Capital and the means of production must become common property in order to achieve well being for all
Plenty for all is not a dream—though it may have been for the ancients for whom the acquisition resources was a struggle. But with the technological power we have today, we can produce an abundance of whatever resource we want with ease. However, capitalism creates artificial scarcity: people go without because the bourgeois will limit production in order to keep prices up, and a lot of work in a capitalist system is wasted on useless products. Thus, If abundance is to become a reality, then capital and the means of production must cease to be regarded as private property, for the bourgeois to dispose of as they please. Since every creation is the culmination of countless contributors, no single individual should be able to claim it as their own. Thus the wealth achieved by our ancestors must all become common property, so that our collective interests may gain from it the greatest good for all. There must be expropriation. The well-being of all—the end, expropriation—the means.
We must recognize, and loudly proclaim, that everyone, whatever their grade in the old society, whether strong or weak, capable or incapable, has, before everything, the right to live, and that society is bound to share among all, without exception, the means of existence that it has at its disposal. We must acknowledge this, and proclaim it aloud, and act upon it. Affairs must be managed in such a way that from the first day of the revolution the worker shall know that a new era is opening before them; that henceforward none need to crouch under the bridges while surrounded by shelter, none need to fast in the midst of plenty, none need to perish with cold near shops full of coats; that all is for all, in practice as well as in theory, and that at last, for the first time in history, a revolution has been accomplished which considers the needs of the people before schooling them in their duties.
This cannot be brought about by Acts of Parliament, but only by taking immediate and effective possession of all that is necessary to ensure the well-being of all. We must organize without delay a way to feed the hungry, to meet all needs, to produce not for the special benefit of one or another, but so as to ensure to society as a whole its life and further development. Very different will be the result if the workers claim the right to well-being. In claiming that right they claim the right to take possession of the wealth of the community—to take houses to live in according to the needs of each family; to socialize the stores of food and learn the meaning of plenty, etc.
References
- Kropotkin, Peter. (1892). The Conquest of Bread Chapter 2. Well-being for all (p. 64).