Is political and civil
inequality
just?
Proudhon - What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
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 ofstation, 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, guatenus
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.
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 ofstation, 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, guatenus
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.
