people to the expropriation of the rich. Once this expropriation accomplished, an "inventory," of the common wealth will be made, and the "distribution" of it organised. Everything will be done by the people themselves. "Just give the people elbow room, and in a week the business of the food supply will proceed with admirable regularity. Only one who has never seen the hard-working people at their labour, only one who has buried himself in documents, could doubt this. Speak of the organising capacity of the Great Misunderstood, the People, to those who have seen them at Paris on the days of the barricades" (which is certainly not the case of Kropotkine) "or in London at the time of the last great strike, when they had to feed half a million starving people, and they will tell you how superior the people is to all the hide-bound officials."[1]
The basis upon which the enjoyment in common of the food supply is to be organised will be very fair, and not at all "Jacobin." There is but one, and only one, which is consistent with sentiments of justice, and is really practical. The taking in heaps from what one possesses abundance of! Rationing out what must be measured, divided! Out of 350 millions who inhabit Europe, 200 millions still follow this perfectly natural practice—which proves, among other things, that the Anarchist ideal "flows from the popular aspirations."
It is the same with regard to housing and clothing. The people will organise everything according to the same rule. There will be an upheaval; that is certain. Only this upheaval must not become mere loss, it must be reduced to a minimum. And it is again—we cannot repeat it too often—by turning to those immediately interested and not to bureaucrats that the least amount of inconvenience will be inflicted upon everybody."[2]
Thus from the beginning of the revolution we shall have
