# An Appeal to the Young

Published by Max N. Maisel, New York, 1921. [1886 translation by H. M. Hyndman? cf. ]
P. Kropotkin.
An Appeal
…to…
The Young
Price 5 cents
Published by
MAX N. MAISEL, 424 Grand St., New York.
1921
PETER KROPOTKIN
AN APPEAL TO THE YOUNG.
It is to the young that I wish to address myself to-day. Let the old—I mean of course the old in heart and mind—lay the pamphlet down without tiring their eyes in reading what will tell them nothing.
I assume that you are about eighteen or twenty years of age, that you have finished your apprenticeship or your studies; that you are just entering on life. I take it for granted that you have a mind free from the superstition which your teachers have sought to force upon you; that you do not fear the devil, and that you do not go to hear parsons and ministers rant. More, that you are not one of the fops, sad products of a society in decay, who display their well-cut trousers and their monkey faces in the park, and who even at their early age have only an insatiable longing for pleasure at any price ... I assume on the contrary that you have a warm heart and for this reason I talk to you.
A first question, I know, occurs to you—you have often asked yourself—"What am I going to be?" In fact when a man is young he understands that after having studied a trade or a science for several years—at the cost of society, mark—he has not done this in order that he should make use of his acquirements as instruments of plunder for his own gain, and he must be depraved indeed and utterly cankered by vice, who has not dreamed that one day he would apply his intelligence, his abilities, his knowledge to help on the enfranchisement of those who to-day grovel in misery and in ignorance.
You are one of those who has had such a vision, are you not? Very well, let us see what you must do to make your dream a reality.
I do not know in what rank you were born. Perhaps, favoured by fortune, you have turned your attention to the study of science; you are to be a doctor, a barrister, a man of letters, or a scientific man; a wide field opens up before you; you enter upon life with extensive knowledge, with a trained intelligence. Or, on the other hand, you are, perhaps, only an honest artisan whose knowledge of science is limited by the little you have learned at school; but you have had the advantage of learning at first hand what a life of exhausting toil is the lot of the worker of our time.
​I stop at the first supposition, to return afterwards to the second; I assume then that you have received a scientific education. Let us suppose you intend to be a doctor.
To-morrow a man attired in rough clothes will come to fetch you to see a sick woman. He will lead you into one of those alleys where the opposite neighbours can almost shake hands over the heads of the passers-by; you ascend into a foul atmosphere by the flickering light of a little ill-trimmed lamp; you climb two, three, four, five flights of filthy stairs, and in a dark, cold room you find the sick woman lying on a pallet covered with dirty rags. Pale, livid children, shivering under their scanty garments, gaze with their big eyes wide open. The husband has worked all his life twelve or thirteen hours a day at no matter what; now he has been out of work for three months. To be out of employ is not rare in his trade; it happens every year, periodically. But, formerly, when he was out of work his wife went out as a char-woman—perhaps to wash your shirts—at the rate of fifteen-pence a day; now she has been bedridden for two months, and misery glares upon the family in all its squalid hideousness.
What will you prescribe for the sick woman, doctor? you who have seen at a glance that the cause of her illness is a general anaemia, want of good food, lack of fresh air. Say a good beef-steak every day? a little exercise in the country? a dry and well-ventilated bed-room? What irony! If she could have afforded it this would have been done long since without waiting for your advice!
If you have a good heart, a frank address, an honest face, the family will tell you many things. They will tell you that the woman on the other side of the partition, who coughs a cough which tears your heart, is a poor ironer; that a flight of stairs lower down all the children have the fever: that the washerwoman who occupies the ground floor will not live to see the spring; and that in the house next door things are worse.
What will you say to all these sick people? Recommend them generous diet, change of air, less exhausting toil. … You only wish you could, but you daren't and you go out heartbroken with a curse on your lips.
The next day, as you still brood over the fate of the dwellers in this dog-hutch, your partner tells you that yesterday a footman came to fetch him, this time in a carriage. It was for the owner of a fine house, for a lady worn out with sleepless nights, who devotes all her life to dressing, visits, balls and squabbles with a stupid husband. Your friend has prescribed for her a less preposterous habit of life, a less heating diet, walks in the fresh air, an even temperament, and, in order to make up in some measure for the want of useful work, a little gymnastic exercise in her bedroom.
The one is dying because she has never had enough food nor enough rest in her whole life; the other pines because she has never known what work is since she was born.
If you are one of those characterless natures who adapt themselves to anything, who at the sight of the most revolting spectacles console themselves with a gentle sigh and a glass of sherry, then you will gradually become used to these contrasts, and the nature of the beast favouring your endeavours, your sole idea will be to maintain yourself in the ranks of pleasure-seekers, so that you may never find yourself among ​the wretched. But if you are a Man, if every sentiment is translated in your case into an action of the will, if, in you the beast has not crushed the intelligent being, then you will return home one day saying to yourself: "No, it is unjust: this must not go on any longer. It is not enough to cure diseases; we must prevent them, a little good living and intellectual development would score off our lists half the patients and half the diseases. Throw physic to the dogs! Air, good diet, less crushing toil—that is how we must begin. Without this, the whole profession of a doctor is nothing but trickery and humbug."
That very day you will understand Socialism. You will wish to know it thoroughly, and if altruism is not a word devoid of significance for you, if you apply to the study of the social question the rigid induction of the natural philosopher, you will end by finding yourself in our ranks, and you will work, as we work, to bring about the Social Revolution.
But perhaps you will say, "Mere practical business may go to the devil! As an astronomer, a physiologist, a chemist, I will devote myself to science. Such work as that always bears fruit, if only for future generations."
Let us first try to understand what you seek in devoting yourself to science. Is it only the pleasure—doubtless immense—which we derive from the study of nature and the exercise of our mental faculties.? In that case I ask you in what respect does the philosopher, who pursues science in order that he may pass life pleasantly to himself, differ from that drunkard there, who only seeks the immediate gratification that gin affords him? The philosopher has, past all question, chosen his enjoyment more wisely, since it affords him a pleasure far deeper and more lasting than that of the toper. But that is all! Both one and the other have the same selfish end in view, personal gratification,
But no, you have no wish to lead this selfish life. By working at science you mean to work for humanity, and this is the idea which will guide you in your investigations,
A charming illusion! Which of us has not hugged it for a moment when giving himself up for the first time to science?
But then, if you are really thinking about humanity, if it is the good of mankind at which you aim, a formidable question arises before you; for, however little you may have of the critical spirit, you must at once note that in our society of to-day science is only an appendage to luxury, rendering life pleasanter for the few, but remaining absolutely inaccessible to the bulk of mankind.
More than a century has passed since science laid down sound propositions as to the origin of the universe, but how many have mastered them or possess the really scientific spirit of criticism? A few thousands at the outside, who are lost in the midst of hundreds of millions still steeped in prejudices and superstitions worthy of savages, who are consequently ever ready to serve as puppets for religious impostors.
Or, to go a step further, let us glance at what science has done to establish rational foundations for physical and moral health. Science tells us how we ought to live in order to preserve the health of our own bodies, how to maintain in good condition the crowded masses of our population. But does not ail the vast amount of work done in these two directions remain a dead letter in our books? We know it does. ​And why?—Because science to-day exists only for a handful of privileged persons, because social inequality, which divides society into two classes—the wage-slaves and the grabbers of capital—renders all its teachings as to the conditions of a rational existence only the bitterest irony to nine-tenths of mankind.
I could give plenty more examples, but I stop short; only go outside Faust's closet, whose windows, darkened by dust, scarce let the light of heaven glimmer on its shelves full of books; look round, and at each step you will find fresh proof in support of this view.
At the present moment we no longer need to accumulate scientific truths and discoveries. The most important is to spread the truths already acquired, to practice them in daily life, to make of them a common inheritance. We have to order things in such wise that all humanity may be capable of assimilating and applying them, so that science ceasing to be a luxury becomes the basis of every-day life. Justice requires this.
Furthermore, the very interests of science require it. Science only makes real progress when its truths find environments ready prepared for their reception. The theory of the mechanical origin of heat, though enunciated in the last century in the same terms that Harn and Clausius formulate it to-day, remained for eighty years buried in the Academical Records until such knowledge of physics had spread widely enough to create a public capable of accepting it. Three generations had to go before the ideas of Erasmus Darwin on the variation of species could be favourably received from his grandson and admitted by academical philosophers, and not without pressure from public opinion even then. The philosopher, like the poet or artist, is always the product of the society in which he moves and teaches.
But if you are imbued with these ideas, you will understand that it is above all important to bring about a radical change in this state of affairs which to-day condemns the philosopher to be crammed with scientific truths, and almost the whole of the rest of human beings to remain what they were five or ten centuries ago, that is to say, in the state of slaves and machines, incapable of mastering established truths. And the day when you are imbued with wide, deep, humane, and profoundly scientific truth, that day will you lose your taste for pure science. You will set to work to find out the means to effect this transformation, and if you bring to your investigations the impartiality which has guided you in your scientific researches you will of necessity adopt the cause of Socialism; you will make an end of sophisms and you will come amongst us. Weary of working to procure pleasures for this small group, which already has a large share of them, you will place your information and devotion at the service of the oppressed.
And be sure that the feeling of duty accomplished and of a real accord established between your sentiments and your actions, you will then find powers in yourself of whose existence you never even dreamed. When too, one day—it is not far distant in any case, saving the presence of our professors—when one day, I say, the change for which you are working should have been brought about then, deriving new forces from collective scientific work, and from the powerful help of armies of labourers who will come to place their energies at its service, science ​will take a new bound forward, in comparison with which the slow progress of to-day will appear the simple exercise of tyros.
Then you will enjoy science; that pleasure will be a pleasure for all.
If you have finished reading law and are about to be called to the Bar, perhaps, you, too, have some illusions, as to your future activity—I assume that you are one of the nobler spirits, that you know what altruism means. Perhaps you think, "To devote my life to an unceasing and vigorous struggle against all injustice. To apply my whole faculties to bringing about the triumph of law the public expression of supreme justice—can any career be nobler!" You begin the real work of life confident in yourself and the profession you have chosen.
Very well; let us turn to any page of the Law Reports and see what actual life will tell you.
Here we have a rich land-owner; he demands the eviction of a cotter tenant who has not paid his rent. From a legal point of view the case is beyond dispute, since the poor farmer can't pay out he must go. But if we look into the facts we shall learn something like this. The landlord has squandered his rents persistently in rollicking pleasure; the tenant has worked hard all day and every day. The landlord has done nothing to improve his estate. Nevertheless its value has trebled in fifty years owing to rise in price of land due to the construction of a railway, to the making of new highroads, to the draining of a marsh, to the enclosure and cultivation of waste lands. But the tenant who has contributed largely towards this increase has ruined himself; he fell into the hands of usurers, and head over ears in debt, he can no longer pay the landlord. The law, always on the side of property, is quite clear; the landlord is in the right. But you, whose feeling of justice has not yet been stifled by legal Fictions, what will you do? Will you contend that the farmer ought to be turned out upon the high road?—for that is what the law ordains—or will you urge that the landlord should pay back to the farmer the whole of the increase of value in his property which is due to the farmer's labour?—this is what equity decrees. Which side will you take? For the law and against justice, or for justice and against the law?
Or when workmen have gone out on strike against a master, without notice, which side will you take then? The side of the law, that is to say the part of the master, who, taking advantage of a period of crisis, has made outrageous profits? or against the law but on the side of the workers who received during the whole time only 2s. a day as wages, and saw their wives and children fade away before their eyes? Will you stand up for that piece of chicanery which consists in affirming "freedom of contract."? Or will you uphold equity, according to which a contract entered into between a man who has dined well and a man who sells his labour for a bare subsistence, between the strong and the weak is not a contract at all,
Take another case. Here in London a man was loitering near a butcher's shop. He stole a beefsteak and ran off with it. Arrested and questioned, it turns out that he is an artisan out of work, and that he and his family have had nothing to eat for four days: The butcher is asked to let the man off but he is all for the triumph of justice! He prosecutes and the man is sentenced to six months imprisonment. ​Blind Themis so wills it! Does not your conscience revolt against society when you hear similar judgments pronounced every day.
Or again, will you call for the enforcement of the law against this man, who badly brought up and ill-used from his childhood, has arrived at man's estate without having heard one sympathetic word, and completes his career by murdering his neighbour in order to rob him of a shilling? Will you demand his execution, or—worse still—that he should be imprisoned for twenty years, when you know very well that he is rather a madman than a criminal, and, in any case, that his crime is the fault of our entire society.
Will you claim that these weavers should be thrown into prison who in a moment of desperation have set fire to a mill; that this man who shot at a crowned murderer should be imprisoned for life; that these insurgents should be shot down who plant the flag of the future on the barricades? No, a thousand times no!
If you reason instead of repeating what is taught you; if you analyze the law and strip off those cloudy fictions with which it has been draped in order to conceal its real origin, which is the right of the stronger, and its substance, which has ever been the consecration of all the tyrannies handed down to mankind through its long and bloody history; when you have comprehended this your contempt for the law will be profound indeed. You will understand that to remain the servant of the written law is to place yourself every day in opposition to the law of conscience, and to make a bargain on the wrong side; and, since this struggle cannot go on for ever, you will either silence your conscience and become a scoundrel, or you will break with tradition, and you will work with us for the utter destruction of all this injustice, economical, social and political.
But then you will be a Socialist, you will be a Revolutionist.
And you, young engineer, who dream of bettering the lot of the workers by applying the inventions of science to industry, what a sad disenchantment, what deceptions await you. You devote the youthful energy of your intellect to working out the plan of some railway which, winding round by the edges of precipices, and piercing the heart of huge mountains, will unite two countries separated by nature. But when once the work is on foot you see whole regiments of workers decimated by privations and sickness in this gloomy tunnel, you see others returning home taking with them a few pence and the seeds of consumption, you will see each yard of the line marked off by human corpses, the result of grovelling greed, and finally, when the line is at last opened, you see it used as the highway tor the artillery of an invading army.
You have devoted your youth to make a discovery destined to simplify production, and after many efforts, many sleepless nights, you have at last this valuable invention. You put it into practice and the result surpasses your expectations. Ten, twenty thousand beings are thrown out of work; those who remain, mostly children are reduced to the condition of mere machines! Three, four, or maybe ten capitalists will make a fortune and drink champagne by the bottlesfull." Was that your dream?
Finally, you study recent industrial advances, and you see that the seamstress has gained nothing, absolutely nothing, by the invention of ​the sewing machine; that the labourer in the St. Gothard tunnel dies of ankylostoma, notwithstanding diamond drills; that the mason and the day labourer are out of work just as before at the foot of the Giffard lifts. If you discuss social problems with the same independence of spirit which has guided you in your mechanical investigations, you necessarily come to the conclusion that under the domination of private property and wage-slavery, every new invention, far from increasing the well-being of the worker, only makes his slavery heavier, his labour more degrading, the periods of slack work more frequent, the crisis sharper, and that the man who already has every conceivable pleasure for himself is the only one who profits by it.
What will you do when you have once come to this conclusion? Either you will begin by silencing your conscience by sophisms; then one fine day you will bid farewell to the honest dreams of your youth and you will try to obtain, for yourself, what commands pleasure and enjoyment—you will then go over to the camp of the exploiters. Or, if you have a tender heart, you will say to yourself:—"No, this is not the time for inventions. Let us work first to transform the domain of production. When private property is put an end to, then each new advance in industry will be made for the benefit of all mankind, and this mass of workers, mere machines as they are to-day, will then become thinking beings who apply to industry their intelligence, strengthened by study and skilled in manual labour, and thus mechanical progress will take a bound forward which will carry out in fifty years what now-a-days we cannot even dream of."
And what shall I say to the schoolmaster—not to the man who looks upon his profession as a wearisome business, but to him who, when surrounded by a joyous band of young pickles, feels exhilarated by their cheery looks and in the midst of their happy laughter, to him, who tries to plant in their little heads those ideas of humanity which he cherished himself when he was young.
Often I see that you are sad, and I know what it is that makes you knit your brows. This very day, your favourite pupil, who is not very well up in Latin, it is true, but who has none the less an excellent heart, recited the story of William Tell with so much vigour! His eyes sparkled; he seemed to wish to stab all tyrants there and then; he gave with such fire the passionate lines of Schiller:—
Before the slave when he breaks his chain, Before the free man tremble not.
But when he returned home, his mother, his father, his uncle, sharply rebuked him for want of respect to the minister or the rural policeman; they held forth to him by the hour on "prudence, respect for authority, submission to his betters," till he put Schiller aside in order to read "Self-Help."
And then only yesterday you were told that your best pupils have all turned out badly. One does nothing but dream of becoming an officer; another in league with his master robs the workers of their slender wages; and you, who had such hopes of these young people, you now brood over the sad contrast between your ideal and life as it is.
You still brood over it. Then I foresee that in two years at the out​side after having suffered disappointment after disappointment, you will lay your favourite authors on the shelf, and you will end by saying that Tell was no doubt a very honest fellow, but after all a trifle cracked; that poetry is a first-rate thing for the fireside, especially when a man has been teaching the rule-of-three all day long, but still poets are always in the clouds and their views have nothing to do with the life of to-day, nor with the next visit of the Inspector of Schools..,
Or, on the other hand, the dreams of your youth will become the firm convictions of your mature age. You will wish to have wide, human education for all, in school and out of school; and, seeing that this is impossible in existing conditions, you will attack the very foundations of bourgeois society. Then discharged as you will be by the Education Department, you will leave your school and come among us and be of us; you will tell men of riper years but of smaller attainments than yourself how enticing knowledge is, what mankind ought to be, nay, what we could be. You will come and work with Socialists for the complete transformation of the existing system, will strive tide by side with us to attain true equality, true fraternity, never-ending liberty for the world.
Lastly, you, young artist, sculptor, painter, poet, musician, do you not observe that the sacred fire which inspired your predecessor! is wanting in the men of to-day? that art is commonplace and mediocrity reigns supreme?
Could it be otherwise? The delight at having re-discovered the ancient world, of having bathed afresh in the springs of nature which created the masterpieces of the Renaissance no longer exists for the art of our time, the revolutionary ideal has left it cold until now, and, failing an ideal, our art fancies that it has found one in realism when it painfully photographs in colours the dewdrop on the leaf of a plant, imitates the muscles in the leg of a cow, or describes minutely in prose and in verse the suffocating filth of a sewer, the boudoir of a whore of high degree.
"But if this is so, what is to be done?" you say. If, I reply, the sacred fire that you say you possess is nothing better than a smouldering wick, then you will go on doing as you have done, and your art will speedily degenerate into the trade of decorator of tradesman's shops, of a purveyor of libretti to third-rate operettas and tales for Christmas Annuals—most of you are already running down that grade with a fine head of steam on. …
But, if your heart really beats in unison with that of humanity, if like a true poet you have an ear for Lite, then, gazing out upon this sea of sorrow whose tide sweeps up around you, face to face with these people dying of hunger, in the presence of these corpses piled up in these mines, and these mutilated bodies lying in heaps on the barricades, looking at these long lines of exiles who are going to bury themselves in the snows of Siberia and in the marshes of tropical islands, in full view of this desperate battle which is being fought, amid the cries of pain from the conquered and the orgies of the victors, of heroism in conflict with cowardice, of noble determination face to face with contemptible cunning—you cannot remain neutral; you will come and take the side of the oppressed because you know that the beautiful, the sublime, the ​spirit of life itself are on the side of those who fight for light, for humanity, for justice!
You stop me at last!
"What the devil!" you say. "But if abstract science is a luxury and practice of medicine mere chicane; if law spells injustice, and mechanical invention is but a means of robbery; if the school, at variance with the wisdom of the "practical man", is sure to be overcome, and art without the revolutionary idea can only degenerate, what remains for me to do?"
A vast and most enthralling task; a work in which your actions will be in complete harmony with your conscience, an undertaking capable of rousing the noblest and most vigorous natures.
What work?—I will now tell you.
Two courses are open to you: you can either tamper for ever with your conscience and finish one day by saying "Humanity can go to the devil as long as I am enjoying every pleasure to the full and so long as the people are foolish enough to let me do so." Or else you will join the ranks of the socialists and work with them for the complete transformation of society. Such is the necessary result of the analysis we have made; such is the logical conclusion at which every intelligent being must arrive provided he judge impartially the things he sees around him, and disregard the sophisms suggested to him by his middle-class education and the interested views of his friends.
Having once reached this conclusion the question which arises is "what is to be done?"
The answer is easy.
Quit the environment in which you are placed and in which it is customary to speak of the workers as a lot of brutes, go amongst the people, and the question will solve itself.
You will find that everywhere, in England as in Germany, in Italy as in the United States, wherever there are privileged classes and oppressed, a tremendous movement is a-foot amongst the working classes, the aim of which is to destroy once and for ever the slavery imposed by the capitalist feudality, and to lay the foundations of a new society, based on the principles of justice and equality. It no longer suffices for the people to voice their misery in those songs whose melody breaks one's heart, and which the serfs of the eighteenth century sung, and which the Slavonic peasant still sings to-day; he works to-day, fully conscious of what he has done, in spite of every obstacle for his enfranchisement. His thoughts are continually occupied in considering what to do so that life instead of being a mere curse to three-fourths of the human race may be a blessing to all. He attacks the most difficult problems of sociology, and strives to solve them with his sound commonsense, his observation, and his sad experience. To come to a common understanding with his fellows in misfortune, he tries to form groups and to organise. He forms societies, sustained with difficulty by slender contributions; he tries to make terms with his fellows beyond the frontier; and he does more than all the loud mouthed philanthropists to hasten in the advent of the day when wars between nations will become impossible. To know what his brothers are doing, to improve his acquaintance with them, to elaborate and propagate his ideas, he sustains, at the cost of what continuous efforts! his working press. ​What a ceaseless struggle! What labour, constantly requiring to be recommenced; sometimes to fill the gaps made by desertion—the result of lassitude, of corruption, of persecutions—sometimes to re-organise the ranks decimated by fusilades and grape shot, sometimes to resume studies suddenly cut short by wholesale massacres.
The papers are conducted by men who have had to snatch from society scraps of knowledge by depriving themselves of food and sleep; the agitation is supported with the halfpence of the workers saved from the strict necessaries of life, often on dry bread itself; and all this is done, shadowed by the continual apprehension of seeing their families plunged into destitution as soon as the master perceives that his worker, his slave, is a socialist.
These are the things you will see if you go amongst the people.
And in this ceaseless struggle how often has the worker, sinking under the weight of difficulties, exclaimed in vain:
"Where then are those young men who have been educated at our expense? whom we have clothed and fed whilst they studied? For whom, with backs bowed down under heavy loads, and with empty stomachs, we have built these houses, these academies, these museums? For whom we, with pallid faces, have printed those fine books we cannot so much as read? Where are they, those professors who claim to possess the science of humanity, and in whose eyes mankind is not worth a rare species of caterpillar? Where are those men who preach of liberty and who never rise to defend ours, daily trodden under foot? These writers, these poets, these painters, all this band of hypocrites, in short, who speak of the people with tears in their eyes, and who nevertheless never come among us to help us in our work?"
Some complacently enjoy their condition of cowardly indifference, others, the majority, despise the "rabble" and are ever ready to pounce down on it if it dare to attack their privileges.
From time to time, it is true, a young man appears on the scene who dreams of drums and barricades, and who is in search of sensational scenes and situations, but who deserts the cause of the people as soon as he perceives that the road to the barricades is long, that the laurels he counts on winning on the way are mixed with thorns. Generally these men are ambitious adventurers, who after failing in their first attempts, seek to obtain the votes of the people, but who later on will be the first to denounce it, if it dare to try and put into practice the principles they themselves advocated, and who perhaps will even point the cannon at the proletariat it it dare move before they, the leaders, have given the word of command.
Add to this stupid insults, haughty contempt, and cowardly calumny on the part of a great number, and you have all the help that the middle-class youth give the people in their powerful social evolution.
But then you ask, "What shall we do?" When there is everything to be done! When a whole army of young people would find plenty to employ the entire vigour of their youthful energy, the full force of their intelligence and their talents to help the people in the vast enterprise they have undertaken!
What shall we do? Listen.
You lovers of pure science, if you are imbued with the principles of ​Socialism, if you have understood the real meaning of the revolution which is even now knocking at the door, do you not see that all science has to be recast in order to place it in harmony with the new principles; that it is your business to accomplish in this field a revolution far greater than that which was accomplished in every branch of science during the eighteenth century? Do you not understand that history—which to-day is an old woman's tale about great kings, great statesmen and great parliaments—that history itself has to be written from the point of view of the people in the long evolution of mankind? That social economy—which to-day is merely the sanctification of capitalist robbery—has to be worked out afresh in its fundamental principles as well as in its innumerable applications? That anthropology, sociology, ethics, must be completely recast, and that the very natural sciences themselves, regarded from another point of view, must undergo a profound modification, alike in regard to the conception of natural phenomena and with respect to the method of exposition.
Very well, then. Set to work! Place your abilities at the command of the good cause. Especialy help us with your clear logic to combat prejudice and to lay by your synthesis the foundation of a better organization, yet more, teach us to apply in our daily arguments the fearlessness of true scientific investigation, and show us as your predecessors did, how man dare sacrifice even life itself for the triumph of the truth.
You, doctors, who have learnt Socialism by a bitter experience, never weary of telling us to-day, to-morrow, in and out of season, that humanity itself hurries onward to decay if man remain in the present conditions of existence and work; that all your medicaments must be powerless against disease while the majority of mankind vegetate in conditions absolutely contrary to those which science tells us are healthful; convince the people that it is the causes of disease which must be uprooted, and show us all what is necessary to remove them.
Come with your scalpel and dissect for us with unerring hand this society of ours fast hastening to putrefaction. Tell us what a rational existence should and might be. Insist, as true surgeons that a gangrenous limb must be amputated when it may poison the whole body.
You who have worked at the application of science to industry, come and tell us frankly what has been the outcome of your discoveries. Convince those who dare not march boldly towards the future what new inventions the knowledge we have already acquired carries in its womb, what industry could do under better conditions, what man might easily produce if he produced always with a view to enhance his own productions.
You poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, if you understand your true mission and the very interests of art itself, come with us. Place your pen, your pencil, your chisel, your ideas at the service of the revolution. Figure forth to us, in your eloquent style, or your impressive pictures, the heroic struggles of the people against their oppressors, fire the hearts of our youth with that glorious revolutionary enthusiasm which inflamed the souls of our ancestors; tell women what a noble career is that of a husband who devotes his life to the great cause of social emancipation! Show the people how hideous is their actual life, and place your hands on the causes of its ugliness; tell us what a ​rational life would be, if it did not encounter at every step the follies and the ignomies of our present social order.
Lastly, all of you who possess knowledge, talent, capacity, industry, if you have a spark of sympathy in your nature, come you, and your companions, come and place your services at the disposal of those who most need them. And remember, if you do come, that you come not as masters, but as comrades in the struggle; that you come not to govern but to gain strength for yourselves in a new life, which sweeps upwards to the conquest of the future: that you come less to teach than to grasp the aspiration of the many: to divine them, to give them shape, and then to work, without rest and without haste, with all the fire of youth and all the judgment of age, to realise them in actual life. Then and then only will you lead a complete, a noble, a rational existence. Then you will see that your every effort on this path bears with it fruit in abundance, and this sublime harmony once established between your actions and the dictates of your conscience will give you powers you never dreamt lay dormant yourselves.
The never-ceasing struggle for truth, justice, and equality among the people, whose gratitude you will earn—what nobler career can the youth of all nations desire than this?
It has taken me long to show you of the well-to-do classes that in view of the dilemna which life presents to you, you will be forced, if courageous and sincere, to come and work side by side with the Socialists, and champion in their ranks the cause of the social revolution.
And yet how simple this truth is after all! But when one is speaking to those who have suffered from the effects of bourgeois surroundings, how many sophisms must be combated, how many prejudices overcome, how many interested objections put aside!
It is easy to be brief to day in addressing you, the youth of the people. The very pressure of events impels you to become Socialists, however little you may have the courage to reason and to act.
To rise from the ranks of the working people, and not devote oneself to bringing about the triumph of Socialism, is to misconceive the real interests at stake, to give up the cause and the true historic mission.
Do you remember the time, when still a mere lad, you went down one winter's day to play in your dark court? The cold nipped your shoulders through your thin clothes, and the mud worked into your worn-out shoes. Even then when you saw chubby children richly clad pass in the distance, looking at you with an air of contempt, you knew right well that these imps, dressed up to the nines, were not the equals of yourself and your comrades, either in intelligence, common-sense or energy. But later when you were forced to shut yourself up in a filthy factory from five or six o'clock in the morning, to remain twelve hours on end close to a whirling machine, and, a machine yourself, were forced to follow day after day for whole years in succession its movements with relentless throbbing—during all this time they, the others, were going quietly to be taught at fine schools, at academies, at the universities. And now these same children, less intelligent, but better taught than you, have become your masters, are enjoying all the pleasure of life and all the advantages of civilization. And you? What sort of lot awaits you?
You return to little, dark, damp lodgings where five or six human ​beings pig together within a few square feet: where your mother, sick of life, aged by care rather than years, offers you dry bread and potatoes as your only food, washed down by a blackish fluid called, in irony tea; and to distract your thoughts you have ever the same never-ending question, "How shall I be able to pay the baker to-morrow, and the landlord the day after?"
What! must you drag on the same weary existence as your father and mother for thirty and forty years? Must you toil your life long to procure for others all the pleasures of well-being, of knowledge, of art, and keep for yourself only the eternal anxiety as to whether you can get a bit of bread? Will you forever give up all that makes life so beautiful to devote yourself to providing every luxury for a handful of idlers? Will you wear yourself out with toil and have in return only trouble, if not misery, when hard times—the fearful hard times—come upon you? Is this what you long for in life?
Perhaps you will give up. Seeing no way out of your condition whatever, maybe you say to yourself, "Whole generations have under gone the same lot, and I, who can alter nothing in the matter, I must submit also. Let us work on then and endeavour to live as well as we can!"
Very well. In that case life itself will take pains to enlighten you.
One day a crisis comes, one of those crises which are no longer mere passing phenomena, as they were formerly, but a crises which destroys a whole industry, which plunges thousands of workers into misery, which crushes whole families. You struggle against the calamity like the rest. But you will soon see how your wife, your child, your friend, little by little succumb to privations, fade away under your very eyes. For sheer want of food, for lack of care and medical assistance, they end their days on the pauper's stretcher, whilst the life of the rich flows on joyously midst the sunny streets of the great city, careless of those who starve and perish. You will then understand how utterly revolting is this society; you will then reflect upon the causes of this crisis, and your examinations will scrutinize to the depths this abomination which puts millions of human beings at the mercy of the brutal greed of a handful of useless triflers; then you will understand that Socialists are right when they say that our present society can be, that it must be organized from top to bottom.
To pass from general crises to your particular case. One day when your master tries by a new reduction of wages to squeeze out of you a few more pence in order to increaze his fortune still further you will protest: but he will haughtily answer, "Go and eat grass, if you will not work at the price I offer." Then you will understand that your master not only tries to shear you like a sheep, but that he looks upon you as an inferior kind of animal altogether; that not content with holding you in his relentless grip by means of the wage system, he is further anxious to make you a slave in every respect. Then you will either bow down before him, you will give up the feeling of human dignity, and you will end by suffering every possible humiliation. Or the blood will rush to your head, you shudder at the hideous slope on which you are slipping down, you will retort, and, turned out workless on the street, you will understand how right socialists are when they say "Revolt! rise against this economic slavery!" Then you will come ​and take your place in the ranks of the Socialists, and yon will work with them for the complete destruction of all slavery—economical, social and political.
Some day again you will learn the story of that charming young girl whose brisk gait, frank manners, and cheerful conversation you so lovingly admired. After having struggled for years and years against misery, she left her native village for the metropolis. She knew right well that there the struggle for existence would be fierce, but she hoped at least to be able to earn an honest livelihood. Well, you know now what has been her fate. Courted by the son of some capitalist she allowed herself to be enticed by his fine words, she gave herself up to him with all the passion of youth, only to see herself abandoned with a baby in her arms. Ever courageous she never ceased to struggle on; but she broke down in this unequal strife against cold and hunger, and she ended her days in one of the hospitals.
And you, woman of the people, has this left you cold and unmoved? While caressing the pretty head of that child who nestles close to you, do you never think about the lot that awaits him, if the present social conditions are not changed? Do you never reflect on the future awaiting your young sister and all your own children? Do you wish that your sons, they too, should vegetate as your father vegetated, with no other care than how to get his daily bread, with no other pleasure than the gin-palace? Do you want your husband, your lads to be ever at the mercy of the first comer who has inherited from his father a capital to exploit them with. Are you anxious that they should remain slaves for a master, food for powder, mere dung wherewith to manure the pasture lands of rich exproprietors?
Nay, never; thousand times no! I know well that your blood has boiled when you have heard that your husbands, after they entered on a strike full of fire and determination, have ended by accepting, cap in hand, the terms dictated by the bloated capitalist in a tone of lofty contempt! I know that you admire those Spanish women who, in a popular uprising, presented their breasts to the bayonets of the soldiery in the front ranks of the insurrectionists. I am certain that you mention with reverence the name of the woman who lodged a bullet in the chest of that ruffianly official who dared to outrage a Socialist prisoner in his cell. And I am confident that your heart beats faster when you read how the women of the people in Paris gathered under a rain of shells to encourage "their men" to heroic action.
Every one of you then, honest young people, men and women, peasants, labourers, artizans, and soldiers, you will understand what are your rights and you will come along with us; you will come in order to work with your brethern in the preparation of that Revolution which sweeping away every vestige of slavery, tearing the fetters asunder, breaking with the old worn-out traditions and opening to all mankind a new and wider scope of joyous existence, shall at length establish true Liberty, real Equality, ungrudging Fraternity throughout human society; work with all, work for all—the full enjoyment of the fruits of their labour, the complete development of all their faculties, a rational, human and happy life!
Don't let anyone tell us that we—but a small band—are too weak to attain unto the magnificent end at which we aim.
​Count and see how many there are who suffer this Injustice.
We peasants who work for others, and who mumble the straw while our master eats the wheat, we by ourselves are millions of men.
We workers who weave silks and velvet in order that we may be clothed in rags, we, too, are a great multitude: and when the clang of the factories permits us a moment's repose, we overflow the streets and squares like the sea in a spring tide.
We soldiers who are driven along to the word of command, or by blows, we who receive the bullets for which our officers get crosses and pensions, we, too, poor fools who have hitherto known no better than to shoot our brothers, why we have only to make a right about face towards these plumed and decorated personages who are so good as to command us, to see a ghastly pallor overspread their faces.
Ay, all of us together, we who suffer and are insulted daily, we are a multidude whom no man can number, we are the ocean that can embrace and swallow up all else.
When we have but the will to do it, that very moment will Justice be done: that very instant the tyrants of the earth shall bite the dust.
THE END
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.