"
A shout of laughter went up from most of the crowd, but the Altrurian did
not seem to see any fun in it.
"Well," he resumed, "I will tell you, as well as I can, what Altruria is
like; but, in the first place, you will have to cast out of your minds all
images of civilization with which your experience has filled them. For a
time the shell of the old Accumulation remained for our social habitation,
and we dwelt in the old competitive and monopolistic forms after the life
had gone out of them--that is, we continued to live in populous cities,
and we toiled to heap up riches for the moth to corrupt, and we slaved on
in making utterly useless things, merely because we had the habit of
making them to sell. For a while we made the old sham things, which
pretended to be useful things and were worse than the confessedly useless
things. I will give you an illustration from the trades, which you will
all understand. The proletariate, in the competitive and monopolistic
time, used to make a kind of shoes for the proletariate, or the women of
the proletariate, which looked like fine shoes of the best quality. It
took just as much work to make these shoes as to make the best fine shoes;
but they were shams through and through.
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