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part) would, on the very next day, get rid of their share on some market or other (say the Soucharev Market in Moscow), and their property would thus fall into the hands of wealthier owners; between the remaining ones a struggle would ensue for the buyers, and in this struggle, too, the wealthier ones would soon get the upper hand of the less well-to-do. The latter would soon be ruined and turn into proletarians, and their lucky rivals would amass fortunes, employing men to work for them, and thus be gradually transformed into first-rate capitalists. And so we should, in a very short time, return to the same order which we have just destroyed, and find ourselves once again before the old problem of capitalist exploitation.
Dividing up into small property-holders is not the ideal of the worker or the agricultural labourer. It is rather the dream of the small shopkeeper oppressed by the big one, who wants to become a large shopkeeper himself. How to become a "boss," how to get hold of as much as possible and retain it in his greedy clutch—that is what the shopkeeper is aiming at. To think of others and consider what this may result in is not his affair so long as he gets an extra sixpence clinking in his pocket. He is not to be frightened by a possible return to capitalism, for he is cherishing a faint hope that he himself, John Smith, may become a capitalist. And that would not be so bad for him.
No; there is an entirely different road along which the working class should go, and is going. The working class is interested in such a reconstruction of society as would make return to capitalism impossible. Sharing of wealth would mean driving capitalism out of the front door only to see it return by the back door. The only way out of this dilemma is a co-operative labour (communist) system.
In a communist order, all the wealth belongs not to individuals or classes, but to society as a whole, which become it were, one great labour association; no one man is master over it. All are equal comrades. There are no classes; capitalists do not employ labour, nor do workers sell their labour to employers. The work is carried out jointly, according to a pre-arranged labour plan. A central bureau of statistics calculates how much it is required to manufacture in a year: such and such a number of hoots, trousers, sausages, blacking, wheat, cloth, and so on. It will also calculate that for this purpose such and such a number of men must work on the fields and in
