Consequently, he isolates himself; for he could not submit
to the majority without renouncing his will and his reason,--that is,
without disowning himself, which is impossible.
to the majority without renouncing his will and his reason,--that is,
without disowning himself, which is impossible.
Proudhon - What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
In comparison with us, they have feeble memories,
sluggish feelings, and are almost destitute of intelligence; but
the identity of these faculties is preserved to some extent, and our
superiority in this respect arises entirely from our understanding.
It is our strength of memory and penetration of judgment which enable us
to multiply and combine the acts which our social instinct impels us to
perform, and which teaches us how to render them more effective, and
how to distribute them justly. The beasts who live in society practise
justice, but are ignorant of its nature, and do not reason upon it; they
obey their instinct without thought or philosophy. They know not how to
unite the social sentiment with the idea of equality, which they do not
possess; this idea being an abstract one. We, on the contrary, starting
with the principle that society implies equality, can, by our reasoning
faculty, understand and agree with each other in settling our rights;
we have even used our judgment to a great extent. But in all this our
conscience plays a small part, as is proved by the fact that the idea
of RIGHT--of which we catch a glimpse in certain animals who approach
nearer than any others to our standard of intelligence--seems to grow,
from the low level at which it stands in savages, to the lofty height
which it reaches in a Plato or a Franklin. If we trace the development
of the moral sense in individuals, and the progress of laws in nations,
we shall be convinced that the ideas of justice and legislative
perfection are always proportional to intelligence. The notion of
justice--which has been regarded by some philosophers as simple--is
then, in reality, complex. It springs from the social instinct on the
one hand, and the idea of equality on the other; just as the notion of
guilt arises from the feeling that justice has been violated, and from
the idea of free-will.
In conclusion, instinct is not modified by acquaintance with its nature;
and the facts of society, which we have thus far observed, occur among
beasts as well as men. We know the meaning of justice; in other words,
of sociability viewed from the standpoint of equality. We have met with
nothing which separates us from the animals.
% 3. --Of the third degree of Sociability.
The reader, perhaps, has not forgotten what was said in the third
chapter concerning the division of labor and the speciality of talents.
The sum total of the talents and capacities of the race is always
the same, and their nature is always similar. We are all born poets,
mathematicians, philosophers, artists, artisans, or farmers, but we are
not born equally endowed; and between one man and another in society,
or between one faculty and another in the same individual, there is an
infinite difference. This difference of degree in the same faculties,
this predominance of talent in certain directions, is, we have said,
the very foundation of our society. Intelligence and natural genius have
been distributed by Nature so economically, and yet so liberally, that
in society there is no danger of either a surplus or a scarcity of
special talents; and that each laborer, by devoting himself to his
function, may always attain to the degree of proficiency necessary to
enable him to benefit by the labors and discoveries of his fellows.
Owing to this simple and wise precaution of Nature, the laborer is not
isolated by his task. He communicates with his fellows through the mind,
before he is united with them in heart; so that with him love is born of
intelligence.
It is not so with societies of animals. In every species, the aptitudes
of all the individuals--though very limited--are equal in number and
(when they are not the result of instinct) in intensity. Each one does
as well as all the others what all the others do; provides his food,
avoids the enemy, burrows in the earth, builds a nest, &c. No animal,
when free and healthy, expects or requires the aid of his neighbor; who,
in his turn, is equally independent.
Associated animals live side by side without any intellectual
intercourse or intimate communication,--all doing the same things,
having nothing to learn or to remember; they see, feel, and come in
contact with each other, but never penetrate each other. Man continually
exchanges with man ideas and feelings, products and services. Every
discovery and act in society is necessary to him. But of this immense
quantity of products and ideas, that which each one has to produce and
acquire for himself is but an atom in the sun. Man would not be man were
it not for society, and society is supported by the balance and harmony
of the powers which compose it.
Society, among the animals, is SIMPLE; with man it is COMPLEX. Man is
associated with man by the same instinct which associates animal with
animal; but man is associated differently from the animal, and it is
this difference in association which constitutes the difference in
morality.
I have proved,--at too great length, perhaps,--both by the spirit of
the laws which regard property as the basis of society, and by political
economy, that inequality of conditions is justified neither by priority
of occupation nor superiority of talent, service, industry, and
capacity. But, although equality of conditions is a necessary
consequence of natural right, of liberty, of the laws of production,
of the capacity of physical nature, and of the principle of society
itself,--it does not prevent the social sentiment from stepping over the
boundaries of DEBT and CREDIT. The fields of benevolence and love extend
far beyond; and when economy has adjusted its balance, the mind
begins to benefit by its own justice, and the heart expands in the
boundlessness of its affection.
The social sentiment then takes on a new character, which varies with
different persons. In the strong, it becomes the pleasure of generosity;
among equals, frank and cordial friendship; in the weak, the pleasure of
admiration and gratitude.
The man who is superior in strength, skill, or courage, knows that he
owes all that he is to society, without which he could not exist. He
knows that, in treating him precisely as it does the lowest of its
members, society discharges its whole duty towards him. But he does
not underrate his faculties; he is no less conscious of his power and
greatness; and it is this voluntary reverence which he pays to humanity,
this avowal that he is but an instrument of Nature,--who is alone worthy
of glory and worship,--it is, I say, this simultaneous confession of
the heart and the mind, this genuine adoration of the Great Being, that
distinguishes and elevates man, and lifts him to a degree of social
morality to which the beast is powerless to attain. Hercules destroying
the monsters and punishing brigands for the safety of Greece, Orpheus
teaching the rough and wild Pelasgians,--neither of them putting a price
upon their services,--there we see the noblest creations of poetry, the
loftiest expression of justice and virtue.
The joys of self-sacrifice are ineffable.
If I were to compare human society to the old Greek tragedies, I should
say that the phalanx of noble minds and lofty souls dances the strophe,
and the humble multitude the antistrophe. Burdened with painful and
disagreeable tasks, but rendered omnipotent by their number and the
harmonic arrangement of their functions, the latter execute what the
others plan. Guided by them, they owe them nothing; they honor them,
however, and lavish upon them praise and approbation.
Gratitude fills people with adoration and enthusiasm.
But equality delights my heart. Benevolence degenerates into tyranny,
and admiration into servility. Friendship is the daughter of equality.
O my friends! may I live in your midst without emulation, and without
glory; let equality bring us together, and fate assign us our places.
May I die without knowing to whom among you I owe the most esteem!
Friendship is precious to the hearts of the children of men.
Generosity, gratitude (I mean here only that gratitude which is born
of admiration of a superior power), and friendship are three distinct
shades of a single sentiment which I will call equite, or SOCIAL
PROPORTIONALITY. [23] Equite does not change justice: but, always taking
equite for the base, it superadds esteem, and thereby forms in man a
third degree of sociability. Equite makes it at once our duty and our
pleasure to aid the weak who have need of us, and to make them our
equals; to pay to the strong a just tribute of gratitude and honor,
without enslaving ourselves to them; to cherish our neighbors, friends,
and equals, for that which we receive from them, even by right of
exchange. Equite is sociability raised to its ideal by reason and
justice; its commonest manifestation is URBANITY or POLITENESS, which,
among certain nations, sums up in a single word nearly all the social
duties.
It is the just distribution of social sympathy and universal love.
Now, this feeling is unknown among the beasts, who love and cling to
each other, and show their preferences, but who cannot conceive of
esteem, and who are incapable of generosity, admiration, or politeness.
This feeling does not spring from intelligence, which calculates,
computes, and balances, but does not love; which sees, but does not
feel. As justice is the product of social instinct and reflection
combined, so equite is a product of justice and taste combined--that is,
of our powers of judging and of idealizing.
This product--the third and last degree of human sociability--is
determined by our complex mode of association; in which inequality,
or rather the divergence of faculties, and the speciality of
functions--tending of themselves to isolate laborers--demand a more
active sociability.
That is why the force which oppresses while protecting is execrable; why
the silly ignorance which views with the same eye the marvels of art,
and the products of the rudest industry, excites unutterable contempt;
why proud mediocrity, which glories in saying, "I have paid you--I owe
you nothing," is especially odious.
SOCIABILITY, JUSTICE, EQUITE--such, in its triplicity, is the exact
definition of the instinctive faculty which leads us into communication
with our fellows, and whose physical manifestation is expressed by the
formula: EQUALITY IN NATURAL WEALTH, AND THE PRODUCTS OF LABOR.
These three degrees of sociability support and imply each other.
Equite cannot exist without justice; society without justice is a
solecism. If, in order to reward talent, I take from one to give to
another, in unjustly stripping the first, I do not esteem his talent as
I ought; if, in society, I award more to myself than to my associate, we
are not really associated. Justice is sociability as manifested in the
division of material things, susceptible of weight and measure; equite
is justice accompanied by admiration and esteem,--things which cannot be
measured.
From this several inferences may be drawn.
1. Though we are free to grant our esteem to one more than to another,
and in all possible degrees, yet we should give no one more than his
proportion of the common wealth; because the duty of justice, being
imposed upon us before that of equite, must always take precedence of
it. The woman honored by the ancients, who, when forced by a tyrant
to choose between the death of her brother and that of her husband,
sacrificed the latter on the ground that she could find another husband
but not another brother,--that woman, I say, in obeying her sense of
equite, failed in point of justice, and did a bad deed, because conjugal
association is a closer relation than fraternal association, and because
the life of our neighbor is not our property.
By the same principle, inequality of wages cannot be admitted by law on
the ground of inequality of talents; because the just distribution of
wealth is the function of economy,--not of enthusiasm.
Finally, as regards donations, wills, and inheritance, society, careful
both of the personal affections and its own rights, must never permit
love and partiality to destroy justice. And, though it is pleasant to
think that the son, who has been long associated with his father in
business, is more capable than any one else of carrying it on; and that
the citizen, who is surprised in the midst of his task by death, is
best fitted, in consequence of his natural taste for his occupation, to
designate his successor; and though the heir should be allowed the right
of choice in case of more than one inheritance,--nevertheless, society
can tolerate no concentration of capital and industry for the benefit of
a single man, no monopoly of labor, no encroachment. [24]
"Suppose that some spoils, taken from the enemy, and equal to twelve,
are to be divided between Achilles and Ajax. If the two persons were
equal, their respective shares would be arithmetically equal: Achilles
would have six, Ajax six. And if we should carry out this arithmetical
equality, Thersites would be entitled to as much as Achilles, which
would be unjust in the extreme. To avoid this injustice, the worth of
the persons should be estimated, and the spoils divided accordingly.
Suppose that the worth of Achilles is double that of Ajax: the former's
share is eight, the latter four. There is no arithmetical equality, but
a proportional equality. It is this comparison of merits, rationum,
that Aristotle calls distributive justice. It is a geometrical
proportion. "--Toullier: French Law according to the Code.
Are Achilles and Ajax associated, or are they not? Settle that, and
you settle the whole question. If Achilles and Ajax, instead of being
associated, are themselves in the service of Agamemnon who pays them,
there is no objection to Aristotle's method. The slave-owner, who
controls his slaves, may give a double allowance of brandy to him who
does double work. That is the law of despotism; the right of slavery.
But if Achilles and Ajax are associated, they are equals. What matters
it that Achilles has a strength of four, while that of Ajax is only two?
The latter may always answer that he is free; that if Achilles has a
strength of four, five could kill him; finally, that in doing personal
service he incurs as great a risk as Achilles. The same argument applies
to Thersites. If he is unable to fight, let him be cook, purveyor, or
butler. If he is good for nothing, put him in the hospital. In no case
wrong him, or impose upon him laws.
Man must live in one of two states: either in society, or out of it.
In society, conditions are necessarily equal, except in the degree of
esteem and consideration which each one may receive. Out of society, man
is so much raw material, a capitalized tool, and often an incommodious
and useless piece of furniture.
2. Equite, justice, and society, can exist only between individuals of
the same species. They form no part of the relations of different races
to each other,--for instance, of the wolf to the goat, of the goat to
man, of man to God, much less of God to man. The attribution of justice,
equity, and love to the Supreme Being is pure anthropomorphism; and the
adjectives just, merciful, pitiful, and the like, should be stricken
from our litanies. God can be regarded as just, equitable, and good,
only to another God. Now, God has no associate; consequently, he cannot
experience social affections,--such as goodness, equite, and justice.
Is the shepherd said to be just to his sheep and his dogs? No: and if he
saw fit to shear as much wool from a lamb six months old, as from a ram
of two years; or, if he required as much work from a young dog as from
an old one,--they would say, not that he was unjust, but that he was
foolish. Between man and beast there is no society, though there may be
affection. Man loves the animals as THINGS,--as SENTIENT THINGS, if you
will,--but not as PERSONS. Philosophy, after having eliminated from the
idea of God the passions ascribed to him by superstition, will then be
obliged to eliminate also the virtues which our liberal piety awards to
him. [25]
The rights of woman and her relations with man are yet to be determined
Matrimonial legislation, like civil legislation, is a matter for the
future to settle.
If God should come down to earth, and dwell among us, we could not love
him unless he became like us; nor give him any thing unless he produced
something; nor listen to him unless he proved us mistaken; nor worship
him unless he manifested his power. All the laws of our nature,
affectional, economical, and intellectual, would prevent us from
treating him as we treat our fellow-men,--that is, according to reason,
justice, and equite.
I infer from this that, if God should wish ever to put himself into
immediate communication with man, he would have to become a man.
Now, if kings are images of God, and executors of his will, they cannot
receive love, wealth, obedience, and glory from us, unless they consent
to labor and associate with us--produce as much as they consume, reason
with their subjects, and do wonderful things. Still more; if, as some
pretend, kings are public functionaries, the love which is due them is
measured by their personal amiability; our obligation to obey them, by
the wisdom of their commands; and their civil list, by the total social
production divided by the number of citizens.
Thus, jurisprudence, political economy, and psychology agree in
admitting the law of equality. Right and duty--the due reward of talent
and labor--the outbursts of love and enthusiasm,--all are regulated in
advance by an invariable standard; all depend upon number and balance.
Equality of conditions is the law of society, and universal solidarity
is the ratification of this law.
Equality of conditions has never been realized, thanks to our passions
and our ignorance; but our opposition to this law has made it all the
more a necessity. To that fact history bears perpetual testimony, and
the course of events reveals it to us. Society advances from equation to
equation. To the eyes of the economist, the revolutions of empires
seem now like the reduction of algebraical quantities, which are
inter-deducible; now like the discovery of unknown quantities, induced
by the inevitable influence of time. Figures are the providence of
history. Undoubtedly there are other elements in human progress; but in
the multitude of hidden causes which agitate nations, there is none more
powerful or constant, none less obscure, than the periodical explosions
of the proletariat against property. Property, acting by exclusion
and encroachment, while population was increasing, has been the
life-principle and definitive cause of all revolutions. Religious wars,
and wars of conquest, when they have stopped short of the extermination
of races, have been only accidental disturbances, soon repaired by the
mathematical progression of the life of nations. The downfall and death
of societies are due to the power of accumulation possessed by property.
In the middle ages, take Florence,--a republic of merchants and brokers,
always rent by its well-known factions, the Guelphs and Ghibellines, who
were, after all, only the people and the proprietors fighting against
each other,--Florence, ruled by bankers, and borne down at last by the
weight of her debts; [26] in ancient times, take Rome, preyed upon from
its birth by usury, flourishing, nevertheless, as long as the known
world furnished its terrible proletaires with LABOR stained with blood
by civil war at every interval of rest, and dying of exhaustion when
the people lost, together with their former energy, their last spark
of moral sense; Carthage, a commercial and financial city, continually
divided by internal competition; Tyre, Sidon, Jerusalem, Nineveh,
Babylon, ruined, in turn, by commercial rivalry and, as we now express
it, by panics in the market,--do not these famous examples show clearly
enough the fate which awaits modern nations, unless the people,
unless France, with a sudden burst of her powerful voice, proclaims in
thunder-tones the abolition of the regime of property?
Here my task should end. I have proved the right of the poor; I have
shown the usurpation of the rich. I demand justice; it is not my
business to execute the sentence. If it should be argued--in order to
prolong for a few years an illegitimate privilege--that it is not enough
to demonstrate equality, that it is necessary also to organize it, and
above all to establish it peacefully, I might reply: The welfare of the
oppressed is of more importance than official composure. Equality of
conditions is a natural law upon which public economy and jurisprudence
are based. The right to labor, and the principle of equal distribution
of wealth, cannot give way to the anxieties of power. It is not for the
proletaire to reconcile the contradictions of the codes, still less to
suffer for the errors of the government. On the contrary, it is the duty
of the civil and administrative power to reconstruct itself on the basis
of political equality. An evil, when known, should be condemned and
destroyed. The legislator cannot plead ignorance as an excuse for
upholding a glaring iniquity. Restitution should not be delayed.
Justice, justice! recognition of right! reinstatement of the
proletaire! --when these results are accomplished, then, judges and
consuls, you may attend to your police, and provide a government for the
Republic!
For the rest, I do not think that a single one of my readers accuses
me of knowing how to destroy, but of not knowing how to construct. In
demonstrating the principle of equality, I have laid the foundation of
the social structure I have done more. I have given an example of
the true method of solving political and legislative problems. Of the
science itself, I confess that I know nothing more than its principle;
and I know of no one at present who can boast of having penetrated
deeper. Many people cry, "Come to me, and I will teach you the truth! "
These people mistake for the truth their cherished opinion and ardent
conviction, which is usually any thing but the truth. The science of
society--like all human sciences--will be for ever incomplete. The depth
and variety of the questions which it embraces are infinite. We hardly
know the A B C of this science, as is proved by the fact that we have
not yet emerged from the period of systems, and have not ceased to
put the authority of the majority in the place of facts. A certain
philological society decided linguistic questions by a plurality
of votes. Our parliamentary debates--were their results less
pernicious--would be even more ridiculous. The task of the true
publicist, in the age in which we live, is to close the mouths of
quacks and charlatans, and to teach the public to demand demonstrations,
instead of being contented with symbols and programmes. Before talking
of the science itself, it is necessary to ascertain its object, and
discover its method and principle. The ground must be cleared of the
prejudices which encumber it. Such is the mission of the nineteenth
century.
For my part, I have sworn fidelity to my work of demolition, and I will
not cease to pursue the truth through the ruins and rubbish. I hate to
see a thing half done; and it will be believed without any assurance of
mine, that, having dared to raise my hand against the Holy Ark, I shall
not rest contented with the removal of the cover. The mysteries of the
sanctuary of iniquity must be unveiled, the tables of the old alliance
broken, and all the objects of the ancient faith thrown in a heap to the
swine. A charter has been given to us,--a resume of political science,
the monument of twenty legislatures. A code has been written,--the pride
of a conqueror, and the summary of ancient wisdom. Well! of this charter
and this code not one article shall be left standing upon another!
The time has come for the wise to choose their course, and prepare for
reconstruction.
But, since a destroyed error necessarily implies a counter-truth, I will
not finish this treatise without solving the first problem of political
science,--that which receives the attention of all minds.
WHEN PROPERTY IS ABOLISHED, WHAT WILL BE THE FORM OF SOCIETY! WILL IT BE
COMMUNISM?
PART SECOND.
% 1. --Of the Causes of our Mistakes. The Origin of Property.
The true form of human society cannot be determined until the following
question has been solved:--
Property not being our natural condition, how did it gain a foothold?
Why has the social instinct, so trustworthy among the animals, erred
in the case of man? Why is man, who was born for society, not yet
associated?
I have said that human society is COMPLEX in its nature. Though this
expression is inaccurate, the fact to which it refers is none the less
true; namely, the classification of talents and capacities. But who
does not see that these talents and capacities, owing to their infinite
variety, give rise to an infinite variety of wills, and that the
character, the inclinations, and--if I may venture to use the
expression--the form of the ego, are necessarily changed; so that in
the order of liberty, as in the order of intelligence, there are as
many types as individuals, as many characters as heads, whose tastes,
fancies, and propensities, being modified by dissimilar ideas,
must necessarily conflict? Man, by his nature and his instinct, is
predestined to society; but his personality, ever varying, is adverse to
it.
In societies of animals, all the members do exactly the same things.
The same genius directs them; the same will animates them. A society of
beasts is a collection of atoms, round, hooked, cubical, or triangular,
but always perfectly identical. These personalities do not vary, and we
might say that a single ego governs them all. The labors which animals
perform, whether alone or in society, are exact reproductions of their
character. Just as the swarm of bees is composed of individual bees,
alike in nature and equal in value, so the honeycomb is formed of
individual cells, constantly and invariably repeated.
But man's intelligence, fitted for his social destiny and his personal
needs, is of a very different composition, and therefore gives rise to
a wonderful variety of human wills. In the bee, the will is constant
and uniform, because the instinct which guides it is invariable, and
constitutes the animal's whole life and nature. In man, talent varies,
and the mind wavers; consequently, his will is multiform and vague. He
seeks society, but dislikes constraint and monotony; he is an imitator,
but fond of his own ideas, and passionately in love with his works.
If, like the bees, every man were born possessed of talent, perfect
knowledge of certain kinds, and, in a word, an innate acquaintance
with the functions he has to perform, but destitute of reflective and
reasoning faculties, society would organize itself. We should see one
man plowing a field, another building houses; this one forging metals,
that one cutting clothes; and still others storing the products, and
superintending their distribution. Each one, without inquiring as to the
object of his labor, and without troubling himself about the extent of
his task, would obey orders, bring his product, receive his salary, and
would then rest for a time; keeping meanwhile no accounts, envious of
nobody, and satisfied with the distributor, who never would be unjust to
any one. Kings would govern, but would not reign; for to reign is to be
a _proprietor a l'engrais_, as Bonaparte said: and having no commands
to give, since all would be at their posts, they would serve rather as
rallying centres than as authorities or counsellors. It would be a state
of ordered communism, but not a society entered into deliberately and
freely.
But man acquires skill only by observation and experiment. He reflects,
then, since to observe and experiment is to reflect; he reasons,
since he cannot help reasoning. In reflecting, he becomes deluded; in
reasoning, he makes mistakes, and, thinking himself right, persists in
them. He is wedded to his opinions; he esteems himself, and despises
others.
Consequently, he isolates himself; for he could not submit
to the majority without renouncing his will and his reason,--that is,
without disowning himself, which is impossible. And this isolation, this
intellectual egotism, this individuality of opinion, lasts until the
truth is demonstrated to him by observation and experience. A final
illustration will make these facts still clearer.
If to the blind but convergent and harmonious instincts of a swarm
of bees should be suddenly added reflection and judgment, the little
society could not long exist. In the first place, the bees would not
fail to try some new industrial process; for instance, that of making
their cells round or square. All sorts of systems and inventions would
be tried, until long experience, aided by geometry, should show them
that the hexagonal shape is the best. Then insurrections would occur.
The drones would be told to provide for themselves, and the queens to
labor; jealousy would spread among the laborers; discords would burst
forth; soon each one would want to produce on his own account; and
finally the hive would be abandoned, and the bees would perish. Evil
would be introduced into the honey-producing republic by the power of
reflection,--the very faculty which ought to constitute its glory.
Thus, moral evil, or, in this case, disorder in society, is naturally
explained by our power of reflection. The mother of poverty, crime,
insurrection, and war was inequality of conditions; which was the
daughter of property, which was born of selfishness, which was
engendered by private opinion, which descended in a direct line from
the autocracy of reason. Man, in his infancy, is neither criminal
nor barbarous, but ignorant and inexperienced. Endowed with imperious
instincts which are under the control of his reasoning faculty, at first
he reflects but little, and reasons inaccurately; then, benefiting by
his mistakes, he rectifies his ideas, and perfects his reason. In the
first place, it is the savage sacrificing all his possessions for
a trinket, and then repenting and weeping; it is Esau selling his
birthright for a mess of pottage, and afterwards wishing to cancel
the bargain; it is the civilized workman laboring in insecurity, and
continually demanding that his wages be increased, neither he nor his
employer understanding that, in the absence of equality, any salary,
however large, is always insufficient. Then it is Naboth dying to defend
his inheritance; Cato tearing out his entrails that he might not be
enslaved; Socrates drinking the fatal cup in defence of liberty of
thought; it is the third estate of '89 reclaiming its liberty: soon it
will be the people demanding equality of wages and an equal division of
the means of production.
Man is born a social being,--that is, he seeks equality and justice in
all his relations, but he loves independence and praise. The difficulty
of satisfying these various desires at the same time is the primary
cause of the despotism of the will, and the appropriation which results
from it. On the other hand, man always needs a market for his products;
unable to compare values of different kinds, he is satisfied to judge
approximately, according to his passion and caprice; and he engages in
dishonest commerce, which always results in wealth and poverty. Thus,
the greatest evils which man suffers arise from the misuse of his social
nature, of this same justice of which he is so proud, and which he
applies with such deplorable ignorance.
The practice of justice is a science which, when once discovered
and diffused, will sooner or later put an end to social disorder, by
teaching us our rights and duties.
This progressive and painful education of our instinct, this slow
and imperceptible transformation of our spontaneous perceptions into
deliberate knowledge, does not take place among the animals, whose
instincts remain fixed, and never become enlightened.
"According to Frederic Cuvier, who has so clearly distinguished between
instinct and intelligence in animals, 'instinct is a natural and
inherent faculty, like feeling, irritability, or intelligence. The wolf
and the fox who recognize the traps in which they have been caught, and
who avoid them; the dog and the horse, who understand the meaning of
several of our words, and who obey us,--thereby show _intelligence_.
The dog who hides the remains of his dinner, the bee who constructs his
cell, the bird who builds his nest, act only from _instinct_. Even man
has instincts: it is a special instinct which leads the new-born
child to suck. But, in man, almost every thing is accomplished by
intelligence; and intelligence supplements instinct. The opposite is
true of animals: their instinct is given them as a supplement to their
intelligence. '"--Flourens: Analytical Summary of the Observations of F.
Cuvier.
"We can form a clear idea of instinct only by admitting that animals
have in their _sensorium_, images or innate and constant sensations,
which influence their actions in the same manner that ordinary and
accidental sensations commonly do. It is a sort of dream, or vision,
which always follows them and in all which relates to instinct they may
be regarded as somnambulists. "--F. Cuvier: Introduction to the Animal
Kingdom.
Intelligence and instinct being common, then, though in different
degrees, to animals and man, what is the distinguishing characteristic
of the latter? According to F. Cuvier, it is REFLECTION OR THE POWER
OF INTELLECTUALLY CONSIDERING OUR OWN MODIFICATIONS BY A SURVEY OF
OURSELVES. This lacks clearness, and requires an explanation.
If we grant intelligence to animals, we must also grant them, in some
degree, reflection; for, the first cannot exist without the second, as
F. Cuvier himself has proved by numerous examples. But notice that the
learned observer defines the kind of reflection which distinguishes us
from the animals as the POWER OF CONSIDERING OUR OWN MODIFICATIONS. This
I shall endeavour to interpret, by developing to the best of my ability
the laconism of the philosophical naturalist.
The intelligence acquired by animals never modifies the operations which
they perform by instinct: it is given them only as a provision against
unexpected accidents which might disturb these operations. In man, on
the contrary, instinctive action is constantly changing into deliberate
action. Thus, man is social by instinct, and is every day becoming
social by reflection and choice. At first, he formed his words by
instinct;[1] he was a poet by inspiration: to-day, he makes grammar a
science, and poetry an art. His conception of God and a future life is
spontaneous and instinctive, and his expressions of this conception
have been, by turns, monstrous, eccentric, beautiful, comforting, and
terrible. All these different creeds, at which the frivolous irreligion
of the eighteenth century mocked, are modes of expression of the
religious sentiment. Some day, man will explain to himself the character
of the God whom he believes in, and the nature of that other world to
which his soul aspires.
[1] "The problem of the origin of language is solved by the distinction
made by Frederic Cuvier between instinct and intelligence. Language
is not a premeditated, arbitrary, or conventional device; nor is it
communicated or revealed to us by God. Language is an instinctive and
unpremeditated creation of man, as the hive is of the bee. In this
sense, it may be said that language is not the work of man, since it is
not the work of his mind. Further, the mechanism of language seems
more wonderful and ingenious when it is not regarded as the result of
reflection. This fact is one of the most curious and indisputable which
philology has observed. See, among other works, a Latin essay by F. G.
Bergmann (Strasbourg, 1839), in which the learned author explains how
the phonetic germ is born of sensation; how language passes through
three successive stages of development; why man, endowed at birth with
the instinctive faculty of creating a language, loses this faculty
as fast as his mind develops; and that the study of languages is real
natural history,--in fact, a science. France possesses to-day several
philologists of the first rank, endowed with rare talents and deep
philosophic insight,--modest savants developing a science almost without
the knowledge of the public; devoting themselves to studies which are
scornfully looked down upon, and seeming to shun applause as much as
others seek it. "
All that he does from instinct man despises; or, if he admires it, it
is as Nature's work, not as his own. This explains the obscurity
which surrounds the names of early inventors; it explains also our
indifference to religious matters, and the ridicule heaped upon
religious customs. Man esteems only the products of reflection and of
reason. The most wonderful works of instinct are, in his eyes, only
lucky GOD-SENDS; he reserves the name DISCOVERY--I had almost said
creation--for the works of intelligence. Instinct is the source of
passion and enthusiasm; it is intelligence which causes crime and
virtue.
In developing his intelligence, man makes use of not only his own
observations, but also those of others. He keeps an account of his
experience, and preserves the record; so that the race, as well as
the individual, becomes more and more intelligent. The animals do not
transmit their knowledge; that which each individual accumulates dies
with him.
It is not enough, then, to say that we are distinguished from the
animals by reflection, unless we mean thereby the CONSTANT TENDENCY OF
OUR INSTINCT TO BECOME INTELLIGENCE. While man is governed by instinct,
he is unconscious of his acts. He never would deceive himself, and never
would be troubled by errors, evils, and disorder, if, like the animals,
instinct were his only guide. But the Creator has endowed us with
reflection, to the end that our instinct might become intelligence;
and since this reflection and resulting knowledge pass through various
stages, it happens that in the beginning our instinct is opposed, rather
than guided, by reflection; consequently, that our power of thought
leads us to act in opposition to our nature and our end; that, deceiving
ourselves, we do and suffer evil, until instinct which points us towards
good, and reflection which makes us stumble into evil, are replaced by
the science of good and evil, which invariably causes us to seek the one
and avoid the other.
Thus, evil--or error and its consequences--is the firstborn son of
the union of two opposing faculties, instinct and reflection; good,
or truth, must inevitably be the second child. Or, to again employ the
figure, evil is the product of incest between adverse powers; good will
sooner or later be the legitimate child of their holy and mysterious
union.
Property, born of the reasoning faculty, intrenches itself behind
comparisons. But, just as reflection and reason are subsequent to
spontaneity, observation to sensation, and experience to instinct, so
property is subsequent to communism. Communism--or association in a
simple form--is the necessary object and original aspiration of the
social nature, the spontaneous movement by which it manifests and
establishes itself. It is the first phase of human civilization. In this
state of society,--which the jurists have called NEGATIVE COMMUNISM--man
draws near to man, and shares with him the fruits of the field and the
milk and flesh of animals. Little by little this communism--negative
as long as man does not produce--tends to become positive and organic
through the development of labor and industry. But it is then that the
sovereignty of thought, and the terrible faculty of reasoning logically
or illogically, teach man that, if equality is the sine qua non of
society, communism is the first species of slavery. To express this idea
by an Hegelian formula, I will say:
Communism--the first expression of the social nature--is the first term
of social development,--the THESIS; property, the reverse of communism,
is the second term,--the ANTITHESIS. When we have discovered the third
term, the SYNTHESIS, we shall have the required solution. Now, this
synthesis necessarily results from the correction of the thesis by the
antithesis. Therefore it is necessary, by a final examination of their
characteristics, to eliminate those features which are hostile to
sociability. The union of the two remainders will give us the true form
of human association.
% 2. --Characteristics of Communism and of Property.
I. I ought not to conceal the fact that property and communism have been
considered always the only possible forms of society. This deplorable
error has been the life of property. The disadvantages of communism are
so obvious that its critics never have needed to employ much eloquence
to thoroughly disgust men with it. The irreparability of the injustice
which it causes, the violence which it does to attractions and
repulsions, the yoke of iron which it fastens upon the will, the moral
torture to which it subjects the conscience, the debilitating effect
which it has upon society; and, to sum it all up, the pious and
stupid uniformity which it enforces upon the free, active, reasoning,
unsubmissive personality of man, have shocked common sense, and
condemned communism by an irrevocable decree.
The authorities and examples cited in its favor disprove it. The
communistic republic of Plato involved slavery; that of Lycurgus
employed Helots, whose duty it was to produce for their masters, thus
enabling the latter to devote themselves exclusively to athletic sports
and to war. Even J. J. Rousseau--confounding communism and equality--has
said somewhere that, without slavery, he did not think equality of
conditions possible. The communities of the early Church did not last
the first century out, and soon degenerated into monasteries. In those
of the Jesuits of Paraguay, the condition of the blacks is said by all
travellers to be as miserable as that of slaves; and it is a fact that
the good Fathers were obliged to surround themselves with ditches and
walls to prevent their new converts from escaping. The followers
of Baboeuf--guided by a lofty horror of property rather than by any
definite belief--were ruined by exaggeration of their principles; the
St. Simonians, lumping communism and inequality, passed away like a
masquerade. The greatest danger to which society is exposed to-day is
that of another shipwreck on this rock.
Singularly enough, systematic communism--the deliberate negation of
property--is conceived under the direct influence of the proprietary
prejudice; and property is the basis of all communistic theories.
The members of a community, it is true, have no private property; but
the community is proprietor, and proprietor not only of the goods, but
of the persons and wills. In consequence of this principle of absolute
property, labor, which should be only a condition imposed upon man by
Nature, becomes in all communities a human commandment, and therefore
odious. Passive obedience, irreconcilable with a reflecting will, is
strictly enforced. Fidelity to regulations, which are always defective,
however wise they may be thought, allows of no complaint. Life, talent,
and all the human faculties are the property of the State, which has
the right to use them as it pleases for the common good. Private
associations are sternly prohibited, in spite of the likes and dislikes
of different natures, because to tolerate them would be to introduce
small communities within the large one, and consequently private
property; the strong work for the weak, although this ought to be left
to benevolence, and not enforced, advised, or enjoined; the industrious
work for the lazy, although this is unjust; the clever work for the
foolish, although this is absurd; and, finally, man--casting aside his
personality, his spontaneity, his genius, and his affections--humbly
annihilates himself at the feet of the majestic and inflexible Commune!
Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the
exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation
of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is
the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised: physical and
mental force; force of events, chance, FORTUNE; force of accumulated
property, &c. In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity
on a level with excellence. This damaging equation is repellent to the
conscience, and causes merit to complain; for, although it may be
the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of
generosity,--they never will endure a comparison. Give them equal
opportunities of labor, and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy
to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance
of the common task.
Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the
law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to
labor when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He
wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to
choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from
judgment, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not
through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the
free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest
feelings. Any plan which could be devised for reconciling it with the
demands of the individual reason and will would end only in changing the
thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we
shall avoid disputes about words.
Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience, and
equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart,
and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labor and
laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality
in point of comfort. For the rest, if property is impossible on account
of the desire to accumulate, communism would soon become so through the
desire to shirk.
II. Property, in its turn, violates equality by the rights of exclusion
and increase, and freedom by despotism. The former effect of property
having been sufficiently developed in the last three chapters, I will
content myself here with establishing by a final comparison, its perfect
identity with robbery.
The Latin words for robber are _fur_ and _latro;_ the former taken from
the Greek {GREEK m }, from {GREEK m }, Latin _fero_, I carry away; the
latter from {GREEK 'i }, I play the part of a brigand, which is derived
from {GREEK i }, Latin _lateo_, I conceal myself. The Greeks have also
{GREEK ncg }, from {GREEK ncg }, I filch, whose radical consonants are
the same as those of {GREEK ' cg }, I cover, I conceal. Thus, in these
languages, the idea of a robber is that of a man who conceals, carries
away, or diverts, in any manner whatever, a thing which does not belong
to him.
The Hebrews expressed the same idea by the word _gannab_,--robber,--from
the verb _ganab_, which means to put away, to turn aside: _lo thi-gnob
(Decalogue: Eighth Commandment_), thou shalt not steal,--that is, thou
shalt not hold back, thou shalt not put away any thing for thyself. That
is the act of a man who, on entering into a society into which he
agrees to bring all that he has, secretly reserves a portion, as did the
celebrated disciple Ananias.
The etymology of the French verb _voler_ is still more significant.
_Voler_, or _faire la vole_ (from the Latin _vola_, palm of the hand),
means to take all the tricks in a game of ombre; so that _le voleur_,
the robber, is the capitalist who takes all, who gets the lion's share.
Probably this verb _voler_ had its origin in the professional slang of
thieves, whence it has passed into common use, and, consequently into
the phraseology of the law.
Robbery is committed in a variety of ways, which have been very
cleverly distinguished and classified by legislators according to their
heinousness or merit, to the end that some robbers may be honored, while
others are punished.
We rob,--1. By murder on the highway; 2. Alone, or in a band; 3. By
breaking into buildings, or scaling walls; 4. By abstraction; 5. By
fraudulent bankruptcy; 6. By forgery of the handwriting of public
officials or private individuals; 7. By manufacture of counterfeit
money.
This species includes all robbers who practise their profession with no
other aid than force and open fraud. Bandits, brigands, pirates, rovers
by land and sea,--these names were gloried in by the ancient heroes, who
thought their profession as noble as it was lucrative. Nimrod, Theseus,
Jason and his Argonauts; Jephthah, David, Cacus, Romulus, Clovis and
all his Merovingian descendants; Robert Guiscard, Tancred de Hauteville,
Bohemond, and most of the Norman heroes,--were brigands and robbers. The
heroic character of the robber is expressed in this line from Horace, in
reference to Achilles,--
_"Jura neget sibi nata, nihil non arroget armis_," [27]
and by this sentence from the dying words of Jacob (Gen. xlviii. ), which
the Jews apply to David, and the Christians to their Christ: _Manus ejus
contra omnes_. In our day, the robber--the warrior of the ancients--is
pursued with the utmost vigor. His profession, in the language of the
code, entails ignominious and corporal penalties, from imprisonment to
the scaffold. A sad change in opinions here below!
We rob,--8. By cheating; 9. By swindling; 10. By abuse of trust; 11. By
games and lotteries.
This second species was encouraged by the laws of Lycurgus, in order
to sharpen the wits of the young. It is the kind practised by Ulysses,
Solon, and Sinon; by the ancient and modern Jews, from Jacob down to
Deutz; and by the Bohemians, the Arabs, and all savage tribes. Under
Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. , it was not considered dishonorable to cheat
at play. To do so was a part of the game; and many worthy people did not
scruple to correct the caprice of Fortune by dexterous jugglery.
To-day even, and in all countries, it is thought a mark of merit
among peasants, merchants, and shopkeepers to KNOW HOW TO MAKE A
BARGAIN,--that is, to deceive one's man. This is so universally
accepted, that the cheated party takes no offence. It is known with what
reluctance our government resolved upon the abolition of lotteries. It
felt that it was dealing a stab thereby at property. The pickpocket,
the blackleg, and the charlatan make especial use of their dexterity of
hand, their subtlety of mind, the magic power of their eloquence,
and their great fertility of invention. Sometimes they offer bait to
cupidity. Therefore the penal code--which much prefers intelligence
to muscular vigor--has made, of the four varieties mentioned above,
a second category, liable only to correctional, not to Ignominious,
punishments.
Let them now accuse the law of being materialistic and atheistic.
We rob,--12. By usury.
This species of robbery, so odious and so severely punished since the
publication of the Gospel, is the connecting link between forbidden and
authorized robbery. Owing to its ambiguous nature, it has given rise to
a multitude of contradictions in the laws and in morals,--contradictions
which have been very cleverly turned to account by lawyers, financiers,
and merchants. Thus the usurer, who lends on mortgage at ten, twelve,
and fifteen per cent. , is heavily fined when detected; while the banker,
who receives the same interest (not, it is true, upon a loan, but in the
way of exchange or discount,--that is, of sale), is protected by royal
privilege. But the distinction between the banker and the usurer is
a purely nominal one. Like the usurer, who lends on property, real or
personal, the banker lends on business paper; like the usurer, he
takes his interest in advance; like the usurer, he can recover from
the borrower if the property is destroyed (that is, if the note is
not redeemed),--a circumstance which makes him a money-lender, not a
money-seller. But the banker lends for a short time only, while
the usurer's loan may be for one, two, three, or more years. Now, a
difference in the duration of the loan, or the form of the act, does not
alter the nature of the transaction. As for the capitalists who invest
their money, either with the State or in commercial operations, at
three, four, and five per cent. ,--that is, who lend on usury at a
little lower rate than the bankers and usurers,--they are the flower of
society, the cream of honesty! Moderation in robbery is the height of
virtue! [28]
But what, then, is usury? Nothing is more amusing than to see these
INSTRUCTORS OF NATIONS hesitate between the authority of the Gospel,
which, they say, NEVER CAN HAVE SPOKEN IN VAIN, and the authority of
economical demonstrations. Nothing, to my mind, is more creditable
to the Gospel than this old infidelity of its pretended teachers.
Salmasius, having assimilated interest to rent, was REFUTED by Grotius,
Pufendorf, Burlamaqui, Wolf, and Heineccius; and, what is more curious
still, Salmasius ADMITTED HIS ERROR. Instead of inferring from this
doctrine of Salmasius that all increase is illegitimate, and proceeding
straight on to the demonstration of Gospel equality, they arrived at
just the opposite conclusion; namely, that since everybody acknowledges
that rent is permissible, if we allow that interest does not differ
from rent, there is nothing left which can be called usury, and,
consequently, that the commandment of Jesus Christ is an ILLUSION, and
amounts to NOTHING, which is an impious conclusion.
If this memoir had appeared in the time of Bossuet, that great
theologian would have PROVED by scripture, the fathers, traditions,
councils, and popes, that property exists by Divine right, while usury
is an invention of the devil; and the heretical work would have been
burned, and the author imprisoned.
We rob,--13. By farm-rent, house-rent, and leases of all kinds.
The author of the "Provincial Letters" entertained the honest Christians
of the seventeenth century at the expense of Escobar, the Jesuit,
and the contract Mohatra. "The contract Mohatra," said Escobar, "is a
contract by which goods are bought, at a high price and on credit, to
be again sold at the same moment to the same person, cash down, and at a
lower price. " Escobar found a way to justify this kind of usury. Pascal
and all the Jansenists laughed at him. But what would the satirical
Pascal, the learned Nicole, and the invincible Arnaud have said, if
Father Antoine Escobar de Valladolid had answered them thus: "A lease
is a contract by which real estate is bought, at a high price and on
credit, to be again sold, at the expiration of a certain time, to the
same person, at a lower price; only, to simplify the transaction, the
buyer is content to pay the difference between the first sale and the
second. Either deny the identity of the lease and the contract Mohatra,
and then I will annihilate you in a moment; or, if you admit the
similarity, admit also the soundness of my doctrine: otherwise you
proscribe both interest and rent at one blow"?
In reply to this overwhelming argument of the Jesuit, the sire of
Montalte would have sounded the tocsin, and would have shouted
that society was in peril,--that the Jesuits were sapping its very
foundations.
We rob,--14. By commerce, when the profit of the merchant exceeds his
legitimate salary.
sluggish feelings, and are almost destitute of intelligence; but
the identity of these faculties is preserved to some extent, and our
superiority in this respect arises entirely from our understanding.
It is our strength of memory and penetration of judgment which enable us
to multiply and combine the acts which our social instinct impels us to
perform, and which teaches us how to render them more effective, and
how to distribute them justly. The beasts who live in society practise
justice, but are ignorant of its nature, and do not reason upon it; they
obey their instinct without thought or philosophy. They know not how to
unite the social sentiment with the idea of equality, which they do not
possess; this idea being an abstract one. We, on the contrary, starting
with the principle that society implies equality, can, by our reasoning
faculty, understand and agree with each other in settling our rights;
we have even used our judgment to a great extent. But in all this our
conscience plays a small part, as is proved by the fact that the idea
of RIGHT--of which we catch a glimpse in certain animals who approach
nearer than any others to our standard of intelligence--seems to grow,
from the low level at which it stands in savages, to the lofty height
which it reaches in a Plato or a Franklin. If we trace the development
of the moral sense in individuals, and the progress of laws in nations,
we shall be convinced that the ideas of justice and legislative
perfection are always proportional to intelligence. The notion of
justice--which has been regarded by some philosophers as simple--is
then, in reality, complex. It springs from the social instinct on the
one hand, and the idea of equality on the other; just as the notion of
guilt arises from the feeling that justice has been violated, and from
the idea of free-will.
In conclusion, instinct is not modified by acquaintance with its nature;
and the facts of society, which we have thus far observed, occur among
beasts as well as men. We know the meaning of justice; in other words,
of sociability viewed from the standpoint of equality. We have met with
nothing which separates us from the animals.
% 3. --Of the third degree of Sociability.
The reader, perhaps, has not forgotten what was said in the third
chapter concerning the division of labor and the speciality of talents.
The sum total of the talents and capacities of the race is always
the same, and their nature is always similar. We are all born poets,
mathematicians, philosophers, artists, artisans, or farmers, but we are
not born equally endowed; and between one man and another in society,
or between one faculty and another in the same individual, there is an
infinite difference. This difference of degree in the same faculties,
this predominance of talent in certain directions, is, we have said,
the very foundation of our society. Intelligence and natural genius have
been distributed by Nature so economically, and yet so liberally, that
in society there is no danger of either a surplus or a scarcity of
special talents; and that each laborer, by devoting himself to his
function, may always attain to the degree of proficiency necessary to
enable him to benefit by the labors and discoveries of his fellows.
Owing to this simple and wise precaution of Nature, the laborer is not
isolated by his task. He communicates with his fellows through the mind,
before he is united with them in heart; so that with him love is born of
intelligence.
It is not so with societies of animals. In every species, the aptitudes
of all the individuals--though very limited--are equal in number and
(when they are not the result of instinct) in intensity. Each one does
as well as all the others what all the others do; provides his food,
avoids the enemy, burrows in the earth, builds a nest, &c. No animal,
when free and healthy, expects or requires the aid of his neighbor; who,
in his turn, is equally independent.
Associated animals live side by side without any intellectual
intercourse or intimate communication,--all doing the same things,
having nothing to learn or to remember; they see, feel, and come in
contact with each other, but never penetrate each other. Man continually
exchanges with man ideas and feelings, products and services. Every
discovery and act in society is necessary to him. But of this immense
quantity of products and ideas, that which each one has to produce and
acquire for himself is but an atom in the sun. Man would not be man were
it not for society, and society is supported by the balance and harmony
of the powers which compose it.
Society, among the animals, is SIMPLE; with man it is COMPLEX. Man is
associated with man by the same instinct which associates animal with
animal; but man is associated differently from the animal, and it is
this difference in association which constitutes the difference in
morality.
I have proved,--at too great length, perhaps,--both by the spirit of
the laws which regard property as the basis of society, and by political
economy, that inequality of conditions is justified neither by priority
of occupation nor superiority of talent, service, industry, and
capacity. But, although equality of conditions is a necessary
consequence of natural right, of liberty, of the laws of production,
of the capacity of physical nature, and of the principle of society
itself,--it does not prevent the social sentiment from stepping over the
boundaries of DEBT and CREDIT. The fields of benevolence and love extend
far beyond; and when economy has adjusted its balance, the mind
begins to benefit by its own justice, and the heart expands in the
boundlessness of its affection.
The social sentiment then takes on a new character, which varies with
different persons. In the strong, it becomes the pleasure of generosity;
among equals, frank and cordial friendship; in the weak, the pleasure of
admiration and gratitude.
The man who is superior in strength, skill, or courage, knows that he
owes all that he is to society, without which he could not exist. He
knows that, in treating him precisely as it does the lowest of its
members, society discharges its whole duty towards him. But he does
not underrate his faculties; he is no less conscious of his power and
greatness; and it is this voluntary reverence which he pays to humanity,
this avowal that he is but an instrument of Nature,--who is alone worthy
of glory and worship,--it is, I say, this simultaneous confession of
the heart and the mind, this genuine adoration of the Great Being, that
distinguishes and elevates man, and lifts him to a degree of social
morality to which the beast is powerless to attain. Hercules destroying
the monsters and punishing brigands for the safety of Greece, Orpheus
teaching the rough and wild Pelasgians,--neither of them putting a price
upon their services,--there we see the noblest creations of poetry, the
loftiest expression of justice and virtue.
The joys of self-sacrifice are ineffable.
If I were to compare human society to the old Greek tragedies, I should
say that the phalanx of noble minds and lofty souls dances the strophe,
and the humble multitude the antistrophe. Burdened with painful and
disagreeable tasks, but rendered omnipotent by their number and the
harmonic arrangement of their functions, the latter execute what the
others plan. Guided by them, they owe them nothing; they honor them,
however, and lavish upon them praise and approbation.
Gratitude fills people with adoration and enthusiasm.
But equality delights my heart. Benevolence degenerates into tyranny,
and admiration into servility. Friendship is the daughter of equality.
O my friends! may I live in your midst without emulation, and without
glory; let equality bring us together, and fate assign us our places.
May I die without knowing to whom among you I owe the most esteem!
Friendship is precious to the hearts of the children of men.
Generosity, gratitude (I mean here only that gratitude which is born
of admiration of a superior power), and friendship are three distinct
shades of a single sentiment which I will call equite, or SOCIAL
PROPORTIONALITY. [23] Equite does not change justice: but, always taking
equite for the base, it superadds esteem, and thereby forms in man a
third degree of sociability. Equite makes it at once our duty and our
pleasure to aid the weak who have need of us, and to make them our
equals; to pay to the strong a just tribute of gratitude and honor,
without enslaving ourselves to them; to cherish our neighbors, friends,
and equals, for that which we receive from them, even by right of
exchange. Equite is sociability raised to its ideal by reason and
justice; its commonest manifestation is URBANITY or POLITENESS, which,
among certain nations, sums up in a single word nearly all the social
duties.
It is the just distribution of social sympathy and universal love.
Now, this feeling is unknown among the beasts, who love and cling to
each other, and show their preferences, but who cannot conceive of
esteem, and who are incapable of generosity, admiration, or politeness.
This feeling does not spring from intelligence, which calculates,
computes, and balances, but does not love; which sees, but does not
feel. As justice is the product of social instinct and reflection
combined, so equite is a product of justice and taste combined--that is,
of our powers of judging and of idealizing.
This product--the third and last degree of human sociability--is
determined by our complex mode of association; in which inequality,
or rather the divergence of faculties, and the speciality of
functions--tending of themselves to isolate laborers--demand a more
active sociability.
That is why the force which oppresses while protecting is execrable; why
the silly ignorance which views with the same eye the marvels of art,
and the products of the rudest industry, excites unutterable contempt;
why proud mediocrity, which glories in saying, "I have paid you--I owe
you nothing," is especially odious.
SOCIABILITY, JUSTICE, EQUITE--such, in its triplicity, is the exact
definition of the instinctive faculty which leads us into communication
with our fellows, and whose physical manifestation is expressed by the
formula: EQUALITY IN NATURAL WEALTH, AND THE PRODUCTS OF LABOR.
These three degrees of sociability support and imply each other.
Equite cannot exist without justice; society without justice is a
solecism. If, in order to reward talent, I take from one to give to
another, in unjustly stripping the first, I do not esteem his talent as
I ought; if, in society, I award more to myself than to my associate, we
are not really associated. Justice is sociability as manifested in the
division of material things, susceptible of weight and measure; equite
is justice accompanied by admiration and esteem,--things which cannot be
measured.
From this several inferences may be drawn.
1. Though we are free to grant our esteem to one more than to another,
and in all possible degrees, yet we should give no one more than his
proportion of the common wealth; because the duty of justice, being
imposed upon us before that of equite, must always take precedence of
it. The woman honored by the ancients, who, when forced by a tyrant
to choose between the death of her brother and that of her husband,
sacrificed the latter on the ground that she could find another husband
but not another brother,--that woman, I say, in obeying her sense of
equite, failed in point of justice, and did a bad deed, because conjugal
association is a closer relation than fraternal association, and because
the life of our neighbor is not our property.
By the same principle, inequality of wages cannot be admitted by law on
the ground of inequality of talents; because the just distribution of
wealth is the function of economy,--not of enthusiasm.
Finally, as regards donations, wills, and inheritance, society, careful
both of the personal affections and its own rights, must never permit
love and partiality to destroy justice. And, though it is pleasant to
think that the son, who has been long associated with his father in
business, is more capable than any one else of carrying it on; and that
the citizen, who is surprised in the midst of his task by death, is
best fitted, in consequence of his natural taste for his occupation, to
designate his successor; and though the heir should be allowed the right
of choice in case of more than one inheritance,--nevertheless, society
can tolerate no concentration of capital and industry for the benefit of
a single man, no monopoly of labor, no encroachment. [24]
"Suppose that some spoils, taken from the enemy, and equal to twelve,
are to be divided between Achilles and Ajax. If the two persons were
equal, their respective shares would be arithmetically equal: Achilles
would have six, Ajax six. And if we should carry out this arithmetical
equality, Thersites would be entitled to as much as Achilles, which
would be unjust in the extreme. To avoid this injustice, the worth of
the persons should be estimated, and the spoils divided accordingly.
Suppose that the worth of Achilles is double that of Ajax: the former's
share is eight, the latter four. There is no arithmetical equality, but
a proportional equality. It is this comparison of merits, rationum,
that Aristotle calls distributive justice. It is a geometrical
proportion. "--Toullier: French Law according to the Code.
Are Achilles and Ajax associated, or are they not? Settle that, and
you settle the whole question. If Achilles and Ajax, instead of being
associated, are themselves in the service of Agamemnon who pays them,
there is no objection to Aristotle's method. The slave-owner, who
controls his slaves, may give a double allowance of brandy to him who
does double work. That is the law of despotism; the right of slavery.
But if Achilles and Ajax are associated, they are equals. What matters
it that Achilles has a strength of four, while that of Ajax is only two?
The latter may always answer that he is free; that if Achilles has a
strength of four, five could kill him; finally, that in doing personal
service he incurs as great a risk as Achilles. The same argument applies
to Thersites. If he is unable to fight, let him be cook, purveyor, or
butler. If he is good for nothing, put him in the hospital. In no case
wrong him, or impose upon him laws.
Man must live in one of two states: either in society, or out of it.
In society, conditions are necessarily equal, except in the degree of
esteem and consideration which each one may receive. Out of society, man
is so much raw material, a capitalized tool, and often an incommodious
and useless piece of furniture.
2. Equite, justice, and society, can exist only between individuals of
the same species. They form no part of the relations of different races
to each other,--for instance, of the wolf to the goat, of the goat to
man, of man to God, much less of God to man. The attribution of justice,
equity, and love to the Supreme Being is pure anthropomorphism; and the
adjectives just, merciful, pitiful, and the like, should be stricken
from our litanies. God can be regarded as just, equitable, and good,
only to another God. Now, God has no associate; consequently, he cannot
experience social affections,--such as goodness, equite, and justice.
Is the shepherd said to be just to his sheep and his dogs? No: and if he
saw fit to shear as much wool from a lamb six months old, as from a ram
of two years; or, if he required as much work from a young dog as from
an old one,--they would say, not that he was unjust, but that he was
foolish. Between man and beast there is no society, though there may be
affection. Man loves the animals as THINGS,--as SENTIENT THINGS, if you
will,--but not as PERSONS. Philosophy, after having eliminated from the
idea of God the passions ascribed to him by superstition, will then be
obliged to eliminate also the virtues which our liberal piety awards to
him. [25]
The rights of woman and her relations with man are yet to be determined
Matrimonial legislation, like civil legislation, is a matter for the
future to settle.
If God should come down to earth, and dwell among us, we could not love
him unless he became like us; nor give him any thing unless he produced
something; nor listen to him unless he proved us mistaken; nor worship
him unless he manifested his power. All the laws of our nature,
affectional, economical, and intellectual, would prevent us from
treating him as we treat our fellow-men,--that is, according to reason,
justice, and equite.
I infer from this that, if God should wish ever to put himself into
immediate communication with man, he would have to become a man.
Now, if kings are images of God, and executors of his will, they cannot
receive love, wealth, obedience, and glory from us, unless they consent
to labor and associate with us--produce as much as they consume, reason
with their subjects, and do wonderful things. Still more; if, as some
pretend, kings are public functionaries, the love which is due them is
measured by their personal amiability; our obligation to obey them, by
the wisdom of their commands; and their civil list, by the total social
production divided by the number of citizens.
Thus, jurisprudence, political economy, and psychology agree in
admitting the law of equality. Right and duty--the due reward of talent
and labor--the outbursts of love and enthusiasm,--all are regulated in
advance by an invariable standard; all depend upon number and balance.
Equality of conditions is the law of society, and universal solidarity
is the ratification of this law.
Equality of conditions has never been realized, thanks to our passions
and our ignorance; but our opposition to this law has made it all the
more a necessity. To that fact history bears perpetual testimony, and
the course of events reveals it to us. Society advances from equation to
equation. To the eyes of the economist, the revolutions of empires
seem now like the reduction of algebraical quantities, which are
inter-deducible; now like the discovery of unknown quantities, induced
by the inevitable influence of time. Figures are the providence of
history. Undoubtedly there are other elements in human progress; but in
the multitude of hidden causes which agitate nations, there is none more
powerful or constant, none less obscure, than the periodical explosions
of the proletariat against property. Property, acting by exclusion
and encroachment, while population was increasing, has been the
life-principle and definitive cause of all revolutions. Religious wars,
and wars of conquest, when they have stopped short of the extermination
of races, have been only accidental disturbances, soon repaired by the
mathematical progression of the life of nations. The downfall and death
of societies are due to the power of accumulation possessed by property.
In the middle ages, take Florence,--a republic of merchants and brokers,
always rent by its well-known factions, the Guelphs and Ghibellines, who
were, after all, only the people and the proprietors fighting against
each other,--Florence, ruled by bankers, and borne down at last by the
weight of her debts; [26] in ancient times, take Rome, preyed upon from
its birth by usury, flourishing, nevertheless, as long as the known
world furnished its terrible proletaires with LABOR stained with blood
by civil war at every interval of rest, and dying of exhaustion when
the people lost, together with their former energy, their last spark
of moral sense; Carthage, a commercial and financial city, continually
divided by internal competition; Tyre, Sidon, Jerusalem, Nineveh,
Babylon, ruined, in turn, by commercial rivalry and, as we now express
it, by panics in the market,--do not these famous examples show clearly
enough the fate which awaits modern nations, unless the people,
unless France, with a sudden burst of her powerful voice, proclaims in
thunder-tones the abolition of the regime of property?
Here my task should end. I have proved the right of the poor; I have
shown the usurpation of the rich. I demand justice; it is not my
business to execute the sentence. If it should be argued--in order to
prolong for a few years an illegitimate privilege--that it is not enough
to demonstrate equality, that it is necessary also to organize it, and
above all to establish it peacefully, I might reply: The welfare of the
oppressed is of more importance than official composure. Equality of
conditions is a natural law upon which public economy and jurisprudence
are based. The right to labor, and the principle of equal distribution
of wealth, cannot give way to the anxieties of power. It is not for the
proletaire to reconcile the contradictions of the codes, still less to
suffer for the errors of the government. On the contrary, it is the duty
of the civil and administrative power to reconstruct itself on the basis
of political equality. An evil, when known, should be condemned and
destroyed. The legislator cannot plead ignorance as an excuse for
upholding a glaring iniquity. Restitution should not be delayed.
Justice, justice! recognition of right! reinstatement of the
proletaire! --when these results are accomplished, then, judges and
consuls, you may attend to your police, and provide a government for the
Republic!
For the rest, I do not think that a single one of my readers accuses
me of knowing how to destroy, but of not knowing how to construct. In
demonstrating the principle of equality, I have laid the foundation of
the social structure I have done more. I have given an example of
the true method of solving political and legislative problems. Of the
science itself, I confess that I know nothing more than its principle;
and I know of no one at present who can boast of having penetrated
deeper. Many people cry, "Come to me, and I will teach you the truth! "
These people mistake for the truth their cherished opinion and ardent
conviction, which is usually any thing but the truth. The science of
society--like all human sciences--will be for ever incomplete. The depth
and variety of the questions which it embraces are infinite. We hardly
know the A B C of this science, as is proved by the fact that we have
not yet emerged from the period of systems, and have not ceased to
put the authority of the majority in the place of facts. A certain
philological society decided linguistic questions by a plurality
of votes. Our parliamentary debates--were their results less
pernicious--would be even more ridiculous. The task of the true
publicist, in the age in which we live, is to close the mouths of
quacks and charlatans, and to teach the public to demand demonstrations,
instead of being contented with symbols and programmes. Before talking
of the science itself, it is necessary to ascertain its object, and
discover its method and principle. The ground must be cleared of the
prejudices which encumber it. Such is the mission of the nineteenth
century.
For my part, I have sworn fidelity to my work of demolition, and I will
not cease to pursue the truth through the ruins and rubbish. I hate to
see a thing half done; and it will be believed without any assurance of
mine, that, having dared to raise my hand against the Holy Ark, I shall
not rest contented with the removal of the cover. The mysteries of the
sanctuary of iniquity must be unveiled, the tables of the old alliance
broken, and all the objects of the ancient faith thrown in a heap to the
swine. A charter has been given to us,--a resume of political science,
the monument of twenty legislatures. A code has been written,--the pride
of a conqueror, and the summary of ancient wisdom. Well! of this charter
and this code not one article shall be left standing upon another!
The time has come for the wise to choose their course, and prepare for
reconstruction.
But, since a destroyed error necessarily implies a counter-truth, I will
not finish this treatise without solving the first problem of political
science,--that which receives the attention of all minds.
WHEN PROPERTY IS ABOLISHED, WHAT WILL BE THE FORM OF SOCIETY! WILL IT BE
COMMUNISM?
PART SECOND.
% 1. --Of the Causes of our Mistakes. The Origin of Property.
The true form of human society cannot be determined until the following
question has been solved:--
Property not being our natural condition, how did it gain a foothold?
Why has the social instinct, so trustworthy among the animals, erred
in the case of man? Why is man, who was born for society, not yet
associated?
I have said that human society is COMPLEX in its nature. Though this
expression is inaccurate, the fact to which it refers is none the less
true; namely, the classification of talents and capacities. But who
does not see that these talents and capacities, owing to their infinite
variety, give rise to an infinite variety of wills, and that the
character, the inclinations, and--if I may venture to use the
expression--the form of the ego, are necessarily changed; so that in
the order of liberty, as in the order of intelligence, there are as
many types as individuals, as many characters as heads, whose tastes,
fancies, and propensities, being modified by dissimilar ideas,
must necessarily conflict? Man, by his nature and his instinct, is
predestined to society; but his personality, ever varying, is adverse to
it.
In societies of animals, all the members do exactly the same things.
The same genius directs them; the same will animates them. A society of
beasts is a collection of atoms, round, hooked, cubical, or triangular,
but always perfectly identical. These personalities do not vary, and we
might say that a single ego governs them all. The labors which animals
perform, whether alone or in society, are exact reproductions of their
character. Just as the swarm of bees is composed of individual bees,
alike in nature and equal in value, so the honeycomb is formed of
individual cells, constantly and invariably repeated.
But man's intelligence, fitted for his social destiny and his personal
needs, is of a very different composition, and therefore gives rise to
a wonderful variety of human wills. In the bee, the will is constant
and uniform, because the instinct which guides it is invariable, and
constitutes the animal's whole life and nature. In man, talent varies,
and the mind wavers; consequently, his will is multiform and vague. He
seeks society, but dislikes constraint and monotony; he is an imitator,
but fond of his own ideas, and passionately in love with his works.
If, like the bees, every man were born possessed of talent, perfect
knowledge of certain kinds, and, in a word, an innate acquaintance
with the functions he has to perform, but destitute of reflective and
reasoning faculties, society would organize itself. We should see one
man plowing a field, another building houses; this one forging metals,
that one cutting clothes; and still others storing the products, and
superintending their distribution. Each one, without inquiring as to the
object of his labor, and without troubling himself about the extent of
his task, would obey orders, bring his product, receive his salary, and
would then rest for a time; keeping meanwhile no accounts, envious of
nobody, and satisfied with the distributor, who never would be unjust to
any one. Kings would govern, but would not reign; for to reign is to be
a _proprietor a l'engrais_, as Bonaparte said: and having no commands
to give, since all would be at their posts, they would serve rather as
rallying centres than as authorities or counsellors. It would be a state
of ordered communism, but not a society entered into deliberately and
freely.
But man acquires skill only by observation and experiment. He reflects,
then, since to observe and experiment is to reflect; he reasons,
since he cannot help reasoning. In reflecting, he becomes deluded; in
reasoning, he makes mistakes, and, thinking himself right, persists in
them. He is wedded to his opinions; he esteems himself, and despises
others.
Consequently, he isolates himself; for he could not submit
to the majority without renouncing his will and his reason,--that is,
without disowning himself, which is impossible. And this isolation, this
intellectual egotism, this individuality of opinion, lasts until the
truth is demonstrated to him by observation and experience. A final
illustration will make these facts still clearer.
If to the blind but convergent and harmonious instincts of a swarm
of bees should be suddenly added reflection and judgment, the little
society could not long exist. In the first place, the bees would not
fail to try some new industrial process; for instance, that of making
their cells round or square. All sorts of systems and inventions would
be tried, until long experience, aided by geometry, should show them
that the hexagonal shape is the best. Then insurrections would occur.
The drones would be told to provide for themselves, and the queens to
labor; jealousy would spread among the laborers; discords would burst
forth; soon each one would want to produce on his own account; and
finally the hive would be abandoned, and the bees would perish. Evil
would be introduced into the honey-producing republic by the power of
reflection,--the very faculty which ought to constitute its glory.
Thus, moral evil, or, in this case, disorder in society, is naturally
explained by our power of reflection. The mother of poverty, crime,
insurrection, and war was inequality of conditions; which was the
daughter of property, which was born of selfishness, which was
engendered by private opinion, which descended in a direct line from
the autocracy of reason. Man, in his infancy, is neither criminal
nor barbarous, but ignorant and inexperienced. Endowed with imperious
instincts which are under the control of his reasoning faculty, at first
he reflects but little, and reasons inaccurately; then, benefiting by
his mistakes, he rectifies his ideas, and perfects his reason. In the
first place, it is the savage sacrificing all his possessions for
a trinket, and then repenting and weeping; it is Esau selling his
birthright for a mess of pottage, and afterwards wishing to cancel
the bargain; it is the civilized workman laboring in insecurity, and
continually demanding that his wages be increased, neither he nor his
employer understanding that, in the absence of equality, any salary,
however large, is always insufficient. Then it is Naboth dying to defend
his inheritance; Cato tearing out his entrails that he might not be
enslaved; Socrates drinking the fatal cup in defence of liberty of
thought; it is the third estate of '89 reclaiming its liberty: soon it
will be the people demanding equality of wages and an equal division of
the means of production.
Man is born a social being,--that is, he seeks equality and justice in
all his relations, but he loves independence and praise. The difficulty
of satisfying these various desires at the same time is the primary
cause of the despotism of the will, and the appropriation which results
from it. On the other hand, man always needs a market for his products;
unable to compare values of different kinds, he is satisfied to judge
approximately, according to his passion and caprice; and he engages in
dishonest commerce, which always results in wealth and poverty. Thus,
the greatest evils which man suffers arise from the misuse of his social
nature, of this same justice of which he is so proud, and which he
applies with such deplorable ignorance.
The practice of justice is a science which, when once discovered
and diffused, will sooner or later put an end to social disorder, by
teaching us our rights and duties.
This progressive and painful education of our instinct, this slow
and imperceptible transformation of our spontaneous perceptions into
deliberate knowledge, does not take place among the animals, whose
instincts remain fixed, and never become enlightened.
"According to Frederic Cuvier, who has so clearly distinguished between
instinct and intelligence in animals, 'instinct is a natural and
inherent faculty, like feeling, irritability, or intelligence. The wolf
and the fox who recognize the traps in which they have been caught, and
who avoid them; the dog and the horse, who understand the meaning of
several of our words, and who obey us,--thereby show _intelligence_.
The dog who hides the remains of his dinner, the bee who constructs his
cell, the bird who builds his nest, act only from _instinct_. Even man
has instincts: it is a special instinct which leads the new-born
child to suck. But, in man, almost every thing is accomplished by
intelligence; and intelligence supplements instinct. The opposite is
true of animals: their instinct is given them as a supplement to their
intelligence. '"--Flourens: Analytical Summary of the Observations of F.
Cuvier.
"We can form a clear idea of instinct only by admitting that animals
have in their _sensorium_, images or innate and constant sensations,
which influence their actions in the same manner that ordinary and
accidental sensations commonly do. It is a sort of dream, or vision,
which always follows them and in all which relates to instinct they may
be regarded as somnambulists. "--F. Cuvier: Introduction to the Animal
Kingdom.
Intelligence and instinct being common, then, though in different
degrees, to animals and man, what is the distinguishing characteristic
of the latter? According to F. Cuvier, it is REFLECTION OR THE POWER
OF INTELLECTUALLY CONSIDERING OUR OWN MODIFICATIONS BY A SURVEY OF
OURSELVES. This lacks clearness, and requires an explanation.
If we grant intelligence to animals, we must also grant them, in some
degree, reflection; for, the first cannot exist without the second, as
F. Cuvier himself has proved by numerous examples. But notice that the
learned observer defines the kind of reflection which distinguishes us
from the animals as the POWER OF CONSIDERING OUR OWN MODIFICATIONS. This
I shall endeavour to interpret, by developing to the best of my ability
the laconism of the philosophical naturalist.
The intelligence acquired by animals never modifies the operations which
they perform by instinct: it is given them only as a provision against
unexpected accidents which might disturb these operations. In man, on
the contrary, instinctive action is constantly changing into deliberate
action. Thus, man is social by instinct, and is every day becoming
social by reflection and choice. At first, he formed his words by
instinct;[1] he was a poet by inspiration: to-day, he makes grammar a
science, and poetry an art. His conception of God and a future life is
spontaneous and instinctive, and his expressions of this conception
have been, by turns, monstrous, eccentric, beautiful, comforting, and
terrible. All these different creeds, at which the frivolous irreligion
of the eighteenth century mocked, are modes of expression of the
religious sentiment. Some day, man will explain to himself the character
of the God whom he believes in, and the nature of that other world to
which his soul aspires.
[1] "The problem of the origin of language is solved by the distinction
made by Frederic Cuvier between instinct and intelligence. Language
is not a premeditated, arbitrary, or conventional device; nor is it
communicated or revealed to us by God. Language is an instinctive and
unpremeditated creation of man, as the hive is of the bee. In this
sense, it may be said that language is not the work of man, since it is
not the work of his mind. Further, the mechanism of language seems
more wonderful and ingenious when it is not regarded as the result of
reflection. This fact is one of the most curious and indisputable which
philology has observed. See, among other works, a Latin essay by F. G.
Bergmann (Strasbourg, 1839), in which the learned author explains how
the phonetic germ is born of sensation; how language passes through
three successive stages of development; why man, endowed at birth with
the instinctive faculty of creating a language, loses this faculty
as fast as his mind develops; and that the study of languages is real
natural history,--in fact, a science. France possesses to-day several
philologists of the first rank, endowed with rare talents and deep
philosophic insight,--modest savants developing a science almost without
the knowledge of the public; devoting themselves to studies which are
scornfully looked down upon, and seeming to shun applause as much as
others seek it. "
All that he does from instinct man despises; or, if he admires it, it
is as Nature's work, not as his own. This explains the obscurity
which surrounds the names of early inventors; it explains also our
indifference to religious matters, and the ridicule heaped upon
religious customs. Man esteems only the products of reflection and of
reason. The most wonderful works of instinct are, in his eyes, only
lucky GOD-SENDS; he reserves the name DISCOVERY--I had almost said
creation--for the works of intelligence. Instinct is the source of
passion and enthusiasm; it is intelligence which causes crime and
virtue.
In developing his intelligence, man makes use of not only his own
observations, but also those of others. He keeps an account of his
experience, and preserves the record; so that the race, as well as
the individual, becomes more and more intelligent. The animals do not
transmit their knowledge; that which each individual accumulates dies
with him.
It is not enough, then, to say that we are distinguished from the
animals by reflection, unless we mean thereby the CONSTANT TENDENCY OF
OUR INSTINCT TO BECOME INTELLIGENCE. While man is governed by instinct,
he is unconscious of his acts. He never would deceive himself, and never
would be troubled by errors, evils, and disorder, if, like the animals,
instinct were his only guide. But the Creator has endowed us with
reflection, to the end that our instinct might become intelligence;
and since this reflection and resulting knowledge pass through various
stages, it happens that in the beginning our instinct is opposed, rather
than guided, by reflection; consequently, that our power of thought
leads us to act in opposition to our nature and our end; that, deceiving
ourselves, we do and suffer evil, until instinct which points us towards
good, and reflection which makes us stumble into evil, are replaced by
the science of good and evil, which invariably causes us to seek the one
and avoid the other.
Thus, evil--or error and its consequences--is the firstborn son of
the union of two opposing faculties, instinct and reflection; good,
or truth, must inevitably be the second child. Or, to again employ the
figure, evil is the product of incest between adverse powers; good will
sooner or later be the legitimate child of their holy and mysterious
union.
Property, born of the reasoning faculty, intrenches itself behind
comparisons. But, just as reflection and reason are subsequent to
spontaneity, observation to sensation, and experience to instinct, so
property is subsequent to communism. Communism--or association in a
simple form--is the necessary object and original aspiration of the
social nature, the spontaneous movement by which it manifests and
establishes itself. It is the first phase of human civilization. In this
state of society,--which the jurists have called NEGATIVE COMMUNISM--man
draws near to man, and shares with him the fruits of the field and the
milk and flesh of animals. Little by little this communism--negative
as long as man does not produce--tends to become positive and organic
through the development of labor and industry. But it is then that the
sovereignty of thought, and the terrible faculty of reasoning logically
or illogically, teach man that, if equality is the sine qua non of
society, communism is the first species of slavery. To express this idea
by an Hegelian formula, I will say:
Communism--the first expression of the social nature--is the first term
of social development,--the THESIS; property, the reverse of communism,
is the second term,--the ANTITHESIS. When we have discovered the third
term, the SYNTHESIS, we shall have the required solution. Now, this
synthesis necessarily results from the correction of the thesis by the
antithesis. Therefore it is necessary, by a final examination of their
characteristics, to eliminate those features which are hostile to
sociability. The union of the two remainders will give us the true form
of human association.
% 2. --Characteristics of Communism and of Property.
I. I ought not to conceal the fact that property and communism have been
considered always the only possible forms of society. This deplorable
error has been the life of property. The disadvantages of communism are
so obvious that its critics never have needed to employ much eloquence
to thoroughly disgust men with it. The irreparability of the injustice
which it causes, the violence which it does to attractions and
repulsions, the yoke of iron which it fastens upon the will, the moral
torture to which it subjects the conscience, the debilitating effect
which it has upon society; and, to sum it all up, the pious and
stupid uniformity which it enforces upon the free, active, reasoning,
unsubmissive personality of man, have shocked common sense, and
condemned communism by an irrevocable decree.
The authorities and examples cited in its favor disprove it. The
communistic republic of Plato involved slavery; that of Lycurgus
employed Helots, whose duty it was to produce for their masters, thus
enabling the latter to devote themselves exclusively to athletic sports
and to war. Even J. J. Rousseau--confounding communism and equality--has
said somewhere that, without slavery, he did not think equality of
conditions possible. The communities of the early Church did not last
the first century out, and soon degenerated into monasteries. In those
of the Jesuits of Paraguay, the condition of the blacks is said by all
travellers to be as miserable as that of slaves; and it is a fact that
the good Fathers were obliged to surround themselves with ditches and
walls to prevent their new converts from escaping. The followers
of Baboeuf--guided by a lofty horror of property rather than by any
definite belief--were ruined by exaggeration of their principles; the
St. Simonians, lumping communism and inequality, passed away like a
masquerade. The greatest danger to which society is exposed to-day is
that of another shipwreck on this rock.
Singularly enough, systematic communism--the deliberate negation of
property--is conceived under the direct influence of the proprietary
prejudice; and property is the basis of all communistic theories.
The members of a community, it is true, have no private property; but
the community is proprietor, and proprietor not only of the goods, but
of the persons and wills. In consequence of this principle of absolute
property, labor, which should be only a condition imposed upon man by
Nature, becomes in all communities a human commandment, and therefore
odious. Passive obedience, irreconcilable with a reflecting will, is
strictly enforced. Fidelity to regulations, which are always defective,
however wise they may be thought, allows of no complaint. Life, talent,
and all the human faculties are the property of the State, which has
the right to use them as it pleases for the common good. Private
associations are sternly prohibited, in spite of the likes and dislikes
of different natures, because to tolerate them would be to introduce
small communities within the large one, and consequently private
property; the strong work for the weak, although this ought to be left
to benevolence, and not enforced, advised, or enjoined; the industrious
work for the lazy, although this is unjust; the clever work for the
foolish, although this is absurd; and, finally, man--casting aside his
personality, his spontaneity, his genius, and his affections--humbly
annihilates himself at the feet of the majestic and inflexible Commune!
Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the
exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation
of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is
the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised: physical and
mental force; force of events, chance, FORTUNE; force of accumulated
property, &c. In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity
on a level with excellence. This damaging equation is repellent to the
conscience, and causes merit to complain; for, although it may be
the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of
generosity,--they never will endure a comparison. Give them equal
opportunities of labor, and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy
to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance
of the common task.
Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the
law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to
labor when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He
wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to
choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from
judgment, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not
through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the
free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest
feelings. Any plan which could be devised for reconciling it with the
demands of the individual reason and will would end only in changing the
thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we
shall avoid disputes about words.
Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience, and
equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart,
and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labor and
laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality
in point of comfort. For the rest, if property is impossible on account
of the desire to accumulate, communism would soon become so through the
desire to shirk.
II. Property, in its turn, violates equality by the rights of exclusion
and increase, and freedom by despotism. The former effect of property
having been sufficiently developed in the last three chapters, I will
content myself here with establishing by a final comparison, its perfect
identity with robbery.
The Latin words for robber are _fur_ and _latro;_ the former taken from
the Greek {GREEK m }, from {GREEK m }, Latin _fero_, I carry away; the
latter from {GREEK 'i }, I play the part of a brigand, which is derived
from {GREEK i }, Latin _lateo_, I conceal myself. The Greeks have also
{GREEK ncg }, from {GREEK ncg }, I filch, whose radical consonants are
the same as those of {GREEK ' cg }, I cover, I conceal. Thus, in these
languages, the idea of a robber is that of a man who conceals, carries
away, or diverts, in any manner whatever, a thing which does not belong
to him.
The Hebrews expressed the same idea by the word _gannab_,--robber,--from
the verb _ganab_, which means to put away, to turn aside: _lo thi-gnob
(Decalogue: Eighth Commandment_), thou shalt not steal,--that is, thou
shalt not hold back, thou shalt not put away any thing for thyself. That
is the act of a man who, on entering into a society into which he
agrees to bring all that he has, secretly reserves a portion, as did the
celebrated disciple Ananias.
The etymology of the French verb _voler_ is still more significant.
_Voler_, or _faire la vole_ (from the Latin _vola_, palm of the hand),
means to take all the tricks in a game of ombre; so that _le voleur_,
the robber, is the capitalist who takes all, who gets the lion's share.
Probably this verb _voler_ had its origin in the professional slang of
thieves, whence it has passed into common use, and, consequently into
the phraseology of the law.
Robbery is committed in a variety of ways, which have been very
cleverly distinguished and classified by legislators according to their
heinousness or merit, to the end that some robbers may be honored, while
others are punished.
We rob,--1. By murder on the highway; 2. Alone, or in a band; 3. By
breaking into buildings, or scaling walls; 4. By abstraction; 5. By
fraudulent bankruptcy; 6. By forgery of the handwriting of public
officials or private individuals; 7. By manufacture of counterfeit
money.
This species includes all robbers who practise their profession with no
other aid than force and open fraud. Bandits, brigands, pirates, rovers
by land and sea,--these names were gloried in by the ancient heroes, who
thought their profession as noble as it was lucrative. Nimrod, Theseus,
Jason and his Argonauts; Jephthah, David, Cacus, Romulus, Clovis and
all his Merovingian descendants; Robert Guiscard, Tancred de Hauteville,
Bohemond, and most of the Norman heroes,--were brigands and robbers. The
heroic character of the robber is expressed in this line from Horace, in
reference to Achilles,--
_"Jura neget sibi nata, nihil non arroget armis_," [27]
and by this sentence from the dying words of Jacob (Gen. xlviii. ), which
the Jews apply to David, and the Christians to their Christ: _Manus ejus
contra omnes_. In our day, the robber--the warrior of the ancients--is
pursued with the utmost vigor. His profession, in the language of the
code, entails ignominious and corporal penalties, from imprisonment to
the scaffold. A sad change in opinions here below!
We rob,--8. By cheating; 9. By swindling; 10. By abuse of trust; 11. By
games and lotteries.
This second species was encouraged by the laws of Lycurgus, in order
to sharpen the wits of the young. It is the kind practised by Ulysses,
Solon, and Sinon; by the ancient and modern Jews, from Jacob down to
Deutz; and by the Bohemians, the Arabs, and all savage tribes. Under
Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. , it was not considered dishonorable to cheat
at play. To do so was a part of the game; and many worthy people did not
scruple to correct the caprice of Fortune by dexterous jugglery.
To-day even, and in all countries, it is thought a mark of merit
among peasants, merchants, and shopkeepers to KNOW HOW TO MAKE A
BARGAIN,--that is, to deceive one's man. This is so universally
accepted, that the cheated party takes no offence. It is known with what
reluctance our government resolved upon the abolition of lotteries. It
felt that it was dealing a stab thereby at property. The pickpocket,
the blackleg, and the charlatan make especial use of their dexterity of
hand, their subtlety of mind, the magic power of their eloquence,
and their great fertility of invention. Sometimes they offer bait to
cupidity. Therefore the penal code--which much prefers intelligence
to muscular vigor--has made, of the four varieties mentioned above,
a second category, liable only to correctional, not to Ignominious,
punishments.
Let them now accuse the law of being materialistic and atheistic.
We rob,--12. By usury.
This species of robbery, so odious and so severely punished since the
publication of the Gospel, is the connecting link between forbidden and
authorized robbery. Owing to its ambiguous nature, it has given rise to
a multitude of contradictions in the laws and in morals,--contradictions
which have been very cleverly turned to account by lawyers, financiers,
and merchants. Thus the usurer, who lends on mortgage at ten, twelve,
and fifteen per cent. , is heavily fined when detected; while the banker,
who receives the same interest (not, it is true, upon a loan, but in the
way of exchange or discount,--that is, of sale), is protected by royal
privilege. But the distinction between the banker and the usurer is
a purely nominal one. Like the usurer, who lends on property, real or
personal, the banker lends on business paper; like the usurer, he
takes his interest in advance; like the usurer, he can recover from
the borrower if the property is destroyed (that is, if the note is
not redeemed),--a circumstance which makes him a money-lender, not a
money-seller. But the banker lends for a short time only, while
the usurer's loan may be for one, two, three, or more years. Now, a
difference in the duration of the loan, or the form of the act, does not
alter the nature of the transaction. As for the capitalists who invest
their money, either with the State or in commercial operations, at
three, four, and five per cent. ,--that is, who lend on usury at a
little lower rate than the bankers and usurers,--they are the flower of
society, the cream of honesty! Moderation in robbery is the height of
virtue! [28]
But what, then, is usury? Nothing is more amusing than to see these
INSTRUCTORS OF NATIONS hesitate between the authority of the Gospel,
which, they say, NEVER CAN HAVE SPOKEN IN VAIN, and the authority of
economical demonstrations. Nothing, to my mind, is more creditable
to the Gospel than this old infidelity of its pretended teachers.
Salmasius, having assimilated interest to rent, was REFUTED by Grotius,
Pufendorf, Burlamaqui, Wolf, and Heineccius; and, what is more curious
still, Salmasius ADMITTED HIS ERROR. Instead of inferring from this
doctrine of Salmasius that all increase is illegitimate, and proceeding
straight on to the demonstration of Gospel equality, they arrived at
just the opposite conclusion; namely, that since everybody acknowledges
that rent is permissible, if we allow that interest does not differ
from rent, there is nothing left which can be called usury, and,
consequently, that the commandment of Jesus Christ is an ILLUSION, and
amounts to NOTHING, which is an impious conclusion.
If this memoir had appeared in the time of Bossuet, that great
theologian would have PROVED by scripture, the fathers, traditions,
councils, and popes, that property exists by Divine right, while usury
is an invention of the devil; and the heretical work would have been
burned, and the author imprisoned.
We rob,--13. By farm-rent, house-rent, and leases of all kinds.
The author of the "Provincial Letters" entertained the honest Christians
of the seventeenth century at the expense of Escobar, the Jesuit,
and the contract Mohatra. "The contract Mohatra," said Escobar, "is a
contract by which goods are bought, at a high price and on credit, to
be again sold at the same moment to the same person, cash down, and at a
lower price. " Escobar found a way to justify this kind of usury. Pascal
and all the Jansenists laughed at him. But what would the satirical
Pascal, the learned Nicole, and the invincible Arnaud have said, if
Father Antoine Escobar de Valladolid had answered them thus: "A lease
is a contract by which real estate is bought, at a high price and on
credit, to be again sold, at the expiration of a certain time, to the
same person, at a lower price; only, to simplify the transaction, the
buyer is content to pay the difference between the first sale and the
second. Either deny the identity of the lease and the contract Mohatra,
and then I will annihilate you in a moment; or, if you admit the
similarity, admit also the soundness of my doctrine: otherwise you
proscribe both interest and rent at one blow"?
In reply to this overwhelming argument of the Jesuit, the sire of
Montalte would have sounded the tocsin, and would have shouted
that society was in peril,--that the Jesuits were sapping its very
foundations.
We rob,--14. By commerce, when the profit of the merchant exceeds his
legitimate salary.
