System of Economical Contradictions; or, the Philosophy of Misery Part 19

Well! I am willing. The remedy for compet.i.tion, in your opinion, is to make compet.i.tion universal. But, in order that compet.i.tion may be universal, it is necessary to procure for all the means of competing; it is necessary to destroy or modify the predominance of capital over labor, to change the relations between employer and workman, to solve, in a word, the antinomy of division and that of machinery; it is necessary to ORGANIZE LABOR: can you give this solution?

M. Dunoyer then develops, with a courage worthy of a better cause, his own utopia of universal compet.i.tion: it is a labyrinth in which the author stumbles and contradicts himself at every step.

"Compet.i.tion," says M. Dunoyer, "meets a mult.i.tude of obstacles."

In fact, it meets so many and such powerful ones that it becomes impossible itself. For how is triumph possible over obstacles inherent in the const.i.tution of society and consequently inseparable from compet.i.tion itself?

In addition to the public services, there is a certain number of professions the practice of which the government has seen fit to more or less exclusively reserve; there is a larger number of which legislation has given a monopoly to a restricted number of individuals. Those which are abandoned to compet.i.tion are subjected to formalities and restrictions, to numberless barriers, which keep many from approaching, and in these consequently compet.i.tion is far from being unlimited. In short, there are few which are not submitted to varied taxes, necessary doubtless, etc.

What does all this mean? M. Dunoyer doubtless does not intend that society shall dispense with government, administration, police, taxes, universities, in a word, with everything that const.i.tutes a society. Then, inasmuch as society necessarily implies exceptions to compet.i.tion, the hypothesis of universal compet.i.tion is chimerical, and we are back again under the regime of caprice,--a result foretold in the definition of compet.i.tion. Is there anything serious in this reasoning of M. Dunoyer?

Formerly the masters of the science began by putting far away from them every preconceived idea, and devoted themselves to tracing facts back to general laws, without ever altering or concealing them. The researches of Adam Smith, considering the time of their appearance, are a marvel of sagacity and lofty reasoning. The economic picture presented by Quesnay, wholly unintelligible as it appears, gives evidence of a profound sentiment of the general synthesis. The introduction to J. B.

Say's great treatise dwells exclusively upon the scientific characteristics of political economy, and in every line is to be seen how much the author felt the need of absolute ideas. The economists of the last century certainly did not const.i.tute the science, but they sought this const.i.tution ardently and honestly.

How far we are today from these n.o.ble thoughts! No longer do they seek a science; they defend the interests of dynasty and caste. The more powerless routine becomes, the more stubbornly they adhere to it; they make use of the most venerated names to stamp abnormal phenomena with a quality of authenticity which they lack; they tax accusing facts with heresy; they calumniate the tendencies of the century; and nothing irritates an economist so much as to pretend to reason with him.

"The peculiar characteristic of the present time," cries M.

Dunoyer, in a tone of keen discontent, "is the agitation of all cla.s.ses; their anxiety, their inability to ever stop at anything and be contented; the infernal labor performed upon the less fortunate that they may become more and more discontented in proportion to the increased efforts of society to make their lot really less pitiful."

Indeed! Because the socialists goad political economy, they are incarnate devils! Can there be anything more impious, in fact, than to teach the proletaire that he is wronged in his labor and his wages, and that, in the surroundings in which he lives, his poverty is irremediable?

M. Reybaud repeats, with greater emphasis, the wail of his master, M. Dunoyer: one would think them the two seraphim of Isaiah chanting a Sanctus to compet.i.tion. In June, 1844, at the time when he published the fourth edition of his "Contemporary Reformers," M. Reybaud wrote, in the bitterness of his soul:

To socialists we owe the organization of labor, the right to labor; they are the promoters of the regime of surveillance. . .

. The legislative chambers on either side of the channel are gradually succ.u.mbing to their influence. . . . Thus utopia is gaining ground. . . .

And M. Reybaud more and more deplores the SECRET INFLUENCE OF SOCIALISM on the best minds, and stigmatizes--see the malice!--the UNPERCEIVED CONTAGION with which even those who have broken lances against socialism allow themselves to be inoculated. Then he announces, as a last act of his high justice against the wicked, the approaching publication, under the t.i.tle of "Laws of Labor," of a work in which he will prove (unless some new evolution takes place in his ideas) that the laws of labor have nothing in common, either with the right to labor or with the organization of labor, and that the best of reforms is laissez-faire.

"Moreover," adds M. Reybaud, "the tendency of political economy is no longer to theory, but to practice. The abstract portions of the science seem henceforth fixed. The controversy over definitions is exhausted, or nearly so. The works of the great economists on value, capital, supply and demand, wages, taxes, machinery, farm-rent, increase of population, over-acc.u.mulation of products, markets, banks, monopolies, etc., seem to have set the limit of dogmatic researches, and form a body of doctrine beyond which there is little to hope."

FACILITY OF SPEECH, IMPOTENCE IN ARGUMENT,--such would have been the conclusion of Montesquieu upon this strange panegyric of the founders of social economy. THE SCIENCE IS COMPLETE! M. Reybaud makes oath to it; and what he proclaims with so much authority is repeated at the Academy, in the professors' chairs, in the councils of State, in the legislative halls; it is published in the journals; the king is made to say it in his New Year's addresses; and before the courts the cases of claimants are decided accordingly.

THE SCIENCE IS COMPLETE! What fools we are, then, socialists, to hunt for daylight at noonday, and to protest, with our lanterns in our hands, against the brilliancy of these solar rays!

But, gentlemen, it is with sincere regret and profound distrust of myself that I find myself forced to ask you for further light.

If you cannot cure our ills, give us at least kind words, give us evidence, give us resignation.

"It is obvious," says M. Dunoyer, "that wealth is infinitely better distributed in our day than it ever has been."

"The equilibrium of pains and pleasures," promptly continues M.

Reybaud, "ever tends to restore itself on earth."

What, then! What do you say? WEALTH BETTER DISTRIBUTED, EQUILIBRIUM RESTORED! Explain yourselves, please, as to this better distribution. Is equality coming, or inequality going?

Is solidarity becoming closer, or compet.i.tion diminishing? I will not quit you until you have answered me, non missura cutem.

. . . For, whatever the cause of the restoration of equilibrium and of the better distribution which you point out, I embrace it with ardor, and will follow it to its last consequences. Before 1830--I select the date at random--wealth was not so well distributed: how so? Today, in your opinion, it is better distributed: why? You see what I am coming at: distribution being not yet perfectly equitable and the equilibrium not absolutely perfect, I ask, on the one hand, what obstacle it is that disturbs the equilibrium, and, on the other, by virtue of what principle humanity continually pa.s.ses from the greater to the less evil and from the good to the better? For, in fact, this secret principle of amelioration can be neither compet.i.tion, nor machinery, nor division of labor, nor supply and demand: all these principles are but levers which by turns cause value to oscillate, as the Academy of Moral Sciences has very clearly seen. What, then, is the sovereign law of well-being? What is this rule, this measure, this criterion of progress, the violation of which is the perpetual cause of poverty? Speak, and quit your haranguing.

Wealth is better distributed, you say. Show us your proofs. M.

Dunoyer:

According to official doc.u.ments, taxes are a.s.sessed on scarcely less than eleven million separate parcels of landed property.

The number of proprietors by whom these taxes are paid is estimated at six millions; so that, a.s.suming four individuals to a family, there must be no less than twenty-four million inhabitants out of thirty-four who partic.i.p.ate in the ownership of the soil.

Then, according to the most favorable figures, there must be ten million proletaires in France, or nearly one-third of the population. Now, what have you to say to that? Add to these ten millions half of the twenty- four others, whose property, burdened with mortgages, parcelled out, impoverished, wretched, gives them no support, and still you will not have the number of individuals whose living is precarious.

The number of twenty-four million proprietors perceptibly tends to increase.

I maintain that it perceptibly tends to decrease. Who is the real proprietor, in your opinion,--the nominal holder, a.s.sessed, taxed, p.a.w.ned, mortgaged, or the creditor who collects the rent?

Jewish and Swiss money-lenders are today the real proprietors of Alsace; and proof of their excellent judgment is to be found in the fact that they have no thought of acquiring landed estates: they prefer to invest their capital.

To the landed proprietors must be added about fifteen hundred thousand holders of patents and licenses, or, a.s.suming four persons to a family, six million individuals interested as leaders in industrial enterprises.

But, in the first place, a great number of these licensed individuals are landed proprietors, and you count them twice.

Further, it may be safely said that, of the whole number of licensed manufacturers and merchants, a fourth at most realize profits, another fourth hold their own, and the rest are constantly running behind in their business. Take, then, half at most of the six million so-called leaders in enterprises, which we will add to the very problematical twelve million landed proprietors, and we shall attain a total of fifteen million Frenchmen in a position, by their education, their industry, their capital, their credit, their property, to engage in compet.i.tion. For the rest of the nation, or nineteen million souls, compet.i.tion, like Henri IV.'s pullet in the pot, is a dish which they produce for the cla.s.s which can pay for it, but which they never touch.

Another difficulty. These nineteen million men, within whose reach compet.i.tion never comes, are hirelings of the compet.i.tors.

In the same way formerly the serfs fought for the lords, but without being able themselves to carry a banner or put an army on foot. Now, if compet.i.tion cannot by itself become the common condition, why should not those for whom it offers nothing but perils, exact guarantees from the barons whom they serve? And if these guarantees can not be denied them, how could they be other than barriers to compet.i.tion, just as the truce of G.o.d, invented by the bishops, was a barrier to feudal wars? By the const.i.tution of society, I said a little while ago, compet.i.tion is an exceptional matter, a privilege; now I ask how it is possible for this privilege to coexist with equality of rights?

And think you, when I demand for consumers and wage-receivers guarantees against compet.i.tion, that it is a socialist's dream?

Listen to two of your most ill.u.s.trious confreres, whom you will not accuse of performing an infernal work.

M. Rossi (Volume I., Lecture 16) recognizes in the State the right to regulate labor, WHEN THE DANGER IS TOO GREAT AND THE GUARANTEES INSUFFICIENT, which means always. For the legislator must secure public order by PRINCIPLES and LAWS: he does not wait for unforeseen facts to arise in order that he may drive them back with an arbitrary hand. Elsewhere (Volume II., pp.

73-77) the same professor points out, as consequences of exaggerated compet.i.tion, the incessant formation of a financial and landed aristocracy and the approaching downfall of small holders, and he raises the cry of alarm. M. Blanqui, on his side, declares that the organization of labor is recognized by economic science as in the order of the day (he has since retracted the statement), urges the partic.i.p.ation of workers in the profits and the advent of the collective laborer, and thunders continually against the monopolies, prohibitions, and tyranny of capital. Qui habet aures audiendi audiat! M. Rossi, as a writer on criminal law, decrees against the robberies of compet.i.tion; M. Blanqui, as examining magistrate, proclaims the guilty parties: it is the counterpart of the duet sung just now by MM. Reybaud and Dunoyer. When the latter cry HOSANNA, the former respond, like the Fathers in the Councils, ANATHEMA.

But, it will be said, MM. Blanqui and Rossi mean to strike only the ABUSES of compet.i.tion; they have taken care not to proscribe the PRINCIPLE, and in that they are thoroughly in accord with MM. Reybaud and Dunoyer.

I protest against this distinction, in the interest of the fame of the two professors.

In fact, abuse has invaded everything, and the exception has become the rule. When M. Troplong, defending, with all the economists, the liberty of commerce, admitted that the coalition of the cab companies was one of those facts against which the legislator finds himself absolutely powerless, and which seem to contradict the sanest notions of social economy, he still had the consolation of saying to himself that such a fact was wholly exceptional, and that there was reason to believe that it would not become general. Now, this fact has become general: the most conservative jurisconsult has only to put his head out of his window to see that today absolutely everything has been monopolized through compet.i.tion,--transportation (by land, rail, and water), wheat and flour, wine and brandy, wood, coal, oil, iron, fabrics, salt, chemical products, etc. It is sad for jurisprudence, that twin sister of political economy, to see its grave antic.i.p.ations contradicted in less than a l.u.s.tre, but it is sadder still for a great nation to be led by such poor geniuses and to glean the few ideas which sustain its life from the brushwood of their writings.