Page:The Social General Strike - Arnold Roller (1912).djvu/19

 of industry, and in this way production will gradually again come in motion. Different branches of production, of course, would have to be given up entirely; for instance, the production of weapons, the mint, the production of church fixtures, etc.; others at least for some time; for example, articles of luxury, toys, etc.

The war materials, such as guns, etc., would have to be remelted and made into useful machinery and tools. If, however, the proletarians of the neighbouring countries should not yet have freed themselves, munitions of war could be used still better by putting them at the disposal of the fighting proletariat of the still oppressed nations.

All idle working men of the suspended industries, the millions of former unemployed, the thousands of former bank employees, the employees of commission houses, fake bureaus, Board of Trade jobbers, travelling salesmen, clergymen, sheriffs, judges, policemen, officers, livery servants and ministers, the millions of freed soldiers, will have their hands full for years to come tearing down the miserable barracks, the pest and fever dens in which the common people were forced to live, and in building sanitary houses fitted up with modern improvements. For years we will have to work in order that the people can tear off from their body the rags in which they have been clothed, and replace them with comfortable, beautiful and seasonable garments.

There will be enough to do for years to remove the memories of tyranny, the gaols, forts, and the still existing prisons. All the Roman gallows (for the cross is nothing else) will have to be torn from the palaces and churches. According to their artistic value, buildings will be turned into useful stables, warehouses, meeting halls, or museums. All the columns which remind us of victories in war, of the highway robbers of the Middle Ages, whom history politely calls knight robbers, all the monuments which were erected for the "rei bombas" and "Kartätschenprinz," will have to be smashed to pieces; and monuments of real heroes of humanity, of fighters, alas so frightfully numerous, the martyrs of freedom, of poets and thinkers who have led humanity from darkness and oppression to light and freedom, will have to take their places.

After this period of transition, trades of liberal arts again can and will be taken up, those which had to disappear on account of capitalistic industry, and which were replaced by the much lower production of mere luxuries.

In the architectural creations of the Middle Ages, the time of the free trades' associations, we admire the richness and variety of sculpture, which are still preserved in the old cathedrals, courts of palaces, universities, etc. Each column has a head differently worked out, every sculpturally decorated part a different design. One sees that here the worker could create freely according to his pleasure and art, not haunted by drivers of capitalistic exploitation; that he had not been reduced to a fraction of an automaton through the specialisation of work.

After this period of transition, work again will become an art, because it will be executed free from compulsion and restraint, and as art it will, as every art does, give pleasure and satisfaction to the