Wolowski is, as far as I know, the first
jurist who has made a legislative application of this economical law.
jurist who has made a legislative application of this economical law.
Proudhon - What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
Reason of intention.
As far as I am permitted to divulge this secret,
I am a conspirator in an immense revolution, terrible to charlatans and
despots, to all exploiters of the poor and credulous, to all salaried
idlers, dealers in political panaceas and parables, tyrants in a word of
thought and of opinion. I labor to stir up the reason of individuals to
insurrection against the reason of authorities.
According to the laws of the society of which I am a member, all the
evils which afflict humanity arise from faith in external teachings and
submission to authority. And not to go outside of our own century, is
it not true, for instance, that France is plundered, scoffed at, and
tyrannized over, because she speaks in masses, and not by heads? The
French people are penned up in three or four flocks, receiving their
signal from a chief, responding to the voice of a leader, and thinking
just as he says. A certain journal, it is said, has fifty thousand
subscribers; assuming six readers to every subscriber, we have three
hundred thousand sheep browsing and bleating at the same cratch. Apply
this calculation to the whole periodical press, and you find that, in
our free and intelligent France, there are two millions of creatures
receiving every morning from the journals spiritual pasturage. Two
millions! In other words, the entire nation allows a score of little
fellows to lead it by the nose.
By no means, sir, do I deny to journalists talent, science, love
of truth, patriotism, and what you please. They are very worthy and
intelligent people, whom I undoubtedly should wish to resemble, had I
the honor to know them. That of which I complain, and that which has
made me a conspirator, is that, instead of enlightening us, these
gentlemen command us, impose upon us articles of faith, and that without
demonstration or verification. When, for example, I ask why these
fortifications of Paris, which, in former times, under the influence
of certain prejudices, and by means of a concurrence of extraordinary
circumstances supposed for the sake of the argument to have existed, may
perhaps have served to protect us, but which it is doubtful whether
our descendants will ever use,--when I ask, I say, on what grounds they
assimilate the future to a hypothetical past, they reply that M.
Thiers, who has a great mind, has written upon this subject a report of
admirable elegance and marvellous clearness. At this I become angry, and
reply that M. Thiers does not know what he is talking about. Why, having
wanted no detached forts seven years ago, do we want them to-day?
"Oh! damn it," they say, "the difference is great; the first forts
were too near to us; with these we cannot be bombarded. " You cannot be
bombarded; but you can be blockaded, and will be, if you stir. What! to
obtain blockade forts from the Parisians, it has sufficed to prejudice
them against bombardment forts! And they thought to outwit the
government! Oh, the sovereignty of the people! . . .
"Damn it! M. Thiers, who is wiser than you, says that it would be absurd
to suppose a government making war upon citizens, and maintaining itself
by force and in spite of the will of the people. That would be absurd! "
Perhaps so: such a thing has happened more than once, and may happen
again. Besides, when despotism is strong, it appears almost legitimate.
However that may be, they lied in 1833, and they lie again in
1841,--those who threaten us with the bomb-shell. And then, if M. Thiers
is so well assured of the intentions of the government, why does he not
wish the forts to be built before the circuit is extended? Why this
air of suspicion of the government, unless an intrigue has been planned
between the government and M. Thiers?
"Damn it! we do not wish to be again invaded. If Paris had been
fortified in 1815, Napoleon would not have been conquered! " But I tell
you that Napoleon was not conquered, but sold; and that if, in 1815,
Paris had had fortifications, it would have been with them as with the
thirty thousand men of Grouchy, who were misled during the battle. It is
still easier to surrender forts than to lead soldiers. Would the selfish
and the cowardly ever lack reasons for yielding to the enemy?
"But do you not see that the absolutist courts are provoked at our
fortifications? --a proof that they do not think as you do. " You believe
that; and, for my part, I believe that in reality they are quite at ease
about the matter; and, if they appear to tease our ministers, they do so
only to give the latter an opportunity to decline. The absolutist courts
are always on better terms with our constitutional monarchy, than
our monarchy with us. Does not M. Guizot say that France needs to
be defended within as well as without? Within! against whom? Against
France. O Parisians! it is but six months since you demanded war, and
now you want only barricades. Why should the allies fear your doctrines,
when you cannot even control yourselves? . . . How could you sustain a
siege, when you weep over the absence of an actress?
"But, finally, do you not understand that, by the rules of modern
warfare, the capital of a country is always the objective point of its
assailants? Suppose our army defeated on the Rhine, France invaded, and
defenceless Paris falling into the hands of the enemy. It would be the
death of the administrative power; without a head it could not live. The
capital taken, the nation must submit. What do you say to that? "
The reply is very simple. Why is society constituted in such a way that
the destiny of the country depends upon the safety of the capital?
Why, in case our territory be invaded and Paris besieged, cannot the
legislative, executive, and military powers act outside of Paris? Why
this localization of all the vital forces of France? . . . Do not cry out
upon decentralization. This hackneyed reproach would discredit only
your own intelligence and sincerity. It is not a question of
decentralization; it is your political fetichism which I attack. Why
should the national unity be attached to a certain place, to certain
functionaries, to certain bayonets? Why should the Place Maubert and the
Palace of the Tuileries be the palladium of France?
Now let me make an hypothesis.
Suppose it were written in the charter, "In case the country be again
invaded, and Paris forced to surrender, the government being annihilated
and the national assembly dissolved, the electoral colleges shall
reassemble spontaneously and without other official notice, for the
purpose of appointing new deputies, who shall organize a provisional
government at Orleans.
"If Orleans succumbs, the government shall reconstruct itself in the same
way at Lyons; then at Bordeaux, then at Bayonne, until all France be
captured or the enemy driven from the land. For the government may
perish, but the nation never dies. The king, the peers, and the deputies
massacred, VIVE LA FRANCE! "
Do you not think that such an addition to the charter would be a better
safeguard for the liberty and integrity of the country than walls and
bastions around Paris? Well, then! do henceforth for administration,
industry, science, literature, and art that which the charter ought
to prescribe for the central government and common defence. Instead of
endeavoring to render Paris impregnable, try rather to render the loss
of Paris an insignificant matter. Instead of accumulating about one
point academies, faculties, schools, and political, administrative,
and judicial centres; instead of arresting intellectual development
and weakening public spirit in the provinces by this fatal
agglomeration,--can you not, without destroying unity, distribute social
functions among places as well as among persons? Such a system--in
allowing each province to participate in political power and action, and
in balancing industry, intelligence, and strength in all parts of the
country--would equally secure, against enemies at home and enemies
abroad, the liberty of the people and the stability of the government.
Discriminate, then, between the centralization of functions and the
concentration of organs; between political unity and its material
symbol.
"Oh! that is plausible; but it is impossible! "--which means that the
city of Paris does not intend to surrender its privileges, and that
there it is still a question of property.
Idle talk! The country, in a state of panic which has been cleverly
worked upon, has asked for fortifications. I dare to affirm that it
has abdicated its sovereignty. All parties are to blame for this
suicide,--the conservatives, by their acquiescence in the plans of the
government; the friends of the dynasty, because they wish no opposition
to that which pleases them, and because a popular revolution would
annihilate them; the democrats, because they hope to rule in their turn.
[67] That which all rejoice at having obtained is a means of future
repression. As for the defence of the country, they are not troubled
about that. The idea of tyranny dwells in the minds of all, and brings
together into one conspiracy all forms of selfishness. We wish the
regeneration of society, but we subordinate this desire to our ideas
and convenience. That our approaching marriage may take place, that our
business may succeed, that our opinions may triumph, we postpone reform.
Intolerance and selfishness lead us to put fetters upon liberty; and,
because we cannot wish all that God wishes, we would, if it rested with
us, stay the course of destiny rather than sacrifice our own interests
and self-love. Is not this an instance where the words of Solomon
apply,--"_L'iniquite a menti a elle-meme_"?
It is said that on this question of the fortification of Paris the staff
of "Le National" are not agreed. This would prove, if proof were needed,
that a journal may blunder and falsify, without entitling any one to
accuse its editors. A journal is a metaphysical being, for which no one
is really responsible, and which owes its existence solely to mutual
concessions. This idea ought to frighten those worthy citizens who,
because they borrow their opinions from a journal, imagine that they
belong to a political party, and who have not the faintest suspicion
that they are really without a head.
For this reason, sir, I have enlisted in a desperate war against
every form of authority over the multitude. Advance sentinel of the
proletariat, I cross bayonets with the celebrities of the day, as
well as with spies and charlatans. Well, when I am fighting with an
illustrious adversary, must I stop at the end of every phrase, like
an orator in the tribune, to say "the learned author," "the eloquent
writer," "the profound publicist," and a hundred other platitudes with
which it is fashionable to mock people? These civilities seem to me no
less insulting to the man attacked than dishonorable to the aggressor.
But when, rebuking an author, I say to him, "Citizen, your doctrine is
absurd, and, if to prove my assertion is an offence against you, I
am guilty of it," immediately the listener opens his ears; he is all
attention; and, if I do not succeed in convincing him, at least I give
his thought an impulse, and set him the wholesome example of doubt and
free examination.
Then do not think, sir, that, in tripping up the philosophy of your very
learned and very estimable confrere, M. Troplong, I fail to appreciate
his talent as a writer (in my opinion, he has too much for a jurist);
nor his knowledge, though it is too closely confined to the letter of
the law, and the reading of old books. In these particulars, M. Troplong
offends on the side of excess rather than deficiency. Further, do not
believe that I am actuated by any personal animosity towards him, or
that I have the slightest desire to wound his self-love. I know M.
Troplong only by his "Treatise on Prescription," which I wish he had not
written; and as for my critics, neither M. Troplong, nor any of those
whose opinion I value, will ever read me. Once more, my only object is
to prove, as far as I am able, to this unhappy French nation, that
those who make the laws, as well as those who interpret them, are not
infallible organs of general, impersonal, and absolute reason.
I had resolved to submit to a systematic criticism the semi-official
defence of the right of property recently put forth by M. Wolowski,
your colleague at the Conservatory. With this view, I had commenced
to collect the documents necessary for each of his lectures, but, soon
perceiving that the ideas of the professor were incoherent, that his
arguments contradicted each other, that one affirmation was sure to be
overthrown by another, and that in M. Wolowski's lucubrations the
good was always mingled with the bad, and being by nature a little
suspicious, it suddenly occurred to me that M. Wolowski was an advocate
of equality in disguise, thrown in spite of himself into the position
in which the patriarch Jacob pictures one of his sons,--_inter
duas clitellas_, between two stools, as the proverb says. In more
parliamentary language, I saw clearly that M. Wolowski was placed
between his profound convictions on the one hand and his official duties
on the other, and that, in order to maintain his position, he had to
assume a certain slant. Then I experienced great pain at seeing the
reserve, the circumlocution, the figures, and the irony to which
a professor of legislation, whose duty it is to teach dogmas with
clearness and precision, was forced to resort; and I fell to cursing
the society in which an honest man is not allowed to say frankly what he
thinks. Never, sir, have you conceived of such torture: I seemed to be
witnessing the martyrdom of a mind. I am going to give you an idea of
these astonishing meetings, or rather of these scenes of sorrow.
Monday, Nov. 20, 1840. --The professor declares, in brief,--1. That the
right of property is not founded upon occupation, but upon the impress
of man; 2. That every man has a natural and inalienable right to the use
of matter.
Now, if matter can be appropriated, and if, notwithstanding, all
men retain an inalienable right to the use of this matter, what is
property? --and if matter can be appropriated only by labor, how long
is this appropriation to continue? --questions that will confuse and
confound all jurists whatsoever.
Then M. Wolowski cites his authorities. Great God! what witnesses he
brings forward! First, M. Troplong, the great metaphysician, whom we
have discussed; then, M. Louis Blanc, editor of the "Revue du Progres,"
who came near being tried by jury for publishing his "Organization of
Labor," and who escaped from the clutches of the public prosecutor only
by a juggler's trick; [68] Corinne,--I mean Madame de Stael,--who, in
an ode, making a poetical comparison of the land with the waves, of the
furrow of a plough with the wake of a vessel, says "that property exists
only where man has left his trace," which makes property dependent
upon the solidity of the elements; Rousseau, the apostle of liberty and
equality, but who, according to M. Wolowski, attacked property only AS
A JOKE, and in order to point a paradox; Robespierre, who prohibited
a division of the land, because he regarded such a measure as a
rejuvenescence of property, and who, while awaiting the definitive
organization of the republic, placed all property in the care? ? of
the people,--that is, transferred the right of eminent domain from the
individual to society; Babeuf, who wanted property for the nation, and
communism for the citizens; M. Considerant, who favors a division of
landed property into shares,--that is, who wishes to render property
nominal and fictitious: the whole being intermingled with jokes and
witticisms (intended undoubtedly to lead people away from the HORNETS'
NESTS) at the expense of the adversaries of the right of property!
November 26. --M. Wolowski supposes this objection: Land, like
water, air, and light, is necessary to life, therefore it cannot
be appropriated; and he replies: The importance of landed property
diminishes as the power of industry increases.
Good! this importance DIMINISHES, but it does not DISAPPEAR; and this,
of itself, shows landed property to be illegitimate. Here M. Wolowski
pretends to think that the opponents of property refer only to property
in land, while they merely take it as a term of comparison; and, in
showing with wonderful clearness the absurdity of the position in which
he places them, he finds a way of drawing the attention of his hearers
to another subject without being false to the truth which it is his
office to contradict.
"Property," says M. Wolowski, "is that which distinguishes man from the
animals. " That may be; but are we to regard this as a compliment or a
satire?
"Mahomet," says M. Wolowski, "decreed property. " And so did Genghis
Khan, and Tamerlane, and all the ravagers of nations. What sort of
legislators were they?
"Property has been in existence ever since the origin of the human
race. " Yes, and so has slavery, and despotism also; and likewise
polygamy and idolatry. But what does this antiquity show?
The members of the Council of the State--M. Portalis at their head--did
not raise, in their discussion of the Code, the question of the
legitimacy of property. "Their silence," says M. Wolowski, "is a
precedent in favor of this right. " I may regard this reply as personally
addressed to me, since the observation belongs to me. I reply, "As long
as an opinion is universally admitted, the universality of belief serves
of itself as argument and proof. When this same opinion is attacked,
the former faith proves nothing; we must resort to reason. Ignorance,
however old and pardonable it may be, never outweighs reason. "
Property has its abuses, M. Wolowski confesses. "But," he says, "these
abuses gradually disappear. To-day their cause is known. They all arise
from a false theory of property. In principle, property is inviolable,
but it can and must be checked and disciplined. " Such are the
conclusions of the professor.
When one thus remains in the clouds, he need not fear to equivocate.
Nevertheless, I would like him to define these ABUSES of property, to
show their cause, to explain this true theory from which no abuse is to
spring; in short, to tell me how, without destroying property, it can
be governed for the greatest good of all. "Our civil code," says M.
Wolowski, in speaking of this subject, "leaves much to be desired. " I
think it leaves every thing undone.
Finally, M. Wolowski opposes, on the one hand, the concentration of
capital, and the absorption which results therefrom; and, on the other,
he objects to the extreme division of the land. Now I think that I have
demonstrated in my First Memoir, that large accumulation and minute
division are the first two terms of an economical trinity,--a THESIS and
an ANTITHESIS. But, while M. Wolowski says nothing of the third term,
the SYNTHESIS, and thus leaves the inference in suspense, I have shown
that this third term is ASSOCIATION, which is the annihilation of
property.
November 30. --LITERARY PROPERTY. M. Wolowski grants that it is just to
recognize the rights of talent (which is not in the least hostile to
equality); but he seriously objects to perpetual and absolute property
in the works of genius, to the profit of the authors' heirs. His main
argument is, that society has a right of collective production over
every creation of the mind. Now, it is precisely this principle of
collective power that I developed in my "Inquiries into Property and
Government," and on which I have established the complete edifice of
a new social organization. M.
Wolowski is, as far as I know, the first
jurist who has made a legislative application of this economical law.
Only, while I have extended the principle of collective power to every
sort of product, M. Wolowski, more prudent than it is my nature to be,
confines it to neutral ground. So, that that which I am bold enough
to say of the whole, he is contented to affirm of a part, leaving
the intelligent hearer to fill up the void for himself. However, his
arguments are keen and close. One feels that the professor, finding
himself more at ease with one aspect of property, has given the rein to
his intellect, and is rushing on towards liberty.
1. Absolute literary property would hinder the activity of other men,
and obstruct the development of humanity. It would be the death of
progress; it would be suicide. What would have happened if the
first inventions,--the plough, the level, the saw, &c. ,--had been
appropriated?
Such is the first proposition of M. Wolowski.
I reply: Absolute property in land and tools hinders human activity, and
obstructs progress and the free development of man.
What happened in Rome, and in all the ancient nations? What occurred
in the middle ages? What do we see to-day in England, in consequence of
absolute property in the sources of production?
The suicide of humanity.
2. Real and personal property is in harmony with the social interest.
In consequence of literary property, social and individual interests are
perpetually in conflict.
The statement of this proposition contains a rhetorical figure, common
with those who do not enjoy full and complete liberty of speech. This
figure is the _anti-phrasis_ or _contre-verite_. It consists, according
to Dumarsais and the best humanists, in saying one thing while meaning
another. M. Wolowski's proposition, naturally expressed, would read as
follows: "Just as real and personal property is essentially hostile to
society, so, in consequence of literary property, social and individual
interests are perpetually in conflict. "
3. M. de Montalembert, in the Chamber of Peers, vehemently protested
against the assimilation of authors to inventors of machinery; an
assimilation which he claimed to be injurious to the former. M. Wolowski
replies, that the rights of authors, without machinery, would be nil;
that, without paper-mills, type foundries, and printing-offices,
there could be no sale of verse and prose; that many a mechanical
invention,--the compass, for instance, the telescope, or the
steam-engine,--is quite as valuable as a book.
Prior to M. Montalembert, M. Charles Comte had laughed at the inference
in favor of mechanical inventions, which logical minds never fail to
draw from the privileges granted to authors. "He," says M. Comte, "who
first conceived and executed the idea of transforming a piece of wood
into a pair of sabots, or an animal's hide into a pair of sandals, would
thereby have acquired an exclusive right to make shoes for the human
race! " Undoubtedly, under the system of property. For, in fact, this
pair of sabots, over which you make so merry, is the creation of the
shoemaker, the work of his genius, the expression of his thought; to him
it is his poem, quite as much as "Le Roi s'amuse," is M. Victor Hugo's
drama. Justice for all alike. If you refuse a patent to a perfecter of
boots, refuse also a privilege to a maker of rhymes.
4. That which gives importance to a book is a fact external to the
author and his work. Without the intelligence of society, without its
development, and a certain community of ideas, passions, and interests
between it and the authors, the works of the latter would be worth
nothing. The exchangeable value of a book is due even more to the SOCIAL
CONDITION than to the talent displayed in it.
Indeed, it seems as if I were copying my own words. This proposition
of M. Wolowski contains a special expression of a general and absolute
idea, one of the strongest and most conclusive against the right of
property. Why do artists, like mechanics, find the means to live?
Because society has made the fine arts, like the rudest industries,
objects of consumption and exchange, governed consequently by all the
laws of commerce and political economy. Now, the first of these laws is
the equipoise of functions; that is, the equality of associates.
5. M. Wolowski indulges in sarcasm against the petitioners for literary
property. "There are authors," he says, "who crave the privileges of
authors, and who for that purpose point out the power of the melodrama.
They speak of the niece of Corneille, begging at the door of a theatre
which the works of her uncle had enriched. . . . To satisfy the avarice of
literary people, it would be necessary to create literary majorats, and
make a whole code of exceptions. "
I like this virtuous irony. But M. Wolowski has by no means exhausted
the difficulties which the question involves. And first, is it just that
MM. Cousin, Guizot, Villemain, Damiron, and company, paid by the State
for delivering lectures, should be paid a second time through the
booksellers? --that I, who have the right to report their lectures,
should not have the right to print them? Is it just that MM. Noel and
Chapsal, overseers of the University, should use their influence in
selling their selections from literature to the youth whose studies they
are instructed to superintend in consideration of a salary? And, if
that is not just, is it not proper to refuse literary property to every
author holding public offices, and receiving pensions or sinecures?
Again, shall the privilege of the author extend to irreligious and
immoral works, calculated only to corrupt the heart, and obscure the
understanding? To grant this privilege is to sanction immorality by law;
to refuse it is to censure the author. And since it is impossible, in
the present imperfect state of society, to prevent all violations of the
moral law, it will be necessary to open a license-office for books as
well as morals. But, then, three-fourths of our literary people will
be obliged to register; and, recognized thenceforth on their own
declaration as PROSTITUTES, they will necessarily belong to the public.
We pay toll to the prostitute; we do not endow her.
Finally, shall plagiarism be classed with forgery? If you reply "Yes,"
you appropriate in advance all the subjects of which books treat; if
you say "No," you leave the whole matter to the decision of the judge.
Except in the case of a clandestine reprint, how will he distinguish
forgery from quotation, imitation, plagiarism, or even coincidence? A
savant spends two years in calculating a table of logarithms to nine
or ten decimals. He prints it. A fortnight after his book is selling
at half-price; it is impossible to tell whether this result is due to
forgery or competition. What shall the court do? In case of doubt, shall
it award the property to the first occupant? As well decide the question
by lot.
These, however, are trifling considerations; but do we see that, in
granting a perpetual privilege to authors and their heirs, we really
strike a fatal blow at their interests? We think to make booksellers
dependent upon authors,--a delusion. The booksellers will unite against
works, and their proprietors. Against works, by refusing to push their
sale, by replacing them with poor imitations, by reproducing them in
a hundred indirect ways; and no one knows how far the science of
plagiarism, and skilful imitation may be carried. Against proprietors.
Are we ignorant of the fact, that a demand for a dozen copies enables a
bookseller to sell a thousand; that with an edition of five hundred he
can supply a kingdom for thirty years? What will the poor authors do in
the presence of this omnipotent union of booksellers? I will tell them
what they will do. They will enter the employ of those whom they now
treat as pirates; and, to secure an advantage, they will become wage
laborers. A fit reward for ignoble avarice, and insatiable pride. [69]
Contradictions of contradictions! "Genius is the great leveller of the
world," cries M. de Lamartine; "then genius should be a proprietor.
Literary property is the fortune of democracy. " This unfortunate
poet thinks himself profound when he is only puffed up. His eloquence
consists solely in coupling ideas which clash with each other: ROUND
SQUARE, DARK SUN, FALLEN ANGEL, PRIEST and LOVE, THOUGHT and POETRY,
GUNIUS {? ? ? }, and FORTUNE, LEVELING and PROPERTY. Let us tell him, in
reply, that his mind is a dark luminary; that each of his discourses is
a disordered harmony; and that all his successes, whether in verse or
prose, are due to the use of the extraordinary in the treatment of the
most ordinary subjects.
"Le National," in reply to the report of M. Lamartine, endeavors to
prove that literary property is of quite a different nature from landed
property; as if the nature of the right of property depended on the
object to which it is applied, and not on the mode of its exercise and
the condition of its existence. But the main object of "Le National"
is to please a class of proprietors whom an extension of the right of
property vexes: that is why "Le National" opposes literary property.
Will it tell us, once for all, whether it is for equality or against it?
6. OBJECTION. --Property in occupied land passes to the heirs of the
occupant. "Why," say the authors, "should not the work of genius pass
in like manner to the heirs of the man of genius? " M. Wolowski's reply:
"Because the labor of the first occupant is continued by his heirs,
while the heirs of an author neither change nor add to his works. In
landed property, the continuance of labor explains the continuance of
the right. "
Yes, when the labor is continued; but if the labor is not continued,
the right ceases. Thus is the right of possession, founded on personal
labor, recognized by M. Wolowski.
M. Wolowski decides in favor of granting to authors property in their
works for a certain number of years, dating from the day of their first
publication.
The succeeding lectures on patents on inventions were no less
instructive, although intermingled with shocking contradictions inserted
with a view to make the useful truths more palatable. The necessity
for brevity compels me to terminate this examination here, not without
regret.
Thus, of two eclectic jurists, who attempt a defence of property, one
is entangled in a set of dogmas without principle or method, and is
constantly talking nonsense; and the other designedly abandons the
cause of property, in order to present under the same name the theory
of individual possession. Was I wrong in claiming that confusion reigned
among legists, and ought I to be legally prosecuted for having said
that their science henceforth stood convicted of falsehood, its glory
eclipsed?
The ordinary resources of the law no longer sufficing, philosophy,
political economy, and the framers of systems have been consulted. All
the oracles appealed to have been discouraging.
The philosophers are no clearer to-day than at the time of the eclectic
efflorescence; nevertheless, through their mystical apothegms, we
can distinguish the words PROGRESS, UNITY, ASSOCIATION, SOLIDARITY,
FRATERNITY, which are certainly not reassuring to proprietors. One of
these philosophers, M. Pierre Leroux, has written two large books, in
which he claims to show by all religious, legislative, and philosophical
systems that, since men are responsible to each other, equality of
conditions is the final law of society. It is true that this philosopher
admits a kind of property; but as he leaves us to imagine what property
would become in presence of equality, we may boldly class him with the
opponents of the right of increase.
I must here declare freely--in order that I may not be suspected of
secret connivance, which is foreign to my nature--that M. Leroux has
my full sympathy. Not that I am a believer in his quasi-Pythagorean
philosophy (upon this subject I should have more than one observation to
submit to him, provided a veteran covered with stripes would not despise
the remarks of a conscript); not that I feel bound to this author by any
special consideration for his opposition to property. In my opinion, M.
Leroux could, and even ought to, state his position more explicitly and
logically. But I like, I admire, in M. Leroux, the antagonist of our
philosophical demigods, the demolisher of usurped reputations, the
pitiless critic of every thing that is respected because of its
antiquity. Such is the reason for my high esteem of M. Leroux; such
would be the principle of the only literary association which, in this
century of coteries, I should care to form. We need men who, like
M. Leroux, call in question social principles,--not to diffuse doubt
concerning them, but to make them doubly sure; men who excite the mind
by bold negations, and make the conscience tremble by doctrines of
annihilation. Where is the man who does not shudder on hearing M. Leroux
exclaim, "There is neither a paradise nor a hell; the wicked will not
be punished, nor the good rewarded. Mortals! cease to hope and fear; you
revolve in a circle of appearances; humanity is an immortal tree, whose
branches, withering one after another, feed with their debris the root
which is always young! " Where is the man who, on hearing this desolate
confession of faith, does not demand with terror, "Is it then true that
I am only an aggregate of elements organized by an unknown force, an
idea realized for a few moments, a form which passes and disappears? Is
it true that my mind is only a harmony, and my soul a vortex? What is
the ego? what is God? what is the sanction of society? "
In former times, M. Leroux would have been regarded as a great culprit,
worthy only (like Vanini) of death and universal execration. To-day, M.
Leroux is fulfilling a mission of salvation, for which, whatever he
may say, he will be rewarded. Like those gloomy invalids who are always
talking of their approaching death, and who faint when the doctor's
opinion confirms their pretence, our materialistic society is agitated
and loses countenance while listening to this startling decree of the
philosopher, "Thou shalt die! " Honor then to M. Leroux, who has revealed
to us the cowardice of the Epicureans; to M. Leroux, who renders new
philosophical solutions necessary! Honor to the anti-eclectic, to the
apostle of equality!
In his work on "Humanity," M. Leroux commences by positing the necessity
of property: "You wish to abolish property; but do you not see that
thereby you would annihilate man and even the name of man? . . . You wish
to abolish property; but could you live without a body? I will not tell
you that it is necessary to support this body;. . . I will tell you that
this body is itself a species of property. "
In order clearly to understand the doctrine of M. Leroux, it must be
borne in mind that there are three necessary and primitive forms of
society,--communism, property, and that which to-day we properly call
association. M. Leroux rejects in the first place communism, and combats
it with all his might. Man is a personal and free being, and therefore
needs a sphere of independence and individual activity. M. Leroux
emphasizes this in adding: "You wish neither family, nor country, nor
property; therefore no more fathers, no more sons, no more brothers.
Here you are, related to no being in time, and therefore without a name;
here you are, alone in the midst of a billion of men who to-day inhabit
the earth. How do you expect me to distinguish you in space in the midst
of this multitude? "
If man is indistinguishable, he is nothing. Now, he can be
distinguished, individualized, only through a devotion of certain things
to his use,--such as his body, his faculties, and the tools which he
uses. "Hence," says M. Leroux, "the necessity of appropriation;" in
short, property.
But property on what condition? Here M. Leroux, after having condemned
communism, denounces in its turn the right of domain. His whole doctrine
can be summed up in this single proposition,--_Man may be made by
property a slave or a despot by turns_.
That posited, if we ask M. Leroux to tell us under what system of
property man will be neither a slave nor a despot, but free, just, and
a citizen, M. Leroux replies in the third volume of his work on
"Humanity:"--
"There are three ways of destroying man's communion with his fellows and
with the universe:. . . 1. By separating man in time; 2. by separating him
in space; 3. by dividing the land, or, in general terms, the instruments
of production; by attaching men to things, by subordinating man to
property, by making man a proprietor. "
This language, it must be confessed, savors a little too strongly of the
metaphysical heights which the author frequents, and of the school of
M. Cousin. Nevertheless, it can be seen, clearly enough it seems to me,
that M. Leroux opposes the exclusive appropriation of the instruments of
production; only he calls this non-appropriation of the instruments of
production a NEW METHOD of establishing property, while I, in accordance
with all precedent, call it a destruction of property. In fact, without
the appropriation of instruments, property is nothing.
"Hitherto, we have confined ourselves to pointing out and combating the
despotic features of property, by considering property alone. We have
failed to see that the despotism of property is a correlative of the
division of the human race;.
I am a conspirator in an immense revolution, terrible to charlatans and
despots, to all exploiters of the poor and credulous, to all salaried
idlers, dealers in political panaceas and parables, tyrants in a word of
thought and of opinion. I labor to stir up the reason of individuals to
insurrection against the reason of authorities.
According to the laws of the society of which I am a member, all the
evils which afflict humanity arise from faith in external teachings and
submission to authority. And not to go outside of our own century, is
it not true, for instance, that France is plundered, scoffed at, and
tyrannized over, because she speaks in masses, and not by heads? The
French people are penned up in three or four flocks, receiving their
signal from a chief, responding to the voice of a leader, and thinking
just as he says. A certain journal, it is said, has fifty thousand
subscribers; assuming six readers to every subscriber, we have three
hundred thousand sheep browsing and bleating at the same cratch. Apply
this calculation to the whole periodical press, and you find that, in
our free and intelligent France, there are two millions of creatures
receiving every morning from the journals spiritual pasturage. Two
millions! In other words, the entire nation allows a score of little
fellows to lead it by the nose.
By no means, sir, do I deny to journalists talent, science, love
of truth, patriotism, and what you please. They are very worthy and
intelligent people, whom I undoubtedly should wish to resemble, had I
the honor to know them. That of which I complain, and that which has
made me a conspirator, is that, instead of enlightening us, these
gentlemen command us, impose upon us articles of faith, and that without
demonstration or verification. When, for example, I ask why these
fortifications of Paris, which, in former times, under the influence
of certain prejudices, and by means of a concurrence of extraordinary
circumstances supposed for the sake of the argument to have existed, may
perhaps have served to protect us, but which it is doubtful whether
our descendants will ever use,--when I ask, I say, on what grounds they
assimilate the future to a hypothetical past, they reply that M.
Thiers, who has a great mind, has written upon this subject a report of
admirable elegance and marvellous clearness. At this I become angry, and
reply that M. Thiers does not know what he is talking about. Why, having
wanted no detached forts seven years ago, do we want them to-day?
"Oh! damn it," they say, "the difference is great; the first forts
were too near to us; with these we cannot be bombarded. " You cannot be
bombarded; but you can be blockaded, and will be, if you stir. What! to
obtain blockade forts from the Parisians, it has sufficed to prejudice
them against bombardment forts! And they thought to outwit the
government! Oh, the sovereignty of the people! . . .
"Damn it! M. Thiers, who is wiser than you, says that it would be absurd
to suppose a government making war upon citizens, and maintaining itself
by force and in spite of the will of the people. That would be absurd! "
Perhaps so: such a thing has happened more than once, and may happen
again. Besides, when despotism is strong, it appears almost legitimate.
However that may be, they lied in 1833, and they lie again in
1841,--those who threaten us with the bomb-shell. And then, if M. Thiers
is so well assured of the intentions of the government, why does he not
wish the forts to be built before the circuit is extended? Why this
air of suspicion of the government, unless an intrigue has been planned
between the government and M. Thiers?
"Damn it! we do not wish to be again invaded. If Paris had been
fortified in 1815, Napoleon would not have been conquered! " But I tell
you that Napoleon was not conquered, but sold; and that if, in 1815,
Paris had had fortifications, it would have been with them as with the
thirty thousand men of Grouchy, who were misled during the battle. It is
still easier to surrender forts than to lead soldiers. Would the selfish
and the cowardly ever lack reasons for yielding to the enemy?
"But do you not see that the absolutist courts are provoked at our
fortifications? --a proof that they do not think as you do. " You believe
that; and, for my part, I believe that in reality they are quite at ease
about the matter; and, if they appear to tease our ministers, they do so
only to give the latter an opportunity to decline. The absolutist courts
are always on better terms with our constitutional monarchy, than
our monarchy with us. Does not M. Guizot say that France needs to
be defended within as well as without? Within! against whom? Against
France. O Parisians! it is but six months since you demanded war, and
now you want only barricades. Why should the allies fear your doctrines,
when you cannot even control yourselves? . . . How could you sustain a
siege, when you weep over the absence of an actress?
"But, finally, do you not understand that, by the rules of modern
warfare, the capital of a country is always the objective point of its
assailants? Suppose our army defeated on the Rhine, France invaded, and
defenceless Paris falling into the hands of the enemy. It would be the
death of the administrative power; without a head it could not live. The
capital taken, the nation must submit. What do you say to that? "
The reply is very simple. Why is society constituted in such a way that
the destiny of the country depends upon the safety of the capital?
Why, in case our territory be invaded and Paris besieged, cannot the
legislative, executive, and military powers act outside of Paris? Why
this localization of all the vital forces of France? . . . Do not cry out
upon decentralization. This hackneyed reproach would discredit only
your own intelligence and sincerity. It is not a question of
decentralization; it is your political fetichism which I attack. Why
should the national unity be attached to a certain place, to certain
functionaries, to certain bayonets? Why should the Place Maubert and the
Palace of the Tuileries be the palladium of France?
Now let me make an hypothesis.
Suppose it were written in the charter, "In case the country be again
invaded, and Paris forced to surrender, the government being annihilated
and the national assembly dissolved, the electoral colleges shall
reassemble spontaneously and without other official notice, for the
purpose of appointing new deputies, who shall organize a provisional
government at Orleans.
"If Orleans succumbs, the government shall reconstruct itself in the same
way at Lyons; then at Bordeaux, then at Bayonne, until all France be
captured or the enemy driven from the land. For the government may
perish, but the nation never dies. The king, the peers, and the deputies
massacred, VIVE LA FRANCE! "
Do you not think that such an addition to the charter would be a better
safeguard for the liberty and integrity of the country than walls and
bastions around Paris? Well, then! do henceforth for administration,
industry, science, literature, and art that which the charter ought
to prescribe for the central government and common defence. Instead of
endeavoring to render Paris impregnable, try rather to render the loss
of Paris an insignificant matter. Instead of accumulating about one
point academies, faculties, schools, and political, administrative,
and judicial centres; instead of arresting intellectual development
and weakening public spirit in the provinces by this fatal
agglomeration,--can you not, without destroying unity, distribute social
functions among places as well as among persons? Such a system--in
allowing each province to participate in political power and action, and
in balancing industry, intelligence, and strength in all parts of the
country--would equally secure, against enemies at home and enemies
abroad, the liberty of the people and the stability of the government.
Discriminate, then, between the centralization of functions and the
concentration of organs; between political unity and its material
symbol.
"Oh! that is plausible; but it is impossible! "--which means that the
city of Paris does not intend to surrender its privileges, and that
there it is still a question of property.
Idle talk! The country, in a state of panic which has been cleverly
worked upon, has asked for fortifications. I dare to affirm that it
has abdicated its sovereignty. All parties are to blame for this
suicide,--the conservatives, by their acquiescence in the plans of the
government; the friends of the dynasty, because they wish no opposition
to that which pleases them, and because a popular revolution would
annihilate them; the democrats, because they hope to rule in their turn.
[67] That which all rejoice at having obtained is a means of future
repression. As for the defence of the country, they are not troubled
about that. The idea of tyranny dwells in the minds of all, and brings
together into one conspiracy all forms of selfishness. We wish the
regeneration of society, but we subordinate this desire to our ideas
and convenience. That our approaching marriage may take place, that our
business may succeed, that our opinions may triumph, we postpone reform.
Intolerance and selfishness lead us to put fetters upon liberty; and,
because we cannot wish all that God wishes, we would, if it rested with
us, stay the course of destiny rather than sacrifice our own interests
and self-love. Is not this an instance where the words of Solomon
apply,--"_L'iniquite a menti a elle-meme_"?
It is said that on this question of the fortification of Paris the staff
of "Le National" are not agreed. This would prove, if proof were needed,
that a journal may blunder and falsify, without entitling any one to
accuse its editors. A journal is a metaphysical being, for which no one
is really responsible, and which owes its existence solely to mutual
concessions. This idea ought to frighten those worthy citizens who,
because they borrow their opinions from a journal, imagine that they
belong to a political party, and who have not the faintest suspicion
that they are really without a head.
For this reason, sir, I have enlisted in a desperate war against
every form of authority over the multitude. Advance sentinel of the
proletariat, I cross bayonets with the celebrities of the day, as
well as with spies and charlatans. Well, when I am fighting with an
illustrious adversary, must I stop at the end of every phrase, like
an orator in the tribune, to say "the learned author," "the eloquent
writer," "the profound publicist," and a hundred other platitudes with
which it is fashionable to mock people? These civilities seem to me no
less insulting to the man attacked than dishonorable to the aggressor.
But when, rebuking an author, I say to him, "Citizen, your doctrine is
absurd, and, if to prove my assertion is an offence against you, I
am guilty of it," immediately the listener opens his ears; he is all
attention; and, if I do not succeed in convincing him, at least I give
his thought an impulse, and set him the wholesome example of doubt and
free examination.
Then do not think, sir, that, in tripping up the philosophy of your very
learned and very estimable confrere, M. Troplong, I fail to appreciate
his talent as a writer (in my opinion, he has too much for a jurist);
nor his knowledge, though it is too closely confined to the letter of
the law, and the reading of old books. In these particulars, M. Troplong
offends on the side of excess rather than deficiency. Further, do not
believe that I am actuated by any personal animosity towards him, or
that I have the slightest desire to wound his self-love. I know M.
Troplong only by his "Treatise on Prescription," which I wish he had not
written; and as for my critics, neither M. Troplong, nor any of those
whose opinion I value, will ever read me. Once more, my only object is
to prove, as far as I am able, to this unhappy French nation, that
those who make the laws, as well as those who interpret them, are not
infallible organs of general, impersonal, and absolute reason.
I had resolved to submit to a systematic criticism the semi-official
defence of the right of property recently put forth by M. Wolowski,
your colleague at the Conservatory. With this view, I had commenced
to collect the documents necessary for each of his lectures, but, soon
perceiving that the ideas of the professor were incoherent, that his
arguments contradicted each other, that one affirmation was sure to be
overthrown by another, and that in M. Wolowski's lucubrations the
good was always mingled with the bad, and being by nature a little
suspicious, it suddenly occurred to me that M. Wolowski was an advocate
of equality in disguise, thrown in spite of himself into the position
in which the patriarch Jacob pictures one of his sons,--_inter
duas clitellas_, between two stools, as the proverb says. In more
parliamentary language, I saw clearly that M. Wolowski was placed
between his profound convictions on the one hand and his official duties
on the other, and that, in order to maintain his position, he had to
assume a certain slant. Then I experienced great pain at seeing the
reserve, the circumlocution, the figures, and the irony to which
a professor of legislation, whose duty it is to teach dogmas with
clearness and precision, was forced to resort; and I fell to cursing
the society in which an honest man is not allowed to say frankly what he
thinks. Never, sir, have you conceived of such torture: I seemed to be
witnessing the martyrdom of a mind. I am going to give you an idea of
these astonishing meetings, or rather of these scenes of sorrow.
Monday, Nov. 20, 1840. --The professor declares, in brief,--1. That the
right of property is not founded upon occupation, but upon the impress
of man; 2. That every man has a natural and inalienable right to the use
of matter.
Now, if matter can be appropriated, and if, notwithstanding, all
men retain an inalienable right to the use of this matter, what is
property? --and if matter can be appropriated only by labor, how long
is this appropriation to continue? --questions that will confuse and
confound all jurists whatsoever.
Then M. Wolowski cites his authorities. Great God! what witnesses he
brings forward! First, M. Troplong, the great metaphysician, whom we
have discussed; then, M. Louis Blanc, editor of the "Revue du Progres,"
who came near being tried by jury for publishing his "Organization of
Labor," and who escaped from the clutches of the public prosecutor only
by a juggler's trick; [68] Corinne,--I mean Madame de Stael,--who, in
an ode, making a poetical comparison of the land with the waves, of the
furrow of a plough with the wake of a vessel, says "that property exists
only where man has left his trace," which makes property dependent
upon the solidity of the elements; Rousseau, the apostle of liberty and
equality, but who, according to M. Wolowski, attacked property only AS
A JOKE, and in order to point a paradox; Robespierre, who prohibited
a division of the land, because he regarded such a measure as a
rejuvenescence of property, and who, while awaiting the definitive
organization of the republic, placed all property in the care? ? of
the people,--that is, transferred the right of eminent domain from the
individual to society; Babeuf, who wanted property for the nation, and
communism for the citizens; M. Considerant, who favors a division of
landed property into shares,--that is, who wishes to render property
nominal and fictitious: the whole being intermingled with jokes and
witticisms (intended undoubtedly to lead people away from the HORNETS'
NESTS) at the expense of the adversaries of the right of property!
November 26. --M. Wolowski supposes this objection: Land, like
water, air, and light, is necessary to life, therefore it cannot
be appropriated; and he replies: The importance of landed property
diminishes as the power of industry increases.
Good! this importance DIMINISHES, but it does not DISAPPEAR; and this,
of itself, shows landed property to be illegitimate. Here M. Wolowski
pretends to think that the opponents of property refer only to property
in land, while they merely take it as a term of comparison; and, in
showing with wonderful clearness the absurdity of the position in which
he places them, he finds a way of drawing the attention of his hearers
to another subject without being false to the truth which it is his
office to contradict.
"Property," says M. Wolowski, "is that which distinguishes man from the
animals. " That may be; but are we to regard this as a compliment or a
satire?
"Mahomet," says M. Wolowski, "decreed property. " And so did Genghis
Khan, and Tamerlane, and all the ravagers of nations. What sort of
legislators were they?
"Property has been in existence ever since the origin of the human
race. " Yes, and so has slavery, and despotism also; and likewise
polygamy and idolatry. But what does this antiquity show?
The members of the Council of the State--M. Portalis at their head--did
not raise, in their discussion of the Code, the question of the
legitimacy of property. "Their silence," says M. Wolowski, "is a
precedent in favor of this right. " I may regard this reply as personally
addressed to me, since the observation belongs to me. I reply, "As long
as an opinion is universally admitted, the universality of belief serves
of itself as argument and proof. When this same opinion is attacked,
the former faith proves nothing; we must resort to reason. Ignorance,
however old and pardonable it may be, never outweighs reason. "
Property has its abuses, M. Wolowski confesses. "But," he says, "these
abuses gradually disappear. To-day their cause is known. They all arise
from a false theory of property. In principle, property is inviolable,
but it can and must be checked and disciplined. " Such are the
conclusions of the professor.
When one thus remains in the clouds, he need not fear to equivocate.
Nevertheless, I would like him to define these ABUSES of property, to
show their cause, to explain this true theory from which no abuse is to
spring; in short, to tell me how, without destroying property, it can
be governed for the greatest good of all. "Our civil code," says M.
Wolowski, in speaking of this subject, "leaves much to be desired. " I
think it leaves every thing undone.
Finally, M. Wolowski opposes, on the one hand, the concentration of
capital, and the absorption which results therefrom; and, on the other,
he objects to the extreme division of the land. Now I think that I have
demonstrated in my First Memoir, that large accumulation and minute
division are the first two terms of an economical trinity,--a THESIS and
an ANTITHESIS. But, while M. Wolowski says nothing of the third term,
the SYNTHESIS, and thus leaves the inference in suspense, I have shown
that this third term is ASSOCIATION, which is the annihilation of
property.
November 30. --LITERARY PROPERTY. M. Wolowski grants that it is just to
recognize the rights of talent (which is not in the least hostile to
equality); but he seriously objects to perpetual and absolute property
in the works of genius, to the profit of the authors' heirs. His main
argument is, that society has a right of collective production over
every creation of the mind. Now, it is precisely this principle of
collective power that I developed in my "Inquiries into Property and
Government," and on which I have established the complete edifice of
a new social organization. M.
Wolowski is, as far as I know, the first
jurist who has made a legislative application of this economical law.
Only, while I have extended the principle of collective power to every
sort of product, M. Wolowski, more prudent than it is my nature to be,
confines it to neutral ground. So, that that which I am bold enough
to say of the whole, he is contented to affirm of a part, leaving
the intelligent hearer to fill up the void for himself. However, his
arguments are keen and close. One feels that the professor, finding
himself more at ease with one aspect of property, has given the rein to
his intellect, and is rushing on towards liberty.
1. Absolute literary property would hinder the activity of other men,
and obstruct the development of humanity. It would be the death of
progress; it would be suicide. What would have happened if the
first inventions,--the plough, the level, the saw, &c. ,--had been
appropriated?
Such is the first proposition of M. Wolowski.
I reply: Absolute property in land and tools hinders human activity, and
obstructs progress and the free development of man.
What happened in Rome, and in all the ancient nations? What occurred
in the middle ages? What do we see to-day in England, in consequence of
absolute property in the sources of production?
The suicide of humanity.
2. Real and personal property is in harmony with the social interest.
In consequence of literary property, social and individual interests are
perpetually in conflict.
The statement of this proposition contains a rhetorical figure, common
with those who do not enjoy full and complete liberty of speech. This
figure is the _anti-phrasis_ or _contre-verite_. It consists, according
to Dumarsais and the best humanists, in saying one thing while meaning
another. M. Wolowski's proposition, naturally expressed, would read as
follows: "Just as real and personal property is essentially hostile to
society, so, in consequence of literary property, social and individual
interests are perpetually in conflict. "
3. M. de Montalembert, in the Chamber of Peers, vehemently protested
against the assimilation of authors to inventors of machinery; an
assimilation which he claimed to be injurious to the former. M. Wolowski
replies, that the rights of authors, without machinery, would be nil;
that, without paper-mills, type foundries, and printing-offices,
there could be no sale of verse and prose; that many a mechanical
invention,--the compass, for instance, the telescope, or the
steam-engine,--is quite as valuable as a book.
Prior to M. Montalembert, M. Charles Comte had laughed at the inference
in favor of mechanical inventions, which logical minds never fail to
draw from the privileges granted to authors. "He," says M. Comte, "who
first conceived and executed the idea of transforming a piece of wood
into a pair of sabots, or an animal's hide into a pair of sandals, would
thereby have acquired an exclusive right to make shoes for the human
race! " Undoubtedly, under the system of property. For, in fact, this
pair of sabots, over which you make so merry, is the creation of the
shoemaker, the work of his genius, the expression of his thought; to him
it is his poem, quite as much as "Le Roi s'amuse," is M. Victor Hugo's
drama. Justice for all alike. If you refuse a patent to a perfecter of
boots, refuse also a privilege to a maker of rhymes.
4. That which gives importance to a book is a fact external to the
author and his work. Without the intelligence of society, without its
development, and a certain community of ideas, passions, and interests
between it and the authors, the works of the latter would be worth
nothing. The exchangeable value of a book is due even more to the SOCIAL
CONDITION than to the talent displayed in it.
Indeed, it seems as if I were copying my own words. This proposition
of M. Wolowski contains a special expression of a general and absolute
idea, one of the strongest and most conclusive against the right of
property. Why do artists, like mechanics, find the means to live?
Because society has made the fine arts, like the rudest industries,
objects of consumption and exchange, governed consequently by all the
laws of commerce and political economy. Now, the first of these laws is
the equipoise of functions; that is, the equality of associates.
5. M. Wolowski indulges in sarcasm against the petitioners for literary
property. "There are authors," he says, "who crave the privileges of
authors, and who for that purpose point out the power of the melodrama.
They speak of the niece of Corneille, begging at the door of a theatre
which the works of her uncle had enriched. . . . To satisfy the avarice of
literary people, it would be necessary to create literary majorats, and
make a whole code of exceptions. "
I like this virtuous irony. But M. Wolowski has by no means exhausted
the difficulties which the question involves. And first, is it just that
MM. Cousin, Guizot, Villemain, Damiron, and company, paid by the State
for delivering lectures, should be paid a second time through the
booksellers? --that I, who have the right to report their lectures,
should not have the right to print them? Is it just that MM. Noel and
Chapsal, overseers of the University, should use their influence in
selling their selections from literature to the youth whose studies they
are instructed to superintend in consideration of a salary? And, if
that is not just, is it not proper to refuse literary property to every
author holding public offices, and receiving pensions or sinecures?
Again, shall the privilege of the author extend to irreligious and
immoral works, calculated only to corrupt the heart, and obscure the
understanding? To grant this privilege is to sanction immorality by law;
to refuse it is to censure the author. And since it is impossible, in
the present imperfect state of society, to prevent all violations of the
moral law, it will be necessary to open a license-office for books as
well as morals. But, then, three-fourths of our literary people will
be obliged to register; and, recognized thenceforth on their own
declaration as PROSTITUTES, they will necessarily belong to the public.
We pay toll to the prostitute; we do not endow her.
Finally, shall plagiarism be classed with forgery? If you reply "Yes,"
you appropriate in advance all the subjects of which books treat; if
you say "No," you leave the whole matter to the decision of the judge.
Except in the case of a clandestine reprint, how will he distinguish
forgery from quotation, imitation, plagiarism, or even coincidence? A
savant spends two years in calculating a table of logarithms to nine
or ten decimals. He prints it. A fortnight after his book is selling
at half-price; it is impossible to tell whether this result is due to
forgery or competition. What shall the court do? In case of doubt, shall
it award the property to the first occupant? As well decide the question
by lot.
These, however, are trifling considerations; but do we see that, in
granting a perpetual privilege to authors and their heirs, we really
strike a fatal blow at their interests? We think to make booksellers
dependent upon authors,--a delusion. The booksellers will unite against
works, and their proprietors. Against works, by refusing to push their
sale, by replacing them with poor imitations, by reproducing them in
a hundred indirect ways; and no one knows how far the science of
plagiarism, and skilful imitation may be carried. Against proprietors.
Are we ignorant of the fact, that a demand for a dozen copies enables a
bookseller to sell a thousand; that with an edition of five hundred he
can supply a kingdom for thirty years? What will the poor authors do in
the presence of this omnipotent union of booksellers? I will tell them
what they will do. They will enter the employ of those whom they now
treat as pirates; and, to secure an advantage, they will become wage
laborers. A fit reward for ignoble avarice, and insatiable pride. [69]
Contradictions of contradictions! "Genius is the great leveller of the
world," cries M. de Lamartine; "then genius should be a proprietor.
Literary property is the fortune of democracy. " This unfortunate
poet thinks himself profound when he is only puffed up. His eloquence
consists solely in coupling ideas which clash with each other: ROUND
SQUARE, DARK SUN, FALLEN ANGEL, PRIEST and LOVE, THOUGHT and POETRY,
GUNIUS {? ? ? }, and FORTUNE, LEVELING and PROPERTY. Let us tell him, in
reply, that his mind is a dark luminary; that each of his discourses is
a disordered harmony; and that all his successes, whether in verse or
prose, are due to the use of the extraordinary in the treatment of the
most ordinary subjects.
"Le National," in reply to the report of M. Lamartine, endeavors to
prove that literary property is of quite a different nature from landed
property; as if the nature of the right of property depended on the
object to which it is applied, and not on the mode of its exercise and
the condition of its existence. But the main object of "Le National"
is to please a class of proprietors whom an extension of the right of
property vexes: that is why "Le National" opposes literary property.
Will it tell us, once for all, whether it is for equality or against it?
6. OBJECTION. --Property in occupied land passes to the heirs of the
occupant. "Why," say the authors, "should not the work of genius pass
in like manner to the heirs of the man of genius? " M. Wolowski's reply:
"Because the labor of the first occupant is continued by his heirs,
while the heirs of an author neither change nor add to his works. In
landed property, the continuance of labor explains the continuance of
the right. "
Yes, when the labor is continued; but if the labor is not continued,
the right ceases. Thus is the right of possession, founded on personal
labor, recognized by M. Wolowski.
M. Wolowski decides in favor of granting to authors property in their
works for a certain number of years, dating from the day of their first
publication.
The succeeding lectures on patents on inventions were no less
instructive, although intermingled with shocking contradictions inserted
with a view to make the useful truths more palatable. The necessity
for brevity compels me to terminate this examination here, not without
regret.
Thus, of two eclectic jurists, who attempt a defence of property, one
is entangled in a set of dogmas without principle or method, and is
constantly talking nonsense; and the other designedly abandons the
cause of property, in order to present under the same name the theory
of individual possession. Was I wrong in claiming that confusion reigned
among legists, and ought I to be legally prosecuted for having said
that their science henceforth stood convicted of falsehood, its glory
eclipsed?
The ordinary resources of the law no longer sufficing, philosophy,
political economy, and the framers of systems have been consulted. All
the oracles appealed to have been discouraging.
The philosophers are no clearer to-day than at the time of the eclectic
efflorescence; nevertheless, through their mystical apothegms, we
can distinguish the words PROGRESS, UNITY, ASSOCIATION, SOLIDARITY,
FRATERNITY, which are certainly not reassuring to proprietors. One of
these philosophers, M. Pierre Leroux, has written two large books, in
which he claims to show by all religious, legislative, and philosophical
systems that, since men are responsible to each other, equality of
conditions is the final law of society. It is true that this philosopher
admits a kind of property; but as he leaves us to imagine what property
would become in presence of equality, we may boldly class him with the
opponents of the right of increase.
I must here declare freely--in order that I may not be suspected of
secret connivance, which is foreign to my nature--that M. Leroux has
my full sympathy. Not that I am a believer in his quasi-Pythagorean
philosophy (upon this subject I should have more than one observation to
submit to him, provided a veteran covered with stripes would not despise
the remarks of a conscript); not that I feel bound to this author by any
special consideration for his opposition to property. In my opinion, M.
Leroux could, and even ought to, state his position more explicitly and
logically. But I like, I admire, in M. Leroux, the antagonist of our
philosophical demigods, the demolisher of usurped reputations, the
pitiless critic of every thing that is respected because of its
antiquity. Such is the reason for my high esteem of M. Leroux; such
would be the principle of the only literary association which, in this
century of coteries, I should care to form. We need men who, like
M. Leroux, call in question social principles,--not to diffuse doubt
concerning them, but to make them doubly sure; men who excite the mind
by bold negations, and make the conscience tremble by doctrines of
annihilation. Where is the man who does not shudder on hearing M. Leroux
exclaim, "There is neither a paradise nor a hell; the wicked will not
be punished, nor the good rewarded. Mortals! cease to hope and fear; you
revolve in a circle of appearances; humanity is an immortal tree, whose
branches, withering one after another, feed with their debris the root
which is always young! " Where is the man who, on hearing this desolate
confession of faith, does not demand with terror, "Is it then true that
I am only an aggregate of elements organized by an unknown force, an
idea realized for a few moments, a form which passes and disappears? Is
it true that my mind is only a harmony, and my soul a vortex? What is
the ego? what is God? what is the sanction of society? "
In former times, M. Leroux would have been regarded as a great culprit,
worthy only (like Vanini) of death and universal execration. To-day, M.
Leroux is fulfilling a mission of salvation, for which, whatever he
may say, he will be rewarded. Like those gloomy invalids who are always
talking of their approaching death, and who faint when the doctor's
opinion confirms their pretence, our materialistic society is agitated
and loses countenance while listening to this startling decree of the
philosopher, "Thou shalt die! " Honor then to M. Leroux, who has revealed
to us the cowardice of the Epicureans; to M. Leroux, who renders new
philosophical solutions necessary! Honor to the anti-eclectic, to the
apostle of equality!
In his work on "Humanity," M. Leroux commences by positing the necessity
of property: "You wish to abolish property; but do you not see that
thereby you would annihilate man and even the name of man? . . . You wish
to abolish property; but could you live without a body? I will not tell
you that it is necessary to support this body;. . . I will tell you that
this body is itself a species of property. "
In order clearly to understand the doctrine of M. Leroux, it must be
borne in mind that there are three necessary and primitive forms of
society,--communism, property, and that which to-day we properly call
association. M. Leroux rejects in the first place communism, and combats
it with all his might. Man is a personal and free being, and therefore
needs a sphere of independence and individual activity. M. Leroux
emphasizes this in adding: "You wish neither family, nor country, nor
property; therefore no more fathers, no more sons, no more brothers.
Here you are, related to no being in time, and therefore without a name;
here you are, alone in the midst of a billion of men who to-day inhabit
the earth. How do you expect me to distinguish you in space in the midst
of this multitude? "
If man is indistinguishable, he is nothing. Now, he can be
distinguished, individualized, only through a devotion of certain things
to his use,--such as his body, his faculties, and the tools which he
uses. "Hence," says M. Leroux, "the necessity of appropriation;" in
short, property.
But property on what condition? Here M. Leroux, after having condemned
communism, denounces in its turn the right of domain. His whole doctrine
can be summed up in this single proposition,--_Man may be made by
property a slave or a despot by turns_.
That posited, if we ask M. Leroux to tell us under what system of
property man will be neither a slave nor a despot, but free, just, and
a citizen, M. Leroux replies in the third volume of his work on
"Humanity:"--
"There are three ways of destroying man's communion with his fellows and
with the universe:. . . 1. By separating man in time; 2. by separating him
in space; 3. by dividing the land, or, in general terms, the instruments
of production; by attaching men to things, by subordinating man to
property, by making man a proprietor. "
This language, it must be confessed, savors a little too strongly of the
metaphysical heights which the author frequents, and of the school of
M. Cousin. Nevertheless, it can be seen, clearly enough it seems to me,
that M. Leroux opposes the exclusive appropriation of the instruments of
production; only he calls this non-appropriation of the instruments of
production a NEW METHOD of establishing property, while I, in accordance
with all precedent, call it a destruction of property. In fact, without
the appropriation of instruments, property is nothing.
"Hitherto, we have confined ourselves to pointing out and combating the
despotic features of property, by considering property alone. We have
failed to see that the despotism of property is a correlative of the
division of the human race;.
