Page:Henry Mayers Hyndman and William Morris - A Summary of the Principles of Socialism (1884).djvu/55

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54

have no more right, than landlords to keep back that organisation of the labour of all, for the benefit of all, which is the only possible outlet from our present anarchical system of production for profit and never-ending round of commercial crises, due to the revolt of the socialised method of production against the individualised form of exchange.

When a glut of goods exists on one hand, and men eager for those goods and anxious to work stand idle and foodless on the other, when these two factors of well-being cannot be brought together because of the necessity to produce for profit which the very glut itself prevents, surely anarchy in production and exchange has been driven to the last ditch of absurdity. When hundreds of thousands of children are brought into the world under such conditions that good food, good health, good. education, are for them impossible, the essential foundations though all three are of true morality and sound citizenship in later life, surely here too the anarchy in our commonest social relations is clearly manifested. When also we look around at the complete divison between classes, their utter ignorance of what one another think and feel, the incapacity of men and women of different classes to sit comfortably at the same meal table, though of the same race, language and creed, here, even apart from the necessary antagonism of economical interests, the social anarchy which the middle-classes call order once more stares us in the face.

After these instances of disintegration and disorder, the ugliness, waste, and adulteration seem comparatively trifling. Yet so long as competitive commerce and