“Real #wealth consists in things of #utility and #beauty, in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in. But if man is doomed to wind cotton around a spool, or dig coal, or build roads for thirty years of his life, there can be no talk of wealth. What he gives to the world is only gray and hideous things, reflecting a dull and hideous existence, - too weak to live, too cowardly to die. Strange to say, there are people who extol this deadening method of #centralized #production as the proudest achievement of our age. They fail utterly to realize that if we are to continue in #machine subserviency, our #slavery is more complete than was our #bondage to the #King. They do not want to know that #centralization is not only the death-knell of #liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in a clock-like, mechanical atmosphere.
#Anarchism cannot but repudiate such a method of production: its goal is the freest possible expression of all the latent powers of the #individual. Oscar Wilde defines a perfect #personality as “one who develops under perfect conditions, who is not wounded, maimed, or in danger.” A perfect personality, then, is only possible in a state of #society where man is #free to choose the mode of #work, the conditions of work, and the #freedom to work. One to whom the making of a table, the building of a house, or the tilling of the soil, is what the painting is to the artist and the discovery to the scientist, - the result of #inspiration, of intense longing, and deep interest in work as a creative force. That being the ideal of Anarchism, its economic arrangements must consist of #voluntary #productive and #distributive #associations, gradually developing into free #communism, as the best means of producing with the least waste of human energy. Anarchism, however, also recognizes the right of the individual, or numbers of individuals, to arrange at all times for other forms of work, in harmony with their tastes and desires.”
- Emma #Goldman - Anarchism: what it really stands for (http://www.panarchy.org/goldman/anarchism.1910.html)
