oppose strikers. And those others--the average
workers who are sent away by the better-class factories as soon as
business is slackened? They also join the formidable army of aged and
indifferent workers who continually circulate among the second-class
factories--those which barely cover their expenses and make their way in
the world by trickery and snares laid for the buyer, and especially for
the consumer in distant countries.

And if you talk to the workmen themselves, you will soon learn that the
rule in such factories is--never to do your best. "Shoddy pay--shoddy
work!" this is the advice which the working man receives from his
comrades upon entering such a factory.

For the workers know that if in a moment of generosity they give way to
the entreaties of an employer and consent to intensify the work in order
to carry out a pressing order, this nervous work will be exacted in the
future as a rule in the scale of wages. Therefore in all such factories
they prefer never to produce as much as they can. In certain industries
production is limited so as to keep up high prices, and sometimes the
pass-word, "Go-canny," is given, which signifies, "Bad work for bad
pay!"

Wage-work is serf-work; it cannot, it must not, produce all that it
could produce. And it is high time to disbelieve the legend which
represents wagedom as the best incentive to productive work. If industry
nowadays brings in a hundred times more than it did in the days of our
grandfathers, it is due to the sudden awakening of physical and chemical
sciences towards the end of last century; not to the capitalist
organization of wagedom, but _in spite_ of that organization.

III

Those who have seriously studied the question do not deny any of the
advantages of Communism, on condition, be it well understood, that
Communism be perfectly free, that is to say, Anarchist. They recognize
that work paid with money, even disguised under the name of "labour
cheques," to Workers' associations governed by the State, would keep up
the characteristics of wagedom and would retain its disadvantages. They
agree that the whole system would soon suffer from it, even if Society
came into possession of the instruments of production. And they admit
that, thanks to an "integral" complete education given to all children,
to the laborious habits of civilized societies, with the liberty of
choosing and varying their occupations and the attractions of work done
by equals fo