by Alexander Berkman
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From: Chapter 3 of "What is Anarchist-Communism?"
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How do you live? What does your freedom amount to?
You depend on your employer for your wages or your salary, don't you? And your
wages determine your way of living, don't they? The conditions of your life,
even what you eat and drink, where you go and with whom you associate, - all
of it depends on your wages.
No, you are not a free man. You are dependent on your employer and on your
wages. You are really a wage slave.
The whole working class, under the capitalist system, is dependent on the
capitalist class. The workers are wage slaves.
So, what becomes of your freedom? What can you do with it? Can you do more
with it than your wages permit?
Can't you see that your wage - your salary or income - is all the freedom that
you have? Your freedom, your liberty, don't go a step further than the wages
you get.
The freedom that is given you on paper, that is written down in law books and
constitutions, does not do you a bit of good. Such freedom only means that you
have the right to do a certain thing. But it doesn't mean that you can do it.
To be able to do it, you must have the chance, the opportunity. You have a
right to eat three fine meals a day, but if you haven't the means, the
opportunity to get those meals, then what good is that right to you?
So freedom really means opportunity to satisfy your needs and wants. If your
freedom does not give you that opportunity, then it does you no good. Real
freedom means opportunity and well being. If it does not mean that, it means
nothing.
You see, then, that the whole situation comes to this: Capitalism robs you and
makes a wage slave of you. The law upholds and protects that robbery.
The government fools you into believing that you are independent and free.
In this way you are fooled and duped every day of your life. But how does it
happen that you didn't think of it before? How is it that most other people
don't see it, either?
It is because you and every one else are lied to about this all the time, from
your earliest childhood.
You are told to be honest, while you are being robbed all your life.
You are commanded to respect the law, while the law protects the capitalist
who is robbing you.
You are taught that killing is wrong, while the government hangs and
electrocutes people and slaughters them in war.
You are told to obey the law and government, though law and government stand
for robbery and murder.
Thus all through life you are lied to, fooled, and deceived, so that it will
be easier to make profits out of you, to exploit you.
Because it is not only the employer and the capitalist who make profits out of
you. The government, the church, tend the school - they all live on your
labor. You support them all. That is why all of them teach you to be content
with your lot and behave yourself.
'Is it really true that I support them all?' you ask in amazement.
Let us see. They eat and drink and are clothed, not to speak of the luxuries
they enjoy. Do they make the things they use and consume, do they do the
planting and sowing and building and so on?
'But they pay for those things,' your friend objects.
Yes, they pay. Suppose a fellow stole fifty dollars from you and then went
and bought with it a suit of clothes for himself. Is that suit by right his?
Didn't he pay for it? Well, just so the people who don't produce anything or
do no useful work pay for things. Their money is the profits they or their
parents before them squeezed out of you, out of the workers.
'Then it is not my boss who supports me, but I him?'
Of course. He gives you a job; that is, permission to work in the factory or
mill which was not built by him but by other workers like yourself. And for
that permission you help to support him for the rest of your life or as long
as you work for him. You support him so generously that he can afford a
mansion in the city and a home in the country, even several of them, and
servants to attend to his wants and those of his family, and for the
entertainment of his friends, and for horse races and for boat races, and for
a hundred other things. But it is not only to him that you are so generous.
Out of your labor, by direct and indirect taxation, are supported the entire
government, local, state, and national, the schools and the churches, and all
the other institutions whose business it is to protect profits and keep you
fooled. You and your fellow workers, labor as a whole, support them all. Do
you wonder that they all tell you that everything is all right and that you
should be good and keep quiet?
It is good for them that you should keep quiet, because they could not keep on
duping and robbing you once you open your eyes and see what's happening to you.
That's why they are all strong for this capitalist system, for law and order'.
But is that system good for you? Do you think it right and just? If not, then
why do you put up with it? Why do you support it? 'What can I do?' you say;
'I'm only one.'
Are you really only one? Are you not rather one out of many thousands, out of
millions, all of them exploited and enslaved the same as you are? Only they
don't know it. If they knew it, they wouldn't stand for it. That's sure. So
the thing is to make them know it.
Every workingman in your city, every toiler in your country, in every country,
in the whole world, is exploited and enslaved the same as you are.
And not only the workingmen. The farmers are duped and robbed in the same
manner.
Just like the workingmen, the farmer is dependent on the capitalist class. He
toils hard all his life, but most of his labor goes to the trusts and
monopolies of the land which by right is no more theirs than the moon is.
The farmer produces the food of the world. He feeds all of us. But before he
can get his goods to us, he is made to pay tribute to the class that lives
by the work of others, the profit-making, capitalist class. The farmer is
mulcted out of the greater part of his product just as the worker is. He is
mulcted by the land owner and by the mortgage holder; by the steel trust and
the railroad. The banker, the commission merchant, the retailer, and a score
of other middlemen squeeze their profits out of the farmer before he is
allowed to get his food to you.
Law and government permit and help this robbery by ruling that the land, which
no man created, belongs to the landlord; the railroads, which the workers
built, belong to the railroad magnates; the warehouses, grain elevators, and
storehouses, erected by the workers, belong to the capitalists; all those
monopolists and capitalists have a right to get profits from the farmer for
using the railroads and other facilities before he can get his food to you.
You can see then, how the farmer is robbed by big capital and business, and
how the law helps in that robbery, just as with the workingman.
But it is not only the worker and the farmer who are exploited and forced to
give up the greater part of their product to the capitalists, to those who
have monopolized the land, the railroads, the factories, the machinery, and
all natural resources. The entire country, the whole world is made to pay
tribute to the kings of finance and industry.
The small business man depends on the wholesaler; the wholesaler on the
manufacturer; the manufacturer on the trust magnates of his industry; and
all of them on the money lords and banks for their credit. The big bankers
and financiers can put any man out of business by just withdrawing their
credit from him. They do so whenever they want to squeeze any one out of
business. The business man is entirely at their mercy. If he does not play
the game as they want it, to suit their interests, then they simply drive
him out of the game.
Thus the whole of mankind is dependent upon and enslaved by just a handful of
men who have monopolized almost the entire wealth of the world, but who have
themselves never created anything.
'But those men work hard,' you say.
Well, some of them don't work at all. Some of them are just idlers, whose
business is managed by others. Some of them do work. But what kind of work do
they do? Do they produce anything, as the worker and the farmer do? No, they
produce nothing, though they may work. They work to mulct people, to get
profits out of them. Does their work benefit you? The highwayman also works
hard and takes great risks to boot. His 'work', like the capitalist's, gives
employment to lawyers, jailers, and a host of other retainers, all of whom
your toil supports.
It seems indeed ridiculous that the whole world should slave for the benefit
of a handful of monopolists, and that all should have to depend upon them for
their right and opportunity to live. But the fact is just that. And it is the
more ridiculous when you consider that the workers and farmers, who alone
create all wealth, should be the most dependent and the poorest of all the
other classes in society.
It is really monstrous, and it is very sad. Surely your common sense must tell
you that such a situation is nothing short of madness. If the great masses of
people, the millions throughout the world, could see how they are fooled,
exploited and enslaved, as you see it now, would they stand for such goings
on? Surely they would not!
The capitalists know they wouldn't. That is why they need the government to
legalize their methods of robbery, to protect the capitalist system.
And that is why the government needs laws, police and soldiers, courts and
prisons to protect capitalism.
But who are the police and the soldiers who protect the capitalists against
you, against the people?
If they were capitalists themselves, then it would stand to reason why they
want to protect the wealth they have stolen, and why they try to keep up,
even by force, the system that gives them the privilege of robbing the people.
But the police and the soldiers, the defenders of 'law and order', are not of
the capitalist class. They are men from the ranks of the people, poor men who
for pay protect the very system that keeps them poor. It is unbelievable, is
it not? Yet it is true. It just comes down to this: some of the slaves protect
their masters in keeping them and the rest of the people in slavery. In the
same way Great Britain, for instance, keeps the Hindoos in India in subjection
by a police force of the natives, of the Hindoos themselves. Or as Belgium
does with the black men in the Congo. Or as any government does with a
subjugated people. It is the same system. Here is what it amounts to:
Capitalism robs and exploits the whole of the people; the laws legalize and
uphold this capitalist robbery; the government uses one part of the people
to aid and protect the capitalists in robbing the whole of the people. The
entire thing is kept up by educating the people to believe that capitalism
is right, that the law is just, and that the government must be obeyed. Do
you see through this game now?