CHAPTER XV. WHAT SHOULD EACH MAN DO? "BUT all these are general considerations, and whether they are correct or not, they are inapplicable to life," will be the remark made by people accustomed to their position, and who do not consider it possible, or who do not wish, to change it. "Tell us what to do, and how to organise society," is what people of the well-to-do classes usually say. People of the well-to-do classes are so accustomed to their rôle of slave owners that when there is talk of improving the workers' condition, they at once begin, like our serf owners before the emancipation, to devise all sorts of plans for their slaves; but it never occurs to them that they have no right to dispose of other people, and that if they really wish to do good to people, the one thing they can and should do is to cease to do the evil they are now doing. And the evil they do is very definite and clear. It is not merely that they employ compulsory slave labour, and do not wish to cease from employing it, but that they also take part in establishing and maintaining this compulsion of labour. That is what they should cease to do. The working people are also so perverted by their compulsory slavery that it seems to most of them that if their position is a bad one, it is the fault of the masters, who pay them too little and who own the means of production. It does not enter their heads that their bad position depends entirely on themselves, and that if only they wish to improve their own and their brothers' positions, and not merely each to do the best he can for himself, the great thing for them to do is themselves to cease to 1 do evil. And the evil that they do is that, desiring to improve their material position by the same means which have brought them into bondage, the workers (for the sake of satisfying the habits they have adopted), sacrificing their human dignity and freedom, accept humiliating and immoral employment or produce unnecessary and harmful articles, and, above all, they maintain governments, taking part in them by paying taxes and by direct service, and thus they enslave themselves. In order that the state of things may be improved, both the well-to-do classes and the workers must understand that improvement cannot be effected by safeguarding one's own interests. Service involves sacrifice, and, therefore, if people really wish to improve the position of their brother men, and not merely their own, they must be ready not only to alter the way of life to which they are accustomed, and to lose those advantages which they have held, |