VI. WEALTH
We have seen that in every commodity which is adapted to satisfy our wants and desires, there are two things to be considered and distinguished: what nature does, and what man does,—what is gratuitous, and what is onerous—the gift of God and the service of man—‹utility› and ‹value›. In the same commodity the one may be immense, and the other imperceptible. The former remaining invariable, the latter may be indefinitely diminished; and is diminished, in fact, as often as an ingenious process or invention enables us to obtain the same result with less effort.
One of the greatest difficulties, one of the most fertile sources of misunderstanding, controversy, and error, here presents itself to us at the very threshold of the science—
What is ‹wealth›?
Are we ‹rich› in proportion to the utilities which we have at our disposal,—that is, in proportion to the wants and desires which we have the means of satisfying? “A man is rich or poor,” says Adam Smith, “according as he possesses a greater or smaller amount of ‹useful› commodities which minister to his enjoyments.”
Are we ‹rich› in proportion to the ‹values› which we possess,—that is to say, the ‹services› which we can command? “Wealth,” says J. B. Say, “is in proportion to Value. It is great if the sum of the value of which it is composed is great—it is small if the value be small.”
The vulgar employ the word Wealth in two senses. Sometimes we hear them say—“The abundance of water is Wealth to such a country.” In this case, they are thinking only of utility. But when one wishes to reckon up his own wealth, he makes what is called an Inventory, in which only commercial Value is taken into account.
With deference to the ‹savants›, I believe that the vulgar are [p181] right for once. Wealth is either ‹actual› or ‹relative›. In the first point of view, we judge of it by our satisfactions. Mankind become richer in proportion as they acquire a greater amount of ease or material prosperity, whatever be the commodities by which it is procured. But do you wish to know what proportional share each man has in the general prosperity; in other words, his ‹relative wealth›? This is simply a relation, which value alone reveals, because value is itself a relation.
Our science has to do with the general welfare and prosperity of men, with the proportion which exists between their Efforts and their Satisfactions,—a proportion which the progressive participation of gratuitous utility in the business of production modifies advantageously. You cannot, then, exclude this element from the idea of Wealth. In a scientific point of view, actual or effective wealth is not the sum of values, but the aggregate of the utilities, gratuitous and onerous, which are attached to these values. As regards satisfactions,—that is to say, as regards actual results of wealth, we are as much enriched by the value annihilated by progress as by that which still subsists.
In the ordinary transactions of life, we cease to take utility into account, in proportion as that utility becomes ‹gratuitous› by the lowering of value. Why? because what is gratuitous is ‹common›, and what is common alters in no respect each man’s share or proportion of actual or effective wealth. We do not exchange what is common to all; and as in our every-day transactions we only require to be made acquainted with the proportion which value establishes, we take no account of anything else.
This subject gave rise to a controversy between Ricardo and J. B. Say. Ricardo gave to the word Wealth the sense of Utility—Say, that of Value. The exclusive triumph of one of these champions was impossible, since the word admits of both senses, according as we regard wealth as actual or relative.
But it is necessary to remark, and the more so on account of the great authority of Say in these matters, that if we confound ‹wealth› (in the sense of actual or effective prosperity) with ‹value›; above all, if we affirm that the one is proportional to the other, we shall be apt to give the science a wrong direction. The works of second-rate Economists, and those of the Socialists, show this but too clearly. To set out by concealing from view precisely that which forms the fairest patrimony of the human race, is an unfortunate beginning. It leads us to consider as annihilated that portion of wealth which progress renders common to all, and exposes us to the danger of falling into a ‹petitio principii›, and studying [p182] Political Economy backwards,—the ‹end›, the design, which it is our object to attain, being perpetually confounded with the ‹obstacle› which impedes our efforts.
In truth, but for the existence of obstacles, there could be no such thing as Value, which is the sign, the symptom, the witness, the proof of our native weakness. It reminds us incessantly of the decree which went forth in the beginning—“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” With reference to Omnipotence, the words ‹Effort›, ‹Service›, and, consequently, ‹Value›, have no meaning. As regards ourselves, we live in an atmosphere of ‹utilities›, of which utilities the greater part are gratuitous, but there are others which we can acquire only by an onerous title. Obstacles are interposed between these utilities and the wants to which they minister. We are condemned either to forego the Utility, or vanquish these obstacles by Efforts. Sweat must drop from the brow before bread can be eaten, whether the toil be undergone by ourselves or by others for our benefit.
The greater the amount of value we find existing in a country, the greater evidence we have that obstacles have been surmounted, but the greater evidence we also have that there are obstacles to surmount. Are we to go so far as to say that these obstacles constitute Wealth, because, apart from them, Value would have no existence?
We may suppose two countries. One of them possesses the means of enjoyment to a greater extent than the other with a less amount of Value, because it is favoured by nature, and it has fewer obstacles to overcome. Which is the richer?
Or, to put a stronger case, let us suppose the same people at different periods of their history. The obstacles to be overcome are the same at both periods. But, now-a-days, they surmount these obstacles with so much greater facility; they execute, for instance, the work of transport, of tillage, of manufactures, at so much less an expense of effort that values are considerably reduced. There are two courses, then, which a people in such a situation may take,—they may content themselves with the same amount of enjoyments as formerly,—progress in that case resolving itself simply into the attainment of additional leisure; and, in such circumstances, should we be authorized to say that the Wealth of the society had retrograded because it is possessed of a smaller amount of value? Or, they may devote the efforts which progress and improvement have rendered disposable to the increase and extension of their enjoyments; but should we be warranted to conclude that, because the amount of values had remained [p183] stationary, the wealth of the society had remained stationary also? It is to this result, however, that we tend if we confound the two things, ‹Riches› and ‹Value›.
Political Economists may here find themselves in a dilemma. Are we to measure wealth by Satisfactions realized, or by Values created?
Were no obstacles interposed between utilities and desires, there would be neither efforts, nor services, nor Values in our case, any more than in that of God and nature. In such circumstances, were wealth estimated by the satisfactions realized, mankind, like nature, would be in possession of infinite riches; but, if estimated by the values created, they would be deprived of wealth altogether. An economist who adopted the first view might pronounce us ‹infinitely rich›,—another, who adopted the second view, might pronounce us ‹infinitely poor›.
The infinite, it is true, is in no respect an attribute of humanity. But mankind direct their exertions to certain ends; they make efforts, they have tendencies, they gravitate towards progressive Wealth or progressive Poverty. Now, how could Economists make themselves mutually intelligible if this successive diminution of effort in relation to result, of labour to be undergone or to be remunerated; in a word, if this successive diminution of Value were considered by some of them as a progress towards Wealth, and by others as a descent towards Poverty?
Did the difficulty, indeed, concern only Economists, we might say, let them settle the matter among themselves. But legislators and governments have every day to introduce measures which exercise a serious influence on human affairs; and in what condition should we be if these measures were taken in the absence of that light which enables us to distinguish Riches from Poverty?
I affirm that the theory which defines Wealth as Value is only the glorification of Obstacles. Its syllogism is this: “Wealth is in proportion to Value, value to efforts, efforts to obstacles; ‹ergo›, wealth is in proportion to obstacles.” I affirm also that, by reason of the division of labour, which includes the case of every one who exercises a trade or profession, the illusion thus created is very difficult to be got rid of. We all of us see that the services which we render are called forth by some obstacle, some want, some suffering,—those of the physician by disease, those of the agricultural labourer by hunger, those of the manufacturer of clothing by cold, those of the carrier by distance, those of the advocate by injustice, those of the soldier by danger to his country. There is not, in fact, a single obstacle, the disappearance of which does not [p184] prove very inopportune and very troublesome to somebody, or which does not even appear fatal in a public point of view, because it seems to dry up a source of employment, of services, of values, of wealth. Very few Economists have been able to preserve themselves entirely from this illusion; and if the science shall ever succeed in dispelling it, its practical mission will have been fulfilled. For I venture to make a third affirmation—namely, that our official practice is saturated with this theory, and that when governments believe it to be their duty to favour certain classes, certain professions, or certain manufactures, they have no other mode of accomplishing their object than by setting up Obstacles, in order to give to particular branches of industry additional development, in order to enlarge artificially the circle of services to which the community is forced to have recourse,—and thus to increase Value, falsely assumed as synonymous with Wealth.
And, in fact, it is quite true that such legislation is useful to the classes which are favoured by it—they exult in it—congratulate each other upon it,—and what is the consequence? Why this, that the same favours are successively accorded to all other classes.
What more natural than to confound Utility with Value, and Value with Riches! The science has never encountered a snare which she has less suspected. For what has happened? At every step of progress the reasoning has been this: “The obstacle is diminished, then effort is lessened, then value is lessened, then utility is lessened, then wealth is lessened,—then we are the most unfortunate people in the world to have taken it into our heads to invent and exchange, to have five fingers in place of three, and two hands in place of one; and then it is necessary to engage government, which is in possession of force, to take order with this abuse.”
This Political Economy ‹à rebours›—this Political Economy read backwards—is the staple of many of our journals, and the life of legislative assemblies. It has misled the candid and philanthropic Sismondi, and we find it very logically set forth in the work of M. de Saint-Chamans.
“There are two kinds of national wealth,” he tells us. “If we have regard only to ‹useful› products with reference to their quantity, their abundance, we have to do with a species of wealth which procures enjoyments to society, and which I shall denominate ‹the Wealth of enjoyment›.
“If we regard products with reference to their exchangeable Value, or simply with reference to their value, we have to do with [p185] a species of Wealth which procures values to society, and which I call ‹the Wealth of value›.
“‹It is this last species of Wealth which forms the special subject of Political Economy, and it is with it, above all, that governments have to do.›”
This being so, how are Economists and Statesmen to proceed? The first are to point out the means of increasing this species of riches, this ‹wealth of value›; the second to set about adopting these means.
But this kind of wealth bears proportion to efforts, and efforts bear proportion to obstacles. Political Economy, then, is to teach, and Government to contrive, how to multiply obstacles. M. de Saint-Chamans does not flinch in the least from this consequence.
Does exchange facilitate our acquiring more of the ‹wealth of enjoyment› with less of the ‹wealth of value›? We must, then, counteract this tendency of exchange.[39]
Is there any portion of gratuitous Utility which we can replace by onerous Utility; for example, by prohibiting the use of a tool or a machine? We must not fail to do so; for it is very evident, he says, that if machinery augments the ‹wealth of enjoyment›, it diminishes the ‹wealth of value›. “‹Let us bless the obstacles› which the dearness and scarcity of fuel in this country has opposed to the multiplication of steam-engines.”[40]
Has nature favoured us in any particular respect? It is our misfortune; for, by that means, we are deprived of the opportunity of exerting ourselves. “I avow that I could desire to see manufactured by manual labour, forced exertion, and the sweat of the brow, things that are now produced without trouble and spontaneously.”[41]
What a misfortune, then, is it for us that we are not obliged to manufacture the water which we drink! It would have been a fine opportunity of producing the ‹wealth of value›. Happily we take our revenge upon wine. “Discover the secret of drawing wine from springs in the earth as abundantly as you draw water, and you will soon see that this fine order of things will ruin a fourth part of France.”[42]
According to the ideas which this Economist sets forth with such ‹naïveté›, there are many methods, and very simple methods too, of obliging men to create what he terms the ‹wealth of value›.
The first is to deprive them of what they have. “If taxation [p186] lays held of money where it is plentiful, to distribute it where it is scarce, it is useful, and far from being a loss, ‹it is a gain›, to the state.”[43]
The second is to dissipate what you take. “Luxury and prodigality, which are so hurtful to individual fortunes, ‹benefit› public wealth. You teach me a fine moral lesson, it may be said—I have no such pretension—my business is with Political Economy, and not with morals. You seek the means of rendering nations richer, and I preach up luxury.”[44]
A more prompt method still is to destroy the wealth which you take from the tax-payer by good sweeping wars. “If you grant me that the expenditure of prodigals is as productive as any other, and that the expenditure of governments is equally productive, . . . you will no longer be astonished at the wealth of England after so expensive a war.”[45]
But, as tending to promote the creation of this ‹Wealth of value›, all these means—taxes, luxury, wars—must hide their diminished heads before an expedient infinitely more efficacious—namely, ‹conflagration›.
“To build is a great source of wealth, because it supplies revenues to proprietors, who furnish the materials, to workmen, and to divers classes of artisans and artists. Melon cites Sir William Petty, who regards, as a ‹national profit›, the labour employed in rebuilding the streets of London after the great fire which consumed two-thirds of the city, and he estimates it (the profit!) at a million sterling per annum (in money of 1666) during four years, and this without the least injury having been done to other branches of trade. Without regarding this pecuniary estimate ‹of profit› as quite accurate,” adds M. de Saint-Chamans, “it is certain at least that this event had no detrimental effect upon the wealth of England at that period. . . . The result stated by Sir W. Petty is not impossible, seeing that the necessity of rebuilding London must have created a large amount of new revenues.”[46]
All Economists, who set out by confounding ‹wealth› with ‹value›, must infallibly arrive at the same conclusions, if they are logical; but they are not logical; for on the road of absurdity men of any common sense always sooner or later stop short. M. de Saint-Chamans seems himself to recede a little before the consequences of his principle, when it lands him in a eulogium on conflagration. We see that he hesitates, and contents himself with a negative panegyric. He should have carried out his principle to [p187] its logical conclusions, and told us roundly what he so clearly indicates.
Of all our Economists, M. de Sismondi has succumbed to the difficulty now under consideration in the manner most to be regretted. Like M. de Saint-Chamans, he set out with the idea that value forms an element of wealth; and, like him, he has built upon this datum a Political Economy ‹à rebours›, denouncing everything which tends to diminish value. Sismondi, like Saint-Chamans, exalts obstacles, proscribes machinery, anathematizes exchange, competition, and liberty, extols luxury and taxation, and arrives at length at this conclusion, that the more we possess the poorer we become.[47]
From beginning to end of his work, however, M. de Sismondi seems to have a lurking consciousness that he is mistaken, and that a dark veil may have interposed itself between his mind and the truth. He does not venture, like M. de Saint-Chamans, to announce roughly and bluntly the consequences of his principle—he hesitates, and is troubled. He asks himself sometimes if it is possible that all men from the beginning of the world have been in error, and on the road to self-destruction, in seeking to diminish the proportion which Effort bears to Satisfaction,—that is to say, ‹value›. At once the friend and the enemy of liberty, he fears it, since the abundance which depreciates value leads to universal poverty, and yet he knows not how to set about the destruction of this fatal liberty. He thus arrives at the confines of socialism and artificial organization, and insinuates that government and science should regulate and control everything. Then he sees the danger of the advice he is giving, retracts it, and ends by falling into despair, exclaiming—“Liberty leads to the abyss of poverty—Constraint is as impossible as it is useless—there is no escape.” In truth and reality, there is none, if Value be Riches; in other words, if the obstacle to prosperity be prosperity itself,—that is to say, if Evil be Good.
The latest writer, as far as I know, who has stirred this question [p188] is M. Proudhon. It made the fortune of his book, ‹Des Contradictions Économiques›. Never was there a finer opportunity of seizing a paradox by the forelock, and snapping his fingers at science. Never was there a fairer occasion of asking—“Do you see in the increase of value a good or an evil? ‹Quidquid dixeris argumentabor.›” Just think what a treat![48]
“I call upon any earnest Economist to explain to me, otherwise than by varying and repeating the question, why value diminishes in proportion as production increases, and ‹vice versa›. . . . In technical phrase, value in use and value in exchange, although necessary to each other, are in an inverse ratio to each other. . . . . Value in use and value in exchange remain, then, fatally enchained, although in their own nature they tend to exclude each other.”
“For this contradiction, which is inherent in the notion of value, no cause can be assigned, nor is any explanation of it possible. . . From the data, that man has need of a great variety of commodities, and that he must provide them by his labour, the necessary conclusion is, that there exists an antagonism between value in use and value in exchange, and from this antagonism a contradiction arises at the very threshold of Political Economy. No amount of intelligence, no agency, divine or human, can make it otherwise. In place, then, of beating about for a useless explanation, let us content ourselves with pointing out clearly the ‹necessity of the contradiction›.”
We know that the grand discovery of M. Proudhon is, that everything is at once true and false, good and bad, legitimate and illegitimate, that there exits no principle which is not self-contradictory, and that contradiction lurks not only in erroneous theories, but in the very essence of things,—“it is the pure expression of necessity, the peculiar law of existence,” etc.; so that it is inevitable, and would be incurable, rationally, but for ‹progression›, and, practically, but for the ‹Banque du Peuple›. Nature is a contradiction, liberty a contradiction, competition a contradiction, property a contradiction,—value, credit, monopoly, community, all contradictions. When M. Proudhon achieved this wonderful discovery his heart must have leaped for joy; for since contradiction is everywhere and in everything, he can never want something to gainsay, which for him is the supreme good. He said to me one day, “I should rather like to go to heaven, but I [p189] fear that everybody there will be of one mind, and I should find nobody to argue with.”
We must confess that the subject of Value gave him an excellent opportunity of indulging his taste. But, with great deference to him, the contradictions and paradoxes to which the word Value has given rise are to be found in the false theories which have been constructed, and not at all, as he would have us believe, in the nature of things.
Theorists have set out, in the first instance, by confounding Value with Utility,—that is to say, evil with good; for utility is the desired result, and value springs from the obstacle which is interposed between the desire and the result. This was their first error, and, when they perceived the consequences of it, they thought to obviate the difficulty by imagining a distinction between value in use and value in exchange—an unwieldy tautology, which had the great fault of attaching the same word—Value—to two opposite phenomena.
But if, putting aside these subtilties, we adhere strictly to facts, what do we perceive? Nothing, assuredly, but what is quite natural and consistent.
A man, we shall suppose, works exclusively for himself. If he acquire skill, if his force and intelligence are developed, if nature becomes more liberal, or if he learns how to make nature co-operate better in his work, he obtains ‹more wealth with less trouble›. Where is the contradiction, and what is there in this to excite so much wonder?
Well, then, in place of remaining an isolated being, suppose this man to have relations with his fellow-men. They exchange; and I repeat my observation,—in proportion as they acquire skill, experience, force, and intelligence,—in proportion as nature (become more liberal or brought more into subjection) lends them more efficacious co-operation, they obtain ‹more wealth with less trouble›; they have at their disposal a greater amount of gratuitous utility; in their transactions they transfer to one another a greater sum of useful results in proportion to a given amount of labour. Where, then, is the contradiction?
If, indeed, following the example of Adam Smith and his successors, you commit the error of applying the same denomination—‹value›—both to the results obtained and to the exertion made; in that case, an antinomy or contradiction will show itself. But be assured that that contradiction is not at all in the facts, but in your own erroneous explanation of those facts.
M. Proudhon ought, then, to have shaped his proposition thus: [p190] It being granted that man has need of a great variety of products, that he can only obtain them by his labour, and that he has the precious gift of educating and improving himself, nothing in the world is more natural than the sustained increase of results in relation to efforts; and there is nothing at all contradictory in a given value serving as the vehicle of a greater amount of realized utility.
Let me repeat, once more, that for man Utility is the fair side of the medal and Value the reverse. Utility has relation only to our Satisfactions, Value only with our Pains. Utility realizes our enjoyments, and is proportioned to them; Value attests our native weakness, springs from obstacles, and is proportioned to those Obstacles.
In virtue of the law of human perfectibility, gratuitous utility tends more and more to take the place of onerous utility, expressed by the word ‹value›. Such is the phenomenon, and it presents assuredly nothing contradictory.
But the question recurs—Should the word Wealth comprehend these two kinds of utility united, or only the last?
If we could form, once for all, two classes of utilities, putting on the one side all those which are gratuitous, and on the other all those which are onerous, we should form, at the same time, two classes of Wealth, which we should denominate, with M. Say, ‹Natural Wealth› and ‹Social Wealth›; or else, with M. de Saint-Chamans, the ‹Wealth of Enjoyment› and the ‹Wealth of Value›; after which, as these authors propose, we should have nothing mere to do with the first of these classes.
“Things which are accessible to all,” says M. Say, “and which everyone may enjoy at pleasure, without being forced to acquire them, and without the fear of exhausting them, such as air, water, the light of the sun, etc., are the gratuitous gifts of nature, and may be denominated ‹Natural Wealth›. As these can be neither produced nor distributed, nor consumed by us, ‹they come not within the domain of Political Economy›.
“The things which this science has to do with are things which we possess, and which have a recognised value. These we denominate ‹Social Wealth›, because they exist only among men united in society.”
“It is the ‹Wealth of Value›,” says M. de Saint-Chamans, “‹which forms the special subject of Political Economy›, and whenever in this work I mention Wealth without being more specific, I mean that description of it.”
Nearly all Economists have taken the same view. [p191]
“The most striking distinction,” says Storch, “which presents itself in the outset, is, that there are certain kinds of value which are capable of appropriation, and other kinds which are not so.[49] ‹The first alone are the subject of Political Economy›, for the analysis of the others would furnish no result worthy of the attention of the statesman.”
For my own part, I think that that portion of utility which, in the progress of society, ceases to be onerous and to possess value, but which does not on that account cease to be utility, and is about to fall into the domain of the ‹common› and ‹gratuitous›, is precisely that which should constantly attract the attention of the statesman and of the Economist. If it do not, in place of penetrating and comprehending the great results which affect and elevate the human race, the science will be left to deal with what is quite contingent and flexible—with what has a tendency to diminish, if not to disappear—with a relation merely; in a word, with Value. Without being aware of it, Economists are thus led to consider only labour, obstacles, and the interest of the producer; and, what is worse, they are led to confound the interest of the producer with the interest of the public,—that is to say, to mistake evil for good, and, under the guidance of the Sismondis and Saint-Chamans, to land at length in the Utopia of the socialists, or the ‹Système des Contradictions› of Proudhon.
And, then, is not this line of demarcation, which you attempt to draw between the two descriptions of utility, chimerical, arbitrary, and impossible? How can you thus disjoin the co-operation of nature and that of man when they combine and get mixed up everywhere, much more when the one tends constantly to replace the other, which is precisely what constitutes progress? If economical science, so dry in some respects, in other aspects elevates and fascinates the mind, it is just because it describes the laws of this association between man and nature,—it is because it shows gratuitous utility substituting itself more and more for onerous utility, enjoyments bearing a greater and greater proportion to labour and fatigue, obstacles constantly lessening, and, along with them, value; the perpetual mistakes and miscalculations of producers more than compensated by the increasing prosperity of consumers; natural wealth, ‹gratuitous› and ‹common›, coming more and more to take the place of wealth which is ‹personal› and ‹appropriated›. What! are we to exclude from Political Economy what constitutes its religious Harmony? [p192]
Air, light, water, are gratuitous, you say. True, and if we enjoyed them under their primitive form, without making them co-operate in any of our works, we might exclude them from Political Economy just as we exclude from it the possible and probable utility of comets. But observe the progress of man. At first he is able to make air, light, water, and other natural agents co-operate very imperfectly. His satisfactions were purchased by laborious personal efforts, they exacted a large amount of labour, and they were transferred to others as important ‹services›; in a word, they were possessed of great ‹value›. By degrees, this water, this air, this light, gravitation, elasticity, calorie, electricity, vegetable life, have abandoned this state of relative inactivity. They mingle more and more with our industry. They are substituted for human labour. They do for us gratuitously what labour does only for an onerous consideration. They annihilate value without diminishing our enjoyments. To speak in common language, what cost us a hundred francs, costs us only ten—what required ten days’ labour now demands only one. The whole value thus annihilated has passed from the domain of Property to that of Community. A considerable proportion of human efforts has been set free, and placed at our disposal for other enterprises; so that with equal labour, equal services, equal value, mankind have enlarged prodigiously the circle of their enjoyments; and yet you tell me that I must eliminate and banish from the science this utility, which is gratuitous and common, which alone explains progress, as well upward as forward, if I may so speak, as well in wealth and prosperity as in freedom and equality!
We may, then, legitimately attach to the word Wealth two meanings.
‹Effective Wealth›, real, and realizing satisfactions, or the aggregate of utilities which human labour, aided by the co-operation of natural agents, places within the reach of Society.
‹Relative Wealth›,—that is to say, the proportional share of each in the general Riches, a share which is determined by Value.
This Economic Harmony, then, may be thus stated:
By labour the action of man is combined with the action of nature.
Utility results from that co-operation.
Each man receives a share of the general utility proportioned to the value he has created,—that is to say, to the services he has rendered; in other words, to the utility he has himself produced.[50] [p193]
‹Morality of Wealth.›—We have just been engaged in studying wealth in an economical point of view; it may not perhaps be useless to say something here of its Moral effects.
In all ages, wealth, in a moral point of view, has been the subject of controversy. Certain philosophers and certain religionists have commanded us to despise it; others have greatly prided themselves on the golden mean, ‹aurea mediocritas›. Few, if any, have admitted as moral an ardent longing after the goods of fortune.
Which are right? Which are wrong? It does not belong to Political Economy to treat of individual morality. I shall make only one remark: I am always inclined to think that in matters which lie within the domain of everyday practice, theorists, savants, philosophers, are much less likely to be right than this universal practice itself, when we include in the meaning of the word practice, not only the actions of the generality of men, but their sentiments and ideas.
Now, what does universal practice demonstrate in this case? It shows us all men endeavouring to emerge from their original state of poverty,—all preferring the sensation of satisfaction to the sensation of want, riches to poverty; all, I should say, or almost all, without excepting even those who declaim against wealth.
The desire for wealth is ardent, incessant, universal, irrepressible. In almost every part of the globe it has triumphed over our natural aversion to toil. Whatever may be said to the contrary, it displays a character of avidity still baser among savage than among civilized nations. All our navigators who left Europe in the eighteenth century, imbued with the fashionable ideas of Rousseau, and expecting to find the men of nature at the antipodes disinterested, generous, hospitable, were struck with the devouring rapacity of these primitive barbarians. Our military men can tell us, in our own day, what we are to think of the boasted disinterestedness of the Arab tribes.
On the other hand, the opinions of all men, even of those who do not act up to their opinions, concur in honouring disinterestedness, generosity, self-control, and in branding that ill-regulated, inordinate love of wealth which causes men not to shrink from any means of obtaining it. The same public opinion surrounds with esteem the man who, in whatever rank of life, devotes his honest and persevering labour to ameliorating the lot and elevating the condition of his family. It is from this combination of facts, ideas, and sentiments, it would seem to me, that we must form our judgment on wealth in connexion with individual morality. [p194]
First of all, we must acknowledge that the motive which urges us to the acquisition of riches is of providential creation,—natural, and consequently ‹moral›. It has its source in that original and general destitution which would be our lot in everything, if it did not create in us the desire to free ourselves from it. We must acknowledge, in the second place, that the efforts which men make to emerge from their primitive destitution, provided they keep within the limits of justice, are estimable and respectable, seeing that they are universally esteemed and respected. No one, moreover, will deny that labour is in itself of a moral nature. This is expressed in the common proverb which we find in all countries,—Idleness is the parent of vice. And we should fall into a glaring contradiction were we to say, on the one hand, that labour is indispensable to the morality of men, and, on the other, that men are immoral when they seek to realize wealth by their labour.
We must acknowledge, in the third place, that the desire of wealth becomes immoral when it goes the length of inducing us to depart from the rules of justice, and that avarice becomes more unpopular in proportion to the wealth of those who addict themselves to that passion.
Such is the judgment pronounced, not by certain philosophers or sects, but by the generality of men; and I adopt it.
I must guard myself, however, by adding that this judgment may be different at the present day from what it was in ancient times, without involving a contradiction.
The Essenians and Stoics lived in a state of society where wealth was always the reward of oppression, of pillage, and of violence. Not only was it deemed immoral in itself, but, in consequence of the immoral means employed in its acquisition, it revealed the immorality of those who possessed it. A reaction, even an exaggerated reaction, against riches and rich men was to be expected. Modern philosophers who declaim against wealth, without taking into account this difference in the means of acquiring wealth, believe themselves Senecas, while they are only parrots, repeating what they do not understand.
But the question which Political Economy proposes is this: Is wealth for mankind a moral good or a moral evil? Does the progressive development of wealth imply, in a moral point of view, improvement or decadence?
The reader anticipates my answer, and will understand that I must say a few words on the subject of individual morality, in order to get quit of the contradiction, or rather of the impossibility, [p195] which would be implied in asserting that what is individual immorality is general morality.
Without having recourse to statistics, or the records of our prisons, we must handle a problem which may be enunciated in these terms:—
Is man degraded by exercising more power over nature—by constraining nature to serve him—by obtaining additional leisure—by freeing himself from the more imperious and pressing wants of his organization—by being enabled to rouse from sleep and inactivity his intellectual and moral faculties,—faculties which assuredly have not been given him to remain in eternal lethargy?
Is man degraded by being removed from a state the most inorganic, so to speak, and raised to a state of the highest spiritualism which it is possible for him to reach?
To enunciate the problem in this form is to resolve it.
I willingly grant, that when wealth is acquired by means which are immoral, it has an immoral influence, as among the Romans.
I also allow that when it is developed in a very unequal manner, creating a great gulf between classes, it has an immoral influence, and gives rise to revolutionary passions.
But does the same thing hold when wealth is the fruit of honest industry and free transactions, and is uniformly distributed over all classes? That would be a doctrine which it is impossible to maintain.
Socialist works, nevertheless, are crammed with declamations against the rich.
I really cannot comprehend how these schools, so opposite in other respects, but so unanimous in this, should not perceive the contradiction into which they fall.
On the one hand, wealth, according to the leaders of these schools, has a deleterious and demoralizing action, which debases the soul, hardens the heart, and leaves behind only a taste for depraved enjoyments. The rich have all manner of vices. The poor have all manner of virtues—they are just, sensible, disinterested, generous,—such is the favourite theme of these authors.
On the other hand, all the efforts of the Socialists’ imagination, all the systems they invent, all the laws they wish to impose upon us, tend, if we are to believe them, to convert poverty into riches. . . . . . .
Morality of wealth proved by this maxim; the profit of one is the profit of another. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [p196]
VII. CAPITAL
The economic laws will be found to act on the same principle, whether we take the case of a numerous agglomeration of men or of only two individuals, or even of a single individual condemned by circumstances to live in a state of isolation.
Such an individual, if he could exist for some time in an isolated state, would be at once capitalist, employer, workman, producer, and consumer. The whole economic evolution would be accomplished in him. Observing each of the elements of which that evolution is made up—want, effort, satisfaction—gratuitous utility, and onerous utility—he would be enabled to form an idea of the entire mechanism, even when thus reduced to its greatest simplicity.
One thing is obvious enough, that he could never confound what was gratuitous with what exacted efforts; for that would imply a contradiction in terms. He would know at once when a material or a force was furnished to him by nature without the co-operation of his labour, even when his own labour was assisted by natural agents, and thus rendered more productive.
An isolated individual would never think of applying his own labour to the production of a commodity as long as he could procure it directly from nature. He would not travel a league to fetch water if he had a well at his door. For the same reason, whenever his own labour was called into requisition, he would endeavour to substitute for it, as much as he possibly could, the co-operation of natural agents.
If he constructed a canoe, he would make it of the lightest materials, in order to take advantage of the specific gravity of water. He would furnish it with a sail, that the wind might save him the trouble of rowing, etc. [p197]
In order to obtain in this way the co-operation of natural agent, tools and instruments would be wanted.
And here the isolated individual would begin to calculate. He would ask himself this question: At present I obtain a satisfaction at the expense of a given effort: when I am in possession of the proper tool or instrument, shall I obtain the same satisfaction with less effort, taking into account the labour required for the construction of the instrument itself?
No one will throw away his labour for the mere pleasure of throwing it away. Our supposed Robinson Crusoe, then, will be induced to set about constructing the instrument only if he sees clearly that, when completed, he will obtain an equal satisfaction at a smaller expense of effort, or a greater amount of satisfaction with the same effort.
One circumstance will form a great element in his calculation—the number of commodities in the production of which this instrument will assist while it lasts. He has a primary standard of comparison—the present labours to which he is subjected every time he wishes to procure the satisfaction directly and without assistance. He estimates how much labour the tool or instrument will save him on each occasion; but labour is required to make the tool, and this labour he will in his own mind spread over all the occasions on which such an instrument can be made available. The greater the number of these occasions, the stronger will be his motive for seeking the co-operation of natural agents. It is here—in this spreading of an ‹advance› over an aggregate of products—that we discover the principle and foundation of Interest.
When Robin Crusoe has once made up his mind to construct the instrument, he perceives that his willingness to make it, and the advantage it is to bring him, are not enough. Tools are necessary to the manufacture of tools—iron must be hammered with iron—and so you go on, mounting from difficulty to difficulty, till you reach the first difficulty of all, which appears to be insuperable. This shows us the extreme slowness with which Capital must have been formed at the beginning, and what an enormous amount of human labour each satisfaction must originally have cost.
Again, in order to construct the instruments of labour, not only tools, but ‹materials› are wanted. If these materials, as for instance stones, are furnished gratuitously by nature, we must still combine them, which costs labour. But the possession of these materials supposes, in almost every case, anterior labour both long and complicated, as in the manufacture of wool, flax, iron, lead, etc.
Nor is this all. Whilst a man is thus working for the exclusive [p198] purpose of facilitating his ulterior labour, he can do nothing to supply his present wants. Now, here we encounter an order of phenomena in which there can be no interruption. Each day the labourer must be fed, clothed, and sheltered. Robinson will perceive, then, that he can undertake nothing for the purpose of procuring the co-operation of natural forces until he has previously accumulated a stock of ‹provisions›. He must every day redouble his activity in the chase, and store up a portion of the game he kills, and subject himself to present privations, in order that he may have at his disposal the time requisite for the construction of the instrument he has projected. In such circumstances, it is most probable that all he will accomplish will be the construction of an instrument which is rude and imperfect, and not very well fitted for the purpose he has in view.
Afterwards, he will obtain greater facilities. Reflection and experience will teach him to work better; and the first tool he makes will furnish him with the means of fabricating others, and of accumulating provisions with greater promptitude.
Tools, materials, provisions—these, doubtless, Robinson will denominate his ‹Capital›; and he will readily discover that the more considerable his capital becomes, the greater command will he obtain over natural agents—that the more he makes such agents co-operate in his labour, the more will he augment his satisfactions in proportion to his efforts.
Let us now vary the hypothesis, and place ourselves in the midst of the social order. Capital is still composed of instruments of labour, materials, and provisions, without which no enterprise of any magnitude can be undertaken, either in a state of isolation, or in a social state. Those who are possessed of capital have been put in possession of it only by their labour, or by their privations; and they would not have undergone that labour (which has no connexion with present wants), they would not have imposed on themselves those privations, but with the view of obtaining ulterior advantages—with the view, for example, of procuring in larger measure the future co-operation of natural agents. On their part, to give away this capital would be to deprive themselves of the special advantage they have in view; it would be to transfer this advantage to others; it would be to render others a ‹service›. We cannot, then, without abandoning the most simple principles of reason and justice, fail to see that the owners of capital have a perfect right to refuse to make this transfer unless in exchange for another ‹service›, freely bargained for and voluntarily agreed to. No man in the world, I believe, will dispute [p199] the equity of the ‹mutuality of services›, for mutuality of services is, in other words, equity. Will it be said that the transaction cannot be free and voluntary, because the man who is in possession of capital is in a position to lay down the law to the man who has none? But how is a bargain to be made? In what way are we to discover the ‹equivalence of services› if it be not in the case of an exchange voluntarily effected on both sides? Do you not perceive, moreover, that the man who borrows capital, being free either to borrow it or not, will refuse to do so unless he sees it to be for his advantage, and that the loan cannot make his situation worse? The question he asks himself is evidently this: Will the employment of this capital afford me advantages which are more than sufficient to make up for the conditions which are demanded of me? Or this: Is the effort which I am now obliged to make, in order to obtain a given satisfaction, greater or less than the sum of the efforts which the loan will entail upon me—first of all, in rendering the ‹services› which are demanded of me by the lender, and afterwards in procuring the special satisfaction I have in view with the aid of the capital borrowed? If, taking all things into account, there be no advantage to be got, he will not borrow, he will remain as he is, and what injury is done him? He may be mistaken, you will say. Undoubtedly he may. One may be mistaken in all imaginable transactions. Are we then to abandon our liberty? If you go that length, tell us what we are to substitute for free will and free consent. Constraint? for if we give up liberty, what remains but constraint? No, you say—the judgment of a third party. Granted, on these conditions: First, that the decision of this third party, whatever name you give him, shall not be put in force by constraint. Secondly, that he be infallible, for to substitute one fallible man for another would be to no purpose; and the parties whose judgment I should least distrust in such a matter are the parties who are interested in the result. The third and last condition is, that this arbitrator shall not be paid for his services; for it would be a singular way of manifesting his sympathy for the borrower, first of all to take away from him his liberty, and then to lay on his shoulders an additional burden as the recompense of this philanthropical service. But let us leave the question of right, and return to Political Economy.
A Capital which is composed of materials, provisions, and instruments, presents two aspects—Utility and Value. I must have failed in my exposition of the theory of value, if the reader does not understand that the man who transfers capital is paid only for its ‹value›, that is to say, for the service rendered in [p200] creating that capital; in other words, for the pains taken by the ‹cédant› combined with the pains saved to the recipient. Capital consists of commodities or products. It assumes the name of capital only by reason of its ulterior destination. It is a great mistake to suppose that capital, as such, is a thing having an independent existence. A sack of corn is still a sack of corn, although one man sells it for revenue, and another buys it for capital. Exchange takes place on the invariable principle of value for value, service for service; and the portion of gratuitous utility which enters into the commodity is so much into the bargain. At the same time, the portion which is gratuitous has no value, and value is the only thing regarded in bargains. In this respect, transactions which have reference to capital are in no respect different from others.
This consideration opens up some admirable views with reference to the social order, but which I cannot do more than indicate here. Man, in a state of isolation, is possessed of capital only when he has brought together materials, provisions, and tools. The same thing does not hold true of man in the social state. It is enough for the latter to have rendered ‹services›, and to have thus the power of drawing upon society, by means of the mechanism of exchange, for equivalent services. I mean by the mechanism of exchange, money, bills, bank-notes, and even bankers themselves. Whoever has rendered a ‹service›, and has not yet received the corresponding ‹satisfaction›, is the bearer of a warrant, either possessed of value, as money, or fiduciary, like bank-notes, which warrant gives him the power of receiving back from society, when he will, where he will, and in what form he will, an equivalent ‹service›. This impairs neither in principle, nor in effect, nor in an equitable point of view, the great law which I seek to elucidate, that ‹services are exchanged for services›. It is still the embryo barter, which has been developed, enlarged, and rendered more complex, but without losing its identity.
The bearer of such a warrant as I have just described may then demand back from society, at pleasure, either an immediate satisfaction, or an object which, in another aspect, may be regarded as capital. The person who lends or transfers has nothing to do with that. He satisfies himself as to the ‹equivalence of the services›—that is all.
Again, he may transfer this warrant to another, to use it as he pleases, under the double condition of ‹restitution›, and of a ‹service›, at a fixed date. If we go to the bottom of the matter, we shall find that in this case the person who lends or transfers capital [p201] ‹deprives himself›, in favour of the cessionary or recipient, either of an immediate satisfaction, which he defers for some years, or of an instrument of labour which would have increased his power of production, procured him the co-operation of natural agents, and augmented, to his profit, the proportion of satisfactions to efforts. He strips himself of these advantages, in order to invest another with them. This is undoubtedly to render a ‹service›, and in equity this service is entitled to a return. Mere restitution at the year’s end cannot be considered as the remuneration of this special service. Observe that the transaction here is not a sale, where the delivery of the thing sold is immediate, and the return or remuneration is immediate also. What we have to do with here is delay. And this delay is ‹in itself› a special service, seeing that it imposes a sacrifice on the person who accords it, and confers an advantage on the person who asks for it. There must, then, be remuneration, or we must give up that supreme law of society, ‹service for service›. This remuneration is variously denominated, according to circumstances—‹hire›, ‹rent›, yearly ‹income›—but its generic name is ‹Interest›.[51]
Every ‹service› then is, or may become, a Capital, an admirable phenomenon due to the mechanism of exchange. If workmen are to commence the construction of a railway ten years hence, we could not at the present moment store up in kind the corn which is to feed them, the stuff which is to clothe them, and the barrows and implements of which they will have need during that protracted operation. But we can save up and transmit to them the ‹value› of these things. For this purpose it is enough that we render present services to society, and obtain for these services the warrants, in money or credits of which I have spoken, which can be converted into corn or cloth ten years hence. It is not even necessary that we should leave these warrants dormant and unproductive in the interval. There are merchants, bankers, and others in society who, for the use of our services or their results, render us the service of imposing upon themselves these privations in our place.
And it is still more remarkable that we can effect an inverse operation, however impossible at first sight this may appear. We can convert into instruments of labour, into railways, into houses, a capital which as yet has no existence—thus making available at once ‹services› which will not be actually rendered till the twentieth century. There are bankers who are ready to make present advances on the faith that workmen and railway travellers of the [p202] third and fourth generation will provide for their payment, and these drafts upon the future are transmitted from hand to hand, without remaining for a moment unproductive. I confess I do not believe that the numerous inventors of artificial societies ever imagined anything at once so simple and so complex, so ingenious and so equitable, as this. They would at once abandon their insipid and stupid utopias if they but knew the fine harmonies of the social mechanism which has been instituted by God. It was a king of Aragon who bethought him what advice he should have given to Providence on the construction of the celestial mechanism, had he been called to the counsels of Omniscience. Newton never conceived so impious a thought.
We thus see that all transmissions of services from one point of time or of space to another repose upon this datum, that ‹to accord delay is to render service›; in other words, they repose on the legitimacy of Interest. The man who, in our days, has wished to suppress interest, does not see that he would bring back exchange to its embryo form,—barter, present barter,—without reference either to the future or the past. He does not see that, imagining himself the most advanced, he is in reality the most retrograde of men, since he would reconstruct society on its most primitive model. He desires, he says, ‹mutuality of services›. But he begins by taking away the character of ‹services› exactly from that kind of ‹services› which unite, tie together, and ‹solidarize› all places and all times. In spite of the practical audacity of his socialist aphorisms, he has paid an involuntary homage to the present order of things. He has but one reform, which is negative. It consists in suppressing in society the most powerful and marvellous part of its machinery.
I have explained in another place the ‹legitimacy› and ‹perpetuity› of Interest. I shall content myself at present with reminding the reader—
‹1st›, That the legitimacy of interest rests upon the fact that he who ‹accords delay renders service›. Interest, then, is legitimate in virtue of the principle of ‹service for service›.
‹2d›, That the perpetuity of interest reposes on this other fact, that ‹he who borrows must pay back all that he has borrowed at a fixed date›. When the thing lent, or its value, is restored to its owner, he can lend it anew. When returned to him a second time, he can lend it a third time, and so on to ‹perpetuity›. Which of the successive and voluntary borrowers can find fault with this?
But since the legitimacy of interest has been contested so [p203] seriously in our day as to put capital to flight, or force it to conceal itself, I may be permitted to show how utterly foolish and insensate this controversy is.
And, first of all, let me ask, would it not be absurd and unjust either that no remuneration should be given for the use of capital, or that that remuneration should be the same, whether the loan were granted and obtained at one year’s, or two years’, or ten years’ date. If, unhappily, under this doctrine of pretended ‹equality›, such a law should find a place in our code, an entire category of human transactions would be suppressed on the instant. We should still have ‹barter›, and ‹sales for ready money›, but we could no longer have sales on credit, nor ‹loans›. The advocates of equality would relieve borrowers from the burden of paying interest; but they would, at the same time, balk them of their loans. At the same rate, we might relieve men from the inconvenient necessity of paying for what they buy. We should only have to prohibit them from purchasing; or, what would come to the same thing, declare ‹prices› illegal.
There is levelling enough, in all conscience, in this pretended principle of equality. First of all, it would put a stop to the creation of capital; for who would desire to save when he could reap no advantage from saving? Then it would reduce wages to zero, for where there is no capital (instruments, materials, and provisions), there can be neither future work nor wages. We should very soon arrive at the most perfect of all equalities, the equality of nothingness.
But is there any man so blind as not to see that delay is ‹in itself› a circumstance which is ‹onerous›, and, consequently, entitled to remuneration? Apart, even, from the consideration of loans, would not every one endeavour to abridge delays? It is the object of our perpetual solicitude. Every employer of workmen lays great stress on the time which must elapse before his returns come in. He sells dearer or cheaper according as his returns are more or less distant. Were he indifferent on that subject, he must forget that capital is power; for if he is alive to that consideration, he must naturally desire that it should perform its work in the shortest possible time, so as to enable him the oftener to engage it in a new operation.
They are but short-sighted Economists who think that we pay interest for capital only when we borrow it. The general rule is, that he who reaps the satisfaction should bear all the charges of production, ‹delay included›, whether he renders the service to himself, or has it rendered to him by another. A man in a state of [p204] isolation, who has no bargains or transactions with any one, would consider it an ‹onerous› circumstance to be deprived of the use of his weapons for a year. Why, then, should an analogous circumstance not be considered as onerous in society? But if a man submits to it voluntarily for the sake of another who agrees voluntarily to remunerate it, what should render that remuneration illegitimate?
Nothing would be transacted in the world; no enterprise requiring advances would be undertaken; we should neither plant, nor sow, nor labour, were not delay considered as ‹in itself› an ‹onerous› circumstance, and treated and paid for as such. Universal consent is so unanimous on this point, that no exchange takes place but on this principle. Delays, hindrances, enter into the appreciation of ‹services›, and, consequently, into the constitution of ‹value›.
Thus, in their crusade against interest, the advocates of equality not only trample under foot the most obvious notions of equity—they ignore not only their own principle of ‹service for service›, but also the authority of mankind and universal practice. How can they, in the face of day, exhibit the overweening pride which such a pretension supposes? Is it not, indeed, a very strange and a very sad thing, that these sectaries should adopt not only tacitly, but often in so many words, the motto, that, since the beginning of the world, all men have been mistaken except themselves? ‹Omnes, ego non.›
Pardon me for thus insisting on the legitimacy of interest, which is founded on this principle, that, ‹since delay is costly, it must be paid for›—to ‹cost› and to ‹pay› being correlative terms. The fault lies in the spirit of our age. It is quite necessary to defend vital truths, admitted generally by mankind, but attacked and brought into question by a few fanatical innovators. For a writer who aspires to demonstrate the harmony of phenomena in the aggregate, it is a painful thing, you may believe, to be constantly stopped by the necessity of elucidating the most elementary notions. Would Laplace have been able to explain the planetary system in all its simplicity, if, among his readers, there had not existed certain common and received ideas,—if it had been necessary for him, in order to prove that the earth turns upon its axis, to begin by teaching numeration? Such is the hard fate of the Economist of our day. If he neglects the rudiments, he is not understood—if he explains them, the beauty and simplicity of his system is lost sight of in the multiplicity of details.
It is a happy thing for mankind that ‹Interest› can be shown to be legitimate. We should otherwise be placed in a miserable [p205] dilemma—we must either perish by remaining just, or make progress by means of injustice.
Every branch of industry is an aggregate of Efforts. But, as regards efforts, there is an important distinction to be made. Some efforts are connected with services which we are presently engaged in rendering; others with an indefinite series of analogous services. Let me explain myself.
The day’s work of the water-carrier must be paid for by those who profit by his labour. But his anterior labour in making his barrow and his water-cask must, as regards remuneration, be spread over an indeterminate number of consumers.
In the same way, ploughing, sowing, harrowing, weeding, cutting down, thrashing, apply only to the present harvest; but clearing, enclosing, draining, building, improving, apply to and facilitate an indefinite number of future harvests.
According to the general law of ‹service for service›, those who receive the ultimate satisfaction must recompense the efforts which have been made for them. As regards the first class of efforts, there is no difficulty. They are bargained for and ‹estimated› by the man who makes them, and the man who profits by them. But how are those of the second class to be ‹estimated›? How is a just proportion of the permanent advances, the general costs, and what the Economists term fixed capital, to be spread over the whole series of satisfactions which they are destined to realize? By what process can we distribute the burden among those to whom the water is furnished down to the time when the barrow shall be worn out, and among all the consumers of corn until the period when the field will produce no more?
I know not how they would resolve this problem in Icarie, or at the Phalanstère.[52] But I am inclined to think that the gentlemen who manufacture artificial societies, and who are so fertile in arrangements and expedients, and so prompt to compel their adoption by Law (or constraint), could imagine no solution more ingenious than the very natural process which men have adopted since the beginning of the world, and which it is now sought to prohibit them from following. Here is the process—it flows from the law of ‹Interest›.
Suppose a thousand francs to be laid out on agricultural improvements, the rate of interest to be five per cent., and the average return fifty hectolitres of corn. In these circumstances, each hectolitre would be burdened with one franc. [p206]
This franc is obviously the legitimate recompense of an actual ‹service›, rendered by the proprietor (whom we might term a labourer), as well to the person who shall acquire a hectolitre of corn ten years hence as to the man who buys it to-day. The law of strict justice, then, is observed here.
But if the agricultural improvement, or the barrow and the water-barrel, have only a limited duration, which we can appreciate approximately, a sinking fund must be added to the interest, in order that, when these portions of capital are worn out, the proprietor may be enabled to renew them. Still it is the law of justice which governs the transaction.
We must not suppose, however, that the franc with which each hectolitre is burdened as interest is an invariable quantity. It represents a value, and is subject to the law of values. It rises or falls with the variation of supply and demand,—that is to say, according to the exigencies of the times and the interests of society.
It is generally thought that this species of remuneration has a tendency to rise, if not in the case of manufacturing, at least in the case of agricultural improvements. Supposing this rent to have been equitable at the beginning, it has a tendency, it is said, to degenerate into abuse; because the proprietor, sitting with his hands across, sees it increase year after year, solely in consequence of the increase of population and the enlarged demand for corn.
I allow that this tendency exists, but it is not peculiar to the rent of land,—it is common to all departments of industry. In all, value increases with the density of population, and even the common day-labourer earns more in Paris than he could in Brittany.
And then, as regards the rent of land, the tendency to which we have referred is powerfully counterbalanced by another tendency—that of progress. An amelioration, realized at the present day by improved processes, effected with less manual labour, and at a time when the rate of interest has fallen, saves our paying too dearly for improvements effected in former times. The fixed capital of the landed proprietor, like that of the manufacturer, is deteriorated in the long-run by the invention of instruments of equal value and greater efficiency. This is a magnificent Law, which overturns the melancholy theory of Ricardo; and it will be explained more in detail when we come to the subject of landed property.
Observe, that the problem of the distribution of the services which form the remuneration of permanent improvements can be resolved only by a reference to the law of ‹interest›. The capital [p207] itself cannot be spread over a succession of purchasers, for this is rendered impossible by their indeterminate number. The first would pay for the last, which would be unjust. Besides, a time would arrive when the proprietor would become possessed both of the capital laid out in the improvement, and of the improvement itself, which would be equally unfair. Let us acknowledge, then, that the natural mechanism of society is too ingenious to require the substitution of artificial contrivances.
I have presented the phenomenon in its simplest form, in order to render it intelligible; but, in practice, things do not take place quite as I have described them.
The proprietor does not regulate the distribution himself, or determine that each hectolitre shall be charged with one franc, more or less, as in the hypothetical case which I have put. He finds an established order of things, as well with reference to the average price of corn as to the rate of interest. Upon these data he decides how he shall invest his capital. He will devote it to agricultural improvements, if he finds that the average price of corn will return him the ordinary rate of interest. If not, he will devote his capital to a more lucrative branch of industry—a branch of industry which, just because it is more lucrative, presents, happily for society, greater attractions for capital. This movement of capital from one department to another, which is what actually takes place, tends to the same result, and presents us with another Harmony.
The reader will understand that I confine myself to a special instance only for the sake of elucidating a general law, which applies to all trades and professions.
A lawyer, for example, cannot expect, from the first suit of which he happens to have charge, to be reimbursed the expense of his education, of his course of probation, of his establishment in business, which we may suppose to amount to 20,000 francs. Not only would this be unjust—it would be impracticable; for were he to make such a stipulation, his first brief would never make its appearance, and our Cujacius would be obliged to imitate the gentleman who, on taking up house, could get nobody to come to his first ball, and declared that next year he would begin with his second.
The same thing holds with the merchant, the physician, the shipowner, the artist. In every career we encounter these two classes of efforts—the second imperatively requires to be spread over an indeterminate number of consumers, employers, or customers, and it is impossible to imagine such a distribution without reference to the mechanism of ‹interest›. [p208]
Great efforts have been made of late to remove the hatred which exists in the popular mind against capital,—infamous, infernal capital, as it is called. It has been exhibited to the masses as a voracious and insatiable monster, more destructive than cholera, more frightful than revolution, exercising on the body politic the action of a vampire, whose power of suction goes on increasing indefinitely. ‹Vires acquirit eundo.› The tongue of this blood-sucker is called usury, revenue, hire, rent, interest. A writer, who might have acquired reputation by his great powers, and who has preferred to gain notoriety by his paradoxes, has been pleased to scatter these paradoxes among a people already in the delirium of a revolutionary fever. I, too, have an apparent paradox to submit to the reader; and I beg him to examine it, and see whether it be not in reality a great and consoling truth.
But, first, I must say a word as to the manner in which M. Proudhon and his school explain what they term the illegitimacy of ‹interest›.
Capital is an instrument of labour. The use of instruments of labour is to procure us the co-operation of the ‹gratuitous› forces of nature. By the steam-engine we avail ourselves of the elasticity of air; by the watch-spring, of the elasticity of steel; by weights or waterfalls, of gravitation; by the voltaic pile, of the rapidity of the electric spark; by the sun’s rays, of the chemical and physical combinations which we call vegetation, etc., etc. Now, by confounding Utility with Value, we suppose that these natural agents possess a value ‹which is inherent in them›; and that, consequently, those who appropriate them are paid for their use, inasmuch as value implies payment. We imagine that products are burdened with one item for the services of man, which we admit to be just; and with another item for the services of nature, which we reject as iniquitous. Why, it is asked, should we pay for gravitation, electricity, vegetable life, elasticity, and so forth?
The answer to this question is to be found in the theory of ‹value›. Those Socialists who take the name of ‹Égalitaires› confound the legitimate ‹value› of the instrument, which is the offspring of human labour, with its useful result, which, under deduction of that legitimate value, or of the interest which represents it, is always gratuitous. When I remunerate an agricultural labourer, a miller, a railway company, I give nothing, absolutely nothing, for the phenomena of vegetation, gravitation, or the elasticity of steam. I pay for the human labour required for making the instruments by means of which these forces are constrained to act; or, what suits my purpose better, I pay interest for that labour. I render [p209] service for service, by means of which the useful action of these forces is turned gratuitously to my profit. It is the same thing as in the case of Exchange, or simple barter. The presence of capital does not at all modify this law, for capital is nothing else than an accumulation of values, of ‹services›, to which is committed the special duty of procuring the co-operation of nature.
And now for my paradox.
Of all the elements of which the total value of any product is made up, the part which we should pay for most cheerfully is that element which we term the interest of the advances, or capital.
And why? Because that element enables us, by paying for ‹one›, to save ‹two›. Because, by its very presence, it shows clearly that natural forces have concurred in the final result, without our having had to pay for their co-operation; and the consequence is, that the same general utility is placed at our disposal, while at the same time a certain portion of gratuitous utility has, happily for us, been substituted for onerous utility; and, in short, the price of the product has been reduced. We acquire it with a less proportion of our own labour, and, what happens to society at large, is just what would happen to an isolated individual who should succeed in realizing an ingenious invention.
Suppose the case of a common artisan, who earns four francs a-day. With two francs,—that is to say, with half-a-day’s labour, he purchases a pair of cotton stockings. Were he to try to procure these stockings by his own direct labour, I sincerely believe that his whole life would not suffice for the work. How, then, does it happen that his half-day’s work pays for all the ‹human services› which have been rendered to him on this occasion? According to the law of ‹service for service›, why is he not forced to give several years’ labour?
For this reason, that the stockings are the result of ‹human services›, of which natural agents, by the intervention of Capital, have enormously diminished the proportion. Our artisan, however, pays not only for the actual labour of all those who have concurred in the work, but also the interest of the capital by means of which the co-operation of nature was procured; and it is worthy of remark, that, without this last remuneration, or were it held to be illegitimate, capital would not have been employed to secure the assistance of the natural agents. There would have been in the product only onerous utility; for in that case the commodity would have been the exclusive result of human labour, and our artisan would have been brought back to the point whence he started,—that is to say, he would have been placed in the [p210] dilemma of either dispensing with the stockings, or of paying for them the price of several years’ labour.
If our artisan had learnt to analyze phenomena, he would soon get reconciled to Capital, on seeing how much he is indebted to it. He would be convinced, above all, that the gratuitous nature of the gifts of God has been completely preserved, and that these gifts have been lavished on him with a liberality which he owes not to his own merit, but to the beautiful mechanism of the ‹natural› social order. Capital does not consist in the vegetative force which has made cotton germinate and flower, but in the ‹pains taken› by the planter. Capital is not the wind which fills the sails of the ship, or the magnetism which acts upon the needle, but the ‹pains taken› by the sailmaker and the optician. Capital is not the elasticity of steam which turns the spindles of the mill, but the ‹pains taken› by the machine-maker. Vegetation, the power of the winds, magnetism, elasticity,—all these are purely gratuitous; and hence the stockings have so little value. As regards the pains taken by the planter, the sailmaker, the optician, the shipbuilder, the sailor, the manufacturer, the merchant, they are spread—or, rather, so far as capital is concerned, the interest of that capital is spread—over innumerable purchasers of stockings; and this is the reason why the portion of labour given by each of these purchasers is so small.
Modern reformers! when I see you desiring to replace this admirable natural order by an arrangement of your own invention, there are two things (although they are in reality one and the same) which confound me,—namely, your want of faith in Providence, and your faith in yourselves—your ignorance, and your presumption.
* * * * *
It follows from what I have said that the progress of mankind coincides with the rapid creation of Capital; for to say that new capital is formed, is just to say, in other words, that obstacles, formerly onerously combated by labour, are now gratuitously combated by nature; and that, be it observed, not for the profit of the capitalist, but for the profit of the community.
This being so, the paramount interest of all (in an economical point of view, and rightly understood) is to favour the rapid creation of capital. But capital, if I may say so, increases of its own accord under the triple influence of activity, frugality, and security. We can scarcely exercise any direct influence on the activity and frugality of our neighbours, except through the medium of public opinion, by an intelligent communication of our antipathies and our sympathies. But as regards security we can do much, for, [p211] without security, capital, far from being formed and accumulated, conceals itself, takes flight, and perishes; and this shows us how suicidal that popular ardour is which displays itself in disturbing the public tranquillity. Let the working-classes be well assured that the mission of Capital from the beginning has been to set men free from the yoke of ignorance, of want, and of despotism; and that to frighten away Capital is to rivet a triple chain on the energies of the human race.
The ‹vires acquirit eundo› may be applied with rigorous exactitude to capital, and its beneficent influence. Capital, when formed, necessarily leaves disposable both labour and the remuneration of that labour. It carries in itself, then, a power of progression. There is in it something which resembles the law of velocities. This progression economical science has omitted hitherto to oppose to the other progression which Malthus has remarked. It is a Harmony which we cannot explain in this place, but must reserve for the chapter on Population.
But I must here put the reader on his guard against a specious objection. If the mission of capital, it may be said, is to cause nature to execute work which has been hitherto executed by human labour, whatever good it may confer upon mankind, it must do injury to the working-classes, especially to those classes who live by wages; for everything which throws hands out of employment, and renders them disposable, renders competition more intense; and this, undoubtedly, is the secret reason of the antipathy of the working-classes to men of capital. If this objection were well founded, we should have a discordant note in the social harmony.
The illusion arises from losing sight of this, that ‹capital, in proportion as its action is extended, sets free and renders disposable a certain amount of human efforts, only by setting free and rendering disposable a corresponding fund of remuneration›, so that these two elements meet and compensate one another. The labour is not paralyzed. Replaced in a special department of industry by gratuitous forces, it sets to work upon other obstacles in the general march of progress, and with more certainty, inasmuch as it finds its recompense prepared beforehand.
Recurring to our former illustration, it is easy to see that the price of stockings (like that of books, and all things else) is lowered by the action of capital, only by leaving in the hands of the purchaser a part of the former price. This is too clear for illustration. The workman who now pays two francs for what he paid six francs for formerly, has four francs left at his disposal. Now, it is exactly [p212] in that proportion that human labour has been replaced by natural forces. These forces, then, are a pure and simple acquisition, which alters in no respect the relation of labour to available remuneration. It will be remembered that the answer to this objection was given formerly,[53] when, observing upon man in a state of isolation, or reduced once more to the primitive law of barter, I put the reader on his guard against the illusion which it is my object here to dispel.
We may leave capital, then, to take care of itself, to be created and accumulated according to its own proper tendencies, and the wants and desires of men. Do not imagine that, when the common labourer economizes for his old days, when the father of a family sets his son up in business, or provides a dower for his daughter, they are exercising to the detriment of the public that noble attribute of man, Foresight; but it would be so, and private virtues would be in direct antagonism with the general good, were there an incompatibility between Capital and Labour.
Far from mankind being subjected to this contradiction, or, I might rather say, this impossibility (for how can we conceive progressive evil in the aggregate to result from progressive good in individual cases?) we must acknowledge that Providence, in justice and mercy, has assigned a nobler part to Labour than to Capital in the work of progress, and has afforded a stimulant more efficacious, a recompense more liberal, to the man who lives by the sweat of his brow, than to the man who subsists upon the exertions of his forefathers.
In fact, having established that every increase of capital is followed by a necessary increase of general prosperity, I venture to lay down the following principle with reference to the distribution of wealth,—a principle which I believe will be found unassailable:—
“‹In proportion to the increase of Capital, the› absolute ‹share of the total product falling to the capitalist is augmented, and his› relative ‹share is diminished; while, on the contrary, the labourer’s share is increased both absolutely and relatively.›”
I shall explain this more clearly by figures:—
Suppose the total products of society, at successive epochs, to be represented by the figures 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, etc.
I maintain that the share falling to the capitalists will descend, successively, from 50 per cent., to 40, 35, 30 per cent., and that the share of the labourers will rise, consequently, from 50 per cent., to 60, 65, 70 per cent.,—so that the ‹absolute› share of the [p213] capitalist will be always greater at each period, although his ‹relative› share will be smaller.
The division will take place in this way,—
Total Share of Share of Product. Capitalist. Labourer. First period, 1000 500 500 Second period, 2000 800 1200 Third period, 3000 1050 1950 Fourth period, 4000 1200 2800
Such is the great, admirable, reassuring, necessary, and ‹inflexible› law of Capital. To demonstrate it, appears to me to be the true way to strike with discredit the declamations which have so long been dinned into our ears against the ‹avidity›, the ‹tyranny›, of the most powerful instrument of civilisation and of ‹equality› which has ever proceeded from the human faculties.
The demonstration is twofold. First of all, we must prove that the ‹relative› share of the product falling to the capitalist goes on continually diminishing. This is not difficult; for it only amounts to saying that ‹the more abundant capital becomes, the more interest falls›. Now, this is a matter of fact, incontestable and uncontested. Not only does science explain it—it is self-evident. Schools the most eccentric admit it. It forms the basis of their theory, for it is from this very fall of interest that they infer the necessary, the inevitable annihilation of what they choose to brand as ‹infernal› Capital. Now, say they, inasmuch as this annihilation is necessary, is inevitable, and must take place in a given time; and, moreover, implies the realization of a positive good, it is incumbent on us to hasten it and insure it. I am not concerned to refute these principles, or the deductions drawn from them. It is enough that Economists of all schools, as well as socialists, ‹egalitaires›, and others, all admit, in point of fact, that interest falls in proportion as capital becomes more abundant. Whether they admit it or not, indeed, the fact is not the less certain. It rests upon the authority of universal experience, and on the acquiescence, involuntary it may be, of all the capitalists in the world. It is a fact that the interest of capital is lower in Spain than in Mexico, in France than in Spain, in England than in France, in Holland than in England. Now, when interest falls from 20 to 15 per cent., and then to 10, to 8, to 6, to 5, to 4½, to 4, to 3½, to 3 per cent., what does that mean in relation to the question which now engages us? It means that capital, as the recompense of its co-operation in the work of production, in the realization of wealth, is content, or, if you will, is forced to be content, with a smaller and smaller share of the product in proportion as capital increases. Does it constitute one-third of the value of corn, of cloth, of houses, of ships, of [p214] canals? in other words, when these things are sold, does one-third of the price fall to the capitalist, and two-thirds to the labourer? By degrees, the capitalist receives no more than a fourth, a fifth, a sixth. His ‹relative› share goes on diminishing, while that of the labourer goes on increasing in the same proportion; and the first part of my demonstration is complete.
It remains for me to prove that the ‹absolute› share falling to the capitalist goes on constantly increasing. It is very true that the tendency of interest is to fall. But when, and why? When, and because, the capital becomes more abundant. It is then quite possible that the total product should be increased while the ‹percentage› is diminished. A man has a larger income with 200,000 francs at four per cent., than with 100,000 francs at five per cent., although, in the first case, he charges less to the manufacturer for the use of his capital. The same thing holds of a nation, and of the world at large. Now, I maintain that the ‹percentage›, in its tendency to fall, neither does nor can follow a progression so rapid that the ‹sum total› of interest should be smaller when capital is abundant than when it is scarce. I admit, indeed, that if the capital of mankind be represented by 100 and interest by 5,—this interest will amount to no more than 4 when the capital shall have mounted to 200. Here we see the simultaneousness of the two effects. The less the ‹relative› part, the greater the ‹absolute› part. But my hypothesis does not admit that the increase of capital from 100 to 200 is sufficient to make interest fall from 5 to 2 per cent., for example; because, if it were so, the capitalist who had an income of 5000 francs with 100,000 francs of capital, would have no greater income than 4000 francs with 200,000 francs of capital. A result so contradictory and impossible, an anomaly so strange, would be met with the simplest and most agreeable of remedies; for then, in order to increase your income, it would only be necessary to consume half your capital. A happy and whimsical age it would be when men could enrich by impoverishing themselves!
We must take care, then, not to lose sight of the combination of these two correlative facts. The increase of capital, and the fall of interest, take place ‹necessarily› in such a way that the total product is continually augmented.
And let us remark in passing, that this completely exposes the fallacy of those who imagine that because interest falls, it tends to annihilation. The effect of that would be, that a time would arrive when capital would be so much increased as to yield nothing to its possessors. Keep your mind easy on that score—before [p215] that time comes, capitalists will dissipate the stock in order to ensure the reappearance of interest.
Such is the great law of Capital and Labour in what concerns the distribution of the product of their joint agency. Each of them has a greater and greater ‹absolute› share, but the ‹proportional› share of the capitalist is continually diminished as compared with that of the labourers.
Cease, then, capitalists and workmen, to regard each other with an eye of envy and distrust. Shut your ears against those absurd declamations which proceed from ignorance and presumption, which, under pretence of insuring future prosperity, blow the flame of present discord. Be assured that your interests are one and identical; that they are indisputably knit together; that they tend together towards the realization of the public good; that the toils of the present generation mingle with the labours of generations which are past; that all who co-operate in the work of production receive their share of the produce; and that the most ingenious and most equitable distribution is effected among you by the wise laws of Providence, and under the empire of freedom, independently altogether of a parasite sentimentalism, which would impose upon you its decrees at the expense of your well-being, your liberty, your security, and your self-respect.
Capital has its root in these attributes of man—Foresight, Intelligence, and Frugality. To set about the creation of capital we must look forward to the future, and sacrifice the present to it—we must exercise a noble empire over ourselves and over our appetites; we must resist the seduction of present enjoyments, the impulses of vanity and the caprices of fashion and of public opinion, always so indulgent to the thoughtless and the prodigal. We must study cause and effect, in order to discover by what processes, by what instruments, nature can be made to co-operate in the work of production. We must be animated by love for our families, and not grudge present sacrifices for the sake of those who are dear to us, and who will reap the fruits after we ourselves have disappeared from the scene. To create capital is to prepare food, clothing, shelter, leisure, instruction, independence, dignity, for future generations. Nothing of all this can be effected without bringing into play motives which are eminently social, and, what is more, converting these virtues into habits.
And yet it is very usual to attribute to capital a sort of fatal efficacy, the effect of which is to introduce egotism, austerity, Machiavelism, into the hearts of those who aspire to possess it. But let us not be misunderstood. There are countries where [p216] labour is of little value, and the little that is earned is shared by the government. In order to snatch from you the fruit of your toil, what is called the State surrounds you with a multitude of trammels. It interferes with all your actions, and mixes itself up in all your concerns. It domineers over your mind and your faith. It disarranges all interests, and places them in an artificial and precarious position. It enervates individual energy and activity, by usurping the direction of all affairs. It makes the responsibility of actions fall upon people with whom it amounts to nothing, so that by degrees all notions of what is just or unjust are effaced. By its diplomacy it embroils the nation in quarrels with all the world, and then the army and navy are brought into play. It warps the popular mind as much as it can upon all economical questions; for it is necessary to make the masses believe that its foolish expenditure, its unjust aggressions, its conquests, its colonies, are for them a source of riches. In such countries it is difficult to create capital by natural means. The great object is to purloin it by force or by fraud from those who have created it. We there see men enriching themselves by war, by places at court, by gambling, by purveying, by stockjobbing, by commercial frauds, by hazardous enterprises, by public contracts, etc. The qualities requisite for thus snatching capital from the hands of those who create it are precisely the opposite of those necessary for its formation. It cannot surprise us, then, that in countries so situated an association is established between these two ideas—‹capital› and ‹egotism›; and this association becomes ineradicable when all the moral ideas of the country exhaust themselves on ancient and mediæval history.
But when we turn our regards, not to this abstraction and abuse of capital, but to its creation by intelligence and activity, foresight and frugality, it is impossible not to perceive that a moral and social virtue is attached to its acquisition.
Nor is there less moral and social virtue in the action of capital than in its formation. Its peculiar effect is to procure us the co-operation of nature, to set us free from all that is most material, muscular, brutal, in the work of production; to render the intelligent principle more and more predominant; to enlarge the domain, I do not say of idleness, but of leisure; to render less imperious the physical wants of our nature, by rendering their satisfaction more easy, and to substitute for them wants and enjoyments of a nature more elevated, more delicate, more refined, more artistic, more spiritual.
Thus, in whatever point of view we place ourselves, whether [p217] we regard Capital in connexion with our wants, which it ennobles; with our efforts, which it facilitates; with our enjoyments, which it purifies; with nature, which it enlists in our service; with morality, which it converts into habit; with sociability, which it develops; with equality, which it promotes; with freedom, in which it lives; with equity, which it realizes by methods the most ingenious—everywhere, always, provided that it is created and acts in the regular order of things, and is not diverted from its natural uses, we recognise in Capital what forms the indubitable note and stamp of all great providential laws,—Harmony. [p218]
VIII. PROPERTY—COMMUNITY
Recognising in the soil, in natural agents, and in instruments of labour, what they incontestably possess, the gift of engendering Utility, I have endeavoured to denude them of what has been erroneously attributed to them, namely, the faculty of creating Value,—a faculty which pertains exclusively to the Services which men exchange with each other.
This simple rectification, whilst it strengthens and confirms Property, by restoring to it its true character, brings to light a most important fact, hitherto, if I am not mistaken, overlooked by Economic science—the fact that there exists a real, essential, and ‹progressive› Community,—the natural result of every social system in which liberty prevails, and the evident design of which is to conduct all men, as brethren, from primitive Equality, which is the equality of ignorance and destitution, towards an ultimate Equality in the possession of truth and material prosperity.
If this radical distinction between the Utility of things and the value of services be true in itself, and in the consequences which have been deduced from it, it is impossible to misunderstand its bearing; for it leads to nothing less than the absorption of utopian theories in science, and the reconcilement of antagonistic schools in a common faith, which satisfies all minds and all aspirations.
Men of Property and leisure!—whatever be your rank in the social scale, whatever step of the social ladder you may have reached by dint of activity, probity, order, and economy—whence come the fears which have seized upon you? The perfumed but poisoned breath of Utopia menaces your existence. You are loudly told that the fortune you have amassed for the purpose of securing a little repose in your old age, and food, instruction, and an outset in life for your children, has been acquired by you at the expense of your brethren; that you have placed yourselves [p219] between the gifts of God and the poor; that, like greedy tax-gatherers, you have levied a tribute on those gifts, under the name of Property, of Interest, and of Rent; that you have intercepted the benefits which the common Father has bestowed on his children, in order to make merchandise of them. You are called upon for restitution; and what augments your terror is, that your advocates, in conducting your defence, feel themselves too often obliged to avow that the usurpation is flagrant, but that it is necessary. Such accusations I meet with a direct and emphatic negative. You have not intercepted the gifts of God. You have received them gratuitously, it is true, at the hands of nature; but you have also gratuitously transferred them to your brethren without receiving anything. They have acted the same way towards you; and the only things which have been reciprocally ‹compensated› are physical or intellectual efforts, toils undergone, dangers braved, skill exercised, privations submitted to, pains taken, ‹services rendered and received›. You may perhaps have thought only of yourselves and your own selfish interest, but that very selfish interest has been an instrument in the hand of an infinitely prescient and wise Providence to enlarge unceasingly among men the domain of Community; for without your efforts all those ‹useful effects› which you have obtained from nature, in order to distribute them without remuneration among your brethren, would have remained for ever inert. I say ‹without remuneration›, because what you have received is simply the recompense of your efforts, and not at all the price of the gifts of God. Live, then, in peace, without fear and without misgiving. You have no other property in the world but your right to services, in exchange for other services, by you faithfully rendered, and by your brethren voluntarily accepted. Such property is legitimate, unassailable; no Utopia can prevail against it, for it enters into the very constitution of our being. No theory can ever succeed in blighting or in shaking it.
Men of toil and privations! you cannot shut your eyes to this truth, that the primitive condition of the human race is that of an entire Community,—a perfect Equality,—of poverty, of destitution, and of ignorance. Man redeems himself from this estate by the sweat of his brow, and directs his course towards another Community, that of the gifts of God, successively obtained with less effort,—towards another Equality, that of material prosperity, knowledge, and moral dignity. The progress of men on the road of improvement is unequal, indeed; and you could not complain were the more hurried and precipitate march of the vanguard of progress to retard in some measure your own advance. But in [p220] truth it is quite the reverse. No ray of light penetrates a single mind without in some degree enlightening yours. No step of progress, prompted by the conscious possession of property, but is a step of progress for you. No wealth is created which does not tend to your enfranchisement; no capital, which does not increase your enjoyments in proportion to your labour; no acquisition, which does not increase your facilities of acquisition; no Property, which does not tend to enlarge, for your benefit, the domain of Community. The natural social order has been so skillfully arranged by the Divine Architect, that those who are more advanced on the road of civilisation hold out to you, voluntarily or unconsciously, a helping hand; for the order of things has been so disposed that no man can work honestly for himself without at the same time working for all. And it is rigorously true to affirm that every attack upon this marvellous order would on your part be not only a homicide, but a suicide. Human nature is an admirable chain, which exhibits this standing miracle, that the first links communicate to all the others a progressive movement more and more rapid, onwards to the last.
Men of philanthropy! lovers of equality! blind defenders, dangerous friends of the suffering classes, who are yet far behind on the road of civilisation, you who expect the reign of Community in this world, why do you begin by unsettling all interests and shaking all received opinions? Why, in your pride, should you seek to subjugate men’s wills, and bring them under the yoke of your social inventions? Do you not see that this Community after which you sigh, and which is to inaugurate the kingdom of God upon earth, has been already thought of and provided for by God himself? Does He want your aid to provide a patrimony for his children? Has He need either of your conceptions or of your violence? Do you not see that this Community is realized more and more every day, in virtue of His admirable decrees; that for the execution of these decrees He has not trusted to your chance services and puerile arrangements, nor even to the growing expression of the sympathetic principle manifested by charity; but that He has confided the realization of His providential designs to the most active, the most personal, the most permanent of all our energies—Self-interest,—a principle imbedded in our inmost nature, and which never flags, never takes rest? Study, then, the social mechanism as it comes from the hand of the Great Mechanician, and you will find that it testifies to a universal solicitude, which far outstrips your dreams and chimeras. You will then, I hope, in place of presumptuously pretending [p221] to reconstruct the divine workmanship, be content to admire and to bless it.
I say not that there is no room in this world of ours for reforms and reformers. I say not that mankind are not to call to their service, and encourage with their gratitude, men of investigation, of science, and of earnestness,—hearts faithful to the people. Such are still but too much wanted,—not to overturn the social laws,—but to combat the artificial obstacles which disturb and reverse the action of these laws. In truth, it is difficult to understand why people should keep repeating such commonplaces as this: “Political Economy is an optimist, as far as existing facts are concerned; and affirms that whatever is is right. At the sight of what is evil, as at the sight of what is good. Economists are content to exclaim, ‹Laissez faire›.” Optimists with reference to existing facts! Then we must be ignorant that the primitive condition of man is poverty, ignorance, the reign of brute force! We must be ignorant that the moving spring of human nature is aversion to all suffering, to all fatigue; and that labour being fatigue, the earliest manifestation of selfishness among men is shown in their effort to throw this painful burden on the shoulders of each other! The words cannibalism, war, slavery, privilege, monopoly, fraud, spoliation, imposture, must either have never reached our ears, or else we must see in these abominations the necessary machinery of progress! But is there not in all this a certain amount of wilful misrepresentation, a confounding of all things for the purpose of accusing us of confounding them? When we admire the providential laws which govern human transactions—when we assert that men’s interests are harmonious—when we thence conclude that they naturally tend and gravitate towards the realization of relative equality and general progress—it is surely from the play and action of these laws, not from their perturbations and disturbances, that we educe harmony. When we say ‹laissez faire›, we surely mean, ‹allow these laws to act›, not, ‹allow these laws to be disturbed›. According as we conform to these laws or violate them, good or evil is produced; in other words, men’s interests are in harmony, provided right prevail, and services are freely and voluntarily exchanged against services. But does this imply that we are ignorant of the perpetual struggle of Wrong against Right? Does this imply that we lose sight of, or approve, the efforts which have been made in all ages, and which are still making, to alter, by force or fraud, the natural equivalence of services? This is exactly when we repudiate as a violation of the natural social laws, as an attack upon property,—for, in our view, the terms, free exchange of services, justice, property, liberty, [p222] security, all express the same idea under different aspects. It is not the principle of Property which we contest, but the antagonistic principle of Spoliation. Proprietors of all ranks! reformers of all schools! this is the mission which should reconcile and unite us.
It is time, high time, that this crusade should begin. A mere theoretical war against Property is by no means the most virulent or the most dangerous. Since the beginning of the world there has existed a practical conspiracy against it which is not likely soon to cease. War, slavery, imposture, oppressive imposts, monopolies, privileges, commercial frauds, colonies, right to employment, right to credit, right to assistance, right to instruction, progressive taxation imposed in direct or inverse proportion to our power of bearing it, are so many battering-rams directed against the tottering edifice; and if the truth must come out, would you tell me whether there are many men in France, even among those who think themselves conservative, who do not, in one form or another, lend a hand to this work of destruction?
There are people to whose optics property never appears in any other form than that of a field or a bag of crown-pieces. If you do not overstep sacred landmarks, or sensibly empty their pockets, they feel quite comfortable. But is there no other kind of Property? Is there not the Property of muscular force and intellectual power, of faculties, of ideas—in a word, the Property of Services? When I throw a service into the social scale, is it not my right that it should be held there, if I may use the expression, suspended, according to the laws of its natural equivalence; that it may there form a counterpoise to any other service which my neighbour may consent to throw into the opposite scale and tender me in exchange? The law of common consent agreed to establish a public force for the protection of property thus understood. But in what situation are we placed if this very force assumes to itself the mission of disturbing the equilibrium, under the socialist pretext that liberty gives birth to monopoly, and that the doctrine of ‹laissez faire› is odious and heartless? When things go on in this way, individual theft may be rare, and may be severely punished, but spoliation is organized, legalized, and erected into a system. Comfort yourselves, Reformers! your work is not yet done—only try to understand what that work really is.
* * * * *
But before proceeding to analyze spoliation, whether public or private, legal or illegal, and to consider its bearing as an element in the social problem, and the part which it plays in the business [p223] of the world, it is necessary to form just ideas, if possible, of Community and Property; for, as we shall by-and-by see, spoliation forms a limit to property, just as property forms a limit to community.
From the preceding Chapters, especially that which treats of Utility and Value, we may deduce this formula:
‹Every man enjoys› «GRATUITOUSLY» ‹all the utilities furnished or created by nature, on condition of taking the trouble to appropriate them, or of returning an equivalent service to those who render him the service of taking that trouble for him›.
Here we have two facts combined and mixed up together, although in their own nature distinct.
We have the gifts of nature—gratuitous materials, gratuitous forces. This is the domain of ‹Community›.
We have also human efforts devoted to the appropriation of these materials, to the direction of these forces,—efforts which are exchanged, ‹estimated›, and compensated. This is the domain of ‹Property›.
In other words, as regards both, we are not owners of the Utility of things, but of their Value, and value is simply the appreciation of reciprocal services.
Property, Community, are two ideas correlative to the ideas of ‹onerosity› and ‹gratuitousness›, on which they are founded.
That which is ‹gratuitous› is ‹common›, for every one enjoys a portion of it, and enjoys it unconditionally.
That which is ‹onerous› is ‹appropriated›, because trouble taken, effort made, is the condition of its enjoyment, as the enjoyment is the reason for taking the trouble, or making the effort.
Does an exchange intervene? It is effected by a comparative estimate of the two efforts or the two services.
This reference to trouble, to pains, implies the existence of an Obstacle. We may then conclude that the object sought for approximates more nearly to the gratuitous and the common, in proportion as the obstacle is less; as, by hypothesis, the complete absence of obstacle would render it perfectly gratuitous and common.
Now, with reference to human nature, which is progressive and perfectible, the obstacle can never be regarded as an absolute and invariable quantity. It diminishes. Then the pains taken diminish along with it—and the service with the pains—and value with the service—and property with value.
And the Utility remains the same. Then the gratuitous and the common have gained all that onerosity and property have lost. [p224]
To determine man to labour he must have a motive, and that motive is the satisfaction he has in view, or utility. His undoubted and irrepressible tendency is to realize the greatest possible satisfaction with the least possible labour, to cause the greatest amount of utility to correspond with the greatest amount of property. Whence it follows that the mission of Property, or rather of the spirit of property, is to realize, in a greater and greater degree, Community.
The starting point of the human race being the maximum of poverty, or the maximum of obstacles to be overcome, it is clear that for all that is gained from one age to another we are indebted to the spirit of property.
This being so, is there to be found in the world a single theoretical adversary of the institution of property? Is it possible to imagine a social force at once so just and so popular? The fundamental dogma of Proudhon himself is the ‹mutuality of services›. On this point we are agreed. What we differ upon is, that I give this the name of ‹Property›, because, on going to the root of the matter, I am convinced that men, if they are free, neither have, nor can have, any other property than that of value, or of services. On the contrary, Proudhon, like most Economists, thinks that certain natural agents have ‹a value which is inherent in them›, and that in consequence of that they are ‹appropriated›. But as regards property in services, far from contesting it, he adopts it as his creed. Do you wish to go still farther? to go the length of asserting that a man should not have a right of property in his own exertions? Will it be said that by exchange it is not enough to transfer gratuitously the co-operation of natural agents, but also to cede gratuitously one’s own efforts? This is indeed a dangerous doctrine; it is to glorify slavery; for to assert that certain men must render, is to assert that other men must receive, services which are not remunerated, and that is slavery. But if you say that this gratuitous interchange must be reciprocal, you get into an incomprehensible logomachy; for either there is some equity in exchange, and then the services will, in one way or another, be ‹estimated› and compensated; or they will not be estimated and compensated,—in which case the one party will render a great amount of service, and the other a small amount, and you will fall back again into slavery.
But it is impossible to contest the legitimate nature of Property in services which are exchanged on the principle of equivalence. To explain their legitimacy we have no need to have recourse to philosophy, or jurisprudence, or metaphysics. Socialists, Economists, [p225] Advocates of Equality and Fraternity,—I defy the whole body, numerous as it is, to raise even the shadow of an objection against the ‹legitimate mutuality of voluntary services›, and consequently against Property, such as I have defined it, such as it actually exists in the natural social order.
I know very well that in practice the reign of Property is far from being an undivided sway, and that we have always to deal with an antagonistic fact. There are services which are not voluntary; there is remuneration which is not freely stipulated; there are services whose equivalence is impaired by force or by fraud; in a word, there is Spoliation. The legitimate principle of Property, however, is not thereby invalidated but confirmed. The very fact of its being violated proves its existence. If we put faith in anything in this world—in facts, in justice, in universal assent, in human language—we must admit that these two words, Property and Spoliation, express ideas which are as opposite, as irreconcilable, as far from being identical as yes and no, light and darkness, good and evil, harmony and discord. Taken literally, the celebrated formula that ‹property is theft› is absurd in the very highest degree. It would not be more monstrous to say that ‹theft is property›, that what is legitimate is illegitimate, that what is is not, etc. The author of this whimsical aphorism probably wished to show how ingeniously he could support a paradox, and meant no more than this, that certain men are paid not only for work which they do but for work which they don’t do, thus appropriating to themselves, exclusively, gratuitous utility—the gifts vouchsafed by God for the good of all. In this case all that we have to do is to prove the assertion, and substitute the truism that ‹theft is theft›.
To ‹steal› means, in ordinary language, to appropriate, by force or fraud, a value, to the prejudice and without the consent of the person who has created that value. It is easy to see how a false Political Economy has succeeded in enlarging the sense of that ugly word ‹steal›. You begin by confounding utility with value. Then, as nature co-operates in the creation of utility, you conclude that nature also concurs in the creation of Value, and you say that this portion of value, being the fruit of no one’s labour, belongs to all. At length, finding that value is never transferred without remuneration, you add, that the man who exacts a recompense for a value which is the creation of nature, which is independent of all human labour, which is ‹inherent in things›, and is by the destination of Providence one of their ‹intrinsic qualities›, like weight or porosity, form or colour, ‹commits a robbery›.
An exact analysis of value overturns this scaffolding of [p226] subtilties intended to prop up a monstrous assimilation of Property with Spoliation.
God has placed certain Materials and certain Forces at the disposal of man. In order to obtain possession of these materials and forces, Labour is necessary, or it is not. If it be not necessary, no one will voluntarily consent to purchase from another, by means of an effort, what, without any effort, he can obtain from the hands of Nature. In this case, services, exchange, value, ‹Property›, are out of the question. If, on the other hand, labour be necessary, in equity it falls upon the person who is to receive the satisfaction; whence it follows that the satisfaction is the recompense of the pains taken, the effort made, the labour undergone. Here you have the principle of Property. This being so, a man takes pains, or submits to labour, for his own benefit, and becomes possessed of the whole utility realized by this labour co-operating with nature. He takes pains, or submits to labour, for another, and in that case he bargains to receive in return an equivalent service, which is likewise the vehicle of utility, and the result exhibits two Efforts, two Utilities which have changed hands, and two Satisfactions. But we must not lose sight of this, that the transaction is effected by the comparison, by the ‹appreciation›, not of the two utilities (they cannot be brought to this test), but of the two services exchanged. It is then exact to say that, in a personal point of view, man, by means of labour, becomes proprietor of natural utility (that is the object of his labour), whatever be the relation (which may vary ‹ad infinitum›) of labour to utility. But in a ‹social› point of view, or in reference to each other, men are never proprietors except of value, the foundation of which is not the liberality of nature, but human service, pains taken, danger encountered, skill displayed, in securing that liberality. In a word, in what concerns natural and gratuitous utility, the last acquirer, the person who is the recipient of the satisfaction, is placed, by exchange, in the shoes of the first labourer. The latter has found himself in presence of a gratuitous utility which he has taken the pains to appropriate; the former returns him an equivalent service, and thus substitutes himself in the other’s right and place; utility is acquired by him by the same title, that is to say, by a gratuitous title, on condition of pains taken. There is here, neither in fact nor in appearance, any improper interception of the gifts of God.
I venture, then, to lay down this proposition as unassailable:
‹In relation to one another, men are proprietors only of values, and values represent only services compared, and voluntarily received and rendered.› [p227]
That, on the one hand, the true meaning of the word ‹value› is what I have already demonstrated it to be (Chapter V.); and that, on the other, men are never, and never can be, as regards each other, proprietors of anything but ‹value›, is evident as well from reasoning as from experience. From reasoning—for why should I go to purchase from a man, by means of an effort, what, without any effort, I can obtain from nature? From universal experience, which is too weighty to be despised in this question,—nothing being more fitted to give us confidence in a theory than the rational and practical acquiescence of men of all ages and all countries. Now I say that universal consent ratifies the sense which I give here to the word Property. When a public officer makes an inventory after a death, or by authority of justice, of when a merchant, manufacturer, or farmer does the same thing for his own satisfaction, or when it is done by officials under a bankruptcy—what do they inscribe on the stamped rolls as each object presents itself? Is it its ‹utility›, its intrinsic merit? No, it is its ‹value›, that is to say, the equivalent of the trouble which, any purchaser taken at random would have in procuring himself a similar commodity. Does a jury named by a judge to report upon a work or a commodity inquire whether it be more useful than another work or commodity? Do they take into consideration the enjoyments which may be thereby procured? Do they esteem a hammer more than a china jar, because the hammer is admirably adapted to make the law of gravitation available to its possessor? or a glass of water more than a diamond, because the former is capable of rendering more substantial service? or the work of Say more than the work of Fourier, because from the former we can draw more rational enjoyment and more solid instruction? No, they ‹value›, they set down the ‹value›, in rigorous conformity, observe, with my definition, or, to say better, it is my definition which is in conformity with their practice. They take into account, not the natural advantages, or the gratuitous utility, attached to each commodity, but the exertion which each acquirer should have to make for himself, or to require another to make for him, in order to procure it. They never think of the exertion which nature has made, if I may hazard the expression, but upon the exertion which the purchaser would have had to make. And when the operation is terminated, when the public is told the sum total of Value which is carried to the balance-sheet, they exclaim with one voice, Here is the wealth which is available to the «Proprietor».
As property includes nothing but value, and as value expresses only a relation, it follows that property itself is only a relation. [p228]
When the public, on the inspection of two inventories, pronounces one man to be richer than another, it is not meant to say that the relative amount of the two properties is indicative of the relative absolute wealth of the two men, or the amount of enjoyments they can command. There enters into positive satisfactions and enjoyments a certain amount of ‹common and gratuitous utility› which alters this proportion very much. As regards the light of day, the air we breathe, the heat of the sun, all men are equal; and Inequality—as indicative of a difference in property or value —has reference only to ‹onerous utility›.
Now I have often said, and I shall probably have occasion frequently to repeat the remark (for it is the finest and most striking, although perhaps the least understood, of the social harmonies, and includes all the others), that it is of the essence of progress—and indeed in this alone progress consists—to transform onerous into gratuitous utility—to diminish value without diminishing utility—to permit each individual to procure the same things with less effort, either to make or to remunerate; to increase continually the mass of things which are ‹common›, and the enjoyment of which, being distributed in a uniform manner among all, effaces by degrees the Inequality which results from difference of fortune.
We must not omit to analyze very carefully the result of this mechanism.
In contemplating the phenomena of the social world, how often have I had occasion to feel the profound justice of Rousseau’s saying: “Il faut beaucoup de philosophie pour observer ce qu’on voit tous les jours!” It is difficult to observe accurately what we see every day; ‹Custom›, that veil which blinds the eyes of the vulgar, and which the attentive observer cannot always throw off, prevents our discerning the most marvellous of all the Economic phenomena: real wealth falling incessantly from the domain of Property into that of Community.
Let us endeavour to demonstrate and explain this democratic evolution, and, if possible, test its range and its effects.
I have remarked elsewhere that if we desire to compare two epochs as regards real wealth and prosperity, we must refer all to a common standard, which is unskilled labour measured by time, and ask ourselves this question—What difference in the amount of satisfaction, according to the degree of advancement which society has reached, is a determinate quantity of unskilled labour—for example, a day’s work of a common labourer—capable of yielding us? [p229]
This question implies two others:
What was the relation of the satisfaction to unskilled labour at the beginning of the period? What is it now?
The difference will be the measure of the advance which gratuitous utility has made relatively to onerous utility—the domain of community relatively to that of property.
I believe that for the politician no problem can be proposed more interesting and instructive than this; and the reader must pardon me if, in order to arrive at a satisfactory solution of it, I fatigue him with too many examples.
I made, at the outset, a sort of catalogue of the most common human wants: respiration, food, clothing, lodging, locomotion, instruction, amusement, etc.
Let us resume the same order, and inquire what amount of satisfactions a common day-labourer could at the beginning, and can now, procure himself, by a determinate number of days’ labour.
‹Respiration.›—Here all is completely gratuitous and common from the beginning. Nature does all, and leaves us nothing to do. Efforts, services, value, property, progress, are all out of the question. As regards utility, Diogenes is as rich as Alexander—as regards value, Alexander is as rich as Diogenes.
‹Food.›—At present, the value of a hectolitre of corn in France is the equivalent of from 15 to 20 days’ work of a common unskilled labourer. This is a fact which we may regard as unimportant, but it is not the less worthy of remark. It is a fact that in our day, viewing humanity in its least advanced aspect, and as represented by a penniless workman, enjoyment measured by a hectolitre of corn can be obtained by an expenditure of 15 days’ unskilled labour. The ordinary calculation is, that three hectolitres of corn annually are required for the subsistence of one man. The common labourer, then, produces, if not his subsistence, what comes to the same thing, the value of his subsistence, by an expenditure of from 45 to 60 days’ labour in the year. If we represent the type of value by ‹one› (in this case ‹one day’s unskilled labour›), the value of a hectolitre of corn will be expressed by 15, 18, or 20, according to the year. The relation of these two values is, say, ‹one to fifteen›.
To discover if progress has been made, and to measure it, we must inquire what this relation was in the early days of the human race. In truth, I dare not hazard a figure, but there is one way of clearing up the difficulty. When you hear a man declaiming against the social order, against the appropriation of the soil, against rent, against machinery, lead him into the middle [p230] of a primitive forest and in sight of a pestilential morass. Say to him, I wish to free you from the yoke of which you complain,—I wish to withdraw you from the atrocious struggles of anarchical competition, from the antagonism of interests, from the selfishness of wealth, from the oppression of property, from the crushing rivalry of machinery, from the stifling atmosphere of society. Here is land exactly like what the first clearers had to encounter. Take as much of it as you please—take it by tens, by hundreds of acres. Cultivate it yourself. All that you can make it produce is yours. I make but one condition, that you will not have recourse to that society of which you represent yourself as the victim.
As regards the soil, observe, this man would be placed in exactly the same situation which mankind at large occupied at the beginning. Now I fear not to be contradicted when I assert that this man would not produce a hectolitre of corn in two years: Ratio 15 to 600.
And now we can measure the progress which has been made. As regards corn—and despite his being obliged to pay rent for his land, interest for his capital, and hire for his tools—or rather because he pays them—a labourer now obtains with 15 days’ work what he would formerly have had difficulty in procuring with 600 days’ work. The value of corn, then, measured by unskilled labour, has fallen from 600 to 15, or from 40 to 1. A hectolitre of corn has for man the same utility it had the day after the deluge—it contains the same quantity of alimentary substance—it satisfies the same want, and in the same degree. It constitutes an equal amount of ‹real wealth›—it does not constitute an equal amount of ‹relative wealth›. Its production has been transferred in a great measure ‹to the charge of nature›. It is obtained with ‹less› human ‹effort›. It renders ‹less service› in passing from hand to hand, it has less ‹value›. In a word, it has become ‹gratuitous›—not absolutely, but in the proportion of 40 to 1.
And not only has it become ‹gratuitous›—it has become ‹common› to the same extent. For it is not to the profit of the person who produces the corn that 39-40ths of the effort have been annihilated, but to the advantage of the consumer, whatever be the kind of labour to which he devotes himself.
‹Clothing.›—We have here again the same phenomenon. A common day-labourer enters one of the warehouses at the Marais,[54] and there obtains clothing corresponding to twenty days of his labour, which we suppose to be unskilled. Were he to attempt to make [p231] this clothing himself, his whole life would be insufficient. Had he desired to obtain the same clothing in the time of Henri Quatre, it would have cost him three or four hundred days’ work. What then has become of this difference in the ‹value› of these stuffs in relation to the quantity of unskilled labour? It has been annihilated, because the ‹gratuitous› forces of nature now perform a great portion of the work, and it has been annihilated to the advantage of mankind at large.
For we must not fail to remark here, that every man owes his neighbour a service equivalent to what he has received from him. If, then, the art of the weaver had made no progress, if weaving were not executed in part by ‹gratuitous› forces, the weaver would still be occupied two or three hundred days in fabricating these stuffs, and our workman would require to give him two or three hundred days’ work in order to obtain the clothing he wants. And since the weaver cannot succeed, with all his wish to do so in obtaining two or three hundred days’ labour in recompense for the intervention of gratuitous forces, and for the progress achieved, we are warranted in saving that this progress has been effected to the advantage of the purchaser or consumer, and that it is a gain to society at large.
‹Conveyance.›—Prior to all progress, when the human race, like our day-labourer, was obliged to make use of primitive and unskilled labour, if a man had desired to have a load of a hundredweight transported from Paris to Bayonne, he would have had only this alternative, either to take the load on his own shoulders, and perform the work himself, travelling over hill and dale, which would have required a year’s labour, or else to ask some one to perform this rough piece of work for him; and as, by hypothesis, the person who undertook this work would have to employ the same means and the same time, he would undoubtedly demand a remuneration equal to a year’s labour. At that period, then, the value of unskilled labour being ‹one›, that of transport was 300 for the weight of a cwt. and a distance of 200 leagues.
But things are changed now. In fact there is no workman in Paris who cannot obtain the same result by the sacrifice of two days’ labour. The alternative indeed is still the same. He must either do the work himself, or get others to do it for him by remunerating them. If our day-labourer perform it himself, it will still cost him a year of fatigue; but if he applies to men who make it their business, he will find twenty carriers to do what he wants for three or four francs, that is to say, for the equivalent of two days’ unskilled labour. Thus the value of such labour being [p232] represented by ‹one›, that of transport, which was represented by 300, is now reduced to ‹two›.
In what way has this astonishing revolution been brought about? Ages have been required to accomplish it. Animals have been trained, mountains have been pierced, valleys have been filled up, bridges have been thrown across rivers, sledges and afterwards wheeled carriages have been invented, obstacles, which give rise to labour, services, value, have been removed; in short, we have succeeded in accomplishing, with labour equal to two, what our remote ancestors would have effected only by labour equal to 300. This progress has been realized by men who had no thought but for their own interests. And yet, who profits by it now? Our poor day-labourer, and with him society at large.
Let no one say that this is not Community. I say that it is Community in the strictest sense of the word. At the outset the satisfaction in question was, in the estimation of all, the equivalent of 300 days’ unskilled labour, or a proportionally smaller amount of skilled labour. Now 298 parts of this labour out of 300 are performed by nature, and mankind are exonerated to a corresponding extent. Now, evidently all men are in exactly the same situation as regards the obstacles which have been removed, the distance which has been wiped out, the fatigue which has been obviated, the value which has been annihilated, since all obtain the result without having to pay for it. What they pay for is the human effort which remains still to be made, as compared with and measured by two days’ work of an unskilled labourer. In other words, the man who has not himself effected this improvement, and who has only muscular force to offer in exchange, has still to give two days’ labour to secure the satisfaction he wishes to obtain. All other men can obtain it with a smaller sacrifice of labour. The Paris lawyer, earning 30,000 francs a year, can obtain it for a twenty-fifth part of a day’s labour, etc.,—by which we see that all men are equal as regards the value annihilated, and that the inequality is restrained within the limits of the portion of value which survives the change, that is, within the domain of Property.
Economical science labours under a disadvantage in being obliged to have recourse to hypothetical cases. The reader is taught to believe that the phenomena which we wish to describe are to be discovered only in special cases, adduced for the sake of illustration. But it is evident that what we have said of corn, clothing, and means of transport, is true of everything else. When an author generalizes, it is for the reader to particularize; and [p233] when the former devotes himself to cold and forbidding analysis, the latter may at least indulge in the pleasures of synthesis.
The synthetic law may be reduced to this formula:
‹Value, which is social property, springs from Effort and Obstacle.›
‹In proportion as the obstacle is lessened, effort, value, or the domain of property, is diminished along with it.›
‹With reference to each given satisfaction, Property always recedes and Community always advances.›
Must we then conclude with M. Proudhon that the days of Property are numbered? Because, as regards each useful result to be realized, each satisfaction to be obtained, Property recedes before Community, are we thence to conclude that the former is about to be absorbed and annihilated altogether?
To adopt this conclusion would be to mistake completely the nature of man. We encounter here a sophism analogous to the one we have already refuted on the subject of the interest of capital. Interest has a tendency to fall, it is said; then it is destined ultimately to disappear altogether. Value and property go on diminishing; then they are destined, it is now said, to be annihilated.
The whole sophism consists in omitting the words, ‹for each determinate result›. It is quite true that men obtain ‹determinate results› with a less amount of effort—it is in this respect that they are progressive and perfectible—it is on this account that we are able to affirm that the ‹relative› domain of property becomes narrower, looking at it as regards each given satisfaction.
But it is not true that all the ‹results› which it is ‹possible› to obtain are ever exhausted, and hence it is absurd to suppose that it is in the nature of progress to lessen or limit the ‹absolute› domain of property.
We have repeated often, and in every shape, that each given effort may, in course of time, serve as the vehicle of a greater amount of gratuitous utility, without our being warranted thence to conclude that men should ever cease to make efforts. All that we can conclude from it is, that their forces, thus rendered disposable, will be employed in combating other obstacles, and will realize, with equal labour, satisfactions hitherto unknown.
I must enlarge still farther on this idea. These are not times to leave anything to possible misconstruction when we venture to pronounce the fearful words, Property and Community.
Man in a state of isolation can, at any given moment of his existence, exert only a certain amount of effort; and the same thing holds of society. [p234]
When man in a state of isolation realizes a step of progress, by making natural agents co-operate with his own labour, the sum of his efforts is reduced by so much, ‹in relation to the useful result sought for›. It would be reduced not relatively only, but ‹absolutely›, if this man, content with his original condition, should convert his progress into leisure, and should abstain from devoting to the acquisition of new enjoyments that portion of effort which is now rendered disposable. That would take for granted that ambition, desire, aspiration, were limited forces, and that the human heart was not indefinitely expansible; but it is quite otherwise. Robinson Crusoe has no sooner handed over part of his work to natural agents, than he devotes his efforts to new enterprises. The sum total of his efforts remains the same,—but one portion of these efforts, aided by a greater amount of natural and gratuitous co-operation, has become more productive, more prolific. This is exactly the phenomenon which we see realized in society.
Because the plough, the harrow, the hammer, the saw, oxen, and horses, the sail, water-power, steam, have successively relieved mankind from an enormous amount of labour, in proportion to each result obtained, it does not necessarily follow that this labour, thus set free and rendered disposable, should lie dormant. Remember what has been already said as to the indefinite expansibility of our wants and desires—and note what is passing around you—and you will not fail to see that as often as man succeeds in vanquishing an obstacle by the aid of natural agents, he sets his own forces to grapple with other obstacles. We have more facility in the art of printing than we had formerly, but we print more. Each book corresponds to a less amount of human effort, to less value, less property; but we have more books, and, on the whole, the same amount of effort, value, property. The same thing might be said of clothing, of houses, of railways, of all human productions. It is not the aggregate of values which has diminished; it is the aggregate of utilities which has increased. It is not the ‹absolute› domain of Property which has been narrowed; it is the absolute domain of Community which has been enlarged. Progress has not paralyzed labour; it has augmented wealth.
Things that are gratuitous and common to all are within the domain of natural forces; and it is as true in theory as in fact that this domain is constantly extending.
Value and Property are within the domain of human efforts, of reciprocal services, and this domain becomes narrower and narrower as regards each given result, but not as regards the aggregate of results; as regards each determinate satisfaction, but not [p235] as regards the aggregate of satisfactions, because the amount of ‹possible› enjoyments is without limit.
It is as true, then, that relative Property gives place to Community, as it is false that absolute Property tends to disappear altogether. Property is a pioneer which accomplishes its work in one circle, and then passes into another. Before property could disappear altogether we must suppose every obstacle to have been removed, labour to have been superseded, human efforts to have become useless; we must suppose men to have no longer need to effect exchanges, or render services to each other; we must suppose all production to be spontaneous, and enjoyment to spring directly from desire; in a word, we must suppose men to have become equal to gods. Then, indeed, all would be gratuitous, and we should have all things in common. Effort, service, value, property, everything indicative of our native weakness and infirmity, would cease to exist.
In vain man raises himself in the social scale, and advances on the road of civilisation—he is as far as ever from Omnipotence. It is one of the attributes of the Divinity, as far as we can understand what is so much above human reason, that between volition and result no obstacle is interposed. God said, ‹Let there be light, and there was light›. And it is the powerlessness of man to express that to which there is so little analogous in his own nature, which reduced Moses to the necessity of supposing between the divine will and the creation of light the intervention of an obstacle in the shape even of a word to be pronounced. But whatever advance man, in virtue of his progressive nature, may be destined yet to make, we may safely affirm that he will never succeed in freeing himself entirely from the obstacles which encumber his path, or in rendering himself independent of the labour of his head and of his hands. The reason is obvious. In proportion as certain obstacles are overcome, his desires dilate and expand, and new obstacles oppose themselves to new efforts. We shall always, then, have labour to perform, to exchange, to estimate, and to value. Property will exist until the consummation of all things, increasing in mass in proportion as men become more active and more numerous; whilst at the same time each effort, each service, each value, each portion of property, considered relatively, will, in passing from hand to hand, serve as the vehicle of an increasing proportion of common and gratuitous utility.
* * * * *
The reader will observe that we use the word Property in a very extended sense, but a sense which on that account is not the [p236] less exact. ‹Property is the right which a man possesses of applying to his own use his own efforts, or of not giving them away except in consideration of equivalent efforts.› The distinction between Proprietors and Prolétaires, then, is radically false, unless it is pretended that there is a class of men who do no work, who have no control over their own exertions, or over the services which they render and those which they receive in exchange.
It is wrong to restrict the term Property to one of its special forms, to capital, to land, to what yields interest or rent; and it is in consequence of this erroneous definition that we proceed afterwards to separate men into two antagonist classes. Analysis demonstrates that interest and rent are the fruit of services rendered, and have the same origin, the same nature, the same rights as manual labour.
The world may be regarded as a vast workshop which Providence has supplied abundantly with materials and forces of which human labour makes use. Anterior efforts, present efforts, even future efforts, or promises of efforts, are exchanged for each other. Their relative merit, as established by exchange, and independently of gratuitous forces and materials, brings out the element of value; and it is of the value created by each individual that each is owner or proprietor.
But what does it signify, it may be said, that a man is proprietor only of the value, or of the acknowledged merit of his service? The possession of the value carries along with it that of the utility which is mingled with it. John has two sacks of corn. Peter has only one. John, you say, is twice as rich in ‹value›. Surely, then, he is also twice as rich in utility, even natural utility. He has twice as much to eat.
Unquestionably it is so: but has he not performed double the labour?
Let us come, nevertheless, to the root of the objection.
Essential, absolute wealth resides, as we have said, in utility. The very word implies this. It is ‹utility› alone which renders ‹service› (‹uti›—in French ‹servir›). It alone has relation to our wants, and it is it alone which man has in view when he devotes himself to labour. Utility at all events is the ultimate object of pursuit; for things do not satisfy our hunger or quench our thirst because they include value, but because they possess utility.
We muse take into account, however, the phenomenon which society exhibits in this respect.
Man in a state of isolation seeks to realize utility without [p237] thinking about value, of which, in that state, he can have no idea.
In the social state, on the contrary, man seeks to realize value irrespective of utility. The commodity he produces is not intended to satisfy his own wants, and he has little interest in its being useful or not. It is for the person who desires to acquire it to judge of that. What concerns the producer is, that it should bear as high a value as possible in the market, as he is certain that the utilities he has to receive in return will be in proportion to the value of what he carries thither.
The division of labour and of occupation leads to this result, that each produces what he does not himself consume, and consumes what he does not himself produce. As producers, what we are in quest of is value; as consumers, what we seek is utility. Universal experience testifies to this. The man who polishes a diamond, or embroiders lace, or distils brandy, or cultivates the poppy, never inquires whether the consumption of these commodities is good or bad in itself. He gives his work, and if his work realizes value, that is enough for him.
And let me here remark in passing, that the moral or immoral has nothing to do with labour, but with desire; and that society is improved, not by rendering the producer, but the consumer, more moral. What an outcry was raised against the English on account of their cultivating opium in India for the deliberate purpose, it was said, of poisoning the Chinese! This was to misunderstand and misapply the principle of morality. No one will ever be effectually prevented from producing a commodity which, being in demand, is possessed of value. It is for the man who demands a particular species of enjoyment to calculate the effects of it; and it is in vain that we attempt to divorce foresight from responsibility. Our vine-growers produce wine, and will produce it as long as it possesses value, without troubling themselves to inquire whether this wine leads to drunkenness in Europe or to suicide in America. It is the judgment which men form as to their wants and satisfactions that determines the direction of labour. This is true even of man in an isolated state; and if a foolish vanity had spoken more loudly to Robinson Crusoe than hunger, he would, in place of devoting his time to the chase, have employed it in arranging feathers for his hat. It is the same with nations as with individuals—serious people have serious pursuits, and frivolous people devote themselves to frivolous occupations.
But to return:
The man who works for himself has in view utility. [p238]
The man who works for others has in view value.
Now Property, as I have defined it, is founded on Value, and value being simply a relation, it follows that property is also a relation.
Were there only one man upon the earth, the idea of Property would never enter his mind. Monarch of all he surveyed, surrounded with utilities which he had only to adapt to his use, never encountering any analogous right to serve as a limit to his own, how should it ever come into his head to say ‹This is mine›? That would imply the correlative assertion, ‹This is not mine›, or ‹This belongs to another›. ‹Meum› and ‹tuum› are inconsistent with isolation, and the word Property necessarily implies relation; but it gives us emphatically to understand that a thing is ‹proper› to one person, only by giving us to understand that it is not ‹proper› to anybody else.
“The first man,” says Rousseau, “who having enclosed a field, took it into his head to say ‹This is mine›, was the true founder of civil society.”
What does the enclosure mean if it be not indicative of exclusion, and consequently of relation? If its object were only to defend the field against the intrusion of animals, it was a precaution, not a sign of property. A boundary, on the contrary, is a mark of property, not of precaution.
Thus men are truly proprietors only in relation to one another; and this being so, of what are they proprietors? Of value, as we discover very clearly in the exchanges they make with each other.
Let us, according to our usual practice, take a very simple case by way of illustration.
Nature labours, and has done so probably from all eternity, to invest spring water with those qualities which fit it for quenching our thirst, and which qualities, so far as we are concerned, constitute its ‹utility›. It is assuredly not my work, for it has been elaborated without my assistance, and quite unknown to me. In this respect I can truly say that water is to me the gratuitous gift of God. What is my own ‹proper› work is the effort which I have made in going to fetch my supply of water for the day.
Of what do I become proprietor by that act?
As regards myself, I am proprietor, if I may use the expression, of all the utility with which nature has invested this water. I can turn it to my own use in any way I think proper. It is for that purpose that I have taken the trouble to fetch it. To dispute my right would be to say that, although men cannot live without [p239] drinking, they have no right to drink the water which they have procured by their own exertions. I do not believe that the Communists, although they go very far, will go the length of asserting this, and even under the ‹régime› of Cabet, the lambs of Icaria would be allowed to quench their thirst in the limpid stream.
But in relation to other men, who are free to do as I do, I am not, and cannot be, proprietor except of what is called, by metonymy, ‹the value of the water›, that is to say, the value of the ‹service› which I render in procuring it.
My right to drink this water being granted, it is impossible to contest my right to give it away. And the right of the other contracting party to go to the spring, as I did, and draw water for himself, being admitted, it is equally impossible to contest his right to accept the water which I have fetched. If the one has a right to give, and the other, in consideration of a payment voluntarily bargained for, to accept, this water, the first is then the ‹proprietor› in relation to the second. It is sad to write upon Political Economy at a time when we cannot advance a step without having recourse to demonstrations so puerile.
But on what basis is the arrangement we have supposed come to? It is essential to know this, in order to appreciate the whole social bearing of the word Property,—a word which sounds so ill in the ears of democratic sentimentalism.
It is clear that, both parties being free, we must take into consideration the trouble I have had, and the trouble I have saved to the other party, as the circumstances which constitute value. We discuss the conditions of the bargain, and, if we come to terms, there is neither exaggeration nor subtilty in saying that my neighbour has acquired ‹gratuitously›, or, if you will, as ‹gratuitously as I did›, all the natural utility of the water. Do you desire proof that the conditions, more or less onerous, of the transaction are determined by the human efforts and not by the intrinsic utility? It will be granted that the utility remains the same whether the spring is distant or near at hand. It is the amount of exertion made, or to be made, which depends upon the distance; and since the remuneration varies with the exertion, it is in the latter, and not in the utility, that the principle of relative value and Property resides.
It is certain, then, that, in relation to others, I am, and can be, proprietor only of my efforts, of my services, which have nothing in common with the recondite and mysterious processes by which nature communicates utility to the things which are the subject [p240] of those services. It would be in vain for me to carry my pretensions farther—at this point we must always in fact encounter the limit of Property;—for if I exact more than the value of my services, my neighbour will do the work for himself. This limit is absolute and unchangeable. It fully explains and vindicates Property, thus reduced to the natural and simple right of demanding one service for another. It shows that the enjoyment of natural utility is appropriated only nominally and in appearance; that the expression, Property in an acre of land, in a hundredweight of iron, in a quarter of wheat, in a yard of cloth, is truly a metonymy, like the expression, Value of water, of iron, and so forth; and that so far as nature has given these things to men, they enjoy them gratuitously and in common; in a word, that Community is in perfect harmony with Property, the gifts of God remaining in the domain of the one, and human services forming alone the very legitimate domain of the other.
But from my having chosen a very simple example in order to point out the line of demarcation which separates the domain of what is common from the domain of what has been appropriated, you are not to conclude that this line loses itself and disappears, even in the most complicated transactions. It continues always to show itself in every free transaction. The labour of going to fetch water from the spring is very simple, no doubt; but when you examine the thing more narrowly, you will be convinced that the labour of raising corn is only more complicated because it embraces a series of efforts quite as simple, in each of which the work of nature co-operates with that of man, so that in fact the example I have shown may be regarded as the type of every economical fact. Take the case of water, of corn, of cloth, of books, of transport, of pictures, of the ballet, of the opera,—in all, certain circumstances, I allow, may impart such value to certain services, but no one is ever paid for anything else than services,—never certainly for the co-operation of nature,—and the reason is obvious, because one of the contracting parties has it always in his power to say, If you demand from me more than your service is ‹worth›, I shall apply to another quarter, or do the work for myself.
But I am not content to vindicate Property; I should wish to make it an object of cherished affection even to the most determined Communists. And to accomplish this, all that is necessary is to describe the popular, progressive, and equalizing part which it plays; and to demonstrate clearly, not only that it does not monopolize and concentrate in a few hands the gifts of God, but that its special mission is to enlarge continually the sphere of [p241] Community. In this respect the natural laws of society are much more ingenious than the artificial systems of Plato, Sir Thomas More, Fénélon, or Monsieur Cabet.
That there are satisfactions which men enjoy, gratuitously and in common, upon a footing of the most perfect equality,—that there is in the social order, underlying Property, a real Community,—no one will dispute. To see this it is not necessary that you should be either an Economist or a Socialist, but that you should have eyes in your head. In certain respects all the children of God are treated in precisely the same way. All are equal as regards the law of gravitation, which attaches them to the earth, as regards the air we breathe, the light of day, the water of the brook. This vast and measureless common fund, which has nothing whatever to do with Value or Property, J. B. Say denominates ‹natural wealth›, in opposition to ‹social wealth›; Proudhon, ‹natural property›, in opposition to ‹acquired property›; Considérant, ‹natural capital›, in opposition to ‹capital which is created›; Saint-Chamans, the ‹wealth of enjoyment›, in opposition to the ‹wealth of value›. We have denominated it ‹gratuitous utility›, in contradistinction to ‹onerous utility›. Call it what you will, it exists, and that entitles us to say that there is among men a common fund of gratuitous and equal satisfactions.
And if wealth, ‹social›, ‹acquired›, ‹created›, ‹of value›, ‹onerous›, in a word, Property, is unequally distributed, we cannot affirm that it is unjustly so, seeing that it is in each man’s case proportional to the ‹services› which give rise to it, and of which it is simply the measure and estimate. Besides, it is clear that this Inequality is lessened by the existence of the common fund, in virtue of the mathematical rule: the relative inequality of two unequal numbers is lessened by adding equal numbers to each of them. When our inventories, then, show that one man is twice as rich as another man, that proportion ceases to be exact when we take into consideration their equal share in the gratuitous utility furnished by nature, and the inequality would be gradually effaced and wiped away if this common fund were itself progressive.
The problem, then, is to find out whether this ‹common fund› is a fixed invariable quantity, given to mankind by Providence in the beginning, and once for all, above which the ‹appropriated fund› is superimposed, apart from the existence of any relation or action between these two orders of phenomena.
Economists have concluded that the social order had no influence upon this natural and common fund of wealth; and this is their reason for excluding it from the domain of Political Economy. [p242]
The Socialists go farther. They believe that the constitution of society tends to make this common fund pass into the region of Property, that it consecrates, to the profit of a few, the usurpation of what belongs to all; and this is the reason why they rise up against Political Economy, which denies this fatal tendency, and against modern society, which submits to it.
The truth is, that Socialism, in this particular, taxes Political Economy with inconsistency, and with some justice too; for after having declared that there are no relations between common and appropriated wealth, Economists have invalidated their own assertion, and prepared the way for the socialist grievance. They did so the moment that, confounding value with utility, they asserted that the materials and forces of nature, that is to say, the gifts of God, had an intrinsic value, a value inherent in them,—for value implies, always and necessarily, appropriation. From that moment they lost the right and the means of logically vindicating Property.
What I maintain—and maintain with a conviction amounting to absolute certainty—is this: that the appropriated fund exerts a constant action upon the fund which is common and unappropriated, and in this respect the first assertion of the Economists is erroneous. But the second assertion, as developed and explained by socialism, is still more fatal; for the action in question does not take place in a way to make the common fund pass into the appropriated fund, but, on the contrary, to make the appropriated fund pass incessantly into the common domain. Property, just and legitimate in itself, because always representing services, tends to transform onerous into gratuitous utility. It is the spur which urges on human intelligence to make latent natural forces operative. It struggles, and undoubtedly for our benefit, against the obstacles which render utility onerous. And when the obstacle has been to a certain extent removed, it is found that, to that extent, it has been removed to the profit and advantage of all. Then indefatigable Property challenges and encounters other obstacles, and goes on, raising, always and without intermission, the level of humanity, realizing more and more Community, and, with Community, Equality, among the great family of mankind.
In this consists the truly marvellous Harmony of the natural social order. This harmony I am unable to describe without combating objections which are perpetually recurring, and without falling into wearisome repetitions. No matter, I submit—let the reader also exercise a little patience on his side. [p243]
Make yourself master, first of all, of this fundamental idea, that when, in any case, there is no obstacle between desire and satisfaction (there is none, for instance, between our eyes and the light of day)—there is no effort to make, no service to render, either to ourselves or to other people, and value and Property have no existence. When an obstacle exists, the whole series comes into play. First, we have Effort—then a voluntary exchange of efforts or Services—then a comparative appreciation of those services, or Value; lastly, the right of each to enjoy the utilities attached to these values, or Property.
If in this struggle against obstacles, which are always uniform, the co-operation of nature and that of labour were also always in equal proportion, Property and Community would advance in parallel lines, without changing their relative proportions.
But it is not so. The universal aim of men in all their enterprises is to diminish the proportion between effort and result, and for that purpose to enlist more and more in their work the assistance of natural agents. No agriculturist, manufacturer, merchant, artisan, shipowner, artist, but makes this his constant study. In that direction all their faculties are bent. For that purpose they invent tools and machines, and avail themselves of the chemical and mechanical forces of the elements, divide their occupations, and unite their efforts. To accomplish more with less, such is the eternal problem which they propose to themselves at all times, in all places, in all situations, in everything. Who doubts that in all this they are prompted by self-interest? What other stimulant could excite them to the same energy? Every man, moreover, is charged with the care of his own existence and advancement. What, then, should constitute the mainspring of his movements but self-interest? You express your astonishment, but wait till I have done, and you will find that if each cares for himself, God cares for us all.
Our constant study, then, is to diminish the proportion which the effort bears to the useful effect sought to be produced. But when the effort is lessened, whether by the removal of obstacles or the intervention of machinery, by the division of labour, the union of forces, or the assistance of natural agents, etc., this diminished effort is less highly appreciated in relation to others;—we render less ‹service› in making the effort for another. There is less value, and we are justified in saying that the domain of Property has receded. Is the useful effect on that account lost? By hypothesis it is not. Where then has it gone to? It has passed into the domain of Community. As regards that portion of human effort [p244] which the useful effect no longer absorbs, it is not on that account sterile—it is turned to other acquisitions. Obstacles present themselves, and will always present themselves, to the indefinite expansibility of our physical, moral, and intellectual wants, to an extent sufficient to ensure that the labour set free in one department will find employment in another. And it is in this way that the appropriated fund remaining always the same, the common fund dilates and expands, like a circle the radius of which is always enlarging.
Apart from this consideration, how could we explain progress or civilisation, however imperfect? Let us turn our regards upon ourselves, and consider our feebleness. Let us compare our own individual vigour and knowledge with the vigour and knowledge necessary to produce the innumerable satisfactions which we derive from society. We shall soon be convinced that were we reduced to our proper efforts, we could not obtain a hundred thousandth part of them, even if millions of acres of uncultivated land were placed at the disposal of each one of us. It is positively certain that a given amount of human effort will realize an immeasurably greater result at the present day than it could in the days of the Druids. If that were true only of an individual, the natural conclusion would be that he lives and prospers at the expense of his fellows. But since this phenomenon is manifested in all the members of the human family, we are led to the comfortable conclusion that things not our own have come to our aid; that the gratuitous co-operation of nature is in larger and larger measure added to our own efforts, and that it remains gratuitous through all our transactions; for were it not gratuitous, it would explain nothing.
From what we have said, we may deduce these formulas:
‹Property is Value, and Value is Property;›
‹That which has no Value is gratuitous, and what is gratuitous is common;›
‹A fall of Value is an approximation towards the gratuitous;›
‹Such approximation is a partial realization of Community.›
There are times when one cannot give utterance to certain words without being exposed to false interpretations. There are always people ready to cry out, in a critical or in a laudatory spirit, according to the sect they belong to: “The author talks of Community—he must be a Communist.” I expect this, and resign myself to it. And yet I must endeavour to guard myself against such hasty inferences.
The reader must have been very inattentive (and the most [p245] formidable class of readers are those who turn over books without attending to what they read) if he has not observed the great gulf which interposes itself between Community and Communism. The two ideas are separated by the entire domain not only of property but of liberty, right, justice, and even of human personality.
Community applies to those things which we enjoy in common by the destination of Providence; because, exacting no effort in order to adapt them to our use, they give rise to no service, no transaction, no Property. The foundation of property is the right which we possess to render services to ourselves, or to others on condition of a return.
What Communism wishes to render common is, not the gratuitous gift of God, but human effort—service.
It desires that each man should carry the fruit of his labour to the common stock, and that afterwards an equitable distribution of that stock should be made by authority.
Now, of two things one. Either the distribution is proportional to the stake which each has contributed, or it is made upon another principle.
In the first case, Communism aims at realizing, as regards result, the present order of things—only substituting the arbitrary will of one for the liberty of all.
In the second case, what must be the basis of the division? Communism answers, Equality. What! Equality, without regard to the difference of pains taken, of labour undergone! You are to have an ‹equal share› whether you have worked six hours or twelve—mechanically, or with intelligence! Of all inequalities surely that would be the most shocking; besides it would be the destruction of all liberty, all activity, all dignity, all sagacity. You pretend to put an end to competition, but in truth you only transform it. The competition at present is, who shall work most and best. Under your regime it would be, who should work worst and least.
Communism misunderstands or disowns the very nature of man. Effort is painful in itself. What urges us to make it? It can only be a feeling more painful still, a want to satisfy, a suffering to remove, a good to be realized. Our moving principle, then, is self-interest. When you ask the Communists what they would substitute for this, they answer, by the mouth of Louis Blanc, ‹The point of honour›, and by that of Monsieur Cabet, ‹Fraternity›. Enable me, then, to experience the sensations of others, in order that I may know what direction to impress upon my industry.
I should like to have it explained what this point of honour, [p246] this fraternity, which are to be set to work in society at the instigation and under the direction of Messieurs Louis Blanc and Cabet, really mean.
But it is not my business in this place to refute Communism, which is opposed in everything to the system which it is my object to establish.
We recognise the right of every man to serve himself, or to serve others on conditions freely stipulated. Communism denies this right, since it masses together and centralizes all services in the hands of an arbitrary authority.
Our doctrine is based upon Property. Communism is founded on systematic spoliation. It consists in handing over to one, without compensation, the labour of another. In fact, did it distribute to each according to his labour, it would recognise property, and would be no longer Communism.
Our doctrine is founded on liberty. In truth, property and liberty are in our eyes one and the same thing, for that which constitutes a man the proprietor of his service is his right and power of disposing of it. Communism annihilates liberty, since it leaves to no one the free disposal of his labour.
Our doctrine is founded on justice—Communism on injustice. That follows clearly from what has been already said.
There is only one point of contact, then, between the communists and us—it is the similarity of two syllables, in the words ‹communism› and ‹community›.
But this similarity of sounds should not mislead the reader. Whilst communism is the negation of Property, we find in our doctrine of Community the most explicit affirmation and the most positive demonstration of property.
If the legitimacy of property has appeared doubtful and inexplicable, even to men who are not communists, the reason is, that they believe that it concentrates in the hands of some, to the exclusion of others, those gifts of God which were originally common. We believe we have entirely dissipated that doubt by demonstrating that what is common by providential destination remains common in all human transactions,—the domain of property never extending beyond that of value—of right onerously acquired by services rendered.
Thus explained, property is vindicated; for who but a fool could pretend that men have no right to their own labour—no right to receive the voluntary services of those to whom they have rendered voluntary services?
There is another word upon which I must offer some explanation, [p247] for of late it has been strangely misapplied—I mean the word ‹gratuitous›. I need not say that I denominate gratuitous, not what costs a man nothing because he has deprived another of it, but what has cost nothing to anyone.
When Diogenes warmed himself in the sun, he might be said to warm himself gratuitously, for he obtained from the divine liberality a satisfaction which exacted no labour either from himself or his contemporaries. Nor does the heat of the sun’s rays cease to be gratuitous when the proprietor avails himself of it to ripen his corn and his grapes, seeing that in selling his grapes or his corn he is paid for his own services and not for those of the sun. This may be an erroneous view (in which case we have no alternative but to become communists); but at any rate this is the sense in which I use the word ‹gratuitous›, and this is what it evidently means.
Much has been said, since the establishment of the Republic, of ‹gratuitous› credit, and ‹gratuitous› instruction. But it is evident that a gross sophism lurks under this phraseology. Can the State shed abroad instruction like the light of day without its costing anything to anybody? Can it cover the country with institutions and professors without their being paid in one shape or another? Instead of leaving each individual to demand and to remunerate voluntarily this description of service, the State may lay hold of the remuneration, taken by taxation from the pockets of the citizens, and distribute among them instruction of its own selection, without exacting from them a second remuneration. This is all that can be effected by government interference—and in this case, those who do not learn pay for those who do, those who learn little for those who learn much, those who are destined to manual labour for those who embrace learned professions. This is communism applied to one branch of human activity. Under this régime, of which I am not called upon here to give an opinion, it might very well be said that ‹instruction is common›, but it would be ridiculous to say that ‹instruction is gratuitous›. Gratuitous! Yes, for some of those who receive it, but not for those who have to pay for it, if not to the teacher, at least to the tax-gatherer.
For that matter, there is nothing which the State can give ‹gratuitously›; and if the word were not a mystification, it is not only ‹gratuitous› education which we should demand from the State, but ‹gratuitous› food, ‹gratuitous› clothing, ‹gratuitous› lodging, etc. Let us take care. The people are not far from going this length, and there are already among us those who demand ‹gratuitous› credit, ‹gratuitous› tools and instruments of labour, etc. Dupes of a word, [p248] we have made one step towards Communism; why should we not make a second, and a third, until all liberty, all justice, and all property have passed away? Will it be urged that instruction is so universally necessary that we may depart somewhat from right and principle in this instance? But then, are not food and sustenance still more necessary than education? ‹Primò vivere, deinde philosophari›, the people may say; and I know not in truth what answer we can make to them.
Who knows? Those who charge me with Communism for having demonstrated the natural community of the gifts of God, are perhaps the very people who seek to violate justice in the matter of education, that is to say, to attack property in its essence. Such inconsistencies are more surprising than uncommon. [p249]