Chapter 6 Chapter One

our wealth I Human beings have traveled a long way. In ancient times, human beings made rough stone tools and relied on unstable hunting to maintain their lives. The only legacy they left to their descendants was a cave shelter from rain and dew. And a few crude stone utensils,--and that vast, great, incomprehensible, terrible nature with which they had to struggle for their tiny existence. In the thousands of years since then, human beings have gradually accumulated unlimited wealth. They have reclaimed land, drained swamps, cut down forests, opened up roads, and penetrated mountains; they have continued to build, invent, and observe , reasoning; they created complex machinery, enlightened the secrets of nature, and at last put steam and electricity to work.As a result, when the child of the civilized people is born, he has a huge capital accumulated by the predecessors, which is ready for his use.Now that we have this huge capital, as long as we combine our own and other people's labor, the increase in wealth must be greater than the riches in the oriental dreams described in "The Arabian Nights".

① That is (Millietunenuits) Arabic legend literature, which contains a series of stories, which were told by the ancient Persian minister's daughter Shehrazade to the Persian king.There is a Chinese translation of this book. - translator The land has been cultivated to an unusually wide extent, and is suitable for sowing the best seeds, which, with skill and industry, yields a bountiful harvest--a harvest more than sufficient to supply all the needs of all mankind.Reasonable methods of cultivation are well known. In the great wilds of the United States, a hundred farmers, using powerful machinery, could in a few months produce enough wheat to support the lives of ten thousand people for a year.If people still want to get twice, three times, or even a hundred times the production, as long as they make the soil and cultivate each seedling well, they can get this great harvest.For the food of the family in ancient times, the hunter had to travel fifty or sixty square miles to search for food; now the civilized man is only within one thousandth of that area, and can feed his whole family more easily and surely.The heat and cold of the climate will not be a hindrance.When the sun's light is insufficient, artificial heat can be used instead; the time has come to use artificial light to promote plant development.In the same place, with glass and hot water pipes, you can get ten times or even fifty times more production than if you leave it alone.

The great achievements of industry are even more astonishing.By the concerted efforts of those ingenious things (this being modern machinery, which is itself the result of three or four generations of painstaking efforts by many anonymous inventors), a hundred workmen can now make the clothes worn by ten thousand men in two years. clothing; and if there were well-run coal mines, the labor of a hundred miners could supply the fuel to warm the houses of ten thousand families in each harsh winter.And we have lately seen with our own eyes the spectacle of a great city that sprang up in the space of a month or two for the Universal Exposition, without disturbing the daily work of the French people in the slightest. ①

① Refers to the Paris Exposition in 1889 and 1900. ——Japanese translator In manufactures as in agriculture, and indeed as in the whole of the present social system, the industriousness, discoveries, and inventions of our ancestors were largely exploited by a few, while the whole of mankind was aided only by the existing machinery of iron and steel. , then every member of the society will surely be able to live in prosperity and stability. We are, indeed, richer—much richer than we think; we are richer, so far as we have; and much richer in what our present mechanical equipment can produce. If the things produced from our soil, from our industry, from our science, from our technical knowledge are used exclusively for the well-being of all people, then we are the most prosperous in the world.

II In our civilized society, we are wealthy.But why are there so many poor people?Why do the majority of the people still have to engage in hard and low labor?With all the wealth left over from the past, and with the establishments of production where a few hours' labor a day is enough to ensure the well-being of all, why is it that even the workers who are paid the best wages are not guaranteed the security of tomorrow? ? Socialists have repeatedly spoken of this question.They discuss this question over and over again every day, and prove it from scientific arguments.This phenomenon is due to the long history of robbery and theft, coerced immigration and war, ignorance, and oppression, etc., to produce necessary goods such as land, mines, roads, machinery, food, Housing, education, learning—all have been taken by a few.This history of plunder and oppression is the life of man before he knew how to subdue the forces of nature.This is because those few people still monopolize two-thirds of the products of people's labor by virtue of the presumed rights they have acquired in the past, and then use the most stupid and shameful methods to waste the many things they have won. .This is because the minority makes the majority unable to subsist for a month or even a week, and then allows them to work only on the condition that the minority themselves receive the greater part of the produce.This is because the few forbid the others to produce their necessities, and force them to produce those things which are unnecessary to the life of the multitude, but which are in the best interest of the monopolist.

This is the essence of capitalism. ① ① This sentence is based on the German translation published in Berlin in 1921, which is different from the French and English versions. - translator Consider a civilized country.The forests that once covered the land have been cut down, the swamps have been drained, and the climate has been improved so that it is habitable.The land that used to have only low-grade weeds is now covered by rich grains.The rock walls between the valleys have also been built into stages, and there are luxuriantly covered by green vines full of golden fruits.Those wild plants with bitter fruits and inedible roots have also been cultivated over generations to become juicy vegetables and luscious fruit trees.Thousands of roads and railroads pass through the ground and through the mountains.The noise of noisy machinery can be heard even in the empty canyons of the Alps, the Caucasus, and the Himalayas.The rivers are navigable; the coast is well measured and approachable; man-made harbours, dredged with great pains, and protected from the fury of the sea, are sufficient shelters for ships.The deep pits go deep into the rocks, and the dense tunnels under the ground have reached the place where coal is dug and mined.Where the roads crossed great cities sprang up; and in these cities all the wealth of industry, science, and art was accumulated.

The great legacy left to our era is the generation after generation of people whose children and grandchildren grew up and died in poverty, were oppressed and abused by their masters, and were devastated by servitude. For thousands of years, millions of people have worked to cut forests, drain swamps, and open water and land roads.Not even every "lud" (equal to a quarter of an acre) of land we cultivate in Europe at present has been irrigated by the blood and sweat of various peoples.Every acre of land bears a history of forced labor, grievous servitude, and hardship of the people.Every mile of railroad, every yard of tunnel, has had its share of human blood drawn.

The shaft of the mine still bears the imprint of the pickaxes of the men who toiled in it.The spaces between the branches of the subterranean tunnels might have been regarded as miners' graves.Countless laborers perish every year from gas explosions, falling rocks, or water from pits; and who knows how many tears, hardships, and untold stories these graves have inspired from the families who lived on the meager wages of the dead. What a misfortune! The cities connected by railroads and waterways are organisms with a lifespan of hundreds of years.If you dig out the ground beneath them, you can see the foundations of city streets, houses, theaters, racetracks, and public buildings.If you explore their history, you will know that the civilization of this city, its industries, its characteristics, etc., were slowly developed and developed by the cooperation of generations of inhabitants before they became what they are today. mature.Dwellings, workshops, storehouses of every kind were created by the accumulated labor of the dead and buried millions of workmen; even today their value is maintained only by the labor of the people who live in all parts of the world. .The elements which constitute what we call the "wealth of nations" have value because they are parts of a great whole.The big docks in London and the big warehouses in Paris, if they are not located in the big center of international shopping malls, then what is the value?What would be the value of our mines, our factories, our manufactories, our railroads, if there were not an unlimited quantity of goods which are daily transported by land and sea?

Millions of people toiled incessantly to create the civilization we now boast of.Millions of people are constantly working to maintain this civilization.Without them, within fifty years our world would be nothing but ruins. Even if it is an idea, an invention, both are public property produced in the past and present.All the mechanical inventions that express human genius have been accomplished by the joint efforts of thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who died in poverty. Thousands of writers, poets, and scholars are constantly laboring to increase knowledge, eliminate errors, and create an atmosphere of scientific thought.Without their cause, there would never be the astonishing progress of civilization that we have today.Even these thousands of philosophers, poets, scholars, and inventors have themselves achieved with the aid of the labors of past centuries, who have been subjected throughout their lives, both physically and mentally, by various laborers. And the support and training of craftsmen, their driving force is also obtained from the environment.

Geniuses like Schein ①, Ma Yao ②, and Grove ③, who promote the development of industry in new directions, are indeed far superior to the capitalists of the world.But genius is itself a child of science, as well as of industry.Until many steam engines have been working for many years before the eyes of thousands of people, continuously turning heat into power, and power into sound, light, and electricity, then the insight of genius can explain the unity of physical force and the cause of mechanics.If we nineteenth-century babies have at last grasped the idea, if we now know how to apply it, it is what everyday experience teaches us.Thinkers in the 18th century already knew this concept and declared it. However, this concept could not be understood by people at that time, because the 18th century did not develop and grow with the progress of the steam engine like our modern times.

① Marc Seguin (Marc Seguin, 1786-1875), a French engineer, was the first person to calculate the equivalent quantity of thermodynamics. - translator ②Mayer (Jules-Robert de Mayer, 1814-1878), a German physicist and doctor, he calculated the amount of heat generated by the compression of gas, and thus determined the "equivalent amount of heat mechanics", and published " Equivalent Quantities in the Mechanics of Heat". - translator ③ Grove (M.R.Grove, 1811-1896), a British physicist, once wrote a book on the unity of physical forces (1846). - translator Just imagine, because Watt sought out skilled workers in Shahe to embody his ideals in metal to complete the parts of his machinery, so that the steam hidden in the machinery was easier to drive than horses and easier to make than water. has become the real soul of modern industry; if Watt can't do this, then we will not be able to know the laws of modern industrial revolution after decades!Every machine has the same history,--a long record of sleepless nights, of poverty, of disillusionment, of joy, of partial improvements discovered by generations of anonymous workmen; The workman adds little to nothing to the original invention, and yet many fertile ideals would not have come to fruition without this insignificant contribution.Not only that, any new invention is but the sum and result of innumerable previous inventions in the vast world of machinery and industry. ④Watt (James Watt, 1736-1819), Scottish engineer, inventor of modern steam engine.He later ran an ironworks in Soho. - translator Science and industry, intellect and application, discovery and practical application to introduce new discoveries, cunning of the mind and ingenuity of the artifice, industry of mind and muscle--all work together.No discovery, no progress, no increase in the wealth of mankind has not been but due to past and present physical and mental diligence. Who then has what right to claim a small part of this immeasurable wealth, and say, "It's mine, not yours"? III However, in the course of many ages that mankind has experienced, all the necessary things that enable people to produce and increase their productivity have been usurped by a few people.We shall describe how this happens in the future.For now, it is sufficient to state the fact and analyze its consequences. The present land, the value of which arises from the needs of a growing population, already belongs to a few who prevent the people from cultivating it—or from cultivating it by modern methods. The mines here and there represent the fruits of the labor of all ages, and their only value arises from the needs of the industry and the density of the population of a country, but these mines are owned by a few; A more profitable investment would be to limit coal mining, or even stop it altogether.Machinery also became the exclusive property of a few.It is an indisputable fact that machinery was gradually improved from its crude invention by three or four generations of workmen; yet machinery remains in the possession of a few.If the descendants of the inventors who first made the lace-making machine more than a hundred years ago now go to the lace factories in Basle and Nottingham to claim their rights, they have been reprimanded: "Go away!" ! This machine is not yours." If they still want to take over the factory, they will be shot. Railways, if there is no such a prosperous population in Europe, as well as European industries, commerce and shopping malls, then no matter how long the railway is, it is just a lot of useless scrap iron; I don't even know, but the railways provide them with more revenue than the princes of the Middle Ages.If the children of the tens of thousands of workers who died digging railways and caves were forced by hunger and cold, once they assembled and asked the shareholders for bread, others would disperse them with stabs and shells to protect the "interests of investors." By this strange system, if the son of a workman is born, if he refuses to admit to dedicating the greater part of his produce to his master, he has no fields to till, no machinery to work, no mines to dig. .He has to sell his labor to others for a small, uncertain wage.His father and his grandfather had labored unceasingly to excrete the fields, to build the factories, to complete the machinery, and all their energies were devoted to this industry.Yet their descendants enter the world poorer than the lowest savages.If he wants to get permission to cultivate the land, he must abide by the condition of "dedicating a quarter of the production to the master and the other quarter to the government and the middleman (broker)".This kind of government, capitalists, landlords, and middlemen, the taxes levied on him are constantly increasing; this leaves him no room for improvement in farming.If he changes his profession to a worker, he can only get a job under the condition of "dedicating one-half or two-thirds of the production products to the machinery owner recognized by the state"; If you seek work under the conditions, you can't get it. In former times the farmer would not have even a piece of arable land unless he gave a quarter of his crop to the feudal lord, who we considered shameless.We call that age the age of barbarism.Today the form has changed, but the actual relationship remains the same; the laborer is still compelled to recognize feudal obligations in the name of a free contract.Because no matter where he goes, he will never find a better situation.Everything has become private property, and he has to admit it; otherwise, he will starve to death. The result of this situation is that all our production is going in the wrong direction.Enterprises never take into account the needs of society as a whole.Its sole purpose is to increase the interests of investors.Hence the continual fluctuations of the market, the periodic panics of industry, each time leaving millions of workers unemployed and wandering the streets. Workers cannot buy the wealth they produce with the wages they earn.Industry seeks foreign markets, and seeks sales among the wealthy classes of other countries.Therefore, in the East, Africa, Egypt, Tokyo (this is Annan's Tokyo), Congo, etc., Europeans had to promote the growth of serfdom.He actually did.Yet everywhere he met the same competition.All countries are developing along the same line.Thus wars, perpetual wars, broke out for the priority of the market.Wars to occupy the East, wars to compete for maritime supremacy, wars to levy import taxes and set conditions to force neighboring countries to accept, and wars to suppress rebellious "blacks" have all broken out!The roar of cannon has never stopped in the world; many races have been slaughtered; the expenditure of armaments in European countries accounts for one-third of the total budget; we know how heavy and embarrassing this tax is on the head of the laborer ! Education is also the privilege of the few.The laborer's boy, at only thirteen years old, is obliged to work in the mines, or to help his father in the fields; and this is superfluous when it comes to education!It is superfluous to talk to the workers who have done excessive work in the brutal and cruel air during the day and come home tired at night!Society is thus divided into two hostile camps; in this state liberty is empty words.The Radical at first advocated the expansion of political rights, but he soon realized that the breath of freedom would give rise to the upward movement of the proletariat, and he changed his direction, changed his views, and returned to oppressive legislation and brutal and despotic government. Courts, magistrates, executioners, policemen, gaolers, that great multitude, were created to maintain this privilege; and from these sprang detectives, perjury, spies, and the whole organization of intimidation and corruption. The social organization in which we live also hinders the growth of social feeling.We all know that if there is no integrity, no self-respect, no sympathy and mutual assistance, human beings will perish, just like the two or three animals that live by robbery and the slave-holding ant race.But this kind of thinking is not in line with the preferences of the ruling class, and they have painstakingly created a specious scientific system to cultivate and oppose this thinking. Skillful preaching, repeatedly on the subject of "the one who has should give to the one who has not"; but if someone puts this doctrine into practice, he is immediately told that such beautiful feelings are very good in poetry. , but not practical.We say that "deceit is self-abasement, self-deprecation", but all civilized life is really a great deception.We accustom ourselves and our children to that double-faced morality, to that hypocritical life.However, our brains are not settled in hypocrisy, so we often use sophistry to deceive and explain ourselves.In fact, hypocrisy and sophistry have become second nature to civilized people. But society cannot survive like this, and society must return to the path of truth; otherwise, it will perish. The consequences of the initial monopoly have spread to the whole of social life.Human society cannot wait to perish, so it has to restore the following basic principles: Since the tools of production are the result of the collaborative work of human beings, the products should be the common property of all races.Personal possession is improper and harmful.All things belong to all people; all things are used by all people.Because all people need all things, because all people use their strength to produce all things, and because no part of each person can be estimated in the production of world wealth, all things belong to all people. Everything belongs to everyone!Here are innumerable tools and implements, here are iron things at our disposal, which we call machinery, which can saw, plan, spin, weave, destroy, or transform for us, Use raw materials to produce our modern wonders.But no one has the right to usurp one of these machines, and say: "This is mine; if you want to use it, you must pay me taxes in your various products." How is this different from the Middle Ages? The prince said to the farmer, "The hills and the pastures are mine. You must tax me from every sheaf of grain you harvest, from every pile of straw you accumulate, from every brick you make!" Everything belongs to everyone!Both men and women, as long as they can share the proper work, have the right to a just distribution of everything produced by all people; this distribution is sufficient to ensure the well-being of all people.There is no longer any need for such vague methods as "the right to work" and "give everyone all the fruits of their labor".What we advocate is: the right to happiness; the happiness of all people!