortunately, it is paid
for by the ruin of agriculture, the shameless exploitation of the
peasants, the misery of the masses. In comparison with the feeble
minority of workers who enjoy a certain comfort, how many millions of
human beings live from hand to mouth, without a secure wage, ready to
go wherever they are wanted; how many peasants work fourteen hours a day
for a poor pittance! Capital depopulates the country, exploits the
colonies and the countries where industries are but little developed,
dooms the immense majority of workmen to remain without technical
education, to remain mediocre even in their own trade.

This is not merely accidental, it is a _necessity_ of the capitalist
system. In order well to remunerate certain classes of workmen, peasants
_must_ become the beasts of burden of society; the country _must_ be
deserted for the town; small trades must agglomerate in the foul suburbs
of large cities, and manufacture a thousand little things for next to
nothing, so as to bring the goods of