Page:The Conquest of Bread (1906).djvu/211

 compulsion to drive men to work. Limiting our studies to the economic side of the question, let us see if such a society, composed of men as they are to-day, neither better nor worse, neither more nor less industrious, would have a chance of successful development.

The objection is known. "If the existence of each is guaranteed, and if the necessity of earning wages does not compel men to work, nobody will work. Every man will lay the burden of his work on another if he is not forced to do it himself," Let us first remark the incredible levity with which this objection is raised, without taking into consideration that the question is in reality merely to know, on the one hand, whether you effectively obtain by wage-work the results you aim at; and, on the other hand, whether voluntary work is not already more productive to-day than work stimulated by wages. A question which would require profound study. But whereas in exact sciences men give their opinion on subjects infinitely less important and less complicated after serious research, after carefully collecting and analysing facts, on this question they will pronounce judgment without appeal, resting satisfied with any one particular event, such as, for example, the want of success of a communist association in America. They act like the barrister, who does not see in the council for the opposite side a representative of a cause, or an opinion contrary to his own, but a simple