WELLINGS 73

VII. CLOTHING 84

VIII. WAYS AND MEANS 87

IX. THE NEED FOR LUXURY 95

X. AGREEABLE WORK 110

XI. FREE AGREEMENT 119

XII. OBJECTIONS 134

XIII. THE COLLECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM 152

XIV. CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION 168

XV. THE DIVISION OF LABOUR 176

XVI. THE DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY 180

XVII. AGRICULTURE 191

NOTES 213

PREFACE

One of the current objections to Communism, and Socialism altogether, is
that the idea is so old, and yet it has never been realized. Schemes of
ideal States haunted the thinkers of Ancient Greece; later on, the early
Christians joined in communist groups; centuries later, large communist
brotherhoods came into existence during the Reform movement. Then, the
same ideals were revived during the great English and French
Revolutions; and finally, quite lately, in 1848, a revolution, inspired
to a great extent with Socialist ideals, took place in France. "And yet,
you see," we are told, "how far away is still the realization of your
schemes. Don't you think that there is some fundamental error in your
understanding of human nature and its needs?"

At first sight this objection seems very serious. However, the moment we
consider human history more attentively, it loses its strength. We see,
first, that hundreds of millions of men have succeeded in maintaining
amongst themselves, in their village communities, for many hundreds of
years, one of the main elements of Socialism--the common ownership of
the chief instrument of production, the land, and the apportionment of
the same according to the labour capacities of the different families;
and we learn that if the communal possession of the land has been
destroyed in Western Europe, it was not from within, but from without,
by the governments which created a land monopoly in favour of the
nobility and the middle classes. We learn, moreover, that the medieval
cities succeeded in maintaining in their midst, for several centuries in
succession, a certain socialized organization of production and trade;
that these centuries were periods of a rapid intellectual, industrial,
and artistic progress; while the d