Socialism and Modern Science | Page 6

ought to work in order to live, but each ought to devote
himself to the kind of labor which best suits his peculiar aptitudes. An
injurious waste of strength and abilities would thus be avoided, and
labor would cease to be repugnant, and would become agreeable and
necessary as a condition of physical and moral health.
And when all have given to society the labor best suited to their innate
and acquired aptitudes, each has a right to the same rewards, since each
has equally contributed to that solidarity of labor which sustains the life
of the social aggregate and, in solidarity with it, the life of each
individual.
The peasant who digs the earth performs a kind of labor in appearance
more modest, but just as necessary, useful and meritorious as that of the
workman who builds a locomotive, of the mechanical engineer who
improves it or of the savant who strives to extend the bounds of human
knowledge in his study or laboratory.
The one essential thing is that all the members of society work, just as
in the individual organism all the cells perform their different functions,

more or less modest in appearance--for example, the nerve-cells, the
bone-cells or the muscular cells--but all biological functions, or sorts of
labor, equally useful and necessary to the life of the organism as a
whole.
In the biological organism no living cell remains inactive, and the cell
obtains nourishment by material exchanges only in proportion to its
labor; in the social organism no individual ought to live without
working, whatever form his labor may take.
In this way the majority of the artificial difficulties that our opponents
raise against socialism may be swept aside.
"Who, then, will black the boots under the socialist regime?" demands
M. Richter in his book so poor in ideas, but which becomes positively
grotesque when it assumes that, in the name of social equality the
"grand chancellor" of the socialist society will be obliged, before
attending to the public business, to black his own boots and mind his
own clothes! In truth, if the adversaries of socialism had nothing but
arguments of this sort, discussion would indeed be needless.
But all will want to do the least fatiguing and most agreeable kinds of
work, says some one with a greater show of seriousness.
I will answer that this is equivalent to demanding to-day the
promulgation of a decree as follows: Henceforth all men shall be born
painters or surgeons!
The distribution to the proper persons of the different kinds of mental
and manual labor will be effected in fact by the anthropological
variations in temperament and character, and there will be no need to
resort to monkish regulations (another baseless objection to socialism).
Propose to a peasant of average intelligence to devote himself to the
study of anatomy or of the penal code or, inversely, tell him whose
brain is more highly developed than his muscles to dig the earth,
instead of observing with the microscope. They will each prefer the
labor for which they feel themselves best fitted.

The changes of occupation or profession will not be as considerable as
many imagine when society shall be organized under the collectivist
regime. When once the industries ministering to purely personal luxury
shall be suppressed--luxury which in most cases insults and aggravates
the misery of the masses--the quantity and variety of work will adapt
themselves gradually, that is to say naturally, to the socialist phase of
civilization just as they now conform to the bourgeois phase.
Moreover, under the socialist regime, every one will have the fullest
liberty to declare and make manifest his personal aptitudes, and it will
not happen, as it does to-day, that many peasants, sons of the people
and of the lower middle class, gifted with natural talents, will be
compelled to allow their talents to atrophy while they toil as peasants,
workingmen or employees, when they would be able to furnish society
a different and more fruitful kind of labor, because it would be more in
Harmony with their peculiar genius.
The one essential point is this: In exchange for the labor that they
furnish to society, society must guarantee to the peasant and the artisan,
as well as to the one who devotes himself to the liberal careers,
conditions of existence worthy of a human being. Then we will no
longer be affronted by the spectacle of a ballet girl, for instance,
earning as much in one evening by whirling on her toes as a scientist, a
doctor, a lawyer, etc., in a year's work. In fact to-day the latter are in
luck if they do that well.
Certainly, the arts will not be neglected under the socialist regime,
because socialism wishes life to be agreeable for all, instead of for a