III

It is foolish indeed to export wheat and import flour, to export wool and import cloth, to export iron and import machinery; not only because transportation is a waste of time and money, but, above all, because a country with no developed industry inevitably remains behind the times in agriculture; because a country with no large factories to bring steel to a finished condition is also backward in all other industries; and lastly, because the industrial and technical capacities of the nation remain undeveloped.

In the world of production everything holds together nowadays. Cultivation of the soil is no longer possible without machinery, without great irrigation works, without railways, without manure factories. And to adapt this machinery, these railways, these irrigation engines, etc., to local conditions, a certain spirit of invention, a certain amount of technical skill, that lie dormant as long as spades and ploughshares are the only implements of cultivation, must be developed.

If fields are to be properly cultivated, and are to yield the abundant harvests man has the right to expect, it is essential that workshops, foundries, and factories develop within the reach of the fields. A variety of occupations, a variety of skill arising therefrom end working together for a common aim — these are the genuine forces of progress.

And now let us imagine the inhabitants of a city or a territory — whether vast or small — stepping for the first time on to the path of the Social Revolution.

We are sometimes told that “nothing will have changed”: that the mines, the factories, etc., will be expropriated, and proclaimed national or communal property, that every man will go back to his usual work, and that the Revolution will then be accomplished.

But this is a dream: the Social Revolution cannot take place so simply.

We have already mentioned that should the Revolution break out to-morrow in Paris, Lyons, or any other city — should the workers lay hands on factories, houses, and banks, present production would be completely revolutionized by this simple fact.

International commerce will come to a standstill; so also will the importation of foreign bread-stuffs; the circulation of commodities and of provisions will be paralyzed. And then, the city or territory in revolt will be compelled to provide for itself, and to reorganize production. If it fails to do so, it is death. If it succeeds, it will revolutionize the economic life of the country.

The quantity of imported provisions having decreased, consumption having increased, one million Parisians working for exportation purposes having been thrown out of work, a great number of things imported to-day from distant or neighbouring countries not reaching their destination, fancy-trade being temporarily at a standstill, What will the inhabitants have to eat six months after the Revolution?

We think that when the stores are empty, the masses will seek to obtain their food from the land. They will be compelled to cultivate the soil, to combine agricultural production with industrial production in Paris and its environs. They will have to abandon the merely ornamental trades and consider the most urgent need — bread.

Citizens will be obliged to become agriculturists. Not in the same manner as peasants who wear themselves out, ploughing for a wage that barely provides them with sufficient food for the year’ but by following the principles of market-gardeners’ intensive agriculture, applied on a large scale by means of the best machinery that man has invented or can invent. They will till the land — not, however, like the country beast of burden a Paris jeweller would object to that. They will reorganize cultivation, not in ten years’ time, but at once, during the revolutionary struggles, from fear of being worsted by the enemy.

Agriculture will have to be carried on by intelligent beings; availing themselves of their knowledge, organizing themselves in joyous gangs for pleasant work, like the men who, a hundred years ago, worked in the Champ de Mars for the Feast of the Federation — a work of delight, when not carried to excess, when scientifically organized, when man invents and improves his tools and is conscious of being a useful member of the community.

Of course, they will not only cultivate, they will also produce those things which they formerly used to order from foreign parts. And let us not forget that for the inhabitants of a revolted territory, “foreign parts” may include all districts that have not joined in the revolutionary movement. During the Revolutions of 1793 and 1871 Paris was made to feel that “foreign parts” meant even the country district at her very gates. The speculator in grains at Troyes starved the sansculottes of Paris more effectually than the German armies brought on French soil by the Versailles conspirators. The revolted city will be compelled to do without “foreigners,” and why not? France invented beetroot sugar when sugar-cane ran short during the continental blockade. Parisians discovered salt petre in their cellars when they no longer received any from abroad. Shall we be inferior to our grandfathers, who with difficulty lisped the first words of science?

A revolution is more than the destruction of a political system. It implies the awakening of human intelligence, the increasing of the inventive spirit tenfold, a hundredfold; it is the dawn of a new, science — the science of men like Laplace, Lamarck, Lavoisier. It is a revolution in the minds of men, more than in their institutions.

And economists tell us to return to our workshops, as if passing through a revolution were going home after a walk in the Epping forest!

To begin with, the sole fact of having laid hands on middle-class property implies the necessity of completely reorganizing the whole of economic life in workshops, in dockyards, and in factories.

And the revolution will not fail to act in this direction. Should Paris, during the social revolution, be cut off from the world for a year or two by the supporters of middle-class rule, its millions of intellects, not yet depressed by factory life — that City of little trades which stimulate the spirit of invention — will show the world what man’s brain can accomplish without asking any help from without, but the motor force of the sun that gives light, the power of the wind that sweeps away impurities, and the silent life-forces at work in the earth we tread on.

We shall see then what a variety of trades, mutually co-operating on a spot of the globe and animated by the social revolution, can do to feed, clothe, house, and supply with all manner of luxuries millions of intelligent men.

We need write no fiction to prove this. What we are sure of, what has already been experimented upon, and recognized as practical, would suffice to carry it into effect, if the attempt were fertilized, vivified by the daring inspiration of the Revolution and the spontaneous impulse of the masses.