18 quotes
The landlord owes his riches to the poverty of the peasants, and the wealth of the capitalist comes from the same source.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
Thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have co-operated in the invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of men.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
The means of production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be the collective property of the race. Individual appropriation is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to all.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
Millions of human beings have labored to create this civilization on which we pride ourselves today. Other millions, scattered through the globe, labor to maintain it. Without them nothing would be left in fifty years but ruins.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
In virtue of this monstrous system, the son of the worker, on entering life, finds no field which he may till, no machine which he may tend, no mine in which he may dog, without accepting to leave a great part of what he will produce to a master.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
The house was not built by its owner. It was erected, decorated, and furnished by innumerable workers — in the timber yard, the brick field, and the workshop, toiling for dear life at a minimum wage.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
There is not even a thought, or an invention, which is not common property, born of the past and the present. Thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have co-operated in the invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of man.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
It is absolutely incomprehensible to us that intelligent men — and such are not wanting in the collectivist party — can remain partisans of national or municipal parliaments after all the lessons history has given them — in France, in England, in Germany, or in the United States.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
What we proclaim is The Right to Well-Being: Well-Being for All!
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
The mine of the future will be well ventilated, with a temperature as easily regulated as that of a library; there will be no horses doomed to die below the earth: underground traction will be carried on by means of an automatic cable put in motion at the pit's mouth.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
We are beginning to see that government by majorities means abandoning all the affairs of the country to the tide-waiters who make up the majorities in the House and in election committees; to those, in a word, who have no pinion of their own.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
What we do want is so to arrange things that every human being born into the world shall be ensured the opportunity in the first instance of learning some useful occupation, and of becoming skill in it; next, that he shall be free to work at his trade without asking leave of master or owner, and without handing over to landlord or capitalist the lion's share of what he produces.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
We must recognize, and loudly proclaim, that every one, whatever his grade in the old society, whether strong or weak, capable or incapable, as, before everything, THE RIGHT TO LIVE, and that society is bound to share amongst all, without exception , the means of existence at its disposal.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
We accustom ourselves and our children to hypocrisy, to the practice of a double-faced morality. And since the brain is ill at ease among lies, we cheat ourselves with sophistry. Hypocrisy and sophistry become the second nature of the civilized man. But a society cannot live thus; it must return to truth or cease to exist.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
It is evident, as Proudhon has already pointed our, that the smallest attack upon property will bring in its train the complete disorganization of the system based upon private enterprise and wage labor. Society itself will be forced to take production in hand, in its entirety, and to reorganize it to meet the needs of the whole people.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
That we are Utopians is well known. So Utopian are we that we go the length of believing that the Revolution can and ought to assure shelter, food, and clothes to all — an idea extremely displeasing to middle-class citizens, whatever their party color, for they are quite alive to the fact that it is not easy to keep the upper hand of a people whose hunger is satisfied.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
The State is abdicating and appealing in its holy functions to private individuals. Everywhere free organization trespasses on its domain. And yet, the facts we have quoted let us catch only a glimpse of what free agreement has in store for us in the future, when there will be no more State.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
The great harm done by bourgeois society, as we have already mentioned, is not only that capitalists seize a large share of the profits of each industrial and commercial enterprise, thus enabling them to live without working, but that all reduction has taken a wrong direction, as it is not carried on with a view to securing well-being to all. For this reason we condemn it.
The Conquest of Bread (1892)