There was a general murmur of satisfaction. Nearly everyone seemed very pleased to think that the existing state of things could not possibly be altered.
Wealth Against Commonwealth
By Henry Demarest Lloyd
(American social reformer, pioneer in what later came to be known as “muck-raking”; 1847-1903)
One of the largest stones in the arch of “consolidation,” perhaps the keystone, is that men have become so intelligent, so responsive and responsible, so co-operative, that they can be trusted in great masses with the care of vast properties owned entirely by others; and with the operation of complicated processes, although but a slender cost of subsistence is awarded them out of fabulous profits. The spectacle of the million and more employees of the railroads of this country despatching trains, maintaining tracks, collecting fares and freights, and turning over hundreds of millions of net profits to the owners, not one in a thousand of whom would know how to do the simplest of these things himself, is possible only where civilization has reached a high average of morals and culture. More and more the mills and mines and stores, and even the farms and forests, are being administered by other than the owners. The virtue of the people is taking the place Poor Richard thought only the eye of the owner could fill. If mankind driven by their fears and the greed of others can do so well, what will be their productivity and cheer when the “interest of all” sings them to their work?
Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution
By Peter Kropotkin
(This work of the great Russian scientist is a most important contribution to modern thought, overthrowing as it does the old-fashioned view of “Nature red in tooth and claw with ravin,” which was the basis of early biologic teaching and is still the basis of all bourgeois economic ideas)
As soon as we study animals—not in laboratories and museums only, but in the forest and prairie, in the steppe and in the mountains—we at once perceive that though there is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species, and especially amidst various classes of animals, there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defence amidst animals belonging to the same species or, at least, to the same society. Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle. Of course it would be extremely difficult to estimate, however roughly, the relative numerical importance of both these series of facts. But if we resort to an indirect test, and ask Nature: “Who are the fittest: those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?” we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have more chances to survive, and they attain, in their respective classes, the highest development and bodily organization. If the numberless facts which can be brought forward to support this view are taken into account, we may safely say that mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle; but that as a factor of evolution, it most probably has a far greater importance, inasmuch as it favors the development of such habits and characters as insure the maintenance and further development of the species, together with the greatest amount of welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least waste of energy.