Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - Socialism and Politics (1903).djvu/13

 Rh hours' movement should become a labour movement, over which they would have no control; they hated the very idea of a general strike for the purpose of reducing the hours of labour, and they hammered into the workers' heads, "legal eight hours! legal eight hours!" They said, "Only vote for us, and for those whom we shall recommendto you ! Discipline! And then you will see. In 1891 you will have the eleven hours' day, in such a year a ten hours' day, then a nine hour's day, and in 1903 you will have the eight hours' day, without having all the troubles and the sufferings of the strikes." This is what Engels and Liebnecht promised them and printed plainly in their papers.

Well, up to now they have not yet got even the nine hours' day and the weekly half-holiday! … In Russia, the despotic Government of the Tsar, under the pressure of strikes, has passed directly from a thirteen and fourteen hours' working day to one of eleven hours', even though it still treats strikes as rebellions. … But where is the eight hours' law in Germany? As distant in the future as it is in Russia! Much more distant, at any rate, than it is in Spain, which has only a handful of impotent Social-Democrats in Madrid, but has, in, return, powerful labour organisations in all its leading industries.

Spain is especially instructive on this account. Since the times of the foundation of the International, it has had strong labour organisations in Catalonia, keeping in close touch with the Anarchists, and always ready to support their demands by strikes, and sometimes by revolts. Everyone remembers, of course, the continual strikes—labour wars would even be more correct—which took place so many times at Barcelona, the desperate measures to which the Government resorted against the Catalonian working men during the Montjuich tortures, and the latest attempts at a general strike.

Now, the result of all this is that the eight hours' day has been fought for long since (more than ten years ago) and introduced in all the building trades of Barcelona, and although it was lost during the Montjuich prosecutions, it was recovered again two years ago, and is nearly general now in these and several other trades. Moreover we have read during the past