lions of human beings are in want of bread,
when every family could grow sufficient wheat to feed ten, twenty, and
even a hundred people annually?" they answer us by droning the same
anthem--division of labour, wages, surplus value, capital,
etc.--arriving at the same conclusion, that production is insufficient
to satisfy all needs; a conclusion which, if true, does not answer the
question: "Can or cannot man by his labour produce the bread he needs?
And if he cannot, what is it that hinders him?"

Here are 350 million Europeans. They need so much bread, so much meat,
wine, milk, eggs, and butter every year. They need so many houses, so
much clothing. This is the minimum of their needs. Can they produce all
this? and if they can, will sufficient leisure be left them for art,
science, and amusement?--in a word, for everything that is not comprised
in the category of absolute necessities? If the answer is in the
affirmative,--What hinders them going ahead? What must they do to remove
the obstacles? Is it time that is needed to achieve such a result? Let
them take it! But let us not lose sight of the aim of production--the
satisfaction of the needs of all.

If the most imperious needs of man remain unsatisfied now,--What must we
do to increase the productivity of our work? But is there no other
cause? Might it not be that production, having lost sight of the _needs_
of man, has strayed in an absolutely wrong direction, and that its
organization is at fault? And as we can prove that such is the case, let
us see how to reorganize production so as to really satisfy all needs.

This seems to us the only right way of facing things. The only way that
would allow of Political Economy becoming a science--the Science of
Social Physiology.

It is evident that so long as science treats of production, as _it is_
carried on at present by civilized nations, by Hindoo communes, or by
savages, it can hardly state facts otherwise than the economists state
them now; that is to say, as a simple _descriptive_ chapter, analogous
to the descriptive chapters of Zoology and Botany. But if this chapter
were written so as to throw some light on the economy of the energy that
is necessary to satisfy human needs, the chapter would gain in
precision, as well as in descriptive value. It would clearly show the
frightful waste of human energy under the present system, and it would
prove that as long as this system exists, the needs of humanity will
n