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

Industrialization And Socialism / 39
tendency to cut off a portion of the service and consequently to eliminate labourers
from production. Now, it is with the economic order as with the spiritual order: outside
ofthe church there is no salvation; outside oflabour there is no subsistence. Society
and nature, equally pitiless, are in accord in the execution of this new decree .
.. . [NJo one denies that machines have contributed to the general welfare; but I
affirm, in regard to this incontestable fa ct, that the economists fall short of the truth
when they advance the absolute statement that the simplification of processes has
nowhere resulted in a diminution of the number of hands employed in any industry
whatever. What the economists ought to say is that machinery, like the division oflabour,
in the present system of social economy is at once a source of wealth and a permanent
and fatal cause of misery ...
An English manufacturer: "The insubordination of our workmen has given us
the idea of dispensing with them. We have made and stimulated every imaginable effo
rt of the mind to replace the service of men by tools more docile, and we have
achieved our object. Machinery has delivered capital from the oppression of labour.
Wherever we still employ a man, we do so only temporarily, pending the invention
fo r us of some means of accomplishing his work without him."
What a system is that which leads a business man to think with delight that society
will soon be able to dispense with men! Machinery has delivered capital from the
oppression oflabour! That is exactly as if the Cabinet should undertake to deliver the
Treasury from the oppression of the taxpayers. Fool! though the workmen cost you
something, they are your customers: what will you do with your products, when,
driven away by you, they shall consume them no longer Thus machinery, after crushing
the workmen, is not slow in dealing employers a counter-blow; fo r, if production
excludes consumption, it is soon obliged to stop itself .
... What a pity that machinery cannot also deliver capital from the oppression of
consumers! What a misfortune that machines do not buy the fabrics which they
weave! The ideal society will be reached when commerce, agriculture, and manufactures
can proceed without a man upon earth!
... Machines! The adult workman becomes an apprentice, a child, again: this result
was fo reseen from the phase of the division of labour, during which we saw the
quality of the workman degenerate in the ratio in which industry was perfected ...
Machines promised us an increase of wealth; they have kept their word, but at
the same time endowing us with an increase of poverty. They promised LIS liberty; I
am going to prove that they have brought us slavery ...
The first, the simplest, the most powerful of machines is the workshop.