--nevertheless every man, simply because he is a _human being_,
has a right to the existence of a man, and not of a slave or a beast of
burden.

We know, we as well as our opponents, that all men cannot perform the
same kind and amount of labor--now, when social inequalities are added
to equalities of natural origin--and that they will still be unable to
do it under a socialist regime--when the social organization will tend
to reduce the effect of congenital inequalities.

There will always be some people whose brains or muscular systems will
be better adapted for scientific work or for artistic work, while others
will be more fit for manual labor, or for work requiring mechanical
precision, etc.

What ought not to be, and what will not be--is that there should be some
men who do not work at all, and others who work too much or receive too
little reward for their toil.

But we have reached the height of injustice and absurdity, and in these
days it is the man who does not work who reaps the largest returns, who
is thus guaranteed the individual monopoly of wealth which accumulates
by means of hereditary transmission. This wealth, moreover, is only very
rarely due to the economy and abstinence of the present possessor or of
some industrious ancestor of his; it is most frequently the time-honored
fruit of spoliation by military conquest, by unscrupulous "business"
methods, or by the favoritism of sovereigns; but it is in every instance
always independent of any exertion, of any socially useful labor of the
inheritor, who often squanders his property in idleness or in the
whirlpool of a life as inane as it is brilliant in appearance.

And, when we are not confronted with a fortune due to inheritance, we
meet with wealth due to fraud. Without talking for the moment of the
economic organization, the mechanism of which Karl Marx has revealed to
us, and which, even without fraud, normally enables the capitalist or
property owner to live upon his income without working, it is
indisputable that the fortunes which are formed or enlarged with the
greatest rapidity under our eyes cannot be the fruit of honest toil. The
really honest workingman, no matter how indefatigable and economical he
may be, if he succeeds in raising himself from the state of wage-slave
to that of an overseer or contractor, can, by a long life of privations,
accumulate at most a few hundreds of dollars. Those who, on the
contrary, without making by their