Even If The Wealth And Power Be

Wherever The Industrial System Has Reached Its Second Generation It Is Threatened By Two Mortal Perils. The First Is The Demand By An Organized Proletariat For Sustenance Without Relation To The Product Of Its Labor; A Demand Which Threatens The Very Existence Of Profit (on The Necessary Presumption Of Which Capitalism Reposes). The Second, And Immediately Graver Danger Is That Of A Revolt For The Confiscation Of The Means Of Production.

I Always Like To Associate With A Lot Of Priests Because It Makes Me Understand Anti-clerical Things So Well.

Take The Particular Trick Of False Names. It Seems To Us Particularly Odious. We Think When We Show Our Contempt For Those Who Use This Subterfuge That We Are Giving Them No More Than They Deserve. It Is A Meanness Which We Associate With Criminals And Vagabonds; A Piece Of Crawling And Sneaking...men Whose Race Is Universally Known, Will Unblushingly Adopt A False Name As A Mask, And After A Year Or Two Pretend To Treat It As An Insult If Their Original And True Name Be Used In Its Place.

Under The Old Social Philosophy Which Had Governed The Middle Ages, Temporal, And Therefore All Economic, Activities Were Referred To An Eternal Standard. The Production Of Wealth, It Distribution And Exchange Were Regulated With A View To Securing The Christian Life Of Christian Men. In Two Points Especially Was This Felt: First In Securing The Independence Of The Family, Which Can Only Be Done By The Wide Distribution Of Property, In Others Words The Prevention Of The Growth Of A Proletariat; Secondly, In The Close Connection Between Wealth And Public Function.

Consider In What Way The Industrial System Developed Upon Capitalist Lines. Why Were A Few Rich Men Put With Such Ease Into Possession Of The New Methods? Why Was It Normal And Natural In Their Eyes And In That Of Contemporary Society That Those Who Produced The New Wealth With The New Machinery Should Be Proletarian And Dispossessed?