Who would choose, if an easy life
were otherwise open to him, to be a coal-miner, or a
stoker on an Atlantic liner? I think it must be conceded
that much necessary work must always remain
disagreeable or at least painfully monotonous, and
that special privileges will have to be accorded to
those who undertake it, if the Anarchist system is ever
to be made workable. It is true that the introduction
of such special privileges would somewhat mar the
rounded logic of Anarchism, but it need not,
I think, make any really vital breach in its system.
Much of the work that needs doing could be rendered
agreeable, if thought and care were given
to this object. Even now it is often only long hours
that make work irksome. If the normal hours of
work were reduced to, say, four, as they could be by
better organization and more scientific methods, a
very great deal of work which is now felt as a burden
would quite cease to be so. If, as Kropotkin suggests,
agricultural work, instead of being the lifelong
drudgery of an ignorant laborer living very
near the verge of abject poverty, were the occasional
occupation of men and women normally employed in
industry or brain-work; if, instead of being conducted
by ancient traditional methods, without any
possibility of intelligent participation by the wage-
earner, it were alive with the search for new methods
and new inventions, filled with the spirit of freedom,
and inviting the mental as well as the physical cooperation
of those who do the work, it might become
a joy instead of a weariness, and a source of health
and life to those engaged in it.
Pages:
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141