How We Live and How We Might Live

“…our present system of Society is based on a state of perpetual war. Do any of you think that this is as it should be? I know that you have often been told that the competition, which is at present the rule of all production, is a good thing, and stimulates the progress of the race; but the people who tell you this should call competition by its shorter name of war if they wish to be honest, and you would then be free to consider whether or no war stimulates progress, otherwise than as a mad bull chasing you over your own garden may do. War, or competition, whichever you please to call it, means at the best pursuing your own advantage at the cost of some one else’s loss…”

This pamphlet contains the text of a lecture delivered to the Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist Democratic Federation at Kelmscott House on November 30th, 1884. It is still relevant today.