52 lines
2.3 KiB
Plaintext
52 lines
2.3 KiB
Plaintext
What is Communist Anarchism? by Alexander Berkman
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"But you yourself know very well what you want, and so does your neighbor.
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You want to be well and healthy; you want to be free, to serve no master,
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to crawl and humiliate yourself before no man; you want to have well-being
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for yourself, your family, and those near and dear to you. And not to be
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harassed and worried by the fear of tomorrow.
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You may feel sure that every one else wants the same thing. So the whole
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matter seems to stand this way:
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*You* want health, liberty, and well-being.
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Everyone is like yourself in this respect.
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Therefore we all seek the same thing in life.
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Then why should we not all seek it together, by joint effort, helping
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each other in it?
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Why should we cheat and rob, kill and murder each other, if we all seek
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the same thing? Aren't *you* entitled to the things you want as well as
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the next man?
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Or is it that we can secure our health, liberty, and well-being better
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by fighting and slaughtering each other?
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Or because there is no other way? Let us look into this.
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Does it not stand to reason that if we all want the same thing in life,
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if we have the same aim, then our *interests* must also be the same? In
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that case we should live like brothers, in peace and friendship; we should
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be good to each other, and help each other all we can.
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But you know it is not at all that way in life. You know that we do not
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live like brothers. You know that the world is full of strife and war, of
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misery, injustice, and wrong, of crime, poverty, and oppression.
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Why is it that way then?
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It is because, though we all have the same aim in life, our *interests
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are different*. It is this that makes all the trouble in the world.
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Just think it over yourself.
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Suppose you want to get a pair of shoes or a hat. You go into the store
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and you try to buy what you need as reasonably and cheaply as you can.
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That is *your* interest. But the store-keeper's interest is to sell it
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to you as dearly as he can, because then his *profit* will be greater.
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That is because everything in the life we live is built on making a profit,
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one way or another. We live in a *system of profit-making*.
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Now, it is plain that if we have to make profits out of each other, then
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our interests cannot be the same. They must be different and often opposed
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to each other." -Alexander Berkman
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