rejoice in its labor, it must reap the full rewards of its labor. It must have the whole of what it produces—nothing more, nothing less. It must not share with the with the capitalist, as in capitalism; it must not share with the community, as in communism. Because in every community there are apt to be some idlers; and the only way to create idlers is by making it possible for an idler to live—a thing he can only do at the expense of the worker. Thus it is that in the communist experiments, the hard-worker has had to see the non-worker enjoying the fruits of others' toil because he did not toil himself; and so it has invariably come to pass that the most vigorous, the most intelligent, and the most industrious members have one after another forsaken these communities, and only the few enthusiasts along with the laziest and most unprincipled have been left in possession, until they eventually came to grief. Now it is very easy to secure this private possession of product, simultaneously with the free access to nature that necessarily precedes it. And the doing of this is what is rightly called ‘co-operation.’ Of course, we know that what is often called co-operation is only so in name, but is in reality stock-jobbing, dividend hunting, or respectable usury. True co-operation precludes dividends, profits, or interest. True co-operation is that form of laboring where each works with the other for mutual benefit, but not for mutual plunder; where each gets the full equivalent of what he produces; and where each sells his surplus product for its real worth—that if to say, that he sells it for just what it costs him in labor, receiving in exchange the equivalent in what it cost another in labor for his commodity. That is the true individualism—it is that individualism which exalts the individuality of the laborer to the highest possible point, by making him a truly independent man, one living entirely by his own labors and not living in any degree on the labors of others; it is that individualism which makes him a real sovereign over his own individuality, and a worthy being to associate with others, equally elevated to the same social, economical, and moral level. It is not the ‘individualism’ that the capitalist talks and boasts about—the individualism of the few only that rejoices in and lives upon the suppression of the individualism of the many; that isn't individualism at all—it's only domination. The present system isn't individualistic; it's exploitative. We live on each other instead of each one living on himself; and it's only those who succeed in living on plenty of others who ever get wealthy; no man ever got enormously wealthy out of his own efforts, but only by enslaving others and living upon them. But these pioneers couldn't possibly do this. Each one can only get what he makes by his own exertions, so he can't become a millionaire or a pauper; but he would earn about twelve pounds a week, when his city brethren would be earning only two pounds for doing the same thing and the ‘sweating’ capitalist who employs them would be getting two or three hundred pounds a week out of his fifty or a hundred hands. And there's another thing these pioneers can do when they get fairly started—they can commence making their own money. I don't mean lending gold out to others and robbing the borrowers of more than they borrowed; that’s called making money, but it isn't anything of the kind: it's only a polite way of legally thieving
