Page:Studies in socialism 1906.djvu/89

Rh I suppose that the workers who yesterday were the paid labourers of the noble or bourgeois proprietors will be formed into an association and will receive from the commune the large estates to exploit. It is evident that they will be in a much happier situation than that in which they find themselves to-day. Whatever part of the product is retained by the commune and by the nation for the benefit of large undertakings of use to society as a whole, the remuneration of the associated workers will be larger than now, as it will no longer be subject to the deductions of the proprietor. And the workers will have the guaranties which they lack to-day. Without being proprietors in the strict and narrow sense of the term, they will not be salaried workers. They will choose their employers; they will take part in the management of undertakings; they will have a definite right by reason of the contracts; they will be protected by the higher forms of the contracts which in the Communist society will guarantee all individual rights, even against arbitrary action of the association of which they will form a part. They will then be attached to the great vineyards cultivated by their hands, by a bond more living and strong, by a sensation more joyous and more full than the wage earner of to-day enjoys. And nevertheless it is extremely probable that they would feel a vital loss if they should no longer find, in seeing the grapes grow golden on certain vines which were theirs, no one's