"--"You are then
an aristocrat?
an aristocrat?
Proudhon - What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
This explains the obscurity
which surrounds the names of early inventors; it explains also our
indifference to religious matters, and the ridicule heaped upon
religious customs. Man esteems only the products of reflection and of
reason. The most wonderful works of instinct are, in his eyes, only
lucky GOD-SENDS; he reserves the name DISCOVERY--I had almost said
creation--for the works of intelligence. Instinct is the source of
passion and enthusiasm; it is intelligence which causes crime and
virtue.
In developing his intelligence, man makes use of not only his own
observations, but also those of others. He keeps an account of his
experience, and preserves the record; so that the race, as well as
the individual, becomes more and more intelligent. The animals do not
transmit their knowledge; that which each individual accumulates dies
with him.
It is not enough, then, to say that we are distinguished from the
animals by reflection, unless we mean thereby the CONSTANT TENDENCY OF
OUR INSTINCT TO BECOME INTELLIGENCE. While man is governed by instinct,
he is unconscious of his acts. He never would deceive himself, and never
would be troubled by errors, evils, and disorder, if, like the animals,
instinct were his only guide. But the Creator has endowed us with
reflection, to the end that our instinct might become intelligence;
and since this reflection and resulting knowledge pass through various
stages, it happens that in the beginning our instinct is opposed, rather
than guided, by reflection; consequently, that our power of thought
leads us to act in opposition to our nature and our end; that, deceiving
ourselves, we do and suffer evil, until instinct which points us towards
good, and reflection which makes us stumble into evil, are replaced by
the science of good and evil, which invariably causes us to seek the one
and avoid the other.
Thus, evil--or error and its consequences--is the firstborn son of
the union of two opposing faculties, instinct and reflection; good,
or truth, must inevitably be the second child. Or, to again employ the
figure, evil is the product of incest between adverse powers; good will
sooner or later be the legitimate child of their holy and mysterious
union.
Property, born of the reasoning faculty, intrenches itself behind
comparisons. But, just as reflection and reason are subsequent to
spontaneity, observation to sensation, and experience to instinct, so
property is subsequent to communism. Communism--or association in a
simple form--is the necessary object and original aspiration of the
social nature, the spontaneous movement by which it manifests and
establishes itself. It is the first phase of human civilization. In this
state of society,--which the jurists have called NEGATIVE COMMUNISM--man
draws near to man, and shares with him the fruits of the field and the
milk and flesh of animals. Little by little this communism--negative
as long as man does not produce--tends to become positive and organic
through the development of labor and industry. But it is then that the
sovereignty of thought, and the terrible faculty of reasoning logically
or illogically, teach man that, if equality is the sine qua non of
society, communism is the first species of slavery. To express this idea
by an Hegelian formula, I will say:
Communism--the first expression of the social nature--is the first term
of social development,--the THESIS; property, the reverse of communism,
is the second term,--the ANTITHESIS. When we have discovered the third
term, the SYNTHESIS, we shall have the required solution. Now, this
synthesis necessarily results from the correction of the thesis by the
antithesis. Therefore it is necessary, by a final examination of their
characteristics, to eliminate those features which are hostile to
sociability. The union of the two remainders will give us the true form
of human association.
% 2. --Characteristics of Communism and of Property.
I. I ought not to conceal the fact that property and communism have been
considered always the only possible forms of society. This deplorable
error has been the life of property. The disadvantages of communism are
so obvious that its critics never have needed to employ much eloquence
to thoroughly disgust men with it. The irreparability of the injustice
which it causes, the violence which it does to attractions and
repulsions, the yoke of iron which it fastens upon the will, the moral
torture to which it subjects the conscience, the debilitating effect
which it has upon society; and, to sum it all up, the pious and
stupid uniformity which it enforces upon the free, active, reasoning,
unsubmissive personality of man, have shocked common sense, and
condemned communism by an irrevocable decree.
The authorities and examples cited in its favor disprove it. The
communistic republic of Plato involved slavery; that of Lycurgus
employed Helots, whose duty it was to produce for their masters, thus
enabling the latter to devote themselves exclusively to athletic sports
and to war. Even J. J. Rousseau--confounding communism and equality--has
said somewhere that, without slavery, he did not think equality of
conditions possible. The communities of the early Church did not last
the first century out, and soon degenerated into monasteries. In those
of the Jesuits of Paraguay, the condition of the blacks is said by all
travellers to be as miserable as that of slaves; and it is a fact that
the good Fathers were obliged to surround themselves with ditches and
walls to prevent their new converts from escaping. The followers
of Baboeuf--guided by a lofty horror of property rather than by any
definite belief--were ruined by exaggeration of their principles; the
St. Simonians, lumping communism and inequality, passed away like a
masquerade. The greatest danger to which society is exposed to-day is
that of another shipwreck on this rock.
Singularly enough, systematic communism--the deliberate negation of
property--is conceived under the direct influence of the proprietary
prejudice; and property is the basis of all communistic theories.
The members of a community, it is true, have no private property; but
the community is proprietor, and proprietor not only of the goods, but
of the persons and wills. In consequence of this principle of absolute
property, labor, which should be only a condition imposed upon man by
Nature, becomes in all communities a human commandment, and therefore
odious. Passive obedience, irreconcilable with a reflecting will, is
strictly enforced. Fidelity to regulations, which are always defective,
however wise they may be thought, allows of no complaint. Life, talent,
and all the human faculties are the property of the State, which has
the right to use them as it pleases for the common good. Private
associations are sternly prohibited, in spite of the likes and dislikes
of different natures, because to tolerate them would be to introduce
small communities within the large one, and consequently private
property; the strong work for the weak, although this ought to be left
to benevolence, and not enforced, advised, or enjoined; the industrious
work for the lazy, although this is unjust; the clever work for the
foolish, although this is absurd; and, finally, man--casting aside his
personality, his spontaneity, his genius, and his affections--humbly
annihilates himself at the feet of the majestic and inflexible Commune!
Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the
exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation
of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is
the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised: physical and
mental force; force of events, chance, FORTUNE; force of accumulated
property, &c. In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity
on a level with excellence. This damaging equation is repellent to the
conscience, and causes merit to complain; for, although it may be
the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of
generosity,--they never will endure a comparison. Give them equal
opportunities of labor, and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy
to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance
of the common task.
Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the
law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to
labor when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He
wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to
choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from
judgment, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not
through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the
free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest
feelings. Any plan which could be devised for reconciling it with the
demands of the individual reason and will would end only in changing the
thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we
shall avoid disputes about words.
Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience, and
equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart,
and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labor and
laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality
in point of comfort. For the rest, if property is impossible on account
of the desire to accumulate, communism would soon become so through the
desire to shirk.
II. Property, in its turn, violates equality by the rights of exclusion
and increase, and freedom by despotism. The former effect of property
having been sufficiently developed in the last three chapters, I will
content myself here with establishing by a final comparison, its perfect
identity with robbery.
The Latin words for robber are _fur_ and _latro;_ the former taken from
the Greek {GREEK m }, from {GREEK m }, Latin _fero_, I carry away; the
latter from {GREEK 'i }, I play the part of a brigand, which is derived
from {GREEK i }, Latin _lateo_, I conceal myself. The Greeks have also
{GREEK ncg }, from {GREEK ncg }, I filch, whose radical consonants are
the same as those of {GREEK ' cg }, I cover, I conceal. Thus, in these
languages, the idea of a robber is that of a man who conceals, carries
away, or diverts, in any manner whatever, a thing which does not belong
to him.
The Hebrews expressed the same idea by the word _gannab_,--robber,--from
the verb _ganab_, which means to put away, to turn aside: _lo thi-gnob
(Decalogue: Eighth Commandment_), thou shalt not steal,--that is, thou
shalt not hold back, thou shalt not put away any thing for thyself. That
is the act of a man who, on entering into a society into which he
agrees to bring all that he has, secretly reserves a portion, as did the
celebrated disciple Ananias.
The etymology of the French verb _voler_ is still more significant.
_Voler_, or _faire la vole_ (from the Latin _vola_, palm of the hand),
means to take all the tricks in a game of ombre; so that _le voleur_,
the robber, is the capitalist who takes all, who gets the lion's share.
Probably this verb _voler_ had its origin in the professional slang of
thieves, whence it has passed into common use, and, consequently into
the phraseology of the law.
Robbery is committed in a variety of ways, which have been very
cleverly distinguished and classified by legislators according to their
heinousness or merit, to the end that some robbers may be honored, while
others are punished.
We rob,--1. By murder on the highway; 2. Alone, or in a band; 3. By
breaking into buildings, or scaling walls; 4. By abstraction; 5. By
fraudulent bankruptcy; 6. By forgery of the handwriting of public
officials or private individuals; 7. By manufacture of counterfeit
money.
This species includes all robbers who practise their profession with no
other aid than force and open fraud. Bandits, brigands, pirates, rovers
by land and sea,--these names were gloried in by the ancient heroes, who
thought their profession as noble as it was lucrative. Nimrod, Theseus,
Jason and his Argonauts; Jephthah, David, Cacus, Romulus, Clovis and
all his Merovingian descendants; Robert Guiscard, Tancred de Hauteville,
Bohemond, and most of the Norman heroes,--were brigands and robbers. The
heroic character of the robber is expressed in this line from Horace, in
reference to Achilles,--
_"Jura neget sibi nata, nihil non arroget armis_," [27]
and by this sentence from the dying words of Jacob (Gen. xlviii. ), which
the Jews apply to David, and the Christians to their Christ: _Manus ejus
contra omnes_. In our day, the robber--the warrior of the ancients--is
pursued with the utmost vigor. His profession, in the language of the
code, entails ignominious and corporal penalties, from imprisonment to
the scaffold. A sad change in opinions here below!
We rob,--8. By cheating; 9. By swindling; 10. By abuse of trust; 11. By
games and lotteries.
This second species was encouraged by the laws of Lycurgus, in order
to sharpen the wits of the young. It is the kind practised by Ulysses,
Solon, and Sinon; by the ancient and modern Jews, from Jacob down to
Deutz; and by the Bohemians, the Arabs, and all savage tribes. Under
Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. , it was not considered dishonorable to cheat
at play. To do so was a part of the game; and many worthy people did not
scruple to correct the caprice of Fortune by dexterous jugglery.
To-day even, and in all countries, it is thought a mark of merit
among peasants, merchants, and shopkeepers to KNOW HOW TO MAKE A
BARGAIN,--that is, to deceive one's man. This is so universally
accepted, that the cheated party takes no offence. It is known with what
reluctance our government resolved upon the abolition of lotteries. It
felt that it was dealing a stab thereby at property. The pickpocket,
the blackleg, and the charlatan make especial use of their dexterity of
hand, their subtlety of mind, the magic power of their eloquence,
and their great fertility of invention. Sometimes they offer bait to
cupidity. Therefore the penal code--which much prefers intelligence
to muscular vigor--has made, of the four varieties mentioned above,
a second category, liable only to correctional, not to Ignominious,
punishments.
Let them now accuse the law of being materialistic and atheistic.
We rob,--12. By usury.
This species of robbery, so odious and so severely punished since the
publication of the Gospel, is the connecting link between forbidden and
authorized robbery. Owing to its ambiguous nature, it has given rise to
a multitude of contradictions in the laws and in morals,--contradictions
which have been very cleverly turned to account by lawyers, financiers,
and merchants. Thus the usurer, who lends on mortgage at ten, twelve,
and fifteen per cent. , is heavily fined when detected; while the banker,
who receives the same interest (not, it is true, upon a loan, but in the
way of exchange or discount,--that is, of sale), is protected by royal
privilege. But the distinction between the banker and the usurer is
a purely nominal one. Like the usurer, who lends on property, real or
personal, the banker lends on business paper; like the usurer, he
takes his interest in advance; like the usurer, he can recover from
the borrower if the property is destroyed (that is, if the note is
not redeemed),--a circumstance which makes him a money-lender, not a
money-seller. But the banker lends for a short time only, while
the usurer's loan may be for one, two, three, or more years. Now, a
difference in the duration of the loan, or the form of the act, does not
alter the nature of the transaction. As for the capitalists who invest
their money, either with the State or in commercial operations, at
three, four, and five per cent. ,--that is, who lend on usury at a
little lower rate than the bankers and usurers,--they are the flower of
society, the cream of honesty! Moderation in robbery is the height of
virtue! [28]
But what, then, is usury? Nothing is more amusing than to see these
INSTRUCTORS OF NATIONS hesitate between the authority of the Gospel,
which, they say, NEVER CAN HAVE SPOKEN IN VAIN, and the authority of
economical demonstrations. Nothing, to my mind, is more creditable
to the Gospel than this old infidelity of its pretended teachers.
Salmasius, having assimilated interest to rent, was REFUTED by Grotius,
Pufendorf, Burlamaqui, Wolf, and Heineccius; and, what is more curious
still, Salmasius ADMITTED HIS ERROR. Instead of inferring from this
doctrine of Salmasius that all increase is illegitimate, and proceeding
straight on to the demonstration of Gospel equality, they arrived at
just the opposite conclusion; namely, that since everybody acknowledges
that rent is permissible, if we allow that interest does not differ
from rent, there is nothing left which can be called usury, and,
consequently, that the commandment of Jesus Christ is an ILLUSION, and
amounts to NOTHING, which is an impious conclusion.
If this memoir had appeared in the time of Bossuet, that great
theologian would have PROVED by scripture, the fathers, traditions,
councils, and popes, that property exists by Divine right, while usury
is an invention of the devil; and the heretical work would have been
burned, and the author imprisoned.
We rob,--13. By farm-rent, house-rent, and leases of all kinds.
The author of the "Provincial Letters" entertained the honest Christians
of the seventeenth century at the expense of Escobar, the Jesuit,
and the contract Mohatra. "The contract Mohatra," said Escobar, "is a
contract by which goods are bought, at a high price and on credit, to
be again sold at the same moment to the same person, cash down, and at a
lower price. " Escobar found a way to justify this kind of usury. Pascal
and all the Jansenists laughed at him. But what would the satirical
Pascal, the learned Nicole, and the invincible Arnaud have said, if
Father Antoine Escobar de Valladolid had answered them thus: "A lease
is a contract by which real estate is bought, at a high price and on
credit, to be again sold, at the expiration of a certain time, to the
same person, at a lower price; only, to simplify the transaction, the
buyer is content to pay the difference between the first sale and the
second. Either deny the identity of the lease and the contract Mohatra,
and then I will annihilate you in a moment; or, if you admit the
similarity, admit also the soundness of my doctrine: otherwise you
proscribe both interest and rent at one blow"?
In reply to this overwhelming argument of the Jesuit, the sire of
Montalte would have sounded the tocsin, and would have shouted
that society was in peril,--that the Jesuits were sapping its very
foundations.
We rob,--14. By commerce, when the profit of the merchant exceeds his
legitimate salary.
Everybody knows the definition of commerce--THE ART OF BUYING FOR THREE
FRANCS THAT WHICH IS WORTH SIX, AND OF SELLING FOR SIX THAT WHICH IS
WORTH THREE. Between commerce thus defined and _vol a l'americaine_,
the only difference is in the relative proportion of the values
exchanged,--in short, in the amount of the profit.
We rob,--15. By making profit on our product, by accepting sinecures,
and by exacting exorbitant wages.
The farmer, who sells a certain amount of corn to the consumer, and who
during the measurement thrusts his hand into the bushel and takes out a
handful of grains, robs; the professor, whose lectures are paid for by
the State, and who through the intervention of a bookseller sells them
to the public a second time, robs; the sinecurist, who receives an
enormous product in exchange for his vanity, robs; the functionary, the
laborer, whatever he may be, who produces only one and gets paid four,
one hundred, or one thousand, robs; the publisher of this book, and I,
its author,--we rob, by charging for it twice as much as it is worth.
In recapitulation:--
Justice, after passing through the state of negative communism, called
by the ancient poets the AGE OF GOLD, commences as the right of the
strongest. In a society which is trying to organize itself, inequality
of faculties calls up the idea of merit; equite suggests the plan of
proportioning not only esteem, but also material comforts, to personal
merit; and since the highest and almost the only merit then recognized
is physical strength, the strongest, {GREEK ' eg }, and consequently
the best, {GREEK ' eg }, is entitled to the largest share; and if it
is refused him, he very naturally takes it by force. From this to the
assumption of the right of property in all things, it is but one step.
Such was justice in the heroic age, preserved, at least by tradition,
among the Greeks and Romans down to the last days of their republics.
Plato, in the "Gorgias," introduces a character named Callicles, who
spiritedly defends the right of the strongest, which Socrates, the
advocate of equality, {GREEK g e }, seriously refutes. It is related
of the great Pompey, that he blushed easily, and, nevertheless, these
words once escaped his lips: "Why should I respect the laws, when I have
arms in my hand? " This shows him to have been a man in whom the moral
sense and ambition were struggling for the mastery, and who sought to
justify his violence by the motto of the hero and the brigand.
From the right of the strongest springs the exploitation of man by
man, or bondage; usury, or the tribute levied upon the conquered by the
conqueror; and the whole numerous family of taxes, duties, monarchical
prerogatives, house-rents, farm-rents, &c. ; in one word,--property.
Force was followed by artifice, the second manifestation of justice,
which was detested by the ancient heroes, who, not excelling in that
direction, were heavy losers by it. Force was still employed, but mental
force instead of physical. Skill in deceiving an enemy by treacherous
propositions seemed deserving of reward; nevertheless, the strong always
prided themselves upon their honesty. In those days, oaths were observed
and promises kept according to the letter rather than the spirit: _Uti
lingua nuncupassit, ita jus esto_,--"As the tongue has spoken, so must
the right be," says the law of the Twelve Tables. Artifice, or rather
perfidy, was the main element in the politics of ancient Rome. Among
other examples, Vico cites the following, also quoted by Montesquieu:
The Romans had guaranteed to the Carthaginians the preservation of their
goods and their CITY,--intentionally using the word civitas, that is,
the society, the State; the Carthaginians, on the contrary, understood
them to mean the material city, urbs, and accordingly began to rebuild
their walls. They were immediately attacked on account of their
violation of the treaty, by the Romans, who, acting upon the old
heroic idea of right, did not imagine that, in taking advantage of an
equivocation to surprise their enemies, they were waging unjust war.
From artifice sprang the profits of manufactures, commerce, and banking,
mercantile frauds, and pretensions which are honored with the beautiful
names of TALENT and GENIUS, but which ought to be regarded as the last
degree of knavery and deception; and, finally, all sorts of social
inequalities.
In those forms of robbery which are prohibited by law, force and
artifice are employed alone and undisguised; in the authorized forms,
they conceal themselves within a useful product, which they use as a
tool to plunder their victim.
The direct use of violence and stratagem was early and universally
condemned; but no nation has yet got rid of that kind of robbery which
acts through talent, labor, and possession, and which is the source
of all the dilemmas of casuistry and the innumerable contradictions of
jurisprudence.
The right of force and the right of artifice--glorified by the
rhapsodists in the poems of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey"--inspired the
legislation of the Greeks and Romans, from which they passed into our
morals and codes. Christianity has not changed at all. The Gospel should
not be blamed, because the priests, as stupid as the legists, have been
unable either to expound or to understand it. The ignorance of councils
and popes upon all questions of morality is equal to that of the
market-place and the money-changers; and it is this utter ignorance
of right, justice, and society, which is killing the Church, and
discrediting its teachings for ever. The infidelity of the Roman church
and other Christian churches is flagrant; all have disregarded the
precept of Jesus; all have erred in moral and doctrinal points; all
are guilty of teaching false and absurd dogmas, which lead straight to
wickedness and murder. Let it ask pardon of God and men,--this church
which called itself infallible, and which has grown so corrupt in
morals; let its reformed sisters humble themselves,. . . and the people,
undeceived, but still religious and merciful, will begin to think. [29]
One of the main causes of Ireland's poverty to-day is the immense
revenues of the English clergy. So heretics and orthodox--Protestants
and Papists--cannot reproach each other. All have strayed from the path
of justice; all have disobeyed the eighth commandment of the Decalogue:
"Thou shalt not steal. "
The development of right has followed the same order, in its various
expressions, that property has in its forms. Every where we see justice
driving robbery before it and confining it within narrower and narrower
limits. Hitherto the victories of justice over injustice, and of
equality over inequality, have been won by instinct and the simple force
of things; but the final triumph of our social nature will be due to
our reason, or else we shall fall back into feudal chaos. Either this
glorious height is reserved for our intelligence, or this miserable
depth for our baseness.
The second effect of property is despotism. Now, since despotism
is inseparably connected with the idea of legitimate authority, in
explaining the natural causes of the first, the principle of the second
will appear.
What is to be the form of government in the future? hear some of my
younger readers reply: "Why, how can you ask such a question?
"You are a republican. " "A republican! Yes; but that word specifies
nothing. _Res publica;_ that is, the public thing. Now, whoever
is interested in public affairs--no matter under what form
of government--may call himself a republican. Even kings are
republicans. "--
"Well! you are a democrat? "--"No. "--"What! you would have a
monarchy. "--"No. "--"A constitutionalist? "--"God forbid!
"--"You are then
an aristocrat? "--"Not at all. "--"You want a mixed government? "--"Still
less. "--"What are you, then? "--"I am an anarchist. "
"Oh! I understand you; you speak satirically. This is a hit at the
government. "--"By no means. I have just given you my serious and
well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I
am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me. "
In all species of sociable animals, "the weakness of the young is the
principle of their obedience to the old," who are strong; and from habit,
which is a kind of conscience with them, the power remains with the
oldest, although he finally becomes the weakest.
Whenever the society is under the control of a chief, this chief is
almost always the oldest of the troop. I say almost always, because
the established order may be disturbed by violent outbreaks. Then the
authority passes to another; and, having been re-established by force,
it is again maintained by habit. Wild horses go in herds: they have a
chief who marches at their head, whom they confidently follow, and who
gives the signal for flight or battle.
"The sheep which we have raised follows us, but it follows in company
with the flock in the midst of which it was born. It regards man AS THE
CHIEF OF ITS FLOCK. . . . Man is regarded by domestic animals as a member
of their society. All that he has to do is to get himself accepted by
them as an associate: he soon becomes their chief, in consequence of his
superior intelligence. He does not, then, change the NATURAL CONDITION
of these animals, as Buffon has said. On the contrary, he uses this
natural condition to his own advantage; in other words, he finds
SOCIABLE animals, and renders them DOMESTIC by becoming their associate
and chief. Thus, the DOMESTICITY of animals is only a special condition,
a simple modification, a definitive consequence of their SOCIABILITY.
All domestic animals are by nature sociable animals. ". . . --Flourens:
Summary of the Observations of F. Cuvier.
Sociable animals follow their chief by INSTINCT; but take notice of the
fact (which F. Cuvier omitted to state), that the function of the chief
is altogether one of INTELLIGENCE. The chief does not teach the others
to associate, to unite under his lead, to reproduce their kind, to
take to flight, or to defend themselves. Concerning each of these
particulars, his subordinates are as well informed as he. But it is the
chief who, by his accumulated experience, provides against accidents; he
it is whose private intelligence supplements, in difficult situations,
the general instinct; he it is who deliberates, decides, and leads; he
it is, in short, whose enlightened prudence regulates the public routine
for the greatest good of all.
Man (naturally a sociable being) naturally follows a chief. Originally,
the chief is the father, the patriarch, the elder; in other words, the
good and wise man, whose functions, consequently, are exclusively of a
reflective and intellectual nature. The human race--like all other
races of sociable animals--has its instincts, its innate faculties, its
general ideas, and its categories of sentiment and reason. Its chiefs,
legislators, or kings have devised nothing, supposed nothing, imagined
nothing. They have only guided society by their accumulated experience,
always however in conformity with opinions and beliefs.
Those philosophers who (carrying into morals and into history their
gloomy and factious whims) affirm that the human race had originally
neither chiefs nor kings, know nothing of the nature of man. Royalty,
and absolute royalty, is--as truly and more truly than democracy--a
primitive form of government. Perceiving that, in the remotest ages,
crowns and kingships were worn by heroes, brigands, and knight-errants,
they confound the two things,--royalty and despotism. But royalty dates
from the creation of man; it existed in the age of negative communism.
Ancient heroism (and the despotism which it engendered) commenced only
with the first manifestation of the idea of justice; that is, with the
reign of force. As soon as the strongest, in the comparison of merits,
was decided to be the best, the oldest had to abandon his position, and
royalty became despotic.
The spontaneous, instinctive, and--so to speak--physiological origin of
royalty gives it, in the beginning, a superhuman character. The
nations connected it with the gods, from whom they said the first kings
descended. This notion was the origin of the divine genealogies of royal
families, the incarnations of gods, and the messianic fables. From it
sprang the doctrine of divine right, which is still championed by a few
singular characters.
Royalty was at first elective, because--at a time when man produced but
little and possessed nothing--property was too weak to establish the
principle of heredity, and secure to the son the throne of his father;
but as soon as fields were cleared, and cities built, each function
was, like every thing else, appropriated, and hereditary kingships and
priesthoods were the result. The principle of heredity was carried into
even the most ordinary professions,--a circumstance which led to class
distinctions, pride of station, and abjection of the common people, and
which confirms my assertion, concerning the principle of patrimonial
succession, that it is a method suggested by Nature of filling vacancies
in business, and completing unfinished tasks.
From time to time, ambition caused usurpers, or SUPPLANTERS of kings,
to start up; and, in consequence, some were called kings by right, or
legitimate kings, and others TYRANTS. But we must not let these names
deceive us. There have been execrable kings, and very tolerable tyrants.
Royalty may always be good, when it is the only possible form of
government; legitimate it is never. Neither heredity, nor election,
nor universal suffrage, nor the excellence of the sovereign, nor the
consecration of religion and of time, can make royalty legitimate.
Whatever form it takes,--monarchic, oligarchic, or democratic,--royalty,
or the government of man by man, is illegitimate and absurd.
Man, in order to procure as speedily as possible the most thorough
satisfaction of his wants, seeks RULE. In the beginning, this rule is
to him living, visible, and tangible. It is his father, his master, his
king. The more ignorant man is, the more obedient he is, and the more
absolute is his confidence in his guide. But, it being a law of man's
nature to conform to rule,--that is, to discover it by his powers of
reflection and reason,--man reasons upon the commands of his chiefs.
Now, such reasoning as that is a protest against authority,--a beginning
of disobedience. At the moment that man inquires into the motives which
govern the will of his sovereign,--at that moment man revolts. If
he obeys no longer because the king commands, but because the king
demonstrates the wisdom of his commands, it may be said that henceforth
he will recognize no authority, and that he has become his own king.
Unhappy he who shall dare to command him, and shall offer, as his
authority, only the vote of the majority; for, sooner or later, the
minority will become the majority, and this imprudent despot will be
overthrown, and all his laws annihilated.
In proportion as society becomes enlightened, royal authority
diminishes. That is a fact to which all history bears witness. At the
birth of nations, men reflect and reason in vain. Without methods,
without principles, not knowing how to use their reason, they cannot
judge of the justice of their conclusions. Then the authority of kings
is immense, no knowledge having been acquired with which to contradict
it. But, little by little, experience produces habits, which develop
into customs; then the customs are formulated in maxims, laid down as
principles,--in short, transformed into laws, to which the king, the
living law, has to bow. There comes a time when customs and laws are so
numerous that the will of the prince is, so to speak, entwined by the
public will; and that, on taking the crown, he is obliged to swear that
he will govern in conformity with established customs and usages; and
that he is but the executive power of a society whose laws are made
independently of him.
Up to this point, all is done instinctively, and, as it were,
unconsciously; but see where this movement must end.
By means of self-instruction and the acquisition of ideas, man finally
acquires the idea of SCIENCE,--that is, of a system of knowledge in
harmony with the reality of things, and inferred from observation.
He searches for the science, or the system, of inanimate bodies,--the
system of organic bodies, the system of the human mind, and the system
of the universe: why should he not also search for the system of
society? But, having reached this height, he comprehends that political
truth, or the science of politics, exists quite independently of
the will of sovereigns, the opinion of majorities, and popular
beliefs,--that kings, ministers, magistrates, and nations, as wills,
have no connection with the science, and are worthy of no consideration.
He comprehends, at the same time, that, if man is born a sociable being,
the authority of his father over him ceases on the day when, his mind
being formed and his education finished, he becomes the associate of his
father; that his true chief and his king is the demonstrated truth; that
politics is a science, not a stratagem; and that the function of the
legislator is reduced, in the last analysis, to the methodical search
for truth.
Thus, in a given society, the authority of man over man is inversely
proportional to the stage of intellectual development which that
society has reached; and the probable duration of that authority can
be calculated from the more or less general desire for a true
government,--that is, for a scientific government. And just as the right
of force and the right of artifice retreat before the steady advance
of justice, and must finally be extinguished in equality, so the
sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of the reason, and
must at last be lost in scientific socialism. Property and royalty
have been crumbling to pieces ever since the world began. As man seeks
justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.
ANARCHY,--the absence of a master, of a sovereign, [30]--such is the
form of government to which we are every day approximating, and which
our accustomed habit of taking man for our rule, and his will for law,
leads us to regard as the height of disorder and the expression of
chaos. The story is told, that a citizen of Paris in the seventeenth
century having heard it said that in Venice there was no king, the
good man could not recover from his astonishment, and nearly died from
laughter at the mere mention of so ridiculous a thing. So strong is our
prejudice. As long as we live, we want a chief or chiefs; and at this
very moment I hold in my hand a brochure, whose author--a zealous
communist--dreams, like a second Marat, of the dictatorship. The most
advanced among us are those who wish the greatest possible number of
sovereigns,--their most ardent wish is for the royalty of the National
Guard. Soon, undoubtedly, some one, jealous of the citizen militia, will
say, "Everybody is king. " But, when he has spoken, I will say, in my
turn, "Nobody is king; we are, whether we will or no, associated. "
Every question of domestic politics must be decided by departmental
statistics; every question of foreign politics is an affair of
international statistics. The science of government rightly belongs
to one of the sections of the Academy of Sciences, whose permanent
secretary is necessarily prime minister; and, since every citizen may
address a memoir to the Academy, every citizen is a legislator. But, as
the opinion of no one is of any value until its truth has been proven,
no one can substitute his will for reason,--nobody is king.
All questions of legislation and politics are matters of science, not of
opinion. The legislative power belongs only to the reason, methodically
recognized and demonstrated. To attribute to any power whatever the
right of veto or of sanction, is the last degree of tyranny. Justice
and legality are two things as independent of our approval as is
mathematical truth. To compel, they need only to be known; to be known,
they need only to be considered and studied. What, then, is the nation,
if it is not the sovereign,--if it is not the source of the legislative
power?
The nation is the guardian of the law--the nation is the EXECUTIVE
POWER. Every citizen may assert: "This is true; that is just;" but his
opinion controls no one but himself. That the truth which he proclaims
may become a law, it must be recognized. Now, what is it to recognize a
law? It is to verify a mathematical or a metaphysical calculation; it is
to repeat an experiment, to observe a phenomenon, to establish a fact.
Only the nation has the right to say, "Be it known and decreed. "
I confess that this is an overturning of received ideas, and that I seem
to be attempting to revolutionize our political system; but I beg the
reader to consider that, having begun with a paradox, I must, if I
reason correctly, meet with paradoxes at every step, and must end with
paradoxes. For the rest, I do not see how the liberty of citizens would
be endangered by entrusting to their hands, instead of the pen of
the legislator, the sword of the law. The executive power, belonging
properly to the will, cannot be confided to too many proxies. That is
the true sovereignty of the nation. [31]
The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign--for all these
titles are synonymous--imposes his will as law, and suffers neither
contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative
and the executive power at once. Accordingly, the substitution of the
scientific and true law for the royal will is accomplished only by a
terrible struggle; and this constant substitution is, after property,
the most potent element in history, the most prolific source of
political disturbances. Examples are too numerous and too striking to
require enumeration.
Now, property necessarily engenders despotism,--the government of
caprice, the reign of libidinous pleasure. That is so clearly the
essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember
what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right
to USE and ABUSE. If, then, government is economy,--if its object
is production and consumption, and the distribution of labor and
products,--how is government possible while property exists? And
if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and
despotic kings--kings in proportion to their _facultes bonitaires_? And
if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property,
absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of
proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion?
% 3. --Determination of the third form of Society. Conclusion.
Then, no government, no public economy, no administration, is possible,
which is based upon property.
Communism seeks EQUALITY and LAW. Property, born of the sovereignty of
the reason, and the sense of personal merit, wishes above all things
INDEPENDENCE and PROPORTIONALITY.
But communism, mistaking uniformity for law, and levelism for
equality, becomes tyrannical and unjust. Property, by its despotism and
encroachments, soon proves itself oppressive and anti-social.
The objects of communism and property are good--their results are bad.
And why? Because both are exclusive, and each disregards two elements
of society. Communism rejects independence and proportionality; property
does not satisfy equality and law.
Now, if we imagine a society based upon these four
principles,--equality, law, independence, and proportionality,--we
find:--
1. That EQUALITY, consisting only in EQUALITY OF CONDITIONS, that is, OF
MEANS, and not in EQUALITY OF COMFORT,--which it is the business of the
laborers to achieve for themselves, when provided with equal means,--in
no way violates justice and equite.
2. That LAW, resulting from the knowledge of facts, and consequently
based upon necessity itself, never clashes with independence.
3. That individual INDEPENDENCE, or the autonomy of the private reason,
originating in the difference in talents and capacities, can exist
without danger within the limits of the law.
4. That PROPORTIONALITY, being admitted only in the sphere of
intelligence and sentiment, and not as regards material objects, may be
observed without violating justice or social equality.
This third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property, we
will call LIBERTY. [32]
In determining the nature of liberty, we do not unite communism and
property indiscriminately; such a process would be absurd eclecticism.
We search by analysis for those elements in each which are true, and
in harmony with the laws of Nature and society, disregarding the rest
altogether; and the result gives us an adequate expression of the
natural form of human society,--in one word, liberty.
Liberty is equality, because liberty exists only in society; and in the
absence of equality there is no society.
Liberty is anarchy, because it does not admit the government of the
will, but only the authority of the law; that is, of necessity.
Liberty is infinite variety, because it respects all wills within the
limits of the law.
Liberty is proportionality, because it allows the utmost latitude to the
ambition for merit, and the emulation of glory.
We can now say, in the words of M. Cousin: "Our principle is true; it is
good, it is social; let us not fear to push it to its ultimate. "
Man's social nature becoming JUSTICE through reflection, EQUITE through
the classification of capacities, and having LIBERTY for its formula,
is the true basis of morality,--the principle and regulator of all our
actions. This is the universal motor, which philosophy is searching for,
which religion strengthens, which egotism supplants, and whose place
pure reason never can fill. DUTY and RIGHT are born of NEED, which, when
considered in connection with others, is a RIGHT, and when considered in
connection with ourselves, a DUTY.
We need to eat and sleep. It is our right to procure those things which
are necessary to rest and nourishment. It is our duty to use them when
Nature requires it.
We need to labor in order to live. 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.
which surrounds the names of early inventors; it explains also our
indifference to religious matters, and the ridicule heaped upon
religious customs. Man esteems only the products of reflection and of
reason. The most wonderful works of instinct are, in his eyes, only
lucky GOD-SENDS; he reserves the name DISCOVERY--I had almost said
creation--for the works of intelligence. Instinct is the source of
passion and enthusiasm; it is intelligence which causes crime and
virtue.
In developing his intelligence, man makes use of not only his own
observations, but also those of others. He keeps an account of his
experience, and preserves the record; so that the race, as well as
the individual, becomes more and more intelligent. The animals do not
transmit their knowledge; that which each individual accumulates dies
with him.
It is not enough, then, to say that we are distinguished from the
animals by reflection, unless we mean thereby the CONSTANT TENDENCY OF
OUR INSTINCT TO BECOME INTELLIGENCE. While man is governed by instinct,
he is unconscious of his acts. He never would deceive himself, and never
would be troubled by errors, evils, and disorder, if, like the animals,
instinct were his only guide. But the Creator has endowed us with
reflection, to the end that our instinct might become intelligence;
and since this reflection and resulting knowledge pass through various
stages, it happens that in the beginning our instinct is opposed, rather
than guided, by reflection; consequently, that our power of thought
leads us to act in opposition to our nature and our end; that, deceiving
ourselves, we do and suffer evil, until instinct which points us towards
good, and reflection which makes us stumble into evil, are replaced by
the science of good and evil, which invariably causes us to seek the one
and avoid the other.
Thus, evil--or error and its consequences--is the firstborn son of
the union of two opposing faculties, instinct and reflection; good,
or truth, must inevitably be the second child. Or, to again employ the
figure, evil is the product of incest between adverse powers; good will
sooner or later be the legitimate child of their holy and mysterious
union.
Property, born of the reasoning faculty, intrenches itself behind
comparisons. But, just as reflection and reason are subsequent to
spontaneity, observation to sensation, and experience to instinct, so
property is subsequent to communism. Communism--or association in a
simple form--is the necessary object and original aspiration of the
social nature, the spontaneous movement by which it manifests and
establishes itself. It is the first phase of human civilization. In this
state of society,--which the jurists have called NEGATIVE COMMUNISM--man
draws near to man, and shares with him the fruits of the field and the
milk and flesh of animals. Little by little this communism--negative
as long as man does not produce--tends to become positive and organic
through the development of labor and industry. But it is then that the
sovereignty of thought, and the terrible faculty of reasoning logically
or illogically, teach man that, if equality is the sine qua non of
society, communism is the first species of slavery. To express this idea
by an Hegelian formula, I will say:
Communism--the first expression of the social nature--is the first term
of social development,--the THESIS; property, the reverse of communism,
is the second term,--the ANTITHESIS. When we have discovered the third
term, the SYNTHESIS, we shall have the required solution. Now, this
synthesis necessarily results from the correction of the thesis by the
antithesis. Therefore it is necessary, by a final examination of their
characteristics, to eliminate those features which are hostile to
sociability. The union of the two remainders will give us the true form
of human association.
% 2. --Characteristics of Communism and of Property.
I. I ought not to conceal the fact that property and communism have been
considered always the only possible forms of society. This deplorable
error has been the life of property. The disadvantages of communism are
so obvious that its critics never have needed to employ much eloquence
to thoroughly disgust men with it. The irreparability of the injustice
which it causes, the violence which it does to attractions and
repulsions, the yoke of iron which it fastens upon the will, the moral
torture to which it subjects the conscience, the debilitating effect
which it has upon society; and, to sum it all up, the pious and
stupid uniformity which it enforces upon the free, active, reasoning,
unsubmissive personality of man, have shocked common sense, and
condemned communism by an irrevocable decree.
The authorities and examples cited in its favor disprove it. The
communistic republic of Plato involved slavery; that of Lycurgus
employed Helots, whose duty it was to produce for their masters, thus
enabling the latter to devote themselves exclusively to athletic sports
and to war. Even J. J. Rousseau--confounding communism and equality--has
said somewhere that, without slavery, he did not think equality of
conditions possible. The communities of the early Church did not last
the first century out, and soon degenerated into monasteries. In those
of the Jesuits of Paraguay, the condition of the blacks is said by all
travellers to be as miserable as that of slaves; and it is a fact that
the good Fathers were obliged to surround themselves with ditches and
walls to prevent their new converts from escaping. The followers
of Baboeuf--guided by a lofty horror of property rather than by any
definite belief--were ruined by exaggeration of their principles; the
St. Simonians, lumping communism and inequality, passed away like a
masquerade. The greatest danger to which society is exposed to-day is
that of another shipwreck on this rock.
Singularly enough, systematic communism--the deliberate negation of
property--is conceived under the direct influence of the proprietary
prejudice; and property is the basis of all communistic theories.
The members of a community, it is true, have no private property; but
the community is proprietor, and proprietor not only of the goods, but
of the persons and wills. In consequence of this principle of absolute
property, labor, which should be only a condition imposed upon man by
Nature, becomes in all communities a human commandment, and therefore
odious. Passive obedience, irreconcilable with a reflecting will, is
strictly enforced. Fidelity to regulations, which are always defective,
however wise they may be thought, allows of no complaint. Life, talent,
and all the human faculties are the property of the State, which has
the right to use them as it pleases for the common good. Private
associations are sternly prohibited, in spite of the likes and dislikes
of different natures, because to tolerate them would be to introduce
small communities within the large one, and consequently private
property; the strong work for the weak, although this ought to be left
to benevolence, and not enforced, advised, or enjoined; the industrious
work for the lazy, although this is unjust; the clever work for the
foolish, although this is absurd; and, finally, man--casting aside his
personality, his spontaneity, his genius, and his affections--humbly
annihilates himself at the feet of the majestic and inflexible Commune!
Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the
exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation
of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is
the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised: physical and
mental force; force of events, chance, FORTUNE; force of accumulated
property, &c. In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity
on a level with excellence. This damaging equation is repellent to the
conscience, and causes merit to complain; for, although it may be
the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of
generosity,--they never will endure a comparison. Give them equal
opportunities of labor, and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy
to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance
of the common task.
Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the
law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to
labor when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He
wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to
choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from
judgment, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not
through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the
free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest
feelings. Any plan which could be devised for reconciling it with the
demands of the individual reason and will would end only in changing the
thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we
shall avoid disputes about words.
Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience, and
equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart,
and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labor and
laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality
in point of comfort. For the rest, if property is impossible on account
of the desire to accumulate, communism would soon become so through the
desire to shirk.
II. Property, in its turn, violates equality by the rights of exclusion
and increase, and freedom by despotism. The former effect of property
having been sufficiently developed in the last three chapters, I will
content myself here with establishing by a final comparison, its perfect
identity with robbery.
The Latin words for robber are _fur_ and _latro;_ the former taken from
the Greek {GREEK m }, from {GREEK m }, Latin _fero_, I carry away; the
latter from {GREEK 'i }, I play the part of a brigand, which is derived
from {GREEK i }, Latin _lateo_, I conceal myself. The Greeks have also
{GREEK ncg }, from {GREEK ncg }, I filch, whose radical consonants are
the same as those of {GREEK ' cg }, I cover, I conceal. Thus, in these
languages, the idea of a robber is that of a man who conceals, carries
away, or diverts, in any manner whatever, a thing which does not belong
to him.
The Hebrews expressed the same idea by the word _gannab_,--robber,--from
the verb _ganab_, which means to put away, to turn aside: _lo thi-gnob
(Decalogue: Eighth Commandment_), thou shalt not steal,--that is, thou
shalt not hold back, thou shalt not put away any thing for thyself. That
is the act of a man who, on entering into a society into which he
agrees to bring all that he has, secretly reserves a portion, as did the
celebrated disciple Ananias.
The etymology of the French verb _voler_ is still more significant.
_Voler_, or _faire la vole_ (from the Latin _vola_, palm of the hand),
means to take all the tricks in a game of ombre; so that _le voleur_,
the robber, is the capitalist who takes all, who gets the lion's share.
Probably this verb _voler_ had its origin in the professional slang of
thieves, whence it has passed into common use, and, consequently into
the phraseology of the law.
Robbery is committed in a variety of ways, which have been very
cleverly distinguished and classified by legislators according to their
heinousness or merit, to the end that some robbers may be honored, while
others are punished.
We rob,--1. By murder on the highway; 2. Alone, or in a band; 3. By
breaking into buildings, or scaling walls; 4. By abstraction; 5. By
fraudulent bankruptcy; 6. By forgery of the handwriting of public
officials or private individuals; 7. By manufacture of counterfeit
money.
This species includes all robbers who practise their profession with no
other aid than force and open fraud. Bandits, brigands, pirates, rovers
by land and sea,--these names were gloried in by the ancient heroes, who
thought their profession as noble as it was lucrative. Nimrod, Theseus,
Jason and his Argonauts; Jephthah, David, Cacus, Romulus, Clovis and
all his Merovingian descendants; Robert Guiscard, Tancred de Hauteville,
Bohemond, and most of the Norman heroes,--were brigands and robbers. The
heroic character of the robber is expressed in this line from Horace, in
reference to Achilles,--
_"Jura neget sibi nata, nihil non arroget armis_," [27]
and by this sentence from the dying words of Jacob (Gen. xlviii. ), which
the Jews apply to David, and the Christians to their Christ: _Manus ejus
contra omnes_. In our day, the robber--the warrior of the ancients--is
pursued with the utmost vigor. His profession, in the language of the
code, entails ignominious and corporal penalties, from imprisonment to
the scaffold. A sad change in opinions here below!
We rob,--8. By cheating; 9. By swindling; 10. By abuse of trust; 11. By
games and lotteries.
This second species was encouraged by the laws of Lycurgus, in order
to sharpen the wits of the young. It is the kind practised by Ulysses,
Solon, and Sinon; by the ancient and modern Jews, from Jacob down to
Deutz; and by the Bohemians, the Arabs, and all savage tribes. Under
Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. , it was not considered dishonorable to cheat
at play. To do so was a part of the game; and many worthy people did not
scruple to correct the caprice of Fortune by dexterous jugglery.
To-day even, and in all countries, it is thought a mark of merit
among peasants, merchants, and shopkeepers to KNOW HOW TO MAKE A
BARGAIN,--that is, to deceive one's man. This is so universally
accepted, that the cheated party takes no offence. It is known with what
reluctance our government resolved upon the abolition of lotteries. It
felt that it was dealing a stab thereby at property. The pickpocket,
the blackleg, and the charlatan make especial use of their dexterity of
hand, their subtlety of mind, the magic power of their eloquence,
and their great fertility of invention. Sometimes they offer bait to
cupidity. Therefore the penal code--which much prefers intelligence
to muscular vigor--has made, of the four varieties mentioned above,
a second category, liable only to correctional, not to Ignominious,
punishments.
Let them now accuse the law of being materialistic and atheistic.
We rob,--12. By usury.
This species of robbery, so odious and so severely punished since the
publication of the Gospel, is the connecting link between forbidden and
authorized robbery. Owing to its ambiguous nature, it has given rise to
a multitude of contradictions in the laws and in morals,--contradictions
which have been very cleverly turned to account by lawyers, financiers,
and merchants. Thus the usurer, who lends on mortgage at ten, twelve,
and fifteen per cent. , is heavily fined when detected; while the banker,
who receives the same interest (not, it is true, upon a loan, but in the
way of exchange or discount,--that is, of sale), is protected by royal
privilege. But the distinction between the banker and the usurer is
a purely nominal one. Like the usurer, who lends on property, real or
personal, the banker lends on business paper; like the usurer, he
takes his interest in advance; like the usurer, he can recover from
the borrower if the property is destroyed (that is, if the note is
not redeemed),--a circumstance which makes him a money-lender, not a
money-seller. But the banker lends for a short time only, while
the usurer's loan may be for one, two, three, or more years. Now, a
difference in the duration of the loan, or the form of the act, does not
alter the nature of the transaction. As for the capitalists who invest
their money, either with the State or in commercial operations, at
three, four, and five per cent. ,--that is, who lend on usury at a
little lower rate than the bankers and usurers,--they are the flower of
society, the cream of honesty! Moderation in robbery is the height of
virtue! [28]
But what, then, is usury? Nothing is more amusing than to see these
INSTRUCTORS OF NATIONS hesitate between the authority of the Gospel,
which, they say, NEVER CAN HAVE SPOKEN IN VAIN, and the authority of
economical demonstrations. Nothing, to my mind, is more creditable
to the Gospel than this old infidelity of its pretended teachers.
Salmasius, having assimilated interest to rent, was REFUTED by Grotius,
Pufendorf, Burlamaqui, Wolf, and Heineccius; and, what is more curious
still, Salmasius ADMITTED HIS ERROR. Instead of inferring from this
doctrine of Salmasius that all increase is illegitimate, and proceeding
straight on to the demonstration of Gospel equality, they arrived at
just the opposite conclusion; namely, that since everybody acknowledges
that rent is permissible, if we allow that interest does not differ
from rent, there is nothing left which can be called usury, and,
consequently, that the commandment of Jesus Christ is an ILLUSION, and
amounts to NOTHING, which is an impious conclusion.
If this memoir had appeared in the time of Bossuet, that great
theologian would have PROVED by scripture, the fathers, traditions,
councils, and popes, that property exists by Divine right, while usury
is an invention of the devil; and the heretical work would have been
burned, and the author imprisoned.
We rob,--13. By farm-rent, house-rent, and leases of all kinds.
The author of the "Provincial Letters" entertained the honest Christians
of the seventeenth century at the expense of Escobar, the Jesuit,
and the contract Mohatra. "The contract Mohatra," said Escobar, "is a
contract by which goods are bought, at a high price and on credit, to
be again sold at the same moment to the same person, cash down, and at a
lower price. " Escobar found a way to justify this kind of usury. Pascal
and all the Jansenists laughed at him. But what would the satirical
Pascal, the learned Nicole, and the invincible Arnaud have said, if
Father Antoine Escobar de Valladolid had answered them thus: "A lease
is a contract by which real estate is bought, at a high price and on
credit, to be again sold, at the expiration of a certain time, to the
same person, at a lower price; only, to simplify the transaction, the
buyer is content to pay the difference between the first sale and the
second. Either deny the identity of the lease and the contract Mohatra,
and then I will annihilate you in a moment; or, if you admit the
similarity, admit also the soundness of my doctrine: otherwise you
proscribe both interest and rent at one blow"?
In reply to this overwhelming argument of the Jesuit, the sire of
Montalte would have sounded the tocsin, and would have shouted
that society was in peril,--that the Jesuits were sapping its very
foundations.
We rob,--14. By commerce, when the profit of the merchant exceeds his
legitimate salary.
Everybody knows the definition of commerce--THE ART OF BUYING FOR THREE
FRANCS THAT WHICH IS WORTH SIX, AND OF SELLING FOR SIX THAT WHICH IS
WORTH THREE. Between commerce thus defined and _vol a l'americaine_,
the only difference is in the relative proportion of the values
exchanged,--in short, in the amount of the profit.
We rob,--15. By making profit on our product, by accepting sinecures,
and by exacting exorbitant wages.
The farmer, who sells a certain amount of corn to the consumer, and who
during the measurement thrusts his hand into the bushel and takes out a
handful of grains, robs; the professor, whose lectures are paid for by
the State, and who through the intervention of a bookseller sells them
to the public a second time, robs; the sinecurist, who receives an
enormous product in exchange for his vanity, robs; the functionary, the
laborer, whatever he may be, who produces only one and gets paid four,
one hundred, or one thousand, robs; the publisher of this book, and I,
its author,--we rob, by charging for it twice as much as it is worth.
In recapitulation:--
Justice, after passing through the state of negative communism, called
by the ancient poets the AGE OF GOLD, commences as the right of the
strongest. In a society which is trying to organize itself, inequality
of faculties calls up the idea of merit; equite suggests the plan of
proportioning not only esteem, but also material comforts, to personal
merit; and since the highest and almost the only merit then recognized
is physical strength, the strongest, {GREEK ' eg }, and consequently
the best, {GREEK ' eg }, is entitled to the largest share; and if it
is refused him, he very naturally takes it by force. From this to the
assumption of the right of property in all things, it is but one step.
Such was justice in the heroic age, preserved, at least by tradition,
among the Greeks and Romans down to the last days of their republics.
Plato, in the "Gorgias," introduces a character named Callicles, who
spiritedly defends the right of the strongest, which Socrates, the
advocate of equality, {GREEK g e }, seriously refutes. It is related
of the great Pompey, that he blushed easily, and, nevertheless, these
words once escaped his lips: "Why should I respect the laws, when I have
arms in my hand? " This shows him to have been a man in whom the moral
sense and ambition were struggling for the mastery, and who sought to
justify his violence by the motto of the hero and the brigand.
From the right of the strongest springs the exploitation of man by
man, or bondage; usury, or the tribute levied upon the conquered by the
conqueror; and the whole numerous family of taxes, duties, monarchical
prerogatives, house-rents, farm-rents, &c. ; in one word,--property.
Force was followed by artifice, the second manifestation of justice,
which was detested by the ancient heroes, who, not excelling in that
direction, were heavy losers by it. Force was still employed, but mental
force instead of physical. Skill in deceiving an enemy by treacherous
propositions seemed deserving of reward; nevertheless, the strong always
prided themselves upon their honesty. In those days, oaths were observed
and promises kept according to the letter rather than the spirit: _Uti
lingua nuncupassit, ita jus esto_,--"As the tongue has spoken, so must
the right be," says the law of the Twelve Tables. Artifice, or rather
perfidy, was the main element in the politics of ancient Rome. Among
other examples, Vico cites the following, also quoted by Montesquieu:
The Romans had guaranteed to the Carthaginians the preservation of their
goods and their CITY,--intentionally using the word civitas, that is,
the society, the State; the Carthaginians, on the contrary, understood
them to mean the material city, urbs, and accordingly began to rebuild
their walls. They were immediately attacked on account of their
violation of the treaty, by the Romans, who, acting upon the old
heroic idea of right, did not imagine that, in taking advantage of an
equivocation to surprise their enemies, they were waging unjust war.
From artifice sprang the profits of manufactures, commerce, and banking,
mercantile frauds, and pretensions which are honored with the beautiful
names of TALENT and GENIUS, but which ought to be regarded as the last
degree of knavery and deception; and, finally, all sorts of social
inequalities.
In those forms of robbery which are prohibited by law, force and
artifice are employed alone and undisguised; in the authorized forms,
they conceal themselves within a useful product, which they use as a
tool to plunder their victim.
The direct use of violence and stratagem was early and universally
condemned; but no nation has yet got rid of that kind of robbery which
acts through talent, labor, and possession, and which is the source
of all the dilemmas of casuistry and the innumerable contradictions of
jurisprudence.
The right of force and the right of artifice--glorified by the
rhapsodists in the poems of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey"--inspired the
legislation of the Greeks and Romans, from which they passed into our
morals and codes. Christianity has not changed at all. The Gospel should
not be blamed, because the priests, as stupid as the legists, have been
unable either to expound or to understand it. The ignorance of councils
and popes upon all questions of morality is equal to that of the
market-place and the money-changers; and it is this utter ignorance
of right, justice, and society, which is killing the Church, and
discrediting its teachings for ever. The infidelity of the Roman church
and other Christian churches is flagrant; all have disregarded the
precept of Jesus; all have erred in moral and doctrinal points; all
are guilty of teaching false and absurd dogmas, which lead straight to
wickedness and murder. Let it ask pardon of God and men,--this church
which called itself infallible, and which has grown so corrupt in
morals; let its reformed sisters humble themselves,. . . and the people,
undeceived, but still religious and merciful, will begin to think. [29]
One of the main causes of Ireland's poverty to-day is the immense
revenues of the English clergy. So heretics and orthodox--Protestants
and Papists--cannot reproach each other. All have strayed from the path
of justice; all have disobeyed the eighth commandment of the Decalogue:
"Thou shalt not steal. "
The development of right has followed the same order, in its various
expressions, that property has in its forms. Every where we see justice
driving robbery before it and confining it within narrower and narrower
limits. Hitherto the victories of justice over injustice, and of
equality over inequality, have been won by instinct and the simple force
of things; but the final triumph of our social nature will be due to
our reason, or else we shall fall back into feudal chaos. Either this
glorious height is reserved for our intelligence, or this miserable
depth for our baseness.
The second effect of property is despotism. Now, since despotism
is inseparably connected with the idea of legitimate authority, in
explaining the natural causes of the first, the principle of the second
will appear.
What is to be the form of government in the future? hear some of my
younger readers reply: "Why, how can you ask such a question?
"You are a republican. " "A republican! Yes; but that word specifies
nothing. _Res publica;_ that is, the public thing. Now, whoever
is interested in public affairs--no matter under what form
of government--may call himself a republican. Even kings are
republicans. "--
"Well! you are a democrat? "--"No. "--"What! you would have a
monarchy. "--"No. "--"A constitutionalist? "--"God forbid!
"--"You are then
an aristocrat? "--"Not at all. "--"You want a mixed government? "--"Still
less. "--"What are you, then? "--"I am an anarchist. "
"Oh! I understand you; you speak satirically. This is a hit at the
government. "--"By no means. I have just given you my serious and
well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I
am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me. "
In all species of sociable animals, "the weakness of the young is the
principle of their obedience to the old," who are strong; and from habit,
which is a kind of conscience with them, the power remains with the
oldest, although he finally becomes the weakest.
Whenever the society is under the control of a chief, this chief is
almost always the oldest of the troop. I say almost always, because
the established order may be disturbed by violent outbreaks. Then the
authority passes to another; and, having been re-established by force,
it is again maintained by habit. Wild horses go in herds: they have a
chief who marches at their head, whom they confidently follow, and who
gives the signal for flight or battle.
"The sheep which we have raised follows us, but it follows in company
with the flock in the midst of which it was born. It regards man AS THE
CHIEF OF ITS FLOCK. . . . Man is regarded by domestic animals as a member
of their society. All that he has to do is to get himself accepted by
them as an associate: he soon becomes their chief, in consequence of his
superior intelligence. He does not, then, change the NATURAL CONDITION
of these animals, as Buffon has said. On the contrary, he uses this
natural condition to his own advantage; in other words, he finds
SOCIABLE animals, and renders them DOMESTIC by becoming their associate
and chief. Thus, the DOMESTICITY of animals is only a special condition,
a simple modification, a definitive consequence of their SOCIABILITY.
All domestic animals are by nature sociable animals. ". . . --Flourens:
Summary of the Observations of F. Cuvier.
Sociable animals follow their chief by INSTINCT; but take notice of the
fact (which F. Cuvier omitted to state), that the function of the chief
is altogether one of INTELLIGENCE. The chief does not teach the others
to associate, to unite under his lead, to reproduce their kind, to
take to flight, or to defend themselves. Concerning each of these
particulars, his subordinates are as well informed as he. But it is the
chief who, by his accumulated experience, provides against accidents; he
it is whose private intelligence supplements, in difficult situations,
the general instinct; he it is who deliberates, decides, and leads; he
it is, in short, whose enlightened prudence regulates the public routine
for the greatest good of all.
Man (naturally a sociable being) naturally follows a chief. Originally,
the chief is the father, the patriarch, the elder; in other words, the
good and wise man, whose functions, consequently, are exclusively of a
reflective and intellectual nature. The human race--like all other
races of sociable animals--has its instincts, its innate faculties, its
general ideas, and its categories of sentiment and reason. Its chiefs,
legislators, or kings have devised nothing, supposed nothing, imagined
nothing. They have only guided society by their accumulated experience,
always however in conformity with opinions and beliefs.
Those philosophers who (carrying into morals and into history their
gloomy and factious whims) affirm that the human race had originally
neither chiefs nor kings, know nothing of the nature of man. Royalty,
and absolute royalty, is--as truly and more truly than democracy--a
primitive form of government. Perceiving that, in the remotest ages,
crowns and kingships were worn by heroes, brigands, and knight-errants,
they confound the two things,--royalty and despotism. But royalty dates
from the creation of man; it existed in the age of negative communism.
Ancient heroism (and the despotism which it engendered) commenced only
with the first manifestation of the idea of justice; that is, with the
reign of force. As soon as the strongest, in the comparison of merits,
was decided to be the best, the oldest had to abandon his position, and
royalty became despotic.
The spontaneous, instinctive, and--so to speak--physiological origin of
royalty gives it, in the beginning, a superhuman character. The
nations connected it with the gods, from whom they said the first kings
descended. This notion was the origin of the divine genealogies of royal
families, the incarnations of gods, and the messianic fables. From it
sprang the doctrine of divine right, which is still championed by a few
singular characters.
Royalty was at first elective, because--at a time when man produced but
little and possessed nothing--property was too weak to establish the
principle of heredity, and secure to the son the throne of his father;
but as soon as fields were cleared, and cities built, each function
was, like every thing else, appropriated, and hereditary kingships and
priesthoods were the result. The principle of heredity was carried into
even the most ordinary professions,--a circumstance which led to class
distinctions, pride of station, and abjection of the common people, and
which confirms my assertion, concerning the principle of patrimonial
succession, that it is a method suggested by Nature of filling vacancies
in business, and completing unfinished tasks.
From time to time, ambition caused usurpers, or SUPPLANTERS of kings,
to start up; and, in consequence, some were called kings by right, or
legitimate kings, and others TYRANTS. But we must not let these names
deceive us. There have been execrable kings, and very tolerable tyrants.
Royalty may always be good, when it is the only possible form of
government; legitimate it is never. Neither heredity, nor election,
nor universal suffrage, nor the excellence of the sovereign, nor the
consecration of religion and of time, can make royalty legitimate.
Whatever form it takes,--monarchic, oligarchic, or democratic,--royalty,
or the government of man by man, is illegitimate and absurd.
Man, in order to procure as speedily as possible the most thorough
satisfaction of his wants, seeks RULE. In the beginning, this rule is
to him living, visible, and tangible. It is his father, his master, his
king. The more ignorant man is, the more obedient he is, and the more
absolute is his confidence in his guide. But, it being a law of man's
nature to conform to rule,--that is, to discover it by his powers of
reflection and reason,--man reasons upon the commands of his chiefs.
Now, such reasoning as that is a protest against authority,--a beginning
of disobedience. At the moment that man inquires into the motives which
govern the will of his sovereign,--at that moment man revolts. If
he obeys no longer because the king commands, but because the king
demonstrates the wisdom of his commands, it may be said that henceforth
he will recognize no authority, and that he has become his own king.
Unhappy he who shall dare to command him, and shall offer, as his
authority, only the vote of the majority; for, sooner or later, the
minority will become the majority, and this imprudent despot will be
overthrown, and all his laws annihilated.
In proportion as society becomes enlightened, royal authority
diminishes. That is a fact to which all history bears witness. At the
birth of nations, men reflect and reason in vain. Without methods,
without principles, not knowing how to use their reason, they cannot
judge of the justice of their conclusions. Then the authority of kings
is immense, no knowledge having been acquired with which to contradict
it. But, little by little, experience produces habits, which develop
into customs; then the customs are formulated in maxims, laid down as
principles,--in short, transformed into laws, to which the king, the
living law, has to bow. There comes a time when customs and laws are so
numerous that the will of the prince is, so to speak, entwined by the
public will; and that, on taking the crown, he is obliged to swear that
he will govern in conformity with established customs and usages; and
that he is but the executive power of a society whose laws are made
independently of him.
Up to this point, all is done instinctively, and, as it were,
unconsciously; but see where this movement must end.
By means of self-instruction and the acquisition of ideas, man finally
acquires the idea of SCIENCE,--that is, of a system of knowledge in
harmony with the reality of things, and inferred from observation.
He searches for the science, or the system, of inanimate bodies,--the
system of organic bodies, the system of the human mind, and the system
of the universe: why should he not also search for the system of
society? But, having reached this height, he comprehends that political
truth, or the science of politics, exists quite independently of
the will of sovereigns, the opinion of majorities, and popular
beliefs,--that kings, ministers, magistrates, and nations, as wills,
have no connection with the science, and are worthy of no consideration.
He comprehends, at the same time, that, if man is born a sociable being,
the authority of his father over him ceases on the day when, his mind
being formed and his education finished, he becomes the associate of his
father; that his true chief and his king is the demonstrated truth; that
politics is a science, not a stratagem; and that the function of the
legislator is reduced, in the last analysis, to the methodical search
for truth.
Thus, in a given society, the authority of man over man is inversely
proportional to the stage of intellectual development which that
society has reached; and the probable duration of that authority can
be calculated from the more or less general desire for a true
government,--that is, for a scientific government. And just as the right
of force and the right of artifice retreat before the steady advance
of justice, and must finally be extinguished in equality, so the
sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of the reason, and
must at last be lost in scientific socialism. Property and royalty
have been crumbling to pieces ever since the world began. As man seeks
justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.
ANARCHY,--the absence of a master, of a sovereign, [30]--such is the
form of government to which we are every day approximating, and which
our accustomed habit of taking man for our rule, and his will for law,
leads us to regard as the height of disorder and the expression of
chaos. The story is told, that a citizen of Paris in the seventeenth
century having heard it said that in Venice there was no king, the
good man could not recover from his astonishment, and nearly died from
laughter at the mere mention of so ridiculous a thing. So strong is our
prejudice. As long as we live, we want a chief or chiefs; and at this
very moment I hold in my hand a brochure, whose author--a zealous
communist--dreams, like a second Marat, of the dictatorship. The most
advanced among us are those who wish the greatest possible number of
sovereigns,--their most ardent wish is for the royalty of the National
Guard. Soon, undoubtedly, some one, jealous of the citizen militia, will
say, "Everybody is king. " But, when he has spoken, I will say, in my
turn, "Nobody is king; we are, whether we will or no, associated. "
Every question of domestic politics must be decided by departmental
statistics; every question of foreign politics is an affair of
international statistics. The science of government rightly belongs
to one of the sections of the Academy of Sciences, whose permanent
secretary is necessarily prime minister; and, since every citizen may
address a memoir to the Academy, every citizen is a legislator. But, as
the opinion of no one is of any value until its truth has been proven,
no one can substitute his will for reason,--nobody is king.
All questions of legislation and politics are matters of science, not of
opinion. The legislative power belongs only to the reason, methodically
recognized and demonstrated. To attribute to any power whatever the
right of veto or of sanction, is the last degree of tyranny. Justice
and legality are two things as independent of our approval as is
mathematical truth. To compel, they need only to be known; to be known,
they need only to be considered and studied. What, then, is the nation,
if it is not the sovereign,--if it is not the source of the legislative
power?
The nation is the guardian of the law--the nation is the EXECUTIVE
POWER. Every citizen may assert: "This is true; that is just;" but his
opinion controls no one but himself. That the truth which he proclaims
may become a law, it must be recognized. Now, what is it to recognize a
law? It is to verify a mathematical or a metaphysical calculation; it is
to repeat an experiment, to observe a phenomenon, to establish a fact.
Only the nation has the right to say, "Be it known and decreed. "
I confess that this is an overturning of received ideas, and that I seem
to be attempting to revolutionize our political system; but I beg the
reader to consider that, having begun with a paradox, I must, if I
reason correctly, meet with paradoxes at every step, and must end with
paradoxes. For the rest, I do not see how the liberty of citizens would
be endangered by entrusting to their hands, instead of the pen of
the legislator, the sword of the law. The executive power, belonging
properly to the will, cannot be confided to too many proxies. That is
the true sovereignty of the nation. [31]
The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign--for all these
titles are synonymous--imposes his will as law, and suffers neither
contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative
and the executive power at once. Accordingly, the substitution of the
scientific and true law for the royal will is accomplished only by a
terrible struggle; and this constant substitution is, after property,
the most potent element in history, the most prolific source of
political disturbances. Examples are too numerous and too striking to
require enumeration.
Now, property necessarily engenders despotism,--the government of
caprice, the reign of libidinous pleasure. That is so clearly the
essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember
what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right
to USE and ABUSE. If, then, government is economy,--if its object
is production and consumption, and the distribution of labor and
products,--how is government possible while property exists? And
if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and
despotic kings--kings in proportion to their _facultes bonitaires_? And
if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property,
absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of
proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion?
% 3. --Determination of the third form of Society. Conclusion.
Then, no government, no public economy, no administration, is possible,
which is based upon property.
Communism seeks EQUALITY and LAW. Property, born of the sovereignty of
the reason, and the sense of personal merit, wishes above all things
INDEPENDENCE and PROPORTIONALITY.
But communism, mistaking uniformity for law, and levelism for
equality, becomes tyrannical and unjust. Property, by its despotism and
encroachments, soon proves itself oppressive and anti-social.
The objects of communism and property are good--their results are bad.
And why? Because both are exclusive, and each disregards two elements
of society. Communism rejects independence and proportionality; property
does not satisfy equality and law.
Now, if we imagine a society based upon these four
principles,--equality, law, independence, and proportionality,--we
find:--
1. That EQUALITY, consisting only in EQUALITY OF CONDITIONS, that is, OF
MEANS, and not in EQUALITY OF COMFORT,--which it is the business of the
laborers to achieve for themselves, when provided with equal means,--in
no way violates justice and equite.
2. That LAW, resulting from the knowledge of facts, and consequently
based upon necessity itself, never clashes with independence.
3. That individual INDEPENDENCE, or the autonomy of the private reason,
originating in the difference in talents and capacities, can exist
without danger within the limits of the law.
4. That PROPORTIONALITY, being admitted only in the sphere of
intelligence and sentiment, and not as regards material objects, may be
observed without violating justice or social equality.
This third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property, we
will call LIBERTY. [32]
In determining the nature of liberty, we do not unite communism and
property indiscriminately; such a process would be absurd eclecticism.
We search by analysis for those elements in each which are true, and
in harmony with the laws of Nature and society, disregarding the rest
altogether; and the result gives us an adequate expression of the
natural form of human society,--in one word, liberty.
Liberty is equality, because liberty exists only in society; and in the
absence of equality there is no society.
Liberty is anarchy, because it does not admit the government of the
will, but only the authority of the law; that is, of necessity.
Liberty is infinite variety, because it respects all wills within the
limits of the law.
Liberty is proportionality, because it allows the utmost latitude to the
ambition for merit, and the emulation of glory.
We can now say, in the words of M. Cousin: "Our principle is true; it is
good, it is social; let us not fear to push it to its ultimate. "
Man's social nature becoming JUSTICE through reflection, EQUITE through
the classification of capacities, and having LIBERTY for its formula,
is the true basis of morality,--the principle and regulator of all our
actions. This is the universal motor, which philosophy is searching for,
which religion strengthens, which egotism supplants, and whose place
pure reason never can fill. DUTY and RIGHT are born of NEED, which, when
considered in connection with others, is a RIGHT, and when considered in
connection with ourselves, a DUTY.
We need to eat and sleep. It is our right to procure those things which
are necessary to rest and nourishment. It is our duty to use them when
Nature requires it.
We need to labor in order to live. 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.
