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Sections (Content) :
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[Russian Trade Union Delegate] The workers in large numbers have learned by experience to appreciate and understand the importance of organization, and that only they themselves can create these organizations.
• 2
PISTHETAERUS: ... I am hunting for fine, tasty words to break down the hardness of their hearts.—I grieve so much for you, who at one time were kings...
CHORUS: We kings! Over whom?
PISTHETAERUS: ...of all that exists...
• 3
Workingmen can organize. Workingmen can combine, federate, unify, cooperate, harmonize, act in concert.
• 4
...the oriflamme of labor shall float over a world of free work shops where freemen and women will in love and freedom produce wealth for their own benefit as Workers.
• 5
...Syndicalism, like the old trade unions, fights for immediate gains, but it is not stupid enough to pretend that labor can expect humane conditions from inhuman economic arrangements in society.
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...where an industry requires complicated machinery and collective labor, the ownership of the machinery of production should also be collective.
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That is what the workers of all ages have been after -- a better world.
• 8
...pure-and-simple unionism is as obsolete as laissez-faire in economy.
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...the only safe and logical choice is industrial democracy -- industry run by those who do the work using democratic procedures on a daily basis for the equal benefit of all.
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The trades unions will not disappear along with the capitalist mode of production like the journeymen’s organizations vanished with the guilds. On the contrary, they will constitute the most energetic factors in surmounting the present mode of production and they will be the pillars on which the edifice of the socialist commonwealth will be erected.
• 11
And when the industrial baron who has been levying blackmail upon the worker is once evicted, production will continue, throwing off the trammels which impede it, putting an end to the speculations which kill and the confusion which disorganizes it, transforming itself according to the necessities of the movement under the impulsion given to it by free labor. "Men never worked in France as they did in 1793, after the soil was snatched from the hands of the nobles," says the historian Michelet. Never have men worked as they will on the day when labor becomes free and everything accomplished by the worker will be a source of well-being to the whole commune.
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The idea of the people will be to provide bread for all. And while middle-class citizens, and workmen infested with middle-class ideas admire their own rhetoric in the "Talking Shops," and "practical people" are engaged in endless discussions on forms of government, we, the "Utopian dreamers"--we shall have to consider the question of daily bread.
We have the temerity to declare that all have a right to bread, that there is bread enough for all, and that with this watchword of Bread for All the Revolution will triumph.
• 13
The oppression which today impinges most directly on the workers and which is the main cause of the moral and material frustrations under which they labor, is economic oppression, that is the exploitation to which bosses and business men subject them, thanks to their monopoly of all the most important means of production and distribution.
To destroy radically this oppression without any danger of it reemerging, all people must be convinced of their right to the means of production, and be prepared to exercise this basic right by expropriating the land owners, the industrialists and financiers, and putting all social wealth at the disposal of the people.
["Anarchist Propaganda," by Errico Malatesta, from "Malatesta: Life and Ideas."]
• 14
...the postwar period of a high level of employment with unusually good opportunities for unskilled and juvenile labor -- an era that seems to be coming to a close.
• 15
"If his chance of getting £1,000 depended on his keeping an appointment, I am certain he would not be there."
Such a cavalier attitude to the work ethic may be fine when one is employed by a capitalist, but when one is involved in a collective it can, to be inelegant, be a pain in the ass.
• 16
Once unions reach the closest goal, to organize the association of workers to give them better economical conditions, the step not far to unloading the heavy burden of slavery, through the overtaking of production by the wage slaves, which therefore is made common property of the whole society, and when the now present and unfair randomly distribution of wealth with its unavoidable consequences, wealth for a few privileged and misery and poverty for the masses, will be succeeded by a more just and natural distribution of the good of this earth, to which we all as humans and brothers have the same rights.
This is the so condemned, so twisted, so misunderstood and so feared goal of socialism, a goal so high and mighty that no culture ever in the past can measure to it. Therefore, workers, join this movement! You have nothing to lose, but everything to win. Join together under the red flag of socialism and go bravely and energetically forward. The future belong to you, on this you can be sure.
• 17
If the working class rejects public ownership with its servitude and exploitation, and demands common ownership with its freedom and self-rule, it cannot do so without fulfilling conditions and shouldering duties. Common ownership of the workers implies, first, that the entirety of producers is master of the means of production and works them in a well planned system of social production. It implies secondly that in all shops, factories, enterprises the personnel regulate their own collective work as part of the whole.
• 18
Since such workers' councils doubtlessly are to play a considerable role in the future organization of the workers' fights and aims, they deserve keen attention and study from all who stand for uncompromising fight and freedom for the working class.
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...in freedom to possess and utilize soil lie social happiness and progress and the death of rent.
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...the socialist reconstruction of society could only be carried out by the economic organizations of the producing classes themselves.
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...the right of property being only a convention of human institution, men may dispose of what they possess as they please: but this is not the case with the essential gifts of nature, such as life and liberty, which every man is permitted to enjoy, and of which it is at least doubtful whether any have a right to divest themselves.
• 22
In our present society, for instance, an exploited wage worker, who catches a glimpse of what work and life might and ought to be, finds the toilsome routine and the squalor of his existence almost intolerable; and even when he has the resolution and courage to continue steadily working his best, and waiting until new ideas have so permeated society as to pave the way for better times, the mere fact that he has such ideas and tries to spread them, brings him into difficulties with his employers.
• 23
The national interest, however, sometimes also requires that property itself shall pass into hands likely to make a better use of it. It is not for themselves alone that the rich elicit the fruits of the earth; it is for the whole nation; and if, by a derangement in their fortune, they suspend the productive power of the country, it concerns the whole nation to put their property under different managers.
• 24
There is not a Socialist in the world today who can indicate with any degree of clearness how we can bring about the cooperative commonwealth except along the lines suggested by industrial organization of the workers.
Political institutions are not adapted to the administration of industry. Only industrial organizations are adapted to the administration of a cooperative commonwealth that we are working for. Only the industrial form of organization offers us even a theoretical constructive Socialist program. There is no constructive Socialism except in the industrial field.
• 25
If what we think of as democracy is no more than a consultative and humanistic approach to management, that is one thing; but if what we mean by democracy is a system based on a fundamental principle of equality within the organization, we are faced with a radical conversation of thought and structure. That conversion will not be brought about by the idealism of a few top-level managers, workers, or union leaders.
• 26
...to strip agrarian reform of that deeper political meaning would be to undermine and destroy it.
Chronology :
April 14, 2020 : Social Organization -- Added.
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