have never quenched. And when we shall have tasted of this joy, we
will set to work to demolish the last vestiges of middle-class rule: its
morality drawn from account books, its 'debit and credit' philosophy,
its 'mine and yours' institutions. 'In demolishing we shall build,' as
Proudhon said; and we shall build in the name of Communism and Anarchy."

CHAPTER XIV

CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION

I

Looking at society and its political organization from a different
standpoint than that of all the authoritarian schools--for we start from
a free individual to reach a free society, instead of beginning by the
State to come down to the individual--we follow the same method in
economic questions. We study the needs of the individuals, and the means
by which they satisfy them, before discussing Production, Exchange,
Taxation, Government, and so on. At first sight the difference may
appear trifling, but in reality it upsets all the canons of official
Political Economy.

If you open the works of any economist you will find that he begins with
PRODUCTION, _i. e._, by the analysis of the means employed nowadays for
the creation of wealth: division of labour, the factory, its machinery,
the accumulation of capital. From Adam Smith to Marx, all have proceeded
along these lines. Only in the latter parts of their books do they treat
of CONSUMPTION, that is to say, of the means resorted to in our present
Society to satisfy the needs of the individuals; and even there they
confine themselves to explaining how riches _are_ divided among those
who vie with one another for their possession.

Perhaps you will say this is logical. Before satisfying needs you must
create the wherewithal to satisfy them. But, before producing anything,
must you not feel the need of it? Was it not necessity that first drove
man to hunt, to raise cattle, to cultivate land, to make implements, and
later on to invent machinery? Is it not the study of the needs that
should govern production? To say the least, it would therefore be quite
as logical to begin by considering the needs, and afterwards to discuss
how production is, and ought to be, organized, in order to satisfy these
needs.

This is precisely what we mean to do.

But as soon as we look at Political Economy from this point of view, it
entirely changes its aspect. It ceases to be a simple description of
facts, and becomes a _science_, and we may define this science as: "_The
study of the n