MEAN, MAXIMUM, MINIMUM
335
to us and not made by us; as it is said, "The earth is the
Lord's
and
the fulness thereof."
Thus, it is thru the Maximum that we escape our too dear
selves and so enjoy the Minimum.
The little boy is asleep, has escaped from the powerful
desires of his dear body and soul. (Do not think that he is now
without a strong and sweet sensation.) But it was necessary to
undergo many arduous joys of the intelligence and lust to come at
last to this home most have lost, on the very edge of death.
Six o'clock in the morning! With a loud clangor of the bur–
glar-alarm the Watchman wakes the two children. Everywhere in
the store is the daylight. And already-how soon!-as he takes the
iron wheels from his shoes, the boy is laughing in his sleeve all day.
III.
I
Desiring to do without-perhaps as almethod of punishment,
and disgusted and weary with the continual consumption of goods
in which he and every one else were consuming their lives, and
not without a little envy of the rich, and also because he thought it
was right to add this particular force to the general social conflict–
Henry founded the National Industrial Boycott, an organization to
destroy the bourgeois structure of society. The plan (a classical
one, dating at least as far back as the
Fable of the Bees)
was
simply to buy and consume as little as possible, the Minimum, and
to spread this resolve as widely as possible. Then, since the produc–
tive system was geared not to necessities but to widely advertised
superfluities, it would soon crack wide open.
To hear it
crack!
Henry confessed to himself that he had a
lust for this particular sound.
A critical friend said: "Even granting, what is absurd, that
you could get a following with this scheme of yours, can't you see
that it's not capital that will be hurt first, but labor? You might as
well recommend a war."
"Yes, a war of attrition, minus the violence (which always
flies to the Maximum)."
"You mean: all the poor people are to starve by principle as
well as necessity."
