Take for example a peasant commune, no matter where,
even in France, where the Jacobins have, done their best
to destroy all communal usage. If the commune
possesses woods and copses, then, so long as there is
plenty of wood for all, everyone can take as much as he
wants, without other let or hindrance than the public
opinion of his neighbours. As to the timber-trees, which
are always scarce, they have to be carefully apportioned.
The same with the communal pasture land; while there is
enough and to spare, no limit is put to what the cattle of
each homestead may consume, nor to the number of
beasts grazing upon the pastures. Grazing grounds are
not divided, nor is fodder doled out, unless there is
scarcity. All the Swiss communes, and many of those in
France and Germany too, wherever there is communal
pasture land, practice this system.
And in the countries of Eastern Europe, where there are
great forests and no scarcity of land, you find the
peasants felling the trees as they need them, and
cultivating as much of the soil as they require, without
any thought of limiting each man’s share of timber or of
land. But the timber will be divided, and the land
parcelled out, to each household according to its needs,
as soon as either becomes scarce, as is already the case
in Russia.
In a word, the system is this: no stint or limit to what the
community possesses in abundance, but equal sharing
and dividing of those commodities which are scarce or
apt to run short. Of the three hundred and fifty millions
who inhabit Europe, two hundred millions still follow this
system of natural Communism.