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

32 / ANARCHISM
7. That in this distribution, each one, man, woman, or child, be in full enjoyment
of the right to labour or the right to engage in such branch of labour as
they may please to select, provided they give proof of integrity and ability.
8. Finally, that, in this new order, people possess a guarantee of well-being, ofa
minimum sufficient fo r the present and the future, and that this guarantee free
them from all uneasiness concerning themselves and their fa milies ...
In order to attain happiness, it is necessary to introduce it into the labours which engage
the greater part of our lives. Life is a long torment to one who pursues occupations
without attraction.
Morality teaches us to love work: let it know, then, how to render work lovable,
and, first of all, let it introduce luxury into husbandry and the workshop. If the arrangements
are poor, repulsive, how arouse industrial attraction
In work, as in pleasure, variety is evidently the desire of nature. Any enjoyment
prolonged, without interruption, beyond two hours, conduces to satiety, to abuse,
blunts our faculties, and exhausts pleasure_ A repast of fo ur hours will not pass off
without excess; an opera of fo ur hours will end by cloying the spectator. Periodical
variety is a necessity of the body and of the soul, a necessity in all nature; even the
soil requires alteration of seeds, and seed alteration of soil. The stomach will soon reject
the best dish ifit be offered every day, and the soul will be blunted in the exercise
of any virtue if it be not relieved by some oth er virtue.
If there is need of variety in pleasure after indulging in it fo r two hours, so much
the more does labour require this diversity, which is continual in the associative
state, and is gurantccd to the poor as wii as the rich.
The first right is the right to sustain life, to eat when one is hungry. This right is
denied in civilization by the philosophers, and conceded by Jesus Christ in these
words:
Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungered,
he, and they that were with him How he went into the house of
God, and did eat the show-bread, which is not lawful to eat but for the
priests, and gave also to them which were with him
Jesus by these words consecrates the right of taking, WHEN ONE IS HUNGRY, what is
necessary, where it may be found; and this right imposes the duty upon the social
body of securing to the people a minimum fo r maintenance-since civilization deprives
it of the first [four) natural right[s), that of the c/wse, fishing, gathering, pasturage,
it owes it an indemnity. As long as this duty is not recognized, there exists no so-