No More Learning

M. Ch. Comte says, in his "Treatise on Property:"--


"France, considered as a nation, has a territory which is her own. "


France, as an individuality, possesses a territory which she cultivates;
it is not her property. Nations are related to each other as individuals
are: they are commoners and workers; it is an abuse of language to call
them proprietors. The right of use and abuse belongs no more to nations
than to men; and the time will come when a war waged for the purpose of
checking a nation in its abuse of the soil will be regarded as a holy
war.

Thus, M. Ch. Comte--who undertakes to explain how property comes into
existence, and who starts with the supposition that a nation is a
proprietor--falls into that error known as BEGGING THE QUESTION; a
mistake which vitiates his whole argument.

If the reader thinks it is pushing logic too far to question a nation's
right of property in the territory which it possesses, I will simply
remind him of the fact that at all ages the results of the fictitious
right of national property have been pretensions to suzerainty,
tributes, monarchical privileges, statute-labor, quotas of men and
money, supplies of merchandise, &c. ; ending finally in refusals to pay
taxes, insurrections, wars, and depopulations.


"Scattered through this territory are extended tracts of land, which
have not been converted into individual property. These lands, which
consist mainly of forests, belong to the whole population, and the
government, which receives the revenues, uses or ought to use them in
the interest of all. "

OUGHT TO USE is well said: a lie is avoided thereby.

"Let them be offered for sale. . . . "


Why offered for sale? Who has a right to sell them? Even were the nation
proprietor, can the generation of to-day dispossess the generation of
to-morrow? The nation, in its function of usufructuary, possesses
them; the government rules, superintends, and protects them. If it also
granted lands, it could grant only their use; it has no right to sell
them or transfer them in any way whatever. Not being a proprietor, how
can it transmit property?


"Suppose some industrious man buys a portion, a large swamp for example.
This would be no usurpation, since the public would receive the exact
value through the hands of the government, and would be as rich after
the sale as before. "


How ridiculous! What! because a prodigal, imprudent, incompetent
official sells the State's possessions, while I, a ward of the State,--I
who have neither an advisory nor a deliberative voice in the State
councils,--while I am allowed to make no opposition to the sale,
this sale is right and legal! The guardians of the nation waste its
substance, and it has no redress! I have received, you tell me, through
the hands of the government my share of the proceeds of the sale: but,
in the first place, I did not wish to sell; and, had I wished to, I
could not have sold. I had not the right. And then I do not see that I
am benefited by the sale. My guardians have dressed up some soldiers,
repaired an old fortress, erected in their pride some costly but
worthless monument,--then they have exploded some fireworks and set up a
greased pole! What does all that amount to in comparison with my loss?

The purchaser draws boundaries, fences himself in, and says, "This is
mine; each one by himself, each one for himself. " Here, then, is a piece
of land upon which, henceforth, no one has a right to step, save
the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save the
proprietor and his servants. Let these sales multiply, and soon the
people--who have been neither able nor willing to sell, and who have
received none of the proceeds of the sale--will have nowhere to rest,
no place of shelter, no ground to till. They will die of hunger at
the proprietor's door, on the edge of that property which was their
birthright; and the proprietor, watching them die, will exclaim, "So
perish idlers and vagrants! "

To reconcile us to the proprietor's usurpation, M. Ch. Comte assumes the
lands to be of little value at the time of sale.


"The importance of these usurpations should not be exaggerated: they
should be measured by the number of men which the occupied land would
support, and by the means which it would furnish them.

"It is evident, for instance, that if a piece of land which is worth
to-day one thousand francs was worth only five centimes when it was
usurped, we really lose only the value of five centimes. A square league
of earth would be hardly sufficient to support a savage in distress;
to-day it supplies one thousand persons with the means of existence.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine parts of this land is the legitimate
property of the possessors; only one-thousandth of the value has been
usurped. "


A peasant admitted one day, at confession, that he had destroyed a
document which declared him a debtor to the amount of three hundred
francs. Said the father confessor, "You must return these three hundred
francs. " "No," replied the peasant, "I will return a penny to pay for
the paper. "

M. Ch. Comte's logic resembles this peasant's honesty. The soil has not
only an integrant and actual value, it has also a potential value,--a
value of the future,--which depends on our ability to make it valuable,
and to employ it in our work. Destroy a bill of exchange, a promissory
note, an annuity deed,--as a paper you destroy almost no value at all;
but with this paper you destroy your title, and, in losing your title,
you deprive yourself of your goods. Destroy the land, or, what is the
same thing, sell it,--you not only transfer one, two, or several crops,
but you annihilate all the products that you could derive from it; you
and your children and your children's children.

When M. Ch. Comte, the apostle of property and the eulogist of labor,
supposes an alienation of the soil on the part of the government, we
must not think that he does so without reason and for no purpose; it
is a necessary part of his position. As he rejected the theory of
occupancy, and as he knew, moreover, that labor could not constitute the
right in the absence of a previous permission to occupy, he was obliged
to connect this permission with the authority of the government, which
means that property is based upon the sovereignty of the people;
in other words, upon universal consent. This theory we have already
considered.

To say that property is the daughter of labor, and then to give labor
material on which to exercise itself, is, if I am not mistaken, to
reason in a circle. Contradictions will result from it.


"A piece of land of a certain size produces food enough to supply a man
for one day. If the possessor, through his labor, discovers some method
of making it produce enough for two days, he doubles its value. This
new value is his work, his creation: it is taken from nobody; it is his
property. "


I maintain that the possessor is paid for his trouble and industry in
his doubled crop, but that he acquires no right to the land. "Let
the laborer have the fruits of his labor. " Very good; but I do not
understand that property in products carries with it property in raw
material. Does the skill of the fisherman, who on the same coast
can catch more fish than his fellows, make him proprietor of the
fishing-grounds? Can the expertness of a hunter ever be regarded as
a property-title to a game-forest? The analogy is perfect,--the
industrious cultivator finds the reward of his industry in the abundancy
and superiority of his crop. If he has made improvements in the soil, he
has the possessor's right of preference. Never, under any circumstances,
can he be allowed to claim a property-title to the soil which he
cultivates, on the ground of his skill as a cultivator.

To change possession into property, something is needed besides labor,
without which a man would cease to be proprietor as soon as he ceased
to be a laborer. Now, the law bases property upon immemorial,
unquestionable possession; that is, prescription. Labor is only the
sensible sign, the physical act, by which occupation is manifested. If,
then, the cultivator remains proprietor after he has ceased to labor
and produce; if his possession, first conceded, then tolerated, finally
becomes inalienable,--it happens by permission of the civil law, and by
virtue of the principle of occupancy. So true is this, that there is not
a bill of sale, not a farm lease, not an annuity, but implies it. I will
quote only one example.

How do we measure the value of land? By its product. If a piece of land
yields one thousand francs, we say that at five per cent. it is worth
twenty thousand francs; at four per cent. twenty-five thousand francs,
&c. ; which means, in other words, that in twenty or twenty-five years'
time the purchaser would recover in full the amount originally paid for
the land. If, then, after a certain length of time, the price of a piece
of land has been wholly recovered, why does the purchaser continue to be
proprietor? Because of the right of occupancy, in the absence of which
every sale would be a redemption.

The theory of appropriation by labor is, then, a contradiction of the
Code; and when the partisans of this theory pretend to explain the laws
thereby, they contradict themselves.


"If men succeed in fertilizing land hitherto unproductive, or even
death-producing, like certain swamps, they create thereby property in
all its completeness. "


What good does it do to magnify an expression, and play with
equivocations, as if we expected to change the reality thereby? THEY
CREATE PROPERTY IN ALL ITS COMPLETENESS. You mean that they create a
productive capacity which formerly did not exist; but this capacity
cannot be created without material to support it. The substance of the
soil remains the same; only its qualities and modifications are changed.
Man has created every thing--every thing save the material itself. Now,
I maintain that this material he can only possess and use, on condition
of permanent labor,--granting, for the time being, his right of property
in things which he has produced.

This, then, is the first point settled: property in product, if we grant
so much, does not carry with it property in the means of production;
that seems to me to need no further demonstration. There is no
difference between the soldier who possesses his arms, the mason
who possesses the materials committed to his care, the fisherman who
possesses the water, the hunter who possesses the fields and forests,
and the cultivator who possesses the lands: all, if you say so, are
proprietors of their products--not one is proprietor of the means of
production. The right to product is exclusive--jus in re; the right to
means is common--jus ad rem.



% 5. --That Labor leads to Equality of Property.

Admit, however, that labor gives a right of property in material.

Why is not this principle universal? Why is the benefit of this
pretended law confined to a few and denied to the mass of laborers?
A philosopher, arguing that all animals sprang up formerly out of the
earth warmed by the rays of the sun, almost like mushrooms, on being
asked why the earth no longer yielded crops of that nature, replied:
"Because it is old, and has lost its fertility. " Has labor, once so
fecund, likewise become sterile? Why does the tenant no longer acquire
through his labor the land which was formerly acquired by the labor of
the proprietor?

"Because," they say, "it is already appropriated. " That is no answer. A
farm yields fifty bushels per hectare; the skill and labor of the tenant
double this product: the increase is created by the tenant. Suppose the
owner, in a spirit of moderation rarely met with, does not go to the
extent of absorbing this product by raising the rent, but allows the
cultivator to enjoy the results of his labor; even then justice is not
satisfied. The tenant, by improving the land, has imparted a new value
to the property; he, therefore, has a right to a part of the property.
If the farm was originally worth one hundred thousand francs, and if
by the labor of the tenant its value has risen to one hundred and fifty
thousand francs, the tenant, who produced this extra value, is the
legitimate proprietor of one-third of the farm. M. Ch. Comte could not
have pronounced this doctrine false, for it was he who said:--


"Men who increase the fertility of the earth are no less useful to their
fellow-men, than if they should create new land. "


Why, then, is not this rule applicable to the man who improves the land,
as well as to him who clears it? The labor of the former makes the land
worth one; that of the latter makes it worth two: both create equal
values. Why not accord to both equal property? I defy any one to
refute this argument, without again falling back on the right of first
occupancy.

"But," it will be said, "even if your wish should be granted, property
would not be distributed much more evenly than now. Land does not go on
increasing in value for ever; after two or three seasons it attains its
maximum fertility. That which is added by the agricultural art results
rather from the progress of science and the diffusion of knowledge, than
from the skill of the cultivator. Consequently, the addition of a
few laborers to the mass of proprietors would be no argument against
property. "

This discussion would, indeed, prove a well-nigh useless one, if our
labors culminated in simply extending land-privilege and industrial
monopoly; in emancipating only a few hundred laborers out of the
millions of proletaires. But this also is a misconception of our real
thought, and does but prove the general lack of intelligence and logic.

If the laborer, who adds to the value of a thing, has a right of
property in it, he who maintains this value acquires the same right.
For what is maintenance? It is incessant addition,--continuous creation.
What is it to cultivate? It is to give the soil its value every year;
it is, by annually renewed creation, to prevent the diminution or
destruction of the value of a piece of land. Admitting, then, that
property is rational and legitimate,--admitting that rent is equitable
and just,--I say that he who cultivates acquires property by as good a
title as he who clears, or he who improves; and that every time a tenant
pays his rent, he obtains a fraction of property in the land entrusted
to his care, the denominator of which is equal to the proportion of rent
paid. Unless you admit this, you fall into absolutism and tyranny; you
recognize class privileges; you sanction slavery.

Whoever labors becomes a proprietor--this is an inevitable deduction
from the acknowledged principles of political economy and jurisprudence.
And when I say proprietor, I do not mean simply (as do our hypocritical
economists) proprietor of his allowance, his salary, his wages,--I mean
proprietor of the value which he creates, and by which the master alone
profits.

As all this relates to the theory of wages and of the distribution of
products,--and as this matter never has been even partially cleared
up,--I ask permission to insist on it: this discussion will not
be useless to the work in hand. Many persons talk of admitting
working-people to a share in the products and profits; but in
their minds this participation is pure benevolence: they have never
shown--perhaps never suspected--that it was a natural, necessary right,
inherent in labor, and inseparable from the function of producer, even
in the lowest forms of his work.

This is my proposition: THE LABORER RETAINS, EVEN AFTER HE HAS RECEIVED
HIS WAGES, A NATURAL RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN THE THING WHICH HE HAS
PRODUCED.

I again quote M. Ch. Comte:--

"Some laborers are employed in draining marshes, in cutting down trees
and brushwood,--in a word, in cleaning up the soil. They increase the
value, they make the amount of property larger; they are paid for
the value which they add in the form of food and daily wages: it then
becomes the property of the capitalist. "


The price is not sufficient: the labor of the workers has created a
value; now this value is their property. But they have neither sold
nor exchanged it; and you, capitalist, you have not earned it. That you
should have a partial right to the whole, in return for the materials
that you have furnished and the provisions that you have supplied, is
perfectly just. You contributed to the production, you ought to share in
the enjoyment. But your right does not annihilate that of the laborers,
who, in spite of you, have been your colleagues in the work of
production. Why do you talk of wages? The money with which you pay
the wages of the laborers remunerates them for only a few years of the
perpetual possession which they have abandoned to you. Wages is the cost
of the daily maintenance and refreshment of the laborer. You are wrong
in calling it the price of a sale. The workingman has sold nothing; he
knows neither his right, nor the extent of the concession which he has
made to you, nor the meaning of the contract which you pretend to
have made with him. On his side, utter ignorance; on yours, error and
surprise, not to say deceit and fraud.

Let us make this clearer by another and more striking example.

No one is ignorant of the difficulties that are met with in the
conversion of untilled land into arable and productive land. These
difficulties are so great, that usually an isolated man would perish
before he could put the soil in a condition to yield him even the most
meagre living. To that end are needed the united and combined efforts of
society, and all the resources of industry. M. Ch. Comte quotes on this
subject numerous and well-authenticated facts, little thinking that he
is amassing testimony against his own system.

Let us suppose that a colony of twenty or thirty families establishes
itself in a wild district, covered with underbrush and forests; and from
which, by agreement, the natives consent to withdraw. Each one of these
families possesses a moderate but sufficient amount of capital, of such
a nature as a colonist would be apt to choose,--animals, seeds, tools,
and a little money and food. The land having been divided, each one
settles himself as comfortably as possible, and begins to clear away the
portion allotted to him. But after a few weeks of fatigue, such as they
never before have known, of inconceivable suffering, of ruinous and
almost useless labor, our colonists begin to complain of their trade;
their condition seems hard to them; they curse their sad existence.

Suddenly, one of the shrewdest among them kills a pig, cures a part of
the meat; and, resolved to sacrifice the rest of his provisions, goes to
find his companions in misery. "Friends," he begins in a very benevolent
tone, "how much trouble it costs you to do a little work and live
uncomfortably! A fortnight of labor has reduced you to your last
extremity! . . . Let us make an arrangement by which you shall all profit.
I offer you provisions and wine: you shall get so much every day;
we will work together, and, zounds! my friends, we will be happy and
contented! "

Would it be possible for empty stomachs to resist such an invitation?
The hungriest of them follow the treacherous tempter. They go to work;
the charm of society, emulation, joy, and mutual assistance double their
strength; the work can be seen to advance. Singing and laughing, they
subdue Nature. In a short time, the soil is thoroughly changed; the
mellowed earth waits only for the seed. That done, the proprietor pays
his laborers, who, on going away, return him their thanks, and grieve
that the happy days which they have spent with him are over.

Others follow this example, always with the same success. Then, these
installed, the rest disperse,--each one returns to his grubbing. But,
while grubbing, it is necessary to live. While they have been clearing
away for their neighbor, they have done no clearing for themselves. One
year's seed-time and harvest is already gone. They had calculated that
in lending their labor they could not but gain, since they would save
their own provisions; and, while living better, would get still more
money. False calculation! they have created for another the means
wherewith to produce, and have created nothing for themselves. The
difficulties of clearing remain the same; their clothing wears out,
their provisions give out; soon their purse becomes empty for the profit
of the individual for whom they have worked, and who alone can furnish
the provisions which they need, since he alone is in a position to
produce them. Then, when the poor grubber has exhausted his resources,
the man with the provisions (like the wolf in the fable, who scents his
victim from afar) again comes forward. One he offers to employ again by
the day; from another he offers to buy at a favorable price a piece of
his bad land, which is not, and never can be, of any use to him: that
is, he uses the labor of one man to cultivate the field of another
for his own benefit. So that at the end of twenty years, of thirty
individuals originally equal in point of wealth, five or six have
become proprietors of the whole district, while the rest have been
philanthropically dispossessed!

In this century of bourgeoisie morality, in which I have had the honor
to be born, the moral sense is so debased that I should not be at all
surprised if I were asked, by many a worthy proprietor, what I see
in this that is unjust and illegitimate? Debased creature! galvanized
corpse! how can I expect to convince you, if you cannot tell robbery
when I show it to you? A man, by soft and insinuating words, discovers
the secret of taxing others that he may establish himself; then, once
enriched by their united efforts, he refuses, on the very conditions
which he himself dictated, to advance the well-being of those who made
his fortune for him: and you ask how such conduct is fraudulent! Under
the pretext that he has paid his laborers, that he owes them nothing
more, that he has nothing to gain by putting himself at the service of
others, while his own occupations claim his attention,--he refuses, I
say, to aid others in getting a foothold, as he was aided in getting his
own; and when, in the impotence of their isolation, these poor laborers
are compelled to sell their birthright, he--this ungrateful proprietor,
this knavish upstart--stands ready to put the finishing touch to their
deprivation and their ruin. And you think that just? Take care!

I read in your startled countenance the reproach of a guilty conscience,
much more clearly than the innocent astonishment of involuntary
ignorance.

"The capitalist," they say, "has paid the laborers their DAILY WAGES.
"
To be accurate, it must be said that the capitalist has paid as many
times one day's wage as he has employed laborers each day,--which is not
at all the same thing. For he has paid nothing for that immense
power which results from the union and harmony of laborers, and
the convergence and simultaneousness of their efforts. Two hundred
grenadiers stood the obelisk of Luxor upon its base in a few hours; do
you suppose that one man could have accomplished the same task in two
hundred days? Nevertheless, on the books of the capitalist, the amount
of wages paid would have been the same. Well, a desert to prepare for
cultivation, a house to build, a factory to run,--all these are
obelisks to erect, mountains to move. The smallest fortune, the most
insignificant establishment, the setting in motion of the lowest
industry, demand the concurrence of so many different kinds of labor and
skill, that one man could not possibly execute the whole of them. It
is astonishing that the economists never have called attention to this
fact. Strike a balance, then, between the capitalist's receipts and his
payments.

The laborer needs a salary which will enable him to live while he works;
for unless he consumes, he cannot produce. Whoever employs a man owes
him maintenance and support, or wages enough to procure the same.
That is the first thing to be done in all production. I admit, for the
moment, that in this respect the capitalist has discharged his duty.

It is necessary that the laborer should find in his production, in
addition to his present support, a guarantee of his future support;
otherwise the source of production would dry up, and his productive
capacity would become exhausted: in other words, the labor accomplished
must give birth perpetually to new labor--such is the universal law of
reproduction. In this way, the proprietor of a farm finds: 1. In his
crops, means, not only of supporting himself and his family, but of
maintaining and improving his capital, of feeding his live-stock--in a
word, means of new labor and continual reproduction; 2. In his ownership
of a productive agency, a permanent basis of cultivation and labor.

But he who lends his services,--what is his basis of cultivation?

The proprietor's presumed need of him, and the unwarranted supposition
that he wishes to employ him. Just as the commoner once held his land by
the munificence and condescension of the lord, so to-day the working-man
holds his labor by the condescension and necessities of the master
and proprietor: that is what is called possession by a precarious [15]
title. But this precarious condition is an injustice, for it implies
an inequality in the bargain. The laborer's wages exceed but little his
running expenses, and do not assure him wages for to-morrow; while the
capitalist finds in the instrument produced by the laborer a pledge of
independence and security for the future.


Now, this reproductive leaven--this eternal germ of life,
this preparation of the land and manufacture of implements for
production--constitutes the debt of the capitalist to the producer,
which he never pays; and it is this fraudulent denial which causes the
poverty of the laborer, the luxury of idleness, and the inequality of
conditions. This it is, above all other things, which has been so fitly
named the exploitation of man by man.

One of three things must be done. Either the laborer must be given a
portion of the product in addition to his wages; or the employer must
render the laborer an equivalent in productive service; or else he
must pledge himself to employ him for ever. Division of the product,
reciprocity of service, or guarantee of perpetual labor,--from the
adoption of one of these courses the capitalist cannot escape. But it
is evident that he cannot satisfy the second and third of these
conditions--he can neither put himself at the service of the thousands
of working-men, who, directly or indirectly, have aided him in
establishing himself, nor employ them all for ever. He has no other
course left him, then, but a division of the property. But if the
property is divided, all conditions will be equal--there will be no more
large capitalists or large proprietors.

Consequently, when M. Ch. Comte--following out his hypothesis--shows
us his capitalist acquiring one after another the products of his
employees' labor, he sinks deeper and deeper into the mire; and, as his
argument does not change, our reply of course remains the same.


"Other laborers are employed in building: some quarry the stone, others
transport it, others cut it, and still others put it in place. Each
of them adds a certain value to the material which passes through his
hands; and this value, the product of his labor, is his property. He
sells it, as fast as he creates it, to the proprietor of the building,
who pays him for it in food and wages. "


_Divide et impera_--divide, and you shall command; divide, and you
shall grow rich; divide, and you shall deceive men, you shall daze their
minds, you shall mock at justice! Separate laborers from each other,
perhaps each one's daily wage exceeds the value of each individual's
product; but that is not the question under consideration. A force of
one thousand men working twenty days has been paid the same wages that
one would be paid for working fifty-five years; but this force of
one thousand has done in twenty days what a single man could not have
accomplished, though he had labored for a million centuries. Is the
exchange an equitable one? Once more, no; when you have paid all the
individual forces, the collective force still remains to be paid.

Consequently, there remains always a right of collective property which
you have not acquired, and which you enjoy unjustly.

Admit that twenty days' wages suffice to feed, lodge, and clothe this
multitude for twenty days: thrown out of employment at the end of that
time, what will become of them, if, as fast as they create, they abandon
their creations to the proprietors who will soon discharge them? While
the proprietor, firm in his position (thanks to the aid of all the
laborers), dwells in security, and fears no lack of labor or bread,
the laborer's only dependence is upon the benevolence of this same
proprietor, to whom he has sold and surrendered his liberty. If, then,
the proprietor, shielding himself behind his comfort and his rights,
refuses to employ the laborer, how can the laborer live? He has ploughed
an excellent field, and cannot sow it; he has built an elegant and
commodious house, and cannot live in it; he has produced all, and can
enjoy nothing.

Labor leads us to equality. Every step that we take brings us nearer to
it; and if laborers had equal strength, diligence, and industry, clearly
their fortunes would be equal also. Indeed, if, as is pretended,--and
as we have admitted,--the laborer is proprietor of the value which he
creates, it follows:--

1. That the laborer acquires at the expense of the idle proprietor;

2. That all production being necessarily collective, the laborer is
entitled to a share of the products and profits commensurate with his
labor;

3. That all accumulated capital being social property, no one can be its
exclusive proprietor.

These inferences are unavoidable; these alone would suffice to
revolutionize our whole economical system, and change our institutions
and our laws. Why do the very persons, who laid down this principle, now
refuse to be guided by it? Why do the Says, the Comtes, the Hennequins,
and others--after having said that property is born of labor--seek to
fix it by occupation and prescription?

But let us leave these sophists to their contradictions and blindness.
The good sense of the people will do justice to their equivocations.
Let us make haste to enlighten it, and show it the true path. Equality
approaches; already between it and us but a short distance intervenes:
to-morrow even this distance will have been traversed.



% 6. --That in Society all Wages are Equal.

When the St. Simonians, the Fourierists, and, in general, all who in our
day are connected with social economy and reform, inscribe upon their
banner,--


"TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS CAPACITY, TO EACH CAPACITY ACCORDING TO ITS
RESULTS" (St. Simon);

"TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS CAPITAL, HIS LABOR, AND HIS SKILL"
(Fourier),--

they mean--although they do not say so in so many words--that the
products of Nature procured by labor and industry are a reward, a palm,
a crown offered to all kinds of preeminence and superiority. They regard
the land as an immense arena in which prizes are contended for,--no
longer, it is true, with lances and swords, by force and by treachery;
but by acquired wealth, by knowledge, talent, and by virtue itself. In
a word, they mean--and everybody agrees with them--that the greatest
capacity is entitled to the greatest reward; and, to use the
mercantile phraseology,--which has, at least, the merit of being
straightforward,--that salaries must be governed by capacity and its
results.

The disciples of these two self-styled reformers cannot deny that such
is their thought; for, in doing so, they would contradict their
official interpretations, and would destroy the unity of their systems.
Furthermore, such a denial on their part is not to be feared. The
two sects glory in laying down as a principle inequality of
conditions,--reasoning from Nature, who, they say, intended the
inequality of capacities. They boast only of one thing; namely, that
their political system is so perfect, that the social inequalities
always correspond with the natural inequalities. They no more trouble
themselves to inquire whether inequality of conditions--I mean of
salaries--is possible, than they do to fix a measure of capacity. [1]

[1] In St. Simon's system, the St. -Simonian priest determines the
capacity of each by virtue of his pontifical infallibility, in imitation
of the Roman Church: in Fourier's, the ranks and merits are decided by
vote, in imitation of the constitutional regime.

Clearly, the great man is an object of ridicule to the reader; he did
not mean to tell his secret.


"To each according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its
results. "

"To each according to his capital, his labor, and his skill. "


Since the death of St. Simon and Fourier, not one among their numerous
disciples has attempted to give to the public a scientific demonstration
of this grand maxim; and I would wager a hundred to one that no
Fourierist even suspects that this biform aphorism is susceptible of two
interpretations.


"To each according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its
results. "

"To each according to his capital, his labor, and his skill. "


This proposition, taken, as they say, _in sensu obvio_--in the sense
usually attributed to it--is false, absurd, unjust, contradictory,
hostile to liberty, friendly to tyranny, anti-social, and was unluckily
framed under the express influence of the property idea.

And, first, CAPITAL must be crossed off the list of elements which are
entitled to a reward. The Fourierists--as far as I have been able to
learn from a few of their pamphlets--deny the right of occupancy, and
recognize no basis of property save labor. Starting with a like premise,
they would have seen--had they reasoned upon the matter--that capital is
a source of production to its proprietor only by virtue of the right of
occupancy, and that this production is therefore illegitimate. Indeed,
if labor is the sole basis of property, I cease to be proprietor of my
field as soon as I receive rent for it from another. This we have
shown beyond all cavil. It is the same with all capital; so that to put
capital in an enterprise, is, by the law's decision, to exchange it
for an equivalent sum in products. I will not enter again upon this
now useless discussion, since I propose, in the following chapter, to
exhaust the subject of PRODUCTION BY CAPITAL.

Thus, capital can be exchanged, but cannot be a source of income.

LABOR and SKILL remain; or, as St. Simon puts it, RESULTS and
CAPACITIES. I will examine them successively.

Should wages be governed by labor? In other words, is it just that
he who does the most should get the most? I beg the reader to pay the
closest attention to this point.

To solve the problem with one stroke, we have only to ask ourselves
the following question: "Is labor a CONDITION or a STRUGGLE? " The reply
seems plain.

God said to man, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,"--that
is, thou shalt produce thy own bread: with more or less ease, according
to thy skill in directing and combining thy efforts, thou shalt labor.
God did not say, "Thou shalt quarrel with thy neighbor for thy bread;"
but, "Thou shalt labor by the side of thy neighbor, and ye shall dwell
together in harmony. " Let us develop the meaning of this law, the
extreme simplicity of which renders it liable to misconstruction.

In labor, two things must be noticed and distinguished: ASSOCIATION and
AVAILABLE MATERIAL.

In so far as laborers are associated, they are equal; and it involves a
contradiction to say that one should be paid more than another. For,
as the product of one laborer can be paid for only in the product of
another laborer, if the two products are unequal, the remainder--or the
difference between the greater and the smaller--will not be acquired
by society; and, therefore, not being exchanged, will not affect the
equality of wages. There will result, it is true, in favor of the
stronger laborer a natural inequality, but not a social inequality; no
one having suffered by his strength and productive energy. In a word,
society exchanges only equal products--that is, rewards no labor save
that performed for her benefit; consequently, she pays all laborers
equally: with what they produce outside of her sphere she has no more to
do, than with the difference in their voices and their hair.

I seem to be positing the principle of inequality: the reverse of this
is the truth. The total amount of labor which can be performed for
society (that is, of labor susceptible of exchange), being, within a
given space, as much greater as the laborers are more numerous, and as
the task assigned to each is less in magnitude,--it follows that natural
inequality neutralizes itself in proportion as association extends, and
as the quantity of consumable values produced thereby increases. So that
in society the only thing which could bring back the inequality of labor
would be the right of occupancy,--the right of property.

Now, suppose that this daily social task consists in the ploughing,
hoeing, or reaping of two square decameters, and that the average time
required to accomplish it is seven hours: one laborer will finish it in
six hours, another will require eight; the majority, however, will work
seven. But provided each one furnishes the quantity of labor demanded of
him, whatever be the time he employs, they are entitled to equal wages.

Shall the laborer who is capable of finishing his task in six hours have
the right, on the ground of superior strength and activity, to usurp
the task of the less skilful laborer, and thus rob him of his labor and
bread? Who dares maintain such a proposition? He who finishes before the
others may rest, if he chooses; he may devote himself to useful exercise
and labors for the maintenance of his strength, and the culture of his
mind, and the pleasure of his life. This he can do without injury to any
one: but let him confine himself to services which affect him solely.
Vigor, genius, diligence, and all the personal advantages which result
therefrom, are the work of Nature and, to a certain extent, of the
individual; society awards them the esteem which they merit: but the
wages which it pays them is measured, not by their power, but by their
production. Now, the product of each is limited by the right of all.

If the soil were infinite in extent, and the amount of available
material were exhaustless, even then we could not accept this maxim,--TO
EACH ACCORDING TO HIS LABOR. And why? Because society, I repeat,
whatever be the number of its subjects, is forced to pay them all the
same wages, since she pays them only in their own products. Only, on the
hypothesis just made, inasmuch as the strong cannot be prevented from
using all their advantages, the inconveniences of natural inequality
would reappear in the very bosom of social equality. But the land,
considering the productive power of its inhabitants and their ability to
multiply, is very limited; further, by the immense variety of products
and the extreme division of labor, the social task is made easy of
accomplishment. Now, through this limitation of things producible, and
through the ease of producing them, the law of absolute equality takes
effect.

Yes, life is a struggle. But this struggle is not between man and
man--it is between man and Nature; and it is each one's duty to take
his share in it. If, in the struggle, the strong come to the aid of the
weak, their kindness deserves praise and love; but their aid must be
accepted as a free gift,--not imposed by force, nor offered at a
price. All have the same career before them, neither too long nor too
difficult; whoever finishes it finds his reward at the end: it is not
necessary to get there first.

In printing-offices, where the laborers usually work by the job, the
compositor receives so much per thousand letters set; the pressman so
much per thousand sheets printed. There, as elsewhere, inequalities
of talent and skill are to be found. When there is no prospect of dull
times (for printing and typesetting, like all other trades, sometimes
come to a stand-still), every one is free to work his hardest, and exert
his faculties to the utmost: he who does more gets more; he who does
less gets less. When business slackens, compositors and pressmen divide
up their labor; all monopolists are detested as no better than robbers
or traitors.

There is a philosophy in the action of these printers, to which
neither economists nor legists have ever risen. If our legislators had
introduced into their codes the principle of distributive justice
which governs printing-offices; if they had observed the popular
instincts,--not for the sake of servile imitation, but in order to
reform and generalize them,--long ere this liberty and equality would
have been established on an immovable basis, and we should not now
be disputing about the right of property and the necessity of social
distinctions.

It has been calculated that if labor were equally shared by the whole
number of able-bodied individuals, the average working-day of each
individual, in France, would not exceed five hours. This being so, how
can we presume to talk of the inequality of laborers? It is the LABOR of
Robert Macaire that causes inequality.

The principle, TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS LABOR, interpreted to mean, WHO
WORKS MOST SHOULD RECEIVE MOST, is based, therefore, on two palpable
errors: one, an error in economy, that in the labor of society tasks
must necessarily be unequal; the other, an error in physics, that there
is no limit to the amount of producible things.

"But," it will be said, "suppose there are some people who wish to
perform only half of their task? ". . . Is that very embarrassing? Probably
they are satisfied with half of their salary. Paid according to the
labor that they had performed, of what could they complain? and what
injury would they do to others? In this sense, it is fair to apply the
maxim,--TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS RESULTS. It is the law of equality
itself.

Further, numerous difficulties, relative to the police system and the
organization of industry, might be raised here. I will reply to them all
with this one sentence,--that they must all be solved by the principle
of equality. Thus, some one might observe, "Here is a task which cannot
be postponed without detriment to production. Ought society to suffer
from the negligence of a few? and will she not venture--out of respect
for the right of labor--to assure with her own hands the product which
they refuse her? In such a case, to whom will the salary belong? "

To society; who will be allowed to perform the labor, either herself, or
through her representatives, but always in such a way that the general
equality shall never be violated, and that only the idler shall be
punished for his idleness. Further, if society may not use excessive
severity towards her lazy members, she has a right, in self-defence, to
guard against abuses.

But every industry needs--they will add--leaders, instructors,
superintendents, &c. Will these be engaged in the general task? No;
since their task is to lead, instruct, and superintend. But they must be
chosen from the laborers by the laborers themselves, and must fulfil
the conditions of eligibility. It is the same with all public functions,
whether of administration or instruction.

Then, article first of the universal constitution will be:--

"The limited quantity of available material proves the necessity of
dividing the labor among the whole number of laborers. The capacity,
given to all, of accomplishing a social task,--that is, an equal
task,--and the impossibility of paying one laborer save in the products
of another, justify the equality of wages. "



% 7. --That Inequality of Powers is the Necessary Condition of Equality
of Fortunes.

It is objected,--and this objection constitutes the second part of the
St. Simonian, and the third part of the Fourierstic, maxims,--

"That all kinds of labor cannot be executed with equal ease. Some
require great superiority of skill and intelligence; and on this
superiority is based the price. The artist, the savant, the poet, the
statesman, are esteemed only because of their excellence; and this
excellence destroys all similitude between them and other men: in the
presence of these heights of science and genius the law of equality
disappears. Now, if equality is not absolute, there is no equality.
From the poet we descend to the novelist; from the sculptor to the
stonecutter; from the architect to the mason; from the chemist to the
cook, &c. Capacities are classified and subdivided into orders, genera,
and species. The extremes of talent are connected by intermediate
talents. Humanity is a vast hierarchy, in which the individual estimates
himself by comparison, and fixes his price by the value placed upon his
product by the public. "

This objection always has seemed a formidable one. It is the
stumbling-block of the economists, as well as of the defenders of
equality. It has led the former into egregious blunders, and has caused
the latter to utter incredible platitudes. Gracchus Babeuf wished all
superiority to be STRINGENTLY REPRESSED, and even PERSECUTED AS A SOCIAL
CALAMITY. To establish his communistic edifice, he lowered all citizens
to the stature of the smallest. Ignorant eclectics have been known to
object to the inequality of knowledge, and I should not be surprised if
some one should yet rebel against the inequality of virtue. Aristotle
was banished, Socrates drank the hemlock, Epaminondas was called to
account, for having proved superior in intelligence and virtue to some
dissolute and foolish demagogues. Such follies will be re-enacted, so
long as the inequality of fortunes justifies a populace, blinded and
oppressed by the wealthy, in fearing the elevation of new tyrants to
power.

Nothing seems more unnatural than that which we examine too closely, and
often nothing seems less like the truth than the truth itself. On the
other hand, according to J. J. Rousseau, "it takes a great deal of
philosophy to enable us to observe once what we see every day;" and,
according to d'Alembert, "the ordinary truths of life make but little
impression on men, unless their attention is especially called to them. "
The father of the school of economists (Say), from whom I borrow these
two quotations, might have profited by them; but he who laughs at the
blind should wear spectacles, and he who notices him is near-sighted.

Strange! that which has frightened so many minds is not, after all,
an objection to equality--it is the very condition on which equality
exists! . . .

Natural inequality the condition of equality of fortunes! . . . What
a paradox! . . . I repeat my assertion, that no one may think I have
blundered--inequality of powers is the sine qua non of equality of
fortunes.

There are two things to be considered in society--FUNCTIONS and
RELATIONS.

I.