19
abolition of all the unnecessary weighing, measuring, accounting, book-keeping, etc., yet it is objectionable on account of its authoritarianism.
It is from this kind of effort that most persons draw their conception of Communism. Many who oppose Communism base their opposition on the assumption that these little socialistic states are the true models of Communism, hence their antipathy to such arrangements.
Fun is poked at the "community toothbrush, towel, bed," etc., by those who answer argument by ridicule. No one believes that there would then be any greater communism in these things than now exists, if he will stop and think a minute. In every hotel and boarding house these tools of cleanliness are used by thousands of different people. In every city there are Toilet Supply Companies who furnish a combination towel-rack, looking-glass, comb and brush-holder, and take the dirty towels away, leaving clean ones every morning. In this way tens of thousands of hands and faces are wiped on the same towels in the run of a year. But the present promiscuity in the use of articles of various kinds is too apparent to need elaboration. Yet it is warmly championed by the ridiculers of the "community towel."
Many imagine that all persons would live in big houses where the meals would be served in a common kitchen. This is another unfounded supposition. For that matter see the millions who do eat in common dining-rooms, each getting his roast beef, maccaroni and cheese or ham and eggs, cooked in the same vessels, by the same cooks, cut from the same roast or ham. All these things occur, not because of the communistic genius of present institutions, but because of the opposite tendency. The desire to supply our needs or wants cheaply gives birth to such arrangements and customs. The one who can combine the efforts of a number of persons, in his given line, judiciously, can supply his wants more cheaply than can be done otherwise.
So we see that the principal objections brought against Communism are invalid. The first, the charge of authoritarianism, cannot apply to true Communism but only to miniature State Socialism, usually called Communism; that of promiscuity can be brought with terrible force against the present methods, or any other methods that propose cheapness as the guide to preference. Neither one can be laid at the door of Communism, as I propose to show.
In the first place the Communism proposed as a social and economic arrangement by the Anarchists who no longer love the fierce struggle of competition, and the wasteful methods of commercialism, is a condition of affairs where all exercise of authority is absent. In such a condition assoociation according to taste would be the rule. All the resources of the earth being then common to all, that is to say, free for all to use but not to monopolize, there would be no necessity to associate with others in productive work, or in social matters, when such association was not pleasant. Persons who because of similarity of taste desired to work in the same kind of undertakings would then associate in their occupation of production or distribution because it would give them pleasure to do so. In social matters the likes and dislikes, attraction and repulsions which wield such an important influence in society today, would have full play, and association of a social character would be pleasant because desired by all persons concerned. Under these conditions crime, vice, and contentions of an unpleasant character would be reduced to the minimum, for all these things as they exist today are the direct outgrowth of the restriction of liberty, the strained and unpleasant association and relations resulting therefrom.
The common house, towel, etc., would be matters for each one to decide for him or herself. If any number of persons wished to unite their domestic affairs and live in one common home, using the same dishes, spoons, towels, etc., they could do so. Those who wished to live the most exclusive lives, having their own
