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

120/ ANARCHISM
latest issue of a newspaper, to enjoy a performance of Wagner or a lecture at the
Sorbonne.
Since these needs vary, not only according to time and place, but also according
to the temperament, disposition and development of each individual, it is clear that
only he or she who experiences and feels them is in a position to appreciate them and
to measure adequately the satisfaction they may give.
Therefore, in drawing the measure of each person's share in the total social production
from need, from the complex and infinite needs of each organism, rather than from
the social use-value of each one's labour, anarchist-communism is inspired not only by a
logical motive, but also by an eminently practical criterion of equality and justice ...
As the ways and measure of the satisfaction of needs vary from person to person,
according to their development and to the particular environment in which they
live, wllile tile rigllt to satisfY tllem in tile manner whicll eacll person, tile sole judge, deems
convenient, remains equal fo r all, equality and justice could not receive a more real and
sincere sanction than that which is given by the libertarian communist conception of
society. All have an equal right to live a full life-the strong and the weak, the intelligent
and the dull, the capable and the inept; and, without regard to the contribution
each one may have given to the total production of society, they all have the same
right to satisfY their needs and to reach the superior fo rms ofhigher development. ..
At present, work has a servile character; it is not chosen freely according to
one's aptitudes; it does not give any satisfaction whatever, material or moral; it offers
only risks, deprivations, humiliations; it is uncertain, painful, excessive, paid in inverse
proportion to its duration; it is sought reluct;lI1t!y, executed with disgust; it is
endured, in short, as a punishment, as a curse. The aversions it arouses at the present
time are understandable, as is understandable the horror with which work, this inevitable
condition of life, is looked at by the unfortunates who bear on their faces, on
their eyes, on their tortured flesh, the stigma of all the aberrations and degenerations
caused by centuries of slavery, of deprivations, of poverty, of grief, of brutality-all
compressed into a state of arrested development, which makes them
incapable of any fe rtile fu nction or of any original action.
However, transplant that rickety progeny of sclerotics, drunkards, arthritics
and prostitutes to a healthier social climate, to a world of equals where production is
ruled by collective interest, not by whim and speculation; where it is limited to what
is necessary and pleasant, excluding all that is stupid, useless, or harmful, from miser's
safes to monstrous battleships; make room within the ranks of redeeming labour
fo r all the energies that now lie stagnant, tricked by all kinds oflies and frauds,