, CONSUMPTION. AND EXCHANGE with the sailors, soldiers, and workers. But by these means they succeeded only in creating indignation an'd antagonising the masses for the injustice of the system was too cryin~ and obvious: Furthermore, even the " favoured class," the proletariat, felt discriminated against because the soldiers were given better rations. Was the worker not as good as the soldier? Could the soldier fight for the Revolution-the factory man argued-if the worker would not supply him with ammunition? The soldier, in his turn, protested against the sailor getting more. Was he not as valuable as the sailor? And all condemned the special rations and privileges bestowed on the Bolshevik members of the Party, and particularly· the comforts and even luxuries enjoyed by the higher officials and commissars, while the masses suffered privatiop . .Popular resentment of such practices was strikingly expressed by the Kronstadt sailors. It was· in the midst of an extremely .severe and hungry winter, in March, 1921, that a public mass-meeting of the. sailors unanimously resolved voluntarily to give up their extra rations in behalf of the less favoured population of Kronstadt, and to equalise the rations in the entire city. This truly ethical revolutionary action voiced the general feeling against discrimination and favouritis~, and gave convincing proof of the deep sense of justice inherent in the masses. All experience teaches that the just and square thing is at the same time also the most sensible and practical in the long run. This holds equally true of the individual as of c9llective life. Discrimination and injustice are particularly destructive to revolution, because the very spirit of revolution is born of the hunger for equity and justice. I have already mentioned that when the social revolution attains the stage where it can produce sufficient for all, then is adopted the Anarchist principle of " to each according to his needs." In the more industrially developed and efficient' countries, that stage would naturally be reached sooner than in backward lands. But until i't is reached, the system of equal sharing, equal distrib_ution·per ~apita, is imperative as the only just method. It goes without saymg, of course, tha:t special consideration must ?e given to the sick and to the old, to children, and to women dunng and ,after pregnancy, as was also the practice in the Russian Revolution. " Let me get this straight," you remark. " There is to be equal. sharing, you say. Then Y?U won't ~e fble to buy anrhing? '.' No there will be no buymg or sel!mg. The revolution abolishes priva;e ownership of the means of proauction and _distributi?n, and with it goes capitalistic business. Personal ;>oss::ss'.onremams onlv 83 Biblioteca G ro Bianco
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTExMDY2NQ==