e same holds true of industry. Take the converse case: instead of
turning the agricultural labourers into peasant-proprietors,
make over the factories to those who work in them. Abolish the
master-manufacturers, but leave the landlord his land, the banker his
money, the merchant his Exchange; maintain the swarm of idlers who live
on the toil of the workmen, the thousand and one middlemen, the State
with its numberless officials,--and industry would come to a standstill.
Finding no purchasers in the mass of peasants who would remain poor; not
possessing the raw material, and unable to export their produce, partly
on account of the stoppage of trade, and still more so because
industries spread all over the world, the manufacturers would feel
unable to struggle, and thousands of workers would be thrown upon the
streets. These starving crowds would be ready and willing to submit to
the first schemer who came to exploit them; they would even consent to
return to the old slavery, under promise of guaranteed work.

Or, finally, suppose you oust the landowners, and hand over the mills
and factories to the worker, without interfering with the swarm of
middlemen who drain the product of our manufacturers, and speculate in
corn and flour, meat and groceries, in our great centres of commerce.
Then, as soon as the exchange of produce is slackened; as soon as the
great cities are left without bread, while the great manufacturing
centres find no buyers for the articles of luxury they produce,--the
counter-revolution is bound to take place, and it would come, treading
upon the slain, sweeping the towns and villages with shot and shell;
indulging in orgies of proscriptions and deportations, such as were seen
in France in 1815, 1848, and 1871.

All is interdependent in a civilized society; it is impossible to reform
any one thing without altering the whole. Therefore, on the day a nation
will strike at private property, under any one of its forms, territorial
or industrial, it will be obliged to attack them all. The very success
of the Revolution will impose it.

Besides, even if it were desired, it would be impossible to confine the
change to a partial expropriation. Once the principle of the "Divine
Right of Property" is shaken, no amount of theorizing will prevent its
overthrow, here by the slaves of the field, there by the slaves of the
machine.

If a great town, Paris for example, were to confine itself to taking
possession of t