crucial question. If civilization and progress are to
be compatible with equality, it is necessary that
equality should not involve long hours of painful
toil for little more than the necessaries of life, since,
where there is no leisure, art and science will die and
all progress will become impossible. The objection
which some feel to Socialism and Anarchism alike on
this ground cannot be upheld in view of the possible
productivity of labor.

The system at which Kropotkin aims, whether or
not it be possible, is certainly one which demands a
very great improvement in the methods of production
above what is common at present. He desires
to abolish wholly the system of wages, not only, as
most Socialists do, in the sense that a man is to be
paid rather for his willingness to work than for the
actual work demanded of him, but in a more fundamental
sense: there is to be no obligation to work,
and all things are to be shared in equal proportions
among the whole population. Kropotkin relies upon
the possibility of making work pleasant: he holds
that, in such a community as he foresees, practically
everyone will prefer work to idleness, because work will
not involve overwork or slavery, or that excessive
specialization that industrialism has brought about,
but will be merely a pleasant activity for certain
hours of the day, giving a man an outlet for his
spontaneous constructive impulses. There is to be no
compulsion, no law, no government exercising force;