Collectivism 
 
 Translated by William heaford. 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
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 7i-
 
 COLLECTIVISM 
 
 AN IV lilB 
 
 SOCIALISM OF THH LIBERAL SCHOOL 
 
 A CRITICISM A ND AN EXPOSITION 
 
 
 9 • > t, • 
 
 A. NAQUET 
 
 Dejiuti de Paris, Ancien Vrofessoy Agregi a ia Faculti de Medicine de Paris 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 WILLIAM HEAFORD 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. 
 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 1895
 
 < » • 
 
 e t « « .
 
 Nl l(^ sic 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The orioiual title of this book, is Socialisvie Collectiviste et 
 Socialisme Libdral. ■■• 
 
 Though a convinced Socialist myself I confess that M. Naquet's 
 book struck me as a most concise and valuable contribution to 
 the discussion of the social question. I felt that the scientific tone 
 in which M. Naquet attempts the confutation of Collectivism 
 deserves full consideration at the hands of English Socialists and 
 of all those interested in the topics with which the book treats. 
 Hence the appearance of this translation, in making which I have 
 not allowed the commentator to usurp the functions of the trans- 
 lator. My chief aim has been to reproduce the thought of my 
 author, and not to add any meretricious embellishments of my 
 own. 
 
 I cannot conclude without expressing my very sincere thanks to 
 Mr, A. Larpent, whose counsel greatly lightened my task, and who 
 kindly compared my trantlation with the original. 
 
 WILLIAM HEAFORD. 
 
 Aiml, 1891. 
 
 1 Paris : E. Deiitii, ediii ur, Libraiie de la Societe des Gens de Letties, 
 1890.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOE 
 
 Translator's Prf.facb v 
 
 Introduction vii 
 
 BOOK L 
 
 Analytical Exposition of the Collectivist Docti'ine. 
 In One Chapter — The Criticism by Karl Marx and His 
 School of the Capitalist Society 1 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 Refutation of the Critical Argument of the Collectivists. 
 
 Chap. I. The Tjieory of Value 11 
 
 II. The Iron Law 19 
 
 Til. Productiveness OF Capital — Interest and Profits . 29 
 
 IV. The Law of Population 51 
 
 V, The Primitive Accumulation 64 
 
 BOOK IIL 
 
 An Analytical and Scientific Criticism of Collectivism. 
 
 I. A General Survey ....... 70 
 
 II. On the Distribution of Wealth under Collectiv- 
 ism 78 
 
 III. On the Production of Wealth ani> on Progress 
 
 UNDER Collectivism 92 
 
 IV. On Luxury 100 
 
 V. Collectivism and Liberty 107 
 
 V[. Collectivism would bring about iiie Stagnation, and 
 
 even the Retrogression, OF THE Human Race . 114 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 Practical Reforms. 
 T. The Twofold Character of Humanity , . . 127 
 II. Diverse Antinomies — Their Solution . . 132 
 III. Solution 143
 
 COLLECTIVISM AND THE SOCIALISM 
 OF THE LIBERAL SCHOOL. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 "^ The Collectivists, through the instrumentality of their different 
 
 , „ writers, foremost amouost whom Karl Marx deserves to be placed, 
 
 on account of the vigour, clearness, and precision of his criticism, 
 
 have indulged in a violent attack upon the existing system of 
 
 society — an attack which, despite the numerous and fundamental 
 
 errors with which it abounds, is none the less powerful, and is 
 
 \ entitled none the less to a serious examination. 
 
 ^ Their doctrine consists quite naturally of two parts — the one 
 
 < critical, and the other organic, embodying a plan of social re- 
 
 ^ organisation. Concerning this latter scheme the fathers of 
 
 ^ Collectivism — Lassalle, Marx — are sober in their details. They 
 
 confine themselves to an impeachment of modern capitalism, and 
 
 it is only through occasional glimpses that they exhibit to us 
 
 their ideas on the future of society. It is to their commentators — 
 
 to Deville, to Schaffle — that one must have recourse in order to 
 
 acquaint oneself with the ideas of the school as a whole. 
 
 Both parts — the criticism and the plan of organisation — lend 
 themselves equally to a scientific refutation, and necessarily so, for 
 the two parts hang together, and the one cannot be false unless 
 the other is likewise false. Let us add, however, that the scheme 
 of reconstruction raises by far the greatest of all the objections. 
 
 One of the points on which Collectivist-Socialism is essentially 
 wrong, though the fact is ignoied by its devotees — and this, too, in 
 
 203184
 
 viii Introduction. 
 
 spite of its constant aflSrmations of materialism — is that it acts 
 practically as a religion. This position, if quite logical on the part 
 of the Christian Socialists, is absolutely illogical on the part of the 
 Collectivists. 
 
 It is clear that if we start from the idea that there exists an 
 immanent justice, and if we believe that, by the working of some 
 universal law, everything must finally result in good, it will be 
 sufficient to demonstrate the existence of evil in order to be justi- 
 fied in concluding that there exists an efficacious remedy. 
 
 But when one admits neither immanent justice nor providence, 
 nothing remains to prove that it is possible to remedy the imper- 
 fections one discovers in nature ; nothing is left to prove that these 
 imperfections are not inherent in the very nature of things, and 
 are not in accordance with the laws of the universe ; nothing that 
 vouches the conclusion that it is possible to substitute, for the 
 social system the Socialists so righteously denounce, a system 
 which would be better. 
 
 The general law of the universe, without doubt, grievously 
 wounds that sentiment of justice which, with the progress of 
 civilisation, has slowly gained possession of the human mind, and 
 which does not seem to correspond to any actual reality outside 
 mankind. 
 
 This general law may be summed up in that precept, as terrible 
 as it is fatal, — Eat one another. 
 
 Throughout nature, the strong destroy the weak., the great de- 
 vour the small. 
 
 This rule everywhere prevails, even in the mineral kingdom. 
 Place in a glass receptacle a saturated solution of any salt, putting 
 therein a large number of undissolved crystals of the same salt, 
 and taking care that the crystals are of various sizes. Close the 
 receptacle, expose it during several years to the changes of the 
 seasons, and you will discover that, by a mechanical process, the 
 operation of which can easily be explained, the large crystals will 
 have become larger, whilst the small ones will have diminished in 
 volume or entirely disappeared. 
 
 A terrible competition is waged in the vegetable world, one
 
 Introdiidioit. ix 
 
 plant stamping out another. The animals devour the plants, and 
 devour each other. Man himself, after ages of cannibalism, still 
 devours the animals, and probably always will devour them. 
 Where, then, can we go to find the principle of the right to live % 
 Assuredly not in nature, since it contiiins not a trace of such a 
 principle. 
 
 Why does such an arrangement of things exist at alii 
 
 To kill a sheep in order to eat it violates the idea we form of 
 justice, and overthrows the principle of the right to live — at least, 
 so far as animals are concerned. Yet we cannot give up eating 
 if we want to live at all, and we cannot sustain life except with 
 dead bodies. Our life is bound up with the destruction of thou- 
 sands of living beings, animals or plants, and, similarly, there is 
 nothing to show that among human aggregations some of the im- 
 perfections which distress us are not inevitable. 
 
 Man, by this fact alone that he is the superior among beings, 
 raises his mind to conceptions which — since they are absolute — have 
 nowhere any objective reality, and justice might very well be one 
 of these subjective conceptions. It is quite possible that this idea 
 may be one of those which can never step outside the domain of 
 imagination into that of fact. No doubt it has not been demon- 
 strated to be so, but the contrary idea equally lacks demonstra- 
 tion, and the fact that we find it certainly impossible to realise 
 our ideal in many cases, notably in the question of food, leaves 
 the stage clear to those who maintain that the same powerlessness 
 limits equally our efforts in many other matters. 
 
 It is not enough, then, for the Collectivists to establish that the 
 society existing to-day is bad. It would, moreover, be necessary 
 for them to prove that it is possible to establish a better society 
 on the ruins of the old, and that this new society would be less 
 charged with abuses and injustice than that which it would have 
 superseded. 
 
 If they cannot prove that, all their criticisms, for that very 
 reason, become mere declamation, and remain a dead letter. 
 
 It is incumbent, therefore, upon those who do not wish to pro- 
 nounce an inconsiderate opinion, not only to weigh the objections
 
 Introduction. 
 
 raised by the Collectivist School against what that school calls the 
 capitalistic society, but also to look for what is well founded 
 amongst its hopes of re-organisation. 
 
 This is the task which we have proposed to fulfil. Our little 
 work will, therefore, be divided into four parts or books. 
 
 In the first book we shall set forth a resume of the doctrine of 
 Karl Marx and of his disciples. 
 
 The second book will be devoted to a refutation of the critical 
 argument of the Collectivists. 
 
 The third will contain an inquiry into the advantages and in- 
 conveniences which the Collectivist system would present, if it ever 
 came to be realised, and continued to exist. 
 
 In the fourth we finally examine the future of society according 
 to the views of the Liberal School of Socialism.
 
 COLLECTIVISM AND THE SOCIALISM 
 OF THE LIBERAL SCHOOL: 
 
 A CSJTICIS.V AKD A^ EXPOSITION. 
 
 BOOK L 
 
 Analytical Exposition of the Collectivist Doctrine. 
 IN ONE CHAPTER. 
 
 THE CRITICISM BY KARL MARX AND HIS SCHOOL OF THE 
 CAPITALISTIC SOCIETY. 
 
 The principal work of Karl Marx is extended to a great Icngtli, 
 and developed in a very methodical manner. It may, however, 
 be rather briefly summarised. In fact, although the author 
 thought it useful, in order to demonstrate the exactness of his 
 propositions, to enter into a crowd of algebraical illustrations, 
 these latter are useless to one who wishes to confine himself to an 
 exposition of the leading features of the system. 
 
 Marx, therein agreeing with the orthodox political economy, 
 admits that all objects the fruit of human labour have two kinds 
 of value — their value in use, otherwise called the utility which 
 they derive from their individual qualities and from the services 
 which can be derived from them — and their value in exchange, by 
 virtue of which, objects whose use is different— and fur the very 
 reason that their use is different — may enter into equivalence and 
 be exchanged one witli the other.
 
 CoUccthisni and Socialism. 
 
 A coat, a pair of shoes, a liat, a pound of meat are use- values 
 which arc serviceable to man eitlier as clothing or as food. From 
 this point of view the one article cannot be substituted for the 
 other. A coat cannot take the place of a pound of meat, any 
 more than a pair of boots can be used in the stead of a hat. 
 
 But if I have two coats, one of them is useless to me. If some 
 one else has two pounds of meat, he will not want to cat more 
 than one. One of us lacks an use-value, the meat ; the other is 
 without another use-value, a coat. It is just at this moment that 
 the exchange takes place. I give up the extra coat to some one 
 who has a pound of meat more than he can eat, and this individual 
 yields me his meat in return. Both of us gain by the transaction, 
 each having relinquished something actually useless to himself, 
 and obtaining some object for which he felt an immediate need. 
 Before the exchange took place, one of us had nothing to eat, and 
 the other had not a coat. xVfter the exchange, however, each of 
 us has found what is necessary for his protection against the in- 
 i'lemency of the weather or to nourish his body. 
 
 The question now arises — in what proportion will this exchange 
 be transacted? It is at this point that the idea of exchange- 
 value or social-value crops up. That idea may be defined as the 
 proportion according to which exchangeable objects, that is to say, 
 articles of commodity, will exchange one witli another in the 
 national market, or in the market of the world. 
 
 As, however, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to establish 
 the equivalence of one commodity in relation to all others, the 
 process adopted in chemistry, wherein a certain body is chosen as 
 the standard by which to establish tlie equivalence of all the 
 other bodies, is adopted in economics ; and a special commodity is 
 adopted — money — as a conmion measure of value to act as the 
 means of exchange, circulation, and payment. 
 
 So far Karl Marx is simply an economist who analj-scs with far- 
 sighted profundity of mind the laws that regulate human society. 
 The same observation applies to him in his studies of monetary 
 circuhition, the development of credit, etc. 
 
 His divergencies from the orthodox political economy begin
 
 Karl Mai^x and his School. 
 
 when he claims to have discovered not only a relative but an 
 absolute measure of value. 
 
 Value — by which we mean exchange-value, unless otherwise ex- 
 pressly indicated — is measured, according to the school of Marx, 
 by the quantities of human labour necessary for its production. 
 If it takes six hoiu's' labour to make a pairs of shoes and twelve 
 hours in order to make a coat, a coat is worth two pairs of shoes, 
 or, expressing the same thing in terms of money, the cost, the 
 price of the coat will be twice that of a pair of shoes. 
 
 The value of gold, like tliat of every other commodity, is what 
 it has cost to produce it. If we admit, as a hypothesis, that the 
 extraction of a gramme of gold costs six hours of human labour 
 and if we agree to take a franc as representing the value of one 
 third of this amount, the statement that an object is worth a 
 franc is tantamount to saying that its production has entailed as 
 much labour as was necessai'y to extract the third of a gramme 
 of gold out of the mine, in other words, two hours' labour. Ac- 
 cording to Marx, it is because the object produced has used up the 
 same quantity of labour as the extraction of a gramme of gold, 
 and solely for that reason, that it can be exchanged for that 
 quantity of the precious metal, or is said to be worth a franc. 
 
 After having laid down these premises, the foundations of which 
 we shall shortly examine, Marx studies the formation of what he 
 calls surplus-value. 
 
 A capitalist employs a certain fixed sum in purchasing objects, 
 and these he converts, exports, or warehouses. He afterwards 
 sells them when they have gone through one of these three pro- 
 cesses, and the amount realised by the sale exceeds what he had 
 expended for the purchase, even adding the expenses incurred in 
 their conversion, warehousing, and exportation. This excess of 
 the selling price beyond the amount at which the articles were 
 purchased represents the merchant's reward, the profit, the surplus- 
 value, and this profit, unless it is eaten up by the capitalist in the 
 satisfixction of his personal wants, will be added to his former 
 capital, will cause it to increase by so much, and will become in 
 its turn a fountain-head of fresh surplus-value.
 
 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 Where does this surplus-value come from ? 
 
 If, ou the market, there is always an equality between the 
 values exchanged, the commodities sold by the capitalist will only 
 be worth what he has paid for them ; and as he cannot sell them 
 beyond their value, the sale price equals the piu-chasing price. 
 Tlie merchant will get back his money, nothing more and nothing 
 less He disbursed a hundred pounds in order to procure them, 
 he recovers a hundred pounds in selling them, and not a penny 
 Qiore. 
 
 It cannot at all be supposed that on the market there exists 
 any difference tending to the advantage of the buyer, or to that 
 of the seller, or that the vendor has the curious privilege of 
 selling his commodity dearer than it is worth. Moreover, if it 
 did exist, such privilege would not in any way explain the 
 economic phenomenon analysed by Marx. What is a purchase 
 for one of the contracting parties is a sale for the other ; and each 
 of them is alternately buyer and seller. If, therefore, the man 
 who exchanges sells above the price, and if this, too, is the 
 general rule, he has similarly bought above the price when he 
 was a buyer, and thus the end of it all is that the two difierenccs 
 ar compensated. Instead of buying a commodity for a liundred 
 pounds to sell it again at a hundred, he lays out a Innidred and 
 ten pounds in buying it, and gets back again a hundred and ten 
 in selling it. The proportion of equality still remains, and no- 
 where does a surplus-value make an appearance. 
 
 Let us even suppose that one party has succeeded in deceiving 
 the other, and has got more for his commodity than it was worth ; 
 even that does not explain the surplus-value. Tlie deceiver 
 becomes enriched, no doxibt ; there has been a change in the dis- 
 tribution of riches ; but, after the fraud is transacted, society is 
 neither richer nor poorer than before. The sum of existing values 
 has not varied 3 it has only changed hands. A robbery has been 
 ccmmitted ; there has been no new production of value, that is to 
 say, of surplus-value. 
 
 What is it, then, that can indeed produce the surplus-value ? 
 
 After having deduced the impossibility of making out that
 
 Karl Marx and his School. 
 
 surplus-value is derivable from the process of sale or purchase, 
 that is to say, after having eliminated the hypothesis according to 
 which surplus- value \YOuld obtain its origin from the circulation 
 of commodities, Karl Marx adds as follows : — 
 
 " There remains a final supposition, in other wonls; that the 
 transformation proceeds from the use-value of the commodity, 
 that is to say, from its use or its consumption. Now we arc 
 dealing with an alteration, an augmentation of the exchange- 
 
 value. In order to obtain an exchange-value from the use-value 
 of a commodity, it would be necessary for the man with money to 
 have the good fortune to discover, amidst the circiilation of 
 commodities, and on the market itself, a commodity the use-value 
 of which might possess the peculiar virtue of being the source of 
 exchange-value, so that to consume it would be to realise some 
 labour, and, as a consequence, to create some value. 
 
 " And in reality the man we are dealing with finds upon the 
 market a commodity endowed with this specific virtue, which is 
 called the power of labour or labour-force. 
 
 "Under this name we must include the whole of the physical 
 or intellectual faculties existing in the body of a man in his living 
 personality, and which he must put in motion in order to produce 
 useful things." ^ 
 
 One step more in the analy&is, and the idea of the great German 
 Socialist will appear in all its perspicuity. 
 
 Value is the representation of labour, and can only be produced 
 by labour. 
 
 But, in order to work, two things are necessary : the labour- 
 force, inherent in man, and the elements, instruments, or raw 
 materials by which, or upon which^ labour can be exercised. 
 
 Now, in the capitalistic society, labour-foi'ce is not found in 
 the possession of the self-same individuals as those who own the 
 elements on whicli, or the means by which, the labour has to be 
 employed. The labour falls to the lot of the worker. The rest 
 belongs to that of the capitalist. 
 
 And as the capitalist can no more produce without labour than 
 ' Karl Marx. Capital (French Edition), p. 71.
 
 CoUectivisin and Socialisvi. 
 
 the worker without the raw materials or the instruments of pro- 
 duction, a contract on the market is freely entered into between 
 these two individuals. 
 
 The worker sells for a limited time his labour-power to the 
 capitalist. The latter, after having bought it, makes use of it as 
 one does of any other use-value that one buys, in consuming it. 
 Now, the way to consume tiiis labour-force is to make it work. 
 He fherefore sets it to work, and to him belongs the value it creates. 
 
 We have now to examine what is the value of this labour-power, 
 and what it is able to produce. 
 
 There is one fact which is undeniable, namely, that man can 
 produce more than he consumes. If the case were otlierwise no 
 accumulation of wealth would have been realised, and no progress 
 would have been possil^le. 
 
 Now, as, according to the Marxist theory, a thing is never worth 
 but what its production has cost, this law applies to labour-power 
 as to all the other commodities. 
 
 What does it cost to produce labour-power ? 
 
 The totality of all the objects necessary for the sustenance of 
 the worker during the time he has parted with his activities, 
 augmented by what I purposely term the restoration of the worker, 
 that is to say, by the cost of reproduction, in other words, the 
 maintenance of the family during the same period. 
 
 Let us hypothetically admit that the daily sum necessary to 
 secure the maintenance and reproduction of the worker is four 
 francs. The labour-force, or the wages that pay for it, are, there- 
 fore, worth four francs. The law which regulates value does not 
 permit the wage to raise itself above that amount. This limita- 
 tion of wages to the amount absolutely indispensable to the 
 worker in order to live and reproduce himself, proceeds from an 
 unconquerable law, one which Lassalle has called the iron laxo. 
 
 Let us continue this supposition by admitting that, in order to 
 earn the four francs, six hours of effort, of human labour, are 
 needed, and that the worker only works six hours. The wage 
 will just sim2:)ly be refunded; not an atom of supplementary value 
 will be created, and no surplus-value will be produced.
 
 Karl Marx and /lis ScJiool. 
 
 But if, instead of working six hours, the worker works twelve, 
 and if he gives to the capitalists, beyond the six hours of necessary 
 work or paid labour, another six hours of supplementary work, or 
 unpaid labour, that is to say, of swylus-lahotir, he thus entirely 
 creates a fresh value of four francs, which belongs to the capitalist, 
 and goes to increase his capital, and constitutes surplus-value or 
 profit. 
 
 Karl Marx after this shows how the capitalist, in consequence of 
 competition, and without, on that account, any reproach being due 
 to the individuals who are subject to the law which regulates the 
 economic relations, and which the capitalist is unable to evade, is 
 always obliged to aim for the continual diminution of the necessary 
 labour iu its relation with surplus-labour ; how he is compelled to 
 strive to obtain every day a greater proportion of unpaid labour, 
 and how, in short, he realises these ends either by prolonging 
 the labour-day when the law does not step in to limit it, by 
 increasing the intensity of labour, or by augmenting its produc- 
 tiveness by means of co-operation or of machinery. But all theee 
 are secondary developments which, though indispensable in a 
 complete and masterly work like that of Marx, have no need to 
 occupy us now. They do not bring any fresh light to assist us in 
 understanding the doctrine we are analysing. 
 
 Thus man, being endowed witli a productive power superior to 
 his needs of consumption, can create more wealth than he destroys. 
 On the other hand, in consequence of the diflierence that exists 
 between those who own labour, and those in whom this labour- 
 force resides, the latter are obliged to sell that commodity at 
 what may be properly called its value, that is to say, for an exact 
 equivalent of the consumption necessary for the worker. The 
 excess in production over consumption belongs henceforth to the 
 capitalist, who thus sees his fortune increase day by day, whilst 
 the worker never succeeds in appropriating to himself — beyond 
 what is strictly necessary for him to live and reproduce himself — 
 the smallest particle of the values he creates. 
 
 Advancing still further, Karl Marx lays down that the conse- 
 quence of machinery is to develop eveiy day, more and more, the
 
 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 great enterprises to the detriment of the small, to expropriato 
 gradually the worker who owns the instruments of labour, then 
 the small tradesman and, finally, the middleman, to the advan- 
 tage of the great capitalist — the number of those owning capital 
 thus acquiring a tendency to rapidly diminish, while the wealth 
 of those who remain capitalists increases, and the number of paid 
 workers, on the contrary, incessantly augmenting. 
 
 Marx, as we have said, docs not impute any blame for this state 
 of things to the individual capitalists who are under the fatal laws 
 of competition. He recognises, moreover, the utility of capital, 
 and considers the capitalistic era through which v;e ai'e passing 
 as a necessary phase in the development of society. But he none 
 the less holds that, on the whole, capital is evolved to the preju- 
 dice of labour, and constitutes a great spoliation. 
 
 The chief of the Collcctivist school foresees, it is true, one objec- 
 tion. In order to produce a primitive surplus-value, thei-e must 
 have been an accumulation anterior to that sui'plus-value, and 
 this accumulation may have been, as the economists contend, the 
 fruit of labour. 
 
 But this objection does not in any way incommode him. By 
 means of an assemblage of facts often convincing but alwa3-s 
 partial, and lacking in generality, he strives to prove that the 
 primitive accumulation was due to war, to conquest, violence, 
 confiscation of property, to waste of the national property, and to 
 the usui'pation of the common lands. He adds, moreover, that 
 even if it were due to labour, the fact would not touch his system. 
 Capital being, in his eyes, a dead thing, and consequently unpro- 
 ductive, it is clear that, according to these premises, the primitive 
 accumulation must have been promptly consumed and replaced 
 by surplus-value pure and simple, that is to say, by unpaid laboui'. 
 
 Marx comes to the conclusion that all the instruments of labour 
 should be common to all. The soil, the mines, the tools of all 
 kinds, the raw materials, the means of storing and transport 
 would all appertain to society. The only things that would be 
 personal property are products intended for individual consump- 
 t;ipp, the tools that one can handle without the co-ODCration of
 
 Karl Marx and Jiis ScJiool. 
 
 others, or any mechanical aid — for example, a needle — but under 
 the proviso that none of these things would be made use of in 
 order to perform labour for which a remuneration would bo sought. 
 
 Society would thus be substituted for capitalistic industry for 
 the production of all useful objects, which would be })laced at the 
 disposal of the consumers in the general storehouses. 
 
 How would the products, thus created, get afterwards into the 
 bands of the consumers ? 
 
 It is at this point that the modern Collectivist school separates 
 itself from the old sentimental communism. With the old com- 
 munists consumption, like production, was to be collective. Ob- 
 jects of luxury, or useless objects would, according to their views, 
 cease to be produced ; aud every one would freely take of all in- 
 dispensable objects as much as he desired. The doctrine was 
 summed up in the motto, which Louis Blanc has made his own : 
 "To each according to his needs, from each according to his 
 powers." In a word, one would consume as much as he wants, 
 and would work as little as he wishes. 
 
 It is clear that such a doctrine could not be upheld by minds 
 so powerful and so scientifically constituted as those of Marx and 
 Lassalle. 
 
 To admit that doctrine would be to launch oneself into the 
 chimera of labour made attractive and production unlimited. As 
 soon as one gives up such fantastic pi-emises, the notion will not 
 bear examination. If labour is an eflfort naturally repugnant to 
 man, although existence cannot be conceived without it ; if, more- 
 over, the products of labour are not, like the air, to that degree 
 unlimited that everyone can draw upon them without discretion 
 and without restricting the consumption of others; if, in a word, 
 work is painful and its products are limited, the absurdity of the 
 metaphysical communism of the end of last century and the 
 beginning of this must be apparent to the eyes of the least obser- 
 vant. Lassalle and Marx took care not to indulge in such dreams. 
 
 With these great thinkers, whose ideas we do not entertain but 
 to who^e great intellectual power we pay our homage, consump- 
 tion ought to continue the same as it is to-day — personal, free,
 
 lo Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 limited by the labour of each individual. Tlio only diflcrcncc is 
 that — capital, being no longer in a position to deduct, as its profit, 
 a part of production — the objects produced would be more equit- 
 ably distributed. 
 
 ISIetallic money would be suppressed, at least for tlie purpose of 
 exchange witliin the Collcclivist communit3^ It would be replaced 
 by labour-notes, which would become the true and only money of 
 the future. Each worker would receive a certain quantity of 
 these notes in proportion to the duration of the labour he fur- 
 nishes — it being quite understood that this duration would be 
 proportionally diminished to the extent of the sums representing 
 tlie expenses of general utility, tliat is to say, the expenses which 
 are now provided for by taxation. 
 
 Let us make a supposition in order to determine these notions ; 
 let ns admit that a third of the total production is destined to meet 
 that category of expenses which may be designated by the name 
 of " collective consumption ; " in that case, every worker who has 
 given three liours' labour would receive a note for two hours' 
 labour. 
 
 Karl J\rarx, as we have already said, is not explicit on these 
 points ; and we must go to his connnentators — to Deville, and 
 Schiiffle — in order to know somewhat completely the ideas of the 
 school on this liead.
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 Refutation of the Critical Argument of the Collectivists. 
 
 ■: o :- 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE THEORY OF VALUE. 
 
 The first objection that may be raised against the criticism of 
 Karl Marx rests on his theory of value, wlucli is totally anti- 
 scientific. 
 
 According to Karl Marx, as we have seen, an object is strictly 
 worth what it has cost to produce, and is worth nothing more. 
 This conception is absolutely erroneous. The cost of production, 
 if it enters as an element in the fixing of value, does so only in a 
 subsidiary manner, simply as a matter of consequence, and leaves 
 the chief and fundamental place to utilit3^ 
 
 Dealing with the economists who say that " the value of an 
 object is that which the consumer is willing to pay for it," Marx 
 contends that this is simply a tautology, a vicious circle, as tliough 
 one had said, "the value of an object is what an object is worth." 
 
 We shall presently see that, under an appearance of precision 
 that dazzles at the first glance, tlie definition of Marx contains a 
 tautology identical with the one with which he reproaclies the 
 cuiTcnt political economy. 
 
 An object is freely furnished by the hand of nature, say a fruit, 
 wild game, a diamond. "We may suppose that it had cost nothing 
 to take possession of it. It prcocnted itself at hap-hazard to the 
 })asser-by who did not seek it, and who only had to take it without 
 labour. From the point of view at which the CoUectivist school
 
 12 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 places itself — and Mavx is very positive on this point — this object 
 is without value. 
 
 Yet who does not see that it will have a value, and that that 
 value will be found in its scarcity, combined with its utility, and 
 in the desire, felt by a large number of human beings, to possess 
 its use-value ! 
 
 Will the Marxist school contend that tliis is to stretch the use 
 of the term value beyond its proper sense'? Will it say that to 
 receive the price of a diamond found without effort is equivalent 
 to a robbery % But if such is the case, to whom shall the diamond 
 belong;? Who will have the rig;ht to make iise of it? 
 
 If there only exists but one diamond, and all the world wants it, 
 we shall certainly have to find out to whom it will have to go, 
 unless by a sentiment of equality we deprive everybody equally of 
 its use. 
 
 The means of determining tae one to wliom the diamond shall 
 appertain can be found only in the sum of the sacrifices which 
 every one will consent to make in exchange for it. otherwise called 
 the price which it will suit the purchasers to pay in order to procure 
 it. This price will constitute the value of the gem, for it cannot 
 be admitted that the price — that is to say, a value — would be given 
 in exchange for a non-value. 
 
 It is therefore contrary to science to say that an object is with- 
 out value if it has cost nothing to produce. This holds good, no 
 doubt, if the object is sufficiently general to be at the disposal of 
 all, so that we can all consume as much of it as is necessary, with- 
 out depriving anybody else ; as, for instance, the atmospheric air, 
 or the water in the river. But as soon as the object no longer 
 sufficiently abounds to be at the disposal of all in unlimited quanti- 
 ties, it assumes a value, and that value is proportioned to its 
 scarcity and utility. 
 
 Thus, water which has no price attached to it on the banks of 
 tiie Lcman, becomes of immense value in certain regions of 
 Western Africa where it runs short. There, the negro who knows 
 the whereabouts of a well, even though it be a natural well, takes 
 more care not to reveal its existence than certainly we do in pre-
 
 The Theory of Value. 73 
 
 serving a flagon of the most precious of wines. AVine, which is a 
 product of labour, is assuredly worth less with us than water in 
 these unhap[)y countries. 
 
 Such is the first error of the Collectivists in relation to value. 
 The second they commit is of an absolutely different kind. 
 
 If it is not true that every object, gi-atuitously given by nature, 
 is destitute of value, it is not less false to say that every product 
 of human industry has some value. A product possesses no value 
 if it is of no use to humanity. 
 
 A man who would amuse himself by breaking ice on the top of 
 Mount Blanc, or of the Yung-Frau, would certainly accomplish a 
 very troublesome labour. Nevertheless, he would not create any 
 value, because he would not find any one who would consent to 
 receive the product of such labour in exchange for his own. 
 
 Marx, however, willingly acknowledges this. " No object," he 
 says, " can be a value if it is not a useful thing. If it is useless, 
 the labour it embodies is fruitlessly expended, and consequently 
 does not create value." ^ 
 
 Perfectly true ; but how is it that the writer did not perceive 
 that between the object which has a great utility and of which it 
 is almost impossible for a man to deprive himself, and the object, 
 the usefulness of which is nil, there exists quite a series of grada- 
 tions % How is it that he did not see that it is for that reason 
 impossible to consider all kinds of labour as being equally produc- 
 tive, though they are subject to the sole condition of not being 
 entirely useless? How is it that he did not recognise that between 
 the two extremes — the fantastic creature who breaks ice on a 
 glacier, and the husbandman who causes wheat to grow — there 
 is a series of intermediate Avorkers, whose products are of various 
 utility and involving values equally various % 
 
 Karl Marx lays down too marked a distinction between exchange- 
 value and use-value. The two things are, it is true, diff"creut, but 
 they are intimately connected. Use-value carries with it the 
 demand for its enjoyment and creates exchange-value. 
 
 It happens, we know, that when a commodity of consider- 
 1 Karl Marx. Capital (French Edition), p. IG.
 
 14 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 able utility is rave upon the market, and for that same reason 
 fetches liigh prices, tlie capitalists and labourers rush towai'ds that 
 branch of industry which concerns itself with its production be- 
 cause such industry promises them great advantages. Doubt- 
 less, in doing so, they bring about a glut in the produce, the 
 price of which lowers for that very reason and enters into equili- 
 brium with the price of other products. It follows, no doubt, as a 
 result, that at the end oi a certain time, and with everything the 
 scarcity of which is not a natural necessity, the value of the 
 various objects is brought back into something like proportion 
 with the labour they have cost. But this fact is simply a con- 
 sequence. The time expended in labour has become proportional 
 to the value, but does not constitute the value. The latter 
 remains independent of it, and has really no other measure than 
 the usefulness of the object and the greater or lesser demand 
 which is made for it. 
 
 The Socialists are, indeed, forced to agree with this to a very 
 large extent. After having taken, in a general way, the time con- 
 sumed in labour as the normal measure of value, Marx lays 
 down the distinction between the labour socially necessary for the 
 production of an object and the labour actually expended by the 
 worker for its production. 
 
 "The time socially necessary for the production of commodities 
 is the time required by the work executed with an average degree 
 of skill and intensity, and under conditions which are normal, 
 under given social conditions. After the introduction in England 
 of weaving by machinery, it needed perhaps half as much labour 
 as formerly to form into a texture a certain quantity of thread. 
 As for the English weaver, he still required the same time to 
 effect this transformation \ but, from the time this change occurred, 
 tlie produce of the weaver's hour of personal labour represented 
 no more than the half of a social hour of labour, and produced no 
 more than a half of its former value." 
 
 The Socialists go further than this, and are led, despite them- 
 selves, by the logic of facts, to recognise the existence of a com- 
 posite labour which is nothing but a multiple of common labour.
 
 The Theory of Value. 15 
 
 The J even admit that, by reason of the fact that they will be 
 more repugnant than others, certain kinds of labour will command 
 a price above the average, and that the law of supply and demand 
 will determine what the price will be. The passage in which M. 
 Deville sets forth that theory deserves to be quoted : — 
 
 "It is/ in the same way, by exciting self-interest that we shall 
 secure the performance of labour especiully dangerous or re- 
 pugnant, by an increase being made in the price of an hour of 
 ordinary labour. It will be laid down, for example, that four 
 hours devoted to these ungrateful tasks will be equivalent to six 
 or seven hours of common labour. In all this, moreover, there 
 will be nothing laid down arbitrarily ; the difference, for the same 
 gain, between the time employed in ordinary labour and that 
 employed in disagreeable labour, will vary in accordance with the 
 supply and demand of labour belonging to the last category." 
 
 The fact is, the measure of human labour does not exist. And 
 it would be impossible to make of labour the basis of value — 
 socially considered — unless one possessed a measure of labour. 
 
 As regards steam engines such a measure exists. "We know 
 exactly how much fuel will have to be consumed in order to pro- 
 duce a given result, and we may com[)are the results accordingly. 
 
 Not so with man ! Has any method yet been discovered by 
 means of which it would be possible to measure intellectual labour, 
 and state its equivalent in muscular labour % 
 
 If we compare the hard muscular labour which lifts heavy 
 weights with the labour that may be called extremely nice, such 
 as that of the watchmaker minutely seeking, with his magnifying 
 glass in hand, to bring together the machinery of a watch— which 
 of them uses up man the most % 
 
 If we take the intellectual labour of the poet, that of the 
 mathematician, the labour of the man who devotes himself to 
 works of imagination or deduction — which of them consumes 
 most brain matter 1 Is it even certain that the diflerence in the 
 amount consumed is the same amongst all men who perform these 
 diverse categories of labour? Can we not admit that the born 
 poet who makes verses, and excellent ones too, as a pastime, ex-
 
 i6 Collectivism ami Socialism. 
 
 pends much less brain matter in reaching this result than another 
 person having no poetic gift, who sits down to write a detestable 
 poem % 
 
 This is sui'ely the problem requiring solution before we can 
 establish a measure of value based on labour — a solution which 
 we unhappily ignore to-day, and which in every probability we 
 shall ignore for a long time to come ! 
 
 Not having any precise and fixed measure of labour except its 
 duration, which signifies nothing, the disciples of Marx and Marx 
 himself have been obliged to have recourse, in order to find a 
 measure for it, to the law of supply and demand, that is to say, to 
 utility. 
 
 To measure labour by its utility, after having made of labour 
 the measuie for the value of products, simply amounts to taking 
 utility as the measure of value. 
 
 When the Socialists spoke about the suppression of metallic 
 money and its substitution by labour-notes, they fancied that 
 they had brought about an enormous change ; they have really 
 changed nothing but words. 
 
 At the present moment in France the third of a gramme of 
 gold, or five grammes of silver [= one franc], being the common 
 standard, and the law of supply and demand making known the 
 quantity of one of these precious metals for which the producers 
 arc willing to exchange their commodities, the value of these 
 commodities is expressed in a certain number of grammes of gold 
 or silver. 
 
 To-morrow — supposing the Socialist state of things realised then 
 — the value of commodities would be expressed in hours of labour. 
 But these hours themselves having been determined by the law of 
 supply and demand, absolutely nothing in society would have ^^ 
 been changed, except the name of the measure. 
 
 The economists are guilty of tautology in saying : " An object is 
 worth what its value is." Agreed ! But Karl Marx commits 
 nnother tautology when, after having said that the value of an 
 object is represented by the number of hours of work which 
 have been required to pioduce it, he is driven, in determining
 
 The Theory of Valiic. 17 
 
 what this number is, to say : " Labour is worth what it is 
 worth." 
 
 The fact is there are many notions which arc not susceptible of 
 precise definition. For example, nature does not show us what 
 matter is. All that it exhibits are certain bodies. But amongst these 
 bodies so different we find certain properties which are common to 
 them all, notably gravity. We then make an abstraction, and 
 admit tliat there is something common, something identical in 
 them all, and to this we give the name of matter. 
 
 We obtain thus the following succession of ideas : — 
 
 o 
 
 Bodies — Gravity — Matter. 
 
 We take a step still further, we measure the quantity of matter 
 by the quantity of gravity — by the weight — and we complete our 
 series, which thus becomes : — 
 
 Bodies — Grav ity — Matter — We ight. 
 
 We know, however, absolutely nothing of what matter is in 
 essence. 
 
 It is equally so, in the realm of economics, with value. 
 
 Commerce and industry exhibit to us only one thing — com- 
 modities. These commodities vary to infinity in their qualities 
 iud utilities ; but in all their properties so multiplied and diverse 
 there is one thing which is common to all — exchangeability. 
 
 Our minds then rise to the absolute conception of some one 
 thing which exists in all things, and we call this something 
 " value," in the same way as in physics we have called " matter " 
 the abstraction made from the common and general properties of 
 bodies. 
 
 Let us continue the comparison. Suppose we want to measure 
 the quality of matter contained in a body by the quantity of 
 gravity within it — not having any means of fixing the amount to 
 an absolute degree, we confine ourselves to a comparison of one 
 body with another, and we take an unit for the mensuration o'' 
 
 c
 
 1 8 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 gravity, an unit of weight, viz. the weight of a centimetre cube of 
 water at 4° centigrcides. This unit we call a gramme. 
 
 We proceed in the same manner with value. We compare the 
 commodities on the market according to the property they have 
 of interchanging one with the otlier, and in order to make the 
 operation easy, so that the results therefrom may be always sus- 
 ceptible of comparison, we take an unit of value, called ix franc, 
 which determines prices, precisely as we took an unit of weight to 
 determine weights. The market place, with the law of supply and 
 demand, acts the part of a pair of scales, and we have the two 
 parallel series : — 
 
 Bodies. Gravity. Matter. Weight. 
 
 Commodities. Exchangeahility. Value. Price. 
 
 Karl Marx's theory of value thus falls to the ground, and with 
 it, as we shall see in an after chapter, the economic consequences 
 he derived from it with regard to the part played by capital.
 
 CHAPTER TI. 
 
 TUB IRON LAW. 
 
 We have already made known what Lassalle calls " the iron law." 
 It is the supposed law in virtue of which wages are strictly 
 limited to the amount indispensable to the worker in order to 
 live and to reproduce himself, without his being able, in a perma- 
 nent and general way, to raise himself above that amount, or to 
 sink beneath it. 
 
 I say, advisedly, in a permanent and general way, because, when 
 one opposes a doctrine, it is only just to present it such as it 
 really is. 
 
 The Socialists do not in any woy deny that, at certain times 
 and in certain places, wages may sometimes be able to rise above 
 what is barely necessary, Tliey admit that, temporarily, they 
 may rise above, or may descend below, thiit point. The super- 
 abundance of hands in an industry, combined with a slackening 
 of the demand, may, according to them, cause wages to fall even 
 below what is necessary to the worker for his subsistence. But 
 they recognise, on the other hand, that the inverse result is 
 often produced in consequence of an increase in the demand, com- 
 bined with a falling off in the supply. But they think — and M. 
 Jules Guesde, who has published a very interesting little book on 
 the subject, tells us so very clearly — that these are simply passing 
 effects which do not in any way impair the accuracy of the law as 
 applied to the consideration of economic phenomena extending 
 over a certain lime and spread over a certain area.. You only 
 have, as it were, in these passing effects one of those innumerable 
 series of oscillatioui: which, notwithstanding the swaying move- 
 ment of the waves of light or heat, for all that constitute purely 
 rectilineal rays of light and heat. 
 
 19
 
 20 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 It is at this standpoint we must place ourselves iu order to dis- 
 cuss the iron law, and from which I am led to attach uo very great 
 importance to the statistics which are placed before me, and which 
 always have a special application to certain limited areas, and to 
 periods no less limited. 
 
 For instance, M. Francis Laiir put forward a little while ago, 
 in La Presse, certain figures from which it very clearly follows 
 that the wages of the workers in Belgian mines have increased 
 since the last twenty years not only nominally, in money, but 
 actually as well, by their purchasing power ; in a word, that the 
 Belgian coal-worker can procure for himself to-day, with hi.^ earn- 
 ings, more articles of consumption than twenty years ago. 
 
 I take these figures of M. Francis Laur as correct, but I hold it 
 as equally certain that they will not convince a single Socialist. 
 I have not heard what M. Guesde has said about them, supposing 
 he has read them at all, but I know what he would say as though 
 I had heard him say it. There is no doubt that he considers these 
 facts as purely contingent, like one of those movements of oscilla- 
 tion, the general effect of which is represented by the mean result. 
 It cannot be doubted that he would not attach any signification 
 to such figures. 
 
 This question of the iron law is, in fact, one of the fundamental 
 notions of Socialism. 
 
 If that law is correct, we should have to write over the labour 
 world, transformed into a social prison-house, the famous line of 
 Dante : — 
 
 " Lasciate ogni speranza vol ch'cntrate." 
 
 This law says to the worker, — Give up every hope of enriching 
 j-ourself. Whether you are industrious, or view work of any sort 
 with loathing, whether you are saving or spendthrift, the same 
 result will follow ; capital will absorb all socially created surplus- 
 value, and will only leave in your hands what is indispensable to 
 keep you from dying of hunger. Even if the capitalists wished 
 to act otherwise they would not have the power to do so. The
 
 The Iron Law. 21 
 
 inflexible law imposes itself upon ns irrespective of all human 
 volition, unless the social organisation steps in. 
 
 It is clear, then, that, even if these conclusions were most 
 strongly established, it would still remain to be proved that 
 Collectivism must be necessarily superior to the system we have 
 now. Nor does it necessarily follow, because a system is shown 
 to be bad, that another may be better, nor even that it may be 
 possible ta find a better. 
 
 It would at least remain, as a result of those conclusions, that 
 the detestation of the wage system would justify all kinds of in- 
 vestigations and excuse every Utopia. 
 
 But is the iron law true % 
 
 Yes, it is true in a limited and contracted sense, but it is 
 not true with the character of universality with which Lassalle, 
 Karl Marx, and Jules Guesde invest it. 
 
 In every period of time there is a minimum consumption, below 
 which no worker, and hardly any object of charity, will descend. 
 If we take this minimum as the basis of the law of wages, the law 
 is true, and it may be said that purely detail modifications, tend- 
 ing either to raise wages or to reduce the price of commodities, 
 do not exert any appreciable effect as a whole. 
 
 But the minimum consumption is not this tantum of nourish- 
 ment, incapable of compression and extension, and necessary in 
 order that the worker may live and pi-opagate. The tanttim 
 representing wages is subject to extension and compression, and 
 Lassalle himself, in order to lend an appearance of plausibility to 
 his law, was obliged to say: "The tavtvm of subsistence necessary 
 in a given time and under certain conditions." 
 
 Now, this innocent addition to the phrase overthrows the whole 
 edifice, and destroys the drift of the law. It was, however, 
 necessary, for if it had been suppressed, the absurdity of the pro- 
 position would have declared itself at once. 
 
 In these days the most unfortunate worker, even the poor 
 wretch who goes to the London workhouses when work is slack, is 
 better lodged and more substantially nourished than were our 
 forefathers, when they lived by the chase, dressed themselves
 
 22 CoUcctivisin and Socialism. 
 
 in the skins of animals, and sheltered themselves in natural 
 caverns. 
 
 Without even going back so far, Ave see to-day a Germjui work- 
 man, a Belgian, or an Italian, content himself with less wages than 
 a French workman, and in a still greater proportion, a Chinese 
 workman lives on a salary infinitely smnller, for equal work, than 
 that which an American demands. These differences between the 
 minimum consumption with which men are content, or with which 
 they have been contented in certain places and during certain 
 periods of time, constitute the clearest and most absolute refuta 
 tion that can be made of the proposition of Lassalle. 
 
 M. Jules Guesde, a strong supporter of this proposition, foresees 
 the objection and strives to refute it. 
 
 If the Troglodyte consumed less than the actual worker of 
 to-day, it was because he did less work ; working less, he used np 
 his organisation less, and in so doing, he had less need to repair it. 
 
 The argument is a trifle hypothetical. If the Troglodyte was 
 not employed in a manufactory, nor even at a trade, it was, at 
 least, necessary for him — by fishing, by the chase, or by gather- 
 ing fruit — to procure for himself the fish, the game, or the fruit 
 necessary for his sustenance. For that reason he had to traverse 
 considerable distances, perform enormous feats of walking, and 
 bring hither from aftir the game he had killed or the fruit he had 
 gathered. There is nothing to prove that the organic combustion, 
 the human wear and tear required by these efforts, was less than 
 that Avhich takes place to-day with the metal-worker or the miner. 
 
 Possibly it may be so, but the proof has not been adduced, and 
 it is a singular mode of reasoning to base one's argument on facts 
 which have not been established. 
 
 M. Guesde will reply, perhaps, that neither has the direct con- 
 trary to his thesis yet been proved. 
 
 But, in these days ! can he maintain that between Germans, 
 Belgians, Italians, j"]n^dish, or French, such organic diflercnces 
 exist as would justify the difference in consumption by the 
 workers of these diverse nations 1 Will he contend that in these 
 instances there is presented to us something analogous to what
 
 The Iron Law. 
 
 occurs in two machines, one of whicli burns more coal tlian the 
 otlier in creating an equal quantum of horse-power ? 
 
 He sajs as much so far as Chinese are concerned, and seeks 
 thus to explain the very low wages that suffice for their existence. 
 But here again he affirms and does not prove. To do this it 
 would be necessary to show the organic and physiological differ- 
 ences which allow of this better adaptation of force. It would 
 have to be established that if the Chinese consent to work for a 
 smaller salary, it is because their organism, as a more perfect 
 machine, permits them to produce a greater effect with a lesser 
 expenditure of human fuel, and to better transform chemical 
 action into mechanical or intellectual action, in which case this 
 people would become the superior race destined to overcome us 
 all; and it would have to be seen whether all this, on the contrary, 
 is not owing, purely and simply, to the fact tluit, being less refined 
 and having more modest tastes, they content themselves v/ith 
 much less than our European or American workmen ; whether, in 
 a word, their inferior consumption is a consequence of the greater 
 perfection in their case of the human machine, or is nothing but 
 a result of their volition. 
 
 But M. Guesde does not disturb himself with all these things. 
 He has need of a law, and he lays it down. In the examination 
 of facts he finds obstacles in his path, certain phenomena which 
 are at variance with his law. But this fact does not stop him 
 one minute. He makes some sort of hypothesis to explain the 
 disturbing agents; then, having presented to us the hypothesis he 
 has made as a demonstrated truth, he goes on his way. Never- 
 theless, this hypothesis — with which, strictly speaking, he may 
 indulge himself, when the question concerns the Chinese, on ac- 
 count of the enormous distance which separates that race from 
 our Caucasian races — can it be conceded to him in regard to the 
 people who inhabit Europe ? 
 
 Where, then, has he found the organic differences, of which he 
 speaks, between the French, the Belgian, the German, the Italian, 
 and the Spaniard % 
 
 At the most all he could say would be that it is the action of
 
 24 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 tlic climate — that in warm countries there is less need of heat- 
 giving foods, and that, as a consequence, the Italian and the 
 Spaniard require less to eat and to drink than the Frenchman. 
 
 This would be true on the one condition, however, that the 
 Italian were employed in Italy or the Spaniard in Spain, As 
 soon as they both come to Paris they are placed in the same 
 climatic conditions as the Parisian workman, and physiologically 
 require to consume as mucli. If they consume less it is because 
 wliat the Parisian workman receives is not the tantum strictly 
 necessary to maintain life and to alloiu for his reprochiction. He 
 receives a sum superior to this minimum, seeing that the Spaniard 
 and the Italian transplanted at Paris are contented with a smaller 
 salary, and yet live. 
 
 In the case of the German and the Belgian the proof is much 
 more striking still. The German inhabits a country colder than 
 France. It is the same with the Belgian. Being in need of the 
 same quantity of food as we do to build up again his tissues and 
 to produce the same quantity of useful labour, he requires more 
 foods of a heat-giving kind than we do, seeing he has to struggle 
 against more severe seasons. IIow, then, does it happen that the 
 Belgians and Germans maintain themselves on a smaller amount 
 if, as Lassalle, Karl Marx, and Jules Guesde affirm, the sum which 
 the Parisian workman receives represents the minimum necessary 
 to a human being in order to live while producing a certain 
 amount of force % 
 
 M. Guesde, in analysing the phenomenon of wages, recognises, 
 as we have shown, that certain oscillations take place, that at 
 certain moments the remuneration of the workman may be raised 
 above the minimum fixed by the iron law, but that, as a set-off, 
 it falls below that minimum, whereby an equilibrium is re-estab- 
 lished. 
 
 That the remuneration should rise above the minimum is con- 
 ceivable, but it seems to me difficult to admit that it can go below 
 it. To affirm that the salary represents an irreducible minimum, 
 and tlicn to declare that it sinks down lower still, appears to me 
 a singularly vicious mode of reasoning.
 
 The Iron Law. 
 
 This argument reuiinds me of the old story of the woman to 
 whom the devil had promised one day to fully accomplish the two 
 wishes she might prefer, 
 
 " Show me the most faithful of all the lovers existing at this 
 moment % " said she. 
 
 The devil obeyed, and brought to her the pearl of love that she 
 desired to know. 
 
 " Very well," she said. Then, after having well inspected this 
 ideal lover : " Now show me a lover more faithful still % " 
 
 The devil was caught, and was unable to grant the second 
 wish. 
 
 The Socialist writer, it is true, gets out of the difficulty in a very 
 ingenious manner. The minimum of necessary consumption is an 
 average, and does not represent a fixed quantity for all individuals. 
 When wages are reduced and fall below the average minimum, 
 there are certain natures more robust, stronger, and more capable 
 of supporting long privations. These alone resist in such cases ; 
 the weakly die, and the reduction of the population has the effect 
 of i-aisiug wages and bringing them back to the indispensable 
 minimum. 
 
 Theoretically the reasoning holds together, but the facts arc 
 decidedly against it, for we do not observe that the rise in wages, 
 following upon a heavy fall — a fall analogous to the one which 
 took place in the wages of the cotton-workers during the War of 
 Secession in America — is preceded by one of those epidemics 
 which decimate populations, as we should expect from the ex- 
 planation of M. Gucsde. 
 
 ^loreover, there is an argument to which, in my opinion, no 
 reply can be made. The consumption of luxuries — and I under- 
 stand by this word the consumption of useless or harmful things 
 — has taken root amongst the workers. 
 
 I do not speak of alcohol, which is perhaps more a poison than a 
 food, but which is, after all, a food, and concerning which there 
 may be some equivocation. I will only speak of tobacco. The 
 question is discussed whether tobacco is injurious or not. Some 
 hold that it is harmless. Others hold it to be the pronounced
 
 Collectivism and Socialisv?. 
 
 enemy of the human race, and there is perhaps some amount of 
 exaggeration on both sides ; but no physician, no physiologist, has 
 ever pretended that tobacco is useful, that it preserves health, that 
 it facihtates the organic functions, or multiplies muscular power. 
 The least that one can say is that it is useless ; that it serves to no 
 purpose ; that it is a consumption with which one can dispense. 
 
 And, nevertheless, nearly all workmen suKjke ; if they smoke it 
 is because they can economise upon the consumption that is useful 
 and reproductive wherewithal to give themselves the luxury of 
 this unnecessary consumption. They would just as well, if they 
 wished it, be able to put in a money-box the pence which they 
 spend for the purchase of tobacco. In a word, they receive more 
 than the tantum which is indispensable for life. The Collectivists 
 will reply that the use of tobacco has become a necessity, and that, 
 if that need disappeared, wages would decline. Such a contingency 
 may be possible, and it is in this that the iron law is true, pro- 
 vided that you limit its signification ; but it remains none the less 
 established that the minimum consumption, which the iron law 
 permits, is capable of indefinite extension, and allows the worker 
 to create new wants for himself by means of fresh means of enjoy- 
 ment, and to take a larger part every day in what Malthas has 
 called the banquet of life. 
 
 An argument, equally convincing-, is suggested by the rest which 
 the workers give themselves without thereto being compelled. 
 The Parisian workman who takes a holiday on Monday after 
 having done no work on the Sunday, the lazzarone of Naples 
 who formerly struck work all the week, after having done a single 
 day's labour, demonstrate that the day, or the days, on which 
 either of them worked have been paid for beyond the amount 
 required for their maintenance. 
 
 The story is told of a traveller passing through Naples during 
 the reign of the Bourbons who, seeing one of the lazzaroni 
 stretched near the door of a palace with his head in the shade 
 and his feet exposed to the sun, asked the fellow how much ho 
 had earned the last time he had done any work. 
 
 The lazzarone indicated a certain number of tarl and haiocchi.
 
 The Iron Laiu. 27 
 
 "But," said the travellei, "if you li:icl worked all the week you 
 would have been able to iDvocure for yourself a pair of boots." 
 
 " 1 am not such a fool ! " replied the Neapolitan. " I should 
 have become accuFtomed to them, and it would have been 
 necessary for me to always work to obtam oihers when the first 
 pair would have been worn out." 
 
 Such is the iron law. A breach is made in it bv the innumer- 
 able savings-bank accounts, which, in France, are opened by the 
 working-class, by the sums, individually small, but great as a 
 whole, which that class saves and invests every year, and also — as 
 M. Paul Leroy-Boaulieu points out — by the " war fund," which 
 the working-class associations bring together In order to subsidise 
 the strikers. If the iron law were true, having the inflexibility 
 that Lassalle and Karl Marx — by distorting a relative truth 
 formulated by political economy — wish to attribute to it, all pro- 
 gress would have been impossible. The progress that has been 
 made, whatever one may say to the contrary, in dress, in housing, 
 and in food, afford the most crushing crioicism that one can give 
 of the iron law. 
 
 This we know fur certain, that under given circumstances, with 
 given customs and fixed wants^ there may be established a certain 
 minimum consumption around which wages oscillate ; and there 
 is no doubt that from this position we may start in throwing a 
 certain light on the reforms which, at the first blush, seem im- 
 portant, but which, made clear by that light, appear afterwards of 
 no value. But between that point and the conclusion that this 
 minimum consumption must be an organic limit at once incom- 
 pressible and inexpansive, there yawns an abyss, and this abyss 
 will have to be bridged before the Collectivists can place the 
 scaffolding upon it to support all the consequences they erect on 
 this shifting soil. 
 
 In reality the consumption of luxuries descends every dav 
 lower down into the social strata, it permeates the worker more 
 and more, it creates for him new wants^ and raises the so-called 
 necessary minimum. 
 
 The condition of the workman is improving. Labour is no
 
 28 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 longer that hell on which is written, — " Lasciate ogni speranza ; " 
 at the most it is a purgatory from which, simply by the play of 
 natural forces favoured by good legislation; one can and should 
 hope to escape.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PRODUCTIVENESS OF CAriTAL — INTEREST AND PROFITS. 
 
 Besides their error concerning value and the law cf wages, Marx, 
 Lassalle, and, before their time, Proudhon, have committed another 
 error, still graver perhaps, on the productiveness of capital. 
 
 According to Marx, what he calls fixed capital, that is to say, 
 non-movable capital invested in machines, out-houses, furnaces, or 
 capital employed in fuel or raw material, only has the right, when 
 the produce comes to be distributed, to be refunded the amount 
 sunken, and not to any interest or any part of the net produce. 
 Capital in his eyes, and in the eyes of the Socialists in general, is 
 unproductive ; labour alone produces, and therefore should alone 
 gather the harvest. 
 
 If this be true, we may ask ourselves the question, for what reason 
 would man have endeavoured to create capital ? It is much more 
 simple to take one's rest and enjoy oneself than to struggle in 
 order to build houses, to construct sheds, to put together machines, 
 to extract coal from the bowels of the earth, and to transport the 
 same to places where industry requires it. 
 
 The fact that man performs this labour shows, therefore, that 
 such labour is useful, and that the sheds, furnaces, machines, the 
 fuel that sets them in motion, the purchasing in lai'ge quantities 
 of raw material, enable man to obtain a greater quantity of use- 
 values than if he had only been able to work with his ten fingers. 
 
 Now, if they possess utility and augment the importance of the 
 produce, it is absolutely legitimate and quite just that they 
 shoiild first of all deduct a quota from it. 
 
 M. Paul Lei'oy-Beaulieu, in his work entitled Le Collectivisme, 
 makes on this subject an ingenious supposition. Admitting, he 
 says, that the machine were a living, intelligent, conscious, and 
 
 free being, no one would dispute its right to be remunerated fur 
 
 29
 
 30 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 its efToi'ts, Now, the situation is the same whether the machine 
 is ahle to live, reason, struggle, and treat for itself, or is only the 
 prolongation, so to speak, of the man who has created it and to 
 whom it belongs. 
 
 Certain it is, however, that on a purely metaphysical question 
 of justice one could rea'^on forever, and heap up subtlety on 
 subtlety, and sophism on sophism. But in the social order we 
 have no right to indulge in metaphysics. 
 
 What we have to consider, in all things, is the general interest. 
 This being so, the first question which suggests itself is, — Is 
 capital under its various forms useful % Does it increase produc- 
 tion, that is to say, the general wealth % 
 
 To this question the answer is affirmative and universal. Marx 
 himself recognises the beneficent action of capital. He wishes to 
 socialise it ; but he does not want it to be destroyed, and would 
 consider a return to the system of individual production of former 
 times as a frightful retrogression. 
 
 Everybody being agreed on this point, we may now put a second 
 question : Capital being useful, is it well to encourage its forma- 
 tion, that is to say, is it well to stimulate saving 1 
 
 Unless logic is an empty word, the affirmation on the first point 
 carries with it an affirmation on tlie second. We could not con- 
 ceive a society which, judg'ng a th'ng useful, and even in(]is])ens- 
 able, would I'c^usc to pu,~h forward its production. 
 
 This being so, what is the best means of stimulating the pro- 
 duction of capital % Sha.l we remunerate it, or deny it all 
 remuneration % It would be puerile to stop to discuss a subject 
 so evident in itself. The best means is to remunerate it. 
 
 Seeing that justice and injustice result no longer, so far as con- 
 cerns the modern philosopher, from some pretended decrees of 
 some I know not what hypothetical providence, but from the 
 general interest; everything being just which subserves the in- 
 terests of societj', and everything being unjust which tends to 
 loosen the social bonds and lead man back to primitive savagery ; 
 ihcn, if capital is socially useful, if, tliorefore, it is well to stimu- 
 l.ite its creation, and if the means of doing so is to remunerate it,
 
 Productiveness of Capital. 31 
 
 it is clear tliat the remuneration of capital is just and legitimate, 
 because it is in conformity with the interests of the social body. 
 
 Supposing capital were not remunerated, who then would strive 
 to cause its production % A man would no doubt build a house 
 to shelter his family and himself ; but he would not waste his 
 trouble in constructing another one. 
 
 All he would do at most, providing he was more skilful at that 
 kind of work than at any other, would be to build more houses so 
 as to exchange them. But that exchange could not take place 
 except between persons owning certain equal values. Whoever 
 could not buy a house would be obliged to sleep under the blue 
 sky, for no one would consent to lose his time in building dwell- 
 ings which he would not inhabit himself, and could not exchange, 
 and all this for the sole pleasure of lodging somebody else in them. 
 
 If, indeed, this were done, we should no longer find ourselves 
 within any economic category, nor even in a position to obey the 
 dictates of justice. We should be exclusively guided by frater- 
 nity and charity. Now, it is superabundantly shown by the 
 example of all times and of every place, that if, exceptionally and 
 at given moments, fraternity can accomplish great things, it is 
 too exceptional and too intermittent a sentiment to enable us to 
 build anything upon it. 
 
 Proudhon contended that humanity, confronted during the ages 
 with the dilemma, " Fraternity or Death," has never ceased to 
 answer, — " Death." 
 
 There is here some exaggeration in the picture of mankind pre- 
 ferring rather to commit suicide than to help one another. But 
 there is, nevertheless, a substratum of truth in it, and that sub- 
 stratum consists in the fact that, whilst fraternity may become a 
 considerable element of social impulsion in certain particular 
 circumstances, it can never become the basis of a social edifice. 
 
 To take up again the hypothesis which for a moment we put 
 aside, — if men Avere prohibited from deriving any interest from 
 capital they would not build any more houses except for them- 
 selves or for those who would be able to pay them with capital, 
 and the greater part of the population would thus be reduced to
 
 '3,2 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 o- 
 
 thc extremity of living in the open air. Not only decency, 
 dignity, and material well-being would thereby be aftected, but 
 material production also. A victim to the inclemencies of the 
 seasons, man would be less able to labour, and would more often 
 be ill ; and, finally, though paying no rent, he would be much less 
 wealthy than he is to-day. 
 
 Proudhon, althougli the great enemy of interest, recognised 
 this in a certain measure. As long, said he, as the capitalist 
 renders a service in lending his capital he ought to be rewarded 
 foi it. But, he added, if by any circumstance whatever I can do 
 without this capital, there is no more need for me to pay for a 
 service of which 1 have ceased to have need. Nothing is more just. 
 But Piuudhou, wlio had pompously taken as his motto : Destruam 
 et aedifimho — " I shall destroy and shall build up again," has, in 
 fact, destroyed little, and built up nothing. We hope to show 
 further on that the Collcctivists have not done more in the way of 
 reconstruction. But we should be anticipating in grappling here 
 this side of the problem, which will be thorougldy dealt with in 
 another part of this work. 
 
 Here is a remarkable thing : Even tlio laws of i)hysics them- 
 selves make a breach in the hypothesis of the unproductiveness of 
 capital — a hypothesis to which, notwithstanding eternal protests, 
 the entire history of mankind utters a long reply. 
 
 If capital were unproductive and personal effort alone produced, 
 all economy, all saving and accumulation would be im})Ossible. 
 To endeavour to produce a labour equal to two, with a force equal 
 to one, would be to give oneself over to the sophism of the inven- 
 tors of perpetual motion. 
 
 If, then, there were no productive element outside human 
 labour, the worker would with great difficulty produce enough 
 day by day to live upon during the morrow, although there would 
 be reason to ask oneself, — how did he manage to live the first day. 
 
 Man conserves, economises, hoards, or capitalises because nature 
 from the first offered to him a gratuitous capital — fruit, animals 
 adapted for food, or animals whose strength he utilised. It is 
 thanks to this capital gratuitously furnished by the earth that,
 
 Productiveness of CapitaL 33 
 
 placed in possession of a means to proiluce more than he con- 
 sumes, he has been able to save, and augment every day by his 
 efforts the extent of this primitive capital, and together with it 
 the importance of its production. 
 
 Thus, until we shall liave found, as Proudhon hoped, a means 
 of doing away with capital, or at any rate with the capitalist, it 
 will be necessary to remunerate the latter. 
 
 But is this remuneration so excessive as the Collectivists pretend 
 it to be ? Is it true tliat capital is an octopus by which all the 
 surplus-value of a country is pumped out % 
 
 We have here a veritable phantasmagoria which has led astray 
 many minds. 
 
 Properly speaking, capital is an abstraction. The things that 
 have a real existence are the capitalists and the actual capital 
 they employ. 
 
 What is tlie position of these last ? Do they really get the 
 wdiole of the profits of which their capital has been the principal 
 productive element? Tliis is certainly very far from being the case. 
 
 Competition obliging every capitalist to content himself with the 
 least possible profit, the capitalist is compelled, in order to retain 
 his customers and the outlets for his commodities, to constantly 
 diminish the selling price, that is to say, to leave to the consumer 
 the greater part of that surplus-value which is the spectre of Karl 
 Marx and his followers. 
 
 Now, the consumer is everybody, and as, in the very immense 
 majority of cases (I beg to be forgiven such an incorrect style ; 
 immense by itself woidd not suffice to express the extent of that 
 majority), the consumer is at the same time a producer, the 
 greatest part of the profits come back to the Avorker in an indirect 
 way — if not in the form of higher salaries, at least in that of use- 
 values that are more numerous and better adapted to his wants. 
 M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, in his refutation of Collectivism, has ad- 
 mirably understood this, and excellently demonstrated it. 
 
 Everybody recognises that if, with tlie worker as with the 
 capit:\list, tliere is an average skill, tl)at very expression indicates 
 that individuals are generally below or above such average. 
 
 c
 
 34 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 Individual profits are derived, above all, — leaving aside accident or 
 chance, and what Henry George and Lassalle call fortuity, — from 
 that variety in skill which differentiates individuals. And con- 
 cerning fortuity we shall say nothing, because there is a contradic- 
 tion between the theory according to which these benefits are 
 held to be the result of mere chance, and the theory of Karl Marx, 
 which makes it flow, according to a fatal law, from the very 
 foundations of capitalistic society. 
 
 A workman employed at piece-work finds out tlie way to pro- 
 duce things better and quicker than his companions. He obtains 
 a higher salary than they ; tlicrc is thus for him an individual 
 profit. A manufacturer invents, it may be, a new machine or a 
 new arrangement in the workshop, which diminishes the amount 
 of the net cost. Even in lowering a little the price of his com- 
 modities, so as to augment the sale, he gains more than his com- 
 petitors. A profit is obtained ; a private fortune is built up. 
 
 These private profits subsist for the worker as well as for the 
 capitalist as long as the patent, if jxxtcnt there be, has not 
 dropped and become public property, or as long as the method is 
 not discovered. But patents do not have a very long existence. 
 Trade methods are very soon found out, and thus, as every com- 
 petitor is in possession of the same trade processes, the price of 
 commodities fall until the moment comes when the profits of each 
 are once more brought back to the point they were at before the 
 invention, viz. the minimum which competition allows to subsist. 
 
 If there is a surplus-labour — to employ the expression of the 
 German Socialist — the greater part of it does not benefit the 
 capitalist but the whole of society, and returns to the workman 
 in a roundabout manner, and by that means ceases to be surplus- 
 labour. 
 
 On the other hand, if the irou law is correct — and it is correct 
 within given limits, and rather narrow ones, of time and locality, 
 taking as a basis an actual minimum consumption, wliicli is in no 
 wise an absolute minimum — then the totality of taxation weighs 
 down upon capital. It is right, moreover, to recognise that the 
 Collcctivists proclaim this. M. Gucsdc affirms it in his law of
 
 ProdiLcliveness of Capital. 35 
 
 salaries, and rejects, with tlie most profound disdain, all idea of 
 an amelioration of the lot of the workers by means of fiscal 
 reforms. 
 
 Many superficial minds will raise an outcry at such an assertion. 
 They will protest by pointing out tlie taxation on consumption 
 which weighs more heavily on the poor than on the rich. 
 
 A good Collectivist laughs at these criticisms on our fiscal 
 system. If it is true, in fact, that, at each period — and I take 
 here the economic truth, instead of taking the eiToneous affirma- 
 tion of Socialism — manners, customs, the progress of comfort have 
 created a minimum consumption below which some individuals 
 will consent to descend in order to economise — a privation which 
 will be the source of saving — but below which minimum, or more 
 correctly, below the salary which represents it, no one will con- 
 sent to work, it necessarily follows that the worker cannot partici- 
 pate in the public burdens. At most, the extent of these burdens 
 weighs down upon him in preventing the minimum consumptiop 
 from being raised as quickly as it would be without them. But 
 that is a general effect which the taxes determine, whatever may 
 be their character and assessment. 
 
 If a tax is imposed on articles of primary necessity, salaries go 
 up in proportion, and, in the last analysis, it is the capitalist who 
 pays it by way of repercussion. 
 
 If the tax is collected directly from capital or from income, 
 salaries go down, and the worker receives a sum minus what, in 
 the conti'ary hypothesis, represented the tax. In both cases he 
 is able, with what he receives, to procure for himself the same 
 quantity of necessary objects, and as it is this, and not the amount 
 of money given to him in payment of his work, wherein consists 
 his real salary, one may say that the wage-winner is only very little 
 affected by the assessment of the tax. The inequality of that 
 assessment is very appreciable amongst capitalists. Of two 
 shareholders living exclusively on their dividends one will be 
 more affected than the other by a bad division of the public 
 burdens, and may legitimately protest against the taxes which are 
 imposed on various modes of consumption. But the worker is
 
 36 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 hero protected by what amount of truth there is in the iron law. 
 Doubtless he can be aftected if the public burdens become heavy 
 enough to fetter industry, because in that case the social life is 
 injured; but up to that point it holds good that, Avhatever 
 character the tax may assume, it is, in its integrity, taken from the 
 profits of capital. In the last case itself, it is not the character of 
 the tax, but solely its general quantitative importance, which may, 
 in other respects, affect the worker. And it is proper to add that, 
 if in recognising this truth we yet consider it as subject to certain 
 limitations in its effects, these effects ought to be considered as 
 absolute — and this is what ^I. Jules Guesde does — by the Socialists 
 who profess that the law of wages is truly an iron law. 
 
 In France, actually 12 per cent, of the total production is 
 absorbed every year by the public expenses, and this reduces in a 
 large proportion the surplus-value of capital. M. Jules Guesde has 
 endeavoured to determine the proportion of what he calls surplus- 
 labour. He reasons in this waj' ; the raw materials amount to 
 ■i,941,000,000 francs, fuel to 191 millions, and surplus-value to 
 1,994 millions. Of these 1,994 millions, 980 are distributed in 
 salaries, and 1 milliard 14 millions would represent profits. 
 He thence draws the conclusion that, in an average day of 12 
 hours, there are 5 hours 44 minutes of paid labour, and 6 hours 
 6 minutes of surplus-labour, which would give, as an average, for 
 each worker, G91 francs of unpaid labour per annum. 
 
 It is plain that all this galaxy of figures is altogether built up 
 on the idea that capital is unproductive, that labour alone pro- 
 duces, and consequently that all the produce should return to it. 
 
 It is amply established that this conception is false ; but if it 
 were true, to examine the figures of M. Guesde would suffice to 
 demonstrate their incorrectness. 
 
 How does the French Socialist establish his figures about 
 surplus-value 1 By differentiating the sale price from the net cost 
 of the objects obtained by industry. Though, whilst he takes a 
 sale price which is exact, he takes a net cost which is erroneous, 
 and thus throws back into the profit account what ought to 
 figure in the general expenses.
 
 Productiveness of Capital. yj 
 
 M. Guesde, in fact, only makes the raw materials and the fuel 
 figure in the general expenses. A better economist than he — Karl 
 Marx — reckoned amongst these expenses the maintenance and pay- 
 ing off of the machines, which become worn out in the course of 
 their work, and cannot be repaired or replaced by their own act. 
 And these last expenses, of which M. Guesde does not take any 
 account^ 'are not the only ones. There are also the expenses of 
 commission, brokerage, insurances, correspondence, travelling, de- 
 preciation, bad debts, bankruptcies, expenses which would all 
 bring down the real profits from 1,994 millions to a figure of three, 
 four or five hundred millions at the most. 
 
 M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, from whom we borrow the figures of 
 Jules Guesde and their refutation, gives, besides, a proof more pre- 
 cisely to the point than all those which can be derived from the 
 most subtle reasoning. This proof consists in the figures, compul- 
 sorily published every year, relative to the management of public 
 companies. 
 
 At Fives-Lille, for example, from 1880 to 1883 — a period of 
 great activity' — the company distributed 720,000 francs to the 
 shareholders, on which the Revenue levied about one tenth. There 
 remained, therefore, to the shareholders, numbering 24,000, hardly 
 GGOjOOO francs to divide amongst themselves, or nearly 27 'GO per 
 share. 
 
 The works employed, in the course of the years 1880-1 883, from 
 five to six thousand workmen. If you divide the profit — that is, 
 G40,000 — by the smallest of these figures, 5,000, you find that this 
 profit corresponds not to 691 francs for each workman, but to 132 
 francs ; the two last figures are wide apart. 
 
 Take another example : in the year 1881 the 20,701 workmen 
 employed in the coal mines in the Department du Nord received 
 20,529.406 francs in wages, whilst the shareholders had only 
 2,751,914 francs to divide amongst themselves, or, rather, 133 
 francs per annum for each worker, instead of 691, and this, too, 
 without making allowance for the 10 per cent, deducted by the 
 Revenue, which would bring back the figure to 120. M. Leroy- 
 Beaulieu quotes, with regard to this point, the following considera-
 
 T^S Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 tions of M. ringenieur Pernolct wliicli, with his permission, wc shall 
 quote in our turn : — 
 
 "The 20,701 workmen in question have had to give, in 1881, 
 at the rate, at most, of 300 working days jDer annum und 
 ])er workman, 6,210,300 days' work, which were jDaid 20,549,400 
 francs, that is to say 3 '306 francs per diem on the average for the 
 different categories of workers. On the other hand, the 2,7;")1,914 
 francsj paid to the shareholders as the reward of capital, correspond 
 to 443 francs for each working day, that is to say, the total coal- 
 mining exploitation in the Department du Nord may be considered 
 as having employed 20,701 workers of all kinds, who, receiving on 
 an average 3-30 francs each working day, would have devoted, of 
 that amount, 0*443 francs to the creation, preparation, maintenance, 
 renewing, and management of everything which constitutes the 
 industry in question, all which things are risky at the beginning, 
 unproductive for a long time, sometimes ruinous, but always neces- 
 sary to insure to the population living on that industry the regu- 
 larity and the security of their existence." 
 
 These figures are perhaps optimistic because, taking into account 
 the salaries and benefits distributed under the form of dividend, 
 they say nothing either of the reserve funds, or of the percentages 
 distributed to the managers, all which are equally taken from the 
 general produce, and leave to the profit properly so called, accord- 
 ing to these figures, 14-40, a larger part than M. Pernolet as- 
 cribes to it. It none the less remains that the profit, even if one 
 considers it as absorbing the totality of that sum, only represents 
 13"40 per cent, instead of representing 103*50 per cent., which is 
 the proportion we should have to deduce from the calculations of 
 M. Guesde. 
 
 This, too, is not all; this sui'plus- value, already so reduced, which 
 goes to the capitalist, suffers other reductions still. One of these 
 reductions is due to risk. What! risk"? the Collectivists will say. 
 And they will revive the declamatory utterances of Lassalle on 
 contingencies, chance, and fortuity. 
 
 But yet, risk, besides the very legitimate part it plays in society 
 iji stimulating production and progress — a subject to which wc
 
 Productiveness of Capital. 39 
 
 shall have to recur — deserves also to be considered as one of the 
 elements of the problem when one is calculating the toll levied 
 by capital on the total production of a country. 
 
 In the Utopian idea of socialised production there would be, 
 according to the years, increase or diminution of produce ; but 
 never would there be either gains or losses in the ordinary accep- 
 tation we attach to these words. Therefore there would never be 
 any risk. 
 
 But in our mode of production all capitalists do not become 
 rich. Social capital, doubtless, goes on ceaselessly increasing, but 
 much private capital is destroyed and annihilated. 
 
 Hence it follows that one arrives at a false estimate from a 
 general point of view, though a correct one in regard to such and 
 such particular case, when, from the profits of one capitalist, one 
 endeavours — as, moreover, we have just done in reference to Fives- 
 Lille and the coal mines in the Nord — to deduce the proportion 
 of surplus-value deducted annually by capital. 
 
 Mr. A, in causing his workmen to labour twelve hours, becomes 
 rich. Just so. But Mr X, his neighbour, although imposing the 
 same amount of labour on his men, becomes ruined. 
 
 If, then, at the end of the year, one wished to form an account 
 of the degree of social accumulation of capital, it would be need- 
 ful, after having added up all the surplus-values produced by 
 Messieurs A, B, C, . . . etc., to diminish the total by all 
 the minus-values resulting from the industrial disasters of 
 Messieurs X, Y, Z, etc. 
 
 If this statistical labour could be done we should perceive that, 
 as a result of those risks which the Collectivists never speak of, 
 the total amount levied by capital does not approach the pro 
 portion it assumes in the inflamed imagination of the Socialists, 
 
 Doubtless there will be inequality between the capitalist who 
 will have sunken, and he who will have prospered, without there ever 
 being the power to eliminate the element of chance in these eflfects. 
 Without doubt it will be permissible for the ruined capitalist to 
 bemoan over what he, too, will call the anarchy of competition. 
 But when one considers the workman and the problem of the
 
 40 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 distribution of riclics between labour and caijital, these imliviLlual 
 inequalities between the capitalists become of no interest, for the 
 workman has only to concern himself reasonably with one tiling, 
 viz. what fixlls on the whole, socially speaking, to the total social 
 capital, and he has only to take such a matter into account in order 
 to arrive at a more exact computation of this quantum. 
 
 On this head, then, we find a new diminution — one which, it is 
 true, we cannot estimate, but which, for all that, is not less certain — 
 of the quota accruing to capital in production. If, then, we have 
 just now charged M. Pernolet with making out a better case tlian it 
 really is for labour, and doing injustice to capital in not taking 
 into account the reserve funds and percentages of the managers, 
 we find, as a set-off to that error, a counterbalance which out- 
 weighs it, when, instead of taking into consideration a private 
 industry, wo consider the whole of the national industry. In 
 reality, M. Pernolet only calculated the profits in a prosperous 
 industry, and said nothing of those which, during the same time, 
 have sunk. 
 
 Are we at the end of all these abatements ? 
 
 Not yet. 
 
 Outside what one may call the general expenses of consumption, 
 to which the taxes are devoted, a society is called upon to create 
 for itself a reserve fund. 
 
 A limited company which would realise no reserve funds would 
 be rapidly reduced to disaster and bankruptcy. It would be the 
 same, a fortiori, with society at large. It is necessary to foresee 
 the bad years, and the harvests rendered insufficient by circum- 
 stances independent of human action. These reserve funds to- 
 day fall upon capital. Karl Marx himself confesses it : — 
 
 " Moreover," he says, " we must not forget that a part of the 
 actual surplus-value, that which is devoted to the formation of a 
 fund of reserve and accumulation, would l^e reckoned then (in a 
 Socialist state) as a necessary labour."^ 
 
 But this reserve fund may be more or loss extended, and the 
 interest of mankind requires that it should be much cxtcndcMl. 
 ! K.ol Marx. Capifnl (Frciifh I'Mitidii), p. 22S.
 
 Productiveness of Capital. 41 
 
 It may be limited to the provisions indispensable to pay oft' tlie 
 existing capital and to ward off a possible deficit of production in 
 bad years. 
 
 But it may also be extended to new capitals destined to im- 
 prove the fields, hitherto unexploited, of human activity, whether 
 these fields are found in the human fixculties, or whethci', like un- 
 cultivated lands or unexplored continents, they arc yet to be 
 fertilised. 
 
 It is towards that work of universal enfranchisement, and en- 
 largement of the sphere in which mankind moves, that^ at the 
 present time, the greater part of the profits of capital is employed, 
 after deducting taxes and a fund for future eventualities. 
 
 This expense would be quite necessarily incurred, iinder 
 pain of ruin, in a Socialistic society ; and one of the criticisms we 
 shall oppose to that society will certainly be the difficulty of 
 taking tliose expenses into calculation to the required degree. 
 The Marxists, therefore, cannot consider, as one of the imperfec- 
 tions of tlie society in which we are moving, the accumulation 
 which provides for society. 
 
 The only reproach that they may formulate to-day, and on 
 which discussion is truly possible, would, therefore, be relative to 
 that portion of the social produce which serves for the personal 
 consumption of the capitalists. 
 
 As to that amount, we have just seen to what point it is 
 diminished by all tlie deductions to which it is subjected, and we 
 have the right to ask if it does not almost exclusively represent 
 the labour of the capitalist, for — saving the objections of the 
 Collectivists — the capitalist works, and liis work is certainly not 
 tlie least productive. 
 
 The labour he exerts is a labour of organisation, of direction, 
 and superintendence, the influence of which, on the course of the 
 undertakings confided to his care, is altogether decisive — decisive 
 to such a degree that one may lay down the aphorism : what the 
 man is worth who directs so much is worth the business. 
 
 To determine the most advantageous conditions of labour; to 
 have the mind alwavs on the watch to surprise, so to speak, in
 
 42 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 their flight, all the new discoveries ; to inform oneself sufficiently 
 well of the state of business so as to buy the raw materials in 
 good condition ; to know how to create outlets for oneself without 
 multiplying beyond measure the advertisements and their cost — 
 these are the masterly qualities which play a decisive part in the 
 success or the reverse of the things that one undertakes. 
 
 '^i'herefore, place face to face two self-same industries started 
 with equal capital. Suppose that the workmen^ the engineers, 
 and overseers are equally active and capable in both ; the one will 
 I'ully succeed and will yield profits, while the other will perish. 
 The only cause of that difference will be in the directors of the 
 two businesses : the one will rise to the level of his task, and the 
 other will be inferior. 
 
 If, moreover, the case were otherwise ; if it sufficed, in order to 
 become wealthy, to make workmen labour beyond the time 
 necessary to reconstitute what is indispensable to their life, and to 
 ]50cket the produce of this surplus-labour, the thing would be 
 easy, the first comer would feel himself equal to it, and all 
 industries would prosper. 
 
 In the middle ages, at the period of the corvee, things took 
 place in this manner. The lord had some lands which the serf 
 tilled gratuitously three days a week, and the pi'oduce of which 
 belonged to the master. The lord, at that period, could not be 
 ruined, or at most he could not be so by the non-success of his 
 industry. The manufacturer to-day may not only be ruined, but 
 mcurs ruin in a very great number of cases, for the undertakings 
 which drop, or which live from day to day, much exceed in num- 
 ber those to which a full success is reserved. That is one of the 
 strongest and most conclusive answers to present to the pretended 
 evidences preferred ly the Collcctivists concerning what they call 
 surplus-value, or tlr: modern corvee. 
 
 in the event of ruin, where, then, is the surplus-value? Not 
 (Milv ii:\s there \\A been accuinulati(Mi because of the unpaid efforts 
 of the worker, b it the total capital has been annihilated in con- 
 sequence of au imperfect management; and in this case, the labour 
 of the oa])italist has been not only unpaid l)ut ruinous.
 
 Producliveness of Capital. 
 
 And yet the non-success does not depend always upon the fault 
 of the capitalist, If one may, in fact, explain many failures by 
 his lack of skill or liis incapacity — in \vhicli case, his work having 
 been useless, it is natural that he should not have been remuner- 
 ated — it often ha})pcns that the disaster is due to accidental 
 causes, of which he is simply the victim. Who, tlien, despite 
 these risks of loss, would give his capital, his time, his labour, and 
 submit himself to that state of mental tension whicli springs from 
 incessant anxieties, if he had not, at least, the hope of a favour- 
 able rislv, and if there did not thence result a benciicent stimula- 
 tion % 
 
 Will it be objected that, with public companies, the role of 
 worker which the capitalist performed as a small master dis- 
 appears in part, seeing that the mere shareholders do nothing but 
 pocket the profit of the undertaking'? 
 
 First of all, the shareholders have furnished their capital which 
 proves productive ; they run all the risks of the concern ; they have 
 taken upon themselves the trouble of economising instead of ex- 
 pending their fortune, and having saved it, they have exposed it 
 to certain risks instead of keeping it as an unproductive treasure. 
 This gives to them incontestable rights to a part of the profits 
 which would not have been made without them. 
 
 In the second place, it is right to observe that the capitalist 
 who directs and carries on an active business is infinitely better 
 rewarded than the mere shareholder who has confined himself to 
 invest his money. The managers have percentages, the directors 
 dpuble percentages and often salaries, without taking into account 
 that they are most frequently the largest shareholders. 
 
 There is this also to consider, that, in many cases, the mere 
 shareholders in one enterprise are working in a second enter- 
 prise, in which perhaps they will find, simply as shai'eholdcrs, 
 the directors or the workmen who, in the first undertaking, 
 confine themselves to having some shares. We have in this a, 
 chasse-croise which, as we shall see later on, is multiplied in 
 proportion as the shareholding companies democratise capital. 
 
 It remains none the less certain, for all that, that many
 
 44 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 capitalists, sliaveliolders, or annuitants live exclusively on the jdvo- 
 duce of their dividends or of their annuities. It is an evil, no 
 doubt, in this sense, that tlicsc individuals arc unutilised forces ; 
 but this is not a social injustice, becaxise their capital is the source 
 of more wealth than tliey tliemselves consume. 
 
 It is right to add that, the statxi, quo being pretty nearly im- 
 possible, these capitalists either increase their fortune or become 
 ruined. In the first case they effect savings, and these being 
 essentially useful, require from them an act of labour ; not that 
 one truly can admit the so called labour of self-denial of tlie 
 economists, but because the putting out and preservation of the 
 money saved necessitates an effort. 
 
 As to those who are ruined, a part of their capital pnsscs into 
 other hands ; and if the other partis destroyed, tliis loss is largely 
 compensated by the enormous excess of production, which is owing 
 to sound speculation. 
 
 The number of idlers tends, moreover, to become less from day 
 to day, in consequence of the constant rise in all values and of the 
 lowering of the rate of interest which ensues. It results from this 
 decline that one needs to-day a considerable fortune to be able to 
 live without working, and that the persons with such fortunes are 
 rare. 
 
 And then, nobod\- has the presumption to put forward the 
 capitalistic society as perfect. Far from that ! It lends itself, 
 certainly, to the most justifiable criticisms. But the question is 
 whether the state dreamed by the disciples of Marx and Lassalle 
 would not lend itself to much graver criticisms, and whether it 
 would not be still more imperfect. 
 
 For, in this as in evcrytliing, in consequence of the imperfection 
 of human nature, we are reduced to seek not after the absolute 
 good, which docs not exist, but after the least evil. 
 
 But it is time to turn Ijaek to the capitalist really worthy of 
 the name, to the man who directs and works, and who, by his 
 direction, his labour, impresses some value upon his industry. 
 
 This man, even in the eyes of Socialists who are the most ab- 
 solute in their doctrines, lias the right to put forward a claim to a
 
 Productiveness of Capital. 45 
 
 part of the profits exactly represonling, at the least, the effort 
 expended by him. 
 
 What shall that part be ? 
 
 If the Marxist school confined itself within the narrow and 
 absolnte principle of the equality of payment ; if, ignoring the 
 quality of the work, it only took into account the number of hours 
 during which each one had laboured, the manager of a manufac- 
 tory would not be able, legitimately, to ask for a higher salary, 
 according to such a theory, than the humblest of his hands. 
 
 But the doctrine of the German Socialist is much broader, much 
 more human, much more scientific. It takes into account the 
 quality as well as the quantity of the cftbrt ; it admits of simple 
 labour and complicated labour ; not being able to measure the 
 wear and tear of the organs, it has recourse, in fine, to supply 
 and demand for the determination of the mutual relationship of 
 the various kinds of labour. 
 
 If this is so, we may lay it down, as a general rule at least, 
 that the portion of the produce consumed by the capitalist does 
 not appreciably exceed what the management would cost under 
 Socialist conditions. 
 
 I say the produce consumed, and not the produce converted 
 into cash and stored up. 
 
 It is evident, in fact, that the portion of surplus-value which is 
 accumulated instead of being lost in consumption, is employed, as 
 we have already demonstrated, in certain generally useful works, 
 and for which it would be necessary to provide as well in a 
 Collectivist society as under the present conditions. 
 
 Here, it will be employed to construct a line of railway or to 
 dig a canal ; there, by mechanical experiments and the creation of 
 new machines, it will exploit some discovery ; elsewhere, it will 
 place virgin tracts under cultivation, or, as in the agro romano, 
 will perhaps render once more fit for cultivation an exhausted soil ; 
 somewhere else, it will facilitate schemes of colonisation and open 
 out new continents to civilisation. 
 
 All these works are not only useful but necessary. No social 
 state would be worthy to detain for one minute the attention of
 
 46 Collectivism and Socialism, 
 
 men which would acknowledge itself incapable of performing 
 them. 
 
 If then, by hypothesis, the capitalist submitted himself to the 
 regime of his workmen, expended no more than they for his per- 
 sonal consumption, and confined himself to accumulate capital in 
 view of these works of universal utility, no one, even from amongst 
 the most prejudiced, would be able to hold this accumulation on 
 his part to be a crime. 
 
 One can only raise against him a single accusation : that of 
 consuming beyond what his labour is worth — an accusation which, 
 however, falls to the ground on the principle of the productive- 
 ness of capital ; but it is well to make the remark that the 
 relative, if not the absolute, amount deducted by capital tends 
 every day to decrease in consequence of this veiy accumulation, 
 which, rendering capitalist and capital more abundant, makes tlic 
 price of the latter go down. In this manner the so-called 
 capitalist society carries within itself the elements of its own 
 amendment, without it being necessary to overturn ever3'thing to 
 cause an effect which will be produced alone by the simple opera- 
 tion of economic forces. 
 
 It is of importance here to point out a contradiction on the 
 part of the Socialists. 
 
 They contend — as we have seen in analysing their theories — 
 that the accumulation of capital has the result of breaking up the 
 small capitalists to the profit of the great, of throwing every day 
 a greater number of human beinys into the ranks of tlie proletariat, 
 and of admitting to tlie function of management a constantly de- 
 creasing number of people. 
 
 This view is false, and M. Paul Lcroy-Beaulieu has emphatically 
 established that it is so in his refutation of Collectivism, by show- 
 ing that the number of small fortunes is infinitely greater than 
 that of the large ones, and tends to increase instead of diminishing. 
 
 r.ut we shall not here enter into tliat discussion, whicli is ex- 
 hausted, and shall confme ourselves to placing Collectivism in a 
 dilemma, without detaining ourselves any longer with the demon- 
 strations of M. Leioy-Bcaulieu.
 
 Productiveness of Capital. 47 
 
 Either your view is correct, we shall say to them, or it is false. 
 If it is false — which is our absolute conviction — then, by that fact 
 alonC; one of the most powerful ai-giimcnts on which Marx has 
 supported his system falls to the ground. Let ns examine, mean- 
 while, what would have been the conclusions, if it were true, that 
 would be properly drawn from it. 
 
 The more the number of the ca[)italists will become diminished, 
 the more also will their personal consumption diminish. 
 
 It is not a question here, be it understood, of that special con- 
 sumption which consists in making collections, in piling up works 
 :)f art, in buying the productions of modern artists — a consumption 
 which constitutes an outlay of public utility. If the capitalists 
 ceased any longer doing this, the State would have to do it — it 
 even does so already in part — and this would only be a modification 
 in the book-keeping of society. When we speak of the consump- 
 tion proper of the capitalist, we mean the part of social production 
 which he swallows up, and causes, in reality, to disappeai-, for his 
 existence and personal pleasures. And we repeat that, thus con- 
 ceived, the total consumption by the capitalist is all the smaller, 
 as the number of those exercising that social function is less con- 
 siderable. 
 
 Two hundred persons, each possessing a fortune of a million 
 francs, will certainly expend infinitely more than one person alone 
 possessing two hundred millions. 
 
 If, then, it were correct that capital is becoming concentrated 
 in a continually diminishing number of hands ; if it were true 
 that it tended to become owned by some unit, the whole Socialistic 
 argument would fall to pieces. Tiie day on which, in fact, its 
 limit would have been attained, the consumption of the capitalist — 
 his civil list — would be considered as a grain of sand in the ocean in 
 proportion to the common production. It would no longer sensibly 
 affect wages in an appreciable manner susceptible of being rcpie- 
 sented in money having currency, however small may be the coin. 
 The capitalist would no longer accumulate, except to fulfil a 
 function which, if he ceased to exist, the State would have to 
 discharge in his stead and place. In fact, and under another
 
 48 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 form, the natural evolution of society would have brought about the 
 Collectivism dreamed of by the Marxist school : all salaried under 
 one direction. Only, this direction would fall to the lot of one 
 individual instead of devolving upon the State ; though this in- 
 dividual would acquire such a power that he would very soon be- 
 come the State. Collectivism would be realised without revolution. 
 
 The State, it is true, would be a despotic State ; but, on the 
 other hand, the Socialists are not decided as to the nature of the 
 State which will be proper to their new society. Schjiffle expressly 
 says that one cannot affirm that the representative system will be 
 perpetuated in Collectivist society. 
 
 In any case, and supposing that Collectivism wished to replace, 
 by a representative form, the form of authoritative government 
 sprung from the very logic of things, a simple, political revolution, 
 similar to all those through which we have passed, would suffice 
 to achieve tliat end, and one would not have to trouble oneself 
 about any social upheaval. 
 
 If, then, the mirage of permanent concentration, such as it 
 presents itself to the Socialist imagination, is an objective reality, 
 there is nothing for the Collectivity to do but to go to sleep and to 
 let things alone. Collectivism will come by itself, and we should 
 only fetter its development by laws protective of labour; it 
 becomes necessary to uphold the laisser-faire, laisser-passer doctrine 
 in all its rigour. 
 
 If, on the otlicr side, this mirage is only a mirage ; if, thanks to 
 trading companies of all kinds, to the spirit of economy which 
 often animates the small, and to the spirit of dissipation which 
 animates, on the contrary, so many of the great when tl>ey have 
 not been the architects of their fortune ; if, thanks to all those 
 different conditions which one may further assist by laws pro- 
 tective of labour, and, in a certain measure, by fiscal laws 
 limiting the excessive accumulation of riches in the same 
 hands ; if, we say, capital, far from becoming centralised, manifests 
 an opposite tendency, a tendency to become decentralised — as we 
 shall strive, in the conclusion of this work, to show is the case — 
 the gloomy picture which Karl Marx presents of our capitalist
 
 Pi'odiictivcncss of Capilal. ^9 
 
 society, compared by liim almost to a prison, is overcliargcd. "Wc 
 liavG certainly no right to hope for equality of conditions and 
 absolute happiness — they are not compatible with the nature of 
 man — but we may hope for a daily increasing moralisation, 
 through the constant increase in the number of those who par- 
 ticipate in the direct benefits of property, and through the 
 advantages which result from the general augmentation of riches 
 for non-property owners themselves, if only on account of the 
 benefits which they obtain from the common expenditure, of 
 which they enjoy on the same title and to the same degree as tlie 
 possessors of capital. 
 
 We arrive thus to this alternative ; either capital accumulates 
 more and more in the same hands, and in that case Collectivism is 
 laying its foundations by itself without there being any necessity to 
 work towards its realisation ; one even can only hinder the move- 
 ment by seeking to hurry it on ; or the social amelioration sought 
 for is being produced by the flict of the diffusion of private 
 property, and in this case to push forward to Collectivism would 
 be to go against the stream of the natural movement to which 
 mankind obeys. 
 
 Tiiis argument could not be confuted unless one attacked the 
 accumulation of capital in itself, instead of finding fault solely 
 with its personal consumption by those who own it; or unless the 
 demand were made on society to cease putting aside any reserve 
 funds with a view to ulterior productions and capitalisations, or 
 unless society were required to distribute the whole, or, at all 
 events, a much larger proportion of the fraction of the annual 
 surplus-value which to-day is capitalised. 
 
 This last result would be reached in a Socialist state, either by 
 not giving higher wages than those of to-day, but diminishing the 
 duration of the day's work, or by maintaining the actual duration 
 of the day's work, but augmenting the salary in proportion to the 
 whole amount now annually saved in order to be of service for 
 fresh production. 
 
 If the one or the otiier of these practices were to prevail, it 
 would be a downright catastrophe for human society.
 
 Collcciivisni and Socialism. 
 
 Now, such a solution would very probably happen; the system 
 of reserve funds, we may reasonably suppose, would disappear as 
 soon as, instead of being stimulated by personal interest, that 
 system would have personal interest arrayed against it. 
 
 We shall draw, later on, from this probability of the suj)pres- 
 sion, or of a very great diminution, of saving in a Collectivist 
 society^ one of the most powerful objections that may possibly be 
 invoked against Collectivism ; an objection which, in default of 
 arguments, the Collectivists are either obliged to pass over in 
 silence, or to refute bj' .scutimental reasons which are without 
 scientific value.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 Every one knows the famous law of population laid down by 
 Malthus. 
 
 Malthus established, relying upon the increase of the population 
 in the United States, that the human species tends to increase 
 much more quickly than the means of subsistence, and that, if an 
 act of the human will does not step in to restrain that natural 
 law, misery is inevitable amongst men. 
 
 In a book already old, I have myself developed that theory with 
 the greater part of the commentaries and absurd or criminal com- 
 binations to which that theory has given birth in some brains. I 
 shall not recur to that thesis here. 
 
 The law of Malthus is really nothing but the more geueral law 
 of natural selection, and of struggle for life, on which Darwin has 
 based his whole system. Applied to animals and to jjlants, it is 
 rigorously true, and it is the sole condition of transformation 
 and of evolution for all living beings other than man. 
 
 An excess of individuals of a given species comes into the world. 
 The soil does not offer enough subsistence for all. It is necessary 
 that the overplus should disappear. From thence, the death uf some 
 of these individuals ensues. The more robust, the stronger,the more 
 cunning, the better adapted to the surroundings alone survive. 
 
 As, moreover, those alone are I'eproduced who live, and as the 
 offspring resemble the parents, the qualities of these latter — those 
 (pialities which caused them to escape from deatli — become fixed 
 in their descendants, who thereby iind themselves fortified, per- 
 fected, and endowed with a more complete adaptation to the 
 conditions under which they will have in their turn to be evolved. 
 
 Such, then, is the universal law. It applies to man as to 
 animals so far as natural tendency goes, and it produces all its 
 
 51
 
 52 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 effects as soon as the social conditions are of a nature to eliminate 
 voluntary forethought. 
 
 If, on the contrary, responsibility is manifested, and if man 
 reflects, an act of his will steps in to counteract the blind tendency 
 within liim, and the law of population ceases to be manifest. The 
 slight increase in the number of the inhabitants of some countries, 
 amongst which, in the first rank, it is meet to place France, is a 
 manifest proof of the power whicli liis intelligence and his will — 
 which latter is nothing, in this case, but a resultant of the former 
 — give man in order to wipe out the consequences of a law which, 
 left to itself, would make misery an organic fatality against which 
 all projects of reform would break themselves to pieces. 
 
 This law, nevertheless, is of prime importance, and it is always 
 necessary to take it into account. It is not, in fact, by regulations 
 or even by persuasion, that one can fight against a tendency 
 natural to the human race. It is by an act individual, spon- 
 taneous, and self-conscious witli each of us, but not self-conscious 
 with the collective mass. Consequently, in order that the moral 
 and physical restraints — to speak the language of the English 
 philosopher — might cease to show themselves, and for the 
 physiological tendency to reassert itself, it would be sufficient to 
 modify the social conditions and wipe out the feeling of responsi- 
 bility from whence the above restraints proceed. 
 
 The example of North America, in regard to this, is convincing. 
 The easy maintenance of existence harl there suppressed all effort 
 of the individual with the view of limiting his progeny, and the 
 population for a century has doubled there every twenty-five years. 
 
 Since then, that enormous increase seems to have suffered some 
 abatemeut, and in certain parts of the Union, in New England 
 notably, the old Anglo-Saxon population has become almost as 
 little prolific as that of France. The cause of this is evidently in 
 the general conditions of life, which have changed and generated 
 the personal and voluntary effort which had not had^. up till then, 
 the opportunity of manifesting itself. 
 
 The law of population is not an economic law. It is an organic 
 law. r.ut it becomes an economic law in consequence of this fact,
 
 The Law of Population. 53 
 
 that the economic surroundings react upon it and attenuate or 
 precipitate its effects. It is for that reason that economists con- 
 cern themselves with it more, perhaps, than naturalists, and that 
 one has not, scientifically speaking, the right, when proposing 
 social reforms, to do so without having inquired, first of all, what 
 consequences these reforms would bo likely to have on the 
 development of the population. 
 
 The Socialists have always been exercised by the law of popula- 
 tion. Some have confined themselves to ignoring it and to expect, 
 probably from Providence, a decree that might interrupt its action. 
 
 Others, like Fourier, have contended that the system of social 
 organisation lauded by them would have the effect of naturally 
 limiting the population outside all intervention of personal will. 
 Unhappily, the proof of that affirmation has not been made, and 
 they have contented themselves with a hypothesis which, in a 
 matter so grave, could not be suflicient to mankind. 
 
 But since, under the pen of Lassalle or of Karl Marx, Socialism 
 has adopted a scientific metliod, the law of Malthus becomes an 
 increasing embarrassment to it. 
 
 The iron law of Lassalle is nothing else than the law of popula- 
 tion reproduced under a new form. 
 
 It is clear, in fact, that if the increasing of the population were 
 only restrained by the failure of the means of subsistence, if all 
 excess of production due to labour and human genius ought 
 fatally to have the result of bringing into the world a number of 
 new people proportionate to the new resources produced, wages 
 would never be able to rise above what is strictly necessary to the 
 worker in order to live. The human species would be condemned 
 to roll an eternal rock of Sisyphus without ho]je of redemption. 
 
 But if this were so, it would, indeed, be useless to search in 
 Collectivism or elsewhere for a remedy for evils, the organic 
 fatality of which would be established. 
 
 It follows that the Collectivist-Socialists find themselves placed 
 in an awkward alternative for their ideas. 
 
 Either they abandon the iron law, and then their system has no 
 longer any basis, for the principal basis of Collectivism is the pre-
 
 54 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 tended demonstration that, outside of it^no amelioration of the lot of 
 the workers is possible — and that demonstration is obtained by the 
 iron law — or they maintain the iron law, and, in that case. Collec- 
 tivism loses still more completely its basis, seeing that man is 
 irashed by an universal and irresistible law which takes no account 
 uf the action of the will. 
 
 Marx has perfectly understood this. He has also striven to 
 evade the difficulty by establishing that the law of population is 
 not an organic law but rather an economic law^ the principal 
 vause whereof lies in the capitalistic organisation of society. 
 
 The economists have repeated very often that there always 
 existed a relation between national production and population, a 
 relation which is not absolute, any more than the law of wages, but 
 which must manifest itself under given circumstances and conditions. 
 
 If the production augments sufficiently so that, without descend- 
 ing below the minimum individual consumption at the time, in- 
 deed even raising this mininuun, the inhabitants of a country can 
 increase in number, this increase takes place. The excess of 
 labour which this development of production causes has, in fact, 
 the consequence of bringing about a demand for labour higher 
 than the offer made ou the market. "Wages go up and poi)ulation 
 with them. But this very augmentation of the population brings 
 about a movement of reaction in wages which, in its turn, causes 
 a decline of the population, or at least stays its increase. 
 
 According to Karl Marx these are nought but errors and 
 sophisms, and over-population is due, not to the fact that, at some 
 I'criods, the workers become too prolific, but to the general con- 
 ditions of machinery. The truth, as he thinks, would be this — 
 when the crises are over and the periods of industrial prosperity 
 return, capital needs workmen in numbers sufficient to answer to 
 the needs of production. 
 
 In such times, attracted by seductive oflors, the workmen 
 abound ; they quit the fields, — from whence, moreover, machinery 
 expels them, at least in England, — in order to rush towards the 
 manufacturins; towns where the abundance of the demand causes 
 a rise of wages on the labour market. Very soon, however, this
 
 The Lazu of Population. 55 
 
 fever abates. The superabundant produets of industry cause a 
 plethora, and come into collision with the cessation in the con- 
 sumption, which refuses to absorb them. It then becomes quite 
 necessary for industry itself to limit its flight. The small manu- 
 facturers are ruined, bankruptcies are piled up, and the great 
 capitalists alone remain whilst considerably restricting their pro- 
 duction. The demand for labour diminishes, salaries go down, 
 and an enormous mass of labourers are hurled into the ranks of 
 the unemployed, living only upon public charity, reduced, con- 
 sequently, to the last extremities of misery, and suffering in their 
 dignity as men as much, perhaps, as they do by the imperfect 
 satisfaction of their wants. 
 
 It is these workmen, discharged and without work, which Karl 
 Marx calls the reserve army of capital. This reserve army, he 
 says, is necessary to capital. Suppress it, and all resumption of 
 business becomes impossible. And so capital strives to keep it up. 
 During the cotton crisis, which coincided with the War of Secession 
 in the United States, the English capitalists made great efforts to 
 prevent the emigration of tlieir fellow-countrymen of the working- 
 class. What would have become of their factories, had they 
 allowed that emigration to take place, when the termination of 
 hostilities in America allowed the cotton to flow once again to the 
 English manufactories and furnished them with the opportunity 
 for a new and formidivble flight ! And as, without there being 
 any wars, the industrial crises are reproduced about every ten 
 years, with a tendency even to the shortening of these periods, 
 the existence of the reserve army is necessary; that is to say, 
 the surplus population is intimately bound up with the actual 
 form of society, and is not related in any fashion to the number 
 of children which are born in working-class families. 
 
 The crises follow too near each other, adds Marx, for events to 
 happen in the way that the bourgeois economists suppose. A 
 period of prosperity does not last long enough to allow a supple- 
 mentary generation to be born and to grow up ; and the factories 
 which, when activity revives, require an immediate swarm of 
 hands, would not be able to wait during the ten, twelve, or twenty
 
 Collcctivisni and Socialism. 
 
 years nocessary for the production of a generation of workmen. 
 The period of crisis would happen before the men had the time to 
 see the light and to develop. 
 
 There is, certainly^, some amount of truth in this analysis; but 
 it errs, above all, by its generalisation. Marx witnessed great 
 crises, industrial quasi-cataclysms like that which coincided with 
 the Secession War in America. He wrote and lived in England, 
 where landed property, regulated by aristocratic and anti-economio 
 laws, allows of some effects which are not realised in other coun- 
 tries. Finally, ho was a contemporary of the most anarchical 
 epoch in machinery ; and from the transitory contingent facts 
 which he saw, he tliought he was able to infer a general law. 
 Therein consisted his error. 
 
 He points out, therefore, the workmen flocking towards the 
 manufacturing towns at the time when work is resumed. But, 
 as for these workmen, where do they come from % From the 
 country districts, he tells us. Quite so ! But then the country 
 ought to be short of hands, and tlie workmen will be welcome if 
 they return there at tlie time of manufacturing crises. No ! 
 replies Marx, for the reason that, in agriculture, hands are replaced 
 by machinery when a further step is not taken and the lands are 
 left uncultivated in order to secure fine huntin*}; for the lords who 
 possess them. 
 
 Perfectly so in England ! But in France, Germany, and It;dy 
 machinery is not yet seriously employed in agriculture. Property 
 is too divided for that. Mucli less arc lands left uncultivated. 
 If England, in regard to this matter, finds itself, by virtue of its 
 succession laws, in a particular and exceptional situation, one 
 may advise her to modify these laws without drawing conclusions, 
 from wliat takes place there, for the entire world. 
 
 Moreover, even in England the observations of Karl Marx arc 
 much exaggerated, and the close study of the fiicts demonstrates, 
 on the contrary, that the periods of enforced idleness are more 
 and more diminishing, a normal equilibrium tending more every 
 day to become established. 
 
 M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, in his work on Collectivism, from which
 
 The Lazv of Popidation. 
 
 57 
 
 \vG have made numerous drafts, provides a most conclusive proof 
 of tliis, viz. that the number of paupers relieved in England 
 and Wales — that is to say, the industrial army of reserve — has 
 gone on diminishing in very large proportions from 1849 to 18S3, 
 which was the nearest year to that in which his book appeai'ed. 
 
 The picture presented by M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu is worth 
 while being reproduced : — 
 
 NUMBER OF PAUPERS RELIEVED. 
 
 Year. 
 
 Al)le-boclie( 
 Adults. 
 
 Other 
 Paupers. 
 
 Total. 
 
 Population of Ens,' 
 laud and Walua. 
 
 IS to 
 
 201,644 
 
 732,775 
 
 9.34,419 
 
 17, .564 ,000 
 
 1850 
 
 151.159 
 
 739,. 384 
 
 920,543 
 
 17,773.324 
 
 ]S5l 
 
 154,525 
 
 706,. 368 
 
 800,893 
 
 17,982,849 
 
 JS52 
 
 137,318 
 
 697,106 
 
 8,34,424 
 
 18.193,206 
 
 1853 
 
 126,220 
 
 (i72,602 
 
 798,822 
 
 1 8,404,-368 
 
 1854 
 
 136,277 
 
 682,060 
 
 8 IS,. 337 
 
 18,616,310 
 
 1855 
 
 144,.500 
 
 706,869 
 
 851,369 
 
 18,829,000 
 
 185(5 
 
 152,174 
 
 725,593 
 
 877,767 
 
 19,042,412 
 
 ] 857 
 
 1.39,130 
 
 704,676 
 
 843,806 
 
 19,2-50,416 
 
 1858 
 
 166,604 
 
 741,582 
 
 908,186 
 
 19,471,293 
 
 1859 
 
 137,418 
 
 723,052 
 
 860,470 
 
 19,686,701 
 
 isi;o 
 
 136,761 
 
 714,2.59 
 
 851,020 
 
 19,902,713 
 
 1861 
 
 150,526 
 
 739,897 
 
 890,423 
 
 20,119,314 
 
 1862 
 
 167,646 
 
 778,520 
 
 946,160 
 
 20,-352.140 
 
 p;:3 
 
 253,499 
 
 889,125 
 
 1,142,624 
 
 20,590,-350 
 
 1864 
 
 186,750 
 
 822,5.39 
 
 1,109,289 
 
 20,8.34,490 
 
 18 J5 
 
 170,1.36 
 
 801,297 
 
 971,4.33 
 
 21,085,138 
 
 1866 
 
 149,320 
 
 771,024 
 
 920,344 
 
 21,342,864 
 
 1867 
 
 158,.308 
 
 799,865 
 
 9.58,173 
 
 21,008,280 
 
 1868 
 
 185,630 
 
 848,314 
 
 1,03.S,974 
 
 2],8S2,059 
 
 1869 
 
 1 83, 1 62 
 
 856, ?S7 
 
 1., 309, 5'! 9 
 
 22,104,847 
 
 1870 
 
 194,089 
 
 885,302 
 
 1,079,, 391 
 
 22,457,700 
 
 1871 
 
 189,839 
 
 892,087 
 
 1,081,926 
 
 22,700,359 
 
 1872 
 
 153,753 
 
 823,911 
 
 977,664 
 
 23,067.835 
 
 1873 
 
 127,697 
 
 759. 64S 
 
 887,-345 
 
 23.-3.50,414 
 
 1S74 
 
 114, ,324 
 
 714,957 
 
 829,281 
 
 23,048,004 
 
 1875 
 
 115,209 
 
 700,398 
 
 8]5„587 
 
 23,944,4.-9 
 
 1876 
 
 97,065 
 
 652,528 
 
 749,543 
 
 24,244,010 
 
 1877 
 
 92,806 
 
 635,. 544 
 
 728,.3;iO 
 
 24,547.309 
 
 1878 
 
 97,927 
 
 644, 77() 
 
 742,703 
 
 24,854,397 
 
 1870 
 
 118,933 
 
 681,493 
 
 800,426 
 
 25,105,330 
 
 1880 
 
 126,228 
 
 711,712 
 
 837,940 
 
 25,480,16! 
 
 1881 
 
 111,369 
 
 691,957 
 
 803,126 
 
 26,0.55,406 
 
 1882 
 
 106,2-0 
 
 691,. 3.34 
 
 797,614 
 
 26,406,820 
 
 1883 
 
 105,357 
 
 093,939 
 
 799,296 
 
 26,762,974
 
 ^8 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 Thus, as one may see by inspecting this curious document, if 
 wo except the years between 1863 to 1871, during whieli tlie 
 effects of the American War, that is to say, of an extra-economic 
 phenomenon, made themselves felt, the number of paupers relieved 
 went on diminisliing from 1849 to 1883 both in a relative and in 
 an absolute manner. 
 
 So tliat, whilst in 1849 the number of paupers relieved, adults 
 and able to work, was 201,644, and the total number of paupers 
 was 934,419 for a population of 17,564,000 inhabitants, in 1883 
 tlie niunbcr of those relieved in the first category was no more 
 tlian 105,357, or an absolute diminution of 95,287; that of the 
 total relieved had fallen to 799,296 for a ])opulation of 26,762,974 
 inhabitants, or an absolute diminution of 134,123. 
 
 From the relative point of view — the only one of importance — 
 the decrease of the proportion of the number of relieved paupers 
 to tlic population is still more considerable, having regard to the 
 increase of the population which, from 21 millions of inhabitants, 
 had risen to the number of 27 millions. 
 
 In 1849 the proportion between the number of adult able- 
 bodied ])aupei-s and that of the population had reached 11 per 
 thousand, and that of the total number of paupers relieved 53 
 per thousand. lu 1883 the first of these proportions fell to 3-9 
 per thousand, and the second to 29 per thousand, or a diminution 
 of two-thirds for the paupers in the first category, and of nearly a 
 half for the whole. It is right to add that the year 1883 was a year 
 of depression and industrial crises, consequently, one of those years 
 in which the reserve army of capital ought to have been formed. 
 
 In Paris we have fewer means of information, because the jjoor 
 law does not exist in France. Nevertheless, the figures furnished 
 by the Assistance ]mhii.q%ie give some valuable indications. It 
 was estimated that in 1813 there was 1 indigent person at Paris 
 for 569 people, and in 1818, 1 for 808. The much more precise 
 figures of the censuses whicli have taken place since have given 
 the following results : — 
 
 182!) 1 iiuli;^unt person for l.S(V2 iuluil^itaiits. 
 1S41 ,, ,, 1:^:^0 
 
 ISoO ,, ,, 193S
 
 The Laiu of Population. 
 
 59 
 
 1850 1 indigent person for 1059 inlialiit.iiits. 
 
 1803 ,, „ 1094 
 
 1804 ,, „ 1010 
 1800 ., ,, 1712 
 
 But, it is said, luacliiiics rcjilacij a considerable miiubcr of hands ; 
 and although the new capital, the formation of which they deter- 
 mine, may have as its consequence a demand for labour, they have, 
 none the less, some deplorably disturbing effects. On the one 
 hand, in fact, it is rare that the new demand is able to reach the 
 number of the workers unemployed, in consequence of the intro- 
 duction of machinery in the branch in which they worked; further, 
 Avhen even equilibrium happens to be established, it requires a 
 sufficiently long time, during which misery does not wait. 
 
 Even here the picture is overdrawn ; and Karl Marx, when say- 
 ing in his work that, without machines, it would actually need 
 200,000,000 workers to suffice for the actual production of Great 
 Britain, takes upon himself to answer his own objection. Machines 
 have had, above all, the effect of placing within the reach of 
 everybody products which formerly were only within the reach of 
 some ; and, if they have given rise to a passing inconvenience, 
 they have engendered some lasting benefits. 
 
 Further, these effects of passing inconvenience have not always 
 been so sudden, so absolute as one would suppose from the read- 
 ing of Das Kapital. Thus, M. Paul Leroy-Bcaulieu quotes some 
 figures concerning the substitution of steam navigation to naviga- 
 tion by sailing vessels, which show that, in that industry at least. 
 
 the evil has not been great. 
 
 These are the figures : — 
 
 SAILING VESSELS. 
 
 Years. 
 
 Number. 
 
 Tonnage. 
 
 Seamen 
 employed. 
 
 1877 
 1878 
 1879 
 1S80 
 1881 
 
 17,101 
 10,704 
 10,449 
 10,lb3 
 15,223 
 
 4,1HS,]49 
 4,070,098 
 3,918,070 
 3,750,442 
 3,509,108 
 
 123,503 
 
 120,085 
 115,177 
 108,008 
 102,498
 
 6o 
 
 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 STEAM VESSELS. 
 
 Years. 
 
 Number. 
 
 Tonnage, 
 
 Seamen 
 employed. 
 
 1877 
 1878 
 1879 
 1880 
 1881 
 
 3,218 
 3,390 
 3,r)80 
 3,789 
 4,088 
 
 1,077,480 
 2,1()0,02G 
 2,.331,ir.7 
 2,r)94,13r) 
 2,921,783 
 
 72,090 
 73,500 
 78,371 
 84,304 ; 
 
 90,405 1 
 
 1 
 
 Tlicse years represent tliose in which, in consequence of the in- 
 vention of a new macliine admitting of a great econom}' in fuel, 
 steam navigation has most increased. 
 
 Now, if we add up, for 1877 and 1881, the total number of 
 seamen employed in the two kinds of navigation, we shall find 
 tliese figures : — 
 
 Years. 
 
 1877 
 1881 
 
 j Seamen employed Seamen employed 
 in Steam Vessels, in Sailing \'essels. 
 
 123,563 
 102,498 
 
 72,999 
 90,405 
 
 Total of the 
 Seamen employed. 
 
 190,562 
 192/J03 
 
 That is to say, in five years a diminution of 3659 seamen on a 
 total of 196,502, or of 1-8 per tliousand 3 a diminution wliicii, 
 clearly, is hardly' appreciable. 
 
 It is riirht to admit that the transformation has not been so 
 easy in other industries. But it must also be agreed tliat the 
 phenomena which Karl Marx observed were those of the substitu- 
 tion of machines for manual labour. To-day that crisis is almost 
 passed away, and wliat takes place, and will continue to take place, 
 is the replacing of less perfect machines by more perfected ones. 
 
 In this latter case — as j\L Paul Leroy-Beaulieu would rightly 
 have us observe — capital, instead of menacing the worker, exercises 
 an undoubted protection in his favour. 
 
 Tlie capital incori^orated in the old machines, whilst defending 
 itself against the new, defends at the same time the workers
 
 The Law of Population. 61 
 
 whom it cniiiloys. A stock of tools is costly. When a manu- 
 facturer 1ms niiulc the outlay, and furnished himself with imple- 
 ments, it would be a mistake to believe that when a new discovery 
 steps in he will throw aside all his materials, unless such con- 
 siderable improvements are made — and such improvements are 
 rarely found — that in consenting to struggle against them he 
 would become ruined. He will wait, before he replaces them by 
 something new, till his implements are no longer of any use, or 
 till he has been refunded for his original outlay ; and during this 
 time, ordinarily rather long, his workmen will have the time to 
 turn themselves round. The transitions thus become infinitely 
 less appreciable than when the first machine had to struggle with 
 the handworker, 
 
 In short, machines lower the net cost of commodities and 
 multiply consumption ; and if there has been terrible crises at the 
 beginning, now that modern capitalism^ is established and follows 
 its normal course, there are the greatest chances that, in the 
 future, the increase of consumption, corresponding to future im- 
 provementSj may lead to the employment of a number of workers 
 equal to, or even greater than, the number of hands which indus 
 trial progress will have economised. 
 
 Machinery even presents, from the point of view of enforced 
 idleness, an useful influence which every unprejudiced mind is 
 bound to acknowledge. 
 
 Formerly, the workman had a special trade. This trade 
 required a long apprenticeship, and he was not able to change his 
 employment. If the fashion happened to produce a suspension of 
 production in the industry which employed him, he was deprived 
 of all resources, and could only place his hopes in a return of the 
 customs which had fled. 
 
 To-day — Karl i\Iarx recognises it, and makes one of his 
 grievances against modern industry out of it — thanks to machinery, 
 the workman can more easily pass from one trade to another. If 
 the new fashion drives him out of the occupation in which he 
 gained his livelihood, he may find employment in the trade which, 
 ^ Or, in M. Xaquet's own words, "la grande industrie."
 
 62 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 thanks to the favour it meets with from the public, has need of 
 ;iu increase of hands. 
 
 So true is this, tliat wlien one studies the effects of the dead 
 season, one perceives that it is tlie workmen in the small indus- 
 tries, and those who work at home, whom it affects most severely. 
 
 The laro-e manufacturers have such an interest in not alio wins; 
 their mac])inery to deteriorate for w^ant of use that they often 
 work at a loss rather than close their factories. 
 
 In the greater nuuiber of cases, if a crisis occurs, they diminish 
 their production, but do not stop it; they make their men work fewer 
 hours, but continue to give them work to do, and if the workman 
 finds his resoiu-ces reduced, at least he is not totally deprived of them. 
 
 The reserve army of capital is, therefore, one of the phantoms 
 which inhabit the mind of the German Socialist ; and if it is true 
 that there are, and always will be, crises and suspensions of labour, 
 it is false that modern capitalism has tlie effect of multiplying 
 those events and enlari^'inii; their extent. 
 
 Be that as it may, however, it remains none the less established 
 that the absolute figure at which the population stands at a given 
 moment is intimately bound up with the amount of the means of 
 subsistence. As M. Courcelles-Leneuil has mathematically formu- 
 lated it, — "this figure is equal to the sum of the aggregate income 
 of society, minus tlie sum of inequalities of consumption and 
 divided by tlio minininm consumption.'' If we call P the 
 necessary amount of })opulation, a the sum of tlie aggregate 
 income, i that of the inequalities of individual consumption, 
 and c the minimum consumption, the result may be represented 
 by this algebraical formula :— 
 
 a — I 
 c 
 
 This law, combined with what is called the law of rent — in virtue 
 of whicli an additional degree of production, necessitated bj'an in- 
 crease of the number of the consumers, costs more labour than the 
 preceding degree of production had cost for an equal quantity of 
 ])roducts — would lead to the terrible conclusions of Mai thus. 
 
 These conclusions would be certainly excessive.
 
 The Laiv of Pop7ilation. 
 
 On the one hand, the law of rent, such as Ricardo had formulated 
 it, is anything but demonstrated. Machinery, in multiplying in 
 an enormous measure the power of labour, has neutralised its 
 effects. On the other hand, as we have said before, it cannot be 
 doubted that the human will intervenes and acts as a powerful 
 lever on the rapidity with which population increases. AVe have 
 already found the demonstration of this in the nearly stationary 
 position of the French population, and we may also give as a proof 
 the persistent augmentation, in spite of all arguments, of the 
 minimum of individual consumption. 
 
 The argument of Karl Marx has an appearance of accuracy when 
 we only consider the duration of a period when industry is flourish- 
 ing, and when one compares that period with the crisis which 
 follows it. But that does not in any manner prevent the effects 
 pointed out by the economists from being equally true. 
 
 It is incontestable that, in moments of prosperity, the worker is 
 more tempted to propagate and, living a more abundant life, is in 
 a better position to preserve the life of the children he engenders. 
 These children will not become workers till later on ; they will not 
 play any part in the movement of increased prosperity to which 
 they owed their birth ; but for all that they will have been born, 
 and will none the less have lived. 
 
 It is none the less incontestable that, during the periods of non- 
 employment and of misery, the worker will have less children, or, 
 if he has as many, they will die in consequence of privations — which 
 will finally lead to the same result. 
 
 It remains, then, perfectly established that the population ab- 
 solutely follows the industrial movement, and that the number of 
 the inhabitants of a country increases when, athwart the oscilla- 
 tions of prosperity and of crises, the total production of that 
 country increases. 
 
 The Collectivists, therefore, would commit a gross eri-or if they 
 imagined that their master had solved the antinomy of population; 
 and we shall have the opportunity of seeing further on that this 
 formidable problem would be one of the stumbling-blocks of Col- 
 lectivism, and certainly not the least.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION. 
 
 One of the fundamental chapters of Karl ^larx is that relative to 
 tlie primitive accumulation. 
 
 In order tliat a surplus-value may exist, it is altogether 
 necessary that, as an essential preliminary, there may be the 
 capital which will have caused it. 
 
 If this capital exists, one can discuss what right it has to taice 
 to itself a portion of the surplus-value, or even the surplus-value 
 entirely; but it must first of all be shown to exist; and its possessor, 
 in the most favourable hypothesis, will only have the right— even 
 if capital is recognised as productive — to his share of the products, 
 if he is, moreover, legitimately in possession of the primitive 
 accumulation. 
 
 As for this primitive accumulation, where docs it come from ] 
 From the labour of the man who owns it, or from that of his 
 ancestors : such, without hesitation, is the x'oply of the econo- 
 mists. And tliey present the ^iicture of the laborious worker who 
 labours and saves, whilst others, idle or prodigal, labour little, or 
 waste the fruit of their labour. 
 
 Karl Marx rises up with vigour against this conception, which 
 he considers as a mere cityriori. He contends that these are purel}^ 
 imaginative views, and that it is enough to open an historical 
 book to show that tliings took place difJerently. In fact, accord- 
 ing to him, tlie accumulation goes back very far. The first 
 accumulations of capital, in antiquity, were constituted by war, 
 by rapine, by reducing conquered peoples into slavery, and by the 
 exploitation of slaves. 
 
 Afterwards, things have followed their course; new spoliations 
 
 64
 
 The Primitive Accitumlation. 65 
 
 have followed the old, and it was auiidst these violences that the 
 modern world saw the light. 
 
 Karl Marx devotes some very long explanations to the demon- 
 stration of this historical truth — a truth, the evidence of wliich is 
 such that he might have avoided advancing the proot ; an aflfirma- 
 tion on that point would have amply sufBced 
 
 But this is not the question wn have to consider, but the 
 following : — 
 
 Let us suppose that, without changing the social organisation, we 
 make a tabula rasa of all that exists ; that, — without destroying 
 the principle of private property, but with the sole end of causing 
 the injustice that marks its origin to disappear, — wo decree a 
 general sharing of all the actual values (note, that this hypothesis 
 has absolutely nothing to do with the Collectivist solution, which 
 is quite different) in order to allow human evolution to begin 
 again on the basis of economic liberty and property, outside all 
 robbery and all spoliation. Very well; if this hypothesis could 
 be realised, the society of to-day, by the means, purely ideal up till 
 now, which has been the subject of the idyll sung by the econo- 
 mists, would be i-econstituted before half a century had passed 
 away. 
 
 The ardour for labour, the intelligence and economy o ; ome, 
 the idleness, want of intelligence, and prodigality of others, would 
 soon give room for a new accumulation of capital on one side, and 
 for the bringing into existence of a class of paupers and wage- 
 winners on the other. One thing alone would be found modi- 
 fied, and perhaps even less so than one thinks, on account of the 
 aptitudes determined by the exercise of functions : the personjiel 
 composing the one and the other category. 
 
 This requires no demonstration, so absolute is its evidence. 
 Those, however, who would not be convinced by this, I would 
 advise to read the works of M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu and of M. de 
 Laveleye, the last named, moreover, being very favourable to the 
 Collectivist idea. They will see there that our hypothesis has 
 been verified, and is verified every day. Communities have 
 existed in the world. There exist some still; the Russian ?«;>, 
 
 E
 
 66 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 the Swiss allineml, the Japanese desm. Now, in all these com- 
 munities, and despite the precautions which are taken to oppose 
 personal appropriation, that appropriation goes on in spite of 
 every one, by virtue of an irresistible tendency of mankind, and 
 without spoliation and violence entering into the matter at all. 
 "What would it be if precautions were not taken to impede this 
 natural evolution ! 
 
 But if such is the case — and this fact can no more be questioned 
 than the affirmations of Marx on tlie primitive accunudation — we 
 may reason as if the idyll of the economists were correct in fact. 
 
 Seeing that, withont spoliation, without violence, without de- 
 ceptive exploitation, the capitalist society Avould be constituted of 
 itself, the arguments which it is sought to erect on ancient 
 violence lose all their value. This violence no longer proves that 
 these abuses were the essential cause of the form which society 
 has taken, and which society would have spontaneously taken 
 without them. Violence is nothing more than a historical accident, 
 and only demonstrates that, in many cases perhaps, the actual 
 possessors are not those who would have been so, if things had 
 occurred naturally, and without any intervention of force. 
 
 But if this is all that one can conclude from the erudition un- 
 folded by Karl Marx in regard to the primitive accumulation, the 
 idea could scarcely enter the mind of any one to produce an 
 universal overturning with the view, not of creating a new society 
 absolutely different from ours, but only to simply repair some 
 items of individual injustice. 
 
 And the question may still be asked whether one would not 
 create more injustice, in acting in this manner, than one would 
 repair. 
 
 In the time of Julius Csesar, the Eomans came into Gaul and 
 took possession of a piece of land which belonged to some Gaul. 
 It was a regrettable act of conquest. But two thousand years have 
 elapsed since then. The property has probably been taken again 
 from the descendants of the Romans by the barbarians. Since 
 then, how many times has it changed hands? No one knows. 
 What a number of purchasers in good faith between the primitive
 
 The Primitive Accumiilalion. 67 
 
 conqueroi- and tho actual landlord ! What an amount of money 
 expended on that land, by its successive possessors, during twenty 
 centuries, to maintain its value ! One may wager that, if it were 
 sold at this moment, its sale price would not even represent the 
 total capital which it had swallowed up, its value at the time of 
 Julius Ccesar not entering as any element of its actual value, which 
 is of fresh formation. And one would dispossess the man who 
 owns it to-day, not in order to make restitution to the unknown 
 descendant of the Gaul despoiled by Coesar's soldiers, but to let 
 it devolve, in the covirse of distribution, on some citizen or other 
 who would have absolutely no right to it! Such an idea is not 
 worth discussing. 
 
 Let people overturn the social conditions if they believe, with 
 the Collectivists, that they can substitute for those conditions 
 something better ! But if one does not believe this to be possible, 
 it would be criminal to upset everything in order to change 
 nothing but the personal functions exercised by different indi- 
 viduals. In truth, society is in no degree interested in the fact 
 that some one owns in preference to some other. This is a matter 
 absolutely destitute of importance. What interests society are 
 the institutions on which ownership is based, and also — in an order 
 of things founded on property — its only interest is that one may 
 always know who is the true owner. It is for that reason that, 
 with the object of avoiding perpetual litigation, and in order that 
 everything may not be constantly called in question to the 
 prejudice of all, prescriptive laws have been promulgated. In- 
 tended to put a limit to the claims which might arise even out 
 of recent usurpations, — when these claims are not brought forward 
 within a certain time, — these laws are indispensable. Are we not 
 still better justified in invoking them when the question in dispute 
 is society as a whole] 
 
 M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu even makes the judicious observation 
 in regard to this point, that, if the right of the present holder 
 were not recognised, there would no longer be security for human 
 aggregations — communes or nations. 
 
 Some little commune in Champagne, or in the Department of
 
 68 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 Herault, is rich, owing to the vines it cnltivates. On the other 
 hand, some otiier commune in tlie Department of Aveyron is poor, 
 and its inliabitants arc fed on rye. By what right do the inhabi- 
 tants of the first commune own a fertile soil, whilst those of the 
 second possess only an ungrateful soil] If tlie fact of occupying 
 this soil for centuries docs not constitute a right, the Aveyronais 
 may legitimately claim their part iu Champagne or Herault. 
 
 And what is true of a commune is equally so of a people. 
 France, Italy, and Spain enjoy possession of fertile lands and. of a 
 favoured climate. Why should the moujiks of Arkangel be de- 
 prived of these, and condemned to live in almost eternal ice? If 
 an indefinitely continued possession is not equal to a title, France 
 has no legitimate argument to put forward against the claims of 
 the Pomeranians, or even of the Persians and, Kurds ! 
 
 There is no medium here : either prescription for all, or pre- 
 scription for none ; either security for individuals, or insecurity 
 for nations ; either the maintenance of civilisation or the return 
 to barbarism. 
 
 Of course no one can draw from these considerations the con- 
 clusion that society has not the right to modify itself, if it deems 
 it useful and possible. Societies have always the right of sub- 
 mitting themselves to the modifications, — whatever may be the 
 degree of importance of these latter, — in which they find, or think 
 they have found, some advantages. 
 
 But the right which modern Society possesses to transform 
 itself cannot, in any case, be grounded on the criticism on primitive 
 accumulation. This criticism is a hors-d'oeuvre in the work of 
 Marx, wliich would take nothing away from the value of his other 
 arguments if these were convincing, but which adds to them 
 absolutely no additional force. 
 
 Marx's criticism only })roves that men have passed through an 
 epoch of barbarism before reaching the actual period of civilisa- 
 tion ; and it would be a bad means of improving the latter for 
 Socialism to bring back barbarism — by destroying, under pretext 
 of social justice, the results acquired — in order simj^ly to begin 
 social evolution over again.
 
 The Primitive Acciimitlation. 69 
 
 Either the attacks of Karl Marx against capitalism hold good 
 — and, in that case, Collectivism is beneficent and possible. If 
 this be true, it is necessary to go forward in the dii-ection of Collec- 
 tivism. Or else, as we think we have shown, the attacks of Karl 
 Marx are erroneous, and, more than that — as we shall endeavour 
 to show — Collectivism would be impossible, or, at the very least, 
 disastrous. If this be the case, we must be satisfied with the 
 situation which the ages have created for us, and we must not seek 
 to recommence social evolution because some abuses of power 
 were committed thousands of years ago; but we must confine our- 
 selves to bringing forward improvements, here and there, to the 
 present state of things, which may curtail what amount of oppres- 
 sion there still remains, in order to lead society to confer every 
 dav, to an always increasing number of individuals, a larger 
 measure of liberty, dignity, and happiness.
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 J 11 Analytical and Scientific Criticism of Collectivism. 
 
 -: :- 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A GENERAL SURVEY. 
 
 Our critical examination of the doctrine of Karl Marx is concluded. 
 We have shown that the theory of value adopted by the German 
 Socialist is erroneous, and that his theory of surplus-value and of 
 the "robbery" committed by the capitalist on the worker rests 
 on a series of sophisms. We have established that his considera- 
 tions on what he calls the primitive accumulation area mere hors- 
 cVoetiV7'e, which confers no strength on his argument. Finally, we 
 have placed beyond doubt that the population question exists by 
 itself, that it has not awaited the so-called capitalist society of to- 
 day in order to manifest itself, that it has forced itself on the 
 attention of men in all times, and that it even seized a more 
 dangerous hold on mankind in the ancient world than is the case 
 at the present time ; that man was even more completely subject 
 to it when the law of rent existed in full force than to-day, when, 
 by the invention of machinery, which is improved evei-y hour, 
 human genius has placed it within bounds. 
 
 But all this does not hinder the society of to-day, — like, moreover, 
 all societies which have preceded it, though in an infinitely smaller 
 degree, despite the fantastic affirmations of the Socialists, — from 
 being the mother of injustice, misery, and death ; and anxiety as 
 
 to the improvements to bring forward to remedy this injustice aiul 
 
 70
 
 A Gcfieral Survey. 
 
 misery remains none the less the noblest pre-occupation that can 
 absorb the human mind. 
 
 We have just asserted that injustice and misery, however great 
 they still may be, are less serious than in the ages past. Karl 
 Marx energetically contests this. It is true he does not urge a 
 return towards the past. He even considers that what exists at 
 the present time is a necessary stage in the evolution of mankind. 
 Bat men, the workman above all, appear to him as liaving been 
 less exploited, as having been more happy, during the feudal 
 period, under the guarantee of the mediaeval Trades-Guilds, than 
 they are to-day. 
 
 In this, perhaps, consists his clumsiest error. 
 
 No doubt the small masters in the towns, who had the mono- 
 poly of labour, and who, beneath the feudal lord, constituted so 
 many embryonic capitalists, were better protected than the exist- 
 ing workmen against excessive labour to-day and want of employ- 
 ment to-morrow. 
 
 But to draw from that fact a general conclusion, one must 
 systematically close one's eyes to the spectacle of mankind as a 
 whole, as presented by those sad times. 
 
 Marx complains of what he calls the reserve army of capital, 
 that is to say, of the loss of employment which falls upon a great 
 number of workers in times of industrial crises. And he foi-gets 
 that, in the past, this army was not a reserve but a permanent 
 army. It consisted of all the men to whom the right to labour 
 was refused, and who extended their fleshless hands at the gates 
 of the monasteries, as, to-day, the men out of work extend theirs to 
 the administrators of the Assistance puhlique in France, and to 
 those who dispense relief under the poor law in England. But 
 there is this difference, and a great one, that to-day the lack of 
 employment is temporary, whilst then it was perpetual. 
 
 To exalt the past, and to undervalue the present, we must also 
 forbear to look upon the spectacle which agriculture oflered, in 
 the midst of the wars, the incursions of armed force, and the de- 
 I^redations of all kind, and we must forget to take into account the 
 frightful situation of the peasants. To be convinced of this we
 
 / - 
 
 "' Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 have only to refer to the magnificent and eloquent pages Avliicli 
 ]\[ichelet has written on the lot of the husbandmen in those ages 
 of semi-barbarism. We shall read there the description of those 
 subterranean i)laces in which the workers in the fields were obliced 
 to hide themselves, their beasts and their harvests, to avoid the 
 robberies, the murders, the numberless acts of violence which they 
 had unceasingly to suffer on the jjart of the marauders, the 
 "great compagnies," the foreign invaders, and even from the 
 soldiers of the king. The corv6e took from them half of their 
 time, and such was the insecurity that it never permitted them to 
 enjoy with repose the pi'oduct of the other half. 
 
 No ! Our times are not inferior to past epochs ; and nuich more 
 in agreement with tlie reality of things than the lamentations of 
 Karl Marx, or of M. de Lavcleye, is the passage of the historian 
 Macaulay : — 
 
 " Those who compare the age on which their lot has fallen with 
 a golden age which exists only in their imagination may talk of 
 degeneracy and decay ; bxit no man who is correctly informed as 
 to the past will bo disposed to take a morose or desponding view 
 of the present." ^ 
 
 The undeniable fact that the minimum personal consumption 
 has increased is the most categorical answer that can be opposed 
 to the morose Anews of the greater part of the Collectivists on the 
 present society. 
 
 Because it is superior to the past, the present is, nevertheless, 
 not perfect; far from it! And we cannot too much encourage 
 those who are in search of fruitful improvements. 
 
 It remains to be examined whether the socialisation of the in- 
 struments of labour — to talk the Marxist language — would mean 
 progress or retrogression ; whether it would better the lot of man, 
 or, on the contrary, whether it would not have the result of making 
 it worse. 
 
 Be it remarked, that to put the question thus does not imply 
 the denial of the right of society to effect the transformation 
 dreamed of by Karl Marx and by his disciples, if that transforma- 
 1 Macaulay, Hist, of Einjiand,
 
 A General Survey. 73 
 
 tiou may possibly raise by one degree the spirit of justice, niay 
 cause misery to recede, and may augment tlie sum of human 
 happiness. It only implies an inquiry whether the means 
 proposed are of a nature to lead to the end aimed at, and are 
 not rather of a nature to lead to an inverse result. 
 
 Against the right of society to change its form, even so radically 
 as we have already had the occasion to recognise, there cannot 
 1)e raised the least doubt. 
 
 Property is not, — as philosophers and even some legisla- 
 tors have contended, — a natural right ; it is essentially a social 
 right. Society created it, and society would have the right to 
 destroy it. 
 
 According to localities, manners, and epochs, the social con- 
 ventions which men have established have been the most unequal, 
 the most dissimilar, the most opposite. 
 
 " La loi J"uii peuple etait chez I'autre people un crime." 
 
 Such are the words which Victor Hugo puts into the mouth of 
 the humanity of the future concerning mankind in the present or 
 the past. Communism played its part among the Incas before the 
 conquest of America, and in Paraguay after the conquest ; col- 
 lective property still exists at Java ; it is found in the Piussian 
 inlr, and remnants of it are pointed out in the alimends of 
 Switzerland. 
 
 Elsewhere, — for instance among the Arabs and other nomadic 
 peoples, — property, without on that account disappearing, and with- 
 out Communism being established, acquires a collective character, 
 and does not become fixed or individualised. 
 
 With us, on the contrary, property takes an absolutely individu- 
 alistic character, and this character is even carried to extreme 
 limits ; all which does not prevent the State, when it deems 
 it useful, from intervening and forcing upo'i the property-owners 
 laws restrictive of their liberty, as is the case, for instance, with 
 the expropriations on account of public utility. Sometimes these 
 legal obligations appear almost in contradiction with the principle 
 of property itself. Of that we have an example with our neigh-
 
 74 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 boiirs across the channel in the Land Act, by which the British 
 Government intervened between the landlord and the Irish farmer, 
 and assumed the power of lowering fixrni routs against the wish 
 of the owner of the soil. 
 
 Individual property, in the modern civilised world, is, therefore, 
 like all the other forms of appropriation which have existed, a social 
 fact. If men have established it, — even tiiough this was effected 
 by virtue of a natural evolution, and in no wise under the domina- 
 tion of a preconceived idea, the laws not haviug intervened till 
 later on in order to fix the custom,— it is because men have, or 
 believed they have, found an advantage in it. As soon as their 
 way of looking at things should ch;uige, nothing could, judicially 
 speaking, interfere with the new decisions wliich they would think 
 proper to form in order to change the social state. 
 
 At most, all they would be bound to do would be to take into 
 account the habits contracted, and proceed with due precautions 
 in the act of transformation. 
 
 And yet this necessity would not be forced upon them except 
 from a practical jjoint of view, and in order to avoid the over- 
 violent shocks which would run the risk of preventing the 
 reform from succeeding. As to the right, it is absolute, even in 
 regard to what is most revolutionary in these measures, and it is 
 laugliable for people in such a matter to talk of spoliation. 
 
 Spoliation exists when, in a settled state of society, a man is de- 
 spoiled of what he possesses by virtue of laws which are allowed to 
 subsist, and which are professedly held in respect. Confiscation, 
 for instance, is robbery. But when you lay hands on the edifice, 
 and change the state of things, it cannot any longer be a question 
 of spoliation, but of total change in what exists. 
 
 The feudal lords were not despoiled because feudalism was 
 suppressed. The French Churcli was not despoiled when its pro- 
 perty was taken away and replaced by stipends provided for by 
 the national budget ; neither will tlie same Cliurch be despoiled 
 when, by decreasing the taxes by the amount which tlie main- 
 tenance of the various religions cost, and by granting the citizens 
 tljc ri'dit of association so that tliov niav freely come forward to
 
 A General Survey . 75 
 
 support the expenses of their sect, all the churches shall be separated 
 from the State ; the slave owners were not despoiled when slavery 
 was suppressed, although an isolated planter in the South would 
 have been entitled to say that he was robbed if his slaves had 
 been confiscated, and slavery allowed to subsist ; a king is not 
 despoiled because a country proclaims the Kcpublic, but he is 
 despoiled if the power is given to an usurper. 
 
 Society has the undoubted, absolute right of completely trans- 
 forming itself. This riglit cannot therefox'e be denied to the 
 i-evolutionary Socialists, suljject, however, to a two-fold condition, 
 viz. that they shall bring to mankind something better than that 
 which it possesses, and that the great majority of men shall be con- 
 vinced of the righteousness of the new principles, aud shall accept 
 the transformation required by them. Indeed, one could not, in 
 any degree, allow a factious minority, taking forcible possession of 
 power, to use violence in order to force upon any country whatever 
 a social overturning which that country would not require. 
 
 However, such a danger is not to be feared, because if a 
 government by minority can be forced upon us, and can last while 
 it only confers certain changes upon the political state, — changes on 
 which there are almost no very decided opinions formed, — there 
 would be against an unaccepted social revolution a force of resist- 
 ance which would moke it altogether impossible. But if the 
 majority accepts itand wills it, no one has any prescription or 
 any right to invoke against it. 
 
 A single reservation ought to be observed in regard to actually 
 living individuals who, born under the existing laws, and not 
 liaving been able to form a suspicion of their abrogation, would 
 have no business occupation since they would have lived up till 
 that time on their annuities. Society ought evidently to provide 
 them with meaus of existence, like the Italian Government, which, 
 after the suppression of the religious communities, granted a 
 pension to the dispersed monks. T.nt these are temporary cor- 
 ditions relating to the execution of these changes, aud have 
 nothing to do v;ith the question of right. 
 
 The real point in dispute, solely and exclusively, is this : Does
 
 "jd Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 the change bring to mankind sometbing better than it ah-cady 
 has? 
 
 To upbraid actual society is an easy task, and if it is not given 
 to every one to do this with the scientific profundity of a Karl 
 Marx, or with the passionate eloquence and powerful dialectic of 
 a Proudhon, it is, on the other hand, given to us all to perceive 
 the imperfections which do exist ; there is no need for all that 
 to analyse salaries and to seek out the causes of surplus-value. 
 There are rich and poor : idle millionaires who dissipate their 
 fortune in vice, whilst there are laborious and honest workers 
 who die of hunger for want of work ; this fact alone impeaches 
 society, even as the existence of the natural inequalities, not only 
 between men but between animals, impeaches creation. All this 
 is clear to the eyes of the least observant. But that is not the 
 point. What must be shown is that these imperfections are not, 
 in part, inevitable ; it must be shown that it is possible — not as 
 everybody hopes, and as experience demonstrates, to attenuate 
 these imperfections by successive improvements — but to cause 
 them completely to disappear by means of a radical cure. 
 
 We should not, therefore, have stayed to refute the criticism of 
 capitalistic society made by Karl Marx and his disciples, if that 
 refutation of the fundamental principles on which the criticism is 
 supported did not furnish some important elements for the dis- 
 cussion of the organic part of their doctrine, — of that part, namely, 
 which deals no longer with the demolition of what exists, but with 
 what is proposed to bo substituted. 
 
 Indeed, it must be understood that we do not in any way bring 
 forward our refutation against the theories of those who, whilst 
 attacking society, cry aloud for a social revolution without know- 
 ing what they shall do after having made it. This anarchic 
 Socialism is unworthy to fix, even for an instant, the attention of 
 thinkers; we may add that it is not worth the trouble of con- 
 sideration. No society will allow itself to be led to destruction 
 without knowing what is to be put in the place of the things 
 destroyed. Revolution is not an end, but a means ; it only 
 ceases to be an attack on the rights of all when the end aimed at
 
 A General Survey. yj 
 
 is clearly known, aud when that end is so much desired by the 
 country as to be in conformity with the general feeling of the 
 population in whose name revohition is made. 
 
 But there is nothing in the anarchist ideas to cause disquiet. 
 No doubt, in particular circumstances which cannot be foreseen, 
 upheavals may take place, some persons may be injured, and 
 private fortunes may be attacked ; but these cyclones pass away, 
 and leave after their departure the social machinery as intact as 
 though nothing had occurred. 
 
 Those alone deserve to be treated seriously and to have their 
 views discussed who form the theory of a clearly defined new 
 society, — who, whilst inviting us to make a revolution intended to 
 free us from the existing order of things, tell us distinctly what 
 they propose to put in its place. 
 
 The old metaphysical Socialism, — which had Fourier, Saint 
 Simon, aud Cabet for its high priests, — has vanished. There 
 remains at this moment only one methodical Socialism, — the 
 Collectivism founded on the pretended economic law which Karl 
 Marx is said to have discovered. 
 
 Through study and discussion, what amount of vagueness there 
 was in the conception of Socialism has disappeared, or has re- 
 mained the poi"tion of the class of Socialists of whom we said just 
 now that there was no need to trouble oneself about them. The ideas 
 have matured and become distinct, and we now clearly know what 
 it is Collectivism would bring about. This fact enables us, by 
 mastering the principal features of the projected society, to pre- 
 sent, as though it existed in fact, an analytical and scientitic 
 criticism thereof.
 
 CHAPTER TT. 
 
 ON THE DISTRIBUTION OP WEALTH UNDER COLLECTIVISM. 
 
 The Collectivists are struck, above all, with the inequality which 
 exists in the distribution of wealtli. This is tlic problem which 
 they wish to deal witli. They do not propose to bring about a 
 more intensive production, but a better distribution. 
 
 We firmly believe, for our part, that they are mistaken, and 
 that, if they succeeded in their projects, they would perceive that 
 they do not make a moi'e equitable distribution than exists to- 
 day, but that they would have mucli less to distribute. 
 
 In order that the Collectivist distribution should be better than 
 ours, it would be necessary for it to have a basis, a rule absolutely 
 different from that which prevails in our days. 
 
 The brutal and authoritative Communism of Baboeuf had found 
 such a rule. It suppressed liberty of consumption even as it 
 suppressed liberty of pi-oduction. It consumed in common as it 
 produced in common ; pi'operly speaking, it suppressed distribu- 
 tion. It made of mankind a great monastery or a great barrack: 
 but a monastery without the lever of religion, a bai-rack uusus- 
 tained by patriotic love, and which was only maintained by dis- 
 cipline. Fraternity was invoked, it is true. But we know what 
 has to be thought of fraternity as a means of social oi'ganisation. 
 This Conmiunism aroused the horror of the human race ; it be- 
 came hateful because it had done away with liberty, which is, by 
 far, the first and tlie greatest of adv^antages. That system dis- 
 appeared. It is a dead doctrine. It has given place to modern 
 Collectivism. 
 
 Collectivism does not propose to destroy liberty of consumption. 
 It wnslies to leave this intact (we shall examine later on whether 
 these claims can be justified) and to interfere only with liberty of 
 
 78
 
 The DistribiUion of Wealth. 79 
 
 production. Fur that reason it i.s obliged to make a distribution 
 of produce, and requires a rule in accordance with which that 
 distribution might be made. 
 
 Such a rule Karl Marx believed he had found in his theory of 
 value and in the substitution of labour notes for metallic money ; 
 but it will suthce to recall to mind our chapter on value to recog- 
 nise that he has not in the least made such a discovery. 
 
 In fact, Marx — and his disciples on this point have been more 
 explicit than he — does not admit equality of wages. He recog- 
 nises that there exists some labour which ought to be better paid 
 than others. His commentator, Schiiffle, goes even so far as to 
 admit that, outside the greater eftbrt to which such labour Avill 
 give rise, and which would justify a higher remuneration, utility 
 alone will intervene in order to fix the value of the labour hour. 
 
 We do not wish to ask whether the ferocious equality of a 
 Collectivist maj'n-ity would easily accommodate itself to that 
 difference of treatment, founded as it is on utility alone, and 
 certainly on an utility which the masses would not understand. 
 
 AYe believe that the masses would not understand that utility, 
 because it would result simply from the necessity of providing 
 some industries with workers, although in fact the labour in those 
 industries Avould not, perhaps, be more arduous than elsewhere, 
 circumstances alone having for the moment turned aside tlie 
 supply of labour. It is clear that this social necessity, based on 
 statistics, would not be apparent to one who would not have made 
 of these facts a particular study, and that the less paid workers 
 would raise an outcry and refuse to accept such inequality of 
 treatment. How, therefore, will this inequality in estimating 
 the social value of the different hours of social labour be deter- 
 mined % Upon whom will the task devolve of saying to a worker, 
 who shall have worked six hours, — "Here is a note for three 
 hours' labour," and of saying to another worker, who shall have 
 worked during the same time, — " Here is a note for six hours " % 
 
 Will it be the State functionaries, the superintendents of 
 labour] Will there be in this estimate an arbitrary fixity? 
 
 If so, what a number of unmerited favours, which would render
 
 8o Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 society not worth liviug in ! We complain of the nepotism of onr 
 time, a nepotism necessarily limited by the very limitation of tho 
 objects to whicli it is applied. What would this be in comparison 
 with the universal nepotism under Collectivism'? No one, indeed, 
 will maintain that Collectivism is called upon to change the heart 
 of man, and that, — when the social workshops shall have been estab- 
 lished, — the loves, the hatreds, the jealousies, and all the passions, 
 high and low, which, in our days, intrude upon and interfere with 
 the abstract feeling of justice, will cease to exist. 
 
 Will it be said that the elective system wo\ild be a sufficient 
 guarantee against the subversive passions 1 But on the one hand 
 there is nothing to prove that society would preserve the elective 
 system. Schiifflc on this point makes tho most definite resei'va- 
 tions. 
 
 On the other hand, experience shows us that, for the last 
 twenty years, the elective system, far from being a guarantee 
 against favouritism, tends, on the contrary, to exaggerate it, A 
 despot would, perhaps, be able to stifle his feelings of friendship 
 and of hatred, and be just and inspired with nought but truth, 
 although this may be very difficult ; and it is rare to meet with 
 despots placed on such an elevated plane. But one who is elected 
 cannot do this. He is bound to be partial on behalf of his 
 electors as against his adversaries. If he does not do this his 
 power is broken. Here injustice forces itself almost as a necessity. 
 
 In fine, if even one supposes a power wielding a great author- 
 ity, thoroughly honest and thoroughly intelligent, a power only 
 inspired by social necessity and the general interest, how will 
 such a power be able, with the best intentions in the world, to 
 estimate the amount at which it is just to reward the hour's 
 labour of a mason, a bootmal;cr, a labourer, or a night-man? 
 How will it be able to modify its estimate every day according to 
 circumstances? This is a problem beyond the power of man. If 
 favouritism disappeared, it would only be to give way exclusively 
 to chance and hazard, which are not better representatives of 
 equality and equity than favouritism. 
 
 We have seen that the Collcctivists have found out the weak
 
 The Distribution of Wealth. 8i 
 
 spot in their armour, and have taken care not to fall into the 
 error of fixing the rate of wages. M. Devillo declares very clearly 
 that it is supply and demand, and supply and demand alone, 
 which, as to-day, will determine the value of labour. But if such 
 is the case, what change will there be from the society of to-day, 
 and how will this unhappy supply and that no less inihappy de- 
 mand, which to-day are laden with all the sins cf Israel, suddenly 
 become pure from all reproach, when the socialisation of the 
 instruments of labour will have taken place ? 
 
 To day the workman who is discontented can go elsewhere. 
 The field is wide. Thousands of workshops call for hands. In 
 spite of that, he may become the victim of the crushing force of 
 capital, although that force may be distributed amongst capital- 
 ists who do not know each other, who do not care for each other, 
 and who have no understanding together. 
 
 To-morrow he would have in front of liim one sole producer, 
 — the State. He would be altogether obliged to accept its condi- 
 tions, whatever they might be. He would find himself in the 
 position of the producers of tobacco in France, — bent under the 
 yoke of the State. 
 
 The law of supply and demand would not only not be free from 
 its defects, but these would be increased a hundred-fold by the 
 fact that there would only be one capitalist. 
 
 The Socialists will not fail to object that the great evil of society 
 to-day consists not in the differences in small sums which ma}^ 
 exist between the wages of such and such worker. They will say 
 that the vice of the capitalistic distribution consists in the fact 
 that the capitalists receive without working, and thus carry off an 
 undue portion of the fruits of labour. 
 
 We have already explained this point, and have demonstrated 
 that the amount deducted by capital is infinitely less considerable 
 than is supposed, and that that deduction is legitimate. 
 
 But, legitimate or not, it is clear that society would have the 
 
 right to get rid of a service for which it would too dearly pay. 
 
 And it would pay for it too much, if, however cheap it was, society 
 
 could obtain it at a lower price. 
 
 F
 
 S2 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 Let us see what result in this respect Collectivist society would 
 yield, and whether from that point of view it offers to us an ad- 
 vantage over what exists to-day. 
 
 It is said that by making common property of the instruments 
 of labour, dividends, interests, and profits, and, consequently, 
 idlers, will be done away with. Everybody will be compelled to 
 labour, witli the exception of tlie invalids and the aged. Here, 
 already, a pause is necessary. Tiie invalids and the aged will be 
 free from labour. Quite so, and as to the aged, nothing need be 
 said, age always being easy to determine ; but how about the 
 sick ? 
 
 All the idle, all the do-nothings will call themselves invalids ; 
 and how will it be possible to ascertain whether really they are 
 invalids or not ? There will be seen reproduced, on the most 
 gigantic scale, what takes jilace actually in the army. Physical 
 infirmities, easily ascertainable, do not give rise in the army, and 
 would not give rise in Collectivist society, to any kind of diffi- 
 culty. On the other hand, the affections so numerous and so 
 manifold of the nervous system, more painful a hundred-fold for 
 those affected thereby than physical infirmities, but which do not 
 show themselves and are not outwardly perceptible — how shall we 
 be able to ascertain these, and check the statement of those who 
 pretend to be thus affected ? 
 
 Will one believe on their mere word those who will say they 
 are stricken with such infirmities'? In this case what a number 
 of idlers living at the expense of others ! The actual amount levied 
 by capital is nothing in comparison with the idling consumption 
 which will be produced to-morrow. 
 
 Will one systematically refuse to believe the parties interested? 
 Then, what a number of innocent victims! What a number of 
 sick and infirm to whom it will be said, — " Either work or die of 
 hunger'" ! 
 
 To-day the sick man who is rich spares himself all labour with- 
 out having to ask help of anybody. As to the poor man, whose 
 sickness is not perceptible, he has not, f\ace to ftice with him, the 
 harshness of an arlministration. lie finds, in the multiplicity of
 
 The Distribution of WealtJi. 83 
 
 a 
 
 the individuals to whom lie is able to apply, and in the varieties 
 of their character, the means of finding for himself some succour 
 which may place him, if not in a state to live, at any rate in a 
 state so as not to die. Even public charity is drained by many 
 unworthy objects who succeed in hiding tlieir idleness under 
 apparent infirmities. 
 
 To-morrow everything would take place with military rigour, — 
 "work or die"; it would be impossible to get away from that 
 alternative. Besides the suj^erannuated workers, there are the 
 less capable, the feeble, those whose labour is less intense and less 
 pi'oductive. To-day, the workers are all brought together in the 
 factory. All belonging to the same trade, except when the pay 
 is by the piece, receive an equal wage. The master kuows that 
 an average is produced. On this he calculates, without concern- 
 ing himself with individual differences. 
 
 As for the worker, he receives neither more nor less — even 
 when he is at piecework — whether the man by his side works 
 more or works less. Capital alone is interested in the fact that 
 labour should acquire its maximum intensity. Thus, no control 
 is exercised from worker to worker. 
 
 To-morrow all will be reversed. The property-holding capitalists 
 will be replaced by functionaries, directors, or overseers, and these 
 will have only a secondary interest in exercising superintendence. 
 The workers, on the contrary, would have the greatest interest in 
 over-estimating their hour of labour, and in depreciating the 
 labour-hour of others. There would ensue in the workshop a vital 
 competition which would create a system of universal underhaiul 
 accusation between the men. 
 
 P'raternity would not correct these abuses any more than it 
 corrects those which manifest themselves in our day. Any one 
 who knows the harshness with which a toiler become capitalist, 
 be he worker or peasant, carries on his superintendence of the 
 wage-earners, and how he exacts from them the greatest effort 
 possible, may conceive how little can be expected from human 
 sentimeutalism. On this point the attempts of 1848 are con- 
 vincing. At that time, numerous working-class associations were
 
 84 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 constituted, subsidised by the State, whicii provided cut of the 
 national budget a credit of three million francs for that object. 
 Fraternity was the basis on which all those co-operative bodies 
 were established. One of these, the co-operative tailors, was more 
 inspired even than the others with the ideas of Lotus Blanc, and 
 substituted day-work for piece-work. It was hoped that the 
 natural check oftercd by those interested would suffice to maintain 
 their zeal, and that fi'atemity would prevent this check from 
 degenerating into espionage anil oppression. Nothing of the kind 
 took place, and, according to 'M. Feugucray, who has written a 
 history of the working class Associations of tiiat time, the supor- 
 intendmce degenerated into such violent and acrimonious 
 recriminations that the workshop became a hell, and it was 
 necessary to re-establish piece-work. This means alone enabled 
 the members to make their mutual companionship tolerable, and 
 restored peace amongst them. And yet, in 1848, fraternity 
 overflowed in every so\d. We may gatlicr fioiu these facts what 
 would become of the mutual check under Collectivism. 
 
 Thus, the difficulty of fixing the value of the hours of labour ; 
 the difficulty of taking into account the infirmities, the maladies, 
 or relative inca|iaciUes ; the difficulty of organising a super- 
 intendence wliieh might not degenerate into espionage — such are 
 the first obstacles with which distri])ution would come into collision 
 under a Collectivist society, and which would cause the I'evival, on 
 the one hand, of the idlers who had been destroyed on the other. 
 
 There would be another important cause, though of a difTerent 
 kind, of unequal distribution. In Collectivism, in the same way as 
 in capitalist society, the labour of direction and of distribution 
 would be required. On wiiom would this labour devolve 1 
 
 To-day it falh to the lot of the free capitalist, to-morrow it 
 would belong to the State. 
 
 Pmt the State is an impersonal being, who cannot act excci)t 
 through certain persons interposed, that is to say, through 
 functionaries. We should therefore see a daily increasing crowd 
 of employes of all ranks. Things would happen — but on a gigantic 
 scale — even as they do in our days in the public administrations,
 
 The Distribution of Wealth. 85 
 
 and the spectacle which these ofier is not calculated to iuapii-e us 
 Avith the desire of making them still more numerous. 
 
 What do we see to-day % A functionary is only dominated by 
 one fear, — that of being considered useless and of seeing his post 
 done away with. His whole intelligence is perpetually on the 
 stretch concerning this rock to be avoided ; and the best means of 
 warding off the peril consists in continually swelling the import- 
 ance of his duties. 
 
 If an office consists of two employes, one of them may be 
 removed and the second may be transferred to another office, two 
 services being thus blended in one, and in that manner the economy 
 of a head clerk or an assistant being realised. But the chief and 
 the assistant hold that such an economy would be deplorable, and 
 their only aim is to make it impossible. To achieve that end it 
 is sufficient for them to have from ten to a dozen employes in- 
 stead of two. The latter will perform no more productive work. 
 All that will be done, so as to appear to utilise them, will be to 
 augment the number of idle formalities. But observe that they 
 are ten in number ; and how could the idea come into the mind 
 of anybody to get rid of a service of such great importance! 
 Therefore no effort is neglected to bring about this result, and as 
 nothing can withstand the patient and j ersistent action of a head 
 of department, who makes everything converge towards the one 
 end, his wish never fails to be realised sooner or later. In this 
 way the number of officials, that is to say, of the unproductives 
 imr excellence^ increases year by year. 
 
 This fact continually crops uj). It is an unconquerable law 
 that bureaucracy breeds bureaucracy, as formerly, in America, the 
 slave states bred slave states. This is one of the plagues of our 
 existing French budgets, against which all our financial com- 
 missions are powerless, as are all our ministers, and for which 
 there only exists one I'emedy: to remove as much as possible from 
 the Government what is not strictly within its province, and to 
 take away from the State as much as can be taken on behalf of 
 private initiative. 
 
 Now, what the Collectivists propose is quite the contrary.
 
 86 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 Tliey want to make the system of government control general, by 
 subjecting the whole of production to public administration, and 
 they wish to multiply in this manner a hundred-fold and more 
 the abuses of all kinds which this system, wherever it is practised, 
 brings about in our day. Capitalism, so far as private property 
 goes, would be abolished. There would no longer exist either 
 pensioners or shareholders, nor happy mortals drawing dividends, 
 no doubt, but interested by the very enticement of these dividends 
 in promoting the general production ; but there would be, as a 
 set-off, employes without number; functionaries — vain-glorious, 
 insolent, and doctrinaire — who would know how to estimate, 
 advantageously for themselves you may be sure, the value of their 
 hour of useless labour, and who would live comfortably without 
 doing anything, or at least without doing anything truly useful 
 and truly productive. 
 
 The worker would no longer break his heart in saying to him- 
 self that M. Lebaudy accumulates capital ; but he would give 
 quite as much surplus-labour — to employ the language of the 
 Marxist school — and perhaps he would give even more of it — only 
 to obtain the same portion, or a smaller portion, of the total pro- 
 duction. 
 
 It may be asked whether interests and profits of all kinds would 
 possibly bo extinguished, or, rather, whether these would be 
 preserved and added to the governmental squandering, and made 
 in themselves unpi'oductivc. 
 
 As soon as Collectivism proposes to respect liberty of consump- 
 tion; as soon as it allows possession — provided this is confined to 
 the ])urp03es of consumption, and on condition that it is not 
 devoted to production — from the moment in which it allows — and 
 Schiifflc is emj)hatic on this point — gift and even inheritance, it 
 follows, as a matter of course, that it would also allow gratuitous 
 lending. 
 
 Now, gratuitous lending, if duly authorised, may reconstitute 
 usurious saving, that unproductive and injurious saving which is 
 "•enerated like an evil-working parasite wherever industrial liberty 
 dof-R iiot exist.
 
 The Distribution of Wealth. %"] 
 
 As soon as the simple Communism of Babanif or of Cabet is cast 
 aside — and it is so, for good cause, mankind not wishing even to 
 tolerate the mention of it— the differences observable amongst 
 men to-day would be reproduced under Collectivism. There 
 would be workers whose hour of labour, paid very low, woidd 
 make saving difficult ; there would be others, on the contrary, to 
 whom that saving would be made easy by the high value placed 
 upon their hour of labour. 
 
 There would be some devotees of joy, who would spend every 
 day their wage of yesterday, and some saving people, and misers 
 even, who would pile labour-notes upon labour-notes. What 
 could prevent one of these spendthrifts from borrowing from one 
 of these misers, and who would be able to forbid the miser from 
 granting a loan % 
 
 Agreed, but without interest, the Collectivists will say. Doubt- 
 less without legal interest. But to-day also the law proscribes, 
 it" not interest, at least an usurious amount of interest. Have these 
 laws ever prevented usury? "We convict, certainly, here and 
 there, a usurer, when the proof of the QfTcnce is palpable — evident. 
 But for one who is caught, ten thousand escape, I lend a hundred 
 francs to a needy man. I make no stipulation about interest ; 
 but whilst I make him sign a bill for one hundred francs, I only 
 give him ninety-five. The interest is mixed up with the principal 
 and escapes all search, all inquiry. Therefore usury has never 
 been killed by laws passed against it, but solely by the possibility 
 for the capitalists of finding for their capital a worthy, honourable, 
 and useful employment. It is not the legal limitation of the amount 
 of interest which, in our days, has made usury almost disappear. 
 It is the development and the security of commerce and industry'. 
 
 In the Collectivist society — capital no longer being able to be use- 
 ful as a means of production to individuals, but only to the State — 
 saving would reappear in the disastrous character it bore during 
 barbarous times, — hoarding and usury. It would not cease, under 
 that form, to be productive for the individual, but it would cease 
 to be productive for the nation, and would even be, for the latter, 
 a real gnawing canker.
 
 SS Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 Facts, on this point, confirm the theoretical deduction. We 
 have olroady spoken of the agricultural communities which exist 
 iu Russia under the name of "J/m'." Now, on the confession of all 
 writers who have dealt with the "J/w-," however sympathetic they 
 may have been to the institution, usury has developed itself there, 
 and with so mucli force that the visurers have gained a special 
 name : they are called the "eaters of the mir." 
 
 Could even productive capitalisation be prevented] The thing 
 does not seem easy. 
 
 There, for example, is a worker who will have put aside for the 
 future, in labour-notes, a considerable sum, in order to enable him- 
 self either to live without work, or to enable some other person to 
 live daring an indefinite time. 
 
 On the other hand, a man with a fertile imagination, tlie author 
 of a discovery which the State has rejected, calls on him. Desirous 
 of employing himself exclusively on the construction of his machine, 
 and to leave, for a time, the general workshop, in order to apply 
 himself with greater freedom of mind to his particular experiments, 
 but not possessing aiiy reserve funds, he asks the man who has such 
 funds to yield him a portion of his money of the new kind, in 
 exchange for the promise made to him of a part of the benefits 
 which should accrue to the inventor, if his machine succeeds. The 
 other accepts. There is a little association formed within the 
 great. There is a little capital which carries on its work. Tlierc, 
 too, are interests or profits — for at bottom tliey are all one — 
 reconstituted to the advantage of this capitalist vx miniature. 
 And as capital knows how to multiply rapidly, we shall very 
 quickly see some private enterprises establislicd under the nose 
 of the national administrations, which will be easily beaten in 
 this competition. 
 
 Will this contract be declared illicit? All the inhibitions will 
 not prevent it any more than they have succeeded during cen- 
 turies, at the Stock Exchange and in commerce, in suppressing 
 credit transactions, by refus'ng to grant them the sanction of the 
 law, or even by proclaiming penalties against them. Tlic only 
 means by which to oppose that form of capitalisation would be
 
 The Distribution of Wealth. 89 
 
 to abolish the profits of the invoitor, by refusing to reward his 
 discovery, or to set one's face against accumulation by docrcciug 
 equal pay, and by reducing that pay always to a minimum. 
 
 But the first of these means, at the same time that it would be 
 the fatal suppression of all progress, would only have the effect of 
 promoting purely usurious accumulation by the elimination of all 
 other possible forms of accumulation, and the second would go in 
 the teeth of the ideas of the school which seeks not the equalisa- 
 tion of salaries, but their elevation. 
 
 Be it noted that we only cite here some examples to show the 
 process whereby interest and profits would man.ige to introduce 
 themselves in Collectivist society. But the number of these pro- 
 cesses is as unlimited as the resources of human intelligence and 
 the combinations it can bring aboc.t. 
 
 AVe may quote another example as striking as the preceding. 
 
 Commodities will not have an uniform value under Collectiv- 
 ism. If we content ourselves with tlie theory of Marx on value, 
 it is clear that, after a bad harvest, the value of wheat or 
 the value of wine would rise, seeing that a like quantity of 
 these products would represent a more considerable average of 
 social labour, the total labour having been tlie same, and the 
 harvest less productive. 
 
 From that point of view, what would prevent a far-sighted 
 citizen from taking advantage of his savings — since buying would 
 be free — and from buying wheat or wine before the harvest which 
 he apprehends will be bad, and afterwards from selling again 
 these provisions to his neighbours, allowing them a reduction on 
 the prices (I make use of this term, for it would still be a price, 
 whatever one may say, and this expression is convenient to use) 
 at the general shops in order to attract their custom % These 
 dealings would be forbidden, illicit, no doubt. But the smuggling 
 of tobacco is also forbidden and illicit to-day, which does not, 
 however, prevent the same from taking place. 
 
 Tlie liberal professions woiild be another cause of unequal distri- 
 bution. Fourier suppressed law proceedings and sickness, but 
 the hopes of modern Collectivism do not go so far. In the
 
 90 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 society which it wishes to buiM up there will be civil cases, con- 
 sidering that ownership in objects of consumption and even in- 
 heritance are preserved. Tlierc will be criminal cases, for you 
 cannot suppress either the vices, the evil leanings, nor the passions 
 of men. There will be sickness. There will, therefore, still be 
 judges, lawyers, and physicians. 
 
 Will these lawyers and physicians be functionaries paid by the 
 State 1 Some say yes ; others say no. In fact, it is difficult for 
 them to be so. A great doctor or a great lawyer, giving his 
 service gratuitously, would be in demand everywhere at the same 
 time, and as he would be unable to fulfil his task, he would be 
 compelled to circumscribe his area. Every lawyer, therefore, 
 would have his circle, and each physician his, in which, and ex- 
 clusively in which, he would have to move. From that moment 
 the citizens would no longer have the right to be defended, or 
 to have themselves cared for, by whomsoever tliey think fit to 
 have. This would be something altogether inadmissible, and one 
 would be inclined thoiceforward, as Schaflle proposes, to leave 
 those professions free wherein labour is exercised without capital. 
 
 But if such is the case — and it could hardly be otherwise — how 
 could one prevent the well-known pliysician, the lawyer much 
 sought after, from insisting on being very dearly paid in labour- 
 notes, and from exacting from the social revenue an incomparably 
 greater part than that of the mass of laboui-ers ? 
 
 If lawyers and physicians were made functionaries, and if it 
 were proposed to limit their area and forbid them fi'om receiving 
 salaries from outsiders, the cit^e would not be further advanced. 
 One would have laid hands on liberty without result. It would 
 not be possible, in fact, to intrude at the bedside of the sick, or 
 in the private study of a ukiu worried witii a lawsuit ; luul it 
 would be impossible to prevent cither the one or the other, in the 
 hope of being the object of more assiduous care, from adding a 
 personal fee to the remuneration of the Government. 
 
 Collectivism would su[)press neither interest nor profits ; but 
 they would be clianged froni the useful things which they are 
 jicarly always today — in a great niimber of cases at least — into an
 
 The DistribiUiou of Weallh. 91 
 
 useless and even injurious tax on tlic general production. It would 
 give rise, on a gigantic scale, to the swarms of abuses which the 
 State administrations already offer to us. 
 
 It would produce an incalculable crowd of functionaries of all 
 kinds, who would live handsomely at the country's expense, and 
 would replace with advantage — for themselves, be it understood — 
 the quota of the national produce enjoyed to-day by the ca[)italists 
 for their consumption. 
 
 It would allow the inequalities in the pay of labour of divers 
 kinds to remain, and would create for the liberal professions as 
 many advantageous positions as those which exist under the most 
 capitalistic societies. 
 
 In a word, in the society to which the disciples of Marx urge 
 us forward, the distribution of wealth would be neither more equal 
 nor more just than is the case to-day. The corvee — seeing there 
 is a corvee — the surplus labour — would hold as large a place therein, 
 perhaps a larger. And as the raison-cVetre of Collectivism is to 
 better distribute the social wealth, and as it has, in reality, no 
 other object, it is clear that, if it fails in that task, it lacks alto- 
 gether any basis. 
 
 It now remains to enquire whetlier, failing in the work of 
 distribution, it may not, at the same time, fetter production 
 and progress ; whetlier it is able to respect, as it hopes to 
 do, the material and moral freedom of the individual ; whetlier it 
 may not create difficulties of all kinds in the way of commerce 
 and international relations ; whether, in a word — powerless to 
 attain the useful end which caused it to be conceived — it may not 
 produce a crowd of disastrous consequence-^, by which no society 
 could fail to be affected.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ON THE rUODUCTlU.N OF WEALTH AND OK TROGRESS UXDliR 
 
 COLLECTIVISM. 
 
 Wii have shown, in the preceding chapter, the direction of in- 
 dustry, of science, and human progress handed over to a hierarchy 
 uf functionaries, from which it would be incapable, even partly, to 
 escape, except by brealving now and then the meshes of the Collec- 
 tivist net. We have established that these meshes would often be 
 brolven, and from thence we have drawn an argument against Col- 
 lectivism, which would always have within it the germs of dissolu- 
 tion. But it is clear tlmt the Collectivists cannot brins; forward 
 these infractions of the system as the means of correcting it and 
 eliminating its imperfections. We have, therefore, the right, when 
 we study the effect of Collectivism on the production of riches and 
 on progress, to reason as though — Collectivism liaving implanted 
 itself in all its rigour — none of these infractions, which we have 
 seen to be fatal, ouglit to liavc taken place. If these infractions 
 occur, it is clear that tlie evil effects of Collectivism can be dimin- 
 ished ; but in tliat case, Collectivism will be imperfect, and that 
 would be an inadmissible defence of a system which should con- 
 sist in reckoning on its imperfections in order to perfect it. 
 
 So, then, we shall reason here as though Collectivism were at 
 work in all the vigour of its principle, and we may say, conse- 
 quently, that all direction of industrj-, all scientific progress, would 
 be handed over to that inuncuse body of mandarins — appointed 
 probably by competition, as in China — and which, whatever in 
 other respects would be its mode of recruiting, would completely 
 crush the whole of mankind. 
 
 Further than that. Collectivism, we must not forget, is conceived 
 
 92
 
 TJic Production of Wealth. 93 
 
 in order to suppress the surplus-value wliich the capitalist appro 
 priates, and in order to cause the worker to benefit thereby. 
 
 It is difficult to perceive, in these conditions, the elements of an 
 ever-increasing production, and the instruments of that scientific 
 and industrial progress which constitute the greatness of the 
 modern world. 
 
 To-day a colony is opened out to civilisation. At once some 
 adventurous capitalists take from their surplus-value — from that 
 part of their surplus-value which they do not consume — sufficient 
 capital to fertilise this field of colonial enterprise, provided that, 
 as, unhappily, it nearly always occurs in France, the State does not 
 fetter them by its mania for making regulations. 
 
 An inventor conceives a new idea. He makes a fruitful dis- 
 covery. How will this idea pass out froui the lobes of his brain 
 into application % The thing is very simple. If he is rich he will 
 devote a part of his fortune to bring his invention to a successful 
 issue. If he is poor, and his idea is a good one, he will nearly 
 always end in meeting a speculating capitalist who, desirous to 
 increase his profits by a risky enterprise, will provide him with the 
 necessary ^ums to bring the thing to realisation. The love of 
 what is improperly called gambling, because of tiie part therein 
 played by hazard, and which should be called speculation, will 
 here play its salutary part. This capitalist will, perhaps, 
 prune oft" from the inventor somewhat too large a portion of the 
 benefits to which he is legitimately entitled ; perhaps lie will cut 
 oft' for himself too large a slice ; but, in short, if the discovery is 
 useful, it will see the light, the whole of mankind will benefit 
 thereby, and the inventor, even after yielding capital a part of the 
 fri;it o' his genius, will yet gather tlierefrom. some considerable 
 profits. 
 
 With CoUectivist-Socialism nothing of this kind will any longer 
 exist. 
 
 First of all the accumulation of capital ceases ; and when a 
 continent is opened out to civilisation, tlie resources are lacking 
 for undertaking the colonisation. 
 
 In the same way as in a public company the siiareholdcrs, when
 
 9-^ Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 they are not withheld by an energetic and interested board of 
 directors, feel a repugnance to create reserve funds, and tend 
 towards the integral distribution of the jDrofits, so the socialised 
 worker will feel an invincible repugnance to the accumulation of 
 capital, and will demand that all the products of the year should 
 be distributed. He will attain that end either by the gradual 
 augmentation of salaries, or by a progressive diminution of the 
 labour-day, or even by these two methods combined. 
 
 The formation of ca])ital will be arrested by such an insur- 
 mountable obstacle, and with it new enterprises that produce 
 weal til. 
 
 As to discoveries, it will be worse still. Tlie inventor will have 
 to struggle not only against the penury of capital, but against 
 this factor combined with administrative routine and inertia. 
 
 Just tliink of Fulton offering his steamboat to Napoleon I., and 
 remember the disdain witli which the Institute of J'Vancc rejected 
 his idea as contrary to the laws of science ! 
 
 I myself remember an illustrious savant who demonstrated to 
 nie the impossibility of establishing a trans-oceanic telegraph, eight 
 ur ten days before the first despatch was transmitted from New 
 York to Valencia. According to him, the currents of induction 
 would prevent the transmission from taking place, and the capital 
 which had been brought together for the construction and the 
 laying down of the cable was so much capital wasted. Let us 
 suppose this savant consulted by a Collectivist state on the 
 expediency of constructing the first cable and throwMng it across 
 the ocean, and then say what counsel he would have given, and 
 wliat would have been the action taken by the financial authority 
 in regard to such an advice ! 
 
 Nor would it be possible for things to hajipen differently. The 
 number of inventors is immeasurable ; every fi'ol invents. The 
 total amount of propositions that are put furwai'd on this head is 
 incalculable. A government would not consider it had the right, 
 and in fact would not have the right, to fritter away the public 
 wealth in experiments full of uncertainty and risk. Except in 
 some cases altogether exceptional, it would reject them all.
 
 The Prodiiction of JVeallh. 95 
 
 Besides, the admiuistratiou is in its nature opposed to change 
 When an employe has acquired the habit of a given kind of labour 
 why should he make an eflbrt to change it? The individual 
 capitalist makes this effort because he is incited by the advantage 
 which he foresees at the end. But can we say this of the Col- 
 lectivist functionary? The success of the machine that is brouglit 
 to him will neither increase nor diminish the value of his hour of 
 labour. Why should he trouble himself ? He will find it infinitely 
 more easy to decree the major excommunication against the inventor 
 in the name of tlie principles of a routine science ; and progress 
 will be gagged even before it has seen the light. 
 
 Besides, for what reason should the invention itself be pro- 
 duced ? In society to-day, the tliinker who conceives an idea, or 
 discovers a new instrument, is impelled thereto by the enticement 
 of gain. He constructs a steam engine which will diminish by 
 one-third or by one-half the consumption of fuel ; what a magni- 
 ficent field of profit is offered to his activity! He will labour and 
 make discoveries, and with the ardour given by the hope of profit, 
 he will force his conviction on the most restive recalcitrant capi- 
 talists. But when the instruments of labour shall be socialised ; 
 when the time devoted to a discovery will not be worth more than 
 the time devoted to any ordinary labour, why should the inventor 
 wear himself out at inventing? In view, one might say, of some 
 decoration, — of an honorary reward ! The value attached to these 
 trifles can only diminish more and more in pro})ortion as the in- 
 telligence of men is raised ; and if social distinctions still flatter 
 men's vanities, they are not sufficient to determine the perform- 
 ance of great efforts. They are claimed with insistency as soon 
 as the eflbrt is made ; but they do not produce the effort itself. 
 
 AVill the Socialists tell us that they would encourage discoveries 
 by granting considerable rewards, labour-notes with profusion, — 
 that is to say, enormous means of enjoyment, — to inventors, as well 
 as to the engineers who would, have noticed tlie discovery and 
 made its introduction possible ? 
 
 Very well ; either those subsidies, like to-day the rewards 
 offered by the Institute of France, will be awarded to the author
 
 96 Collectivism and Sccialism. 
 
 of an allotted task, the object of which will have been fixed, or 
 the reward will be applied to any discovery whatever. 
 
 In the first case, wc have the right to ask, seeing the paucity 
 of fertile efforts which the rewards of the Institute have ever pro- 
 duced, wliether the rewards of Collcctivist society will be endowed 
 with more attractions, and will give better results. There is 
 small probability of this, because the object which will have been 
 fixed will never be realised. It will be something aualagous to 
 the three hundred thousand francs promised to whomsoever will 
 discover a remedy for the phylloxera. Tlie remedy is discovered. 
 There are several of them even : immersion, sulphide of carbon, 
 sulpho-carbonates, and the plantation of American vines. But as 
 t\ese results are in no way absolute ; as they have been obtained 
 by an extreme multiplicity of experiments ; and as perhaps the 
 best means of warding off the evil, viz. the plantation of American 
 vines, is not, properly speaking, a remedy ; as, in short, no one is 
 able to say, — It is I that stayed the scourge, no one has had, and 
 no one Avill have, the three hundred thousand francs. 
 
 If, on the otlicr hand, a fund were voted to reward all in- 
 ventors and functionaries who would notice the discovery — the 
 nature and object of which would not have been stated beforehand 
 — people would fall into the contrary error. Everybody would 
 bring forward a new idea. This idea would be nearly always 
 accepted, and the funds of the State would be squandered in the 
 study of a crowd of absiu'd enterprises. 
 
 At the present time, if the capitalist is pushed forward by the 
 allurements of gain, he is held back by the fear of loss; and these 
 two opposing s^'utiments establish a just equilibrium, which allows 
 the fruitful ideas to see the light, and prevents society from use- 
 lessly swallowing up capital in the search after any sort of philo- 
 sopher's stone or perpetual motion. 
 
 In a Socialist state, on the contrary, this equilibrium is impos- 
 sible. Either the absence of all enticement will cause everything 
 to be rejected, or the absence of all fear will cause everything to 
 be accepted. lather absolute stagnation or reckless waste. We 
 Bcarcoly see how tlie Marxists can escape from this dilemma.
 
 The Production of Wealth. 97 
 
 Moreover, what would be the good of encouraging, by promises 
 of subsidy, efforts which the form of society not only would be 
 unable to stimulate, but against which it would, even from a 
 material point of view, place many obstacles % In order to dis- 
 cover, it is necessary to reflect, it is necessary to think, to have 
 one's freedom, to live a life very active at bottom, but often idle 
 on the surface. The inventor niust often leave the workshop or 
 the laboratory to give himself up to the combinations of his brain. 
 To-day he finds the means to do this in his capital, — if he possesses 
 any, — and if he does not possess any, in the capital that is lent to 
 him, for, if his idea be good in any way, it seldom happens that 
 he does not succeed in bringing conviction to somebody. But 
 to-morrow ! He will have no capital, since nobody will have any. 
 The State will not provide him with it for an idea in which no 
 one will believe, and which all will put down to the score of idle- 
 ness; and, supposing even, — which will seldom happen, — that, 
 despite this lack of stimulation, he should be urged forward, by an 
 exceptional force within, to search and to discover, the social 
 surroundings will refuse him the material means of success. 
 
 Is it needful to speak of the intellectual professions, — of artists, 
 of poets, of literateurs? SchiifHe, so far as he is concerned, would 
 also be tempted, in the same way as with the lawyers and the 
 physicians, to allow the present laisser-faire let-things-alone 
 principle to remain active here. The thing is easy to say, — it is 
 less easy to do. Even in art, in literature even, there is a 
 material side. A sculptor has need of tools, of clay, of marble, a 
 cast, a studio in which he may yield himself up to his inspira- 
 tion. A painter cannot do without brushes, colours, and canvas. 
 For a man of letters, a poet, a musical composer, there is needed 
 a printing press to spread abroad their works and to give these 
 the publicity without which they are as though non-existent. 
 
 The sculptor and painter will, perhaps, be able with their 
 labour-notes to procure for themselves colours, brushes, clay, and 
 diverse instruments ; but the man of letters will not have any 
 other printing press at his disposal but that of the State, and he 
 will be at the discretion of the latter, which will thenceforth have 
 
 G
 
 98 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 tlic power of suppressing all littraiy production in opposition with 
 the ideas of the moment. 
 
 We shall recur later on to this frightful threat to liberty, which 
 oven the political system of Napoleon I. did not ventui'e to utter. 
 But:, without concerning ourselves at this moment with a point so 
 important and so grave, whilst admitting the existence of a liberal 
 State wdiich might consent to give publicity to the most violent 
 satires directed against itself, there would always be the double 
 danger which we have pointed out in regard to discoveries. 
 
 Either the State would print all that would be submitted to it, or 
 it would make a choice. In the first case, it would print all the 
 idiotic nonsense and all the rhapsodies that one can imagine. 
 Whoever has filled a somewhat prominent post has had the oppor- 
 tunity of seeing how many absurd things — as stupidly thought 
 as they were badly written — would see the light if this depended 
 only on their authors, who always believe that they have been 
 delivered of a chef-d'oeuvre. 
 
 To print everything that is offered is impossible : it would be 
 a frightful waste, of which no one can form an idea. 
 
 It would, therefore, be necessary to make a choice between the 
 diverse productions of the mind, to admit these and reject those. 
 What arbitrariness ! — Woe to him who will not submit to the 
 taste of the moment ! Victor Hugo certainly would have seen 
 the printing presses closed against him by the classics of 1830; 
 and Zola, in our days, would have experienced many difficulties in 
 overcoming the obstacles piled up before him. 
 
 What would happen w^ould be something analogous to what 
 takes place in the theatrical world when a new author puts a play 
 forward. One knows all the difficulties which it is necessary to 
 overcome. But under Collectivism tlie difficulty would be very 
 much graver still. There exists to-day different theatres, different 
 directors, and what is rejected by one is accepted by another. In 
 tlio new society there would be a committee of arts, of sciences, or 
 of letters. When a man would not have the luck of pleasing this 
 committee, there would be nothing left but to bow submission, 
 and there would not exist any other door at which he could knock.
 
 TJie Production of Wealth. 99 
 
 Is it possible to conceive a regime more opposed to the unfolding 
 of talent and genius, and more prone to produce a crushing 
 uniformity'? Collectivism would kill artistic progress, literary 
 progress, scientific progress, and industrial progress. It would say 
 to mankind, — " Thou shalt go no further," and by that extin- 
 guisher placed upon all the men of elite^ whilst killing invention, 
 suppressing emulation, causing a beneficent speculation to 
 disappear, and preventing the accumulation of capital, it would 
 deal a fatal blow to prodviction. We have already seen that itf 
 would distribute as badly as, perhaps in a worse manner than, the 
 existing society. We have just seen that it would produce much 
 less abundantly, and that, consequently, not having a better 
 principle of distribution, it would have less to distribute. 
 
 These considerations alone should suffice to cause every sensible 
 mind to reject it. But these considerations are not the onl}^ 
 ones that plead against this mischievous chimera.
 
 CFTAPTER IV. 
 
 ON LUXURY. 
 
 We have just enumerated diverse causes which, under Collectivism, 
 would have the effect of impeding social development. We find yet 
 another in the fatal stoppage which, — by the fact of the equalisa- 
 tion of fortunes, and even when this would not be the end wished 
 for, — would interpose and smite consumption and, as a conse- 
 quence, the production of objects of luxury. 
 
 We shall, perhaps, in speaking in this way, astonish the 
 Collectivists, who see, in the suppression of tlie industries relating 
 to luxury, a means of suppressing some useless labour, and of thus 
 throwing back upon labour of general utility a crowd of workers 
 who, at the present time, are diverted therefrom. They consider 
 that the disappearance of luxury would have the effect of aug- 
 menting the abundance of objects of prime necessity, or, — what 
 comes to the same, — of causing the duration of labour intended 
 for their production to be diminished. 
 
 There is here an optical delusion which, besides the Socialists, 
 many of the economists have committed, and which cannot resist 
 a philosophical analysis. Under Collectivism, it is very true, we 
 should perhaps succeed in disjilaying great luxury in parks, 
 gardens, monuments, schools, and in all that would be of a public 
 character. But there is a form of luxury which could never be- 
 come collective, — the luxury of the liouse, of the clothing, of the 
 table. This form of luxury would be condemned, and it would be 
 a social misfortune. 
 
 What do we call objects of luxury ? The objects which are of a 
 very high price, and which, in consequence, are only within the 
 reach of rich people. 
 
 But the dearness or the cheapness of an object is a matter of 
 conditions and circumstances. An object is dear cither because 
 
 I GO
 
 On Luxury. loi 
 
 it is naturally rare, — as the diamond, — or because it is rare in- 
 dustrially. 
 
 We may call industrially rare a commodity, the manufacture of 
 which costs much time and trouble. 
 
 If we make abstraction of natural rarities, such as precious 
 stones and metals, we shall have to recognise that a commodity 
 that is rare to-day may cease to be so to-morrow, if the means ot 
 manufacture become perfected. It hence follows that what was 
 sumptuary consumption yesterday is no longer so to-day, and that 
 what is sumptuary to-day will cease to remain so to-morrow. 
 The first house constructed at the epoch of the Troglodytes was a 
 sumptuary consumption. It was certainly an object of luxury 
 amongst all others; and, however inferior it was to the most 
 pestiferous of our hovels to-day, it must have appeared a palace. 
 
 Siinilarly, the first woven fabric that enabled man to substitute 
 for the skins of beasts clothing more comfortable and better 
 adapted to the seasons was a sumptuary consumption. 
 
 Again, the shirt which Isabeau of Bavaria wore for the first 
 time in the world, and the price of which must have been out of 
 proportion with all that we are able to imagine to-day, when we 
 picture to ourselves a shirt, was a sumptuary consumption. 
 The first printed book, the first clock, the first portable watch, 
 the first packet of paper was alwa^'s a sumptuary consumption. 
 
 Sugar, coifee, tea, pepper, and all the numerous alimentary 
 products which, — however refined in their tastes they were, or 
 believed themselves to be, — the Romans and the Greeks never 
 knew, were articles of sumptuary consumption. 
 
 Tobacco, when it was introduced into Europe by Nicot, was a 
 sumptuary consumption. 
 
 Finally, the modest potato itself, that equalising vegetable par 
 excellence, which adorns the table of the rich as well as that of the 
 poor, when, — brought over to France by Parmentier, — it appeared 
 for the first time at the royal table of Louis XVI., was a sumptuary 
 consumption. 
 
 Now, if one considers these various examples, taken hap-hazard 
 from among thousands, it will be noticed that there is not a single
 
 I02 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 one of the products that we have adduced which has not entered 
 into general use. 
 
 Nobody any longer lives to-day in caverns. Everybody has the 
 use of, if not actual property in, a cottage. Nobody any longer 
 covers himself with skins of beasts. Even these have become 
 articles of luxury ; and the poorest, the most badly dressed 
 amongst us, has clothing made up from an artificial texture. 
 
 Everybody wears a shirt ; everybody reads a newspaper or a 
 book ; everybody possesses a sheet of paper to write a letter ; 
 watches have to such a degree become general that we find them in 
 the pocket of the less fortunate of the workers ; sugar, cofiee, tea, 
 pepper, are on every table \ there is no workman, cither in the 
 fields or in the towns, who does not smoke his pipe, and tlie 
 potato has become the most universal, perhaps, of all foods. 
 
 In a word, what yesterday was only within the reach of some 
 well-garnished purses is now accessible to all men, and has entered 
 into that minimum of individual consumption within which the 
 population limits itself, and which serves as the basis of salaries. 
 
 But in order that houses, texture, shirts, papers, printed-matter, 
 watches, sugar, coffee, tea, pepper, tobacco and potatoes should 
 have become objects of current consumption, it was necessary 
 that they should have begun, first of all, by being objects of 
 luxury. 
 
 It was impossible, for example, for a book not to fetch an in- 
 finitely higher price on the morrow of Gutenberg's discovery than at 
 the present moment. It was impossible for the shirt of Isabeau of 
 Bavaria not to be more difficult to make, and not to cost, in con- 
 sequence, much more than a shirt manufactured in our days. 
 
 If, under the pretext that these were objects of luxury useful 
 only to certain people, their production had been forbidden ; or if, 
 — what comes to the same — the absence of large fortunes had 
 caused their purchase to be almost an impossibility, they would 
 never have been manufactured. 
 
 AVhcrefore should a weaver have striven hard in the weaving of 
 a shirt only to waste time which no one would ever be able to 
 remunerate ? For what reason should a navigator have gone and
 
 On Luxury. 103 
 
 exposed his life, his time, and his capital, in order to bring back, — 
 from the Indies, from America, from China, from Arabia, — sugar, 
 tobacco, coffee, or potatoes, if he had not been sensible that there 
 was a whole category of citizens in his country rich enough to 
 buy his cargo, and thus to procure for him some profit ? Evidently 
 he would have preferred to remain at home, and to cultivate what 
 his ancestors had cultivated before him. 
 
 Now, the first house once built, every one wished to have a 
 house ; the first piece of cloth once woven, the first clothing cut 
 and sown, the first shirt made, every one desired cloth, clothing, 
 and a shirt ; the first bit of sugar, the first cup of tea or coflee, 
 the first pinch tasted of pepper, everybody wanted to sugar or to 
 pepper his foods, and to stimulate himself by infusions of coffee or 
 tea; as soon as tobacco was imported, the pipe, the cigar, and 
 snuff became an aspii-ation nearly common to all men ; potatoes 
 once known, there is no table where one has not wished to 
 have them. 
 
 Industry, since that time, has exerted its energies and wrought 
 wonders. Impelled by the desire to sell in greater quantities, 
 and thus to enrich themselves, the producei's have striven to per- 
 fect their means of production and transport. Oceanic navigation 
 was established ; agriculture enabled exotic vegetation to be 
 acclimatised amongst us ; mechanicians have discovered methods 
 which enable us to obtain in an hour what formerly cost months 
 of labour, and thus the objects of luxury have become current 
 objects; but they only became current objects of consumption, 
 because they began by being objects of luxury. 
 
 If, then, ten thousand years ago, society had been organised in 
 such fashion that luxury would have been impracticable, none of 
 the progress w^hich has been introduced amongst men would have 
 been possible. We should still dwell in caverns, and we should 
 still be clothed with untanned skins of animals. 
 
 It is certainly preferable that equality should have been 
 violated in those remote times, and that somebody should have 
 been able to procure for himself that which was not yet accessible 
 to all, seeing it is due to that fact alone that these objects —
 
 I04 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 luxurious at the moment of their creation — are accessible to the 
 masses to-day. 
 
 Proudhon, who will not be accused of not having been a 
 Socialist; Proudhon, who first uttered these words, — " Property ia 
 robbery ; " Proudhon who, like Karl Marx, — of whom, in this 
 respect, he was the precursor, — made the criticism upon interest 
 and on the profits of capital; Proudhon, with his vast intelligence, 
 with his love of liberty, and his high sentiment of human dignity, 
 understood the part played by luxury as he had understood that 
 of speculation. The lines which he has written on luxury deserve 
 all the more to be quoted, as they do not come from a bourgeois 
 economist, but from a resolute dcspiser of modern society. 
 
 " Our laws," he says, " do not bear the character of sumptuary 
 laws . . . ; this is precisely the best feature of our laws of taxa- 
 tion. . . . You wish to strike a blow at the objects of luxury ; 
 you take civilisation the wrong way. . . . What, in economic 
 language, are the products of luxury ? Those products the pro- 
 portion of which to the total wealth is the least ; those products 
 which come last in the industrial series, and the creation of which 
 supposes the pre-existence of all the others. From this point of 
 view all the objects of human labour have been, and in their turn 
 have ceased to be, objects of luxury, seeing that by luxury we 
 understand nothing but a relation of posteriority, either chrono- 
 logical or commercial, in reference to the elements of wealth. 
 Luxury, in a word, is synonymous with progress ; it is, at each 
 moment of the social life, the expression of the maximum of well- 
 being realised by labour, and to which it is the right, as it is the 
 destiny, of all to attain. . . . What then ! do you think the town 
 of Salente and the prosperity of Fabricius are worth consideration? 
 
 *' Luxury humanises, elevates, and ennobles the habits ; the 
 first and most efficacious education for the people, the stimulant 
 of the ideal with most men, is luxury. ... It is the taste for 
 luxury which, in our days, — in default of religious principles, — keeps 
 up the social movement and reveals to the lower classes their 
 dignity. . . . Luxury is more than a right in our society, it is a 
 need ; and that man is truly to be pitied who never gives himself
 
 On Luxury. 105 
 
 a little luxuiy. And it is when the imiversal effort tends to 
 popularise articles of luxury more and more that you wish to 
 restrict the enjoyment of the people to tlie objects which you are 
 pleased to qualify as objects of necessity ! . . . 
 
 " The workman sweats and deprives himself and squeezes out 
 of his scanty earnings something to buy an adornment for his 
 betrothed, a necklace for his little girl, a watch for his son, and 
 yoii take away from him this happiness ! . . . But have you con- 
 sidered that to tax the objects of luxury is to forbid the arts of 
 luxury % " 1 
 
 To forbid the arts of luxury ! Proudhon has there placed his 
 finger on one of the national dangers of the suppression of luxury. 
 
 Up to this point we have not concerned ourselves, in speaking 
 of luxury, with the division of mankind into distinct nationalities. 
 What we have said is true for all men, in all latitudes, in every 
 climate. If all mankind were one single human agglomeration 
 what we said would still hold good. But it would be possible in 
 that case, and on looking superficially at things, that labour ex- 
 pended on luxuries, — despite their immense utility for the future, — 
 might be considered as injurious, in the pi-esent, to the production 
 of objects of prime necessity. This even is no longer true when, 
 descending from these heights, and ceasing to look at humanity in 
 its entirety, we consider it under the diflferent nations which con- 
 stitute it, and when, amongst these nations, we fix our eyes on 
 that country which interests us most, — France. 
 
 The resources of France are not sufficient for her wants. She 
 is obliged to import commodities from abroad, and these com- 
 modities she pays for with those she exports. Now, her 
 principal exportations consist of objects of luxury. From 
 the point of view of what we are agreed in calling objects of 
 jH'ime necessity, she presents a notable inferiority to many com- 
 peting peoples. Whatever may be the cause, she produces more 
 expensively than England, Germany, India, America, or China. 
 Her cocoons are unable to compete with tlie Japanese or Chinese 
 
 1 Proudhon. Les Contradictions Economiques (4th edit, vol, i. ), pp. 
 2S4-'JSl).
 
 io6 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 cocoons ; her ironware, unless protected by custom-house tariffs, 
 v.'ould not sustain the competition of English, German, or Swedish 
 iron. Ilcr wheat stuffs cannot be measured, so far as price goes, 
 witli those of Bessarabia, of India, or America. 
 
 But she produces objects of luxury better than any of her rivals. 
 Amongst these there arc some who with difliculty engage in the 
 contest. Others, like Germany, are making efforts to establish 
 this mode of production. They succeed sometimes with articles 
 of quasi-luxury — with wliat one calls shoddy; but as for what con- 
 stitutes true luxuries, they do not succeed, and it is to France that 
 it is always necessary to have recourse. They do not succeed in 
 putting into their work either the finish or the taste which our 
 I'arisian workers so well know how to impart. 
 
 It is with her j^roducts of luxury, so universally sought after, 
 that France holds her place in the international market, and that 
 she can export what is necessary to pay for the products of which 
 she has need and wliich she imjiorts. 
 
 When a Parisian workman makes an inlaid piece of furniture 
 in perfect imitation of the ancient ; when a workman at Beauvais 
 makes a tapestry which vies in its beauty with the ancient 
 tapestries; when a workwoman of Valenciennes weaves those magni 
 ficent pieces of lace-work so universally prized; for the world, these 
 are carved furniture, tapestries, and lace-Avork that are manu 
 factured ; for France, it is wheat, wine, meat, potatoes that are 
 produced, and that in a greater quantity than they could certainly 
 be produced in an equal period of labour, if the workers had em- 
 ployed themselves in the cultivation direct of potatoes, vines, and 
 wheat, or the raising of stock. 
 
 The suppression of the sumptuary industries, elsewhere than in 
 France, would have the general inconveniences we have indicated. 
 In France it would have, additionally, this enormous inconvenience: 
 that, in suppressing the exchanges which are advantageous to us, 
 it would impoverish us in objects of current consumption, and thus 
 would run counter to the object which one proposes to realise, see- 
 ing that that object is none other tlian to increase production and 
 to lower the price of those products,
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 COLLECTIVISM AND LIBERTY. 
 
 ScHAFFLE, who bas endeavoured to describe Socialism such as it is in 
 the mind of its authors, with the view of ehminating all unjust 
 criticisms ; Schiiffle, who has presented a succinct but complete 
 analysis of the Socialist doctrines, and who, whilst incontestably 
 being quite sympathetic to Collectivism, does not dissimulate the 
 weak points of tlie system, and often consents to bring those points 
 forward, expresses himself thus : — ^ 
 
 " In brief, there is no reason to conclude tliat, — production behig socially 
 regulated and carried on under one control, — tlie determination of our wants 
 should be so as well, and that, in that matter also, the State ought to 
 continue its functions. We insist emphatically on this point, for ij 
 Socialism loished to aholish freedom of individual wants, it ought to he loolccd 
 vpon as the mortal enemy of all liberty, all civilisation, and all intellectmd 
 and material toell-beimj. All the advantages which Socialism brings with 
 it would not compensate the loss of that fundamental freedom. 
 
 " In dealing witli Socialism it is therefore necessary, tirst of all, to ex 
 amine it from this point of view. If it uselessly gives to its principle ot 
 production a practical corollary of such a nature as to endanger the freedoir. 
 to maintain an individual household, it is unacceptable, whatever it may 
 promise and ofier to us. In fact, the actual order of things, despite itj 
 deformities, is yet a tenfold more free, and a tenfold more favourable t(> 
 civilisation." 
 
 The question is here well laid down, and that by one of the men 
 
 who exalt Socialism the most. But it is extraordinary that, with 
 
 his indubitable qualities as an analyst, Schaffle did not see that, 
 
 . in putting the question in such a mannei', he had condemned 
 
 Collectivism irrevocably. 
 
 ' Schaffle. The Quintessence of Socialisjn (quoted from the French 
 translation by Malon), p. 47. 
 
 J07
 
 io8 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 His French translator, Malon, perceived this point. He there- 
 fore hastened, below the passage which we have just quoted, to 
 place the following note : — 
 
 "J. Stuart Mill, in his Pnndples of Political Economy, after having 
 closely criticised authoritative Communism, added in effect, — If, however, it 
 were necessary to choose between Communism with its chances, and the main- 
 tenance indefinitely of the present system, I would mucli prefer Communism. 
 J. Stuart Mill was right : an equalising organisation, whatever that 
 organisation may be, would be superior to the reigning social plundering, 
 whicli so many oppressions, so numy iniquities, and so much suffering 
 illustrate." 
 
 More imaginative than logical, Malon believes in the possibility of 
 an organisation that would enforce equality, and he chooses be- 
 tween equality and liberty. He does not see that an equalising 
 organisation is a snare, and that officialism would be called in, 
 under the system of his choice, to replace capitalism. He does not 
 see that even if, — deciding for pure Communism, for Communism 
 which socialises as well consumption as production, — he procured 
 the disappearance of the causes of inequality which we have 
 pointed out in the Collectivism of Marx and Schiiffle, he would 
 augment in a gigantic proportion the inequality which would be 
 the outcome of officialism, because the latter would deal such a 
 blow to production that it could not be maintained to any feeble 
 extent except by an absolutely despotic authority, and that such 
 an authority is always accompanied with a great swarm of func- 
 tionaries, with an army, and other unproductive expenses. 
 
 Besides, the affirmation of Malon and of John Stuart Mill docs 
 not seem worth a long refutation. If Socialism presented itself under 
 the form of authoritative Communism suppressing all liberty, it 
 would soon succeed in losing nearly the whole of its adherents, and 
 its doctrine, having become simply academic, would no longer 
 present any social interest. 
 
 Schiiffle has admirably nudei-stood this, and it was this wdiich 
 caused him to write the passage we have quoted above. 
 
 It remains for us to ascertain whether the freedom of con 
 sumption, which he considers as the supreme good, is such a
 
 Cclleciivisni and Liberty. 109 
 
 boon that, with its suppression, all the advantages of Collectivism 
 would disappear, — whether that freedom, we say, is compatible with 
 the socialisation of production \ it remains for us to examine 
 whether, — freedom of production having vanished, — the freedom of 
 material consumption, and even that form which we may be 
 permitted to call freedom of intellectual and moral consumption, 
 might not vanish at the same time. 
 
 Well, SchiifSe takes upon himself to answer that question. 
 Some lines before those which we have quoted above, he says in 
 fact : — 
 
 " It is true that the State would be able to radically eliminate 
 the wants that would appear to it harmful by no longer produc- 
 ing for their satisfaction ; wherefore it is that the vegetarians, — 
 Baltzer amongst others, — tend towards Socialism. But it is not a 
 bad thing to remove from the social body adulterated or injurious 
 products. In order to avoid the abuse of this process of purifica- 
 tion (and those madmen, the temperance partisans) we should only 
 have to appeal to the strong and generally developed sense of 
 individual liberty." 
 
 This passage, with its appearance of tranquillity, is altogether 
 terrifying. 
 
 The State, as master of production, will be able to suppress all 
 consumption which will not be agreeable to it. Some partisans, 
 having become masters of power by revolution, if not by general 
 consent, will be able to-morrow to force vegetarianism upon a 
 nation by stopping the raising of cattle. Without even going so 
 far as that, another Government will decide upon suppressing 
 alcohol, another will go as far as to proscribe wine. These are 
 not fantastic suppositions. Look at what takes place in our days 
 in certain States in the American union, think of those Draconian 
 laws against the sale of intoxicating liquors, and say if it would 
 be very difficult to take a step farther, when the State, by the 
 generalisation of production in its hands, would have gained 
 omnipotence in regard to consumption ! Social revolutions would 
 not be ended. Men would fight in view of some article of con- 
 sumption sought to bo suppressed; or of another which it would
 
 1 1 o Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 be sought to ]'evive. But supposing that in the material worhi 
 things would not go so far ; that the public good sense would deal 
 justice to the '^temperance partisans" and that the authority 
 \YOuld confine itself to preventing certain articles of consumption 
 manifestly harmful; there would remain the intellectual and moral 
 side. Here despotism would refgn absolute, and would be 
 such as has never been dreamt of under the most autocratic 
 monarchies. 
 
 What, for example, would become of the freedom of the press, 
 when the State would be the one and only printer, the one and 
 only publisher ? 
 
 Can one imagine the French ministry of the present hour 
 printing the Intransigeant, or the victorious Doulangist party 
 publishing the Radical, the He'puhiicpce Franfaise, and the Parti 
 Otivrier 1 
 
 To-day, even where the laws arc severe, every one publishes 
 upon his own responsibility what he thinks proper, and there 
 always exists a sufficient number of adventurous spirits, so that 
 an idea can never be completely stifled. Even when the censure 
 steps in with its scissors, like a preventive weapon against liberty, 
 clandestine printing presses are organised, — thanks to the indi- 
 vidualisation of industry and commerce which makes it possible 
 to pi'ocure the elements and instruments of industry. The de- 
 centralisation of material production takes it out of the power of 
 the most absolute Governments to completely kill freedom, because 
 they lack the means of always and everywhere preventing infrac- 
 tions of their regulations and their laws. 
 
 Those means of repression which have been wanting to the 
 most terrible despots of whom history has preserved the memory, 
 Collectivism furnishes tliem for us. 
 
 The State being the only printer, the only letter-founder, the 
 only paper manufacturer, and the only manufacturer of printer's 
 ink, — what censure will be equivalent to that % It was not worth 
 while bringing about the revolution of July 1830, in the name of 
 the liberty of the press ; and we can scarcely understand the 
 Collcctivists who. recently, at the Chamber of Deputies, indulged
 
 Collectivism and Liberty. 1 1 i 
 
 in mutual felicitations over having- succeeded in rejecting the loi 
 Rdnach. What is the loi Reinach in comparison with what 
 Collectivism promises to us ? 
 
 It is not only in regard to the press, but in regard to the right 
 of meeting, in regard to association, and, above all, to public 
 instruction, that liberty will be threatened. As to public meet- 
 ings, it will be sufficient to refuse the citizens, whose ideas 
 ai'e not agreeable, the use of the halls of which the State will be 
 the proprietor. In regard to association, it would soon be de- 
 clared that these associations constitute little States within the 
 great one, and that they are injurious to society at large. 
 
 In the matter of education the doctrines of the reigning State 
 would only be allowed to be taught. 
 
 In our days State education has been created, and rightly so, 
 it not being right that an institution so necessai'y and so little 
 remunerative should be abandoned to the chance of private 
 initiative. But if the State has a system of education of its OAvn, 
 an education which ought to be neutral in order not to wound 
 any conviction, it leaves individual liberty in the matter of 
 education intact. This freedom to teach is a safety-valve against 
 State omnipotence. If the schools of the State dejDarted 
 from the attitude of neutrality imposed upon them, one would 
 very soon see free schools spring up where the children of those 
 whose beliefs would appear threatened would take refuge. 
 
 The Catholics have taught us for some years past the use that 
 can be made of free schools, and it is not for us who are Free- 
 thinkers to wish to give up the rights which the Catholics exercise 
 at this moment, but which we should possibly have to exercise 
 in our tumi. 
 
 With Collectivism this freedom would disappear. How could 
 one organise a free school when there would no longer be any 
 private capital 1 Teaching is an industry like any other ; and for 
 every industry capital is needed. To establish a school it is 
 necessary to have premises and books ; it is necessary to be in a 
 position to pay the teachers ; it is necessary, as in everything else, 
 to sink funds, and this is even more necessary here than elsewhere,
 
 1 1 2 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 if one wishes to compete with the gratuitous teaching of the 
 State. 
 
 Unfettered teaching therefoi'e becomes radically impossible in 
 Collectivism. This, therefore, — State education and nothing but 
 State education, — is what we are promised by the ideal society of 
 Karl Marx, of Lassalle, of Schafflc, of M. Guesde, and of M. 
 Malon. The Catholics, like M. de Mun, will perhaps accom- 
 modate themselves to this idea, because they hope that the State 
 will fall into Catholic hands, and because the Catholic doctrine 
 has never professed but a feeble enthusiasm for liberty. The 
 sectarian Free-thinkers also — who are nothing but turn-coat 
 Catholics, and who do not hesitate, any more than the religious 
 fanatics, to stifle by force an unpleasant idea — smile approval on 
 Collectivism because they flatter themselves that they will come 
 into power. 
 
 Both the one and the other delude themselves, and those whose 
 hopes will be deceived by the event wall bitterly regret having 
 ever yielded to such illusions. 
 
 We, for our part, who consider liberty as the first and the 
 greatest of boons, will never associate ourselves with a system the 
 triumph of which would have the effect of stifling all liberty, and 
 of only leaving to mankind the prospect of continual revolutions 
 and successive oppressions. 
 
 Schiifiie irrevocably condemned Collectivism when he recognised 
 tlic impossibility of renouncing liberty. It is, indeed, in vain that, 
 by a subtle analysis, by a mere abstraction, the Marxists have 
 separated production from consumption, and have pretended to 
 preserve liberty in the one case, while causing liberty to dis- 
 appear in the otlier. 
 
 The socialisation of production kills freedom of consumption, 
 and, whatever may be its aim and its hopes, Collectivism would 
 rapidly end either — if the meshes of the net were relaxed — in the 
 reconstruction of capitalistic society, or in an absolute, authorita- 
 tive, and narrow Communism. In the first case, it would, to 
 say the least, be absurd to expend such considerable forces in 
 order to modify a state of things to which, through shocks with-
 
 Collectivism and Libcrly. 113 
 
 out number, we should necessarily have to return. In the 
 second case, social slavery woiild be definitely established in 
 the A\orld. 
 
 Of these two solutions, the one is not more valuable than the 
 otlier. Collectivism is decidedly not the polar star of humanity.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 COLLECTIVISM WOULD BRING ABOUT THE STAGNATION, AND EVEN THE 
 RETROGRESSION, OF THE HUMAN RAGE. 
 
 In suppressing luxury for some, and emulation for others — emula- 
 tion which arises from the hope of profit; in causing the disappear- 
 ance of speculation which, as Proudhon had so very well seen, 
 is the genius of all invention and of all discovery ; in replacing 
 tlic movement — not anarchic, as is pretended, but automatic and 
 natural — of society by red tape and statistics ; Collectivism, if it 
 would not go so far as to cause a retrogression of our race — and 
 we shall shortly see that it would be fated to bring this about — 
 would have, at least, the necessary and immediate cflect of wipin^^ 
 out all progress, and of arresting the social movement at the 
 precise moment at which tlie mechanism of society would have 
 been transformed : like a clock which stops immediately as soon as 
 one breaks the spring which serves as a propeller. 
 
 Perhaps it will be thought that such a suppression of all progress, 
 and of all fresh manifestation, on a grand scale, of human genius, 
 offers no reason to disquiet us. The present society enables its 
 members to live. Its only defect, it will be said, is, that it distri- 
 butes badly that which it produces ; but that, notwithstanding, it 
 produces in abundance. Let us fix this industi'ial state of things in 
 assuring an equitable distribution, and it matters little if after- 
 wards we cease to realise any progress. Men will live. The 
 masses will be more happy than to-day ; and it is better to live 
 and be happy than to make i:)rogress. 
 
 ""I'lie Collectivists, it is true, do not reason in this manner. 
 
 Indeed, being on the one hand enthusiasts, and blinded by the 
 
 object of equalising fortunes which they pvu'sue, and which conceals 
 
 an}- obstacle from them, they do not perceive the inevitable 
 
 114
 
 Collectivism and Retrogression. 1 1 5 
 
 consequences of their system. On the other liand, if tlierc are 
 some among them who are capable of avowing to tlicmselves these 
 consequences, and of accepting them, they would not be likely to 
 publicly confess this. Tlioy luiderstand too well how much an 
 affirmation of eternal stagnation would seem repugnant to the 
 eyes of all, and how it would alienate men from a system which 
 would lead to such results. 
 
 But if, through blindness or thi'ough calculation, tha Cullectiv- 
 ists avoid lending themselves to the mode of reasoning which we 
 have just sketched, that reasoning none the less forms the basis — 
 consciously or unconsciously — of their theory. Indeed, if one 
 does not accommodate oneself to that state of universal stand- 
 still, it is necessary to renounce Collectivism and to seek else- 
 where than in the socialisation of the instruments of labour the 
 foundation of the social improvements which we all aim after. 
 
 Now, let us admit this reasoning for an instant, and see if it is 
 solid. Is it true tliat, giving up all emulation, all liberty, all 
 future industrial progress, and all new discovery, society may, at 
 least, live, henceforth and in perpetuity, in an uniform mediocrity, 
 whilst the amount of production and the actual figure of population 
 is fixed at the same time? 
 
 Unhappily, there is in this nothing else but one snare added to 
 all the snares which Collectivism would reserve for iis, if, for the 
 misfortune of the human race, it happened to be established. 
 
 And, fii'st of all, no one admits that Collectivism would be able 
 to triumph at the same time on every point of the globe. We 
 may rely that it would find, at some points, a stronger resistance 
 than at others. After the lapse of a century, the political con- 
 quests of the French Revolution are not yet extended all over 
 Europe, and we are justified in supposing that a transformation 
 so considerable as that sought for by the Marxist school, would 
 require, in order to become general, at least as long a time as the 
 principles of 1789. 
 
 There would therefore be simultaneously, at a given moment, 
 Collectivist nations and capitalistic nations. 
 
 The first nations, for as long as the genei'alisation of Collectivism
 
 1 1 6 Collectivisvi and Socialism. 
 
 would be incomplete, vould be obliged to struggle in the world- 
 market Avith the natural arms of competition. The Collectivist 
 nation would apply its system within its borders ; but abroad it 
 would certainly be forced to take up with metallic money again, 
 to re-enter the circle of the circulation of products, and to invest 
 these with the role and the character of commodities. 
 
 There is, indeed, no necessitj', even for an instant, to concern 
 oneself with the hypothesis according to which a people — the 
 German people, or the French people — would make up their minds 
 to wall themselves off from the outer world by prohibitive tariffs. 
 
 A Chinese wall is possible in a civilisation so primitive that the 
 people who construct it have only very restricted wants, or in the 
 case of a nation which disposes of a territory extensive enough to 
 produce, at least, all that which is necessary for the satisfaction 
 of its wants. 
 
 But the wants of mankind are to-day too considerable, and the 
 torritoi-y occupied by the diverse European nations is too small 
 for the people who inhabit it to be able to procure for them- 
 selves, without recourse to importation, all the objects which are 
 necessary for them. 
 
 Let us take France by way of example. Once closed to the 
 outer world, whence could she obtain, — I do not say the precious 
 metals with which, owing to luxury and money being abolished, 
 she would perhaps be able to dispense, — but the metals indispens- 
 able to industr}', such as copper, lead, mercury and tin? Whence 
 could she procure coffee, tea, pepper, Peruvian barks, and all the 
 products of the soil of tropical countries which she employs either 
 as foods or as medicines? Whence could she get the cotton which 
 slie does not produce ; whence, too, the wool which she does not 
 produce, except in a proportion inferior to her consumption? 
 Whence, in the years of average or inferior harvests, the wheat 
 and the cattle necessary to make up for the deficit in her pro- 
 duction, and to secure an adequate food supply ? 
 
 Evidently, she would have to do without these things, or to go 
 and seek them where they are ; and if she went in search of them 
 it would be necessary to pay for them. As, moreover, gold and
 
 Collcciivism and Retrogression. 1 1 7 
 
 silver are only means of circulation \ as one does not pay for pro- 
 ducts except with products — tlie products imported with those 
 exported — the country which would first reach Collectivism would 
 compulsorily have to continue to deal commercially with those 
 countries which would have remained behind in the capitalistic 
 system. 
 
 Such being the case, there is reason to ask oneself which nation 
 would be the better armed for the competition on the world- 
 market — that nation which would have adopted Collectivism, or that 
 nation which would have persevered in the ancient system ; and 
 which of the two, consequently, would oust the other, or would 
 be ousted by it % 
 
 To that question the answer is forced upon us, viz.^ the people 
 better armed in this contest would, by a long way, be the capital- 
 istic people. With the latter people, — things continuing to work 
 as they do at the present time, — salaries would be maintained 
 relatively low ; the capital not distributed, — that is to say, the 
 capital accumulated, — would constitute a considerable reserve, 
 enabling the easy renewal of the instruments of labour, which 
 would, consequently, be constantly kept on a level with the pro- 
 gress which emulation and the hope of gain amongst individuals 
 would not fail to produce. The productive power of labour would 
 experience a constant increase, and the price of commodities would 
 consequently have a permanent tendency to go down. 
 
 Where Collectivism, on the contrary, would be in activity, things 
 would take place in an inverse manner. On the one hand, under 
 Collectivism, no more inventions, or hardly any more, would be made, 
 and the industrial means existing at the moment of the social revo- 
 lution would henceforth remain without change. From that point 
 of view, therefore, there would be no hope of seeing the productive 
 power of labour increase, and of seeing the price of the objects of 
 consumption or of exchange decrease. In the second place, by 
 means of the excessive reduction of the labour day, or by means 
 of the excessive rise of salaries ; owing also to the disappearance of 
 surplus-labour, and to the fact of each man consuming more than 
 he does to-day, and exerting himself so as not to produce more
 
 1 1 8 Collcclivisui and Socialism. 
 
 than he consumes ; it is evident that, on this account as well, the 
 price of commodities would have a forced tendency to rise. 
 
 We have seen that, in fact, in our days, the capitalist gives up 
 to the consumer, by the lowering of the price of his commodity, a 
 very great portion of his surplus-value. As to his personal con- 
 sumption, which would, it is considered, be diminished under the 
 new order of things, its diminution would not effect an economy 
 comparable to the destruction of wealth which an increase of tlio 
 general consumption would bring about. 
 
 In an army, the salary of the ofhccrs strikes a ]}riovi the 
 imagination, when one compares it with the modest pay of the 
 soldier. But when one examines a war-office budget, one quickly 
 perceives that the pay of the soldiers, — seeing the great number of 
 them, — costs incomparably more to the State than the salary of 
 the officers. It caii be seen that if the pay of all officers were 
 suppressed, the least augmentation of the sum daily received by 
 the soldier would exceed by a great deal the saving realised by 
 that suppression. 
 
 It is the same in the social order, and this, too, in an infinitely 
 greater proportion, because of the more considerable masses of 
 men to whom the phenomenon applies. Here the capitalists 
 represent the officers ; the workers represent the soldiers. Even 
 in admitting that it might be possible to retrench from the total 
 consumption the amount which the capitalists consume to-day 
 above the average, it would be enough to raise that avernge at 
 the same time, in order to make the deficit enormous. Wliat 
 would be the state of things if the sumptuary consumption of the 
 capitalist were not even diminished'? And we tliink we have 
 established that tliat consumption would not be diminished, tliat 
 the director-like functionaries would certainly exact as much from 
 the social labour, and pcrliaps more, than do now. the actual holders 
 of capital. It follows from all these conditions, so disadvantageous 
 from the point of view of the struggle for life, that the Collectivist 
 people Avoukl produce at prices infinitely higher than the econo- 
 mist and bourgeois people. 
 
 Therefore, when the Collectivist people would come forward
 
 Colh'clivisni and Rctro(ryes.sion. 119 
 
 into the wurld-market they would sec tlieniselvcs repelled at 
 every point. And, nevertheless, they would be forced to go and 
 buy the matcvials wliicli they could not dispense with from those 
 nations who would obstinately refuse to buy from them anything 
 in return. How would they pay? With tiieir metallic reserves 
 at first; then, when these reserves would be exhausted — and that 
 would quickly take place — with products which they would be 
 obliged to part with below the cost price — that is to say, at a loss. 
 This transaction would be ruinous, and it would be necessary very 
 quickly to resume the supply of surplus-labour, no longer in order 
 to accumulate national capital, but in order to enrich the foreign 
 exchange agents. These latter individuals would, in such a state 
 of things, reap so great an advantage that, very likely, Collectivism 
 would not become general, the nations which already had not 
 entered it taking, good care not to embrace it after such an ex- 
 perience. As to those nations which would have adopted this 
 new social system, they would be condemned to cut adrift from it 
 as quickly as possible, or else to disappear. 
 
 Let us now make an inadmissible supposition in order to leave 
 nothing unanswered in the Collectivist arguments. Let us admit 
 that the social revolution would be so sudden, so general, that 
 Collectivism would be established everywhere at the same time. 
 There certainly would no longer be the dread of the competition 
 of the remaining capitalistic nations, but, from the international 
 point of view, there would be other embarrassments. There 
 would still be the need of foreign products, and as, in all 
 countries, the State would be the only producer, one would have 
 to go to it in order to buy. Competition would be destroyed or 
 nearly so ; for, instead of taking place between individuals, it 
 could only take place between nations, and the purchasing people, — 
 finding itself in presence of a single vendor in the shape of a 
 nation, or of a very small number of nations acting as vendors, 
 who would be able to form themselves into a sj-ndicate — nothing 
 Avould be more easy than for the latter to strangle the purchaser 
 every time a question arose concerning an article the production 
 of which is limited to rare countries. For instance, it is certain
 
 I 20 Collecthisui and Socialism. 
 
 that it would be sufficient for the United States and Russia to 
 form a mutual under.stauding together in order to obtain, in 
 exchange for their petroleum, just what it would please them to 
 ask. 
 
 It is true tluit the people standing in the position of con- 
 sumer would have the resource of returning to the use of colza 
 oil, and that this fact would re-establish a certain equilibrium. 
 But beyond the trouble which the employment of this means would 
 involve, it would only be applicable when the question would be 
 one concerning products the consumption of which is not in- 
 dispensable. If, on the conti-ary, in consequence of cattle 
 disease, or of a bad harvest, a people suffered from a scarcity in 
 cattle, or in cereals, they would be obliged to submit to the 
 conditions forced upon them by the possessors of horned beasts 
 or of wheat. To-day the multiplicity of vendors and purchasers, 
 and the keenness of competition, give an elasticity to commerce 
 which makes such accidents impossible. The}'' would become the 
 rule when the smallest purchase would have to be made by one 
 Government from another, and more than one war would break 
 out from these economic negociations, as it breaks out to-day 
 from political negociations, which are by far less impassioned 
 than those on which would depend the immediate feeding of a 
 whole population. 
 
 These inconveniences would only disappear if mankind in its 
 entirety formed one single agglomeration, or, at least, if several 
 nations, after having accomplished their revolution, mixed to- 
 gether in such manner as to possess a territory so vast that 
 men would dwell there, under all latitudes, and all climates, and 
 on all categories of lands, owning mines of all metals and of all 
 combustibles, and would be able to procure amongst themselves, 
 without recourse to outsiders, everything they would need, and if 
 they would have the resource to shut themselves up and con- 
 stitute a little group of humanity determined to suffice to 
 themselves. 
 
 Tlic first of the-e hypotheses, — that of mankind united in one 
 single agglomeration, — is impracticable. The second is less so,
 
 Collcctivisui and Retrogression. 1 2 1 
 
 although it may not be everywliere of easy application. But it 
 could be realised on certain points of the globe, notably in the 
 United States. 
 
 Very well, lot us suppose the idea realised. Lot us suppose 
 that Collectivism is established in this country so exceptionally 
 disposed to receive it, and that it has not any longer to struggle 
 with the element, fatal to it, of international exchange ; it will 
 none the less lead, by the simple play of natural forces within, to 
 a fatal retrogression, or a rapid decay. 
 
 The actual surplus-value would, in large measure, lose its 
 character of capital ; it would bo nearly entirely distributed 
 either under the form of salaries, or under the form of general 
 expenses. The undertaking of new exploitations would be given 
 up, and, henceforward, having no longer need of instruments or 
 means of subsistence intended for a fresh utilisation of dormant 
 wealth, pretty nearly all that one would produce would bo 
 consume J. 
 
 But immediately — social well-being augmenting — the population 
 would iacreaso, for the population question forces itself upon us, 
 and it is not sufficient to deny it in order that its effects should dis- 
 appear. Now, as no capital would have been accumulated in order 
 to utilise the arms of the new-comers on fresh fields of exploitation, 
 it would be impossible to procure labour for them all except by 
 lowering again the limits of the labour day ; and this would fall 
 very soon below what would be strictly necessary. It is true that 
 at this moment the law of population would begin to act in an 
 inverse sense ; the number of the inhabitants would sufler a 
 backward movement, which would allow the duration of the 
 labour day to rise to the number of hours necessaiy. But this 
 duration would, naturally, be proportionate to the minimum 
 salary imposed by the iron law which, — all individual prevision 
 having disappeared, — would recover its primitive force. And 
 whilst, in our individualist society, the quantum of the minimum 
 consumption follows a progressive scale and always tends to 
 augment, it would fullow a retrogressive scale in Collcctivist 
 society, and manifest a constant tendency to diminish.
 
 122 Ccilccfivisni and Socialism. 
 
 To-day, on the avowal even of the Socialists, the accumulation 
 of capital, the augmentation of the productiveness of labour, and 
 the creation of machinery, which constantly lower the price of 
 commodities, have this result, that, if the salary diminishes 
 sometimes in a relative way — wlicu one compares it to the totality 
 of the surplus-value — viewed in tlic absolute it always goes up. 
 
 To-morrow — supposing that Collectivism should be realised to- 
 morrow — the abrupt interruption of accumulated wealth, of in- 
 ventions, and of the perfecting of machinery, would make that rise 
 in the absolute salary impossible, although a rise might be pro- 
 duced in the relative salary ; and we must not forget that the 
 absolute salary alone can enable a man to satisfy his wants. The 
 augmentation of the relative salary consists only in tliis fact, that 
 a man no longer shares with anyone, or shares in a lesser degree, 
 the product of the industry in wliich he labours. This augmen- 
 tation does not increase the ha})piness of any one, and it even 
 diminishes it, if the portion which returns to each, when every- 
 thing falls to the lot of labour, is less than what the worker 
 received when the share that fell directly to labour was only the 
 half, the tliird, or tlic fourth of the production. 
 
 As the statu quo does not exist anywhere in nature, as it is 
 an universal law that all that does not make progress recedes, 
 that all that does not advance goes back, it is certain that the 
 absolute salary, being no longer able to augment, would diminish. 
 
 It is, moreover, easy to form an idea of the process of this 
 diminution. Wlien the population would rise, the duration of 
 labour would be lowered, that is to say, to speak our present 
 language, the wage would be lowered. Then, when the 
 pressure of misery would become felt, population, in its tiu-n, 
 would diminish. Nevertheless, as this retrogressive move- 
 ment would last during the time it takes for a generation 
 to grow up, it would certainly be necessary, during that 
 period, for every body to form habits of consuming less than 
 formerly. On these habits, tlicn, the population would be 
 regulated in order to become limited. But when the population 
 wuuM have reached tlic limit adequate to its new habits, the
 
 Collcclivism and Retrogression. 123 
 
 same effects would be reproduced, bearing witb them the same 
 consequences. 
 
 It is necessary, indeed, never to lose siglit of the fact that the 
 iron law docs not bring down salaries to the amount which is 
 strictly necessary to mere material existence, but to the amount 
 which is necessary to preserve life, taking the habits of the time 
 as the basis. 
 
 It follows that salaries regulated by the said law are susceptible 
 of compression and extension, — a fact without which,- as we have 
 already established, all progress and all retrogression would be 
 impossible, and mankind would only be able to move itself in an 
 always similar situation with a frightful monotony. 
 
 The iron law and the law of population only constitute one 
 law. They are the two sides of one and the same phenomenon. 
 If population were not limited, life would be impossible. Such 
 limitation takes place, despite the contrary organic tendency of 
 the human race. The process whereby that limitation is effected 
 is a double one. It acts on the one hand through misery, — the 
 lack of the means of subsistence which mows down the genera- 
 tions. This process is the only one which acts on the wild races 
 of animals. On the other hand, it acts through willed personal 
 forethought, — a form which is peculiar to humanity. 
 
 The first form, which I shall call the animal form, leads to the 
 absolute law of wages, such as Lassallj had conceived it. The 
 second form, the human form, leads, on the contrary, to the 
 permanent increase of well-being. In the first case, the popula- 
 tion outstrips subsistence, and misery foi'ces itself upon mankind ; 
 in the second, it is subsistence which outstrips population, and 
 the condition of man is improved. 
 
 This law is not an economic law ; it is an organic law which 
 acts with the fatality of natural laws ; and avc have only to put 
 to ourselves one single question : What is the form of society 
 which develops individual forethought % What is the form 
 that annihilates it? The first will necessarily be the higher 
 form of society, and the second form will have to be carefully 
 avoided.
 
 124 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 Now there is a point on which everj'body is agreed, on which 
 not one Sociahst will raise the least criticism, viz.^ that personal 
 responsibility breeds personal forethought, and that irresponsibility 
 breeds want of forethought. 
 
 Well, then, can it be contested that the liberal and individual- 
 istic society of to-day does develop the responsibility of each 
 individual % Can it be contested that Collectivism suppresses it % 
 
 To-day, before lightly augmenting one's family, one recognises 
 that it will be necessary to nourish its members so long as the 
 children shall be in their early years ; that later on it will be 
 necessary to find them work and a position. The difficulty in- 
 creases with the number of children to be raised. A balance is 
 established between the natural pleasure which one feels in 
 increasing one's family, and the inconveniences which the new 
 burdens would impose ixpon one. Hence, a voluntary limitation 
 which is in proportion with adopted habits and the minimum 
 consumption, below whicli one will not consent to descend. 
 
 To-morrow, why should one inflict on oneself the worry of 
 family limitation, when it would be upon society that the family 
 burdens would devolve, and when one would be always sure of 
 having work for the new-comers % In order to take such a step 
 one would have to be guided by the consideration of social duty, 
 but the action of each man on the whole of society is too feeble, 
 too small, too inappreciable for that consideration to have any 
 weight whatever on individuals. 
 
 It hence follows that the law of waiies, which the Collectivist 
 Socialists have made the corner stone of their system, is exactly 
 the supreme law which irrevocably condemns their theory. 
 
 Therefore, the individualist development has the effect of in- 
 creasing every day the minimiim individiial consumption, in 
 allowing each one to satisfy an increasing number of wants. 
 
 The development of Collectivist society would have the effect of 
 lowering this minimum of consumption, and of reducing the 
 individual to the satisfaction from day to day of a lesser number 
 of wants. 
 
 The actual individualistic society of to-day creates wealth.
 
 Collectivism and Retrogression. 
 
 The Collcctivist society would breed misery. 
 
 The individualistic society does not always well distribute, but 
 it produces much. 
 
 The Collectivist society would certainly distribute no better, 
 but urged by the chimera of a better distribution, it would deal a 
 fatal blow to production and would wind up in no longer having 
 anything to distribute. 
 
 The Collectivist theory is, therefore, a mere Utopia. It cannot 
 be realised because it comes in conflict with one of the sentiments 
 most deeply rooted in the human heart — that of individual 
 initiative ; and if, by the hypothesis, it could be realised in fact, 
 it would be the most frightful misfortune that could fall upon 
 humanit}'. 
 
 In order that Collectivism might become possible and bo 
 stripped of danger, it would be necessary, as Fourier had supposed, 
 that labour — even labour of the most repulsive kind — should be 
 as attractive as play, and that there should be produced, in accord- 
 ance with the natural tastes of each individual, a spontaneous 
 division of labour, society — in virtue of some higher law — contain- 
 ing the proportion of each aptitude which is exactly necessary. But 
 this, imhappily, is an artificial conception which the learned 
 Socialists of our time repel no less than we do as not resting on 
 anything real. 
 
 Collectivism, consequently, does not adapt itself to human 
 nature. Will it so adapt itself one day, if considerable organic 
 modifications are brought about in man, and if the human species 
 transforms itself into a different species % No one can answer for 
 this. 
 
 It is probable that the Darwinian hypothesis is true — that the 
 species which people the globe are derived from ancient extinct 
 species ; and it is perfectly in conformity with that hypothesis that 
 the actual species should be converted, in their turn, into new 
 species destined to replace them. But tliis is the secret of the 
 future, and of a future excessively remote, — so remote in any case, 
 that it is not of any interest for us to peer into it. All that we 
 are permitted to afiirm — and that is sufficient for us — is that, as
 
 1 26 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 long as man sliall remain man, as long as a new species shall not 
 have supplanted the species to which we belong, the Collectivist 
 idea will be one of those conceptions of which it will be of the 
 greatest importance to beware, and against which we ought to 
 defend ourselves.
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 Practical Reforms. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE TWOFOLD CHARACTER OP HUMANITY. 
 
 From the fact, which we have endeavoured to establisli iip to this 
 point,, that Collectivism — in so far as it is of an absolute character 
 — is repugnant to human nature, ought we to wind up with 
 Anarchism and claim the suppression of all public functions 1 Not 
 at all ! 
 
 Every living species in Nature has its qualities and its proper 
 instincts, and is only able to develop itself by obeying them. 
 
 There exists some beings absokitely individualistic. Such are 
 the wild beasts. The males do not come near the females except 
 in order to breed, then they go back to their sohtude, taking no 
 part in the education of the young ; the females, on their part, 
 know no more about the family than what is simply necessary in 
 order that the young ones may reach the age which will allow 
 them to separate themselves from their mothers, and to live in an 
 isolated manner on their own account in unfrequented places. 
 Under such conditions there is no sort of society, not even the 
 most elementary. 
 
 Other animals, on the contrary, have instincts completely com- 
 munistic. That West African bird which the French call " The 
 Republican," and, much better still, the bee and the ant, furnish us 
 
 "with examples. Amongst these last species the sentiment of 
 
 127
 
 128 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 personality has disappeared to such a degree that Nature seems 
 to take nothing into account except the community. Amongst 
 bees, all individuals that are not intended to assist in the work 
 of reproduction are made neuter by the hygienic rules to -which 
 they are submitted ; the males are put to death as useless mouths 
 as soon as their function is completed, and each soldier engaged iu 
 a strucrgle is a soldier dead. The bee does not sting to defend 
 
 CO o 
 
 itself. In stinging it commits suicide. It stings to defend the 
 collective existence. 
 
 Man is neither entirely an Individualist like a wild beast, nor 
 completely a Communist like the ant or the bee. This fact con- 
 denuis to a fatal failure every absolute system, Collectivist or Indi- 
 vidualistic: Communism and Anarchy„ Man possesses at the 
 same time powerful social instincts, and unsubdued individualistic 
 instincts. Let no one ask him to live in solitude ! Not only would 
 one fall foul of a profound repugnance on his part, but also of a 
 physical impossibility. Man — who in a state of societ}'-, becomes 
 the master of creation, — when once isolated, is no more than the 
 worst armed amongst animals. He has neither the muscular 
 power nor the claws and the teeth of wild animals, nor the 
 minuteness which enables the insect to dissimulate, nor the 
 rapidity of the fallow deer and of the gazelle, nor the excessively 
 prolific faculties which, if they are not a guarantee of life for the 
 individual, at least secure the conservation of the species. Let 
 nobody, therefore, talk to him about isolation ! But neither let 
 any one speak to liim about giving up his personal freedom, his 
 personal initiative, the adventures and the risks of his liberty ! 
 His horror for the complete subjection of the individual to the 
 social organism is equal to his horror for tlie condition of 
 solitude. 
 
 It is necessary, then, that man may find, in the conditions in 
 which he lives, the satisfaction of these two classes of instincts, 
 and tliat he may be able to satisfy his individualist wants and 
 his social ones. Every system which neglects either of these 
 tendencies stands condemned. 
 
 There is another remark we ought to make. These two aspects
 
 The Tzvofold Character of Htnnaniiy. i 29 
 
 of human nature are naturally developed on a par with each 
 other. Evolution even manifests itself in both senses at 
 once. 
 
 When one studies ancient society, one perceives that individual 
 freedom was much less respected then than in our day, that the child 
 was much more subjected to the family, and that the citizen was 
 much more sacrificed to society. State reasons had then a power, 
 and exercised a dominion, which they have since happily lost. 
 The exile of Aristides appeared the most natural thing in the 
 world. 
 
 To-day we still exile Aristides, when he inconveniences us, but 
 we do not avow that we exile him because he causes inconveni- 
 ence ; we take good care to invent an imaginary crime to justify 
 the banishment. Eeasons of State still act ; but they have lost 
 so much of their action on the mind that we are forced to disown 
 them whilst obeying them . . . whilst awaiting the time when 
 nobody will be able even to obey them. We are condemned to 
 an attitude of hypocrisy, and it has been rightly said that hypo- 
 crisy is a homage paid by vice to virtue. But at the same time 
 that modern society distinguishes itself from ancient society by 
 the greater extension which is given to individual scope and 
 private initiative, it is also distinguished from it by numerous 
 conquests made by the State over the individual, that is to say, 
 by conquests in an inverse sense. It is thus that a considerable 
 number of public functions have been instituted, the possible 
 creation of which the ancients had even no suspicion of^ and that 
 new ones are being instituted every day. 
 
 The individualistic and collective attributes of man are to this 
 degree irreducible, that in despite of what — apparently at least — 
 may bo contradictory in the fact we are about to state, all 
 progress manifests itself at the same time by conquests made by 
 the individual over society, and also by inverse conquests made 
 by society over the individual. A more perfect division takes 
 place every day between what ought normally to belong to the 
 individual, a:id what should appertain to the Commune or to the 
 State. All our struggles are concerned with this distribution of 
 
 I
 
 I ;o LoUcctivism and Socialism. 
 
 prerogatives. In this distribution all our progress and all our 
 reaction are summed up. 
 
 It is this twofold character of humanity which furnishes the 
 reason why there are points extremely striking in all Collectivist 
 criticisms as also in every defence preferred by libex-al economists, 
 and why an impartial and enlightened mind is able to feel 
 an equal enthusiasm for the admirable works of Marx, for the 
 eloquent pages of Proudhon and Lassalle, and for the works 
 of Adam Smith and of Jean-Baptiste Say. 
 
 The line is, therefore, clearly drawn for the philosopher and for 
 the statesman. Both seek for that which ought reasonably to be 
 left to private initiative, and for that which the Collectivity may 
 claim through its different elements, the Comnnuie or State. 
 
 But this labour would be uni'ealisable if it were proposed to 
 begin with map^Mng out details, and to finish immediately with a 
 complete system, a perfect whole. This task is the work of each day, 
 and is being pursued by the natural evolution of human society 
 without the delimitations marked by the thinkers playing the 
 part that one would imagine in this distribution of functions. 
 The desire to rid oneself of leading strings that have become 
 useless, and that of providing for the satisfaction of new needs 
 which are manifesting themselves, form almost the only motive 
 powers of that immense organism, the workings of whicli never 
 stop. 
 
 Science, however, is able, and ought, from this day forward, to 
 strive in order to find out a guiding principle which would admit 
 of these two aspects of man — apparently so opposed — being 
 reconciled. 
 
 "We think that this guiding principle may be formulated thus : 
 
 The Collective action via.y and shoxild he exercised on all occasions 
 U'hen the transference of a function from the individual to society 
 has the effect, not of diminishing individual liberty, hut of protect- 
 ing, guaranteeing, and develojnng that same liberty. 
 
 In a word, the object sought for would bo the plenitude of in- 
 dividual liberty; and society — even in its most narrow regulations, 
 even when it would appear to injure that liberty — would not
 
 The Tzvofold Character of Iliiinaniiy. 1 3 1 
 
 intervene, in reality, except in order to develop liberty, or, at 
 least, in order to defend it against a more dangerons assault. 
 Such, we believe, arc the principles in the light of which it is 
 necessary to examine the diflferent economic categories, if one 
 desires to remain in conformity with the facts of science, of 
 experience, and of reason.
 
 CHAPTER TT. 
 
 DIVERSE ANTINOMIES — THEIR SOLUTION. 
 
 In modern society, free competition is the basis of all commerce 
 and of all industry. From thence proceed, in each section of 
 human activity, the rules of production. Competition is beneficial 
 in the highest degree because it tends to improve the product 
 and to lower the net cost. 
 
 But there ai-e several antinomies in competition, even as there 
 exist some in many other orders of phenomena. 
 
 It happens, for example, that, by reason of its exaggeration, 
 competition ceases to improve the product, injures it on the 
 contrary by fraud, and makes it impossible for the individual to 
 procure for himself the unadulterated objects which he desires 
 for his consumption. This is a first antinomy. It also happens 
 that, in the great entei'prises requiring the employment of very 
 considerable capital, such as railways, maritime navigation 
 companies, trans-continental cable companies, or, likewise, in 
 enterprises which are concerned with the exploitation of an 
 object the amount of which is limited and cannot be created by 
 the hand of man — as is the case with mines — that competition 
 ends in monopoly, that is to say, in its contrary. 
 
 A railway company is formed. It lays down a net work of rails, 
 the construction of which involves an expense of two, three, four, 
 or five hundred million francs. If no competing exploitation comes 
 along and establishes itself by its side, it is very evident that this first 
 company remains absolute master of the carriage of passengers and 
 goods, and can take advantage of that situation so as to falsify the 
 economic conditions, and to force tariffs on the public out of 
 proportion with the real value of its services. 
 
 Will competition step in by means of the organisation of a new 
 company and the construction of a second parallel line ] Possibly 
 
 132
 
 Diverse A ntinomies — Tfieu" Solution. 133 
 
 so. This is even probable, if the field of exploitation — and con- 
 sequently, for that reason, the field of profits — is extensive. But 
 for this purpose there is need of a new expenditure of a capital 
 of two, threCj four, or five hundred million francs. 
 
 As soon as the new line is open, the tariffs go down and the 
 public breathe freely, each company tending to turn aside the 
 traffic for its own profit ; and thus it happens that the cost of 
 carriage is bi'ought back, by the law of supply and demand, to the 
 normal value of the service rendered. 
 
 Unhappily, the two companies soon perceive that they have 
 been inflicting injury on one another, that their struggle has the 
 effect of lowering the cost of carriage in a way prejudicial to their 
 interests ; they become merged together, or form a coalition, and 
 the public falls again into the inconveniences of monopoly. 
 
 In order that these inconveniences should be avoided, it would 
 be necessary that a third line should be constructed. But the 
 capitalists who would undertake that task would have to devote 
 thereto still another half milliard of francs, which would raise to a 
 milliard and a half the expenses incurred in order to establish the 
 means of communication between the points in question. 
 
 Now, it may be that the traffic sufficient to remunerate half a 
 milliard or a milliard may be insufficient to remunerate a milliard 
 and a half. As the capitalist docs not bring forward his capital 
 except where he meets with some chances of profit ; and as he 
 undertakes nothing for glory alone, or in view of some general 
 interest (although the general interest profits by his action) ; and, 
 further, as he is not guided, and cannot be, except by privato 
 interest ; if the traffic is not considerable enough to remunerate a 
 milliard and a half, the third line will not be constructed, and the 
 monopoly of the merged or coalesced companies will subsist in its 
 integrity. 
 
 Moreover, were it possible to usefully create a third line, the 
 monopoly would only be delayed, for the facts which we have 
 described as certain to be produced between the two fii'st companies, 
 would be infallibly brought about, by the same economic fatality, 
 betweeia the merged companies and the new competing society.
 
 134 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 Here, then, is a case in which absolute economic freedom leads 
 to monopoly ; and one may easily recognise, by applying the same 
 reasoning to analogous premises, that tliis case is not an isolated 
 one. In mines, for exami:)le, a monopoly is even much more 
 easily established, at least in many circumstances. In fact, the 
 field in wliich exploitation exerts itself is here limited not by 
 human will, but by nature. A mine is discovered, it is not 
 created ; and when a capitalist or a company has taken possession 
 of all the mineral values of a given kind, one can defy any other 
 capitalist to compete with tliem. 
 
 Now, this union of the mines of a self-same nature in the hands 
 of the same capitalist, or in the hands of a number of capitalists 
 sufficiently restricted to enable them to form an understanding 
 together and to unite in making coalitions, is the logical conse- 
 quence of the normal accumulation of capital. 
 
 If it is false that, if we only consider private individuals, capital 
 tends more and more to become concentrated in a few hands, to 
 the detriment of the greatest number of individuals — a view which 
 constitutes one of tlic fundamental ei-rors of Karl Marx and of his 
 school — it is, on tlic other hand, absolutely true — and on this 
 point the analysis of Marx is exact — that the small undertakings 
 liave a constant tendency to become effaced, and to disappear 
 before the great undertakings. 
 
 The luiiou of the mining companies, or their mutual luider- 
 standing, forces itself upon us, and it will not be by crying out 
 against monopoly, by applying from time to time the 419th 
 Article of the French Code Penal, by striking here and there at 
 some financiers or some manufacturers sacrificed as a holocaust to 
 the popular passions, that one Avill prevent this result from being 
 produced, for it flows from the unconquerable laws which regulate 
 capitalistic society. 
 
 This monopoly, brought about by the very effect of a natural 
 law which seems entirely directed against it, is the second con- 
 tradiction, the second antinomy oficred by the study of competi- 
 tion. We shall discover yet more of these antinomies. 
 
 The orthodox political economy shows us the worker and tlie
 
 Diverse Antinoniies — Their Solution. 1 3 5 
 
 capitalist meeting together on the market as two agents freely 
 exchanging, and arriving, by the balance of supply and demand, 
 at the establishment not only of the just and normal amount of 
 the wage, but, also, of the general conditions of labour. 
 
 Now, if it is true that labour is able to struggle against capital ; 
 if it is true that the centralisation of the workers — the conse- 
 quence of the centralisation of industry — makes day by day that 
 struggle more easy and more efficacious ; there remains none the 
 less, and always will remain, a force in the hands of capital against 
 which all the efforts of the workers will break themselves in vain, 
 because that force flo\Ys from the very nature of things. 
 
 On this point, Karl Marx appears to us to have established his 
 demonstration on a rock. We shall not reproduce the whole of 
 the arguments which he gives. But there is one argument quite 
 theoretical and quite diwiori^ which Mars does not formulate and 
 which, however, seems to us difficult to refute. 
 
 As long as industry is divided — and it is to be hoped that it 
 will be so for a long time — a capitalist who is outside the branches 
 in which monopoly forces itself lapon us, cannot consent to a re- 
 form, cannot diminish the hours of labour of his workmen, can- 
 not improve the sanitary conditions of his workshop, and cannot 
 raise salaries, except by raising by that very fact, and immedi- 
 ately, the cost price of his commodity. 
 
 Now, as we have before established, the manufacturer only 
 retains for himself the most inconsiderable part of the surplus- 
 value produced, the principal part whereof is distributed to the 
 consumers under the form of a reduction in the price of the objects 
 of consumption. 
 
 Of the part so retained by the manufacturer, the most important 
 fraction is intended to be added to the necessary accumulation 
 without which capital infallibly perishes. 
 
 As the necessities of the market oblige the capitalist to content 
 himself with the least possible profit, if he raises the cost price of 
 his commodity, he is compelled to demand a higher price than 
 that which his rivals demand for the same article. From that 
 moment the consumers, — who only see the prices, and do not
 
 136 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 scrutinise iuto their causes, — naturally turn away from him in 
 order to go to the man who offers them the same things cheaper. 
 The reforming manufacturer thus finds himself ruined by the 
 man who has refused to effect any reform. 
 
 If he is ruined, his workmen fall out of work. They come 
 upon the general labour market, causing wages to go down ; and, 
 consequently, they have such an interest in the avoidance of these 
 misfortunes that they are no more able, logically, to insist upon 
 the reforms than the manufacturer is in a position to accomplish 
 them. 
 
 In order that improvements of this nature should become 
 realised by the simple working of natural forces, there would be 
 needed either the unanimity of the masters in a given industry 
 carried on in a particular country, or, at least, an unanimity on 
 the part of all the workmen employed in that industry, in claim- 
 ing these improvements at the same time and with an equal 
 vigour. 
 
 If even this universal understanding — and for that reason so 
 improbable — were brought about, there would remain inter- 
 national competition, which so stands in the way as to make the 
 best wishes abortive. 
 
 Absolute freedom of commerce and of inchistry is, therefore, in- 
 ccqmhle of giving rise to the social reforms ivhich the ivorher has the 
 right to exact. 
 
 Another antinomy still : — 
 
 Private industry does not manifest its useful effects except in 
 cases wherein the immediate profit is the motive which deter- 
 mines the industry and serves as its propelling force. 
 
 But there are certain services in which the material interest of 
 the moment is nothing for society, while the interest of the future 
 is everything for society, and in which, from the point of view of 
 profits, there exists a conflict between these two interests. For 
 these services private industry is totally unadapted. 
 
 Education — secondary education,^ and higher education above 
 
 ^ M. Naquet's remarks on education arc made with reference to educa- 
 tional affairs in France.
 
 Diverse Antinomies — Their Solution. 137 
 
 all — belongs to that order. The master who opens a school 
 does not in any way concern himself with the raising of the in- 
 tellectual and moral level of the nation. He has but one end, 
 viz.^ to attract to himself the greatest possible number of scholars, 
 and to pocket as much money as he can. If the means to attain 
 this end consists in tlie excellence of the teaching imparted by 
 him, one may be free from any concern about the schoolmaster's 
 private interest: the education will be free from all reproach. 
 But if, on the contrary, it is by a lax and inferior teaching 
 that he succeeds in making the twenty franc pieces flow into his 
 coffers, we shall see the level of his teaching become lower from 
 day to day. 
 
 This second hypothesis is, unhappily, that which is the more 
 generally realised in France. The abandomnent of education to 
 private initiative brings with it the mutual competition of schools, 
 "lycees," and colleges. 
 
 Unhappily, the young people who, in the teaching to which they 
 submit themselves, seek a solid education, — the development of 
 their knowledge, and the perfecting of their minds — form the great, 
 the very great exception. The immense majority of mankind 
 work in order to create for themselves a position. They only see 
 in the studies which they are forced to undergo the diploma or 
 the final certificate, and only seek to acquire this diploma or this 
 certificate at the cost of the least efibrt. 
 
 One may, for that reason, rest assured that the establishment 
 in which the masters are of a superior order, and wherein the 
 diplomas are only conferred after conscientious examination, will 
 receive the limited mimber of students who seek education for its 
 own sake ; but that the great number will, on the contrarj', run 
 after the rival establishments. These latter will prosper, whilst 
 the former, simply because it has no absolute monopoly, and 
 simply because a competition is raised against it, will not pay its 
 expenses, and will be condemned to perish. 
 
 Things take place so much in this manner in France that, even 
 to-day, the multiplicity of the State faculties produces, in a 
 certain measure, effects of this order, and the higher Council of
 
 138 CotlectivisDi and Socialism. 
 
 Public Education is obliged to take under its consideration the 
 tendency of the students of one faculty to go to another faculty to 
 pass their examinations, when they have some reasons to suppose 
 that the examiners there are more indulgent. 
 
 Thus, in the matter of education, competition tends exclusively 
 to lower the value of the product; and as, in this instance, the 
 excellence of the product is fundamental for the welfai'e of societ}', 
 it is evident that we have here a service which cannot be usefully 
 abandoned to the initiative of individuals. 
 
 It would be easy, but of no utility, to multiply this enumera- 
 tion, which everyone can complete for himself — the examples we 
 have furnished being amply sufficient in order that the idea, 
 which we wish thence to deduce, may be distinctly made clear. 
 
 To sum up : competition, in certain industries, leads de facto to 
 monopoly. Nearly everywhere it renders reforms impossible, 
 when the consequence of these reforms is, not the lowering, but 
 the raising of the cost price. It sterilises, in these cases, the 
 individual goodwill of the capitalists, and even makes fruitless, 
 from the point of view of reform, the struggle between labour and 
 capital. 
 
 Finally, competition often brings about frauds and falsifications 
 or, at least, the debasement of the quality of the product. This 
 result is realised nearly always in the industries in which the 
 excellence of the product is everything, and the immediate profit 
 to be pocketed is nothing, since the interest of the present has to 
 yield to the interest of the futTU'c. These industries are doomed 
 to a fatal inferiority if they are handed over to individual action, 
 and the services which devolve upon these industries continue to 
 suffer. 
 
 Here, then, wc have certain well established, and very clearly 
 defined antinomies. 
 
 Tlic rule of the antinomy is, that every time a given order of 
 phenomena develops its consequences in two opposed and contra- 
 dictory series, there is reason to anticipate a higher principle, a 
 synthesis, which will cause the contradiction to disappear, and will 
 solve the antinomy.
 
 Diverse Antinomies — Theiy Solution. 139 
 
 This higher principle, in the examples qiiotecl by us, is the 
 action of the State exercising itself, either by laws and regulations 
 imposed upon all similar industries, or even by the substitution of 
 the public service for the free competition of individuals. In this 
 is seen the importance of the collective side of humanity. If 
 private industrial enterprise involves the manufacture of com- 
 modities of bad quality, and thus aims a blow at the liberty, the 
 interests, and the health of the purchaser, there is occasion for 
 a superintendence by the State with the view of repressing fraud. 
 
 If the interests of the worker, the preservation of the health of 
 the labourer, and his well-being — which are the primordial elements 
 of social power — are injured by a competition wliich is powerless 
 to protect them, it is necessary that the State should intervene to 
 equalise matters between the manufactui-ers, by promulgating laws 
 on the hours of labour, on unhealthy workshops, on the labour of 
 children and women, and on the weekly day of rest. 
 
 If private individual action ends in monopoly, and thus tends 
 to suppress the liberty of the consumer to the profit of the mono- 
 poliser, justice requires that this monopoly, oi-ganised as a part of 
 the public service, should be carried on by the State, or that the 
 State should limit, by severe regulations and a continual superin- 
 tendence, the rights of the individuals and of the companies into 
 whose hands the monopoly has fallen. 
 
 Finally, if the excellence of the product surpasses in importance 
 the possible profits, — as is the case with education, — the public 
 service forces itself upon us as the only solution. Thus, public 
 service is necessary for the railways or for the mines, or, at the 
 least, a limitation, by precise laws and by continuous administra- 
 tive action, of the rights of companies. Public service is neces- 
 sary for education. Finally, laws protective of the workman ; 
 laws limiting the duration of the labour-day for women, children, 
 or even for adults ; securing a day of rest each week ; aiming at the 
 suppression of forms of labour destructive of the health of those 
 ■who are therein employed ; — such is the field on which the action of 
 the State ought legitimately to be exerted, not in order to put 
 constraint upon the individual, but, on the contrary, in order to
 
 140 Collectivis7ii and Socialism. 
 
 favour liberty by destroying the obstacles accumulated by liberty 
 against liberty. 
 
 There is yet another service which justifies the action of the 
 State, whether that service is exerted by superintendence, or is 
 exerted by direct exploitation held as a monopoly. This is the 
 service, which in our days has become altogether indispensable, of 
 banks of issue. 
 
 In banks of issue, monopoly does not arise, — as in the case of 
 railways or mines, — from the very force of circumstances. But if 
 these great establishments, which are the regulators of monetaiy 
 circulation, were abandoned without direction to private initiative, 
 no doubt there would be some excellent ones ; but some, very little 
 secure, would also exist. The depreciation of bank notes would 
 ensue under such circumstances. If it is true, indeed, that men 
 of business would, most often, succeed in distinguishing the banks 
 that are safe from those which would not be so, — that they would 
 accept the paper issued by the first whilst refusing that of the 
 second, — this would not be the case with the mass of the citizens. 
 
 Here, everybody would be in the dark. One would have but 
 one light to make things clear by : the current rate of exchange ; 
 but what a number of causes may influence this rate outside the 
 stability of the establishment from which the notes emanate ! 
 The bribed press would not fail to lead the public into error ; one 
 would falsify by adroit manoeuvring the normal price of exchange, 
 and, after some inevitable and repeated losses, the public at large 
 would refuse to receive the paper money and would no longer 
 accept anything but payment in specie. Circulation would thereby 
 be impeded and production injured. 
 
 It is needful, therefore, and of the highest necessity, that the 
 State should intervene ; either, as to-day, in France, by conferring 
 the monopoly of the issue of notes on a single bank compelled to 
 give security by a guarantee capital ; or, as in the United States, 
 by leaving the banks free to establish themselves, but fixing the 
 conditions outside which no emission of notes is permitted ; or, 
 finally, by establishing a State bank and making the bank of 
 emission a part of the public service.
 
 Diverse Antinomies — Their SohUion. 141 
 
 One may hesitate between these diverse solutions j bnt, whatever 
 be the solution adopted, State action — collective action — forces 
 itself upon us. Moreovei', in our opinion, two solutions only are 
 acceptible amongst the three offered : that adopted in the United 
 States and which, in guaranteeing the public against the excesses 
 of competition, preserves for the public, however, all its advantages ; 
 or, on the other hand, the sj^stem of the State bank. Monopoly 
 in the hands of a company is nearly always bad, because it levies 
 a tax on all citizens to the profit only of some few. Where a 
 monopoly exists, common sense shows that it ought to be exercised 
 by the monopolising company at cost price, except in the cases in 
 which the fact would be established — as may perfectly well happen 
 — that gratuitous exploitation as a part of the public service is still 
 more costly than onerous exploitation by private individuals. 
 
 But there is a remark, the importance of which must be pointed 
 out at once : viz.^ tliat in so far as it acts for the public service, 
 the State is subject to the general laws of the market. Its action, 
 from the point of view of the distribution of wealth, does not in- 
 volve the consequences which the Socialists of the school of Marx 
 anticipate from the socialisation of the instruments of labour. It 
 is this which makes it possible for us to accept this form of 
 collective action, and is the reason why M. Deville, in the intro- 
 duction of his analysis of the doctrine of Karl Marx, rejects it. 
 
 Indeed, as we have superabundantly shown, society could not be 
 burdened with the production and distribution of wealth ; it can 
 assume but one burden, that of remedying the defects of equili- 
 brium which arise from an entirely anarchical competition, — which 
 defects would upset the social mechanism. 
 
 As to what has been commonly called " the social question," it 
 may be summed up thus : It is necessary to reach a point at 
 which the functious of capitalist and worker, which to-day are 
 separated, may be united in the same persons. It is to be desired 
 that, directly or indirectly, the instrument of labour may be tlic 
 property of the man who puts it to advantage. It is necessary 
 that the social action may be exercised unceasingly with the view 
 of aiding the formation of tliis state of things, the realisation of
 
 142 Collectivism and Socialism, 
 
 which should be of a nature not only to satisfy the feeling of 
 justice, but also to greatly beuclit the general interest. But if it 
 is of importance to steer towards this social end, it is veiy neces- 
 saiy to guard oneself against the Utopia which consists in believing 
 that it is possible to attain that end in an absolute manner, — an 
 Utopia which, inspired with that hope, leads nj) to the Collectivist 
 chimera. 
 
 The absolute and complete juxtaposition of the functions of 
 capitalist and worker is one of those final ends, — an example of 
 which is offered by the asymptotes in mathematics, and arc still 
 more numerous in society, — ends towards which one journeys un- 
 ceasingly, but the very condition in order to approach them is 
 that one is doomed never to attain them.
 
 CHAPTER TIL 
 
 SOLUTION. 
 
 Up to the present we have overthrown the theory of Collectivism 
 pure and simple ; shown in what circumstances the collective 
 action has the right and the duty of exercising itself, and indi- 
 cated the end towards which it is necessary to steer. But by 
 what metliod ought we to take steps towards attaining this end 1 
 This is the problem which it now remains for us to examine. 
 
 The French Revolution has furnished ns, in regard to this, a 
 good example to meditate upon. 
 
 The Revolution of 1789 was much more a social than a political 
 revolution. 
 
 Our great Assemblies of 1789, of 1792, and of 1793, found 
 themselves in the presence of an old feudal society, already pro 
 foundly impaired, but of which it was needful to complete the 
 destruction, and to the replacement of which it was necessary to 
 proceed. In that society the land was possessed by the proprietor 
 of the soil. The seigniorial property was charged with entails, 
 and its division, therefore, became impossible. The laws were 
 such that the feudal lord could not lose, and, as a consequence, 
 the peasant could only with difficulty acquire anything. 
 
 As regards manufacturing, it hardly existed. Industry had 
 only commenced to emerge out of the handicraft stage to enter into 
 that which Karl Marx calls the manufacturing period ; and manu- 
 facturing, already in full development in Great Britain — which 
 has preceded us in the field of industry — had only just begun with 
 us. The handicrafts reigned still with their guilds and corpora- 
 tions, securing an existence for a certain number of privileged 
 people, and mercilessly throwing the others into the ranks of 
 mendicity. 
 
 M3
 
 144 Collcclivisiii and Socialism. 
 
 The Revolution might have proceeded by way of violent expro- 
 priation, and torn the land awaj'^from its possessors and given it to 
 the peasants. It emj^loyed quite another means. It seized hold, 
 no doubt, of the possessions of the Church ; but these possessions 
 could not be assimilated to the property of an individual. They 
 were a means of assuring a public service by a special endowment. 
 This endowment might have disappeared if the service were 
 henceforth judged useless, or even — as it happened — if the service 
 were assured in another manner, — by the State-budget, for 
 example, — or else by the right of association being granted to the 
 faitliful, and by permitting them to set apart funds of their own. 
 
 As regards the nobles, the Revolution only took away from 
 them their possessions when they conspired against the Republic, 
 — when they emigrated and went to Coblentz to bear arms against 
 the fatherland. In their case the punishment of confiscation, 
 which was part of the legislation of the period, was pronounced 
 against them ; but this was simply a penalty, and not a measure 
 of social renovation. The aristocratic families who remained in 
 France, — such as the Montmorency family, — and who did not raise 
 insurrection against the new order of things, were not dis- 
 turbed in their rights as proprietors, and preserved all their 
 property. 
 
 Moreover, the violent dispossessions which took place on ac- 
 count of war hardly brought about any social effect. Often^ even, 
 they came in conflict with the object for which they had been 
 made. This was temporarily the case with the ecclesiastical 
 possessions, the sale of which produced simply the substitution of 
 a new proprietor, much more rapacious, for the former good- 
 natured owner, who contented himself with an insignificant rent. 
 The sold and confiscated lands fell to the lot of bourgeois proprie- 
 tors, who bought them very cheaply, and who carved out estates 
 for themselves from the ruin of the former possessors. The 
 people in the country gained nothing, or hardly anything, in all 
 these changes ; and if the Revolution had been confined to these 
 acts of dispossession, and Ir.id not modified legislation, it would 
 have completely failed : its work would have beeri nil.
 
 Solution. 145 
 
 But at the same time that the Revohition proceeded with con- 
 fiscations and sales which were the outcome of war, and the sole 
 purpose of which, as we have already said (and which it i.s 
 necessary never to lose sight of), was the more speedily to break 
 up the partisans of the old regime, it took care to make laws whicli 
 prevented that re'ylme from being reconstituted, and made its 
 total destruction at once necessai'y and definitive. 
 
 In the industrial order it abolished the guilds and corporations. 
 Fearinc lest the traditions and customs mitrht bring about their 
 reconstitution, the Revolution even aimed a blow at the riglit of 
 association, in order to give the new traditions the time to form 
 themselves, and to make its work imperishable. It was only in 
 the second half of this century that the reaction has begun against 
 that species of political protectionism which has henceforth be- 
 come useless. 
 
 In the agricultural world the Revolution suppressed the riglit 
 of primogeniture and entail. It went much further. Here also, 
 fearing the dominion of old habits, it determined to prevent the 
 fathers of ftimily from individually reconstituting these super- 
 annuated institutions, and it dealt a blow to the right of bequest. 
 Save as regards a portion, carefully limited and left at the dis- 
 position of the testator, the Revolution decreed the equal sharing 
 of the property within the family. 
 
 These laws have sufficed to bring about very rapidly a radical 
 transformation of society. The idle rich, having no longer the 
 indivisibility of property in order to perpetuate their fortune — 
 injured by their tastes for expenditure, and by the partition of 
 the family estates — were very quickly driven to the necessity of 
 selling. The peasants, on the other hand, ever laborious and all 
 the more thrifty as they now saw in their savings the possibility 
 for themselves of becoming possessed of the soil, have piled up 
 money, sou by sou, with which they have bought, in little bits at a 
 time, the lands of the seigneurs and of the ruined bourgeois. It 
 is in this way that, at this moment, the half of the national soil is 
 possessed by agricultural workers, and that thus the instrument 
 of labour is, for the most part, in the. hands of those who utilise it. 
 
 K
 
 146 Collcctivisni and Socialism. 
 
 This democratic work is still going on, and everything — even 
 the depression which has supervened in the returns from agricul- 
 ture, which makes land a very disadvantageous investment for the 
 bourgeois — tends to cause the agricultural instrument — the soil — 
 to pass more and more into the hands of the workers in the fields. 
 
 We may say in passing that the so-called laws of agricultural 
 jirotection, wdiich have been passionately voted for some time in order 
 ■to raise the income of the landed proprietors, go counter to this 
 .iiovement, and have the result of fettering the work of the 
 Revolution, 
 
 No doubt, this solution of the land question by the division ad 
 infinitum of the soil presents some considerable inconveniences. 
 It prevents the employment of machines which, by diminishing 
 the cost of cultivation, would furnish the farmers with the means 
 of struggling more efficaciously against the importations of the 
 foreigner. It renders difficult the employment of the processes of 
 George Ville, which would allow this struggle to be carried on by 
 raising considerably the returns from agriculture. But, in regard 
 to this, association will complete the work which minute sub- 
 division has begun, and association will take place, despite the 
 extreme repugnance of the peasants to part with their property in 
 the soil. It will take place, because it becomes a condition of life 
 or death for our agriculture, and because notliing can prevail 
 against economic necessity. 
 
 If, therefore, modern industry iiad not been created since 1789, 
 and had not developed itself with an extraordinary rapidity, the 
 social question would not exist. 
 
 Indeed, with regard to the land, thanks to the laws of the Revolu- 
 tion, that question has, so to speak, solved itself by the normal 
 evolution and by the natural operation of the social forces, — at least 
 within the limits in which a question so complex can be solved, 
 — and it goes on being solved from day to da}'. 
 
 In manufacturing, the material parcelling out of means of wealth- 
 production cannot be an element of solution as it has been in 
 agriculture, Tlie reason for this is simple. Land is of good or 
 bad quality. It is large or small. But in any case, whatever
 
 Solution. 147 
 
 may be its productive power, whatever may be its extent, it is by 
 itself a complete instrument. Let us take an estate of ten 
 thousand hectares ; we have a vast and powerful element of pro- 
 duction. If we parcel it out in ten thousand lots of one hectare 
 or in twenty thousand lots of half-a-hectare, each of these lots will 
 be aia instrument as complete, as peifect, although much smaller, 
 as it was before the division of the parcelled out estate. There is 
 nothing like this in manufacturing. A factoiy is an assemblage 
 of varied machines employed by the agency of a central motor, 
 concurring in one single end, and forming a Avhole — a complicated 
 and higher totality. 
 
 In order to remain adapted to its end, this machinery ought 
 always to contain within itself all the parts of which it is com- 
 posed. If we divide it, if we separate, one from the other, the 
 sub-mechanism of which it is formed, we shall have made a con- 
 siderable capital into a series of objects shorn almost entirely of 
 value, and certainly altogether lacking in productive power. 
 
 It is therefore not possible that the worker can become pos- 
 sessed of fractions of a factory as a peasant does of small bits of 
 laud. The solution of the problem does not consist in minute 
 subdivision. 
 
 But, — as if, in human society, things contained in themselves 
 the elements of their own transformation, — the excess of capitalism 
 has caused the remedy to rise to tlie surface, and this remedy 
 consists in shareholding societies, and in the extreme division of 
 industrial capital which results from the constitution of these 
 societies. 
 
 As long as capital was individual and the factory belonged to a 
 single proprietor, the accumulation of capital always emptied 
 itself into the same purse and the poor man was unable to acquire 
 anything from it. 
 
 But machinery, by its developments in the course of the nine- 
 teenth century, has required such a considerable amount of 
 capital that the normal accumulation was not sufficient. It has 
 therefore been necessary to bring together the capital of different 
 hidividuals, — to unite, to group, and blend these amounts into a
 
 148 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 single capital ; — in a word, to form companies. It was only under 
 these conditions that the ci'eation of railways was possible and 
 could be realised. 
 
 Afterwards, — the movement still continuing, — trading companies 
 of lesser importance were created, and, from the time the legisla- 
 tive powers in the different countries made the association of 
 capital relatively free, the fouiidation of societies of this nature 
 has taken an immense development. Now, shareholding societies 
 are nothing else than the indirect means of the subdivision of the 
 factory ; one cannot divide it materially, but one can divide ad 
 infinitum its value, its capital, and, for that wavy reason, its profits. 
 
 And as the shareholder is subject to the conditions of society 
 created in 1789; as, when he himself does not labour — the stocks 
 being divided at each succession — he is promptly ruined ; as, 
 moreover, the men of small means economise, save money and 
 buy the stocks which abound in the market, these latter come 
 into possession of moveable property just as the peasant has come 
 into the possession of landed property. 
 
 Ask tlie Panama Company how many large investments and 
 how many small ones there were in their enterprise, and you will 
 be edified as to the diffusion of personal property. It will be 
 objected perhaps that the example is badly chosen, because the 
 savings placed in the Panama enterprise have been destroyed ; 
 but this example is only brought forward to show to what a 
 gigantic accumulation of capital the small savings can amount, 
 and from that point of view the example could not be more 
 striking. 
 
 As to the bad use that may be made of these savings, the ques- 
 tion is quite a different one. Some inquiry needs to be made on 
 that point. 
 
 Trade investments arc, in fact, much inferior to land invest- 
 ments because they lend themselves more easily to the machina- 
 tions of unsound speculation. 
 
 The peasant who makes himself the possessor of a piece of 
 land knows what he buys, and thus finds himself protected from 
 rubbery.
 
 Sohttion. 149 
 
 The workman who buys stocks in some industrial concern 
 rarely knows what is being sold to him. He is forced to lend faith 
 to the newspapers, which indiscriminately praise the good invest- 
 ments and the bad. And as the bad investments arc quoted at a 
 much higher interest ; as those who issue the shares advertise 
 them the most extensively ; it is more often towards these high- 
 flown investments that the savings of the poor are directed — only 
 to be swallowed up, in the end, in the coflfers of a class of financial 
 pirates. Were it not for this piracy which daily goes on and 
 drains the savings of the worker, the movement for the democra- 
 tisation of industrial capital would have proceeded as rapidly as 
 the democratisation of landed capital. 
 
 It is therefore in the direction of the guarantees to provide 
 against these spoliations, against this scandalous exploitation of 
 ignorance, that the public authorities ought to turn their at- 
 tention. Here we have one of the great means of solving 
 the problem which to-day justly impassions the minds of 
 men. 
 
 The public authorities ought also to secure to the workers 
 every imaginable facility to defend their interests against the 
 lords of capital. They entered on that path when they pro- 
 claimed the right of association, and granted to the workers the 
 liberty which the laws of 1791 had refused them, viz.^ to form 
 themselves into trade-unions. 
 
 These first essays are still timidly made and must be courage- 
 ously pursued. 
 
 We said before, in a chapter devoted to the iron law, that that 
 law is very relative ; that it is only verified under given con- 
 ditions, in a limited space of time, and on the basis of the 
 actual minimum consumption ; that it is not true in time and 
 space, and that unless this were so, — no social progress being 
 realisable, — we should still be in the position we were at the epoch 
 of the troglodytes. 
 
 The minimum consumption, as soon as the population becomes 
 limited, presents a constant tendency to rise. Otherwise ex- 
 pressed, real wages — and it is necessary to understand by that
 
 150 Collectivism and Socialis^n. 
 
 expression the purchasing power of the money received as wages — 
 always tend to augment. 
 
 It is incontestable that the natural grouping together of 
 workmen, — sucli as results from the very force of things, from 
 industrial centralisation, — as well as the voluntary grouping 
 togetlicr which tiie law makes free, and which individual initiative 
 realises, play a considerable part in this increase of the minimum 
 consumption, and consequently of wages. 
 
 If this is the case ; if the so-called iron-law is moulded only in 
 a malleable metal; if the wages of the worker are not strictly 
 limited to that without which life would be impossible ; if the 
 worker obtains, either under the form of diminution of the value 
 of the products or otherwise, the return of a part of the social 
 surplus-value ; he becomes apt, like the cultivator of the soil, to 
 economise. He is able, with his savings, to buy bonds and 
 shares ; he becomes a capitalist. 
 
 Is it necessary, for the solution of the problem, to urge for 
 co-operative associations for the purpose of consumption and 
 production? The answer to that question will have to be positive 
 or negative, according to the end one aims at in seeking to 
 develop co-operation. 
 
 If the end aimed at is, — in that respect as for the participation 
 of the profits, — the placing in the hands of the worker an 
 instrument of production and a means of saving superior to those 
 which he possesses already, the answer must be affirmative. Co- 
 operation combines efforts which, without it, would have remained 
 isolated, increases the intensity of labour, and enables intelligent, 
 laborious, and active men to come more quickly by that way than 
 by others into the possession of capital. But if one seeks, in 
 co-operative societies, a means of rendering the workman owner of 
 the tool itself with which he labours, one must answer in the 
 negative the question put just now. It would be necessary, in- 
 deed, in order to accomplish that purpose, to make these associa- 
 tions species of societies in mortmain, and to dispossess the 
 worker who would cease to labour of the portion of capital created 
 by him. Thus, one would fall back very quickly in detail into all
 
 Solution. 1 5 1 
 
 the vices of Collectivism, without even having the general ad- 
 vantages of that system. On the other hand, if one or several of 
 those engaged in collective industry may at any moment retire 
 from the society in their capacity as workers, but in so doing 
 only give up the share in the profits appurtenant to their labour, — 
 not the share of the profits appurtenant to their capital, — the 
 society, co-operative at the beginning, ceases very rapidly to be so, 
 and transforms itself into an ordinary shareholding society, the 
 co-operation at the outset having been only a means to enable the 
 members to obtain capital, without having the power to be any- 
 thing more. Co-operation, therefore, can never become a social 
 institution ; it can only be one of the thousand ways which enable 
 the lower classes to rise higher and to enjoy the possession in 
 their turn of the direct benefits of ownership. 
 
 But the importance attached to co-operative societies, con- 
 sidered as a means of placing the means of labour in the hands of 
 the worker, arises from a false conception, and even from a narrow 
 conception. No doubt it is necessary to aim towards uniting 
 more and more the functions of capitalist and workman in the 
 same persons. It is necessary to aim at the suppression of mere 
 idlers and mere day-workers. But it is nowise necessary that the 
 functions of workman and capitalist should be confused in the 
 same individuals, and this in the narrow domain of a given pro- 
 duction, as is the case with the peasants who ai'e actually owners 
 of the soil. It is not necessary, for example, that in an enter- 
 prise in which the iron ore is worked, everybody should be, at the 
 same time, a workman employed at the factory and a shareholder 
 in the same. It is enough that the qualities of capitalist and 
 workman should be combined in those who constitute tlie whole 
 body of workers engaged in universal production. 
 
 An individual may be simply a wage winner in an industry 
 without owning in that industry the least particle of capital, and 
 he may be at the same time a shareholder in another society in 
 which, not contributing any labour, he takes part simply as a 
 capitalist. Many of the drivers of the "fiacres" in Paris were 
 Bhareholders or boudlioldcrs in the Panama Company. Tiicy
 
 I s - Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 certainly did not work iu the cutting through of the isthmus ; 
 they were not, on the otlier hand, owners of any share in tlio 
 " Compagnie des petites voitures." And, nevertheless, from the 
 general point of view of society considered as a whole, they were 
 none the less capitalists and workers, — paid workmen in regard to 
 the ''Compagnie des petites voitures," and capitalists at Panama. 
 They performed surplus-labour and swelled the surplus-value on 
 the one hand ; and they drew, or hoped to draw, from the surplus- 
 value on the other. 
 
 The fact that, at the present time, the worker may be a share- 
 holder in the very enterprise to which he is attached is a par- 
 ticular case, a fortuitous incident, which adds nothing to the 
 commingling of functions towards which human society ought to 
 tend and, indeed, does tend. This particular case is perhaps worthy 
 of enlisting our attention. Pei'haps there is reason to press the 
 worker forward towards this goal as much as possible by partici- 
 pation in the profits, seeing that when he invests his savings in 
 the enterprise in which he is employed, he knows what he is doing 
 with his money and is less exposed to be deceived. But — let us 
 repeat it — this fact has nothing to do with the general theory. 
 That theory requires that the number of idle capitalists should go 
 on diminishing unceasingly. 
 
 Again^ it requires that the number of those who are simply 
 paid workers should also go on decreasing. It finally requires 
 that a number of men growing in number every day shall partici- 
 pate, as workers, in the products of the necessary labour, and, 
 as capitalists, in the profits resulting from what Karl Marx calls 
 BurpUis-labour, 
 
 If we educate the worker ; if we put him in a position to defend 
 himself against the monstrous enterprises of the baser sort of 
 speculation ; if we confer on him rights which will enable him to 
 protect his interests and to cause the iron law to bend more and 
 more every day ; the social question — the perpetual Fieri, as 
 Hegel would have said — will disappear from the number of our 
 anxieties, because it will go on gradually solving itself. Laws on 
 the limitation of the labour day, on unhealthy occupations, on tho
 
 Solution. 153 
 
 labour of children and womcU; will equally enable the solution to 
 be hastened. 
 
 The same result would probably flow from a progressive tax on 
 successions and from every measure which would clieck the tend- 
 ency of great accumulations to get into the same hands. In a 
 word, one of the errors, — the fundamental error, perhaps, — of the 
 Marxist school has consisted in the belief that capital is accumu- 
 lated in a number of liands becoming every day more restricted ; 
 whilst, on the contrary, capital has a marked tendency to become 
 democratised and be diffused. Marx saw that imaginary being 
 called the manufactory, and that other imaginary being, called 
 accumulated capital — unique in appearance, and intended to carry 
 on tlie manufactory, — and he spoke of the stamping out of the 
 small people because, in fact, the large factories kill the small 
 ones, and the great capitalists kill the small. But what he did not 
 see is, that in this there is only a modification in the mode of 
 production, that the individualisation of capital is not thereby 
 affected, and that, on the contrary, it is facilitated by that con- 
 centration. 
 
 Indeed, what does it matter if two thousand small traders have 
 been suppressed by the Bon Marche, the Louvre, the Printemps or 
 the Place Clichy, when an equal or greater number of producers 
 have been able to invest their savings in the shares of the Place 
 Clichy, of the Printenips, of the Bon Marche or of the Lo%ivre .? 
 What does it matter if ten incoherent local railway enterprises 
 are replaced by a great and much more general enterprise, when 
 the new company which is formed unites in itself as many share- 
 holders as all the companies which have preceded it? The final 
 result is the same ; the ownership is quite as much divided as 
 formerly ; it is only more solid, because the great and powerful 
 companies spoken of offer guarantees wliich are hardly ever offered 
 by the small enterprises having no consistency ; and thus they ad- 
 mit of money saved being invested with greater security, without 
 it running the risk of disappearing in a small private business or 
 in a small company with no future before it. 
 
 Not only — con'rary to wliat the ]\[;ir.\ists. deceived by the con-
 
 154 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 templation of the immense amount of capital put in circulation in 
 our day, suppose — is property quite as much divided to-day as 
 formerly, but it is even infinitely more so. 
 
 The movement which was set up in relation to the soil after 
 1789, is reproduced to-day in the clearest fashion in industry 
 proper ; and, iu tlie same way as this movement has solved, in 
 regard to the land, the fuudauieutal question of our time, so it 
 will solve it in this case. 
 
 To hasten that solution tvhat is 7iecessary? We have just indi- 
 cated it: — viz., to facilitate private enterprises, to guarantee the 
 small peopile against deception and fraud ; each day more and more 
 to furnish the xoorher with the weapon of education in order to put 
 him in a position to safeguard more efficaciously his interests; to 
 cause the State to intervene in order to 2>Totect the liberty of the 
 tveak, to oppose that which injures the ptcblic health, to act hy taxa- 
 tion in a coercive manner tvith a view to 23^'svent the formation of 
 too great individual fortunes, and also with a view to prevent the 
 soil from heing more parcelled up every day; to cause the obstacles 
 to disappear which a series of bad governments have accumulated, and 
 xuhich the actual ivant of solidarity among the nations forces the 
 r/overnme7its to accumulate still more. 
 
 The principal of these obstacles lies in the war expenses, and in 
 the national debts which are the consequences thereof. 
 
 War expenses have this immense inconvenience, viz. that of being 
 miproductive, and of putting impediments in the way of the 
 accumulation of the general capital of a country. Because they 
 are unproductive it should not, however, be concluded that they 
 are useless. 
 
 When a country is menaced —and all countries in Europe are 
 menaced, or may reasonably believe themselves so to be — it is 
 certainly forced to put itself in a state of defence, cost what it 
 may. It is better to expend considerable sums unprofitably than 
 to perish. The summum bonum is life. Wliat would be the use 
 of the national wealth when the nations would have perished? 
 Dut if the expenses of war are useful, if they breed a relative 
 security which renders labour and production possible iu the
 
 Sohdion. 155 
 
 diverse branches of human activity ; if, from this point of view, 
 it is admissible to call them indirectly productive ; it is none the 
 less certain that, by themselves, they do not determine the pro- 
 duction of any wealth. The labour which they absorb docs not, 
 properly speaking, create value. Let a federation of peoples in- 
 tervene to-morrow, and all the guns, all the rifles, all the powder, 
 smokeless or not, will be thrown aside as useless, as presenting no 
 longer any utility, and as incapable of being exchanged with 
 anything. 
 
 And these unproductive expenses are considerable. They drain 
 off an immense amount of capital which, if it had remained free, 
 would have fertilised the soil, multiplied the means of communi- 
 cation, and founded new industrial undertakings. These enter- 
 prises, — by increasing the productiveness of labour, by raising in 
 an absolute manner^ even though possibly they may lower in a 
 relative manner, the quantity of wealth which the worker receives; 
 in a word, by rendering the iron law more and more flexible, and by 
 really leading to a rise of wages, — would have the result of facili- 
 tating the formation of investments and the continual accession of 
 new social strata to the enjoyment of property. 
 
 In lieu of this, these sums are to-day, properly speaking, thrown 
 into the sea. And, as they cannot always be drawn from that part 
 of the national income regularly devoted to public expenses, — as 
 States are obliged to make calls upon the social reserve fund for 
 them, which finds itself diminished to that extent, — it is not to 
 taxation, but to borrowing that nations are compelled to have 
 recourse in order to obtain them. As a consequence, there ensues 
 the gradual formation of enormous debts, the interest on which 
 swells every budget in such a manner, that every day the 
 obstacles to the accumulation of capital become greater, bearing 
 in their train an increase in the price of everything, a slackening 
 of industry, and a progressive diminution of wages resulting from 
 the industrial marasmus combined with the rise in the price of 
 provisions. The iron law renews its power under the domination 
 of these detestable circumstances, and individual thrift meets with 
 ever-increasing obstacles. Further than that, a melancholy pre-
 
 156 Collectivism mid Socialism. 
 
 judicc springs up in the different countries. The State invest- 
 ments come to be considered as the surest of all. They become 
 the regulators of the market ; and it is in this direction that the 
 small savings, and nearly all the savings of average amount, tend 
 to become invested. 
 
 Well it is, if the national budgets, — having become more and more 
 swollen, — do not reach one of those states with which private 
 enterprises are too much familiar, and which terminate in a fatal 
 bankruptcy, dragging into disaster all those who will have had 
 an exaggerated confidence in the State credit, and, indirectly even, 
 many of those Avho have created industries. 
 
 As long as it shall be necessary to maintain armies, build 
 fortresses, cast guns, manufacture melinite or other diffei'cut ex- 
 plosives for the purposes of war; as long as it shall be nccessaiy, — 
 almost as soon as an armament is completed, — to put it aside in order 
 to substitute for it another more in harmony with the progress of the 
 science of destruction ; as long as it shall be impossible to extinguish 
 the national debts and even to prevent their increase ; as long as 
 the fear of international conflicts shall continue to add itself to all 
 these evils by creating an atmosphere of insecurity, which ob. 
 structs all enterprises requiring a lengthy time in which to be 
 completed ; as long as the struggle for life between the nations 
 shall force these to fight each other by custom-house tariffs, — as if 
 these latter were gun-shots, — and shall thus fetter exchange and pro- 
 duction ; as long as these obstacles of all kinds shall remain strewn 
 across the path of mankind, let no one speak of progress, of serious 
 social reforms, and beneficent evolution. No true reform is 
 possible, no social evolution can be effected. At most, what is 
 permitted to the nations is to turn themselves about on their beds of 
 sorrow, while effecting some modifications in their laws which 
 they take for reforms, and which are hardly changes at all. 
 
 The social question tends to solve itself by the natural 
 progress of things ; and the solution would perhaps be much more 
 hastened on than one thinks if it were possible to lu'ge on the 
 movement. But it will be fatally obstructed, stopping short in 
 its development, and even going backward, as long as that monu-
 
 Sohition. 157 
 
 ment of human folly which is called the armed peace, shall not 
 have disappeared from Europe. 
 
 It is not against the great industrial companies, it is not against 
 the masters, that the Socialists ought to concentrate their etlbrts ; 
 it is against the armed peace. 
 
 How can an end be put to this armed peace 1 By war, it is said 
 by some. The remedy is, at least, heroic. Would it be efficacious % 
 I can see clearly what would be lost thereby : young and valiant 
 men, workers in the flower of their age, an immense amount of 
 capital, — for which the war indemnity would not even offer com- 
 pensation to the victorious nation, — a prolonged stoppage in 
 European labour ; and all this adorned, on the side of the 
 conquered, with national bankruptcies and numberless miseries, 
 without reckoning that, on the morrow of the war, the same 
 rivalries as on the eve of the contest, — or, at least, rivalries of the 
 same nature, — would force the co-partners of the spoil to recom- 
 mence, with renewed vigour, the ruinous system to which, precisely 
 by war, it would have been essayed to put an end. It is, there- 
 fore, neither by war that armed peace will be suppressed, nor by 
 armaments that war will be abolished. To the old Latin adage — 
 8i vis 2xicem ^xtra helluvi, which since the last twenty years the 
 Bismarcks, the Crispis, and other politicians of the same school, 
 repeat incessantly, there is good reason to prefer the adage of 
 Enfantin : Si vis pacem para pacem (if you wish peace, prepare 
 peace). 
 
 It is, nevertheless, necessary to recognise that it does not depend 
 upon anyone at this moment to stop the movement of furious folly 
 which drags Europe along; that the peace cannot be fruitful unless 
 it is honourable ; that the nation which would degrade itself to 
 avoid war would avoid probably nothing at all, and would be 
 condemned to suffer war under conditions much more disadvan- 
 
 tageous. 
 
 It is none the less true that on armed peace, and on it almost 
 exclusively, the social question rests. 
 
 If the Socialists would abandon the Collectivist crotchets which 
 keep the sensible minds at a distance from them, and thus injure
 
 158 Collectivism and Socialism. 
 
 the expansion of the system; if, everywhere — simultaneously and 
 exclusively — they aimed all their efforts against armaments and 
 war; their political triumph would be rapid, and rapid, too, the 
 natural social evolution which would follow upon the general dis- 
 armament. These efforts they put forward, no doubt, but, with 
 them they are the accessory object when they ought to be the 
 principal one ; and, moreover, by the errors which constitute the 
 foundations of their doctrine, they postpone the hour of success. 
 
 I am, for my i:)art, profoundly a Socialist. Social inequality and 
 injustice are revolting to me. I am hurt as much as — and more than 
 — any one, by the contrast of excessive wealth and extreme misery. 
 But I have the certitude, no less profound, that Collectivism would 
 aggravate, in lieu of mitigating, the evils from which wc suffer; 
 that the solution, — condemned to remain perpetually imperfect, 
 whilst perpetually approaching nearer to perfection, — should only 
 be sought in the action simply of natural laws and of the 
 normal machinery of society, legislative reforms hardly ever in- 
 terfering, except in the manner of oil intended to lubricate the 
 State machine. I am certain, above all, that the threats of war, 
 the exj)enses which they determine, and the national debts which 
 they cause, arc the true obstacles to be undermined. 
 
 Finally, it is my conviction that the national hatreds and pre- 
 judices, which make these evils necessary, will have to disappear 
 in order that Socialism may be possible ; and 1 am convinced that 
 the chief mission of Socialism is to struggle against these mis- 
 chievous errors, and to fell them to the ground. 
 
 This task Socialism tries to fulfil ; but it does not sufficiently 
 concentrate itself on this single point. Let it do this, and the 
 rapidity of its triumph will equal the greatness of its task. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
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