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

War And Revolution In Europe /285
and horses have to be bought, which involves both procurement costs and secondly,
operating costs. So it was with the slave, who first had to be bought and trained even
as a child and then provided with subsistence. The modern entrepreneur gets the
modern worker free of charge; whether he pays a subsistence wage to one or to the
other is indifferent.
Here again in this depersonalization and dehumanization of the relationship
between the entrepreneur and the worker, the capitalist system, modern technology
and state centralism go hand in hand. The capitalist system itself reduces the worker
to a number. Technology, allied with capitalism, makes him a cog in the wheels of the
machine. Finally the state sees to it that the capitalist not only has no reason to
mourn the worker's death, but even in cases of death or accident has no need to become
personally involved with him in any way. The state's insurance institutions can
certainly be regarded from many aspects, but this one should not be overlooked.
They too replace living humanity by a blindly functioning mechanism.
The limits of technology, as it has been incorporated into capitalism, have gone
beyond the bounds of humanity. There is not much concern for the workers' life or
health (here one must not think only of the machines; one should also recall the dangerous
metal wastes in the polluted air of work-shops and factories, the poisoning of
the air over entire cities), and certainly there is no concern for the worker's joy of life
or comfort during work.
The Marxists and the masses of workers who are influenced by them are completely
unaware of how fundamentally the technology of the socialists differs from capitalist
technology in this regard. Technology will, in a cultured people, have to be directed
according to the psychology of free people who want to use it. When the workers themselves
determine under what conditions they want to work, they will make a compromise
between the amount of time they want to spend outside of production and the
intensity of work they are willing to accept within production. There will be considerable
individual differences; some will work very fast and energetically, so that afterwards they
can spend a very long time in rest and recreation, while others will prefer not to degrade
any hours of the day to a mere means, and they will want their work itself to be pleasurable
and proceed at a comfortable pace. Their slogan will be "Haste makes waste" and
their technology will be adapted to their nature ...
The capitalist production process is a key point for the emancipation of work
only in a negative respect. It does not lead to socialism by its own further development
and immanent laws; not through the workers' struggle in their role as producers
can it be transformed decisively in favour of labour, but only if the workers stop