Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

118/ ANARCHISM
combination of both kinds of activities; and instead of "technical education," which
means the maintenance of the present division between brain work and manual
work, we advocate education integra/e, or complete education, which means the disappearance
of that pernicious distinction ...
Have the fa ctory and the workshop at the gates of your fields and gardens, and
work in them. Not those large establishments, of course, in which huge masses of
metals have to be dealt with and which are better placed at certain spots indicated by
Nature, but the countless variety of workshops and fa ctories which are required to
satisfY the infinite diversity of tastes among civilized men. Not those fa ctories in
which children lose all the appearance of children in the atmosphere of an industrial
hell, but those airy and hygienic, and consequently economical, fa ctories in which
human life is of more account than machinery and the making of extra profits, of
which we already find a few samples here and there; factories and workshops into
which men, women and children will not be driven by hunger, but will be attracted by
the desire of finding an activity suited to their tastes, and where, aided by the motor
and the machine, they will choose the branch of activity which best suits their incl inations
...
For centuries science and so-called practical wisdom have said to man: "It is
good to be rich, to be able to satisfY, at least, your material needs; but the only means
to be rich is to so train your mind and capacities as to be able to compel other
men-slaves, serfs or wage-earners-to make these riches fo r you. You have no
choice . Either you must stand in the ranks of the peasants and the artisans who,
whatsoever economists and moralists may promise rhl'J11 in the future, are now periodically
doomed to starve after each bad crop or during their strikes and to be shot
down by their own sons the moment they lose patience. Or you must train your faculties
so as to be a military commander of the masses, or to be accepted as one of the
wheels of the governing machinery of the State, or to become a manager of men in
commerce or industry." For many centuries there was no other choice, and men fo l­
lowed that advice, without finding in it happiness, either fo r themselves and their
own children, or fo r those whom they pretended to preserve from worse misfortunes.
But modern knowledge has another issue to offer to thinking men. It tells them
that in order to be rich they need not take the bread from the mouths of others; but
that the more rational outcome would be a society in which men, with the work of
their own hands and intelligence, and by the aid of the machinery already invented
and to be invented, should themselves create all imaginable riches. Technics and sci-