Page:The wage system.pdf/5

 Let us add that certain Collectivists advocate the wholesale remuneration of trade societies. Thus, one society may say: "Here are a hundred tons of steel. To produce them one hundred workers of our society have taken ten days; as our day consisted of eight hours, that makes eight thousand hours of labor for one hundred tons of steel; eighty hours a ton." Upon which the State will pay them eight thousind labor notes of one hour each, and these eight thousand notes will be distributed amongst the fellow-workers in the foundry as seems best to themselves.

Or again, if one hundred miners have spent twenty days in hewing eight thousand tons of coal, the coal will be worth two hours a ton, and the sixteen thousand labor notes for one hour each received by the miners' union will be divided amongst them as they think fair.

If there be disputes: if the miners protest and say that a ton of steel ought to cost six hours of labor instead of eight; or if the pro­fessor rate his day twice as high as the nurse; then the State must step in and regulate their differences. Such, in a few words, is the organisation which the Collectivists desire to see arising from the Social Revolution. As we have seen, their principles are: collective property in the instruments of labor, and remuneration of each worker according to the time spent in productive toil', taking into account the productiveness of his work. As for their political system, it would be parliamentary rule, amelior­ated by the change of men in power, the imperative mandate, and the referendum—i.е., the general vote of Yes or No upon questions submitted to the popular decision.

Now, we must at once say that this system seems to us absolutely incapable of realisation.

The Collectivists begin by proclaiming a revolutionary principle—the abolition of private property—and, as soon as proclaimed, they deny it, by maintaining an organisation of production and consumption springing from private property.

They proclaim a revolutionary principle and ignore the consequences it must necessarily bring about. They forget that the very fact of abolishing individual property in the instillments of production (land, factories, means of communication, capital) must cause society to set out in a new direction; that it must change production from top to bottom, change not only its methods but its ends; that all the everyday relations between individuals must be modified as soon as land, machinery and the rest are considered as common possessions.