The expenses of seizure will be much less, it is said; but
will the interest on the borrowed capital be less exorbitant?
will the interest on the borrowed capital be less exorbitant?
Proudhon - What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
To do so is both our right and our
duty.
We need to love our wives and children. It is our duty to protect and
support them. It is our right to be loved in preference to all others.
Conjugal fidelity is justice. Adultery is high treason against society.
We need to exchange our products for other products. It is our right
that this exchange should be one of equivalents; and since we consume
before we produce, it would be our duty, if we could control the matter,
to see to it that our last product shall follow our last consumption.
Suicide is fraudulent bankruptcy.
We need to live our lives according to the dictates of our reason. It
is our right to maintain our freedom. It is our duty to respect that of
others.
We need to be appreciated by our fellows. It is our duty to deserve
their praise. It is our right to be judged by our works.
Liberty is not opposed to the rights of succession and bequest. It
contents itself with preventing violations of equality. "Choose," it
tells us, "between two legacies, but do not take them both. " All our
legislation concerning transmissions, entailments, adoptions, and, if I
may venture to use such a word, COADJUTORERIES, requires remodelling.
Liberty favors emulation, instead of destroying it. In social equality,
emulation consists in accomplishing under like conditions; it is its own
reward. No one suffers by the victory.
Liberty applauds self-sacrifice, and honors it with its votes, but it
can dispense with it. Justice alone suffices to maintain the social
equilibrium. Self-sacrifice is an act of supererogation. Happy, however,
the man who can say, "I sacrifice myself. " [33]
Liberty is essentially an organizing force. To insure equality between
men and peace among nations, agriculture and industry, and the centres
of education, business, and storage, must be distributed according to
the climate and the geographical position of the country, the nature of
the products, the character and natural talents of the inhabitants, &c. ,
in proportions so just, so wise, so harmonious, that in no place shall
there ever be either an excess or a lack of population, consumption, and
products. There commences the science of public and private right,
the true political economy. It is for the writers on jurisprudence,
henceforth unembarrassed by the false principle of property, to describe
the new laws, and bring peace upon earth. Knowledge and genius they do
not lack; the foundation is now laid for them. [34]
I have accomplished my task; property is conquered, never again to
arise. Wherever this work is read and discussed, there will be deposited
the germ of death to property; there, sooner or later, privilege and
servitude will disappear, and the despotism of will will give place to
the reign of reason. What sophisms, indeed, what prejudices
(however obstinate) can stand before the simplicity of the following
propositions:--
I. Individual POSSESSION [35] is the condition of social life; five
thousand years of property demonstrate it. PROPERTY is the suicide of
society. Possession is a right; property is against right. Suppress
property while maintaining possession, and, by this simple modification
of the principle, you will revolutionize law, government, economy, and
institutions; you will drive evil from the face of the earth.
II. All having an equal right of occupancy, possession varies with the
number of possessors; property cannot establish itself.
III. The effect of labor being the same for all, property is lost in the
common prosperity.
IV. All human labor being the result of collective force, all property
becomes, in consequence, collective and unitary. To speak more exactly,
labor destroys property.
V. Every capacity for labor being, like every instrument of labor, an
accumulated capital, and a collective property, inequality of wages
and fortunes (on the ground of inequality of capacities) is, therefore,
injustice and robbery.
VI. The necessary conditions of commerce are the liberty of the
contracting parties and the equivalence of the products exchanged.
Now, value being expressed by the amount of time and outlay which each
product costs, and liberty being inviolable, the wages of laborers (like
their rights and duties) should be equal.
VII. Products are bought only by products. Now, the condition of all
exchange being equivalence of products, profit is impossible and unjust.
Observe this elementary principle of economy, and pauperism, luxury,
oppression, vice, crime, and hunger will disappear from our midst.
VIII. Men are associated by the physical and mathematical law of
production, before they are voluntarily associated by choice. Therefore,
equality of conditions is demanded by justice; that is, by strict social
law: esteem, friendship, gratitude, admiration, all fall within the
domain of EQUITABLE or PROPORTIONAL law only.
IX. Free association, liberty--whose sole function is to maintain
equality in the means of production and equivalence in exchanges--is the
only possible, the only just, the only true form of society.
X. Politics is the science of liberty. The government of man by man
(under whatever name it be disguised) is oppression. Society finds its
highest perfection in the union of order with anarchy.
The old civilization has run its race; a new sun is rising, and will
soon renew the face of the earth. Let the present generation perish, let
the old prevaricators die in the desert! the holy earth shall not cover
their bones. Young man, exasperated by the corruption of the age, and
absorbed in your zeal for justice! --if your country is dear to you,
and if you have the interests of humanity at heart, have the courage to
espouse the cause of liberty! Cast off your old selfishness, and plunge
into the rising flood of popular equality! There your regenerate soul
will acquire new life and vigor; your enervated genius will recover
unconquerable energy; and your heart, perhaps already withered, will be
rejuvenated! Every thing will wear a different look to your illuminated
vision; new sentiments will engender new ideas within you; religion,
morality, poetry, art, language will appear before you in nobler and
fairer forms; and thenceforth, sure of your faith, and thoughtfully
enthusiastic, you will hail the dawn of universal regeneration!
And you, sad victims of an odious law! --you, whom a jesting world
despoils and outrages! --you, whose labor has always been fruitless,
and whose rest has been without hope,--take courage! your tears are
numbered! The fathers have sown in affliction, the children shall reap
in rejoicings!
O God of liberty! God of equality! Thou who didst place in my heart
the sentiment of justice, before my reason could comprehend it, hear
my ardent prayer! Thou hast dictated all that I have written; Thou hast
shaped my thought; Thou hast directed my studies; Thou hast weaned my
mind from curiosity and my heart from attachment, that I might publish
Thy truth to the master and the slave. I have spoken with what force and
talent Thou hast given me: it is Thine to finish the work. Thou knowest
whether I seek my welfare or Thy glory, O God of liberty! Ah! perish
my memory, and let humanity be free! Let me see from my obscurity
the people at last instructed; let noble teachers enlighten them; let
generous spirits guide them! Abridge, if possible, the time of our
trial; stifle pride and avarice in equality; annihilate this love of
glory which enslaves us; teach these poor children that in the bosom
of liberty there are neither heroes nor great men! Inspire the powerful
man, the rich man, him whose name my lips shall never pronounce in Thy
presence, with a horror of his crimes; let him be the first to apply for
admission to the redeemed society; let the promptness of his repentance
be the ground of his forgiveness! Then, great and small, wise and
foolish, rich and poor, will unite in an ineffable fraternity; and,
singing in unison a new hymn, will rebuild Thy altar, O God of liberty
and equality!
END OF FIRST MEMOIR.
WHAT IS PROPERTY? SECOND MEMOIR
A LETTER TO M. BLANQUI.
SECOND MEMOIR.
PARIS, April 1, 1841.
MONSIEUR,--
Before resuming my "Inquiries into Government and Property," it is
fitting, for the satisfaction of some worthy people, and also in the
interest of order, that I should make to you a plain, straightforward
explanation. In a much-governed State, no one would be allowed to
attack the external form of the society, and the groundwork of its
institutions, until he had established his right to do so,--first, by
his morality; second, by his capacity; and, third, by the purity of
his intentions. Any one who, wishing to publish a treatise upon the
constitution of the country, could not satisfy this threefold condition,
would be obliged to procure the endorsement of a responsible patron
possessing the requisite qualifications.
But we Frenchmen have the liberty of the press. This grand right--the
sword of thought, which elevates the virtuous citizen to the rank of
legislator, and makes the malicious citizen an agent of discord--frees
us from all preliminary responsibility to the law; but it does not
release us from our internal obligation to render a public account
of our sentiments and thoughts. I have used, in all its fulness, and
concerning an important question, the right which the charter grants
us. I come to-day, sir, to submit my conscience to your judgment, and my
feeble insight to your discriminating reason. You have criticised in a
kindly spirit--I had almost said with partiality for the writer--a work
which teaches a doctrine that you thought it your duty to condemn. "The
Academy of Moral and Political Sciences," said you in your report, "can
accept the conclusions of the author only as far as it likes. " I venture
to hope, sir, that, after you have read this letter, if your prudence
still restrains you, your fairness will induce you to do me justice.
MEN, EQUAL IN THE DIGNITY OF THEIR PERSONS AND EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW,
SHOULD BE EQUAL IN THEIR CONDITIONS,--such is the thesis which I
maintained and developed in a memoir bearing the title, "What is
Property? or, An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government. "
The idea of social equality, even in individual fortunes, has in all
ages besieged, like a vague presentiment, the human imagination. Poets
have sung of it in their hymns; philosophers have dreamed of it in their
Utopias; priests teach it, but only for the spiritual world. The people,
governed by it, never have had faith in it; and the civil power is never
more disturbed than by the fables of the age of gold and the reign
of Astrea. A year ago, however, this idea received a scientific
demonstration, which has not yet been satisfactorily answered, and,
permit me to add, never will be. This demonstration, owing to its
slightly impassioned style, its method of reasoning,--which was so
at variance with that employed by the generally recognized
authorities,--and the importance and novelty of its conclusions, was of
a nature to cause some alarm; and might have been dangerous, had it not
been--as you, sir, so well said--a sealed letter, so far as the general
public was concerned, addressed only to men of intelligence. I was
glad to see that through its metaphysical dress you recognized the wise
foresight of the author; and I thank you for it. May God grant that my
intentions, which are wholly peaceful, may never be charged upon me as
treasonable!
Like a stone thrown into a mass of serpents, the First Memoir on
Property excited intense animosity, and aroused the passions of many.
But, while some wished the author and his work to be publicly denounced,
others found in them simply the solution of the fundamental problems of
society; a few even basing evil speculations upon the new light which
they had obtained. It was not to be expected that a system of inductions
abstractly gathered together, and still more abstractly expressed, would
be understood with equal accuracy in its ensemble and in each of its
parts.
To find the law of equality, no longer in charity and self-sacrifice
(which are not binding in their nature), but in justice; to base
equality of functions upon equality of persons; to determine the
absolute principle of exchange; to neutralize the inequality of
individual faculties by collective force; to establish an equation
between property and robbery; to change the law of succession without
destroying the principle; to maintain the human personality in a
system of absolute association, and to save liberty from the chains
of communism; to synthetize the monarchical and democratic forms of
government; to reverse the division of powers; to give the executive
power to the nation, and to make legislation a positive, fixed,
and absolute science,--what a series of paradoxes! what a string of
delusions! if I may not say, what a chain of truths! But it is not
my purpose here to pass upon the theory of the right of possession. I
discuss no dogmas. My only object is to justify my views, and to show
that, in writing as I did, I not only exercised a right, but performed a
duty.
Yes, I have attacked property, and shall attack it again; but, sir,
before demanding that I shall make the amende honorable for having
obeyed my conscience and spoken the exact truth, condescend, I beg of
you, to cast a glance at the events which are happening around us; look
at our deputies, our magistrates, our philosophers, our ministers, our
professors, and our publicists; examine their methods of dealing with
the matter of property; count up with me the restrictions placed upon
it every day in the name of the public welfare; measure the breaches
already made; estimate those which society thinks of making hereafter;
add the ideas concerning property held by all theories in common;
interrogate history, and then tell me what will be left, half a century
hence, of this old right of property; and, thus perceiving that I have
so many accomplices, you will immediately declare me innocent.
What is the law of expropriation on the ground of public utility, which
everybody favors, and which is even thought too lenient? [36]
A flagrant violation of the right of property. Society indemnifies,
it is said, the dispossessed proprietor; but does it return to him the
traditional associations, the poetic charm, and the family pride which
accompany property? Naboth, and the miller of Sans-Souci, would have
protested against French law, as they protested against the caprice of
their kings. "It is the field of our fathers," they would have cried,
"and we will not sell it! " Among the ancients, the refusal of the
individual limited the powers of the State. The Roman law bowed to
the will of the citizen, and an emperor--Commodus, if I remember
rightly--abandoned the project of enlarging the forum out of respect for
the rights of the occupants who refused to abdicate. Property is a
real right, _jus_ _in re_,--a right inherent in the thing, and whose
principle lies in the external manifestation of man's will. Man leaves
his imprint, stamps his character, upon the objects of his handiwork.
This plastic force of man, as the modern jurists say, is the seal which,
set upon matter, makes it holy. Whoever lays hands upon it, against the
proprietor's will, does violence to the latter's personality. And yet,
when an administrative committee saw fit to declare that public utility
required it, property had to give way to the general will. Soon, in
the name of public utility, methods of cultivation and conditions of
enjoyment will be prescribed; inspectors of agriculture and manufactures
will be appointed; property will be taken away from unskilful hands,
and entrusted to laborers who are more deserving of it; and a general
superintendence of production will be established. It is not two years
since I saw a proprietor destroy a forest more than five hundred acres
in extent. If public utility had interfered, that forest--the only one
for miles around--would still be standing.
But, it is said, expropriation on the ground of public utility is only
an exception which confirms the principle, and bears testimony in
favor of the right. Very well; but from this exception we will pass to
another, from that to a third, and so on from exceptions to exceptions,
until we have reduced the rule to a pure abstraction.
How many supporters do you think, sir, can be claimed for the project
of the conversion of the public funds? I venture to say that everybody
favors it, except the fund-holders. Now, this so-called conversion is
an extensive expropriation, and in this case with no indemnity whatever.
The public funds are so much real estate, the income from which the
proprietor counts upon with perfect safety, and which owes its value
to the tacit promise of the government to pay interest upon it at the
established rate, until the fund-holder applies for redemption. For,
if the income is liable to diminution, it is less profitable than
house-rent or farm-rent, whose rates may rise or fall according to the
fluctuations in the market; and in that case, what inducement has the
capitalist to invest his money in the State? When, then, you force the
fund-holder to submit to a diminution of interest, you make him bankrupt
to the extent of the diminution; and since, in consequence of the
conversion, an equally profitable investment becomes impossible, you
depreciate his property.
That such a measure may be justly executed, it must be generalized; that
is, the law which provides for it must decree also that interest on sums
lent on deposit or on mortgage throughout the realm, as well as house
and farm-rents, shall be reduced to three per cent. This simultaneous
reduction of all kinds of income would be not a whit more difficult to
accomplish than the proposed conversion; and, further, it would offer
the advantage of forestalling at one blow all objections to it, at the
same time that it would insure a just assessment of the land-tax. See!
If at the moment of conversion a piece of real estate yields an income
of one thousand francs, after the new law takes effect it will yield
only six hundred francs. Now, allowing the tax to be an aliquot
part--one-fourth for example--of the income derived from each piece of
property, it is clear on the one hand that the proprietor would not, in
order to lighten his share of the tax, underestimate the value of his
property; since, house and farm-rents being fixed by the value of the
capital, and the latter being measured by the tax, to depreciate his
real estate would be to reduce his revenue. On the other hand, it is
equally evident that the same proprietors could not overestimate the
value of their property, in order to increase their incomes beyond the
limits of the law, since the tenants and farmers, with their old leases
in their hands, would enter a protest.
Such, sir, must be the result sooner or later of the conversion which
has been so long demanded; otherwise, the financial operation of which
we are speaking would be a crying injustice, unless intended as a
stepping-stone. This last motive seems the most plausible one; for in
spite of the clamors of interested parties, and the flagrant violation
of certain rights, the public conscience is bound to fulfil its desire,
and is no more affected when charged with attacking property, than
when listening to the complaints of the bondholders. In this case,
instinctive justice belies legal justice.
Who has not heard of the inextricable confusion into which the Chamber
of Deputies was thrown last year, while discussing the question of
colonial and native sugars? Did they leave these two industries to
themselves? The native manufacturer was ruined by the colonist. To
maintain the beet-root, the cane had to be taxed. To protect the
property of the one, it became necessary to violate the property of the
other. The most remarkable feature of this business was precisely that
to which the least attention was paid; namely, that, in one way or
another, property had to be violated. Did they impose on each industry
a proportional tax, so as to preserve a balance in the market? They
created a maximum PRICE for each variety of sugar; and, as this maximum
PRICE was not the same, they attacked property in two ways,--on the one
hand, interfering with the liberty of trade; on the other, disregarding
the equality of proprietors. Did they suppress the beet-root by granting
an indemnity to the manufacturer? They sacrificed the property of the
tax-payer. Finally, did they prefer to cultivate the two varieties of
sugar at the nation's expense, just as different varieties of tobacco
are cultivated? They abolished, so far as the sugar industry was
concerned, the right of property. This last course, being the most
social, would have been certainly the best; but, if property is the
necessary basis of civilization, how is this deep-seated antagonism to
be explained? [37]
Not satisfied with the power of dispossessing a citizen on the ground
of public utility, they want also to dispossess him on the ground of
PRIVATE UTILITY. For a long time, a revision of the law concerning
mortgages was clamored for; a process was demanded, in behalf of all
kinds of credit and in the interest of even the debtors themselves,
which would render the expropriation of real estate as prompt, as easy,
and as effective as that which follows a commercial protest. The Chamber
of Deputies, in the early part of this year, 1841, discussed this
project, and the law was passed almost unanimously. There is nothing
more just, nothing more reasonable, nothing more philosophical
apparently, than the motives which gave rise to this reform.
I. Formerly, the small proprietor whose obligation had arrived at
maturity, and who found himself unable to meet it, had to employ all
that he had left, after being released from his debt, in defraying the
legal costs. Henceforth, the promptness of expropriation will save him
from total ruin. 2. The difficulties in the way of payment arrested
credit, and prevented the employment of capital in agricultural
enterprises. This cause of distrust no longer existing, capitalists will
find new markets, agriculture will rapidly develop, and farmers will
be the first to enjoy the benefit of the new law. 3. Finally, it was
iniquitous and absurd, that, on account of a protested note, a poor
manufacturer should see in twenty-four hours his business arrested, his
labor suspended, his merchandise seized, his machinery sold at auction,
and finally himself led off to prison, while two years were sometimes
necessary to expropriate the most miserable piece of real estate.
These arguments, and others besides, you clearly stated, sir, in your
first lectures of this academic year.
But, when stating these excellent arguments, did you ask yourself, sir,
whither would tend such a transformation of our system of mortgages? . . .
To monetize, if I may say so, landed property; to accumulate it within
portfolios; to separate the laborer from the soil, man from Nature; to
make him a wanderer over the face of the earth; to eradicate from
his heart every trace of family feeling, national pride, and love of
country; to isolate him more and more; to render him indifferent to
all around him; to concentrate his love upon one object,--money; and,
finally, by the dishonest practices of usury, to monopolize the land
to the profit of a financial aristocracy,--a worthy auxiliary of that
industrial feudality whose pernicious influence we begin to feel so
bitterly. Thus, little by little, the subordination of the laborer to
the idler, the restoration of abolished castes, and the distinction
between patrician and plebeian, would be effected; thus, thanks to the
new privileges granted to the property of the capitalists, that of the
small and intermediate proprietors would gradually disappear, and with
it the whole class of free and honest laborers. This certainly is not
my plan for the abolition of property. Far from mobilizing the soil, I
would, if possible, immobilize even the functions of pure intelligence,
so that society might be the fulfilment of the intentions of Nature,
who gave us our first possession, the land. For, if the instrument
or capital of production is the mark of the laborer, it is also his
pedestal, his support, his country, and, as the Psalmist says, THE PLACE
OF HIS ACTIVITY AND HIS REST. [38]
Let us examine more closely still the inevitable and approaching result
of the last law concerning judicial sales and mortgages. Under
the system of competition which is killing us, and whose necessary
expression is a plundering and tyrannical government, the farmer will
need always capital in order to repair his losses, and will be forced to
contract loans. Always depending upon the future for the payment of his
debts, he will be deceived in his hope, and surprised by maturity. For
what is there more prompt, more unexpected, more abbreviatory of space
and time, than the maturity of an obligation? I address this question
to all whom this pitiless Nemesis pursues, and even troubles in their
dreams. Now, under the new law, the expropriation of a debtor will be
effected a hundred times more rapidly; then, also, spoliation will be
a hundred times surer, and the free laborer will pass a hundred times
sooner from his present condition to that of a serf attached to the
soil. Formerly, the length of time required to effect the seizure
curbed the usurer's avidity, gave the borrower an opportunity to recover
himself, and gave rise to a transaction between him and his creditor
which might result finally in a complete release. Now, the debtor's
sentence is irrevocable: he has but a few days of grace.
And what advantages are promised by this law as an offset to this sword
of Damocles, suspended by a single hair over the head of the unfortunate
husbandman?
The expenses of seizure will be much less, it is said; but
will the interest on the borrowed capital be less exorbitant? For, after
all, it is interest which impoverishes the peasant and leads to his
expropriation. That the law may be in harmony with its principle, that
it may be truly inspired by that spirit of justice for which it is
commended, it must--while facilitating expropriation--lower the legal
price of money. Otherwise, the reform concerning mortgages is but a trap
set for small proprietors,--a legislative trick.
Lower interest on money! But, as we have just seen, that is to limit
property. Here, sir, you shall make your own defence. More than once, in
your learned lectures, I have heard you deplore the precipitancy of the
Chambers, who, without previous study and without profound knowledge
of the subject, voted almost unanimously to maintain the statutes and
privileges of the Bank. Now these privileges, these statutes, this vote
of the Chambers, mean simply this,--that the market price of specie,
at five or six per cent. , is not too high, and that the conditions
of exchange, discount, and circulation, which generally double this
interest, are none too severe. So the government thinks. M. Blanqui--a
professor of political economy, paid by the State--maintains the
contrary, and pretends to demonstrate, by decisive arguments, the
necessity of a reform. Who, then, best understands the interests of
property,--the State, or M. Blanqui?
If specie could be borrowed at half the present rate, the revenues from
all sorts of property would soon be reduced one-half also. For example:
when it costs less to build a house than to hire one, when it is cheaper
to clear a field than to procure one already cleared, competition
inevitably leads to a reduction of house and farm-rents, since the
surest way to depreciate active capital is to increase its amount. But
it is a law of political economy that an increase of production augments
the mass of available capital, consequently tends to raise wages, and
finally to annihilate interest. Then, proprietors are interested in
maintaining the statutes and privileges of the Bank; then, a reform in
this matter would compromise the right of increase; then, the peers and
deputies are better informed than Professor Blanqui.
But these same deputies,--so jealous of their privileges whenever
the equalizing effects of a reform are within their intellectual
horizon,--what did they do a few days before they passed the law
concerning judicial sales? They formed a conspiracy against property!
Their law to regulate the labor of children in factories will, without
doubt, prevent the manufacturer from compelling a child to labor more
than so many hours a day; but it will not force him to increase the pay
of the child, nor that of its father. To-day, in the interest of health,
we diminish the subsistence of the poor; to-morrow it will be necessary
to protect them by fixing their MINIMUM wages. But to fix their minimum
wages is to compel the proprietor, is to force the master to accept his
workman as an associate, which interferes with freedom and makes mutual
insurance obligatory. Once entered upon this path, we never shall
stop. Little by little the government will become manufacturer,
commission-merchant, and retail dealer.
It will be the sole proprietor. Why, at all epochs, have the ministers
of State been so reluctant to meddle with the question of wages?
Why have they always refused to interfere between the master and the
workman? Because they knew the touchy and jealous nature of property,
and, regarding it as the principle of all civilization, felt that to
meddle with it would be to unsettle the very foundations of society.
Sad condition of the proprietary regime,--one of inability to exercise
charity without violating justice! [39]
And, sir, this fatal consequence which necessity forces upon the State
is no mere imagination. Even now the legislative power is asked, no
longer simply to regulate the government of factories, but to create
factories itself. Listen to the millions of voices shouting on all hands
for THE ORGANISATION OF LABOR, THE CREATION OF NATIONAL WORKSHOPS!
The whole laboring class is agitated: it has its journals, organs,
and representatives. To guarantee labor to the workingman, to balance
production with sale, to harmonize industrial proprietors, it advocates
to-day--as a sovereign remedy--one sole head, one national wardenship,
one huge manufacturing company. For, sir, all this is included in the
idea of national workshops. On this subject I wish to quote, as proof,
the views of an illustrious economist, a brilliant mind, a progressive
intellect, an enthusiastic soul, a true patriot, and yet an official
defender of the right of property. [40]
The honorable professor of the Conservatory proposes then,--
1. TO CHECK THE CONTINUAL EMIGRATION OF LABORERS FROM THE COUNTRY INTO
THE CITIES.
But, to keep the peasant in his village, his residence there must be
made endurable: to be just to all, the proletaire of the country must be
treated as well as the proletaire of the city. Reform is needed, then,
on farms as well as in factories; and, when the government enters the
workshop, the government must seize the plough! What becomes, during
this progressive invasion, of independent cultivation, exclusive domain,
property?
2. TO FIX FOR EACH PROFESSION A MODERATE SALARY, VARYING WITH TIME AND
PLACE AND BASED UPON CERTAIN DATA.
The object of this measure would be to secure to laborers their
subsistence, and to proprietors their profits, while obliging the latter
to sacrifice from motives of prudence, if for no other reason, a portion
of their income. Now, I say, that this portion, in the long run, would
swell until at last there would be an equality of enjoyment between the
proletaire and the proprietor. For, as we have had occasion to remark
several times already, the interest of the capitalist--in other words
the increase of the idler--tends, on account of the power of labor, the
multiplication of products and exchanges, to continually diminish, and,
by constant reduction, to disappear. So that, in the society proposed
by M. Blanqui, equality would not be realized at first, but would exist
potentially; since property, though outwardly seeming to be industrial
feudality, being no longer a principle of exclusion and encroachment,
but only a privilege of division, would not be slow, thanks to the
intellectual and political emancipation of the proletariat, in passing
into absolute equality,--as absolute at least as any thing can be on
this earth.
I omit, for the sake of brevity, the numerous considerations which
the professor adduces in support of what he calls, too modestly in my
opinion, his Utopia. They would serve only to prove beyond all question
that, of all the charlatans of radicalism who fatigue the public ear,
no one approaches, for depth and clearness of thought, the audacious M.
Blanqui.
3. NATIONAL WORKSHOPS SHOULD BE IN OPERATION ONLY DURING PERIODS OF
STAGNATION IN ORDINARY INDUSTRIES; AT SUCH TIMES THEY SHOULD BE OPENED
AS VAST OUTLETS TO THE FLOOD OF THE LABORING POPULATION.
But, sir, the stoppage of private industry is the result of
over-production, and insufficient markets. If, then, production
continues in the national workshops, how will the crisis be terminated?
Undoubtedly, by the general depreciation of merchandise, and, in the
last analysis, by the conversion of private workshops into national
workshops. On the other hand, the government will need capital with
which to pay its workmen; now, how will this capital be obtained? By
taxation. And upon what will the tax be levied? Upon property. Then you
will have proprietary industry sustaining against itself, and at its own
expense, another industry with which it cannot compete. What, think you,
will become, in this fatal circle, of the possibility of profit,--in a
word, of property?
Thank Heaven! equality of conditions is taught in the public schools;
let us fear revolutions no longer. The most implacable enemy of property
could not, if he wished to destroy it, go to work in a wiser and more
effective way. Courage, then, ministers, deputies, economists! make
haste to seize this glorious initiative; let the watchwords of equality,
uttered from the heights of science and power, be repeated in the midst
of the people; let them thrill the breasts of the proletaires, and carry
dismay into the ranks of the last representatives of privilege!
The tendency of society in favor of compelling proprietors to support
national workshops and public manufactories is so strong that for
several years, under the name of ELECTORAL REFORM, it has been
exclusively the question of the day. What is, after all, this electoral
reform which the people grasp at, as if it were a bait, and which
so many ambitious persons either call for or denounce? It is the
acknowledgment of the right of the masses to a voice in the assessment
of taxes, and the making of the laws; which laws, aiming always at the
protection of material interests, affect, in a greater or less degree,
all questions of taxation or wages. Now the people, instructed long
since by their journals, their dramas, [41] and their songs, [42] know
to-day that taxation, to be equitably divided, must be graduated, and
must be borne mainly by the rich,--that it must be levied upon luxuries,
&c. And be sure that the people, once in the majority in the Chamber,
will not fail to apply these lessons. Already we have a minister
of public works. National workshops will follow; and soon, as
a consequence, the excess of the proprietor's revenue over the
workingman's wages will be swallowed up in the coffers of the laborers
of the State. Do you not see that in this way property is gradually
reduced, as nobility was formerly, to a nominal title, to a distinction
purely honorary in its nature?
Either the electoral reform will fail to accomplish that which is hoped
from it, and will disappoint its innumerable partisans, or else it will
inevitably result in a transformation of the absolute right under which
we live into a right of possession; that is, that while, at present,
property makes the elector, after this reform is accomplished, the
citizen, the producer will be the possessor. [43] Consequently, the
radicals are right in saying that the electoral reform is in their eyes
only a means; but, when they are silent as to the end, they show either
profound ignorance, or useless dissimulation. There should be no secrets
or reservations from peoples and powers. He disgraces himself and fails
in respect for his fellows, who, in publishing his opinions, employs
evasion and cunning. Before the people act, they need to know the whole
truth. Unhappy he who shall dare to trifle with them! For the people are
credulous, but they are strong. Let us tell them, then, that this reform
which is proposed is only a means,--a means often tried, and hitherto
without effect,--but that the logical object of the electoral reform is
equality of fortunes; and that this equality itself is only a new means
having in view the superior and definitive object of the salvation of
society, the restoration of morals and religion, and the revival of
poetry and art.
This assertion of M. Rossi is not borne out by history. Property is the
cause of the electoral right, not as a PRESUMPTION OF CAPACITY,--an idea
which never prevailed until lately, and which is extremely absurd,--but
as a GUARANTEE OF DEVOTION TO THE ESTABLISHED ORDER. The electoral body
is a league of those interested in the maintenance of property, against
those not interested. There are thousands of documents, even official
documents, to prove this, if necessary. For the rest, the present system
is only a continuation of the municipal system, which, in the
middle ages, sprang up in connection with feudalism,--an oppressive,
mischief-making system, full of petty passions and base intrigues.
It would be an abuse of the reader's patience to insist further upon
the tendency of our time towards equality. There are, moreover, so many
people who denounce the present age, that nothing is gained by exposing
to their view the popular, scientific, and representative tendencies of
the nation.
Prompt to recognize the accuracy of the inferences drawn from
observation, they confine themselves to a general censure of the facts,
and an absolute denial of their legitimacy. "What wonder," they say,
"that this atmosphere of equality intoxicates us, considering all that
has been said and done during the past ten years! . . . Do you not see that
society is dissolving, that a spirit of infatuation is carrying us away?
All these hopes of regeneration are but forebodings of death; your songs
of triumph are like the prayers of the departing, your trumpet peals
announce the baptism of a dying man. Civilization is falling in ruin:
_Imus, imus, praecipites_! "
Such people deny God. I might content myself with the reply that
the spirit of 1830 was the result of the maintenance of the violated
charter; that this charter arose from the Revolution of '89; that
'89 implies the States-General's right of remonstrance, and the
enfranchisement of the communes; that the communes suppose feudalism,
which in its turn supposes invasion, Roman law, Christianity, &c.
But it is necessary to look further. We must penetrate to the very heart
of ancient institutions, plunge into the social depths, and uncover this
indestructible leaven of equality which the God of justice breathed into
our souls, and which manifests itself in all our works.
Labor is man's contemporary; it is a duty, since it is a condition of
existence: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. " It is more
than a duty, it is a mission: "God put the man into the garden to dress
it. " I add that labor is the cause and means of equality.
Cast away upon a desert island two men: one large, strong, and active;
the other weak, timid, and domestic. The latter will die of hunger;
while the other, a skilful hunter, an expert fisherman, and an
indefatigable husbandman, will overstock himself with provisions. What
greater inequality, in this state of Nature so dear to the heart of Jean
Jacques, could be imagined! But let these two men meet and associate
themselves: the second immediately attends to the cooking, takes charge
of the household affairs, and sees to the provisions, beds, and clothes;
provided the stronger does not abuse his superiority by enslaving and
ill-treating his companion, their social condition will be perfectly
equal. Thus, through exchange of services, the inequalities of Nature
neutralize each other, talents associate, and forces balance. Violence
and inertia are found only among the poor and the aristocratic. And
in that lies the philosophy of political economy, the mystery of human
brotherhood. _Hic est sapientia_. Let us pass from the hypothetical
state of pure Nature into civilization.
The proprietor of the soil, who produces, I will suppose with the
economists, by lending his instrument, receives at the foundation of a
society so many bushels of grain for each acre of arable land. As long
as labor is weak, and the variety of its products small, the proprietor
is powerful in comparison with the laborers; he has ten times,
one hundred times, the portion of an honest man. But let labor, by
multiplying its inventions, multiply its enjoyments and wants, and the
proprietor, if he wishes to enjoy the new products, will be obliged to
reduce his income every day; and since the first products tend rather
to depreciate than to rise in value,--in consequence of the continual
addition of the new ones, which may be regarded as supplements of the
first ones,--it follows that the idle proprietor grows poor as fast
as public prosperity increases. "Incomes" (I like to quote you, sir,
because it is impossible to give too good an authority for these
elementary principles of economy, and because I cannot express them
better myself), "incomes," you have said, "tend to disappear as capital
increases. He who possesses to-day an income of twenty thousand pounds
is not nearly as rich as he who possessed the same amount fifty years
ago. The time is coming when all property will be a burden to the idle,
and will necessarily pass into the hands of the able and industrious.
[44]. . . "
In order to live as a proprietor, or to consume without producing, it is
necessary, then, to live upon the labor of another; in other words,
it is necessary to kill the laborer. It is upon this principle that
proprietors of those varieties of capital which are of primary necessity
increase their farm-rents as fast as industry develops, much more
careful of their privileges in that respect, than those economists who,
in order to strengthen property, advocate a reduction of interest.
But the crime is unavailing: labor and production increase; soon the
proprietor will be forced to labor, and then property is lost.
The proprietor is a man who, having absolute control of an instrument
of production, claims the right to enjoy the product of the instrument
without using it himself. To this end he lends it; and we have just
seen that from this loan the laborer derives a power of exchange, which
sooner or later will destroy the right of increase. In the first place,
the proprietor is obliged to allow the laborer a portion of the product,
for without it the laborer could not live. Soon the latter, through
the development of his industry, finds a means of regaining the greater
portion of that which he gives to the proprietor; so that at last, the
objects of enjoyment increasing continually, while the income of the
idler remains the same, the proprietor, having exhausted his resources,
begins to think of going to work himself. Then the victory of the
producer is certain. Labor commences to tip the balance towards its own
side, and commerce leads to equilibrium.
Man's instinct cannot err; as, in liberty, exchange of functions leads
inevitably to equality among men, so commerce--or exchange of products,
which is identical with exchange of functions--is a new cause of
equality. As long as the proprietor does not labor, however small his
income, he enjoys a privilege; the laborer's welfare may be equal to
his, but equality of conditions does not exist. But as soon as the
proprietor becomes a producer,--since he can exchange his special
product only with his tenant or his _commandite_,--sooner or later this
tenant, this _exploited_ man, if violence is not done him, will make
a profit out of the proprietor, and will oblige him to restore--in the
exchange of their respective products--the interest on his capital. So
that, balancing one injustice by another, the contracting parties will
be equal. Labor and exchange, when liberty prevails, lead, then, to
equality of fortunes; mutuality of services neutralizes privilege.
That is why despots in all ages and countries have assumed control
of commerce; they wished to prevent the labor of their subjects from
becoming an obstacle to the rapacity of tyrants.
Up to this point, all takes place in the natural order; there is no
premeditation, no artifice. The whole proceeding is governed by the laws
of necessity alone. Proprietors and laborers act only in obedience to
their wants. Thus, the exercise of the right of increase, the art
of robbing the producer, depends--during this first period of
civilization--upon physical violence, murder, and war.
But at this point a gigantic and complicated conspiracy is hatched
against the capitalists. The weapon of the EXPLOITERS is met by the
EXPLOITED with the instrument of commerce,--a marvellous invention,
denounced at its origin by the moralists who favored property, but
inspired without doubt by the genius of labor, by the Minerva of the
proletaires.
The principal cause of the evil lay in the accumulation and immobility
of capital of all sorts,--an immobility which prevented labor, enslaved
and subalternized by haughty idleness, from ever acquiring it. The
necessity was felt of dividing and mobilizing wealth, of rendering it
portable, of making it pass from the hands of the possessor into those
of the worker. Labor invented MONEY. Afterwards, this invention was
revived and developed by the BILL OF EXCHANGE and the BANK. For all
these things are substantially the same, and proceed from the same mind.
The first man who conceived the idea of representing a value by a shell,
a precious stone, or a certain weight of metal, was the real inventor
of the Bank. What is a piece of money, in fact? It is a bill of exchange
written upon solid and durable material, and carrying with it its own
redemption. By this means, oppressed equality was enabled to laugh at
the efforts of the proprietors, and the balance of justice was adjusted
for the first time in the tradesman's shop. The trap was cunningly set,
and accomplished its purpose so thoroughly that in idle hands money
became only dissolving wealth, a false symbol, a shadow of riches. An
excellent economist and profound philosopher was that miser who took
as his motto, "WHEN A GUINEA IS EXCHANGED, IT EVAPORATES. " So it may
be said, "When real estate is converted into money, it is lost. " This
explains the constant fact of history, that the nobles--the unproductive
proprietors of the soil--have every where been dispossessed by
industrial and commercial plebeians. Such was especially the case in the
formation of the Italian republics, born, during the middle ages, of
the impoverishment of the seigniors. I will not pursue the interesting
considerations which this matter suggests; I could only repeat the
testimony of historians, and present economical demonstrations in an
altered form.
The greatest enemy of the landed and industrial aristocracy to-day, the
incessant promoter of equality of fortunes, is the BANKER. Through him
immense plains are divided, mountains change their positions, forests
are grown upon the public squares, one hemisphere produces for another,
and every corner of the globe has its usufructuaries. By means of the
Bank new wealth is continually created, the use of which (soon becoming
indispensable to selfishness) wrests the dormant capital from the hands
of the jealous proprietor. The banker is at once the most potent creator
of wealth, and the main distributor of the products of art and Nature.
And yet, by the strangest antinomy, this same banker is the most
relentless collector of profits, increase, and usury ever inspired by
the demon of property. The importance of the services which he renders
leads us to endure, though not without complaint, the taxes which he
imposes. Nevertheless, since nothing can avoid its providential mission,
since nothing which exists can escape the end for which it exists
the banker (the modern Croesus) must some day become the restorer of
equality. And following in your footsteps, sir, I have already given the
reason; namely, that profit decreases as capital multiplies, since an
increase of capital--calling for more laborers, without whom it remains
unproductive--always causes an increase of wages. Whence it follows that
the Bank, to-day the suction-pump of wealth, is destined to become the
steward of the human race.
The phrase EQUALITY OF FORTUNES chafes people, as if it referred to
a condition of the other world, unknown here below. There are some
persons, radicals as well as moderates, whom the very mention of this
idea fills with indignation. Let, then, these silly aristocrats abolish
mercantile societies and insurance companies, which are founded
by prudence for mutual assistance. For all these social facts, so
spontaneous and free from all levelling intentions, are the legitimate
fruits of the instinct of equality.
When the legislator makes a law, properly speaking he does not MAKE
it,--he does not CREATE it: he DESCRIBES it. In legislating upon the
moral, civil, and political relations of citizens, he does not express
an arbitrary notion: he states the general idea,--the higher principle
which governs the matter which he is considering; in a word, he is the
proclaimer, not the inventor, of the law. So, when two or more men
form among themselves, by synallagmatic contract, an industrial or an
insurance association, they recognize that their interests, formerly
isolated by a false spirit of selfishness and independence, are
firmly connected by their inner natures, and by the mutuality of their
relations. They do not really bind themselves by an act of their private
will: they swear to conform henceforth to a previously existing social
law hitherto disregarded by them. And this is proved by the fact that
these same men, could they avoid association, would not associate.
Before they can be induced to unite their interests, they must acquire
full knowledge of the dangers of competition and isolation; hence the
experience of evil is the only thing which leads them into society.
Now I say that, to establish equality among men, it is only necessary
to generalize the principle upon which insurance, agricultural, and
commercial associations are based. I say that competition, isolation
of interests, monopoly, privilege, accumulation of capital, exclusive
enjoyment, subordination of functions, individual production, the right
of profit or increase, the exploitation of man by man, and, to sum up
all these species under one head, that PROPERTY is the principal cause
of misery and crime. And, for having arrived at this offensive and
anti-proprietary conclusion, I am an abhorred monster; radicals and
conservatives alike point me out as a fit subject for prosecution; the
academies shower their censures upon me; the most worthy people regard
me as mad; and those are excessively tolerant who content themselves
with the assertion that I am a fool. Oh, unhappy the writer who
publishes the truth otherwise than as a performance of a duty! If he has
counted upon the applause of the crowd; if he has supposed that avarice
and self-interest would forget themselves in admiration of him; if he
has neglected to encase himself within three thicknesses of brass,--he
will fail, as he ought, in his selfish undertaking. The unjust
criticisms, the sad disappointments, the despair of his mistaken
ambition, will kill him.
But, if I am no longer permitted to express my own personal opinion
concerning this interesting question of social equilibrium, let me, at
least, make known the thought of my masters, and develop the doctrines
advocated in the name of the government.
It never has been my intention, sir, in spite of the vigorous censure
which you, in behalf of your academy, have pronounced upon the doctrine
of equality of fortunes, to contradict and cope with you. In listening
to you, I have felt my inferiority too keenly to permit me to enter upon
such a discussion. And then,--if it must be said,--however different
your language is from mine, we believe in the same principles; you share
all my opinions. I do not mean to insinuate thereby, sir, that you have
(to use the phraseology of the schools) an ESOTERIC and an EXOTERIC
doctrine,--that, secretly believing in equality, you defend property
only from motives of prudence and by command. I am not rash enough to
regard you as my colleague in my revolutionary projects; and I esteem
you too highly, moreover, to suspect you of dissimulation. I only
mean that the truths which methodical investigation and laborious
metaphysical speculation have painfully demonstrated to me, a profound
acquaintance with political economy and a long experience reveal to
you. While I have reached my belief in equality by long reflection, and
almost in spite of my desires, you hold yours, sir, with all the zeal of
faith,--with all the spontaneity of genius. That is why your course
of lectures at the Conservatory is a perpetual war upon property and
inequality of fortunes; that is why your most learned investigations,
your most ingenious analyses, and your innumerable observations always
conclude in a formula of progress and equality; that is why, finally,
you are never more admired and applauded than at those moments of
inspiration when, borne upon the wings of science, you ascend to those
lofty truths which cause plebeian hearts to beat with enthusiasm, and
which chill with horror men whose intentions are evil. How many times,
from the place where I eagerly drank in your eloquent words, have I
inwardly thanked Heaven for exempting you from the judgment passed by
St. Paul upon the philosophers of his time,--"They have known the truth,
and have not made it known"! How many times have I rejoiced at finding
my own justification in each of your discourses! No, no; I neither wish
nor ask for any thing which you do not teach yourself. I appeal to your
numerous audience; let it belie me if, in commenting upon you, I pervert
your meaning.
duty.
We need to love our wives and children. It is our duty to protect and
support them. It is our right to be loved in preference to all others.
Conjugal fidelity is justice. Adultery is high treason against society.
We need to exchange our products for other products. It is our right
that this exchange should be one of equivalents; and since we consume
before we produce, it would be our duty, if we could control the matter,
to see to it that our last product shall follow our last consumption.
Suicide is fraudulent bankruptcy.
We need to live our lives according to the dictates of our reason. It
is our right to maintain our freedom. It is our duty to respect that of
others.
We need to be appreciated by our fellows. It is our duty to deserve
their praise. It is our right to be judged by our works.
Liberty is not opposed to the rights of succession and bequest. It
contents itself with preventing violations of equality. "Choose," it
tells us, "between two legacies, but do not take them both. " All our
legislation concerning transmissions, entailments, adoptions, and, if I
may venture to use such a word, COADJUTORERIES, requires remodelling.
Liberty favors emulation, instead of destroying it. In social equality,
emulation consists in accomplishing under like conditions; it is its own
reward. No one suffers by the victory.
Liberty applauds self-sacrifice, and honors it with its votes, but it
can dispense with it. Justice alone suffices to maintain the social
equilibrium. Self-sacrifice is an act of supererogation. Happy, however,
the man who can say, "I sacrifice myself. " [33]
Liberty is essentially an organizing force. To insure equality between
men and peace among nations, agriculture and industry, and the centres
of education, business, and storage, must be distributed according to
the climate and the geographical position of the country, the nature of
the products, the character and natural talents of the inhabitants, &c. ,
in proportions so just, so wise, so harmonious, that in no place shall
there ever be either an excess or a lack of population, consumption, and
products. There commences the science of public and private right,
the true political economy. It is for the writers on jurisprudence,
henceforth unembarrassed by the false principle of property, to describe
the new laws, and bring peace upon earth. Knowledge and genius they do
not lack; the foundation is now laid for them. [34]
I have accomplished my task; property is conquered, never again to
arise. Wherever this work is read and discussed, there will be deposited
the germ of death to property; there, sooner or later, privilege and
servitude will disappear, and the despotism of will will give place to
the reign of reason. What sophisms, indeed, what prejudices
(however obstinate) can stand before the simplicity of the following
propositions:--
I. Individual POSSESSION [35] is the condition of social life; five
thousand years of property demonstrate it. PROPERTY is the suicide of
society. Possession is a right; property is against right. Suppress
property while maintaining possession, and, by this simple modification
of the principle, you will revolutionize law, government, economy, and
institutions; you will drive evil from the face of the earth.
II. All having an equal right of occupancy, possession varies with the
number of possessors; property cannot establish itself.
III. The effect of labor being the same for all, property is lost in the
common prosperity.
IV. All human labor being the result of collective force, all property
becomes, in consequence, collective and unitary. To speak more exactly,
labor destroys property.
V. Every capacity for labor being, like every instrument of labor, an
accumulated capital, and a collective property, inequality of wages
and fortunes (on the ground of inequality of capacities) is, therefore,
injustice and robbery.
VI. The necessary conditions of commerce are the liberty of the
contracting parties and the equivalence of the products exchanged.
Now, value being expressed by the amount of time and outlay which each
product costs, and liberty being inviolable, the wages of laborers (like
their rights and duties) should be equal.
VII. Products are bought only by products. Now, the condition of all
exchange being equivalence of products, profit is impossible and unjust.
Observe this elementary principle of economy, and pauperism, luxury,
oppression, vice, crime, and hunger will disappear from our midst.
VIII. Men are associated by the physical and mathematical law of
production, before they are voluntarily associated by choice. Therefore,
equality of conditions is demanded by justice; that is, by strict social
law: esteem, friendship, gratitude, admiration, all fall within the
domain of EQUITABLE or PROPORTIONAL law only.
IX. Free association, liberty--whose sole function is to maintain
equality in the means of production and equivalence in exchanges--is the
only possible, the only just, the only true form of society.
X. Politics is the science of liberty. The government of man by man
(under whatever name it be disguised) is oppression. Society finds its
highest perfection in the union of order with anarchy.
The old civilization has run its race; a new sun is rising, and will
soon renew the face of the earth. Let the present generation perish, let
the old prevaricators die in the desert! the holy earth shall not cover
their bones. Young man, exasperated by the corruption of the age, and
absorbed in your zeal for justice! --if your country is dear to you,
and if you have the interests of humanity at heart, have the courage to
espouse the cause of liberty! Cast off your old selfishness, and plunge
into the rising flood of popular equality! There your regenerate soul
will acquire new life and vigor; your enervated genius will recover
unconquerable energy; and your heart, perhaps already withered, will be
rejuvenated! Every thing will wear a different look to your illuminated
vision; new sentiments will engender new ideas within you; religion,
morality, poetry, art, language will appear before you in nobler and
fairer forms; and thenceforth, sure of your faith, and thoughtfully
enthusiastic, you will hail the dawn of universal regeneration!
And you, sad victims of an odious law! --you, whom a jesting world
despoils and outrages! --you, whose labor has always been fruitless,
and whose rest has been without hope,--take courage! your tears are
numbered! The fathers have sown in affliction, the children shall reap
in rejoicings!
O God of liberty! God of equality! Thou who didst place in my heart
the sentiment of justice, before my reason could comprehend it, hear
my ardent prayer! Thou hast dictated all that I have written; Thou hast
shaped my thought; Thou hast directed my studies; Thou hast weaned my
mind from curiosity and my heart from attachment, that I might publish
Thy truth to the master and the slave. I have spoken with what force and
talent Thou hast given me: it is Thine to finish the work. Thou knowest
whether I seek my welfare or Thy glory, O God of liberty! Ah! perish
my memory, and let humanity be free! Let me see from my obscurity
the people at last instructed; let noble teachers enlighten them; let
generous spirits guide them! Abridge, if possible, the time of our
trial; stifle pride and avarice in equality; annihilate this love of
glory which enslaves us; teach these poor children that in the bosom
of liberty there are neither heroes nor great men! Inspire the powerful
man, the rich man, him whose name my lips shall never pronounce in Thy
presence, with a horror of his crimes; let him be the first to apply for
admission to the redeemed society; let the promptness of his repentance
be the ground of his forgiveness! Then, great and small, wise and
foolish, rich and poor, will unite in an ineffable fraternity; and,
singing in unison a new hymn, will rebuild Thy altar, O God of liberty
and equality!
END OF FIRST MEMOIR.
WHAT IS PROPERTY? SECOND MEMOIR
A LETTER TO M. BLANQUI.
SECOND MEMOIR.
PARIS, April 1, 1841.
MONSIEUR,--
Before resuming my "Inquiries into Government and Property," it is
fitting, for the satisfaction of some worthy people, and also in the
interest of order, that I should make to you a plain, straightforward
explanation. In a much-governed State, no one would be allowed to
attack the external form of the society, and the groundwork of its
institutions, until he had established his right to do so,--first, by
his morality; second, by his capacity; and, third, by the purity of
his intentions. Any one who, wishing to publish a treatise upon the
constitution of the country, could not satisfy this threefold condition,
would be obliged to procure the endorsement of a responsible patron
possessing the requisite qualifications.
But we Frenchmen have the liberty of the press. This grand right--the
sword of thought, which elevates the virtuous citizen to the rank of
legislator, and makes the malicious citizen an agent of discord--frees
us from all preliminary responsibility to the law; but it does not
release us from our internal obligation to render a public account
of our sentiments and thoughts. I have used, in all its fulness, and
concerning an important question, the right which the charter grants
us. I come to-day, sir, to submit my conscience to your judgment, and my
feeble insight to your discriminating reason. You have criticised in a
kindly spirit--I had almost said with partiality for the writer--a work
which teaches a doctrine that you thought it your duty to condemn. "The
Academy of Moral and Political Sciences," said you in your report, "can
accept the conclusions of the author only as far as it likes. " I venture
to hope, sir, that, after you have read this letter, if your prudence
still restrains you, your fairness will induce you to do me justice.
MEN, EQUAL IN THE DIGNITY OF THEIR PERSONS AND EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW,
SHOULD BE EQUAL IN THEIR CONDITIONS,--such is the thesis which I
maintained and developed in a memoir bearing the title, "What is
Property? or, An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government. "
The idea of social equality, even in individual fortunes, has in all
ages besieged, like a vague presentiment, the human imagination. Poets
have sung of it in their hymns; philosophers have dreamed of it in their
Utopias; priests teach it, but only for the spiritual world. The people,
governed by it, never have had faith in it; and the civil power is never
more disturbed than by the fables of the age of gold and the reign
of Astrea. A year ago, however, this idea received a scientific
demonstration, which has not yet been satisfactorily answered, and,
permit me to add, never will be. This demonstration, owing to its
slightly impassioned style, its method of reasoning,--which was so
at variance with that employed by the generally recognized
authorities,--and the importance and novelty of its conclusions, was of
a nature to cause some alarm; and might have been dangerous, had it not
been--as you, sir, so well said--a sealed letter, so far as the general
public was concerned, addressed only to men of intelligence. I was
glad to see that through its metaphysical dress you recognized the wise
foresight of the author; and I thank you for it. May God grant that my
intentions, which are wholly peaceful, may never be charged upon me as
treasonable!
Like a stone thrown into a mass of serpents, the First Memoir on
Property excited intense animosity, and aroused the passions of many.
But, while some wished the author and his work to be publicly denounced,
others found in them simply the solution of the fundamental problems of
society; a few even basing evil speculations upon the new light which
they had obtained. It was not to be expected that a system of inductions
abstractly gathered together, and still more abstractly expressed, would
be understood with equal accuracy in its ensemble and in each of its
parts.
To find the law of equality, no longer in charity and self-sacrifice
(which are not binding in their nature), but in justice; to base
equality of functions upon equality of persons; to determine the
absolute principle of exchange; to neutralize the inequality of
individual faculties by collective force; to establish an equation
between property and robbery; to change the law of succession without
destroying the principle; to maintain the human personality in a
system of absolute association, and to save liberty from the chains
of communism; to synthetize the monarchical and democratic forms of
government; to reverse the division of powers; to give the executive
power to the nation, and to make legislation a positive, fixed,
and absolute science,--what a series of paradoxes! what a string of
delusions! if I may not say, what a chain of truths! But it is not
my purpose here to pass upon the theory of the right of possession. I
discuss no dogmas. My only object is to justify my views, and to show
that, in writing as I did, I not only exercised a right, but performed a
duty.
Yes, I have attacked property, and shall attack it again; but, sir,
before demanding that I shall make the amende honorable for having
obeyed my conscience and spoken the exact truth, condescend, I beg of
you, to cast a glance at the events which are happening around us; look
at our deputies, our magistrates, our philosophers, our ministers, our
professors, and our publicists; examine their methods of dealing with
the matter of property; count up with me the restrictions placed upon
it every day in the name of the public welfare; measure the breaches
already made; estimate those which society thinks of making hereafter;
add the ideas concerning property held by all theories in common;
interrogate history, and then tell me what will be left, half a century
hence, of this old right of property; and, thus perceiving that I have
so many accomplices, you will immediately declare me innocent.
What is the law of expropriation on the ground of public utility, which
everybody favors, and which is even thought too lenient? [36]
A flagrant violation of the right of property. Society indemnifies,
it is said, the dispossessed proprietor; but does it return to him the
traditional associations, the poetic charm, and the family pride which
accompany property? Naboth, and the miller of Sans-Souci, would have
protested against French law, as they protested against the caprice of
their kings. "It is the field of our fathers," they would have cried,
"and we will not sell it! " Among the ancients, the refusal of the
individual limited the powers of the State. The Roman law bowed to
the will of the citizen, and an emperor--Commodus, if I remember
rightly--abandoned the project of enlarging the forum out of respect for
the rights of the occupants who refused to abdicate. Property is a
real right, _jus_ _in re_,--a right inherent in the thing, and whose
principle lies in the external manifestation of man's will. Man leaves
his imprint, stamps his character, upon the objects of his handiwork.
This plastic force of man, as the modern jurists say, is the seal which,
set upon matter, makes it holy. Whoever lays hands upon it, against the
proprietor's will, does violence to the latter's personality. And yet,
when an administrative committee saw fit to declare that public utility
required it, property had to give way to the general will. Soon, in
the name of public utility, methods of cultivation and conditions of
enjoyment will be prescribed; inspectors of agriculture and manufactures
will be appointed; property will be taken away from unskilful hands,
and entrusted to laborers who are more deserving of it; and a general
superintendence of production will be established. It is not two years
since I saw a proprietor destroy a forest more than five hundred acres
in extent. If public utility had interfered, that forest--the only one
for miles around--would still be standing.
But, it is said, expropriation on the ground of public utility is only
an exception which confirms the principle, and bears testimony in
favor of the right. Very well; but from this exception we will pass to
another, from that to a third, and so on from exceptions to exceptions,
until we have reduced the rule to a pure abstraction.
How many supporters do you think, sir, can be claimed for the project
of the conversion of the public funds? I venture to say that everybody
favors it, except the fund-holders. Now, this so-called conversion is
an extensive expropriation, and in this case with no indemnity whatever.
The public funds are so much real estate, the income from which the
proprietor counts upon with perfect safety, and which owes its value
to the tacit promise of the government to pay interest upon it at the
established rate, until the fund-holder applies for redemption. For,
if the income is liable to diminution, it is less profitable than
house-rent or farm-rent, whose rates may rise or fall according to the
fluctuations in the market; and in that case, what inducement has the
capitalist to invest his money in the State? When, then, you force the
fund-holder to submit to a diminution of interest, you make him bankrupt
to the extent of the diminution; and since, in consequence of the
conversion, an equally profitable investment becomes impossible, you
depreciate his property.
That such a measure may be justly executed, it must be generalized; that
is, the law which provides for it must decree also that interest on sums
lent on deposit or on mortgage throughout the realm, as well as house
and farm-rents, shall be reduced to three per cent. This simultaneous
reduction of all kinds of income would be not a whit more difficult to
accomplish than the proposed conversion; and, further, it would offer
the advantage of forestalling at one blow all objections to it, at the
same time that it would insure a just assessment of the land-tax. See!
If at the moment of conversion a piece of real estate yields an income
of one thousand francs, after the new law takes effect it will yield
only six hundred francs. Now, allowing the tax to be an aliquot
part--one-fourth for example--of the income derived from each piece of
property, it is clear on the one hand that the proprietor would not, in
order to lighten his share of the tax, underestimate the value of his
property; since, house and farm-rents being fixed by the value of the
capital, and the latter being measured by the tax, to depreciate his
real estate would be to reduce his revenue. On the other hand, it is
equally evident that the same proprietors could not overestimate the
value of their property, in order to increase their incomes beyond the
limits of the law, since the tenants and farmers, with their old leases
in their hands, would enter a protest.
Such, sir, must be the result sooner or later of the conversion which
has been so long demanded; otherwise, the financial operation of which
we are speaking would be a crying injustice, unless intended as a
stepping-stone. This last motive seems the most plausible one; for in
spite of the clamors of interested parties, and the flagrant violation
of certain rights, the public conscience is bound to fulfil its desire,
and is no more affected when charged with attacking property, than
when listening to the complaints of the bondholders. In this case,
instinctive justice belies legal justice.
Who has not heard of the inextricable confusion into which the Chamber
of Deputies was thrown last year, while discussing the question of
colonial and native sugars? Did they leave these two industries to
themselves? The native manufacturer was ruined by the colonist. To
maintain the beet-root, the cane had to be taxed. To protect the
property of the one, it became necessary to violate the property of the
other. The most remarkable feature of this business was precisely that
to which the least attention was paid; namely, that, in one way or
another, property had to be violated. Did they impose on each industry
a proportional tax, so as to preserve a balance in the market? They
created a maximum PRICE for each variety of sugar; and, as this maximum
PRICE was not the same, they attacked property in two ways,--on the one
hand, interfering with the liberty of trade; on the other, disregarding
the equality of proprietors. Did they suppress the beet-root by granting
an indemnity to the manufacturer? They sacrificed the property of the
tax-payer. Finally, did they prefer to cultivate the two varieties of
sugar at the nation's expense, just as different varieties of tobacco
are cultivated? They abolished, so far as the sugar industry was
concerned, the right of property. This last course, being the most
social, would have been certainly the best; but, if property is the
necessary basis of civilization, how is this deep-seated antagonism to
be explained? [37]
Not satisfied with the power of dispossessing a citizen on the ground
of public utility, they want also to dispossess him on the ground of
PRIVATE UTILITY. For a long time, a revision of the law concerning
mortgages was clamored for; a process was demanded, in behalf of all
kinds of credit and in the interest of even the debtors themselves,
which would render the expropriation of real estate as prompt, as easy,
and as effective as that which follows a commercial protest. The Chamber
of Deputies, in the early part of this year, 1841, discussed this
project, and the law was passed almost unanimously. There is nothing
more just, nothing more reasonable, nothing more philosophical
apparently, than the motives which gave rise to this reform.
I. Formerly, the small proprietor whose obligation had arrived at
maturity, and who found himself unable to meet it, had to employ all
that he had left, after being released from his debt, in defraying the
legal costs. Henceforth, the promptness of expropriation will save him
from total ruin. 2. The difficulties in the way of payment arrested
credit, and prevented the employment of capital in agricultural
enterprises. This cause of distrust no longer existing, capitalists will
find new markets, agriculture will rapidly develop, and farmers will
be the first to enjoy the benefit of the new law. 3. Finally, it was
iniquitous and absurd, that, on account of a protested note, a poor
manufacturer should see in twenty-four hours his business arrested, his
labor suspended, his merchandise seized, his machinery sold at auction,
and finally himself led off to prison, while two years were sometimes
necessary to expropriate the most miserable piece of real estate.
These arguments, and others besides, you clearly stated, sir, in your
first lectures of this academic year.
But, when stating these excellent arguments, did you ask yourself, sir,
whither would tend such a transformation of our system of mortgages? . . .
To monetize, if I may say so, landed property; to accumulate it within
portfolios; to separate the laborer from the soil, man from Nature; to
make him a wanderer over the face of the earth; to eradicate from
his heart every trace of family feeling, national pride, and love of
country; to isolate him more and more; to render him indifferent to
all around him; to concentrate his love upon one object,--money; and,
finally, by the dishonest practices of usury, to monopolize the land
to the profit of a financial aristocracy,--a worthy auxiliary of that
industrial feudality whose pernicious influence we begin to feel so
bitterly. Thus, little by little, the subordination of the laborer to
the idler, the restoration of abolished castes, and the distinction
between patrician and plebeian, would be effected; thus, thanks to the
new privileges granted to the property of the capitalists, that of the
small and intermediate proprietors would gradually disappear, and with
it the whole class of free and honest laborers. This certainly is not
my plan for the abolition of property. Far from mobilizing the soil, I
would, if possible, immobilize even the functions of pure intelligence,
so that society might be the fulfilment of the intentions of Nature,
who gave us our first possession, the land. For, if the instrument
or capital of production is the mark of the laborer, it is also his
pedestal, his support, his country, and, as the Psalmist says, THE PLACE
OF HIS ACTIVITY AND HIS REST. [38]
Let us examine more closely still the inevitable and approaching result
of the last law concerning judicial sales and mortgages. Under
the system of competition which is killing us, and whose necessary
expression is a plundering and tyrannical government, the farmer will
need always capital in order to repair his losses, and will be forced to
contract loans. Always depending upon the future for the payment of his
debts, he will be deceived in his hope, and surprised by maturity. For
what is there more prompt, more unexpected, more abbreviatory of space
and time, than the maturity of an obligation? I address this question
to all whom this pitiless Nemesis pursues, and even troubles in their
dreams. Now, under the new law, the expropriation of a debtor will be
effected a hundred times more rapidly; then, also, spoliation will be
a hundred times surer, and the free laborer will pass a hundred times
sooner from his present condition to that of a serf attached to the
soil. Formerly, the length of time required to effect the seizure
curbed the usurer's avidity, gave the borrower an opportunity to recover
himself, and gave rise to a transaction between him and his creditor
which might result finally in a complete release. Now, the debtor's
sentence is irrevocable: he has but a few days of grace.
And what advantages are promised by this law as an offset to this sword
of Damocles, suspended by a single hair over the head of the unfortunate
husbandman?
The expenses of seizure will be much less, it is said; but
will the interest on the borrowed capital be less exorbitant? For, after
all, it is interest which impoverishes the peasant and leads to his
expropriation. That the law may be in harmony with its principle, that
it may be truly inspired by that spirit of justice for which it is
commended, it must--while facilitating expropriation--lower the legal
price of money. Otherwise, the reform concerning mortgages is but a trap
set for small proprietors,--a legislative trick.
Lower interest on money! But, as we have just seen, that is to limit
property. Here, sir, you shall make your own defence. More than once, in
your learned lectures, I have heard you deplore the precipitancy of the
Chambers, who, without previous study and without profound knowledge
of the subject, voted almost unanimously to maintain the statutes and
privileges of the Bank. Now these privileges, these statutes, this vote
of the Chambers, mean simply this,--that the market price of specie,
at five or six per cent. , is not too high, and that the conditions
of exchange, discount, and circulation, which generally double this
interest, are none too severe. So the government thinks. M. Blanqui--a
professor of political economy, paid by the State--maintains the
contrary, and pretends to demonstrate, by decisive arguments, the
necessity of a reform. Who, then, best understands the interests of
property,--the State, or M. Blanqui?
If specie could be borrowed at half the present rate, the revenues from
all sorts of property would soon be reduced one-half also. For example:
when it costs less to build a house than to hire one, when it is cheaper
to clear a field than to procure one already cleared, competition
inevitably leads to a reduction of house and farm-rents, since the
surest way to depreciate active capital is to increase its amount. But
it is a law of political economy that an increase of production augments
the mass of available capital, consequently tends to raise wages, and
finally to annihilate interest. Then, proprietors are interested in
maintaining the statutes and privileges of the Bank; then, a reform in
this matter would compromise the right of increase; then, the peers and
deputies are better informed than Professor Blanqui.
But these same deputies,--so jealous of their privileges whenever
the equalizing effects of a reform are within their intellectual
horizon,--what did they do a few days before they passed the law
concerning judicial sales? They formed a conspiracy against property!
Their law to regulate the labor of children in factories will, without
doubt, prevent the manufacturer from compelling a child to labor more
than so many hours a day; but it will not force him to increase the pay
of the child, nor that of its father. To-day, in the interest of health,
we diminish the subsistence of the poor; to-morrow it will be necessary
to protect them by fixing their MINIMUM wages. But to fix their minimum
wages is to compel the proprietor, is to force the master to accept his
workman as an associate, which interferes with freedom and makes mutual
insurance obligatory. Once entered upon this path, we never shall
stop. Little by little the government will become manufacturer,
commission-merchant, and retail dealer.
It will be the sole proprietor. Why, at all epochs, have the ministers
of State been so reluctant to meddle with the question of wages?
Why have they always refused to interfere between the master and the
workman? Because they knew the touchy and jealous nature of property,
and, regarding it as the principle of all civilization, felt that to
meddle with it would be to unsettle the very foundations of society.
Sad condition of the proprietary regime,--one of inability to exercise
charity without violating justice! [39]
And, sir, this fatal consequence which necessity forces upon the State
is no mere imagination. Even now the legislative power is asked, no
longer simply to regulate the government of factories, but to create
factories itself. Listen to the millions of voices shouting on all hands
for THE ORGANISATION OF LABOR, THE CREATION OF NATIONAL WORKSHOPS!
The whole laboring class is agitated: it has its journals, organs,
and representatives. To guarantee labor to the workingman, to balance
production with sale, to harmonize industrial proprietors, it advocates
to-day--as a sovereign remedy--one sole head, one national wardenship,
one huge manufacturing company. For, sir, all this is included in the
idea of national workshops. On this subject I wish to quote, as proof,
the views of an illustrious economist, a brilliant mind, a progressive
intellect, an enthusiastic soul, a true patriot, and yet an official
defender of the right of property. [40]
The honorable professor of the Conservatory proposes then,--
1. TO CHECK THE CONTINUAL EMIGRATION OF LABORERS FROM THE COUNTRY INTO
THE CITIES.
But, to keep the peasant in his village, his residence there must be
made endurable: to be just to all, the proletaire of the country must be
treated as well as the proletaire of the city. Reform is needed, then,
on farms as well as in factories; and, when the government enters the
workshop, the government must seize the plough! What becomes, during
this progressive invasion, of independent cultivation, exclusive domain,
property?
2. TO FIX FOR EACH PROFESSION A MODERATE SALARY, VARYING WITH TIME AND
PLACE AND BASED UPON CERTAIN DATA.
The object of this measure would be to secure to laborers their
subsistence, and to proprietors their profits, while obliging the latter
to sacrifice from motives of prudence, if for no other reason, a portion
of their income. Now, I say, that this portion, in the long run, would
swell until at last there would be an equality of enjoyment between the
proletaire and the proprietor. For, as we have had occasion to remark
several times already, the interest of the capitalist--in other words
the increase of the idler--tends, on account of the power of labor, the
multiplication of products and exchanges, to continually diminish, and,
by constant reduction, to disappear. So that, in the society proposed
by M. Blanqui, equality would not be realized at first, but would exist
potentially; since property, though outwardly seeming to be industrial
feudality, being no longer a principle of exclusion and encroachment,
but only a privilege of division, would not be slow, thanks to the
intellectual and political emancipation of the proletariat, in passing
into absolute equality,--as absolute at least as any thing can be on
this earth.
I omit, for the sake of brevity, the numerous considerations which
the professor adduces in support of what he calls, too modestly in my
opinion, his Utopia. They would serve only to prove beyond all question
that, of all the charlatans of radicalism who fatigue the public ear,
no one approaches, for depth and clearness of thought, the audacious M.
Blanqui.
3. NATIONAL WORKSHOPS SHOULD BE IN OPERATION ONLY DURING PERIODS OF
STAGNATION IN ORDINARY INDUSTRIES; AT SUCH TIMES THEY SHOULD BE OPENED
AS VAST OUTLETS TO THE FLOOD OF THE LABORING POPULATION.
But, sir, the stoppage of private industry is the result of
over-production, and insufficient markets. If, then, production
continues in the national workshops, how will the crisis be terminated?
Undoubtedly, by the general depreciation of merchandise, and, in the
last analysis, by the conversion of private workshops into national
workshops. On the other hand, the government will need capital with
which to pay its workmen; now, how will this capital be obtained? By
taxation. And upon what will the tax be levied? Upon property. Then you
will have proprietary industry sustaining against itself, and at its own
expense, another industry with which it cannot compete. What, think you,
will become, in this fatal circle, of the possibility of profit,--in a
word, of property?
Thank Heaven! equality of conditions is taught in the public schools;
let us fear revolutions no longer. The most implacable enemy of property
could not, if he wished to destroy it, go to work in a wiser and more
effective way. Courage, then, ministers, deputies, economists! make
haste to seize this glorious initiative; let the watchwords of equality,
uttered from the heights of science and power, be repeated in the midst
of the people; let them thrill the breasts of the proletaires, and carry
dismay into the ranks of the last representatives of privilege!
The tendency of society in favor of compelling proprietors to support
national workshops and public manufactories is so strong that for
several years, under the name of ELECTORAL REFORM, it has been
exclusively the question of the day. What is, after all, this electoral
reform which the people grasp at, as if it were a bait, and which
so many ambitious persons either call for or denounce? It is the
acknowledgment of the right of the masses to a voice in the assessment
of taxes, and the making of the laws; which laws, aiming always at the
protection of material interests, affect, in a greater or less degree,
all questions of taxation or wages. Now the people, instructed long
since by their journals, their dramas, [41] and their songs, [42] know
to-day that taxation, to be equitably divided, must be graduated, and
must be borne mainly by the rich,--that it must be levied upon luxuries,
&c. And be sure that the people, once in the majority in the Chamber,
will not fail to apply these lessons. Already we have a minister
of public works. National workshops will follow; and soon, as
a consequence, the excess of the proprietor's revenue over the
workingman's wages will be swallowed up in the coffers of the laborers
of the State. Do you not see that in this way property is gradually
reduced, as nobility was formerly, to a nominal title, to a distinction
purely honorary in its nature?
Either the electoral reform will fail to accomplish that which is hoped
from it, and will disappoint its innumerable partisans, or else it will
inevitably result in a transformation of the absolute right under which
we live into a right of possession; that is, that while, at present,
property makes the elector, after this reform is accomplished, the
citizen, the producer will be the possessor. [43] Consequently, the
radicals are right in saying that the electoral reform is in their eyes
only a means; but, when they are silent as to the end, they show either
profound ignorance, or useless dissimulation. There should be no secrets
or reservations from peoples and powers. He disgraces himself and fails
in respect for his fellows, who, in publishing his opinions, employs
evasion and cunning. Before the people act, they need to know the whole
truth. Unhappy he who shall dare to trifle with them! For the people are
credulous, but they are strong. Let us tell them, then, that this reform
which is proposed is only a means,--a means often tried, and hitherto
without effect,--but that the logical object of the electoral reform is
equality of fortunes; and that this equality itself is only a new means
having in view the superior and definitive object of the salvation of
society, the restoration of morals and religion, and the revival of
poetry and art.
This assertion of M. Rossi is not borne out by history. Property is the
cause of the electoral right, not as a PRESUMPTION OF CAPACITY,--an idea
which never prevailed until lately, and which is extremely absurd,--but
as a GUARANTEE OF DEVOTION TO THE ESTABLISHED ORDER. The electoral body
is a league of those interested in the maintenance of property, against
those not interested. There are thousands of documents, even official
documents, to prove this, if necessary. For the rest, the present system
is only a continuation of the municipal system, which, in the
middle ages, sprang up in connection with feudalism,--an oppressive,
mischief-making system, full of petty passions and base intrigues.
It would be an abuse of the reader's patience to insist further upon
the tendency of our time towards equality. There are, moreover, so many
people who denounce the present age, that nothing is gained by exposing
to their view the popular, scientific, and representative tendencies of
the nation.
Prompt to recognize the accuracy of the inferences drawn from
observation, they confine themselves to a general censure of the facts,
and an absolute denial of their legitimacy. "What wonder," they say,
"that this atmosphere of equality intoxicates us, considering all that
has been said and done during the past ten years! . . . Do you not see that
society is dissolving, that a spirit of infatuation is carrying us away?
All these hopes of regeneration are but forebodings of death; your songs
of triumph are like the prayers of the departing, your trumpet peals
announce the baptism of a dying man. Civilization is falling in ruin:
_Imus, imus, praecipites_! "
Such people deny God. I might content myself with the reply that
the spirit of 1830 was the result of the maintenance of the violated
charter; that this charter arose from the Revolution of '89; that
'89 implies the States-General's right of remonstrance, and the
enfranchisement of the communes; that the communes suppose feudalism,
which in its turn supposes invasion, Roman law, Christianity, &c.
But it is necessary to look further. We must penetrate to the very heart
of ancient institutions, plunge into the social depths, and uncover this
indestructible leaven of equality which the God of justice breathed into
our souls, and which manifests itself in all our works.
Labor is man's contemporary; it is a duty, since it is a condition of
existence: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. " It is more
than a duty, it is a mission: "God put the man into the garden to dress
it. " I add that labor is the cause and means of equality.
Cast away upon a desert island two men: one large, strong, and active;
the other weak, timid, and domestic. The latter will die of hunger;
while the other, a skilful hunter, an expert fisherman, and an
indefatigable husbandman, will overstock himself with provisions. What
greater inequality, in this state of Nature so dear to the heart of Jean
Jacques, could be imagined! But let these two men meet and associate
themselves: the second immediately attends to the cooking, takes charge
of the household affairs, and sees to the provisions, beds, and clothes;
provided the stronger does not abuse his superiority by enslaving and
ill-treating his companion, their social condition will be perfectly
equal. Thus, through exchange of services, the inequalities of Nature
neutralize each other, talents associate, and forces balance. Violence
and inertia are found only among the poor and the aristocratic. And
in that lies the philosophy of political economy, the mystery of human
brotherhood. _Hic est sapientia_. Let us pass from the hypothetical
state of pure Nature into civilization.
The proprietor of the soil, who produces, I will suppose with the
economists, by lending his instrument, receives at the foundation of a
society so many bushels of grain for each acre of arable land. As long
as labor is weak, and the variety of its products small, the proprietor
is powerful in comparison with the laborers; he has ten times,
one hundred times, the portion of an honest man. But let labor, by
multiplying its inventions, multiply its enjoyments and wants, and the
proprietor, if he wishes to enjoy the new products, will be obliged to
reduce his income every day; and since the first products tend rather
to depreciate than to rise in value,--in consequence of the continual
addition of the new ones, which may be regarded as supplements of the
first ones,--it follows that the idle proprietor grows poor as fast
as public prosperity increases. "Incomes" (I like to quote you, sir,
because it is impossible to give too good an authority for these
elementary principles of economy, and because I cannot express them
better myself), "incomes," you have said, "tend to disappear as capital
increases. He who possesses to-day an income of twenty thousand pounds
is not nearly as rich as he who possessed the same amount fifty years
ago. The time is coming when all property will be a burden to the idle,
and will necessarily pass into the hands of the able and industrious.
[44]. . . "
In order to live as a proprietor, or to consume without producing, it is
necessary, then, to live upon the labor of another; in other words,
it is necessary to kill the laborer. It is upon this principle that
proprietors of those varieties of capital which are of primary necessity
increase their farm-rents as fast as industry develops, much more
careful of their privileges in that respect, than those economists who,
in order to strengthen property, advocate a reduction of interest.
But the crime is unavailing: labor and production increase; soon the
proprietor will be forced to labor, and then property is lost.
The proprietor is a man who, having absolute control of an instrument
of production, claims the right to enjoy the product of the instrument
without using it himself. To this end he lends it; and we have just
seen that from this loan the laborer derives a power of exchange, which
sooner or later will destroy the right of increase. In the first place,
the proprietor is obliged to allow the laborer a portion of the product,
for without it the laborer could not live. Soon the latter, through
the development of his industry, finds a means of regaining the greater
portion of that which he gives to the proprietor; so that at last, the
objects of enjoyment increasing continually, while the income of the
idler remains the same, the proprietor, having exhausted his resources,
begins to think of going to work himself. Then the victory of the
producer is certain. Labor commences to tip the balance towards its own
side, and commerce leads to equilibrium.
Man's instinct cannot err; as, in liberty, exchange of functions leads
inevitably to equality among men, so commerce--or exchange of products,
which is identical with exchange of functions--is a new cause of
equality. As long as the proprietor does not labor, however small his
income, he enjoys a privilege; the laborer's welfare may be equal to
his, but equality of conditions does not exist. But as soon as the
proprietor becomes a producer,--since he can exchange his special
product only with his tenant or his _commandite_,--sooner or later this
tenant, this _exploited_ man, if violence is not done him, will make
a profit out of the proprietor, and will oblige him to restore--in the
exchange of their respective products--the interest on his capital. So
that, balancing one injustice by another, the contracting parties will
be equal. Labor and exchange, when liberty prevails, lead, then, to
equality of fortunes; mutuality of services neutralizes privilege.
That is why despots in all ages and countries have assumed control
of commerce; they wished to prevent the labor of their subjects from
becoming an obstacle to the rapacity of tyrants.
Up to this point, all takes place in the natural order; there is no
premeditation, no artifice. The whole proceeding is governed by the laws
of necessity alone. Proprietors and laborers act only in obedience to
their wants. Thus, the exercise of the right of increase, the art
of robbing the producer, depends--during this first period of
civilization--upon physical violence, murder, and war.
But at this point a gigantic and complicated conspiracy is hatched
against the capitalists. The weapon of the EXPLOITERS is met by the
EXPLOITED with the instrument of commerce,--a marvellous invention,
denounced at its origin by the moralists who favored property, but
inspired without doubt by the genius of labor, by the Minerva of the
proletaires.
The principal cause of the evil lay in the accumulation and immobility
of capital of all sorts,--an immobility which prevented labor, enslaved
and subalternized by haughty idleness, from ever acquiring it. The
necessity was felt of dividing and mobilizing wealth, of rendering it
portable, of making it pass from the hands of the possessor into those
of the worker. Labor invented MONEY. Afterwards, this invention was
revived and developed by the BILL OF EXCHANGE and the BANK. For all
these things are substantially the same, and proceed from the same mind.
The first man who conceived the idea of representing a value by a shell,
a precious stone, or a certain weight of metal, was the real inventor
of the Bank. What is a piece of money, in fact? It is a bill of exchange
written upon solid and durable material, and carrying with it its own
redemption. By this means, oppressed equality was enabled to laugh at
the efforts of the proprietors, and the balance of justice was adjusted
for the first time in the tradesman's shop. The trap was cunningly set,
and accomplished its purpose so thoroughly that in idle hands money
became only dissolving wealth, a false symbol, a shadow of riches. An
excellent economist and profound philosopher was that miser who took
as his motto, "WHEN A GUINEA IS EXCHANGED, IT EVAPORATES. " So it may
be said, "When real estate is converted into money, it is lost. " This
explains the constant fact of history, that the nobles--the unproductive
proprietors of the soil--have every where been dispossessed by
industrial and commercial plebeians. Such was especially the case in the
formation of the Italian republics, born, during the middle ages, of
the impoverishment of the seigniors. I will not pursue the interesting
considerations which this matter suggests; I could only repeat the
testimony of historians, and present economical demonstrations in an
altered form.
The greatest enemy of the landed and industrial aristocracy to-day, the
incessant promoter of equality of fortunes, is the BANKER. Through him
immense plains are divided, mountains change their positions, forests
are grown upon the public squares, one hemisphere produces for another,
and every corner of the globe has its usufructuaries. By means of the
Bank new wealth is continually created, the use of which (soon becoming
indispensable to selfishness) wrests the dormant capital from the hands
of the jealous proprietor. The banker is at once the most potent creator
of wealth, and the main distributor of the products of art and Nature.
And yet, by the strangest antinomy, this same banker is the most
relentless collector of profits, increase, and usury ever inspired by
the demon of property. The importance of the services which he renders
leads us to endure, though not without complaint, the taxes which he
imposes. Nevertheless, since nothing can avoid its providential mission,
since nothing which exists can escape the end for which it exists
the banker (the modern Croesus) must some day become the restorer of
equality. And following in your footsteps, sir, I have already given the
reason; namely, that profit decreases as capital multiplies, since an
increase of capital--calling for more laborers, without whom it remains
unproductive--always causes an increase of wages. Whence it follows that
the Bank, to-day the suction-pump of wealth, is destined to become the
steward of the human race.
The phrase EQUALITY OF FORTUNES chafes people, as if it referred to
a condition of the other world, unknown here below. There are some
persons, radicals as well as moderates, whom the very mention of this
idea fills with indignation. Let, then, these silly aristocrats abolish
mercantile societies and insurance companies, which are founded
by prudence for mutual assistance. For all these social facts, so
spontaneous and free from all levelling intentions, are the legitimate
fruits of the instinct of equality.
When the legislator makes a law, properly speaking he does not MAKE
it,--he does not CREATE it: he DESCRIBES it. In legislating upon the
moral, civil, and political relations of citizens, he does not express
an arbitrary notion: he states the general idea,--the higher principle
which governs the matter which he is considering; in a word, he is the
proclaimer, not the inventor, of the law. So, when two or more men
form among themselves, by synallagmatic contract, an industrial or an
insurance association, they recognize that their interests, formerly
isolated by a false spirit of selfishness and independence, are
firmly connected by their inner natures, and by the mutuality of their
relations. They do not really bind themselves by an act of their private
will: they swear to conform henceforth to a previously existing social
law hitherto disregarded by them. And this is proved by the fact that
these same men, could they avoid association, would not associate.
Before they can be induced to unite their interests, they must acquire
full knowledge of the dangers of competition and isolation; hence the
experience of evil is the only thing which leads them into society.
Now I say that, to establish equality among men, it is only necessary
to generalize the principle upon which insurance, agricultural, and
commercial associations are based. I say that competition, isolation
of interests, monopoly, privilege, accumulation of capital, exclusive
enjoyment, subordination of functions, individual production, the right
of profit or increase, the exploitation of man by man, and, to sum up
all these species under one head, that PROPERTY is the principal cause
of misery and crime. And, for having arrived at this offensive and
anti-proprietary conclusion, I am an abhorred monster; radicals and
conservatives alike point me out as a fit subject for prosecution; the
academies shower their censures upon me; the most worthy people regard
me as mad; and those are excessively tolerant who content themselves
with the assertion that I am a fool. Oh, unhappy the writer who
publishes the truth otherwise than as a performance of a duty! If he has
counted upon the applause of the crowd; if he has supposed that avarice
and self-interest would forget themselves in admiration of him; if he
has neglected to encase himself within three thicknesses of brass,--he
will fail, as he ought, in his selfish undertaking. The unjust
criticisms, the sad disappointments, the despair of his mistaken
ambition, will kill him.
But, if I am no longer permitted to express my own personal opinion
concerning this interesting question of social equilibrium, let me, at
least, make known the thought of my masters, and develop the doctrines
advocated in the name of the government.
It never has been my intention, sir, in spite of the vigorous censure
which you, in behalf of your academy, have pronounced upon the doctrine
of equality of fortunes, to contradict and cope with you. In listening
to you, I have felt my inferiority too keenly to permit me to enter upon
such a discussion. And then,--if it must be said,--however different
your language is from mine, we believe in the same principles; you share
all my opinions. I do not mean to insinuate thereby, sir, that you have
(to use the phraseology of the schools) an ESOTERIC and an EXOTERIC
doctrine,--that, secretly believing in equality, you defend property
only from motives of prudence and by command. I am not rash enough to
regard you as my colleague in my revolutionary projects; and I esteem
you too highly, moreover, to suspect you of dissimulation. I only
mean that the truths which methodical investigation and laborious
metaphysical speculation have painfully demonstrated to me, a profound
acquaintance with political economy and a long experience reveal to
you. While I have reached my belief in equality by long reflection, and
almost in spite of my desires, you hold yours, sir, with all the zeal of
faith,--with all the spontaneity of genius. That is why your course
of lectures at the Conservatory is a perpetual war upon property and
inequality of fortunes; that is why your most learned investigations,
your most ingenious analyses, and your innumerable observations always
conclude in a formula of progress and equality; that is why, finally,
you are never more admired and applauded than at those moments of
inspiration when, borne upon the wings of science, you ascend to those
lofty truths which cause plebeian hearts to beat with enthusiasm, and
which chill with horror men whose intentions are evil. How many times,
from the place where I eagerly drank in your eloquent words, have I
inwardly thanked Heaven for exempting you from the judgment passed by
St. Paul upon the philosophers of his time,--"They have known the truth,
and have not made it known"! How many times have I rejoiced at finding
my own justification in each of your discourses! No, no; I neither wish
nor ask for any thing which you do not teach yourself. I appeal to your
numerous audience; let it belie me if, in commenting upon you, I pervert
your meaning.
