Page:Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov - Anarchism and Socialism - tr. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1906).pdf/84

 be we will throw a few bombs at the "hide bound officials." We will call upon the People to organise, and will destroy all the organs it may provide itself with.

This then is the way in which we realise the excellent Anarchist ideal—in imagination. In the name of the liberty of individuals all action of the individuals is done away with, and in the name of the People we get rid of the whole class of revolutionists; the individuals are drowned in the mass. If you can only get used to this logical process, you meet with no more difficulties, and you can boast that you are neither "authoritarian" nor "Utopian." What could be easier, what more pleasant?

But in order to consume, it is necessary to produce. Kropotkine knows this so well that he reads the "authoritarian" Marx a lesson on the subject.

"The evil of the present organisation is not in that the 'surplus value' of production passes over to the capitalist—as Rodbertus and Marx had contended—thus narrowing down the Socialist conception, and the general ideas on the capitalist regime. Surplus value itself is only a consequence of more profound causes. The evil is that there can be any kind of 'surplus value,' instead of a surplus not consumed by each generation; for, in order that there may be 'surplus value,' men, women, and children must be obliged by hunger to sell their labour powers, for a trifling portion of what these powers produce, and, especially of what they are capable of producing" (poor Marx, who knew nothing of all these profound truths, although so confusedly expounded by the learned Prince!) …. "It does not, indeed, suffice to distribute in equal shares the profits realised in one industry, if, at the same time, one has to exploit thousands of other workers. The point is to produce with the smallest possible expenditure of human labour power the greatest possible amount of products necessary for the well being of, all." (Italicised by Kropotkine himself).

Ignorant Marxists that we are! We have never heard that a Socialist society pre-supposes a systematic