Let us not forget that we want to make the individual, and not the collectivity, the supreme value. We want to form whole men by doing away with that specialization which cripples us all. We want to give to manual labour that dignity which belongs to it of right, by giving workmen the full understanding of technical processes instead of mere mechanical training; and to provide the understanding with its proper object, by placing it in contact with the world through the medium of labour. We want to make abundantly clear the true relationships between man and nature — those relationships that are concealed, in every society based on exploitation, by “the degrading division of labour into intellectual and manual labor”. We want to give back to man, that is to say to the individual,the power which it is his proper function to exercise over nature, over tools, over socitey itself; to re-establish the importance of the workers as compared with material conditions of work; and, instead of doing away with private property, “to turn individual property into something real, by transforming the means of production… which at present serve above all to enslave and exploit labour, into mere instruments of labour freely and co-operatively preformed.
~ Simone Weil, Oppression and Liberty
