12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940414243444546474849505152535455565758596061626364656667686970717273747576777879808182838485868788899091929394959697989910010110210310410510610710810911011111211311411511611711811912012112212312412512612712812913013113213313413513613713813914014114214314414514614714814915015115215315415515615715815916016116216316416516616716816917017117217317417517617717817918018118218318418518618718818919019119219319419519619719819920020120220320420520620720820921021121221321421521621721821922022122222322422522622722822923023123223323423523623723823924024124224324424524624724824925025125225325425525625725825926026126226326426526626726826927027127227327427527627727827928028128228328428528628728828929029129229329429529629729829930030130230330430530630730830931031131231331431531631731831932032132232332432532632732832933033133233333433533633733833934034134234334434534634734834935035135235335435535635735835936036136236336436536636736836937037137237337437537637737837938038138238338438538638738838939039139239339439539639739839940040140240340440540640740840941041141241341441541641741841942042142242342442542642742842943043143243343443543643743843944044144244344444544644744844945045145245345445545645745845946046146246346446546646746846947047147247347447547647747847948048148248348448548648748848949049149249349449549649749849950050150250350450550650750850951051151251351451551651751851952052152252352452552652752852953053153253353453553653753853954054154254354454554654754854955055155255355455555655755855956056156256356456556656756856957057157257357457557657757857958058158258358458558658758858959059159259359459559659759859960060160260360460560660760860961061161261361461561661761861962062162262362462562662762862963063163263363463563663763863964064164264364464564664764864965065165265365465565665765865966066166266366466566666766866967067167267367467567667767867968068168268368468568668768868969069169269369469569669769869970070170270370470570670770870971071171271371471571671771871972072172272372472572672772872973073173273373473573673773873974074174274374474574674774874975075175275375475575675775875976076176276376476576676776876977077177277377477577677777877978078178278378478578678778878979079179279379479579679779879980080180280380480580680780880981081181281381481581681781881982082182282382482582682782882983083183283383483583683783883984084184284384484584684784884985085185285385485585685785885986086186286386486586686786886987087187287387487587687787887988088188288388488588688788888989089189289389489589689789889990090190290390490590690790890991091191291391491591691791891992092192292392492592692792892993093193293393493593693793893994094194294394494594694794894995095195295395495595695795895996096196296396496596696796896997097197297397497597697797897998098198298398498598698798898999099199299399499599699799899910001001100210031004100510061007100810091010101110121013101410151016101710181019102010211022102310241025102610271028102910301031103210331034103510361037103810391040104110421043104410451046104710481049105010511052105310541055105610571058105910601061106210631064106510661067106810691070107110721073107410751076107710781079108010811082108310841085108610871088108910901091109210931094109510961097109810991100110111021103110411051106110711081109111011111112111311141115111611171118111911201121112211231124112511261127112811291130113111321133113411351136113711381139114011411142114311441145114611471148114911501151115211531154115511561157115811591160116111621163116411651166116711681169117011711172117311741175117611771178117911801181118211831184118511861187118811891190119111921193119411951196119711981199120012011202120312041205120612071208120912101211121212131214121512161217121812191220122112221223122412251226122712281229123012311232123312341235123612371238123912401241124212431244124512461247124812491250125112521253125412551256125712581259126012611262126312641265126612671268126912701271127212731274127512761277127812791280128112821283128412851286128712881289129012911292129312941295129612971298129913001301130213031304130513061307130813091310131113121313131413151316131713181319132013211322132313241325132613271328132913301331133213331334133513361337133813391340134113421343134413451346134713481349135013511352135313541355135613571358135913601361136213631364136513661367136813691370137113721373137413751376137713781379138013811382138313841385138613871388138913901391139213931394139513961397139813991400140114021403140414051406140714081409141014111412141314141415141614171418141914201421142214231424142514261427142814291430143114321433143414351436143714381439144014411442144314441445144614471448144914501451145214531454145514561457145814591460146114621463146414651466146714681469147014711472147314741475147614771478147914801481148214831484148514861487148814891490149114921493149414951496149714981499150015011502150315041505150615071508150915101511151215131514151515161517151815191520152115221523152415251526152715281529153015311532153315341535153615371538153915401541154215431544154515461547154815491550155115521553155415551556155715581559156015611562156315641565156615671568156915701571157215731574157515761577157815791580158115821583158415851586158715881589159015911592159315941595159615971598159916001601160216031604160516061607160816091610161116121613161416151616161716181619162016211622162316241625162616271628162916301631163216331634163516361637163816391640164116421643164416451646164716481649165016511652165316541655165616571658165916601661166216631664166516661667166816691670167116721673167416751676167716781679168016811682168316841685168616871688168916901691169216931694169516961697169816991700170117021703170417051706170717081709171017111712171317141715171617171718171917201721172217231724172517261727172817291730173117321733173417351736173717381739174017411742174317441745174617471748174917501751175217531754175517561757175817591760176117621763176417651766176717681769177017711772177317741775177617771778177917801781178217831784178517861787178817891790179117921793179417951796179717981799180018011802180318041805180618071808180918101811181218131814181518161817181818191820182118221823182418251826182718281829183018311832183318341835183618371838183918401841184218431844184518461847184818491850185118521853185418551856185718581859186018611862186318641865186618671868186918701871187218731874187518761877187818791880188118821883188418851886188718881889189018911892189318941895189618971898189919001901190219031904190519061907190819091910191119121913191419151916191719181919192019211922192319241925192619271928192919301931193219331934193519361937193819391940194119421943194419451946194719481949195019511952195319541955195619571958195919601961196219631964196519661967196819691970197119721973197419751976197719781979198019811982198319841985198619871988198919901991199219931994199519961997199819992000200120022003200420052006200720082009201020112012201320142015201620172018201920202021202220232024202520262027202820292030203120322033203420352036203720382039204020412042204320442045204620472048204920502051205220532054205520562057205820592060206120622063206420652066206720682069207020712072207320742075207620772078207920802081208220832084208520862087208820892090209120922093209420952096209720982099210021012102210321042105210621072108210921102111211221132114211521162117211821192120212121222123212421252126212721282129213021312132213321342135213621372138213921402141214221432144214521462147214821492150215121522153215421552156215721582159216021612162216321642165216621672168216921702171217221732174217521762177217821792180218121822183218421852186218721882189219021912192219321942195219621972198219922002201220222032204220522062207220822092210221122122213221422152216221722182219222022212222222322242225222622272228222922302231223222332234223522362237223822392240224122422243224422452246224722482249225022512252225322542255225622572258225922602261226222632264226522662267226822692270227122722273227422752276227722782279228022812282228322842285228622872288228922902291229222932294229522962297229822992300230123022303230423052306230723082309231023112312231323142315231623172318231923202321232223232324232523262327232823292330233123322333233423352336233723382339234023412342234323442345234623472348234923502351235223532354235523562357235823592360236123622363236423652366236723682369237023712372237323742375237623772378237923802381238223832384238523862387238823892390239123922393239423952396239723982399240024012402240324042405240624072408240924102411241224132414241524162417241824192420242124222423242424252426242724282429243024312432243324342435243624372438243924402441244224432444244524462447244824492450245124522453245424552456245724582459246024612462246324642465246624672468246924702471247224732474247524762477247824792480248124822483248424852486248724882489249024912492249324942495249624972498249925002501250225032504250525062507250825092510251125122513251425152516251725182519252025212522252325242525252625272528252925302531253225332534253525362537253825392540254125422543254425452546254725482549255025512552255325542555255625572558255925602561256225632564256525662567256825692570257125722573257425752576257725782579258025812582258325842585258625872588258925902591259225932594259525962597259825992600260126022603260426052606260726082609261026112612261326142615261626172618261926202621262226232624262526262627262826292630263126322633263426352636263726382639264026412642264326442645264626472648264926502651265226532654265526562657265826592660266126622663266426652666266726682669267026712672267326742675267626772678267926802681268226832684268526862687268826892690269126922693269426952696269726982699270027012702270327042705270627072708270927102711271227132714271527162717271827192720272127222723272427252726272727282729273027312732273327342735273627372738273927402741274227432744274527462747274827492750275127522753275427552756275727582759276027612762276327642765276627672768276927702771277227732774277527762777277827792780278127822783278427852786278727882789279027912792279327942795279627972798279928002801280228032804280528062807280828092810281128122813281428152816281728182819282028212822282328242825282628272828282928302831283228332834283528362837283828392840284128422843284428452846284728482849285028512852285328542855285628572858285928602861286228632864286528662867286828692870287128722873287428752876287728782879288028812882288328842885288628872888288928902891289228932894289528962897289828992900290129022903290429052906290729082909291029112912291329142915291629172918291929202921292229232924292529262927292829292930293129322933293429352936293729382939294029412942294329442945294629472948294929502951295229532954295529562957295829592960296129622963296429652966296729682969297029712972297329742975297629772978297929802981298229832984298529862987298829892990299129922993299429952996299729982999300030013002300330043005300630073008300930103011301230133014301530163017301830193020302130223023302430253026302730283029303030313032303330343035303630373038303930403041304230433044304530463047304830493050305130523053305430553056305730583059306030613062306330643065306630673068306930703071307230733074307530763077307830793080308130823083308430853086308730883089309030913092309330943095309630973098309931003101310231033104310531063107310831093110311131123113311431153116311731183119312031213122312331243125312631273128312931303131313231333134313531363137313831393140314131423143314431453146314731483149315031513152315331543155315631573158315931603161316231633164316531663167316831693170317131723173317431753176317731783179318031813182318331843185318631873188318931903191319231933194319531963197319831993200320132023203320432053206320732083209321032113212321332143215321632173218321932203221322232233224322532263227322832293230323132323233323432353236323732383239324032413242324332443245324632473248324932503251325232533254325532563257325832593260326132623263326432653266326732683269327032713272327332743275327632773278327932803281328232833284328532863287328832893290329132923293329432953296329732983299330033013302330333043305330633073308330933103311331233133314331533163317331833193320332133223323332433253326332733283329333033313332333333343335333633373338333933403341334233433344334533463347334833493350335133523353335433553356335733583359336033613362336333643365336633673368336933703371337233733374337533763377337833793380338133823383338433853386338733883389339033913392339333943395339633973398339934003401340234033404340534063407340834093410341134123413341434153416341734183419342034213422342334243425342634273428342934303431343234333434343534363437343834393440344134423443344434453446344734483449345034513452345334543455345634573458345934603461346234633464346534663467346834693470347134723473347434753476347734783479348034813482348334843485348634873488348934903491349234933494349534963497349834993500350135023503350435053506350735083509351035113512351335143515351635173518351935203521352235233524352535263527352835293530353135323533353435353536353735383539354035413542354335443545354635473548354935503551355235533554355535563557355835593560356135623563356435653566356735683569357035713572357335743575357635773578357935803581358235833584358535863587358835893590359135923593359435953596359735983599360036013602360336043605360636073608360936103611361236133614361536163617361836193620362136223623362436253626362736283629363036313632363336343635363636373638363936403641364236433644364536463647364836493650365136523653365436553656365736583659366036613662366336643665366636673668366936703671367236733674367536763677367836793680368136823683368436853686368736883689369036913692369336943695369636973698369937003701370237033704370537063707370837093710371137123713371437153716371737183719372037213722372337243725372637273728372937303731373237333734373537363737373837393740374137423743374437453746374737483749375037513752375337543755375637573758375937603761376237633764376537663767376837693770377137723773377437753776377737783779378037813782378337843785378637873788378937903791379237933794379537963797379837993800380138023803380438053806380738083809381038113812381338143815381638173818381938203821382238233824382538263827382838293830383138323833383438353836383738383839384038413842384338443845384638473848384938503851385238533854385538563857385838593860386138623863386438653866386738683869387038713872387338743875387638773878387938803881388238833884388538863887388838893890389138923893389438953896389738983899390039013902390339043905390639073908390939103911391239133914391539163917391839193920392139223923392439253926392739283929393039313932393339343935393639373938393939403941394239433944394539463947394839493950395139523953395439553956395739583959396039613962396339643965396639673968396939703971397239733974397539763977397839793980398139823983398439853986398739883989399039913992399339943995399639973998399940004001400240034004400540064007400840094010401140124013401440154016401740184019402040214022402340244025402640274028402940304031403240334034403540364037403840394040404140424043404440454046404740484049405040514052405340544055405640574058405940604061406240634064406540664067406840694070407140724073407440754076407740784079408040814082408340844085408640874088408940904091409240934094409540964097409840994100410141024103410441054106410741084109411041114112411341144115411641174118411941204121412241234124412541264127412841294130413141324133413441354136413741384139414041414142414341444145414641474148414941504151415241534154415541564157415841594160416141624163416441654166416741684169417041714172417341744175417641774178417941804181418241834184418541864187418841894190419141924193419441954196419741984199420042014202420342044205420642074208420942104211421242134214421542164217421842194220422142224223422442254226422742284229423042314232423342344235423642374238423942404241424242434244424542464247424842494250425142524253425442554256425742584259426042614262426342644265426642674268426942704271427242734274427542764277427842794280428142824283428442854286428742884289429042914292429342944295429642974298429943004301430243034304430543064307430843094310431143124313431443154316431743184319432043214322432343244325432643274328432943304331433243334334433543364337433843394340434143424343434443454346434743484349435043514352435343544355435643574358435943604361436243634364436543664367436843694370437143724373437443754376437743784379438043814382438343844385438643874388438943904391439243934394439543964397439843994400440144024403440444054406440744084409441044114412441344144415441644174418441944204421442244234424442544264427442844294430443144324433443444354436443744384439444044414442444344444445444644474448444944504451445244534454445544564457445844594460446144624463446444654466446744684469447044714472447344744475447644774478447944804481448244834484448544864487448844894490449144924493449444954496449744984499450045014502450345044505450645074508450945104511451245134514451545164517451845194520452145224523452445254526452745284529453045314532453345344535453645374538453945404541454245434544454545464547454845494550455145524553455445554556455745584559456045614562456345644565456645674568456945704571457245734574457545764577457845794580458145824583458445854586458745884589459045914592459345944595459645974598459946004601460246034604460546064607460846094610461146124613461446154616461746184619462046214622462346244625462646274628462946304631463246334634463546364637463846394640464146424643464446454646464746484649465046514652465346544655465646574658465946604661466246634664466546664667466846694670467146724673467446754676467746784679468046814682468346844685468646874688468946904691469246934694469546964697469846994700470147024703470447054706470747084709471047114712471347144715471647174718471947204721472247234724472547264727472847294730473147324733473447354736473747384739474047414742474347444745474647474748474947504751475247534754475547564757475847594760476147624763476447654766476747684769477047714772477347744775477647774778477947804781478247834784478547864787478847894790479147924793479447954796479747984799480048014802480348044805480648074808480948104811481248134814481548164817481848194820482148224823482448254826482748284829483048314832483348344835483648374838483948404841484248434844484548464847484848494850485148524853485448554856485748584859486048614862486348644865486648674868486948704871487248734874487548764877487848794880488148824883488448854886488748884889489048914892489348944895489648974898489949004901490249034904490549064907490849094910491149124913491449154916491749184919492049214922492349244925492649274928492949304931493249334934493549364937493849394940494149424943494449454946494749484949495049514952495349544955495649574958495949604961496249634964496549664967496849694970497149724973497449754976497749784979498049814982498349844985498649874988498949904991499249934994499549964997499849995000500150025003500450055006500750085009501050115012501350145015501650175018501950205021502250235024502550265027502850295030503150325033503450355036503750385039504050415042504350445045504650475048504950505051505250535054505550565057505850595060506150625063506450655066506750685069507050715072507350745075507650775078507950805081508250835084508550865087508850895090509150925093509450955096509750985099510051015102510351045105510651075108510951105111511251135114511551165117511851195120512151225123512451255126512751285129513051315132513351345135513651375138513951405141514251435144514551465147514851495150515151525153515451555156515751585159516051615162516351645165516651675168516951705171517251735174517551765177517851795180518151825183518451855186518751885189519051915192519351945195519651975198519952005201520252035204520552065207520852095210521152125213521452155216521752185219522052215222522352245225522652275228522952305231523252335234523552365237523852395240524152425243524452455246524752485249525052515252525352545255525652575258525952605261526252635264526552665267526852695270527152725273527452755276527752785279528052815282528352845285528652875288528952905291529252935294529552965297529852995300530153025303530453055306530753085309531053115312531353145315531653175318531953205321532253235324532553265327532853295330533153325333533453355336533753385339534053415342534353445345534653475348534953505351535253535354535553565357535853595360536153625363536453655366536753685369537053715372537353745375537653775378537953805381538253835384538553865387538853895390539153925393539453955396539753985399540054015402540354045405540654075408540954105411541254135414541554165417541854195420542154225423542454255426542754285429543054315432543354345435543654375438543954405441544254435444544554465447544854495450545154525453545454555456545754585459546054615462546354645465546654675468546954705471547254735474547554765477547854795480548154825483548454855486548754885489549054915492549354945495549654975498549955005501550255035504550555065507550855095510551155125513551455155516551755185519552055215522552355245525552655275528552955305531553255335534553555365537553855395540554155425543554455455546554755485549555055515552555355545555555655575558555955605561556255635564556555665567556855695570557155725573557455755576557755785579558055815582558355845585558655875588558955905591559255935594559555965597559855995600560156025603560456055606560756085609561056115612561356145615561656175618561956205621562256235624562556265627562856295630563156325633563456355636563756385639564056415642564356445645564656475648564956505651565256535654565556565657565856595660566156625663566456655666566756685669567056715672567356745675567656775678567956805681568256835684568556865687568856895690569156925693569456955696569756985699570057015702570357045705570657075708570957105711571257135714571557165717571857195720572157225723572457255726572757285729573057315732573357345735573657375738573957405741574257435744574557465747574857495750575157525753575457555756575757585759576057615762576357645765576657675768576957705771577257735774577557765777577857795780578157825783578457855786578757885789579057915792579357945795579657975798579958005801580258035804580558065807580858095810581158125813581458155816581758185819582058215822582358245825582658275828582958305831583258335834583558365837583858395840584158425843584458455846584758485849585058515852585358545855585658575858585958605861586258635864586558665867586858695870587158725873587458755876587758785879588058815882588358845885588658875888588958905891589258935894589558965897589858995900590159025903590459055906590759085909591059115912591359145915591659175918591959205921592259235924592559265927592859295930593159325933593459355936593759385939594059415942594359445945594659475948594959505951595259535954595559565957595859595960596159625963596459655966596759685969597059715972597359745975597659775978597959805981598259835984598559865987598859895990599159925993599459955996599759985999600060016002600360046005600660076008600960106011601260136014601560166017601860196020602160226023602460256026602760286029603060316032603360346035603660376038603960406041604260436044604560466047604860496050605160526053605460556056605760586059606060616062606360646065606660676068606960706071607260736074607560766077607860796080608160826083608460856086608760886089609060916092609360946095609660976098609961006101610261036104610561066107610861096110611161126113611461156116611761186119612061216122612361246125612661276128612961306131613261336134613561366137613861396140614161426143614461456146614761486149615061516152615361546155615661576158615961606161616261636164616561666167616861696170617161726173617461756176617761786179618061816182618361846185618661876188618961906191619261936194619561966197619861996200620162026203620462056206620762086209621062116212621362146215621662176218621962206221622262236224622562266227622862296230623162326233623462356236623762386239624062416242624362446245624662476248624962506251625262536254625562566257625862596260626162626263626462656266626762686269627062716272627362746275627662776278627962806281628262836284628562866287628862896290629162926293629462956296629762986299630063016302630363046305630663076308630963106311631263136314631563166317631863196320632163226323632463256326632763286329633063316332633363346335633663376338633963406341634263436344634563466347634863496350635163526353635463556356635763586359636063616362636363646365636663676368636963706371637263736374637563766377637863796380638163826383638463856386638763886389639063916392639363946395639663976398639964006401640264036404640564066407640864096410641164126413641464156416641764186419642064216422642364246425642664276428642964306431643264336434643564366437643864396440644164426443644464456446644764486449645064516452645364546455645664576458645964606461646264636464646564666467646864696470647164726473647464756476647764786479648064816482648364846485648664876488648964906491649264936494649564966497649864996500650165026503650465056506650765086509651065116512651365146515651665176518651965206521652265236524652565266527652865296530653165326533653465356536653765386539654065416542654365446545654665476548654965506551655265536554655565566557655865596560656165626563656465656566656765686569657065716572657365746575657665776578657965806581658265836584658565866587658865896590659165926593659465956596659765986599660066016602660366046605660666076608660966106611661266136614661566166617661866196620662166226623662466256626662766286629663066316632663366346635663666376638663966406641664266436644664566466647664866496650665166526653665466556656665766586659666066616662666366646665666666676668666966706671667266736674667566766677667866796680668166826683668466856686668766886689669066916692669366946695669666976698669967006701670267036704670567066707670867096710671167126713671467156716671767186719672067216722672367246725672667276728672967306731673267336734673567366737673867396740674167426743674467456746674767486749675067516752675367546755675667576758675967606761676267636764676567666767676867696770677167726773677467756776677767786779678067816782678367846785678667876788678967906791679267936794679567966797679867996800680168026803680468056806680768086809681068116812681368146815681668176818681968206821682268236824682568266827682868296830683168326833683468356836683768386839684068416842684368446845684668476848684968506851685268536854685568566857685868596860686168626863686468656866686768686869687068716872687368746875687668776878687968806881688268836884688568866887688868896890689168926893689468956896689768986899690069016902690369046905690669076908690969106911691269136914691569166917691869196920692169226923692469256926692769286929693069316932693369346935693669376938693969406941694269436944694569466947694869496950695169526953695469556956695769586959696069616962696369646965696669676968696969706971697269736974697569766977697869796980698169826983698469856986698769886989699069916992699369946995699669976998699970007001700270037004700570067007700870097010701170127013701470157016701770187019702070217022702370247025702670277028702970307031703270337034703570367037703870397040704170427043704470457046704770487049705070517052705370547055705670577058705970607061706270637064706570667067706870697070707170727073707470757076707770787079708070817082708370847085708670877088708970907091709270937094709570967097709870997100710171027103710471057106710771087109711071117112711371147115711671177118711971207121712271237124712571267127712871297130713171327133713471357136713771387139714071417142714371447145714671477148714971507151715271537154715571567157715871597160716171627163716471657166716771687169717071717172717371747175717671777178717971807181718271837184718571867187718871897190719171927193719471957196719771987199720072017202720372047205720672077208720972107211721272137214721572167217721872197220722172227223722472257226722772287229723072317232723372347235723672377238723972407241724272437244724572467247724872497250725172527253725472557256725772587259726072617262726372647265726672677268726972707271727272737274727572767277727872797280728172827283728472857286728772887289729072917292729372947295729672977298729973007301730273037304730573067307730873097310731173127313731473157316731773187319732073217322732373247325732673277328732973307331733273337334733573367337733873397340734173427343734473457346734773487349735073517352735373547355735673577358735973607361736273637364736573667367736873697370737173727373737473757376737773787379738073817382738373847385738673877388738973907391739273937394739573967397739873997400740174027403740474057406740774087409741074117412741374147415741674177418741974207421742274237424742574267427742874297430743174327433743474357436743774387439744074417442744374447445744674477448744974507451745274537454745574567457745874597460746174627463746474657466746774687469747074717472747374747475747674777478747974807481748274837484748574867487748874897490749174927493749474957496749774987499750075017502750375047505750675077508750975107511751275137514751575167517751875197520752175227523752475257526752775287529753075317532753375347535753675377538753975407541754275437544754575467547754875497550755175527553755475557556755775587559756075617562756375647565756675677568756975707571757275737574757575767577757875797580758175827583758475857586758775887589759075917592759375947595759675977598759976007601760276037604760576067607760876097610761176127613761476157616761776187619762076217622762376247625762676277628762976307631763276337634763576367637763876397640764176427643764476457646764776487649765076517652765376547655765676577658765976607661766276637664766576667667766876697670767176727673767476757676767776787679768076817682768376847685768676877688768976907691769276937694769576967697769876997700770177027703770477057706770777087709771077117712771377147715771677177718771977207721772277237724772577267727772877297730773177327733773477357736773777387739774077417742774377447745774677477748774977507751775277537754775577567757775877597760776177627763776477657766776777687769777077717772777377747775777677777778777977807781778277837784778577867787778877897790779177927793779477957796779777987799780078017802780378047805780678077808780978107811781278137814781578167817781878197820782178227823782478257826782778287829783078317832783378347835783678377838783978407841784278437844784578467847784878497850785178527853785478557856785778587859786078617862786378647865786678677868786978707871787278737874787578767877787878797880788178827883788478857886788778887889789078917892789378947895789678977898789979007901790279037904790579067907790879097910791179127913791479157916791779187919792079217922792379247925792679277928792979307931793279337934793579367937793879397940794179427943794479457946794779487949795079517952795379547955795679577958795979607961796279637964796579667967796879697970797179727973797479757976797779787979798079817982798379847985798679877988798979907991799279937994799579967997799879998000800180028003800480058006800780088009801080118012801380148015801680178018801980208021802280238024802580268027802880298030803180328033803480358036803780388039804080418042804380448045804680478048804980508051805280538054805580568057805880598060806180628063806480658066806780688069807080718072807380748075807680778078807980808081808280838084808580868087808880898090809180928093809480958096809780988099810081018102810381048105810681078108810981108111811281138114811581168117811881198120812181228123812481258126812781288129813081318132813381348135813681378138813981408141814281438144814581468147814881498150815181528153815481558156815781588159816081618162816381648165816681678168816981708171817281738174817581768177817881798180818181828183818481858186818781888189819081918192819381948195819681978198819982008201820282038204820582068207820882098210821182128213821482158216821782188219822082218222822382248225822682278228822982308231823282338234823582368237823882398240824182428243824482458246824782488249825082518252825382548255825682578258825982608261826282638264826582668267826882698270827182728273827482758276827782788279828082818282828382848285828682878288828982908291829282938294829582968297829882998300830183028303830483058306830783088309831083118312831383148315831683178318831983208321832283238324832583268327832883298330833183328333833483358336833783388339834083418342834383448345834683478348834983508351835283538354835583568357835883598360836183628363836483658366836783688369837083718372837383748375837683778378837983808381838283838384838583868387838883898390839183928393839483958396839783988399840084018402840384048405840684078408840984108411841284138414841584168417841884198420842184228423842484258426842784288429843084318432843384348435843684378438843984408441844284438444844584468447844884498450845184528453845484558456845784588459846084618462846384648465846684678468846984708471847284738474847584768477847884798480848184828483848484858486848784888489849084918492849384948495849684978498849985008501850285038504850585068507850885098510851185128513851485158516851785188519852085218522852385248525852685278528852985308531853285338534853585368537853885398540854185428543854485458546854785488549855085518552855385548555855685578558855985608561856285638564856585668567856885698570857185728573857485758576857785788579858085818582858385848585858685878588858985908591859285938594859585968597859885998600860186028603860486058606860786088609861086118612861386148615861686178618861986208621862286238624862586268627862886298630863186328633863486358636863786388639864086418642864386448645864686478648864986508651865286538654865586568657865886598660866186628663866486658666866786688669867086718672867386748675867686778678867986808681868286838684868586868687868886898690869186928693869486958696869786988699870087018702870387048705870687078708870987108711871287138714871587168717871887198720872187228723872487258726872787288729873087318732873387348735873687378738873987408741874287438744874587468747874887498750875187528753875487558756875787588759876087618762876387648765876687678768876987708771877287738774877587768777877887798780878187828783878487858786878787888789879087918792879387948795879687978798879988008801880288038804880588068807880888098810881188128813881488158816881788188819882088218822882388248825882688278828882988308831883288338834883588368837883888398840884188428843884488458846884788488849885088518852885388548855885688578858885988608861886288638864886588668867886888698870887188728873887488758876887788788879888088818882888388848885888688878888888988908891889288938894889588968897889888998900890189028903890489058906890789088909891089118912891389148915891689178918891989208921892289238924892589268927892889298930893189328933893489358936893789388939894089418942894389448945894689478948894989508951895289538954895589568957895889598960896189628963896489658966896789688969897089718972897389748975897689778978897989808981898289838984898589868987898889898990899189928993899489958996899789988999900090019002900390049005900690079008900990109011901290139014901590169017901890199020902190229023902490259026902790289029903090319032903390349035903690379038903990409041904290439044904590469047904890499050905190529053905490559056905790589059906090619062906390649065906690679068906990709071907290739074907590769077907890799080908190829083908490859086908790889089909090919092909390949095909690979098909991009101910291039104910591069107910891099110911191129113911491159116911791189119912091219122912391249125912691279128912991309131913291339134913591369137913891399140914191429143914491459146914791489149915091519152915391549155915691579158915991609161916291639164916591669167916891699170917191729173917491759176917791789179918091819182918391849185918691879188918991909191919291939194919591969197919891999200920192029203920492059206920792089209921092119212921392149215921692179218921992209221922292239224922592269227922892299230923192329233923492359236923792389239924092419242924392449245924692479248924992509251925292539254925592569257925892599260926192629263926492659266926792689269927092719272927392749275927692779278927992809281928292839284928592869287928892899290929192929293929492959296929792989299930093019302930393049305930693079308930993109311931293139314931593169317931893199320932193229323932493259326932793289329933093319332933393349335933693379338933993409341934293439344934593469347934893499350935193529353935493559356935793589359936093619362936393649365936693679368936993709371937293739374937593769377937893799380938193829383938493859386938793889389939093919392939393949395939693979398939994009401940294039404940594069407940894099410941194129413941494159416941794189419942094219422942394249425942694279428942994309431943294339434943594369437943894399440944194429443944494459446944794489449945094519452945394549455945694579458945994609461946294639464946594669467946894699470947194729473947494759476947794789479948094819482948394849485948694879488948994909491949294939494949594969497949894999500950195029503950495059506950795089509951095119512951395149515951695179518951995209521952295239524952595269527952895299530953195329533953495359536953795389539954095419542954395449545954695479548954995509551955295539554955595569557955895599560956195629563956495659566956795689569957095719572957395749575957695779578957995809581958295839584958595869587958895899590959195929593959495959596959795989599960096019602960396049605960696079608960996109611961296139614961596169617961896199620962196229623962496259626962796289629963096319632963396349635963696379638963996409641964296439644964596469647964896499650965196529653965496559656965796589659966096619662966396649665966696679668966996709671967296739674967596769677967896799680968196829683968496859686968796889689969096919692969396949695969696979698969997009701970297039704970597069707970897099710971197129713971497159716971797189719972097219722972397249725972697279728972997309731973297339734973597369737973897399740974197429743974497459746974797489749975097519752975397549755975697579758975997609761976297639764976597669767976897699770977197729773977497759776977797789779978097819782978397849785978697879788978997909791979297939794979597969797979897999800980198029803980498059806980798089809981098119812981398149815981698179818981998209821982298239824982598269827982898299830983198329833983498359836983798389839984098419842984398449845984698479848984998509851985298539854985598569857985898599860986198629863986498659866986798689869987098719872987398749875987698779878987998809881988298839884988598869887988898899890989198929893989498959896989798989899990099019902990399049905990699079908990999109911991299139914991599169917991899199920992199229923992499259926992799289929993099319932993399349935993699379938993999409941994299439944994599469947994899499950995199529953995499559956995799589959996099619962996399649965996699679968996999709971997299739974997599769977997899799980998199829983998499859986998799889989999099919992999399949995999699979998999910000100011000210003100041000510006100071000810009100101001110012100131001410015100161001710018100191002010021100221002310024100251002610027100281002910030100311003210033100341003510036100371003810039100401004110042100431004410045100461004710048100491005010051100521005310054100551005610057100581005910060100611006210063100641006510066100671006810069100701007110072100731007410075100761007710078100791008010081100821008310084100851008610087100881008910090100911009210093100941009510096100971009810099101001010110102101031010410105101061010710108101091011010111101121011310114101151011610117101181011910120101211012210123101241012510126101271012810129101301013110132101331013410135101361013710138101391014010141101421014310144101451014610147101481014910150101511015210153101541015510156101571015810159101601016110162101631016410165101661016710168101691017010171101721017310174101751017610177101781017910180101811018210183101841018510186101871018810189101901019110192101931019410195101961019710198101991020010201102021020310204102051020610207102081020910210102111021210213102141021510216102171021810219102201022110222102231022410225102261022710228102291023010231102321023310234102351023610237102381023910240102411024210243102441024510246102471024810249102501025110252102531025410255102561025710258102591026010261102621026310264102651026610267102681026910270102711027210273102741027510276102771027810279102801028110282102831028410285102861028710288102891029010291102921029310294102951029610297102981029910300103011030210303103041030510306103071030810309103101031110312103131031410315103161031710318103191032010321103221032310324103251032610327103281032910330103311033210333103341033510336103371033810339103401034110342103431034410345103461034710348103491035010351103521035310354103551035610357103581035910360103611036210363103641036510366103671036810369103701037110372103731037410375103761037710378103791038010381103821038310384103851038610387103881038910390103911039210393103941039510396103971039810399104001040110402104031040410405104061040710408104091041010411104121041310414104151041610417104181041910420104211042210423104241042510426104271042810429104301043110432104331043410435104361043710438104391044010441104421044310444104451044610447104481044910450104511045210453104541045510456104571045810459104601046110462104631046410465104661046710468104691047010471104721047310474104751047610477104781047910480104811048210483104841048510486104871048810489104901049110492104931049410495104961049710498104991050010501105021050310504105051050610507105081050910510105111051210513105141051510516105171051810519105201052110522105231052410525105261052710528105291053010531105321053310534105351053610537105381053910540105411054210543105441054510546105471054810549105501055110552105531055410555105561055710558105591056010561105621056310564105651056610567105681056910570105711057210573105741057510576105771057810579105801058110582105831058410585105861058710588105891059010591105921059310594105951059610597105981059910600106011060210603106041060510606106071060810609106101061110612106131061410615106161061710618106191062010621106221062310624106251062610627106281062910630106311063210633106341063510636106371063810639106401064110642106431064410645106461064710648106491065010651106521065310654106551065610657106581065910660106611066210663106641066510666106671066810669106701067110672106731067410675106761067710678106791068010681106821068310684106851068610687106881068910690106911069210693106941069510696106971069810699107001070110702107031070410705107061070710708107091071010711107121071310714107151071610717107181071910720107211072210723107241072510726107271072810729107301073110732107331073410735107361073710738107391074010741107421074310744107451074610747107481074910750107511075210753107541075510756107571075810759107601076110762107631076410765107661076710768107691077010771107721077310774107751077610777107781077910780107811078210783107841078510786107871078810789107901079110792107931079410795107961079710798107991080010801108021080310804108051080610807108081080910810108111081210813108141081510816108171081810819108201082110822108231082410825108261082710828108291083010831108321083310834108351083610837108381083910840108411084210843108441084510846108471084810849108501085110852108531085410855108561085710858108591086010861108621086310864108651086610867108681086910870108711087210873108741087510876108771087810879108801088110882108831088410885108861088710888108891089010891108921089310894108951089610897108981089910900109011090210903109041090510906109071090810909109101091110912109131091410915109161091710918109191092010921109221092310924109251092610927109281092910930109311093210933109341093510936109371093810939109401094110942109431094410945109461094710948109491095010951109521095310954109551095610957109581095910960109611096210963109641096510966109671096810969109701097110972109731097410975109761097710978109791098010981109821098310984109851098610987109881098910990109911099210993109941099510996109971099810999110001100111002110031100411005110061100711008110091101011011110121101311014110151101611017110181101911020110211102211023110241102511026110271102811029110301103111032110331103411035110361103711038110391104011041110421104311044110451104611047110481104911050110511105211053110541105511056110571105811059110601106111062110631106411065110661106711068110691107011071110721107311074110751107611077110781107911080110811108211083110841108511086110871108811089110901109111092110931109411095110961109711098110991110011101111021110311104111051110611107111081110911110111111111211113111141111511116111171111811119111201112111122111231112411125111261112711128111291113011131111321113311134111351113611137111381113911140111411114211143111441114511146111471114811149111501115111152111531115411155111561115711158111591116011161111621116311164111651116611167111681116911170111711117211173111741117511176111771117811179111801118111182111831118411185111861118711188111891119011191111921119311194111951119611197111981119911200112011120211203112041120511206112071120811209112101121111212112131121411215112161121711218112191122011221112221122311224112251122611227112281122911230112311123211233112341123511236112371123811239112401124111242112431124411245112461124711248112491125011251112521125311254112551125611257112581125911260112611126211263112641126511266112671126811269112701127111272112731127411275112761127711278112791128011281112821128311284112851128611287112881128911290112911129211293112941129511296112971129811299113001130111302113031130411305113061130711308113091131011311113121131311314113151131611317113181131911320113211132211323113241132511326113271132811329113301133111332113331133411335113361133711338113391134011341113421134311344113451134611347113481134911350113511135211353113541135511356113571135811359113601136111362113631136411365113661136711368113691137011371113721137311374113751137611377113781137911380113811138211383113841138511386113871138811389113901139111392113931139411395113961139711398113991140011401114021140311404114051140611407114081140911410114111141211413114141141511416114171141811419114201142111422114231142411425114261142711428114291143011431114321143311434114351143611437114381143911440114411144211443114441144511446114471144811449114501145111452114531145411455114561145711458114591146011461114621146311464114651146611467114681146911470114711147211473114741147511476114771147811479114801148111482114831148411485114861148711488114891149011491114921149311494114951149611497114981149911500115011150211503115041150511506115071150811509115101151111512115131151411515115161151711518115191152011521115221152311524115251152611527115281152911530115311153211533115341153511536115371153811539115401154111542115431154411545115461154711548115491155011551115521155311554115551155611557115581155911560115611156211563115641156511566115671156811569115701157111572115731157411575115761157711578115791158011581115821158311584115851158611587115881158911590115911159211593115941159511596115971159811599116001160111602116031160411605116061160711608116091161011611116121161311614116151161611617116181161911620116211162211623116241162511626116271162811629116301163111632116331163411635116361163711638116391164011641116421164311644116451164611647116481164911650116511165211653116541165511656116571165811659116601166111662116631166411665116661166711668116691167011671116721167311674116751167611677116781167911680116811168211683116841168511686116871168811689116901169111692116931169411695116961169711698116991170011701117021170311704117051170611707117081170911710117111171211713117141171511716117171171811719117201172111722117231172411725117261172711728117291173011731117321173311734117351173611737117381173911740117411174211743117441174511746117471174811749117501175111752117531175411755117561175711758117591176011761117621176311764117651176611767117681176911770117711177211773117741177511776117771177811779117801178111782117831178411785117861178711788117891179011791117921179311794117951179611797117981179911800118011180211803118041180511806118071180811809118101181111812118131181411815118161181711818118191182011821118221182311824118251182611827118281182911830118311183211833118341183511836118371183811839118401184111842118431184411845118461184711848118491185011851118521185311854118551185611857118581185911860118611186211863118641186511866118671186811869118701187111872118731187411875118761187711878118791188011881118821188311884118851188611887118881188911890118911189211893118941189511896118971189811899119001190111902119031190411905119061190711908119091191011911119121191311914119151191611917119181191911920119211192211923119241192511926119271192811929119301193111932119331193411935119361193711938119391194011941119421194311944119451194611947119481194911950119511195211953119541195511956119571195811959119601196111962119631196411965119661196711968119691197011971119721197311974119751197611977119781197911980119811198211983119841198511986119871198811989119901199111992119931199411995119961199711998119991200012001120021200312004120051200612007120081200912010120111201212013120141201512016120171201812019120201202112022120231202412025120261202712028120291203012031120321203312034120351203612037120381203912040120411204212043120441204512046120471204812049120501205112052120531205412055120561205712058120591206012061120621206312064120651206612067120681206912070120711207212073120741207512076120771207812079120801208112082120831208412085120861208712088120891209012091120921209312094120951209612097120981209912100121011210212103121041210512106121071210812109121101211112112121131211412115121161211712118121191212012121121221212312124121251212612127121281212912130121311213212133121341213512136121371213812139121401214112142121431214412145121461214712148121491215012151121521215312154121551215612157121581215912160121611216212163121641216512166121671216812169121701217112172121731217412175121761217712178121791218012181121821218312184121851218612187121881218912190121911219212193121941219512196121971219812199122001220112202122031220412205122061220712208122091221012211122121221312214122151221612217122181221912220122211222212223122241222512226122271222812229122301223112232122331223412235122361223712238122391224012241122421224312244122451224612247122481224912250122511225212253122541225512256122571225812259122601226112262122631226412265122661226712268122691227012271122721227312274122751227612277122781227912280122811228212283122841228512286122871228812289122901229112292122931229412295122961229712298122991230012301123021230312304123051230612307123081230912310123111231212313123141231512316123171231812319123201232112322123231232412325123261232712328123291233012331123321233312334123351233612337123381233912340123411234212343123441234512346123471234812349123501235112352123531235412355123561235712358123591236012361123621236312364123651236612367123681236912370123711237212373123741237512376123771237812379123801238112382123831238412385123861238712388123891239012391123921239312394123951239612397123981239912400124011240212403124041240512406124071240812409124101241112412124131241412415124161241712418124191242012421124221242312424124251242612427124281242912430124311243212433124341243512436124371243812439124401244112442124431244412445124461244712448124491245012451124521245312454124551245612457124581245912460124611246212463124641246512466124671246812469124701247112472124731247412475124761247712478124791248012481124821248312484124851248612487124881248912490124911249212493124941249512496124971249812499125001250112502125031250412505125061250712508125091251012511125121251312514125151251612517125181251912520125211252212523125241252512526125271252812529125301253112532125331253412535125361253712538125391254012541125421254312544125451254612547125481254912550125511255212553125541255512556125571255812559125601256112562125631256412565125661256712568125691257012571125721257312574125751257612577125781257912580125811258212583125841258512586125871258812589125901259112592125931259412595125961259712598125991260012601126021260312604126051260612607126081260912610126111261212613126141261512616126171261812619126201262112622126231262412625126261262712628126291263012631126321263312634126351263612637126381263912640126411264212643126441264512646126471264812649126501265112652126531265412655126561265712658126591266012661126621266312664126651266612667126681266912670126711267212673126741267512676126771267812679126801268112682126831268412685126861268712688126891269012691126921269312694126951269612697126981269912700127011270212703127041270512706127071270812709127101271112712127131271412715127161271712718127191272012721127221272312724127251272612727127281272912730127311273212733127341273512736127371273812739127401274112742127431274412745127461274712748127491275012751127521275312754127551275612757127581275912760127611276212763127641276512766127671276812769127701277112772127731277412775127761277712778127791278012781127821278312784127851278612787127881278912790127911279212793127941279512796127971279812799128001280112802128031280412805128061280712808128091281012811128121281312814128151281612817128181281912820128211282212823128241282512826128271282812829128301283112832128331283412835128361283712838128391284012841128421284312844128451284612847128481284912850128511285212853128541285512856128571285812859128601286112862128631286412865128661286712868128691287012871128721287312874128751287612877128781287912880128811288212883128841288512886128871288812889128901289112892128931289412895128961289712898128991290012901129021290312904129051290612907129081290912910129111291212913129141291512916129171291812919129201292112922129231292412925129261292712928129291293012931129321293312934129351293612937129381293912940129411294212943129441294512946129471294812949129501295112952129531295412955129561295712958129591296012961129621296312964129651296612967129681296912970129711297212973129741297512976129771297812979129801298112982129831298412985129861298712988129891299012991129921299312994129951299612997129981299913000130011300213003130041300513006130071300813009130101301113012130131301413015130161301713018130191302013021130221302313024130251302613027130281302913030130311303213033130341303513036130371303813039130401304113042130431304413045130461304713048130491305013051130521305313054130551305613057130581305913060130611306213063130641306513066130671306813069130701307113072130731307413075130761307713078130791308013081130821308313084130851308613087130881308913090130911309213093130941309513096130971309813099131001310113102131031310413105131061310713108131091311013111131121311313114131151311613117131181311913120131211312213123131241312513126131271312813129131301313113132131331313413135131361313713138131391314013141131421314313144131451314613147131481314913150131511315213153131541315513156131571315813159131601316113162131631316413165131661316713168131691317013171131721317313174131751317613177131781317913180131811318213183131841318513186131871318813189131901319113192131931319413195131961319713198131991320013201132021320313204132051320613207132081320913210132111321213213132141321513216132171321813219132201322113222132231322413225132261322713228132291323013231132321323313234132351323613237132381323913240132411324213243132441324513246132471324813249132501325113252132531325413255132561325713258132591326013261132621326313264132651326613267132681326913270132711327213273132741327513276132771327813279132801328113282132831328413285132861328713288132891329013291132921329313294132951329613297132981329913300133011330213303133041330513306133071330813309133101331113312133131331413315133161331713318133191332013321133221332313324133251332613327133281332913330133311333213333133341333513336133371333813339133401334113342133431334413345133461334713348133491335013351133521335313354133551335613357133581335913360133611336213363133641336513366133671336813369133701337113372133731337413375133761337713378133791338013381133821338313384133851338613387133881338913390133911339213393133941339513396133971339813399134001340113402134031340413405134061340713408134091341013411134121341313414134151341613417134181341913420134211342213423134241342513426134271342813429134301343113432134331343413435134361343713438134391344013441134421344313444134451344613447134481344913450134511345213453134541345513456134571345813459134601346113462134631346413465134661346713468134691347013471134721347313474134751347613477134781347913480134811348213483134841348513486134871348813489134901349113492134931349413495134961349713498134991350013501135021350313504135051350613507135081350913510135111351213513135141351513516135171351813519135201352113522135231352413525135261352713528135291353013531135321353313534135351353613537135381353913540135411354213543135441354513546135471354813549135501355113552135531355413555135561355713558135591356013561135621356313564135651356613567135681356913570135711357213573135741357513576135771357813579135801358113582135831358413585135861358713588135891359013591135921359313594135951359613597135981359913600136011360213603136041360513606136071360813609136101361113612136131361413615136161361713618136191362013621136221362313624136251362613627136281362913630136311363213633136341363513636136371363813639136401364113642136431364413645136461364713648136491365013651136521365313654136551365613657136581365913660136611366213663136641366513666136671366813669136701367113672136731367413675136761367713678136791368013681136821368313684136851368613687136881368913690136911369213693136941369513696136971369813699137001370113702137031370413705137061370713708137091371013711137121371313714137151371613717137181371913720137211372213723137241372513726137271372813729137301373113732137331373413735137361373713738137391374013741137421374313744137451374613747137481374913750137511375213753137541375513756137571375813759137601376113762137631376413765137661376713768137691377013771137721377313774137751377613777137781377913780137811378213783137841378513786137871378813789137901379113792137931379413795137961379713798137991380013801138021380313804138051380613807138081380913810138111381213813138141381513816138171381813819138201382113822138231382413825138261382713828138291383013831138321383313834138351383613837138381383913840138411384213843138441384513846138471384813849138501385113852138531385413855138561385713858138591386013861138621386313864138651386613867138681386913870138711387213873138741387513876138771387813879138801388113882138831388413885138861388713888138891389013891138921389313894138951389613897138981389913900139011390213903139041390513906139071390813909139101391113912139131391413915139161391713918139191392013921139221392313924139251392613927139281392913930139311393213933139341393513936139371393813939139401394113942139431394413945139461394713948139491395013951139521395313954139551395613957139581395913960139611396213963139641396513966139671396813969139701397113972139731397413975139761397713978139791398013981139821398313984139851398613987139881398913990139911399213993139941399513996139971399813999140001400114002140031400414005140061400714008140091401014011140121401314014140151401614017140181401914020140211402214023140241402514026140271402814029140301403114032140331403414035140361403714038140391404014041140421404314044140451404614047140481404914050140511405214053140541405514056140571405814059140601406114062140631406414065140661406714068140691407014071140721407314074140751407614077140781407914080140811408214083140841408514086140871408814089140901409114092140931409414095140961409714098140991410014101141021410314104141051410614107141081410914110141111411214113141141411514116141171411814119141201412114122141231412414125141261412714128141291413014131141321413314134141351413614137141381413914140141411414214143141441414514146141471414814149141501415114152141531415414155141561415714158141591416014161141621416314164141651416614167141681416914170141711417214173141741417514176141771417814179141801418114182141831418414185141861418714188141891419014191141921419314194141951419614197141981419914200142011420214203142041420514206142071420814209142101421114212142131421414215142161421714218142191422014221142221422314224142251422614227142281422914230142311423214233142341423514236142371423814239142401424114242142431424414245142461424714248142491425014251142521425314254142551425614257142581425914260142611426214263142641426514266142671426814269142701427114272142731427414275142761427714278142791428014281142821428314284142851428614287142881428914290142911429214293142941429514296142971429814299143001430114302143031430414305143061430714308143091431014311143121431314314143151431614317143181431914320143211432214323143241432514326143271432814329143301433114332143331433414335143361433714338143391434014341143421434314344143451434614347143481434914350143511435214353143541435514356143571435814359143601436114362143631436414365143661436714368143691437014371143721437314374143751437614377143781437914380143811438214383143841438514386143871438814389143901439114392143931439414395143961439714398143991440014401144021440314404144051440614407144081440914410144111441214413144141441514416144171441814419144201442114422144231442414425144261442714428144291443014431144321443314434144351443614437144381443914440144411444214443144441444514446144471444814449144501445114452144531445414455144561445714458144591446014461144621446314464144651446614467144681446914470144711447214473144741447514476144771447814479144801448114482144831448414485144861448714488144891449014491144921449314494144951449614497144981449914500145011450214503145041450514506145071450814509145101451114512145131451414515145161451714518145191452014521145221452314524145251452614527145281452914530145311453214533145341453514536145371453814539145401454114542145431454414545145461454714548145491455014551145521455314554145551455614557145581455914560145611456214563145641456514566145671456814569145701457114572145731457414575145761457714578145791458014581145821458314584145851458614587145881458914590145911459214593145941459514596145971459814599146001460114602146031460414605146061460714608146091461014611146121461314614146151461614617146181461914620146211462214623146241462514626146271462814629146301463114632146331463414635146361463714638146391464014641146421464314644146451464614647146481464914650146511465214653146541465514656146571465814659146601466114662146631466414665146661466714668146691467014671146721467314674146751467614677146781467914680146811468214683146841468514686146871468814689146901469114692146931469414695146961469714698146991470014701147021470314704147051470614707147081470914710147111471214713147141471514716147171471814719147201472114722147231472414725147261472714728147291473014731147321473314734147351473614737147381473914740147411474214743147441474514746147471474814749147501475114752147531475414755147561475714758147591476014761147621476314764147651476614767147681476914770147711477214773147741477514776147771477814779147801478114782147831478414785147861478714788147891479014791147921479314794147951479614797147981479914800148011480214803148041480514806148071480814809148101481114812148131481414815148161481714818148191482014821148221482314824148251482614827148281482914830148311483214833148341483514836148371483814839148401484114842148431484414845148461484714848148491485014851148521485314854148551485614857148581485914860148611486214863148641486514866148671486814869148701487114872148731487414875148761487714878148791488014881148821488314884148851488614887148881488914890148911489214893148941489514896148971489814899149001490114902149031490414905149061490714908149091491014911149121491314914149151491614917149181491914920149211492214923149241492514926149271492814929149301493114932149331493414935149361493714938149391494014941149421494314944149451494614947149481494914950149511495214953149541495514956149571495814959149601496114962149631496414965149661496714968149691497014971149721497314974149751497614977149781497914980149811498214983149841498514986149871498814989149901499114992149931499414995149961499714998149991500015001150021500315004150051500615007150081500915010150111501215013150141501515016150171501815019150201502115022150231502415025150261502715028150291503015031150321503315034150351503615037150381503915040150411504215043150441504515046150471504815049150501505115052150531505415055150561505715058150591506015061150621506315064150651506615067150681506915070150711507215073150741507515076150771507815079150801508115082150831508415085150861508715088150891509015091150921509315094150951509615097150981509915100151011510215103151041510515106151071510815109151101511115112151131511415115151161511715118151191512015121151221512315124151251512615127151281512915130151311513215133151341513515136151371513815139151401514115142151431514415145151461514715148151491515015151151521515315154151551515615157151581515915160151611516215163151641516515166151671516815169151701517115172151731517415175151761517715178151791518015181151821518315184151851518615187151881518915190151911519215193151941519515196151971519815199152001520115202152031520415205152061520715208152091521015211152121521315214152151521615217152181521915220152211522215223152241522515226152271522815229152301523115232152331523415235152361523715238152391524015241152421524315244152451524615247152481524915250152511525215253152541525515256152571525815259152601526115262152631526415265152661526715268152691527015271152721527315274152751527615277152781527915280152811528215283152841528515286152871528815289152901529115292152931529415295152961529715298152991530015301153021530315304153051530615307153081530915310153111531215313153141531515316153171531815319153201532115322153231532415325153261532715328153291533015331153321533315334153351533615337153381533915340153411534215343153441534515346153471534815349153501535115352153531535415355153561535715358153591536015361153621536315364153651536615367153681536915370153711537215373153741537515376153771537815379153801538115382153831538415385153861538715388153891539015391153921539315394153951539615397153981539915400154011540215403154041540515406154071540815409154101541115412154131541415415154161541715418154191542015421154221542315424154251542615427154281542915430154311543215433154341543515436154371543815439154401544115442154431544415445154461544715448154491545015451154521545315454154551545615457154581545915460154611546215463154641546515466154671546815469154701547115472154731547415475154761547715478154791548015481154821548315484154851548615487154881548915490154911549215493154941549515496154971549815499155001550115502155031550415505155061550715508155091551015511155121551315514155151551615517155181551915520155211552215523155241552515526155271552815529155301553115532155331553415535155361553715538155391554015541155421554315544155451554615547155481554915550155511555215553155541555515556155571555815559155601556115562155631556415565155661556715568155691557015571155721557315574155751557615577155781557915580155811558215583155841558515586155871558815589155901559115592155931559415595155961559715598155991560015601156021560315604156051560615607156081560915610156111561215613156141561515616156171561815619156201562115622156231562415625156261562715628156291563015631156321563315634156351563615637156381563915640156411564215643156441564515646156471564815649156501565115652156531565415655156561565715658156591566015661156621566315664156651566615667156681566915670156711567215673156741567515676156771567815679156801568115682156831568415685156861568715688156891569015691156921569315694156951569615697156981569915700157011570215703157041570515706157071570815709157101571115712157131571415715157161571715718157191572015721157221572315724157251572615727157281572915730157311573215733157341573515736157371573815739157401574115742157431574415745157461574715748157491575015751157521575315754157551575615757157581575915760157611576215763157641576515766157671576815769157701577115772157731577415775157761577715778157791578015781157821578315784157851578615787157881578915790157911579215793157941579515796157971579815799158001580115802158031580415805158061580715808158091581015811158121581315814158151581615817158181581915820158211582215823158241582515826158271582815829158301583115832158331583415835158361583715838158391584015841158421584315844158451584615847158481584915850158511585215853158541585515856158571585815859158601586115862158631586415865158661586715868158691587015871158721587315874158751587615877158781587915880158811588215883158841588515886158871588815889158901589115892158931589415895158961589715898158991590015901159021590315904159051590615907159081590915910159111591215913159141591515916159171591815919159201592115922159231592415925159261592715928159291593015931159321593315934159351593615937159381593915940159411594215943159441594515946159471594815949159501595115952159531595415955159561595715958159591596015961159621596315964159651596615967159681596915970159711597215973159741597515976159771597815979159801598115982159831598415985159861598715988159891599015991159921599315994159951599615997159981599916000160011600216003160041600516006160071600816009160101601116012160131601416015160161601716018160191602016021160221602316024160251602616027160281602916030160311603216033160341603516036160371603816039160401604116042160431604416045160461604716048160491605016051160521605316054160551605616057160581605916060160611606216063160641606516066160671606816069160701607116072160731607416075160761607716078160791608016081160821608316084160851608616087160881608916090160911609216093160941609516096160971609816099161001610116102161031610416105161061610716108161091611016111161121611316114161151611616117161181611916120161211612216123161241612516126161271612816129161301613116132161331613416135161361613716138161391614016141161421614316144161451614616147161481614916150161511615216153161541615516156161571615816159161601616116162161631616416165161661616716168161691617016171161721617316174161751617616177161781617916180161811618216183161841618516186161871618816189161901619116192161931619416195161961619716198161991620016201162021620316204162051620616207162081620916210162111621216213162141621516216162171621816219162201622116222162231622416225162261622716228162291623016231162321623316234162351623616237162381623916240162411624216243162441624516246162471624816249162501625116252162531625416255162561625716258162591626016261162621626316264162651626616267162681626916270162711627216273162741627516276162771627816279162801628116282162831628416285162861628716288162891629016291162921629316294162951629616297162981629916300163011630216303163041630516306163071630816309163101631116312163131631416315163161631716318163191632016321163221632316324163251632616327163281632916330163311633216333163341633516336163371633816339163401634116342163431634416345163461634716348163491635016351163521635316354163551635616357163581635916360163611636216363163641636516366163671636816369163701637116372163731637416375163761637716378163791638016381163821638316384163851638616387163881638916390163911639216393163941639516396163971639816399164001640116402164031640416405164061640716408164091641016411164121641316414164151641616417164181641916420164211642216423164241642516426164271642816429164301643116432164331643416435164361643716438164391644016441164421644316444164451644616447164481644916450164511645216453164541645516456164571645816459164601646116462164631646416465164661646716468164691647016471164721647316474164751647616477164781647916480164811648216483164841648516486164871648816489164901649116492164931649416495164961649716498164991650016501165021650316504165051650616507165081650916510165111651216513165141651516516165171651816519165201652116522165231652416525165261652716528165291653016531165321653316534165351653616537165381653916540165411654216543165441654516546165471654816549165501655116552165531655416555165561655716558165591656016561165621656316564165651656616567165681656916570165711657216573165741657516576165771657816579165801658116582165831658416585165861658716588165891659016591165921659316594165951659616597165981659916600166011660216603166041660516606166071660816609166101661116612166131661416615 |
- The Project Gutenberg EBook of What is Property?, by P. J. Proudhon
- This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
- almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
- re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
- with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
- Title: What is Property?
- An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
- Author: P. J. Proudhon
- Posting Date: July 10, 2008 [EBook #360]
- Release Date: November, 1995
- Language: English
- *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT IS PROPERTY? ***
- Produced by Mike Lough
- WHAT IS PROPERTY?
- AN INQUIRY INTO THE PRINCIPLE OF RIGHT AND OF GOVERNMENT
- By P. J. Proudhon
- CONTENTS.
- P. J. PROUDHON: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORKS
- PREFACE
- FIRST MEMOIR
- CHAPTER I.
- METHOD PURSUED IN THIS WORK.--THE IDEA OF A REVOLUTION
- CHAPTER II.
- PROPERTY CONSIDERED AS A NATURAL RIGHT.--OCCUPATION AND CIVIL LAW
- AS EFFICIENT BASES OF PROPERTY.--DEFINITIONS
- % 1. Property as a Natural Right.
- % 2. Occupation as the Title to Property.
- % 3. Civil Law as the Foundation and Sanction of Property.
- CHAPTER III.
- LABOR AS THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF THE DOMAIN OF PROPERTY
- % 1. The Land cannot be appropriated.
- % 2. Universal Consent no Justification of Property.
- % 3. Prescription gives no Title to Property.
- % 4. Labor.--That Labor has no Inherent Power to appropriate
- Natural Wealth.
- % 5. That Labor leads to Equality of Property.
- % 6. That in Society all Wages are Equal.
- % 7. That Inequality of Powers is the Necessary Condition of
- Equality of Fortunes.
- % 8. That, from the stand-point of Justice, Labor destroys
- Property.
- CHAPTER IV.
- THAT PROPERTY IS IMPOSSIBLE
- DEMONSTRATION. AXIOM.
- Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over
- any thing which he has stamped as his own.
- FIRST PROPOSITION.
- Property is Impossible, because it demands Something for Nothing.
- SECOND PROPOSITION.
- Property is Impossible, because, wherever it exists, Production
- costs more than it is worth.
- THIRD PROPOSITION.
- Property is Impossible, because, with a given Capital, Production
- is proportional to Labor, not to Property.
- FOURTH PROPOSITION.
- Property is Impossible, because it is Homicide.
- FIFTH PROPOSITION.
- Property is Impossible, because, if it exists, Society devours itself.
- Appendix to the Fifth Proposition.
- SIXTH PROPOSITION.
- Property is Impossible, because it is the Mother of Tyranny.
- SEVENTH PROPOSITION.
- Property is Impossible, because, in consuming its Receipts, it
- loses them; in hoarding them, it nullifies them; and, in
- using them as Capital, it turns them against Production.
- EIGHTH PROPOSITION.
- Property is Impossible, because its Power of Accumulation is
- infinite, and is exercised only over Finite Quantities.
- NINTH PROPOSITION
- Property is Impossible, because it is powerless against Property.
- TENTH PROPOSITION.
- Property is Impossible, because it is the Negation of Equality.
- CHAPTER V.
- PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPOSITION OF THE IDEA OF JUSTICE AND IN JUSTICE,
- AND A DETERMINATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT AND OF RIGHT.
- PART 1.
- % 1. Of the Moral Sense in Man and the Animals.
- % 2. Of the First and Second Degrees of Sociability.
- % 3. Of the Third Degree of Sociability.
- PART I 1.
- % 1. Of the Causes of our Mistakes. The Origin of Property.
- % 2. Characteristics of Communism and of Property.
- % 3. Determination of the Third Form of Society. Conclusion.
- SECOND MEMOIR
- LETTER TO M. BLANQUI ON PROPERTY
- P. J. PROUDHON: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORKS.
- The correspondence [1] of P. J. Proudhon, the first volumes of which we
- publish to-day, has been collected since his death by the faithful
- and intelligent labors of his daughter, aided by a few friends. It was
- incomplete when submitted to Sainte Beuve, but the portion with which
- the illustrious academician became acquainted was sufficient to allow
- him to estimate it as a whole with that soundness of judgment which
- characterized him as a literary critic.
- He would, however, caution readers against accepting the biographer's
- interpretation of the author's views as in any sense authoritative;
- advising them, rather, to await the publication of the remainder
- of Proudhon's writings, that they may form an opinion for
- themselves.--Translator.
- In an important work, which his habitual readers certainly have not
- forgotten, although death did not allow him to finish it, Sainte Beuve
- thus judges the correspondence of the great publicist:--
- "The letters of Proudhon, even outside the circle of his particular
- friends, will always be of value; we can always learn something from
- them, and here is the proper place to determine the general character of
- his correspondence.
- "It has always been large, especially since he became so celebrated;
- and, to tell the truth, I am persuaded that, in the future, the
- correspondence of Proudhon will be his principal, vital work, and that
- most of his books will be only accessory to and corroborative of this.
- At any rate, his books can be well understood only by the aid of his
- letters and the continual explanations which he makes to those who
- consult him in their doubt, and request him to define more clearly his
- position.
- "There are, among celebrated people, many methods of correspondence.
- There are those to whom letter-writing is a bore, and who, assailed with
- questions and compliments, reply in the greatest haste, solely that the
- job may be over with, and who return politeness for politeness, mingling
- it with more or less wit. This kind of correspondence, though coming
- from celebrated people, is insignificant and unworthy of collection and
- classification.
- "After those who write letters in performance of a disagreeable duty,
- and almost side by side with them in point of insignificance, I should
- put those who write in a manner wholly external, wholly superficial,
- devoted only to flattery, lavishing praise like gold, without counting
- it; and those also who weigh every word, who reply formally and
- pompously, with a view to fine phrases and effects. They exchange words
- only, and choose them solely for their brilliancy and show. You think
- it is you, individually, to whom they speak; but they are addressing
- themselves in your person to the four corners of Europe. Such letters
- are empty, and teach as nothing but theatrical execution and the
- favorite pose of their writers.
- "I will not class among the latter the more prudent and sagacious
- authors who, when writing to individuals, keep one eye on posterity.
- We know that many who pursue this method have written long, finished,
- charming, flattering, and tolerably natural letters. Beranger furnishes
- us with the best example of this class.
- "Proudhon, however, is a man of entirely different nature and habits.
- In writing, he thinks of nothing but his idea and the person whom he
- addresses: ad rem et ad hominem. A man of conviction and doctrine, to
- write does not weary him; to be questioned does not annoy him. When
- approached, he cares only to know that your motive is not one of futile
- curiosity, but the love of truth; he assumes you to be serious, he
- replies, he examines your objections, sometimes verbally, sometimes
- in writing; for, as he remarks, 'if there be some points which
- correspondence can never settle, but which can be made clear by
- conversation in two minutes, at other times just the opposite is the
- case: an objection clearly stated in writing, a doubt well expressed,
- which elicits a direct and positive reply, helps things along more than
- ten hours of oral intercourse!' In writing to you he does not hesitate
- to treat the subject anew; he unfolds to you the foundation and
- superstructure of his thought: rarely does he confess himself
- defeated--it is not his way; he holds to his position, but admits the
- breaks, the variations, in short, the EVOLUTION of his mind. The history
- of his mind is in his letters; there it must be sought.
- "Proudhon, whoever addresses him, is always ready; he quits the page
- of the book on which he is at work to answer you with the same pen, and
- that without losing patience, without getting confused, without
- sparing or complaining of his ink; he is a public man, devoted to the
- propagation of his idea by all methods, and the best method, with him,
- is always the present one, the latest one. His very handwriting, bold,
- uniform, legible, even in the most tiresome passages, betrays no haste,
- no hurry to finish. Each line is accurate: nothing is left to chance;
- the punctuation, very correct and a little emphatic and decided,
- indicates with precision and delicate distinction all the links in the
- chain of his argument. He is devoted entirely to you, to his business
- and yours, while writing to you, and never to anything else. All the
- letters of his which I have seen are serious: not one is commonplace.
- "But at the same time he is not at all artistic or affected; he does
- not CONSTRUCT his letters, he does not revise them, he spends no time in
- reading them over; we have a first draught, excellent and clear, a jet
- from the fountain-head, but that is all. The new arguments, which he
- discovers in support of his ideas and which opposition suggests to
- him, are an agreeable surprise, and shed a light which we should vainly
- search for even in his works. His correspondence differs essentially
- from his books, in that it gives you no uneasiness; it places you in
- the very heart of the man, explains him to you, and leaves you with an
- impression of moral esteem and almost of intellectual security. We feel
- his sincerity. I know of no one to whom he can be more fitly compared in
- this respect than George Sand, whose correspondence is large, and at the
- same time full of sincerity. His role and his nature correspond. If
- he is writing to a young man who unbosoms himself to him in sceptical
- anxiety, to a young woman who asks him to decide delicate questions of
- conduct for her, his letter takes the form of a short moral essay, of a
- father-confessor's advice. Has he perchance attended the theatre (a
- rare thing for him) to witness one of Ponsart's comedies, or a drama of
- Charles Edmond's, he feels bound to give an account of his impressions
- to the friend to whom he is indebted for this pleasure, and his letter
- becomes a literary and philosophical criticism, full of sense, and like
- no other. His familiarity is suited to his correspondent; he affects no
- rudeness. The terms of civility or affection which he employs towards
- his correspondents are sober, measured, appropriate to each, and honest
- in their simplicity and cordiality. When he speaks of morals and the
- family, he seems at times like the patriarchs of the Bible. His command
- of language is complete, and he never fails to avail himself of it. Now
- and then a coarse word, a few personalities, too bitter and quite unjust
- or injurious, will have to be suppressed in printing; time, however, as
- it passes away, permits many things and renders them inoffensive. Am I
- right in saying that Proudhon's correspondence, always substantial, will
- one day be the most accessible and attractive portion of his works?"
- Almost the whole of Proudhon's real biography is included in his
- correspondence. Up to 1837, the date of the first letter which we have
- been able to collect, his life, narrated by Sainte Beuve, from whom we
- make numerous extracts, may be summed up in a few pages.
- Pierre Joseph Proudhon was born on the 15th of January, 1809, in
- a suburb of Besancon, called Mouillere. His father and mother were
- employed in the great brewery belonging to M. Renaud. His father, though
- a cousin of the jurist Proudhon, the celebrated professor in the faculty
- of Dijon, was a journeyman brewer. His mother, a genuine peasant, was a
- common servant. She was an orderly person of great good sense; and, as
- they who knew her say, a superior woman of HEROIC character,--to use the
- expression of the venerable M. Weiss, the librarian at Besancon. She
- it was especially that Proudhon resembled: she and his grandfather
- Tournesi, the soldier peasant of whom his mother told him, and whose
- courageous deeds he has described in his work on "Justice." Proudhon,
- who always felt a great veneration for his mother Catharine, gave
- her name to the elder of his daughters. In 1814, when Besancon was
- blockaded, Mouillere, which stood in front of the walls of the town, was
- destroyed in the defence of the place; and Proudhon's father established
- a cooper's shop in a suburb of Battant, called Vignerons. Very honest,
- but simple-minded and short-sighted, this cooper, the father of five
- children, of whom Pierre Joseph was the eldest, passed his life in
- poverty. At eight years of age, Proudhon either made himself useful in
- the house, or tended the cattle out of doors. No one should fail to read
- that beautiful and precious page of his work on "Justice," in which he
- describes the rural sports which he enjoyed when a neatherd. At the age
- of twelve, he was a cellar-boy in an inn. This, however, did not prevent
- him from studying.
- His mother was greatly aided by M. Renaud, the former owner of the
- brewery, who had at that time retired from business, and was engaged in
- the education of his children.
- Proudhon entered school as a day-scholar in the sixth class. He was
- necessarily irregular in his attendance; domestic cares and restraints
- sometimes kept him from his classes. He succeeded nevertheless in his
- studies; he showed great perseverance. His family were so poor that they
- could not afford to furnish him with books; he was obliged to borrow
- them from his comrades, and copy the text of his lessons. He has himself
- told us that he was obliged to leave his wooden shoes outside the door,
- that he might not disturb the classes with his noise; and that, having
- no hat, he went to school bareheaded. One day, towards the close of his
- studies, on returning from the distribution of the prizes, loaded with
- crowns, he found nothing to eat in the house.
- "In his eagerness for labor and his thirst for knowledge, Proudhon,"
- says Sainte Beuve, "was not content with the instruction of his
- teachers. From his twelfth to his fourteenth year, he was a constant
- frequenter of the town library. One curiosity led to another, and he
- called for book after book, sometimes eight or ten at one sitting. The
- learned librarian, the friend and almost the brother of Charles Nodier,
- M. Weiss, approached him one day, and said, smiling, 'But, my little
- friend, what do you wish to do with all these books?' The child raised
- his head, eyed his questioner, and replied: 'What's that to you?' And
- the good M. Weiss remembers it to this day."
- Forced to earn his living, Proudhon could not continue his studies. He
- entered a printing-office in Besancon as a proof-reader. Becoming,
- soon after, a compositor, he made a tour of France in this capacity. At
- Toulon, where he found himself without money and without work, he had a
- scene with the mayor, which he describes in his work on "Justice."
- Sainte Beuve says that, after his tour of France, his service book being
- filled with good certificates, Proudhon was promoted to the position
- of foreman. But he does not tell us, for the reason that he had no
- knowledge of a letter written by Fallot, of which we never heard until
- six months since, that the printer at that time contemplated quitting
- his trade in order to become a teacher.
- Towards 1829, Fallot, who was a little older than Proudhon, and
- who, after having obtained the Suard pension in 1832, died in his
- twenty-ninth year, while filling the position of assistant librarian at
- the Institute, was charged, Protestant though he was, with the revisal
- of a "Life of the Saints," which was published at Besancon. The book was
- in Latin, and Fallot added some notes which also were in Latin.
- "But," says Sainte Beuve, "it happened that some errors escaped his
- attention, which Proudhon, then proof-reader in the printing office,
- did not fail to point out to him. Surprised at finding so good a Latin
- scholar in a workshop, he desired to make his acquaintance; and soon
- there sprung up between them a most earnest and intimate friendship: a
- friendship of the intellect and of the heart."
- Addressed to a printer between twenty-two and twenty-three years of age,
- and predicting in formal terms his future fame, Fallot's letter seems to
- us so interesting that we do not hesitate to reproduce it entire.
- "PARIS, December 5, 1831.
- "MY DEAR PROUDHON,--YOU have a right to be surprised at, and even
- dissatisfied with, my long delay in replying to your kind letter; I will
- tell you the cause of it. It became necessary to forward an account of
- your ideas to M. J. de Gray; to hear his objections, to reply to them,
- and to await his definitive response, which reached me but a short time
- ago; for M. J. is a sort of financial king, who takes no pains to be
- punctual in dealing with poor devils like ourselves. I, too, am careless
- in matters of business; I sometimes push my negligence even to disorder,
- and the metaphysical musings which continually occupy my mind, added to
- the amusements of Paris, render me the most incapable man in the world
- for conducting a negotiation with despatch.
- "I have M. Jobard's decision; here it is: In his judgment, you are
- too learned and clever for his children; he fears that you could not
- accommodate your mind and character to the childish notions common
- to their age and station. In short, he is what the world calls a good
- father; that is, he wants to spoil his children, and, in order to do
- this easily, he thinks fit to retain his present instructor, who is not
- very learned, but who takes part in their games and joyous sports with
- wonderful facility, who points out the letters of the alphabet to
- the little girl, who takes the little boys to mass, and who, no less
- obliging than the worthy Abbe P. of our acquaintance, would readily
- dance for Madame's amusement. Such a profession would not suit you, you
- who have a free, proud, and manly soul: you are refused; let us dismiss
- the matter from our minds. Perhaps another time my solicitude will be
- less unfortunate. I can only ask your pardon for having thought of thus
- disposing of you almost without consulting you. I find my excuse in the
- motives which guided me; I had in view your well-being and advancement
- in the ways of this world.
- "I see in your letter, my comrade, through its brilliant witticisms and
- beneath the frank and artless gayety with which you have sprinkled it,
- a tinge of sadness and despondency which pains me. You are unhappy, my
- friend: your present situation does not suit you; you cannot remain in
- it, it was not made for you, it is beneath you; you ought, by all
- means, to leave it, before its injurious influence begins to affect your
- faculties, and before you become settled, as they say, in the ways of
- your profession, were it possible that such a thing could ever happen,
- which I flatly deny. You are unhappy; you have not yet entered upon the
- path which Nature has marked out for you. But, faint-hearted soul, is
- that a cause for despondency? Ought you to feel discouraged? Struggle,
- morbleu, struggle persistently, and you will triumph. J. J. Rousseau
- groped about for forty years before his genius was revealed to him.
- You are not J. J Rousseau; but listen: I know not whether I should have
- divined the author of "Emile" when he was twenty years of age, supposing
- that I had been his contemporary, and had enjoyed the honor of his
- acquaintance. But I have known you, I have loved you, I have divined
- your future, if I may venture to say so; for the first time in my life,
- I am going to risk a prophecy. Keep this letter, read it again fifteen
- or twenty years hence, perhaps twenty-five, and if at that time the
- prediction which I am about to make has not been fulfilled, burn it as
- a piece of folly out of charity and respect for my memory. This is my
- prediction: you will be, Proudhon, in spite of yourself, inevitably,
- by the fact of your destiny, a writer, an author; you will be a
- philosopher; you will be one of the lights of the century, and your name
- will occupy a place in the annals of the nineteenth century, like those
- of Gassendi, Descartes, Malebranche, and Bacon in the seventeenth, and
- those of Diderot, Montesquieu, Helvetius. Locke, Hume, and Holbach in
- the eighteenth. Such will be your lot! Do now what you will, set type in
- a printing-office, bring up children, bury yourself in deep seclusion,
- seek obscure and lonely villages, it is all one to me; you cannot escape
- your destiny; you cannot divest yourself of your noblest feature, that
- active, strong, and inquiring mind, with which you are endowed; your
- place in the world has been appointed, and it cannot remain empty. Go
- where you please, I expect you in Paris, talking philosophy and the
- doctrines of Plato; you will have to come, whether you want to or not.
- I, who say this to you, must feel very sure of it in order to be willing
- to put it upon paper, since, without reward for my prophetic skill,--to
- which, I assure you, I make not the slightest claim,--I run the risk of
- passing for a hare-brained fellow, in case I prove to be mistaken: he
- plays a bold game who risks his good sense upon his cards, in return
- for the very trifling and insignificant merit of having divined a young
- man's future.
- "When I say that I expect you in Paris, I use only a proverbial phrase
- which you must not allow to mislead you as to my projects and plans.
- To reside in Paris is disagreeable to me, very much so; and when this
- fine-art fever which possesses me has left me, I shall abandon the place
- without regret to seek a more peaceful residence in a provincial town,
- provided always the town shall afford me the means of living, bread, a
- bed, books, rest, and solitude. How I miss, my good Proudhon, that dark,
- obscure, smoky chamber in which I dwelt in Besancon, and where we spent
- so many pleasant hours in the discussion of philosophy! Do you remember
- it? But that is now far away. Will that happy time ever return? Shall
- we one day meet again? Here my life is restless, uncertain, precarious,
- and, what is worse, indolent, illiterate, and vagrant. I do no work, I
- live in idleness, I ramble about; I do not read, I no longer study; my
- books are forsaken; now and then I glance over a few metaphysical works,
- and after a days walk through dirty, filthy, crowded streets. I lie
- down with empty head and tired body, to repeat the performance on the
- following day. What is the object of these walks, you will ask. I make
- visits, my friend; I hold interviews with stupid people. Then a fit of
- curiosity seizes me, the least inquisitive of beings: there are museums,
- libraries, assemblies, churches, palaces, gardens, and theatres to
- visit. I am fond of pictures, fond of music, fond of sculpture; all
- these are beautiful and good, but they cannot appease hunger, nor take
- the place of my pleasant readings of Bailly, Hume, and Tennemann, which
- I used to enjoy by my fireside when I was able to read.
- "But enough of complaints. Do not allow this letter to affect you too
- much, and do not think that I give way to dejection or despondency; no,
- I am a fatalist, and I believe in my star. I do not know yet what my
- calling is, nor for what branch of polite literature I am best fitted;
- I do not even know whether I am, or ever shall be, fitted for any: but
- what matters it? I suffer, I labor, I dream, I enjoy, I think; and, in a
- word, when my last hour strikes, I shall have lived.
- "Proudhon, I love you, I esteem you; and, believe me, these are not mere
- phrases. What interest could I have in flattering and praising a poor
- printer? Are you rich, that you may pay for courtiers? Have you a
- sumptuous table, a dashing wife, and gold to scatter, in order to
- attract them to your suite? Have you the glory, honors, credit, which
- would render your acquaintance pleasing to their vanity and pride? No;
- you are poor, obscure, abandoned; but, poor, obscure, and abandoned,
- you have a friend, and a friend who knows all the obligations which that
- word imposes upon honorable people, when they venture to assume it. That
- friend is myself: put me to the test.
- "GUSTAVE FALLOT."
- It appears from this letter that if, at this period, Proudhon had
- already exhibited to the eyes of a clairvoyant friend his genius for
- research and investigation, it was in the direction of philosophical,
- rather than of economical and social, questions.
- Having become foreman in the house of Gauthier & Co., who carried on
- a large printing establishment at Besancon, he corrected the proofs of
- ecclesiastical writers, the Fathers of the Church. As they were printing
- a Bible, a Vulgate, he was led to compare the Latin with the original
- Hebrew.
- "In this way," says Sainte Beuve, "he learned Hebrew by himself, and,
- as everything was connected in his mind, he was led to the study of
- comparative philology. As the house of Gauthier published many works
- on Church history and theology, he came also to acquire, through this
- desire of his to investigate everything, an extensive knowledge of
- theology, which afterwards caused misinformed persons to think that he
- had been in an ecclesiastical seminary."
- Towards 1836, Proudhon left the house of Gauthier, and, in company
- with an associate, established a small printing-office in Besancon. His
- contribution to the partnership consisted, not so much in capital, as
- in his knowledge of the trade. His partner committing suicide in 1838,
- Proudhon was obliged to wind up the business, an operation which he did
- not accomplish as quickly and as easily as he hoped. He was then urged
- by his friends to enter the ranks of the competitors for the Suard
- pension. This pension consisted of an income of fifteen hundred francs
- bequeathed to the Academy of Besancon by Madame Suard, the widow of the
- academician, to be given once in three years to the young man residing
- in the department of Doubs, a bachelor of letters or of science, and
- not possessing a fortune, whom the Academy of Besancon SHOULD DEEM BEST
- FITTED FOR A LITERARY OR SCIENTIFIC CAREER, OR FOR THE STUDY OF LAW
- OR OF MEDICINE. The first to win the Suard pension was Gustave Fallot.
- Mauvais, who was a distinguished astronomer in the Academy of Sciences,
- was the second. Proudhon aspired to be the third. To qualify himself, he
- had to be received as a bachelor of letters, and was obliged to write a
- letter to the Academy of Besancon. In a phrase of this letter, the terms
- of which he had to modify, though he absolutely refused to change
- its spirit, Proudhon expressed his firm resolve to labor for the
- amelioration of the condition of his brothers, the working-men.
- The only thing which he had then published was an "Essay on General
- Grammar," which appeared without the author's signature. While
- reprinting, at Besancon, the "Primitive Elements of Languages,
- Discovered by the Comparison of Hebrew roots with those of the Latin and
- French," by the Abbe Bergier, Proudhon had enlarged the edition of his
- "Essay on General Grammar."
- The date of the edition, 1837, proves that he did not at that time think
- of competing for the Suard pension. In this work, which continued and
- completed that of the Abbe Bergier, Proudhon adopted the same point
- of view, that of Moses and of Biblical tradition. Two years later, in
- February, 1839, being already in possession of the Suard pension, he
- addressed to the Institute, as a competitor for the Volney prize,
- a memoir entitled: "Studies in Grammatical Classification and the
- Derivation of some French words." It was his first work, revised and
- presented in another form. Four memoirs only were sent to the Institute,
- none of which gained the prize. Two honorable mentions were granted,
- one of them to memoir No. 4; that is, to P. J. Proudhon, printer at
- Besancon. The judges were MM. Amedde Jaubert, Reinaud, and Burnouf.
- "The committee," said the report presented at the annual meeting of the
- five academies on Thursday, May 2, 1839, "has paid especial attention to
- manuscripts No. 1 and No. 4. Still, it does not feel able to grant
- the prize to either of these works, because they do not appear to
- be sufficiently elaborated. The committee, which finds in No. 4 some
- ingenious analyses, particularly in regard to the mechanism of the
- Hebrew language, regrets that the author has resorted to hazardous
- conjectures, and has sometimes forgotten the special recommendation of
- the committee to pursue the experimental and comparative method."
- Proudhon remembered this. He attended the lectures of Eugene Burnouf,
- and, as soon as he became acquainted with the labors and discoveries of
- Bopp and his successors, he definitively abandoned an hypothesis which
- had been condemned by the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres.
- He then sold, for the value of the paper, the remaining copies of the
- "Essay" published by him in 1837. In 1850, they were still lying in a
- grocer's back-shop.
- A neighboring publisher then placed the edition on the market, with
- the attractive name of Proudhon upon it. A lawsuit ensued, in which
- the author was beaten. His enemies, and at that time there were many of
- them, would have been glad to have proved him a renegade and a recanter.
- Proudhon, in his work on "Justice," gives some interesting details of
- this lawsuit.
- In possession of the Suard pension, Proudhon took part in the contest
- proposed by the Academy of Besancon on the question of the utility
- of the celebration of Sunday. His memoir obtained honorable mention,
- together with a medal which was awarded him, in open session, on the
- 24th of August, 1839. The reporter of the committee, the Abbe Doney,
- since made Bishop of Montauban, called attention to the unquestionable
- superiority of his talent.
- "But," says Sainte Beuve, "he reproached him with having adopted
- dangerous theories, and with having touched upon questions of practical
- politics and social organization, where upright intentions and zeal for
- the public welfare cannot justify rash solutions."
- Was it policy, we mean prudence, which induced Proudhon to screen his
- ideas of equality behind the Mosaic law? Sainte Beuve, like many others,
- seems to think so. But we remember perfectly well that, having asked
- Proudhon, in August, 1848, if he did not consider himself indebted in
- some respects to his fellow-countryman, Charles Fourier, we received
- from him the following reply: "I have certainly read Fourier, and have
- spoken of him more than once in my works; but, upon the whole, I do not
- think that I owe anything to him. My real masters, those who have caused
- fertile ideas to spring up in my mind, are three in number: first, the
- Bible; next, Adam Smith; and last, Hegel."
- Freely confessed in the "Celebration of Sunday," the influence of the
- Bible on Proudhon is no less manifest in his first memoir on property.
- Proudhon undoubtedly brought to this work many ideas of his own; but
- is not the very foundation of ancient Jewish law to be found in its
- condemnation of usurious interest and its denial of the right of
- personal appropriation of land?
- The first memoir on property appeared in 1840, under the title, "What is
- Property? or an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government."
- Proudhon dedicated it, in a letter which served as the preface, to the
- Academy of Besancon. The latter, finding itself brought to trial by its
- pensioner, took the affair to heart, and evoked it, says Sainte Beuve,
- with all possible haste.
- The pension narrowly escaped being immediately withdrawn from the bold
- defender of the principle of equality of conditions. M. Vivien, then
- Minister of Justice, who was earnestly solicited to prosecute the
- author, wished first to obtain the opinion of the economist, Blanqui, a
- member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Proudhon having
- presented to this academy a copy of his book, M. Blanqui was appointed
- to review it. This review, though it opposed Proudhon's views, shielded
- him. Treated as a savant by M. Blanqui, the author was not prosecuted.
- He was always grateful to MM. Blanqui and Vivien for their handsome
- conduct in the matter.
- M. Blanqui's review, which was partially reproduced by "Le Moniteur," on
- the 7th of September, 1840, naturally led Proudhon to address to him, in
- the form of a letter, his second memoir on property, which appeared
- in April, 1841. Proudhon had endeavored, in his first memoir, to
- demonstrate that the pursuit of equality of conditions is the true
- principle of right and of government. In the "Letter to M. Blanqui," he
- passes in review the numerous and varied methods by which this principle
- gradually becomes realized in all societies, especially in modern
- society.
- In 1842, a third memoir appeared, entitled, "A Notice to Proprietors, or
- a Letter to M. Victor Considerant, Editor of 'La Phalange,' in Reply
- to a Defence of Property." Here the influence of Adam Smith manifested
- itself, and was frankly admitted. Did not Adam Smith find, in the
- principle of equality, the first of all the laws which govern wages?
- There are other laws, undoubtedly; but Proudhon considers them all as
- springing from the principle of property, as he defined it in his first
- memoir. Thus, in humanity, there are two principles,--one which leads us
- to equality, another which separates us from it. By the former, we
- treat each other as associates; by the latter, as strangers, not to say
- enemies. This distinction, which is constantly met with throughout the
- three memoirs, contained already, in germ, the idea which gave birth to
- the "System of Economical Contradictions," which appeared in 1846, the
- idea of antinomy or contre-loi.
- The "Notice to Proprietors" was seized by the magistrates of Besancon;
- and Proudhon was summoned to appear before the assizes of Doubs within
- a week. He read his written defence to the jurors in person, and was
- acquitted. The jury, like M. Blanqui, viewed him only as a philosopher,
- an inquirer, a savant.
- In 1843, Proudhon published the "Creation of Order in Humanity," a
- large volume, which does not deal exclusively with questions of social
- economy. Religion, philosophy, method, certainty, logic, and dialectics
- are treated at considerable length.
- Released from his printing-office on the 1st of March of the same year,
- Proudhon had to look for a chance to earn his living. Messrs. Gauthier
- Bros., carriers by water between Mulhouse and Lyons, the eldest of whom
- was Proudhon's companion in childhood, conceived the happy thought
- of employing him, of utilizing his ability in their business, and in
- settling the numerous points of difficulty which daily arose. Besides
- the large number of accounts which his new duties required him to make
- out, and which retarded the publication of the "System of Economical
- Contradictions," until October, 1846, we ought to mention a work, which,
- before it appeared in pamphlet form, was published in the "Revue des
- Economistes,"--"Competition between Railroads and Navigable Ways."
- "Le Miserere, or the Repentance of a King," which he published in
- March, 1845, in the "Revue Independante," during that Lenten season when
- Lacordaire was preaching in Lyons, proves that, though devoting himself
- with ardor to the study of economical problems, Proudhon had not lost
- his interest in questions of religious history. Among his writings on
- these questions, which he was unfortunately obliged to leave unfinished,
- we may mention a nearly completed history of the early Christian
- heresies, and of the struggle of Christianity against Caesarism.
- We have said that, in 1848, Proudhon recognized three masters. Having
- no knowledge of the German language, he could not have read the works
- of Hegel, which at that time had not been translated into French. It
- was Charles Grun, a German, who had come to France to study the various
- philosophical and socialistic systems, who gave him the substance of the
- Hegelian ideas. During the winter of 1844-45, Charles Grun had some long
- conversations with Proudhon, which determined, very decisively, not the
- ideas, which belonged exclusively to the bisontin thinker, but the form
- of the important work on which he labored after 1843, and which was
- published in 1846 by Guillaumin.
- Hegel's great idea, which Proudhon appropriated, and which he
- demonstrates with wonderful ability in the "System of Economical
- Contradictions," is as follows: Antinomy, that is, the existence of two
- laws or tendencies which are opposed to each other, is possible,
- not only with two different things, but with one and the same thing.
- Considered in their thesis, that is, in the law or tendency which
- created them, all the economical categories are rational,--competition,
- monopoly, the balance of trade, and property, as well as the division
- of labor, machinery, taxation, and credit. But, like communism and
- population, all these categories are antinomical; all are opposed, not
- only to each other, but to themselves. All is opposition, and disorder
- is born of this system of opposition. Hence, the sub-title of the
- work,--"Philosophy of Misery." No category can be suppressed; the
- opposition, antinomy, or contre-tendance, which exists in each of them,
- cannot be suppressed.
- Where, then, lies the solution of the social problem? Influenced by the
- Hegelian ideas, Proudhon began to look for it in a superior synthesis,
- which should reconcile the thesis and antithesis. Afterwards, while at
- work upon his book on "Justice," he saw that the antinomical terms do
- not cancel each other, any more than the opposite poles of an electric
- pile destroy each other; that they are the procreative cause of motion,
- life, and progress; that the problem is to discover, not their fusion,
- which would be death, but their equilibrium,--an equilibrium for ever
- unstable, varying with the development of society.
- On the cover of the "System of Economical Contradictions," Proudhon
- announced, as soon to appear, his "Solution of the Social Problem." This
- work, upon which he was engaged when the Revolution of 1848 broke
- out, had to be cut up into pamphlets and newspaper articles. The two
- pamphlets, which he published in March, 1848, before he became editor
- of "Le Representant du Peuple," bear the same title,--"Solution of the
- Social Problem." The first, which is mainly a criticism of the early
- acts of the provisional government, is notable from the fact that in
- it Proudhon, in advance of all others, energetically opposed the
- establishment of national workshops. The second, "Organization of
- Credit and Circulation," sums up in a few pages his idea of economical
- progress: a gradual reduction of interest, profit, rent, taxes, and
- wages. All progress hitherto has been made in this manner; in this
- manner it must continue to be made. Those workingmen who favor a nominal
- increase of wages are, unconsciously following a back-track, opposed to
- all their interests.
- After having published in "Le Representant du Peuple," the statutes of
- the Bank of Exchange,--a bank which was to make no profits, since it
- was to have no stockholders, and which, consequently, was to discount
- commercial paper with out interest, charging only a commission
- sufficient to defray its running expenses,--Proudhon endeavored, in
- a number of articles, to explain its mechanism and necessity. These
- articles have been collected in one volume, under the double title,
- "Resume of the Social Question; Bank of Exchange." His other articles,
- those which up to December, 1848, were inspired by the progress of
- events, have been collected in another volume,--"Revolutionary Ideas."
- Almost unknown in March, 1848, and struck off in April from the list of
- candidates for the Constituent Assembly by the delegation of workingmen
- which sat at the Luxembourg, Proudhon had but a very small number of
- votes at the general elections of April. At the complementary elections,
- which were held in the early days of June, he was elected in Paris by
- seventy-seven thousand votes.
- After the fatal days of June, he published an article on le terme, which
- caused the first suspension of "Le Representant du Peuple." It was at
- that time that he introduced a bill into the Assembly, which, being
- referred to the Committee on the Finances, drew forth, first, the report
- of M. Thiers, and then the speech which Proudhon delivered, on the
- 31st of July, in reply to this report. "Le Representant du Peuple,"
- reappearing a few days later, he wrote, a propos of the law requiring
- journals to give bonds, his famous article on "The Malthusians" (August
- 10, 1848).
- Ten days afterwards, "Le Representant du Peuple," again suspended,
- definitively ceased to appear. "Le Peuple," of which he was the
- editor-in-chief, and the first number of which was issued in the early
- part of September, appeared weekly at first, for want of sufficient
- bonds; it afterwards appeared daily, with a double number once a week.
- Before "Le Peuple" had obtained its first bond, Proudhon published a
- remarkable pamphlet on the "Right to Labor,"--a right which he denied
- in the form in which it was then affirmed. It was during the same
- period that he proposed, at the Poissonniere banquet, his Toast to the
- Revolution.
- Proudhon, who had been asked to preside at the banquet, refused, and
- proposed in his stead, first, Ledru-Rollin, and then, in view of the
- reluctance of the organizers of the banquet, the illustrious president
- of the party of the Mountain, Lamennais. It was evidently his intention
- to induce the representatives of the Extreme Left to proclaim at last
- with him the Democratic and Social Republic. Lamennais being accepted by
- the organizers, the Mountain promised to be present at the banquet. The
- night before, all seemed right, when General Cavaignac replaced Minister
- Senart by Minister Dufaure-Vivien. The Mountain, questioning the
- government, proposed a vote of confidence in the old minister, and,
- tacitly, of want of confidence in the new. Proudhon abstained from
- voting on this proposition. The Mountain declared that it would not
- attend the banquet, if Proudhon was to be present. Five Montagnards,
- Mathieu of Drome at their head, went to the temporary office of "Le
- Peuple" to notify him of this. "Citizen Proudhon," said they to the
- organizers in his presence, "in abstaining from voting to-day on
- the proposition of the Mountain, has betrayed the Republican cause."
- Proudhon, vehemently questioned, began his defence by recalling, on
- the one hand, the treatment which he had received from the dismissed
- minister; and, on the other, the impartial conduct displayed towards him
- in 1840 by M. Vivien, the new minister. He then attacked the Mountain by
- telling its delegates that it sought only a pretext, and that really, in
- spite of its professions of Socialism in private conversation, whether
- with him or with the organizers of the banquet, it had not the courage
- to publicly declare itself Socialist.
- On the following day, in his Toast to the Revolution, a toast which
- was filled with allusions to the exciting scene of the night before,
- Proudhon commenced his struggle against the Mountain. His duel with
- Felix Pyat was one of the episodes of this struggle, which became less
- bitter on Proudhon's side after the Mountain finally decided to publicly
- proclaim the Democratic and Social Republic. The campaign for the
- election of a President of the Republic had just begun. Proudhon made
- a very sharp attack on the candidacy of Louis Bonaparte in a pamphlet
- which is regarded as one of his literary chefs-d'oeuvre: the "Pamphlet
- on the Presidency." An opponent of this institution, against which he
- had voted in the Constituent Assembly, he at first decided to take no
- part in the campaign. But soon seeing that he was thus increasing the
- chances of Louis Bonaparte, and that if, as was not at all probable, the
- latter should not obtain an absolute majority of the votes, the Assembly
- would not fail to elect General Cavaignac, he espoused, for the sake of
- form, the candidacy of Raspail, who was supported by his friends in
- the Socialist Committee. Charles Delescluze, the editor-in-chief of
- "La Revolution Democratique et Sociale," who could not forgive him for
- having preferred Raspail to Ledru-Rollin, the candidate of the Mountain,
- attacked him on the day after the election with a violence which
- overstepped all bounds. At first, Proudhon had the wisdom to refrain
- from answering him. At length, driven to an extremity, he became
- aggressive himself, and Delescluze sent him his seconds. This time,
- Proudhon positively refused to fight; he would not have fought with
- Felix Pyat, had not his courage been called in question.
- On the 25th of January, 1849, Proudhon, rising from a sick bed, saw
- that the existence of the Constituent Assembly was endangered by the
- coalition of the monarchical parties with Louis Bonaparte, who was
- already planning his coup d'Etat. He did not hesitate to openly attack
- the man who had just received five millions of votes. He wanted to break
- the idol; he succeeded only in getting prosecuted and condemned himself.
- The prosecution demanded against him was authorized by a majority of the
- Constituent Assembly, in spite of the speech which he delivered on that
- occasion. Declared guilty by the jury, he was sentenced, in March, 1849,
- to three years' imprisonment and the payment of a fine of ten thousand
- francs.
- Proudhon had not abandoned for a single moment his project of a Bank of
- Exchange, which was to operate without capital with a sufficient number
- of merchants and manufacturers for adherents. This bank, which he then
- called the Bank of the People, and around which he wished to gather the
- numerous working-people's associations which had been formed since
- the 24th of February, 1848, had already obtained a certain number of
- subscribers and adherents, the latter to the number of thirty-seven
- thousand. It was about to commence operations, when Proudhon's sentence
- forced him to choose between imprisonment and exile. He did not hesitate
- to abandon his project and return the money to the subscribers. He
- explained the motives which led him to this decision in an article in
- "Le Peuple."
- Having fled to Belgium, he remained there but a few days, going thence
- to Paris, under an assumed name, to conceal himself in a house in the
- Rue de Chabrol. From his hiding-place he sent articles almost every
- day, signed and unsigned, to "Le Peuple." In the evening, dressed in a
- blouse, he went to some secluded spot to take the air. Soon, emboldened
- by habit, he risked an evening promenade upon the Boulevards, and
- afterwards carried his imprudence so far as to take a stroll by daylight
- in the neighborhood of the Gare du Nord. It was not long before he was
- recognized by the police, who arrested him on the 6th of June, 1849, in
- the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonniere.
- Taken to the office of the prefect of police, then to Sainte-Pelagie,
- he was in the Conciergerie on the day of the 13th of June, 1849, which
- ended with the violent suppression of "Le Peuple." He then began to
- write the "Confessions of a Revolutionist," published towards the end
- of the year. He had been again transferred to Sainte-Pelagie, when he
- married, in December, 1849, Mlle. Euphrasie Piegard, a young working
- girl whose hand he had requested in 1847. Madame Proudhon bore him four
- daughters, of whom but two, Catherine and Stephanie, survived their
- father. Stephanie died in 1873.
- In October, 1849, "Le Peuple" was replaced by a new journal, "La Voix
- du Peuple," which Proudhon edited from his prison cell. In it were
- published his discussions with Pierre Leroux and Bastiat.
- The political articles which he sent to "La Voix du Peuple" so
- displeased the government finally, that it transferred him to Doullens,
- where he was secretly confined for some time. Afterwards taken back
- to Paris, to appear before the assizes of the Seine in reference to
- an article in "La Voix du Peuple," he was defended by M. Cremieux and
- acquitted. From the Conciergerie he went again to Sainte-Pelagie, where
- he ended his three years in prison on the 6th of June, 1852.
- "La Voix du Peuple," suppressed before the promulgation of the law of
- the 31st of May, had been replaced by a weekly sheet, "Le Peuple" of
- 1850. Established by the aid of the principal members of the Mountain,
- this journal soon met with the fate of its predecessors.
- In 1851, several months before the coup d'Etat, Proudhon published the
- "General Idea of the Revolution of the Nineteenth Century," in which,
- after having shown the logical series of unitary governments,--from
- monarchy, which is the first term, to the direct government of the
- people, which is the last,--he opposes the ideal of an-archy or
- self-government to the communistic or governmental ideal.
- At this period, the Socialist party, discouraged by the elections of
- 1849, which resulted in a greater conservative triumph than those of
- 1848, and justly angry with the national representative body which
- had just passed the law of the 31st of May, 1850, demanded direct
- legislation and direct government. Proudhon, who did not want, at any
- price, the plebiscitary system which he had good reason to regard as
- destructive of liberty, did not hesitate to point out, to those of his
- friends who expected every thing from direct legislation, one of the
- antinomies of universal suffrage. In so far as it is an institution
- intended to achieve, for the benefit of the greatest number, the social
- reforms to which landed suffrage is opposed, universal suffrage is
- powerless; especially if it pretends to legislate or govern directly.
- For, until the social reforms are accomplished, the greatest number is
- of necessity the least enlightened, and consequently the least capable
- of understanding and effecting reforms. In regard to the antinomy,
- pointed out by him, of liberty and government,--whether the latter be
- monarchic, aristocratic, or democratic in form,--Proudhon, whose chief
- desire was to preserve liberty, naturally sought the solution in the
- free contract. But though the free contract may be a practical solution
- of purely economical questions, it cannot be made use of in politics.
- Proudhon recognized this ten years later, when his beautiful study on
- "War and Peace" led him to find in the FEDERATIVE PRINCIPLE the exact
- equilibrium of liberty and government.
- "The Social Revolution Demonstrated by the Coup d' Etat" appeared in
- 1852, a few months after his release from prison. At that time, terror
- prevailed to such an extent that no one was willing to publish his
- book without express permission from the government. He succeeded in
- obtaining this permission by writing to Louis Bonaparte a letter which
- he published at the same time with the work. The latter being offered
- for sale, Proudhon was warned that he would not be allowed to publish
- any more books of the same character. At that time he entertained the
- idea of writing a universal history entitled "Chronos." This project was
- never fulfilled.
- Already the father of two children, and about to be presented with a
- third, Proudhon was obliged to devise some immediate means of gaining a
- living; he resumed his labors, and published, at first anonymously, the
- "Manual of a Speculator in the Stock-Exchange." Later, in 1857, after
- having completed the work, he did not hesitate to sign it, acknowledging
- in the preface his indebtedness to his collaborator, G. Duchene.
- Meantime, he vainly sought permission to establish a journal, or review.
- This permission was steadily refused him. The imperial government
- always suspected him after the publication of the "Social Revolution
- Demonstrated by the Coup d'Etat."
- Towards the end of 1853, Proudhon issued in Belgium a pamphlet entitled
- "The Philosophy of Progress." Entirely inoffensive as it was, this
- pamphlet, which he endeavored to send into France, was seized on the
- frontier. Proudhon's complaints were of no avail.
- The empire gave grants after grants to large companies. A financial
- society, having asked for the grant of a railroad in the east of France,
- employed Proudhon to write several memoirs in support of this demand.
- The grant was given to another company. The author was offered an
- indemnity as compensation, to be paid (as was customary in such cases)
- by the company which received the grant. It is needless to say that
- Proudhon would accept nothing. Then, wishing to explain to the public,
- as well as to the government, the end which he had in view, he
- published the work entitled "Reforms to be Effected in the Management of
- Railroads."
- Towards the end of 1854, Proudhon had already begun his book on
- "Justice," when he had a violent attack of cholera, from which he
- recovered with great difficulty. Ever afterwards his health was
- delicate.
- At last, on the 22d of April, 1858, he published, in three large
- volumes, the important work upon which he had labored since 1854. This
- work had two titles: the first, "Justice in the Revolution and in the
- Church;" the second, "New Principles of Practical Philosophy, addressed
- to His Highness Monseigneur Mathieu, Cardinal-Archbishop of Besancon."
- On the 27th of April, when there had scarcely been time to read the
- work, an order was issued by the magistrate for its seizure; on the
- 28th the seizure was effected. To this first act of the magistracy,
- the author of the incriminated book replied on the 11th of May in a
- strongly-motived petition, demanding a revision of the concordat of
- 1802; or, in other words, a new adjustment of the relations between
- Church and State. At bottom, this petition was but the logical
- consequence of the work itself. An edition of a thousand copies being
- published on the 17th of May, the "Petition to the Senate" was regarded
- by the public prosecutor as an aggravation of the offence or offences
- discovered in the body of the work to which it was an appendix, and was
- seized in its turn on the 23d. On the first of June, the author appealed
- to the Senate in a second "Petition," which was deposited with the
- first in the office of the Secretary of the Assembly, the guardian and
- guarantee, according to the constitution of 1852, of the principles
- of '89. On the 2d of June, the two processes being united, Proudhon
- appeared at the bar with his publisher, the printer of the book, and
- the printer of the petition, to receive the sentence of the police
- magistrate, which condemned him to three years' imprisonment, a fine of
- four thousand francs, and the suppression of his work. It is needless
- to say that the publisher and printers were also condemned by the sixth
- chamber.
- Proudhon lodged an appeal; he wrote a memoir which the law of 1819, in
- the absence of which he would have been liable to a new prosecution,
- gave him the power to publish previous to the hearing. Having decided
- to make use of the means which the law permitted, he urged in vain the
- printers who were prosecuted with him to lend him their aid. He then
- demanded of Attorney-General Chaix d'Est Ange a statement to the effect
- that the twenty-third article of the law of the 17th of May, 1819,
- allows a written defence, and that a printer runs no risk in printing
- it. The attorney-general flatly refused. Proudhon then started for
- Belgium, where he printed his defence, which could not, of course, cross
- the French frontier. This memoir is entitled to rank with the best of
- Beaumarchais's; it is entitled: "Justice prosecuted by the Church;
- An Appeal from the Sentence passed upon P. J. Proudhon by the Police
- Magistrate of the Seine, on the 2d of June, 1858." A very close
- discussion of the grounds of the judgment of the sixth chamber, it was
- at the same time an excellent resume of his great work.
- Once in Belgium, Proudhon did not fail to remain there. In 1859, after
- the general amnesty which followed the Italian war, he at first thought
- himself included in it. But the imperial government, consulted by his
- friends, notified him that, in its opinion, and in spite of the contrary
- advice of M. Faustin Helie, his condemnation was not of a political
- character. Proudhon, thus classed by the government with the authors
- of immoral works, thought it beneath his dignity to protest, and waited
- patiently for the advent of 1863 to allow him to return to France.
- In Belgium, where he was not slow in forming new friendships, he
- published in 1859-60, in separate parts, a new edition of his great work
- on "Justice." Each number contained, in addition to the original text
- carefully reviewed and corrected, numerous explanatory notes and some
- "Tidings of the Revolution." In these tidings, which form a sort of
- review of the progress of ideas in Europe, Proudhon sorrowfully
- asserts that, after having for a long time marched at the head of the
- progressive nations, France has become, without appearing to suspect it,
- the most retrogressive of nations; and he considers her more than once
- as seriously threatened with moral death.
- The Italian war led him to write a new work, which he published in 1861,
- entitled "War and Peace." This work, in which, running counter to
- a multitude of ideas accepted until then without examination, he
- pronounced for the first time against the restoration of an aristocratic
- and priestly Poland, and against the establishment of a unitary
- government in Italy, created for him a multitude of enemies. Most of
- his friends, disconcerted by his categorical affirmation of a right
- of force, notified him that they decidedly disapproved of his new
- publication. "You see," triumphantly cried those whom he had always
- combated, "this man is only a sophist."
- Led by his previous studies to test every thing by the question of
- right, Proudhon asks, in his "War and Peace," whether there is a real
- right of which war is the vindication, and victory the demonstration.
- This right, which he roughly calls the right of the strongest or the
- right of force, and which is, after all, only the right of the most
- worthy to the preference in certain definite cases, exists, says
- Proudhon, independently of war. It cannot be legitimately vindicated
- except where necessity clearly demands the subordination of one will to
- another, and within the limits in which it exists; that is, without ever
- involving the enslavement of one by the other. Among nations, the right
- of the majority, which is only a corollary of the right of force, is
- as unacceptable as universal monarchy. Hence, until equilibrium is
- established and recognized between States or national forces, there must
- be war. War, says Proudhon, is not always necessary to determine which
- side is the strongest; and he has no trouble in proving this by examples
- drawn from the family, the workshop, and elsewhere. Passing then to the
- study of war, he proves that it by no means corresponds in practice to
- that which it ought to be according to his theory of the right of force.
- The systematic horrors of war naturally lead him to seek a cause for
- it other than the vindication of this right; and then only does the
- economist take it upon himself to denounce this cause to those who, like
- himself, want peace. The necessity of finding abroad a compensation
- for the misery resulting in every nation from the absence of economical
- equilibrium, is, according to Proudhon, the ever real, though ever
- concealed, cause of war. The pages devoted to this demonstration and to
- his theory of poverty, which he clearly distinguishes from misery and
- pauperism, shed entirely new light upon the philosophy of history. As
- for the author's conclusion, it is a very simple one. Since the treaty
- of Westphalia, and especially since the treaties of 1815, equilibrium
- has been the international law of Europe. It remains now, not to destroy
- it, but, while maintaining it, to labor peacefully, in every nation
- protected by it, for the equilibrium of economical forces. The last line
- of the book, evidently written to check imperial ambition, is: "Humanity
- wants no more war."
- In 1861, after Garibaldi's expedition and the battle of Castelfidardo,
- Proudhon immediately saw that the establishment of Italian unity would
- be a severe blow to European equilibrium. It was chiefly in order to
- maintain this equilibrium that he pronounced so energetically in
- favor of Italian federation, even though it should be at first only
- a federation of monarchs. In vain was it objected that, in being
- established by France, Italian unity would break European equilibrium in
- our favor. Proudhon, appealing to history, showed that every State which
- breaks the equilibrium in its own favor only causes the other States to
- combine against it, and thereby diminishes its influence and power. He
- added that, nations being essentially selfish, Italy would not fail,
- when opportunity offered, to place her interest above her gratitude.
- To maintain European equilibrium by diminishing great States and
- multiplying small ones; to unite the latter in organized federations,
- not for attack, but for defence; and with these federations, which, if
- they were not republican already, would quickly become so, to hold in
- check the great military monarchies,--such, in the beginning of 1861,
- was the political programme of Proudhon.
- The object of the federations, he said, will be to guarantee, as far as
- possible, the beneficent reign of peace; and they will have the
- further effect of securing in every nation the triumph of liberty over
- despotism. Where the largest unitary State is, there liberty is in the
- greatest danger; further, if this State be democratic, despotism without
- the counterpoise of majorities is to be feared. With the federation, it
- is not so. The universal suffrage of the federal State is checked by the
- universal suffrage of the federated States; and the latter is offset in
- its turn by PROPERTY, the stronghold of liberty, which it tends, not to
- destroy, but to balance with the institutions of MUTUALISM.
- All these ideas, and many others which were only hinted at in his
- work on "War and Peace," were developed by Proudhon in his subsequent
- publications, one of which has for its motto, "Reforms always, Utopias
- never." The thinker had evidently finished his evolution.
- The Council of State of the canton of Vaud having offered prizes for
- essays on the question of taxation, previously discussed at a congress
- held at Lausanne, Proudhon entered the ranks and carried off the first
- prize. His memoir was published in 1861 under the title of "The Theory
- of Taxation."
- About the same time, he wrote at Brussels, in "L'Office de Publicite,"
- some remarkable articles on the question of literary property, which
- was discussed at a congress held in Belgium, These articles must not be
- confounded with "Literary Majorats," a more complete work on the same
- subject, which was published in 1863, soon after his return to France.
- Arbitrarily excepted from the amnesty in 1859, Proudhon was pardoned two
- years later by a special act. He did not wish to take advantage of this
- favor, and seemed resolved to remain in Belgium until the 2d of June,
- 1863, the time when he was to acquire the privilege of prescription,
- when an absurd and ridiculous riot, excited in Brussels by an article
- published by him on federation and unity in Italy, induced him to hasten
- his return to France. Stones were thrown against the house in which
- he lived, in the Faubourg d'Ixelles. After having placed his wife and
- daughters in safety among his friends at Brussels, he arrived in Paris
- in September, 1862, and published there, "Federation and Italian Unity,"
- a pamphlet which naturally commences with the article which served as a
- pretext for the rioters in Brussels.
- Among the works begun by Proudhon while in Belgium, which death did not
- allow him to finish, we ought to mention a "History of Poland," which
- will be published later; and, "The Theory of Property," which appeared
- in 1865, before "The Gospels Annotated," and after the volume entitled
- "The Principle of Art and its Social Destiny."
- The publications of Proudhon, in 1863, were: 1. "Literary Majorats: An
- Examination of a Bill having for its object the Creation of a Perpetual
- Monopoly for the Benefit of Authors, Inventors, and Artists;" 2.
- "The Federative Principle and the Necessity of Re-establishing the
- Revolutionary party;" 3. "The Sworn Democrats and the Refractories;" 4.
- "Whether the Treaties of 1815 have ceased to exist? Acts of the Future
- Congress."
- The disease which was destined to kill him grew worse and worse; but
- Proudhon labored constantly!... A series of articles, published in 1864
- in "Le Messager de Paris," have been collected in a pamphlet under the
- title of "New Observations on Italian Unity." He hoped to publish
- during the same year his work on "The Political Capacity of the Working
- Classes," but was unable to write the last chapter.... He grew weaker
- continually. His doctor prescribed rest. In the month of August he went
- to Franche-Comte, where he spent a month. Having returned to Paris,
- he resumed his labor with difficulty.... From the month of December
- onwards, the heart disease made rapid progress; the oppression became
- insupportable, his legs were swollen, and he could not sleep....
- On the 19th of January, 1865, he died, towards two o'clock in the
- morning, in the arms of his wife, his sister-in-law, and the friend who
- writes these lines....
- The publication of his correspondence, to which his daughter Catherine
- is faithfully devoted, will tend, no doubt, to increase his reputation
- as a thinker, as a writer, and as an honest man.
- J. A. LANGLOIS.
- PREFACE.
- The following letter served as a preface to the first edition of this
- memoir:--
- "To the Members of the Academy of Besancon
- "PARIS, June 30, 1840.
- "GENTLEMEN,--In the course of your debate of the 9th of May, 1833,
- in regard to the triennial pension established by Madame Suard, you
- expressed the following wish:--
- "'The Academy requests the titulary to present it annually, during the
- first fortnight in July, with a succinct and logical statement of the
- various studies which he has pursued during the year which has just
- expired.'
- "I now propose, gentlemen, to discharge this duty.
- "When I solicited your votes, I boldly avowed my intention to bend my
- efforts to the discovery of some means of AMELIORATING THE PHYSICAL,
- MORAL, AND INTELLECTUAL CONDITION OF THE MERE NUMEROUS AND POORER
- CLASSES. This idea, foreign as it may have seemed to the object of my
- candidacy, you received favorably; and, by the precious distinction with
- which it has been your pleasure to honor me, you changed this formal
- offer into an inviolable and sacred obligation. Thenceforth I understood
- with how worthy and honorable a society I had to deal: my regard for
- its enlightenment, my recognition of its benefits, my enthusiasm for its
- glory, were unbounded.
- "Convinced at once that, in order to break loose from the beaten paths
- of opinions and systems, it was necessary to proceed in my study of man
- and society by scientific methods, and in a rigorous manner, I devoted
- one year to philology and grammar; linguistics, or the natural history
- of speech, being, of all the sciences, that which was best suited to
- the character of my mind, seemed to bear the closest relation to the
- researches which I was about to commence. A treatise, written at
- this period upon one of the most interesting questions of comparative
- grammar,[2] if it did not reveal the astonishing success, at least bore
- witness to the thoroughness, of my labors.
- "Since that time, metaphysics and moral science have been my only
- studies; my perception of the fact that these sciences, though badly
- defined as to their object and not confined to their sphere, are, like
- the natural sciences, susceptible of demonstration and certainty, has
- already rewarded my efforts.
- "But, gentlemen, of all the masters whom I have followed, to none do
- I owe so much as to you. Your co-operation, your programmes, your
- instructions, in agreement with my secret wishes and most cherished
- hopes, have at no time failed to enlighten me and to point out my road;
- this memoir on property is the child of your thought.
- "In 1838, the Academy of Besancon proposed the following question:
- TO WHAT CAUSES MUST WE ATTRIBUTE THE CONTINUALLY INCREASING NUMBER OF
- SUICIDES, AND WHAT ARE THE PROPER MEANS FOR ARRESTING THE EFFECTS OF
- THIS MORAL CONTAGION?
- "Thereby it asked, in less general terms, what was the cause of the
- social evil, and what was its remedy? You admitted that yourselves,
- gentlemen when your committee reported that the competitors had
- enumerated with exactness the immediate and particular causes of
- suicide, as well as the means of preventing each of them; but that
- from this enumeration, chronicled with more or less skill, no positive
- information had been gained, either as to the primary cause of the evil,
- or as to its remedy.
- "In 1839, your programme, always original and varied in its academical
- expression, became more exact. The investigations of 1838 had pointed
- out, as the causes or rather as the symptoms of the social malady,
- the neglect of the principles of religion and morality, the desire for
- wealth, the passion for enjoyment, and political disturbances. All these
- data were embodied by you in a single proposition: _THE UTILITY OF THE
- CELEBRATION OF SUNDAY AS REGARDS HYGIENE, MORALITY, AND SOCIAL AND
- POLITICAL RELATION_.
- "In a Christian tongue you asked, gentlemen, what was the true system
- of society. A competitor [3] dared to maintain, and believed that he
- had proved, that the institution of a day of rest at weekly intervals
- is inseparably bound up with a political system based on the equality of
- conditions; that without equality this institution is an anomaly and
- an impossibility: that equality alone can revive this ancient and
- mysterious keeping of the seventh day. This argument did not meet with
- your approbation, since, without denying the relation pointed out by
- the competitor, you judged, and rightly gentlemen, that the principle of
- equality of conditions not being demonstrated, the ideas of the author
- were nothing more than hypotheses.
- "Finally, gentlemen, this fundamental principle of equality you
- presented for competition in the following terms: THE ECONOMICAL AND
- MORAL CONSEQUENCES IN FRANCE UP TO THE PRESENT TIME, AND THOSE WHICH
- SEEM LIKELY TO APPEAR IN FUTURE, OF THE LAW CONCERNING THE EQUAL
- DIVISION OF HEREDITARY PROPERTY BETWEEN THE CHILDREN.
- "Instead of confining one to common places without breadth or
- significance, it seems to me that your question should be developed as
- follows:--
- "If the law has been able to render the right of heredity common to
- all the children of one father, can it not render it equal for all his
- grandchildren and great-grandchildren?
- "If the law no longer heeds the age of any member of the family, can
- it not, by the right of heredity, cease to heed it in the race, in the
- tribe, in the nation?
- "Can equality, by the right of succession, be preserved between
- citizens, as well as between cousins and brothers? In a word, can the
- principle of succession become a principle of equality?
- "To sum up all these ideas in one inclusive question: What is the
- principle of heredity? What are the foundations of inequality? What is
- property?
- "Such, gentlemen, is the object of the memoir that I offer you to day.
- "If I have rightly grasped the object of your thought; if I succeed in
- bringing to light a truth which is indisputable, but, from causes
- which I am bold enough to claim to have explained, has always been
- misunderstood; if by an infallible method of investigation, I establish
- the dogma of equality of conditions; if I determine the principle
- of civil law, the essence of justice, and the form of society; if I
- annihilate property forever,--to you, gentlemen, will redound all the
- glory, for it is to your aid and your inspiration that I owe it.
- "My purpose in this work is the application of method to the problems of
- philosophy; every other intention is foreign to and even abusive of it.
- "I have spoken lightly of jurisprudence: I had the right; but I should
- be unjust did I not distinguish between this pretended science and
- the men who practise it. Devoted to studies both laborious and severe,
- entitled in all respects to the esteem of their fellow-citizens by their
- knowledge and eloquence our legists deserve but one reproach, that of an
- excessive deference to arbitrary laws.
- "I have been pitiless in my criticism of the economists: for them
- I confess that, in general, I have no liking. The arrogance and
- the emptiness of their writings, their impertinent pride and their
- unwarranted blunders, have disgusted me. Whoever, knowing them, pardons
- them, may read them.
- "I have severely blamed the learned Christian Church: it was my duty.
- This blame results from the facts which I call attention to: why has
- the Church decreed concerning things which it does not understand? The
- Church has erred in dogma and in morals; physics and mathematics
- testify against her. It may be wrong for me to say it, but surely it
- is unfortunate for Christianity that it is true. To restore religion,
- gentlemen, it is necessary to condemn the Church.
- "Perhaps you will regret, gentlemen, that, in giving all my attention to
- method and evidence, I have too much neglected form and style: in vain
- should I have tried to do better. Literary hope and faith I have none.
- The nineteenth century is, in my eyes, a genesic era, in which new
- principles are elaborated, but in which nothing that is written shall
- endure. That is the reason, in my opinion, why, among so many men of
- talent, France to-day counts not one great writer. In a society like
- ours, to seek for literary glory seems to me an anachronism. Of what
- use is it to invoke an ancient sibyl when a muse is on the eve of birth?
- Pitiable actors in a tragedy nearing its end, that which it behooves us
- to do is to precipitate the catastrophe. The most deserving among us
- is he who plays best this part. Well, I no longer aspire to this sad
- success!
- "Why should I not confess it, gentlemen? I have aspired to your
- suffrages and sought the title of your pensioner, hating all which
- exists and full of projects for its destruction; I shall finish this
- investigation in a spirit of calm and philosophical resignation. I have
- derived more peace from the knowledge of the truth, than anger from the
- feeling of oppression; and the most precious fruit that I could wish to
- gather from this memoir would be the inspiration of my readers with that
- tranquillity of soul which arises from the clear perception of evil and
- its cause, and which is much more powerful than passion and enthusiasm.
- My hatred of privilege and human authority was unbounded; perhaps at
- times I have been guilty, in my indignation, of confounding persons and
- things; at present I can only despise and complain; to cease to hate I
- only needed to know.
- "It is for you now, gentlemen, whose mission and character are the
- proclamation of the truth, it is for you to instruct the people, and to
- tell them for what they ought to hope and what they ought to fear. The
- people, incapable as yet of sound judgment as to what is best for them,
- applaud indiscriminately the most opposite ideas, provided that in them
- they get a taste of flattery: to them the laws of thought are like the
- confines of the possible; to-day they can no more distinguish between a
- savant and a sophist, than formerly they could tell a physician from
- a sorcerer. 'Inconsiderately accepting, gathering together, and
- accumulating everything that is new, regarding all reports as true and
- indubitable, at the breath or ring of novelty they assemble like bees at
- the sound of a basin.' [4]
- "May you, gentlemen, desire equality as I myself desire it; may you,
- for the eternal happiness of our country, become its propagators and its
- heralds; may I be the last of your pensioners! Of all the wishes that
- I can frame, that, gentlemen, is the most worthy of you and the most
- honorable for me.
- "I am, with the profoundest respect and the most earnest gratitude,
- "Your pensioner,
- "P. J. PROUDHON."
- Two months after the receipt of this letter, the Academy, in its debate
- of August 24th, replied to the address of its pensioner by a note, the
- text of which I give below:--
- "A member calls the attention of the Academy to a pamphlet, published
- last June by the titulary of the Suard pension, entitled, "What is
- property?" and dedicated by the author to the Academy. He is of the
- opinion that the society owes it to justice, to example, and to its
- own dignity, to publicly disavow all responsibility for the anti-social
- doctrines contained in this publication. In consequence he demands:
- "1. That the Academy disavow and condemn, in the most formal manner,
- the work of the Suard pensioner, as having been published without its
- assent, and as attributing to it opinions diametrically opposed to the
- principles of each of its members;
- "2. That the pensioner be charged, in case he should publish a second
- edition of his book, to omit the dedication;
- "3. That this judgment of the Academy be placed upon the records.
- "These three propositions, put to vote, are adopted."
- After this ludicrous decree, which its authors thought to render
- powerful by giving it the form of a contradiction, I can only beg the
- reader not to measure the intelligence of my compatriots by that of our
- Academy.
- While my patrons in the social and political sciences were fulminating
- anathemas against my brochure, a man, who was a stranger to
- Franche-Comte, who did not know me, who might even have regarded himself
- as personally attacked by the too sharp judgment which I had passed upon
- the economists, a publicist as learned as he was modest, loved by the
- people whose sorrows he felt, honored by the power which he sought to
- enlighten without flattering or disgracing it, M. Blanqui--member of the
- Institute, professor of political economy, defender of property--took up
- my defence before his associates and before the ministry, and saved me
- from the blows of a justice which is always blind, because it is always
- ignorant.
- It seems to me that the reader will peruse with pleasure the letter
- which M. Blanqui did me the honor to write to me upon the publication
- of my second memoir, a letter as honorable to its author as it is
- flattering to him to whom it is addressed.
- "PARIS, May 1, 1841.
- "MONSIEUR,--I hasten to thank you for forwarding to me your second
- memoir upon property. I have read it with all the interest that an
- acquaintance with the first would naturally inspire. I am very glad that
- you have modified somewhat the rudeness of form which gave to a work
- of such gravity the manner and appearance of a pamphlet; for you quite
- frightened me, sir, and your talent was needed to reassure me in regard
- to your intentions. One does not expend so much real knowledge with
- the purpose of inflaming his country. This proposition, now coming into
- notice--PROPERTY IS ROBBERY!--was of a nature to repel from your book
- even those serious minds who do not judge by appearances, had you
- persisted in maintaining it in its rude simplicity. But if you have
- softened the form, you are none the less faithful to the ground-work
- of your doctrines; and although you have done me the honor to give me a
- share in this perilous teaching, I cannot accept a partnership which,
- as far as talent goes, would surely be a credit to me, but which would
- compromise me in all other respects.
- "I agree with you in one thing only; namely, that all kinds of property
- get too frequently abused in this world. But I do not reason from the
- abuse to the abolition,--an heroic remedy too much like death, which
- cures all evils. I will go farther: I will confess that, of all abuses,
- the most hateful to me are those of property; but once more, there is
- a remedy for this evil without violating it, all the more without
- destroying it. If the present laws allow abuse, we can reconstruct them.
- Our civil code is not the Koran; it is not wrong to examine it. Change,
- then, the laws which govern the use of property, but be sparing of
- anathemas; for, logically, where is the honest man whose hands are
- entirely clean? Do you think that one can be a robber without knowing
- it, without wishing it, without suspecting it? Do you not admit that
- society in its present state, like every man, has in its constitution
- all kinds of virtues and vices inherited from our ancestors? Is
- property, then, in your eyes a thing so simple and so abstract that you
- can re-knead and equalize it, if I may so speak, in your metaphysical
- mill? One who has said as many excellent and practical things as occur
- in these two beautiful and paradoxical improvisations of yours cannot
- be a pure and unwavering utopist. You are too well acquainted with the
- economical and academical phraseology to play with the hard words
- of revolutions. I believe, then, that you have handled property as
- Rousseau, eighty years ago, handled letters, with a magnificent and
- poetical display of wit and knowledge. Such, at least, is my opinion.
- "That is what I said to the Institute at the time when I presented my
- report upon your book. I knew that they wished to proceed against you in
- the courts; you perhaps do not know by how narrow a chance I succeeded
- in preventing them. [5] What chagrin I should always have felt, if
- the king's counsel, that is to say, the intellectual executioner, had
- followed in my very tracks to attack your book and annoy your person! I
- actually passed two terrible nights, and I succeeded in restraining
- the secular arm only by showing that your book was an academical
- dissertation, and not the manifesto of an incendiary. Your style is too
- lofty ever to be of service to the madmen who in discussing the gravest
- questions of our social order, use paving-stones as their weapons. But
- see to it, sir, that ere long they do not come, in spite of you, to
- seek for ammunition in this formidable arsenal, and that your
- vigorous metaphysics falls not into the hands of some sophist of the
- market-place, who might discuss the question in the presence of a
- starving audience: we should have pillage for conclusion and peroration.
- "I feel as deeply as you, sir, the abuses which you point out; but I
- have so great an affection for order,--not that common and strait-laced
- order with which the police are satisfied, but the majestic and imposing
- order of human societies,--that I sometimes find myself embarrassed
- in attacking certain abuses. I like to rebuild with one hand when I am
- compelled to destroy with the other. In pruning an old tree, we guard
- against destruction of the buds and fruit. You know that as well as any
- one. You are a wise and learned man; you have a thoughtful mind. The
- terms by which you characterize the fanatics of our day are strong
- enough to reassure the most suspicious imaginations as to your
- intentions; but you conclude in favor of the abolition of property! You
- wish to abolish the most powerful motor of the human mind; you attack
- the paternal sentiment in its sweetest illusions; with one word you
- arrest the formation of capital, and we build henceforth upon the sand
- instead of on a rock. That I cannot agree to; and for that reason I
- have criticised your book, so full of beautiful pages, so brilliant with
- knowledge and fervor!
- "I wish, sir, that my impaired health would permit me to examine with
- you, page by page, the memoir which you have done me the honor to
- address to me publicly and personally; I think I could offer some
- important criticisms. For the moment, I must content myself with
- thanking you for the kind words in which you have seen fit to speak of
- me. We each possess the merit of sincerity; I desire also the merit
- of prudence. You know how deep-seated is the disease under which the
- working-people are suffering; I know how many noble hearts beat under
- those rude garments, and I feel an irresistible and fraternal sympathy
- with the thousands of brave people who rise early in the morning to
- labor, to pay their taxes, and to make our country strong. I try to
- serve and enlighten them, whereas some endeavor to mislead them. You
- have not written directly for them. You have issued two magnificent
- manifestoes, the second more guarded than the first; issue a third more
- guarded than the second, and you will take high rank in science, whose
- first precept is calmness and impartiality.
- "Farewell, sir! No man's esteem for another can exceed mine for you.
- "BLANQUI."
- I should certainly take some exceptions to this noble and eloquent
- letter; but I confess that I am more inclined to realize the prediction
- with which it terminates than to augment needlessly the number of
- my antagonists. So much controversy fatigues and wearies me. The
- intelligence expended in the warfare of words is like that employed in
- battle: it is intelligence wasted. M. Blanqui acknowledges that property
- is abused in many harmful ways; I call PROPERTY the sum these abuses
- exclusively. To each of us property seems a polygon whose angles need
- knocking off; but, the operation performed, M. Blanqui maintains
- that the figure will still be a polygon (an hypothesis admitted in
- mathematics, although not proven), while I consider that this figure
- will be a circle. Honest people can at least understand one another.
- For the rest, I allow that, in the present state of the question, the
- mind may legitimately hesitate before deciding in favor of the abolition
- of property. To gain the victory for one's cause, it does not suffice
- simply to overthrow a principle generally recognized, which has the
- indisputable merit of systematically recapitulating our political
- theories; it is also necessary to establish the opposite principle, and
- to formulate the system which must proceed from it. Still further, it
- is necessary to show the method by which the new system will satisfy
- all the moral and political needs which induced the establishment of
- the first. On the following conditions, then, of subsequent evidence,
- depends the correctness of my preceding arguments:--
- The discovery of a system of absolute equality in which all existing
- institutions, save property, or the sum of the abuses of property,
- not only may find a place, but may themselves serve as instruments
- of equality: individual liberty, the division of power, the public
- ministry, the jury system, administrative and judicial organization, the
- unity and completeness of instruction, marriage, the family, heredity
- in direct and collateral succession, the right of sale and exchange, the
- right to make a will, and even birthright,--a system which, better than
- property, guarantees the formation of capital and keeps up the courage
- of all; which, from a superior point of view, explains, corrects, and
- completes the theories of association hitherto proposed, from Plato
- and Pythagoras to Babeuf, Saint Simon, and Fourier; a system, finally,
- which, serving as a means of transition, is immediately applicable.
- A work so vast requires, I am aware, the united efforts of twenty
- Montesquieus; nevertheless, if it is not given to a single man to
- finish, a single one can commence, the enterprise. The road that he
- shall traverse will suffice to show the end and assure the result.
- WHAT IS PROPERTY? OR,
- AN INQUIRY INTO THE PRINCIPLE OF RIGHT AND OF GOVERNMENT.
- FIRST MEMOIR.
- _Adversus hostem aeterna auctertas esto._
- Against the enemy, revendication is eternal. LAW OF THE
- TWELVE TABLES.
- CHAPTER I. METHOD PURSUED IN THIS WORK.--THE IDEA OF A REVOLUTION.
- If I were asked to answer the following question: WHAT IS SLAVERY? and I
- should answer in one word, IT IS MURDER, my meaning would be understood
- at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power
- to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of
- life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to
- this other question: WHAT IS PROPERTY! may I not likewise answer, IT
- IS ROBBERY, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second
- proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?
- I undertake to discuss the vital principle of our government and our
- institutions, property: I am in my right. I may be mistaken in the
- conclusion which shall result from my investigations: I am in my right.
- I think best to place the last thought of my book first: still am I in
- my right.
- Such an author teaches that property is a civil right, born of
- occupation and sanctioned by law; another maintains that it is a natural
- right, originating in labor,--and both of these doctrines, totally
- opposed as they may seem, are encouraged and applauded. I contend that
- neither labor, nor occupation, nor law, can create property; that it is
- an effect without a cause: am I censurable?
- But murmurs arise!
- PROPERTY IS ROBBERY! That is the war-cry of '93! That is the signal of
- revolutions!
- Reader, calm yourself: I am no agent of discord, no firebrand of
- sedition. I anticipate history by a few days; I disclose a truth whose
- development we may try in vain to arrest; I write the preamble of
- our future constitution. This proposition which seems to you
- blasphemous--PROPERTY IS ROBBERY--would, if our prejudices allowed us
- to consider it, be recognized as the lightning-rod to shield us from the
- coming thunderbolt; but too many interests stand in the way!... Alas!
- philosophy will not change the course of events: destiny will fulfill
- itself regardless of prophecy. Besides, must not justice be done and our
- education be finished?
- PROPERTY IS ROBBERY!... What a revolution in human ideas! PROPRIETOR and
- ROBBER have been at all times expressions as contradictory as the beings
- whom they designate are hostile; all languages have perpetuated this
- opposition. On what authority, then, do you venture to attack universal
- consent, and give the lie to the human race? Who are you, that you
- should question the judgment of the nations and the ages?
- Of what consequence to you, reader, is my obscure individuality? I
- live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and
- to evidence. My name, like yours, is TRUTH-SEEKER. [6] My mission is
- written in these words of the law: SPEAK WITHOUT HATRED AND WITHOUT
- FEAR; TELL THAT WHICH THOU KNOWEST! The work of our race is to build the
- temple of science, and this science includes man and Nature. Now, truth
- reveals itself to all; to-day to Newton and Pascal, tomorrow to
- the herdsman in the valley and the journeyman in the shop. Each one
- contributes his stone to the edifice; and, his task accomplished,
- disappears. Eternity precedes us, eternity follows us: between two
- infinites, of what account is one poor mortal that the century should
- inquire about him?
- Disregard then, reader, my title and my character, and attend only to my
- arguments. It is in accordance with universal consent that I undertake
- to correct universal error; from the OPINION of the human race I appeal
- to its FAITH. Have the courage to follow me; and, if your will is
- untrammelled, if your conscience is free, if your mind can unite two
- propositions and deduce a third therefrom, my ideas will inevitably
- become yours. In beginning by giving you my last word, it was my purpose
- to warn you, not to defy you; for I am certain that, if you read me, you
- will be compelled to assent. The things of which I am to speak are so
- simple and clear that you will be astonished at not having perceived
- them before, and you will say: "I have neglected to think." Others offer
- you the spectacle of genius wresting Nature's secrets from her, and
- unfolding before you her sublime messages; you will find here only a
- series of experiments upon JUSTICE and RIGHT a sort of verification of
- the weights and measures of your conscience. The operations shall be
- conducted under your very eyes; and you shall weigh the result.
- Nevertheless, I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the
- abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice,
- nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I
- leave the business of governing the world.
- One day I asked myself: Why is there so much sorrow and misery in
- society? Must man always be wretched? And not satisfied with the
- explanations given by the reformers,--these attributing the general
- distress to governmental cowardice and incapacity, those to conspirators
- and emeutes, still others to ignorance and general corruption,--and
- weary of the interminable quarrels of the tribune and the press, I
- sought to fathom the matter myself. I have consulted the masters of
- science; I have read a hundred volumes of philosophy, law, political
- economy, and history: would to God that I had lived in a century in
- which so much reading had been useless! I have made every effort to
- obtain exact information, comparing doctrines, replying to objections,
- continually constructing equations and reductions from arguments, and
- weighing thousands of syllogisms in the scales of the most rigorous
- logic. In this laborious work, I have collected many interesting facts
- which I shall share with my friends and the public as soon as I have
- leisure. But I must say that I recognized at once that we had never
- understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred:
- JUSTICE, EQUITY, LIBERTY; that concerning each of these principles our
- ideas have been utterly obscure; and, in fact, that this ignorance was
- the sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the
- calamities that have ever afflicted the human race.
- My mind was frightened by this strange result: I doubted my reason.
- What! said I, that which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor insight
- penetrated, you have discovered! Wretch, mistake not the visions of
- your diseased brain for the truths of science! Do you not know (great
- philosophers have said so) that in points of practical morality
- universal error is a contradiction?
- I resolved then to test my arguments; and in entering upon this new
- labor I sought an answer to the following questions: Is it possible
- that humanity can have been so long and so universally mistaken in the
- application of moral principles? How and why could it be mistaken? How
- can its error, being universal, be capable of correction?
- These questions, on the solution of which depended the certainty of my
- conclusions, offered no lengthy resistance to analysis. It will be seen,
- in chapter V. of this work, that in morals, as in all other branches of
- knowledge, the gravest errors are the dogmas of science; that, even in
- works of justice, to be mistaken is a privilege which ennobles man; and
- that whatever philosophical merit may attach to me is infinitely small.
- To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its
- appearance. In giving expression to the last stage of an idea,--an idea
- which permeates all minds, which to-morrow will be proclaimed by another
- if I fail to announce it to-day,--I can claim no merit save that of
- priority of utterance. Do we eulogize the man who first perceives the
- dawn?
- Yes: all men believe and repeat that equality of conditions is identical
- with equality of rights; that PROPERTY and ROBBERY are synonymous terms;
- that every social advantage accorded, or rather usurped, in the name of
- superior talent or service, is iniquity and extortion. All men in their
- hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made
- to understand it.
- Before entering directly upon the question before me, I must say a word
- of the road that I shall traverse. When Pascal approached a geometrical
- problem, he invented a method of solution; to solve a problem in
- philosophy a method is equally necessary. Well, by how much do the
- problems of which philosophy treats surpass in the gravity of their
- results those discussed by geometry! How much more imperatively, then,
- do they demand for their solution a profound and rigorous analysis!
- It is a fact placed for ever beyond doubt, say the modern psychologists,
- that every perception received by the mind is determined by certain
- general laws which govern the mind; is moulded, so to speak, in certain
- types pre-existing in our understanding, and which constitutes its
- original condition. Hence, say they, if the mind has no innate IDEAS,
- it has at least innate FORMS. Thus, for example, every phenomenon is of
- necessity conceived by us as happening in TIME and SPACE,--that compels
- us to infer a CAUSE of its occurrence; every thing which exists implies
- the ideas of SUBSTANCE, MODE, RELATION, NUMBER, &C.; in a word, we form
- no idea which is not related to some one of the general principles of
- reason, independent of which nothing exists.
- These axioms of the understanding, add the psychologists, these
- fundamental types, by which all our judgments and ideas are inevitably
- shaped, and which our sensations serve only to illuminate, are known
- in the schools as CATEGORIES. Their primordial existence in the mind is
- to-day demonstrated; they need only to be systematized and catalogued.
- Aristotle recognized ten; Kant increased the number to fifteen; M.
- Cousin has reduced it to three, to two, to one; and the indisputable
- glory of this professor will be due to the fact that, if he has not
- discovered the true theory of categories, he has, at least, seen more
- clearly than any one else the vast importance of this question,--the
- greatest and perhaps the only one with which metaphysics has to deal.
- I confess that I disbelieve in the innateness, not only of IDEAS, but
- also of FORMS or LAWS of our understanding; and I hold the metaphysics
- of Reid and Kant to be still farther removed from the truth than that of
- Aristotle. However, as I do not wish to enter here into a discussion of
- the mind, a task which would demand much labor and be of no interest to
- the public, I shall admit the hypothesis that our most general and
- most necessary ideas--such as time, space, substance, and cause--exist
- originally in the mind; or, at least, are derived immediately from its
- constitution.
- But it is a psychological fact none the less true, and one to which the
- philosophers have paid too little attention, that habit, like a second
- nature, has the power of fixing in the mind new categorical forms
- derived from the appearances which impress us, and by them usually
- stripped of objective reality, but whose influence over our judgments
- is no less predetermining than that of the original categories. Hence
- we reason by the ETERNAL and ABSOLUTE laws of our mind, and at the same
- time by the secondary rules, ordinarily faulty, which are suggested to
- us by imperfect observation. This is the most fecund source of false
- prejudices, and the permanent and often invincible cause of a multitude
- of errors. The bias resulting from these prejudices is so strong that
- often, even when we are fighting against a principle which our mind
- thinks false, which is repugnant to our reason, and which our conscience
- disapproves, we defend it without knowing it, we reason in accordance
- with it, and we obey it while attacking it. Enclosed within a circle,
- our mind revolves about itself, until a new observation, creating within
- us new ideas, brings to view an external principle which delivers us
- from the phantom by which our imagination is possessed.
- Thus, we know to-day that, by the laws of a universal magnetism whose
- cause is still unknown, two bodies (no obstacle intervening) tend to
- unite by an accelerated impelling force which we call GRAVITATION. It is
- gravitation which causes unsupported bodies to fall to the ground, which
- gives them weight, and which fastens us to the earth on which we live.
- Ignorance of this cause was the sole obstacle which prevented the
- ancients from believing in the antipodes. "Can you not see," said St.
- Augustine after Lactantius, "that, if there were men under our feet,
- their heads would point downward, and that they would fall into the
- sky?" The bishop of Hippo, who thought the earth flat because it
- appeared so to the eye, supposed in consequence that, if we should
- connect by straight lines the zenith with the nadir in different places,
- these lines would be parallel with each other; and in the direction
- of these lines he traced every movement from above to below. Thence he
- naturally concluded that the stars were rolling torches set in the vault
- of the sky; that, if left to themselves, they would fall to the earth in
- a shower of fire; that the earth was one vast plain, forming the lower
- portion of the world, &c. If he had been asked by what the world itself
- was sustained, he would have answered that he did not know, but that
- to God nothing is impossible. Such were the ideas of St. Augustine in
- regard to space and movement, ideas fixed within him by a prejudice
- derived from an appearance, and which had become with him a general and
- categorical rule of judgment. Of the reason why bodies fall his mind
- knew nothing; he could only say that a body falls because it falls.
- With us the idea of a fall is more complex: to the general ideas of
- space and movement which it implies, we add that of attraction or
- direction towards a centre, which gives us the higher idea of cause. But
- if physics has fully corrected our judgment in this respect, we still
- make use of the prejudice of St. Augustine; and when we say that a thing
- has FALLEN, we do not mean simply and in general that there has been
- an effect of gravitation, but specially and in particular that it is
- towards the earth, and FROM ABOVE TO BELOW, that this movement has taken
- place. Our mind is enlightened in vain; the imagination prevails, and
- our language remains forever incorrigible. To DESCEND FROM HEAVEN is as
- incorrect an expression as to MOUNT TO HEAVEN; and yet this expression
- will live as long as men use language.
- All these phrases--FROM ABOVE TO BELOW; TO DESCEND FROM HEAVEN; TO FALL
- FROM THE CLOUDS, &C.--are henceforth harmless, because we know how to
- rectify them in practice; but let us deign to consider for a moment how
- much they have retarded the progress of science. If, indeed, it be a
- matter of little importance to statistics, mechanics, hydrodynamics, and
- ballistics, that the true cause of the fall of bodies should be known,
- and that our ideas of the general movements in space should be exact,
- it is quite otherwise when we undertake to explain the system of the
- universe, the cause of tides, the shape of the earth, and its position
- in the heavens: to understand these things we must leave the circle
- of appearances. In all ages there have been ingenious mechanicians,
- excellent architects, skilful artillerymen: any error, into which it was
- possible for them to fall in regard to the rotundity of the earth and
- gravitation, in no wise retarded the development of their art; the
- solidity of their buildings and accuracy of their aim was not affected
- by it. But sooner or later they were forced to grapple with phenomena,
- which the supposed parallelism of all perpendiculars erected from the
- earth's surface rendered inexplicable: then also commenced a struggle
- between the prejudices, which for centuries had sufficed in daily
- practice, and the unprecedented opinions which the testimony of the eyes
- seemed to contradict.
- Thus, on the one hand, the falsest judgments, whether based on isolated
- facts or only on appearances, always embrace some truths whose sphere,
- whether large or small, affords room for a certain number of inferences,
- beyond which we fall into absurdity. The ideas of St. Augustine, for
- example, contained the following truths: that bodies fall towards the
- earth, that they fall in a straight line, that either the sun or the
- earth moves, that either the sky or the earth turns, &c. These general
- facts always have been true; our science has added nothing to them. But,
- on the other hand, it being necessary to account for every thing, we are
- obliged to seek for principles more and more comprehensive: that is why
- we have had to abandon successively, first the opinion that the world
- was flat, then the theory which regards it as the stationary centre of
- the universe, &c.
- If we pass now from physical nature to the moral world, we still find
- ourselves subject to the same deceptions of appearance, to the same
- influences of spontaneity and habit. But the distinguishing feature of
- this second division of our knowledge is, on the one hand, the good
- or the evil which we derive from our opinions; and, on the other, the
- obstinacy with which we defend the prejudice which is tormenting and
- killing us.
- Whatever theory we embrace in regard to the shape of the earth and the
- cause of its weight, the physics of the globe does not suffer; and,
- as for us, our social economy can derive therefrom neither profit nor
- damage. But it is in us and through us that the laws of our moral nature
- work; now, these laws cannot be executed without our deliberate aid,
- and, consequently, unless we know them. If, then, our science of moral
- laws is false, it is evident that, while desiring our own good, we are
- accomplishing our own evil; if it is only incomplete, it may suffice for
- a time for our social progress, but in the long run it will lead us
- into a wrong road, and will finally precipitate us into an abyss of
- calamities.
- Then it is that we need to exercise our highest judgments; and, be it
- said to our glory, they are never found wanting: but then also commences
- a furious struggle between old prejudices and new ideas. Days of
- conflagration and anguish! We are told of the time when, with the same
- beliefs, with the same institutions, all the world seemed happy: why
- complain of these beliefs; why banish these institutions? We are slow to
- admit that that happy age served the precise purpose of developing the
- principle of evil which lay dormant in society; we accuse men and gods,
- the powers of earth and the forces of Nature. Instead of seeking the
- cause of the evil in his mind and heart, man blames his masters, his
- rivals, his neighbors, and himself; nations arm themselves, and slay
- and exterminate each other, until equilibrium is restored by the vast
- depopulation, and peace again arises from the ashes of the combatants.
- So loath is humanity to touch the customs of its ancestors, and to
- change the laws framed by the founders of communities, and confirmed by
- the faithful observance of the ages.
- _Nihil motum ex antiquo probabile est_: Distrust all innovations, wrote
- Titus Livius. Undoubtedly it would be better were man not compelled to
- change: but what! because he is born ignorant, because he exists only
- on condition of gradual self-instruction, must he abjure the light,
- abdicate his reason, and abandon himself to fortune? Perfect health is
- better than convalescence: should the sick man, therefore, refuse to
- be cured? Reform, reform! cried, ages since, John the Baptist and Jesus
- Christ. Reform, reform! cried our fathers, fifty years ago; and for a
- long time to come we shall shout, Reform, reform!
- Seeing the misery of my age, I said to myself: Among the principles that
- support society, there is one which it does not understand, which its
- ignorance has vitiated, and which causes all the evil that exists. This
- principle is the most ancient of all; for it is a characteristic of
- revolutions to tear down the most modern principles, and to respect
- those of long-standing. Now the evil by which we suffer is anterior to
- all revolutions. This principle, impaired by our ignorance, is honored
- and cherished; for if it were not cherished it would harm nobody, it
- would be without influence.
- But this principle, right in its purpose, but misunderstood: this
- principle, as old as humanity, what is it? Can it be religion?
- All men believe in God: this dogma belongs at once to their conscience
- and their mind. To humanity God is a fact as primitive, an idea as
- inevitable, a principle as necessary as are the categorical ideas of
- cause, substance, time, and space to our understanding. God is proven to
- us by the conscience prior to any inference of the mind; just as the
- sun is proven to us by the testimony of the senses prior to all the
- arguments of physics. We discover phenomena and laws by observation and
- experience; only this deeper sense reveals to us existence. Humanity
- believes that God is; but, in believing in God, what does it believe? In
- a word, what is God?
- The nature of this notion of Divinity,--this primitive, universal
- notion, born in the race,--the human mind has not yet fathomed. At each
- step that we take in our investigation of Nature and of causes, the idea
- of God is extended and exalted; the farther science advances, the more
- God seems to grow and broaden. Anthropomorphism and idolatry constituted
- of necessity the faith of the mind in its youth, the theology of infancy
- and poesy. A harmless error, if they had not endeavored to make it a
- rule of conduct, and if they had been wise enough to respect the
- liberty of thought. But having made God in his own image, man wished
- to appropriate him still farther; not satisfied with disfiguring the
- Almighty, he treated him as his patrimony, his goods, his possessions.
- God, pictured in monstrous forms, became throughout the world the
- property of man and of the State. Such was the origin of the corruption
- of morals by religion, and the source of pious feuds and holy wars.
- Thank Heaven! we have learned to allow every one his own beliefs; we
- seek for moral laws outside the pale of religion. Instead of legislating
- as to the nature and attributes of God, the dogmas of theology, and
- the destiny of our souls, we wisely wait for science to tell us what to
- reject and what to accept. God, soul, religion,--eternal objects of
- our unwearied thought and our most fatal aberrations, terrible
- problems whose solution, for ever attempted, for ever remains
- unaccomplished,--concerning all these questions we may still be
- mistaken, but at least our error is harmless. With liberty in religion,
- and the separation of the spiritual from the temporal power, the
- influence of religious ideas upon the progress of society is purely
- negative; no law, no political or civil institution being founded on
- religion. Neglect of duties imposed by religion may increase the general
- corruption, but it is not the primary cause; it is only an auxiliary or
- result. It is universally admitted, and especially in the matter
- which now engages our attention, that the cause of the inequality
- of conditions among men--of pauperism, of universal misery, and of
- governmental embarrassments--can no longer be traced to religion: we
- must go farther back, and dig still deeper.
- But what is there in man older and deeper than the religious sentiment?
- There is man himself; that is, volition and conscience, free-will and
- law, eternally antagonistic. Man is at war with himself: why?
- "Man," say the theologians, "transgressed in the beginning; our race
- is guilty of an ancient offence. For this transgression humanity has
- fallen; error and ignorance have become its sustenance. Read history,
- you will find universal proof of this necessity for evil in the
- permanent misery of nations. Man suffers and always will suffer; his
- disease is hereditary and constitutional. Use palliatives, employ
- emollients; there is no remedy."
- Nor is this argument peculiar to the theologians; we find it
- expressed in equivalent language in the philosophical writings of the
- materialists, believers in infinite perfectibility. Destutt de Tracy
- teaches formally that poverty, crime, and war are the inevitable
- conditions of our social state; necessary evils, against which it would
- be folly to revolt. So, call it NECESSITY OF EVIL or ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY,
- it is at bottom the same philosophy.
- "The first man transgressed." If the votaries of the Bible interpreted
- it faithfully, they would say: MAN ORIGINALLY TRANSGRESSED, that is,
- made a mistake; for TO TRANSGRESS, TO FAIL, TO MAKE A MISTAKE, all mean
- the same thing.
- "The consequences of Adam's transgression are inherited by the race;
- the first is ignorance." Truly, the race, like the individual, is born
- ignorant; but, in regard to a multitude of questions, even in the moral
- and political spheres, this ignorance of the race has been dispelled:
- who says that it will not depart altogether? Mankind makes continual
- progress toward truth, and light ever triumphs over darkness. Our
- disease is not, then, absolutely incurable, and the theory of the
- theologians is worse than inadequate; it is ridiculous, since it is
- reducible to this tautology: "Man errs, because he errs." While the true
- statement is this: "Man errs, because he learns."
- Now, if man arrives at a knowledge of all that he needs to know, it is
- reasonable to believe that, ceasing to err, he will cease to suffer.
- But if we question the doctors as to this law, said to be engraved upon
- the heart of man, we shall immediately see that they dispute about a
- matter of which they know nothing; that, concerning the most important
- questions, there are almost as many opinions as authors; that we find
- no two agreeing as to the best form of government, the principle of
- authority, and the nature of right; that all sail hap-hazard upon a
- shoreless and bottomless sea, abandoned to the guidance of their private
- opinions which they modestly take to be right reason. And, in view
- of this medley of contradictory opinions, we say: "The object of our
- investigations is the law, the determination of the social principle.
- Now, the politicians, that is, the social scientists, do not understand
- each other; then the error lies in themselves; and, as every error has
- a reality for its object, we must look in their books to find the truth
- which they have unconsciously deposited there."
- Now, of what do the lawyers and the publicists treat? Of JUSTICE,
- EQUITY, LIBERTY, NATURAL LAW, CIVIL LAWS, &c. But what is justice?
- What is its principle, its character, its formula? To this question our
- doctors evidently have no reply; for otherwise their science, starting
- with a principle clear and well defined, would quit the region of
- probabilities, and all disputes would end.
- What is justice? The theologians answer: "All justice comes from God."
- That is true; but we know no more than before.
- The philosophers ought to be better informed: they have argued so much
- about justice and injustice! Unhappily, an examination proves that their
- knowledge amounts to nothing, and that with them--as with the savages
- whose every prayer to the sun is simply _O! O!_--it is a cry of
- admiration, love, and enthusiasm; but who does not know that the sun
- attaches little meaning to the interjection O! That is exactly our
- position toward the philosophers in regard to justice. Justice, they
- say, is a DAUGHTER OF HEAVEN; A LIGHT WHICH ILLUMINES EVERY MAN THAT
- COMES INTO THE WORLD; THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PREROGATIVE OF OUR NATURE;
- THAT WHICH DISTINGUISHES US FROM THE BEASTS AND LIKENS US TO GOD--and
- a thousand other similar things. What, I ask, does this pious litany
- amount to? To the prayer of the savages: O!
- All the most reasonable teachings of human wisdom concerning justice are
- summed up in that famous adage: DO UNTO OTHERS THAT WHICH YOU WOULD THAT
- OTHERS SHOULD DO UNTO YOU; DO NOT UNTO OTHERS THAT WHICH YOU WOULD
- NOT THAT OTHERS SHOULD DO UNTO YOU. But this rule of moral practice is
- unscientific: what have I a right to wish that others should do or not
- do to me? It is of no use to tell me that my duty is equal to my right,
- unless I am told at the same time what my right is.
- Let us try to arrive at something more precise and positive.
- Justice is the central star which governs societies, the pole around
- which the political world revolves, the principle and the regulator of
- all transactions. Nothing takes place between men save in the name of
- RIGHT; nothing without the invocation of justice. Justice is not the
- work of the law: on the contrary, the law is only a declaration and
- application of JUSTICE in all circumstances where men are liable to come
- in contact. If, then, the idea that we form of justice and right were
- ill-defined, if it were imperfect or even false, it is clear that all
- our legislative applications would be wrong, our institutions vicious,
- our politics erroneous: consequently there would be disorder and social
- chaos.
- This hypothesis of the perversion of justice in our minds, and, as a
- necessary result, in our acts, becomes a demonstrated fact when it is
- shown that the opinions of men have not borne a constant relation to the
- notion of justice and its applications; that at different periods they
- have undergone modifications: in a word, that there has been progress
- in ideas. Now, that is what history proves by the most overwhelming
- testimony.
- Eighteen Hundred years ago, the world, under the rule of the Caesars,
- exhausted itself in slavery, superstition, and voluptuousness. The
- people--intoxicated and, as it were, stupefied by their long-continued
- orgies--had lost the very notion of right and duty: war and dissipation
- by turns swept them away; usury and the labor of machines (that is of
- slaves), by depriving them of the means of subsistence, hindered them
- from continuing the species. Barbarism sprang up again, in a hideous
- form, from this mass of corruption, and spread like a devouring leprosy
- over the depopulated provinces. The wise foresaw the downfall of the
- empire, but could devise no remedy. What could they think indeed? To
- save this old society it would have been necessary to change the objects
- of public esteem and veneration, and to abolish the rights affirmed by
- a justice purely secular; they said: "Rome has conquered through her
- politics and her gods; any change in theology and public opinion would
- be folly and sacrilege. Rome, merciful toward conquered nations, though
- binding them in chains, spared their lives; slaves are the most fertile
- source of her wealth; freedom of the nations would be the negation of
- her rights and the ruin of her finances. Rome, in fact, enveloped in the
- pleasures and gorged with the spoils of the universe, is kept alive by
- victory and government; her luxury and her pleasures are the price of
- her conquests: she can neither abdicate nor dispossess herself."
- Thus Rome had the facts and the law on her side. Her pretensions were
- justified by universal custom and the law of nations. Her institutions
- were based upon idolatry in religion, slavery in the State, and
- epicurism in private life; to touch those was to shake society to its
- foundations, and, to use our modern expression, to open the abyss of
- revolutions. So the idea occurred to no one; and yet humanity was dying
- in blood and luxury.
- All at once a man appeared, calling himself The Word of God. It is not
- known to this day who he was, whence he came, nor what suggested to
- him his ideas. He went about proclaiming everywhere that the end of the
- existing society was at hand, that the world was about to experience a
- new birth; that the priests were vipers, the lawyers ignoramuses,
- and the philosophers hypocrites and liars; that master and slave
- were equals, that usury and every thing akin to it was robbery, that
- proprietors and idlers would one day burn, while the poor and pure in
- heart would find a haven of peace.
- This man--The Word of God--was denounced and arrested as a public enemy
- by the priests and the lawyers, who well understood how to induce the
- people to demand his death. But this judicial murder, though it put the
- finishing stroke to their crimes, did not destroy the doctrinal seeds
- which The Word of God had sown. After his death, his original disciples
- travelled about in all directions, preaching what they called the GOOD
- NEWS, creating in their turn millions of missionaries; and, when their
- task seemed to be accomplished, dying by the sword of Roman justice.
- This persistent agitation, the war of the executioners and martyrs,
- lasted nearly three centuries, ending in the conversion of the world.
- Idolatry was destroyed, slavery abolished, dissolution made room for a
- more austere morality, and the contempt for wealth was sometimes pushed
- almost to privation.
- Society was saved by the negation of its own principles, by a revolution
- in its religion, and by violation of its most sacred rights. In this
- revolution, the idea of justice spread to an extent that had not before
- been dreamed of, never to return to its original limits. Heretofore
- justice had existed only for the masters; [7] it then commenced to exist
- for the slaves.
- Nevertheless, the new religion at that time had borne by no means all
- its fruits. There was a perceptible improvement of the public morals,
- and a partial release from oppression; but, other than that, the SEEDS
- SOWN BY THE SON OF MAN, having fallen into idolatrous hearts, had
- produced nothing save innumerable discords and a quasi-poetical
- mythology. Instead of developing into their practical consequences the
- principles of morality and government taught by The Word of God, his
- followers busied themselves in speculations as to his birth, his origin,
- his person, and his actions; they discussed his parables, and from the
- conflict of the most extravagant opinions upon unanswerable questions
- and texts which no one understood, was born THEOLOGY,--which may be
- defined as the SCIENCE OF THE INFINITELY ABSURD.
- The truth of CHRISTIANITY did not survive the age of the apostles; the
- GOSPEL, commented upon and symbolized by the Greeks and Latins, loaded
- with pagan fables, became literally a mass of contradictions; and to
- this day the reign of the INFALLIBLE CHURCH has been a long era of
- darkness. It is said that the GATES OF HELL will not always prevail,
- that THE WORD OF GOD will return, and that one day men will know truth
- and justice; but that will be the death of Greek and Roman Catholicism,
- just as in the light of science disappeared the caprices of opinion.
- The monsters which the successors of the apostles were bent on
- destroying, frightened for a moment, reappeared gradually, thanks to the
- crazy fanaticism, and sometimes the deliberate connivance, of priests
- and theologians. The history of the enfranchisement of the French
- communes offers constantly the spectacle of the ideas of justice and
- liberty spreading among the people, in spite of the combined efforts of
- kings, nobles, and clergy. In the year 1789 of the Christian era, the
- French nation, divided by caste, poor and oppressed, struggled in the
- triple net of royal absolutism, the tyranny of nobles and parliaments,
- and priestly intolerance. There was the right of the king and the right
- of the priest, the right of the patrician and the right of the plebeian;
- there were the privileges of birth, province, communes, corporations,
- and trades; and, at the bottom of all, violence, immorality, and misery.
- For some time they talked of reformation; those who apparently desired
- it most favoring it only for their own profit, and the people who were
- to be the gainers expecting little and saying nothing. For a long
- time these poor people, either from distrust, incredulity, or despair,
- hesitated to ask for their rights: it is said that the habit of serving
- had taken the courage away from those old communes, which in the middle
- ages were so bold.
- Finally a book appeared, summing up the whole matter in these two
- propositions: WHAT IS THE THIRD ESTATE?--NOTHING. WHAT OUGHT IT
- TO BE?--EVERY THING. Some one added by way of comment: WHAT IS THE
- KING?--THE SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE.
- This was a sudden revelation: the veil was torn aside, a thick bandage
- fell from all eyes. The people commenced to reason thus:--
- If the king is our servant, he ought to report to us;
- If he ought to report to us, he is subject to control;
- If he can be controlled, he is responsible;
- If he is responsible, he is punishable;
- If he is punishable, he ought to be punished according to his merits;
- If he ought to be punished according to his merits, he can be punished
- with death.
- Five years after the publication of the brochure of Sieyes, the third
- estate was every thing; the king, the nobility, the clergy, were no
- more. In 1793, the nation, without stopping at the constitutional
- fiction of the inviolability of the sovereign, conducted Louis XVI. to
- the scaffold; in 1830, it accompanied Charles X. to Cherbourg. In each
- case, it may have erred, in fact, in its judgment of the offence; but,
- in right, the logic which led to its action was irreproachable. The
- people, in punishing their sovereign, did precisely that which the
- government of July was so severely censured for failing to do when it
- refused to execute Louis Bonaparte after the affair of Strasburg: they
- struck the true culprit. It was an application of the common law, a
- solemn decree of justice enforcing the penal laws. [8]
- The spirit which gave rise to the movement of '89 was a spirit of
- negation; that, of itself, proves that the order of things which was
- substituted for the old system was not methodical or well-considered;
- that, born of anger and hatred, it could not have the effect of a
- science based on observation and study; that its foundations, in a word,
- were not derived from a profound knowledge of the laws of Nature and
- society. Thus the people found that the republic, among the so-called
- new institutions, was acting on the very principles against which they
- had fought, and was swayed by all the prejudices which they had intended
- to destroy. We congratulate ourselves, with inconsiderate enthusiasm,
- on the glorious French Revolution, the regeneration of 1789, the great
- changes that have been effected, and the reversion of institutions: a
- delusion, a delusion!
- When our ideas on any subject, material, intellectual, or social,
- undergo a thorough change in consequence of new observations, I call
- that movement of the mind REVOLUTION. If the ideas are simply extended
- or modified, there is only PROGRESS. Thus the system of Ptolemy was a
- step in astronomical progress, that of Copernicus was a revolution. So,
- in 1789, there was struggle and progress; revolution there was none. An
- examination of the reforms which were attempted proves this.
- The nation, so long a victim of monarchical selfishness, thought to
- deliver itself for ever by declaring that it alone was sovereign. But
- what was monarchy? The sovereignty of one man. What is democracy? The
- sovereignty of the nation, or, rather, of the national majority. But it
- is, in both cases, the sovereignty of man instead of the sovereignty of
- the law, the sovereignty of the will instead of the sovereignty of the
- reason; in one word, the passions instead of justice. Undoubtedly, when
- a nation passes from the monarchical to the democratic state, there
- is progress, because in multiplying the sovereigns we increase the
- opportunities of the reason to substitute itself for the will; but in
- reality there is no revolution in the government, since the principle
- remains the same. Now, we have the proof to-day that, with the most
- perfect democracy, we cannot be free. [9]
- Nor is that all. The nation-king cannot exercise its sovereignty itself;
- it is obliged to delegate it to agents: this is constantly reiterated by
- those who seek to win its favor. Be these agents five, ten, one hundred,
- or a thousand, of what consequence is the number; and what matters the
- name? It is always the government of man, the rule of will and caprice.
- I ask what this pretended revolution has revolutionized?
- We know, too, how this sovereignty was exercised; first by the
- Convention, then by the Directory, afterwards confiscated by the Consul.
- As for the Emperor, the strong man so much adored and mourned by the
- nation, he never wanted to be dependent on it; but, as if intending to
- set its sovereignty at defiance, he dared to demand its suffrage: that
- is, its abdication, the abdication of this inalienable sovereignty; and
- he obtained it.
- But what is sovereignty? It is, they say, the POWER TO MAKE LAW. [10]
- Another absurdity, a relic of despotism. The nation had long seen kings
- issuing their commands in this form: FOR SUCH IS OUR PLEASURE; it wished
- to taste in its turn the pleasure of making laws. For fifty years it
- has brought them forth by myriads; always, be it understood, through the
- agency of representatives. The play is far from ended.
- The definition of sovereignty was derived from the definition of the
- law. The law, they said, is THE EXPRESSION OF THE WILL OF THE SOVEREIGN:
- then, under a monarchy, the law is the expression of the will of the
- king; in a republic, the law is the expression of the will of the
- people. Aside from the difference in the number of wills, the two
- systems are exactly identical: both share the same error, namely, that
- the law is the expression of a will; it ought to be the expression of
- a fact. Moreover they followed good leaders: they took the citizen of
- Geneva for their prophet, and the contrat social for their Koran.
- Bias and prejudice are apparent in all the phrases of the new
- legislators. The nation had suffered from a multitude of exclusions and
- privileges; its representatives issued the following declaration: ALL
- MEN ARE EQUAL BY NATURE AND BEFORE THE LAW; an ambiguous and redundant
- declaration. MEN ARE EQUAL BY NATURE: does that mean that they are equal
- in size, beauty, talents, and virtue? No; they meant, then, political
- and civil equality. Then it would have been sufficient to have said: ALL
- MEN ARE EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW.
- But what is equality before the law? Neither the constitution of 1790,
- nor that of '93, nor the granted charter, nor the accepted charter, have
- defined it accurately. All imply an inequality in fortune and station
- incompatible with even a shadow of equality in rights. In this respect
- it may be said that all our constitutions have been faithful expressions
- of the popular will: I am going, to prove it.
- Formerly the people were excluded from civil and military offices; it
- was considered a wonder when the following high-sounding article
- was inserted in the Declaration of Rights: "All citizens are equally
- eligible to office; free nations know no qualifications in their choice
- of officers save virtues and talents."
- They certainly ought to have admired so beautiful an idea: they admired
- a piece of nonsense. Why! the sovereign people, legislators, and
- reformers, see in public offices, to speak plainly, only opportunities
- for pecuniary advancement. And, because it regards them as a source of
- profit, it decrees the eligibility of citizens. For of what use would
- this precaution be, if there were nothing to gain by it? No one would
- think of ordaining that none but astronomers and geographers should be
- pilots, nor of prohibiting stutterers from acting at the theatre and
- the opera. The nation was still aping the kings: like them it wished
- to award the lucrative positions to its friends and flatterers.
- Unfortunately, and this last feature completes the resemblance, the
- nation did not control the list of livings; that was in the hands of its
- agents and representatives. They, on the other hand, took care not to
- thwart the will of their gracious sovereign.
- This edifying article of the Declaration of Rights, retained in the
- charters of 1814 and 1830, implies several kinds of civil inequality;
- that is, of inequality before the law: inequality of station, since the
- public functions are sought only for the consideration and emoluments
- which they bring; inequality of wealth, since, if it had been desired
- to equalize fortunes, public service would have been regarded as a duty,
- not as a reward; inequality of privilege, the law not stating what
- it means by TALENTS and VIRTUES. Under the empire, virtue and talent
- consisted simply in military bravery and devotion to the emperor; that
- was shown when Napoleon created his nobility, and attempted to connect
- it with the ancients. To-day, the man who pays taxes to the amount
- of two hundred francs is virtuous; the talented man is the honest
- pickpocket: such truths as these are accounted trivial.
- The people finally legalized property. God forgive them, for they
- knew not what they did! For fifty years they have suffered for their
- miserable folly. But how came the people, whose voice, they tell us,
- is the voice of God, and whose conscience is infallible,--how came the
- people to err? How happens it that, when seeking liberty and equality,
- they fell back into privilege and slavery? Always through copying the
- ancient regime.
- Formerly, the nobility and the clergy contributed towards the expenses
- of the State only by voluntary aid and gratuitous gift; their property
- could not be seized even for debt,--while the plebeian, overwhelmed by
- taxes and statute-labor, was continually tormented, now by the
- king's tax-gatherers, now by those of the nobles and clergy. He whose
- possessions were subject to mortmain could neither bequeath nor inherit
- property; he was treated like the animals, whose services and offspring
- belong to their master by right of accession. The people wanted the
- conditions of OWNERSHIP to be alike for all; they thought that every one
- should ENJOY AND FREELY DISPOSE OF HIS POSSESSIONS HIS INCOME AND THE
- FRUIT OF HIS LABOR AND INDUSTRY. The people did not invent property; but
- as they had not the same privileges in regard to it, which the nobles
- and clergy possessed, they decreed that the right should be exercised
- by all under the same conditions. The more obnoxious forms of
- property--statute-labor, mortmain, maitrise, and exclusion from public
- office--have disappeared; the conditions of its enjoyment have been
- modified: the principle still remains the same. There has been progress
- in the regulation of the right; there has been no revolution.
- These, then, are the three fundamental principles of modern society,
- established one after another by the movements of 1789 and 1830: 1.
- SOVEREIGNTY OF THE HUMAN WILL; in short, DESPOTISM. 2. INEQUALITY OF
- WEALTH AND RANK. 3. PROPERTY--above JUSTICE, always invoked as the
- guardian angel of sovereigns, nobles, and proprietors; JUSTICE, the
- general, primitive, categorical law of all society.
- We must ascertain whether the ideas of DESPOTISM, CIVIL INEQUALITY
- and PROPERTY, are in harmony with the primitive notion of JUSTICE, and
- necessarily follow from it,--assuming various forms according to the
- condition, position, and relation of persons; or whether they are not
- rather the illegitimate result of a confusion of different things, a
- fatal association of ideas. And since justice deals especially with the
- questions of government, the condition of persons, and the possession
- of things, we must ascertain under what conditions, judging by universal
- opinion and the progress of the human mind, government is just, the
- condition of citizens is just, and the possession of things is just;
- then, striking out every thing which fails to meet these conditions,
- the result will at once tell us what legitimate government is, what the
- legitimate condition of citizens is, and what the legitimate possession
- of things is; and finally, as the last result of the analysis, what
- JUSTICE is.
- Is the authority of man over man just?
- Everybody answers, "No; the authority of man is only the authority of
- the law, which ought to be justice and truth." The private will counts
- for nothing in government, which consists, first, in discovering truth
- and justice in order to make the law; and, second, in superintending the
- execution of this law. I do not now inquire whether our constitutional
- form of government satisfies these conditions; whether, for example, the
- will of the ministry never influences the declaration and interpretation
- of the law; or whether our deputies, in their debates, are more intent
- on conquering by argument than by force of numbers: it is enough for me
- that my definition of a good government is allowed to be correct. This
- idea is exact. Yet we see that nothing seems more just to the Oriental
- nations than the despotism of their sovereigns; that, with the ancients
- and in the opinion of the philosophers themselves, slavery was just;
- that in the middle ages the nobles, the priests, and the bishops felt
- justified in holding slaves; that Louis XIV. thought that he was right
- when he said, "The State! I am the State;" and that Napoleon deemed it
- a crime for the State to oppose his will. The idea of justice, then,
- applied to sovereignty and government, has not always been what it is
- to-day; it has gone on developing and shaping itself by degrees, until
- it has arrived at its present state. But has it reached its last phase?
- I think not: only, as the last obstacle to be overcome arises from the
- institution of property which we have kept intact, in order to finish
- the reform in government and consummate the revolution, this very
- institution we must attack.
- Is political and civil inequality just?
- Some say yes; others no. To the first I would reply that, when the
- people abolished all privileges of birth and caste, they did it, in all
- probability, because it was for their advantage; why then do they favor
- the privileges of fortune more than those of rank and race? Because, say
- they, political inequality is a result of property; and without property
- society is impossible: thus the question just raised becomes a question
- of property. To the second I content myself with this remark: If you
- wish to enjoy political equality, abolish property; otherwise, why do
- you complain?
- Is property just?
- Everybody answers without hesitation, "Yes, property is just." I say
- everybody, for up to the present time no one who thoroughly understood
- the meaning of his words has answered no. For it is no easy thing to
- reply understandingly to such a question; only time and experience can
- furnish an answer. Now, this answer is given; it is for us to understand
- it. I undertake to prove it.
- We are to proceed with the demonstration in the following order:--
- I. We dispute not at all, we refute nobody, we deny nothing; we accept
- as sound all the arguments alleged in favor of property, and confine
- ourselves to a search for its principle, in order that we may then
- ascertain whether this principle is faithfully expressed by property. In
- fact, property being defensible on no ground save that of justice, the
- idea, or at least the intention, of justice must of necessity underlie
- all the arguments that have been made in defence of property; and, as on
- the other hand the right of property is only exercised over those things
- which can be appreciated by the senses, justice, secretly objectifying
- itself, so to speak, must take the shape of an algebraic formula.
- By this method of investigation, we soon see that every argument which
- has been invented in behalf of property, WHATEVER IT MAY BE, always and
- of necessity leads to equality; that is, to the negation of property.
- The first part covers two chapters: one treating of occupation, the
- foundation of our right; the other, of labor and talent, considered as
- causes of property and social inequality.
- The first of these chapters will prove that the right of occupation
- OBSTRUCTS property; the second that the right of labor DESTROYS it.
- II. Property, then, being of necessity conceived as existing only in
- connection with equality, it remains to find out why, in spite of this
- necessity of logic, equality does not exist. This new investigation also
- covers two chapters: in the first, considering the fact of property in
- itself, we inquire whether this fact is real, whether it exists, whether
- it is possible; for it would imply a contradiction, were these two
- opposite forms of society, equality and inequality, both possible. Then
- we discover, singularly enough, that property may indeed manifest
- itself accidentally; but that, as an institution and principle, it is
- mathematically impossible. So that the axiom of the school--ab actu ad
- posse valet consecutio: from the actual to the possible the inference is
- good--is given the lie as far as property is concerned.
- Finally, in the last chapter, calling psychology to our aid, and
- probing man's nature to the bottom, we shall disclose the principle of
- JUSTICE--its formula and character; we shall state with precision the
- organic law of society; we shall explain the origin of property, the
- causes of its establishment, its long life, and its approaching death;
- we shall definitively establish its identity with robbery. And, after
- having shown that these three prejudices--THE SOVEREIGNTY OF MAN, THE
- INEQUALITY OF CONDITIONS, AND PROPERTY--are one and the same; that they
- may be taken for each other, and are reciprocally convertible,--we
- shall have no trouble in inferring therefrom, by the principle
- of contradiction, the basis of government and right. There our
- investigations will end, reserving the right to continue them in future
- works.
- The importance of the subject which engages our attention is recognized
- by all minds.
- "Property," says M. Hennequin, "is the creative and conservative
- principle of civil society. Property is one of those basic institutions,
- new theories concerning which cannot be presented too soon; for it must
- not be forgotten, and the publicist and statesman must know, that on the
- answer to the question whether property is the principle or the result
- of social order, whether it is to be considered as a cause or an effect,
- depends all morality, and, consequently, all the authority of human
- institutions."
- These words are a challenge to all men of hope and faith; but, although
- the cause of equality is a noble one, no one has yet picked up the
- gauntlet thrown down by the advocates of property; no one has been
- courageous enough to enter upon the struggle. The spurious learning of
- haughty jurisprudence, and the absurd aphorisms of a political economy
- controlled by property have puzzled the most generous minds; it is a
- sort of password among the most influential friends of liberty and
- the interests of the people that EQUALITY IS A CHIMERA! So many false
- theories and meaningless analogies influence minds otherwise keen,
- but which are unconsciously controlled by popular prejudice. Equality
- advances every day--fit aequalitas. Soldiers of liberty, shall we desert
- our flag in the hour of triumph?
- A defender of equality, I shall speak without bitterness and without
- anger; with the independence becoming a philosopher, with the courage
- and firmness of a free man. May I, in this momentous struggle, carry
- into all hearts the light with which I am filled; and show, by the
- success of my argument, that equality failed to conquer by the sword
- only that it might conquer by the pen!
- CHAPTER II. PROPERTY CONSIDERED AS A NATURAL RIGHT
- PROPERTY CONSIDERED AS A NATURAL RIGHT.--OCCUPATION AND
- CIVIL LAW AS EFFICIENT BASES OF PROPERTY. DEFINITIONS.
- The Roman law defined property as the right to use and abuse one's own
- within the limits of the law--jus utendi et abutendi re sua, quatenus
- juris ratio patitur. A justification of the word ABUSE has been
- attempted, on the ground that it signifies, not senseless and immoral
- abuse, but only absolute domain. Vain distinction! invented as an excuse
- for property, and powerless against the frenzy of possession, which it
- neither prevents nor represses. The proprietor may, if he chooses, allow
- his crops to rot under foot; sow his field with salt; milk his cows
- on the sand; change his vineyard into a desert, and use his
- vegetable-garden as a park: do these things constitute abuse, or not? In
- the matter of property, use and abuse are necessarily indistinguishable.
- According to the Declaration of Rights, published as a preface to the
- Constitution of '93, property is "the right to enjoy and dispose at
- will of one's goods, one's income, and the fruit of one's labor and
- industry."
- Code Napoleon, article 544: "Property is the right to enjoy and dispose
- of things in the most absolute manner, provided we do not overstep the
- limits prescribed by the laws and regulations."
- These two definitions do not differ from that of the Roman law: all
- give the proprietor an absolute right over a thing; and as for the
- restriction imposed by the code,--PROVIDED WE DO NOT OVERSTEP THE LIMITS
- PRESCRIBED BY THE LAWS AND REGULATIONS,--its object is not to limit
- property, but to prevent the domain of one proprietor from interfering
- with that of another. That is a confirmation of the principle, not a
- limitation of it.
- There are different kinds of property: 1. Property pure and simple, the
- dominant and seigniorial power over a thing; or, as they term it, NAKED
- PROPERTY. 2. POSSESSION. "Possession," says Duranton, "is a matter of
- fact, not of right." Toullier: "Property is a right, a legal power;
- possession is a fact." The tenant, the farmer, the commandite, the
- usufructuary, are possessors; the owner who lets and lends for use, the
- heir who is to come into possession on the death of a usufructuary, are
- proprietors. If I may venture the comparison: a lover is a possessor, a
- husband is a proprietor.
- This double definition of property--domain and possession--is of the
- highest importance; and it must be clearly understood, in order to
- comprehend what is to follow.
- From the distinction between possession and property arise two sorts of
- rights: the jus in re, the right in a thing, the right by which I may
- reclaim the property which I have acquired, in whatever hands I find
- it; and the jus ad rem, the right TO a thing, which gives me a claim to
- become a proprietor. Thus the right of the partners to a marriage over
- each other's person is the jus in re; that of two who are betrothed is
- only the jus ad rem. In the first, possession and property are united;
- the second includes only naked property. With me who, as a laborer,
- have a right to the possession of the products of Nature and my own
- industry,--and who, as a proletaire, enjoy none of them,--it is by
- virtue of the jus ad rem that I demand admittance to the jus in re.
- This distinction between the jus in re and the jus ad rem is the basis
- of the famous distinction between possessoire and petitoire,--actual
- categories of jurisprudence, the whole of which is included within their
- vast boundaries. Petitoire refers to every thing relating to property;
- possessoire to that relating to possession. In writing this memoir
- against property, I bring against universal society an action petitoire:
- I prove that those who do not possess to-day are proprietors by the same
- title as those who do possess; but, instead of inferring therefrom
- that property should be shared by all, I demand, in the name of general
- security, its entire abolition. If I fail to win my case, there is
- nothing left for us (the proletarian class and myself) but to cut our
- throats: we can ask nothing more from the justice of nations; for, as
- the code of procedure (art 26) tells us in its energetic style, THE
- PLAINTIFF WHO HAS BEEN NON-SUITED IN AN ACTION PETITOIRE, IS DEBARRED
- THEREBY FROM BRINGING AN ACTION POSSESSOIRE. If, on the contrary, I gain
- the case, we must then commence an action possessoire, that we may be
- reinstated in the enjoyment of the wealth of which we are deprived by
- property. I hope that we shall not be forced to that extremity; but
- these two actions cannot be prosecuted at once, such a course being
- prohibited by the same code of procedure.
- Before going to the heart of the question, it will not be useless to
- offer a few preliminary remarks.
- % 1.--Property as a Natural Right.
- The Declaration of Rights has placed property in its list of the natural
- and inalienable rights of man, four in all: LIBERTY, EQUALITY, PROPERTY,
- SECURITY. What rule did the legislators of '93 follow in compiling
- this list? None. They laid down principles, just as they discussed
- sovereignty and the laws; from a general point of view, and according to
- their own opinion. They did every thing in their own blind way.
- If we can believe Toullier: "The absolute rights can be reduced to
- three: SECURITY, LIBERTY, PROPERTY." Equality is eliminated by the
- Rennes professor; why? Is it because LIBERTY implies it, or because
- property prohibits it? On this point the author of "Droit Civil
- Explique" is silent: it has not even occurred to him that the matter is
- under discussion.
- Nevertheless, if we compare these three or four rights with each other,
- we find that property bears no resemblance whatever to the others;
- that for the majority of citizens it exists only potentially, and as a
- dormant faculty without exercise; that for the others, who do enjoy it,
- it is susceptible of certain transactions and modifications which do
- not harmonize with the idea of a natural right; that, in practice,
- governments, tribunals, and laws do not respect it; and finally that
- everybody, spontaneously and with one voice, regards it as chimerical.
- Liberty is inviolable. I can neither sell nor alienate my liberty;
- every contract, every condition of a contract, which has in view the
- alienation or suspension of liberty, is null: the slave, when he plants
- his foot upon the soil of liberty, at that moment becomes a free man.
- When society seizes a malefactor and deprives him of his liberty, it is
- a case of legitimate defence: whoever violates the social compact by the
- commission of a crime declares himself a public enemy; in attacking the
- liberty of others, he compels them to take away his own. Liberty is the
- original condition of man; to renounce liberty is to renounce the nature
- of man: after that, how could we perform the acts of man?
- Likewise, equality before the law suffers neither restriction nor
- exception. All Frenchmen are equally eligible to office: consequently,
- in the presence of this equality, condition and family have, in many
- cases, no influence upon choice. The poorest citizen can obtain judgment
- in the courts against one occupying the most exalted station. Let the
- millionaire, Ahab, build a chateau upon the vineyard of Naboth: the
- court will have the power, according to the circumstances, to order the
- destruction of the chateau, though it has cost millions; and to force
- the trespasser to restore the vineyard to its original state, and pay
- the damages. The law wishes all property, that has been legitimately
- acquired, to be kept inviolate without regard to value, and without
- respect for persons.
- The charter demands, it is true, for the exercise of certain political
- rights, certain conditions of fortune and capacity; but all publicists
- know that the legislator's intention was not to establish a privilege,
- but to take security. Provided the conditions fixed by law are complied
- with, every citizen may be an elector, and every elector eligible. The
- right, once acquired, is the same for all; the law compares neither
- persons nor votes. I do not ask now whether this system is the best; it
- is enough that, in the opinion of the charter and in the eyes of every
- one, equality before the law is absolute, and, like liberty, admits of
- no compromise.
- It is the same with the right of security. Society promises its members
- no half-way protection, no sham defence; it binds itself to them as
- they bind themselves to it. It does not say to them, "I will shield
- you, provided it costs me nothing; I will protect you, if I run no risks
- thereby." It says, "I will defend you against everybody; I will save and
- avenge you, or perish myself."
- The whole strength of the State is at the service of each citizen; the
- obligation which binds them together is absolute.
- How different with property! Worshipped by all, it is acknowledged by
- none: laws, morals, customs, public and private conscience, all plot its
- death and ruin.
- To meet the expenses of government, which has armies to support, tasks
- to perform, and officers to pay, taxes are needed. Let all contribute to
- these expenses: nothing more just. But why should the rich pay more than
- the poor? That is just, they say, because they possess more. I confess
- that such justice is beyond my comprehension.
- Why are taxes paid? To protect all in the exercise of their natural
- rights--liberty, equality, security, and property; to maintain order in
- the State; to furnish the public with useful and pleasant conveniences.
- Now, does it cost more to defend the rich man's life and liberty than
- the poor man's? Who, in time of invasion, famine, or plague, causes
- more trouble,--the large proprietor who escapes the evil without
- the assistance of the State, or the laborer who sits in his cottage
- unprotected from danger?
- Is public order endangered more by the worthy citizen, or by the artisan
- and journeyman? Why, the police have more to fear from a few hundred
- laborers, out of work, than from two hundred thousand electors!
- Does the man of large income appreciate more keenly than the poor man
- national festivities, clean streets, and beautiful monuments?
- Why, he prefers his country-seat to all the popular pleasures; and when
- he wants to enjoy himself, he does not wait for the greased pole!
- One of two things is true: either the proportional tax affords greater
- security to the larger tax-payers, or else it is a wrong.
- Because, if property is a natural right, as the Declaration of '93
- declares, all that belongs to me by virtue of this right is as sacred as
- my person; it is my blood, my life, myself: whoever touches it offends
- the apple of my eye. My income of one hundred thousand francs is as
- inviolable as the grisette's daily wage of seventy-five centimes; her
- attic is no more sacred than my suite of apartments. The tax is not
- levied in proportion to strength, size, or skill: no more should it be
- levied in proportion to property.
- If, then, the State takes more from me, let it give me more in return,
- or cease to talk of equality of rights; for otherwise, society is
- established, not to defend property, but to destroy it. The State,
- through the proportional tax, becomes the chief of robbers; the State
- sets the example of systematic pillage: the State should be brought to
- the bar of justice at the head of those hideous brigands, that execrable
- mob which it now kills from motives of professional jealousy.
- But, they say, the courts and the police force are established to
- restrain this mob; government is a company, not exactly for insurance,
- for it does not insure, but for vengeance and repression. The premium
- which this company exacts, the tax, is divided in proportion to
- property; that is, in proportion to the trouble which each piece of
- property occasions the avengers and repressers paid by the government.
- This is any thing but the absolute and inalienable right of property.
- Under this system the poor and the rich distrust, and make war upon,
- each other. But what is the object of the war? Property. So that
- property is necessarily accompanied by war upon property. The liberty
- and security of the rich do not suffer from the liberty and security
- of the poor; far from that, they mutually strengthen and sustain each
- other. The rich man's right of property, on the contrary, has to be
- continually defended against the poor man's desire for property. What
- a contradiction! In England they have a poor-rate: they wish me to pay
- this tax. But what relation exists between my natural and inalienable
- right of property and the hunger from which ten million wretched people
- are suffering? When religion commands us to assist our fellows, it
- speaks in the name of charity, not in the name of law. The obligation
- of benevolence, imposed upon me by Christian morality, cannot be imposed
- upon me as a political tax for the benefit of any person or poor-house.
- I will give alms when I see fit to do so, when the sufferings of others
- excite in me that sympathy of which philosophers talk, and in which I do
- not believe: I will not be forced to bestow them. No one is obliged to
- do more than comply with this injunction: IN THE EXERCISE OF YOUR OWN
- RIGHTS DO NOT ENCROACH UPON THE RIGHTS OF ANOTHER; an injunction which
- is the exact definition of liberty. Now, my possessions are my own;
- no one has a claim upon them: I object to the placing of the third
- theological virtue in the order of the day.
- Everybody, in France, demands the conversion of the five per cent.
- bonds; they demand thereby the complete sacrifice of one species of
- property. They have the right to do it, if public necessity requires it;
- but where is the just indemnity promised by the charter? Not only
- does none exist, but this indemnity is not even possible; for, if the
- indemnity were equal to the property sacrificed, the conversion would be
- useless.
- The State occupies the same position to-day toward the bondholders
- that the city of Calais did, when besieged by Edward III, toward its
- notables. The English conqueror consented to spare its inhabitants,
- provided it would surrender to him its most distinguished citizens to do
- with as he pleased. Eustache and several others offered themselves; it
- was noble in them, and our ministers should recommend their example to
- the bondholders. But had the city the right to surrender them? Assuredly
- not. The right to security is absolute; the country can require no one
- to sacrifice himself. The soldier standing guard within the enemy's
- range is no exception to this rule. Wherever a citizen stands guard,
- the country stands guard with him: to-day it is the turn of the one,
- to-morrow of the other. When danger and devotion are common, flight is
- parricide. No one has the right to flee from danger; no one can serve
- as a scapegoat. The maxim of Caiaphas--IT IS RIGHT THAT A MAN SHOULD DIE
- FOR HIS NATION--is that of the populace and of tyrants; the two extremes
- of social degradation.
- It is said that all perpetual annuities are essentially redeemable. This
- maxim of civil law, applied to the State, is good for those who wish to
- return to the natural equality of labor and wealth; but, from the point
- of view of the proprietor, and in the mouth of conversionists, it is
- the language of bankrupts. The State is not only a borrower, it is an
- insurer and guardian of property; granting the best of security, it
- assures the most inviolable possession. How, then, can it force open the
- hands of its creditors, who have confidence in it, and then talk to
- them of public order and security of property? The State, in such
- an operation, is not a debtor who discharges his debt; it is a
- stock-company which allures its stockholders into a trap, and there,
- contrary to its authentic promise, exacts from them twenty, thirty, or
- forty per cent. of the interest on their capital.
- That is not all. The State is a university of citizens joined together
- under a common law by an act of society. This act secures all in the
- possession of their property; guarantees to one his field, to another
- his vineyard, to a third his rents, and to the bondholder, who might
- have bought real estate but who preferred to come to the assistance of
- the treasury, his bonds. The State cannot demand, without offering an
- equivalent, the sacrifice of an acre of the field or a corner of the
- vineyard; still less can it lower rents: why should it have the right
- to diminish the interest on bonds? This right could not justly exist,
- unless the bondholder could invest his funds elsewhere to equal
- advantage; but being confined to the State, where can he find a place to
- invest them, since the cause of conversion, that is, the power to borrow
- to better advantage, lies in the State? That is why a government, based
- on the principle of property, cannot redeem its annuities without the
- consent of their holders.
- The money deposited with the republic is property which it has no right
- to touch while other kinds of property are respected; to force
- their redemption is to violate the social contract, and outlaw the
- bondholders.
- The whole controversy as to the conversion of bonds finally reduces
- itself to this:--
- QUESTION. Is it just to reduce to misery forty-five thousand families
- who derive an income from their bonds of one hundred francs or less?
- ANSWER. Is it just to compel seven or eight millions of tax-payers to
- pay a tax of five francs, when they should pay only three? It is clear,
- in the first place, that the reply is in reality no reply; but, to make
- the wrong more apparent, let us change it thus: Is it just to endanger
- the lives of one hundred thousand men, when we can save them by
- surrendering one hundred heads to the enemy? Reader, decide!
- All this is clearly understood by the defenders of the present system.
- Yet, nevertheless, sooner or later, the conversion will be effected
- and property be violated, because no other course is possible; because
- property, regarded as a right, and not being a right, must of right
- perish; because the force of events, the laws of conscience, and
- physical and mathematical necessity must, in the end, destroy this
- illusion of our minds.
- To sum up: liberty is an absolute right, because it is to man what
- impenetrability is to matter,--a sine qua non of existence; equality
- is an absolute right, because without equality there is no society;
- security is an absolute right, because in the eyes of every man his own
- liberty and life are as precious as another's. These three rights are
- absolute; that is, susceptible of neither increase nor diminution;
- because in society each associate receives as much as he gives,--liberty
- for liberty, equality for equality, security for security, body for
- body, soul for soul, in life and in death.
- But property, in its derivative sense, and by the definitions of law, is
- a right outside of society; for it is clear that, if the wealth of each
- was social wealth, the conditions would be equal for all, and it would
- be a contradiction to say: PROPERTY IS A MAN'S RIGHT TO DISPOSE AT WILL
- OF SOCIAL PROPERTY. Then if we are associated for the sake of liberty,
- equality, and security, we are not associated for the sake of property;
- then if property is a NATURAL right, this natural right is not SOCIAL,
- but ANTI-SOCIAL. Property and society are utterly irreconcilable
- institutions. It is as impossible to associate two proprietors as to
- join two magnets by their opposite poles. Either society must perish, or
- it must destroy property.
- If property is a natural, absolute, imprescriptible, and inalienable
- right, why, in all ages, has there been so much speculation as to its
- origin?--for this is one of its distinguishing characteristics. The
- origin of a natural right! Good God! who ever inquired into the origin
- of the rights of liberty, security, or equality? They exist by the same
- right that we exist; they are born with us, they live and die with us.
- With property it is very different, indeed. By law, property can exist
- without a proprietor, like a quality without a subject. It exists for
- the human being who as yet is not, and for the octogenarian who is no
- more. And yet, in spite of these wonderful prerogatives which savor
- of the eternal and the infinite, they have never found the origin of
- property; the doctors still disagree. On one point only are they in
- harmony: namely, that the validity of the right of property depends upon
- the authenticity of its origin. But this harmony is their condemnation.
- Why have they acknowledged the right before settling the question of
- origin?
- Certain classes do not relish investigation into the pretended titles to
- property, and its fabulous and perhaps scandalous history. They wish to
- hold to this proposition: that property is a fact; that it always has
- been, and always will be. With that proposition the savant Proudhon [11]
- commenced his "Treatise on the Right of Usufruct," regarding the origin
- of property as a useless question. Perhaps I would subscribe to this
- doctrine, believing it inspired by a commendable love of peace, were
- all my fellow-citizens in comfortable circumstances; but, no! I will not
- subscribe to it.
- The titles on which they pretend to base the right of property are two
- in number: OCCUPATION and LABOR. I shall examine them successively,
- under all their aspects and in detail; and I remind the reader that,
- to whatever authority we appeal, I shall prove beyond a doubt that
- property, to be just and possible, must necessarily have equality for
- its condition.
- % 2.--Occupation, as the Title to Property.
- It is remarkable that, at those meetings of the State Council at which
- the Code was discussed, no controversy arose as to the origin and
- principle of property. All the articles of Vol. II., Book 2, concerning
- property and the right of accession, were passed without opposition or
- amendment. Bonaparte, who on other questions had given his legists so
- much trouble, had nothing to say about property. Be not surprised at it:
- in the eyes of that man, the most selfish and wilful person that ever
- lived, property was the first of rights, just as submission to authority
- was the most holy of duties.
- The right of OCCUPATION, or of the FIRST OCCUPANT, is that which results
- from the actual, physical, real possession of a thing. I occupy a
- piece of land; the presumption is, that I am the proprietor, until
- the contrary is proved. We know that originally such a right cannot be
- legitimate unless it is reciprocal; the jurists say as much.
- Cicero compares the earth to a vast theatre: _Quemadmodum theatrum cum
- commune sit, recte tamen dici potest ejus esse eum locum quem quisque
- occuparit_.
- This passage is all that ancient philosophy has to say about the origin
- of property.
- The theatre, says Cicero, is common to all; nevertheless, the place that
- each one occupies is called HIS OWN; that is, it is a place POSSESSED,
- not a place APPROPRIATED. This comparison annihilates property;
- moreover, it implies equality. Can I, in a theatre, occupy at the same
- time one place in the pit, another in the boxes, and a third in the
- gallery? Not unless I have three bodies, like Geryon, or can exist
- in different places at the same time, as is related of the magician
- Apollonius.
- According to Cicero, no one has a right to more than he needs: such
- is the true interpretation of his famous axiom--_suum quidque cujusque
- sit_, to each one that which belongs to him--an axiom that has been
- strangely applied. That which belongs to each is not that which each MAY
- possess, but that which each HAS A RIGHT to possess. Now, what have we a
- right to possess? That which is required for our labor and consumption;
- Cicero's comparison of the earth to a theatre proves it. According to
- that, each one may take what place he will, may beautify and adorn it,
- if he can; it is allowable: but he must never allow himself to overstep
- the limit which separates him from another. The doctrine of Cicero leads
- directly to equality; for, occupation being pure toleration, if the
- toleration is mutual (and it cannot be otherwise) the possessions are
- equal.
- Grotius rushes into history; but what kind of reasoning is that which
- seeks the origin of a right, said to be natural, elsewhere than in
- Nature? This is the method of the ancients: the fact exists, then it
- is necessary, then it is just, then its antecedents are just also.
- Nevertheless, let us look into it.
- "Originally, all things were common and undivided; they were the
- property of all." Let us go no farther. Grotius tells us how this
- original communism came to an end through ambition and cupidity; how the
- age of gold was followed by the age of iron, &c. So that property rested
- first on war and conquest, then on treaties and agreements. But either
- these treaties and agreements distributed wealth equally, as did the
- original communism (the only method of distribution with which the
- barbarians were acquainted, and the only form of justice of which they
- could conceive; and then the question of origin assumes this form:
- how did equality afterwards disappear?)--or else these treaties and
- agreements were forced by the strong upon the weak, and in that case
- they are null; the tacit consent of posterity does not make them valid,
- and we live in a permanent condition of iniquity and fraud.
- We never can conceive how the equality of conditions, having once
- existed, could afterwards have passed away. What was the cause of such
- degeneration? The instincts of the animals are unchangeable, as well
- as the differences of species; to suppose original equality in human
- society is to admit by implication that the present inequality is
- a degeneration from the nature of this society,--a thing which the
- defenders of property cannot explain. But I infer therefrom that, if
- Providence placed the first human beings in a condition of equality, it
- was an indication of its desires, a model that it wished them to realize
- in other forms; just as the religious sentiment, which it planted in
- their hearts, has developed and manifested itself in various ways. Man
- has but one nature, constant and unalterable: he pursues it through
- instinct, he wanders from it through reflection, he returns to it
- through judgment; who shall say that we are not returning now? According
- to Grotius, man has abandoned equality; according to me, he will yet
- return to it. How came he to abandon it? Why will he return to it? These
- are questions for future consideration.
- Reid writes as follows:--
- "The right of property is not innate, but acquired. It is not grounded
- upon the constitution of man, but upon his actions. Writers on
- jurisprudence have explained its origin in a manner that may satisfy
- every man of common understanding.
- "The earth is given to men in common for the purposes of life, by the
- bounty of Heaven. But to divide it, and appropriate one part of its
- produce to one, another part to another, must be the work of men
- who have power and understanding given them, by which every man may
- accommodate himself, WITHOUT HURT TO ANY OTHER.
- "This common right of every man to what the earth produces, before it
- be occupied and appropriated by others, was, by ancient moralists, very
- properly compared to the right which every citizen had to the public
- theatre, where every man that came might occupy an empty seat, and
- thereby acquire a right to it while the entertainment lasted; but no man
- had a right to dispossess another.
- "The earth is a great theatre, furnished by the Almighty, with perfect
- wisdom and goodness, for the entertainment and employment of all
- mankind. Here every man has a right to accommodate himself as a
- spectator, and to perform his part as an actor; but without hurt to
- others."
- Consequences of Reid's doctrine.
- 1. That the portion which each one appropriates may wrong no one, it
- must be equal to the quotient of the total amount of property to be
- shared, divided by the number of those who are to share it;
- 2. The number of places being of necessity equal at all times to that
- of the spectators, no spectator can occupy two places, nor can any actor
- play several parts;
- 3. Whenever a spectator comes in or goes out, the places of all contract
- or enlarge correspondingly: for, says Reid, "THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY
- IS NOT INNATE, BUT ACQUIRED;" consequently, it is not absolute;
- consequently, the occupancy on which it is based, being a conditional
- fact, cannot endow this right with a stability which it does not possess
- itself. This seems to have been the thought of the Edinburgh professor
- when he added:--
- "A right to life implies a right to the necessary means of life; and
- that justice, which forbids the taking away the life of an innocent man,
- forbids no less the taking from him the necessary means of life. He has
- the same right to defend the one as the other. To hinder another man's
- innocent labor, or to deprive him of the fruit of it, is an injustice
- of the same kind, and has the same effect as to put him in fetters or in
- prison, and is equally a just object of resentment."
- Thus the chief of the Scotch school, without considering at all the
- inequality of skill or labor, posits a priori the equality of the means
- of labor, abandoning thereafter to each laborer the care of his own
- person, after the eternal axiom: WHOSO DOES WELL, SHALL FARE WELL.
- The philosopher Reid is lacking, not in knowledge of the principle, but
- in courage to pursue it to its ultimate. If the right of life is equal,
- the right of labor is equal, and so is the right of occupancy. Would
- it not be criminal, were some islanders to repulse, in the name of
- property, the unfortunate victims of a shipwreck struggling to reach
- the shore? The very idea of such cruelty sickens the imagination. The
- proprietor, like Robinson Crusoe on his island, wards off with pike and
- musket the proletaire washed overboard by the wave of civilization, and
- seeking to gain a foothold upon the rocks of property. "Give me work!"
- cries he with all his might to the proprietor: "don't drive me away, I
- will work for you at any price." "I do not need your services," replies
- the proprietor, showing the end of his pike or the barrel of his gun.
- "Lower my rent at least." "I need my income to live upon." "How can
- I pay you, when I can get no work?" "That is your business." Then the
- unfortunate proletaire abandons himself to the waves; or, if he attempts
- to land upon the shore of property, the proprietor takes aim, and kills
- him.
- We have just listened to a spiritualist; we will now question a
- materialist, then an eclectic: and having completed the circle of
- philosophy, we will turn next to law.
- According to Destutt de Tracy, property is a necessity of our nature.
- That this necessity involves unpleasant consequences, it would be
- folly to deny. But these consequences are necessary evils which do not
- invalidate the principle; so that it is as unreasonable to rebel against
- property on account of the abuses which it generates, as to complain
- of life because it is sure to end in death. This brutal and pitiless
- philosophy promises at least frank and close reasoning. Let us see if it
- keeps its promise.
- "We talk very gravely about the conditions of property,... as if it was
- our province to decide what constitutes property.... It would seem, to
- hear certain philosophers and legislators, that at a certain moment,
- spontaneously and without cause, people began to use the words THINE and
- MINE; and that they might have, or ought to have, dispensed with them.
- But THINE and MINE were never invented."
- A philosopher yourself, you are too realistic. THINE and MINE do not
- necessarily refer to self, as they do when I say your philosophy, and my
- equality; for your philosophy is you philosophizing, and my equality is
- I professing equality. THINE and MINE oftener indicate a relation,--YOUR
- country, YOUR parish, YOUR tailor, YOUR milkmaid; MY chamber, MY seat at
- the theatre, MY company and MY battalion in the National Guard. In the
- former sense, we may sometimes say MY labor, MY skill, MY virtue; never
- MY grandeur nor MY majesty: in the latter sense only, MY field, MY
- house, MY vineyard, MY capital,--precisely as the banker's clerk says
- MY cash-box. In short, THINE and MINE are signs and expressions of
- personal, but equal, rights; applied to things outside of us, they
- indicate possession, function, use, not property.
- It does not seem possible, but, nevertheless, I shall prove, by
- quotations, that the whole theory of our author is based upon this
- paltry equivocation.
- "Prior to all covenants, men are, not exactly, as Hobbes says, in a
- state of HOSTILITY, but of ESTRANGEMENT. In this state, justice and
- injustice are unknown; the rights of one bear no relation to the rights
- of another. All have as many rights as needs, and all feel it their duty
- to satisfy those needs by any means at their command."
- Grant it; whether true or false, it matters not. Destutt de Tracy cannot
- escape equality. On this theory, men, while in a state of ESTRANGEMENT,
- are under no obligations to each other; they all have the right
- to satisfy their needs without regard to the needs of others, and
- consequently the right to exercise their power over Nature, each
- according to his strength and ability. That involves the greatest
- inequality of wealth. Inequality of conditions, then, is the
- characteristic feature of estrangement or barbarism: the exact opposite
- of Rousseau's idea.
- But let us look farther:--
- "Restrictions of these rights and this duty commence at the time when
- covenants, either implied or expressed, are agreed upon. Then appears
- for the first time justice and injustice; that is, the balance between
- the rights of one and the rights of another, which up to that time were
- necessarily equal."
- Listen: RIGHTS WERE EQUAL; that means that each individual had the right
- to SATISFY HIS NEEDS WITHOUT REFERENCE TO THE NEEDS OF OTHERS. In other
- words, that all had the right to injure each other; that there was no
- right save force and cunning. They injured each other, not only by war
- and pillage, but also by usurpation and appropriation. Now, in order to
- abolish this equal right to use force and stratagem,--this equal
- right to do evil, the sole source of the inequality of benefits and
- injuries,--they commenced to make COVENANTS EITHER IMPLIED OR EXPRESSED,
- and established a balance. Then these agreements and this balance
- were intended to secure to all equal comfort; then, by the law of
- contradictions, if isolation is the principle of inequality, society
- must produce equality. The social balance is the equalization of the
- strong and the weak; for, while they are not equals, they are strangers;
- they can form no associations,--they live as enemies. Then, if
- inequality of conditions is a necessary evil, so is isolation, for
- society and inequality are incompatible with each other. Then, if
- society is the true condition of man's existence, so is equality also.
- This conclusion cannot be avoided.
- This being so, how is it that, ever since the establishment of this
- balance, inequality has been on the increase? How is it that justice and
- isolation always accompany each other? Destutt de Tracy shall reply:--
- "NEEDS and MEANS, RIGHTS and DUTIES, are products of the will. If man
- willed nothing, these would not exist. But to have needs and means,
- rights and duties, is to HAVE, to POSSESS, something. They are so many
- kinds of property, using the word in its most general sense: they are
- things which belong to us."
- Shameful equivocation, not justified by the necessity for
- generalization! The word PROPERTY has two meanings: 1. It designates the
- quality which makes a thing what it is; the attribute which is peculiar
- to it, and especially distinguishes it. We use it in this sense when we
- say THE PROPERTIES OF THE TRIANGLE or of NUMBERS; THE PROPERTY OF THE
- MAGNET, &c. 2. It expresses the right of absolute control over a thing
- by a free and intelligent being. It is used in this sense by writers
- on jurisprudence. Thus, in the phrase, IRON ACQUIRES THE PROPERTY OF A
- MAGNET, the word PROPERTY does not convey the same idea that it does in
- this one: _I HAVE ACQUIRED THIS MAGNET AS MY PROPERTY_. To tell a poor
- man that he HAS property because he HAS arms and legs,--that the hunger
- from which he suffers, and his power to sleep in the open air are his
- property,--is to play upon words, and to add insult to injury.
- "The sole basis of the idea of property is the idea of personality. As
- soon as property is born at all, it is born, of necessity, in all its
- fulness. As soon as an individual knows HIMSELF,--his moral personality,
- his capacities of enjoyment, suffering, and action,--he necessarily
- sees also that this SELF is exclusive proprietor of the body in which
- it dwells, its organs, their powers, faculties, &c.... Inasmuch as
- artificial and conventional property exists, there must be natural
- property also; for nothing can exist in art without its counterpart in
- Nature."
- We ought to admire the honesty and judgment of philosophers! Man has
- properties; that is, in the first acceptation of the term, faculties. He
- has property; that is, in its second acceptation, the right of domain.
- He has, then, the property of the property of being proprietor. How
- ashamed I should be to notice such foolishness, were I here considering
- only the authority of Destutt de Tracy! But the entire human race, since
- the origination of society and language, when metaphysics and dialectics
- were first born, has been guilty of this puerile confusion of thought.
- All which man could call his own was identified in his mind with his
- person. He considered it as his property, his wealth; a part of himself,
- a member of his body, a faculty of his mind. The possession of things
- was likened to property in the powers of the body and mind; and on this
- false analogy was based the right of property,--THE IMITATION OF NATURE
- BY ART, as Destutt de Tracy so elegantly puts it.
- But why did not this ideologist perceive that man is not proprietor even
- of his own faculties? Man has powers, attributes, capacities; they are
- given him by Nature that he may live, learn, and love: he does not own
- them, but has only the use of them; and he can make no use of them that
- does not harmonize with Nature's laws. If he had absolute mastery over
- his faculties, he could avoid hunger and cold; he could eat unstintedly,
- and walk through fire; he could move mountains, walk a hundred leagues
- in a minute, cure without medicines and by the sole force of his will,
- and could make himself immortal. He could say, "I wish to produce," and
- his tasks would be finished with the words; he could say. "I wish to
- know," and he would know; "I love," and he would enjoy. What then? Man
- is not master of himself, but may be of his surroundings. Let him use
- the wealth of Nature, since he can live only by its use; but let him
- abandon his pretensions to the title of proprietor, and remember that he
- is called so only metaphorically.
- To sum up: Destutt de Tracy classes together the external PRODUCTIONS of
- nature and art, and the POWERS or FACULTIES of man, making both of them
- species of property; and upon this equivocation he hopes to establish,
- so firmly that it can never be disturbed, the right of property. But
- of these different kinds of property some are INNATE, as memory,
- imagination, strength, and beauty; while others are ACQUIRED, as land,
- water, and forests. In the state of Nature or isolation, the strongest
- and most skilful (that is, those best provided with innate property)
- stand the best chance of obtaining acquired property. Now, it is to
- prevent this encroachment and the war which results therefrom, that
- a balance (justice) has been employed, and covenants (implied or
- expressed) agreed upon: it is to correct, as far as possible, inequality
- of innate property by equality of acquired property. As long as the
- division remains unequal, so long the partners remain enemies; and it
- is the purpose of the covenants to reform this state of things. Thus
- we have, on the one hand, isolation, inequality, enmity, war, robbery,
- murder; on the other, society, equality, fraternity, peace, and love.
- Choose between them!
- M. Joseph Dutens--a physician, engineer, and geometrician, but a very
- poor legist, and no philosopher at all--is the author of a "Philosophy
- of Political Economy," in which he felt it his duty to break lances in
- behalf of property. His reasoning seems to be borrowed from Destutt
- de Tracy. He commences with this definition of property, worthy of
- Sganarelle: "Property is the right by which a thing is one's own."
- Literally translated: Property is the right of property.
- After getting entangled a few times on the subjects of will, liberty,
- and personality; after having distinguished between IMMATERIAL-NATURAL
- property, and MATERIAL-NATURAL property, a distinction similar to
- Destutt de Tracy's of innate and acquired property,--M. Joseph Dutens
- concludes with these two general propositions: 1. Property is a natural
- and inalienable right of every man; 2. Inequality of property is a
- necessary result of Nature,--which propositions are convertible into a
- simpler one: All men have an equal right of unequal property.
- He rebukes M. de Sismondi for having taught that landed property has no
- other basis than law and conventionality; and he says himself, speaking
- of the respect which people feel for property, that "their good sense
- reveals to them the nature of the ORIGINAL CONTRACT made between society
- and proprietors."
- He confounds property with possession, communism with equality, the just
- with the natural, and the natural with the possible. Now he takes these
- different ideas to be equivalents; now he seems to distinguish between
- them, so much so that it would be infinitely easier to refute him than
- to understand him. Attracted first by the title of the work, "Philosophy
- of Political Economy," I have found, among the author's obscurities,
- only the most ordinary ideas. For that reason I will not speak of him.
- M. Cousin, in his "Moral Philosophy," page 15, teaches that all
- morality, all laws, all rights are given to man with this injunction:
- "FREE BEING, REMAIN FREE." Bravo! master; I wish to remain free if I
- can. He continues:--
- "Our principle is true; it is good, it is social. Do not fear to push it
- to its ultimate.
- "1. If the human person is sacred, its whole nature is sacred; and
- particularly its interior actions, its feelings, its thoughts, its
- voluntary decisions. This accounts for the respect due to philosophy,
- religion, the arts industry, commerce, and to all the results of
- liberty. I say respect, not simply toleration; for we do not tolerate a
- right, we respect it."
- I bow my head before this philosophy.
- "2. My liberty, which is sacred, needs for its objective action an
- instrument which we call the body: the body participates then in the
- sacredness of liberty; it is then inviolable. This is the basis of the
- principle of individual liberty.
- "3. My liberty needs, for its objective action, material to work upon;
- in other words, property or a thing. This thing or property naturally
- participates then in the inviolability of my person. For instance, I
- take possession of an object which has become necessary and useful in
- the outward manifestation of my liberty. I say, 'This object is
- mine since it belongs to no one else; consequently, I possess it
- legitimately.' So the legitimacy of possession rests on two conditions.
- First, I possess only as a free being. Suppress free activity, you
- destroy my power to labor. Now it is only by labor that I can use this
- property or thing, and it is only by using it that I possess it. Free
- activity is then the principle of the right of property. But that alone
- does not legitimate possession. All men are free; all can use property
- by labor. Does that mean that all men have a right to all property? Not
- at all. To possess legitimately, I must not only labor and produce in
- my capacity of a free being, but I must also be the first to occupy the
- property. In short, if labor and production are the principle of the
- right of property, the fact of first occupancy is its indispensable
- condition.
- "4. I possess legitimately: then I have the right to use my property as
- I see fit. I have also the right to give it away. I have also the right
- to bequeath it; for if I decide to make a donation, my decision is as
- valid after my death as during my life."
- In fact, to become a proprietor, in M. Cousin's opinion, one must take
- possession by occupation and labor. I maintain that the element of time
- must be considered also; for if the first occupants have occupied every
- thing, what are the new comers to do? What will become of them, having
- an instrument with which to work, but no material to work upon?
- Must they devour each other? A terrible extremity, unforeseen by
- philosophical prudence; for the reason that great geniuses neglect
- little things.
- Notice also that M. Cousin says that neither occupation nor labor, taken
- separately, can legitimate the right of property; and that it is born
- only from the union of the two. This is one of M. Cousin's eclectic
- turns, which he, more than any one else, should take pains to
- avoid. Instead of proceeding by the method of analysis, comparison,
- elimination, and reduction (the only means of discovering the truth amid
- the various forms of thought and whimsical opinions), he jumbles
- all systems together, and then, declaring each both right and wrong,
- exclaims: "There you have the truth."
- But, adhering to my promise, I will not refute him. I will only prove,
- by all the arguments with which he justifies the right of property, the
- principle of equality which kills it. As I have already said, my sole
- intent is this: to show at the bottom of all these positions that
- inevitable major, EQUALITY; hoping hereafter to show that the principle
- of property vitiates the very elements of economical, moral, and
- governmental science, thus leading it in the wrong direction.
- Well, is it not true, from M. Cousin's point of view, that, if the
- liberty of man is sacred, it is equally sacred in all individuals; that,
- if it needs property for its objective action, that is, for its life,
- the appropriation of material is equally necessary for all; that, if I
- wish to be respected in my right of appropriation, I must respect
- others in theirs; and, consequently, that though, in the sphere of the
- infinite, a person's power of appropriation is limited only by
- himself, in the sphere of the finite this same power is limited by the
- mathematical relation between the number of persons and the space which
- they occupy? Does it not follow that if one individual cannot prevent
- another--his fellow-man--from appropriating an amount of material equal
- to his own, no more can he prevent individuals yet to come; because,
- while individuality passes away, universality persists, and eternal laws
- cannot be determined by a partial view of their manifestations? Must we
- not conclude, therefore, that whenever a person is born, the others must
- crowd closer together; and, by reciprocity of obligation, that if the
- new comer is afterwards to become an heir, the right of succession does
- not give him the right of accumulation, but only the right of choice?
- I have followed M. Cousin so far as to imitate his style, and I am
- ashamed of it. Do we need such high-sounding terms, such sonorous
- phrases, to say such simple things? Man needs to labor in order to live;
- consequently, he needs tools to work with and materials to work upon.
- His need to produce constitutes his right to produce. Now, this right is
- guaranteed him by his fellows, with whom he makes an agreement to that
- effect. One hundred thousand men settle in a large country like France
- with no inhabitants: each man has a right to 1/100,000 of the land. If
- the number of possessors increases, each one's portion diminishes in
- consequence; so that, if the number of inhabitants rises to thirty-four
- millions, each one will have a right only to 1/34,000,000. Now,
- so regulate the police system and the government, labor, exchange,
- inheritance, &c., that the means of labor shall be shared by all
- equally, and that each individual shall be free; and then society will
- be perfect.
- Of all the defenders of property, M. Cousin has gone the farthest. He
- has maintained against the economists that labor does not establish the
- right of property unless preceded by occupation, and against the jurists
- that the civil law can determine and apply a natural right, but cannot
- create it. In fact, it is not sufficient to say, "The right of property
- is demonstrated by the existence of property; the function of the civil
- law is purely declaratory." To say that, is to confess that there is
- no reply to those who question the legitimacy of the fact itself.
- Every right must be justifiable in itself, or by some antecedent right;
- property is no exception. For this reason, M. Cousin has sought to base
- it upon the SANCTITY of the human personality, and the act by which the
- will assimilates a thing. "Once touched by man," says one of M. Cousin's
- disciples, "things receive from him a character which transforms and
- humanizes them." I confess, for my part, that I have no faith in this
- magic, and that I know of nothing less holy than the will of man. But
- this theory, fragile as it seems to psychology as well as jurisprudence,
- is nevertheless more philosophical and profound than those theories
- which are based upon labor or the authority of the law. Now, we have
- just seen to what this theory of which we are speaking leads,--to the
- equality implied in the terms of its statement.
- But perhaps philosophy views things from too lofty a standpoint, and
- is not sufficiently practical; perhaps from the exalted summit of
- speculation men seem so small to the metaphysician that he cannot
- distinguish between them; perhaps, indeed, the equality of conditions is
- one of those principles which are very true and sublime as generalities,
- but which it would be ridiculous and even dangerous to attempt to
- rigorously apply to the customs of life and to social transactions.
- Undoubtedly, this is a case which calls for imitation of the wise
- reserve of moralists and jurists, who warn us against carrying things to
- extremes, and who advise us to suspect every definition; because there
- is not one, they say, which cannot be utterly destroyed by developing
- its disastrous results--_Omnis definitio in jure civili periculosa
- est: parum est enim ut non subverti possit_. Equality of conditions,--a
- terrible dogma in the ears of the proprietor, a consoling truth at
- the poor-man's sick-bed, a frightful reality under the knife of the
- anatomist,--equality of conditions, established in the political, civil,
- and industrial spheres, is only an alluring impossibility, an inviting
- bait, a satanic delusion.
- It is never my intention to surprise my reader. I detest, as I do death,
- the man who employs subterfuge in his words and conduct. From the first
- page of this book, I have expressed myself so plainly and decidedly that
- all can see the tendency of my thought and hopes; and they will do me
- the justice to say, that it would be difficult to exhibit more frankness
- and more boldness at the same time. I do not hesitate to declare that
- the time is not far distant when this reserve, now so much admired in
- philosophers--this happy medium so strongly recommended by professors of
- moral and political science--will be regarded as the disgraceful feature
- of a science without principle, and as the seal of its reprobation. In
- legislation and morals, as well as in geometry, axioms are absolute,
- definitions are certain; and all the results of a principle are to be
- accepted, provided they are logically deduced. Deplorable pride! We know
- nothing of our nature, and we charge our blunders to it; and, in a
- fit of unaffected ignorance, cry out, "The truth is in doubt, the
- best definition defines nothing!" We shall know some time whether this
- distressing uncertainty of jurisprudence arises from the nature of
- its investigations, or from our prejudices; whether, to explain social
- phenomena, it is not enough to change our hypothesis, as did Copernicus
- when he reversed the system of Ptolemy.
- But what will be said when I show, as I soon shall, that this same
- jurisprudence continually tries to base property upon equality? What
- reply can be made?
- % 3.--Civil Law as the Foundation and Sanction of Property.
- Pothier seems to think that property, like royalty, exists by divine
- right. He traces back its origin to God himself--ab Jove principium. He
- begins in this way:--
- "God is the absolute ruler of the universe and all that it contains:
- _Domini est terra et plenitudo ejus, orbis et universi qui habitant in
- eo_. For the human race he has created the earth and all its creatures,
- and has given it a control over them subordinate only to his own. 'Thou
- madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put
- all things under his feet,' says the Psalmist. God accompanied this gift
- with these words, addressed to our first parents after the creation: 'Be
- fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth,'" &c.
- After this magnificent introduction, who would refuse to believe the
- human race to be an immense family living in brotherly union, and
- under the protection of a venerable father? But, heavens! are brothers
- enemies? Are fathers unnatural, and children prodigal?
- GOD GAVE THE EARTH TO THE HUMAN RACE: why then have I received none? HE
- HAS PUT ALL THINGS UNDER MY FEET,--and I have not where to lay my head!
- MULTIPLY, he tells us through his interpreter, Pothier. Ah, learned
- Pothier! that is as easy to do as to say; but you must give moss to the
- bird for its nest.
- "The human race having multiplied, men divided among themselves the
- earth and most of the things upon it; that which fell to each, from that
- time exclusively belonged to him. That was the origin of the right of
- property."
- Say, rather, the right of possession. Men lived in a state of communism;
- whether positive or negative it matters little. Then there was no
- property, not even private possession. The genesis and growth of
- possession gradually forcing people to labor for their support, they
- agreed either formally or tacitly,--it makes no difference which,--that
- the laborer should be sole proprietor of the fruit of his labor; that
- is, they simply declared the fact that thereafter none could live
- without working. It necessarily followed that, to obtain equality of
- products, there must be equality of labor; and that, to obtain equality
- of labor, there must be equality of facilities for labor. Whoever
- without labor got possession, by force or by strategy, of another's
- means of subsistence, destroyed equality, and placed himself above or
- outside of the law. Whoever monopolized the means of production on the
- ground of greater industry, also destroyed equality. Equality being then
- the expression of right, whoever violated it was UNJUST.
- Thus, labor gives birth to private possession; the right in a thing--jus
- in re. But in what thing? Evidently IN THE PRODUCT, not IN THE SOIL.
- So the Arabs have always understood it; and so, according to Caesar and
- Tacitus, the Germans formerly held. "The Arabs," says M. de Sismondi,
- "who admit a man's property in the flocks which he has raised, do not
- refuse the crop to him who planted the seed; but they do not see why
- another, his equal, should not have a right to plant in his turn.
- The inequality which results from the pretended right of the first
- occupant seems to them to be based on no principle of justice; and when
- all the land falls into the hands of a certain number of inhabitants,
- there results a monopoly in their favor against the rest of the nation,
- to which they do not wish to submit."
- Well, they have shared the land. I admit that therefrom results a more
- powerful organization of labor; and that this method of distribution,
- fixed and durable, is advantageous to production: but how could this
- division give to each a transferable right of property in a thing
- to which all had an inalienable right of possession? In the terms
- of jurisprudence, this metamorphosis from possessor to proprietor is
- legally impossible; it implies in the jurisdiction of the courts the
- union of possessoire and petitoire; and the mutual concessions of those
- who share the land are nothing less than traffic in natural rights. The
- original cultivators of the land, who were also the original makers of
- the law, were not as learned as our legislators, I admit; and had
- they been, they could not have done worse: they did not foresee the
- consequences of the transformation of the right of private possession
- into the right of absolute property. But why have not those, who in
- later times have established the distinction between jus in re and jus
- ad rem, applied it to the principle of property itself?
- Let me call the attention of the writers on jurisprudence to their own
- maxims.
- The right of property, provided it can have a cause, can have but
- one--_Dominium non potest nisi ex una causa contingere_. I can possess
- by several titles; I can become proprietor by only one--_Non ut ex
- pluribus causis idem nobis deberi potest, ita ex pluribus causis idem
- potest nostrum esse_. The field which I have cleared, which I cultivate,
- on which I have built my house, which supports myself, my family, and
- my livestock, I can possess: 1st. As the original occupant; 2d. As a
- laborer; 3d. By virtue of the social contract which assigns it to me as
- my share.
- But none of these titles confer upon me the right of property. For, if I
- attempt to base it upon occupancy, society can reply, "I am the original
- occupant." If I appeal to my labor, it will say, "It is only on that
- condition that you possess." If I speak of agreements, it will respond,
- "These agreements establish only your right of use." Such, however, are
- the only titles which proprietors advance. They never have been able
- to discover any others. Indeed, every right--it is Pothier who says
- it--supposes a producing cause in the person who enjoys it; but in man
- who lives and dies, in this son of earth who passes away like a
- shadow, there exists, with respect to external things, only titles of
- possession, not one title of property. Why, then, has society recognized
- a right injurious to itself, where there is no producing cause? Why,
- in according possession, has it also conceded property? Why has the law
- sanctioned this abuse of power?
- The German Ancillon replies thus:--
- "Some philosophers pretend that man, in employing his forces upon a
- natural object,--say a field or a tree,--acquires a right only to the
- improvements which he makes, to the form which he gives to the object,
- not to the object itself. Useless distinction! If the form could be
- separated from the object, perhaps there would be room for question; but
- as this is almost always impossible, the application of man's strength
- to the different parts of the visible world is the foundation of the
- right of property, the primary origin of riches."
- Vain pretext! If the form cannot be separated from the object, nor
- property from possession, possession must be shared; in any case,
- society reserves the right to fix the conditions of property. Let us
- suppose that an appropriated farm yields a gross income of ten thousand
- francs; and, as very seldom happens, that this farm cannot be divided.
- Let us suppose farther that, by economical calculation, the annual
- expenses of a family are three thousand francs: the possessor of this
- farm should be obliged to guard his reputation as a good father of a
- family, by paying to society ten thousand francs,--less the total
- costs of cultivation, and the three thousand francs required for the
- maintenance of his family. This payment is not rent, it is an indemnity.
- What sort of justice is it, then, which makes such laws as this:--
- "Whereas, since labor so changes the form of a thing that the form
- and substance cannot be separated without destroying the thing itself,
- either society must be disinherited, or the laborer must lose the fruit
- of his labor; and
- "Whereas, in every other case, property in raw material would give a
- title to added improvements, minus their cost; and whereas, in this
- instance, property in improvements ought to give a title to the
- principal;
- "Therefore, the right of appropriation by labor shall never be admitted
- against individuals, but only against society."
- In such a way do legislators always reason in regard to property.
- The law is intended to protect men's mutual rights,--that is, the rights
- of each against each, and each against all; and, as if a proportion
- could exist with less than four terms, the law-makers always disregard
- the latter. As long as man is opposed to man, property offsets property,
- and the two forces balance each other; as soon as man is isolated, that
- is, opposed to the society which he himself represents, jurisprudence is
- at fault: Themis has lost one scale of her balance.
- Listen to the professor of Rennes, the learned Toullier:--
- "How could this claim, made valid by occupation, become stable and
- permanent property, which might continue to stand, and which might be
- reclaimed after the first occupant had relinquished possession?
- "Agriculture was a natural consequence of the multiplication of the
- human race, and agriculture, in its turn, favors population, and
- necessitates the establishment of permanent property; for who would
- take the trouble to plough and sow, if he were not certain that he would
- reap?"
- To satisfy the husbandman, it was sufficient to guarantee him possession
- of his crop; admit even that he should have been protected in his right
- of occupation of land, as long as he remained its cultivator. That was
- all that he had a right to expect; that was all that the advance of
- civilization demanded. But property, property! the right of escheat over
- lands which one neither occupies nor cultivates,--who had authority to
- grant it? who pretended to have it?
- "Agriculture alone was not sufficient to establish permanent property;
- positive laws were needed, and magistrates to execute them; in a word,
- the civil State was needed.
- "The multiplication of the human race had rendered agriculture
- necessary; the need of securing to the cultivator the fruit of his labor
- made permanent property necessary, and also laws for its protection. So
- we are indebted to property for the creation of the civil State."
- Yes, of our civil State, as you have made it; a State which, at first,
- was despotism, then monarchy, then aristocracy, today democracy, and
- always tyranny.
- "Without the ties of property it never would have been possible to
- subordinate men to the wholesome yoke of the law; and without permanent
- property the earth would have remained a vast forest. Let us admit,
- then, with the most careful writers, that if transient property, or
- the right of preference resulting from occupation, existed prior to
- the establishment of civil society, permanent property, as we know it
- to-day, is the work of civil law. It is the civil law which holds that,
- when once acquired, property can be lost only by the action of
- the proprietor, and that it exists even after the proprietor has
- relinquished possession of the thing, and it has fallen into the hands
- of a third party.
- "Thus property and possession, which originally were confounded, became
- through the civil law two distinct and independent things; two things
- which, in the language of the law, have nothing whatever in common. In
- this we see what a wonderful change has been effected in property, and
- to what an extent Nature has been altered by the civil laws."
- Thus the law, in establishing property, has not been the expression of a
- psychological fact, the development of a natural law, the application of
- a moral principle. It has literally CREATED a right outside of its own
- province. It has realized an abstraction, a metaphor, a fiction; and
- that without deigning to look at the consequences, without considering
- the disadvantages, without inquiring whether it was right or wrong.
- It has sanctioned selfishness; it has indorsed monstrous pretensions;
- it has received with favor impious vows, as if it were able to fill up a
- bottomless pit, and to satiate hell! Blind law; the law of the ignorant
- man; a law which is not a law; the voice of discord, deceit, and
- blood! This it is which, continually revived, reinstated, rejuvenated,
- restored, re-enforced--as the palladium of society--has troubled the
- consciences of the people, has obscured the minds of the masters, and
- has induced all the catastrophes which have befallen nations.
- This it is which Christianity has condemned, but which its ignorant
- ministers deify; who have as little desire to study Nature and man, as
- ability to read their Scriptures.
- But, indeed, what guide did the law follow in creating the domain of
- property? What principle directed it? What was its standard?
- Would you believe it? It was equality.
- Agriculture was the foundation of territorial possession, and the
- original cause of property. It was of no use to secure to the farmer the
- fruit of his labor, unless the means of production were at the same time
- secured to him. To fortify the weak against the invasion of the strong,
- to suppress spoliation and fraud, the necessity was felt of establishing
- between possessors permanent lines of division, insuperable obstacles.
- Every year saw the people multiply, and the cupidity of the husbandman
- increase: it was thought best to put a bridle on ambition by setting
- boundaries which ambition would in vain attempt to overstep. Thus the
- soil came to be appropriated through need of the equality which is
- essential to public security and peaceable possession. Undoubtedly the
- division was never geographically equal; a multitude of rights, some
- founded in Nature, but wrongly interpreted and still more wrongly
- applied, inheritance, gift, and exchange; others, like the privileges
- of birth and position, the illegitimate creations of ignorance and brute
- force,--all operated to prevent absolute equality. But, nevertheless,
- the principle remained the same: equality had sanctioned possession;
- equality sanctioned property.
- The husbandman needed each year a field to sow; what more convenient and
- simple arrangement for the barbarians,--instead of indulging in annual
- quarrels and fights, instead of continually moving their houses,
- furniture, and families from spot to spot,--than to assign to each
- individual a fixed and inalienable estate?
- It was not right that the soldier, on returning from an expedition,
- should find himself dispossessed on account of the services which he had
- just rendered to his country; his estate ought to be restored to him. It
- became, therefore, customary to retain property by intent alone--_nudo
- animo;_ it could be sacrificed only with the consent and by the action
- of the proprietor.
- It was necessary that the equality in the division should be kept up
- from one generation to another, without a new distribution of the land
- upon the death of each family; it appeared therefore natural and just
- that children and parents, according to the degree of relationship
- which they bore to the deceased, should be the heirs of their ancestors.
- Thence came, in the first place, the feudal and patriarchal custom of
- recognizing only one heir; then, by a quite contrary application of the
- principle of equality, the admission of all the children to a share in
- their father's estate, and, very recently also among us, the definitive
- abolition of the right of primogeniture.
- But what is there in common between these rude outlines of instinctive
- organization and the true social science? How could these men, who never
- had the faintest idea of statistics, valuation, or political economy,
- furnish us with principles of legislation?
- "The law," says a modern writer on jurisprudence, "is the expression of
- a social want, the declaration of a fact: the legislator does not make
- it, he declares it. 'This definition is not exact. The law is a method
- by which social wants must be satisfied; the people do not vote it, the
- legislator does not express it: the savant discovers and formulates it."
- But in fact, the law, according to M. Ch. Comte, who has devoted half a
- volume to its definition, was in the beginning only the EXPRESSION OF
- A WANT, and the indication of the means of supplying it; and up to this
- time it has been nothing else. The legists--with mechanical fidelity,
- full of obstinacy, enemies of philosophy, buried in literalities--have
- always mistaken for the last word of science that which was only the
- inconsiderate aspiration of men who, to be sure, were well-meaning, but
- wanting in foresight.
- They did not foresee, these old founders of the domain of property, that
- the perpetual and absolute right to retain one's estate,--a right which
- seemed to them equitable, because it was common,--involves the right to
- transfer, sell, give, gain, and lose it; that it tends, consequently,
- to nothing less than the destruction of that equality which they
- established it to maintain. And though they should have foreseen it,
- they disregarded it; the present want occupied their whole attention,
- and, as ordinarily happens in such cases, the disadvantages were at
- first scarcely perceptible, and they passed unnoticed.
- They did not foresee, these ingenuous legislators, that if property is
- retainable by intent alone--_nudo animo_--it carries with it the right
- to let, to lease, to loan at interest, to profit by exchange, to settle
- annuities, and to levy a tax on a field which intent reserves, while the
- body is busy elsewhere.
- They did not foresee, these fathers of our jurisprudence, that, if
- the right of inheritance is any thing other than Nature's method of
- preserving equality of wealth, families will soon become victims of the
- most disastrous exclusions; and society, pierced to the heart by one of
- its most sacred principles, will come to its death through opulence and
- misery. [12]
- Under whatever form of government we live, it can always be said that
- _le mort saisit le vif;_ that is, that inheritance and succession will
- last for ever, whoever may be the recognized heir. But the St. Simonians
- wish the heir to be designated by the magistrate; others wish him to
- be chosen by the deceased, or assumed by the law to be so chosen: the
- essential point is that Nature's wish be satisfied, so far as the law of
- equality allows.
- To-day the real controller of inheritance is chance or caprice; now, in
- matters of legislation, chance and caprice cannot be accepted as guides.
- It is for the purpose of avoiding the manifold disturbances which
- follow in the wake of chance that Nature, after having created us equal,
- suggests to us the principle of heredity; which serves as a voice by
- which society asks us to choose, from among all our brothers, him whom
- we judge best fitted to complete our unfinished work.
- They did not foresee.... But why need I go farther?
- The consequences are plain enough, and this is not the time to criticise
- the whole Code.
- The history of property among the ancient nations is, then, simply a
- matter of research and curiosity. It is a rule of jurisprudence that the
- fact does not substantiate the right. Now, property is no exception to
- this rule: then the universal recognition of the right of property
- does not legitimate the right of property. Man is mistaken as to the
- constitution of society, the nature of right, and the application of
- justice; just as he was mistaken regarding the cause of meteors and the
- movement of the heavenly bodies. His old opinions cannot be taken for
- articles of faith. Of what consequence is it to us that the Indian race
- was divided into four classes; that, on the banks of the Nile and the
- Ganges, blood and position formerly determined the distribution of the
- land; that the Greeks and Romans placed property under the protection
- of the gods; that they accompanied with religious ceremonies the work
- of partitioning the land and appraising their goods? The variety of the
- forms of privilege does not sanction injustice. The faith of Jupiter,
- the proprietor, [13] proves no more against the equality of citizens,
- than do the mysteries of Venus, the wanton, against conjugal chastity.
- The authority of the human race is of no effect as evidence in favor
- of the right of property, because this right, resting of necessity upon
- equality, contradicts its principle; the decision of the religions which
- have sanctioned it is of no effect, because in all ages the priest
- has submitted to the prince, and the gods have always spoken as the
- politicians desired; the social advantages, attributed to property,
- cannot be cited in its behalf, because they all spring from the
- principle of equality of possession.
- What means, then, this dithyramb upon property?
- "The right of property is the most important of human institutions."...
- Yes; as monarchy is the most glorious.
- "The original cause of man's prosperity upon earth."
- Because justice was supposed to be its principle.
- "Property became the legitimate end of his ambition, the hope of his
- existence, the shelter of his family; in a word, the corner-stone of the
- domestic dwelling, of communities, and of the political State."
- Possession alone produced all that.
- "Eternal principle,--"
- Property is eternal, like every negation,--
- "Of all social and civil institutions."
- For that reason, every institution and every law based on property will
- perish.
- "It is a boon as precious as liberty."
- For the rich proprietor.
- "In fact, the cause of the cultivation of the habitable earth."
- If the cultivator ceased to be a tenant, would the land be worse cared
- for?
- "The guarantee and the morality of labor."
- Under the regime of property, labor is not a condition, but a privilege.
- "The application of justice."
- What is justice without equality of fortunes? A balance with false
- weights.
- "All morality,--"
- A famished stomach knows no morality,--
- "All public order,--"
- Certainly, the preservation of property,--
- "Rest on the right of property." [14]
- Corner-stone of all which is, stumbling-block of all which ought to
- be,--such is property.
- To sum up and conclude:--
- Not only does occupation lead to equality, it PREVENTS property. For,
- since every man, from the fact of his existence, has the right of
- occupation, and, in order to live, must have material for cultivation
- on which he may labor; and since, on the other hand, the number of
- occupants varies continually with the births and deaths,--it follows
- that the quantity of material which each laborer may claim varies
- with the number of occupants; consequently, that occupation is always
- subordinate to population. Finally, that, inasmuch as possession, in
- right, can never remain fixed, it is impossible, in fact, that it can
- ever become property.
- Every occupant is, then, necessarily a possessor or usufructuary,--a
- function which excludes proprietorship. Now, this is the right of the
- usufructuary: he is responsible for the thing entrusted to him; he
- must use it in conformity with general utility, with a view to its
- preservation and development; he has no power to transform it, to
- diminish it, or to change its nature; he cannot so divide the usufruct
- that another shall perform the labor while he receives the product. In a
- word, the usufructuary is under the supervision of society, submitted to
- the condition of labor and the law of equality.
- Thus is annihilated the Roman definition of property--THE RIGHT OF USE
- AND ABUSE--an immorality born of violence, the most monstrous pretension
- that the civil laws ever sanctioned. Man receives his usufruct from the
- hands of society, which alone is the permanent possessor. The individual
- passes away, society is deathless.
- What a profound disgust fills my soul while discussing such simple
- truths! Do we doubt these things to-day? Will it be necessary to again
- take arms for their triumph? And can force, in default of reason, alone
- introduce them into our laws?
- ALL HAVE AN EQUAL RIGHT OF OCCUPANCY.
- THE AMOUNT OCCUPIED BEING MEASURED, NOT BY THE WILL, BUT BY THE VARIABLE
- CONDITIONS OF SPACE AND NUMBER, PROPERTY CANNOT EXIST.
- This no code has ever expressed; this no constitution can admit! These
- are axioms which the civil law and the law of nations deny!.....
- But I hear the exclamations of the partisans of another system: "Labor,
- labor! that is the basis of property!"
- Reader, do not be deceived. This new basis of property is worse than the
- first, and I shall soon have to ask your pardon for having demonstrated
- things clearer, and refuted pretensions more unjust, than any which we
- have yet considered.
- CHAPTER III. LABOR AS THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF THE DOMAIN OF PROPERTY.
- Nearly all the modern writers on jurisprudence, taking their cue from
- the economists, have abandoned the theory of first occupancy as a too
- dangerous one, and have adopted that which regards property as born of
- labor. In this they are deluded; they reason in a circle. To labor it is
- necessary to occupy, says M. Cousin.
- Consequently, I have added in my turn, all having an equal right of
- occupancy, to labor it is necessary to submit to equality. "The rich,"
- exclaims Jean Jacques, "have the arrogance to say, 'I built this wall; I
- earned this land by my labor.' Who set you the tasks? we may reply, and
- by what right do you demand payment from us for labor which we did not
- impose upon you?" All sophistry falls to the ground in the presence of
- this argument.
- But the partisans of labor do not see that their system is an absolute
- contradiction of the Code, all the articles and provisions of which
- suppose property to be based upon the fact of first occupancy. If labor,
- through the appropriation which results from it, alone gives birth to
- property, the Civil Code lies, the charter is a falsehood, our whole
- social system is a violation of right. To this conclusion shall we come,
- at the end of the discussion which is to occupy our attention in this
- chapter and the following one, both as to the right of labor and the
- fact of property. We shall see, on the one hand, our legislation in
- opposition to itself; and, on the other hand, our new jurisprudence in
- opposition both to its own principle and to our legislation.
- I have asserted that the system which bases property upon labor implies,
- no less than that which bases it upon occupation, the equality of
- fortunes; and the reader must be impatient to learn how I propose to
- deduce this law of equality from the inequality of skill and faculties:
- directly his curiosity shall be satisfied. But it is proper that I
- should call his attention for a moment to this remarkable feature of
- the process; to wit, the substitution of labor for occupation as the
- principle of property; and that I should pass rapidly in review some
- of the prejudices to which proprietors are accustomed to appeal, which
- legislation has sanctioned, and which the system of labor completely
- overthrows.
- Reader, were you ever present at the examination of a criminal? Have
- you watched his tricks, his turns, his evasions, his distinctions, his
- equivocations? Beaten, all his assertions overthrown, pursued like
- a fallow deer by the in exorable judge, tracked from hypothesis
- to hypothesis,--he makes a statement, he corrects it, retracts it,
- contradicts it, he exhausts all the tricks of dialectics, more subtle,
- more ingenious a thousand times than he who invented the seventy-two
- forms of the syllogism. So acts the proprietor when called upon
- to defend his right. At first he refuses to reply, he exclaims, he
- threatens, he defies; then, forced to accept the discussion, he
- arms himself with chicanery, he surrounds himself with formidable
- artillery,--crossing his fire, opposing one by one and all together
- occupation, possession, limitation, covenants, immemorial custom, and
- universal consent. Conquered on this ground, the proprietor, like a
- wounded boar, turns on his pursuers. "I have done more than occupy,"
- he cries with terrible emotion; "I have labored, produced, improved,
- transformed, CREATED. This house, these fields, these trees are the work
- of my hands; I changed these brambles into a vineyard, and this bush
- into a fig-tree; and to-day I reap the harvest of my labors. I have
- enriched the soil with my sweat; I have paid those men who, had they not
- had the work which I gave them, would have died of hunger. No one
- shared with me the trouble and expense; no one shall share with me the
- benefits."
- You have labored, proprietor! why then do you speak of original
- occupancy? What, were you not sure of your right, or did you hope to
- deceive men, and make justice an illusion? Make haste, then, to acquaint
- us with your mode of defence, for the judgment will be final; and you
- know it to be a question of restitution.
- You have labored! but what is there in common between the labor which
- duty compels you to perform, and the appropriation of things in which
- there is a common interest? Do you not know that domain over the soil,
- like that over air and light, cannot be lost by prescription?
- You have labored! have you never made others labor? Why, then, have they
- lost in laboring for you what you have gained in not laboring for them?
- You have labored! very well; but let us see the results of your labor.
- We will count, weigh, and measure them. It will be the judgment of
- Balthasar; for I swear by balance, level, and square, that if you have
- appropriated another's labor in any way whatsoever, you shall restore it
- every stroke.
- Thus, the principle of occupation is abandoned; no longer is it said,
- "The land belongs to him who first gets possession of it." Property,
- forced into its first intrenchment, repudiates its old adage; justice,
- ashamed, retracts her maxims, and sorrow lowers her bandage over her
- blushing cheeks. And it was but yesterday that this progress in social
- philosophy began: fifty centuries required for the extirpation of a
- lie! During this lamentable period, how many usurpations have been
- sanctioned, how many invasions glorified, how many conquests celebrated!
- The absent dispossessed, the poor banished, the hungry excluded by
- wealth, which is so ready and bold in action! Jealousies and wars,
- incendiarism and bloodshed, among the nations! But henceforth, thanks
- to the age and its spirit, it is to be admitted that the earth is not a
- prize to be won in a race; in the absence of any other obstacle, there
- is a place for everybody under the sun. Each one may harness his goat
- to the bearn, drive his cattle to pasture, sow a corner of a field, and
- bake his bread by his own fireside.
- But, no; each one cannot do these things. I hear it proclaimed on all
- sides, "Glory to labor and industry! to each according to his capacity;
- to each capacity according to its results!" And I see three-fourths of
- the human race again despoiled, the labor of a few being a scourge to
- the labor of the rest.
- "The problem is solved," exclaims M. Hennequin. "Property, the daughter
- of labor, can be enjoyed at present and in the future only under the
- protection of the laws. It has its origin in natural law; it derives its
- power from civil law; and from the union of these two ideas, LABOR and
- PROTECTION, positive legislation results."...
- Ah! THE PROBLEM IS SOLVED! PROPERTY IS THE DAUGHTER OF LABOR! What,
- then, is the right of accession, and the right of succession, and the
- right of donation, &c., if not the right to become a proprietor by
- simple occupancy? What are your laws concerning the age of majority,
- emancipation, guardianship, and interdiction, if not the various
- conditions by which he who is already a laborer gains or loses the right
- of occupancy; that is, property?
- Being unable, at this time, to enter upon a detailed discussion of the
- Code, I shall content myself with examining the three arguments oftenest
- resorted to in support of property. 1. APPROPRIATION, or the formation
- of property by possession; 2. THE CONSENT OF MANKIND; 3. PRESCRIPTION. I
- shall then inquire into the effects of labor upon the relative condition
- of the laborers and upon property.
- % 1.--The Land cannot be Appropriated.
- "It would seem that lands capable of cultivation ought to be regarded
- as natural wealth, since they are not of human creation, but Nature's
- gratuitous gift to man; but inasmuch as this wealth is not fugitive,
- like the air and water,--inasmuch as a field is a fixed and limited
- space which certain men have been able to appropriate, to the
- exclusion of all others who in their turn have consented to this
- appropriation,--the land, which was a natural and gratuitous gift,
- has become social wealth, for the use of which we ought to pay."--SAY:
- POLITICAL ECONOMY.
- Was I wrong in saying, at the beginning of this chapter, that the
- economists are the very worst authorities in matters of legislation and
- philosophy? It is the FATHER of this class of men who clearly states
- the question, How can the supplies of Nature, the wealth created by
- Providence, become private property? and who replies by so gross an
- equivocation that we scarcely know which the author lacks, sense or
- honesty. What, I ask, has the fixed and solid nature of the earth to do
- with the right of appropriation? I can understand that a thing LIMITED
- and STATIONARY, like the land, offers greater chances for appropriation
- than the water or the sunshine; that it is easier to exercise the right
- of domain over the soil than over the atmosphere: but we are not dealing
- with the difficulty of the thing, and Say confounds the right with the
- possibility. We do not ask why the earth has been appropriated to a
- greater extent than the sea and the air; we want to know by what right
- man has appropriated wealth WHICH HE DID NOT CREATE, AND WHICH NATURE
- GAVE TO HIM GRATUITOUSLY.
- Say, then, did not solve the question which he asked. But if he had
- solved it, if the explanation which he has given us were as satisfactory
- as it is illogical, we should know no better than before who has a right
- to exact payment for the use of the soil, of this wealth which is not
- man's handiwork. Who is entitled to the rent of the land? The producer
- of the land, without doubt. Who made the land? God. Then, proprietor,
- retire!
- But the creator of the land does not sell it: he gives it; and, in
- giving it, he is no respecter of persons. Why, then, are some of his
- children regarded as legitimate, while others are treated as bastards?
- If the equality of shares was an original right, why is the inequality
- of conditions a posthumous right?
- Say gives us to understand that if the air and the water were not of a
- FUGITIVE nature, they would have been appropriated. Let me observe in
- passing that this is more than an hypothesis; it is a reality. Men have
- appropriated the air and the water, I will not say as often as they
- could, but as often as they have been allowed to.
- The Portuguese, having discovered the route to India by the Cape of
- Good Hope, pretended to have the sole right to that route; and Grotius,
- consulted in regard to this matter by the Dutch who refused to recognize
- this right, wrote expressly for this occasion his treatise on
- the "Freedom of the Seas," to prove that the sea is not liable to
- appropriation.
- The right to hunt and fish used always to be confined to lords and
- proprietors; to-day it is leased by the government and communes to
- whoever can pay the license-fee and the rent. To regulate hunting and
- fishing is an excellent idea, but to make it a subject of sale is to
- create a monopoly of air and water.
- What is a passport? A universal recommendation of the traveller's
- person; a certificate of security for himself and his property. The
- treasury, whose nature it is to spoil the best things, has made the
- passport a means of espionage and a tax. Is not this a sale of the right
- to travel?
- Finally, it is permissible neither to draw water from a spring situated
- in another's grounds without the permission of the proprietor, because
- by the right of accession the spring belongs to the possessor of the
- soil, if there is no other claim; nor to pass a day on his premises
- without paying a tax; nor to look at a court, a garden, or an orchard,
- without the consent of the proprietor; nor to stroll in a park or an
- enclosure against the owner's will: every one is allowed to shut himself
- up and to fence himself in. All these prohibitions are so many positive
- interdictions, not only of the land, but of the air and water. We who
- belong to the proletaire class: property excommunicates us! _Terra, et
- aqua, et aere, et igne interdicti sumus_.
- Men could not appropriate the most fixed of all the elements without
- appropriating the three others; since, by French and Roman law, property
- in the surface carries with it property from zenith to nadir--_Cujus
- est solum, ejus est usque ad caelum_. Now, if the use of water, air,
- and fire excludes property, so does the use of the soil. This chain of
- reasoning seems to have been presented by M. Ch. Comte, in his "Treatise
- on Property," chap. 5.
- "If a man should be deprived of air for a few moments only, he would
- cease to exist, and a partial deprivation would cause him severe
- suffering; a partial or complete deprivation of food would produce like
- effects upon him though less suddenly; it would be the same, at least
- in certain climates! were he deprived of all clothing and shelter.... To
- sustain life, then, man needs continually to appropriate many different
- things. But these things do not exist in like proportions. Some, such as
- the light of the stars, the atmosphere of the earth, the water composing
- the seas and oceans, exist in such large quantities that men cannot
- perceive any sensible increase or diminution; each one can appropriate
- as much as his needs require without detracting from the enjoyment of
- others, without causing them the least harm. Things of this sort are, so
- to speak, the common property of the human race; the only duty imposed
- upon each individual in this regard is that of infringing not at all
- upon the rights of others."
- Let us complete the argument of M. Ch. Comte. A man who should be
- prohibited from walking in the highways, from resting in the fields,
- from taking shelter in caves, from lighting fires, from picking berries,
- from gathering herbs and boiling them in a bit of baked clay,--such
- a man could not live. Consequently the earth--like water, air, and
- light--is a primary object of necessity which each has a right to use
- freely, without infringing another's right. Why, then, is the earth
- appropriated? M. Ch. Comte's reply is a curious one. Say pretends that
- it is because it is not FUGITIVE; M. Ch. Comte assures us that it
- is because it is not INFINITE. The land is limited in amount. Then,
- according to M. Ch. Comte, it ought to be appropriated. It would
- seem, on the contrary, that he ought to say, Then it ought not to be
- appropriated. Because, no matter how large a quantity of air or light
- any one appropriates, no one is damaged thereby; there always remains
- enough for all. With the soil, it is very different. Lay hold who will,
- or who can, of the sun's rays, the passing breeze, or the sea's billows;
- he has my consent, and my pardon for his bad intentions. But let any
- living man dare to change his right of territorial possession into the
- right of property, and I will declare war upon him, and wage it to the
- death!
- M. Ch. Comte's argument disproves his position. "Among the things
- necessary to the preservation of life," he says, "there are some which
- exist in such large quantities that they are inexhaustible; others which
- exist in lesser quantities, and can satisfy the wants of only a certain
- number of persons. The former are called COMMON, the latter PRIVATE."
- This reasoning is not strictly logical. Water, air, and light are
- COMMON things, not because they are INEXHAUSTIBLE, but because they are
- INDISPENSABLE; and so indispensable that for that very reason Nature
- has created them in quantities almost infinite, in order that their
- plentifulness might prevent their appropriation. Likewise the land
- is indispensable to our existence,--consequently a common thing,
- consequently insusceptible of appropriation; but land is much scarcer
- than the other elements, therefore its use must be regulated, not for
- the profit of a few, but in the interest and for the security of all.
- In a word, equality of rights is proved by equality of needs. Now,
- equality of rights, in the case of a commodity which is limited in
- amount, can be realized only by equality of possession. An agrarian law
- underlies M. Ch. Comte's arguments.
- From whatever point we view this question of property--provided we go
- to the bottom of it--we reach equality. I will not insist farther on
- the distinction between things which can, and things which cannot, be
- appropriated. On this point, economists and legists talk worse than
- nonsense. The Civil Code, after having defined property, says nothing
- about susceptibility of appropriation; and if it speaks of things which
- are in THE MARKET, it always does so without enumerating or describing
- them. However, light is not wanting. There are some few maxims such as
- these: _Ad reges potestas omnium pertinet, ad singulos proprietas; Omnia
- rex imperio possidet, singula dominio_. Social sovereignty opposed to
- private property!--might not that be called a prophecy of equality, a
- republican oracle? Examples crowd upon us: once the possessions of
- the church, the estates of the crown, the fiefs of the nobility
- were inalienable and imprescriptible. If, instead of abolishing this
- privilege, the Constituent had extended it to every individual; if
- it had declared that the right of labor, like liberty, can never be
- forfeited,--at that moment the revolution would have been consummated,
- and we could now devote ourselves to improvement in other directions.
- % 2.--Universal Consent no Justification of Property.
- In the extract from Say, quoted above, it is not clear whether the
- author means to base the right of property on the stationary character
- of the soil, or on the consent which he thinks all men have granted
- to this appropriation. His language is such that it may mean either
- of these things, or both at once; which entitles us to assume that the
- author intended to say, "The right of property resulting originally from
- the exercise of the will, the stability of the soil permitted it to be
- applied to the land, and universal consent has since sanctioned this
- application."
- However that may be, can men legitimate property by mutual consent? I
- say, no. Such a contract, though drafted by Grotius, Montesquieu, and J.
- J. Rousseau, though signed by the whole human race, would be null in the
- eyes of justice, and an act to enforce it would be illegal. Man can
- no more give up labor than liberty. Now, to recognize the right of
- territorial property is to give up labor, since it is to relinquish
- the means of labor; it is to traffic in a natural right, and divest
- ourselves of manhood.
- But I wish that this consent, of which so much is made, had been given,
- either tacitly or formally. What would have been the result? Evidently,
- the surrenders would have been reciprocal; no right would have been
- abandoned without the receipt of an equivalent in exchange. We thus come
- back to equality again,--the sine qua non of appropriation; so that,
- after having justified property by universal consent, that is, by
- equality, we are obliged to justify the inequality of conditions by
- property. Never shall we extricate ourselves from this dilemma. Indeed,
- if, in the terms of the social compact, property has equality for its
- condition, at the moment when equality ceases to exist, the compact is
- broken and all property becomes usurpation. We gain nothing, then, by
- this pretended consent of mankind.
- % 3.--Prescription Gives No Title to Property.
- The right of property was the origin of evil on the earth, the first
- link in the long chain of crimes and misfortunes which the human race
- has endured since its birth. The delusion of prescription is the fatal
- charm thrown over the intellect, the death sentence breathed into the
- conscience, to arrest man's progress towards truth, and bolster up the
- worship of error.
- The Code defines prescription thus: "The process of gaining and losing
- through the lapse of time." In applying this definition to ideas and
- beliefs, we may use the word PRESCRIPTION to denote the everlasting
- prejudice in favor of old superstitions, whatever be their object; the
- opposition, often furious and bloody, with which new light has always
- been received, and which makes the sage a martyr. Not a principle, not a
- discovery, not a generous thought but has met, at its entrance into the
- world, with a formidable barrier of preconceived opinions, seeming
- like a conspiracy of all old prejudices. Prescriptions against reason,
- prescriptions against facts, prescriptions against every truth hitherto
- unknown,--that is the sum and substance of the _statu quo_ philosophy,
- the watchword of conservatives throughout the centuries.
- When the evangelical reform was broached to the world, there was
- prescription in favor of violence, debauchery, and selfishness; when
- Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, and their disciples reconstructed philosophy
- and the sciences, there was prescription in favor of the Aristotelian
- philosophy; when our fathers of '89 demanded liberty and equality, there
- was prescription in favor of tyranny and privilege. "There always have
- been proprietors and there always will be:" it is with this profound
- utterance, the final effort of selfishness dying in its last ditch,
- that the friends of social inequality hope to repel the attacks of their
- adversaries; thinking undoubtedly that ideas, like property, can be lost
- by prescription.
- Enlightened to-day by the triumphal march of science, taught by the most
- glorious successes to question our own opinions, we receive with favor
- and applause the observer of Nature, who, by a thousand experiments
- based upon the most profound analysis, pursues a new principle, a law
- hitherto undiscovered. We take care to repel no idea, no fact, under the
- pretext that abler men than ourselves lived in former days, who did not
- notice the same phenomena, nor grasp the same analogies. Why do we not
- preserve a like attitude towards political and philosophical questions?
- Why this ridiculous mania for affirming that every thing has been said,
- which means that we know all about mental and moral science? Why is
- the proverb, THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN, applied exclusively to
- metaphysical investigations?
- Because we still study philosophy with the imagination, instead of by
- observation and method; because fancy and will are universally regarded
- as judges, in the place of arguments and facts,--it has been impossible
- to this day to distinguish the charlatan from the philosopher, the
- savant from the impostor. Since the days of Solomon and Pythagoras,
- imagination has been exhausted in guessing out social and psychological
- laws; all systems have been proposed. Looked at in this light, it is
- probably true that EVERY THING HAS BEEN SAID; but it is no less true
- that EVERY THING REMAINS TO BE PROVED. In politics (to take only this
- branch of philosophy), in politics every one is governed in his choice
- of party by his passion and his interests; the mind is submitted to the
- impositions of the will,--there is no knowledge, there is not even a
- shadow of certainty. In this way, general ignorance produces general
- tyranny; and while liberty of thought is written in the charter, slavery
- of thought, under the name of MAJORITY RULE, is decreed by the charter.
- In order to confine myself to the civil prescription of which the Code
- speaks, I shall refrain from beginning a discussion upon this worn-out
- objection brought forward by proprietors; it would be too tiresome
- and declamatory. Everybody knows that there are rights which cannot be
- prescribed; and, as for those things which can be gained through the
- lapse of time, no one is ignorant of the fact that prescription requires
- certain conditions, the omission of one of which renders it null. If it
- is true, for example, that the proprietor's possession has been CIVIL,
- PUBLIC, PEACEABLE, and UNINTERRUPTED, it is none the less true that
- it is not based on a just title; since the only titles which it can
- show--occupation and labor--prove as much for the proletaire who
- demands, as for the proprietor who defends. Further, this possession is
- DISHONEST, since it is founded on a violation of right, which prevents
- prescription, according to the saying of St. Paul--_Nunquam in
- usucapionibus juris error possessori prodest_. The violation of right
- lies either in the fact that the holder possesses as proprietor, while
- he should possess only as usufructuary; or in the fact that he has
- purchased a thing which no one had a right to transfer or sell.
- Another reason why prescription cannot be adduced in favor of property
- (a reason borrowed from jurisprudence) is that the right to possess
- real estate is a part of a universal right which has never been totally
- destroyed even at the most critical periods; and the proletaire, in
- order to regain the power to exercise it fully, has only to prove that
- he has always exercised it in part.
- He, for example, who has the universal right to possess, give, exchange,
- loan, let, sell, transform, or destroy a thing, preserves the integrity
- of this right by the sole act of loaning, though he has never shown his
- authority in any other manner. Likewise we shall see that EQUALITY OF
- POSSESSIONS, EQUALITY OF RIGHTS, LIBERTY, WILL, PERSONALITY, are so
- many identical expressions of one and the same idea,--the RIGHT OF
- PRESERVATION and DEVELOPMENT; in a word, the right of life, against
- which there can be no prescription until the human race has vanished
- from the face of the earth.
- Finally, as to the time required for prescription, it would be
- superfluous to show that the right of property in general cannot be
- acquired by simple possession for ten, twenty, a hundred, a thousand,
- or one hundred thousand years; and that, so long as there exists a human
- head capable of understanding and combating the right of property, this
- right will never be prescribed. For principles of jurisprudence and
- axioms of reason are different from accidental and contingent facts.
- One man's possession can prescribe against another man's possession; but
- just as the possessor cannot prescribe against himself, so reason has
- always the faculty of change and reformation. Past error is not binding
- on the future. Reason is always the same eternal force. The institution
- of property, the work of ignorant reason, may be abrogated by a more
- enlightened reason. Consequently, property cannot be established by
- prescription. This is so certain and so true, that on it rests the
- maxim that in the matter of prescription a violation of right goes for
- nothing.
- But I should be recreant to my method, and the reader would have the
- right to accuse me of charlatanism and bad faith, if I had nothing
- further to advance concerning prescription. I showed, in the first
- place, that appropriation of land is illegal; and that, supposing it to
- be legal, it must be accompanied by equality of property. I have shown,
- in the second place, that universal consent proves nothing in favor
- of property; and that, if it proves any thing, it proves equality of
- property. I have yet to show that prescription, if admissible at all,
- presupposes equality of property.
- This demonstration will be neither long nor difficult. I need only to
- call attention to the reasons why prescription was introduced.
- "Prescription," says Dunod, "seems repugnant to natural equity, which
- permits no one either to deprive another of his possessions without his
- knowledge and consent, or to enrich himself at another's expense. But as
- it might often happen, in the absence of prescription, that one who had
- honestly earned would be ousted after long possession; and even that
- he who had received a thing from its rightful owner, or who had been
- legitimately relieved from all obligations, would, on losing his title,
- be liable to be dispossessed or subjected again,--the public welfare
- demanded that a term should be fixed, after the expiration of which no
- one should be allowed to disturb actual possessors, or reassert rights
- too long neglected.... The civil law, in regulating prescription, has
- aimed, then, only to perfect natural law, and to supplement the law of
- nations; and as it is founded on the public good, which should always be
- considered before individual welfare,--_bono publico usucapio introducta
- est_,--it should be regarded with favor, provided the conditions
- required by the law are fulfilled."
- Toullier, in his "Civil Law," says: "In order that the question of
- proprietorship may not remain too long unsettled, and thereby injure the
- public welfare, disturbing the peace of families and the stability of
- social transactions, the law has fixed a time when all claims shall be
- cancelled, and possession shall regain its ancient prerogative through
- its transformation into property."
- Cassiodorus said of property, that it was the only safe harbor in
- which to seek shelter from the tempests of chicanery and the gales of
- avarice--_Hic unus inter humanas pro cellas portus, quem si homines
- fervida voluntate praeterierint; in undosis semper jurgiis errabunt_.
- Thus, in the opinion of the authors, prescription is a means of
- preserving public order; a restoration in certain cases of the original
- mode of acquiring property; a fiction of the civil law which derives
- all its force from the necessity of settling differences which otherwise
- would never end. For, as Grotius says, time has no power to produce
- effects; all things happen in time, but nothing is done by time.
- Prescription, or the right of acquisition through the lapse of time, is,
- therefore, a fiction of the law, conventionally adopted.
- But all property necessarily originated in prescription, or, as the
- Latins say, in _usucapion;_ that is, in continued possession.
- I ask, then, in the first place, how possession can become property by
- the lapse of time? Continue possession as long as you wish, continue
- it for years and for centuries, you never can give duration--which of
- itself creates nothing, changes nothing, modifies nothing--the power
- to change the usufructuary into a proprietor. Let the civil law secure
- against chance-comers the honest possessor who has held his position
- for many years,--that only confirms a right already respected; and
- prescription, applied in this way, simply means that possession which
- has continued for twenty, thirty, or a hundred years shall be retained
- by the occupant. But when the law declares that the lapse of time
- changes possessor into proprietor, it supposes that a right can be
- created without a producing cause; it unwarrantably alters the character
- of the subject; it legislates on a matter not open to legislation; it
- exceeds its own powers. Public order and private security ask only
- that possession shall be protected. Why has the law created property?
- Prescription was simply security for the future; why has the law made it
- a matter of privilege?
- Thus the origin of prescription is identical with that of property
- itself; and since the latter can legitimate itself only when accompanied
- by equality, prescription is but another of the thousand forms which the
- necessity of maintaining this precious equality has taken. And this is
- no vain induction, no far-fetched inference. The proof is written in all
- the codes.
- And, indeed, if all nations, through their instinct of justice and their
- conservative nature, have recognized the utility and the necessity
- of prescription; and if their design has been to guard thereby the
- interests of the possessor,--could they not do something for the absent
- citizen, separated from his family and his country by commerce, war, or
- captivity, and in no position to exercise his right of possession? No.
- Also, at the same time that prescription was introduced into the laws,
- it was admitted that property is preserved by intent alone,--_nudo
- animo_. Now, if property is preserved by intent alone, if it can be
- lost only by the action of the proprietor, what can be the use of
- prescription? How does the law dare to presume that the proprietor, who
- preserves by intent alone, intended to abandon that which he has allowed
- to be prescribed? What lapse of time can warrant such a conjecture;
- and by what right does the law punish the absence of the proprietor by
- depriving him of his goods? What then! we found but a moment since that
- prescription and property were identical; and now we find that they are
- mutually destructive!
- Grotius, who perceived this difficulty, replied so singularly that his
- words deserve to be quoted: _Bene sperandum de hominibus, ac propterea
- non putandum eos hoc esse animo ut, rei caducae causa, hominem alterum
- velint in perpetuo peccato versari, quo d evitari saepe non poterit sine
- tali derelictione_.
- "Where is the man," he says, "with so unchristian a soul that, for a
- trifle, he would perpetuate the trespass of a possessor, which would
- inevitably be the result if he did not consent to abandon his right?" By
- the Eternal! I am that man. Though a million proprietors should burn for
- it in hell, I lay the blame on them for depriving me of my portion of
- this world's goods. To this powerful consideration Grotius rejoins, that
- it is better to abandon a disputed right than to go to law, disturb the
- peace of nations, and stir up the flames of civil war. I accept, if you
- wish it, this argument, provided you indemnify me. But if this indemnity
- is refused me, what do I, a proletaire, care for the tranquillity and
- security of the rich? I care as little for PUBLIC ORDER as for the
- proprietor's safety. I ask to live a laborer; otherwise I will die a
- warrior.
- Whichever way we turn, we shall come to the conclusion that prescription
- is a contradiction of property; or rather that prescription and property
- are two forms of the same principle, but two forms which serve to
- correct each other; and ancient and modern jurisprudence did not make
- the least of its blunders in pretending to reconcile them. Indeed, if
- we see in the institution of property only a desire to secure to
- each individual his share of the soil and his right to labor; in the
- distinction between naked property and possession only an asylum for
- absentees, orphans, and all who do not know, or cannot maintain, their
- rights; in prescription only a means, either of defence against unjust
- pretensions and encroachments, or of settlement of the differences
- caused by the removal of possessors,--we shall recognize in these
- various forms of human justice the spontaneous efforts of the mind to
- come to the aid of the social instinct; we shall see in this protection
- of all rights the sentiment of equality, a constant levelling tendency.
- And, looking deeper, we shall find in the very exaggeration of these
- principles the confirmation of our doctrine; because, if equality of
- conditions and universal association are not soon realized, it will be
- owing to the obstacle thrown for the time in the way of the common sense
- of the people by the stupidity of legislators and judges; and also to
- the fact that, while society in its original state was illuminated with
- a flash of truth, the early speculations of its leaders could bring
- forth nothing but darkness.
- After the first covenants, after the first draughts of laws and
- constitutions, which were the expression of man's primary needs, the
- legislator's duty was to reform the errors of legislation; to complete
- that which was defective; to harmonize, by superior definitions, those
- things which seemed to conflict. Instead of that, they halted at the
- literal meaning of the laws, content to play the subordinate part of
- commentators and scholiasts. Taking the inspirations of the human mind,
- at that time necessarily weak and faulty, for axioms of eternal and
- unquestionable truth,--influenced by public opinion, enslaved by the
- popular religion,--they have invariably started with the principle
- (following in this respect the example of the theologians) that that is
- infallibly true which has been admitted by all persons, in all places,
- and at all times--_quod ab omnibus, quod ubique, quod semper;_ as if a
- general but spontaneous opinion was any thing more than an indication of
- the truth. Let us not be deceived: the opinion of all nations may serve
- to authenticate the perception of a fact, the vague sentiment of a law;
- it can teach us nothing about either fact or law. The consent of mankind
- is an indication of Nature; not, as Cicero says, a law of Nature. Under
- the indication is hidden the truth, which faith can believe, but only
- thought can know. Such has been the constant progress of the human mind
- in regard to physical phenomena and the creations of genius: how can
- it be otherwise with the facts of conscience and the rules of human
- conduct?
- % 4.--Labor--That Labor Has No Inherent Power to Appropriate Natural
- Wealth.
- We shall show by the maxims of political economy and law, that is, by
- the authorities recognized by property,--
- 1. That labor has no inherent power to appropriate natural wealth.
- 2. That, if we admit that labor has this power, we are led directly to
- equality of property,--whatever the kind of labor, however scarce the
- product, or unequal the ability of the laborers.
- 3. That, in the order of justice, labor DESTROYS property.
- Following the example of our opponents, and that we may leave no
- obstacles in the path, let us examine the question in the strongest
- possible light.
- M. Ch. Comte says, in his "Treatise on Property:"--
- "France, considered as a nation, has a territory which is her own."
- France, as an individuality, possesses a territory which she cultivates;
- it is not her property. Nations are related to each other as individuals
- are: they are commoners and workers; it is an abuse of language to call
- them proprietors. The right of use and abuse belongs no more to nations
- than to men; and the time will come when a war waged for the purpose of
- checking a nation in its abuse of the soil will be regarded as a holy
- war.
- Thus, M. Ch. Comte--who undertakes to explain how property comes into
- existence, and who starts with the supposition that a nation is a
- proprietor--falls into that error known as BEGGING THE QUESTION; a
- mistake which vitiates his whole argument.
- If the reader thinks it is pushing logic too far to question a nation's
- right of property in the territory which it possesses, I will simply
- remind him of the fact that at all ages the results of the fictitious
- right of national property have been pretensions to suzerainty,
- tributes, monarchical privileges, statute-labor, quotas of men and
- money, supplies of merchandise, &c.; ending finally in refusals to pay
- taxes, insurrections, wars, and depopulations.
- "Scattered through this territory are extended tracts of land, which
- have not been converted into individual property. These lands, which
- consist mainly of forests, belong to the whole population, and the
- government, which receives the revenues, uses or ought to use them in
- the interest of all."
- OUGHT TO USE is well said: a lie is avoided thereby.
- "Let them be offered for sale...."
- Why offered for sale? Who has a right to sell them? Even were the nation
- proprietor, can the generation of to-day dispossess the generation of
- to-morrow? The nation, in its function of usufructuary, possesses
- them; the government rules, superintends, and protects them. If it also
- granted lands, it could grant only their use; it has no right to sell
- them or transfer them in any way whatever. Not being a proprietor, how
- can it transmit property?
- "Suppose some industrious man buys a portion, a large swamp for example.
- This would be no usurpation, since the public would receive the exact
- value through the hands of the government, and would be as rich after
- the sale as before."
- How ridiculous! What! because a prodigal, imprudent, incompetent
- official sells the State's possessions, while I, a ward of the State,--I
- who have neither an advisory nor a deliberative voice in the State
- councils,--while I am allowed to make no opposition to the sale,
- this sale is right and legal! The guardians of the nation waste its
- substance, and it has no redress! I have received, you tell me, through
- the hands of the government my share of the proceeds of the sale: but,
- in the first place, I did not wish to sell; and, had I wished to, I
- could not have sold. I had not the right. And then I do not see that I
- am benefited by the sale. My guardians have dressed up some soldiers,
- repaired an old fortress, erected in their pride some costly but
- worthless monument,--then they have exploded some fireworks and set up a
- greased pole! What does all that amount to in comparison with my loss?
- The purchaser draws boundaries, fences himself in, and says, "This is
- mine; each one by himself, each one for himself." Here, then, is a piece
- of land upon which, henceforth, no one has a right to step, save
- the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save the
- proprietor and his servants. Let these sales multiply, and soon the
- people--who have been neither able nor willing to sell, and who have
- received none of the proceeds of the sale--will have nowhere to rest,
- no place of shelter, no ground to till. They will die of hunger at
- the proprietor's door, on the edge of that property which was their
- birthright; and the proprietor, watching them die, will exclaim, "So
- perish idlers and vagrants!"
- To reconcile us to the proprietor's usurpation, M. Ch. Comte assumes the
- lands to be of little value at the time of sale.
- "The importance of these usurpations should not be exaggerated: they
- should be measured by the number of men which the occupied land would
- support, and by the means which it would furnish them.
- "It is evident, for instance, that if a piece of land which is worth
- to-day one thousand francs was worth only five centimes when it was
- usurped, we really lose only the value of five centimes. A square league
- of earth would be hardly sufficient to support a savage in distress;
- to-day it supplies one thousand persons with the means of existence.
- Nine hundred and ninety-nine parts of this land is the legitimate
- property of the possessors; only one-thousandth of the value has been
- usurped."
- A peasant admitted one day, at confession, that he had destroyed a
- document which declared him a debtor to the amount of three hundred
- francs. Said the father confessor, "You must return these three hundred
- francs." "No," replied the peasant, "I will return a penny to pay for
- the paper."
- M. Ch. Comte's logic resembles this peasant's honesty. The soil has not
- only an integrant and actual value, it has also a potential value,--a
- value of the future,--which depends on our ability to make it valuable,
- and to employ it in our work. Destroy a bill of exchange, a promissory
- note, an annuity deed,--as a paper you destroy almost no value at all;
- but with this paper you destroy your title, and, in losing your title,
- you deprive yourself of your goods. Destroy the land, or, what is the
- same thing, sell it,--you not only transfer one, two, or several crops,
- but you annihilate all the products that you could derive from it; you
- and your children and your children's children.
- When M. Ch. Comte, the apostle of property and the eulogist of labor,
- supposes an alienation of the soil on the part of the government, we
- must not think that he does so without reason and for no purpose; it
- is a necessary part of his position. As he rejected the theory of
- occupancy, and as he knew, moreover, that labor could not constitute the
- right in the absence of a previous permission to occupy, he was obliged
- to connect this permission with the authority of the government, which
- means that property is based upon the sovereignty of the people;
- in other words, upon universal consent. This theory we have already
- considered.
- To say that property is the daughter of labor, and then to give labor
- material on which to exercise itself, is, if I am not mistaken, to
- reason in a circle. Contradictions will result from it.
- "A piece of land of a certain size produces food enough to supply a man
- for one day. If the possessor, through his labor, discovers some method
- of making it produce enough for two days, he doubles its value. This
- new value is his work, his creation: it is taken from nobody; it is his
- property."
- I maintain that the possessor is paid for his trouble and industry in
- his doubled crop, but that he acquires no right to the land. "Let
- the laborer have the fruits of his labor." Very good; but I do not
- understand that property in products carries with it property in raw
- material. Does the skill of the fisherman, who on the same coast
- can catch more fish than his fellows, make him proprietor of the
- fishing-grounds? Can the expertness of a hunter ever be regarded as
- a property-title to a game-forest? The analogy is perfect,--the
- industrious cultivator finds the reward of his industry in the abundancy
- and superiority of his crop. If he has made improvements in the soil, he
- has the possessor's right of preference. Never, under any circumstances,
- can he be allowed to claim a property-title to the soil which he
- cultivates, on the ground of his skill as a cultivator.
- To change possession into property, something is needed besides labor,
- without which a man would cease to be proprietor as soon as he ceased
- to be a laborer. Now, the law bases property upon immemorial,
- unquestionable possession; that is, prescription. Labor is only the
- sensible sign, the physical act, by which occupation is manifested. If,
- then, the cultivator remains proprietor after he has ceased to labor
- and produce; if his possession, first conceded, then tolerated, finally
- becomes inalienable,--it happens by permission of the civil law, and by
- virtue of the principle of occupancy. So true is this, that there is not
- a bill of sale, not a farm lease, not an annuity, but implies it. I will
- quote only one example.
- How do we measure the value of land? By its product. If a piece of land
- yields one thousand francs, we say that at five per cent. it is worth
- twenty thousand francs; at four per cent. twenty-five thousand francs,
- &c.; which means, in other words, that in twenty or twenty-five years'
- time the purchaser would recover in full the amount originally paid for
- the land. If, then, after a certain length of time, the price of a piece
- of land has been wholly recovered, why does the purchaser continue to be
- proprietor? Because of the right of occupancy, in the absence of which
- every sale would be a redemption.
- The theory of appropriation by labor is, then, a contradiction of the
- Code; and when the partisans of this theory pretend to explain the laws
- thereby, they contradict themselves.
- "If men succeed in fertilizing land hitherto unproductive, or even
- death-producing, like certain swamps, they create thereby property in
- all its completeness."
- What good does it do to magnify an expression, and play with
- equivocations, as if we expected to change the reality thereby? THEY
- CREATE PROPERTY IN ALL ITS COMPLETENESS. You mean that they create a
- productive capacity which formerly did not exist; but this capacity
- cannot be created without material to support it. The substance of the
- soil remains the same; only its qualities and modifications are changed.
- Man has created every thing--every thing save the material itself. Now,
- I maintain that this material he can only possess and use, on condition
- of permanent labor,--granting, for the time being, his right of property
- in things which he has produced.
- This, then, is the first point settled: property in product, if we grant
- so much, does not carry with it property in the means of production;
- that seems to me to need no further demonstration. There is no
- difference between the soldier who possesses his arms, the mason
- who possesses the materials committed to his care, the fisherman who
- possesses the water, the hunter who possesses the fields and forests,
- and the cultivator who possesses the lands: all, if you say so, are
- proprietors of their products--not one is proprietor of the means of
- production. The right to product is exclusive--jus in re; the right to
- means is common--jus ad rem.
- % 5.--That Labor leads to Equality of Property.
- Admit, however, that labor gives a right of property in material.
- Why is not this principle universal? Why is the benefit of this
- pretended law confined to a few and denied to the mass of laborers?
- A philosopher, arguing that all animals sprang up formerly out of the
- earth warmed by the rays of the sun, almost like mushrooms, on being
- asked why the earth no longer yielded crops of that nature, replied:
- "Because it is old, and has lost its fertility." Has labor, once so
- fecund, likewise become sterile? Why does the tenant no longer acquire
- through his labor the land which was formerly acquired by the labor of
- the proprietor?
- "Because," they say, "it is already appropriated." That is no answer. A
- farm yields fifty bushels per hectare; the skill and labor of the tenant
- double this product: the increase is created by the tenant. Suppose the
- owner, in a spirit of moderation rarely met with, does not go to the
- extent of absorbing this product by raising the rent, but allows the
- cultivator to enjoy the results of his labor; even then justice is not
- satisfied. The tenant, by improving the land, has imparted a new value
- to the property; he, therefore, has a right to a part of the property.
- If the farm was originally worth one hundred thousand francs, and if
- by the labor of the tenant its value has risen to one hundred and fifty
- thousand francs, the tenant, who produced this extra value, is the
- legitimate proprietor of one-third of the farm. M. Ch. Comte could not
- have pronounced this doctrine false, for it was he who said:--
- "Men who increase the fertility of the earth are no less useful to their
- fellow-men, than if they should create new land."
- Why, then, is not this rule applicable to the man who improves the land,
- as well as to him who clears it? The labor of the former makes the land
- worth one; that of the latter makes it worth two: both create equal
- values. Why not accord to both equal property? I defy any one to
- refute this argument, without again falling back on the right of first
- occupancy.
- "But," it will be said, "even if your wish should be granted, property
- would not be distributed much more evenly than now. Land does not go on
- increasing in value for ever; after two or three seasons it attains its
- maximum fertility. That which is added by the agricultural art results
- rather from the progress of science and the diffusion of knowledge, than
- from the skill of the cultivator. Consequently, the addition of a
- few laborers to the mass of proprietors would be no argument against
- property."
- This discussion would, indeed, prove a well-nigh useless one, if our
- labors culminated in simply extending land-privilege and industrial
- monopoly; in emancipating only a few hundred laborers out of the
- millions of proletaires. But this also is a misconception of our real
- thought, and does but prove the general lack of intelligence and logic.
- If the laborer, who adds to the value of a thing, has a right of
- property in it, he who maintains this value acquires the same right.
- For what is maintenance? It is incessant addition,--continuous creation.
- What is it to cultivate? It is to give the soil its value every year;
- it is, by annually renewed creation, to prevent the diminution or
- destruction of the value of a piece of land. Admitting, then, that
- property is rational and legitimate,--admitting that rent is equitable
- and just,--I say that he who cultivates acquires property by as good a
- title as he who clears, or he who improves; and that every time a tenant
- pays his rent, he obtains a fraction of property in the land entrusted
- to his care, the denominator of which is equal to the proportion of rent
- paid. Unless you admit this, you fall into absolutism and tyranny; you
- recognize class privileges; you sanction slavery.
- Whoever labors becomes a proprietor--this is an inevitable deduction
- from the acknowledged principles of political economy and jurisprudence.
- And when I say proprietor, I do not mean simply (as do our hypocritical
- economists) proprietor of his allowance, his salary, his wages,--I mean
- proprietor of the value which he creates, and by which the master alone
- profits.
- As all this relates to the theory of wages and of the distribution of
- products,--and as this matter never has been even partially cleared
- up,--I ask permission to insist on it: this discussion will not
- be useless to the work in hand. Many persons talk of admitting
- working-people to a share in the products and profits; but in
- their minds this participation is pure benevolence: they have never
- shown--perhaps never suspected--that it was a natural, necessary right,
- inherent in labor, and inseparable from the function of producer, even
- in the lowest forms of his work.
- This is my proposition: THE LABORER RETAINS, EVEN AFTER HE HAS RECEIVED
- HIS WAGES, A NATURAL RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN THE THING WHICH HE HAS
- PRODUCED.
- I again quote M. Ch. Comte:--
- "Some laborers are employed in draining marshes, in cutting down trees
- and brushwood,--in a word, in cleaning up the soil. They increase the
- value, they make the amount of property larger; they are paid for
- the value which they add in the form of food and daily wages: it then
- becomes the property of the capitalist."
- The price is not sufficient: the labor of the workers has created a
- value; now this value is their property. But they have neither sold
- nor exchanged it; and you, capitalist, you have not earned it. That you
- should have a partial right to the whole, in return for the materials
- that you have furnished and the provisions that you have supplied, is
- perfectly just. You contributed to the production, you ought to share in
- the enjoyment. But your right does not annihilate that of the laborers,
- who, in spite of you, have been your colleagues in the work of
- production. Why do you talk of wages? The money with which you pay
- the wages of the laborers remunerates them for only a few years of the
- perpetual possession which they have abandoned to you. Wages is the cost
- of the daily maintenance and refreshment of the laborer. You are wrong
- in calling it the price of a sale. The workingman has sold nothing; he
- knows neither his right, nor the extent of the concession which he has
- made to you, nor the meaning of the contract which you pretend to
- have made with him. On his side, utter ignorance; on yours, error and
- surprise, not to say deceit and fraud.
- Let us make this clearer by another and more striking example.
- No one is ignorant of the difficulties that are met with in the
- conversion of untilled land into arable and productive land. These
- difficulties are so great, that usually an isolated man would perish
- before he could put the soil in a condition to yield him even the most
- meagre living. To that end are needed the united and combined efforts of
- society, and all the resources of industry. M. Ch. Comte quotes on this
- subject numerous and well-authenticated facts, little thinking that he
- is amassing testimony against his own system.
- Let us suppose that a colony of twenty or thirty families establishes
- itself in a wild district, covered with underbrush and forests; and from
- which, by agreement, the natives consent to withdraw. Each one of these
- families possesses a moderate but sufficient amount of capital, of such
- a nature as a colonist would be apt to choose,--animals, seeds, tools,
- and a little money and food. The land having been divided, each one
- settles himself as comfortably as possible, and begins to clear away the
- portion allotted to him. But after a few weeks of fatigue, such as they
- never before have known, of inconceivable suffering, of ruinous and
- almost useless labor, our colonists begin to complain of their trade;
- their condition seems hard to them; they curse their sad existence.
- Suddenly, one of the shrewdest among them kills a pig, cures a part of
- the meat; and, resolved to sacrifice the rest of his provisions, goes to
- find his companions in misery. "Friends," he begins in a very benevolent
- tone, "how much trouble it costs you to do a little work and live
- uncomfortably! A fortnight of labor has reduced you to your last
- extremity!... Let us make an arrangement by which you shall all profit.
- I offer you provisions and wine: you shall get so much every day;
- we will work together, and, zounds! my friends, we will be happy and
- contented!"
- Would it be possible for empty stomachs to resist such an invitation?
- The hungriest of them follow the treacherous tempter. They go to work;
- the charm of society, emulation, joy, and mutual assistance double their
- strength; the work can be seen to advance. Singing and laughing, they
- subdue Nature. In a short time, the soil is thoroughly changed; the
- mellowed earth waits only for the seed. That done, the proprietor pays
- his laborers, who, on going away, return him their thanks, and grieve
- that the happy days which they have spent with him are over.
- Others follow this example, always with the same success. Then, these
- installed, the rest disperse,--each one returns to his grubbing. But,
- while grubbing, it is necessary to live. While they have been clearing
- away for their neighbor, they have done no clearing for themselves. One
- year's seed-time and harvest is already gone. They had calculated that
- in lending their labor they could not but gain, since they would save
- their own provisions; and, while living better, would get still more
- money. False calculation! they have created for another the means
- wherewith to produce, and have created nothing for themselves. The
- difficulties of clearing remain the same; their clothing wears out,
- their provisions give out; soon their purse becomes empty for the profit
- of the individual for whom they have worked, and who alone can furnish
- the provisions which they need, since he alone is in a position to
- produce them. Then, when the poor grubber has exhausted his resources,
- the man with the provisions (like the wolf in the fable, who scents his
- victim from afar) again comes forward. One he offers to employ again by
- the day; from another he offers to buy at a favorable price a piece of
- his bad land, which is not, and never can be, of any use to him: that
- is, he uses the labor of one man to cultivate the field of another
- for his own benefit. So that at the end of twenty years, of thirty
- individuals originally equal in point of wealth, five or six have
- become proprietors of the whole district, while the rest have been
- philanthropically dispossessed!
- In this century of bourgeoisie morality, in which I have had the honor
- to be born, the moral sense is so debased that I should not be at all
- surprised if I were asked, by many a worthy proprietor, what I see
- in this that is unjust and illegitimate? Debased creature! galvanized
- corpse! how can I expect to convince you, if you cannot tell robbery
- when I show it to you? A man, by soft and insinuating words, discovers
- the secret of taxing others that he may establish himself; then, once
- enriched by their united efforts, he refuses, on the very conditions
- which he himself dictated, to advance the well-being of those who made
- his fortune for him: and you ask how such conduct is fraudulent! Under
- the pretext that he has paid his laborers, that he owes them nothing
- more, that he has nothing to gain by putting himself at the service of
- others, while his own occupations claim his attention,--he refuses, I
- say, to aid others in getting a foothold, as he was aided in getting his
- own; and when, in the impotence of their isolation, these poor laborers
- are compelled to sell their birthright, he--this ungrateful proprietor,
- this knavish upstart--stands ready to put the finishing touch to their
- deprivation and their ruin. And you think that just? Take care!
- I read in your startled countenance the reproach of a guilty conscience,
- much more clearly than the innocent astonishment of involuntary
- ignorance.
- "The capitalist," they say, "has paid the laborers their DAILY WAGES."
- To be accurate, it must be said that the capitalist has paid as many
- times one day's wage as he has employed laborers each day,--which is not
- at all the same thing. For he has paid nothing for that immense
- power which results from the union and harmony of laborers, and
- the convergence and simultaneousness of their efforts. Two hundred
- grenadiers stood the obelisk of Luxor upon its base in a few hours; do
- you suppose that one man could have accomplished the same task in two
- hundred days? Nevertheless, on the books of the capitalist, the amount
- of wages paid would have been the same. Well, a desert to prepare for
- cultivation, a house to build, a factory to run,--all these are
- obelisks to erect, mountains to move. The smallest fortune, the most
- insignificant establishment, the setting in motion of the lowest
- industry, demand the concurrence of so many different kinds of labor and
- skill, that one man could not possibly execute the whole of them. It
- is astonishing that the economists never have called attention to this
- fact. Strike a balance, then, between the capitalist's receipts and his
- payments.
- The laborer needs a salary which will enable him to live while he works;
- for unless he consumes, he cannot produce. Whoever employs a man owes
- him maintenance and support, or wages enough to procure the same.
- That is the first thing to be done in all production. I admit, for the
- moment, that in this respect the capitalist has discharged his duty.
- It is necessary that the laborer should find in his production, in
- addition to his present support, a guarantee of his future support;
- otherwise the source of production would dry up, and his productive
- capacity would become exhausted: in other words, the labor accomplished
- must give birth perpetually to new labor--such is the universal law of
- reproduction. In this way, the proprietor of a farm finds: 1. In his
- crops, means, not only of supporting himself and his family, but of
- maintaining and improving his capital, of feeding his live-stock--in a
- word, means of new labor and continual reproduction; 2. In his ownership
- of a productive agency, a permanent basis of cultivation and labor.
- But he who lends his services,--what is his basis of cultivation?
- The proprietor's presumed need of him, and the unwarranted supposition
- that he wishes to employ him. Just as the commoner once held his land by
- the munificence and condescension of the lord, so to-day the working-man
- holds his labor by the condescension and necessities of the master
- and proprietor: that is what is called possession by a precarious [15]
- title. But this precarious condition is an injustice, for it implies
- an inequality in the bargain. The laborer's wages exceed but little his
- running expenses, and do not assure him wages for to-morrow; while the
- capitalist finds in the instrument produced by the laborer a pledge of
- independence and security for the future.
- Now, this reproductive leaven--this eternal germ of life,
- this preparation of the land and manufacture of implements for
- production--constitutes the debt of the capitalist to the producer,
- which he never pays; and it is this fraudulent denial which causes the
- poverty of the laborer, the luxury of idleness, and the inequality of
- conditions. This it is, above all other things, which has been so fitly
- named the exploitation of man by man.
- One of three things must be done. Either the laborer must be given a
- portion of the product in addition to his wages; or the employer must
- render the laborer an equivalent in productive service; or else he
- must pledge himself to employ him for ever. Division of the product,
- reciprocity of service, or guarantee of perpetual labor,--from the
- adoption of one of these courses the capitalist cannot escape. But it
- is evident that he cannot satisfy the second and third of these
- conditions--he can neither put himself at the service of the thousands
- of working-men, who, directly or indirectly, have aided him in
- establishing himself, nor employ them all for ever. He has no other
- course left him, then, but a division of the property. But if the
- property is divided, all conditions will be equal--there will be no more
- large capitalists or large proprietors.
- Consequently, when M. Ch. Comte--following out his hypothesis--shows
- us his capitalist acquiring one after another the products of his
- employees' labor, he sinks deeper and deeper into the mire; and, as his
- argument does not change, our reply of course remains the same.
- "Other laborers are employed in building: some quarry the stone, others
- transport it, others cut it, and still others put it in place. Each
- of them adds a certain value to the material which passes through his
- hands; and this value, the product of his labor, is his property. He
- sells it, as fast as he creates it, to the proprietor of the building,
- who pays him for it in food and wages."
- _Divide et impera_--divide, and you shall command; divide, and you
- shall grow rich; divide, and you shall deceive men, you shall daze their
- minds, you shall mock at justice! Separate laborers from each other,
- perhaps each one's daily wage exceeds the value of each individual's
- product; but that is not the question under consideration. A force of
- one thousand men working twenty days has been paid the same wages that
- one would be paid for working fifty-five years; but this force of
- one thousand has done in twenty days what a single man could not have
- accomplished, though he had labored for a million centuries. Is the
- exchange an equitable one? Once more, no; when you have paid all the
- individual forces, the collective force still remains to be paid.
- Consequently, there remains always a right of collective property which
- you have not acquired, and which you enjoy unjustly.
- Admit that twenty days' wages suffice to feed, lodge, and clothe this
- multitude for twenty days: thrown out of employment at the end of that
- time, what will become of them, if, as fast as they create, they abandon
- their creations to the proprietors who will soon discharge them? While
- the proprietor, firm in his position (thanks to the aid of all the
- laborers), dwells in security, and fears no lack of labor or bread,
- the laborer's only dependence is upon the benevolence of this same
- proprietor, to whom he has sold and surrendered his liberty. If, then,
- the proprietor, shielding himself behind his comfort and his rights,
- refuses to employ the laborer, how can the laborer live? He has ploughed
- an excellent field, and cannot sow it; he has built an elegant and
- commodious house, and cannot live in it; he has produced all, and can
- enjoy nothing.
- Labor leads us to equality. Every step that we take brings us nearer to
- it; and if laborers had equal strength, diligence, and industry, clearly
- their fortunes would be equal also. Indeed, if, as is pretended,--and
- as we have admitted,--the laborer is proprietor of the value which he
- creates, it follows:--
- 1. That the laborer acquires at the expense of the idle proprietor;
- 2. That all production being necessarily collective, the laborer is
- entitled to a share of the products and profits commensurate with his
- labor;
- 3. That all accumulated capital being social property, no one can be its
- exclusive proprietor.
- These inferences are unavoidable; these alone would suffice to
- revolutionize our whole economical system, and change our institutions
- and our laws. Why do the very persons, who laid down this principle, now
- refuse to be guided by it? Why do the Says, the Comtes, the Hennequins,
- and others--after having said that property is born of labor--seek to
- fix it by occupation and prescription?
- But let us leave these sophists to their contradictions and blindness.
- The good sense of the people will do justice to their equivocations.
- Let us make haste to enlighten it, and show it the true path. Equality
- approaches; already between it and us but a short distance intervenes:
- to-morrow even this distance will have been traversed.
- % 6.--That in Society all Wages are Equal.
- When the St. Simonians, the Fourierists, and, in general, all who in our
- day are connected with social economy and reform, inscribe upon their
- banner,--
- "TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS CAPACITY, TO EACH CAPACITY ACCORDING TO ITS
- RESULTS" (St. Simon);
- "TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS CAPITAL, HIS LABOR, AND HIS SKILL"
- (Fourier),--
- they mean--although they do not say so in so many words--that the
- products of Nature procured by labor and industry are a reward, a palm,
- a crown offered to all kinds of preeminence and superiority. They regard
- the land as an immense arena in which prizes are contended for,--no
- longer, it is true, with lances and swords, by force and by treachery;
- but by acquired wealth, by knowledge, talent, and by virtue itself. In
- a word, they mean--and everybody agrees with them--that the greatest
- capacity is entitled to the greatest reward; and, to use the
- mercantile phraseology,--which has, at least, the merit of being
- straightforward,--that salaries must be governed by capacity and its
- results.
- The disciples of these two self-styled reformers cannot deny that such
- is their thought; for, in doing so, they would contradict their
- official interpretations, and would destroy the unity of their systems.
- Furthermore, such a denial on their part is not to be feared. The
- two sects glory in laying down as a principle inequality of
- conditions,--reasoning from Nature, who, they say, intended the
- inequality of capacities. They boast only of one thing; namely, that
- their political system is so perfect, that the social inequalities
- always correspond with the natural inequalities. They no more trouble
- themselves to inquire whether inequality of conditions--I mean of
- salaries--is possible, than they do to fix a measure of capacity.[1]
- [1] In St. Simon's system, the St.-Simonian priest determines the
- capacity of each by virtue of his pontifical infallibility, in imitation
- of the Roman Church: in Fourier's, the ranks and merits are decided by
- vote, in imitation of the constitutional regime.
- Clearly, the great man is an object of ridicule to the reader; he did
- not mean to tell his secret.
- "To each according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its
- results."
- "To each according to his capital, his labor, and his skill."
- Since the death of St. Simon and Fourier, not one among their numerous
- disciples has attempted to give to the public a scientific demonstration
- of this grand maxim; and I would wager a hundred to one that no
- Fourierist even suspects that this biform aphorism is susceptible of two
- interpretations.
- "To each according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its
- results."
- "To each according to his capital, his labor, and his skill."
- This proposition, taken, as they say, _in sensu obvio_--in the sense
- usually attributed to it--is false, absurd, unjust, contradictory,
- hostile to liberty, friendly to tyranny, anti-social, and was unluckily
- framed under the express influence of the property idea.
- And, first, CAPITAL must be crossed off the list of elements which are
- entitled to a reward. The Fourierists--as far as I have been able to
- learn from a few of their pamphlets--deny the right of occupancy, and
- recognize no basis of property save labor. Starting with a like premise,
- they would have seen--had they reasoned upon the matter--that capital is
- a source of production to its proprietor only by virtue of the right of
- occupancy, and that this production is therefore illegitimate. Indeed,
- if labor is the sole basis of property, I cease to be proprietor of my
- field as soon as I receive rent for it from another. This we have
- shown beyond all cavil. It is the same with all capital; so that to put
- capital in an enterprise, is, by the law's decision, to exchange it
- for an equivalent sum in products. I will not enter again upon this
- now useless discussion, since I propose, in the following chapter, to
- exhaust the subject of PRODUCTION BY CAPITAL.
- Thus, capital can be exchanged, but cannot be a source of income.
- LABOR and SKILL remain; or, as St. Simon puts it, RESULTS and
- CAPACITIES. I will examine them successively.
- Should wages be governed by labor? In other words, is it just that
- he who does the most should get the most? I beg the reader to pay the
- closest attention to this point.
- To solve the problem with one stroke, we have only to ask ourselves
- the following question: "Is labor a CONDITION or a STRUGGLE?" The reply
- seems plain.
- God said to man, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,"--that
- is, thou shalt produce thy own bread: with more or less ease, according
- to thy skill in directing and combining thy efforts, thou shalt labor.
- God did not say, "Thou shalt quarrel with thy neighbor for thy bread;"
- but, "Thou shalt labor by the side of thy neighbor, and ye shall dwell
- together in harmony." Let us develop the meaning of this law, the
- extreme simplicity of which renders it liable to misconstruction.
- In labor, two things must be noticed and distinguished: ASSOCIATION and
- AVAILABLE MATERIAL.
- In so far as laborers are associated, they are equal; and it involves a
- contradiction to say that one should be paid more than another. For,
- as the product of one laborer can be paid for only in the product of
- another laborer, if the two products are unequal, the remainder--or the
- difference between the greater and the smaller--will not be acquired
- by society; and, therefore, not being exchanged, will not affect the
- equality of wages. There will result, it is true, in favor of the
- stronger laborer a natural inequality, but not a social inequality; no
- one having suffered by his strength and productive energy. In a word,
- society exchanges only equal products--that is, rewards no labor save
- that performed for her benefit; consequently, she pays all laborers
- equally: with what they produce outside of her sphere she has no more to
- do, than with the difference in their voices and their hair.
- I seem to be positing the principle of inequality: the reverse of this
- is the truth. The total amount of labor which can be performed for
- society (that is, of labor susceptible of exchange), being, within a
- given space, as much greater as the laborers are more numerous, and as
- the task assigned to each is less in magnitude,--it follows that natural
- inequality neutralizes itself in proportion as association extends, and
- as the quantity of consumable values produced thereby increases. So that
- in society the only thing which could bring back the inequality of labor
- would be the right of occupancy,--the right of property.
- Now, suppose that this daily social task consists in the ploughing,
- hoeing, or reaping of two square decameters, and that the average time
- required to accomplish it is seven hours: one laborer will finish it in
- six hours, another will require eight; the majority, however, will work
- seven. But provided each one furnishes the quantity of labor demanded of
- him, whatever be the time he employs, they are entitled to equal wages.
- Shall the laborer who is capable of finishing his task in six hours have
- the right, on the ground of superior strength and activity, to usurp
- the task of the less skilful laborer, and thus rob him of his labor and
- bread? Who dares maintain such a proposition? He who finishes before the
- others may rest, if he chooses; he may devote himself to useful exercise
- and labors for the maintenance of his strength, and the culture of his
- mind, and the pleasure of his life. This he can do without injury to any
- one: but let him confine himself to services which affect him solely.
- Vigor, genius, diligence, and all the personal advantages which result
- therefrom, are the work of Nature and, to a certain extent, of the
- individual; society awards them the esteem which they merit: but the
- wages which it pays them is measured, not by their power, but by their
- production. Now, the product of each is limited by the right of all.
- If the soil were infinite in extent, and the amount of available
- material were exhaustless, even then we could not accept this maxim,--TO
- EACH ACCORDING TO HIS LABOR. And why? Because society, I repeat,
- whatever be the number of its subjects, is forced to pay them all the
- same wages, since she pays them only in their own products. Only, on the
- hypothesis just made, inasmuch as the strong cannot be prevented from
- using all their advantages, the inconveniences of natural inequality
- would reappear in the very bosom of social equality. But the land,
- considering the productive power of its inhabitants and their ability to
- multiply, is very limited; further, by the immense variety of products
- and the extreme division of labor, the social task is made easy of
- accomplishment. Now, through this limitation of things producible, and
- through the ease of producing them, the law of absolute equality takes
- effect.
- Yes, life is a struggle. But this struggle is not between man and
- man--it is between man and Nature; and it is each one's duty to take
- his share in it. If, in the struggle, the strong come to the aid of the
- weak, their kindness deserves praise and love; but their aid must be
- accepted as a free gift,--not imposed by force, nor offered at a
- price. All have the same career before them, neither too long nor too
- difficult; whoever finishes it finds his reward at the end: it is not
- necessary to get there first.
- In printing-offices, where the laborers usually work by the job, the
- compositor receives so much per thousand letters set; the pressman so
- much per thousand sheets printed. There, as elsewhere, inequalities
- of talent and skill are to be found. When there is no prospect of dull
- times (for printing and typesetting, like all other trades, sometimes
- come to a stand-still), every one is free to work his hardest, and exert
- his faculties to the utmost: he who does more gets more; he who does
- less gets less. When business slackens, compositors and pressmen divide
- up their labor; all monopolists are detested as no better than robbers
- or traitors.
- There is a philosophy in the action of these printers, to which
- neither economists nor legists have ever risen. If our legislators had
- introduced into their codes the principle of distributive justice
- which governs printing-offices; if they had observed the popular
- instincts,--not for the sake of servile imitation, but in order to
- reform and generalize them,--long ere this liberty and equality would
- have been established on an immovable basis, and we should not now
- be disputing about the right of property and the necessity of social
- distinctions.
- It has been calculated that if labor were equally shared by the whole
- number of able-bodied individuals, the average working-day of each
- individual, in France, would not exceed five hours. This being so, how
- can we presume to talk of the inequality of laborers? It is the LABOR of
- Robert Macaire that causes inequality.
- The principle, TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS LABOR, interpreted to mean, WHO
- WORKS MOST SHOULD RECEIVE MOST, is based, therefore, on two palpable
- errors: one, an error in economy, that in the labor of society tasks
- must necessarily be unequal; the other, an error in physics, that there
- is no limit to the amount of producible things.
- "But," it will be said, "suppose there are some people who wish to
- perform only half of their task?"... Is that very embarrassing? Probably
- they are satisfied with half of their salary. Paid according to the
- labor that they had performed, of what could they complain? and what
- injury would they do to others? In this sense, it is fair to apply the
- maxim,--TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS RESULTS. It is the law of equality
- itself.
- Further, numerous difficulties, relative to the police system and the
- organization of industry, might be raised here. I will reply to them all
- with this one sentence,--that they must all be solved by the principle
- of equality. Thus, some one might observe, "Here is a task which cannot
- be postponed without detriment to production. Ought society to suffer
- from the negligence of a few? and will she not venture--out of respect
- for the right of labor--to assure with her own hands the product which
- they refuse her? In such a case, to whom will the salary belong?"
- To society; who will be allowed to perform the labor, either herself, or
- through her representatives, but always in such a way that the general
- equality shall never be violated, and that only the idler shall be
- punished for his idleness. Further, if society may not use excessive
- severity towards her lazy members, she has a right, in self-defence, to
- guard against abuses.
- But every industry needs--they will add--leaders, instructors,
- superintendents, &c. Will these be engaged in the general task? No;
- since their task is to lead, instruct, and superintend. But they must be
- chosen from the laborers by the laborers themselves, and must fulfil
- the conditions of eligibility. It is the same with all public functions,
- whether of administration or instruction.
- Then, article first of the universal constitution will be:--
- "The limited quantity of available material proves the necessity of
- dividing the labor among the whole number of laborers. The capacity,
- given to all, of accomplishing a social task,--that is, an equal
- task,--and the impossibility of paying one laborer save in the products
- of another, justify the equality of wages."
- % 7.--That Inequality of Powers is the Necessary Condition of Equality
- of Fortunes.
- It is objected,--and this objection constitutes the second part of the
- St. Simonian, and the third part of the Fourierstic, maxims,--
- "That all kinds of labor cannot be executed with equal ease. Some
- require great superiority of skill and intelligence; and on this
- superiority is based the price. The artist, the savant, the poet, the
- statesman, are esteemed only because of their excellence; and this
- excellence destroys all similitude between them and other men: in the
- presence of these heights of science and genius the law of equality
- disappears. Now, if equality is not absolute, there is no equality.
- From the poet we descend to the novelist; from the sculptor to the
- stonecutter; from the architect to the mason; from the chemist to the
- cook, &c. Capacities are classified and subdivided into orders, genera,
- and species. The extremes of talent are connected by intermediate
- talents. Humanity is a vast hierarchy, in which the individual estimates
- himself by comparison, and fixes his price by the value placed upon his
- product by the public."
- This objection always has seemed a formidable one. It is the
- stumbling-block of the economists, as well as of the defenders of
- equality. It has led the former into egregious blunders, and has caused
- the latter to utter incredible platitudes. Gracchus Babeuf wished all
- superiority to be STRINGENTLY REPRESSED, and even PERSECUTED AS A SOCIAL
- CALAMITY. To establish his communistic edifice, he lowered all citizens
- to the stature of the smallest. Ignorant eclectics have been known to
- object to the inequality of knowledge, and I should not be surprised if
- some one should yet rebel against the inequality of virtue. Aristotle
- was banished, Socrates drank the hemlock, Epaminondas was called to
- account, for having proved superior in intelligence and virtue to some
- dissolute and foolish demagogues. Such follies will be re-enacted, so
- long as the inequality of fortunes justifies a populace, blinded and
- oppressed by the wealthy, in fearing the elevation of new tyrants to
- power.
- Nothing seems more unnatural than that which we examine too closely, and
- often nothing seems less like the truth than the truth itself. On the
- other hand, according to J. J. Rousseau, "it takes a great deal of
- philosophy to enable us to observe once what we see every day;" and,
- according to d'Alembert, "the ordinary truths of life make but little
- impression on men, unless their attention is especially called to them."
- The father of the school of economists (Say), from whom I borrow these
- two quotations, might have profited by them; but he who laughs at the
- blind should wear spectacles, and he who notices him is near-sighted.
- Strange! that which has frightened so many minds is not, after all,
- an objection to equality--it is the very condition on which equality
- exists!...
- Natural inequality the condition of equality of fortunes!... What
- a paradox!... I repeat my assertion, that no one may think I have
- blundered--inequality of powers is the sine qua non of equality of
- fortunes.
- There are two things to be considered in society--FUNCTIONS and
- RELATIONS.
- I. FUNCTIONS. Every laborer is supposed to be capable of performing the
- task assigned to him; or, to use a common expression, "every workman
- must know his trade." The workman equal to his work,--there is an
- equation between functionary and function.
- In society, functions are not alike; there must be, then, different
- capacities. Further,--certain functions demand greater intelligence
- and powers; then there are people of superior mind and talent. For
- the performance of work necessarily involves a workman: from the need
- springs the idea, and the idea makes the producer. We only know what our
- senses long for and our intelligence demands; we have no keen desire
- for things of which we cannot conceive, and the greater our powers of
- conception, the greater our capabilities of production.
- Thus, functions arising from needs, needs from desires, and desires
- from spontaneous perception and imagination, the same intelligence which
- imagines can also produce; consequently, no labor is superior to the
- laborer. In a word, if the function calls out the functionary, it is
- because the functionary exists before the function.
- Let us admire Nature's economy. With regard to these various needs which
- she has given us, and which the isolated man cannot satisfy unaided,
- Nature has granted to the race a power refused to the individual. This
- gives rise to the principle of the DIVISION OF LABOR,--a principle
- founded on the SPECIALITY OF VOCATIONS.
- The satisfaction of some needs demands of man continual creation;
- while others can, by the labor of a single individual, be satisfied for
- millions of men through thousands of centuries. For example, the need of
- clothing and food requires perpetual reproduction; while a knowledge
- of the system of the universe may be acquired for ever by two or
- three highly-gifted men. The perpetual current of rivers supports our
- commerce, and runs our machinery; but the sun, alone in the midst of
- space, gives light to the whole world. Nature, who might create
- Platos and Virgils, Newtons and Cuviers, as she creates husbandmen and
- shepherds, does not see fit to do so; choosing rather to proportion the
- rarity of genius to the duration of its products, and to balance the
- number of capacities by the competency of each one of them.
- I do not inquire here whether the distance which separates one man from
- another, in point of talent and intelligence, arises from the deplorable
- condition of civilization, nor whether that which is now called the
- INEQUALITY OF POWERS would be in an ideal society any thing more than
- a DIVERSITY OF POWERS. I take the worst view of the matter; and, that
- I may not be accused of tergiversation and evasion of difficulties, I
- acknowledge all the inequalities that any one can desire. [16]
- Certain philosophers, in love with the levelling idea, maintain that all
- minds are equal, and that all differences are the result of education.
- I am no believer, I confess, in this doctrine; which, even if it were
- true, would lead to a result directly opposite to that desired. For, if
- capacities are equal, whatever be the degree of their power (as no one
- can be coerced), there are functions deemed coarse, low, and degrading,
- which deserve higher pay,--a result no less repugnant to equality than
- to the principle, TO EACH CAPACITY ACCORDING TO ITS RESULTS. Give me,
- on the contrary, a society in which every kind of talent bears a proper
- numerical relation to the needs of the society, and which demands from
- each producer only that which his special function requires him to
- produce; and, without impairing in the least the hierarchy of functions,
- I will deduce the equality of fortunes.
- This is my second point.
- II. RELATIONS. In considering the element of labor, I have shown that in
- the same class of productive services, the capacity to perform a social
- task being possessed by all, no inequality of reward can be based upon
- an inequality of individual powers. However, it is but fair to say that
- certain capacities seem quite incapable of certain services; so that, if
- human industry were entirely confined to one class of products, numerous
- incapacities would arise, and, consequently, the greatest social
- inequality. But every body sees, without any hint from me, that the
- variety of industries avoids this difficulty; so clear is this that
- I shall not stop to discuss it. We have only to prove, then, that
- functions are equal to each other; just as laborers, who perform the
- same function, are equal to each other.
- Property makes man a eunuch, and then reproaches him for being nothing
- but dry wood, a decaying tree.
- Are you astonished that I refuse to genius, to knowledge, to
- courage,--in a word, to all the excellences admired by the world,--the
- homage of dignities, the distinctions of power and wealth? It is not I
- who refuse it: it is economy, it is justice, it is liberty. Liberty! for
- the first time in this discussion I appeal to her. Let her rise in her
- own defence, and achieve her victory.
- Every transaction ending in an exchange of products or services may be
- designated as a COMMERCIAL OPERATION.
- Whoever says commerce, says exchange of equal values; for, if the values
- are not equal, and the injured party perceives it, he will not consent
- to the exchange, and there will be no commerce.
- Commerce exists only among free men. Transactions may be effected
- between other people by violence or fraud, but there is no commerce.
- A free man is one who enjoys the use of his reason and his faculties;
- who is neither blinded by passion, nor hindered or driven by oppression,
- nor deceived by erroneous opinions.
- So, in every exchange, there is a moral obligation that neither of the
- contracting parties shall gain at the expense of the other; that is,
- that, to be legitimate and true, commerce must be exempt from all
- inequality. This is the first condition of commerce. Its second
- condition is, that it be voluntary; that is, that the parties act freely
- and openly.
- I define, then, commerce or exchange as an act of society.
- The negro who sells his wife for a knife, his children for some bits
- of glass, and finally himself for a bottle of brandy, is not free. The
- dealer in human flesh, with whom he negotiates, is not his associate; he
- is his enemy.
- The civilized laborer who bakes a loaf that he may eat a slice of bread,
- who builds a palace that he may sleep in a stable, who weaves rich
- fabrics that he may dress in rags, who produces every thing that he may
- dispense with every thing,--is not free. His employer, not becoming
- his associate in the exchange of salaries or services which takes place
- between them, is his enemy.
- The soldier who serves his country through fear instead of through love
- is not free; his comrades and his officers, the ministers or organs of
- military justice, are all his enemies.
- The peasant who hires land, the manufacturer who borrows capital, the
- tax-payer who pays tolls, duties, patent and license fees, personal and
- property taxes, &c., and the deputy who votes for them,--all act
- neither intelligently nor freely. Their enemies are the proprietors, the
- capitalists, the government.
- Give men liberty, enlighten their minds that they may know the meaning
- of their contracts, and you will see the most perfect equality in
- exchanges without regard to superiority of talent and knowledge; and
- you will admit that in commercial affairs, that is, in the sphere of
- society, the word superiority is void of sense.
- Let Homer sing his verse. I listen to this sublime genius in comparison
- with whom I, a simple herdsman, an humble farmer, am as nothing. What,
- indeed,--if product is to be compared with product,--are my cheeses and
- my beans in the presence of his "Iliad"? But, if Homer wishes to take
- from me all that I possess, and make me his slave in return for his
- inimitable poem, I will give up the pleasure of his lays, and dismiss
- him. I can do without his "Iliad," and wait, if necessary, for the
- "AEneid."
- Homer cannot live twenty-four hours without my products. Let him accept,
- then, the little that I have to offer; and then his muse may instruct,
- encourage, and console me.
- "What! do you say that such should be the condition of one who sings of
- gods and men? Alms, with the humiliation and suffering which they bring
- with them!--what barbarous generosity!"... Do not get excited, I beg
- of you. Property makes of a poet either a Croesus or a beggar; only
- equality knows how to honor and to praise him. What is its duty? To
- regulate the right of the singer and the duty of the listener. Now,
- notice this point, which is a very important one in the solution of this
- question: both are free, the one to sell, the other to buy. Henceforth
- their respective pretensions go for nothing; and the estimate, whether
- fair or unfair, that they place, the one upon his verse, the other
- upon his liberality, can have no influence upon the conditions of the
- contract. We must no longer, in making our bargains, weigh talent; we
- must consider products only.
- In order that the bard of Achilles may get his due reward, he must first
- make himself wanted: that done, the exchange of his verse for a fee of
- any kind, being a free act, must be at the same time a just act; that
- is, the poet's fee must be equal to his product. Now, what is the value
- of this product?
- Let us suppose, in the first place, that this "Iliad"--this chef-d'
- oeuvre that is to be equitably rewarded--is really above price, that we
- do not know how to appraise it. If the public, who are free to purchase
- it, refuse to do so, it is clear that, the poem being unexchangeable,
- its intrinsic value will not be diminished; but that its exchangeable
- value, or its productive utility, will be reduced to zero, will be
- nothing at all. Then we must seek the amount of wages to be paid between
- infinity on the one hand and nothing on the other, at an equal distance
- from each, since all rights and liberties are entitled to equal respect;
- in other words, it is not the intrinsic value, but the relative value,
- of the thing sold that needs to be fixed. The question grows simpler:
- what is this relative value? To what reward does a poem like the "Iliad"
- entitle its author?
- The first business of political economy, after fixing its definitions,
- was the solution of this problem; now, not only has it not been solved,
- but it has been declared insoluble. According to the economists,
- the relative or exchangeable value of things cannot be absolutely
- determined; it necessarily varies.
- "The value of a thing," says Say, "is a positive quantity, but only for
- a given moment. It is its nature to perpetually vary, to change from one
- point to another. Nothing can fix it absolutely, because it is based
- on needs and means of production which vary with every moment. These
- variations complicate economical phenomena, and often render them very
- difficult of observation and solution. I know no remedy for this; it is
- not in our power to change the nature of things."
- Elsewhere Say says, and repeats, that value being based on utility, and
- utility depending entirely on our needs, whims, customs, &c., value
- is as variable as opinion. Now, political economy being the science
- of values, of their production, distribution, exchange, and
- consumption,--if exchangeable value cannot be absolutely determined,
- how is political economy possible? How can it be a science? How can two
- economists look each other in the face without laughing? How dare they
- insult metaphysicians and psychologists? What! that fool of a Descartes
- imagined that philosophy needed an immovable base--an _aliquid
- inconcussum_--on which the edifice of science might be built, and he was
- simple enough to search for it! And the Hermes of economy, Trismegistus
- Say, devoting half a volume to the amplification of that solemn text,
- _political economy is a science_, has the courage to affirm immediately
- afterwards that this science cannot determine its object,--which is
- equivalent to saying that it is without a principle or foundation! He
- does not know, then, the illustrious Say, the nature of a science; or
- rather, he knows nothing of the subject which he discusses.
- Say's example has borne its fruits. Political economy, as it exists at
- present, resembles ontology: discussing effects and causes, it knows
- nothing, explains nothing, decides nothing. The ideas honored with the
- name of economic laws are nothing more than a few trifling generalities,
- to which the economists thought to give an appearance of depth by
- clothing them in high-sounding words. As for the attempts that have been
- made by the economists to solve social problems, all that can be said
- of them is, that, if a glimmer of sense occasionally appears in their
- lucubrations, they immediately fall back into absurdity. For twenty-five
- years political economy, like a heavy fog, has weighed upon France,
- checking the efforts of the mind, and setting limits to liberty.
- Has every creation of industry a venal, absolute, unchangeable, and
- consequently legitimate and true value?--Yes.
- Can every product of man be exchanged for some other product of
- man?--Yes, again.
- How many nails is a pair of shoes worth?
- If we can solve this appalling problem, we shall have the key of the
- social system for which humanity has been searching for six thousand
- years. In the presence of this problem, the economist recoils confused;
- the peasant who can neither read nor write replies without hesitation:
- "As many as can be made in the same time, and with the same expense."
- The absolute value of a thing, then, is its cost in time and expense.
- How much is a diamond worth which costs only the labor of picking it
- up?--Nothing; it is not a product of man. How much will it be worth when
- cut and mounted?--The time and expense which it has cost the laborer.
- Why, then, is it sold at so high a price?--Because men are not free.
- Society must regulate the exchange and distribution of the rarest
- things, as it does that of the most common ones, in such a way that each
- may share in the enjoyment of them. What, then, is that value which is
- based upon opinion?--Delusion, injustice, and robbery.
- By this rule, it is easy to reconcile every body. If the mean term,
- which we are searching for, between an infinite value and no value at
- all is expressed in the case of every product, by the amount of time and
- expense which the product cost, a poem which has cost its author thirty
- years of labor and an outlay of ten thousand francs in journeys, books,
- &c., must be paid for by the ordinary wages received by a laborer during
- thirty years, PLUS ten thousand francs indemnity for expense incurred.
- Suppose the whole amount to be fifty thousand francs; if the society
- which gets the benefit of the production include a million of men, my
- share of the debt is five centimes.
- This gives rise to a few observations.
- 1. The same product, at different times and in different places, may
- cost more or less of time and outlay; in this view, it is true that
- value is a variable quantity. But this variation is not that of the
- economists, who place in their list of the causes of the variation of
- values, not only the means of production, but taste, caprice, fashion,
- and opinion. In short, the true value of a thing is invariable in its
- algebraic expression, although it may vary in its monetary expression.
- 2. The price of every product in demand should be its cost in time and
- outlay--neither more nor less: every product not in demand is a loss to
- the producer--a commercial non-value.
- 3. The ignorance of the principle of evaluation, and the difficulty
- under many circumstances of applying it, is the source of commercial
- fraud, and one of the most potent causes of the inequality of fortunes.
- 4. To reward certain industries and pay for certain products, a society
- is needed which corresponds in size with the rarity of talents, the
- costliness of the products, and the variety of the arts and sciences.
- If, for example, a society of fifty farmers can support a schoolmaster,
- it requires one hundred for a shoemaker, one hundred and fifty for a
- blacksmith, two hundred for a tailor, &c. If the number of farmers rises
- to one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand, &c., as fast as
- their number increases, that of the functionaries which are earliest
- required must increase in the same proportion; so that the highest
- functions become possible only in the most powerful societies. [17] That
- is the peculiar feature of capacities; the character of genius, the seal
- of its glory, cannot arise and develop itself, except in the bosom of
- a great nation. But this physiological condition, necessary to the
- existence of genius, adds nothing to its social rights: far from
- that,--the delay in its appearance proves that, in economical and
- civil affairs, the loftiest intelligence must submit to the equality
- of possessions; an equality which is anterior to it, and of which it
- constitutes the crown.
- This is severe on our pride, but it is an inexorable truth. And here
- psychology comes to the aid of social economy, giving us to understand
- that talent and material recompense have no common measure; that, in
- this respect, the condition of all producers is equal: consequently,
- that all comparison between them, and all distinction in fortunes, is
- impossible.
- _ _In fact, every work coming from the hands of man--compared with the
- raw material of which it is composed--is beyond price. In this respect,
- the distance is as great between a pair of wooden shoes and the trunk of
- a walnut-tree, as between a statue by Scopas and a block of marble.
- The genius of the simplest mechanic exerts as much influence over the
- materials which he uses, as does the mind of a Newton over the inert
- spheres whose distances, volumes, and revolutions he calculates. You ask
- for talent and genius a corresponding degree of honor and reward. Fix
- for me the value of a wood-cutter's talent, and I will fix that of
- Homer. If any thing can reward intelligence, it is intelligence itself.
- That is what happens, when various classes of producers pay to each
- other a reciprocal tribute of admiration and praise. But if they
- contemplate an exchange of products with a view to satisfying mutual
- needs, this exchange must be effected in accordance with a system of
- economy which is indifferent to considerations of talent and genius, and
- whose laws are deduced, not from vague and meaningless admiration, but
- from a just balance between DEBIT and CREDIT; in short, from commercial
- accounts.
- Now, that no one may imagine that the liberty of buying and selling
- is the sole basis of the equality of wages, and that society's sole
- protection against superiority of talent lies in a certain force of
- inertia which has nothing in common with right, I shall proceed to
- explain why all capacities are entitled to the same reward, and why a
- corresponding difference in wages would be an injustice. I shall prove
- that the obligation to stoop to the social level is inherent in talent;
- and on this very superiority of genius I will found the equality of
- fortunes. I have just given the negative argument in favor of rewarding
- all capacities alike; I will now give the direct and positive argument.
- Listen, first, to the economist: it is always pleasant to see how he
- reasons, and how he understands justice. Without him, moreover, without
- his amusing blunders and his wonderful arguments, we should learn
- nothing. Equality, so odious to the economist, owes every thing to
- political economy.
- "When the parents of a physician [the text says a lawyer, which is
- not so good an example] have expended on his education forty thousand
- francs, this sum may be regarded as so much capital invested in his
- head. It is therefore permissible to consider it as yielding an annual
- income of four thousand francs. If the physician earns thirty thousand,
- there remains an income of twenty-six thousand francs due to the
- personal talents given him by Nature. This natural capital, then, if we
- assume ten per cent. as the rate of interest, amounts to two hundred
- and sixty thousand francs; and the capital given him by his parents, in
- defraying the expenses of his education, to forty thousand francs. The
- union of these two kinds of capital constitutes his fortune."--Say:
- Complete Course, &c.
- Say divides the fortune of the physician into two parts: one is composed
- of the capital which went to pay for his education, the other represents
- his personal talents. This division is just; it is in conformity with
- the nature of things; it is universally admitted; it serves as the
- major premise of that grand argument which establishes the inequality of
- capacities. I accept this premise without qualification; let us look at
- the consequences.
- 1. Say CREDITS the physician with forty thousand francs,--the cost of
- his education. This amount should be entered upon the DEBIT side of the
- account. For, although this expense was incurred for him, it was not
- incurred by him. Then, instead of appropriating these forty thousand
- francs, the physician should add them to the price of his product, and
- repay them to those who are entitled to them. Notice, further, that
- Say speaks of INCOME instead of REIMBURSEMENT; reasoning on the false
- principle of the productivity of capital. The expense of educating a
- talent is a debt contracted by this talent. From the very fact of its
- existence, it becomes a debtor to an amount equal to the cost of its
- production. This is so true and simple that, if the education of some
- one child in a family has cost double or triple that of its brothers,
- the latter are entitled to a proportional amount of the property
- previous to its division. There is no difficulty about this in the case
- of guardianship, when the estate is administered in the name of the
- minors.
- 2. That which I have just said of the obligation incurred by talent of
- repaying the cost of its education does not embarrass the economist. The
- man of talent, he says, inheriting from his family, inherits among other
- things a claim to the forty thousand francs which his education costs;
- and he becomes, in consequence, its proprietor. But this is to abandon
- the right of talent, and to fall back upon the right of occupancy; which
- again calls up all the questions asked in Chapter II. What is the right
- of occupancy? what is inheritance? Is the right of succession a right of
- accumulation or only a right of choice? how did the physician's father
- get his fortune? was he a proprietor, or only a usufructuary? If he was
- rich, let him account for his wealth; if he was poor, how could he incur
- so large an expense? If he received aid, what right had he to use that
- aid to the disadvantage of his benefactors, &c.?
- 3. "There remains an income of twenty-six thousand francs due to
- the personal talents given him by Nature." (Say,--as above quoted.)
- Reasoning from this premise, Say concludes that our physician's talent
- is equivalent to a capital of two hundred and sixty thousand francs.
- This skilful calculator mistakes a consequence for a principle. The
- talent must not be measured by the gain, but rather the gain by
- the talent; for it may happen, that, notwithstanding his merit, the
- physician in question will gain nothing at all, in which case will it be
- necessary to conclude that his talent or fortune is equivalent to zero?
- To such a result, however, would Say's reasoning lead; a result which is
- clearly absurd.
- Now, it is impossible to place a money value on any talent whatsoever,
- since talent and money have no common measure. On what plausible ground
- can it be maintained that a physician should be paid two, three, or a
- hundred times as much as a peasant? An unavoidable difficulty, which has
- never been solved save by avarice, necessity, and oppression. It is not
- thus that the right of talent should be determined. But how is it to be
- determined?
- 4. I say, first, that the physician must be treated with as much favor
- as any other producer, that he must not be placed below the level of
- others. This I will not stop to prove. But I add that neither must he be
- lifted above that level; because his talent is collective property for
- which he did not pay, and for which he is ever in debt.
- Just as the creation of every instrument of production is the result of
- collective force, so also are a man's talent and knowledge the product
- of universal intelligence and of general knowledge slowly accumulated
- by a number of masters, and through the aid of many inferior industries.
- When the physician has paid for his teachers, his books, his diplomas,
- and all the other items of his educational expenses, he has no more paid
- for his talent than the capitalist pays for his house and land when he
- gives his employees their wages. The man of talent has contributed to
- the production in himself of a useful instrument. He has, then, a share
- in its possession; he is not its proprietor. There exist side by side in
- him a free laborer and an accumulated social capital. As a laborer, he
- is charged with the use of an instrument, with the superintendence of a
- machine; namely, his capacity. As capital, he is not his own master; he
- uses himself, not for his own benefit, but for that of others.
- Even if talent did not find in its own excellence a reward for the
- sacrifices which it costs, still would it be easier to find reasons for
- lowering its reward than for raising it above the common level.
- Every producer receives an education; every laborer is a talent, a
- capacity,--that is, a piece of collective property. But all talents are
- not equally costly. It takes but few teachers, but few years, and but
- little study, to make a farmer or a mechanic: the generative effort
- and--if I may venture to use such language--the period of social
- gestation are proportional to the loftiness of the capacity. But while
- the physician, the poet, the artist, and the savant produce but little,
- and that slowly, the productions of the farmer are much less uncertain,
- and do not require so long a time. Whatever be then the capacity of a
- man,--when this capacity is once created,--it does not belong to him.
- Like the material fashioned by an industrious hand, it had the power
- of BECOMING, and society has given it BEING. Shall the vase say to the
- potter, "I am that I am, and I owe you nothing"?
- The artist, the savant, and the poet find their just recompense in the
- permission that society gives them to devote themselves exclusively to
- science and to art: so that in reality they do not labor for themselves,
- but for society, which creates them, and requires of them no other duty.
- Society can, if need be, do without prose and verse, music and painting,
- and the knowledge of the movements of the moon and stars; but it cannot
- live a single day without food and shelter.
- Undoubtedly, man does not live by bread alone; he must, also (according
- to the Gospel), LIVE BY THE WORD OF GOD; that is, he must love the
- good and do it, know and admire the beautiful, and study the marvels of
- Nature. But in order to cultivate his mind, he must first take care of
- his body,--the latter duty is as necessary as the former is noble. If it
- is glorious to charm and instruct men, it is honorable as well to feed
- them. When, then, society--faithful to the principle of the division
- of labor--intrusts a work of art or of science to one of its members,
- allowing him to abandon ordinary labor, it owes him an indemnity for
- all which it prevents him from producing industrially; but it owes him
- nothing more. If he should demand more, society should, by refusing his
- services, annihilate his pretensions. Forced, then, in order to live, to
- devote himself to labor repugnant to his nature, the man of genius would
- feel his weakness, and would live the most distasteful of lives.
- They tell of a celebrated singer who demanded of the Empress of Russia
- (Catherine II) twenty thousand roubles for his services: "That is more
- than I give my field-marshals," said Catherine. "Your majesty," replied
- the other, "has only to make singers of her field-marshals."
- If France (more powerful than Catherine II) should say to Mademoiselle
- Rachel, "You must act for one hundred louis, or else spin cotton;" to
- M. Duprez, "You must sing for two thousand four hundred francs, or else
- work in the vineyard,"--do you think that the actress Rachel, and the
- singer Duprez, would abandon the stage? If they did, they would be the
- first to repent it.
- Mademoiselle Rachel receives, they say, sixty thousand francs annually
- from the Comedie-Francaise. For a talent like hers, it is a slight fee.
- Why not one hundred thousand francs, two hundred thousand francs? Why!
- not a civil list? What meanness! Are we really guilty of chaffering with
- an artist like Mademoiselle Rachel?
- It is said, in reply, that the managers of the theatre cannot give more
- without incurring a loss; that they admit the superior talent of
- their young associate; but that, in fixing her salary, they have been
- compelled to take the account of the company's receipts and expenses
- into consideration also.
- That is just, but it only confirms what I have said; namely, that an
- artist's talent may be infinite, but that its mercenary claims are
- necessarily limited,--on the one hand, by its usefulness to the society
- which rewards it; on the other, by the resources of this society: in
- other words, that the demand of the seller is balanced by the right of
- the buyer.
- Mademoiselle Rachel, they say, brings to the treasury of the
- Theatre-Francais more than sixty thousand francs. I admit it; but then I
- blame the theatre. From whom does the Theatre-Francais take this
- money? From some curious people who are perfectly free. Yes; but the
- workingmen, the lessees, the tenants, those who borrow by pawning their
- possessions, from whom these curious people recover all that they pay to
- the theatre,--are they free? And when the better part of their products
- are consumed by others at the play, do you assure me that their families
- are not in want? Until the French people, reflecting on the salaries
- paid to all artists, savants, and public functionaries, have plainly
- expressed their wish and judgment as to the matter, the salaries of
- Mademoiselle Rachel and all her fellow-artists will be a compulsory tax
- extorted by violence, to reward pride, and support libertinism.
- It is because we are neither free nor sufficiently enlightened, that we
- submit to be cheated in our bargains; that the laborer pays the duties
- levied by the prestige of power and the selfishness of talent upon the
- curiosity of the idle, and that we are perpetually scandalized by these
- monstrous inequalities which are encouraged and applauded by public
- opinion.
- The whole nation, and the nation only, pays its authors, its savants,
- its artists, its officials, whatever be the hands through which their
- salaries pass. On what basis should it pay them? On the basis of
- equality. I have proved it by estimating the value of talent. I shall
- confirm it in the following chapter, by proving the impossibility of all
- social inequality.
- What have we shown so far? Things so simple that really they seem
- silly:--
- That, as the traveller does not appropriate the route which he
- traverses, so the farmer does not appropriate the field which he sows;
- That if, nevertheless, by reason of his industry, a laborer may
- appropriate the material which he employs, every employer of material
- becomes, by the same title, a proprietor;
- That all capital, whether material or mental, being the result of
- collective labor, is, in consequence, collective property;
- That the strong have no right to encroach upon the labor of the weak,
- nor the shrewd to take advantage of the credulity of the simple;
- Finally, that no one can be forced to buy that which he does not want,
- still less to pay for that which he has not bought; and, consequently,
- that the exchangeable value of a product, being measured neither by the
- opinion of the buyer nor that of the seller, but by the amount of time
- and outlay which it has cost, the property of each always remains the
- same.
- Are not these very simple truths? Well, as simple as they seem to you,
- reader, you shall yet see others which surpass them in dullness and
- simplicity. For our course is the reverse of that of the geometricians:
- with them, the farther they advance, the more difficult their problems
- become; we, on the contrary, after having commenced with the most
- abstruse propositions, shall end with the axioms.
- But I must close this chapter with an exposition of one of those
- startling truths which never have been dreamed of by legists or
- economists.
- % 8.--That, from the Stand-point of Justice, Labor destroys Property.
- This proposition is the logical result of the two preceding sections,
- which we have just summed up.
- The isolated man can supply but a very small portion of his wants; all
- his power lies in association, and in the intelligent combination of
- universal effort. The division and co-operation of labor multiply the
- quantity and the variety of products; the individuality of functions
- improves their quality.
- There is not a man, then, but lives upon the products of several
- thousand different industries; not a laborer but receives from society
- at large the things which he consumes, and, with these, the power to
- reproduce. Who, indeed, would venture the assertion, "I produce, by
- my own effort, all that I consume; I need the aid of no one else"?
- The farmer, whom the early economists regarded as the only real
- producer--the farmer, housed, furnished, clothed, fed, and assisted
- by the mason, the carpenter, the tailor, the miller, the baker, the
- butcher, the grocer, the blacksmith, &c.,--the farmer, I say, can he
- boast that he produces by his own unaided effort?
- The various articles of consumption are given to each by all;
- consequently, the production of each involves the production of all.
- One product cannot exist without another; an isolated industry is an
- impossible thing. What would be the harvest of the farmer, if others
- did not manufacture for him barns, wagons, ploughs, clothes, &c.? Where
- would be the savant without the publisher; the printer without the
- typecaster and the machinist; and these, in their turn, without a
- multitude of other industries?... Let us not prolong this catalogue--so
- easy to extend--lest we be accused of uttering commonplaces. All
- industries are united by mutual relations in a single group; all
- productions do reciprocal service as means and end; all varieties of
- talent are but a series of changes from the inferior to the superior.
- Now, this undisputed and indisputable fact of the general participation
- in every species of product makes all individual productions common; so
- that every product, coming from the hands of the producer, is mortgaged
- in advance by society. The producer himself is entitled to only
- that portion of his product, which is expressed by a fraction whose
- denominator is equal to the number of individuals of which society is
- composed. It is true that in return this same producer has a share in
- all the products of others, so that he has a claim upon all, just as
- all have a claim upon him; but is it not clear that this reciprocity of
- mortgages, far from authorizing property, destroys even possession? The
- laborer is not even possessor of his product; scarcely has he finished
- it, when society claims it.
- "But," it will be answered, "even if that is so--even if the product
- does not belong to the producer--still society gives each laborer an
- equivalent for his product; and this equivalent, this salary, this
- reward, this allowance, becomes his property. Do you deny that this
- property is legitimate? And if the laborer, instead of consuming his
- entire wages, chooses to economize,--who dare question his right to do
- so?"
- The laborer is not even proprietor of the price of his labor, and cannot
- absolutely control its disposition. Let us not be blinded by a spurious
- justice. That which is given the laborer in exchange for his product is
- not given him as a reward for past labor, but to provide for and secure
- future labor. We consume before we produce. The laborer may say at the
- end of the day, "I have paid yesterday's expenses; to-morrow I shall pay
- those of today." At every moment of his life, the member of society is
- in debt; he dies with the debt unpaid:--how is it possible for him to
- accumulate?
- They talk of economy--it is the proprietor's hobby. Under a system of
- equality, all economy which does not aim at subsequent reproduction or
- enjoyment is impossible--why? Because the thing saved, since it cannot
- be converted into capital, has no object, and is without a FINAL CAUSE.
- This will be explained more fully in the next chapter.
- To conclude:--
- The laborer, in his relation to society, is a debtor who of necessity
- dies insolvent. The proprietor is an unfaithful guardian who denies the
- receipt of the deposit committed to his care, and wishes to be paid for
- his guardianship down to the last day.
- Lest the principles just set forth may appear to certain readers
- too metaphysical, I shall reproduce them in a more concrete form,
- intelligible to the dullest brains, and pregnant with the most important
- consequences.
- Hitherto, I have considered property as a power of EXCLUSION; hereafter,
- I shall examine it as a power of INVASION.
- CHAPTER IV. THAT PROPERTY IS IMPOSSIBLE.
- The last resort of proprietors,--the overwhelming argument whose
- invincible potency reassures them,--is that, in their opinion, equality
- of conditions is impossible. "Equality of conditions is a chimera," they
- cry with a knowing air; "distribute wealth equally to-day--to-morrow
- this equality will have vanished."
- To this hackneyed objection, which they repeat everywhere with the most
- marvellous assurance, they never fail to add the following comment, as
- a sort of GLORY BE TO THE FATHER: "If all men were equal, nobody would
- work." This anthem is sung with variations.
- "If all were masters, nobody would obey."
- "If nobody were rich, who would employ the poor?"
- And, "If nobody were poor, who would labor for the rich?"
- But let us have done with invective--we have better arguments at our
- command.
- If I show that property itself is impossible--that it is property which
- is a contradiction, a chimera, a utopia; and if I show it no longer
- by metaphysics and jurisprudence, but by figures, equations, and
- calculations,--imagine the fright of the astounded proprietor! And you,
- reader; what do you think of the retort?
- Numbers govern the world--mundum regunt numeri. This proverb applies
- as aptly to the moral and political, as to the sidereal and molecular,
- world. The elements of justice are identical with those of algebra;
- legislation and government are simply the arts of classifying
- and balancing powers; all jurisprudence falls within the rules of
- arithmetic. This chapter and the next will serve to lay the foundations
- of this extraordinary doctrine. Then will be unfolded to the reader's
- vision an immense and novel career; then shall we commence to see in
- numerical relations the synthetic unity of philosophy and the sciences;
- and, filled with admiration and enthusiasm for this profound and
- majestic simplicity of Nature, we shall shout with the apostle: "Yes,
- the Eternal has made all things by number, weight, and measure!" We
- shall understand not only that equality of conditions is possible, but
- that all else is impossible; that this seeming impossibility which
- we charge upon it arises from the fact that we always think of it
- in connection either with the proprietary or the communistic
- regime,--political systems equally irreconcilable with human nature. We
- shall see finally that equality is constantly being realized without our
- knowledge, even at the very moment when we are pronouncing it incapable
- of realization; that the time draws near when, without any effort or
- even wish of ours, we shall have it universally established; that with
- it, in it, and by it, the natural and true political order must make
- itself manifest.
- It has been said, in speaking of the blindness and obstinacy of the
- passions, that, if man had any thing to gain by denying the truths of
- arithmetic, he would find some means of unsettling their certainty: here
- is an opportunity to try this curious experiment. I attack property,
- no longer with its own maxims, but with arithmetic. Let the proprietors
- prepare to verify my figures; for, if unfortunately for them the figures
- prove accurate, the proprietors are lost.
- In proving the impossibility of property, I complete the proof of its
- injustice. In fact,--
- That which is JUST must be USEFUL;
- That which is useful must be TRUE;
- That which is true must be POSSIBLE;
- Therefore, every thing which is impossible is untrue, useless, unjust.
- Then,--a priori,--we may judge of the justice of any thing by its
- possibility; so that if the thing were absolutely impossible, it would
- be absolutely unjust.
- PROPERTY IS PHYSICALLY AND MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE.
- DEMONSTRATION.
- AXIOM.--Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over
- any thing which he has stamped as his own.
- This proposition is purely an axiom, because,--
- 1. It is not a definition, since it does not express all that is
- included in the right of property--the right of sale, of exchange, of
- gift; the right to transform, to alter, to consume, to destroy, to
- use and abuse, &c. All these rights are so many different powers of
- property, which we may consider separately; but which we disregard here,
- that we may devote all our attention to this single one,--the right of
- increase.
- 2. It is universally admitted. No one can deny it without denying the
- facts, without being instantly belied by universal custom.
- 3. It is self-evident, since property is always accompanied (either
- actually or potentially) by the fact which this axiom expresses; and
- through this fact, mainly, property manifests, establishes, and asserts
- itself.
- 4. Finally, its negation involves a contradiction. The right of increase
- is really an inherent right, so essential a part of property, that, in
- its absence, property is null and void.
- OBSERVATIONS.--Increase receives different names according to the
- thing by which it is yielded: if by land, FARM-RENT; if by houses and
- furniture, RENT; if by life-investments, REVENUE; if by money, INTEREST;
- if by exchange, ADVANTAGE, GAIN, PROFIT (three things which must not be
- confounded with the wages or legitimate price of labor).
- Increase--a sort of royal prerogative, of tangible and consumable
- homage--is due to the proprietor on account of his nominal and
- metaphysical occupancy. His seal is set upon the thing; that is enough
- to prevent any one else from occupying it without HIS permission.
- This permission to use his things the proprietor may, if he chooses,
- freely grant. Commonly he sells it. This sale is really a stellionate
- and an extortion; but by the legal fiction of the right of property,
- this same sale, severely punished, we know not why, in other cases, is a
- source of profit and value to the proprietor.
- The amount demanded by the proprietor, in payment for this permission,
- is expressed in monetary terms by the dividend which the supposed
- product yields in nature. So that, by the right of increase, the
- proprietor reaps and does not plough; gleans and does not till; consumes
- and does not produce; enjoys and does not labor. Very different from the
- idols of the Psalmist are the gods of property: the former had hands and
- felt not; the latter, on the contrary, _manus habent et palpabunt_.
- _ _The right of increase is conferred in a very mysterious and
- supernatural manner. The inauguration of a proprietor is accompanied
- by the awful ceremonies of an ancient initiation. First, comes the
- CONSECRATION of the article; a consecration which makes known to all
- that they must offer up a suitable sacrifice to the proprietor, whenever
- they wish, by his permission obtained and signed, to use his article.
- Second, comes the ANATHEMA, which prohibits--except on the conditions
- aforesaid--all persons from touching the article, even in the
- proprietor's absence; and pronounces every violator of property
- sacrilegious, infamous, amenable to the secular power, and deserving of
- being handed over to it.
- Finally, the DEDICATION, which enables the proprietor or patron
- saint--the god chosen to watch over the article--to inhabit it mentally,
- like a divinity in his sanctuary. By means of this dedication, the
- substance of the article--so to speak--becomes converted into the person
- of the proprietor, who is regarded as ever present in its form.
- This is exactly the doctrine of the writers on jurisprudence.
- "Property," says Toullier, "is a MORAL QUALITY inherent in a thing;
- AN ACTUAL BOND which fastens it to the proprietor, and which cannot be
- broken save by his act." Locke humbly doubted whether God could make
- matter INTELLIGENT. Toullier asserts that the proprietor renders it
- MORAL. How much does he lack of being a God? These are by no means
- exaggerations.
- PROPERTY IS THE RIGHT OF INCREASE; that is, the power to produce without
- labor. Now, to produce without labor is to make something from nothing;
- in short, to create. Surely it is no more difficult to do this than to
- moralize matter. The jurists are right, then, in applying to proprietors
- this passage from the Scriptures,--_Ego dixi: Dii estis et filii Excelsi
- omnes_,--"I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the
- Most High."
- PROPERTY IS THE RIGHT OF INCREASE. To us this axiom shall be like the
- name of the beast in the Apocalypse,--a name in which is hidden the
- complete explanation of the whole mystery of this beast. It was known
- that he who should solve the mystery of this name would obtain a
- knowledge of the whole prophecy, and would succeed in mastering the
- beast. Well! by the most careful interpretation of our axiom we shall
- kill the sphinx of property.
- Starting from this eminently characteristic fact--the RIGHT OF
- INCREASE--we shall pursue the old serpent through his coils; we shall
- count the murderous entwinings of this frightful taenia, whose head,
- with its thousand suckers, is always hidden from the sword of its most
- violent enemies, though abandoning to them immense fragments of its
- body. It requires something more than courage to subdue this monster.
- It was written that it should not die until a proletaire, armed with a
- magic wand, had fought with it.
- COROLLARIES.--1. THE AMOUNT OF INCREASE IS PROPORTIONAL TO THE THING
- INCREASED. Whatever be the rate of interest,--whether it rise to three,
- five, or ten per cent., or fall to one-half, one-fourth, one-tenth,--it
- does not matter; the law of increase remains the same. The law is as
- follows:--
- All capital--the cash value of which can be estimated--may be considered
- as a term in an arithmetical series which progresses in the ratio of one
- hundred, and the revenue yielded by this capital as the corresponding
- term of another arithmetical series which progresses in a ratio equal to
- the rate of interest. Thus, a capital of five hundred francs being the
- fifth term of the arithmetical progression whose ratio is one hundred,
- its revenue at three per cent. will be indicated by the fifth term of
- the arithmetical progression whose ratio is three:--
- 100 . 200 . 300 . 400 . 500.
- 3 . 6 . 9 . 12 . 15.
- An acquaintance with this sort of LOGARITHMS--tables of which,
- calculated to a very high degree, are possessed by proprietors--will
- give us the key to the most puzzling problems, and cause us to
- experience a series of surprises.
- By this LOGARITHMIC theory of the right of increase, a piece of
- property, together with its income, may be defined as A NUMBER WHOSE
- LOGARITHM IS EQUAL TO THE SUM OF ITS UNITS DIVIDED BY ONE HUNDRED, AND
- MULTIPLIED BY THE RATE OF INTEREST. For instance; a house valued at one
- hundred thousand francs, and leased at five per cent., yields a revenue
- of five thousand francs, according to the formula 100,000 x 5 / 100 =
- five thousand. Vice versa, a piece of land which yields, at two and a
- half per cent., a revenue of three thousand francs is worth one hundred
- and twenty thousand francs, according to this other formula;
- 3,000 x 100/ 2 1/2 = one hundred and twenty thousand.
- In the first case, the ratio of the progression which marks the increase
- of interest is five; in the second, it is two and a half.
- OBSERVATION.--The forms of increase known as farm-rent, income, and
- interest are paid annually; rent is paid by the week, the month, or
- the year; profits and gains are paid at the time of exchange. Thus, the
- amount of increase is proportional both to the thing increased, and
- the time during which it increases; in other words, usury grows like a
- cancer--_foenus serpit sicut cancer_.
- 2. THE INCREASE PAID TO THE PROPRIETOR BY THE OCCUPANT IS A DEAD LOSS
- TO THE LATTER. For if the proprietor owed, in exchange for the increase
- which he receives, some thing more than the permission which he grants,
- his right of property would not be perfect--he would not possess
- _jure optimo, jure perfecto;_ that is, he would not be in reality a
- proprietor. Then, all which passes from the hands of the occupant into
- those of the proprietor in the name of increase, and as the price of
- the permission to occupy, is a permanent gain for the latter, and a dead
- loss and annihilation for the former; to whom none of it will return,
- save in the forms of gift, alms, wages paid for his services, or
- the price of merchandise which he has delivered. In a word, increase
- perishes so far as the borrower is concerned; or to use the more
- energetic Latin phrase,--_res perit solventi_.
- 3. THE RIGHT OF INCREASE OPPRESSES THE PROPRIETOR AS WELL AS THE
- STRANGER. The master of a thing, as its proprietor, levies a tax for the
- use of his property upon himself as its possessor, equal to that which
- he would receive from a third party; so that capital bears interest in
- the hands of the capitalist, as well as in those of the borrower and the
- commandite. If, indeed, rather than accept a rent of five hundred francs
- for my apartment, I prefer to occupy and enjoy it, it is clear that I
- shall become my own debtor for a rent equal to that which I deny myself.
- This principle is universally practised in business, and is regarded as
- an axiom by the economists. Manufacturers, also, who have the advantage
- of being proprietors of their floating capital, although they owe no
- interest to any one, in calculating their profits subtract from them,
- not only their running expenses and the wages of their employees, but
- also the interest on their capital. For the same reason, money-lenders
- retain in their own possession as little money as possible; for, since
- all capital necessarily bears interest, if this interest is supplied by
- no one, it comes out of the capital, which is to that extent diminished.
- Thus, by the right of increase, capital eats itself up. This is,
- doubtless, the idea that Papinius intended to convey in the phrase, as
- elegant as it is forcible--_Foenus mordet solidam_. I beg pardon for
- using Latin so frequently in discussing this subject; it is an homage
- which I pay to the most usurious nation that ever existed.
- FIRST PROPOSITION.
- Property is impossible, because it demands Something for Nothing.
- The discussion of this proposition covers the same ground as that of the
- origin of farm-rent, which is so much debated by the economists. When
- I read the writings of the greater part of these men, I cannot avoid
- a feeling of contempt mingled with anger, in view of this mass of
- nonsense, in which the detestable vies with the absurd. It would be a
- repetition of the story of the elephant in the moon, were it not for the
- atrocity of the consequences. To seek a rational and legitimate origin
- of that which is, and ever must be, only robbery, extortion, and
- plunder--that must be the height of the proprietor's folly; the last
- degree of bedevilment into which minds, otherwise judicious, can be
- thrown by the perversity of selfishness.
- "A farmer," says Say, "is a wheat manufacturer who, among other tools
- which serve him in modifying the material from which he makes the
- wheat, employs one large tool, which we call a field. If he is not the
- proprietor of the field, if he is only a tenant, he pays the proprietor
- for the productive service of this tool. The tenant is reimbursed by
- the purchaser, the latter by another, until the product reaches the
- consumer; who redeems the first payment, PLUS all the others, by means
- of which the product has at last come into his hands."
- Let us lay aside the subsequent payments by which the product reaches
- the consumer, and, for the present, pay attention only to the first one
- of all,--the rent paid to the proprietor by the tenant. On what ground,
- we ask, is the proprietor entitled to this rent?
- According to Ricardo, MacCulloch, and Mill, farm-rent, properly
- speaking, is simply the EXCESS OF THE PRODUCT OF THE MOST FERTILE LAND
- OVER THAT OF LANDS OF AN INFERIOR QUALITY; so that farm-rent is not
- demanded for the former until the increase of population renders
- necessary the cultivation of the latter.
- It is difficult to see any sense in this. How can a right to the land be
- based upon a difference in the quality of the land? How can varieties of
- soil engender a principle of legislation and politics? This reasoning
- is either so subtle, or so stupid, that the more I think of it, the more
- bewildered I become. Suppose two pieces of land of equal area; the one,
- A, capable of supporting ten thousand inhabitants; the other, B, capable
- of supporting nine thousand only: when, owing to an increase in their
- number, the inhabitants of A shall be forced to cultivate B, the landed
- proprietors of A will exact from their tenants in A a rent proportional
- to the difference between ten and nine. So say, I think, Ricardo,
- MacCulloch, and Mill. But if A supports as many inhabitants as it can
- contain,--that is, if the inhabitants of A, by our hypothesis, have only
- just enough land to keep them alive,--how can they pay farm-rent?
- If they had gone no farther than to say that the difference in land has
- OCCASIONED farm-rent, instead of CAUSED it, this observation would have
- taught us a valuable lesson; namely, that farm-rent grew out of a desire
- for equality. Indeed, if all men have an equal right to the possession
- of good land, no one can be forced to cultivate bad land without
- indemnification. Farm-rent--according to Ricardo, MacCulloch, and
- Mill--would then have been a compensation for loss and hardship. This
- system of practical equality is a bad one, no doubt; but it sprang from
- good intentions. What argument can Ricardo, MacCulloch, and Mill develop
- therefrom in favor of property? Their theory turns against themselves,
- and strangles them.
- Malthus thinks that farm-rent has its source in the power possessed by
- land of producing more than is necessary to supply the wants of the
- men who cultivate it. I would ask Malthus why successful labor should
- entitle the idle to a portion of the products?
- But the worthy Malthus is mistaken in regard to the fact. Yes; land has
- the power of producing more than is needed by those who cultivate it, if
- by CULTIVATORS is meant tenants only. The tailor also makes more clothes
- than he wears, and the cabinet-maker more furniture than he uses. But,
- since the various professions imply and sustain one another, not only
- the farmer, but the followers of all arts and trades--even to the doctor
- and the school-teacher--are, and ought to be, regarded as CULTIVATORS OF
- THE LAND. Malthus bases farm-rent upon the principle of commerce.
- Now, the fundamental law of commerce being equivalence of the products
- exchanged, any thing which destroys this equivalence violates the law.
- There is an error in the estimate which needs to be corrected.
- Buchanan--a commentator on Smith--regarded farm-rent as the result of a
- monopoly, and maintained that labor alone is productive. Consequently,
- he thought that, without this monopoly, products would rise in price;
- and he found no basis for farm-rent save in the civil law. This opinion
- is a corollary of that which makes the civil law the basis of property.
- But why has the civil law--which ought to be the written expression of
- justice--authorized this monopoly? Whoever says monopoly, necessarily
- excludes justice. Now, to say that farm-rent is a monopoly sanctioned by
- the law, is to say that injustice is based on justice,--a contradiction
- in terms.
- Say answers Buchanan, that the proprietor is not a monopolist, because a
- monopolist "is one who does not increase the utility of the merchandise
- which passes through his hands."
- How much does the proprietor increase the utility of his tenant's
- products? Has he ploughed, sowed, reaped, mowed, winnowed, weeded? These
- are the processes by which the tenant and his employees increase
- the utility of the material which they consume for the purpose of
- reproduction.
- "The landed proprietor increases the utility of products by means of his
- implement, the land. This implement receives in one state, and returns
- in another the materials of which wheat is composed. The action of
- the land is a chemical process, which so modifies the material that it
- multiplies it by destroying it. The soil is then a producer of utility;
- and when it [the soil?] asks its pay in the form of profit, or farm
- rent, for its proprietor, it at the same time gives something to the
- consumer in exchange for the amount which the consumer pays it. It gives
- him a produced utility; and it is the production of this utility which
- warrants us in calling land productive, as well as labor."
- Let us clear up this matter.
- The blacksmith who manufactures for the farmer implements of husbandry,
- the wheelwright who makes him a cart, the mason who builds his barn,
- the carpenter, the basket-maker, &c.,--all of whom contribute to
- agricultural production by the tools which they provide,--are producers
- of utility; consequently, they are entitled to a part of the products.
- "Undoubtedly," says Say; "but the land also is an implement whose
- service must be paid for, then...."
- I admit that the land is an implement; but who made it? Did the
- proprietor? Did he--by the efficacious virtue of the right of property,
- by this MORAL QUALITY infused into the soil--endow it with vigor and
- fertility? Exactly there lies the monopoly of the proprietor; in the
- fact that, though he did not make the implement, he asks pay for its
- use. When the Creator shall present himself and claim farm-rent, we will
- consider the matter with him; or even when the proprietor--his pretended
- representative--shall exhibit his power-of-attorney.
- "The proprietor's service," adds Say, "is easy, I admit."
- It is a frank confession.
- "But we cannot disregard it. Without property, one farmer would contend
- with another for the possession of a field without a proprietor, and the
- field would remain uncultivated...."
- Then the proprietor's business is to reconcile farmers by robbing
- them. O logic! O justice! O the marvellous wisdom of economists! The
- proprietor, if they are right, is like Perrin-Dandin who, when summoned
- by two travellers to settle a dispute about an oyster, opened it,
- gobbled it, and said to them:--
- "The Court awards you each a shell."
- Could any thing worse be said of property?
- Will Say tell us why the same farmers, who, if there were no
- proprietors, would contend with each other for possession of the
- soil, do not contend to-day with the proprietors for this possession?
- Obviously, because they think them legitimate possessors, and because
- their respect for even an imaginary right exceeds their avarice. I
- proved, in Chapter II., that possession is sufficient, without property,
- to maintain social order. Would it be more difficult, then, to reconcile
- possessors without masters than tenants controlled by proprietors? Would
- laboring men, who respect--much to their own detriment--the pretended
- rights of the idler, violate the natural rights of the producer and the
- manufacturer? What! if the husbandman forfeited his right to the land as
- soon as he ceased to occupy it, would he become more covetous? And would
- the impossibility of demanding increase, of taxing another's labor, be a
- source of quarrels and law-suits? The economists use singular logic.
- But we are not yet through. Admit that the proprietor is the legitimate
- master of the land.
- "The land is an instrument of production," they say. That is true. But
- when, changing the noun into an adjective, they alter the phrase, thus,
- "The land is a productive instrument," they make a wicked blunder.
- According to Quesnay and the early economists, all production comes from
- the land. Smith, Ricardo, and de Tracy, on the contrary, say that labor
- is the sole agent of production. Say, and most of his successors,
- teach that BOTH land AND labor AND capital are productive. The latter
- constitute the eclectic school of political economy. The truth is, that
- NEITHER land NOR labor NOR capital is productive. Production results
- from the co-operation of these three equally necessary elements, which,
- taken separately, are equally sterile.
- Political economy, indeed, treats of the production, distribution,
- and consumption of wealth or values. But of what values? Of the values
- produced by human industry; that is, of the changes made in matter
- by man, that he may appropriate it to his own use, and not at all of
- Nature's spontaneous productions. Man's labor consists in a simple
- laying on of hands. When he has taken that trouble, he has produced a
- value. Until then, the salt of the sea, the water of the springs, the
- grass of the fields, and the trees of the forests are to him as if they
- were not. The sea, without the fisherman and his line, supplies no fish.
- The forest, without the wood-cutter and his axe, furnishes neither
- fuel nor timber. The meadow, without the mower, yields neither hay
- nor aftermath. Nature is a vast mass of material to be cultivated and
- converted into products; but Nature produces nothing for herself: in the
- economical sense, her products, in their relation to man, are not yet
- products.
- Capital, tools, and machinery are likewise unproductive. The hammer and
- the anvil, without the blacksmith and the iron, do not forge. The mill,
- without the miller and the grain, does not grind, &c. Bring tools and
- raw material together; place a plough and some seed on fertile soil;
- enter a smithy, light the fire, and shut up the shop,--you will produce
- nothing. The following remark was made by an economist who possessed
- more good sense than most of his fellows: "Say credits capital with an
- active part unwarranted by its nature; left to itself, it is an idle
- tool." (J. Droz: Political Economy.)
- Finally, labor and capital together, when unfortunately combined,
- produce nothing. Plough a sandy desert, beat the water of the rivers,
- pass type through a sieve,--you will get neither wheat, nor fish, nor
- books. Your trouble will be as fruitless as was the immense labor of the
- army of Xerxes; who, as Herodotus says, with his three million soldiers,
- scourged the Hellespont for twenty-four hours, as a punishment for
- having broken and scattered the pontoon bridge which the great king had
- thrown across it.
- Tools and capital, land and labor, considered individually and
- abstractly, are not, literally speaking, productive. The proprietor who
- asks to be rewarded for the use of a tool, or the productive power
- of his land, takes for granted, then, that which is radically false;
- namely, that capital produces by its own effort,--and, in taking pay for
- this imaginary product, he literally receives something for nothing.
- OBJECTION.--But if the blacksmith, the wheelwright, all manufacturers in
- short, have a right to the products in return for the implements which
- they furnish; and if land is an implement of production,--why does not
- this implement entitle its proprietor, be his claim real or imaginary,
- to a portion of the products; as in the case of the manufacturers of
- ploughs and wagons?
- REPLY.--Here we touch the heart of the question, the mystery of
- property; which we must clear up, if we would understand any thing of
- the strange effects of the right of increase.
- He who manufactures or repairs the farmer's tools receives the price
- ONCE, either at the time of delivery, or in several payments; and when
- this price is once paid to the manufacturer, the tools which he has
- delivered belong to him no more. Never does he claim double payment for
- the same tool, or the same job of repairs. If he annually shares in the
- products of the farmer, it is owing to the fact that he annually makes
- something for the farmer.
- The proprietor, on the contrary, does not yield his implement; eternally
- he is paid for it, eternally he keeps it.
- In fact, the rent received by the proprietor is not intended to defray
- the expense of maintaining and repairing the implement; this expense is
- charged to the borrower, and does not concern the proprietor except as
- he is interested in the preservation of the article. If he takes it upon
- himself to attend to the repairs, he takes care that the money which he
- expends for this purpose is repaid.
- This rent does not represent the product of the implement, since of
- itself the implement produces nothing; we have just proved this, and we
- shall prove it more clearly still by its consequences.
- Finally, this rent does not represent the participation of the
- proprietor in the production; since this participation could consist,
- like that of the blacksmith and the wheelwright, only in the surrender
- of the whole or a part of his implement, in which case he would cease
- to be its proprietor, which would involve a contradiction of the idea of
- property.
- Then, between the proprietor and his tenant there is no exchange either
- of values or services; then, as our axiom says, farm-rent is real
- increase,--an extortion based solely upon fraud and violence on the
- one hand, and weakness and ignorance upon the other. PRODUCTS say
- the economists, ARE BOUGHT ONLY BY PRODUCTS. This maxim is property's
- condemnation. The proprietor, producing neither by his own labor nor by
- his implement, and receiving products in exchange for nothing, is either
- a parasite or a thief. Then, if property can exist only as a right,
- property is impossible.
- COROLLARIES.--1. The republican constitution of 1793, which defined
- property as "the right to enjoy the fruit of one's labor," was grossly
- mistaken. It should have said, "Property is the right to enjoy and
- dispose at will of another's goods,--the fruit of another's industry and
- labor."
- 2. Every possessor of lands, houses, furniture, machinery, tools, money,
- &c., who lends a thing for a price exceeding the cost of repairs (the
- repairs being charged to the lender, and representing products which he
- exchanges for other products), is guilty of swindling and extortion. In
- short, all rent received (nominally as damages, but really as payment
- for a loan) is an act of property,--a robbery.
- HISTORICAL COMMENT.--The tax which a victorious nation levies upon a
- conquered nation is genuine farm-rent. The seigniorial rights abolished
- by the Revolution of 1789,--tithes, mortmain, statute-labor, &c.,--were
- different forms of the rights of property; and they who under the titles
- of nobles, seigneurs, prebendaries, &c. enjoyed these rights, were
- neither more nor less than proprietors. To defend property to-day is to
- condemn the Revolution.
- SECOND PROPOSITION.
- Property is impossible because wherever it exists Production costs more
- than it is worth.
- The preceding proposition was legislative in its nature; this one
- is economical. It serves to prove that property, which originates in
- violence, results in waste.
- "Production," says Say, "is exchange on a large scale. To render the
- exchange productive the value of the whole amount of service must be
- balanced by the value of the product. If this condition is not
- complied with, the exchange is unequal; the producer gives more than he
- receives."
- Now, value being necessarily based upon utility, it follows that every
- useless product is necessarily valueless,--that it cannot be exchanged;
- and, consequently, that it cannot be given in payment for productive
- services.
- Then, though production may equal consumption, it never can exceed it;
- for there is no real production save where there is a production of
- utility, and there is no utility save where there is a possibility of
- consumption. Thus, so much of every product as is rendered by
- excessive abundance inconsumable, becomes useless, valueless,
- unexchangeable,--consequently, unfit to be given in payment for any
- thing whatever, and is no longer a product.
- Consumption, on the other hand, to be legitimate,--to be true
- consumption,--must be reproductive of utility; for, if it is
- unproductive, the products which it destroys are cancelled
- values--things produced at a pure loss; a state of things which causes
- products to depreciate in value. Man has the power to destroy, but he
- consumes only that which he reproduces. Under a right system of economy,
- there is then an equation between production and consumption.
- These points established, let us suppose a community of one thousand
- families, enclosed in a territory of a given circumference, and deprived
- of foreign intercourse. Let this community represent the human race,
- which, scattered over the face of the earth, is really isolated. In
- fact, the difference between a community and the human race being only
- a numerical one, the economical results will be absolutely the same in
- each case.
- Suppose, then, that these thousand families, devoting themselves
- exclusively to wheat-culture, are obliged to pay to one hundred
- individuals, chosen from the mass, an annual revenue of ten per cent. on
- their product. It is clear that, in such a case, the right of increase
- is equivalent to a tax levied in advance upon social production. Of what
- use is this tax?
- It cannot be levied to supply the community with provisions, for between
- that and farm-rent there is nothing in common; nor to pay for services
- and products,--for the proprietors, laboring like the others, have
- labored only for themselves. Finally, this tax is of no use to its
- recipients who, having harvested wheat enough for their own consumption,
- and not being able in a society without commerce and manufactures to
- procure any thing else in exchange for it, thereby lose the advantage of
- their income.
- In such a society, one-tenth of the product being inconsumable,
- one-tenth of the labor goes unpaid--production costs more than it is
- worth.
- Now, change three hundred of our wheat-producers into artisans of all
- kinds: one hundred gardeners and wine-growers, sixty shoemakers
- and tailors, fifty carpenters and blacksmiths, eighty of various
- professions, and, that nothing may be lacking, seven school-masters,
- one mayor, one judge, and one priest; each industry furnishes the whole
- community with its special product. Now, the total production being one
- thousand, each laborer's consumption is one; namely, wheat, meat,
- and grain, 0.7; wine and vegetables, 0.1; shoes and clothing, 0.06;
- iron-work and furniture, 0.05; sundries, 0.08; instruction, 0.007;
- administration, 0.002; mass, 0.001, Total 1.
- But the community owes a revenue of ten per cent.; and it matters little
- whether the farmers alone pay it, or all the laborers are responsible
- for it,--the result is the same. The farmer raises the price of his
- products in proportion to his share of the debt; the other laborers
- follow his example. Then, after some fluctuations, equilibrium is
- established, and all pay nearly the same amount of the revenue. It
- would be a grave error to assume that in a nation none but farmers pay
- farm-rent--the whole nation pays it.
- I say, then, that by this tax of ten per cent. each laborer's
- consumption is reduced as follows: wheat, 0.63; wine and vegetables,
- 0.09; clothing and shoes, 0.054; furniture and iron-work, 0.045; other
- products, 0.072; schooling, 0.0063; administration, 0.0018; mass,
- 0.0009. Total 0.9.
- The laborer has produced 1; he consumes only 0.9. He loses, then,
- one-tenth of the price of his labor; his production still costs
- more than it is worth. On the other hand, the tenth received by the
- proprietors is no less a waste; for, being laborers themselves, they,
- like the others, possess in the nine-tenths of their product the
- wherewithal to live: they want for nothing. Why should they wish their
- proportion of bread, wine, meat, clothes, shelter, &c., to be doubled,
- if they can neither consume nor exchange them? Then farm-rent, with
- them as with the rest of the laborers, is a waste, and perishes in their
- hands. Extend the hypothesis, increase the number and variety of the
- products, you still have the same result.
- Hitherto, we have considered the proprietor as taking part in the
- production, not only (as Say says) by the use of his instrument, but in
- an effective manner and by the labor of his hands. Now, it is easy to
- see that, under such circumstances, property will never exist. What
- happens?
- The proprietor--an essentially libidinous animal, without virtue or
- shame--is not satisfied with an orderly and disciplined life. He loves
- property, because it enables him to do at leisure what he pleases and
- when he pleases. Having obtained the means of life, he gives himself up
- to trivialities and indolence; he enjoys, he fritters away his time, he
- goes in quest of curiosities and novel sensations. Property--to enjoy
- itself--has to abandon ordinary life, and busy itself in luxurious
- occupations and unclean enjoyments.
- Instead of giving up a farm-rent, which is perishing in their hands,
- and thus lightening the labor of the community, our hundred proprietors
- prefer to rest. In consequence of this withdrawal,--the absolute
- production being diminished by one hundred, while the consumption
- remains the same,--production and consumption seem to balance. But,
- in the first place, since the proprietors no longer labor, their
- consumption is, according to economical principles, unproductive;
- consequently, the previous condition of the community--when the labor of
- one hundred was rewarded by no products--is superseded by one in which
- the products of one hundred are consumed without labor. The deficit
- is always the same, whichever the column of the account in which it is
- expressed. Either the maxims of political economy are false, or else
- property, which contradicts them, is impossible.
- The economists--regarding all unproductive consumption as an evil, as
- a robbery of the human race--never fail to exhort proprietors to
- moderation, labor, and economy; they preach to them the necessity of
- making themselves useful, of remunerating production for that which they
- receive from it; they launch the most terrible curses against luxury and
- laziness. Very beautiful morality, surely; it is a pity that it lacks
- common sense. The proprietor who labors, or, as the economists say,
- WHO MAKES HIMSELF USEFUL, is paid for this labor and utility; is he,
- therefore, any the less idle as concerns the property which he does not
- use, and from which he receives an income? His condition, whatever he
- may do, is an unproductive and FELONIOUS one; he cannot cease to waste
- and destroy without ceasing to be a proprietor.
- But this is only the least of the evils which property engenders.
- Society has to maintain some idle people, whether or no. It will always
- have the blind, the maimed, the insane, and the idiotic. It can easily
- support a few sluggards. At this point, the impossibilities thicken and
- become complicated.
- THIRD PROPOSITION.
- Property is impossible, because, with a given capital, Production is
- proportional to labor, not to property.
- To pay a farm-rent of one hundred at the rate of ten per cent. of the
- product, the product must be one thousand; that the product may be one
- thousand, a force of one thousand laborers is needed. It follows,
- that in granting a furlough, as we have just done, to our one hundred
- laborer-proprietors, all of whom had an equal right to lead the life
- of men of income,--we have placed ourselves in a position where we are
- unable to pay their revenues. In fact, the productive power, which at
- first was one thousand, being now but nine hundred, the production is
- also reduced to nine hundred, one-tenth of which is ninety. Either,
- then, ten proprietors out of the one hundred cannot be paid,--provided
- the remaining ninety are to get the whole amount of their farm-rent,--or
- else all must consent to a decrease of ten per cent. For it is not for
- the laborer, who has been wanting in no particular, who has produced as
- in the past, to suffer by the withdrawal of the proprietor. The
- latter must take the consequences of his own idleness. But, then, the
- proprietor becomes poorer for the very reason that he wishes to enjoy;
- by exercising his right, he loses it; so that property seems to decrease
- and vanish in proportion as we try to lay hold of it,--the more we
- pursue it, the more it eludes our grasp. What sort of a right is that
- which is governed by numerical relations, and which an arithmetical
- calculation can destroy?
- The laborer-proprietor received, first, as laborer, 0.9 in wages;
- second, as proprietor, 1 in farm-rent. He said to himself, "My farm-rent
- is sufficient; I have enough and to spare without my labor." And thus
- it is that the income upon which he calculated gets diminished by
- one-tenth,--he at the same time not even suspecting the cause of this
- diminution. By taking part in the production, he was himself the creator
- of this tenth which has vanished; and while he thought to labor only for
- himself, he unwittingly suffered a loss in exchanging his products, by
- which he was made to pay to himself one-tenth of his own farm-rent. Like
- every one else, he produced 1, and received but 0.9
- If, instead of nine hundred laborers, there had been but five hundred,
- the whole amount of farm-rent would have been reduced to fifty; if there
- had been but one hundred, it would have fallen to ten. We may posit,
- then, the following axiom as a law of proprietary economy: INCREASE MUST
- DIMINISH AS THE NUMBER OF IDLERS AUGMENTS.
- _ _This first result will lead us to another more surprising still.
- Its effect is to deliver us at one blow from all the evils of property,
- without abolishing it, without wronging proprietors, and by a highly
- conservative process.
- We have just proved that, if the farm-rent in a community of one
- thousand laborers is one hundred, that of nine hundred would be ninety,
- that of eight hundred, eighty, that of one hundred, ten, &c. So that, in
- a community where there was but one laborer, the farm-rent would be but
- 0.1; no matter how great the extent and value of the land appropriated.
- Therefore, WITH A GIVEN LANDED CAPITAL, PRODUCTION IS PROPORTIONAL TO
- LABOR, NOT TO PROPERTY.
- Guided by this principle, let us try to ascertain the maximum increase
- of all property whatever.
- What is, essentially, a farm-lease? It is a contract by which the
- proprietor yields to a tenant possession of his land, in consideration
- of a portion of that which it yields him, the proprietor. If, in
- consequence of an increase in his household, the tenant becomes ten
- times as strong as the proprietor, he will produce ten times as
- much. Would the proprietor in such a case be justified in raising the
- farm-rent tenfold? His right is not, The more you produce, the more I
- demand. It is, The more I sacrifice, the more I demand. The increase
- in the tenant's household, the number of hands at his disposal, the
- resources of his industry,--all these serve to increase production, but
- bear no relation to the proprietor. His claims are to be measured by his
- own productive capacity, not that of others. Property is the right of
- increase, not a poll-tax. How could a man, hardly capable of cultivating
- even a few acres by himself, demand of a community, on the ground of its
- use of ten thousand acres of his property, ten thousand times as much
- as he is incapable of producing from one acre? Why should the price of a
- loan be governed by the skill and strength of the borrower, rather than
- by the utility sacrificed by the proprietor? We must recognize, then,
- this second economical law: INCREASE IS MEASURED BY A FRACTION OF THE
- PROPRIETORS PRODUCTION.
- Now, this production, what is it? In other words, What can the lord and
- master of a piece of land justly claim to have sacrificed in lending it
- to a tenant?
- The productive capacity of a proprietor, like that of any laborer, being
- one, the product which he sacrifices in surrendering his land is also
- one. If, then, the rate of increase is ten per cent., the maximum
- increase is 0.1.
- But we have seen that, whenever a proprietor withdraws from production,
- the amount of products is lessened by 1. Then the increase which accrues
- to him, being equal to 0.1 while he remains among the laborers, will be
- equal after his withdrawal, by the law of the decrease of farm-rent,
- to 0.09. Thus we are led to this final formula: THE MAXIMUM INCOME OF
- A PROPRIETOR IS EQUAL TO THE SQUARE ROOT OF THE PRODUCT OF ONE LABORER
- (some number being agreed upon to express this product). THE DIMINUTION
- WHICH THIS INCOME SUFFERS, IF THE PROPRIETOR IS IDLE, IS EQUAL TO A
- FRACTION WHOSE NUMERATOR IS 1, AND WHOSE DENOMINATOR IS THE NUMBER WHICH
- EXPRESSES THE PRODUCT.
- Thus the maximum income of an idle proprietor, or of one who labors in
- his own behalf outside of the community, figured at ten per cent. on an
- average production of one thousand francs per laborer, would be ninety
- francs. If, then, there are in France one million proprietors with an
- income of one thousand francs each, which they consume unproductively,
- instead of the one thousand millions which are paid them annually, they
- are entitled in strict justice, and by the most accurate calculation, to
- ninety millions only.
- It is something of a reduction, to take nine hundred and ten millions
- from the burdens which weigh so heavily upon the laboring class!
- Nevertheless, the account is not finished, and the laborer is still
- ignorant of the full extent of his rights.
- What is the right of increase when confined within just limits? A
- recognition of the right of occupancy. But since all have an equal right
- of occupancy, every man is by the same title a proprietor. Every man has
- a right to an income equal to a fraction of his product. If, then,
- the laborer is obliged by the right of property to pay a rent to the
- proprietor, the proprietor is obliged by the same right to pay the same
- amount of rent to the laborer; and, since their rights balance each
- other, the difference between them is zero.
- _Scholium_.--If farm-rent is only a fraction of the supposed product of
- the proprietor, whatever the amount and value of the property, the same
- is true in the case of a large number of small and distinct proprietors.
- For, although one man may use the property of each separately, he cannot
- use the property of all at the same time.
- To sum up. The right of increase, which can exist only within very
- narrow limits, defined by the laws of production, is annihilated by
- the right of occupancy. Now, without the right of increase, there is no
- property. Then property is impossible.
- FOURTH PROPOSITION.
- Property is impossible, because it is Homicide.
- If the right of increase could be subjected to the laws of reason and
- justice, it would be reduced to an indemnity or reward whose MAXIMUM
- never could exceed, for a single laborer, a certain fraction of that
- which he is capable of producing. This we have just shown. But why
- should the right of increase--let us not fear to call it by its right
- name, the right of robbery--be governed by reason, with which it has
- nothing in common? The proprietor is not content with the increase
- allotted him by good sense and the nature of things: he demands ten
- times, a hundred times, a thousand times, a million times as much. By
- his own labor, his property would yield him a product equal only to
- one; and he demands of society, no longer a right proportional to his
- productive capacity, but a per capita tax. He taxes his fellows in
- proportion to their strength, their number, and their industry. A son
- is born to a farmer. "Good!" says the proprietor; "one more chance
- for increase!" By what process has farm-rent been thus changed into
- a poll-tax? Why have our jurists and our theologians failed, with all
- their shrewdness, to check the extension of the right of increase?
- The proprietor, having estimated from his own productive capacity the
- number of laborers which his property will accommodate, divides it
- into as many portions, and says: "Each one shall yield me revenue."
- To increase his income, he has only to divide his property. Instead
- of reckoning the interest due him on his labor, he reckons it on his
- capital; and, by this substitution, the same property, which in the
- hands of its owner is capable of yielding only one, is worth to him
- ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million. Consequently, he has only to hold
- himself in readiness to register the names of the laborers who apply to
- him--his task consists in drafting leases and receipts.
- Not satisfied with the lightness of his duties, the proprietor does not
- intend to bear even the deficit resulting from his idleness; he throws
- it upon the shoulders of the producer, of whom he always demands the
- same reward. When the farm-rent of a piece of land is once raised to its
- highest point, the proprietor never lowers it; high prices, the scarcity
- of labor, the disadvantages of the season, even pestilence itself, have
- no effect upon him--why should he suffer from hard times when he does
- not labor?
- Here commences a new series of phenomena.
- Say--who reasons with marvellous clearness whenever he assails taxation,
- but who is blind to the fact that the proprietor, as well as the
- tax-gatherer, steals from the tenant, and in the same manner--says in
- his second letter to Malthus:--
- "If the collector of taxes and those who employ him consume one-sixth
- of the products, they thereby compel the producers to feed, clothe, and
- support themselves on five-sixths of what they produce. They admit this,
- but say at the same time that it is possible for each one to live on
- five-sixths of what he produces.
- "I admit that, if they insist upon it; but I ask if they believe that the
- producer would live as well, in case they demanded of him, instead of
- one-sixth, two-sixths, or one-third, of their products? No; but he would
- still live. Then I ask whether he would still live, in case they should
- rob him of two-thirds,... then three-quarters? But I hear no reply."
- If the master of the French economists had been less blinded by his
- proprietary prejudices, he would have seen that farm-rent has precisely
- the same effect.
- Take a family of peasants composed of six persons,--father, mother, and
- four children,--living in the country, and cultivating a small piece of
- ground. Let us suppose that by hard labor they manage, as the saying is,
- to make both ends meet; that, having lodged, warmed, clothed, and fed
- themselves, they are clear of debt, but have laid up nothing. Taking the
- years together, they contrive to live. If the year is prosperous, the
- father drinks a little more wine, the daughters buy themselves a dress,
- the sons a hat; they eat a little cheese, and, occasionally, some meat.
- I say that these people are on the road to wreck and ruin.
- For, by the third corollary of our axiom, they owe to themselves the
- interest on their own capital. Estimating this capital at only eight
- thousand francs at two and a half per cent., there is an annual interest
- of two hundred francs to be paid. If, then, these two hundred francs,
- instead of being subtracted from the gross product to be saved and
- capitalized, are consumed, there is an annual deficit of two hundred
- francs in the family assets; so that at the end of forty years these
- good people, without suspecting it, will have eaten up their property
- and become bankrupt!
- This result seems ridiculous--it is a sad reality.
- The conscription comes. What is the conscription? An act of property
- exercised over families by the government without warning--a robbery
- of men and money. The peasants do not like to part with their sons,--in
- that I do not think them wrong. It is hard for a young man of twenty
- to gain any thing by life in the barracks; unless he is depraved, he
- detests it. You can generally judge of a soldier's morality by his
- hatred of his uniform. Unfortunate wretches or worthless scamps,--such
- is the make-up of the French army. This ought not to be the case,--but
- so it is. Question a hundred thousand men, and not one will contradict
- my assertion.
- Our peasant, in redeeming his two conscripted sons, expends four
- thousand francs, which he borrows for that purpose; the interest on
- this, at five per cent., is two hundred francs;--a sum equal to that
- referred to above. If, up to this time, the production of the family,
- constantly balanced by its consumption, has been one thousand two
- hundred francs, or two hundred francs per persons--in order to pay this
- interest, either the six laborers must produce as much as seven, or must
- consume as little as five.
- Curtail consumption they cannot--how can they curtail necessity? To
- produce more is impossible; they can work neither harder nor longer.
- Shall they take a middle course, and consume five and a half while
- producing six and a half? They would soon find that with the stomach
- there is no compromise--that beyond a certain degree of abstinence it
- is impossible to go--that strict necessity can be curtailed but little
- without injury to the health; and, as for increasing the product,--there
- comes a storm, a drought, an epizootic, and all the hopes of the farmer
- are dashed. In short, the rent will not be paid, the interest will
- accumulate, the farm will be seized, and the possessor ejected.
- Thus a family, which lived in prosperity while it abstained from
- exercising the right of property, falls into misery as soon as the
- exercise of this right becomes a necessity. Property requires of the
- husbandman the double power of enlarging his land, and fertilizing it by
- a simple command. While a man is simply possessor of the land, he finds
- in it means of subsistence; as soon as he pretends to proprietorship,
- it suffices him no longer. Being able to produce only that which
- he consumes, the fruit of his labor is his recompense for his
- trouble--nothing is left for the instrument.
- Required to pay what he cannot produce,--such is the condition of the
- tenant after the proprietor has retired from social production in order
- to speculate upon the labor of others by new methods.
- Let us now return to our first hypothesis.
- The nine hundred laborers, sure that their future production will equal
- that of the past, are quite surprised, after paying their farm-rent, to
- find themselves poorer by one-tenth than they were the previous year.
- In fact, this tenth--which was formerly produced and paid by the
- proprietor-laborer who then took part in the production, and paid part
- of the--public expenses--now has not been produced, and has been paid.
- It must then have been taken from the producer's consumption. To
- choke this inexplicable deficit, the laborer borrows, confident of
- his intention and ability to return,--a confidence which is shaken the
- following year by a new loan, PLUS the interest on the first. From whom
- does he borrow? From the proprietor. The proprietor lends his surplus to
- the laborer; and this surplus, which he ought to return, becomes--being
- lent at interest--a new source of profit to him. Then debts increase
- indefinitely; the proprietor makes advances to the producer who never
- returns them; and the latter, constantly robbed and constantly borrowing
- from the robbers, ends in bankruptcy, defrauded of all that he had.
- Suppose that the proprietor--who needs his tenant to furnish him with
- an income--then releases him from his debts. He will thus do a very
- benevolent deed, which will procure for him a recommendation in the
- curate's prayers; while the poor tenant, overwhelmed by this unstinted
- charity, and taught by his catechism to pray for his benefactors, will
- promise to redouble his energy, and suffer new hardships that he may
- discharge his debt to so kind a master.
- This time he takes precautionary measures; he raises the price of
- grains. The manufacturer does the same with his products. The reaction
- comes, and, after some fluctuation, the farm-rent--which the tenant
- thought to put upon the manufacturer's shoulders--becomes nearly
- balanced. So that, while he is congratulating himself upon his success,
- he finds himself again impoverished, but to an extent somewhat smaller
- than before. For the rise having been general, the proprietor suffers
- with the rest; so that the laborers, instead of being poorer by
- one-tenth, lose only nine-hundredths. But always it is a debt which
- necessitates a loan, the payment of interest, economy, and fasting.
- Fasting for the nine-hundredths which ought not to be paid, and are
- paid; fasting for the redemption of debts; fasting to pay the interest
- on them. Let the crop fail, and the fasting becomes starvation. They
- say, "IT IS NECESSARY TO WORK MORE." That means, obviously, that IT IS
- NECESSARY TO PRODUCE MORE. By what conditions is production effected? By
- the combined action of labor, capital, and land. As for the labor, the
- tenant undertakes to furnish it; but capital is formed only by economy.
- Now, if the tenant could accumulate any thing, he would pay his debts.
- But granting that he has plenty of capital, of what use would it be to
- him if the extent of the land which he cultivates always remained the
- same? He needs to enlarge his farm.
- Will it be said, finally, that he must work harder and to better
- advantage? But, in our estimation of farm-rent, we have assumed the
- highest possible average of production. Were it not the highest, the
- proprietor would increase the farm-rent. Is not this the way in which
- the large landed proprietors have gradually raised their rents, as
- fast as they have ascertained by the increase in population and
- the development of industry how much society can produce from their
- property? The proprietor is a foreigner to society; but, like the
- vulture, his eyes fixed upon his prey, he holds himself ready to pounce
- upon and devour it.
- The facts to which we have called attention, in a community of one
- thousand persons, are reproduced on a large scale in every nation
- and wherever human beings live, but with infinite variations and in
- innumerable forms, which it is no part of my intention to describe.
- In fine, property--after having robbed the laborer by usury--murders him
- slowly by starvation. Now, without robbery and murder, property cannot
- exist; with robbery and murder, it soon dies for want of support.
- Therefore it is impossible.
- FIFTH PROPOSITION.
- Property is impossible, because, if it exists, Society devours itself.
- When the ass is too heavily loaded, he lies down; man always moves on.
- Upon this indomitable courage, the proprietor--well knowing that it
- exists--bases his hopes of speculation. The free laborer produces ten;
- for me, thinks the proprietor, he will produce twelve.
- Indeed,--before consenting to the confiscation of his fields, before
- bidding farewell to the paternal roof,--the peasant, whose story we have
- just told, makes a desperate effort; he leases new land; he will sow
- one-third more; and, taking half of this new product for himself, he
- will harvest an additional sixth, and thereby pay his rent. What an
- evil! To add one-sixth to his production, the farmer must add, not
- one-sixth, but two-sixths to his labor. At such a price, he pays a
- farm-rent which in God's eyes he does not owe.
- The tenant's example is followed by the manufacturer. The former tills
- more land, and dispossesses his neighbors; the latter lowers the price
- of his merchandise, and endeavors to monopolize its manufacture and
- sale, and to crush out his competitors. To satisfy property, the laborer
- must first produce beyond his needs. Then, he must produce beyond his
- strength; for, by the withdrawal of laborers who become proprietors, the
- one always follows from the other. But to produce beyond his strength
- and needs, he must invade the production of another, and consequently
- diminish the number of producers. Thus the proprietor--after having
- lessened production by stepping outside--lessens it still further by
- encouraging the monopoly of labor. Let us calculate it.
- The laborer's deficit, after paying his rent, being, as we have seen,
- one-tenth, he tries to increase his production by this amount. He sees
- no way of accomplishing this save by increasing his labor: this also he
- does. The discontent of the proprietors who have not received the full
- amount of their rent; the advantageous offers and promises made them by
- other farmers, whom they suppose more diligent, more industrious, and
- more reliable; the secret plots and intrigues,--all these give rise to a
- movement for the re-division of labor, and the elimination of a certain
- number of producers. Out of nine hundred, ninety will be ejected, that
- the production of the others may be increased one-tenth. But will
- the total product be increased? Not in the least: there will be eight
- hundred and ten laborers producing as nine hundred, while, to accomplish
- their purpose, they would have to produce as one thousand. Now, it
- having been proved that farm-rent is proportional to the landed capital
- instead of to labor, and that it never diminishes, the debts must
- continue as in the past, while the labor has increased. Here, then, we
- have a society which is continually decimating itself, and which
- would destroy itself, did not the periodical occurrence of failures,
- bankruptcies, and political and economical catastrophes re-establish
- equilibrium, and distract attention from the real causes of the
- universal distress.
- The monopoly of land and capital is followed by economical processes
- which also result in throwing laborers out of employment. Interest being
- a constant burden upon the shoulders of the farmer and the manufacturer,
- they exclaim, each speaking for himself, "I should have the means
- wherewith to pay my rent and interest, had I not to pay so many hands."
- Then those admirable inventions, intended to assure the easy and speedy
- performance of labor, become so many infernal machines which kill
- laborers by thousands.
- "A few years ago, the Countess of Strafford ejected fifteen thousand
- persons from her estate, who, as tenants, added to its value. This act
- of private administration was repeated in 1820, by another large Scotch
- proprietor, towards six hundred tenants and their families."--Tissot: on
- Suicide and Revolt.
- _ _The author whom I quote, and who has written eloquent words
- concerning the revolutionary spirit which prevails in modern society,
- does not say whether he would have disapproved of a revolt on the part
- of these exiles. For myself, I avow boldly that in my eyes it would
- have been the first of rights, and the holiest of duties; and all that I
- desire to-day is that my profession of faith be understood.
- Society devours itself,--1. By the violent and periodical sacrifice
- of laborers: this we have just seen, and shall see again; 2. By the
- stoppage of the producer's consumption caused by property. These two
- modes of suicide are at first simultaneous; but soon the first is given
- additional force by the second, famine uniting with usury to render
- labor at once more necessary and more scarce.
- By the principles of commerce and political economy, that an industrial
- enterprise may be successful, its product must furnish,--1. The interest
- on the capital employed; 2. Means for the preservation of this capital;
- 3. The wages of all the employees and contractors. Further, as large a
- profit as possible must be realized.
- The financial shrewdness and rapacity of property is worthy of
- admiration. Each different name which increase takes affords the
- proprietor an opportunity to receive it,--1. In the form of interest; 2.
- In the form of profit. For, it says, a part of the income derived
- from manufactures consists of interest on the capital employed. If
- one hundred thousand francs have been invested in a manufacturing
- enterprise, and in a year's time five thousand francs have been received
- therefrom in addition to the expenses, there has been no profit, but
- only interest on the capital. Now, the proprietor is not a man to labor
- for nothing. Like the lion in the fable, he gets paid in each of his
- capacities; so that, after he has been served, nothing is left for his
- associates.
- _Ego primam tollo, nominor quia leo.
- Secundam quia sum fortis tribuctis mihi.
- Tum quia plus valeo, me sequetur tertia.
- Malo adficietur, si quis quartam tetigerit._
- I know nothing prettier than this fable.
- "I am the contractor. I take the first share.
- I am the laborer, I take the second.
- I am the capitalist, I take the third.
- I am the proprietor, I take the whole."
- In four lines, Phaedrus has summed up all the forms of property.
- I say that this interest, all the more then this profit, is impossible.
- What are laborers in relation to each other? So many members of a large
- industrial society, to each of whom is assigned a certain portion of
- the general production, by the principle of the division of labor and
- functions. Suppose, first, that this society is composed of but three
- individuals,--a cattle-raiser, a tanner, and a shoemaker. The social
- industry, then, is that of shoemaking. If I should ask what ought to be
- each producer's share of the social product, the first schoolboy whom I
- should meet would answer, by a rule of commerce and association, that it
- should be one-third. But it is not our duty here to balance the rights
- of laborers conventionally associated: we have to prove that, whether
- associated or not, our three workers are obliged to act as if they
- were; that, whether they will or no, they are associated by the force of
- things, by mathematical necessity.
- Three processes are required in the manufacture of shoes,--the rearing
- of cattle, the preparation of their hides, and the cutting and sewing.
- If the hide, on leaving the farmer's stable, is worth one, it is worth
- two on leaving the tanner's pit, and three on leaving the shoemaker's
- shop. Each laborer has produced a portion of the utility; so that, by
- adding all these portions together, we get the value of the article. To
- obtain any quantity whatever of this article, each producer must pay,
- then, first for his own labor, and second for the labor of the other
- producers. Thus, to obtain as many shoes as can be made from ten hides,
- the farmer will give thirty raw hides, and the tanner twenty tanned
- hides. For, the shoes that are made from ten hides are worth thirty raw
- hides, in consequence of the extra labor bestowed upon them; just
- as twenty tanned hides are worth thirty raw hides, on account of
- the tanner's labor. But if the shoemaker demands thirty-three in the
- farmer's product, or twenty-two in the tanner's, for ten in his own,
- there will be no exchange; for, if there were, the farmer and the
- tanner, after having paid the shoemaker ten for his labor, would have to
- pay eleven for that which they had themselves sold for ten,--which, of
- course, would be impossible. [18]
- Well, this is precisely what happens whenever an emolument of any kind
- is received; be it called revenue, farm-rent, interest, or profit. In
- the little community of which we are speaking, if the shoemaker--in
- order to procure tools, buy a stock of leather, and support himself
- until he receives something from his investment--borrows money at
- interest, it is clear that to pay this interest he will have to make a
- profit off the tanner and the farmer. But as this profit is impossible
- unless fraud is used, the interest will fall back upon the shoulders of
- the unfortunate shoemaker, and ruin him.
- I have imagined a case of unnatural simplicity. There is no human
- society but sustains more than three vocations. The most uncivilized
- society supports numerous industries; to-day, the number of industrial
- functions (I mean by industrial functions all useful functions) exceeds,
- perhaps, a thousand. However numerous the occupations, the economic law
- remains the same,--THAT THE PRODUCER MAY LIVE, HIS WAGES MUST REPURCHASE
- HIS PRODUCT.
- _ _The economists cannot be ignorant of this rudimentary principle
- of their pretended science: why, then, do they so obstinately defend
- property, and inequality of wages, and the legitimacy of usury, and the
- honesty of profit,--all of which contradict the economic law, and make
- exchange impossible? A contractor pays one hundred thousand francs
- for raw material, fifty thousand francs in wages, and then expects to
- receive a product of two hundred thousand francs,--that is, expects to
- make a profit on the material and on the labor of his employees; but
- if the laborers and the purveyor of the material cannot, with their
- combined wages, repurchase that which they have produced for the
- contractor, how can they live? I will develop my question. Here details
- become necessary.
- If the workingman receives for his labor an average of three francs per
- day, his employer (in order to gain any thing beyond his own salary, if
- only interest on his capital) must sell the day's labor of his employee,
- in the form of merchandise, for more than three francs. The workingman
- cannot, then, repurchase that which he has produced for his master.
- It is thus with all trades whatsoever. The tailor, the hatter, the
- cabinet-maker, the blacksmith, the tanner, the mason, the jeweller,
- the printer, the clerk, &c., even to the farmer and wine-grower, cannot
- repurchase their products; since, producing for a master who in one form
- or another makes a profit, they are obliged to pay more for their own
- labor than they get for it.
- In France, twenty millions of laborers, engaged in all the branches of
- science, art, and industry, produce every thing which is useful to man.
- Their annual wages amount, it is estimated to twenty thousand millions;
- but, in consequence of the right of property, and the multifarious forms
- of increase, premiums, tithes, interests, fines, profits, farm-rents,
- house-rents, revenues, emoluments of every nature and description, their
- products are estimated by the proprietors and employers at twenty-five
- thousand millions. What does that signify? That the laborers, who are
- obliged to repurchase these products in order to live, must either pay
- five for that which they produced for four, or fast one day in five.
- If there is an economist in France able to show that this calculation is
- false, I summon him to appear; and I promise to retract all that I have
- wrongfully and wickedly uttered in my attacks upon property.
- Let us now look at the results of this profit.
- If the wages of the workingmen were the same in all pursuits, the
- deficit caused by the proprietor's tax would be felt equally everywhere;
- but also the cause of the evil would be so apparent, that it would soon
- be discovered and suppressed. But, as there is the same inequality of
- wages (from that of the scavenger up to that of the minister of state)
- as of property, robbery continually rebounds from the stronger to the
- weaker; so that, since the laborer finds his hardships increase as he
- descends in the social scale, the lowest class of people are literally
- stripped naked and eaten alive by the others.
- The laboring people can buy neither the cloth which they weave, nor the
- furniture which they manufacture, nor the metal which they forge, nor
- the jewels which they cut, nor the prints which they engrave. They can
- procure neither the wheat which they plant, nor the wine which they
- grow, nor the flesh of the animals which they raise. They are allowed
- neither to dwell in the houses which they build, nor to attend the
- plays which their labor supports, nor to enjoy the rest which their body
- requires. And why? Because the right of increase does not permit these
- things to be sold at the cost-price, which is all that laborers can
- afford to pay. On the signs of those magnificent warehouses which he in
- his poverty admires, the laborer reads in large letters: "This is thy
- work, and thou shalt not have it." _Sic vos non vobis_!
- Every manufacturer who employs one thousand laborers, and gains from
- them daily one sou each, is slowly pushing them into a state of misery.
- Every man who makes a profit has entered into a conspiracy with famine.
- But the whole nation has not even this labor, by means of which property
- starves it. And why? Because the workers are forced by the insufficiency
- of their wages to monopolize labor; and because, before being destroyed
- by dearth, they destroy each other by competition. Let us pursue this
- truth no further.
- If the laborer's wages will not purchase his product, it follows
- that the product is not made for the producer. For whom, then, is it
- intended? For the richer consumer; that is, for only a fraction of
- society. But when the whole society labors, it produces for the whole
- society. If, then, only a part of society consumes, sooner or later a
- part of society will be idle. Now, idleness is death, as well for the
- laborer as for the proprietor.
- This conclusion is inevitable.
- The most distressing spectacle imaginable is the sight of producers
- resisting and struggling against this mathematical necessity, this power
- of figures to which their prejudices blind them.
- If one hundred thousand printers can furnish reading-matter enough for
- thirty-four millions of men, and if the price of books is so high that
- only one-third of that number can afford to buy them, it is clear that
- these one hundred thousand printers will produce three times as much as
- the booksellers can sell. That the products of the laborers may never
- exceed the demands of the consumers, the laborers must either rest two
- days out of three, or, separating into three groups, relieve each other
- three times a week, month, or quarter; that is, during two-thirds of
- their life they must not live. But industry, under the influence of
- property, does not proceed with such regularity. It endeavors to
- produce a great deal in a short time, because the greater the amount of
- products, and the shorter the time of production, the less each product
- costs. As soon as a demand begins to be felt, the factories fill up, and
- everybody goes to work. Then business is lively, and both governors and
- governed rejoice. But the more they work to-day, the more idle will they
- be hereafter; the more they laugh, the more they shall weep. Under
- the rule of property, the flowers of industry are woven into none but
- funeral wreaths. The laborer digs his own grave.
- If the factory stops running, the manufacturer has to pay interest on
- his capital the same as before. He naturally tries, then, to continue
- production by lessening expenses. Then comes the lowering of wages; the
- introduction of machinery; the employment of women and children to do
- the work of men; bad workmen, and wretched work. They still produce,
- because the decreased cost creates a larger market; but they do not
- produce long, because, the cheapness being due to the quantity and
- rapidity of production, the productive power tends more than ever to
- outstrip consumption. It is when laborers, whose wages are scarcely
- sufficient to support them from one day to another, are thrown out of
- work, that the consequences of the principle of property become most
- frightful. They have not been able to economize, they have made no
- savings, they have accumulated no capital whatever to support them even
- one day more. Today the factory is closed. To-morrow the people starve
- in the streets. Day after tomorrow they will either die in the hospital,
- or eat in the jail.
- And still new misfortunes come to complicate this terrible situation. In
- consequence of the cessation of business, and the extreme cheapness of
- merchandise, the manufacturer finds it impossible to pay the interest
- on his borrowed capital; whereupon his frightened creditors hasten to
- withdraw their funds. Production is suspended, and labor comes to a
- standstill. Then people are astonished to see capital desert commerce,
- and throw itself upon the Stock Exchange; and I once heard M. Blanqui
- bitterly lamenting the blind ignorance of capitalists. The cause of
- this movement of capital is very simple; but for that very reason an
- economist could not understand it, or rather must not explain it. The
- cause lies solely in COMPETITION.
- I mean by competition, not only the rivalry between two parties engaged
- in the same business, but the general and simultaneous effort of all
- kinds of business to get ahead of each other. This effort is to-day
- so strong, that the price of merchandise scarcely covers the cost of
- production and distribution; so that, the wages of all laborers being
- lessened, nothing remains, not even interest for the capitalists.
- The primary cause of commercial and industrial stagnations is, then,
- interest on capital,--that interest which the ancients with one accord
- branded with the name of usury, whenever it was paid for the use
- of money, but which they did not dare to condemn in the forms of
- house-rent, farm-rent, or profit: as if the nature of the thing lent
- could ever warrant a charge for the lending; that is, robbery.
- In proportion to the increase received by the capitalist will be the
- frequency and intensity of commercial crises,--the first being given, we
- always can determine the two others; and vice versa. Do you wish to know
- the regulator of a society? Ascertain the amount of active capital; that
- is, the capital bearing interest, and the legal rate of this interest.
- The course of events will be a series of overturns, whose number and
- violence will be proportional to the activity of capital.
- In 1839, the number of failures in Paris alone was one thousand and
- sixty-four. This proportion was kept up in the early months of 1840;
- and, as I write these lines, the crisis is not yet ended. It is said,
- further, that the number of houses which have wound up their business
- is greater than the number of declared failures. By this flood, we may
- judge of the waterspout's power of suction.
- The decimation of society is now imperceptible and permanent, now
- periodical and violent; it depends upon the course which property takes.
- In a country where the property is pretty evenly distributed, and where
- little business is done,--the rights and claims of each being balanced
- by those of others,--the power of invasion is destroyed. There--it may
- be truly said--property does not exist, since the right of increase is
- scarcely exercised at all. The condition of the laborers--as regards
- security of life--is almost the same as if absolute equality prevailed
- among them. They are deprived of all the advantages of full and free
- association, but their existence is not endangered in the least. With
- the exception of a few isolated victims of the right of property--of
- this misfortune whose primary cause no one perceives--the society
- appears to rest calmly in the bosom of this sort of equality. But have a
- care; it is balanced on the edge of a sword: at the slightest shock, it
- will fall and meet with death!
- Ordinarily, the whirlpool of property localizes itself. On the one hand,
- farm-rent stops at a certain point; on the other, in consequence of
- competition and over-production, the price of manufactured goods does
- not rise,--so that the condition of the peasant varies but little, and
- depends mainly on the seasons. The devouring action of property bears,
- then, principally upon business. We commonly say COMMERCIAL CRISES, not
- AGRICULTURAL CRISES; because, while the farmer is eaten up slowly by the
- right of increase, the manufacturer is swallowed at a single mouthful.
- This leads to the cessation of business, the destruction of fortunes,
- and the inactivity of the working people; who die one after another on
- the highways, and in the hospitals, prisons, and galleys.
- To sum up this proposition:--
- Property sells products to the laborer for more than it pays him for
- them; therefore it is impossible.
- APPENDIX TO THE FIFTH PROPOSITION.
- I. Certain reformers, and even the most of the publicists--who, though
- belonging to no particular school, busy themselves in devising means for
- the amelioration of the lot of the poorer and more numerous class--lay
- much stress now-a-days on a better organization of labor. The disciples
- of Fourier, especially, never stop shouting, "ON TO THE PHALANX!"
- declaiming in the same breath against the foolishness and absurdity of
- other sects.
- They consist of half-a-dozen incomparable geniuses who have discovered
- that FIVE AND FOUR MAKE NINE; TAKE TWO AWAY, AND NINE REMAIN,--and
- who weep over the blindness of France, who refuses to believe in this
- astonishing arithmetic.[1]
- [1] Fourier, having to multiply a whole number by a fraction,
- never failed, they say, to obtain a product much greater than the
- multiplicand. He affirmed that under his system of harmony the mercury
- would solidify when the temperature was above zero. He might as well
- have said that the Harmonians would make burning ice. I once asked an
- intelligent phalansterian what he thought of such physics. "I do not
- know," he answered; "but I believe." And yet the same man disbelieved in
- the doctrine of the Real Presence.
- In fact, the Fourierists proclaim themselves, on the one hand, defenders
- of property, of the right of increase, which they have thus formulated:
- TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS CAPITAL, HIS LABOR, AND HIS SKILL. On the other
- hand, they wish the workingman to come into the enjoyment of all
- the wealth of society; that is,--abridging the expression,--into the
- undivided enjoyment of his own product. Is not this like saying to the
- workingman, "Labor, you shall have three francs per day; you shall live
- on fifty-five sous; you shall give the rest to the proprietor, and thus
- you will consume three francs"?
- If the above speech is not an exact epitome of Charles Fourier's system,
- I will subscribe to the whole phalansterian folly with a pen dipped in
- my own blood.
- Of what use is it to reform industry and agriculture,--of what use,
- indeed, to labor at all,--if property is maintained, and labor can never
- meet its expenses? Without the abolition of property, the organization
- of labor is neither more nor less than a delusion. If production should
- be quadrupled,--a thing which does not seem to me at all impossible,--it
- would be labor lost: if the additional product was not consumed, it
- would be of no value, and the proprietor would decline to receive it as
- interest; if it was consumed, all the disadvantages of property would
- reappear. It must be confessed that the theory of passional attraction
- is gravely at fault in this particular, and that Fourier, when he tried
- to harmonize the PASSION for property,--a bad passion, whatever he may
- say to the contrary,--blocked his own chariot-wheels.
- The absurdity of the phalansterian economy is so gross, that many people
- suspect Fourier, in spite of all the homage paid by him to proprietors,
- of having been a secret enemy of property. This opinion might be
- supported by plausible arguments; still it is not mine. Charlatanism
- was too important a part for such a man to play, and sincerity too
- insignificant a one. I would rather think Fourier ignorant (which is
- generally admitted) than disingenuous. As for his disciples, before they
- can formulate any opinion of their own, they must declare once for
- all, unequivocally and with no mental reservation, whether they mean to
- maintain property or not, and what they mean by their famous motto,--"To
- each according to his capital, his labor, and his skill."
- II. But, some half-converted proprietor will observe, "Would it not be
- possible, by suppressing the bank, incomes, farm-rent, house-rent, usury
- of all kinds, and finally property itself, to proportion products to
- capacities? That was St. Simon's idea; it was also Fourier's; it is the
- desire of the human conscience; and no decent person would dare maintain
- that a minister of state should live no better than a peasant."
- O Midas! your ears are long! What! will you never understand that
- disparity of wages and the right of increase are one and the same?
- Certainly, St. Simon, Fourier, and their respective flocks committed
- a serious blunder in attempting to unite, the one, inequality and
- communism; the other, inequality and property: but you, a man of
- figures, a man of economy,--you, who know by heart your LOGARITHMIC
- tables,--how can you make so stupid a mistake?
- Does not political economy itself teach you that the product of a man,
- whatever be his individual capacity, is never worth more than his labor,
- and that a man's labor is worth no more than his consumption? You remind
- me of that great constitution-framer, poor Pinheiro-Ferreira, the Sieyes
- of the nineteenth century, who, dividing the citizens of a nation into
- twelve classes,--or, if you prefer, into twelve grades,--assigned to
- some a salary of one hundred thousand francs each; to others, eighty
- thousand; then twenty-five thousand, fifteen thousand, ten thousand,
- &c., down to one thousand five hundred, and one thousand francs, the
- minimum allowance of a citizen. Pinheiro loved distinctions, and could
- no more conceive of a State without great dignitaries than of an army
- without drum-majors; and as he also loved, or thought he loved, liberty,
- equality, and fraternity, he combined the good and the evil of our old
- society in an eclectic philosophy which he embodied in a constitution.
- Excellent Pinheiro! Liberty even to passive submission, fraternity
- even to identity of language, equality even in the jury-box and at the
- guillotine,--such was his ideal republic. Unappreciated genius, of whom
- the present century was unworthy, but whom the future will avenge!
- Listen, proprietor. Inequality of talent exists in fact; in right it is
- not admissible, it goes for nothing, it is not thought of. One Newton in
- a century is equal to thirty millions of men; the psychologist admires
- the rarity of so fine a genius, the legislator sees only the rarity
- of the function. Now, rarity of function bestows no privilege upon the
- functionary; and that for several reasons, all equally forcible.
- 1. Rarity of genius was not, in the Creator's design, a motive to compel
- society to go down on its knees before the man of superior talents,
- but a providential means for the performance of all functions to the
- greatest advantage of all.
- 2. Talent is a creation of society rather than a gift of Nature; it
- is an accumulated capital, of which the receiver is only the guardian.
- Without society,--without the education and powerful assistance which
- it furnishes,--the finest nature would be inferior to the most ordinary
- capacities in the very respect in which it ought to shine. The more
- extensive a man's knowledge, the more luxuriant his imagination, the
- more versatile his talent,--the more costly has his education been, the
- more remarkable and numerous were his teachers and his models, and the
- greater is his debt. The farmer produces from the time that he leaves
- his cradle until he enters his grave: the fruits of art and science
- are late and scarce; frequently the tree dies before the fruit ripens.
- Society, in cultivating talent, makes a sacrifice to hope.
- 3. Capacities have no common standard of comparison: the conditions of
- development being equal, inequality of talent is simply speciality of
- talent.
- 4. Inequality of wages, like the right of increase, is economically
- impossible. Take the most favorable case,--that where each laborer
- has furnished his maximum production; that there may be an equitable
- distribution of products, the share of each must be equal to the
- quotient of the total production divided by the number of laborers. This
- done, what remains wherewith to pay the higher wages? Nothing whatever.
- Will it be said that all laborers should be taxed? But, then, their
- consumption will not be equal to their production, their wages will not
- pay for their productive service, they will not be able to repurchase
- their product, and we shall once more be afflicted with all the
- calamities of property. I do not speak of the injustice done to
- the defrauded laborer, of rivalry, of excited ambition, and burning
- hatred,--these may all be important considerations, but they do not hit
- the point.
- On the one hand, each laborer's task being short and easy, and the means
- for its successful accomplishment being equal in all cases, how could
- there be large and small producers? On the other hand, all functions
- being equal, either on account of the actual equivalence of talents
- and capacities, or on account of social co-operation, how could a
- functionary claim a salary proportional to the worth of his genius?
- But, what do I say? In equality wages are always proportional to
- talents. What is the economical meaning of wages? The reproductive
- consumption of the laborer. The very act by which the laborer produces
- constitutes, then, this consumption, exactly equal to his production,
- of which we are speaking. When the astronomer produces observations, the
- poet verses, or the savant experiments, they consume instruments, books,
- travels, &c., &c.; now, if society supplies this consumption, what more
- can the astronomer, the savant, or the poet demand? We must conclude,
- then, that in equality, and only in equality, St. Simon's adage--TO
- EACH ACCORDING TO HIS CAPACITY TO EACH CAPACITY ACCORDING TO ITS
- RESULTS--finds its full and complete application.
- III. The great evil--the horrible and ever-present evil--arising from
- property, is that, while property exists, population, however reduced,
- is, and always must be, over-abundant. Complaints have been made in
- all ages of the excess of population; in all ages property has been
- embarrassed by the presence of pauperism, not perceiving that it caused
- it. Further,--nothing is more curious than the diversity of the plans
- proposed for its extermination. Their atrocity is equalled only by their
- absurdity.
- The ancients made a practice of abandoning their children. The wholesale
- and retail slaughter of slaves, civil and foreign wars, also lent their
- aid. In Rome (where property held full sway), these three means were
- employed so effectively, and for so long a time, that finally the empire
- found itself without inhabitants. When the barbarians arrived, nobody
- was to be found; the fields were no longer cultivated; grass grew in the
- streets of the Italian cities.
- In China, from time immemorial, upon famine alone has devolved the task
- of sweeping away the poor. The people living almost exclusively upon
- rice, if an accident causes the crop to fail, in a few days hunger kills
- the inhabitants by myriads; and the Chinese historian records in the
- annals of the empire, that in such a year of such an emperor twenty,
- thirty, fifty, one hundred thousand inhabitants died of starvation.
- Then they bury the dead, and recommence the production of children until
- another famine leads to the same result. Such appears to have been, in
- all ages, the Confucian economy.
- I borrow the following facts from a modern economist:--
- "Since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, England has been
- preyed upon by pauperism. At that time beggars were punished by law."
- Nevertheless, she had not one-fourth as large a population as she has
- to-day.
- "Edward prohibits alms-giving, on pain of imprisonment.... The laws of
- 1547 and 1656 prescribe a like punishment, in case of a second offence.
- Elizabeth orders that each parish shall support its own paupers. But
- what is a pauper? Charles II. decides that an UNDISPUTED residence of
- forty days constitutes a settlement in a parish; but, if disputed, the
- new-comer is forced to pack off. James II. modifies this decision,
- which is again modified by William. In the midst of trials, reports, and
- modifications, pauperism increases, and the workingman languishes and
- dies.
- "The poor-tax in 1774 exceeded forty millions of francs; in 1783-4-5,
- it averaged fifty-three millions; 1813, more than a hundred and
- eighty-seven millions five hundred thousand francs; 1816, two hundred
- and fifty millions; in 1817, it is estimated at three hundred and
- seventeen millions.
- "In 1821, the number of paupers enrolled upon the parish lists was
- estimated at four millions, nearly one-third of the population.
- "FRANCE. In 1544, Francis I. establishes a compulsory tax in behalf of
- the poor. In 1566 and 1586, the same principle is applied to the whole
- kingdom.
- "Under Louis XIV., forty thousand paupers infested the capital [as many
- in proportion as to-day]. Mendicity was punished severely. In 1740,
- the Parliament of Paris re-establishes within its own jurisdiction the
- compulsory assessment.
- "The Constituent Assembly, frightened at the extent of the evil and the
- difficulty of curing it, ordains the _statu quo_.
- "The Convention proclaims assistance of the poor to be a NATIONAL DEBT.
- Its law remains unexecuted.
- "Napoleon also wishes to remedy the evil: his idea is imprisonment. 'In
- that way,' said he, 'I shall protect the rich from the importunity
- of beggars, and shall relieve them of the disgusting sight of abject
- poverty.'" O wonderful man!
- From these facts, which I might multiply still farther, two things are
- to be inferred,--the one, that pauperism is independent of population;
- the other, that all attempts hitherto made at its extermination have
- proved abortive.
- Catholicism founds hospitals and convents, and commands charity; that
- is, she encourages mendicity. That is the extent of her insight as
- voiced by her priests.
- The secular power of Christian nations now orders taxes on the rich,
- now banishment and imprisonment for the poor; that is, on the one hand,
- violation of the right of property, and, on the other, civil death and
- murder.
- The modern economists--thinking that pauperism is caused by the excess
- of population, exclusively--have devoted themselves to devising checks.
- Some wish to prohibit the poor from marrying; thus,--having denounced
- religious celibacy,--they propose compulsory celibacy, which will
- inevitably become licentious celibacy.
- Others do not approve this method, which they deem too violent; and
- which, they say, deprives the poor man of THE ONLY PLEASURE WHICH HE
- KNOWS IN THIS WORLD. They would simply recommend him to be PRUDENT. This
- opinion is held by Malthus, Sismondi, Say, Droz, Duchatel, &c. But if
- the poor are to be PRUDENT, the rich must set the example. Why should
- the marriageable age of the latter be fixed at eighteen years, while
- that of the former is postponed until thirty?
- Again, they would do well to explain clearly what they mean by this
- matrimonial prudence which they so urgently recommend to the laborer;
- for here equivocation is especially dangerous, and I suspect that
- the economists are not thoroughly understood. "Some half-enlightened
- ecclesiastics are alarmed when they hear prudence in marriage advised;
- they fear that the divine injunction--INCREASE AND MULTIPLY--is to be
- set aside. To be logical, they must anathematize bachelors." (J. Droz:
- Political Economy.)
- M. Droz is too honest a man, and too little of a theologian, to see why
- these casuists are so alarmed; and this chaste ignorance is the very
- best evidence of the purity of his heart. Religion never has encouraged
- early marriages; and the kind of PRUDENCE which it condemns is that
- described in this Latin sentence from Sanchez,--_An licet ob metum
- liberorum semen extra vas ejicere_?
- Destutt de Tracy seems to dislike prudence in either form. He says: "I
- confess that I no more share the desire of the moralists to diminish
- and restrain our pleasures, than that of the politicians to increase
- our procreative powers, and accelerate reproduction." He believes, then,
- that we should love and marry when and as we please. Widespread misery
- results from love and marriage, but this our philosopher does not heed.
- True to the dogma of the necessity of evil, to evil he looks for the
- solution of all problems. He adds: "The multiplication of men continuing
- in all classes of society, the surplus members of the upper classes are
- supported by the lower classes, and those of the latter are destroyed
- by poverty." This philosophy has few avowed partisans; but it has over
- every other the indisputable advantage of demonstration in practice. Not
- long since France heard it advocated in the Chamber of Deputies, in the
- course of the discussion on the electoral reform,--POVERTY WILL ALWAYS
- EXIST. That is the political aphorism with which the minister of state
- ground to powder the arguments of M. Arago. POVERTY WILL ALWAYS EXIST!
- Yes, so long as property does.
- The Fourierists--INVENTORS of so many marvellous contrivances--could
- not, in this field, belie their character. They invented four methods of
- checking increase of population at will.
- 1. THE VIGOR OF WOMEN. On this point they are contradicted by
- experience; for, although vigorous women may be less likely to conceive,
- nevertheless they give birth to the healthiest children; so that the
- advantage of maternity is on their side.
- 2. INTEGRAL EXERCISE, or the equal development of all the physical
- powers. If this development is equal, how is the power of reproduction
- lessened?
- 3. THE GASTRONOMIC REGIME; or, in plain English, the philosophy of the
- belly. The Fourierists say, that abundance of rich food renders
- women sterile; just as too much sap--while enhancing the beauty of
- flowers--destroys their reproductive capacity. But the analogy is a
- false one. Flowers become sterile when the stamens--or male organs--are
- changed into petals, as may be seen by inspecting a rose; and when
- through excessive dampness the pollen loses its fertilizing power.
- Then,--in order that the gastronomic regime may produce the results
- claimed for it,--not only must the females be fattened, but the males
- must be rendered impotent.
- 4. PHANEROGAMIC MORALITY, or public concubinage. I know not why the
- phalansterians use Greek words to convey ideas which can be expressed so
- clearly in French. This method--like the preceding one--is copied from
- civilized customs. Fourier, himself, cites the example of prostitutes
- as a proof. Now we have no certain knowledge yet of the facts which he
- quotes. So states Parent Duchatelet in his work on "Prostitution."
- From all the information which I have been able to gather, I find that
- all the remedies for pauperism and fecundity--sanctioned by universal
- practice, philosophy, political economy, and the latest reformers--may
- be summed up in the following list: masturbation, onanism, [19]
- sodomy, tribadie, polyandry, [20] prostitution, castration, continence,
- abortion, and infanticide. [21]
- All these methods being proved inadequate, there remains proscription.
- Unfortunately, proscription, while decreasing the number of the poor,
- increases their proportion. If the interest charged by the proprietor
- upon the product is equal only to one-twentieth of the product (by law
- it is equal to one-twentieth of the capital), it follows that twenty
- laborers produce for nineteen only; because there is one among them,
- called proprietor, who eats the share of two. Suppose that the twentieth
- laborer--the poor one--is killed: the production of the following year
- will be diminished one-twentieth; consequently the nineteenth will have
- to yield his portion, and perish. For, since it is not one-twentieth
- of the product of nineteen which must be paid to the proprietor, but
- one-twentieth of the product of twenty (see third proposition), each
- surviving laborer must sacrifice one-twentieth PLUS one four-hundredth
- of his product; in other words, one man out of nineteen must be killed.
- Therefore, while property exists, the more poor people we kill, the more
- there are born in proportion.
- Malthus, who proved so clearly that population increases in geometrical
- progression, while production increases only in arithmetical
- progression, did not notice this PAUPERIZING power of property. Had he
- observed this, he would have understood that, before trying to check
- reproduction, the right of increase should be abolished; because,
- wherever that right is tolerated, there are always too many inhabitants,
- whatever the extent or fertility of the soil.
- It will be asked, perhaps, how I would maintain a balance between
- population and production; for sooner or later this problem must be
- solved. The reader will pardon me, if I do not give my method here. For,
- in my opinion, it is useless to say a thing unless we prove it. Now, to
- explain my method fully would require no less than a formal treatise.
- It is a thing so simple and so vast, so common and so extraordinary,
- so true and so misunderstood, so sacred and so profane, that to name it
- without developing and proving it would serve only to excite contempt
- and incredulity. One thing at a time. Let us establish equality, and
- this remedy will soon appear; for truths follow each other, just as
- crimes and errors do.
- SIXTH PROPOSITION.
- Property is impossible, because it is the Mother of Tyranny.
- What is government? Government is public economy, the supreme
- administrative power over public works and national possessions.
- Now, the nation is like a vast society in which all the citizens are
- stockholders. Each one has a deliberative voice in the assembly; and,
- if the shares are equal, has one vote at his disposal. But, under the
- regime of property, there is great inequality between the shares of
- the stockholders; therefore, one may have several hundred votes, while
- another has only one. If, for example, I enjoy an income of one million;
- that is, if I am the proprietor of a fortune of thirty or forty millions
- well invested, and if this fortune constitutes 1/30000 of the national
- capital,--it is clear that the public administration of my property
- would form 1/30000 of the duties of the government; and, if the nation
- had a population of thirty-four millions, that I should have as many
- votes as one thousand one hundred and thirty-three simple stockholders.
- Thus, when M. Arago demands the right of suffrage for all members of the
- National Guard, he is perfectly right; since every citizen is enrolled
- for at least one national share, which entitles him to one vote. But the
- illustrious orator ought at the same time to demand that each elector
- shall have as many votes as he has shares; as is the case in commercial
- associations. For to do otherwise is to pretend that the nation has a
- right to dispose of the property of individuals without consulting them;
- which is contrary to the right of property. In a country where property
- exists, equality of electoral rights is a violation of property.
- Now, if each citizen's sovereignty must and ought to be proportional to
- his property, it follows that the small stock holders are at the mercy
- of the larger ones; who will, as soon as they choose, make slaves of
- the former, marry them at pleasure, take from them their wives,
- castrate their sons, prostitute their daughters, throw the aged to the
- sharks,--and finally will be forced to serve themselves in the same way,
- unless they prefer to tax themselves for the support of their servants.
- In such a condition is Great Britain to-day. John Bull--caring little
- for liberty, equality, or dignity--prefers to serve and beg. But you,
- bonhomme Jacques?
- Property is incompatible with political and civil equality; then
- property is impossible.
- HISTORICAL COMMENTS.--1. When the vote of the third estate was doubled
- by the States-General of 1789, property was grossly violated. The
- nobility and the clergy possessed three-fourths of the soil of France;
- they should have controlled three-fourths of the votes in the national
- representation. To double the vote of the third estate was just, it is
- said, since the people paid nearly all the taxes. This argument would
- be sound, if there were nothing to be voted upon but taxes. But it was a
- question at that time of reforming the government and the constitution;
- consequently, the doubling of the vote of the third estate was a
- usurpation, and an attack on property.
- 2. If the present representatives of the radical opposition should
- come into power, they would work a reform by which every National Guard
- should be an elector, and every elector eligible for office,--an attack
- on property.
- They would lower the rate of interest on public funds,--an attack on
- property.
- They would, in the interest of the public, pass laws to regulate the
- exportation of cattle and wheat,--an attack on property.
- They would alter the assessment of taxes,--an attack on property.
- They would educate the people gratuitously,--a conspiracy against
- property.
- They would organize labor; that is, they would guarantee labor to the
- workingman, and give him a share in the profits,--the abolition of
- property.
- Now, these same radicals are zealous defenders of property,--a radical
- proof that they know not what they do, nor what they wish.
- 3. Since property is the grand cause of privilege and despotism, the
- form of the republican oath should be changed. Instead of, "I swear
- hatred to royalty," henceforth the new member of a secret society should
- say, "I swear hatred to property."
- SEVENTH PROPOSITION.
- _Property is impossible, because, in consuming its Receipts, it loses
- them; in hoarding them, it nullifies them; and in using them as Capital,
- it turns them against Production_.
- I. If, with the economists, we consider the laborer as a living machine,
- we must regard the wages paid to him as the amount necessary to support
- this machine, and keep it in repair. The head of a manufacturing
- establishment--who employs laborers at three, five, ten, and
- fifteen francs per day, and who charges twenty francs for his
- superintendence--does not regard his disbursements as losses, because
- he knows they will return to him in the form of products. Consequently,
- LABOR and REPRODUCTIVE CONSUMPTION are identical.
- What is the proprietor? He is a machine which does not work; or, which
- working for its own pleasure, and only when it sees fit, produces
- nothing.
- What is it to consume as a proprietor? It is to consume without
- working, to consume without reproducing. For, once more, that which the
- proprietor consumes as a laborer comes back to him; he does not give his
- labor in exchange for his property, since, if he did, he would thereby
- cease to be a proprietor. In consuming as a laborer, the proprietor
- gains, or at least does not lose, since he recovers that which he
- consumes; in consuming as a proprietor, he impoverishes himself. To
- enjoy property, then, it is necessary to destroy it; to be a real
- proprietor, one must cease to be a proprietor.
- The laborer who consumes his wages is a machine which destroys and
- reproduces; the proprietor who consumes his income is a bottomless
- gulf,--sand which we water, a stone which we sow. So true is this,
- that the proprietor--neither wishing nor knowing how to produce, and
- perceiving that as fast as he uses his property he destroys it for
- ever--has taken the precaution to make some one produce in his place.
- That is what political economy, speaking in the name of eternal justice,
- calls PRODUCING BY HIS CAPITAL,--PRODUCING BY HIS TOOLS. And that is
- what ought to be called PRODUCING BY A SLAVE--PRODUCING AS A THIEF AND
- AS A TYRANT. He, the proprietor, produce!... The robber might say, as
- well: "I produce."
- The consumption of the proprietor has been styled luxury, in opposition
- to USEFUL consumption. From what has just been said, we see that great
- luxury can prevail in a nation which is not rich,--that poverty even
- increases with luxury, and vice versa. The economists (so much credit
- must be given them, at least) have caused such a horror of luxury,
- that to-day a very large number of proprietors--not to say almost
- all--ashamed of their idleness--labor, economize, and capitalize. They
- have jumped from the frying-pan into the fire.
- I cannot repeat it too often: the proprietor who thinks to deserve
- his income by working, and who receives wages for his labor, is a
- functionary who gets paid twice; that is the only difference between an
- idle proprietor and a laboring proprietor. By his labor, the proprietor
- produces his wages only--not his income. And since his condition enables
- him to engage in the most lucrative pursuits, it may be said that the
- proprietor's labor harms society more than it helps it. Whatever the
- proprietor does, the consumption of his income is an actual loss, which
- his salaried functions neither repair nor justify; and which would
- annihilate property, were it not continually replenished by outside
- production.
- II. Then, the proprietor who consumes annihilates the product: he does
- much worse if he lays it up. The things which he lays by pass into
- another world; nothing more is seen of them, not even the _caput
- mortuum_,--the smoke. If we had some means of transportation by which
- to travel to the moon, and if the proprietors should be seized with a
- sudden fancy to carry their savings thither, at the end of a certain
- time our terraqueous planet would be transported by them to its
- satellite!
- The proprietor who lays up products will neither allow others to enjoy
- them, nor enjoy them himself; for him there is neither possession nor
- property. Like the miser, he broods over his treasures: he does not use
- them. He may feast his eyes upon them; he may lie down with them; he
- may sleep with them in his arms: all very fine, but coins do not
- breed coins. No real property without enjoyment; no enjoyment without
- consumption; no consumption without loss of property,--such is the
- inflexible necessity to which God's judgment compels the proprietor to
- bend. A curse upon property!
- III. The proprietor who, instead of consuming his income, uses it as
- capital, turns it against production, and thereby makes it impossible
- for him to exercise his right. For the more he increases the amount of
- interest to be paid upon it, the more he is compelled to diminish wages.
- Now, the more he diminishes wages,--that is, the less he devotes to
- the maintenance and repair of the machines,--the more he diminishes
- the quantity of labor; and with the quantity of labor the quantity of
- product, and with the quantity of product the very source of his income.
- This is clearly shown by the following example:--
- Take an estate consisting of arable land, meadows, and vineyards,
- containing the dwellings of the owner and the tenant; and worth,
- together with the farming implements, one hundred thousand francs, the
- rate of increase being three per cent. If, instead of consuming his
- revenue, the proprietor uses it, not in enlarging but in beautifying his
- estate, can he annually demand of his tenant an additional ninety francs
- on account of the three thousand francs which he has thus added to
- his capital? Certainly not; for on such conditions the tenant, though
- producing no more than before, would soon be obliged to labor for
- nothing,--what do I say? to actually suffer loss in order to hold his
- lease.
- In fact, revenue can increase only as productive soil increases: it
- is useless to build walls of marble, and work with plows of gold. But,
- since it is impossible to go on acquiring for ever, to add estate to
- estate, to CONTINUE ONE'S POSSESSIONS, as the Latins said; and since,
- moreover, the proprietor always has means wherewith to capitalize,--it
- follows that the exercise of his right finally becomes impossible.
- Well, in spite of this impossibility, property capitalizes, and in
- capitalizing increases its revenue; and, without stopping to look at the
- particular cases which occur in commerce, manufacturing operations,
- and banking, I will cite a graver fact,--one which directly affects all
- citizens. I mean the indefinite increase of the budget.
- The taxes increase every year. It would be difficult to tell in which
- department of the government the expenses increase; for who can boast
- of any knowledge as to the budget? On this point, the ablest financiers
- continually disagree. What is to be thought, I ask, of the science of
- government, when its professors cannot understand one another's figures?
- Whatever be the immediate causes of this growth of the budget, it is
- certain that taxation increases at a rate which causes everybody to
- despair. Everybody sees it, everybody acknowledges it; but nobody
- seems to understand the primary cause.[1] Now, I say that it cannot be
- otherwise,--that it is necessary and inevitable.
- [1] "The financial situation of the English government was shown up
- in the House of Lords during the session of January 23. It is not
- an encouraging one. For several years the expenses have exceeded the
- receipts, and the Minister has been able to re-establish the balance
- only by loans renewed annually. The combined deficits of the years 1838
- and 1839 amount to forty-seven million five hundred thousand francs. In
- 1840, the excess of expenses over receipts is expected to be twenty-two
- million five hundred thousand francs. Attention was called to these
- figures by Lord Ripon. Lord Melbourne replied: 'The noble earl unhappily
- was right in declaring that the public expenses continually increase,
- and with him I must say that there is no room for hope that they can be
- diminished or met in any way.'"--National: January 26, 1840.
- A nation is the tenant of a rich proprietor called the GOVERNMENT,
- to whom it pays, for the use of the soil, a farm-rent called a tax.
- Whenever the government makes war, loses or gains a battle, changes the
- outfit of its army, erects a monu-ment, digs a canal, opens a road,
- or builds a railway, it borrows money, on which the tax-payers pay
- interest; that is, the government, without adding to its productive
- capacity, increases its active capital,--in a word, capitalizes after
- the manner of the proprietor of whom I have just spoken.
- Now, when a governmental loan is once contracted, and the interest is
- once stipulated, the budget cannot be reduced. For, to accomplish that,
- either the capitalists must relinquish their interest, which would
- involve an abandonment of property; or the government must go into
- bankruptcy, which would be a fraudulent denial of the political
- principle; or it must pay the debt, which would require another loan;
- or it must reduce expenses, which is impossible, since the loan
- was contracted for the sole reason that the ordinary receipts
- were insufficient; or the money expended by the government must be
- reproductive, which requires an increase of productive capacity,--a
- condition excluded by our hypothesis; or, finally, the tax-payers must
- submit to a new tax in order to pay the debt,--an impossible thing. For,
- if this new tax were levied upon all citizens alike, half, or even more,
- of the citizens would be unable to pay it; if the rich had to bear the
- whole, it would be a forced contribution,--an invasion of property.
- Long financial experience has shown that the method of loans, though
- exceedingly dangerous, is much surer, more convenient, and less costly
- than any other method; consequently the government borrows,--that is,
- goes on capitalizing,--and increases the budget.
- Then, a budget, instead of ever diminishing, must necessarily and
- continually increase. It is astonishing that the economists, with all
- their learning, have failed to perceive a fact so simple and so evident.
- If they have perceived it, why have they neglected to condemn it?
- HISTORICAL COMMENT.--Much interest is felt at present in a financial
- operation which is expected to result in a reduction of the budget.
- It is proposed to change the present rate of increase, five per cent.
- Laying aside the politico-legal question to deal only with the financial
- question,--is it not true that, when five per cent. is changed to four
- per cent., it will then be necessary, for the same reasons, to change
- four to three; then three to two, then two to one, and finally to sweep
- away increase altogether? But that would be the advent of equality of
- conditions and the abolition of property. Now it seems to me, that an
- intelligent nation should voluntarily meet an inevitable revolution
- half way, instead of suffering itself to be dragged after the car of
- inflexible necessity.
- EIGHTH PROPOSITION.
- Property is impossible, because its power of Accumulation is infinite,
- and is exercised only over finite quantities.
- If men, living in equality, should grant to one of their number the
- exclusive right of property; and this sole proprietor should lend one
- hundred francs to the human race at compound interest, payable to his
- descendants twenty-four generations hence,--at the end of six hundred
- years this sum of one hundred francs, at five per cent., would amount to
- 107,854,010,777,600 francs; two thousand six hundred and ninety-six
- and one-third times the capital of France (supposing her capital to be
- 40,000,000,000), or more than twenty times the value of the terrestrial
- globe!
- Suppose that a man, in the reign of St. Louis, had borrowed one hundred
- francs, and had refused,--he and his heirs after him,--to return it.
- Even though it were known that the said heirs were not the rightful
- possessors, and that prescription had been interrupted always at the
- right moment,--nevertheless, by our laws, the last heir would be obliged
- to return the one hundred francs with interest, and interest on the
- interest; which in all would amount, as we have seen, to nearly one
- hundred and eight thousand billions.
- Every day, fortunes are growing in our midst much more rapidly than
- this. The preceding example supposed the interest equal to one-twentieth
- of the capital,--it often equals one-tenth, one-fifth, one-half of the
- capital; and sometimes the capital itself.
- The Fourierists--irreconcilable enemies of equality, whose partisans
- they regard as SHARKS--intend, by quadrupling production, to satisfy
- all the demands of capital, labor, and skill. But, should production
- be multiplied by four, ten, or even one hundred, property would
- soon absorb, by its power of accumulation and the effects of its
- capitalization, both products and capital, and the land, and even the
- laborers. Is the phalanstery to be prohibited from capitalizing and
- lending at interest? Let it explain, then, what it means by property.
- I will carry these calculations no farther. They are capable of infinite
- variation, upon which it would be puerile for me to insist. I only ask
- by what standard judges, called upon to decide a suit for possession,
- fix the interest? And, developing the question, I ask,--
- Did the legislator, in introducing into the Republic the principle
- of property, weigh all the consequences? Did he know the law of the
- possible? If he knew it, why is it not in the Code? Why is so much
- latitude allowed to the proprietor in accumulating property and
- charging interest,--to the judge in recognizing and fixing the domain of
- property,--to the State in its power to levy new taxes continually? At
- what point is the nation justified in repudiating the budget, the tenant
- his farm-rent, and the manufacturer the interest on his capital? How
- far may the idler take advantage of the laborer? Where does the right
- of spoliation begin, and where does it end? When may the producer say
- to the proprietor, "I owe you nothing more"? When is property satisfied?
- When must it cease to steal?
- If the legislator did know the law of the possible, and disregarded it,
- what must be thought of his justice? If he did not know it, what must
- be thought of his wisdom? Either wicked or foolish, how can we recognize
- his authority?
- If our charters and our codes are based upon an absurd hypothesis,
- what is taught in the law-schools? What does a judgment of the Court
- of Appeal amount to? About what do our Chambers deliberate? What is
- POLITICS? What is our definition of a STATESMAN? What is the meaning of
- JURISPRUDENCE? Should we not rather say JURISIGNORANCE?
- If all our institutions are based upon an error in calculation, does it
- not follow that these institutions are so many shams? And if the entire
- social structure is built upon this absolute impossibility of property,
- is it not true that the government under which we live is a chimera, and
- our present society a utopia?
- NINTH PROPOSITION.
- Property is impossible, because it is powerless against Property.
- I. By the third corollary of our axiom, interest tells against the
- proprietor as well as the stranger. This economical principle is
- universally admitted. Nothing simpler at first blush; yet, nothing more
- absurd, more contradictory in terms, or more absolutely impossible.
- The manufacturer, it is said, pays himself the rent on his house and
- capital. HE PAYS HIMSELF; that is, he gets paid by the public who buy
- his products. For, suppose the manufacturer, who seems to make this
- profit on his property, wishes also to make it on his merchandise, can
- he then pay himself one franc for that which cost him ninety centimes,
- and make money by the operation? No: such a transaction would transfer
- the merchant's money from his right hand to his left, but without any
- profit whatever.
- Now, that which is true of a single individual trading with himself is
- true also of the whole business world. Form a chain of ten, fifteen,
- twenty producers; as many as you wish. If the producer A makes a
- profit out of the producer B. B's loss must, according to economical
- principles, be made up by C, C's by D; and so on through to Z.
- But by whom will Z be paid for the loss caused him by the profit charged
- by A in the beginning? BY THE CONSUMER, replies Say. Contemptible
- equivocation! Is this consumer any other, then, than A, B. C, D, &c.,
- or Z? By whom will Z be paid? If he is paid by A, no one makes a profit;
- consequently, there is no property. If, on the contrary, Z bears the
- burden himself, he ceases to be a member of society; since it refuses
- him the right of property and profit, which it grants to the other
- associates.
- Since, then, a nation, like universal humanity, is a vast industrial
- association which cannot act outside of itself, it is clear that no man
- can enrich himself without impoverishing another. For, in order that the
- right of property, the right of increase, may be respected in the
- case of A, it must be denied to Z; thus we see how equality of rights,
- separated from equality of conditions, may be a truth. The iniquity of
- political economy in this respect is flagrant. "When I, a manufacturer,
- purchase the labor of a workingman, I do not include his wages in the
- net product of my business; on the contrary, I deduct them. But the
- workingman includes them in his net product.... "(Say: Political
- Economy.)
- That means that all which the workingman gains is NET PRODUCT; but that
- only that part of the manufacturer's gains is NET PRODUCT, which remains
- after deducting his wages. But why is the right of profit confined to
- the manufacturer? Why is this right, which is at bottom the right of
- property itself, denied to the workingman? In the terms of economical
- science, the workingman is capital. Now, all capital, beyond the cost
- of its maintenance and repair, must bear interest. This the proprietor
- takes care to get, both for his capital and for himself. Why is the
- workingman prohibited from charging a like interest for his capital,
- which is himself?
- Property, then, is inequality of rights; for, if it were not inequality
- of rights, it would be equality of goods,--in other words, it would not
- exist. Now, the charter guarantees to all equality of rights. Then, by
- the charter, property is impossible.
- II. Is A, the proprietor of an estate, entitled by the fact of his
- proprietorship to take possession of the field belonging to B. his
- neighbor? "No," reply the proprietors; "but what has that to do with
- the right of property?" That I shall show you by a series of similar
- propositions.
- Has C, a hatter, the right to force D, his neighbor and also a hatter,
- to close his shop, and cease his business? Not the least in the world.
- But C wishes to make a profit of one franc on every hat, while D is
- content with fifty centimes. It is evident that D's moderation is
- injurious to C's extravagant claims. Has the latter a right to prevent D
- from selling? Certainly not.
- Since D is at liberty to sell his hats fifty centimes cheaper than C if
- he chooses, C in his turn is free to reduce his price one franc. Now, D
- is poor, while C is rich; so that at the end of two or three years D is
- ruined by this intolerable competition, and C has complete control of
- the market. Can the proprietor D get any redress from the proprietor C?
- Can he bring a suit against him to recover his business and property?
- No; for D could have done the same thing, had he been the richer of the
- two.
- On the same ground, the large proprietor A may say to the small
- proprietor B: "Sell me your field, otherwise you shall not sell your
- wheat,"--and that without doing him the least wrong, or giving him
- ground for complaint. So that A can devour B if he likes, for the very
- reason that A is stronger than B. Consequently, it is not the right of
- property which enables A and C to rob B and D, but the right of might.
- By the right of property, neither the two neighbors A and B, nor the two
- merchants C and D, could harm each other. They could neither dispossess
- nor destroy one another, nor gain at one another's expense. The power of
- invasion lies in superior strength.
- But it is superior strength also which enables the manufacturer
- to reduce the wages of his employees, and the rich merchant and
- well-stocked proprietor to sell their products for what they please. The
- manufacturer says to the laborer, "You are as free to go elsewhere
- with your services as I am to receive them. I offer you so much." The
- merchant says to the customer, "Take it or leave it; you are master of
- your money, as I am of my goods. I want so much." Who will yield? The
- weaker.
- Therefore, without force, property is powerless against property, since
- without force it has no power to increase; therefore, without force,
- property is null and void.
- HISTORICAL COMMENT.--The struggle between colonial and native sugars
- furnishes us a striking example of this impossibility of property. Leave
- these two industries to themselves, and the native manufacturer will
- be ruined by the colonist. To maintain the beet-root, the cane must be
- taxed: to protect the property of the one, it is necessary to injure the
- property of the other. The most remarkable feature of this business is
- precisely that to which the least attention is paid; namely, that, in
- one way or another, property has to be violated. Impose on each industry
- a proportional tax, so as to preserve a balance in the market, and you
- create a MAXIMUM PRICE,--you attack property in two ways. On the one
- hand, your tax interferes with the liberty of trade; on the other, it
- does not recognize equality of proprietors. Indemnify the beet-root, you
- violate the property of the tax-payer. Cultivate the two varieties of
- sugar at the nation's expense, just as different varieties of tobacco
- are cultivated,--you abolish one species of property. This last course
- would be the simpler and better one; but, to induce the nations to adopt
- it, requires such a co-operation of able minds and generous hearts as is
- at present out of the question.
- Competition, sometimes called liberty of trade,--in a word, property
- in exchange,--will be for a long time the basis of our commercial
- legislation; which, from the economical point of view, embraces all
- civil laws and all government. Now, what is competition? A duel in a
- closed field, where arms are the test of right.
- "Who is the liar,--the accused or the accuser?" said our barbarous
- ancestors. "Let them fight it out," replied the still more barbarous
- judge; "the stronger is right."
- Which of us two shall sell spices to our neighbor? "Let each offer them
- for sale," cries the economist; "the sharper, or the more cunning, is
- the more honest man, and the better merchant."
- Such is the exact spirit of the Code Napoleon.
- TENTH PROPOSITION.
- Property is impossible, because it is the Negation of equality.
- The development of this proposition will be the resume of the preceding
- ones.
- 1. It is a principle of economical justice, that PRODUCTS ARE BOUGHT
- ONLY BY PRODUCTS. Property, being capable of defence only on the ground
- that it produces utility, is, since it produces nothing, for ever
- condemned.
- 2. It is an economical law, that LABOR MUST BE BALANCED BY PRODUCT. It
- is a fact that, with property, production costs more than it is worth.
- 3. Another economical law: THE CAPITAL BEING GIVEN, PRODUCTION IS
- MEASURED, NOT BY THE AMOUNT OF CAPITAL, BUT BY PRODUCTIVE CAPACITY.
- Property, requiring income to be always proportional to capital without
- regard to labor, does not recognize this relation of equality between
- effect and cause.
- 4 and 5. Like the insect which spins its silk, the laborer never
- produces for himself alone. Property, demanding a double product and
- unable to obtain it, robs the laborer, and kills him.
- 6. Nature has given to every man but one mind, one heart, one will.
- Property, granting to one individual a plurality of votes, supposes him
- to have a plurality of minds.
- 7. All consumption which is not reproductive of utility is destruction.
- Property, whether it consumes or hoards or capitalizes, is productive of
- INUTILITY,--the cause of sterility and death.
- 8. The satisfaction of a natural right always gives rise to an equation;
- in other words, the right to a thing is necessarily balanced by the
- possession of the thing. Thus, between the right to liberty and the
- condition of a free man there is a balance, an equation; between the
- right to be a father and paternity, an equation; between the right to
- security and the social guarantee, an equation. But between the right
- of increase and the receipt of this increase there is never an equation;
- for every new increase carries with it the right to another, the latter
- to a third, and so on for ever. Property, never being able to accomplish
- its object, is a right against Nature and against reason.
- 9. Finally, property is not self-existent. An extraneous cause--either
- FORCE or FRAUD--is necessary to its life and action. In other
- words, property is not equal to property: it is a negation--a
- delusion--NOTHING.
- CHAPTER V. PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPOSITION OF THE IDEA OF JUSTICE
- PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPOSITION OF THE IDEA OF JUSTICE AND
- INJUSTICE, AND A DETERMINATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF
- GOVERNMENT AND OF RIGHT.
- Property is impossible; equality does not exist. We hate the former, and
- yet wish to possess it; the latter rules all our thoughts, yet we know
- not how to reach it. Who will explain this profound antagonism between
- our conscience and our will? Who will point out the causes of this
- pernicious error, which has become the most sacred principle of justice
- and society?
- I am bold enough to undertake the task, and I hope to succeed.
- But before explaining why man has violated justice, it is necessary to
- determine what justice is.
- PART FIRST.
- % 1.--Of the Moral Sense in Man and the Animals.
- The philosophers have endeavored often to locate the line which
- separates man's intelligence from that of the brutes; and, according
- to their general custom, they gave utterance to much foolishness before
- resolving upon the only course possible for them to take,--observation.
- It was reserved for an unpretending savant--who perhaps did not pride
- himself on his philosophy--to put an end to the interminable controversy
- by a simple distinction; but one of those luminous distinctions which
- are worth more than systems. Frederic Cuvier separated INSTINCT from
- INTELLIGENCE.
- But, as yet, no one has proposed this question:--
- IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MAN'S MORAL SENSE AND THAT OF THE BRUTE A
- DIFFERENCE IN KIND OR ONLY IN DEGREE?
- If, hitherto, any one had dared to maintain the latter alternative, his
- arguments would have seemed scandalous, blasphemous, and offensive to
- morality and religion. The ecclesiastical and secular tribunals would
- have condemned him with one voice. And, mark the style in which they
- would have branded the immoral paradox! "Conscience,"--they would have
- cried,--"conscience, man's chief glory, was given to him exclusively;
- the notion of justice and injustice, of merit and demerit, is his noble
- privilege; to man, alone,--the lord of creation,--belongs the sublime
- power to resist his worldly propensities, to choose between good and
- evil, and to bring himself more and more into the resemblance of God
- through liberty and justice.... No; the holy image of virtue was never
- graven save on the heart of man." Words full of feeling, but void of
- sense.
- Man is a rational and social animal--{GREEK ' c g}--said Aristotle. This
- definition is worth more than all which have been given since. I do not
- except even M. de Bonald's celebrated definition,--MAN IS AN INTELLECT
- SERVED BY ORGANS--a definition which has the double fault of explaining
- the known by the unknown; that is, the living being by the intellect;
- and of neglecting man's essential quality,--animality.
- Man, then, is an animal living in society. Society means the sum total
- of relationships; in short, system. Now, all systems exist only on
- certain conditions. What, then, are the conditions, the LAWS, of human
- society?
- What are the RIGHTS of men with respect to each other; what is JUSTICE?
- It amounts to nothing to say,--with the philosophers of various
- schools,--"It is a divine instinct, an immortal and heavenly voice, a
- guide given us by Nature, a light revealed unto every man on coming
- into the world, a law engraved upon our hearts; it is the voice of
- conscience, the dictum of reason, the inspiration of sentiment, the
- penchant of feeling; it is the love of self in others; it is enlightened
- self-interest; or else it is an innate idea, the imperative command of
- applied reason, which has its source in the concepts of pure reason;
- it is a passional attraction," &c., &c. This may be as true as it seems
- beautiful; but it is utterly meaningless. Though we should prolong
- this litany through ten pages (it has been filtered through a thousand
- volumes), we should be no nearer to the solution of the question.
- "Justice is public utility," says Aristotle. That is true, but it is a
- tautology. "The principle that the public welfare ought to be the
- object of the legislator"--says M. Ch. Comte in his "Treatise on
- Legislation"--"cannot be overthrown. But legislation is advanced no
- farther by its announcement and demonstration, than is medicine when it
- is said that it is the business of physicians to cure the sick."
- Let us take another course. RUGHT is the sum total of the principles
- which govern society. Justice, in man, is the respect and observation of
- those principles. To practise justice is to obey the social instinct;
- to do an act of justice is to do a social act. If, then, we watch the
- conduct of men towards each other under different circumstances, it
- will be easy for us to distinguish between the presence and absence of
- society; from the result we may inductively infer the law.
- Let us commence with the simplest and least doubtful cases.
- The mother, who protects her son at the peril of her life, and
- sacrifices every thing to his support, is in society with him--she is a
- good mother. She, on the contrary, who abandons her child, is unfaithful
- to the social instinct,--maternal love being one of its many features;
- she is an unnatural mother.
- If I plunge into the water to rescue a drowning man, I am his brother,
- his associate; if, instead of aiding him, I sink him, I am his enemy,
- his murderer.
- Whoever bestows alms treats the poor man as his associate; not
- thoroughly, it is true, but only in respect to the amount which he
- shares with him. Whoever takes by force or stratagem that which is
- not the product of his labor, destroys his social character--he is a
- brigand.
- The Samaritan who relieves the traveller lying by the wayside, dresses
- his wounds, comforts him, and supplies him with money, thereby declares
- himself his associate--his neighbor; the priest, who passes by on the
- other side, remains unassociated, and is his enemy.
- In all these cases, man is moved by an internal attraction towards his
- fellow, by a secret sympathy which causes him to love, congratulate,
- and condole; so that, to resist this attraction, his will must struggle
- against his nature.
- But in these respects there is no decided difference between man and the
- animals. With them, as long as the weakness of their young endears them
- to their mothers,--in a word, associates them with their mothers,--the
- latter protect the former, at the peril of their lives, with a courage
- which reminds us of our heroes dying for their country. Certain species
- unite for hunting purposes, seek each other, call each other (a poet
- would say invite each other), to share their prey; in danger they
- aid, protect, and warn each other. The elephant knows how to help his
- companion out of the ditch into which the latter has fallen. Cows form
- a circle, with their horns outward and their calves in the centre, in
- order to repel the attacks of wolves. Horses and pigs, on hearing a cry
- of distress from one of their number, rush to the spot whence it comes.
- What descriptions I might give of their marriages, the tenderness of the
- males towards the females, and the fidelity of their loves! Let us add,
- however,--to be entirely just--that these touching demonstrations of
- society, fraternity, and love of neighbor, do not prevent the animals
- from quarrelling, fighting, and outrageously abusing one another while
- gaining their livelihood and showing their gallantry; the resemblance
- between them and ourselves is perfect.
- The social instinct, in man and beast, exists to a greater or less
- degree--its nature is the same. Man has the greater need of association,
- and employs it more; the animal seems better able to endure isolation.
- In man, social needs are more imperative and complex; in the beast, they
- seem less intense, less diversified, less regretted. Society, in a
- word, aims, in the case of man, at the preservation of the race and
- the individual; with the animals, its object is more exclusively the
- preservation of the race.
- As yet, we have met with no claim which man can make for himself alone.
- The social instinct and the moral sense he shares with the brutes; and
- when he thinks to become god-like by a few acts of charity, justice,
- and devotion, he does not perceive that in so acting he simply obeys an
- instinct wholly animal in its nature. As we are good, loving, tender,
- just, so we are passionate, greedy, lewd, and vindictive; that is, we
- are like the beasts. Our highest virtues appear, in the last analysis,
- as blind, impulsive instincts. What subjects for canonization and
- apotheosis!
- There is, however, a difference between us two-handed bipeds and other
- living creatures--what is it?
- A student of philosophy would hasten to reply: "This difference lies in
- the fact that we are conscious of our social faculty, while the animals
- are unconscious of theirs--in the fact that while we reflect and reason
- upon the operation of our social instinct, the animals do nothing of the
- kind."
- I will go farther. It is by our reflective and reasoning powers,
- with which we seem to be exclusively endowed, that we know that it is
- injurious, first to others and then to ourselves, to resist the social
- instinct which governs us, and which we call JUSTICE. It is our reason
- which teaches us that the selfish man, the robber, the murderer--in a
- word, the traitor to society--sins against Nature, and is guilty with
- respect to others and himself, when he does wrong wilfully. Finally, it
- is our social sentiment on the one hand, and our reason on the
- other, which cause us to think that beings such as we should take the
- responsibility of their acts. Such is the principle of remorse, revenge,
- and penal justice.
- But this proves only an intellectual diversity between the animals and
- man, not at all an affectional one; for, although we reason upon our
- relations with our fellows, we likewise reason upon our most trivial
- actions,--such as drinking, eating, choosing a wife, or selecting a
- dwelling-place. We reason upon things earthly and things heavenly; there
- is nothing to which our reasoning powers are not applicable. Now,
- just as the knowledge of external phenomena, which we acquire, has no
- influence upon their causes and laws, so reflection, by illuminating our
- instinct, enlightens us as to our sentient nature, but does not alter
- its character; it tells us what our morality is, but neither changes nor
- modifies it. Our dissatisfaction with ourselves after doing wrong,
- the indignation which we feel at the sight of injustice, the idea of
- deserved punishment and due remuneration, are effects of reflection, and
- not immediate effects of instinct and emotion. Our appreciation (I do
- not say exclusive appreciation, for the animals also realize that they
- have done wrong, and are indignant when one of their number is attacked,
- but), our infinitely superior appreciation of our social duties, our
- knowledge of good and evil, does not establish, as regards morality, any
- vital difference between man and the beasts.
- % 2.--Of the first and second degrees of Sociability.
- I insist upon the fact, which I have just pointed out, as one of the
- most important facts of anthropology.
- The sympathetic attraction, which causes us to associate, is, by reason
- of its blind, unruly nature, always governed by temporary impulse,
- without regard to higher rights, and without distinction of merit or
- priority. The bastard dog follows indifferently all who call it; the
- suckling child regards every man as its father and every woman as its
- nurse; every living creature, when deprived of the society of animals
- of its species, seeks companionship in its solitude. This fundamental
- characteristic of the social instinct renders intolerable and even
- hateful the friendship of frivolous persons, liable to be infatuated
- with every new face, accommodating to all whether good or bad, and
- ready to sacrifice, for a passing liaison, the oldest and most honorable
- affections. The fault of such beings is not in the heart--it is in the
- judgment. Sociability, in this degree, is a sort of magnetism awakened
- in us by the contemplation of a being similar to ourselves, but which
- never goes beyond the person who feels it; it may be reciprocated, but
- not communicated. Love, benevolence, pity, sympathy, call it what you
- will, there is nothing in it which deserves esteem,--nothing which lifts
- man above the beast.
- The second degree of sociability is justice, which may be defined as the
- RECOGNITION OF THE EQUALITY BETWEEN ANOTHER'S PERSONALITY AND OUR OWN.
- The sentiment of justice we share with the animals; we alone can form
- an exact idea of it; but our idea, as has been said already, does not
- change its nature. We shall soon see how man rises to a third degree
- of sociability which the animals are incapable of reaching. But I must
- first prove by metaphysics that SOCIETY, JUSTICE, and EQUALITY,
- are three equivalent terms,--three expressions meaning the same
- thing,--whose mutual conversion is always allowable.
- If, amid the confusion of a shipwreck, having escaped in a boat with
- some provisions, I see a man struggling with the waves, am I bound to
- go to his assistance? Yes, I am bound under penalty of being adjudged
- guilty of murder and treason against society.
- But am I also bound to share with him my provisions?
- To settle this question, we must change the phraseology. If society is
- binding on the boat, is it also binding on the provisions? Undoubtedly.
- The duty of an associate is absolute. Man's occupancy succeeds his
- social nature, and is subordinate to it; possession can become exclusive
- only when permission to occupy is granted to all alike. That which
- in this instance obscures our duty is our power of foresight, which,
- causing us to fear an eventual danger, impels us to usurpation, and
- makes us robbers and murderers. Animals do not calculate the duty of
- instinct any more than the disadvantages resulting to those who exercise
- it; it would be strange if the intellect of man--the most sociable of
- animals--should lead him to disobey the law.
- He betrays society who attempts to use it only for his own advantage;
- better that God should deprive us of prudence, if it is to serve as the
- tool of our selfishness.
- "What!" you will say, "must I share my bread, the bread which I have
- earned and which belongs to me, with the stranger whom I do not know;
- whom I may never see again, and who, perhaps, will reward me with
- ingratitude? If we had earned this bread together, if this man had
- done something to obtain it, he might demand his share, since his
- co-operation would entitle him to it; but as it is, what claim has he on
- me? We have not produced together--we shall not eat together."
- The fallacy in this argument lies in the false supposition, that each
- producer is not necessarily associated with every other producer.
- When two or more individuals have regularly organized a society,--when
- the contracts have been agreed upon, drafted, and signed,--there is
- no difficulty about the future. Everybody knows that when two men
- associate--for instance--in order to fish, if one of them catches no
- fish, he is none the less entitled to those caught by his associate.
- If two merchants form a partnership, while the partnership lasts, the
- profits and losses are divided between them; since each produces, not
- for himself, but for the society: when the time of distribution arrives,
- it is not the producer who is considered, but the associate. That is why
- the slave, to whom the planter gives straw and rice; and the civilized
- laborer, to whom the capitalist pays a salary which is always too
- small,--not being associated with their employers, although producing
- with them,--are disregarded when the product is divided. Thus, the horse
- who draws our coaches, and the ox who draws our carts produce with us,
- but are not associated with us; we take their product, but do not share
- it with them. The animals and laborers whom we employ hold the same
- relation to us. Whatever we do for them, we do, not from a sense of
- justice, but out of pure benevolence. [22]
- But is it possible that we are not all associated? Let us call to mind
- what was said in the last two chapters, That even though we do not want
- to be associated, the force of things, the necessity of consumption, the
- laws of production, and the mathematical principle of exchange combine
- to associate us. There is but a single exception to this rule,--that
- of the proprietor, who, producing by his right of increase, is not
- associated with any one, and consequently is not obliged to share his
- product with any one; just as no one else is bound to share with him.
- With the exception of the proprietor, we labor for each other; we can
- do nothing by ourselves unaided by others, and we continually exchange
- products and services with each other. If these are not social acts,
- what are they?
- Now, neither a commercial, nor an industrial, nor an agricultural
- association can be conceived of in the absence of equality; equality
- is its sine qua non. So that, in all matters which concern this
- association, to violate society is to violate justice and equality.
- Apply this principle to humanity at large.
- After what has been said, I assume that the reader has sufficient
- insight to enable him to dispense with any aid of mine.
- By this principle, the man who takes possession of a field, and says,
- "This field is mine," will not be unjust so long as every one else has
- an equal right of possession; nor will he be unjust, if, wishing to
- change his location, he exchanges this field for an equivalent. But
- if, putting another in his place, he says to him, "Work for me while
- I rest," he then becomes unjust, unassociated, UNEQUAL. He is a
- proprietor.
- Reciprocally, the sluggard, or the rake, who, without performing
- any social task, enjoys like others--and often more than others--the
- products of society, should be proceeded against as a thief and a
- parasite. We owe it to ourselves to give him nothing; but, since he must
- live, to put him under supervision, and compel him to labor.
- Sociability is the attraction felt by sentient beings for each other.
- Justice is this same attraction, accompanied by thought and knowledge.
- But under what general concept, in what category of the understanding,
- is justice placed? In the category of equal quantities. Hence, the
- ancient definition of justice--_Justum aequale est, injustum inaequale_.
- What is it, then, to practise justice? It is to give equal wealth
- to each, on condition of equal labor. It is to act socially. Our
- selfishness may complain; there is no escape from evidence and
- necessity.
- What is the right of occupancy? It is a natural method of dividing the
- earth, by reducing each laborer's share as fast as new laborers present
- themselves. This right disappears if the public interest requires it;
- which, being the social interest, is also that of the occupant.
- What is the right of labor? It is the right to obtain one's share
- of wealth by fulfilling the required conditions. It is the right of
- society, the right of equality.
- Justice, which is the product of the combination of an idea and an
- instinct, manifests itself in man as soon as he is capable of feeling,
- and of forming ideas. Consequently, it has been regarded as an
- innate and original sentiment; but this opinion is logically and
- chronologically false. But justice, by its composition hybrid--if I may
- use the term,--justice, born of emotion and intellect combined, seems to
- me one of the strongest proofs of the unity and simplicity of the
- ego; the organism being no more capable of producing such a mixture by
- itself, than are the combined senses of hearing and sight of forming a
- binary sense, half auditory and half visual.
- This double nature of justice gives us the definitive basis of all the
- demonstrations in Chapters II., III., and IV. On the one hand, the idea
- of JUSTICE being identical with that of society, and society necessarily
- implying equality, equality must underlie all the sophisms invented in
- defence of property; for, since property can be defended only as a just
- and social institution, and property being inequality, in order to
- prove that property is in harmony with society, it must be shown that
- injustice is justice, and that inequality is equality,--a contradiction
- in terms. On the other hand, since the idea of equality--the second
- element of justice--has its source in the mathematical proportions of
- things; and since property, or the unequal distribution of wealth among
- laborers, destroys the necessary balance between labor, production, and
- consumption,--property must be impossible.
- All men, then, are associated; all are entitled to the same justice; all
- are equal. Does it follow that the preferences of love and friendship
- are unjust?
- This requires explanation. I have already supposed the case of a man in
- peril, I being in a position to help him. Now, I suppose myself appealed
- to at the same time by two men exposed to danger.
- Am I not allowed--am I not commanded even--to rush first to the aid of
- him who is endeared to me by ties of blood, friendship, acquaintance,
- or esteem, at the risk of leaving the other to perish? Yes. And why?
- Because within universal society there exist for each of us as many
- special societies as there are individuals; and we are bound, by the
- principle of sociability itself, to fulfil the obligations which these
- impose upon us, according to the intimacy of our relations with them.
- Therefore we must give our father, mother, children, friends, relatives,
- &c., the preference over all others. But in what consists this
- preference?
- A judge has a case to decide, in which one of the parties is his
- friend, and the other his enemy. Should he, in this instance, prefer
- his INTIMATE ASSOCIATE to his DISTANT ASSOCIATE; and decide the case in
- favor of his friend, in spite of evidence to the contrary? No: for, if
- he should favor his friend's injustice, he would become his accomplice
- in his violation of the social compact; he would form with him a sort of
- conspiracy against the social body. Preference should be shown only in
- personal matters, such as love, esteem, confidence, or intimacy, when
- all cannot be considered at once. Thus, in case of fire, a father
- would save his own child before thinking of his neighbor's; but the
- recognition of a right not being an optional matter with a judge, he is
- not at liberty to favor one person to the detriment of another.
- The theory of these special societies--which are formed concentrically,
- so to speak, by each of us inside of the main body--gives the key to
- all the problems which arise from the opposition and conflict of the
- different varieties of social duty,--problems upon which the ancient
- tragedies are based.
- The justice practised among animals is, in a certain degree, negative.
- With the exception of protecting their young, hunting and plundering
- in troops, uniting for common defence and sometimes for individual
- assistance, it consists more in prevention than in action. A sick animal
- who cannot arise from the ground, or an imprudent one who has fallen
- over a precipice, receives neither medicine nor nourishment. If he
- cannot cure himself, nor relieve himself of his trouble, his life is in
- danger: he will neither be cared for in bed, nor fed in a prison.
- Their neglect of their fellows arises as much from the weakness of
- their intellect as from their lack of resources. Still, the degrees
- of intimacy common among men are not unknown to the animals. They
- have friendships of habit and of choice; friendships neighborly, and
- friendships parental. In comparison with us, they have feeble memories,
- sluggish feelings, and are almost destitute of intelligence; but
- the identity of these faculties is preserved to some extent, and our
- superiority in this respect arises entirely from our understanding.
- It is our strength of memory and penetration of judgment which enable us
- to multiply and combine the acts which our social instinct impels us to
- perform, and which teaches us how to render them more effective, and
- how to distribute them justly. The beasts who live in society practise
- justice, but are ignorant of its nature, and do not reason upon it; they
- obey their instinct without thought or philosophy. They know not how to
- unite the social sentiment with the idea of equality, which they do not
- possess; this idea being an abstract one. We, on the contrary, starting
- with the principle that society implies equality, can, by our reasoning
- faculty, understand and agree with each other in settling our rights;
- we have even used our judgment to a great extent. But in all this our
- conscience plays a small part, as is proved by the fact that the idea
- of RIGHT--of which we catch a glimpse in certain animals who approach
- nearer than any others to our standard of intelligence--seems to grow,
- from the low level at which it stands in savages, to the lofty height
- which it reaches in a Plato or a Franklin. If we trace the development
- of the moral sense in individuals, and the progress of laws in nations,
- we shall be convinced that the ideas of justice and legislative
- perfection are always proportional to intelligence. The notion of
- justice--which has been regarded by some philosophers as simple--is
- then, in reality, complex. It springs from the social instinct on the
- one hand, and the idea of equality on the other; just as the notion of
- guilt arises from the feeling that justice has been violated, and from
- the idea of free-will.
- In conclusion, instinct is not modified by acquaintance with its nature;
- and the facts of society, which we have thus far observed, occur among
- beasts as well as men. We know the meaning of justice; in other words,
- of sociability viewed from the standpoint of equality. We have met with
- nothing which separates us from the animals.
- % 3.--Of the third degree of Sociability.
- The reader, perhaps, has not forgotten what was said in the third
- chapter concerning the division of labor and the speciality of talents.
- The sum total of the talents and capacities of the race is always
- the same, and their nature is always similar. We are all born poets,
- mathematicians, philosophers, artists, artisans, or farmers, but we are
- not born equally endowed; and between one man and another in society,
- or between one faculty and another in the same individual, there is an
- infinite difference. This difference of degree in the same faculties,
- this predominance of talent in certain directions, is, we have said,
- the very foundation of our society. Intelligence and natural genius have
- been distributed by Nature so economically, and yet so liberally, that
- in society there is no danger of either a surplus or a scarcity of
- special talents; and that each laborer, by devoting himself to his
- function, may always attain to the degree of proficiency necessary to
- enable him to benefit by the labors and discoveries of his fellows.
- Owing to this simple and wise precaution of Nature, the laborer is not
- isolated by his task. He communicates with his fellows through the mind,
- before he is united with them in heart; so that with him love is born of
- intelligence.
- It is not so with societies of animals. In every species, the aptitudes
- of all the individuals--though very limited--are equal in number and
- (when they are not the result of instinct) in intensity. Each one does
- as well as all the others what all the others do; provides his food,
- avoids the enemy, burrows in the earth, builds a nest, &c. No animal,
- when free and healthy, expects or requires the aid of his neighbor; who,
- in his turn, is equally independent.
- Associated animals live side by side without any intellectual
- intercourse or intimate communication,--all doing the same things,
- having nothing to learn or to remember; they see, feel, and come in
- contact with each other, but never penetrate each other. Man continually
- exchanges with man ideas and feelings, products and services. Every
- discovery and act in society is necessary to him. But of this immense
- quantity of products and ideas, that which each one has to produce and
- acquire for himself is but an atom in the sun. Man would not be man were
- it not for society, and society is supported by the balance and harmony
- of the powers which compose it.
- Society, among the animals, is SIMPLE; with man it is COMPLEX. Man is
- associated with man by the same instinct which associates animal with
- animal; but man is associated differently from the animal, and it is
- this difference in association which constitutes the difference in
- morality.
- I have proved,--at too great length, perhaps,--both by the spirit of
- the laws which regard property as the basis of society, and by political
- economy, that inequality of conditions is justified neither by priority
- of occupation nor superiority of talent, service, industry, and
- capacity. But, although equality of conditions is a necessary
- consequence of natural right, of liberty, of the laws of production,
- of the capacity of physical nature, and of the principle of society
- itself,--it does not prevent the social sentiment from stepping over the
- boundaries of DEBT and CREDIT. The fields of benevolence and love extend
- far beyond; and when economy has adjusted its balance, the mind
- begins to benefit by its own justice, and the heart expands in the
- boundlessness of its affection.
- The social sentiment then takes on a new character, which varies with
- different persons. In the strong, it becomes the pleasure of generosity;
- among equals, frank and cordial friendship; in the weak, the pleasure of
- admiration and gratitude.
- The man who is superior in strength, skill, or courage, knows that he
- owes all that he is to society, without which he could not exist. He
- knows that, in treating him precisely as it does the lowest of its
- members, society discharges its whole duty towards him. But he does
- not underrate his faculties; he is no less conscious of his power and
- greatness; and it is this voluntary reverence which he pays to humanity,
- this avowal that he is but an instrument of Nature,--who is alone worthy
- of glory and worship,--it is, I say, this simultaneous confession of
- the heart and the mind, this genuine adoration of the Great Being, that
- distinguishes and elevates man, and lifts him to a degree of social
- morality to which the beast is powerless to attain. Hercules destroying
- the monsters and punishing brigands for the safety of Greece, Orpheus
- teaching the rough and wild Pelasgians,--neither of them putting a price
- upon their services,--there we see the noblest creations of poetry, the
- loftiest expression of justice and virtue.
- The joys of self-sacrifice are ineffable.
- If I were to compare human society to the old Greek tragedies, I should
- say that the phalanx of noble minds and lofty souls dances the strophe,
- and the humble multitude the antistrophe. Burdened with painful and
- disagreeable tasks, but rendered omnipotent by their number and the
- harmonic arrangement of their functions, the latter execute what the
- others plan. Guided by them, they owe them nothing; they honor them,
- however, and lavish upon them praise and approbation.
- Gratitude fills people with adoration and enthusiasm.
- But equality delights my heart. Benevolence degenerates into tyranny,
- and admiration into servility. Friendship is the daughter of equality.
- O my friends! may I live in your midst without emulation, and without
- glory; let equality bring us together, and fate assign us our places.
- May I die without knowing to whom among you I owe the most esteem!
- Friendship is precious to the hearts of the children of men.
- Generosity, gratitude (I mean here only that gratitude which is born
- of admiration of a superior power), and friendship are three distinct
- shades of a single sentiment which I will call equite, or SOCIAL
- PROPORTIONALITY. [23] Equite does not change justice: but, always taking
- equite for the base, it superadds esteem, and thereby forms in man a
- third degree of sociability. Equite makes it at once our duty and our
- pleasure to aid the weak who have need of us, and to make them our
- equals; to pay to the strong a just tribute of gratitude and honor,
- without enslaving ourselves to them; to cherish our neighbors, friends,
- and equals, for that which we receive from them, even by right of
- exchange. Equite is sociability raised to its ideal by reason and
- justice; its commonest manifestation is URBANITY or POLITENESS, which,
- among certain nations, sums up in a single word nearly all the social
- duties.
- It is the just distribution of social sympathy and universal love.
- Now, this feeling is unknown among the beasts, who love and cling to
- each other, and show their preferences, but who cannot conceive of
- esteem, and who are incapable of generosity, admiration, or politeness.
- This feeling does not spring from intelligence, which calculates,
- computes, and balances, but does not love; which sees, but does not
- feel. As justice is the product of social instinct and reflection
- combined, so equite is a product of justice and taste combined--that is,
- of our powers of judging and of idealizing.
- This product--the third and last degree of human sociability--is
- determined by our complex mode of association; in which inequality,
- or rather the divergence of faculties, and the speciality of
- functions--tending of themselves to isolate laborers--demand a more
- active sociability.
- That is why the force which oppresses while protecting is execrable; why
- the silly ignorance which views with the same eye the marvels of art,
- and the products of the rudest industry, excites unutterable contempt;
- why proud mediocrity, which glories in saying, "I have paid you--I owe
- you nothing," is especially odious.
- SOCIABILITY, JUSTICE, EQUITE--such, in its triplicity, is the exact
- definition of the instinctive faculty which leads us into communication
- with our fellows, and whose physical manifestation is expressed by the
- formula: EQUALITY IN NATURAL WEALTH, AND THE PRODUCTS OF LABOR.
- These three degrees of sociability support and imply each other.
- Equite cannot exist without justice; society without justice is a
- solecism. If, in order to reward talent, I take from one to give to
- another, in unjustly stripping the first, I do not esteem his talent as
- I ought; if, in society, I award more to myself than to my associate, we
- are not really associated. Justice is sociability as manifested in the
- division of material things, susceptible of weight and measure; equite
- is justice accompanied by admiration and esteem,--things which cannot be
- measured.
- From this several inferences may be drawn.
- 1. Though we are free to grant our esteem to one more than to another,
- and in all possible degrees, yet we should give no one more than his
- proportion of the common wealth; because the duty of justice, being
- imposed upon us before that of equite, must always take precedence of
- it. The woman honored by the ancients, who, when forced by a tyrant
- to choose between the death of her brother and that of her husband,
- sacrificed the latter on the ground that she could find another husband
- but not another brother,--that woman, I say, in obeying her sense of
- equite, failed in point of justice, and did a bad deed, because conjugal
- association is a closer relation than fraternal association, and because
- the life of our neighbor is not our property.
- By the same principle, inequality of wages cannot be admitted by law on
- the ground of inequality of talents; because the just distribution of
- wealth is the function of economy,--not of enthusiasm.
- Finally, as regards donations, wills, and inheritance, society, careful
- both of the personal affections and its own rights, must never permit
- love and partiality to destroy justice. And, though it is pleasant to
- think that the son, who has been long associated with his father in
- business, is more capable than any one else of carrying it on; and that
- the citizen, who is surprised in the midst of his task by death, is
- best fitted, in consequence of his natural taste for his occupation, to
- designate his successor; and though the heir should be allowed the right
- of choice in case of more than one inheritance,--nevertheless, society
- can tolerate no concentration of capital and industry for the benefit of
- a single man, no monopoly of labor, no encroachment. [24]
- "Suppose that some spoils, taken from the enemy, and equal to twelve,
- are to be divided between Achilles and Ajax. If the two persons were
- equal, their respective shares would be arithmetically equal: Achilles
- would have six, Ajax six. And if we should carry out this arithmetical
- equality, Thersites would be entitled to as much as Achilles, which
- would be unjust in the extreme. To avoid this injustice, the worth of
- the persons should be estimated, and the spoils divided accordingly.
- Suppose that the worth of Achilles is double that of Ajax: the former's
- share is eight, the latter four. There is no arithmetical equality, but
- a proportional equality. It is this comparison of merits, rationum,
- that Aristotle calls distributive justice. It is a geometrical
- proportion."--Toullier: French Law according to the Code.
- Are Achilles and Ajax associated, or are they not? Settle that, and
- you settle the whole question. If Achilles and Ajax, instead of being
- associated, are themselves in the service of Agamemnon who pays them,
- there is no objection to Aristotle's method. The slave-owner, who
- controls his slaves, may give a double allowance of brandy to him who
- does double work. That is the law of despotism; the right of slavery.
- But if Achilles and Ajax are associated, they are equals. What matters
- it that Achilles has a strength of four, while that of Ajax is only two?
- The latter may always answer that he is free; that if Achilles has a
- strength of four, five could kill him; finally, that in doing personal
- service he incurs as great a risk as Achilles. The same argument applies
- to Thersites. If he is unable to fight, let him be cook, purveyor, or
- butler. If he is good for nothing, put him in the hospital. In no case
- wrong him, or impose upon him laws.
- Man must live in one of two states: either in society, or out of it.
- In society, conditions are necessarily equal, except in the degree of
- esteem and consideration which each one may receive. Out of society, man
- is so much raw material, a capitalized tool, and often an incommodious
- and useless piece of furniture.
- 2. Equite, justice, and society, can exist only between individuals of
- the same species. They form no part of the relations of different races
- to each other,--for instance, of the wolf to the goat, of the goat to
- man, of man to God, much less of God to man. The attribution of justice,
- equity, and love to the Supreme Being is pure anthropomorphism; and the
- adjectives just, merciful, pitiful, and the like, should be stricken
- from our litanies. God can be regarded as just, equitable, and good,
- only to another God. Now, God has no associate; consequently, he cannot
- experience social affections,--such as goodness, equite, and justice.
- Is the shepherd said to be just to his sheep and his dogs? No: and if he
- saw fit to shear as much wool from a lamb six months old, as from a ram
- of two years; or, if he required as much work from a young dog as from
- an old one,--they would say, not that he was unjust, but that he was
- foolish. Between man and beast there is no society, though there may be
- affection. Man loves the animals as THINGS,--as SENTIENT THINGS, if you
- will,--but not as PERSONS. Philosophy, after having eliminated from the
- idea of God the passions ascribed to him by superstition, will then be
- obliged to eliminate also the virtues which our liberal piety awards to
- him. [25]
- The rights of woman and her relations with man are yet to be determined
- Matrimonial legislation, like civil legislation, is a matter for the
- future to settle.
- If God should come down to earth, and dwell among us, we could not love
- him unless he became like us; nor give him any thing unless he produced
- something; nor listen to him unless he proved us mistaken; nor worship
- him unless he manifested his power. All the laws of our nature,
- affectional, economical, and intellectual, would prevent us from
- treating him as we treat our fellow-men,--that is, according to reason,
- justice, and equite.
- I infer from this that, if God should wish ever to put himself into
- immediate communication with man, he would have to become a man.
- Now, if kings are images of God, and executors of his will, they cannot
- receive love, wealth, obedience, and glory from us, unless they consent
- to labor and associate with us--produce as much as they consume, reason
- with their subjects, and do wonderful things. Still more; if, as some
- pretend, kings are public functionaries, the love which is due them is
- measured by their personal amiability; our obligation to obey them, by
- the wisdom of their commands; and their civil list, by the total social
- production divided by the number of citizens.
- Thus, jurisprudence, political economy, and psychology agree in
- admitting the law of equality. Right and duty--the due reward of talent
- and labor--the outbursts of love and enthusiasm,--all are regulated in
- advance by an invariable standard; all depend upon number and balance.
- Equality of conditions is the law of society, and universal solidarity
- is the ratification of this law.
- Equality of conditions has never been realized, thanks to our passions
- and our ignorance; but our opposition to this law has made it all the
- more a necessity. To that fact history bears perpetual testimony, and
- the course of events reveals it to us. Society advances from equation to
- equation. To the eyes of the economist, the revolutions of empires
- seem now like the reduction of algebraical quantities, which are
- inter-deducible; now like the discovery of unknown quantities, induced
- by the inevitable influence of time. Figures are the providence of
- history. Undoubtedly there are other elements in human progress; but in
- the multitude of hidden causes which agitate nations, there is none more
- powerful or constant, none less obscure, than the periodical explosions
- of the proletariat against property. Property, acting by exclusion
- and encroachment, while population was increasing, has been the
- life-principle and definitive cause of all revolutions. Religious wars,
- and wars of conquest, when they have stopped short of the extermination
- of races, have been only accidental disturbances, soon repaired by the
- mathematical progression of the life of nations. The downfall and death
- of societies are due to the power of accumulation possessed by property.
- In the middle ages, take Florence,--a republic of merchants and brokers,
- always rent by its well-known factions, the Guelphs and Ghibellines, who
- were, after all, only the people and the proprietors fighting against
- each other,--Florence, ruled by bankers, and borne down at last by the
- weight of her debts; [26] in ancient times, take Rome, preyed upon from
- its birth by usury, flourishing, nevertheless, as long as the known
- world furnished its terrible proletaires with LABOR stained with blood
- by civil war at every interval of rest, and dying of exhaustion when
- the people lost, together with their former energy, their last spark
- of moral sense; Carthage, a commercial and financial city, continually
- divided by internal competition; Tyre, Sidon, Jerusalem, Nineveh,
- Babylon, ruined, in turn, by commercial rivalry and, as we now express
- it, by panics in the market,--do not these famous examples show clearly
- enough the fate which awaits modern nations, unless the people,
- unless France, with a sudden burst of her powerful voice, proclaims in
- thunder-tones the abolition of the regime of property?
- Here my task should end. I have proved the right of the poor; I have
- shown the usurpation of the rich. I demand justice; it is not my
- business to execute the sentence. If it should be argued--in order to
- prolong for a few years an illegitimate privilege--that it is not enough
- to demonstrate equality, that it is necessary also to organize it, and
- above all to establish it peacefully, I might reply: The welfare of the
- oppressed is of more importance than official composure. Equality of
- conditions is a natural law upon which public economy and jurisprudence
- are based. The right to labor, and the principle of equal distribution
- of wealth, cannot give way to the anxieties of power. It is not for the
- proletaire to reconcile the contradictions of the codes, still less to
- suffer for the errors of the government. On the contrary, it is the duty
- of the civil and administrative power to reconstruct itself on the basis
- of political equality. An evil, when known, should be condemned and
- destroyed. The legislator cannot plead ignorance as an excuse for
- upholding a glaring iniquity. Restitution should not be delayed.
- Justice, justice! recognition of right! reinstatement of the
- proletaire!--when these results are accomplished, then, judges and
- consuls, you may attend to your police, and provide a government for the
- Republic!
- For the rest, I do not think that a single one of my readers accuses
- me of knowing how to destroy, but of not knowing how to construct. In
- demonstrating the principle of equality, I have laid the foundation of
- the social structure I have done more. I have given an example of
- the true method of solving political and legislative problems. Of the
- science itself, I confess that I know nothing more than its principle;
- and I know of no one at present who can boast of having penetrated
- deeper. Many people cry, "Come to me, and I will teach you the truth!"
- These people mistake for the truth their cherished opinion and ardent
- conviction, which is usually any thing but the truth. The science of
- society--like all human sciences--will be for ever incomplete. The depth
- and variety of the questions which it embraces are infinite. We hardly
- know the A B C of this science, as is proved by the fact that we have
- not yet emerged from the period of systems, and have not ceased to
- put the authority of the majority in the place of facts. A certain
- philological society decided linguistic questions by a plurality
- of votes. Our parliamentary debates--were their results less
- pernicious--would be even more ridiculous. The task of the true
- publicist, in the age in which we live, is to close the mouths of
- quacks and charlatans, and to teach the public to demand demonstrations,
- instead of being contented with symbols and programmes. Before talking
- of the science itself, it is necessary to ascertain its object, and
- discover its method and principle. The ground must be cleared of the
- prejudices which encumber it. Such is the mission of the nineteenth
- century.
- For my part, I have sworn fidelity to my work of demolition, and I will
- not cease to pursue the truth through the ruins and rubbish. I hate to
- see a thing half done; and it will be believed without any assurance of
- mine, that, having dared to raise my hand against the Holy Ark, I shall
- not rest contented with the removal of the cover. The mysteries of the
- sanctuary of iniquity must be unveiled, the tables of the old alliance
- broken, and all the objects of the ancient faith thrown in a heap to the
- swine. A charter has been given to us,--a resume of political science,
- the monument of twenty legislatures. A code has been written,--the pride
- of a conqueror, and the summary of ancient wisdom. Well! of this charter
- and this code not one article shall be left standing upon another!
- The time has come for the wise to choose their course, and prepare for
- reconstruction.
- But, since a destroyed error necessarily implies a counter-truth, I will
- not finish this treatise without solving the first problem of political
- science,--that which receives the attention of all minds.
- WHEN PROPERTY IS ABOLISHED, WHAT WILL BE THE FORM OF SOCIETY! WILL IT BE
- COMMUNISM?
- PART SECOND.
- % 1.--Of the Causes of our Mistakes. The Origin of Property.
- The true form of human society cannot be determined until the following
- question has been solved:--
- Property not being our natural condition, how did it gain a foothold?
- Why has the social instinct, so trustworthy among the animals, erred
- in the case of man? Why is man, who was born for society, not yet
- associated?
- I have said that human society is COMPLEX in its nature. Though this
- expression is inaccurate, the fact to which it refers is none the less
- true; namely, the classification of talents and capacities. But who
- does not see that these talents and capacities, owing to their infinite
- variety, give rise to an infinite variety of wills, and that the
- character, the inclinations, and--if I may venture to use the
- expression--the form of the ego, are necessarily changed; so that in
- the order of liberty, as in the order of intelligence, there are as
- many types as individuals, as many characters as heads, whose tastes,
- fancies, and propensities, being modified by dissimilar ideas,
- must necessarily conflict? Man, by his nature and his instinct, is
- predestined to society; but his personality, ever varying, is adverse to
- it.
- In societies of animals, all the members do exactly the same things.
- The same genius directs them; the same will animates them. A society of
- beasts is a collection of atoms, round, hooked, cubical, or triangular,
- but always perfectly identical. These personalities do not vary, and we
- might say that a single ego governs them all. The labors which animals
- perform, whether alone or in society, are exact reproductions of their
- character. Just as the swarm of bees is composed of individual bees,
- alike in nature and equal in value, so the honeycomb is formed of
- individual cells, constantly and invariably repeated.
- But man's intelligence, fitted for his social destiny and his personal
- needs, is of a very different composition, and therefore gives rise to
- a wonderful variety of human wills. In the bee, the will is constant
- and uniform, because the instinct which guides it is invariable, and
- constitutes the animal's whole life and nature. In man, talent varies,
- and the mind wavers; consequently, his will is multiform and vague. He
- seeks society, but dislikes constraint and monotony; he is an imitator,
- but fond of his own ideas, and passionately in love with his works.
- If, like the bees, every man were born possessed of talent, perfect
- knowledge of certain kinds, and, in a word, an innate acquaintance
- with the functions he has to perform, but destitute of reflective and
- reasoning faculties, society would organize itself. We should see one
- man plowing a field, another building houses; this one forging metals,
- that one cutting clothes; and still others storing the products, and
- superintending their distribution. Each one, without inquiring as to the
- object of his labor, and without troubling himself about the extent of
- his task, would obey orders, bring his product, receive his salary, and
- would then rest for a time; keeping meanwhile no accounts, envious of
- nobody, and satisfied with the distributor, who never would be unjust to
- any one. Kings would govern, but would not reign; for to reign is to be
- a _proprietor a l'engrais_, as Bonaparte said: and having no commands
- to give, since all would be at their posts, they would serve rather as
- rallying centres than as authorities or counsellors. It would be a state
- of ordered communism, but not a society entered into deliberately and
- freely.
- But man acquires skill only by observation and experiment. He reflects,
- then, since to observe and experiment is to reflect; he reasons,
- since he cannot help reasoning. In reflecting, he becomes deluded; in
- reasoning, he makes mistakes, and, thinking himself right, persists in
- them. He is wedded to his opinions; he esteems himself, and despises
- others. Consequently, he isolates himself; for he could not submit
- to the majority without renouncing his will and his reason,--that is,
- without disowning himself, which is impossible. And this isolation, this
- intellectual egotism, this individuality of opinion, lasts until the
- truth is demonstrated to him by observation and experience. A final
- illustration will make these facts still clearer.
- If to the blind but convergent and harmonious instincts of a swarm
- of bees should be suddenly added reflection and judgment, the little
- society could not long exist. In the first place, the bees would not
- fail to try some new industrial process; for instance, that of making
- their cells round or square. All sorts of systems and inventions would
- be tried, until long experience, aided by geometry, should show them
- that the hexagonal shape is the best. Then insurrections would occur.
- The drones would be told to provide for themselves, and the queens to
- labor; jealousy would spread among the laborers; discords would burst
- forth; soon each one would want to produce on his own account; and
- finally the hive would be abandoned, and the bees would perish. Evil
- would be introduced into the honey-producing republic by the power of
- reflection,--the very faculty which ought to constitute its glory.
- Thus, moral evil, or, in this case, disorder in society, is naturally
- explained by our power of reflection. The mother of poverty, crime,
- insurrection, and war was inequality of conditions; which was the
- daughter of property, which was born of selfishness, which was
- engendered by private opinion, which descended in a direct line from
- the autocracy of reason. Man, in his infancy, is neither criminal
- nor barbarous, but ignorant and inexperienced. Endowed with imperious
- instincts which are under the control of his reasoning faculty, at first
- he reflects but little, and reasons inaccurately; then, benefiting by
- his mistakes, he rectifies his ideas, and perfects his reason. In the
- first place, it is the savage sacrificing all his possessions for
- a trinket, and then repenting and weeping; it is Esau selling his
- birthright for a mess of pottage, and afterwards wishing to cancel
- the bargain; it is the civilized workman laboring in insecurity, and
- continually demanding that his wages be increased, neither he nor his
- employer understanding that, in the absence of equality, any salary,
- however large, is always insufficient. Then it is Naboth dying to defend
- his inheritance; Cato tearing out his entrails that he might not be
- enslaved; Socrates drinking the fatal cup in defence of liberty of
- thought; it is the third estate of '89 reclaiming its liberty: soon it
- will be the people demanding equality of wages and an equal division of
- the means of production.
- Man is born a social being,--that is, he seeks equality and justice in
- all his relations, but he loves independence and praise. The difficulty
- of satisfying these various desires at the same time is the primary
- cause of the despotism of the will, and the appropriation which results
- from it. On the other hand, man always needs a market for his products;
- unable to compare values of different kinds, he is satisfied to judge
- approximately, according to his passion and caprice; and he engages in
- dishonest commerce, which always results in wealth and poverty. Thus,
- the greatest evils which man suffers arise from the misuse of his social
- nature, of this same justice of which he is so proud, and which he
- applies with such deplorable ignorance.
- The practice of justice is a science which, when once discovered
- and diffused, will sooner or later put an end to social disorder, by
- teaching us our rights and duties.
- This progressive and painful education of our instinct, this slow
- and imperceptible transformation of our spontaneous perceptions into
- deliberate knowledge, does not take place among the animals, whose
- instincts remain fixed, and never become enlightened.
- "According to Frederic Cuvier, who has so clearly distinguished between
- instinct and intelligence in animals, 'instinct is a natural and
- inherent faculty, like feeling, irritability, or intelligence. The wolf
- and the fox who recognize the traps in which they have been caught, and
- who avoid them; the dog and the horse, who understand the meaning of
- several of our words, and who obey us,--thereby show _intelligence_.
- The dog who hides the remains of his dinner, the bee who constructs his
- cell, the bird who builds his nest, act only from _instinct_. Even man
- has instincts: it is a special instinct which leads the new-born
- child to suck. But, in man, almost every thing is accomplished by
- intelligence; and intelligence supplements instinct. The opposite is
- true of animals: their instinct is given them as a supplement to their
- intelligence.'"--Flourens: Analytical Summary of the Observations of F.
- Cuvier.
- "We can form a clear idea of instinct only by admitting that animals
- have in their _sensorium_, images or innate and constant sensations,
- which influence their actions in the same manner that ordinary and
- accidental sensations commonly do. It is a sort of dream, or vision,
- which always follows them and in all which relates to instinct they may
- be regarded as somnambulists."--F. Cuvier: Introduction to the Animal
- Kingdom.
- Intelligence and instinct being common, then, though in different
- degrees, to animals and man, what is the distinguishing characteristic
- of the latter? According to F. Cuvier, it is REFLECTION OR THE POWER
- OF INTELLECTUALLY CONSIDERING OUR OWN MODIFICATIONS BY A SURVEY OF
- OURSELVES. This lacks clearness, and requires an explanation.
- If we grant intelligence to animals, we must also grant them, in some
- degree, reflection; for, the first cannot exist without the second, as
- F. Cuvier himself has proved by numerous examples. But notice that the
- learned observer defines the kind of reflection which distinguishes us
- from the animals as the POWER OF CONSIDERING OUR OWN MODIFICATIONS. This
- I shall endeavour to interpret, by developing to the best of my ability
- the laconism of the philosophical naturalist.
- The intelligence acquired by animals never modifies the operations which
- they perform by instinct: it is given them only as a provision against
- unexpected accidents which might disturb these operations. In man, on
- the contrary, instinctive action is constantly changing into deliberate
- action. Thus, man is social by instinct, and is every day becoming
- social by reflection and choice. At first, he formed his words by
- instinct;[1] he was a poet by inspiration: to-day, he makes grammar a
- science, and poetry an art. His conception of God and a future life is
- spontaneous and instinctive, and his expressions of this conception
- have been, by turns, monstrous, eccentric, beautiful, comforting, and
- terrible. All these different creeds, at which the frivolous irreligion
- of the eighteenth century mocked, are modes of expression of the
- religious sentiment. Some day, man will explain to himself the character
- of the God whom he believes in, and the nature of that other world to
- which his soul aspires.
- [1] "The problem of the origin of language is solved by the distinction
- made by Frederic Cuvier between instinct and intelligence. Language
- is not a premeditated, arbitrary, or conventional device; nor is it
- communicated or revealed to us by God. Language is an instinctive and
- unpremeditated creation of man, as the hive is of the bee. In this
- sense, it may be said that language is not the work of man, since it is
- not the work of his mind. Further, the mechanism of language seems
- more wonderful and ingenious when it is not regarded as the result of
- reflection. This fact is one of the most curious and indisputable which
- philology has observed. See, among other works, a Latin essay by F. G.
- Bergmann (Strasbourg, 1839), in which the learned author explains how
- the phonetic germ is born of sensation; how language passes through
- three successive stages of development; why man, endowed at birth with
- the instinctive faculty of creating a language, loses this faculty
- as fast as his mind develops; and that the study of languages is real
- natural history,--in fact, a science. France possesses to-day several
- philologists of the first rank, endowed with rare talents and deep
- philosophic insight,--modest savants developing a science almost without
- the knowledge of the public; devoting themselves to studies which are
- scornfully looked down upon, and seeming to shun applause as much as
- others seek it."
- All that he does from instinct man despises; or, if he admires it, it
- is as Nature's work, not as his own. This explains the obscurity
- which surrounds the names of early inventors; it explains also our
- indifference to religious matters, and the ridicule heaped upon
- religious customs. Man esteems only the products of reflection and of
- reason. The most wonderful works of instinct are, in his eyes, only
- lucky GOD-SENDS; he reserves the name DISCOVERY--I had almost said
- creation--for the works of intelligence. Instinct is the source of
- passion and enthusiasm; it is intelligence which causes crime and
- virtue.
- In developing his intelligence, man makes use of not only his own
- observations, but also those of others. He keeps an account of his
- experience, and preserves the record; so that the race, as well as
- the individual, becomes more and more intelligent. The animals do not
- transmit their knowledge; that which each individual accumulates dies
- with him.
- It is not enough, then, to say that we are distinguished from the
- animals by reflection, unless we mean thereby the CONSTANT TENDENCY OF
- OUR INSTINCT TO BECOME INTELLIGENCE. While man is governed by instinct,
- he is unconscious of his acts. He never would deceive himself, and never
- would be troubled by errors, evils, and disorder, if, like the animals,
- instinct were his only guide. But the Creator has endowed us with
- reflection, to the end that our instinct might become intelligence;
- and since this reflection and resulting knowledge pass through various
- stages, it happens that in the beginning our instinct is opposed, rather
- than guided, by reflection; consequently, that our power of thought
- leads us to act in opposition to our nature and our end; that, deceiving
- ourselves, we do and suffer evil, until instinct which points us towards
- good, and reflection which makes us stumble into evil, are replaced by
- the science of good and evil, which invariably causes us to seek the one
- and avoid the other.
- Thus, evil--or error and its consequences--is the firstborn son of
- the union of two opposing faculties, instinct and reflection; good,
- or truth, must inevitably be the second child. Or, to again employ the
- figure, evil is the product of incest between adverse powers; good will
- sooner or later be the legitimate child of their holy and mysterious
- union.
- Property, born of the reasoning faculty, intrenches itself behind
- comparisons. But, just as reflection and reason are subsequent to
- spontaneity, observation to sensation, and experience to instinct, so
- property is subsequent to communism. Communism--or association in a
- simple form--is the necessary object and original aspiration of the
- social nature, the spontaneous movement by which it manifests and
- establishes itself. It is the first phase of human civilization. In this
- state of society,--which the jurists have called NEGATIVE COMMUNISM--man
- draws near to man, and shares with him the fruits of the field and the
- milk and flesh of animals. Little by little this communism--negative
- as long as man does not produce--tends to become positive and organic
- through the development of labor and industry. But it is then that the
- sovereignty of thought, and the terrible faculty of reasoning logically
- or illogically, teach man that, if equality is the sine qua non of
- society, communism is the first species of slavery. To express this idea
- by an Hegelian formula, I will say:
- Communism--the first expression of the social nature--is the first term
- of social development,--the THESIS; property, the reverse of communism,
- is the second term,--the ANTITHESIS. When we have discovered the third
- term, the SYNTHESIS, we shall have the required solution. Now, this
- synthesis necessarily results from the correction of the thesis by the
- antithesis. Therefore it is necessary, by a final examination of their
- characteristics, to eliminate those features which are hostile to
- sociability. The union of the two remainders will give us the true form
- of human association.
- % 2.--Characteristics of Communism and of Property.
- I. I ought not to conceal the fact that property and communism have been
- considered always the only possible forms of society. This deplorable
- error has been the life of property. The disadvantages of communism are
- so obvious that its critics never have needed to employ much eloquence
- to thoroughly disgust men with it. The irreparability of the injustice
- which it causes, the violence which it does to attractions and
- repulsions, the yoke of iron which it fastens upon the will, the moral
- torture to which it subjects the conscience, the debilitating effect
- which it has upon society; and, to sum it all up, the pious and
- stupid uniformity which it enforces upon the free, active, reasoning,
- unsubmissive personality of man, have shocked common sense, and
- condemned communism by an irrevocable decree.
- The authorities and examples cited in its favor disprove it. The
- communistic republic of Plato involved slavery; that of Lycurgus
- employed Helots, whose duty it was to produce for their masters, thus
- enabling the latter to devote themselves exclusively to athletic sports
- and to war. Even J. J. Rousseau--confounding communism and equality--has
- said somewhere that, without slavery, he did not think equality of
- conditions possible. The communities of the early Church did not last
- the first century out, and soon degenerated into monasteries. In those
- of the Jesuits of Paraguay, the condition of the blacks is said by all
- travellers to be as miserable as that of slaves; and it is a fact that
- the good Fathers were obliged to surround themselves with ditches and
- walls to prevent their new converts from escaping. The followers
- of Baboeuf--guided by a lofty horror of property rather than by any
- definite belief--were ruined by exaggeration of their principles; the
- St. Simonians, lumping communism and inequality, passed away like a
- masquerade. The greatest danger to which society is exposed to-day is
- that of another shipwreck on this rock.
- Singularly enough, systematic communism--the deliberate negation of
- property--is conceived under the direct influence of the proprietary
- prejudice; and property is the basis of all communistic theories.
- The members of a community, it is true, have no private property; but
- the community is proprietor, and proprietor not only of the goods, but
- of the persons and wills. In consequence of this principle of absolute
- property, labor, which should be only a condition imposed upon man by
- Nature, becomes in all communities a human commandment, and therefore
- odious. Passive obedience, irreconcilable with a reflecting will, is
- strictly enforced. Fidelity to regulations, which are always defective,
- however wise they may be thought, allows of no complaint. Life, talent,
- and all the human faculties are the property of the State, which has
- the right to use them as it pleases for the common good. Private
- associations are sternly prohibited, in spite of the likes and dislikes
- of different natures, because to tolerate them would be to introduce
- small communities within the large one, and consequently private
- property; the strong work for the weak, although this ought to be left
- to benevolence, and not enforced, advised, or enjoined; the industrious
- work for the lazy, although this is unjust; the clever work for the
- foolish, although this is absurd; and, finally, man--casting aside his
- personality, his spontaneity, his genius, and his affections--humbly
- annihilates himself at the feet of the majestic and inflexible Commune!
- Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the
- exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation
- of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is
- the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised: physical and
- mental force; force of events, chance, FORTUNE; force of accumulated
- property, &c. In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity
- on a level with excellence. This damaging equation is repellent to the
- conscience, and causes merit to complain; for, although it may be
- the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of
- generosity,--they never will endure a comparison. Give them equal
- opportunities of labor, and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy
- to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance
- of the common task.
- Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the
- law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to
- labor when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He
- wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to
- choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from
- judgment, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not
- through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the
- free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest
- feelings. Any plan which could be devised for reconciling it with the
- demands of the individual reason and will would end only in changing the
- thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we
- shall avoid disputes about words.
- Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience, and
- equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart,
- and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labor and
- laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality
- in point of comfort. For the rest, if property is impossible on account
- of the desire to accumulate, communism would soon become so through the
- desire to shirk.
- II. Property, in its turn, violates equality by the rights of exclusion
- and increase, and freedom by despotism. The former effect of property
- having been sufficiently developed in the last three chapters, I will
- content myself here with establishing by a final comparison, its perfect
- identity with robbery.
- The Latin words for robber are _fur_ and _latro;_ the former taken from
- the Greek {GREEK m }, from {GREEK m }, Latin _fero_, I carry away; the
- latter from {GREEK 'i }, I play the part of a brigand, which is derived
- from {GREEK i }, Latin _lateo_, I conceal myself. The Greeks have also
- {GREEK ncg }, from {GREEK ncg }, I filch, whose radical consonants are
- the same as those of {GREEK ' cg }, I cover, I conceal. Thus, in these
- languages, the idea of a robber is that of a man who conceals, carries
- away, or diverts, in any manner whatever, a thing which does not belong
- to him.
- The Hebrews expressed the same idea by the word _gannab_,--robber,--from
- the verb _ganab_, which means to put away, to turn aside: _lo thi-gnob
- (Decalogue: Eighth Commandment_), thou shalt not steal,--that is, thou
- shalt not hold back, thou shalt not put away any thing for thyself. That
- is the act of a man who, on entering into a society into which he
- agrees to bring all that he has, secretly reserves a portion, as did the
- celebrated disciple Ananias.
- The etymology of the French verb _voler_ is still more significant.
- _Voler_, or _faire la vole_ (from the Latin _vola_, palm of the hand),
- means to take all the tricks in a game of ombre; so that _le voleur_,
- the robber, is the capitalist who takes all, who gets the lion's share.
- Probably this verb _voler_ had its origin in the professional slang of
- thieves, whence it has passed into common use, and, consequently into
- the phraseology of the law.
- Robbery is committed in a variety of ways, which have been very
- cleverly distinguished and classified by legislators according to their
- heinousness or merit, to the end that some robbers may be honored, while
- others are punished.
- We rob,--1. By murder on the highway; 2. Alone, or in a band; 3. By
- breaking into buildings, or scaling walls; 4. By abstraction; 5. By
- fraudulent bankruptcy; 6. By forgery of the handwriting of public
- officials or private individuals; 7. By manufacture of counterfeit
- money.
- This species includes all robbers who practise their profession with no
- other aid than force and open fraud. Bandits, brigands, pirates, rovers
- by land and sea,--these names were gloried in by the ancient heroes, who
- thought their profession as noble as it was lucrative. Nimrod, Theseus,
- Jason and his Argonauts; Jephthah, David, Cacus, Romulus, Clovis and
- all his Merovingian descendants; Robert Guiscard, Tancred de Hauteville,
- Bohemond, and most of the Norman heroes,--were brigands and robbers. The
- heroic character of the robber is expressed in this line from Horace, in
- reference to Achilles,--
- _"Jura neget sibi nata, nihil non arroget armis_," [27]
- and by this sentence from the dying words of Jacob (Gen. xlviii.), which
- the Jews apply to David, and the Christians to their Christ: _Manus ejus
- contra omnes_. In our day, the robber--the warrior of the ancients--is
- pursued with the utmost vigor. His profession, in the language of the
- code, entails ignominious and corporal penalties, from imprisonment to
- the scaffold. A sad change in opinions here below!
- We rob,--8. By cheating; 9. By swindling; 10. By abuse of trust; 11. By
- games and lotteries.
- This second species was encouraged by the laws of Lycurgus, in order
- to sharpen the wits of the young. It is the kind practised by Ulysses,
- Solon, and Sinon; by the ancient and modern Jews, from Jacob down to
- Deutz; and by the Bohemians, the Arabs, and all savage tribes. Under
- Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., it was not considered dishonorable to cheat
- at play. To do so was a part of the game; and many worthy people did not
- scruple to correct the caprice of Fortune by dexterous jugglery.
- To-day even, and in all countries, it is thought a mark of merit
- among peasants, merchants, and shopkeepers to KNOW HOW TO MAKE A
- BARGAIN,--that is, to deceive one's man. This is so universally
- accepted, that the cheated party takes no offence. It is known with what
- reluctance our government resolved upon the abolition of lotteries. It
- felt that it was dealing a stab thereby at property. The pickpocket,
- the blackleg, and the charlatan make especial use of their dexterity of
- hand, their subtlety of mind, the magic power of their eloquence,
- and their great fertility of invention. Sometimes they offer bait to
- cupidity. Therefore the penal code--which much prefers intelligence
- to muscular vigor--has made, of the four varieties mentioned above,
- a second category, liable only to correctional, not to Ignominious,
- punishments.
- Let them now accuse the law of being materialistic and atheistic.
- We rob,--12. By usury.
- This species of robbery, so odious and so severely punished since the
- publication of the Gospel, is the connecting link between forbidden and
- authorized robbery. Owing to its ambiguous nature, it has given rise to
- a multitude of contradictions in the laws and in morals,--contradictions
- which have been very cleverly turned to account by lawyers, financiers,
- and merchants. Thus the usurer, who lends on mortgage at ten, twelve,
- and fifteen per cent., is heavily fined when detected; while the banker,
- who receives the same interest (not, it is true, upon a loan, but in the
- way of exchange or discount,--that is, of sale), is protected by royal
- privilege. But the distinction between the banker and the usurer is
- a purely nominal one. Like the usurer, who lends on property, real or
- personal, the banker lends on business paper; like the usurer, he
- takes his interest in advance; like the usurer, he can recover from
- the borrower if the property is destroyed (that is, if the note is
- not redeemed),--a circumstance which makes him a money-lender, not a
- money-seller. But the banker lends for a short time only, while
- the usurer's loan may be for one, two, three, or more years. Now, a
- difference in the duration of the loan, or the form of the act, does not
- alter the nature of the transaction. As for the capitalists who invest
- their money, either with the State or in commercial operations, at
- three, four, and five per cent.,--that is, who lend on usury at a
- little lower rate than the bankers and usurers,--they are the flower of
- society, the cream of honesty! Moderation in robbery is the height of
- virtue! [28]
- But what, then, is usury? Nothing is more amusing than to see these
- INSTRUCTORS OF NATIONS hesitate between the authority of the Gospel,
- which, they say, NEVER CAN HAVE SPOKEN IN VAIN, and the authority of
- economical demonstrations. Nothing, to my mind, is more creditable
- to the Gospel than this old infidelity of its pretended teachers.
- Salmasius, having assimilated interest to rent, was REFUTED by Grotius,
- Pufendorf, Burlamaqui, Wolf, and Heineccius; and, what is more curious
- still, Salmasius ADMITTED HIS ERROR. Instead of inferring from this
- doctrine of Salmasius that all increase is illegitimate, and proceeding
- straight on to the demonstration of Gospel equality, they arrived at
- just the opposite conclusion; namely, that since everybody acknowledges
- that rent is permissible, if we allow that interest does not differ
- from rent, there is nothing left which can be called usury, and,
- consequently, that the commandment of Jesus Christ is an ILLUSION, and
- amounts to NOTHING, which is an impious conclusion.
- If this memoir had appeared in the time of Bossuet, that great
- theologian would have PROVED by scripture, the fathers, traditions,
- councils, and popes, that property exists by Divine right, while usury
- is an invention of the devil; and the heretical work would have been
- burned, and the author imprisoned.
- We rob,--13. By farm-rent, house-rent, and leases of all kinds.
- The author of the "Provincial Letters" entertained the honest Christians
- of the seventeenth century at the expense of Escobar, the Jesuit,
- and the contract Mohatra. "The contract Mohatra," said Escobar, "is a
- contract by which goods are bought, at a high price and on credit, to
- be again sold at the same moment to the same person, cash down, and at a
- lower price." Escobar found a way to justify this kind of usury. Pascal
- and all the Jansenists laughed at him. But what would the satirical
- Pascal, the learned Nicole, and the invincible Arnaud have said, if
- Father Antoine Escobar de Valladolid had answered them thus: "A lease
- is a contract by which real estate is bought, at a high price and on
- credit, to be again sold, at the expiration of a certain time, to the
- same person, at a lower price; only, to simplify the transaction, the
- buyer is content to pay the difference between the first sale and the
- second. Either deny the identity of the lease and the contract Mohatra,
- and then I will annihilate you in a moment; or, if you admit the
- similarity, admit also the soundness of my doctrine: otherwise you
- proscribe both interest and rent at one blow"?
- In reply to this overwhelming argument of the Jesuit, the sire of
- Montalte would have sounded the tocsin, and would have shouted
- that society was in peril,--that the Jesuits were sapping its very
- foundations.
- We rob,--14. By commerce, when the profit of the merchant exceeds his
- legitimate salary.
- Everybody knows the definition of commerce--THE ART OF BUYING FOR THREE
- FRANCS THAT WHICH IS WORTH SIX, AND OF SELLING FOR SIX THAT WHICH IS
- WORTH THREE. Between commerce thus defined and _vol a l'americaine_,
- the only difference is in the relative proportion of the values
- exchanged,--in short, in the amount of the profit.
- We rob,--15. By making profit on our product, by accepting sinecures,
- and by exacting exorbitant wages.
- The farmer, who sells a certain amount of corn to the consumer, and who
- during the measurement thrusts his hand into the bushel and takes out a
- handful of grains, robs; the professor, whose lectures are paid for by
- the State, and who through the intervention of a bookseller sells them
- to the public a second time, robs; the sinecurist, who receives an
- enormous product in exchange for his vanity, robs; the functionary, the
- laborer, whatever he may be, who produces only one and gets paid four,
- one hundred, or one thousand, robs; the publisher of this book, and I,
- its author,--we rob, by charging for it twice as much as it is worth.
- In recapitulation:--
- Justice, after passing through the state of negative communism, called
- by the ancient poets the AGE OF GOLD, commences as the right of the
- strongest. In a society which is trying to organize itself, inequality
- of faculties calls up the idea of merit; equite suggests the plan of
- proportioning not only esteem, but also material comforts, to personal
- merit; and since the highest and almost the only merit then recognized
- is physical strength, the strongest, {GREEK ' eg }, and consequently
- the best, {GREEK ' eg }, is entitled to the largest share; and if it
- is refused him, he very naturally takes it by force. From this to the
- assumption of the right of property in all things, it is but one step.
- Such was justice in the heroic age, preserved, at least by tradition,
- among the Greeks and Romans down to the last days of their republics.
- Plato, in the "Gorgias," introduces a character named Callicles, who
- spiritedly defends the right of the strongest, which Socrates, the
- advocate of equality, {GREEK g e }, seriously refutes. It is related
- of the great Pompey, that he blushed easily, and, nevertheless, these
- words once escaped his lips: "Why should I respect the laws, when I have
- arms in my hand?" This shows him to have been a man in whom the moral
- sense and ambition were struggling for the mastery, and who sought to
- justify his violence by the motto of the hero and the brigand.
- From the right of the strongest springs the exploitation of man by
- man, or bondage; usury, or the tribute levied upon the conquered by the
- conqueror; and the whole numerous family of taxes, duties, monarchical
- prerogatives, house-rents, farm-rents, &c.; in one word,--property.
- Force was followed by artifice, the second manifestation of justice,
- which was detested by the ancient heroes, who, not excelling in that
- direction, were heavy losers by it. Force was still employed, but mental
- force instead of physical. Skill in deceiving an enemy by treacherous
- propositions seemed deserving of reward; nevertheless, the strong always
- prided themselves upon their honesty. In those days, oaths were observed
- and promises kept according to the letter rather than the spirit: _Uti
- lingua nuncupassit, ita jus esto_,--"As the tongue has spoken, so must
- the right be," says the law of the Twelve Tables. Artifice, or rather
- perfidy, was the main element in the politics of ancient Rome. Among
- other examples, Vico cites the following, also quoted by Montesquieu:
- The Romans had guaranteed to the Carthaginians the preservation of their
- goods and their CITY,--intentionally using the word civitas, that is,
- the society, the State; the Carthaginians, on the contrary, understood
- them to mean the material city, urbs, and accordingly began to rebuild
- their walls. They were immediately attacked on account of their
- violation of the treaty, by the Romans, who, acting upon the old
- heroic idea of right, did not imagine that, in taking advantage of an
- equivocation to surprise their enemies, they were waging unjust war.
- From artifice sprang the profits of manufactures, commerce, and banking,
- mercantile frauds, and pretensions which are honored with the beautiful
- names of TALENT and GENIUS, but which ought to be regarded as the last
- degree of knavery and deception; and, finally, all sorts of social
- inequalities.
- In those forms of robbery which are prohibited by law, force and
- artifice are employed alone and undisguised; in the authorized forms,
- they conceal themselves within a useful product, which they use as a
- tool to plunder their victim.
- The direct use of violence and stratagem was early and universally
- condemned; but no nation has yet got rid of that kind of robbery which
- acts through talent, labor, and possession, and which is the source
- of all the dilemmas of casuistry and the innumerable contradictions of
- jurisprudence.
- The right of force and the right of artifice--glorified by the
- rhapsodists in the poems of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey"--inspired the
- legislation of the Greeks and Romans, from which they passed into our
- morals and codes. Christianity has not changed at all. The Gospel should
- not be blamed, because the priests, as stupid as the legists, have been
- unable either to expound or to understand it. The ignorance of councils
- and popes upon all questions of morality is equal to that of the
- market-place and the money-changers; and it is this utter ignorance
- of right, justice, and society, which is killing the Church, and
- discrediting its teachings for ever. The infidelity of the Roman church
- and other Christian churches is flagrant; all have disregarded the
- precept of Jesus; all have erred in moral and doctrinal points; all
- are guilty of teaching false and absurd dogmas, which lead straight to
- wickedness and murder. Let it ask pardon of God and men,--this church
- which called itself infallible, and which has grown so corrupt in
- morals; let its reformed sisters humble themselves,... and the people,
- undeceived, but still religious and merciful, will begin to think. [29]
- One of the main causes of Ireland's poverty to-day is the immense
- revenues of the English clergy. So heretics and orthodox--Protestants
- and Papists--cannot reproach each other. All have strayed from the path
- of justice; all have disobeyed the eighth commandment of the Decalogue:
- "Thou shalt not steal."
- The development of right has followed the same order, in its various
- expressions, that property has in its forms. Every where we see justice
- driving robbery before it and confining it within narrower and narrower
- limits. Hitherto the victories of justice over injustice, and of
- equality over inequality, have been won by instinct and the simple force
- of things; but the final triumph of our social nature will be due to
- our reason, or else we shall fall back into feudal chaos. Either this
- glorious height is reserved for our intelligence, or this miserable
- depth for our baseness.
- The second effect of property is despotism. Now, since despotism
- is inseparably connected with the idea of legitimate authority, in
- explaining the natural causes of the first, the principle of the second
- will appear.
- What is to be the form of government in the future? hear some of my
- younger readers reply: "Why, how can you ask such a question?
- "You are a republican." "A republican! Yes; but that word specifies
- nothing. _Res publica;_ that is, the public thing. Now, whoever
- is interested in public affairs--no matter under what form
- of government--may call himself a republican. Even kings are
- republicans."--
- "Well! you are a democrat?"--"No."--"What! you would have a
- monarchy."--"No."--"A constitutionalist?"--"God forbid!"--"You are then
- an aristocrat?"--"Not at all."--"You want a mixed government?"--"Still
- less."--"What are you, then?"--"I am an anarchist."
- "Oh! I understand you; you speak satirically. This is a hit at the
- government."--"By no means. I have just given you my serious and
- well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I
- am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me."
- In all species of sociable animals, "the weakness of the young is the
- principle of their obedience to the old," who are strong; and from habit,
- which is a kind of conscience with them, the power remains with the
- oldest, although he finally becomes the weakest.
- Whenever the society is under the control of a chief, this chief is
- almost always the oldest of the troop. I say almost always, because
- the established order may be disturbed by violent outbreaks. Then the
- authority passes to another; and, having been re-established by force,
- it is again maintained by habit. Wild horses go in herds: they have a
- chief who marches at their head, whom they confidently follow, and who
- gives the signal for flight or battle.
- "The sheep which we have raised follows us, but it follows in company
- with the flock in the midst of which it was born. It regards man AS THE
- CHIEF OF ITS FLOCK.... Man is regarded by domestic animals as a member
- of their society. All that he has to do is to get himself accepted by
- them as an associate: he soon becomes their chief, in consequence of his
- superior intelligence. He does not, then, change the NATURAL CONDITION
- of these animals, as Buffon has said. On the contrary, he uses this
- natural condition to his own advantage; in other words, he finds
- SOCIABLE animals, and renders them DOMESTIC by becoming their associate
- and chief. Thus, the DOMESTICITY of animals is only a special condition,
- a simple modification, a definitive consequence of their SOCIABILITY.
- All domestic animals are by nature sociable animals."...--Flourens:
- Summary of the Observations of F. Cuvier.
- Sociable animals follow their chief by INSTINCT; but take notice of the
- fact (which F. Cuvier omitted to state), that the function of the chief
- is altogether one of INTELLIGENCE. The chief does not teach the others
- to associate, to unite under his lead, to reproduce their kind, to
- take to flight, or to defend themselves. Concerning each of these
- particulars, his subordinates are as well informed as he. But it is the
- chief who, by his accumulated experience, provides against accidents; he
- it is whose private intelligence supplements, in difficult situations,
- the general instinct; he it is who deliberates, decides, and leads; he
- it is, in short, whose enlightened prudence regulates the public routine
- for the greatest good of all.
- Man (naturally a sociable being) naturally follows a chief. Originally,
- the chief is the father, the patriarch, the elder; in other words, the
- good and wise man, whose functions, consequently, are exclusively of a
- reflective and intellectual nature. The human race--like all other
- races of sociable animals--has its instincts, its innate faculties, its
- general ideas, and its categories of sentiment and reason. Its chiefs,
- legislators, or kings have devised nothing, supposed nothing, imagined
- nothing. They have only guided society by their accumulated experience,
- always however in conformity with opinions and beliefs.
- Those philosophers who (carrying into morals and into history their
- gloomy and factious whims) affirm that the human race had originally
- neither chiefs nor kings, know nothing of the nature of man. Royalty,
- and absolute royalty, is--as truly and more truly than democracy--a
- primitive form of government. Perceiving that, in the remotest ages,
- crowns and kingships were worn by heroes, brigands, and knight-errants,
- they confound the two things,--royalty and despotism. But royalty dates
- from the creation of man; it existed in the age of negative communism.
- Ancient heroism (and the despotism which it engendered) commenced only
- with the first manifestation of the idea of justice; that is, with the
- reign of force. As soon as the strongest, in the comparison of merits,
- was decided to be the best, the oldest had to abandon his position, and
- royalty became despotic.
- The spontaneous, instinctive, and--so to speak--physiological origin of
- royalty gives it, in the beginning, a superhuman character. The
- nations connected it with the gods, from whom they said the first kings
- descended. This notion was the origin of the divine genealogies of royal
- families, the incarnations of gods, and the messianic fables. From it
- sprang the doctrine of divine right, which is still championed by a few
- singular characters.
- Royalty was at first elective, because--at a time when man produced but
- little and possessed nothing--property was too weak to establish the
- principle of heredity, and secure to the son the throne of his father;
- but as soon as fields were cleared, and cities built, each function
- was, like every thing else, appropriated, and hereditary kingships and
- priesthoods were the result. The principle of heredity was carried into
- even the most ordinary professions,--a circumstance which led to class
- distinctions, pride of station, and abjection of the common people, and
- which confirms my assertion, concerning the principle of patrimonial
- succession, that it is a method suggested by Nature of filling vacancies
- in business, and completing unfinished tasks.
- From time to time, ambition caused usurpers, or SUPPLANTERS of kings,
- to start up; and, in consequence, some were called kings by right, or
- legitimate kings, and others TYRANTS. But we must not let these names
- deceive us. There have been execrable kings, and very tolerable tyrants.
- Royalty may always be good, when it is the only possible form of
- government; legitimate it is never. Neither heredity, nor election,
- nor universal suffrage, nor the excellence of the sovereign, nor the
- consecration of religion and of time, can make royalty legitimate.
- Whatever form it takes,--monarchic, oligarchic, or democratic,--royalty,
- or the government of man by man, is illegitimate and absurd.
- Man, in order to procure as speedily as possible the most thorough
- satisfaction of his wants, seeks RULE. In the beginning, this rule is
- to him living, visible, and tangible. It is his father, his master, his
- king. The more ignorant man is, the more obedient he is, and the more
- absolute is his confidence in his guide. But, it being a law of man's
- nature to conform to rule,--that is, to discover it by his powers of
- reflection and reason,--man reasons upon the commands of his chiefs.
- Now, such reasoning as that is a protest against authority,--a beginning
- of disobedience. At the moment that man inquires into the motives which
- govern the will of his sovereign,--at that moment man revolts. If
- he obeys no longer because the king commands, but because the king
- demonstrates the wisdom of his commands, it may be said that henceforth
- he will recognize no authority, and that he has become his own king.
- Unhappy he who shall dare to command him, and shall offer, as his
- authority, only the vote of the majority; for, sooner or later, the
- minority will become the majority, and this imprudent despot will be
- overthrown, and all his laws annihilated.
- In proportion as society becomes enlightened, royal authority
- diminishes. That is a fact to which all history bears witness. At the
- birth of nations, men reflect and reason in vain. Without methods,
- without principles, not knowing how to use their reason, they cannot
- judge of the justice of their conclusions. Then the authority of kings
- is immense, no knowledge having been acquired with which to contradict
- it. But, little by little, experience produces habits, which develop
- into customs; then the customs are formulated in maxims, laid down as
- principles,--in short, transformed into laws, to which the king, the
- living law, has to bow. There comes a time when customs and laws are so
- numerous that the will of the prince is, so to speak, entwined by the
- public will; and that, on taking the crown, he is obliged to swear that
- he will govern in conformity with established customs and usages; and
- that he is but the executive power of a society whose laws are made
- independently of him.
- Up to this point, all is done instinctively, and, as it were,
- unconsciously; but see where this movement must end.
- By means of self-instruction and the acquisition of ideas, man finally
- acquires the idea of SCIENCE,--that is, of a system of knowledge in
- harmony with the reality of things, and inferred from observation.
- He searches for the science, or the system, of inanimate bodies,--the
- system of organic bodies, the system of the human mind, and the system
- of the universe: why should he not also search for the system of
- society? But, having reached this height, he comprehends that political
- truth, or the science of politics, exists quite independently of
- the will of sovereigns, the opinion of majorities, and popular
- beliefs,--that kings, ministers, magistrates, and nations, as wills,
- have no connection with the science, and are worthy of no consideration.
- He comprehends, at the same time, that, if man is born a sociable being,
- the authority of his father over him ceases on the day when, his mind
- being formed and his education finished, he becomes the associate of his
- father; that his true chief and his king is the demonstrated truth; that
- politics is a science, not a stratagem; and that the function of the
- legislator is reduced, in the last analysis, to the methodical search
- for truth.
- Thus, in a given society, the authority of man over man is inversely
- proportional to the stage of intellectual development which that
- society has reached; and the probable duration of that authority can
- be calculated from the more or less general desire for a true
- government,--that is, for a scientific government. And just as the right
- of force and the right of artifice retreat before the steady advance
- of justice, and must finally be extinguished in equality, so the
- sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of the reason, and
- must at last be lost in scientific socialism. Property and royalty
- have been crumbling to pieces ever since the world began. As man seeks
- justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.
- ANARCHY,--the absence of a master, of a sovereign, [30]--such is the
- form of government to which we are every day approximating, and which
- our accustomed habit of taking man for our rule, and his will for law,
- leads us to regard as the height of disorder and the expression of
- chaos. The story is told, that a citizen of Paris in the seventeenth
- century having heard it said that in Venice there was no king, the
- good man could not recover from his astonishment, and nearly died from
- laughter at the mere mention of so ridiculous a thing. So strong is our
- prejudice. As long as we live, we want a chief or chiefs; and at this
- very moment I hold in my hand a brochure, whose author--a zealous
- communist--dreams, like a second Marat, of the dictatorship. The most
- advanced among us are those who wish the greatest possible number of
- sovereigns,--their most ardent wish is for the royalty of the National
- Guard. Soon, undoubtedly, some one, jealous of the citizen militia, will
- say, "Everybody is king." But, when he has spoken, I will say, in my
- turn, "Nobody is king; we are, whether we will or no, associated."
- Every question of domestic politics must be decided by departmental
- statistics; every question of foreign politics is an affair of
- international statistics. The science of government rightly belongs
- to one of the sections of the Academy of Sciences, whose permanent
- secretary is necessarily prime minister; and, since every citizen may
- address a memoir to the Academy, every citizen is a legislator. But, as
- the opinion of no one is of any value until its truth has been proven,
- no one can substitute his will for reason,--nobody is king.
- All questions of legislation and politics are matters of science, not of
- opinion. The legislative power belongs only to the reason, methodically
- recognized and demonstrated. To attribute to any power whatever the
- right of veto or of sanction, is the last degree of tyranny. Justice
- and legality are two things as independent of our approval as is
- mathematical truth. To compel, they need only to be known; to be known,
- they need only to be considered and studied. What, then, is the nation,
- if it is not the sovereign,--if it is not the source of the legislative
- power?
- The nation is the guardian of the law--the nation is the EXECUTIVE
- POWER. Every citizen may assert: "This is true; that is just;" but his
- opinion controls no one but himself. That the truth which he proclaims
- may become a law, it must be recognized. Now, what is it to recognize a
- law? It is to verify a mathematical or a metaphysical calculation; it is
- to repeat an experiment, to observe a phenomenon, to establish a fact.
- Only the nation has the right to say, "Be it known and decreed."
- I confess that this is an overturning of received ideas, and that I seem
- to be attempting to revolutionize our political system; but I beg the
- reader to consider that, having begun with a paradox, I must, if I
- reason correctly, meet with paradoxes at every step, and must end with
- paradoxes. For the rest, I do not see how the liberty of citizens would
- be endangered by entrusting to their hands, instead of the pen of
- the legislator, the sword of the law. The executive power, belonging
- properly to the will, cannot be confided to too many proxies. That is
- the true sovereignty of the nation. [31]
- The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign--for all these
- titles are synonymous--imposes his will as law, and suffers neither
- contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative
- and the executive power at once. Accordingly, the substitution of the
- scientific and true law for the royal will is accomplished only by a
- terrible struggle; and this constant substitution is, after property,
- the most potent element in history, the most prolific source of
- political disturbances. Examples are too numerous and too striking to
- require enumeration.
- Now, property necessarily engenders despotism,--the government of
- caprice, the reign of libidinous pleasure. That is so clearly the
- essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember
- what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right
- to USE and ABUSE. If, then, government is economy,--if its object
- is production and consumption, and the distribution of labor and
- products,--how is government possible while property exists? And
- if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and
- despotic kings--kings in proportion to their _facultes bonitaires_? And
- if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property,
- absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of
- proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion?
- % 3.--Determination of the third form of Society. Conclusion.
- Then, no government, no public economy, no administration, is possible,
- which is based upon property.
- Communism seeks EQUALITY and LAW. Property, born of the sovereignty of
- the reason, and the sense of personal merit, wishes above all things
- INDEPENDENCE and PROPORTIONALITY.
- But communism, mistaking uniformity for law, and levelism for
- equality, becomes tyrannical and unjust. Property, by its despotism and
- encroachments, soon proves itself oppressive and anti-social.
- The objects of communism and property are good--their results are bad.
- And why? Because both are exclusive, and each disregards two elements
- of society. Communism rejects independence and proportionality; property
- does not satisfy equality and law.
- Now, if we imagine a society based upon these four
- principles,--equality, law, independence, and proportionality,--we
- find:--
- 1. That EQUALITY, consisting only in EQUALITY OF CONDITIONS, that is, OF
- MEANS, and not in EQUALITY OF COMFORT,--which it is the business of the
- laborers to achieve for themselves, when provided with equal means,--in
- no way violates justice and equite.
- 2. That LAW, resulting from the knowledge of facts, and consequently
- based upon necessity itself, never clashes with independence.
- 3. That individual INDEPENDENCE, or the autonomy of the private reason,
- originating in the difference in talents and capacities, can exist
- without danger within the limits of the law.
- 4. That PROPORTIONALITY, being admitted only in the sphere of
- intelligence and sentiment, and not as regards material objects, may be
- observed without violating justice or social equality.
- This third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property, we
- will call LIBERTY. [32]
- In determining the nature of liberty, we do not unite communism and
- property indiscriminately; such a process would be absurd eclecticism.
- We search by analysis for those elements in each which are true, and
- in harmony with the laws of Nature and society, disregarding the rest
- altogether; and the result gives us an adequate expression of the
- natural form of human society,--in one word, liberty.
- Liberty is equality, because liberty exists only in society; and in the
- absence of equality there is no society.
- Liberty is anarchy, because it does not admit the government of the
- will, but only the authority of the law; that is, of necessity.
- Liberty is infinite variety, because it respects all wills within the
- limits of the law.
- Liberty is proportionality, because it allows the utmost latitude to the
- ambition for merit, and the emulation of glory.
- We can now say, in the words of M. Cousin: "Our principle is true; it is
- good, it is social; let us not fear to push it to its ultimate."
- Man's social nature becoming JUSTICE through reflection, EQUITE through
- the classification of capacities, and having LIBERTY for its formula,
- is the true basis of morality,--the principle and regulator of all our
- actions. This is the universal motor, which philosophy is searching for,
- which religion strengthens, which egotism supplants, and whose place
- pure reason never can fill. DUTY and RIGHT are born of NEED, which, when
- considered in connection with others, is a RIGHT, and when considered in
- connection with ourselves, a DUTY.
- We need to eat and sleep. It is our right to procure those things which
- are necessary to rest and nourishment. It is our duty to use them when
- Nature requires it.
- We need to labor in order to live. To do so is both our right and our
- duty.
- We need to love our wives and children. It is our duty to protect and
- support them. It is our right to be loved in preference to all others.
- Conjugal fidelity is justice. Adultery is high treason against society.
- We need to exchange our products for other products. It is our right
- that this exchange should be one of equivalents; and since we consume
- before we produce, it would be our duty, if we could control the matter,
- to see to it that our last product shall follow our last consumption.
- Suicide is fraudulent bankruptcy.
- We need to live our lives according to the dictates of our reason. It
- is our right to maintain our freedom. It is our duty to respect that of
- others.
- We need to be appreciated by our fellows. It is our duty to deserve
- their praise. It is our right to be judged by our works.
- Liberty is not opposed to the rights of succession and bequest. It
- contents itself with preventing violations of equality. "Choose," it
- tells us, "between two legacies, but do not take them both." All our
- legislation concerning transmissions, entailments, adoptions, and, if I
- may venture to use such a word, COADJUTORERIES, requires remodelling.
- Liberty favors emulation, instead of destroying it. In social equality,
- emulation consists in accomplishing under like conditions; it is its own
- reward. No one suffers by the victory.
- Liberty applauds self-sacrifice, and honors it with its votes, but it
- can dispense with it. Justice alone suffices to maintain the social
- equilibrium. Self-sacrifice is an act of supererogation. Happy, however,
- the man who can say, "I sacrifice myself." [33]
- Liberty is essentially an organizing force. To insure equality between
- men and peace among nations, agriculture and industry, and the centres
- of education, business, and storage, must be distributed according to
- the climate and the geographical position of the country, the nature of
- the products, the character and natural talents of the inhabitants, &c.,
- in proportions so just, so wise, so harmonious, that in no place shall
- there ever be either an excess or a lack of population, consumption, and
- products. There commences the science of public and private right,
- the true political economy. It is for the writers on jurisprudence,
- henceforth unembarrassed by the false principle of property, to describe
- the new laws, and bring peace upon earth. Knowledge and genius they do
- not lack; the foundation is now laid for them. [34]
- I have accomplished my task; property is conquered, never again to
- arise. Wherever this work is read and discussed, there will be deposited
- the germ of death to property; there, sooner or later, privilege and
- servitude will disappear, and the despotism of will will give place to
- the reign of reason. What sophisms, indeed, what prejudices
- (however obstinate) can stand before the simplicity of the following
- propositions:--
- I. Individual POSSESSION [35] is the condition of social life; five
- thousand years of property demonstrate it. PROPERTY is the suicide of
- society. Possession is a right; property is against right. Suppress
- property while maintaining possession, and, by this simple modification
- of the principle, you will revolutionize law, government, economy, and
- institutions; you will drive evil from the face of the earth.
- II. All having an equal right of occupancy, possession varies with the
- number of possessors; property cannot establish itself.
- III. The effect of labor being the same for all, property is lost in the
- common prosperity.
- IV. All human labor being the result of collective force, all property
- becomes, in consequence, collective and unitary. To speak more exactly,
- labor destroys property.
- V. Every capacity for labor being, like every instrument of labor, an
- accumulated capital, and a collective property, inequality of wages
- and fortunes (on the ground of inequality of capacities) is, therefore,
- injustice and robbery.
- VI. The necessary conditions of commerce are the liberty of the
- contracting parties and the equivalence of the products exchanged.
- Now, value being expressed by the amount of time and outlay which each
- product costs, and liberty being inviolable, the wages of laborers (like
- their rights and duties) should be equal.
- VII. Products are bought only by products. Now, the condition of all
- exchange being equivalence of products, profit is impossible and unjust.
- Observe this elementary principle of economy, and pauperism, luxury,
- oppression, vice, crime, and hunger will disappear from our midst.
- VIII. Men are associated by the physical and mathematical law of
- production, before they are voluntarily associated by choice. Therefore,
- equality of conditions is demanded by justice; that is, by strict social
- law: esteem, friendship, gratitude, admiration, all fall within the
- domain of EQUITABLE or PROPORTIONAL law only.
- IX. Free association, liberty--whose sole function is to maintain
- equality in the means of production and equivalence in exchanges--is the
- only possible, the only just, the only true form of society.
- X. Politics is the science of liberty. The government of man by man
- (under whatever name it be disguised) is oppression. Society finds its
- highest perfection in the union of order with anarchy.
- The old civilization has run its race; a new sun is rising, and will
- soon renew the face of the earth. Let the present generation perish, let
- the old prevaricators die in the desert! the holy earth shall not cover
- their bones. Young man, exasperated by the corruption of the age, and
- absorbed in your zeal for justice!--if your country is dear to you,
- and if you have the interests of humanity at heart, have the courage to
- espouse the cause of liberty! Cast off your old selfishness, and plunge
- into the rising flood of popular equality! There your regenerate soul
- will acquire new life and vigor; your enervated genius will recover
- unconquerable energy; and your heart, perhaps already withered, will be
- rejuvenated! Every thing will wear a different look to your illuminated
- vision; new sentiments will engender new ideas within you; religion,
- morality, poetry, art, language will appear before you in nobler and
- fairer forms; and thenceforth, sure of your faith, and thoughtfully
- enthusiastic, you will hail the dawn of universal regeneration!
- And you, sad victims of an odious law!--you, whom a jesting world
- despoils and outrages!--you, whose labor has always been fruitless,
- and whose rest has been without hope,--take courage! your tears are
- numbered! The fathers have sown in affliction, the children shall reap
- in rejoicings!
- O God of liberty! God of equality! Thou who didst place in my heart
- the sentiment of justice, before my reason could comprehend it, hear
- my ardent prayer! Thou hast dictated all that I have written; Thou hast
- shaped my thought; Thou hast directed my studies; Thou hast weaned my
- mind from curiosity and my heart from attachment, that I might publish
- Thy truth to the master and the slave. I have spoken with what force and
- talent Thou hast given me: it is Thine to finish the work. Thou knowest
- whether I seek my welfare or Thy glory, O God of liberty! Ah! perish
- my memory, and let humanity be free! Let me see from my obscurity
- the people at last instructed; let noble teachers enlighten them; let
- generous spirits guide them! Abridge, if possible, the time of our
- trial; stifle pride and avarice in equality; annihilate this love of
- glory which enslaves us; teach these poor children that in the bosom
- of liberty there are neither heroes nor great men! Inspire the powerful
- man, the rich man, him whose name my lips shall never pronounce in Thy
- presence, with a horror of his crimes; let him be the first to apply for
- admission to the redeemed society; let the promptness of his repentance
- be the ground of his forgiveness! Then, great and small, wise and
- foolish, rich and poor, will unite in an ineffable fraternity; and,
- singing in unison a new hymn, will rebuild Thy altar, O God of liberty
- and equality!
- END OF FIRST MEMOIR.
- WHAT IS PROPERTY? SECOND MEMOIR
- A LETTER TO M. BLANQUI.
- SECOND MEMOIR.
- PARIS, April 1, 1841.
- MONSIEUR,--
- Before resuming my "Inquiries into Government and Property," it is
- fitting, for the satisfaction of some worthy people, and also in the
- interest of order, that I should make to you a plain, straightforward
- explanation. In a much-governed State, no one would be allowed to
- attack the external form of the society, and the groundwork of its
- institutions, until he had established his right to do so,--first, by
- his morality; second, by his capacity; and, third, by the purity of
- his intentions. Any one who, wishing to publish a treatise upon the
- constitution of the country, could not satisfy this threefold condition,
- would be obliged to procure the endorsement of a responsible patron
- possessing the requisite qualifications.
- But we Frenchmen have the liberty of the press. This grand right--the
- sword of thought, which elevates the virtuous citizen to the rank of
- legislator, and makes the malicious citizen an agent of discord--frees
- us from all preliminary responsibility to the law; but it does not
- release us from our internal obligation to render a public account
- of our sentiments and thoughts. I have used, in all its fulness, and
- concerning an important question, the right which the charter grants
- us. I come to-day, sir, to submit my conscience to your judgment, and my
- feeble insight to your discriminating reason. You have criticised in a
- kindly spirit--I had almost said with partiality for the writer--a work
- which teaches a doctrine that you thought it your duty to condemn. "The
- Academy of Moral and Political Sciences," said you in your report, "can
- accept the conclusions of the author only as far as it likes." I venture
- to hope, sir, that, after you have read this letter, if your prudence
- still restrains you, your fairness will induce you to do me justice.
- MEN, EQUAL IN THE DIGNITY OF THEIR PERSONS AND EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW,
- SHOULD BE EQUAL IN THEIR CONDITIONS,--such is the thesis which I
- maintained and developed in a memoir bearing the title, "What is
- Property? or, An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government."
- The idea of social equality, even in individual fortunes, has in all
- ages besieged, like a vague presentiment, the human imagination. Poets
- have sung of it in their hymns; philosophers have dreamed of it in their
- Utopias; priests teach it, but only for the spiritual world. The people,
- governed by it, never have had faith in it; and the civil power is never
- more disturbed than by the fables of the age of gold and the reign
- of Astrea. A year ago, however, this idea received a scientific
- demonstration, which has not yet been satisfactorily answered, and,
- permit me to add, never will be. This demonstration, owing to its
- slightly impassioned style, its method of reasoning,--which was so
- at variance with that employed by the generally recognized
- authorities,--and the importance and novelty of its conclusions, was of
- a nature to cause some alarm; and might have been dangerous, had it not
- been--as you, sir, so well said--a sealed letter, so far as the general
- public was concerned, addressed only to men of intelligence. I was
- glad to see that through its metaphysical dress you recognized the wise
- foresight of the author; and I thank you for it. May God grant that my
- intentions, which are wholly peaceful, may never be charged upon me as
- treasonable!
- Like a stone thrown into a mass of serpents, the First Memoir on
- Property excited intense animosity, and aroused the passions of many.
- But, while some wished the author and his work to be publicly denounced,
- others found in them simply the solution of the fundamental problems of
- society; a few even basing evil speculations upon the new light which
- they had obtained. It was not to be expected that a system of inductions
- abstractly gathered together, and still more abstractly expressed, would
- be understood with equal accuracy in its ensemble and in each of its
- parts.
- To find the law of equality, no longer in charity and self-sacrifice
- (which are not binding in their nature), but in justice; to base
- equality of functions upon equality of persons; to determine the
- absolute principle of exchange; to neutralize the inequality of
- individual faculties by collective force; to establish an equation
- between property and robbery; to change the law of succession without
- destroying the principle; to maintain the human personality in a
- system of absolute association, and to save liberty from the chains
- of communism; to synthetize the monarchical and democratic forms of
- government; to reverse the division of powers; to give the executive
- power to the nation, and to make legislation a positive, fixed,
- and absolute science,--what a series of paradoxes! what a string of
- delusions! if I may not say, what a chain of truths! But it is not
- my purpose here to pass upon the theory of the right of possession. I
- discuss no dogmas. My only object is to justify my views, and to show
- that, in writing as I did, I not only exercised a right, but performed a
- duty.
- Yes, I have attacked property, and shall attack it again; but, sir,
- before demanding that I shall make the amende honorable for having
- obeyed my conscience and spoken the exact truth, condescend, I beg of
- you, to cast a glance at the events which are happening around us; look
- at our deputies, our magistrates, our philosophers, our ministers, our
- professors, and our publicists; examine their methods of dealing with
- the matter of property; count up with me the restrictions placed upon
- it every day in the name of the public welfare; measure the breaches
- already made; estimate those which society thinks of making hereafter;
- add the ideas concerning property held by all theories in common;
- interrogate history, and then tell me what will be left, half a century
- hence, of this old right of property; and, thus perceiving that I have
- so many accomplices, you will immediately declare me innocent.
- What is the law of expropriation on the ground of public utility, which
- everybody favors, and which is even thought too lenient? [36]
- A flagrant violation of the right of property. Society indemnifies,
- it is said, the dispossessed proprietor; but does it return to him the
- traditional associations, the poetic charm, and the family pride which
- accompany property? Naboth, and the miller of Sans-Souci, would have
- protested against French law, as they protested against the caprice of
- their kings. "It is the field of our fathers," they would have cried,
- "and we will not sell it!" Among the ancients, the refusal of the
- individual limited the powers of the State. The Roman law bowed to
- the will of the citizen, and an emperor--Commodus, if I remember
- rightly--abandoned the project of enlarging the forum out of respect for
- the rights of the occupants who refused to abdicate. Property is a
- real right, _jus_ _in re_,--a right inherent in the thing, and whose
- principle lies in the external manifestation of man's will. Man leaves
- his imprint, stamps his character, upon the objects of his handiwork.
- This plastic force of man, as the modern jurists say, is the seal which,
- set upon matter, makes it holy. Whoever lays hands upon it, against the
- proprietor's will, does violence to the latter's personality. And yet,
- when an administrative committee saw fit to declare that public utility
- required it, property had to give way to the general will. Soon, in
- the name of public utility, methods of cultivation and conditions of
- enjoyment will be prescribed; inspectors of agriculture and manufactures
- will be appointed; property will be taken away from unskilful hands,
- and entrusted to laborers who are more deserving of it; and a general
- superintendence of production will be established. It is not two years
- since I saw a proprietor destroy a forest more than five hundred acres
- in extent. If public utility had interfered, that forest--the only one
- for miles around--would still be standing.
- But, it is said, expropriation on the ground of public utility is only
- an exception which confirms the principle, and bears testimony in
- favor of the right. Very well; but from this exception we will pass to
- another, from that to a third, and so on from exceptions to exceptions,
- until we have reduced the rule to a pure abstraction.
- How many supporters do you think, sir, can be claimed for the project
- of the conversion of the public funds? I venture to say that everybody
- favors it, except the fund-holders. Now, this so-called conversion is
- an extensive expropriation, and in this case with no indemnity whatever.
- The public funds are so much real estate, the income from which the
- proprietor counts upon with perfect safety, and which owes its value
- to the tacit promise of the government to pay interest upon it at the
- established rate, until the fund-holder applies for redemption. For,
- if the income is liable to diminution, it is less profitable than
- house-rent or farm-rent, whose rates may rise or fall according to the
- fluctuations in the market; and in that case, what inducement has the
- capitalist to invest his money in the State? When, then, you force the
- fund-holder to submit to a diminution of interest, you make him bankrupt
- to the extent of the diminution; and since, in consequence of the
- conversion, an equally profitable investment becomes impossible, you
- depreciate his property.
- That such a measure may be justly executed, it must be generalized; that
- is, the law which provides for it must decree also that interest on sums
- lent on deposit or on mortgage throughout the realm, as well as house
- and farm-rents, shall be reduced to three per cent. This simultaneous
- reduction of all kinds of income would be not a whit more difficult to
- accomplish than the proposed conversion; and, further, it would offer
- the advantage of forestalling at one blow all objections to it, at the
- same time that it would insure a just assessment of the land-tax. See!
- If at the moment of conversion a piece of real estate yields an income
- of one thousand francs, after the new law takes effect it will yield
- only six hundred francs. Now, allowing the tax to be an aliquot
- part--one-fourth for example--of the income derived from each piece of
- property, it is clear on the one hand that the proprietor would not, in
- order to lighten his share of the tax, underestimate the value of his
- property; since, house and farm-rents being fixed by the value of the
- capital, and the latter being measured by the tax, to depreciate his
- real estate would be to reduce his revenue. On the other hand, it is
- equally evident that the same proprietors could not overestimate the
- value of their property, in order to increase their incomes beyond the
- limits of the law, since the tenants and farmers, with their old leases
- in their hands, would enter a protest.
- Such, sir, must be the result sooner or later of the conversion which
- has been so long demanded; otherwise, the financial operation of which
- we are speaking would be a crying injustice, unless intended as a
- stepping-stone. This last motive seems the most plausible one; for in
- spite of the clamors of interested parties, and the flagrant violation
- of certain rights, the public conscience is bound to fulfil its desire,
- and is no more affected when charged with attacking property, than
- when listening to the complaints of the bondholders. In this case,
- instinctive justice belies legal justice.
- Who has not heard of the inextricable confusion into which the Chamber
- of Deputies was thrown last year, while discussing the question of
- colonial and native sugars? Did they leave these two industries to
- themselves? The native manufacturer was ruined by the colonist. To
- maintain the beet-root, the cane had to be taxed. To protect the
- property of the one, it became necessary to violate the property of the
- other. The most remarkable feature of this business was precisely that
- to which the least attention was paid; namely, that, in one way or
- another, property had to be violated. Did they impose on each industry
- a proportional tax, so as to preserve a balance in the market? They
- created a maximum PRICE for each variety of sugar; and, as this maximum
- PRICE was not the same, they attacked property in two ways,--on the one
- hand, interfering with the liberty of trade; on the other, disregarding
- the equality of proprietors. Did they suppress the beet-root by granting
- an indemnity to the manufacturer? They sacrificed the property of the
- tax-payer. Finally, did they prefer to cultivate the two varieties of
- sugar at the nation's expense, just as different varieties of tobacco
- are cultivated? They abolished, so far as the sugar industry was
- concerned, the right of property. This last course, being the most
- social, would have been certainly the best; but, if property is the
- necessary basis of civilization, how is this deep-seated antagonism to
- be explained? [37]
- Not satisfied with the power of dispossessing a citizen on the ground
- of public utility, they want also to dispossess him on the ground of
- PRIVATE UTILITY. For a long time, a revision of the law concerning
- mortgages was clamored for; a process was demanded, in behalf of all
- kinds of credit and in the interest of even the debtors themselves,
- which would render the expropriation of real estate as prompt, as easy,
- and as effective as that which follows a commercial protest. The Chamber
- of Deputies, in the early part of this year, 1841, discussed this
- project, and the law was passed almost unanimously. There is nothing
- more just, nothing more reasonable, nothing more philosophical
- apparently, than the motives which gave rise to this reform.
- I. Formerly, the small proprietor whose obligation had arrived at
- maturity, and who found himself unable to meet it, had to employ all
- that he had left, after being released from his debt, in defraying the
- legal costs. Henceforth, the promptness of expropriation will save him
- from total ruin. 2. The difficulties in the way of payment arrested
- credit, and prevented the employment of capital in agricultural
- enterprises. This cause of distrust no longer existing, capitalists will
- find new markets, agriculture will rapidly develop, and farmers will
- be the first to enjoy the benefit of the new law. 3. Finally, it was
- iniquitous and absurd, that, on account of a protested note, a poor
- manufacturer should see in twenty-four hours his business arrested, his
- labor suspended, his merchandise seized, his machinery sold at auction,
- and finally himself led off to prison, while two years were sometimes
- necessary to expropriate the most miserable piece of real estate.
- These arguments, and others besides, you clearly stated, sir, in your
- first lectures of this academic year.
- But, when stating these excellent arguments, did you ask yourself, sir,
- whither would tend such a transformation of our system of mortgages?...
- To monetize, if I may say so, landed property; to accumulate it within
- portfolios; to separate the laborer from the soil, man from Nature; to
- make him a wanderer over the face of the earth; to eradicate from
- his heart every trace of family feeling, national pride, and love of
- country; to isolate him more and more; to render him indifferent to
- all around him; to concentrate his love upon one object,--money; and,
- finally, by the dishonest practices of usury, to monopolize the land
- to the profit of a financial aristocracy,--a worthy auxiliary of that
- industrial feudality whose pernicious influence we begin to feel so
- bitterly. Thus, little by little, the subordination of the laborer to
- the idler, the restoration of abolished castes, and the distinction
- between patrician and plebeian, would be effected; thus, thanks to the
- new privileges granted to the property of the capitalists, that of the
- small and intermediate proprietors would gradually disappear, and with
- it the whole class of free and honest laborers. This certainly is not
- my plan for the abolition of property. Far from mobilizing the soil, I
- would, if possible, immobilize even the functions of pure intelligence,
- so that society might be the fulfilment of the intentions of Nature,
- who gave us our first possession, the land. For, if the instrument
- or capital of production is the mark of the laborer, it is also his
- pedestal, his support, his country, and, as the Psalmist says, THE PLACE
- OF HIS ACTIVITY AND HIS REST. [38]
- Let us examine more closely still the inevitable and approaching result
- of the last law concerning judicial sales and mortgages. Under
- the system of competition which is killing us, and whose necessary
- expression is a plundering and tyrannical government, the farmer will
- need always capital in order to repair his losses, and will be forced to
- contract loans. Always depending upon the future for the payment of his
- debts, he will be deceived in his hope, and surprised by maturity. For
- what is there more prompt, more unexpected, more abbreviatory of space
- and time, than the maturity of an obligation? I address this question
- to all whom this pitiless Nemesis pursues, and even troubles in their
- dreams. Now, under the new law, the expropriation of a debtor will be
- effected a hundred times more rapidly; then, also, spoliation will be
- a hundred times surer, and the free laborer will pass a hundred times
- sooner from his present condition to that of a serf attached to the
- soil. Formerly, the length of time required to effect the seizure
- curbed the usurer's avidity, gave the borrower an opportunity to recover
- himself, and gave rise to a transaction between him and his creditor
- which might result finally in a complete release. Now, the debtor's
- sentence is irrevocable: he has but a few days of grace.
- And what advantages are promised by this law as an offset to this sword
- of Damocles, suspended by a single hair over the head of the unfortunate
- husbandman? The expenses of seizure will be much less, it is said; but
- will the interest on the borrowed capital be less exorbitant? For, after
- all, it is interest which impoverishes the peasant and leads to his
- expropriation. That the law may be in harmony with its principle, that
- it may be truly inspired by that spirit of justice for which it is
- commended, it must--while facilitating expropriation--lower the legal
- price of money. Otherwise, the reform concerning mortgages is but a trap
- set for small proprietors,--a legislative trick.
- Lower interest on money! But, as we have just seen, that is to limit
- property. Here, sir, you shall make your own defence. More than once, in
- your learned lectures, I have heard you deplore the precipitancy of the
- Chambers, who, without previous study and without profound knowledge
- of the subject, voted almost unanimously to maintain the statutes and
- privileges of the Bank. Now these privileges, these statutes, this vote
- of the Chambers, mean simply this,--that the market price of specie,
- at five or six per cent., is not too high, and that the conditions
- of exchange, discount, and circulation, which generally double this
- interest, are none too severe. So the government thinks. M. Blanqui--a
- professor of political economy, paid by the State--maintains the
- contrary, and pretends to demonstrate, by decisive arguments, the
- necessity of a reform. Who, then, best understands the interests of
- property,--the State, or M. Blanqui?
- If specie could be borrowed at half the present rate, the revenues from
- all sorts of property would soon be reduced one-half also. For example:
- when it costs less to build a house than to hire one, when it is cheaper
- to clear a field than to procure one already cleared, competition
- inevitably leads to a reduction of house and farm-rents, since the
- surest way to depreciate active capital is to increase its amount. But
- it is a law of political economy that an increase of production augments
- the mass of available capital, consequently tends to raise wages, and
- finally to annihilate interest. Then, proprietors are interested in
- maintaining the statutes and privileges of the Bank; then, a reform in
- this matter would compromise the right of increase; then, the peers and
- deputies are better informed than Professor Blanqui.
- But these same deputies,--so jealous of their privileges whenever
- the equalizing effects of a reform are within their intellectual
- horizon,--what did they do a few days before they passed the law
- concerning judicial sales? They formed a conspiracy against property!
- Their law to regulate the labor of children in factories will, without
- doubt, prevent the manufacturer from compelling a child to labor more
- than so many hours a day; but it will not force him to increase the pay
- of the child, nor that of its father. To-day, in the interest of health,
- we diminish the subsistence of the poor; to-morrow it will be necessary
- to protect them by fixing their MINIMUM wages. But to fix their minimum
- wages is to compel the proprietor, is to force the master to accept his
- workman as an associate, which interferes with freedom and makes mutual
- insurance obligatory. Once entered upon this path, we never shall
- stop. Little by little the government will become manufacturer,
- commission-merchant, and retail dealer.
- It will be the sole proprietor. Why, at all epochs, have the ministers
- of State been so reluctant to meddle with the question of wages?
- Why have they always refused to interfere between the master and the
- workman? Because they knew the touchy and jealous nature of property,
- and, regarding it as the principle of all civilization, felt that to
- meddle with it would be to unsettle the very foundations of society.
- Sad condition of the proprietary regime,--one of inability to exercise
- charity without violating justice! [39]
- And, sir, this fatal consequence which necessity forces upon the State
- is no mere imagination. Even now the legislative power is asked, no
- longer simply to regulate the government of factories, but to create
- factories itself. Listen to the millions of voices shouting on all hands
- for THE ORGANISATION OF LABOR, THE CREATION OF NATIONAL WORKSHOPS!
- The whole laboring class is agitated: it has its journals, organs,
- and representatives. To guarantee labor to the workingman, to balance
- production with sale, to harmonize industrial proprietors, it advocates
- to-day--as a sovereign remedy--one sole head, one national wardenship,
- one huge manufacturing company. For, sir, all this is included in the
- idea of national workshops. On this subject I wish to quote, as proof,
- the views of an illustrious economist, a brilliant mind, a progressive
- intellect, an enthusiastic soul, a true patriot, and yet an official
- defender of the right of property. [40]
- The honorable professor of the Conservatory proposes then,--
- 1. TO CHECK THE CONTINUAL EMIGRATION OF LABORERS FROM THE COUNTRY INTO
- THE CITIES.
- But, to keep the peasant in his village, his residence there must be
- made endurable: to be just to all, the proletaire of the country must be
- treated as well as the proletaire of the city. Reform is needed, then,
- on farms as well as in factories; and, when the government enters the
- workshop, the government must seize the plough! What becomes, during
- this progressive invasion, of independent cultivation, exclusive domain,
- property?
- 2. TO FIX FOR EACH PROFESSION A MODERATE SALARY, VARYING WITH TIME AND
- PLACE AND BASED UPON CERTAIN DATA.
- The object of this measure would be to secure to laborers their
- subsistence, and to proprietors their profits, while obliging the latter
- to sacrifice from motives of prudence, if for no other reason, a portion
- of their income. Now, I say, that this portion, in the long run, would
- swell until at last there would be an equality of enjoyment between the
- proletaire and the proprietor. For, as we have had occasion to remark
- several times already, the interest of the capitalist--in other words
- the increase of the idler--tends, on account of the power of labor, the
- multiplication of products and exchanges, to continually diminish, and,
- by constant reduction, to disappear. So that, in the society proposed
- by M. Blanqui, equality would not be realized at first, but would exist
- potentially; since property, though outwardly seeming to be industrial
- feudality, being no longer a principle of exclusion and encroachment,
- but only a privilege of division, would not be slow, thanks to the
- intellectual and political emancipation of the proletariat, in passing
- into absolute equality,--as absolute at least as any thing can be on
- this earth.
- I omit, for the sake of brevity, the numerous considerations which
- the professor adduces in support of what he calls, too modestly in my
- opinion, his Utopia. They would serve only to prove beyond all question
- that, of all the charlatans of radicalism who fatigue the public ear,
- no one approaches, for depth and clearness of thought, the audacious M.
- Blanqui.
- 3. NATIONAL WORKSHOPS SHOULD BE IN OPERATION ONLY DURING PERIODS OF
- STAGNATION IN ORDINARY INDUSTRIES; AT SUCH TIMES THEY SHOULD BE OPENED
- AS VAST OUTLETS TO THE FLOOD OF THE LABORING POPULATION.
- But, sir, the stoppage of private industry is the result of
- over-production, and insufficient markets. If, then, production
- continues in the national workshops, how will the crisis be terminated?
- Undoubtedly, by the general depreciation of merchandise, and, in the
- last analysis, by the conversion of private workshops into national
- workshops. On the other hand, the government will need capital with
- which to pay its workmen; now, how will this capital be obtained? By
- taxation. And upon what will the tax be levied? Upon property. Then you
- will have proprietary industry sustaining against itself, and at its own
- expense, another industry with which it cannot compete. What, think you,
- will become, in this fatal circle, of the possibility of profit,--in a
- word, of property?
- Thank Heaven! equality of conditions is taught in the public schools;
- let us fear revolutions no longer. The most implacable enemy of property
- could not, if he wished to destroy it, go to work in a wiser and more
- effective way. Courage, then, ministers, deputies, economists! make
- haste to seize this glorious initiative; let the watchwords of equality,
- uttered from the heights of science and power, be repeated in the midst
- of the people; let them thrill the breasts of the proletaires, and carry
- dismay into the ranks of the last representatives of privilege!
- The tendency of society in favor of compelling proprietors to support
- national workshops and public manufactories is so strong that for
- several years, under the name of ELECTORAL REFORM, it has been
- exclusively the question of the day. What is, after all, this electoral
- reform which the people grasp at, as if it were a bait, and which
- so many ambitious persons either call for or denounce? It is the
- acknowledgment of the right of the masses to a voice in the assessment
- of taxes, and the making of the laws; which laws, aiming always at the
- protection of material interests, affect, in a greater or less degree,
- all questions of taxation or wages. Now the people, instructed long
- since by their journals, their dramas, [41] and their songs, [42] know
- to-day that taxation, to be equitably divided, must be graduated, and
- must be borne mainly by the rich,--that it must be levied upon luxuries,
- &c. And be sure that the people, once in the majority in the Chamber,
- will not fail to apply these lessons. Already we have a minister
- of public works. National workshops will follow; and soon, as
- a consequence, the excess of the proprietor's revenue over the
- workingman's wages will be swallowed up in the coffers of the laborers
- of the State. Do you not see that in this way property is gradually
- reduced, as nobility was formerly, to a nominal title, to a distinction
- purely honorary in its nature?
- Either the electoral reform will fail to accomplish that which is hoped
- from it, and will disappoint its innumerable partisans, or else it will
- inevitably result in a transformation of the absolute right under which
- we live into a right of possession; that is, that while, at present,
- property makes the elector, after this reform is accomplished, the
- citizen, the producer will be the possessor. [43] Consequently, the
- radicals are right in saying that the electoral reform is in their eyes
- only a means; but, when they are silent as to the end, they show either
- profound ignorance, or useless dissimulation. There should be no secrets
- or reservations from peoples and powers. He disgraces himself and fails
- in respect for his fellows, who, in publishing his opinions, employs
- evasion and cunning. Before the people act, they need to know the whole
- truth. Unhappy he who shall dare to trifle with them! For the people are
- credulous, but they are strong. Let us tell them, then, that this reform
- which is proposed is only a means,--a means often tried, and hitherto
- without effect,--but that the logical object of the electoral reform is
- equality of fortunes; and that this equality itself is only a new means
- having in view the superior and definitive object of the salvation of
- society, the restoration of morals and religion, and the revival of
- poetry and art.
- This assertion of M. Rossi is not borne out by history. Property is the
- cause of the electoral right, not as a PRESUMPTION OF CAPACITY,--an idea
- which never prevailed until lately, and which is extremely absurd,--but
- as a GUARANTEE OF DEVOTION TO THE ESTABLISHED ORDER. The electoral body
- is a league of those interested in the maintenance of property, against
- those not interested. There are thousands of documents, even official
- documents, to prove this, if necessary. For the rest, the present system
- is only a continuation of the municipal system, which, in the
- middle ages, sprang up in connection with feudalism,--an oppressive,
- mischief-making system, full of petty passions and base intrigues.
- It would be an abuse of the reader's patience to insist further upon
- the tendency of our time towards equality. There are, moreover, so many
- people who denounce the present age, that nothing is gained by exposing
- to their view the popular, scientific, and representative tendencies of
- the nation.
- Prompt to recognize the accuracy of the inferences drawn from
- observation, they confine themselves to a general censure of the facts,
- and an absolute denial of their legitimacy. "What wonder," they say,
- "that this atmosphere of equality intoxicates us, considering all that
- has been said and done during the past ten years!... Do you not see that
- society is dissolving, that a spirit of infatuation is carrying us away?
- All these hopes of regeneration are but forebodings of death; your songs
- of triumph are like the prayers of the departing, your trumpet peals
- announce the baptism of a dying man. Civilization is falling in ruin:
- _Imus, imus, praecipites_!"
- Such people deny God. I might content myself with the reply that
- the spirit of 1830 was the result of the maintenance of the violated
- charter; that this charter arose from the Revolution of '89; that
- '89 implies the States-General's right of remonstrance, and the
- enfranchisement of the communes; that the communes suppose feudalism,
- which in its turn supposes invasion, Roman law, Christianity, &c.
- But it is necessary to look further. We must penetrate to the very heart
- of ancient institutions, plunge into the social depths, and uncover this
- indestructible leaven of equality which the God of justice breathed into
- our souls, and which manifests itself in all our works.
- Labor is man's contemporary; it is a duty, since it is a condition of
- existence: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." It is more
- than a duty, it is a mission: "God put the man into the garden to dress
- it." I add that labor is the cause and means of equality.
- Cast away upon a desert island two men: one large, strong, and active;
- the other weak, timid, and domestic. The latter will die of hunger;
- while the other, a skilful hunter, an expert fisherman, and an
- indefatigable husbandman, will overstock himself with provisions. What
- greater inequality, in this state of Nature so dear to the heart of Jean
- Jacques, could be imagined! But let these two men meet and associate
- themselves: the second immediately attends to the cooking, takes charge
- of the household affairs, and sees to the provisions, beds, and clothes;
- provided the stronger does not abuse his superiority by enslaving and
- ill-treating his companion, their social condition will be perfectly
- equal. Thus, through exchange of services, the inequalities of Nature
- neutralize each other, talents associate, and forces balance. Violence
- and inertia are found only among the poor and the aristocratic. And
- in that lies the philosophy of political economy, the mystery of human
- brotherhood. _Hic est sapientia_. Let us pass from the hypothetical
- state of pure Nature into civilization.
- The proprietor of the soil, who produces, I will suppose with the
- economists, by lending his instrument, receives at the foundation of a
- society so many bushels of grain for each acre of arable land. As long
- as labor is weak, and the variety of its products small, the proprietor
- is powerful in comparison with the laborers; he has ten times,
- one hundred times, the portion of an honest man. But let labor, by
- multiplying its inventions, multiply its enjoyments and wants, and the
- proprietor, if he wishes to enjoy the new products, will be obliged to
- reduce his income every day; and since the first products tend rather
- to depreciate than to rise in value,--in consequence of the continual
- addition of the new ones, which may be regarded as supplements of the
- first ones,--it follows that the idle proprietor grows poor as fast
- as public prosperity increases. "Incomes" (I like to quote you, sir,
- because it is impossible to give too good an authority for these
- elementary principles of economy, and because I cannot express them
- better myself), "incomes," you have said, "tend to disappear as capital
- increases. He who possesses to-day an income of twenty thousand pounds
- is not nearly as rich as he who possessed the same amount fifty years
- ago. The time is coming when all property will be a burden to the idle,
- and will necessarily pass into the hands of the able and industrious.
- [44]..."
- In order to live as a proprietor, or to consume without producing, it is
- necessary, then, to live upon the labor of another; in other words,
- it is necessary to kill the laborer. It is upon this principle that
- proprietors of those varieties of capital which are of primary necessity
- increase their farm-rents as fast as industry develops, much more
- careful of their privileges in that respect, than those economists who,
- in order to strengthen property, advocate a reduction of interest.
- But the crime is unavailing: labor and production increase; soon the
- proprietor will be forced to labor, and then property is lost.
- The proprietor is a man who, having absolute control of an instrument
- of production, claims the right to enjoy the product of the instrument
- without using it himself. To this end he lends it; and we have just
- seen that from this loan the laborer derives a power of exchange, which
- sooner or later will destroy the right of increase. In the first place,
- the proprietor is obliged to allow the laborer a portion of the product,
- for without it the laborer could not live. Soon the latter, through
- the development of his industry, finds a means of regaining the greater
- portion of that which he gives to the proprietor; so that at last, the
- objects of enjoyment increasing continually, while the income of the
- idler remains the same, the proprietor, having exhausted his resources,
- begins to think of going to work himself. Then the victory of the
- producer is certain. Labor commences to tip the balance towards its own
- side, and commerce leads to equilibrium.
- Man's instinct cannot err; as, in liberty, exchange of functions leads
- inevitably to equality among men, so commerce--or exchange of products,
- which is identical with exchange of functions--is a new cause of
- equality. As long as the proprietor does not labor, however small his
- income, he enjoys a privilege; the laborer's welfare may be equal to
- his, but equality of conditions does not exist. But as soon as the
- proprietor becomes a producer,--since he can exchange his special
- product only with his tenant or his _commandite_,--sooner or later this
- tenant, this _exploited_ man, if violence is not done him, will make
- a profit out of the proprietor, and will oblige him to restore--in the
- exchange of their respective products--the interest on his capital. So
- that, balancing one injustice by another, the contracting parties will
- be equal. Labor and exchange, when liberty prevails, lead, then, to
- equality of fortunes; mutuality of services neutralizes privilege.
- That is why despots in all ages and countries have assumed control
- of commerce; they wished to prevent the labor of their subjects from
- becoming an obstacle to the rapacity of tyrants.
- Up to this point, all takes place in the natural order; there is no
- premeditation, no artifice. The whole proceeding is governed by the laws
- of necessity alone. Proprietors and laborers act only in obedience to
- their wants. Thus, the exercise of the right of increase, the art
- of robbing the producer, depends--during this first period of
- civilization--upon physical violence, murder, and war.
- But at this point a gigantic and complicated conspiracy is hatched
- against the capitalists. The weapon of the EXPLOITERS is met by the
- EXPLOITED with the instrument of commerce,--a marvellous invention,
- denounced at its origin by the moralists who favored property, but
- inspired without doubt by the genius of labor, by the Minerva of the
- proletaires.
- The principal cause of the evil lay in the accumulation and immobility
- of capital of all sorts,--an immobility which prevented labor, enslaved
- and subalternized by haughty idleness, from ever acquiring it. The
- necessity was felt of dividing and mobilizing wealth, of rendering it
- portable, of making it pass from the hands of the possessor into those
- of the worker. Labor invented MONEY. Afterwards, this invention was
- revived and developed by the BILL OF EXCHANGE and the BANK. For all
- these things are substantially the same, and proceed from the same mind.
- The first man who conceived the idea of representing a value by a shell,
- a precious stone, or a certain weight of metal, was the real inventor
- of the Bank. What is a piece of money, in fact? It is a bill of exchange
- written upon solid and durable material, and carrying with it its own
- redemption. By this means, oppressed equality was enabled to laugh at
- the efforts of the proprietors, and the balance of justice was adjusted
- for the first time in the tradesman's shop. The trap was cunningly set,
- and accomplished its purpose so thoroughly that in idle hands money
- became only dissolving wealth, a false symbol, a shadow of riches. An
- excellent economist and profound philosopher was that miser who took
- as his motto, "WHEN A GUINEA IS EXCHANGED, IT EVAPORATES." So it may
- be said, "When real estate is converted into money, it is lost." This
- explains the constant fact of history, that the nobles--the unproductive
- proprietors of the soil--have every where been dispossessed by
- industrial and commercial plebeians. Such was especially the case in the
- formation of the Italian republics, born, during the middle ages, of
- the impoverishment of the seigniors. I will not pursue the interesting
- considerations which this matter suggests; I could only repeat the
- testimony of historians, and present economical demonstrations in an
- altered form.
- The greatest enemy of the landed and industrial aristocracy to-day, the
- incessant promoter of equality of fortunes, is the BANKER. Through him
- immense plains are divided, mountains change their positions, forests
- are grown upon the public squares, one hemisphere produces for another,
- and every corner of the globe has its usufructuaries. By means of the
- Bank new wealth is continually created, the use of which (soon becoming
- indispensable to selfishness) wrests the dormant capital from the hands
- of the jealous proprietor. The banker is at once the most potent creator
- of wealth, and the main distributor of the products of art and Nature.
- And yet, by the strangest antinomy, this same banker is the most
- relentless collector of profits, increase, and usury ever inspired by
- the demon of property. The importance of the services which he renders
- leads us to endure, though not without complaint, the taxes which he
- imposes. Nevertheless, since nothing can avoid its providential mission,
- since nothing which exists can escape the end for which it exists
- the banker (the modern Croesus) must some day become the restorer of
- equality. And following in your footsteps, sir, I have already given the
- reason; namely, that profit decreases as capital multiplies, since an
- increase of capital--calling for more laborers, without whom it remains
- unproductive--always causes an increase of wages. Whence it follows that
- the Bank, to-day the suction-pump of wealth, is destined to become the
- steward of the human race.
- The phrase EQUALITY OF FORTUNES chafes people, as if it referred to
- a condition of the other world, unknown here below. There are some
- persons, radicals as well as moderates, whom the very mention of this
- idea fills with indignation. Let, then, these silly aristocrats abolish
- mercantile societies and insurance companies, which are founded
- by prudence for mutual assistance. For all these social facts, so
- spontaneous and free from all levelling intentions, are the legitimate
- fruits of the instinct of equality.
- When the legislator makes a law, properly speaking he does not MAKE
- it,--he does not CREATE it: he DESCRIBES it. In legislating upon the
- moral, civil, and political relations of citizens, he does not express
- an arbitrary notion: he states the general idea,--the higher principle
- which governs the matter which he is considering; in a word, he is the
- proclaimer, not the inventor, of the law. So, when two or more men
- form among themselves, by synallagmatic contract, an industrial or an
- insurance association, they recognize that their interests, formerly
- isolated by a false spirit of selfishness and independence, are
- firmly connected by their inner natures, and by the mutuality of their
- relations. They do not really bind themselves by an act of their private
- will: they swear to conform henceforth to a previously existing social
- law hitherto disregarded by them. And this is proved by the fact that
- these same men, could they avoid association, would not associate.
- Before they can be induced to unite their interests, they must acquire
- full knowledge of the dangers of competition and isolation; hence the
- experience of evil is the only thing which leads them into society.
- Now I say that, to establish equality among men, it is only necessary
- to generalize the principle upon which insurance, agricultural, and
- commercial associations are based. I say that competition, isolation
- of interests, monopoly, privilege, accumulation of capital, exclusive
- enjoyment, subordination of functions, individual production, the right
- of profit or increase, the exploitation of man by man, and, to sum up
- all these species under one head, that PROPERTY is the principal cause
- of misery and crime. And, for having arrived at this offensive and
- anti-proprietary conclusion, I am an abhorred monster; radicals and
- conservatives alike point me out as a fit subject for prosecution; the
- academies shower their censures upon me; the most worthy people regard
- me as mad; and those are excessively tolerant who content themselves
- with the assertion that I am a fool. Oh, unhappy the writer who
- publishes the truth otherwise than as a performance of a duty! If he has
- counted upon the applause of the crowd; if he has supposed that avarice
- and self-interest would forget themselves in admiration of him; if he
- has neglected to encase himself within three thicknesses of brass,--he
- will fail, as he ought, in his selfish undertaking. The unjust
- criticisms, the sad disappointments, the despair of his mistaken
- ambition, will kill him.
- But, if I am no longer permitted to express my own personal opinion
- concerning this interesting question of social equilibrium, let me, at
- least, make known the thought of my masters, and develop the doctrines
- advocated in the name of the government.
- It never has been my intention, sir, in spite of the vigorous censure
- which you, in behalf of your academy, have pronounced upon the doctrine
- of equality of fortunes, to contradict and cope with you. In listening
- to you, I have felt my inferiority too keenly to permit me to enter upon
- such a discussion. And then,--if it must be said,--however different
- your language is from mine, we believe in the same principles; you share
- all my opinions. I do not mean to insinuate thereby, sir, that you have
- (to use the phraseology of the schools) an ESOTERIC and an EXOTERIC
- doctrine,--that, secretly believing in equality, you defend property
- only from motives of prudence and by command. I am not rash enough to
- regard you as my colleague in my revolutionary projects; and I esteem
- you too highly, moreover, to suspect you of dissimulation. I only
- mean that the truths which methodical investigation and laborious
- metaphysical speculation have painfully demonstrated to me, a profound
- acquaintance with political economy and a long experience reveal to
- you. While I have reached my belief in equality by long reflection, and
- almost in spite of my desires, you hold yours, sir, with all the zeal of
- faith,--with all the spontaneity of genius. That is why your course
- of lectures at the Conservatory is a perpetual war upon property and
- inequality of fortunes; that is why your most learned investigations,
- your most ingenious analyses, and your innumerable observations always
- conclude in a formula of progress and equality; that is why, finally,
- you are never more admired and applauded than at those moments of
- inspiration when, borne upon the wings of science, you ascend to those
- lofty truths which cause plebeian hearts to beat with enthusiasm, and
- which chill with horror men whose intentions are evil. How many times,
- from the place where I eagerly drank in your eloquent words, have I
- inwardly thanked Heaven for exempting you from the judgment passed by
- St. Paul upon the philosophers of his time,--"They have known the truth,
- and have not made it known"! How many times have I rejoiced at finding
- my own justification in each of your discourses! No, no; I neither wish
- nor ask for any thing which you do not teach yourself. I appeal to your
- numerous audience; let it belie me if, in commenting upon you, I pervert
- your meaning.
- A disciple of Say, what in your eyes is more anti-social than the
- custom-houses; or, as you correctly call them, the barriers erected by
- monopoly between nations? What is more annoying, more unjust, or more
- absurd, than this prohibitory system which compels us to pay forty
- sous in France for that which in England or Belgium would bring us but
- fifteen? It is the custom-house, you once said, [45] which arrests
- the development of civilization by preventing the specialization of
- industries; it is the custom-house which enriches a hundred monopolists
- by impoverishing millions of citizens; it is the custom-house which
- produces famine in the midst of abundance, which makes labor sterile by
- prohibiting exchange, and which stifles production in a mortal embrace.
- It is the custom-house which renders nations jealous of, and hostile to,
- each other; four-fifths of the wars of all ages were caused originally
- by the custom-house. And then, at the highest pitch of your enthusiasm,
- you shouted: "Yes, if to put an end to this hateful system, it should
- become necessary for me to shed the last drop of my blood, I would
- joyfully spring into the gap, asking only time enough to give thanks to
- God for having judged me worthy of martyrdom!"
- And, at that solemn moment, I said to myself: "Place in every department
- of France such a professor as that, and the revolution is avoided."
- But, sir, by this magnificent theory of liberty of commerce you render
- military glory impossible,--you leave nothing for diplomacy to do;
- you even take away the desire for conquest, while abolishing profit
- altogether. What matters it, indeed, who restores Constantinople,
- Alexandria, and Saint Jean d'Acre, if the Syrians, Egyptians, and Turks
- are free to choose their masters; free to exchange their products with
- whom they please? Why should Europe get into such a turmoil over this
- petty Sultan and his old Pasha, if it is only a question whether we or
- the English shall civilize the Orient,--shall instruct Egypt and Syria
- in the European arts, and shall teach them to construct machines, dig
- canals, and build railroads? For, if to national independence free trade
- is added, the foreign influence of these two countries is thereafter
- exerted only through a voluntary relationship of producer to producer,
- or apprentice to journeyman.
- Alone among European powers, France cheerfully accepted the task of
- civilizing the Orient, and began an invasion which was quite apostolic
- in its character,--so joyful and high-minded do noble thoughts render
- our nation! But diplomatic rivalry, national selfishness, English
- avarice, and Russian ambition stood in her way. To consummate a
- long-meditated usurpation, it was necessary to crush a too generous
- ally: the robbers of the Holy Alliance formed a league against dauntless
- and blameless France. Consequently, at the news of this famous treaty,
- there arose among us a chorus of curses upon the principle of property,
- which at that time was acting under the hypocritical formulas of the old
- political system. The last hour of property seemed to have struck by
- the side of Syria; from the Alps to the ocean, from the Rhine to the
- Pyrenees, the popular conscience was aroused. All France sang songs
- of war, and the coalition turned pale at the sound of these shuddering
- cries: "War upon the autocrat, who wishes to be proprietor of the
- old world! War upon the English perjurer, the devourer of India, the
- poisoner of China, the tyrant of Ireland, and the eternal enemy of
- France! War upon the allies who have conspired against liberty and
- equality! War! war! war upon property!"
- By the counsel of Providence the emancipation of the nations is
- postponed. France is to conquer, not by arms, but by example. Universal
- reason does not yet understand this grand equation, which, commencing
- with the abolition of slavery, and advancing over the ruins of
- aristocracies and thrones, must end in equality of rights and fortunes;
- but the day is not far off when the knowledge of this truth will be as
- common as that of equality of origin. Already it seems to be understood
- that the Oriental question is only a question of custom-houses. Is it,
- then, so difficult for public opinion to generalize this idea, and to
- comprehend, finally, that if the suppression of custom-houses involves
- the abolition of national property, it involves also, as a consequence,
- the abolition of individual property?
- In fact, if we suppress the custom-houses, the alliance of the nations
- is declared by that very act; their solidarity is recognized, and their
- equality proclaimed. If we suppress the custom-houses, the principle of
- association will not be slow in reaching from the State to the province,
- from the province to the city, and from the city to the workshop. But,
- then, what becomes of the privileges of authors and artists? Of what
- use are the patents for invention, imagination, amelioration, and
- improvement? When our deputies write a law of literary property by
- the side of a law which opens a large breach in the custom-house they
- contradict themselves, indeed, and pull down with one hand what they
- build up with the other. Without the custom-house, literary property
- does not exist, and the hopes of our starving authors are frustrated.
- For, certainly you do not expect, with the good man Fourier, that
- literary property will exercise itself in China to the profit of a
- French writer; and that an ode of Lamartine, sold by privilege all over
- the world, will bring in millions to its author! The poet's work
- is peculiar to the climate in which he lives; every where else the
- reproduction of his works, having no market value, should be frank and
- free. But what! will it be necessary for nations to put themselves under
- mutual surveillance for the sake of verses, statues, and elixirs? We
- shall always have, then, an excise, a city-toll, rights of entrance
- and transit, custom-houses finally; and then, as a reaction against
- privilege, smuggling.
- Smuggling! That word reminds me of one of the most horrible forms
- of property. "Smuggling," you have said, sir, [46] "is an offence of
- political creation; it is the exercise of natural liberty, defined as a
- crime in certain cases by the will of the sovereign. The smuggler is a
- gallant man,--a man of spirit, who gaily busies himself in procuring for
- his neighbor, at a very low price, a jewel, a shawl, or any other object
- of necessity or luxury, which domestic monopoly renders excessively
- dear." Then, to a very poetical monograph of the smuggler, you add this
- dismal conclusion,--that the smuggler belongs to the family of Mandrin,
- and that the galleys should be his home!
- But, sir, you have not called attention to the horrible exploitation
- which is carried on in this way in the name of property.
- It is said,--and I give this report only as an hypothesis and an
- illustration, for I do not believe it,--it is said that the present
- minister of finances owes his fortune to smuggling. M. Humann, of
- Strasbourg, sent out of France, it is said, enormous quantities of
- sugar, for which he received the bounty on exportation promised by
- the State; then, smuggling this sugar back again, he exported it anew,
- receiving the bounty on exportation a second time, and so on. Notice,
- sir, that I do not state this as a fact; I give it only as it is told,
- not endorsing or even believing it. My sole design is to fix the idea in
- the mind by an example. If I believed that a minister had committed such
- a crime, that is, if I had personal and authentic knowledge that he had,
- I would denounce M. Humann, the minister of finances, to the Chamber of
- Deputies, and would loudly demand his expulsion from the ministry.
- But that which is undoubtedly false of M. Humann is true of many others,
- as rich and no less honorable than he. Smuggling, organized on a large
- scale by the eaters of human flesh, is carried on to the profit of a few
- pashas at the risk and peril of their imprudent victims. The inactive
- proprietor offers his merchandise for sale; the actual smuggler risks
- his liberty, his honor, and his life. If success crowns the enterprise,
- the courageous servant gets paid for his journey; the profit goes to
- the coward. If fortune or treachery delivers the instrument of this
- execrable traffic into the hands of the custom-house officer, the
- master-smuggler suffers a loss which a more fortunate voyage will soon
- repair. The agent, pronounced a scoundrel, is thrown into prison in
- company with robbers; while his glorious patron, a juror, elector,
- deputy, or minister, makes laws concerning expropriation, monopoly, and
- custom-houses!
- I promised, at the beginning of this letter, that no attack on property
- should escape my pen, my only object being to justify myself before the
- public by a general recrimination. But I could not refrain from branding
- so odious a mode of exploitation, and I trust that this short digression
- will be pardoned. Property does not avenge, I hope, the injuries which
- smuggling suffers.
- The conspiracy against property is general; it is flagrant; it takes
- possession of all minds, and inspires all our laws; it lies at the
- bottom of all theories. Here the proletaire pursues property in the
- street, there the legislator lays an interdict upon it; now, a professor
- of political economy or of industrial legislation, [47] paid to defend
- it, undermines it with redoubled blows; at another--time, an academy
- calls it in question, [48] or inquires as to the progress of its
- demolition. [49] To-day there is not an idea, not an opinion, not
- a sect, which does not dream of muzzling property. None confess it,
- because none are yet conscious of it; there are too few minds capable
- of grasping spontaneously this ensemble of causes and effects,
- of principles and consequences, by which I try to demonstrate the
- approaching disappearance of property; on the other hand, the ideas that
- are generally formed of this right are too divergent and too loosely
- determined to allow an admission, so soon, of the contrary theory. Thus,
- in the middle and lower ranks of literature and philosophy, no less than
- among the common people, it is thought that, when property is abolished,
- no one will be able to enjoy the fruit of his labor; that no one will
- have any thing peculiar to himself, and that tyrannical communism will
- be established on the ruins of family and liberty!--chimeras, which are
- to support for a little while longer the cause of privilege.
- But, before determining precisely the idea of property, before seeking
- amid the contradictions of systems for the common element which must
- form the basis of the new right, let us cast a rapid glance at
- the changes which, at the various periods of history, property has
- undergone. The political forms of nations are the expression of their
- beliefs. The mobility of these forms, their modification and their
- destruction, are solemn experiences which show us the value of ideas,
- and gradually eliminate from the infinite variety of customs the
- absolute, eternal, and immutable truth. Now, we shall see that every
- political institution tends, necessarily, and on pain of death, to
- equalize conditions; that every where and always equality of fortunes
- (like equality of rights) has been the social aim, whether the plebeian
- classes have endeavored to rise to political power by means of property,
- or whether--rulers already--they have used political power to overthrow
- property. We shall see, in short, by the progress of society, that the
- consummation of justice lies in the extinction of individual domain.
- For the sake of brevity, I will disregard the testimony of
- ecclesiastical history and Christian theology: this subject deserves a
- separate treatise, and I propose hereafter to return to it. Moses and
- Jesus Christ proscribed, under the names of usury and inequality, [50]
- all sorts of profit and increase. The church itself, in its purest
- teachings, has always condemned property; and when I attacked, not only
- the authority of the church, but also its infidelity to justice, I did
- it to the glory of religion. I wanted to provoke a peremptory reply, and
- to pave the way for Christianity's triumph, in spite of the innumerable
- attacks of which it is at present the object. I hoped that an apologist
- would arise forthwith, and, taking his stand upon the Scriptures, the
- Fathers, the canons, and the councils and constitutions of the Popes,
- would demonstrate that the church always has maintained the doctrine of
- equality, and would attribute to temporary necessity the contradictions
- of its discipline. Such a labor would serve the cause of religion
- as well as that of equality. We must know, sooner or later, whether
- Christianity is to be regenerated in the church or out of it, and
- whether this church accepts the reproaches cast upon it of hatred to
- liberty and antipathy to progress. Until then we will suspend judgment,
- and content ourselves with placing before the clergy the teachings of
- history.
- When Lycurgus undertook to make laws for Sparta, in what condition did
- he find this republic? On this point all historians agree. The people
- and the nobles were at war. The city was in a confused state, and
- divided by two parties,--the party of the poor, and the party of the
- rich. Hardly escaped from the barbarism of the heroic ages, society was
- rapidly declining. The proletariat made war upon property, which, in its
- turn, oppressed the proletariat. What did Lycurgus do? His first measure
- was one of general security, at the very idea of which our legislators
- would tremble. He abolished all debts; then, employing by turns
- persuasion and force, he induced the nobles to renounce their
- privileges, and re-established equality.
- Lycurgus, in a word, hunted property out of Lacedaemon, seeing no other
- way to harmonize liberty, equality, and law. I certainly should not wish
- France to follow the example of Sparta; but it is remarkable that the
- most ancient of Greek legislators, thoroughly acquainted with the nature
- and needs of the people, more capable than any one else of appreciating
- the legitimacy of the obligations which he, in the exercise of his
- absolute authority, cancelled; who had compared the legislative
- systems of his time, and whose wisdom an oracle had proclaimed,--it
- is remarkable, I say, that Lycurgus should have judged the right of
- property incompatible with free institutions, and should have thought it
- his duty to preface his legislation by a coup d'etat which destroyed all
- distinctions of fortune.
- Lycurgus understood perfectly that the luxury, the love of enjoyments,
- and the inequality of fortunes, which property engenders, are the bane
- of society; unfortunately the means which he employed to preserve his
- republic were suggested to him by false notions of political economy,
- and by a superficial knowledge of the human heart. Accordingly,
- property, which this legislator wrongly confounded with wealth,
- reentered the city together with the swarm of evils which he was
- endeavoring to banish; and this time Sparta was hopelessly corrupted.
- "The introduction of wealth," says M. Pastoret, "was one of the
- principal causes of the misfortunes which they experienced. Against
- these, however, the laws had taken extraordinary precautions, the best
- among which was the inculcation of morals which tended to suppress
- desire."
- The best of all precautions would have been the anticipation of desire
- by satisfaction. Possession is the sovereign remedy for cupidity,
- a remedy which would have been the less perilous to Sparta because
- fortunes there were almost equal, and conditions were nearly alike. As a
- general thing, fasting and abstinence are bad teachers of moderation.
- "There was a law," says M. Pastoret again, "to prohibit the rich from
- wearing better clothing than the poor, from eating more delicate food,
- and from owning elegant furniture, vases, carpets, fine houses," &c.
- Lycurgus hoped, then, to maintain equality by rendering wealth useless.
- How much wiser he would have been if, in accordance with his military
- discipline, he had organized industry and taught the people to procure
- by their own labor the things which he tried in vain to deprive them of.
- In that case, enjoying happy thoughts and pleasant feelings, the citizen
- would have known no other desire than that with which the legislator
- endeavored to inspire him,--love of honor and glory, the triumphs of
- talent and virtue.
- "Gold and all kinds of ornaments were forbidden the women." Absurd.
- After the death of Lycurgus, his institutions became corrupted; and four
- centuries before the Christian era not a vestige remained of the former
- simplicity. Luxury and the thirst for gold were early developed among
- the Spartans in a degree as intense as might have been expected from
- their enforced poverty and their inexperience in the arts. Historians
- have accused Pausanias, Lysander, Agesilaus, and others of having
- corrupted the morals of their country by the introduction of wealth
- obtained in war. It is a slander. The morals of the Spartans necessarily
- grew corrupt as soon as the Lacedaemonian poverty came in contact with
- Persian luxury and Athenian elegance. Lycurgus, then, made a fatal
- mistake in attempting to inspire generosity and modesty by enforcing
- vain and proud simplicity.
- "Lycurgus was not frightened at idleness! A Lacedemonian, happening to
- be in Athens (where idleness was forbidden) during the punishment of
- a citizen who had been found guilty, asked to see the Athenian thus
- condemned for having exercised the rights of a free man.... It was one
- of the principles of Lycurguss, acted upon for several centuries, that
- free men should not follow lucrative professions.... The women disdained
- domestic labor; they did not spin their wool themselves, as did the
- other Greeks [they did not, then, read Homer!]; they left their slaves
- to make their clothing for them."--Pastoret: History of Legislation.
- Could any thing be more contradictory? Lycurgus proscribed property
- among the citizens, and founded the means of subsistence on the worst
- form of property,--on property obtained by force. What wonder, after
- that, that a lazy city, where no industry was carried on, became a den
- of avarice? The Spartans succumbed the more easily to the allurements of
- luxury and Asiatic voluptuousness, being placed entirely at their mercy
- by their own coarseness. The same thing happened to the Romans, when
- military success took them out of Italy,--a thing which the author
- of the prosopopoeia of Fabricius could not explain. It is not the
- cultivation of the arts which corrupts morals, but their degradation,
- induced by inactive and luxurious opulence. The instinct of property
- is to make the industry of Daedalus, as well as the talent of Phidias,
- subservient to its own fantastic whims and disgraceful pleasures.
- Property, not wealth, ruined the Spartans.
- When Solon appeared, the anarchy caused by property was at its height
- in the Athenian republic. "The inhabitants of Attica were divided
- among themselves as to the form of government. Those who lived on the
- mountains (the poor) preferred the popular form; those of the plain
- (the middle class), the oligarchs; those by the sea coast, a mixture
- of oligarchy and democracy. Other dissensions were arising from the
- inequality of fortunes. The mutual antagonism of the rich and poor had
- become so violent, that the one-man power seemed the only safe-guard
- against the revolution with which the republic was threatened."
- (Pastoret: History of Legislation.)
- Quarrels between the rich and the poor, which seldom occur in
- monarchies, because a well established power suppresses dissensions,
- seem to be the life of popular governments. Aristotle had noticed this.
- The oppression of wealth submitted to agrarian laws, or to excessive
- taxation; the hatred of the lower classes for the upper class, which
- is exposed always to libellous charges made in hopes of
- confiscation,--these were the features of the Athenian government which
- were especially revolting to Aristotle, and which caused him to favor
- a limited monarchy. Aristotle, if he had lived in our day, would have
- supported the constitutional government. But, with all deference to the
- Stagirite, a government which sacrifices the life of the proletaire to
- that of the proprietor is quite as irrational as one which supports the
- former by robbing the latter; neither of them deserve the support of a
- free man, much less of a philosopher.
- Solon followed the example of Lycurgus. He celebrated his legislative
- inauguration by the abolition of debts,--that is, by bankruptcy. In
- other words, Solon wound up the governmental machine for a longer or
- shorter time depending upon the rate of interest. Consequently, when the
- spring relaxed and the chain became unwound, the republic had either
- to perish, or to recover itself by a second bankruptcy. This singular
- policy was pursued by all the ancients. After the captivity of Babylon,
- Nehemiah, the chief of the Jewish nation, abolished debts; Lycurgus
- abolished debts; Solon abolished debts; the Roman people, after the
- expulsion of the kings until the accession of the Caesars, struggled
- with the Senate for the abolition of debts. Afterwards, towards the
- end of the republic, and long after the establishment of the empire,
- agriculture being abandoned, and the provinces becoming depopulated
- in consequence of the excessive rates of interest, the emperors freely
- granted the lands to whoever would cultivate them,--that is, they
- abolished debts. No one, except Lycurgus, who went to the other extreme,
- ever perceived that the great point was, not to release debtors by a
- coup d'etat, but to prevent the contraction of debts in future.
- On the contrary, the most democratic governments were always exclusively
- based upon individual property; so that the social element of all these
- republics was war between the citizens.
- Solon decreed that a census should be taken of all fortunes, regulated
- political rights by the result, granted to the larger proprietors more
- influence, established the balance of powers,--in a word, inserted in
- the constitution the most active leaven of discord; as if, instead of a
- legislator chosen by the people, he had been their greatest enemy. Is
- it not, indeed, the height of imprudence to grant equality of political
- rights to men of unequal conditions? If a manufacturer, uniting all
- his workmen in a joint-stock company, should give to each of them a
- consultative and deliberative voice,--that is, should make all of them
- masters,--would this equality of mastership secure continued inequality
- of wages? That is the whole political system of Solon, reduced to its
- simplest expression.
- "In giving property a just preponderance," says M. Pastoret, "Solon
- repaired, as far as he was able, his first official act,--the abolition
- of debts.... He thought he owed it to public peace to make this great
- sacrifice of acquired rights and natural equity. But the violation of
- individual property and written contracts is a bad preface to a public
- code."
- In fact, such violations are always cruelly punished. In '89 and '93,
- the possessions of the nobility and the clergy were confiscated, the
- clever proletaires were enriched; and to-day the latter, having become
- aristocrats, are making us pay dearly for our fathers' robbery. What,
- therefore, is to be done now? It is not for us to violate right, but to
- restore it. Now, it would be a violation of justice to dispossess some
- and endow others, and then stop there. We must gradually lower the rate
- of interest, organize industry, associate laborers and their functions,
- and take a census of the large fortunes, not for the purpose of granting
- privileges, but that we may effect their redemption by settling a
- life-annuity upon their proprietors. We must apply on a large scale the
- principle of collective production, give the State eminent domain over
- all capital! make each producer responsible, abolish the custom-house,
- and transform every profession and trade into a public function. Thereby
- large fortunes will vanish without confiscation or violence; individual
- possession will establish itself, without communism, under the
- inspection of the republic; and equality of conditions will no longer
- depend simply on the will of citizens.
- Of the authors who have written upon the Romans, Bossuet and Montesquieu
- occupy prominent positions in the first rank; the first being generally
- regarded as the father of the philosophy of history, and the second as
- the most profound writer upon law and politics. Nevertheless, it could
- be shown that these two great writers, each of them imbued with the
- prejudices of their century and their cloth, have left the question of
- the causes of the rise and fall of the Romans precisely where they found
- it.
- Bossuet is admirable as long as he confines himself to description:
- witness, among other passages, the picture which he has given us
- of Greece before the Persian War, and which seems to have inspired
- "Telemachus;" the parallel between Athens and Sparta, drawn twenty
- times since Bossuet; the description of the character and morals of
- the ancient Romans; and, finally, the sublime peroration which ends the
- "Discourse on Universal History." But when the famous historian deals
- with causes, his philosophy is at fault.
- "The tribunes always favored the division of captured lands, or the
- proceeds of their sale, among the citizens. The Senate steadfastly
- opposed those laws which were damaging to the State, and wanted the
- price of lands to be awarded to the public treasury."
- Thus, according to Bossuet, the first and greatest wrong of civil wars
- was inflicted upon the people, who, dying of hunger, demanded that the
- lands, which they had shed their blood to conquer, should be given to
- them for cultivation. The patricians, who bought them to deliver to
- their slaves, had more regard for justice and the public interests.
- How little affects the opinions of men! If the roles of Cicero and the
- Gracchi had been inverted, Bossuet, whose sympathies were aroused by the
- eloquence of the great orator more than by the clamors of the tribunes,
- would have viewed the agrarian laws in quite a different light. He
- then would have understood that the interest of the treasury was only
- a pretext; that, when the captured lands were put up at auction, the
- patricians hastened to buy them, in order to profit by the revenues from
- them,--certain, moreover, that the price paid would come back to them
- sooner or later, in exchange either for supplies furnished by them to
- the republic, or for the subsistence of the multitude, who could buy
- only of them, and whose services at one time, and poverty at another,
- were rewarded by the State. For a State does not hoard; on the contrary,
- the public funds always return to the people. If, then, a certain number
- of men are the sole dealers in articles of primary necessity, it follows
- that the public treasury, in passing and repassing through their hands,
- deposits and accumulates real property there.
- When Menenius related to the people his fable of the limbs and the
- stomach, if any one had remarked to this story-teller that the stomach
- freely gives to the limbs the nourishment which it freely receives, but
- that the patricians gave to the plebeians only for cash, and lent to
- them only at usury, he undoubtedly would have silenced the wily senator,
- and saved the people from a great imposition. The Conscript Fathers
- were fathers only of their own line. As for the common people, they were
- regarded as an impure race, exploitable, taxable, and workable at the
- discretion and mercy of their masters.
- As a general thing, Bossuet shows little regard for the people. His
- monarchical and theological instincts know nothing but authority,
- obedience, and alms-giving, under the name of charity.
- This unfortunate disposition constantly leads him to mistake symptoms
- for causes; and his depth, which is so much admired, is borrowed from
- his authors, and amounts to very little, after all.
- When he says, for instance, that "the dissensions in the republic, and
- finally its fall, were caused by the jealousies of its citizens, and
- their love of liberty carried to an extreme and intolerable extent," are
- we not tempted to ask him what caused those JEALOUSIES?--what inspired
- the people with that LOVE OF LIBERTY, EXTREME AND INTOLERABLE? It would
- be useless to reply, The corruption of morals; the disregard for the
- ancient poverty; the debaucheries, luxury, and class jealousies; the
- seditious character of the Gracchi, &c. Why did the morals become
- corrupt, and whence arose those eternal dissensions between the
- patricians and the plebeians?
- In Rome, as in all other places, the dissension between the rich and
- the poor was not caused directly by the desire for wealth (people, as
- a general thing, do not covet that which they deem it illegitimate to
- acquire), but by a natural instinct of the plebeians, which led them to
- seek the cause of their adversity in the constitution of the republic.
- So we are doing to-day; instead of altering our public economy, we
- demand an electoral reform. The Roman people wished to return to the
- social compact; they asked for reforms, and demanded a revision of
- the laws, and a creation of new magistracies. The patricians, who had
- nothing to complain of, opposed every innovation. Wealth always has been
- conservative. Nevertheless, the people overcame the resistance of the
- Senate; the electoral right was greatly extended; the privileges of
- the plebeians were increased,--they had their representatives, their
- tribunes, and their consuls; but, notwithstanding these reforms, the
- republic could not be saved. When all political expedients had been
- exhausted, when civil war had depleted the population, when the Caesars
- had thrown their bloody mantle over the cancer which was consuming the
- empire,--inasmuch as accumulated property always was respected, and
- since the fire never stopped, the nation had to perish in the flames.
- The imperial power was a compromise which protected the property of the
- rich, and nourished the proletaires with wheat from Africa and Sicily:
- a double error, which destroyed the aristocrats by plethora and
- the commoners by famine. At last there was but one real proprietor
- left,--the emperor,--whose dependent, flatterer, parasite, or slave,
- each citizen became; and when this proprietor was ruined, those who
- gathered the crumbs from under his table, and laughed when he cracked
- his jokes, perished also.
- Montesquieu succeeded no better than Bossuet in fathoming the causes of
- the Roman decline; indeed, it may be said that the president has only
- developed the ideas of the bishop. If the Romans had been more moderate
- in their conquests, more just to their allies, more humane to the
- vanquished; if the nobles had been less covetous, the emperors less
- lawless, the people less violent, and all classes less corrupt; if...
- &c.,--perhaps the dignity of the empire might have been preserved, and
- Rome might have retained the sceptre of the world! That is all that can
- be gathered from the teachings of Montesquieu. But the truth of history
- does not lie there; the destinies of the world are not dependent upon
- such trivial causes. The passions of men, like the contingencies of time
- and the varieties of climate, serve to maintain the forces which move
- humanity and produce all historical changes; but they do not explain
- them. The grain of sand of which Pascal speaks would have caused the
- death of one man only, had not prior action ordered the events of which
- this death was the precursor.
- Montesquieu has read extensively; he knows Roman history thoroughly, is
- perfectly well acquainted with the people of whom he speaks, and sees
- very clearly why they were able to conquer their rivals and govern the
- world. While reading him we admire the Romans, but we do not like them;
- we witness their triumphs without pleasure, and we watch their fall
- without sorrow. Montesquieu's work, like the works of all French
- writers, is skilfully composed,--spirited, witty, and filled with wise
- observations. He pleases, interests, instructs, but leads to little
- reflection; he does not conquer by depth of thought; he does not exalt
- the mind by elevated reason or earnest feeling. In vain should we search
- his writings for knowledge of antiquity, the character of primitive
- society, or a description of the heroic ages, whose morals and
- prejudices lived until the last days of the republic. Vico, painting the
- Romans with their horrible traits, represents them as excusable, because
- he shows that all their conduct was governed by preexisting ideas and
- customs, and that they were informed, so to speak, by a superior genius
- of which they were unconscious; in Montesquieu, the Roman atrocity
- revolts, but is not explained. Therefore, as a writer, Montesquieu
- brings greater credit upon French literature; as a philosopher, Vico
- bears away the palm.
- Originally, property in Rome was national, not private. Numa was
- the first to establish individual property by distributing the lands
- captured by Romulus. What was the dividend of this distribution effected
- by Numa? What conditions were imposed upon individuals, what powers
- reserved to the State? None whatever. Inequality of fortunes, absolute
- abdication by the republic of its right of eminent domain over the
- property of citizens,--such were the first results of the division of
- Numa, who justly may be regarded as the originator of Roman revolutions.
- He it was who instituted the worship of the god Terminus,--the guardian
- of private possession, and one of the most ancient gods of Italy. It
- was Numa who placed property under the protection of Jupiter; who,
- in imitation of the Etrurians, wished to make priests of the
- land-surveyors; who invented a liturgy for cadastral operations, and
- ceremonies of consecration for the marking of boundaries,--who, in
- short, made a religion of property. [51] All these fancies would have
- been more beneficial than dangerous, if the holy king had not forgotten
- one essential thing; namely, to fix the amount that each citizen could
- possess, and on what conditions he could possess it. For, since it is
- the essence of property to continually increase by accession and profit,
- and since the lender will take advantage of every opportunity to apply
- this principle inherent in property, it follows that properties tend, by
- means of their natural energy and the religious respect which protects
- them, to absorb each other, and fortunes to increase or diminish to an
- indefinite extent,--a process which necessarily results in the ruin
- of the people, and the fall of the republic. Roman history is but the
- development of this law.
- Scarcely had the Tarquins been banished from Rome and the monarchy
- abolished, when quarrels commenced between the orders. In the year
- 494 B.C., the secession of the commonalty to the Mons Sacer led to the
- establishment of the tribunate. Of what did the plebeians complain?
- That they were poor, exhausted by the interest which they paid to the
- proprietors,--_foeneratoribus;_ that the republic, administered for the
- benefit of the nobles, did nothing for the people; that, delivered over
- to the mercy of their creditors, who could sell them and their children,
- and having neither hearth nor home, they were refused the means of
- subsistence, while the rate of interest was kept at its highest point,
- &c. For five centuries, the sole policy of the Senate was to evade
- these just complaints; and, notwithstanding the energy of the tribunes,
- notwithstanding the eloquence of the Gracchi, the violence of Marius,
- and the triumph of Caesar, this execrable policy succeeded only too
- well. The Senate always temporized; the measures proposed by the
- tribunes might be good, but they were inopportune. It admitted that
- something should be done; but first it was necessary that the people
- should resume the performance of their duties, because the Senate could
- not yield to violence, and force must be employed only by the law. If
- the people--out of respect for legality--took this beautiful advice, the
- Senate conjured up a difficulty; the reform was postponed, and that was
- the end of it. On the contrary, if the demands of the proletaires became
- too pressing, it declared a foreign war, and neighboring nations were
- deprived of their liberty, to maintain the Roman aristocracy.
- But the toils of war were only a halt for the plebeians in their onward
- march towards pauperism. The lands confiscated from the conquered
- nations were immediately added to the domain of the State, to the ager
- publicus; and, as such, cultivated for the benefit of the treasury; or,
- as was more often the case, they were sold at auction. None of them were
- granted to the proletaires, who, unlike the patricians and knights, were
- not supplied by the victory with the means of buying them. War never
- enriched the soldier; the extensive plundering has been done always by
- the generals. The vans of Augereau, and of twenty others, are famous in
- our armies; but no one ever heard of a private getting rich. Nothing was
- more common in Rome than charges of peculation, extortion, embezzlement,
- and brigandage, carried on in the provinces at the head of armies, and
- in other public capacities. All these charges were quieted by intrigue,
- bribery of the judges, or desistance of the accuser. The culprit was
- allowed always in the end to enjoy his spoils in peace; his son was only
- the more respected on account of his father's crimes. And, in fact, it
- could not be otherwise. What would become of us, if every deputy, peer,
- or public functionary should be called upon to show his title to his
- fortune!
- "The patricians arrogated the exclusive enjoyment of the ager publicus;
- and, like the feudal seigniors, granted some portions of their lands to
- their dependants,--a wholly precarious concession, revocable at the will
- of the grantor. The plebeians, on the contrary, were entitled to the
- enjoyment of only a little pasture-land left to them in common:
- an utterly unjust state of things, since, in consequence of it,
- taxation--_census_--weighed more heavily upon the poor than upon the
- rich. The patrician, in fact, always exempted himself from the tithe
- which he owed as the price and as the acknowledgment of the concession
- of domain; and, on the other hand, paid no taxes on his POSSESSIONS,
- if, as there is good reason to believe, only citizens' property was
- taxed."--Laboulaye: History of Property.
- In order thoroughly to understand the preceding quotation, we must know
- that the estates of CITIZENS--that is, estates independent of the public
- domain, whether they were obtained in the division of Numa, or had since
- been sold by the questors--were alone regarded as PROPERTY; upon these
- a tax, or _cense_, was imposed. On the contrary, the estates obtained
- by concessions of the public domain, of the ager publicus (for which a
- light rent was paid), were called POSSESSIONS. Thus, among the Romans,
- there was a RIGHT OF PROPERTY and a RIGHT OF POSSESSION regulating the
- administration of all estates. Now, what did the proletaires wish? That
- the jus possessionis--the simple right of possession--should be extended
- to them at the expense, as is evident, not of private property, but of
- the public domain,--agri publici. The proletaires, in short, demanded
- that they should be tenants of the land which they had conquered. This
- demand, the patricians in their avarice never would accede to. Buying
- as much of this land as they could, they afterwards found means of
- obtaining the rest as POSSESSIONS. Upon this land they employed their
- slaves. The people, who could not buy, on account of the competition
- of the rich, nor hire, because--cultivating with their own hands--they
- could not promise a rent equal to the revenue which the land would
- yield when cultivated by slaves, were always deprived of possession and
- property.
- Civil wars relieved, to some extent, the sufferings of the multitude.
- "The people enrolled themselves under the banners of the ambitious, in
- order to obtain by force that which the law refused them,--property. A
- colony was the reward of a victorious legion. But it was no longer
- the ager publicus only; it was all Italy that lay at the mercy of the
- legions. The ager publicus disappeared almost entirely,... but the
- cause of the evil--accumulated property--became more potent than ever."
- (Laboulaye: History of Property.)
- The author whom I quote does not tell us why this division of
- territory which followed civil wars did not arrest the encroachments of
- accumulated property; the omission is easily supplied. Land is not
- the only requisite for cultivation; a working-stock is also
- necessary,--animals, tools, harnesses, a house, an advance, &c. Where
- did the colonists, discharged by the dictator who rewarded them, obtain
- these things? From the purse of the usurers; that is, of the patricians,
- to whom all these lands finally returned, in consequence of the rapid
- increase of usury, and the seizure of estates. Sallust, in his account
- of the conspiracy of Catiline, tells us of this fact. The conspirators
- were old soldiers of Sylla, who, as a reward for their services, had
- received from him lands in Cisalpine Gaul, Tuscany, and other parts of
- the peninsula Less than twenty years had elapsed since these colonists,
- free of debt, had left the service and commenced farming; and already
- they were crippled by usury, and almost ruined. The poverty caused
- by the exactions of creditors was the life of this conspiracy which
- well-nigh inflamed all Italy, and which, with a worthier chief and
- fairer means, possibly would have succeeded. In Rome, the mass of the
- people were favorable to the conspirators--_cuncta plebes Catilinae
- incepta probabat;_ the allies were weary of the patricians' robberies;
- deputies from the Allobroges (the Savoyards) had come to Rome to appeal
- to the Senate in behalf of their fellow-citizens involved in debt; in
- short, the complaint against the large proprietors was universal. "We
- call men and gods to witness," said the soldiers of Catiline, who were
- Roman citizens with not a slave among them, "that we have taken arms
- neither against the country, nor to attack any one, but in defence of
- our lives and liberties. Wretched, poor, most of us deprived of country,
- all of us of fame and fortune, by the violence and cruelty of usurers,
- we have no rights, no property, no liberty." [52]
- The bad reputation of Catiline, and his atrocious designs, the
- imprudence of his accomplices, the treason of several, the strategy
- of Cicero, the angry outbursts of Cato, and the terror of the
- Senate, baffled this enterprise, which, in furnishing a precedent for
- expeditions against the rich, would perhaps have saved the republic, and
- given peace to the world. But Rome could not evade her destiny; the end
- of her expiations had not come. A nation never was known to anticipate
- its punishment by a sudden and unexpected conversion. Now, the
- long-continued crimes of the Eternal City could not be atoned for by
- the massacre of a few hundred patricians. Catiline came to stay divine
- vengeance; therefore his conspiracy failed.
- The encroachment of large proprietors upon small proprietors, by the aid
- of usury, farm-rent, and profits of all sorts, was common throughout the
- empire. The most honest citizens invested their money at high rates of
- interest. [53] Cato, Cicero, Brutus, all the stoics so noted for
- their frugality, _viri frugi_,--Seneca, the teacher of virtue,--levied
- enormous taxes in the provinces, under the name of usury; and it is
- something remarkable, that the last defenders of the republic, the proud
- Pompeys, were all usurious aristocrats, and oppressors of the poor.
- But the battle of Pharsalus, having killed men only, without touching
- institutions, the encroachments of the large domains became every day
- more active. Ever since the birth of Christianity, the Fathers have
- opposed this invasion with all their might. Their writings are filled
- with burning curses upon this crime of usury, of which Christians are
- not always innocent.
- St. Cyprian complains of certain bishops of his time, who, absorbed in
- disgraceful stock-jobbing operations, abandoned their churches, and went
- about the provinces appropriating lands by artifice and fraud, while
- lending money and piling up interests upon interests. [54] Why, in the
- midst of this passion for accumulation, did not the possession of the
- public land, like private property, become concentrated in a few hands?
- By law, the domain of the State was inalienable, and consequently
- possession was always revocable; but the edict of the praetor continued
- it indefinitely, so that finally the possessions of the patricians were
- transformed into absolute property, though the name, possessions,
- was still applied to them. This conversion, instigated by senatorial
- avarice; owed its accomplishment to the most deplorable and indiscreet
- policy. If, in the time of Tiberius Gracchus, who wished to limit each
- citizen's possession of the ager publicus to five hundred acres, the
- amount of this possession had been fixed at as much as one family could
- cultivate, and granted on the express condition that the possessor
- should cultivate it himself, and should lease it to no one, the empire
- never would have been desolated by large estates; and possession,
- instead of increasing property, would have absorbed it. On what, then,
- depended the establishment and maintenance of equality in conditions
- and fortunes? On a more equitable division of the ager publicus, a wiser
- distribution of the right of possession.
- I insist upon this point, which is of the utmost importance, because
- it gives us an opportunity to examine the history of this individual
- possession, of which I said so much in my first memoir, and which so few
- of my readers seem to have understood. The Roman republic--having, as
- it did, the power to dispose absolutely of its territory, and to impose
- conditions upon possessors--was nearer to liberty and equality than any
- nation has been since. If the Senate had been intelligent and just,--if,
- at the time of the retreat to the Mons Sacer, instead of the ridiculous
- farce enacted by Menenius Agrippa, a solemn renunciation of the right
- to acquire had been made by each citizen on attaining his share of
- possessions,--the republic, based upon equality of possessions and the
- duty of labor, would not, in attaining its wealth, have degenerated
- in morals; Fabricius would have enjoyed the arts without controlling
- artists; and the conquests of the ancient Romans would have been the
- means of spreading civilization, instead of the series of murders and
- robberies that they were.
- But property, having unlimited power to amass and to lease, was daily
- increased by the addition of new possessions. From the time of Nero, six
- individuals were the sole proprietors of one-half of Roman Africa. In
- the fifth century, the wealthy families had incomes of no less than
- two millions: some possessed as many as twenty thousand slaves. All
- the authors who have written upon the causes of the fall of the Roman
- republic concur.
- M. Giraud of Aix [55] quotes the testimony of Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch,
- Olympiodorus, and Photius. Under Vespasian and Titus, Pliny, the
- naturalist, exclaimed: "Large estates have ruined Italy, and are ruining
- the provinces."
- But it never has been understood that the extension of property was
- effected then, as it is to-day, under the aegis of the law, and by
- virtue of the constitution. When the Senate sold captured lands at
- auction, it was in the interest of the treasury and of public welfare.
- When the patricians bought up possessions and property, they realized
- the purpose of the Senate's decrees; when they lent at high rates of
- interest, they took advantage of a legal privilege. "Property," said the
- lender, "is the right to enjoy even to the extent of abuse, _jus utendi
- et abutendi_; that is, the right to lend at interest,--to lease, to
- acquire, and then to lease and lend again." But property is also the
- right to exchange, to transfer, and to sell. If, then, the social
- condition is such that the proprietor, ruined by usury, may be compelled
- to sell his possession, the means of his subsistence, he will sell
- it; and, thanks to the law, accumulated property--devouring and
- anthropophagous property--will be established.[56]
- The immediate and secondary cause of the decline of the Romans
- was, then, the internal dissensions between the two orders of the
- republic,--the patricians and the plebeians,--dissensions which gave
- rise to civil wars, proscriptions, and loss of liberty, and finally led
- to the empire; but the primary and mediate cause of their decline was
- the establishment by Numa of the institution of property.
- I end with an extract from a work which I have quoted several times
- already, and which has recently received a prize from the Academy of
- Moral and Political Sciences:--
- "The concentration of property," says M. Laboulaye, "while causing
- extreme poverty, forced the emperors to feed and amuse the people, that
- they might forget their misery. _Panem et circenses:_ that was the Roman
- law in regard to the poor; a dire and perhaps a necessary evil wherever
- a landed aristocracy exists.
- "To feed these hungry mouths, grain was brought from Africa and the
- provinces, and distributed gratuitously among the needy. In the time of
- Caesar, three hundred and twenty thousand people were thus fed. Augustus
- saw that such a measure led directly to the destruction of husbandry;
- but to abolish these distributions was to put a weapon within the reach
- of the first aspirant for power.
- "The emperor shrank at the thought.
- "While grain was gratuitous, agriculture was impossible. Tillage gave
- way to pasturage, another cause of depopulation, even among slaves.
- "Finally, luxury, carried further and further every day, covered the
- soil of Italy with elegant villas, which occupied whole cantons. Gardens
- and groves replaced the fields, and the free population fled to the
- towns. Husbandry disappeared almost entirely, and with husbandry the
- husbandman. Africa furnished the wheat, and Greece the wine. Tiberius
- complained bitterly of this evil, which placed the lives of the Roman
- people at the mercy of the winds and waves: that was his anxiety. One
- day later, and three hundred thousand starving men walked the streets of
- Rome: that was a revolution.
- "This decline of Italy and the provinces did not stop. After the
- reign of Nero, depopulation commenced in towns as noted as Antium and
- Tarentum. Under the reign of Pertinax, there was so much desert land
- that the emperor abandoned it, even that which belonged to the treasury,
- to whoever would cultivate it, besides exempting the farmers from
- taxation for a period of ten years. Senators were compelled to invest
- one-third of their fortunes in real estate in Italy; but this measure
- served only to increase the evil which they wished to cure. To force
- the rich to possess in Italy was to increase the large estates which
- had ruined the country. And must I say, finally, that Aurelian wished to
- send the captives into the desert lands of Etruria, and that Valentinian
- was forced to settle the Alamanni on the fertile banks of the Po?"
- If the reader, in running through this book, should complain of meeting
- with nothing but quotations from other works, extracts from journals
- and public lectures, comments upon laws, and interpretations of them, I
- would remind him that the very object of this memoir is to establish the
- conformity of my opinion concerning property with that universally held;
- that, far from aiming at a paradox, it has been my main study to follow
- the advice of the world; and, finally, that my sole pretension is to
- clearly formulate the general belief. I cannot repeat it too often,--and
- I confess it with pride,--I teach absolutely nothing that is new; and I
- should regard the doctrine which I advocate as radically erroneous, if a
- single witness should testify against it.
- Let us now trace the revolutions in property among the Barbarians.
- As long as the German tribes dwelt in their forests, it did not occur
- to them to divide and appropriate the soil. The land was held in common:
- each individual could plow, sow, and reap. But, when the empire was once
- invaded, they bethought themselves of sharing the land, just as
- they shared spoils after a victory. "Hence," says M. Laboulaye, "the
- expressions _sortes Burgundiorum Gothorum_ and {GREEK, ' k }; hence the
- German words _allod_, allodium, and _loos_, lot, which are used in all
- modern languages to designate the gifts of chance."
- Allodial property, at least with the mass of coparceners, was originally
- held, then, in equal shares; for all of the prizes were equal, or, at
- least, equivalent. This property, like that of the Romans, was wholly
- individual, independent, exclusive, transferable, and consequently
- susceptible of accumulation and invasion. But, instead of its being, as
- was the case among the Romans, the large estate which, through
- increase and usury, subordinated and absorbed the small one, among
- the Barbarians--fonder of war than of wealth, more eager to dispose
- of persons than to appropriate things--it was the warrior who, through
- superiority of arms, enslaved his adversary. The Roman wanted matter;
- the Barbarian wanted man. Consequently, in the feudal ages, rents were
- almost nothing,--simply a hare, a partridge, a pie, a few pints of wine
- brought by a little girl, or a Maypole set up within the suzerain's
- reach. In return, the vassal or incumbent had to follow the seignior
- to battle (a thing which happened almost every day), and equip and feed
- himself at his own expense. "This spirit of the German tribes--this
- spirit of companionship and association--governed the territory as it
- governed individuals. The lands, like the men, were secured to a chief
- or seignior by a bond of mutual protection and fidelity. This subjection
- was the labor of the German epoch which gave birth to feudalism. By fair
- means or foul, every proprietor who could not be a chief was forced to
- be a vassal." (Laboulaye: History of Property.)
- By fair means or foul, every mechanic who cannot be a master has to be
- a journeyman; every proprietor who is not an invader will be invaded;
- every producer who cannot, by the exploitation of other men, furnish
- products at less than their proper value, will lose his labor.
- Corporations and masterships, which are hated so bitterly, but which
- will reappear if we are not careful, are the necessary results of
- the principle of competition which is inherent in property; their
- organization was patterned formerly after that of the feudal hierarchy,
- which was the result of the subordination of men and possessions.
- The times which paved the way for the advent of feudalism and the
- reappearance of large proprietors were times of carnage and the most
- frightful anarchy. Never before had murder and violence made such havoc
- with the human race. The tenth century, among others, if my memory
- serves me rightly, was called the CENTURY OF IRON. His property, his
- life, and the honor of his wife and children always in danger the
- small proprietor made haste to do homage to his seignior, and to
- bestow something on the church of his freehold, that he might receive
- protection and security.
- "Both facts and laws bear witness that from the sixth to the tenth
- century the proprietors of small freeholds were gradually plundered,
- or reduced by the encroachments of large proprietors and counts to the
- condition of either vassals or tributaries. The Capitularies are full
- of repressive provisions; but the incessant reiteration of these
- threats only shows the perseverance of the evil and the impotency of the
- government. Oppression, moreover, varies but little in its methods. The
- complaints of the free proprietors, and the groans of the plebeians
- at the time of the Gracchi, were one and the same. It is said that,
- whenever a poor man refused to give his estate to the bishop, the
- curate, the count, the judge, or the centurion, these immediately sought
- an opportunity to ruin him. They made him serve in the army until,
- completely ruined, he was induced, by fair means or foul, to give up his
- freehold."--Laboulaye: History of Property.
- How many small proprietors and manufacturers have not been ruined by
- large ones through chicanery, law-suits, and competition? Strategy,
- violence, and usury,--such are the proprietor's methods of plundering
- the laborer.
- Thus we see property, at all ages and in all its forms, oscillating by
- virtue of its principle between two opposite terms,--extreme division
- and extreme accumulation.
- Property, at its first term, is almost null. Reduced to personal
- exploitation, it is property only potentially. At its second term, it
- exists in its perfection; then it is truly property.
- When property is widely distributed, society thrives, progresses, grows,
- and rises quickly to the zenith of its power. Thus, the Jews, after
- leaving Babylon with Esdras and Nehemiah, soon became richer and more
- powerful than they had been under their kings. Sparta was in a strong
- and prosperous condition during the two or three centuries which
- followed the death of Lycurgus. The best days of Athens were those of
- the Persian war; Rome, whose inhabitants were divided from the beginning
- into two classes,--the exploiters and the exploited,--knew no such thing
- as peace.
- When property is concentrated, society, abusing itself, polluted, so
- to speak, grows corrupt, wears itself out--how shall I express this
- horrible idea?--plunges into long-continued and fatal luxury.
- When feudalism was established, society had to die of the same disease
- which killed it under the Caesars,--I mean accumulated property. But
- humanity, created for an immortal destiny, is deathless; the revolutions
- which disturb it are purifying crises, invariably followed by more
- vigorous health. In the fifth century, the invasion of the Barbarians
- partially restored the world to a state of natural equality. In the
- twelfth century, a new spirit pervading all society gave the slave his
- rights, and through justice breathed new life into the heart of nations.
- It has been said, and often repeated, that Christianity regenerated the
- world. That is true; but it seems to me that there is a mistake in
- the date. Christianity had no influence upon Roman society; when the
- Barbarians came, that society had disappeared. For such is God's curse
- upon property; every political organization based upon the exploitation
- of man, shall perish: slave-labor is death to the race of tyrants. The
- patrician families became extinct, as the feudal families did, and as
- all aristocracies must.
- It was in the middle ages, when a reactionary movement was beginning
- to secretly undermine accumulated property, that the influence of
- Christianity was first exercised to its full extent.
- The destruction of feudalism, the conversion of the serf into the
- commoner, the emancipation of the communes, and the admission of the
- Third Estate to political power, were deeds accomplished by Christianity
- exclusively. I say Christianity, not ecclesiasticism; for the priests
- and bishops were themselves large proprietors, and as such often
- persecuted the villeins. Without the Christianity of the middle ages,
- the existence of modern society could not be explained, and would not be
- possible.
- The truth of this assertion is shown by the very facts which M.
- Laboulaye quotes, although this author inclines to the opposite opinion.
- [57]
- Now, we did not commence to love God and to think of our salvation until
- after the promulgation of the Gospel.
- 1. Slavery among the Romans.--"The Roman slave was, in the eyes of
- the law, only a thing,--no more than an ox or a horse. He had neither
- property, family, nor personality; he was defenceless against his
- master's cruelty, folly, or cupidity. 'Sell your oxen that are past
- use,' said Cato, 'sell your calves, your lambs, your wool, your hides,
- your old ploughs, your old iron, your old slave, and your sick slave,
- and all that is of no use to you.' When no market could be found for the
- slaves that were worn out by sickness or old age, they were abandoned to
- starvation. Claudius was the first defender of this shameful practice."
- "Discharge your old workman," says the economist of the proprietary
- school; "turn off that sick domestic, that toothless and worn-out
- servant. Put away the unserviceable beauty; to the hospital with the
- useless mouths!"
- "The condition of these wretched beings improved but little under the
- emperors; and the best that can be said of the goodness of Antoninus
- is that he prohibited intolerable cruelty, as an ABUSE OF PROPERTY.
- _Expedit enim reipublicae ne quis re re sua male utatur_, says Gaius.
- "As soon as the Church met in council, it launched an anathema against
- the masters who had exercised over their slaves this terrible right of
- life and death. Were not the slaves, thanks to the right of sanctuary
- and to their poverty, the dearest proteges of religion? Constantine, who
- embodied in the laws the grand ideas of Christianity, valued the life of
- a slave as highly as that of a freeman, and declared the master, who had
- intentionally brought death upon his slave, guilty of murder. Between
- this law and that of Antoninus there is a complete revolution in moral
- ideas: the slave was a thing; religion has made him a man."
- Note the last words: "Between the law of the Gospel and that of
- Antoninus there is a complete revolution in moral ideas: the slave was
- a thing; religion has made him a man." The moral revolution which
- transformed the slave into a citizen was effected, then, by Christianity
- before the Barbarians set foot upon the soil of the empire. We have
- only to trace the progress of this MORAL revolution in the PERSONNEL
- of society. "But," M. Laboulaye rightly says, "it did not change the
- condition of men in a moment, any more than that of things; between
- slavery and liberty there was an abyss which could not be filled in a
- day; the transitional step was servitude."
- Now, what was servitude? In what did it differ from Roman slavery, and
- whence came this difference? Let the same author answer.
- 2. Of servitude.--"I see, in the lord's manor, slaves charged with
- domestic duties. Some are employed in the personal service of the
- master; others are charged with household cares. The women spin the
- wool; the men grind the grain, make the bread, or practise, in the
- interest of the seignior, what little they know of the industrial arts.
- The master punishes them when he chooses, kills them with impunity, and
- sells them and theirs like so many cattle. The slave has no personality,
- and consequently no _wehrgeld_ [59] peculiar to himself: he is a thing.
- The _wehrgeld_ belongs to the master as a compensation for the loss of
- his property. Whether the slave is killed or stolen, the indemnity does
- not change, for the injury is the same; but the indemnity increases or
- diminishes according to the value of the serf. In all these particulars
- Germanic slavery and Roman servitude are alike."
- This similarity is worthy of notice. Slavery is always the same, whether
- in a Roman villa or on a Barbarian farm. The man, like the ox and the
- ass, is a part of the live-stock; a price is set upon his head; he is a
- tool without a conscience, a chattel without personality, an impeccable,
- irresponsible being, who has neither rights nor duties.
- Why did his condition improve?
- "In good season..." [when?] "the serf began to be regarded as a man;
- and, as such, the law of the Visigoths, under the influence of Christian
- ideas, punished with fine or banishment any one who maimed or killed
- him."
- Always Christianity, always religion, though we should like to speak
- of the laws only. Did the philanthropy of the Visigoths make its first
- appearance before or after the preaching of the Gospel? This point must
- be cleared up.
- "After the conquest, the serfs were scattered over the large estates
- of the Barbarians, each having his house, his lot, and his peculium, in
- return for which he paid rent and performed service. They were rarely
- separated from their homes when their land was sold; they and all that
- they had became the property of the purchaser. The law favored this
- realization of the serf, in not allowing him to be sold out of the
- country."
- What inspired this law, destructive not only of slavery, but of property
- itself? For, if the master cannot drive from his domain the slave whom
- he has once established there, it follows that the slave is proprietor,
- as well as the master.
- "The Barbarians," again says M. Laboulaye, "were the first to recognize
- the slave's rights of family and property,--two rights which are
- incompatible with slavery."
- But was this recognition the necessary result of the mode of servitude
- in vogue among the Germanic nations previous to their conversion to
- Christianity, or was it the immediate effect of that spirit of justice
- infused with religion, by which the seignior was forced to respect in
- the serf a soul equal to his own, a brother in Jesus Christ, purified by
- the same baptism, and redeemed by the same sacrifice of the Son of God
- in the form of man? For we must not close our eyes to the fact that,
- though the Barbarian morals and the ignorance and carelessness of the
- seigniors, who busied themselves mainly with wars and battles, paying
- little or no attention to agriculture, may have been great aids in
- the emancipation of the serfs, still the vital principle of this
- emancipation was essentially Christian. Suppose that the Barbarians had
- remained Pagans in the midst of a Pagan world. As they did not change
- the Gospel, so they would not have changed the polytheistic customs;
- slavery would have remained what it was; they would have continued to
- kill the slaves who were desirous of liberty, family, and property;
- whole nations would have been reduced to the condition of Helots;
- nothing would have changed upon the terrestrial stage, except the
- actors. The Barbarians were less selfish, less imperious, less
- dissolute, and less cruel than the Romans. Such was the nature upon
- which, after the fall of the empire and the renovation of society,
- Christianity was to act. But this nature, grounded as in former times
- upon slavery and war, would, by its own energy, have produced nothing
- but war and slavery.
- "GRADUALLY the serfs obtained the privilege of being judged by the same
- standard as their masters...."
- When, how, and by what title did they obtain this privilege?
- "GRADUALLY their duties were regulated."
- Whence came the regulations? Who had the authority to introduce them?
- "The master took a part of the labor of the serf,--three days, for
- instance,--and left the rest to him. As for Sunday, that belonged to
- God."
- And what established Sunday, if not religion? Whence I infer, that
- the same power which took it upon itself to suspend hostilities and
- to lighten the duties of the serf was also that which regulated the
- judiciary and created a sort of law for the slave.
- But this law itself, on what did it bear?--what was its principle?--what
- was the philosophy of the councils and popes with reference to this
- matter? The reply to all these questions, coming from me alone, would
- be distrusted. The authority of M. Laboulaye shall give credence to my
- words. This holy philosophy, to which the slaves were indebted for every
- thing, this invocation of the Gospel, was an anathema against property.
- The proprietors of small freeholds, that is, the freemen of the middle
- class, had fallen, in consequence of the tyranny of the nobles, into a
- worse condition than that of the tenants and serfs. "The expenses of war
- weighed less heavily upon the serf than upon the freeman; and, as for
- legal protection, the seigniorial court, where the serf was judged by
- his peers, was far preferable to the cantonal assembly. It was better to
- have a noble for a seignior than for a judge."
- So it is better to-day to have a man of large capital for an associate
- than for a rival. The honest tenant--the laborer who earns weekly a
- moderate but constant salary--is more to be envied than the independent
- but small farmer, or the poor licensed mechanic.
- At that time, all were either seigniors or serfs, oppressors or
- oppressed. "Then, under the protection of convents, or of the
- seigniorial turret, new societies were formed, which silently spread
- over the soil made fertile by their hands, and which derived their power
- from the annihilation of the free classes whom they enlisted in their
- behalf. As tenants, these men acquired, from generation to generation,
- sacred rights over the soil which they cultivated in the interest of
- lazy and pillaging masters. As fast as the social tempest abated, it
- became necessary to respect the union and heritage of these villeins,
- who by their labor had truly prescribed the soil for their own profit."
- I ask how prescription could take effect where a contrary title and
- possession already existed? M. Laboulaye is a lawyer. Where, then, did
- he ever see the labor of the slave and the cultivation by the tenant
- prescribe the soil for their own profit, to the detriment of a
- recognized master daily acting as a proprietor? Let us not disguise
- matters. As fast as the tenants and the serfs grew rich, they wished
- to be independent and free; they commenced to associate, unfurl their
- municipal banners, raise belfries, fortify their towns, and refuse to
- pay their seigniorial dues. In doing these things they were perfectly
- right; for, in fact, their condition was intolerable. But in law--I mean
- in Roman and Napoleonic law--their refusal to obey and pay tribute to
- their masters was illegitimate.
- Now, this imperceptible usurpation of property by the commonalty was
- inspired by religion.
- The seignior had attached the serf to the soil; religion granted the
- serf rights over the soil. The seignior imposed duties upon the serf;
- religion fixed their limits. The seignior could kill the serf with
- impunity, could deprive him of his wife, violate his daughter, pillage
- his house, and rob him of his savings; religion checked his invasions:
- it excommunicated the seignior. Religion was the real cause of the
- ruin of feudal property. Why should it not be bold enough to-day to
- resolutely condemn capitalistic property? Since the middle ages, there
- has been no change in social economy except in its forms; its relations
- remain unaltered.
- The only result of the emancipation of the serfs was that property
- changed hands; or, rather, that new proprietors were created. Sooner
- or later the extension of privilege, far from curing the evil, was to
- operate to the disadvantage of the plebeians. Nevertheless, the new
- social organization did not meet with the same end in all places. In
- Lombardy, for example, where the people rapidly growing rich through
- commerce and industry soon conquered the authorities, even to the
- exclusion of the nobles,--first, the nobility became poor and degraded,
- and were forced, in order to live and maintain their credit, to gain
- admission to the guilds; then, the ordinary subalternization of property
- leading to inequality of fortunes, to wealth and poverty, to jealousies
- and hatreds, the cities passed rapidly from the rankest democracy under
- the yoke of a few ambitious leaders. Such was the fate of most of the
- Lombardic cities,--Genoa, Florence, Bologna, Milan, Pisa, &c,.--which
- afterwards changed rulers frequently, but which have never since risen
- in favor of liberty. The people can easily escape from the tyranny of
- despots, but they do not know how to throw off the effects of their own
- despotism; just as we avoid the assassin's steel, while we succumb to a
- constitutional malady. As soon as a nation becomes proprietor, either
- it must perish, or a foreign invasion must force it again to begin its
- evolutionary round. [59]
- "The communes once organized, the kings treated them as superior
- vassals. Now, just as the under vassal had no communication with the
- king except through the direct vassal, so also the commoners could enter
- no complaints except through the commune.
- "Like causes produce like effects. Each commune became a small and
- separate State, governed by a few citizens, who sought to extend their
- authority over the others; who, in their turn, revenged themselves
- upon the unfortunate inhabitants who had not the right of citizenship.
- Feudalism in unemancipated countries, and oligarchy in the communes,
- made nearly the same ravages. There were sub-associations, fraternities,
- tradesmen's associations in the communes, and colleges in the
- universities. The oppression was so great, that it was no rare thing to
- see the inhabitants of a commune demanding its suppression...."--Meyer:
- Judicial Institutions of Europe.
- In France, the Revolution was much more gradual. The communes, in taking
- refuge under the protection of the kings, had found them masters rather
- than protectors. Their liberty had long since been lost, or, rather,
- their emancipation had been suspended, when feudalism received its
- death-blow at the hand of Richelieu. Then liberty halted; the prince of
- the feudatories held sole and undivided sway. The nobles, the clergy,
- the commoners, the parliaments, every thing in short except a few
- seeming privileges, were controlled by the king; who, like his early
- predecessors, consumed regularly, and nearly always in advance, the
- revenues of his domain,--and that domain was France.
- Finally, '89 arrived; liberty resumed its march; a century and a
- half had been required to wear out the last form of feudal
- property,--monarchy.
- The French Revolution may be defined as _the substitution of real right
- for personal right;_ that is to say, in the days of feudalism, the value
- of property depended upon the standing of the proprietor, while, after
- the Revolution, the regard for the man was proportional to his property.
- Now, we have seen from what has been said in the preceding pages, that
- this recognition of the right of laborers had been the constant aim of
- the serfs and communes, the secret motive of their efforts. The movement
- of '89 was only the last stage of that long insurrection. But it seems
- to me that we have not paid sufficient attention to the fact that the
- Revolution of 1789, instigated by the same causes, animated by the same
- spirit, triumphing by the same struggles, was consummated in Italy four
- centuries ago. Italy was the first to sound the signal of war against
- feudalism; France has followed; Spain and England are beginning to move;
- the rest still sleep. If a grand example should be given to the world,
- the day of trial would be much abridged.
- Note the following summary of the revolutions of property, from the days
- of the Roman Empire down to the present time:--
- 1. Fifth century.--Barbarian invasions; division of the lands of the
- empire into independent portions or freeholds.
- 2. From the fifth to the eighth century.--Gradual concentration of
- freeholds, or transformation of the small freeholds into fiefs, feuds,
- tenures, &c. Large properties, small possessions. Charlemagne (771-814)
- decrees that all freeholds are dependent upon the king of France.
- 3. From the eighth to the tenth century.--The relation between the crown
- and the superior dependents is broken; the latter becoming freeholders,
- while the smaller dependents cease to recognize the king, and adhere to
- the nearest suzerain. Feudal system.
- 4. Twelfth century.--Movement of the serfs towards liberty; emancipation
- of the communes.
- 5. Thirteenth century.--Abolition of personal right, and of the feudal
- system in Italy. Italian Republics.
- 6. Seventeenth century.--Abolition of feudalism in France during
- Richelieu's ministry. Despotism.
- 7. 1789.--Abolition of all privileges of birth, caste, provinces, and
- corporations; equality of persons and of rights. French democracy.
- 8. 1830.--The principle of concentration inherent in individual property
- is REMARKED. Development of the idea of association.
- The more we reflect upon this series of transformations and changes,
- the more clearly we see that they were necessary in their principle, in
- their manifestations, and in their result.
- It was necessary that inexperienced conquerors, eager for liberty,
- should divide the Roman Empire into a multitude of estates, as free and
- independent as themselves.
- It was necessary that these men, who liked war even better than liberty,
- should submit to their leaders; and, as the freehold represented the
- man, that property should violate property.
- It was necessary that, under the rule of a nobility always idle when not
- fighting, there should grow up a body of laborers, who, by the power
- of production, and by the division and circulation of wealth, would
- gradually gain control over commerce, industry, and a portion of the
- land, and who, having become rich, would aspire to power and authority
- also.
- It was necessary, finally, that liberty and equality of rights having
- been achieved, and individual property still existing, attended by
- robbery, poverty, social inequality, and oppression, there should be
- an inquiry into the cause of this evil, and an idea of universal
- association formed, whereby, on condition of labor, all interests should
- be protected and consolidated.
- "Evil, when carried too far," says a learned jurist, "cures itself; and
- the political innovation which aims to increase the power of the State,
- finally succumbs to the effects of its own work. The Germans, to secure
- their independence, chose chiefs; and soon they were oppressed by their
- kings and noblemen. The monarchs surrounded themselves with volunteers,
- in order to control the freemen; and they found themselves dependent
- upon their proud vassals. The _missi dominici_ were sent into the
- provinces to maintain the power of the emperors, and to protect the
- people from the oppressions of the noblemen; and not only did they usurp
- the imperial power to a great extent, but they dealt more severely with
- the inhabitants. The freemen became vassals, in order to get rid of
- military service and court duty; and they were immediately involved in
- all the personal quarrels of their seigniors, and compelled to do
- jury duty in their courts.... The kings protected the cities and
- the communes, in the hope of freeing them from the yoke of the grand
- vassals, and of rendering their own power more absolute; and those same
- communes have, in several European countries, procured the establishment
- of a constitutional power, are now holding royalty in check, and
- are giving rise to a universal desire for political reform."--Meyer:
- Judicial Institutions of Europe.
- In recapitulation.
- What was feudalism? A confederation of the grand seign iors against the
- villeins, and against the king. [60] What is constitutional government?
- A confederation of the bourgeoisie against the laborers, and against the
- king. [61]
- How did feudalism end? In the union of the communes and the royal
- authority. How will the bourgeoisie aristocracy end? In the union of the
- proletariat and the sovereign power.
- What was the immediate result of the struggle of the communes and the
- king against the seigniors? The monarchical unity of Louis XIV. What
- will be the result of the struggle of the proletariat and the sovereign
- power combined against the bourgeoisie? The absolute unity of the nation
- and the government.
- It remains to be seen whether the nation, one and supreme, will be
- represented in its executive and central power by ONE, by FIVE, by ONE
- HUNDRED, or ONE THOUSAND; that is, it remains to be seen, whether the
- royalty of the barricades intends to maintain itself by the people, or
- without the people, and whether Louis Philippe wishes his reign to be
- the most famous in all history.
- I have made this statement as brief, but at the same time as accurate
- as I could, neglecting facts and details, that I might give the more
- attention to the economical relations of society. For the study of
- history is like the study of the human organism; just as the latter
- has its system, its organs, and its functions, which can be treated
- separately, so the former has its ensemble, its instruments, and its
- causes. Of course I do not pretend that the principle of property is
- a complete resume of all the social forces; but, as in that wonderful
- machine which we call our body, the harmony of the whole allows us to
- draw a general conclusion from the consideration of a single function or
- organ, so, in discussing historical causes, I have been able to reason
- with absolute accuracy from a single order of facts, certain as I was
- of the perfect correlation which exists between this special order and
- universal history. As is the property of a nation, so is its family,
- its marriage, its religion, its civil and military organization, and
- its legislative and judicial institutions. History, viewed from this
- standpoint, is a grand and sublime psychological study.
- Well, sir, in writing against property, have I done more than quote the
- language of history? I have said to modern society,--the daughter and
- heiress of all preceding societies,--_Age guod agis:_ complete the
- task which for six thousand years you have been executing under the
- inspiration and by the command of God; hasten to finish your journey;
- turn neither to the right nor the left, but follow the road which lies
- before you. You seek reason, law, unity, and discipline; but hereafter
- you can find them only by stripping off the veils of your infancy, and
- ceasing to follow instinct as a guide. Awaken your sleeping conscience;
- open your eyes to the pure light of reflection and science; behold the
- phantom which troubled your dreams, and so long kept you in a state of
- unutterable anguish. Know thyself, O long-deluded society[1] know thy
- enemy!... And I have denounced property.
- We often hear the defenders of the right of domain quote in defence of
- their views the testimony of nations and ages. We can judge, from what
- has just been said, how far this historical argument conforms to the
- real facts and the conclusions of science.
- To complete this apology, I must examine the various theories.
- Neither politics, nor legislation, nor history, can be explained and
- understood, without a positive theory which defines their elements,
- and discovers their laws; in short, without a philosophy. Now, the two
- principal schools, which to this day divide the attention of the world,
- do not satisfy this condition.
- The first, essentially PRACTICAL in its character, confined to a
- statement of facts, and buried in learning, cares very little by what
- laws humanity develops itself. To it these laws are the secret of the
- Almighty, which no one can fathom without a commission from on high.
- In applying the facts of history to government, this school does not
- reason; it does not anticipate; it makes no comparison of the past with
- the present, in order to predict the future. In its opinion, the
- lessons of experience teach us only to repeat old errors, and its whole
- philosophy consists in perpetually retracing the tracks of antiquity,
- instead of going straight ahead forever in the direction in which they
- point.
- The second school may be called either FATALISTIC or PANTHEISTIC. To
- it the movements of empires and the revolutions of humanity are the
- manifestations, the incarnations, of the Almighty. The human race,
- identified with the divine essence, wheels in a circle of appearances,
- informations, and destructions, which necessarily excludes the idea of
- absolute truth, and destroys providence and liberty.
- Corresponding to these two schools of history, there are two schools
- of jurisprudence, similarly opposed, and possessed of the same
- peculiarities.
- 1. The practical and conventional school, to which the law is always a
- creation of the legislator, an expression of his will, a privilege
- which he condescends to grant,--in short, a gratuitous affirmation to be
- regarded as judicious and legitimate, no matter what it declares.
- 2. The fatalistic and pantheistic school, sometimes called the
- historical school, which opposes the despotism of the first, and
- maintains that law, like literature and religion, is always the
- expression of society,--its manifestation, its form, the external
- realization of its mobile spirit and its ever-changing inspirations.
- Each of these schools, denying the absolute, rejects thereby all
- positive and a priori philosophy.
- Now, it is evident that the theories of these two schools, whatever view
- we take of them, are utterly unsatisfactory: for, opposed, they form no
- dilemma,--that is, if one is false, it does not follow that the other
- is true; and, united, they do not constitute the truth, since they
- disregard the absolute, without which there is no truth. They are
- respectively a THESIS and an ANTITHESIS. There remains to be found,
- then, a SYNTHESIS, which, predicating the absolute, justifies the will
- of the legislator, explains the variations of the law, annihilates
- the theory of the circular movement of humanity, and demonstrates its
- progress.
- The legists, by the very nature of their studies and in spite of their
- obstinate prejudices, have been led irresistibly to suspect that the
- absolute in the science of law is not as chimerical as is commonly
- supposed; and this suspicion arose from their comparison of the various
- relations which legislators have been called upon to regulate.
- M. Laboulaye, the laureate of the Institute, begins his "History of
- Property" with these words:--
- "While the law of contract, which regulates only the mutual interests of
- men, has not varied for centuries (except in certain forms which relate
- more to the proof than to the character of the obligation), the civil
- law of property, which regulates the mutual relations of citizens, has
- undergone several radical changes, and has kept pace in its variations
- with all the vicissitudes of society. The law of contract, which holds
- essentially to those principles of eternal justice which are engraven
- upon the depths of the human heart, is the immutable element of
- jurisprudence, and, in a certain sense, its philosophy. Property, on
- the contrary, is the variable element of jurisprudence, its history, its
- policy."
- Marvellous! There is in law, and consequently in politics, something
- variable and something invariable. The invariable element is obligation,
- the bond of justice, duty; the variable element is property,--that is,
- the external form of law, the subject-matter of the contract. Whence
- it follows that the law can modify, change, reform, and judge property.
- Reconcile that, if you can, with the idea of an eternal, absolute,
- permanent, and indefectible right.
- However, M. Laboulaye is in perfect accord with himself when he adds,
- "Possession of the soil rests solely upon force until society takes it
- in hand, and espouses the cause of the possessor;" [62] and, a little
- farther, "The right of property is not natural, but social. The laws not
- only protect property: they give it birth," &c. Now, that which the
- law has made the law can unmake; especially since, according to
- M. Laboulaye,--an avowed partisan of the historical or pantheistic
- school,--the law is not absolute, is not an idea, but a form.
- But why is it that property is variable, and, unlike obligation,
- incapable of definition and settlement? Before affirming, somewhat
- boldly without doubt, that in right there are no absolute principles
- (the most dangerous, most immoral, most tyrannical--in a word, most
- anti-social--assertion imaginable), it was proper that the right of
- property should be subjected to a thorough examination, in order to put
- in evidence its variable, arbitrary, and contingent elements, and
- those which are eternal, legitimate, and absolute; then, this operation
- performed, it became easy to account for the laws, and to correct all
- the codes.
- Now, this examination of property I claim to have made, and in the
- fullest detail; but, either from the public's lack of interest in
- an unrecommended and unattractive pamphlet, or--which is more
- probable--from the weakness of exposition and want of genius which
- characterize the work, the First Memoir on Property passed unnoticed;
- scarcely would a few communists, having turned its leaves, deign to
- brand it with their disapprobation. You alone, sir, in spite of the
- disfavor which I showed for your economical predecessors in too severe
- a criticism of them,--you alone have judged me justly; and although I
- cannot accept, at least literally, your first judgment, yet it is to
- you alone that I appeal from a decision too equivocal to be regarded as
- final.
- It not being my intention to enter at present into a discussion of
- principles, I shall content myself with estimating, from the point of
- view of this simple and intelligible absolute, the theories of property
- which our generation has produced.
- The most exact idea of property is given us by the Roman law, faithfully
- followed in this particular by the ancient legists. It is the absolute,
- exclusive, autocratic domain of a man over a thing,--a domain which
- begins by USUCAPTION, is maintained by POSSESSION, and finally, by the
- aid of PRESCRIPTION, finds its sanction in the civil law; a domain which
- so identifies the man with the thing, that the proprietor can say, "He
- who uses my field, virtually compels me to labor for him; therefore he
- owes me compensation."
- I pass in silence the secondary modes by which property can be
- acquired,--_tradition, sale, exchange, inheritance_, &c.,--which have
- nothing in common with the origin of property.
- Accordingly, Pothier said THE DOMAIN OF PROPERTY, and not simply
- PROPERTY. And the most learned writers on jurisprudence--in imitation
- of the Roman praetor who recognized a RIGHT OF PROPERTY and a RIGHT
- OF POSSESSION--have carefully distinguished between the DOMAIN and the
- right of USUFRUCT, USE, and HABITATION, which, reduced to its natural
- limits, is the very expression of justice; and which is, in my opinion,
- to supplant domanial property, and finally form the basis of all
- jurisprudence.
- But, sir, admire the clumsiness of systems, or rather the fatality of
- logic! While the Roman law and all the savants inspired by it teach that
- property in its origin is the right of first occupancy sanctioned by
- law, the modern legists, dissatisfied with this brutal definition, claim
- that property is based upon LABOR. Immediately they infer that he who no
- longer labors, but makes another labor in his stead, loses his right to
- the earnings of the latter. It is by virtue of this principle that
- the serfs of the middle ages claimed a legal right to property, and
- consequently to the enjoyment of political rights; that the clergy were
- despoiled in '89 of their immense estates, and were granted a pension
- in exchange; that at the restoration the liberal deputies opposed the
- indemnity of one billion francs. "The nation," said they, "has acquired
- by twenty-five years of labor and possession the property which the
- emigrants forfeited by abandonment and long idleness: why should the
- nobles be treated with more favor than the priests?" [63]
- This position is quite in harmony with my principles, and I heartily
- applaud the indignation of M. Lerminier; but I do not know that a
- proprietor was ever deprived of his property because UNWORTHY; and as
- reasonable, social, and even useful as the thing may seem, it is quite
- contrary to the uses and customs of property.
- All usurpations, not born of war, have been caused and supported by
- labor. All modern history proves this, from the end of the Roman empire
- down to the present day. And as if to give a sort of legal sanction to
- these usurpations, the doctrine of labor, subversive of property,
- is professed at great length in the Roman law under the name of
- PRESCRIPTION.
- The man who cultivates, it has been said, makes the land his own;
- consequently, no more property. This was clearly seen by the old
- jurists, who have not failed to denounce this novelty; while on the
- other hand the young school hoots at the absurdity of the first-occupant
- theory. Others have presented themselves, pretending to reconcile
- the two opinions by uniting them. They have failed, like all the
- _juste-milieux_ of the world, and are laughed at for their eclecticism.
- At present, the alarm is in the camp of the old doctrine; from all sides
- pour IN DEFENCES OF PROPERTY, STUDIES REGARDING PROPERTY, THEORIES OF
- PROPERTY, each one of which, giving the lie to the rest, inflicts a
- fresh wound upon property.
- Consider, indeed, the inextricable embarrassments, the contradictions,
- the absurdities, the incredible nonsense, in which the bold defenders of
- property so lightly involve themselves. I choose the eclectics, because,
- those killed, the others cannot survive.
- M. Troplong, jurist, passes for a philosopher in the eyes of the editors
- of "Le Droit." I tell the gentlemen of "Le Droit" that, in the judgment
- of philosophers, M. Troplong is only an advocate; and I prove my
- assertion.
- M. Troplong is a defender of progress. "The words of the code," says he,
- "are fruitful sap with which the classic works of the eighteenth century
- overflow. To wish to suppress them... is to violate the law of progress,
- and to forget that a science which moves is a science which grows." [64]
- Now, the only mutable and progressive portion of law, as we have already
- seen, is that which concerns property. If, then, you ask what reforms
- are to be introduced into the right of property? M. Troplong makes no
- reply; what progress is to be hoped for? no reply; what is to be the
- destiny of property in case of universal association? no reply; what is
- the absolute and what the contingent, what the true and what the false,
- in property? no reply. M. Troplong favors quiescence and _in statu
- quo_ in regard to property. What could be more unphilosophical in a
- progressive philosopher?
- Nevertheless, M. Troplong has thought about these things. "There are,"
- he says, "many weak points and antiquated ideas in the doctrines of
- modern authors concerning property: witness the works of MM. Toullier
- and Duranton." The doctrine of M. Troplong promises, then, strong
- points, advanced and progressive ideas. Let us see; let us examine:--
- "Man, placed in the presence of matter, is conscious of a power over it,
- which has been given to him to satisfy the needs of his being. King
- of inanimate or unintelligent nature, he feels that he has a right to
- modify it, govern it, and fit it for his use. There it is, the subject
- of property, which is legitimate only when exercised over things, never
- when over persons."
- M. Troplong is so little of a philosopher, that he does not even know
- the import of the philosophical terms which he makes a show of using. He
- says of matter that it is the SUBJECT of property; he should have said
- the OBJECT. M. Troplong uses the language of the anatomists, who apply
- the term SUBJECT to the human matter used in their experiments.
- This error of our author is repeated farther on: "Liberty, which
- overcomes matter, the subject of property, &c." The SUBJECT of
- property is man; its OBJECT is matter. But even this is but a slight
- mortification; directly we shall have some crucifixions.
- Thus, according to the passage just quoted, it is in the conscience and
- personality of man that the principle of property must be sought. Is
- there any thing new in this doctrine? Apparently it never has occurred
- to those who, since the days of Cicero and Aristotle, and earlier, have
- maintained that THINGS BELONG TO THE FIRST OCCUPANT, that occupation may
- be exercised by beings devoid of conscience and personality. The human
- personality, though it may be the principle or the subject of property,
- as matter is the object, is not the CONDITION. Now, it is this condition
- which we most need to know. So far, M. Troplong tells us no more than
- his masters, and the figures with which he adorns his style add nothing
- to the old idea.
- Property, then, implies three terms: The subject, the object, and the
- condition. There is no difficulty in regard to the first two terms. As
- to the third, the condition of property down to this day, for the Greek
- as for the Barbarian, has been that of first occupancy. What now would
- you have it, progressive doctor?
- "When man lays hands for the first time upon an object without a
- master, he performs an act which, among individuals, is of the greatest
- importance. The thing thus seized and occupied participates, so to
- speak, in the personality of him who holds it. It becomes sacred, like
- himself. It is impossible to take it without doing violence to his
- liberty, or to remove it without rashly invading his person. Diogenes
- did but express this truth of intuition, when he said: 'Stand out of my
- light!'"
- Very good! but would the prince of cynics, the very personal and very
- haughty Diogenes, have had the right to charge another cynic, as rent
- for this same place in the sunshine, a bone for twenty-four hours of
- possession? It is that which constitutes the proprietor; it is that
- which you fail to justify. In reasoning from the human personality and
- individuality to the right of property, you unconsciously construct
- a syllogism in which the conclusion includes more than the premises,
- contrary to the rules laid down by Aristotle. The individuality of
- the human person proves INDIVIDUAL POSSESSION, originally called
- _proprietas_, in opposition to collective possession, _communio_.
- It gives birth to the distinction between THINE and MINE, true signs
- of equality, not, by any means, of subordination. "From equivocation to
- equivocation," says M. Michelet, [65] "property would crawl to the end
- of the world; man could not limit it, were not he himself its limit.
- Where they clash, there will be its frontier." In short, individuality
- of being destroys the hypothesis of communism, but it does not for that
- reason give birth to domain,--that domain by virtue of which the holder
- of a thing exercises over the person who takes his place a right of
- prestation and suzerainty, that has always been identified with property
- itself.
- Further, that he whose legitimately acquired possession injures nobody
- cannot be nonsuited without flagrant injustice, is a truth, not of
- INTUITION, as M. Troplong says, but of INWARD SENSATION, [66] which has
- nothing to do with property.
- M. Troplong admits, then, occupancy as a condition of property. In that,
- he is in accord with the Roman law, in accord with MM. Toullier and
- Duranton; but in his opinion this condition is not the only one, and it
- is in this particular that his doctrine goes beyond theirs.
- "But, however exclusive the right arising from sole occupancy, does it
- not become still more so, when man has moulded matter by his labor;
- when he has deposited in it a portion of himself, re-creating it by his
- industry, and setting upon it the seal of his intelligence and activity?
- Of all conquests, that is the most legitimate, for it is the price of
- labor.
- "He who should deprive a man of the thing thus remodelled, thus
- humanized, would invade the man himself, and would inflict the deepest
- wounds upon his liberty."
- I pass over the very beautiful explanations in which M. Troplong,
- discussing labor and industry, displays the whole wealth of his
- eloquence. M. Troplong is not only a philosopher, he is an orator, an
- artist. HE ABOUNDS WITH APPEALS TO THE CONSCIENCE AND THE PASSIONS. I
- might make sad work of his rhetoric, should I undertake to dissect it;
- but I confine myself for the present to his philosophy.
- If M. Troplong had only known how to think and reflect, before
- abandoning the original fact of occupancy and plunging into the theory
- of labor, he would have asked himself: "What is it to occupy?" And he
- would have discovered that OCCUPANCY is only a generic term by which
- all modes of possession are expressed,--seizure, station, immanence,
- habitation, cultivation, use, consumption, &c.; that labor,
- consequently, is but one of a thousand forms of occupancy. He would have
- understood, finally, that the right of possession which is born of labor
- is governed by the same general laws as that which results from the
- simple seizure of things. What kind of a legist is he who declaims when
- he ought to reason, who continually mistakes his metaphors for legal
- axioms, and who does not so much as know how to obtain a universal by
- induction, and form a category?
- If labor is identical with occupancy, the only benefit which it secures
- to the laborer is the right of individual possession of the object of
- his labor; if it differs from occupancy, it gives birth to a right equal
- only to itself,--that is, a right which begins, continues, and ends,
- with the labor of the occupant. It is for this reason, in the words of
- the law, that one cannot acquire a just title to a thing by labor alone.
- He must also hold it for a year and a day, in order to be regarded as
- its possessor; and possess it twenty or thirty years, in order to become
- its proprietor.
- These preliminaries established, M. Troplong's whole structure falls of
- its own weight, and the inferences, which he attempts to draw, vanish.
- "Property once acquired by occupation and labor, it naturally preserves
- itself, not only by the same means, but also by the refusal of the
- holder to abdicate; for from the very fact that it has risen to the
- height of a right, it is its nature to perpetuate itself and to last for
- an indefinite period.... Rights, considered from an ideal point of
- view, are imperishable and eternal; and time, which affects only the
- contingent, can no more disturb them than it can injure God himself."
- It is astonishing that our author, in speaking of the IDEAL, TIME, and
- ETERNITY, did not work into his sentence the DIVINE WINGS of Plato,--so
- fashionable to-day in philosophical works.
- With the exception of falsehood, I hate nonsense more than any thing
- else in the world. PROPERTY ONCE ACQUIRED! Good, if it is acquired; but,
- as it is not acquired, it cannot be preserved. RIGHTS ARE ETERNAL! Yes,
- in the sight of God, like the archetypal ideas of the Platonists. But,
- on the earth, rights exist only in the presence of a subject, an object,
- and a condition. Take away one of these three things, and rights no
- longer exist. Thus, individual possession ceases at the death of the
- subject, upon the destruction of the object, or in case of exchange or
- abandonment.
- Let us admit, however, with M. Troplong, that property is an absolute
- and eternal right, which cannot be destroyed save by the deed and at
- the will of the proprietor. What are the consequences which immediately
- follow from this position?
- To show the justice and utility of prescription, M. Troplong supposes
- the case of a bona fide possessor whom a proprietor, long since
- forgotten or even unknown, is attempting to eject from his possession.
- "At the start, the error of the possessor was excusable but not
- irreparable. Pursuing its course and growing old by degrees, it has
- so completely clothed itself in the colors of truth, it has spoken
- so loudly the language of right, it has involved so many confiding
- interests, that it fairly may be asked whether it would not cause
- greater confusion to go back to the reality than to sanction the
- fictions which it (an error, without doubt) has sown on its way? Well,
- yes; it must be confessed, without hesitation, that the remedy would
- prove worse than the disease, and that its application would lead to the
- most outrageous injustice."
- How long since utility became a principle of law? When the Athenians, by
- the advice of Aristides, rejected a proposition eminently advantageous
- to their republic, but also utterly unjust, they showed finer moral
- perception and greater clearness of intellect than M. Troplong. Property
- is an eternal right, independent of time, indestructible except by the
- act and at the will of the proprietor; and here this right is taken from
- the proprietor, and on what ground? Good God! on the ground of ABSENCE!
- Is it not true that legists are governed by caprice in giving and taking
- away rights? When it pleases these gentlemen, idleness, unworthiness, or
- absence can invalidate a right which, under quite similar circumstances,
- labor, residence, and virtue are inadequate to obtain. Do not be
- astonished that legists reject the absolute. Their good pleasure is law,
- and their disordered imaginations are the real cause of the EVOLUTIONS
- in jurisprudence.
- "If the nominal proprietor should plead ignorance, his claim would be
- none the more valid. Indeed, his ignorance might arise from inexcusable
- carelessness, etc."
- What! in order to legitimate dispossession through prescription, you
- suppose faults in the proprietor! You blame his absence,--which may
- have been involuntary; his neglect,--not knowing what caused it; his
- carelessness,--a gratuitous supposition of your own! It is absurd. One
- very simple observation suffices to annihilate this theory. Society,
- which, they tell us, makes an exception in the interest of order in
- favor of the possessor as against the old proprietor, owes the latter
- an indemnity; since the privilege of prescription is nothing but
- expropriation for the sake of public utility.
- But here is something stronger:--
- "In society a place cannot remain vacant with impunity. A new man arises
- in place of the old one who disappears or goes away; he brings here his
- existence, becomes entirely absorbed, and devotes himself to this post
- which he finds abandoned. Shall the deserter, then, dispute the honor of
- the victory with the soldier who fights with the sweat standing on his
- brow, and bears the burden of the day, in behalf of a cause which he
- deems just?"
- When the tongue of an advocate once gets in motion, who can tell where
- it will stop? M. Troplong admits and justifies usurpation in case of
- the ABSENCE of the proprietor, and on a mere presumption of his
- CARELESSNESS. But when the neglect is authenticated; when the
- abandonment is solemnly and voluntarily set forth in a contract in the
- presence of a magistrate; when the proprietor dares to say, "I cease to
- labor, but I still claim a share of the product,"--then the absentee's
- right of property is protected; the usurpation of the possessor would
- be criminal; farm-rent is the reward of idleness. Where is, I do not say
- the consistency, but, the honesty of this law?
- Prescription is a result of the civil law, a creation of the legislator.
- Why has not the legislator fixed the conditions differently?--why,
- instead of twenty and thirty years, is not a single year sufficient to
- prescribe?--why are not voluntary absence and confessed idleness as good
- grounds for dispossession as involuntary absence, ignorance, or apathy?
- But in vain should we ask M. Troplong, the philosopher, to tell us
- the ground of prescription. Concerning the code, M. Troplong does not
- reason. "The interpreter," he says, "must take things as they are,
- society as it exists, laws as they are made: that is the only sensible
- starting-point." Well, then, write no more books; cease to reproach your
- predecessors--who, like you, have aimed only at interpretation of the
- law--for having remained in the rear; talk no more of philosophy and
- progress, for the lie sticks in your throat.
- M. Troplong denies the reality of the right of possession; he denies
- that possession has ever existed as a principle of society; and he
- quotes M. de Savigny, who holds precisely the opposite position, and
- whom he is content to leave unanswered. At one time, M. Troplong asserts
- that possession and property are CONTEMPORANEOUS, and that they exist AT
- THE SAME TIME, which implies that the RIGHT of property is based on the
- FACT of possession,--a conclusion which is evidently absurd; at
- another, he denies that possession HAD ANY HISTORICAL EXISTENCE PRIOR
- TO PROPERTY,--an assertion which is contradicted by the customs of many
- nations which cultivate the land without appropriating it; by the Roman
- law, which distinguished so clearly between POSSESSION and PROPERTY; and
- by our code itself, which makes possession for twenty or thirty years
- the condition of property. Finally, M. Troplong goes so far as to
- maintain that the Roman maxim, _Nihil comune habet proprietas cum
- possessione_--which contains so striking an allusion to the possession
- of the _ager publicus_, and which, sooner or later, will be again
- accepted without qualification--expresses in French law only a judicial
- axiom, a simple rule forbidding the union of an _action possessoire_
- with an _action petitoire_,--an opinion as retrogressive as it is
- unphilosophical.
- In treating of _actions possessoires_, M. Troplong is so unfortunate or
- awkward that he mutilates economy through failure to grasp its
- meaning "Just as property," he writes, "gave rise to the action for
- revendication, so possession--the _jus possessionis_--was the cause
- of possessory interdicts.... There were two kinds of interdicts,--the
- interdict _recuperandae possessionis_, and the interdict _retinendae
- possessionis_,--which correspond to our _complainte en cas de saisine
- et nouvelete_. There is also a third,--_adipiscendae possessionis_,--of
- which the Roman law-books speak in connection with the two others.
- But, in reality, this interdict is not possessory: for he who wishes
- to acquire possession by this means does not possess, and has not
- possessed; and yet acquired possession is the condition of possessory
- interdicts." Why is not an action to acquire possession equally
- conceivable with an action to be reinstated in possession? When the
- Roman plebeians demanded a division of the conquered territory; when
- the proletaires of Lyons took for their motto, _Vivre en travaillant, ou
- mourir en combattant_ (to live working, or die fighting); when the most
- enlightened of the modern economists claim for every man the right to
- labor and to live,--they only propose this interdict, _adipiscendae
- possessionis_, which embarrasses M. Troplong so seriously. And what is
- my object in pleading against property, if not to obtain possession? How
- is it that M. Troplong--the legist, the orator, the philosopher--does
- not see that logically this interdict must be admitted, since it is the
- necessary complement of the two others, and the three united form an
- indivisible trinity,--to RECOVER, to MAINTAIN, to ACQUIRE? To break this
- series is to create a blank, destroy the natural synthesis of things,
- and follow the example of the geometrician who tried to conceive of
- a solid with only two dimensions. But it is not astonishing that M.
- Troplong rejects the third class of _actions possessoires_, when
- we consider that he rejects possession itself. He is so completely
- controlled by his prejudices in this respect, that he is unconsciously
- led, not to unite (that would be horrible in his eyes), but to identify
- the _action possessoire_ with the _action petitoire_. This could be
- easily proved, were it not too tedious to plunge into these metaphysical
- obscurities.
- As an interpreter of the law, M. Troplong is no more successful than
- as a philosopher. One specimen of his skill in this direction, and I am
- done with him:--
- Code of Civil Procedure, Art. 23: "_Actions possessoires_ are only when
- commenced within the year of trouble by those who have held possession
- for at least a year by an irrevocable title."
- M. Troplong's comments:--
- "Ought we to maintain--as Duparc, Poullain, and Lanjuinais would have
- us--the rule _spoliatus ante omnia restituendus_, when an individual,
- who is neither proprietor nor annual possessor, is expelled by a third
- party, who has no right to the estate? I think not. Art. 23 of the
- Code is general: it absolutely requires that the plaintiff in _actions
- possessoires_ shall have been in peaceable possession for a year at
- least. That is the invariable principle: it can in no case be modified.
- And why should it be set aside? The plaintiff had no seisin; he had no
- privileged possession; he had only a temporary occupancy, insufficient
- to warrant in his favor the presumption of property, which renders the
- annual possession so valuable. Well! this _ae facto_ occupancy he has
- lost; another is invested with it: possession is in the hands of this
- new-comer. Now, is not this a case for the application of the principle,
- _In_ _pari causa possesser potior habetur_? Should not the actual
- possessor be preferred to the evicted possessor? Can he not meet the
- complaint of his adversary by saying to him: 'Prove that you were an
- annual possessor before me, for you are the plaintiff. As far as I am
- concerned, it is not for me to tell you how I possess, nor how long
- I have possessed. _Possideo quia possideo_. I have no other reply, no
- other defence. When you have shown that your action is admissible, then
- we will see whether you are entitled to lift the veil which hides the
- origin of my possession.'"
- And this is what is honored with the name of jurisprudence and
- philosophy,--the restoration of force. What! when I have "moulded matter
- by my labor" [I quote M. Troplong]; when I have "deposited in it a
- portion of myself" [M. Troplong]; when I have "re-created it by
- my industry, and set upon it the seal of my intelligence" [M.
- Troplong],--on the ground that I have not possessed it for a year, a
- stranger may dispossess me, and the law offers me no protection! And if
- M. Troplong is my judge, M. Troplong will condemn me! And if I resist
- my adversary,--if, for this bit of mud which I may call MY FIELD, and
- of which they wish to rob me, a war breaks out between the two
- competitors,--the legislator will gravely wait until the stronger,
- having killed the other, has had possession for a year! No, no, Monsieur
- Troplong! you do not understand the words of the law; for I prefer
- to call in question your intelligence rather than the justice of the
- legislator. You are mistaken in your application of the principle, _In
- pari causa possessor potior habetur:_ the actuality of possession here
- refers to him who possessed at the time when the difficulty arose, not
- to him who possesses at the time of the complaint. And when the code
- prohibits the reception of _actions possessoires_, in cases where the
- possession is not of a year's duration, it simply means that if, before
- a year has elapsed, the holder relinquishes possession, and ceases
- actually to occupy _in propria persona_, he cannot avail himself of an
- _action possessoire_ against his successor. In a word, the code treats
- possession of less than a year as it ought to treat all possession,
- however long it has existed,--that is, the condition of property ought
- to be, not merely seisin for a year, but perpetual seisin.
- I will not pursue this analysis farther. When an author bases two
- volumes of quibbles on foundations so uncertain, it may be boldly
- declared that his work, whatever the amount of learning displayed in it,
- is a mess of nonsense unworthy a critic's attention.
- At this point, sir, I seem to hear you reproaching me for this conceited
- dogmatism, this lawless arrogance, which respects nothing, claims a
- monopoly of justice and good sense, and assumes to put in the pillory
- any one who dares to maintain an opinion contrary to its own. This
- fault, they tell me, more odious than any other in an author, was too
- prominent a characteristic of my First Memoir, and I should do well to
- correct it.
- It is important to the success of my defence, that I should vindicate
- myself from this reproach; and since, while perceiving in myself other
- faults of a different character, I still adhere in this particular to
- my disputatious style, it is right that I should give my reasons for my
- conduct. I act, not from inclination, but from necessity.
- I say, then, that I treat my authors as I do for two reasons: a REASON
- OF RIGHT, and a REASON OF INTENTION; both peremptory.
- 1. Reason of right. When I preach equality of fortunes, I do not advance
- an opinion more or less probable, a utopia more or less ingenious, an
- idea conceived within my brain by means of imagination only. I lay down
- an absolute truth, concerning which hesitation is impossible, modesty
- superfluous, and doubt ridiculous.
- But, do you ask, what assures me that that which I utter is true?
- What assures me, sir? The logical and metaphysical processes which I
- use, the correctness of which I have demonstrated by a priori reasoning;
- the fact that I possess an infallible method of investigation and
- verification with which my authors are unacquainted; and finally, the
- fact that for all matters relating to property and justice I have found
- a formula which explains all legislative variations, and furnishes a
- key for all problems. Now, is there so much as a shadow of method in M.
- Toullier, M. Troplong, and this swarm of insipid commentators, almost
- as devoid of reason and moral sense as the code itself? Do you give the
- name of method to an alphabetical, chronological, analogical, or merely
- nominal classification of subjects? Do you give the name of method
- to these lists of paragraphs gathered under an arbitrary head, these
- sophistical vagaries, this mass of contradictory quotations and
- opinions, this nauseous style, this spasmodic rhetoric, models of which
- are so common at the bar, though seldom found elsewhere? Do you take for
- philosophy this twaddle, this intolerable pettifoggery adorned with a
- few scholastic trimmings? No, no! a writer who respects himself, never
- will consent to enter the balance with these manipulators of law,
- misnamed JURISTS; and for my part I object to a comparison.
- 2. Reason of intention. As far as I am permitted to divulge this secret,
- I am a conspirator in an immense revolution, terrible to charlatans and
- despots, to all exploiters of the poor and credulous, to all salaried
- idlers, dealers in political panaceas and parables, tyrants in a word of
- thought and of opinion. I labor to stir up the reason of individuals to
- insurrection against the reason of authorities.
- According to the laws of the society of which I am a member, all the
- evils which afflict humanity arise from faith in external teachings and
- submission to authority. And not to go outside of our own century, is
- it not true, for instance, that France is plundered, scoffed at, and
- tyrannized over, because she speaks in masses, and not by heads? The
- French people are penned up in three or four flocks, receiving their
- signal from a chief, responding to the voice of a leader, and thinking
- just as he says. A certain journal, it is said, has fifty thousand
- subscribers; assuming six readers to every subscriber, we have three
- hundred thousand sheep browsing and bleating at the same cratch. Apply
- this calculation to the whole periodical press, and you find that, in
- our free and intelligent France, there are two millions of creatures
- receiving every morning from the journals spiritual pasturage. Two
- millions! In other words, the entire nation allows a score of little
- fellows to lead it by the nose.
- By no means, sir, do I deny to journalists talent, science, love
- of truth, patriotism, and what you please. They are very worthy and
- intelligent people, whom I undoubtedly should wish to resemble, had I
- the honor to know them. That of which I complain, and that which has
- made me a conspirator, is that, instead of enlightening us, these
- gentlemen command us, impose upon us articles of faith, and that without
- demonstration or verification. When, for example, I ask why these
- fortifications of Paris, which, in former times, under the influence
- of certain prejudices, and by means of a concurrence of extraordinary
- circumstances supposed for the sake of the argument to have existed, may
- perhaps have served to protect us, but which it is doubtful whether
- our descendants will ever use,--when I ask, I say, on what grounds they
- assimilate the future to a hypothetical past, they reply that M.
- Thiers, who has a great mind, has written upon this subject a report of
- admirable elegance and marvellous clearness. At this I become angry, and
- reply that M. Thiers does not know what he is talking about. Why, having
- wanted no detached forts seven years ago, do we want them to-day?
- "Oh! damn it," they say, "the difference is great; the first forts
- were too near to us; with these we cannot be bombarded." You cannot be
- bombarded; but you can be blockaded, and will be, if you stir. What! to
- obtain blockade forts from the Parisians, it has sufficed to prejudice
- them against bombardment forts! And they thought to outwit the
- government! Oh, the sovereignty of the people!...
- "Damn it! M. Thiers, who is wiser than you, says that it would be absurd
- to suppose a government making war upon citizens, and maintaining itself
- by force and in spite of the will of the people. That would be absurd!"
- Perhaps so: such a thing has happened more than once, and may happen
- again. Besides, when despotism is strong, it appears almost legitimate.
- However that may be, they lied in 1833, and they lie again in
- 1841,--those who threaten us with the bomb-shell. And then, if M. Thiers
- is so well assured of the intentions of the government, why does he not
- wish the forts to be built before the circuit is extended? Why this
- air of suspicion of the government, unless an intrigue has been planned
- between the government and M. Thiers?
- "Damn it! we do not wish to be again invaded. If Paris had been
- fortified in 1815, Napoleon would not have been conquered!" But I tell
- you that Napoleon was not conquered, but sold; and that if, in 1815,
- Paris had had fortifications, it would have been with them as with the
- thirty thousand men of Grouchy, who were misled during the battle. It is
- still easier to surrender forts than to lead soldiers. Would the selfish
- and the cowardly ever lack reasons for yielding to the enemy?
- "But do you not see that the absolutist courts are provoked at our
- fortifications?--a proof that they do not think as you do." You believe
- that; and, for my part, I believe that in reality they are quite at ease
- about the matter; and, if they appear to tease our ministers, they do so
- only to give the latter an opportunity to decline. The absolutist courts
- are always on better terms with our constitutional monarchy, than
- our monarchy with us. Does not M. Guizot say that France needs to
- be defended within as well as without? Within! against whom? Against
- France. O Parisians! it is but six months since you demanded war, and
- now you want only barricades. Why should the allies fear your doctrines,
- when you cannot even control yourselves?... How could you sustain a
- siege, when you weep over the absence of an actress?
- "But, finally, do you not understand that, by the rules of modern
- warfare, the capital of a country is always the objective point of its
- assailants? Suppose our army defeated on the Rhine, France invaded, and
- defenceless Paris falling into the hands of the enemy. It would be the
- death of the administrative power; without a head it could not live. The
- capital taken, the nation must submit. What do you say to that?"
- The reply is very simple. Why is society constituted in such a way that
- the destiny of the country depends upon the safety of the capital?
- Why, in case our territory be invaded and Paris besieged, cannot the
- legislative, executive, and military powers act outside of Paris? Why
- this localization of all the vital forces of France?... Do not cry out
- upon decentralization. This hackneyed reproach would discredit only
- your own intelligence and sincerity. It is not a question of
- decentralization; it is your political fetichism which I attack. Why
- should the national unity be attached to a certain place, to certain
- functionaries, to certain bayonets? Why should the Place Maubert and the
- Palace of the Tuileries be the palladium of France?
- Now let me make an hypothesis.
- Suppose it were written in the charter, "In case the country be again
- invaded, and Paris forced to surrender, the government being annihilated
- and the national assembly dissolved, the electoral colleges shall
- reassemble spontaneously and without other official notice, for the
- purpose of appointing new deputies, who shall organize a provisional
- government at Orleans.
- "If Orleans succumbs, the government shall reconstruct itself in the same
- way at Lyons; then at Bordeaux, then at Bayonne, until all France be
- captured or the enemy driven from the land. For the government may
- perish, but the nation never dies. The king, the peers, and the deputies
- massacred, VIVE LA FRANCE!"
- Do you not think that such an addition to the charter would be a better
- safeguard for the liberty and integrity of the country than walls and
- bastions around Paris? Well, then! do henceforth for administration,
- industry, science, literature, and art that which the charter ought
- to prescribe for the central government and common defence. Instead of
- endeavoring to render Paris impregnable, try rather to render the loss
- of Paris an insignificant matter. Instead of accumulating about one
- point academies, faculties, schools, and political, administrative,
- and judicial centres; instead of arresting intellectual development
- and weakening public spirit in the provinces by this fatal
- agglomeration,--can you not, without destroying unity, distribute social
- functions among places as well as among persons? Such a system--in
- allowing each province to participate in political power and action, and
- in balancing industry, intelligence, and strength in all parts of the
- country--would equally secure, against enemies at home and enemies
- abroad, the liberty of the people and the stability of the government.
- Discriminate, then, between the centralization of functions and the
- concentration of organs; between political unity and its material
- symbol.
- "Oh! that is plausible; but it is impossible!"--which means that the
- city of Paris does not intend to surrender its privileges, and that
- there it is still a question of property.
- Idle talk! The country, in a state of panic which has been cleverly
- worked upon, has asked for fortifications. I dare to affirm that it
- has abdicated its sovereignty. All parties are to blame for this
- suicide,--the conservatives, by their acquiescence in the plans of the
- government; the friends of the dynasty, because they wish no opposition
- to that which pleases them, and because a popular revolution would
- annihilate them; the democrats, because they hope to rule in their turn.
- [67] That which all rejoice at having obtained is a means of future
- repression. As for the defence of the country, they are not troubled
- about that. The idea of tyranny dwells in the minds of all, and brings
- together into one conspiracy all forms of selfishness. We wish the
- regeneration of society, but we subordinate this desire to our ideas
- and convenience. That our approaching marriage may take place, that our
- business may succeed, that our opinions may triumph, we postpone reform.
- Intolerance and selfishness lead us to put fetters upon liberty; and,
- because we cannot wish all that God wishes, we would, if it rested with
- us, stay the course of destiny rather than sacrifice our own interests
- and self-love. Is not this an instance where the words of Solomon
- apply,--"_L'iniquite a menti a elle-meme_"?
- It is said that on this question of the fortification of Paris the staff
- of "Le National" are not agreed. This would prove, if proof were needed,
- that a journal may blunder and falsify, without entitling any one to
- accuse its editors. A journal is a metaphysical being, for which no one
- is really responsible, and which owes its existence solely to mutual
- concessions. This idea ought to frighten those worthy citizens who,
- because they borrow their opinions from a journal, imagine that they
- belong to a political party, and who have not the faintest suspicion
- that they are really without a head.
- For this reason, sir, I have enlisted in a desperate war against
- every form of authority over the multitude. Advance sentinel of the
- proletariat, I cross bayonets with the celebrities of the day, as
- well as with spies and charlatans. Well, when I am fighting with an
- illustrious adversary, must I stop at the end of every phrase, like
- an orator in the tribune, to say "the learned author," "the eloquent
- writer," "the profound publicist," and a hundred other platitudes with
- which it is fashionable to mock people? These civilities seem to me no
- less insulting to the man attacked than dishonorable to the aggressor.
- But when, rebuking an author, I say to him, "Citizen, your doctrine is
- absurd, and, if to prove my assertion is an offence against you, I
- am guilty of it," immediately the listener opens his ears; he is all
- attention; and, if I do not succeed in convincing him, at least I give
- his thought an impulse, and set him the wholesome example of doubt and
- free examination.
- Then do not think, sir, that, in tripping up the philosophy of your very
- learned and very estimable confrere, M. Troplong, I fail to appreciate
- his talent as a writer (in my opinion, he has too much for a jurist);
- nor his knowledge, though it is too closely confined to the letter of
- the law, and the reading of old books. In these particulars, M. Troplong
- offends on the side of excess rather than deficiency. Further, do not
- believe that I am actuated by any personal animosity towards him, or
- that I have the slightest desire to wound his self-love. I know M.
- Troplong only by his "Treatise on Prescription," which I wish he had not
- written; and as for my critics, neither M. Troplong, nor any of those
- whose opinion I value, will ever read me. Once more, my only object is
- to prove, as far as I am able, to this unhappy French nation, that
- those who make the laws, as well as those who interpret them, are not
- infallible organs of general, impersonal, and absolute reason.
- I had resolved to submit to a systematic criticism the semi-official
- defence of the right of property recently put forth by M. Wolowski,
- your colleague at the Conservatory. With this view, I had commenced
- to collect the documents necessary for each of his lectures, but, soon
- perceiving that the ideas of the professor were incoherent, that his
- arguments contradicted each other, that one affirmation was sure to be
- overthrown by another, and that in M. Wolowski's lucubrations the
- good was always mingled with the bad, and being by nature a little
- suspicious, it suddenly occurred to me that M. Wolowski was an advocate
- of equality in disguise, thrown in spite of himself into the position
- in which the patriarch Jacob pictures one of his sons,--_inter
- duas clitellas_, between two stools, as the proverb says. In more
- parliamentary language, I saw clearly that M. Wolowski was placed
- between his profound convictions on the one hand and his official duties
- on the other, and that, in order to maintain his position, he had to
- assume a certain slant. Then I experienced great pain at seeing the
- reserve, the circumlocution, the figures, and the irony to which
- a professor of legislation, whose duty it is to teach dogmas with
- clearness and precision, was forced to resort; and I fell to cursing
- the society in which an honest man is not allowed to say frankly what he
- thinks. Never, sir, have you conceived of such torture: I seemed to be
- witnessing the martyrdom of a mind. I am going to give you an idea of
- these astonishing meetings, or rather of these scenes of sorrow.
- Monday, Nov. 20, 1840.--The professor declares, in brief,--1. That the
- right of property is not founded upon occupation, but upon the impress
- of man; 2. That every man has a natural and inalienable right to the use
- of matter.
- Now, if matter can be appropriated, and if, notwithstanding, all
- men retain an inalienable right to the use of this matter, what is
- property?--and if matter can be appropriated only by labor, how long
- is this appropriation to continue?--questions that will confuse and
- confound all jurists whatsoever.
- Then M. Wolowski cites his authorities. Great God! what witnesses he
- brings forward! First, M. Troplong, the great metaphysician, whom we
- have discussed; then, M. Louis Blanc, editor of the "Revue du Progres,"
- who came near being tried by jury for publishing his "Organization of
- Labor," and who escaped from the clutches of the public prosecutor only
- by a juggler's trick; [68] Corinne,--I mean Madame de Stael,--who, in
- an ode, making a poetical comparison of the land with the waves, of the
- furrow of a plough with the wake of a vessel, says "that property exists
- only where man has left his trace," which makes property dependent
- upon the solidity of the elements; Rousseau, the apostle of liberty and
- equality, but who, according to M. Wolowski, attacked property only AS
- A JOKE, and in order to point a paradox; Robespierre, who prohibited
- a division of the land, because he regarded such a measure as a
- rejuvenescence of property, and who, while awaiting the definitive
- organization of the republic, placed all property in the care?? of
- the people,--that is, transferred the right of eminent domain from the
- individual to society; Babeuf, who wanted property for the nation, and
- communism for the citizens; M. Considerant, who favors a division of
- landed property into shares,--that is, who wishes to render property
- nominal and fictitious: the whole being intermingled with jokes and
- witticisms (intended undoubtedly to lead people away from the HORNETS'
- NESTS) at the expense of the adversaries of the right of property!
- November 26.--M. Wolowski supposes this objection: Land, like
- water, air, and light, is necessary to life, therefore it cannot
- be appropriated; and he replies: The importance of landed property
- diminishes as the power of industry increases.
- Good! this importance DIMINISHES, but it does not DISAPPEAR; and this,
- of itself, shows landed property to be illegitimate. Here M. Wolowski
- pretends to think that the opponents of property refer only to property
- in land, while they merely take it as a term of comparison; and, in
- showing with wonderful clearness the absurdity of the position in which
- he places them, he finds a way of drawing the attention of his hearers
- to another subject without being false to the truth which it is his
- office to contradict.
- "Property," says M. Wolowski, "is that which distinguishes man from the
- animals." That may be; but are we to regard this as a compliment or a
- satire?
- "Mahomet," says M. Wolowski, "decreed property." And so did Genghis
- Khan, and Tamerlane, and all the ravagers of nations. What sort of
- legislators were they?
- "Property has been in existence ever since the origin of the human
- race." Yes, and so has slavery, and despotism also; and likewise
- polygamy and idolatry. But what does this antiquity show?
- The members of the Council of the State--M. Portalis at their head--did
- not raise, in their discussion of the Code, the question of the
- legitimacy of property. "Their silence," says M. Wolowski, "is a
- precedent in favor of this right." I may regard this reply as personally
- addressed to me, since the observation belongs to me. I reply, "As long
- as an opinion is universally admitted, the universality of belief serves
- of itself as argument and proof. When this same opinion is attacked,
- the former faith proves nothing; we must resort to reason. Ignorance,
- however old and pardonable it may be, never outweighs reason."
- Property has its abuses, M. Wolowski confesses. "But," he says, "these
- abuses gradually disappear. To-day their cause is known. They all arise
- from a false theory of property. In principle, property is inviolable,
- but it can and must be checked and disciplined." Such are the
- conclusions of the professor.
- When one thus remains in the clouds, he need not fear to equivocate.
- Nevertheless, I would like him to define these ABUSES of property, to
- show their cause, to explain this true theory from which no abuse is to
- spring; in short, to tell me how, without destroying property, it can
- be governed for the greatest good of all. "Our civil code," says M.
- Wolowski, in speaking of this subject, "leaves much to be desired." I
- think it leaves every thing undone.
- Finally, M. Wolowski opposes, on the one hand, the concentration of
- capital, and the absorption which results therefrom; and, on the other,
- he objects to the extreme division of the land. Now I think that I have
- demonstrated in my First Memoir, that large accumulation and minute
- division are the first two terms of an economical trinity,--a THESIS and
- an ANTITHESIS. But, while M. Wolowski says nothing of the third term,
- the SYNTHESIS, and thus leaves the inference in suspense, I have shown
- that this third term is ASSOCIATION, which is the annihilation of
- property.
- November 30.--LITERARY PROPERTY. M. Wolowski grants that it is just to
- recognize the rights of talent (which is not in the least hostile to
- equality); but he seriously objects to perpetual and absolute property
- in the works of genius, to the profit of the authors' heirs. His main
- argument is, that society has a right of collective production over
- every creation of the mind. Now, it is precisely this principle of
- collective power that I developed in my "Inquiries into Property and
- Government," and on which I have established the complete edifice of
- a new social organization. M. Wolowski is, as far as I know, the first
- jurist who has made a legislative application of this economical law.
- Only, while I have extended the principle of collective power to every
- sort of product, M. Wolowski, more prudent than it is my nature to be,
- confines it to neutral ground. So, that that which I am bold enough
- to say of the whole, he is contented to affirm of a part, leaving
- the intelligent hearer to fill up the void for himself. However, his
- arguments are keen and close. One feels that the professor, finding
- himself more at ease with one aspect of property, has given the rein to
- his intellect, and is rushing on towards liberty.
- 1. Absolute literary property would hinder the activity of other men,
- and obstruct the development of humanity. It would be the death of
- progress; it would be suicide. What would have happened if the
- first inventions,--the plough, the level, the saw, &c.,--had been
- appropriated?
- Such is the first proposition of M. Wolowski.
- I reply: Absolute property in land and tools hinders human activity, and
- obstructs progress and the free development of man.
- What happened in Rome, and in all the ancient nations? What occurred
- in the middle ages? What do we see to-day in England, in consequence of
- absolute property in the sources of production?
- The suicide of humanity.
- 2. Real and personal property is in harmony with the social interest.
- In consequence of literary property, social and individual interests are
- perpetually in conflict.
- The statement of this proposition contains a rhetorical figure, common
- with those who do not enjoy full and complete liberty of speech. This
- figure is the _anti-phrasis_ or _contre-verite_. It consists, according
- to Dumarsais and the best humanists, in saying one thing while meaning
- another. M. Wolowski's proposition, naturally expressed, would read as
- follows: "Just as real and personal property is essentially hostile to
- society, so, in consequence of literary property, social and individual
- interests are perpetually in conflict."
- 3. M. de Montalembert, in the Chamber of Peers, vehemently protested
- against the assimilation of authors to inventors of machinery; an
- assimilation which he claimed to be injurious to the former. M. Wolowski
- replies, that the rights of authors, without machinery, would be nil;
- that, without paper-mills, type foundries, and printing-offices,
- there could be no sale of verse and prose; that many a mechanical
- invention,--the compass, for instance, the telescope, or the
- steam-engine,--is quite as valuable as a book.
- Prior to M. Montalembert, M. Charles Comte had laughed at the inference
- in favor of mechanical inventions, which logical minds never fail to
- draw from the privileges granted to authors. "He," says M. Comte, "who
- first conceived and executed the idea of transforming a piece of wood
- into a pair of sabots, or an animal's hide into a pair of sandals, would
- thereby have acquired an exclusive right to make shoes for the human
- race!" Undoubtedly, under the system of property. For, in fact, this
- pair of sabots, over which you make so merry, is the creation of the
- shoemaker, the work of his genius, the expression of his thought; to him
- it is his poem, quite as much as "Le Roi s'amuse," is M. Victor Hugo's
- drama. Justice for all alike. If you refuse a patent to a perfecter of
- boots, refuse also a privilege to a maker of rhymes.
- 4. That which gives importance to a book is a fact external to the
- author and his work. Without the intelligence of society, without its
- development, and a certain community of ideas, passions, and interests
- between it and the authors, the works of the latter would be worth
- nothing. The exchangeable value of a book is due even more to the SOCIAL
- CONDITION than to the talent displayed in it.
- Indeed, it seems as if I were copying my own words. This proposition
- of M. Wolowski contains a special expression of a general and absolute
- idea, one of the strongest and most conclusive against the right of
- property. Why do artists, like mechanics, find the means to live?
- Because society has made the fine arts, like the rudest industries,
- objects of consumption and exchange, governed consequently by all the
- laws of commerce and political economy. Now, the first of these laws is
- the equipoise of functions; that is, the equality of associates.
- 5. M. Wolowski indulges in sarcasm against the petitioners for literary
- property. "There are authors," he says, "who crave the privileges of
- authors, and who for that purpose point out the power of the melodrama.
- They speak of the niece of Corneille, begging at the door of a theatre
- which the works of her uncle had enriched.... To satisfy the avarice of
- literary people, it would be necessary to create literary majorats, and
- make a whole code of exceptions."
- I like this virtuous irony. But M. Wolowski has by no means exhausted
- the difficulties which the question involves. And first, is it just that
- MM. Cousin, Guizot, Villemain, Damiron, and company, paid by the State
- for delivering lectures, should be paid a second time through the
- booksellers?--that I, who have the right to report their lectures,
- should not have the right to print them? Is it just that MM. Noel and
- Chapsal, overseers of the University, should use their influence in
- selling their selections from literature to the youth whose studies they
- are instructed to superintend in consideration of a salary? And, if
- that is not just, is it not proper to refuse literary property to every
- author holding public offices, and receiving pensions or sinecures?
- Again, shall the privilege of the author extend to irreligious and
- immoral works, calculated only to corrupt the heart, and obscure the
- understanding? To grant this privilege is to sanction immorality by law;
- to refuse it is to censure the author. And since it is impossible, in
- the present imperfect state of society, to prevent all violations of the
- moral law, it will be necessary to open a license-office for books as
- well as morals. But, then, three-fourths of our literary people will
- be obliged to register; and, recognized thenceforth on their own
- declaration as PROSTITUTES, they will necessarily belong to the public.
- We pay toll to the prostitute; we do not endow her.
- Finally, shall plagiarism be classed with forgery? If you reply "Yes,"
- you appropriate in advance all the subjects of which books treat; if
- you say "No," you leave the whole matter to the decision of the judge.
- Except in the case of a clandestine reprint, how will he distinguish
- forgery from quotation, imitation, plagiarism, or even coincidence? A
- savant spends two years in calculating a table of logarithms to nine
- or ten decimals. He prints it. A fortnight after his book is selling
- at half-price; it is impossible to tell whether this result is due to
- forgery or competition. What shall the court do? In case of doubt, shall
- it award the property to the first occupant? As well decide the question
- by lot.
- These, however, are trifling considerations; but do we see that, in
- granting a perpetual privilege to authors and their heirs, we really
- strike a fatal blow at their interests? We think to make booksellers
- dependent upon authors,--a delusion. The booksellers will unite against
- works, and their proprietors. Against works, by refusing to push their
- sale, by replacing them with poor imitations, by reproducing them in
- a hundred indirect ways; and no one knows how far the science of
- plagiarism, and skilful imitation may be carried. Against proprietors.
- Are we ignorant of the fact, that a demand for a dozen copies enables a
- bookseller to sell a thousand; that with an edition of five hundred he
- can supply a kingdom for thirty years? What will the poor authors do in
- the presence of this omnipotent union of booksellers? I will tell them
- what they will do. They will enter the employ of those whom they now
- treat as pirates; and, to secure an advantage, they will become wage
- laborers. A fit reward for ignoble avarice, and insatiable pride. [69]
- Contradictions of contradictions! "Genius is the great leveller of the
- world," cries M. de Lamartine; "then genius should be a proprietor.
- Literary property is the fortune of democracy." This unfortunate
- poet thinks himself profound when he is only puffed up. His eloquence
- consists solely in coupling ideas which clash with each other: ROUND
- SQUARE, DARK SUN, FALLEN ANGEL, PRIEST and LOVE, THOUGHT and POETRY,
- GUNIUS {???}, and FORTUNE, LEVELING and PROPERTY. Let us tell him, in
- reply, that his mind is a dark luminary; that each of his discourses is
- a disordered harmony; and that all his successes, whether in verse or
- prose, are due to the use of the extraordinary in the treatment of the
- most ordinary subjects.
- "Le National," in reply to the report of M. Lamartine, endeavors to
- prove that literary property is of quite a different nature from landed
- property; as if the nature of the right of property depended on the
- object to which it is applied, and not on the mode of its exercise and
- the condition of its existence. But the main object of "Le National"
- is to please a class of proprietors whom an extension of the right of
- property vexes: that is why "Le National" opposes literary property.
- Will it tell us, once for all, whether it is for equality or against it?
- 6. OBJECTION.--Property in occupied land passes to the heirs of the
- occupant. "Why," say the authors, "should not the work of genius pass
- in like manner to the heirs of the man of genius?" M. Wolowski's reply:
- "Because the labor of the first occupant is continued by his heirs,
- while the heirs of an author neither change nor add to his works. In
- landed property, the continuance of labor explains the continuance of
- the right."
- Yes, when the labor is continued; but if the labor is not continued,
- the right ceases. Thus is the right of possession, founded on personal
- labor, recognized by M. Wolowski.
- M. Wolowski decides in favor of granting to authors property in their
- works for a certain number of years, dating from the day of their first
- publication.
- The succeeding lectures on patents on inventions were no less
- instructive, although intermingled with shocking contradictions inserted
- with a view to make the useful truths more palatable. The necessity
- for brevity compels me to terminate this examination here, not without
- regret.
- Thus, of two eclectic jurists, who attempt a defence of property, one
- is entangled in a set of dogmas without principle or method, and is
- constantly talking nonsense; and the other designedly abandons the
- cause of property, in order to present under the same name the theory
- of individual possession. Was I wrong in claiming that confusion reigned
- among legists, and ought I to be legally prosecuted for having said
- that their science henceforth stood convicted of falsehood, its glory
- eclipsed?
- The ordinary resources of the law no longer sufficing, philosophy,
- political economy, and the framers of systems have been consulted. All
- the oracles appealed to have been discouraging.
- The philosophers are no clearer to-day than at the time of the eclectic
- efflorescence; nevertheless, through their mystical apothegms, we
- can distinguish the words PROGRESS, UNITY, ASSOCIATION, SOLIDARITY,
- FRATERNITY, which are certainly not reassuring to proprietors. One of
- these philosophers, M. Pierre Leroux, has written two large books, in
- which he claims to show by all religious, legislative, and philosophical
- systems that, since men are responsible to each other, equality of
- conditions is the final law of society. It is true that this philosopher
- admits a kind of property; but as he leaves us to imagine what property
- would become in presence of equality, we may boldly class him with the
- opponents of the right of increase.
- I must here declare freely--in order that I may not be suspected of
- secret connivance, which is foreign to my nature--that M. Leroux has
- my full sympathy. Not that I am a believer in his quasi-Pythagorean
- philosophy (upon this subject I should have more than one observation to
- submit to him, provided a veteran covered with stripes would not despise
- the remarks of a conscript); not that I feel bound to this author by any
- special consideration for his opposition to property. In my opinion, M.
- Leroux could, and even ought to, state his position more explicitly and
- logically. But I like, I admire, in M. Leroux, the antagonist of our
- philosophical demigods, the demolisher of usurped reputations, the
- pitiless critic of every thing that is respected because of its
- antiquity. Such is the reason for my high esteem of M. Leroux; such
- would be the principle of the only literary association which, in this
- century of coteries, I should care to form. We need men who, like
- M. Leroux, call in question social principles,--not to diffuse doubt
- concerning them, but to make them doubly sure; men who excite the mind
- by bold negations, and make the conscience tremble by doctrines of
- annihilation. Where is the man who does not shudder on hearing M. Leroux
- exclaim, "There is neither a paradise nor a hell; the wicked will not
- be punished, nor the good rewarded. Mortals! cease to hope and fear; you
- revolve in a circle of appearances; humanity is an immortal tree, whose
- branches, withering one after another, feed with their debris the root
- which is always young!" Where is the man who, on hearing this desolate
- confession of faith, does not demand with terror, "Is it then true that
- I am only an aggregate of elements organized by an unknown force, an
- idea realized for a few moments, a form which passes and disappears? Is
- it true that my mind is only a harmony, and my soul a vortex? What is
- the ego? what is God? what is the sanction of society?"
- In former times, M. Leroux would have been regarded as a great culprit,
- worthy only (like Vanini) of death and universal execration. To-day, M.
- Leroux is fulfilling a mission of salvation, for which, whatever he
- may say, he will be rewarded. Like those gloomy invalids who are always
- talking of their approaching death, and who faint when the doctor's
- opinion confirms their pretence, our materialistic society is agitated
- and loses countenance while listening to this startling decree of the
- philosopher, "Thou shalt die!" Honor then to M. Leroux, who has revealed
- to us the cowardice of the Epicureans; to M. Leroux, who renders new
- philosophical solutions necessary! Honor to the anti-eclectic, to the
- apostle of equality!
- In his work on "Humanity," M. Leroux commences by positing the necessity
- of property: "You wish to abolish property; but do you not see that
- thereby you would annihilate man and even the name of man?... You wish
- to abolish property; but could you live without a body? I will not tell
- you that it is necessary to support this body;... I will tell you that
- this body is itself a species of property."
- In order clearly to understand the doctrine of M. Leroux, it must be
- borne in mind that there are three necessary and primitive forms of
- society,--communism, property, and that which to-day we properly call
- association. M. Leroux rejects in the first place communism, and combats
- it with all his might. Man is a personal and free being, and therefore
- needs a sphere of independence and individual activity. M. Leroux
- emphasizes this in adding: "You wish neither family, nor country, nor
- property; therefore no more fathers, no more sons, no more brothers.
- Here you are, related to no being in time, and therefore without a name;
- here you are, alone in the midst of a billion of men who to-day inhabit
- the earth. How do you expect me to distinguish you in space in the midst
- of this multitude?"
- If man is indistinguishable, he is nothing. Now, he can be
- distinguished, individualized, only through a devotion of certain things
- to his use,--such as his body, his faculties, and the tools which he
- uses. "Hence," says M. Leroux, "the necessity of appropriation;" in
- short, property.
- But property on what condition? Here M. Leroux, after having condemned
- communism, denounces in its turn the right of domain. His whole doctrine
- can be summed up in this single proposition,--_Man may be made by
- property a slave or a despot by turns_.
- That posited, if we ask M. Leroux to tell us under what system of
- property man will be neither a slave nor a despot, but free, just, and
- a citizen, M. Leroux replies in the third volume of his work on
- "Humanity:"--
- "There are three ways of destroying man's communion with his fellows and
- with the universe:... 1. By separating man in time; 2. by separating him
- in space; 3. by dividing the land, or, in general terms, the instruments
- of production; by attaching men to things, by subordinating man to
- property, by making man a proprietor."
- This language, it must be confessed, savors a little too strongly of the
- metaphysical heights which the author frequents, and of the school of
- M. Cousin. Nevertheless, it can be seen, clearly enough it seems to me,
- that M. Leroux opposes the exclusive appropriation of the instruments of
- production; only he calls this non-appropriation of the instruments of
- production a NEW METHOD of establishing property, while I, in accordance
- with all precedent, call it a destruction of property. In fact, without
- the appropriation of instruments, property is nothing.
- "Hitherto, we have confined ourselves to pointing out and combating the
- despotic features of property, by considering property alone. We have
- failed to see that the despotism of property is a correlative of the
- division of the human race;... that property, instead of being organized
- in such a way as to facilitate the unlimited communion of man with his
- fellows and with the universe, has been, on the contrary, turned against
- this communion."
- Let us translate this into commercial phraseology. In order to destroy
- despotism and the inequality of conditions, men must cease from
- competition and must associate their interests. Let employer and
- employed (now enemies and rivals) become associates.
- Now, ask any manufacturer, merchant, or capitalist, whether he would
- consider himself a proprietor if he were to share his revenue and
- profits with this mass of wage-laborers whom it is proposed to make his
- associates.
- "Family, property, and country are finite things, which ought to be
- organized with a view to the infinite. For man is a finite being,
- who aspires to the infinite. To him, absolute finiteness is evil. The
- infinite is his aim, the indefinite his right."
- Few of my readers would understand these hierophantic words, were I to
- leave them unexplained. M. Leroux means, by this magnificent formula,
- that humanity is a single immense society, which, in its collective
- unity, represents the infinite; that every nation, every tribe, every
- commune, and every citizen are, in different degrees, fragments or
- finite members of the infinite society, the evil in which results
- solely from individualism and privilege,--in other words, from the
- subordination of the infinite to the finite; finally, that, to attain
- humanity's end and aim, each part has a right to an indefinitely
- progressive development.
- "All the evils which afflict the human race arise from caste. The family
- is a blessing; the family caste (the nobility) is an evil. Country is
- a blessing; the country caste (supreme, domineering, conquering) is an
- evil; property (individual possession) is a blessing; the property
- caste (the domain of property of Pothier, Toullier, Troplong, &c.) is an
- evil."
- Thus, according to M. Leroux, there is property and property,--the one
- good, the other bad. Now, as it is proper to call different things by
- different names, if we keep the name "property" for the former, we must
- call the latter robbery, rapine, brigandage. If, on the contrary, we
- reserve the name "property" for the latter, we must designate the former
- by the term POSSESSION, or some other equivalent; otherwise we should be
- troubled with an unpleasant synonymy.
- What a blessing it would be if philosophers, daring for once to say all
- that they think, would speak the language of ordinary mortals! Nations
- and rulers would derive much greater profit from their lectures, and,
- applying the same names to the same ideas, would come, perhaps, to
- understand each other. I boldly declare that, in regard to property, I
- hold no other opinion than that of M. Leroux; but, if I should adopt the
- style of the philosopher, and repeat after him, "Property is a blessing,
- but the property caste--the _statu quo_ of property--is an evil," I
- should be extolled as a genius by all the bachelors who write for the
- reviews. [70] If, on the contrary, I prefer the classic language of Rome
- and the civil code, and say accordingly, "Possession is a blessing, but
- property is robbery," immediately the aforesaid bachelors raise a hue
- and cry against the monster, and the judge threatens me. Oh, the power
- of language!
- "Le National," on the other hand, has laughed at M. Leroux and his ideas
- on property, charging him with TAUTOLOGY and CHILDISHNESS. "Le National"
- does not wish to understand. Is it necessary to remind this journal that
- it has no right to deride a dogmatic philosopher, because it is without
- a doctrine itself? From its foundation, "Le National" has been a nursery
- of intriguers and renegades. From time to time it takes care to warn its
- readers. Instead of lamenting over all its defections, the democratic
- sheet would do better to lay the blame on itself, and confess the
- shallowness of its theories. When will this organ of popular interests
- and the electoral reform cease to hire sceptics and spread doubt? I will
- wager, without going further, that M. Leon Durocher, the critic of M.
- Leroux, is an anonymous or pseudonymous editor of some bourgeois, or
- even aristocratic, journal.
- The economists, questioned in their turn, propose to associate capital
- and labor. You know, sir, what that means. If we follow out the
- doctrine, we soon find that it ends in an absorption of property, not by
- the community, but by a general and indissoluble commandite, so that
- the condition of the proprietor would differ from that of the workingman
- only in receiving larger wages. This system, with some peculiar
- additions and embellishments, is the idea of the phalanstery. But it
- is clear that, if inequality of conditions is one of the attributes of
- property, it is not the whole of property. That which makes property a
- DELIGHTFUL THING, as some philosopher (I know not who) has said, is
- the power to dispose at will, not only of one's own goods, but of their
- specific nature; to use them at pleasure; to confine and enclose them;
- to excommunicate mankind, as M. Pierre Leroux says; in short, to make
- such use of them as passion, interest, or even caprice, may suggest.
- What is the possession of money, a share in an agricultural or
- industrial enterprise, or a government-bond coupon, in comparison with
- the infinite charm of being master of one's house and grounds, under
- one's vine and fig-tree? "_Beati possidentes_!" says an author quoted by
- M. Troplong. Seriously, can that be applied to a man of income, who has
- no other possession under the sun than the market, and in his pocket
- his money? As well maintain that a trough is a coward. A nice method of
- reform! They never cease to condemn the thirst for gold, and the
- growing individualism of the century; and yet, most inconceivable
- of contradictions, they prepare to turn all kinds of property into
- one,--property in coin.
- I must say something further of a theory of property lately put forth
- with some ado: I mean the theory of M. Considerant.
- The Fourierists are not men who examine a doctrine in order to ascertain
- whether it conflicts with their system. On the contrary, it is their
- custom to exult and sing songs of triumph whenever an adversary passes
- without perceiving or noticing them.
- These gentlemen want direct refutations, in order that, if they are
- beaten, they may have, at least, the selfish consolation of having been
- spoken of. Well, let their wish be gratified.
- M. Considerant makes the most lofty pretensions to logic. His method
- of procedure is always that of MAJOR, MINOR, AND CONCLUSION. He would
- willingly write upon his hat, "_Argumentator in barbara_." But M.
- Considerant is too intelligent and quick-witted to be a good logician,
- as is proved by the fact that he appears to have taken the syllogism for
- logic.
- The syllogism, as everybody knows who is interested in philosophical
- curiosities, is the first and perpetual sophism of the human mind,--the
- favorite tool of falsehood, the stumbling-block of science, the advocate
- of crime. The syllogism has produced all the evils which the fabulist
- so eloquently condemned, and has done nothing good or useful: it is
- as devoid of truth as of justice. We might apply to it these words of
- Scripture: "_Celui qui met en lui sa confiance, perira_." Consequently,
- the best philosophers long since condemned it; so that now none but the
- enemies of reason wish to make the syllogism its weapon.
- M. Considerant, then, has built his theory of property upon a syllogism.
- Would he be disposed to stake the system of Fourier upon his arguments,
- as I am ready to risk the whole doctrine of equality upon my refutation
- of that system? Such a duel would be quite in keeping with the warlike
- and chivalric tastes of M. Considerant, and the public would profit by
- it; for, one of the two adversaries falling, no more would be said about
- him, and there would be one grumbler less in the world.
- The theory of M. Considerant has this remarkable feature, that, in
- attempting to satisfy at the same time the claims of both laborers and
- proprietors, it infringes alike upon the rights of the former and the
- privileges of the latter. In the first place, the author lays it down as
- a principle: "1. That the use of the land belongs to each member of the
- race; that it is a natural and imprescriptible right, similar in all
- respects to the right to the air and the sunshine. 2. That the right
- to labor is equally fundamental, natural, and imprescriptible." I have
- shown that the recognition of this double right would be the death of
- property. I denounce M. Considerant to the proprietors!
- But M. Considerant maintains that the right to labor creates the right
- of property, and this is the way he reasons:--
- Major Premise.--"Every man legitimately possesses the thing which his
- labor, his skill,--or, in more general terms, his action,--has created."
- To which M. Considerant adds, by way of comment: "Indeed, the land not
- having been created by man, it follows from the fundamental principle
- of property, that the land, being given to the race in common, can in
- no wise be the exclusive and legitimate property of such and such
- individuals, who were not the creators of this value."
- If I am not mistaken, there is no one to whom this proposition, at first
- sight and in its entirety, does not seem utterly irrefutable. Reader,
- distrust the syllogism.
- First, I observe that the words LEGITIMATELY POSSESSES signify to the
- author's mind is _LEGITIMATE PROPRIETOR;_ otherwise the argument, being
- intended to prove the legitimacy of property, would have no meaning. I
- might here raise the question of the difference between property and
- possession, and call upon M. Considerant, before going further, to
- define the one and the other; but I pass on.
- This first proposition is doubly false. 1. In that it asserts the act
- of CREATION to be the only basis of property. 2. In that it regards this
- act as sufficient in all cases to authorize the right of property.
- And, in the first place, if man may be proprietor of the game which he
- does not create, but which he KILLS; of the fruits which he does not
- create, but which he GATHERS; of the vegetables which he does not
- create, but which he PLANTS; of the animals which he does not create,
- but which he REARS,--it is conceivable that men may in like manner
- become proprietors of the land which they do not create, but which they
- clear and fertilize. The act of creation, then, is not NECESSARY to the
- acquisition of the right of property. I say further, that this act alone
- is not always sufficient, and I prove it by the second premise of M.
- Considerant:--
- Minor Premise.--"Suppose that on an isolated island, on the soil of a
- nation, or over the whole face of the earth (the extent of the scene of
- action does not affect our judgment of the facts), a generation of
- human beings devotes itself for the first time to industry, agriculture,
- manufactures, &c. This generation, by its labor, intelligence, and
- activity, creates products, develops values which did not exist on the
- uncultivated land. Is it not perfectly clear that the property of this
- industrious generation will stand on a basis of right, if the value
- or wealth produced by the activity of all be distributed among the
- producers, according to each one's assistance in the creation of the
- general wealth? That is unquestionable."
- That is quite questionable. For this value or wealth, PRODUCED BY THE
- ACTIVITY OF ALL, is by the very fact of its creation COLLECTIVE wealth,
- the use of which, like that of the land, may be divided, but which as
- property remains UNDIVIDED. And why this undivided ownership? Because
- the society which creates is itself indivisible,--a permanent unit,
- incapable of reduction to fractions. And it is this unity of society
- which makes the land common property, and which, as M. Considerant
- says, renders its use imprescriptible in the case of every individual.
- Suppose, indeed, that at a given time the soil should be equally
- divided; the very next moment this division, if it allowed the right
- of property, would become illegitimate. Should there be the slightest
- irregularity in the method of transfer, men, members of society,
- imprescriptible possessors of the land, might be deprived at one blow of
- property, possession, and the means of production. In short, property
- in capital is indivisible, and consequently inalienable, not necessarily
- when the capital is UNCREATED, but when it is COMMON or COLLECTIVE.
- I confirm this theory against M. Considerant, by the third term of his
- syllogism:--
- Conclusion.--"The results of the labor performed by this generation are
- divisible into two classes, between which it is important clearly to
- distinguish. The first class includes the products of the soil which
- belong to this first generation in its usufructuary capacity, augmented,
- improved and refined by its labor and industry. These products consist
- either of objects of consumption or instruments of labor. It is clear
- that these products are the legitimate property of those who have
- created them by their activity.... Second class.--Not only has this
- generation created the products just mentioned (objects of consumption
- and instruments of labor), but it has also added to the original value
- of the soil by cultivation, by the erection of buildings, by all
- the labor producing permanent results, which it has performed. This
- additional value evidently constitutes a product--a value created by
- the activity of the first generation; and if, BY ANY MEANS WHATEVER,
- the ownership of this value be distributed among the members of
- society equitably,--that is, in proportion to the labor which each
- has performed,--each will legitimately possess the portion which he
- receives. He may then dispose of this legitimate and private property
- as he sees fit,--exchange it, give it away, or transfer it; and no other
- individual, or collection of other individuals,--that is, society,--can
- lay any claim to these values."
- Thus, by the distribution of collective capital, to the use of which
- each associate, either in his own right or in right of his authors,
- has an imprescriptible and undivided title, there will be in the
- phalanstery, as in the France of 1841, the poor and the rich; some men
- who, to live in luxury, have only, as Figaro says, to take the
- trouble to be born, and others for whom the fortune of life is but an
- opportunity for long-continued poverty; idlers with large incomes, and
- workers whose fortune is always in the future; some privileged by birth
- and caste, and others pariahs whose sole civil and political rights are
- THE RIGHT TO LABOR, AND THE RIGHT TO LAND. For we must not be deceived;
- in the phalanstery every thing will be as it is to-day, an object of
- property,--machines, inventions, thought, books, the products of art,
- of agriculture, and of industry; animals, houses, fences, vineyards,
- pastures, forests, fields,--every thing, in short, except the
- UNCULTIVATED LAND. Now, would you like to know what uncultivated land is
- worth, according to the advocates of property? "A square league hardly
- suffices for the support of a savage," says M. Charles Comte. Estimating
- the wretched subsistence of this savage at three hundred francs
- per year, we find that the square league necessary to his life is,
- relatively to him, faithfully represented by a rent of fifteen francs.
- In France there are twenty-eight thousand square leagues, the total rent
- of which, by this estimate, would be four hundred and twenty thousand
- francs, which, when divided among nearly thirty-four millions of people,
- would give each an INCOME OF A CENTIME AND A QUARTER. That is the new
- right which the great genius of Fourier has invented IN BEHALF OF THE
- FRENCH PEOPLE, and with which his first disciple hopes to reform the
- world. I denounce M. Considerant to the proletariat!
- If the theory of M. Considerant would at least really guarantee this
- property which he cherishes so jealously, I might pardon him the flaws
- in his syllogism, certainly the best one he ever made in his life. But,
- no: that which M. Considerant takes for property is only a privilege
- of extra pay. In Fourier's system, neither the created capital nor
- the increased value of the soil are divided and appropriated in any
- effective manner: the instruments of labor, whether created or not,
- remain in the hands of the phalanx; the pretended proprietor can touch
- only the income. He is permitted neither to realize his share of the
- stock, nor to possess it exclusively, nor to administer it, whatever it
- be. The cashier throws him his dividend; and then, proprietor, eat the
- whole if you can!
- The system of Fourier would not suit the proprietors, since it takes
- away the most delightful feature of property,--the free disposition of
- one's goods. It would please the communists no better, since it involves
- unequal conditions. It is repugnant to the friends of free association
- and equality, in consequence of its tendency to wipe out human character
- and individuality by suppressing possession, family, and country,--the
- threefold expression of the human personality.
- Of all our active publicists, none seem to me more fertile in resources,
- richer in imagination, more luxuriant and varied in style, than M.
- Considerant. Nevertheless, I doubt if he will undertake to reestablish
- his theory of property. If he has this courage, this is what I would say
- to him: "Before writing your reply, consider well your plan of action;
- do not scour the country; have recourse to none of your ordinary
- expedients; no complaints of civilization; no sarcasms upon equality;
- no glorification of the phalanstery. Leave Fourier and the departed in
- peace, and endeavor only to re-adjust the pieces of your syllogism. To
- this end, you ought, first, to analyze closely each proposition of your
- adversary; second, to show the error, either by a direct refutation, or
- by proving the converse; third, to oppose argument to argument, so that,
- objection and reply meeting face to face, the stronger may break down
- the weaker, and shiver it to atoms. By that method only can you boast of
- having conquered, and compel me to regard you as an honest reasoner, and
- a good artillery-man."
- I should have no excuse for tarrying longer with these phalansterian
- crotchets, if the obligation which I have imposed upon myself of making
- a clean sweep, and the necessity of vindicating my dignity as a writer,
- did not prevent me from passing in silence the reproach uttered against
- me by a correspondent of "La Phalange." "We have seen but lately," says
- this journalist, [71] "that M. Proudhon, enthusiast as he has been for
- the science created by Fourier, is, or will be, an enthusiast for any
- thing else whatsoever."
- If ever sectarians had the right to reproach another for changes in
- his beliefs, this right certainly does not belong to the disciples of
- Fourier, who are always so eager to administer the phalansterian baptism
- to the deserters of all parties. But why regard it as a crime, if they
- are sincere? Of what consequence is the constancy or inconstancy of
- an individual to the truth which is always the same? It is better
- to enlighten men's minds than to teach them to be obstinate in their
- prejudices. Do we not know that man is frail and fickle, that his heart
- is full of delusions, and that his lips are a distillery of falsehood?
- _Omnis homo meudax_. Whether we will or no, we all serve for a time as
- instruments of this truth, whose kingdom comes every day.
- God alone is immutable, because he is eternal.
- That is the reply which, as a general rule, an honest man is entitled
- always to make, and which I ought perhaps to be content to offer as an
- excuse; for I am no better than my fathers. But, in a century of doubt
- and apostasy like ours, when it is of importance to set the small and
- the weak an example of strength and honesty of utterance, I must not
- suffer my character as a public assailant of property to be dishonored.
- I must render an account of my old opinions.
- Examining myself, therefore, upon this charge of Fourierism, and
- endeavoring to refresh my memory, I find that, having been connected
- with the Fourierists in my studies and my friendships, it is possible
- that, without knowing it, I have been one of Fourier's partisans. Jerome
- Lalande placed Napoleon and Jesus Christ in his catalogue of atheists.
- The Fourierists resemble this astronomer: if a man happens to find fault
- with the existing civilization, and to admit the truth of a few of their
- criticisms, they straightway enlist him, willy-nilly, in their school.
- Nevertheless, I do not deny that I have been a Fourierist; for,
- since they say it, of course it may be so. But, sir, that of which my
- ex-associates are ignorant, and which doubtless will astonish you, is
- that I have been many other things,--in religion, by turns a Protestant,
- a Papist, an Arian and Semi-Arian, a Manichean, a Gnostic, an
- Adamite even and a Pre-Adamite, a Sceptic, a Pelagian, a Socinian, an
- Anti-Trinitarian, and a Neo-Christian; [72] in philosophy and politics,
- an Idealist, a Pantheist, a Platonist, a Cartesian, an Eclectic
- (that is, a sort of _juste-milieu_), a Monarchist, an Aristocrat,
- a Constitutionalist, a follower of Babeuf, and a Communist. I have
- wandered through a whole encyclopaedia of systems. Do you think
- it surprising, sir, that, among them all, I was for a short time a
- Fourierist?
- For my part, I am not at all surprised, although at present I have
- no recollection of it. One thing is sure,--that my superstition and
- credulity reached their height at the very period of my life which my
- critics reproachfully assign as the date of my Fourieristic beliefs.
- Now I hold quite other views. My mind no longer admits that which is
- demonstrated by syllogisms, analogies, or metaphors, which are the
- methods of the phalanstery, but demands a process of generalization and
- induction which excludes error. Of my past OPINIONSS I retain absolutely
- none. I have acquired some KNOWLEDGE. I no longer BELIEVE. I either
- KNOW, or am IGNORANT. In a word, in seeking for the reason of things, I
- saw that I was a RATIONALIST.
- Undoubtedly, it would have been simpler to begin where I have ended.
- But then, if such is the law of the human mind; if all society, for six
- thousand years, has done nothing but fall into error; if all mankind are
- still buried in the darkness of faith, deceived by their prejudices and
- passions, guided only by the instinct of their leaders; if my accusers,
- themselves, are not free from sectarianism (for they call themselves
- FOURIERISTS),--am I alone inexcusable for having, in my inner self, at
- the secret tribunal of my conscience, begun anew the journey of our poor
- humanity?
- I would by no means, then, deny my errors; but, sir, that which
- distinguishes me from those who rush into print is the fact that, though
- my thoughts have varied much, my writings do not vary. To-day, even, and
- on a multitude of questions, I am beset by a thousand extravagant and
- contradictory opinions; but my opinions I do not print, for the public
- has nothing to do with them. Before addressing my fellow-men, I wait
- until light breaks in upon the chaos of my ideas, in order that what I
- may say may be, not the whole truth (no man can know that), but nothing
- but the truth.
- This singular disposition of my mind to first identify itself with a
- system in order to better understand it, and then to reflect upon it in
- order to test its legitimacy, is the very thing which disgusted me with
- Fourier, and ruined in my esteem the societary school. To be a faithful
- Fourierist, in fact, one must abandon his reason and accept every
- thing from a master,--doctrine, interpretation, and application. M.
- Considerant, whose excessive intolerance anathematizes all who do not
- abide by his sovereign decisions, has no other conception of Fourierism.
- Has he not been appointed Fourier's vicar on earth and pope of a Church
- which, unfortunately for its apostles, will never be of this world?
- Passive belief is the theological virtue of all sectarians, especially
- of the Fourierists.
- Now, this is what happened to me. While trying to demonstrate by
- argument the religion of which I had become a follower in studying
- Fourier, I suddenly perceived that by reasoning I was becoming
- incredulous; that on each article of the creed my reason and my faith
- were at variance, and that my six weeks' labor was wholly lost. I saw
- that the Fourierists--in spite of their inexhaustible gabble, and their
- extravagant pretension to decide in all things--were neither savants,
- nor logicians, nor even believers; that they were SCIENTIFIC QUACKS, who
- were led more by their self-love than their conscience to labor for the
- triumph of their sect, and to whom all means were good that would reach
- that end. I then understood why to the Epicureans they promised women,
- wine, music, and a sea of luxury; to the rigorists, maintenance of
- marriage, purity of morals, and temperance; to laborers, high wages;
- to proprietors, large incomes; to philosophers, solutions the secret
- of which Fourier alone possessed; to priests, a costly religion and
- magnificent festivals; to savants, knowledge of an unimaginable nature;
- to each, indeed, that which he most desired. In the beginning,
- this seemed to me droll; in the end, I regarded it as the height of
- impudence. No, sir; no one yet knows of the foolishness and infamy which
- the phalansterian system contains. That is a subject which I mean to
- treat as soon as I have balanced my accounts with property. [73]
- It is rumored that the Fourierists think of leaving France and going to
- the new world to found a phalanstery. When a house threatens to fall,
- the rats scamper away; that is because they are rats. Men do better;
- they rebuild it. Not long since, the St. Simonians, despairing of their
- country which paid no heed to them, proudly shook the dust from their
- feet, and started for the Orient to fight the battle of free woman.
- Pride, wilfulness, mad selfishness! True charity, like true faith,
- does not worry, never despairs; it seeks neither its own glory, nor
- its interest, nor empire; it does every thing for all, speaks with
- indulgence to the reason and the will, and desires to conquer only by
- persuasion and sacrifice. Remain in France, Fourierists, if the progress
- of humanity is the only thing which you have at heart! There is more to
- do here than in the new world. Otherwise, go! you are nothing but liars
- and hypocrites!
- The foregoing statement by no means embraces all the political elements,
- all the opinions and tendencies, which threaten the future of property;
- but it ought to satisfy any one who knows how to classify facts, and to
- deduce their law or the idea which governs them. Existing society seems
- abandoned to the demon of falsehood and discord; and it is this sad
- sight which grieves so deeply many distinguished minds who lived too
- long in a former age to be able to understand ours. Now, while the
- short-sighted spectator begins to despair of humanity, and, distracted
- and cursing that of which he is ignorant, plunges into scepticism and
- fatalism, the true observer, certain of the spirit which governs
- the world, seeks to comprehend and fathom Providence. The memoir on
- "Property," published last year by the pensioner of the Academy of
- Besancon, is simply a study of this nature.
- The time has come for me to relate the history of this unlucky treatise,
- which has already caused me so much chagrin, and made me so unpopular;
- but which was on my part so involuntary and unpremeditated, that I would
- dare to affirm that there is not an economist, not a philosopher, not a
- jurist, who is not a hundred times guiltier than I. There is something
- so singular in the way in which I was led to attack property, that if,
- on hearing my sad story, you persist, sir, in your blame, I hope at
- least you will be forced to pity me.
- I never have pretended to be a great politician; far from that, I always
- have felt for controversies of a political nature the greatest aversion;
- and if, in my "Essay on Property," I have sometimes ridiculed our
- politicians, believe, sir, that I was governed much less by my pride
- in the little that I know, than by my vivid consciousness of their
- ignorance and excessive vanity. Relying more on Providence than on
- men; not suspecting at first that politics, like every other science,
- contained an absolute truth; agreeing equally well with Bossuet and
- Jean Jacques,--I accepted with resignation my share of human misery,
- and contented myself with praying to God for good deputies, upright
- ministers, and an honest king. By taste as well as by discretion and
- lack of confidence in my powers, I was slowly pursuing some commonplace
- studies in philology, mingled with a little metaphysics, when I suddenly
- fell upon the greatest problem that ever has occupied philosophical
- minds: I mean the criterion of certainty.
- Those of my readers who are unacquainted with the philosophical
- terminology will be glad to be told in a few words what this criterion
- is, which plays so great a part in my work.
- The criterion of certainty, according to the philosophers, will be,
- when discovered, an infallible method of establishing the truth of an
- opinion, a judgment, a theory, or a system, in nearly the same way as
- gold is recognized by the touchstone, as iron approaches the magnet,
- or, better still, as we verify a mathematical operation by applying
- the PROOF. TIME has hitherto served as a sort of criterion for society.
- Thus, the primitive men--having observed that they were not all equal
- in strength, beauty, and labor--judged, and rightly, that certain ones
- among them were called by nature to the performance of simple and common
- functions; but they concluded, and this is where their error lay, that
- these same individuals of duller intellect, more restricted genius, and
- weaker personality, were predestined to SERVE the others; that is, to
- labor while the latter rested, and to have no other will than theirs:
- and from this idea of a natural subordination among men sprang
- domesticity, which, voluntarily accepted at first, was imperceptibly
- converted into horrible slavery. Time, making this error more palpable,
- has brought about justice. Nations have learned at their own cost that
- the subjection of man to man is a false idea, an erroneous theory,
- pernicious alike to master and to slave. And yet such a social system
- has stood several thousand years, and has been defended by celebrated
- philosophers; even to-day, under somewhat mitigated forms, sophists of
- every description uphold and extol it. But experience is bringing it to
- an end.
- Time, then, is the criterion of societies; thus looked at, history is
- the demonstration of the errors of humanity by the argument _reductio ad
- absurdum_.
- Now, the criterion sought for by metaphysicians would have the advantage
- of discriminating at once between the true and the false in every
- opinion; so that in politics, religion, and morals, for example, the
- true and the useful being immediately recognized, we should no longer
- need to await the sorrowful experience of time. Evidently such a secret
- would be death to the sophists,--that cursed brood, who, under different
- names, excite the curiosity of nations, and, owing to the difficulty
- of separating the truth from the error in their artistically woven
- theories, lead them into fatal ventures, disturb their peace, and fill
- them with such extraordinary prejudice.
- Up to this day, the criterion of certainty remains a mystery; this is
- owing to the multitude of criteria that have been successively proposed.
- Some have taken for an absolute and definite criterion the testimony
- of the senses; others intuition; these evidence; those argument. M.
- Lamennais affirms that there is no other criterion than universal
- reason. Before him, M. de Bonald thought he had discovered it in
- language. Quite recently, M. Buchez has proposed morality; and, to
- harmonize them all, the eclectics have said that it was absurd to seek
- for an absolute criterion, since there were as many criteria as special
- orders of knowledge.
- Of all these hypotheses it may be observed, That the testimony of the
- senses is not a criterion, because the senses, relating us only to
- phenomena, furnish us with no ideas; that intuition needs external
- confirmation or objective certainty; that evidence requires proof, and
- argument verification; that universal reason has been wrong many a time;
- that language serves equally well to express the true or the false; that
- morality, like all the rest, needs demonstration and rule; and finally,
- that the eclectic idea is the least reasonable of all, since it is of no
- use to say that there are several criteria if we cannot point out one.
- I very much fear that it will be with the criterion as with the
- philosopher's stone; that it will finally be abandoned, not only as
- insolvable, but as chimerical. Consequently, I entertain no hopes of
- having found it; nevertheless, I am not sure that some one more skilful
- will not discover it.
- Be it as it may with regard to a criterion or criteria, there are
- methods of demonstration which, when applied to certain subjects,
- may lead to the discovery of unknown truths, bring to light relations
- hitherto unsuspected, and lift a paradox to the highest degree of
- certainty. In such a case, it is not by its novelty, nor even by its
- content, that a system should be judged, but by its method. The critic,
- then, should follow the example of the Supreme Court, which, in the
- cases which come before it, never examines the facts, but only the form
- of procedure. Now, what is the form of procedure? A method.
- I then looked to see what philosophy, in the absence of a criterion, had
- accomplished by the aid of special methods, and I must say that I
- could not discover--in spite of the loudly-proclaimed pretensions
- of some--that it had produced any thing of real value; and, at last,
- wearied with the philosophical twaddle, I resolved to make a new search
- for the criterion. I confess it, to my shame, this folly lasted for two
- years, and I am not yet entirely rid of it. It was like seeking a needle
- in a haystack. I might have learned Chinese or Arabic in the time that I
- have lost in considering and reconsidering syllogisms, in rising to
- the summit of an induction as to the top of a ladder, in inserting
- a proposition between the horns of a dilemma, in decomposing,
- distinguishing, separating, denying, affirming, admitting, as if I could
- pass abstractions through a sieve.
- I selected justice as the subject-matter of my experiments.
- Finally, after a thousand decompositions, recompositions, and double
- compositions, I found at the bottom of my analytical crucible, not the
- criterion of certainty, but a metaphysico-economico-political treatise,
- whose conclusions were such that I did not care to present them in a
- more artistic or, if you will, more intelligible form. The effect which
- this work produced upon all classes of minds gave me an idea of the
- spirit of our age, and did not cause me to regret the prudent and
- scientific obscurity of my style. How happens it that to-day I am
- obliged to defend my intentions, when my conduct bears the evident
- impress of such lofty morality?
- You have read my work, sir, and you know the gist of my tedious and
- scholastic lucubrations. Considering the revolutions of humanity,
- the vicissitudes of empires, the transformations of property, and the
- innumerable forms of justice and of right, I asked, "Are the evils which
- afflict us inherent in our condition as men, or do they arise only from
- an error? This inequality of fortunes which all admit to be the cause of
- society's embarrassments, is it, as some assert, the effect of Nature;
- or, in the division of the products of labor and the soil, may there not
- have been some error in calculation? Does each laborer receive all that
- is due him, and only that which is due him? In short, in the present
- conditions of labor, wages, and exchange, is no one wronged?--are the
- accounts well kept?--is the social balance accurate?"
- Then I commenced a most laborious investigation. It was necessary to
- arrange informal notes, to discuss contradictory titles, to reply to
- captious allegations, to refute absurd pretensions, and to describe
- fictitious debts, dishonest transactions, and fraudulent accounts. In
- order to triumph over quibblers, I had to deny the authority of custom,
- to examine the arguments of legislators, and to oppose science with
- science itself. Finally, all these operations completed, I had to give a
- judicial decision.
- I therefore declared, my hand upon my heart, before God and men, that
- the causes of social inequality are three in number: 1. GRATUITOUS
- APPROPRIATION OF COLLECTIVE WEALTH; 2. INEQUALITY IN EXCHANGE; 3. THE
- RIGHT OF PROFIT OR INCREASE.
- And since this threefold method of extortion is the very essence of the
- domain of property, I denied the legitimacy of property, and proclaimed
- its identity with robbery.
- That is my only offence. I have reasoned upon property; I have searched
- for the criterion of justice; I have demonstrated, not the possibility,
- but the necessity, of equality of fortunes; I have allowed myself no
- attack upon persons, no assault upon the government, of which I, more
- than any one else, am a provisional adherent. If I have sometimes
- used the word PROPRIETOR, I have used it as the abstract name of a
- metaphysical being, whose reality breathes in every individual,--not
- alone in a privileged few.
- Nevertheless, I acknowledge--for I wish my confession to be
- sincere--that the general tone of my book has been bitterly censured.
- They complain of an atmosphere of passion and invective unworthy of
- an honest man, and quite out of place in the treatment of so grave a
- subject.
- If this reproach is well founded (which it is impossible for me either
- to deny or admit, because in my own cause I cannot be judge),--if, I
- say, I deserve this charge, I can only humble myself and acknowledge
- myself guilty of an involuntary wrong; the only excuse that I could
- offer being of such a nature that it ought not to be communicated to the
- public. All that I can say is, that I understand better than any one how
- the anger which injustice causes may render an author harsh and violent
- in his criticisms. When, after twenty years of labor, a man still finds
- himself on the brink of starvation, and then suddenly discovers in
- an equivocation, an error in calculation, the cause of the evil which
- torments him in common with so many millions of his fellows, he can
- scarcely restrain a cry of sorrow and dismay.
- But, sir, though pride be offended by my rudeness, it is not to pride
- that I apologize, but to the proletaires, to the simple-minded, whom I
- perhaps have scandalized. My angry dialectics may have produced a bad
- effect on some peaceable minds. Some poor workingman--more affected
- by my sarcasm than by the strength of my arguments--may, perhaps, have
- concluded that property is the result of a perpetual Machiavelianism on
- the part of the governors against the governed,--a deplorable error of
- which my book itself is the best refutation. I devoted two chapters to
- showing how property springs from human personality and the comparison
- of individuals. Then I explained its perpetual limitation; and,
- following out the same idea, I predicted its approaching disappearance.
- How, then, could the editors of the "Revue Democratique," after
- having borrowed from me nearly the whole substance of their economical
- articles, dare to say: "The holders of the soil, and other productive
- capital, are more or less wilful accomplices in a vast robbery, they
- being the exclusive receivers and sharers of the stolen goods"?
- The proprietors WILFULLY guilty of the crime of robbery! Never did
- that homicidal phrase escape my pen; never did my heart conceive the
- frightful thought. Thank Heaven! I know not how to calumniate my kind;
- and I have too strong a desire to seek for the reason of things to be
- willing to believe in criminal conspiracies. The millionnaire is no more
- tainted by property than the journeyman who works for thirty sous per
- day. On both sides the error is equal, as well as the intention. The
- effect is also the same, though positive in the former, and negative
- in the latter. I accused property; I did not denounce the proprietors,
- which would have been absurd: and I am sorry that there are among us
- wills so perverse and minds so shattered that they care for only so much
- of the truth as will aid them in their evil designs. Such is the
- only regret which I feel on account of my indignation, which, though
- expressed perhaps too bitterly, was at least honest, and legitimate in
- its source.
- However, what did I do in this essay which I voluntarily submitted
- to the Academy of Moral Sciences? Seeking a fixed axiom amid social
- uncertainties, I traced back to one fundamental question all the
- secondary questions over which, at present, so keen and diversified
- a conflict is raging This question was the right of property. Then,
- comparing all existing theories with each other, and extracting from
- them that which is common to them all, I endeavored to discover that
- element in the idea of property which is necessary, immutable, and
- absolute; and asserted, after authentic verification, that this idea
- is reducible to that of INDIVIDUAL AND TRANSMISSIBLE POSSESSION;
- SUSCEPTIBLE OF EXCHANGE, BUT NOT OF ALIENATION; FOUNDED ON LABOR, AND
- NOT ON FICTITIOUS OCCUPANCY, OR IDLE CAPRICE. I said, further, that this
- idea was the result of our revolutionary movements,--the culminating
- point towards which all opinions, gradually divesting themselves of
- their contradictory elements, converge. And I tried to demonstrate
- this by the spirit of the laws, by political economy, by psychology and
- history.
- A Father of the Church, finishing a learned exposition of the Catholic
- doctrine, cried, in the enthusiasm of his faith, _"Domine, si error est,
- a te decepti sumus_ (if my religion is false, God is to blame)." I, as
- well as this theologian, can say, "If equality is a fable, God, through
- whom we act and think and are; God, who governs society by eternal laws,
- who rewards just nations, and punishes proprietors,--God alone is the
- author of evil; God has lied. The fault lies not with me."
- But, if I am mistaken in my inferences, I should be shown my error, and
- led out of it. It is surely worth the trouble, and I think I deserve
- this honor. There is no ground for proscription.
- For, in the words of that member of the Convention who did not like
- the guillotine, _to kill is not to reply_. Until then, I persist in
- regarding my work as useful, social, full of instruction for public
- officials,--worthy, in short, of reward and encouragement.
- For there is one truth of which I am profoundly convinced,--nations
- live by absolute ideas, not by approximate and partial conceptions;
- therefore, men are needed who define principles, or at least test them
- in the fire of controversy. Such is the law,--the idea first, the pure
- idea, the understanding of the laws of God, the theory: practice follows
- with slow steps, cautious, attentive to the succession of events; sure
- to seize, towards this eternal meridian, the indications of supreme
- reason.
- The co-operation of theory and practice produces in humanity the
- realization of order,--the absolute truth. [74]
- All of us, as long as we live, are called, each in proportion to his
- strength, to this sublime work. The only duty which it imposes upon
- us is to refrain from appropriating the truth to ourselves, either by
- concealing it, or by accommodating it to the temper of the century,
- or by using it for our own interests. This principle of conscience, so
- grand and so simple, has always been present in my thought.
- Consider, in fact, sir, that which I might have done, but did not wish
- to do. I reason on the most honorable hypothesis. What hindered me from
- concealing, for some years to come, the abstract theory of the equality
- of fortunes, and, at the same time, from criticising constitutions and
- codes; from showing the absolute and the contingent, the immutable and
- the ephemeral, the eternal and the transitory, in laws present and past;
- from constructing a new system of legislation, and establishing on
- a solid foundation this social edifice, ever destroyed and as often
- rebuilt? Might I not, taking up the definitions of casuists, have
- clearly shown the cause of their contradictions and uncertainties, and
- supplied, at the same time, the inadequacies of their conclusions? Might
- I not have confirmed this labor by a vast historical exposition, in
- which the principle of exclusion, and of the accumulation of property,
- the appropriation of collective wealth, and the radical vice in
- exchanges, would have figured as the constant causes of tyranny, war,
- and revolution?
- "It should have been done," you say. Do not doubt, sir, that such a task
- would have required more patience than genius. With the principles of
- social economy which I have analyzed, I would have had only to break
- the ground, and follow the furrow. The critic of laws finds nothing more
- difficult than to determine justice: the labor alone would have been
- longer. Oh, if I had pursued this glittering prospect, and, like the
- man of the burning bush, with inspired countenance and deep and solemn
- voice, had presented myself some day with new tables, there would have
- been found fools to admire, boobies to applaud, and cowards to offer me
- the dictatorship; for, in the way of popular infatuations, nothing is
- impossible.
- But, sir, after this monument of insolence and pride, what should I have
- deserved in your opinion, at the tribunal of God, and in the judgment of
- free men? Death, sir, and eternal reprobation!
- I therefore spoke the truth as soon as I saw it, waiting only long
- enough to give it proper expression. I pointed out error in order
- that each might reform himself, and render his labors more useful. I
- announced the existence of a new political element, in order that
- my associates in reform, developing it in concert, might arrive more
- promptly at that unity of principles which alone can assure to society
- a better day. I expected to receive, if not for my book, at least for
- my commendable conduct, a small republican ovation. And, behold!
- journalists denounce me, academicians curse me, political adventurers
- (great God!) think to make themselves tolerable by protesting that they
- are not like me! I give the formula by which the whole social edifice
- may be scientifically reconstructed, and the strongest minds reproach
- me for being able only to destroy. The rest despise me, because I am
- unknown. When the "Essay on Property" fell into the reformatory camp,
- some asked: "Who has spoken? Is it Arago? Is it Lamennais? Michel de
- Bourges or Garnier-Pages?"
- And when they heard the name of a new man: "We do not know him,"
- they would reply. Thus, the monopoly of thought, property in reason,
- oppresses the proletariat as well as the _bourgeoisie_. The worship of
- the infamous prevails even on the steps of the tabernacle.
- But what am I saying? May evil befall me, if I blame the poor creatures!
- Oh! let us not despise those generous souls, who in the excitement of
- their patriotism are always prompt to identify the voice of their
- chiefs with the truth. Let us encourage rather their simple credulity,
- enlighten complacently and tenderly their precious sincerity, and
- reserve our shafts for those vain-glorious spirits who are always
- admiring their genius, and, in different tongues, caressing the people
- in order to govern them.
- These considerations alone oblige me to reply to the strange and
- superficial conclusions of the "Journal du Peuple" (issue of Oct. 11,
- 1840), on the question of property. I leave, therefore, the journalist
- to address myself only to his readers. I hope that the self-love of the
- writer will not be offended, if, in the presence of the masses, I ignore
- an individual.
- You say, proletaires of the "Peuple," "For the very reason that men and
- things exist, there always will be men who will possess things; nothing,
- therefore, can destroy property."
- In speaking thus, you unconsciously argue exactly after the manner of
- M. Cousin, who always reasons from _possession_ to PROPERTY. This
- coincidence, however, does not surprise me. M. Cousin is a philosopher
- of much mind, and you, proletaires, have still more. Certainly it is
- honorable, even for a philosopher, to be your companion in error.
- Originally, the word PROPERTY was synonymous with PROPER or INDIVIDUAL
- POSSESSION. It designated each individual's special right to the use of
- a thing. But when this right of use, inert (if I may say so) as it
- was with regard to the other usufructuaries, became active and
- paramount,--that is, when the usufructuary converted his right to
- personally use the thing into the right to use it by his neighbor's
- labor,--then property changed its nature, and its idea became complex.
- The legists knew this very well, but instead of opposing, as they ought,
- this accumulation of profits, they accepted and sanctioned the whole.
- And as the right of farm-rent necessarily implies the right of use,--in
- other words, as the right to cultivate land by the labor of a slave
- supposes one's power to cultivate it himself, according to the principle
- that the greater includes the less,--the name property was reserved
- to designate this double right, and that of possession was adopted to
- designate the right of use.
- Whence property came to be called the perfect right, the right of
- domain, the eminent right, the heroic or _quiritaire_ right,--in Latin,
- _jus perfectum, jus optimum, jus quiritarium, jus dominii_,--while
- possession became assimilated to farm-rent.
- Now, that individual possession exists of right, or, better,
- from natural necessity, all philosophers admit, and can easily e
- demonstrated; but when, in imitation of M. Cousin, we assume it to be
- the basis of the domain of property, we fall into the sophism called
- _sophisma amphiboliae vel ambiguitatis_, which consists in changing the
- meaning by a verbal equivocation.
- People often think themselves very profound, because, by the aid of
- expressions of extreme generality, they appear to rise to the height
- of absolute ideas, and thus deceive inexperienced minds; and, what
- is worse, this is commonly called EXAMINING ABSTRACTIONS. But the
- abstraction formed by the comparison of identical facts is one thing,
- while that which is deduced from different acceptations of the same term
- is quite another. The first gives the universal idea, the axiom, the
- law; the second indicates the order of generation of ideas. All
- our errors arise from the constant confusion of these two kinds of
- abstractions. In this particular, languages and philosophies are alike
- deficient. The less common an idiom is, and the more obscure its
- terms, the more prolific is it as a source of error: a philosopher is
- sophistical in proportion to his ignorance of any method of neutralizing
- this imperfection in language. If the art of correcting the errors of
- speech by scientific methods is ever discovered, then philosophy will
- have found its criterion of certainty.
- Now, then, the difference between property and possession being well
- established, and it being settled that the former, for the reasons
- which I have just given, must necessarily disappear, is it best, for the
- slight advantage of restoring an etymology, to retain the word PROPERTY?
- My opinion is that it would be very unwise to do so, and I will tell
- why. I quote from the "Journal du Peuple:"--
- "To the legislative power belongs the right to regulate property, to
- prescribe the conditions of acquiring, possessing, and transmitting
- it... It cannot be denied that inheritance, assessment, commerce,
- industry, labor, and wages require the most important modifications."
- You wish, proletaires, to REGULATE PROPERTY; that is, you wish to
- destroy it and reduce it to the right of possession. For to regulate
- property without the consent of the proprietors is to deny the right
- OF DOMAIN; to associate employees with proprietors is to destroy
- the EMINENT right; to suppress or even reduce farm-rent, house-rent,
- revenue, and increase generally, is to annihilate PERFECT property. Why,
- then, while laboring with such laudable enthusiasm for the establishment
- of equality, should you retain an expression whose equivocal meaning
- will always be an obstacle in the way of your success?
- There you have the first reason--a wholly philosophical one--for
- rejecting not only the thing, but the name, property. Here now is the
- political, the highest reason.
- Every social revolution--M. Cousin will tell you--is effected only by
- the realization of an idea, either political, moral, or religious. When
- Alexander conquered Asia, his idea was to avenge Greek liberty against
- the insults of Oriental despotism; when Marius and Caesar overthrew
- the Roman patricians, their idea was to give bread to the people;
- when Christianity revolutionized the world, its idea was to emancipate
- mankind, and to substitute the worship of one God for the deities of
- Epicurus and Homer; when France rose in '89, her idea was liberty and
- equality before the law. There has been no true revolution, says M.
- Cousin, with out its idea; so that where an idea does not exist, or even
- fails of a formal expression, revolution is impossible. There are mobs,
- conspirators, rioters, regicides. There are no revolutionists. Society,
- devoid of ideas, twists and tosses about, and dies in the midst of its
- fruitless labor.
- Nevertheless, you all feel that a revolution is to come, and that you
- alone can accomplish it. What, then, is the idea which governs you,
- proletaires of the nineteenth century?--for really I cannot call you
- revolutionists. What do you think?--what do you believe?--what do you
- want? Be guarded in your reply. I have read faithfully your favorite
- journals, your most esteemed authors. I find everywhere only vain and
- puerile _entites_; nowhere do I discover an idea.
- I will explain the meaning of this word _entite_,--new, without doubt,
- to most of you.
- By _entite_ is generally understood a substance which the imagination
- grasps, but which is incognizable by the senses and the reason. Thus the
- SOPORIFIC POWER of opium, of which Sganarelle speaks, and the PECCANT
- HUMORS of ancient medicine, are _entites_. The _entite_ is the
- support of those who do not wish to confess their ignorance. It
- is incomprehensible; or, as St. Paul says, the _argumentum non
- apparentium_. In philosophy, the _entite_ is often only a repetition of
- words which add nothing to the thought.
- For example, when M. Pierre Leroux--who says so many excellent things,
- but who is too fond, in my opinion, of his Platonic formulas--assures us
- that the evils of humanity are due to our IGNORANCE OF LIFE, M. Pierre
- Leroux utters an _entite;_ for it is evident that if we are evil it is
- because we do not know how to live; but the knowledge of this fact is of
- no value to us.
- When M. Edgar Quinet declares that France suffers and declines because
- there is an ANTAGONISM of men and of interests, he declares an _entite;_
- for the problem is to discover the cause of this antagonism.
- When M. Lamennais, in thunder tones, preaches self-sacrifice and love,
- he proclaims two _entites_; for we need to know on what conditions
- self-sacrifice and love can spring up and exist.
- So also, proletaires, when you talk of LIBERTY, PROGRESS, and THE
- SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE, you make of these naturally intelligible
- things so many _entites_ in space: for, on the one hand, we need a new
- definition of liberty, since that of '89 no longer suffices; and, on the
- other, we must know in what direction society should proceed in order to
- be in progress. As for the sovereignty of the people, that is a
- grosser _entite_ than the sovereignty of reason; it is the _entite_
- of _entites_. In fact, since sovereignty can no more be conceived
- of outside of the people than outside of reason, it remains to be
- ascertained who, among the people, shall exercise the sovereignty; and,
- among so many minds, which shall be the sovereigns. To say that the
- people should elect their representatives is to say that the people
- should recognize their sovereigns, which does not remove the difficulty
- at all.
- But suppose that, equal by birth, equal before the law, equal in
- personality, equal in social functions, you wish also to be equal in
- conditions.
- Suppose that, perceiving all the mutual relations of men, whether
- they produce or exchange or consume, to be relations of commutative
- justice,--in a word, social relations; suppose, I say, that, perceiving
- this, you wish to give this natural society a legal existence, and to
- establish the fact by law,--
- I say that then you need a clear, positive, and exact expression of your
- whole idea,--that is, an expression which states at once the principle,
- the means, and the end; and I add that that expression is ASSOCIATION.
- And since the association of the human race dates, at least rightfully,
- from the beginning of the world, and has gradually established and
- perfected itself by successively divesting itself of its negative
- elements, slavery, nobility, despotism, aristocracy, and feudalism,--I
- say that, to eliminate the last negation of society, to formulate the
- last revolutionary idea, you must change your old rallying-cries, NO
- MORE ABSOLUTISM, NO MORE NOBILITY, NO MORE SLAVES! into that of NO MORE
- PROPERTY!...
- But I know what astonishes you, poor souls, blasted by the wind of
- poverty, and crushed by your patrons' pride: it is EQUALITY, whose
- consequences frighten you. How, you have said in your journal,--how can
- we "dream of a level which, being unnatural, is therefore unjust? How
- shall we pay the day's labor of a Cormenin or a Lamennais?"
- Plebeians, listen! When, after the battle of Salamis, the Athenians
- assembled to award the prizes for courage, after the ballots had been
- collected, it was found that each combatant had one vote for the first
- prize, and Themistocles all the votes for the second. The people of
- Minerva were crowned by their own hands. Truly heroic souls! all were
- worthy of the olive-branch, since all had ventured to claim it for
- themselves. Antiquity praised this sublime spirit. Learn, proletaires,
- to esteem yourselves, and to respect your dignity. You wish to be
- free, and you know not how to be citizens. Now, whoever says "citizens"
- necessarily says equals.
- If I should call myself Lamennais or Cormenin, and some journal,
- speaking of me, should burst forth with these hyperboles, INCOMPARABLE
- GENIUS, SUPERIOR MIND, CONSUMMATE VIRTUE, NOBLE CHARACTER, I should not
- like it, and should complain,--first, because such eulogies are never
- deserved; and, second, because they furnish a bad example. But I wish,
- in order to reconcile you to equality, to measure for you the
- greatest literary personage of our century. Do not accuse me of envy,
- proletaires, if I, a defender of equality, estimate at their proper
- value talents which are universally admired, and which I, better than
- any one, know how to recognize. A dwarf can always measure a giant: all
- that he needs is a yardstick.
- You have seen the pretentious announcements of "L'Esquisse d'une
- Philosophie," and you have admired the work on trust; for either you
- have not read it, or, if you have, you are incapable of judging it.
- Acquaint yourselves, then, with this speculation more brilliant than
- sound; and, while admiring the enthusiasm of the author, cease to pity
- those useful labors which only habit and the great number of the
- persons engaged in them render contemptible. I shall be brief; for,
- notwithstanding the importance of the subject and the genius of the
- author, what I have to say is of but little moment.
- M. Lamennais starts with the existence of God. How does he demonstrate
- it? By Cicero's argument,--that is, by the consent of the human race.
- There is nothing new in that. We have still to find out whether the
- belief of the human race is legitimate; or, as Kant says, whether
- our subjective certainty of the existence of God corresponds with the
- objective truth. This, however, does not trouble M. Lamennais. He says
- that, if the human race believes, it is because it has a reason for
- believing.
- Then, having pronounced the name of God, M. Lamennais sings a hymn; and
- that is his demonstration!
- This first hypothesis admitted, M. Lamennais follows it with a second;
- namely, that there are three persons in God. But, while Christianity
- teaches the dogma of the Trinity only on the authority of revelation, M.
- Lamennais pretends to arrive at it by the sole force of argument; and he
- does not perceive that his pretended demonstration is, from beginning to
- end, anthropomorphism,--that is, an ascription of the faculties of the
- human mind and the powers of nature to the Divine substance. New songs,
- new hymns!
- God and the Trinity thus DEMONSTRATED, the philosopher passes to the
- creation,--a third hypothesis, in which M. Lamennais, always eloquent,
- varied, and sublime, DEMONSTRATES that God made the world neither of
- nothing, nor of something, nor of himself; that he was free in creating,
- but that nevertheless he could not but create; that there is in matter
- a matter which is not matter; that the archetypal ideas of the world are
- separated from each other, in the Divine mind, by a division which is
- obscure and unintelligible, and yet substantial and real, which involves
- intelligibility, &c. We meet with like contradictions concerning the
- origin of evil. To explain this problem,--one of the profoundest in
- philosophy,--M. Lamennais at one time denies evil, at another makes God
- the author of evil, and at still another seeks outside of God a
- first cause which is not God,--an amalgam of _entites_ more or less
- incoherent, borrowed from Plato, Proclus, Spinoza, I might say even from
- all philosophers.
- Having thus established his trinity of hypotheses, M. Lamennais
- deduces therefrom, by a badly connected chain of analogies, his whole
- philosophy. And it is here especially that we notice the syncretism
- which is peculiar to him. The theory of M. Lamennais embraces all
- systems, and supports all opinions. Are you a materialist? Suppress,
- as useless _entites_, the three persons in God; then, starting directly
- from heat, light, and electro-magnetism,--which, according to the
- author, are the three original fluids, the three primary external
- manifestations of Will, Intelligence, and Love,--you have a
- materialistic and atheistic cosmogony. On the contrary, are you wedded
- to spiritualism? With the theory of the immateriality of the body, you
- are able to see everywhere nothing but spirits. Finally, if you incline
- to pantheism, you will be satisfied by M. Lamennais, who formally
- teaches that the world is not an EMANATION from Divinity,--which is pure
- pantheism,--but a FLOW of Divinity.
- I do not pretend, however, to deny that "L'Esquisse" contains some
- excellent things; but, by the author's declaration, these things are not
- original with him; it is the system which is his. That is undoubtedly
- the reason why M. Lamennais speaks so contemptuously of his predecessors
- in philosophy, and disdains to quote his originals. He thinks that,
- since "L'Esquisse" contains all true philosophy, the world will lose
- nothing when the names and works of the old philosophers perish. M.
- Lamennais, who renders glory to God in beautiful songs, does not know
- how as well to render justice to his fellows. His fatal fault is this
- appropriation of knowledge, which the theologians call the PHILOSOPHICAL
- SIN, or the SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST--a sin which will not damn you,
- proletaires, nor me either.
- In short, "L'Esquisse," judged as a system, and divested of all which
- its author borrows from previous systems, is a commonplace work, whose
- method consists in constantly explaining the known by the unknown, and
- in giving entites for abstractions, and tautologies for proofs. Its
- whole theodicy is a work not of genius but of imagination, a patching up
- of neo-Platonic ideas. The psychological portion amounts to nothing,
- M. Lamennais openly ridiculing labors of this character, without which,
- however, metaphysics is impossible. The book, which treats of logic
- and its methods, is weak, vague, and shallow. Finally, we find in the
- physical and physiological speculations which M. Lamennais deduces
- from his trinitarian cosmogony grave errors, the preconceived design of
- accommodating facts to theory, and the substitution in almost every case
- of hypothesis for reality. The third volume on industry and art is the
- most interesting to read, and the best. It is true that M. Lamennais
- can boast of nothing but his style. As a philosopher, he has added not a
- single idea to those which existed before him.
- Why, then, this excessive mediocrity of M. Lamennais considered as
- a thinker, a mediocrity which disclosed itself at the time of the
- publication of the "Essai sur l'Indifference!"? It is because (remember
- this well, proletaires!) Nature makes no man truly complete, and because
- the development of certain faculties almost always excludes an equal
- development of the opposite faculties; it is because M. Lamennais
- is preeminently a poet, a man of feeling and sentiment. Look at his
- style,--exuberant, sonorous, picturesque, vehement, full of exaggeration
- and invective,--and hold it for certain that no man possessed of such
- a style was ever a true metaphysician. This wealth of expression and
- illustration, which everybody admires, becomes in M Lamennais the
- incurable cause of his philosophical impotence. His flow of language,
- and his sensitive nature misleading his imagination, he thinks that
- he is reasoning when he is only repeating himself, and readily takes a
- description for a logical deduction. Hence his horror of positive ideas,
- his feeble powers of analysis, his pronounced taste for indefinite
- analogies, verbal abstractions, hypothetical generalities, in short, all
- sorts of entites.
- Further, the entire life of M. Lamennais is conclusive proof of
- his anti-philosophical genius. Devout even to mysticism, an ardent
- ultramontane, an intolerant theocrat, he at first feels the double
- influence of the religious reaction and the literary theories which
- marked the beginning of this century, and falls back to the middle ages
- and Gregory VII.; then, suddenly becoming a progressive Christian and a
- democrat, he gradually leans towards rationalism, and finally falls into
- deism. At present, everybody waits at the trap-door. As for me, though I
- would not swear to it, I am inclined to think that M. Lamennais, already
- taken with scepticism, will die in a state of indifference. He owes
- to individual reason and methodical doubt this expiation of his early
- essays.
- It has been pretended that M. Lamennais, preaching now a theocracy, now
- universal democracy, has been always consistent; that, under different
- names, he has sought invariably one and the same thing,--unity. Pitiful
- excuse for an author surprised in the very act of contradiction! What
- would be thought of a man who, by turns a servant of despotism under
- Louis XVI, a demagogue with Robespierre, a courtier of the Emperor,
- a bigot during fifteen years of the Restoration, a conservative
- since 1830, should dare to say that he ever had wished for but one
- thing,--public order? Would he be regarded as any the less a renegade
- from all parties? Public order, unity, the world's welfare, social
- harmony, the union of the nations,--concerning each of these things
- there is no possible difference of opinion. Everybody wishes them;
- the character of the publicist depends only upon the means by which
- he proposes to arrive at them. But why look to M. Lamennais for a
- steadfastness of opinion, which he himself repudiates? Has he not said,
- "The mind has no law; that which I believe to-day, I did not believe
- yesterday; I do not know that I shall believe it to-morrow"?
- No; there is no real superiority among men, since all talents and
- capacities are combined never in one individual. This man has the power
- of thought, that one imagination and style, still another industrial and
- commercial capacity. By our very nature and education, we possess only
- special aptitudes which are limited and confined, and which become
- consequently more necessary as they gain in depth and strength.
- Capacities are to each other as functions and persons; who would dare
- to classify them in ranks? The finest genius is, by the laws of his
- existence and development, the most dependent upon the society which
- creates him. Who would dare to make a god of the glorious child?
- "It is not strength which makes the man," said a Hercules of the
- market-place to the admiring crowd; "it is character." That man, who
- had only his muscles, held force in contempt. The lesson is a good one,
- proletaires; we should profit by it. It is not talent (which is also a
- force), it is not knowledge, it is not beauty which makes the man. It is
- heart, courage, will, virtue. Now, if we are equal in that which makes
- us men, how can the accidental distribution of secondary faculties
- detract from our manhood?
- Remember that privilege is naturally and inevitably the lot of the weak;
- and do not be misled by the fame which accompanies certain talents
- whose greatest merit consists in their rarity, and a long and toilsome
- apprenticeship. It is easier for M. Lamennais to recite a philippic, or
- sing a humanitarian ode after the Platonic fashion, than to discover a
- single useful truth; it is easier for an economist to apply the laws of
- production and distribution than to write ten lines in the style of M.
- Lamennais; it is easier for both to speak than to act. You, then, who
- put your hands to the work, who alone truly create, why do you wish me
- to admit your inferiority? But, what am I saying?
- Yes, you are inferior, for you lack virtue and will! Ready for labor and
- for battle, you have, when liberty and equality are in question, neither
- courage nor character!
- In the preface to his pamphlet on "Le Pays et le Gouvernement," as well
- as in his defence before the jury, M. Lamennais frankly declared
- himself an advocate of property. Out of regard for the author and his
- misfortune, I shall abstain from characterizing this declaration, and
- from examining these two sorrowful performances. M. Lamennais seems to
- be only the tool of a quasi-radical party, which flatters him in order
- to use him, without respect for a glorious, but hence forth powerless,
- old age. What means this profession of faith? From the first number of
- "L'Avenir" to "L'Esquisse d'une Philosophie," M. Lamennais always
- favors equality, association, and even a sort of vague and indefinite
- communism. M. Lamennais, in recognizing the right of property, gives the
- lie to his past career, and renounces his most generous tendencies. Can
- it, then, be true that in this man, who has been too roughly treated,
- but who is also too easily flattered, strength of talent has already
- outlived strength of will?
- It is said that M. Lamennais has rejected the offers of several of his
- friends to try to procure for him a commutation of his sentence. M.
- Lamennais prefers to serve out his time. May not this affectation of a
- false stoicism come from the same source as his recognition of the right
- of property? The Huron, when taken prisoner, hurls insults and threats
- at his conqueror,--that is the heroism of the savage; the martyr
- prays for his executioners, and is willing to receive from them his
- life,--that is the heroism of the Christian. Why has the apostle of love
- become an apostle of anger and revenge? Has, then, the translator of
- "L'Imitation" forgotten that he who offends charity cannot honor virtue?
- Galileo, retracting on his knees before the tribunal of the inquisition
- his heresy in regard to the movement of the earth, and recovering at
- that price his liberty, seems to me a hundred times grander than
- M. Lamennais. What! if we suffer for truth and justice, must we, in
- retaliation, thrust our persecutors outside the pale of human society;
- and, when sentenced to an unjust punishment, must we decline exemption
- if it is offered to us, because it pleases a few base satellites to call
- it a pardon? Such is not the wisdom of Christianity. But I forgot that
- in the presence of M. Lamennais this name is no longer pronounced. May
- the prophet of "L'Avenir" be soon restored to liberty and his friends;
- but, above all, may he henceforth derive his inspiration only from his
- genius and his heart!
- O proletaires, proletaires! how long are you to be victimized by this
- spirit of revenge and implacable hatred which your false friends kindle,
- and which, perhaps, has done more harm to the development of reformatory
- ideas than the corruption, ignorance, and malice of the government?
- Believe me, at the present time everybody is to blame. In fact, in
- intention, or in example, all are found wanting; and you have no right
- to accuse any one. The king himself (God forgive me! I do not like to
- justify a king),--the king himself is, like his predecessors, only the
- personification of an idea, and an idea, proletaires, which possesses
- you yet. His greatest wrong consists in wishing for its complete
- realization, while you wish it realized only partially,--consequently,
- in being logical in his government; while you, in your complaints, are
- not at all so. You clamor for a second regicide. He that is without sin
- among you,--let him cast at the prince of property the first stone!
- How successful you would have been if, in order to influence men,
- you had appealed to the self-love of men,--if, in order to alter
- the constitution and the law, you had placed yourselves within the
- constitution and the law! Fifty thousand laws, they say, make up our
- political and civil codes. Of these fifty thousand laws, twenty-five
- thousand are for you, twenty-five thousand against you. Is it not clear
- that your duty is to oppose the former to the latter, and thus, by the
- argument of contradiction, drive privilege into its last ditch? This
- method of action is henceforth the only useful one, being the only moral
- and rational one.
- For my part, if I had the ear of this nation, to which I am attached by
- birth and predilection, with no intention of playing the leading part
- in the future republic, I would instruct the laboring masses to
- conquer property through institutions and judicial pleadings; to seek
- auxiliaries and accomplices in the highest ranks of society, and to ruin
- all privileged classes by taking advantage of their common desire for
- power and popularity.
- The petition for the electoral reform has already received two hundred
- thousand signatures, and the illustrious Arago threatens us with a
- million. Surely, that will be well done; but from this million of
- citizens, who are as willing to vote for an emperor as for equality,
- could we not select ten thousand signatures--I mean bona fide
- signatures--whose authors can read, write, cipher, and even think
- a little, and whom we could invite, after due perusal and verbal
- explanation, to sign such a petition as the following:--
- "TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR:--
- "MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE,--On the day when a royal ordinance, decreeing
- the establishment of model national workshops, shall appear in the
- 'Moniteur,' the undersigned, to the number of TEN THOUSAND, will repair
- to the Palace of the Tuileries, and there, with all the power of their
- lungs, will shout, 'Long live Louis Philippe!'
- "On the day when the 'Moniteur' shall inform the public that this
- petition is refused, the undersigned, to the number of TEN THOUSAND,
- will say secretly in their hearts, 'Down with Louis Philippe!'"
- If I am not mistaken, such a petition would have some effect. [75] The
- pleasure of a popular ovation would be well worth the sacrifice of a few
- millions. They sow so much to reap unpopularity! Then, if the nation,
- its hopes of 1830 restored, should feel it its duty to keep its
- promise,--and it would keep it, for the word of the nation is, like that
- of God, sacred,--if, I say, the nation, reconciled by this act with
- the public-spirited monarchy, should bear to the foot of the throne its
- cheers and its vows, and should at that solemn moment choose me to speak
- in its name, the following would be the substance of my speech:--
- "SIRE,--This is what the nation wishes to say to your Majesty:--
- "O King! you see what it costs to gain the applause of the citizens.
- Would you like us henceforth to take for our motto: 'Let us help the
- King, the King will help us'? Do you wish the people to cry: 'THE KING
- AND THE FRENCH NATION'? Then abandon these grasping bankers, these
- quarrelsome lawyers, these miserable bourgeois, these infamous writers,
- these dishonored men. All these, Sire, hate you, and continue to support
- you only because they fear us. Finish the work of our kings; wipe out
- aristocracy and privilege; consult with these faithful proletaires, with
- the nation, which alone can honor a sovereign and sincerely shout, 'Long
- live the king!'"
- The rest of what I have to say, sir, is for you alone; others would
- not understand me. You are, I perceive, a republican as well as an
- economist, and your patriotism revolts at the very idea of addressing
- to the authorities a petition in which the government of Louis Philippe
- should be tacitly recognized. "National workshops! it were well to have
- such institutions established," you think; "but patriotic hearts never
- will accept them from an aristocratic ministry, nor by the courtesy of a
- king." Already, undoubtedly, your old prejudices have returned, and you
- now regard me only as a sophist, as ready to flatter the powers that
- be as to dishonor, by pushing them to an extreme, the principles of
- equality and universal fraternity.
- What shall I say to you?... That I should so lightly compromise the
- future of my theories, either this clever sophistry which is attributed
- to me must be at bottom a very trifling affair, or else my convictions
- must be so firm that they deprive me of free-will.
- But, not to insist further on the necessity of a compromise between the
- executive power and the people, it seems to me, sir, that, in doubting
- my patriotism, you reason very capriciously, and that your judgments
- are exceedingly rash. You, sir, ostensibly defending government and
- property, are allowed to be a republican, reformer, phalansterian, any
- thing you wish; I, on the contrary, demanding distinctly enough a slight
- reform in public economy, am foreordained a conservative, and likewise
- a friend of the dynasty. I cannot explain myself more clearly. So firm
- a believer am I in the philosophy of accomplished facts and the _statu
- quo_ of governmental forms that, instead of destroying that which
- exists and beginning over again the past, I prefer to render every thing
- legitimate by correcting it. It is true that the corrections which I
- propose, though respecting the form, tend to finally change the nature
- of the things corrected. Who denies it? But it is precisely that which
- constitutes my system of _statu quo_. I make no war upon symbols,
- figures, or phantoms. I respect scarecrows, and bow before bugbears. I
- ask, on the one hand, that property be left as it is, but that interest
- on all kinds of capital be gradually lowered and finally abolished; on
- the other hand, that the charter be maintained in its present shape, but
- that method be introduced into administration and politics. That is all.
- Nevertheless, submitting to all that is, though not satisfied with it, I
- endeavor to conform to the established order, and to render unto Caesar
- the things that are Caesar's. Is it thought, for instance, that I love
- property?... Very well; I am myself a proprietor and do homage to the
- right of increase, as is proved by the fact that I have creditors to
- whom I faithfully pay, every year, a large amount of interest. The same
- with politics. Since we are a monarchy, I would cry, "LONG LIVE THE
- KING," rather than suffer death; which does not prevent me, however,
- from demanding that the irremovable, inviolable, and hereditary
- representative of the nation shall act with the proletaires against the
- privileged classes; in a word, that the king shall become the leader of
- the radical party. Thereby we proletaires would gain every thing; and I
- am sure that, at this price, Louis Philippe might secure to his family
- the perpetual presidency of the republic. And this is why I think so.
- If there existed in France but one great functional inequality, the duty
- of the functionary being, from one end of the year to the other, to hold
- full court of savants, artists, soldiers, deputies, inspectors, &c.,
- it is evident that the expenses of the presidency then would be the
- national expenses; and that, through the reversion of the civil list to
- the mass of consumers, the great inequality of which I speak would form
- an exact equation with the whole nation. Of this no economist needs a
- demonstration. Consequently, there would be no more fear of cliques,
- courtiers, and appanages, since no new inequality could be established.
- The king, as king, would have friends (unheard-of thing), but no family.
- His relatives or kinsmen,--_agnats et cognats_,--if they were fools,
- would be nothing to him; and in no case, with the exception of the heir
- apparent, would they have, even in court, more privileges than others.
- No more nepotism, no more favor, no more baseness. No one would go
- to court save when duty required, or when called by an honorable
- distinction; and as all conditions would be equal and all functions
- equally honored, there would be no other emulation than that of merit
- and virtue. I wish the king of the French could say without shame,
- "My brother the gardener, my sister-in-law the milk-maid, my son the
- prince-royal, and my son the blacksmith." His daughter might well be an
- artist. That would be beautiful, sir; that would be royal; no one but a
- buffoon could fail to understand it.
- In this way, I have come to think that the forms of royalty may be
- made to harmonize with the requirements of equality, and have given
- a monarchical form to my republican spirit. I have seen that France
- contains by no means as many democrats as is generally supposed, and
- I have compromised with the monarchy. I do not say, however, that, if
- France wanted a republic, I could not accommodate myself equally well,
- and perhaps better. By nature, I hate all signs of distinction, crosses
- of honor, gold lace, liveries, costumes, honorary titles, &c., and,
- above all, parades. If I had my way, no general should be distinguished
- from a soldier, nor a peer of France from a peasant. Why have I never
- taken part in a review? for I am happy to say, sir, that I am a national
- guard; I have nothing else in the world but that. Because the review is
- always held at a place which I do not like, and because they have fools
- for officers whom I am compelled to obey. You see,--and this is not the
- best of my history,--that, in spite of my conservative opinions, my life
- is a perpetual sacrifice to the republic.
- Nevertheless, I doubt if such simplicity would be agreeable to French
- vanity, to that inordinate love of distinction and flattery which makes
- our nation the most frivolous in the world. M. Lamartine, in his grand
- "Meditation on Bonaparte," calls the French A NATION OF BRUTUSES. We are
- merely a nation of Narcissuses. Previous to '89, we had the aristocracy
- of blood; then every bourgeois looked down upon the commonalty, and
- wished to be a nobleman. Afterwards, distinction was based on wealth,
- and the bourgeoisie jealous of the nobility, and proud of their money,
- used 1830 to promote, not liberty by any means, but the aristocracy
- of wealth. When, through the force of events, and the natural laws of
- society, for the development of which France offers such free play,
- equality shall be established in functions and fortunes, then the beaux
- and the belles, the savants and the artists, will form new classes.
- There is a universal and innate desire in this Gallic country for fame
- and glory. We must have distinctions, be they what they may,--nobility,
- wealth, talent, beauty, or dress. I suspect MM. Arage and Garnier-Pages
- of having aristocratic manners, and I picture to myself our great
- journalists, in their columns so friendly to the people, administering
- rough kicks to the compositors in their printing offices.
- "This man," once said "Le National" in speaking of Carrel, "whom we
- had proclaimed FIRST CONSUL!... Is it not true that the monarchical
- principle still lives in the hearts of our democrats, and that they
- want universal suffrage in order to make themselves kings? Since "Le
- National" prides itself on holding more fixed opinions than "Le Journal
- des Debats," I presume that, Armand Carrel being dead, M. Armand Marrast
- is now first consul, and M. Garnier-Pages second consul. In every thing
- the deputy must give way to the journalist. I do not speak of M.
- Arago, whom I believe to be, in spite of calumny, too learned for the
- consulship. Be it so. Though we have consuls, our position is not much
- altered. I am ready to yield my share of sovereignty to MM. Armand
- Marrast and Garnier-Pages, the appointed consuls, provided they will
- swear on entering upon the duties of their office, to abolish property
- and not be haughty.
- Forever promises! Forever oaths! Why should the people trust in
- tribunes, when kings perjure themselves? Alas! truth and honesty are no
- longer, as in the days of King John, in the mouth of princes. A whole
- senate has been convicted of felony, and, the interest of the governors
- always being, for some mysterious reason, opposed to the interest of the
- governed, parliaments follow each other while the nation dies of hunger.
- No, no! No more protectors, no more emperors, no more consuls. Better
- manage our affairs ourselves than through agents. Better associate our
- industries than beg from monopolies; and, since the republic cannot
- dispense with virtues, we should labor for our reform.
- This, therefore, is my line of conduct. I preach emancipation to the
- proletaires; association to the laborers; equality to the wealthy. I
- push forward the revolution by all means in my power,--the tongue,
- the pen, the press, by action, and example. My life is a continual
- apostleship.
- Yes, I am a reformer; I say it as I think it, in good faith, and that I
- may be no longer reproached for my vanity. I wish to convert the world.
- Very likely this fancy springs from an enthusiastic pride which may have
- turned to delirium; but it will be admitted at least that I have plenty
- of company, and that my madness is not monomania. At the present day,
- everybody wishes to be reckoned among the lunatics of Beranger. To say
- nothing of the Babeufs, the Marats, and the Robespierres, who swarm in
- our streets and workshops, all the great reformers of antiquity live
- again in the most illustrious personages of our time. One is Jesus
- Christ, another Moses, a third Mahomet; this is Orpheus, that Plato,
- or Pythagoras. Gregory VII., himself, has risen from the grave together
- with the evangelists and the apostles; and it may turn out that even I
- am that slave who, having escaped from his master's house, was forthwith
- made a bishop and a reformer by St. Paul. As for the virgins and holy
- women, they are expected daily; at present, we have only Aspasias and
- courtesans.
- Now, as in all diseases, the diagnostic varies according to the
- temperament, so my madness has its peculiar aspects and distinguishing
- characteristic.
- Reformers, as a general thing, are jealous of their role; they suffer no
- rivals, they want no partners; they have disciples, but no co-laborers.
- It is my desire, on the contrary, to communicate my enthusiasm, and to
- make it, as far as I can, epidemic. I wish that all were, like myself,
- reformers, in order that there might be no more sects; and that Christs,
- Anti-Christs, and false Christs might be forced to understand and agree
- with each other.
- Again, every reformer is a magician, or at least desires to become one.
- Thus Moses, Jesus Christ, and the apostles, proved their mission by
- miracles. Mahomet ridiculed miracles after having endeavored to perform
- them. Fourier, more cunning, promises us wonders when the globe shall
- be covered with phalansteries. For myself, I have as great a horror
- of miracles as of authorities, and aim only at logic. That is why I
- continually search after the criterion of certainty. I work for the
- reformation of ideas. Little matters it that they find me dry and
- austere. I mean to conquer by a bold struggle, or die in the attempt;
- and whoever shall come to the defence of property, I swear that I
- will force him to argue like M. Considerant, or philosophize like M.
- Troplong.
- Finally,--and it is here that I differ most from my compeers,--I do not
- believe it necessary, in order to reach equality, to turn every thing
- topsy-turvy. To maintain that nothing but an overturn can lead to reform
- is, in my judgment, to construct a syllogism, and to look for the truth
- in the regions of the unknown. Now, I am for generalization, induction,
- and progress. I regard general disappropriation as impossible: attacked
- from that point, the problem of universal association seems to me
- insolvable. Property is like the dragon which Hercules killed: to
- destroy it, it must be taken, not by the head, but by the tail,--that
- is, by profit and interest.
- I stop. I have said enough to satisfy any one who can read and
- understand. The surest way by which the government can baffle intrigues
- and break up parties is to take possession of science, and point out to
- the nation, at an already appreciable distance, the rising oriflamme of
- equality; to say to those politicians of the tribune and the press, for
- whose fruitless quarrels we pay so dearly, "You are rushing forward,
- blind as you are, to the abolition of property; but the government
- marches with its eyes open. You hasten the future by unprincipled and
- insincere controversy; but the government, which knows this future,
- leads you thither by a happy and peaceful transition. The present
- generation will not pass away before France, the guide and model of
- civilized nations, has regained her rank and legitimate influence."
- But, alas! the government itself,--who shall enlighten it? Who can
- induce it to accept this doctrine of equality, whose terrible but
- decisive formula the most generous minds hardly dare to acknowledge?...
- I feel my whole being tremble when I think that the testimony of
- three men--yes, of three men who make it their business to teach and
- define--would suffice to give full play to public opinion, to change
- beliefs, and to fix destinies. Will not the three men be found?...
- May we hope, or not? What must we think of those who govern us? In the
- world of sorrow in which the proletaire moves, and where nothing is
- known of the intentions of power, it must be said that despair prevails.
- But you, sir,--you, who by function belong to the official world; you,
- in whom the people recognize one of their noblest friends, and
- property its most prudent adversary,--what say you of our deputies, our
- ministers, our king? Do you believe that the authorities are friendly
- to us? Then let the government declare its position; let it print its
- profession of faith in equality, and I am dumb. Otherwise, I shall
- continue the war; and the more obstinacy and malice is shown, the
- oftener will I redouble my energy and audacity. I have said before, and
- I repeat it,--I have sworn, not on the dagger and the death's-head, amid
- the horrors of a catacomb, and in the presence of men besmeared with
- blood; but I have sworn on my conscience to pursue property, to grant it
- neither peace nor truce, until I see it everywhere execrated. I have not
- yet published half the things that I have to say concerning the right of
- domain, nor the best things. Let the knights of property, if there are
- any who fight otherwise than by retreating, be prepared every day for
- a new demonstration and accusation; let them enter the arena armed with
- reason and knowledge, not wrapped up in sophisms, for justice will be
- done.
- "To become enlightened, we must have liberty. That alone suffices;
- but it must be the liberty to use the reason in regard to all public
- matters.
- "And yet we hear on every hand authorities of all kinds and degrees
- crying: 'Do not reason!'
- "If a distinction is wanted, here is one:--
- "The PUBLIC use of the reason always should be free, but the PRIVATE
- use ought always to be rigidly restricted. By public use, I mean the
- scientific, literary use; by private, that which may be taken advantage
- of by civil officials and public functionaries. Since the governmental
- machinery must be kept in motion, in order to preserve unity and attain
- our object, we must not reason; we must obey. But the same individual
- who is bound, from this point of view, to passive obedience, has the
- right to speak in his capacity of citizen and scholar. He can make an
- appeal to the public, submit to it his observations on events which
- occur around him and in the ranks above him, taking care, however, to
- avoid offences which are punishable.
- "Reason, then, as much as you like; only, obey."--Kant: Fragment on the
- Liberty of Thought and of the Press. Tissot's Translation.
- These words of the great philosopher outline for me my duty. I have
- delayed the reprint of the work entitled "What is Property?" in order
- that I might lift the discussion to the philosophical height from which
- ridiculous clamor has dragged it down; and that, by a new presentation
- of the question, I might dissipate the fears of good citizens. I now
- reenter upon the public use of my reason, and give truth full swing. The
- second edition of the First Memoir on Property will immediately follow
- the publication of this letter. Before issuing any thing further, I
- shall await the observations of my critics, and the co-operation of the
- friends of the people and of equality.
- Hitherto, I have spoken in my own name, and on my own personal
- responsibility. It was my duty. I was endeavoring to call attention to
- principles which antiquity could not discover, because it knew nothing
- of the science which reveals them,--political economy. I have, then,
- testified as to FACTS; in short, I have been a WITNESS. Now my role
- changes. It remains for me to deduce the practical consequences of the
- facts proclaimed. The position of PUBLIC PROSECUTOR is the only one
- which I am henceforth fitted to fill, and I shall sum up the case in the
- name of the PEOPLE.
- I am, sir, with all the consideration that I owe to your talent and your
- character,
- Your very humble and most obedient servant,
- P. J. PROUDHON,
- Pensioner of the Academy of Besancon.
- P.S. During the session of April 2, the Chamber of Deputies rejected,
- by a very large majority, the literary-property bill, BECAUSE IT DID NOT
- UNDERSTAND IT. Nevertheless, literary property is only a special form of
- the right of property, which everybody claims to understand. Let us hope
- that this legislative precedent will not be fruitless for the cause of
- equality. The consequence of the vote of the Chamber is the abolition
- of capitalistic property,--property incomprehensible, contradictory,
- impossible, and absurd.
- FOOTNOTES:
- [Footnote 1: In the French edition of Proudhon's works, the above sketch
- of his life is prefixed to the first volume of his correspondence, but
- the translator prefers to insert it here as the best method of
- introducing the author to the American public.]
- [Footnote 2: "An Inquiry into Grammatical Classifications." By P. J.
- Proudhon. A treatise which received honorable mention from the Academy
- of Inscriptions, May 4, 1839. Out of print.]
- [Footnote 3: "The Utility of the Celebration of Sunday," &c. By P. J.
- Proudhon. Besancon, 1839, 12mo; 2d edition, Paris, 1841, 18mo.]
- [Footnote 4: Charron, on "Wisdom," Chapter xviii.]
- [Footnote 5: M. Vivien, Minister of Justice, before commencing
- proceedings against the "Memoir upon Property," asked the opinion of M.
- Blanqui; and it was on the strength of the observations of this
- honorable academician that he spared a book which had already excited
- the indignation of the magistrates. M. Vivien is not the only official
- to whom I have been indebted, since my first publication, for assistance
- and protection; but such generosity in the political arena is so rare
- that one may acknowledge it graciously and freely. I have always
- thought, for my part, that bad institutions made bad magistrates; just
- as the cowardice and hypocrisy of certain bodies results solely from the
- spirit which governs them. Why, for instance, in spite of the virtues
- and talents for which they are so noted, are the academies generally
- centres of intellectual repression, stupidity, and base intrigue? That
- question ought to be proposed by an academy: there would be no lack of
- competitors.]
- [Footnote 6: In Greek, {GREEK e ncg } examiner; a philosopher whose
- business is to seek the truth.]
- [Footnote 7: Religion, laws, marriage, were the privileges of freemen,
- and, in the beginning, of nobles only. Dii majorum gentium--gods of the
- patrician families; jus gentium--right of nations; that is, of families
- or nobles. The slave and the plebeian had no families; their children
- were treated as the offspring of animals. BEASTS they were born, BEASTS
- they must live.]
- [Footnote 8: If the chief of the executive power is responsible, so must
- the deputies be also. It is astonishing that this idea has never
- occurred to any one; it might be made the subject of an interesting
- essay. But I declare that I would not, for all the world, maintain it;
- the people are yet much too logical for me to furnish them with
- arguments.]
- [Footnote 9: See De Tocqueville, "Democracy in the United States;" and
- Michel Chevalier, "Letters on North America." Plutarch tells us, "Life
- of Pericles," that in Athens honest people were obliged to conceal
- themselves while studying, fearing they would be regarded as aspirants
- for office.]
- [Footnote 10: "Sovereignty," according to Toullier, "is human
- omnipotence." A materialistic definition: if sovereignty is any thing,
- it is a RIGHT not a FORCE or a faculty. And what is human omnipotence?]
- [Footnote 11: The Proudhon here referred to is J. B. V. Proudhon; a
- distinguished French jurist, and distant relative of the Translator.]
- [Footnote 12: Here, especially, the simplicity of our ancestors appears
- in all its rudeness. After having made first cousins heirs, where there
- were no legitimate children, they could not so divide the property
- between two different branches as to prevent the simultaneous existence
- of extreme wealth and extreme poverty in the same family. For example:--
- James, dying, leaves two sons, Peter and John, heirs of his fortune:
- James's property is divided equally between them. But Peter has only one
- daughter, while John, his brother, leaves six sons. It is clear that, to
- be true to the principle of equality, and at the same time to that of
- heredity, the two estates must be divided in seven equal portions among
- the children of Peter and John; for otherwise a stranger might marry
- Peter's daughter, and by this alliance half of the property of James,
- the grandfather, would be transferred to another family, which is
- contrary to the principle of heredity. Furthermore, John's children
- would be poor on account of their number, while their cousin, being an
- only child, would be rich, which is contrary to the principle of
- equality. If we extend this combined application of two principles
- apparently opposed to each other, we shall become convinced that the
- right of succession, which is assailed with so little wisdom in our day,
- is no obstacle to the maintenance of equality.]
- [Footnote 13: _Zeus klesios_.]
- [Footnote 14: Giraud, "Investigations into the Right of Property among
- the Romans."]
- [Footnote 15: Precarious, from precor, "I pray;" because the act of
- concession expressly signified that the lord, in answer to the prayers
- of his men or slaves, had granted them permission to labor.]
- [Footnote 16: I cannot conceive how any one dares to justify the
- inequality of conditions, by pointing to the base inclinations and
- propensities of certain men. Whence comes this shameful degradation of
- heart and mind to which so many fall victims, if not from the misery and
- abjection into which property plunges them?]
- [Footnote 17: How many citizens are needed to support a professor of
- philosophy?--Thirty-five millions. How many for an economist?--Two
- billions. And for a literary man, who is neither a savant, nor an
- artist, nor a philosopher, nor an economist, and who writes newspaper
- novels?--None.]
- [Footnote 18: There is an error in the author's calculation here; but
- the translator, feeling sure that the reader will understand Proudhon's
- meaning, prefers not to alter his figures.--Translator.]
- [Footnote 19: _Hoc inter se differunt onanismus et manuspratio, nempe
- quod haec a solitario exercetur, ille autem a duobus reciprocatur,
- masculo scilicet et faemina. Porro foedam hanc onanismi venerem ludentes
- uxoria mariti habent nunc omnigm suavissimam_]
- [Footnote 20: Polyandry,--plurality of husbands.]
- [Footnote 21: Infanticide has just been publicly advocated in England,
- in a pamphlet written by a disciple of Malthus. He proposes an ANNUAL
- MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS in all families containing more children than
- the law allows; and he asks that a magnificent cemetery, adorned with
- statues, groves, fountains, and flowers, be set apart as a special
- burying-place for the superfluous children. Mothers would resort to this
- delightful spot to dream of the happiness of these little angels, and
- would return, quite comforted, to give birth to others, to be buried in
- their turn.]
- [Footnote 22: To perform an act of benevolence towards one's neighbor is
- called, in Hebrew, to do justice; in Greek, to take compassion or pity
- ({GREEK n n f e },from which is derived the French _aumone_); in Latin,
- to perform an act of love or charity; in French, give alms. We can trace
- the degradation of this principle through these various expressions: the
- first signifies duty; the second only sympathy; the third, affection, a
- matter of choice, not an obligation; the fourth, caprice.]
- [Footnote 23: I mean here by equite what the Latins called humanitas,--
- that is, the kind of sociability which is peculiar to man. Humanity,
- gentle and courteous to all, knows how to distinguish ranks, virtues,
- and capacities without injury to any.]
- [Footnote 24: Justice and equite never have been understood.]
- [Footnote 25: Between woman and man there may exist love, passion, ties
- of custom, and the like; but there is no real society. Man and woman are
- not companions. The difference of the sexes places a barrier between
- them, like that placed between animals by a difference of race.
- Consequently, far from advocating what is now called the emancipation of
- woman, I should incline, rather, if there were no other alternative, to
- exclude her from society.]
- [Footnote 26: "The strong-box of Cosmo de Medici was the grave of
- Florentine liberty," said M. Michelet to the College of France.]
- [Footnote 27: "My right is my lance and my buckler." General de Brossard
- said, like Achilles: "I get wine, gold, and women with my lance and my
- buckler."]
- [Footnote 28: It would be interesting and profitable to review the
- authors who have written on usury, or, to use the gentler expression
- which some prefer, lendingat interest. The theologians always have
- opposed usury; but, since they have admitted always the legitimacy of
- rent, and since rent is evidently identical with interest, they have
- lost themselves in a labyrinth of subtle distinctions, and have finally
- reached a pass where they do not know what to think of usury. The
- Church--the teacher of morality, so jealous and so proud of the purity
- of her doctrine--has always been ignorant of the real nature of property
- and usury. She even has proclaimed through her pontiffs the most
- deplorable errors. _Non potest mutuum_, said Benedict XIV., _locationi
- ullo pacto comparari_. "Rent," says Bossuet, "is as far from usury as
- heaven is from the earth." How, on{sic} such a doctrine, condemn lending
- at interest? how justify the Gospel, which expressly forbids usury? The
- difficulty of theologians is a very serious one. Unable to refute the
- economical demonstrations, which rightly assimilate interest to rent,
- they no longer dare to condemn interest, and they can say only that
- there must be such a thing as usury, since the Gospel forbids it.]
- [Footnote 29: "I preach the Gospel, I live by the Gospel," said the
- Apostle; meaning thereby that he lived by his labor. The Catholic clergy
- prefer to live by property. The struggles in the communes of the middle
- ages between the priests and bishops and the large proprietors and
- seigneurs are famous. The papal excommunications fulminated in defence
- of ecclesiastical revenues are no less so. Even to-day, the official
- organs of the Gallican clergy still maintain that the pay received by
- the clergy is not a salary, but an indemnity for goods of which they
- were once proprietors, and which were taken from them in '89 by the
- Third Estate. The clergy prefer to live by the right of increase rather
- than by labor.]
- [Footnote 30: The meaning ordinarily attached to the word "anarchy" is
- absence of principle, absence of rule; consequently, it has been
- regarded as synonymous with "disorder."]
- [Footnote 31: If such ideas are ever forced into the minds of the
- people, it will be by representative government and the tyranny of
- talkers. Once science, thought, and speech were characterized by the
- same expression. To designate a thoughtful and a learned man, they said,
- "a man quick to speak and powerful in discourse." For a long time,
- speech has been abstractly distinguished from science and reason.
- Gradually, this abstraction is becoming realized, as the logicians say,
- in society; so that we have to-day savants of many kinds who talk but
- little, and TALKERS who are not even savants in the science of speech.
- Thus a philosopher is no longer a savant: he is a talker. Legislators
- and poets were once profound and sublime characters: now they are
- talkers. A talker is a sonorous bell, whom the least shock suffices to
- set in perpetual motion. With the talker, the flow of speech is always
- directly proportional to the poverty of thought. Talkers govern the
- world; they stun us, they bore us, they worry us, they suck our blood,
- and laugh at us. As for the savants, they keep silence: if they wish to
- say a word, they are cut short. Let them write.]
- [Footnote 32: _libertas, librare, libratio, libra_,--liberty, to
- liberate, libration, balance (pound),--words which have a common
- derivation. Liberty is the balance of rights and duties. To make a man
- free is to balance him with others,--that is, to put him or their
- level.]
- [Footnote 33: In a monthly publication, the first number of which has
- just appeared under the name of "L'Egalitaire," self-sacrifice is laid
- down as a principle of equality. This is a confusion of ideas. Self-
- sacrifice, taken alone, is the last degree of inequality. To seek
- equality in self-sacrifice is to confess that equality is against
- nature. Equality must be based upon justice, upon strict right, upon the
- principles invoked by the proprietor himself; otherwise it will never
- exist. Self-sacrifice is superior to justice; but it cannot be imposed
- as law, because it is of such a nature as to admit of no reward. It is,
- indeed, desirable that everybody shall recognize the necessity of self-
- sacrifice, and the idea of "L'Egalitaire" is an excellent example.
- Unfortunately, it can have no effect. What would you reply, indeed, to a
- man who should say to you, "I do not want to sacrifice myself"? Is he to
- be compelled to do so? When self-sacrifice is forced, it becomes
- oppression, slavery, the exploitation of man by man. Thus have the
- proletaires sacrificed themselves to property.]
- [Footnote 34: The disciples of Fourier have long seemed to me the most
- advanced of all modern socialists, and almost the only ones worthy of
- the name. If they had understood the nature of their task, spoken to the
- people, awakened their sympathies, and kept silence when they did not
- understand; if they had made less extravagant pretensions, and had shown
- more respect for public intelligence,--perhaps the reform would now,
- thanks to them, be in progress. But why are these earnest reformers
- continually bowing to power and wealth,--that is, to all that is anti-
- reformatory? How, in a thinking age, can they fail to see that the world
- must be converted by DEMONSTRATION, not by myths and allegories? Why do
- they, the deadly enemies of civilization, borrow from it, nevertheless,
- its most pernicious fruits,--property, inequality of fortune and rank,
- gluttony, concubinage, prostitution, what do I know? theurgy, magic, and
- sorcery? Why these endless denunciations of morality, metaphysics, and
- psychology, when the abuse of these sciences, which they do not
- understand, constitutes their whole system? Why this mania for deifying
- a man whose principal merit consisted in talking nonsense about things
- whose names, even, he did not know, in the strongest language ever put
- upon paper? Whoever admits the infallibility of a man becomes thereby
- incapable of instructing others. Whoever denies his own reason will soon
- proscribe free thought. The phalansterians would not fail to do it if
- they had the power. Let them condescend to reason, let them proceed
- systematically, let them give us demonstrations instead of revelations,
- and we will listen willingly. Then let them organize manufactures,
- agriculture, and commerce; let them make labor attractive, and the most
- humble functions honorable, and our praise shall be theirs. Above all,
- let them throw off that Illuminism which gives them the appearance of
- impostors or dupes, rather than believers and apostles.]
- [Footnote 35: Individual possession is no obstacle to extensive
- cultivation and unity of exploitation. If I have not spoken of the
- drawbacks arising from small estates, it is because I thought it useless
- to repeat what so many others have said, and what by this time all the
- world must know. But I am surprised that the economists, who have so
- clearly shown the disadvantages of spade-husbandry, have failed to see
- that it is caused entirely by property; above all, that they have not
- perceived that their plan for mobilizing the soil is a first step
- towards the abolition of property.]
- [Footnote 36: In the Chamber of Deputies, during the session of the
- fifth of January, 1841, M. Dufaure moved to renew the expropriation
- bill, on the ground of public utility.]
- [Footnote 37: "What is Property?" Chap. IV., Ninth Proposition.]
- [Footnote 38: _Tu cognovisti sessionem meam et resurrectionem meam_.
- Psalm 139.]
- [Footnote 39: The emperor Nicholas has just compelled all the
- manufacturers in his empire to maintain, at their own expense, within
- their establishments, small hospitals for the reception of sick
- workmen,--the number of beds in each being proportional to the number of
- laborers in the factory. "You profit by man's labor," the Czar could
- have said to his proprietors; "you shall be responsible for man's life."
- M. Blanqui has said that such a measure could not succeed in France. It
- would be an attack upon property,--a thing hardly conceivable even in
- Russia, Scythia, or among the Cossacks; but among us, the oldest sons of
- civilization!... I fear very much that this quality of age may prove in
- the end a mark of decrepitude.]
- [Footnote 40: Course of M. Blanqui. Lecture of Nov. 27,1840.]
- [Footnote 41: In "Mazaniello," the Neapolitan fisherman demands, amid
- the applause of the galleries, that a tax be levied upon luxuries.]
- [Footnote 42: _Seme le champ, proletaire; C'est l l'oisif
- qui recoltera_.]
- [Footnote 43: "In some countries, the enjoyment of certain political
- rights depends upon the amount of property. But, in these same
- countries, property is expressive, rather than attributive, of the
- qualifications necessary to the exercise of these rights. It is rather a
- conjectural proof than the cause of these qualifications."--Rossi:
- Treatise on Penal Law.]
- [Footnote 44: Lecture of December 22.]
- [Footnote 45: Lecture of Jan. 15, 1841.]
- [Footnote 46: Lecture of Jan. 15, 1841.]
- [Footnote 47: MM. Blanqui and Wolowski.]
- [Footnote 48: Subject proposed by the Fourth Class of the Institute, the
- Academy of Moral and Political Sciences: "What would be the effect upon
- the working-class of the organization of labor, according to the modern
- ideas of association?"]
- [Footnote 49: Subject proposed by the Academy of Besancon: "The
- economical and moral consequences in France, up to the present time, and
- those which seem likely to appear in future, of the law concerning the
- equal division of hereditary property between the children."]
- [Footnote 50: {GREEK, ?n n '},--greater property. The Vulgate translates
- it avaritia.]
- [Footnote 51: Similar or analogous customs have existed among all
- nations. Consult, among other works, "Origin of French Law," by M.
- Michelet; and "Antiquities of German Law," by Grimm.]
- [Footnote 52: _Dees hominesque testamur, nos arma neque contra patriam
- cepisse neque quo periculum aliis faceremus, sed uti corpora nostra ab
- injuria tuta forent, qui miseri, egentes, violentia atque crudelitate
- foeneraterum, plerique patriae, sed omncsfarna atque fortunis expertes
- sumus; neque cuiquam nostrum licuit, more majorum, lege uti, neque,
- amisso patrimonio, libferum corpus habere._--Sallus: Bellum
- Catilinarium.]
- [Footnote 53: Fifty, sixty, and eighty per cent.--Course of M. Blanqui.]
- [Footnote 54: _Episcopi plurimi, quos et hortamento esse oportet
- caeteris et exemplo, divina prouratione contempta, procuratores rerum
- saeularium fieri, derelicta cathedra, plebe leserta, per alienas
- provincias oberrantes, negotiationis quaestuosae nundinas au uucu-,
- pari, esurientibus in ecclesia fratribus habere argentum largitur velle,
- fundos insidi.sis fraudibus rapere, usuris multiplicantibus faenus
- augere._--Cyprian: De Lapsis. {--NOTE: what does this refer to? This is
- at bottom of pg 341 in MS} In this passage, St. Cyprian alludes to
- lending on mortgages and to compound interest.]
- [Footnote 55: "Inquiries concerning Property among the Romans."]
- [Footnote 56: "Its acquisitive nature works rapidly in the sleep of the
- law. It is ready, at the word, to absorb every thing. Witness the famous
- equivocation about the ox-hide which, when cut up into thongs, was large
- enough to enclose the site of Carthage.... The legend has reappeared
- several times since Dido.... Such is the love of man for the land.
- Limited by tombs, measured by the members of the human body, by the
- thumb, the foot, and the arm, it harmonizes, as far as possible, with
- the very proportions of man. Nor is he satisfied yet: he calls Heaven to
- witness that it is his; he tries to or his land, to give it the form of
- heaven.... In his titanic intoxication, he describes property in the
- very terms which he employs in describing the Almighty--_fundus_
- _optimus maximus_.... He shall make it his couch, and they shall be
- separated no more,--{GREEK, ' nf g h g g."}--Michelet:Origin of French
- Law.]
- [Footnote 57: M. Guizot denies that Christianity alone is entitled to
- the glory of the abolition of slavery. "To this end," he says, "many
- causes were necessary,--the evolution of other ideas and other
- principles of civilization." So general an assertion cannot be refuted.
- Some of these ideas and causes should have been pointed out, that we
- might judge whether their source was not wholly Christian, or whether at
- least the Christian spirit had not penetrated and thus fructified them.
- Most of the emancipation charters begin with these words: "For the love
- of God and the salvation of my soul."]
- [Footnote 58: _Weregild_,--the fine paid for the murder of a man. So
- much for a count, so much for a baron, so much for a freeman, so much
- for a priest; for a slave, nothing. His value was restored to the
- proprietor.]
- [Footnote 59: The spirit of despotism and monopoly which animated the
- communes has not escaped the attention of historians. "The formation of
- the commoners' associations," says Meyer, "did not spring from the true
- spirit of liberty, but from the desire for exemption from the charges of
- the seigniors, from individual interests, and jealousy of the welfare of
- others.... Each commune or corporation opposed the creation of every
- other; and this spirit increased to such an extent that the King of
- England, Henry V., having established a university at Caen, in 1432, the
- city and university of Paris opposed the registration of the edict."]
- [Footnote 60: Feudalism was, in spirit and in its providential destiny,
- a long protest of the human personality against the monkish communism
- with which Europe, in the middle ages, was overrun. After the orgies of
- Pagan selfishness, society--carried to the opposite extreme by the
- Christian religion--risked its life by unlimited self-denial and
- absolute indifference to the pleasures of the world. Feudalism was the
- balance-weight which saved Europe from the combined influence of the
- religious communities and the Manlchean sects which had sprung up since
- the fourth century under different names and in different countries.
- Modern civilization is indebted to feudalism for the definitive
- establishment of the person, of marriage, of the family, and of country.
- (See, on this subject, Guizot, "History of Civilization in Europe.")]
- [Footnote 61: This was made evident in July, 1830, and the years which
- followed it, when the electoral bourgeoisie effected a revolution in
- order to get control over the king, and suppressed the emeutes in order
- to restrain the people. The bourgeoisie, through the jury, the
- magistracy, its position in the army, and its municipal despotism,
- governs both royalty and the people. It is the bourgeoisie which, more
- than any other class, is conservative and retrogressive. It is the
- bourgeoisie which makes and unmakes ministries. It is the bourgeoisie
- which has destroyed the influence of the Upper Chamber, and which will
- dethrone the King whenever he shall become unsatisfactory to it. It is
- to please the bourgeoisie that royalty makes itself unpopular. It is the
- bourgeoisie which is troubled at the hopes of the people, and which
- hinders reform. The journals of the bourgeoisie are the ones which
- preach morality and religion to us, while reserving scepticism and
- indifference for themselves; which attack personal government, and favor
- the denial of the electoral privilege to those who have no property. The
- bourgeoisie will accept any thing rather than the emancipation of the
- proletariat. As soon as it thinks its privileges threatened, it will
- unite with royalty; and who does not know that at this very moment these
- two antagonists have suspended their quarrels?... It has been a question
- of property.]
- [Footnote 62: The same opinion was recently expressed from the tribune
- by one of our most honorable Deputies, M. Gauguier. "Nature," said he,
- "has not endowed man with landed property." Changing the adjective
- LANDED, which designates only a species into CAPITALISTIC, which denotes
- the genus,--M. Gauguier made an egalitaire profession of faith.]
- [Footnote 63: A professor of comparative legislation, M. Lerminier, has
- gone still farther. He has dared to say that the nation took from the
- clergy all their possessions, not because of IDLENESS, but because of
- UNWORTHINESS. "You have civilized the world," cries this apostle of
- equality, speaking to the priests; "and for that reason your possessions
- were given you. In your hands they were at once an instrument and a
- reward. But you do not now deserve them, for you long since ceased to
- civilize any thing whatever...."]
- [Footnote 64: "Treatise on Prescription."]
- [Footnote 65: "Origin of French Law."]
- [Footnote 66: To honor one's parents, to be grateful to one's
- benefactors, to neither kill nor steal,--truths of inward sensation. To
- obey God rather than men, to render to each that which is his; the whole
- is greater than a part, a straight line is the shortest road from one
- point to another,--truths of intuition. All are a priori but the first
- are felt by the conscience, and imply only a simple act of the soul; the
- second are perceived by the reason, and imply comparison and relation.
- In short, the former are sentiments, the latter are ideas.]
- [Footnote 67: Armand Carrel would have favored the fortification of the
- capital. "Le National" has said, again and again, placing the name of
- its old editor by the side of the names of Napoleon and Vauban. What
- signifies this exhumation of an anti-popular politician? It signifies
- that Armand Carrel wished to make government an individual and
- irremovable, but elective, property, and that he wished this property to
- be elected, not by the people, but by the army. The political system of
- Carrel was simply a reorganization of the pretorian guards. Carrel also
- hated the _pequins_. That which he deplored in the revolution of July
- was not, they say, the insurrection of the people, but the victory of
- the people over the soldiers. That is the reason why Carrel, after 1830,
- would never support the patriots. "Do you answer me with a few
- regiments?" he asked. Armand Carrel regarded the army--the military
- power--as the basis of law and government. This man undoubtedly had a
- moral sense within him, but he surely had no sense of justice. Were he
- still in this world, I declare it boldly, liberty would have no greater
- enemy than Carrel.]
- [Footnote 68: In a very short article, which was read by M. Wolowski, M.
- Louis Blanc declares, in substance, that he is not a communist (which I
- easily believe); that one must be a fool to attack property (but he does
- not say why); and that it is very necessary to guard against confounding
- property with its abuses. When Voltaire overthrew Christianity, he
- repeatedly avowed that he had no spite against religion, but only
- against its abuses.]
- [Footnote 69: The property fever is at its height among writers and
- artists, and it is curious to see the complacency with which our
- legislators and men of letters cherish this devouring passion. An artist
- sells a picture, and then, the merchandise delivered, assumes to prevent
- the purchaser from selling engravings, under the pretext that he, the
- painter, in selling the original, has not sold his DESIGN. A dispute
- arises between the amateur and the artist in regard to both the fact and
- the law. M. Villemain, the Minister of Public Instruction, being
- consulted as to this particular case, finds that the painter is right;
- only the property in the design should have been specially reserved in
- the contract: so that, in reality, M. Villemain recognizes in the artist
- a power to surrender his work and prevent its communication; thus
- contradicting the legal axiom, One CANNOT GIVE AND KEEP AT THE SAME
- TIME. A strange reasoner is M. Villemain! An ambiguous principle leads
- to a false conclusion. Instead of rejecting the principle, M. Villemain
- hastens to admit the conclusion. With him the _reductio ad absurdum_ is
- a convincing argument. Thus he is made official defender of literary
- property, sure of being understood and sustained by a set of loafers,
- the disgrace of literature and the plague of public morals. Why, then,
- does M. Villemain feel so strong an interest in setting himself up as
- the chief of the literary classes, in playing for their benefit the role
- of Trissotin in the councils of the State, and in becoming the
- accomplice and associate of a band of profligates,--_soi-disant_ men of
- letters,--who for more than ten years have labored with such deplorable
- success to ruin public spirit, and corrupt the heart by warping the
- mind?]
- [Footnote 70: M. Leroux has been highly praised in a review for having
- defended property. I do not know whether the industrious encyclopedist
- is pleased with the praise, but I know very well that in his place I
- should mourn for reason and for truth.]
- [Footnote 71: "Impartial," of Besancon.]
- [Footnote 72: The Arians deny the divinity of Christ. The Semi-Arians
- differ from the Arians only by a few subtle distinctions. M. Pierre
- Leroux, who regards Jesus as a man, but claims that the Spirit of God
- was infused into him, is a true Semi-Arian.
- The Manicheans admit two co-existent and eternal principles,--God and
- matter, spirit and flesh, light and darkness, good and evil; but, unlike
- the Phalansterians, who pretend to reconcile the two, the Manicheans
- make war upon matter, and labor with all their might for the destruction
- of the flesh, by condemning marriage and forbidding reproduction,--which
- does not prevent them, however, from indulging in all the carnal
- pleasures which the intensest lust can conceive of. In this last
- particular, the tendency of the Fourieristic morality is quite
- Manichean.
- The Gnostics do not differ from the early Christians. As their name
- indicates, they regarded themselves as inspired. Fourier, who held
- peculiar ideas concerning the visions of somnambulists, and who believed
- in the possibility of developing the magnetic power to such an extent as
- to enable us to commune with invisible beings, might, if he were living,
- pass also for a Gnostic.
- The Adamites attend mass entirely naked, from motives of chastity. Jean
- Jacques Rousseau, who took the sleep of the senses for chastity, and who
- saw in modesty only a refinement of pleasure, inclined towards Adamism.
- I know such a sect, whose members usually celebrate their mysteries in
- the costume of Venus coming from the bath.
- The Pre-Adamites believe that men existed before the first man. I once
- met a Pre-Adamite. True, he was deaf and a Fourierist.
- The Pelagians deny grace, and attribute all the merit of good works to
- liberty. The Fourierists, who teach that man's nature and passions are
- good, are reversed Pelagians; they give all to grace, and nothing to
- liberty.
- The Socinians, deists in all other respects, admit an original
- revelation. Many people are Socinians to-day, who do not suspect it, and
- who regard their opinions as new.
- The Neo-Christians are those simpletons who admire Christianity because
- it has produced bells and cathedrals. Base in soul, corrupt in heart,
- dissolute in mind and senses, the Neo-Christians seek especially after
- the external form, and admire religion, as they love women, for its
- physical beauty. They believe in a coming revelation, as well as a
- transfiguration of Catholicism. They will sing masses at the grand
- spectacle in the phalanstery.]
- [Footnote 73: It should be understood that the above refers only to the
- moral and political doctrines of Fourier,--doctrines which, like all
- philosophical and religious systems, have their root and _raison
- d'existence_ in society itself, and for this reason deserve to be
- examined. The peculiar speculations of Fourier and his sect concerning
- cosmogony, geology, natural history, physiology, and psychology, I leave
- to the attention of those who would think it their duty to seriously
- refute the fables of Blue Beard and the Ass's Skin.]
- [Footnote 74: A writer for the radical press, M. Louis Raybaud, said, in
- the preface to his "Studies of Contemporary Reformers:" "Who does not
- know that morality is relative? Aside from a few grand sentiments which
- are strikingly instinctive, the measure of human acts varies with
- nations and climates, and only civilization--the progressive education
- of the race--can lead to a universal morality.... The absolute escapes
- our contingent and finite nature; the absolute is the secret of God."
- God keep from evil M. Louis Raybaud! But I cannot help remarking that
- all political apostates begin by the negation of the absolute, which is
- really the negation of truth. What can a writer, who professes
- scepticism, have in common with radical views? What has he to say to his
- readers? What judgment is he entitled to pass upon contemporary
- reformers? M. Raybaud thought it would seem wise to repeat an old
- impertinence of the legist, and that may serve him for an excuse. We all
- have these weaknesses. But I am surprised that a man of so much
- intelligence as M. Raybaud, who STUDIES SYSTEMS, fails to see the very
- thing he ought first to recognize,--namely, that systems are the
- progress of the mind towards the absolute.]
- [Footnote 75: The electoral reform, it is continually asserted, is not
- an END, but a MEANS. Undoubtedly; but what, then, is the end? Why not
- furnish an unequivocal explanation of its object? How can the people
- choose their representatives, unless they know in advance the purpose
- for which they choose them, and the object of the commission which they
- entrust to them? But, it is said, the very business of those chosen by
- the people is to find out the object of the reform. That is a quibble.
- What is to hinder these persons, who are to be elected in future, from
- first seeking for this object, and then, when they have found it, from
- communicating it to the people? The reformers have well said, that,
- while the object of the electoral reform remains in the least
- indefinite, it will be only a means of transferring power from the hands
- of petty tyrants to the hands of other tyrants. We know already how a
- nation may be oppressed by being led to believe that it is obeying only
- its own laws. The history of universal suffrage, among all nations, is
- the history of the restrictions of liberty by and in the name of the
- multitude. Still, if the electoral reform, in its present shape, were
- rational, practical, acceptable to clean consciences and upright minds,
- perhaps one might be excused, though ignorant of its object, for
- supporting it. But, no; the text of the petition determines nothing,
- makes no distinctions, requires no conditions, no guarantee; it
- establishes the right without the duty. "Every Frenchman is a voter, and
- eligible to office." As well say: "Every bayonet is intelligent, every
- savage is civilized, every slave is free." In its vague generality, the
- reformatory petition is the weakest of abstractions, or the highest form
- of political treason. Consequently, the enlightened patriots distrust
- and despise each other. The most radical writer of the time,--he whose
- economical and social theories are, without comparison, the most
- advanced,--M. Leroux, has taken a bold stand against universal suffrage
- and democratic government, and has written an exceedingly keen criticism
- of J. J. Rousseau. That is undoubtedly the reason why M. Leroux is no
- longer the philosopher of "Le National." That journal, like Napoleon,
- does not like men of ideas. Nevertheless, "Le National" ought to know
- that he who fights against ideas will perish by ideas.]
- End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What is Property?, by P. J. Proudhon
- *** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT IS PROPERTY? ***
- ***** This file should be named 360.txt or 360.zip *****
- This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
- http://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/360/
- Produced by Mike Lough
- Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
- will be renamed.
- Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
- one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
- (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
- permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
- set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
- copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
- protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
- Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
- charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
- do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
- rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
- such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
- research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
- practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
- subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
- redistribution.
- *** START: FULL LICENSE ***
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
- PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
- To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
- distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
- (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
- Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
- Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
- http://gutenberg.org/license).
- Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
- electronic works
- 1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
- electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
- and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
- (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
- the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
- all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
- If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
- Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
- terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
- entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
- 1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
- used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
- agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
- things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
- even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
- paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
- Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
- and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
- works. See paragraph 1.E below.
- 1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
- or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
- Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
- collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
- individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
- located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
- copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
- works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
- are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
- Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
- freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
- this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
- the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
- keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
- Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
- 1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
- what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
- a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
- the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
- before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
- creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
- Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
- the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
- States.
- 1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
- 1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
- access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
- whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
- phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
- Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
- copied or distributed:
- This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
- almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
- re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
- with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
- 1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
- from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
- posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
- and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
- or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
- with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
- work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
- through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
- Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
- 1.E.9.
- 1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
- with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
- must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
- terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
- to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
- permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
- 1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
- License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
- work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
- 1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
- electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
- prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
- active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
- Gutenberg-tm License.
- 1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
- compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
- word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
- distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
- "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
- posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
- you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
- copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
- request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
- form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
- License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
- 1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
- performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
- unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
- 1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
- access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
- that
- - You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
- the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
- you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
- owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
- has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
- Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
- must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
- prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
- returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
- sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
- address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
- the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- - You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
- you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
- does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
- License. You must require such a user to return or
- destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
- and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
- Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- - You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
- money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
- electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
- of receipt of the work.
- - You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
- distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- 1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
- electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
- forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
- both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
- Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
- Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
- 1.F.
- 1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
- effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
- public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
- collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
- works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
- "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
- corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
- property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
- computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
- your equipment.
- 1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
- of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
- Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
- Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
- Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
- liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
- fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
- LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
- PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
- TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
- LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
- INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
- DAMAGE.
- 1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
- defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
- receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
- written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
- received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
- your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
- the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
- refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
- providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
- receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
- is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
- opportunities to fix the problem.
- 1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
- in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
- WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
- WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
- 1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
- warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
- If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
- law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
- interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
- the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
- provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
- 1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
- trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
- providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
- with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
- promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
- harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
- that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
- or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
- work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
- Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
- Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
- Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
- electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
- including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
- because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
- people in all walks of life.
- Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
- assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
- goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
- remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
- Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
- and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
- To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
- and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
- and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
- Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
- Foundation
- The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
- 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
- state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
- Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
- number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
- http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
- Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
- permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
- The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
- Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
- throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
- 809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
- business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact
- information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
- page at http://pglaf.org
- For additional contact information:
- Dr. Gregory B. Newby
- Chief Executive and Director
- gbnewby@pglaf.org
- Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
- Literary Archive Foundation
- Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
- spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
- increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
- freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
- array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
- ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
- status with the IRS.
- The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
- charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
- States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
- considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
- with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
- where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
- SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
- particular state visit http://pglaf.org
- While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
- have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
- against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
- approach us with offers to donate.
- International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
- any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
- outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
- Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
- methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
- ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
- To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
- Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
- works.
- Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
- concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
- with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
- Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
- Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
- editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
- unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
- keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
- Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
- http://www.gutenberg.org
- This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
- including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
- Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
- subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
|