[These draft translations are part of on ongoing effort to translate both editions of Proudhon’s Justice in the Revolution and in the Church into English, together with some related works, as the first step toward establishing an edition of Proudhon’s works in English. They are very much a first step, as there are lots of decisions about how best to render the texts which can only be answered in the course of the translation process. It seems important to share the work as it is completed, even in rough form, but the drafts are not suitable for scholarly work or publication elsewhere in their present state. — Shawn P. Wilbur, translator]
TROISIÈME ÉTUDE
CHAPITRE PREMIER.
I
OF JUSTICE IN THE REVOLUTION AND IN THE CHURCH.
THIRD STUDY.
GOODS.
CHAPTER ONE.
Position of the problem of the division of goods, or economic problem.
I am really sorry to have to speak to you again about M. de Mirecourt. But, as I told you, M. de Mirecourt is a sign of the times: so much the worse for the times. M. de Mirecourt receives communications from the episcopate: so much the worse for the episcopate.
My biographer begins in these terms:
“Pierre-Joseph…” — He affects to call me by my first name, quite simply, like a kid. It does well apparently in a pamphlet written for devotees; that flattens you a man: let us bend our backs under the whip of this Nemesis.
“So Pierre-Joseph is the son of a poor brewer cooper…”
This poverty of my birth returns on every page: it is the beginning, the middle and the end of my story. My attention being directed in spite of me to this insistence of my biographer, I asked myself what he wanted, and here is what I have discovered.
Ordinary men make the mistake of hating poverty, as if it were a blemish in the system of Providence; and those who house her in their homes, the even greater wrong of wanting to expel her. This is at least what those satisfied with the established order think, in the secret places of their hearts, disturbed and scandalized by the cry of misery.
Pauvreté n’est pas vice, disent les bonnes femmes de Franche-Comté, mais c’est pis ! — Pis que le vice, entendez-vous, Monseigneur ? quelle pensée révolutionnaire ! C’est la première leçon de philosophie pratique que j’ai reçue ; et, je l’avoue, rien, d’aussi loin que je me souvienne, ne m’a autant donné à réfléchir.
When I was in college, I was surprised to find in my authors the same sentence, almost a word for word: Paupertas hoc habet durius in se quèd ridiculos homines facit: What is most unbearable in poverty is it makes you look ridiculous. I don’t recall who said that anymore. Poverty and derision! it struck my cheek like a slap. M. de Mirecourt reminds me of it when he names me, with a joking tone, Pierre-Joseph.
Silence to the poor! This was Lamennais’ last word in 1848, when the Constituent Assembly, as a measure of order against the poor, reestablished the security of newspapers. At the assizes of the nation, poverty does not have the floor, it is suspect.
There are moralists, there are some even in the republican party, whose virtue impatiently suffered the the fact that these questions of wealth, wages, property, distribution of products, well-being were discussed in front of the masses. — Speak to them of duty, of sacrifice, of disinterestedness, of the celestial origin of the soul and of its immortal hopes, they applaud; but of material goods, goodness no! It is wrong that poverty shows itself in a republic: Silence to the poor!
Well, yes, Monsignor, I am poor, son of a poor man; I have spent my life with the poor, and, to all appearances, I shall die poor. What do you want ? I wouldn’t ask for anything better than to get rich; I believe that wealth is good in its nature and that it befits everyone, even the philosopher. But I am difficult about the means, and those which I would like to use are not within my reach. Then, it’s nothing for me to make a fortune, as long as there are poor people. In this respect I say like Caesar: Nothing is done as long as there is still work to do, Nil actum reputans si quid superesset agendum. Anyone who is poor is my family. My father was an apprentice cooper, my mother a cook; they married as late as they could, which did not prevent them from giving birth to five children, of whom I am the eldest, and to whom they left their poverty after having worked well. So shall I do: I have been working for nearly forty years, and, poor bird beaten by the storm, I have not yet found the green branch that must shelter my brood. Of all this misery I would never have said anything, if I had not been made a species of criminal for having broken my ban of indigence, and having allowed myself to reason about the principles of wealth and the laws of its distribution. Ah! if at least the problem were solved for everyone, and that there were only me poor in the world! I would return to my nothingness and would no longer dishonor, by my insolent protests, my country and my century.
Monseigneur,
1. — I am really sorry to have to speak to you again about M. de Mirecourt. But, as I told you, M. de Mirecourt is a sign of the times: so much the worse for the times. M. de Mirecourt receives communications from the episcopate: so much the worse for the episcopate.
My biographer begins in these terms:
“Pierre-Joseph…” — He affects to call me by my first name, quite simply, like a kid. It does well apparently in a pamphlet written for devotees; that flattens you a man: let us bend our backs under the whip of this Nemesis.
“So Pierre-Joseph is the son of a poor brewer cooper…”
This poverty of my birth returns on every page: it is the beginning, the middle and the end of my story. My attention being directed in spite of me to this insistence of my biographer, I asked myself what he wanted, and here is what I have discovered.
Ordinary men make the mistake of hating poverty, as if it were a blemish in the system of Providence; and those who house her in their homes, the even greater wrong of wanting to expel her. This is at least what those satisfied with the established order suspect, disturbed and scandalized by the cry of misery.
Poverty is not a vice, say the good women of Franche-Comté, but it’s worse! — Worse than vice, do you hear, Monsignor? What a revolutionary thought! This is the first lesson in practical philosophy that I received; and I confess that nothing, as far back as I can remember, has given me so much to think about.
When I was in college, I was surprised to find in my authors the same sentence, almost a word for word: Paupertas hoc habet durius in se quèd ridiculos homines facit: What is most unbearable in poverty is it makes you look ridiculous. I don’t recall who said that anymore. Poverty and derision! it struck my cheek like a slap. M. de Mirecourt reminds me of it when he names me, with a joking tone, Pierre-Joseph.
Silence to the poor! This was Lamennais’ last word in 1848, when the Constituent Assembly, as a measure of order against the poor, reestablished the security of newspapers. At the assizes of the nation, poverty does not have the floor, it is suspect.
There are moralists, there are some even in the republican party, whose virtue impatiently suffered the the fact that these questions of wealth, wages, property, distribution of products, well-being were discussed in front of the masses. — Speak to them of duty, of sacrifice, of disinterestedness, of the celestial origin of the soul and of its immortal hopes, they applaud; but of material goods, goodness no! It is wrong that poverty shows itself in a republic: Silence to the poor!
Well, yes, Monsignor, I am poor, son of a poor man; I have spent my life with the poor, and, to all appearances, I shall die poor. What do you want ? I wouldn’t ask for anything better than to get rich; I believe that wealth is good in its nature and that it befits everyone, even the philosopher. But I am difficult about the means, and those which I would like to use are not within my reach. Then, it’s nothing for me to make a fortune, as long as there are poor people. In this respect I say like Caesar: Nothing is done as long as there is still work to do, Nil actum reputans si quid superesset agendum. Anyone who is poor is my family. My father was an apprentice cooper, my mother a cook; they married as late as they could, which did not prevent them from giving birth to five children, of whom I am the eldest, and to whom they left their poverty after having worked well. So shall I do: I have been working for nearly forty years, and, poor bird beaten by the storm, I have not yet found the green branch that must shelter my brood. Of all this misery I would never have said anything, if I had not been made a species of criminal for having broken my ban of indigence, and having allowed myself to reason about the principles of wealth and the laws of its distribution. Ah! if at least the problem were solved for everyone, and that there were only me poor in the world! I would return to my nothingness and would no longer dishonor, by my insolent protests, my country and my century.
II. — Regarding this question of poverty, the Church has quite different maxims:
Blessed are the poor! — Blessed are those who are hungry! —Blessed are those who weep!
These words are taken from the Sermon on the Mount, in St. Matthew, ch. v. It is the gospel that is sung on All Saints’ Day: my teachers took care to make me recite it by heart for seven consecutive years.
Il y aura toujours des pauvres, disait l’ancienne Loi : Non deerunt pauperes in terrâ habitationistuæ. (Deut. xv) Et le fondateur de la nouvelle n’a pas manqué de répéter cet adage : Vous aurez toujours des pauvres avec vous : Pauperes semper habebitis vobiscum. Here we are far from the opinion of the classics, of the statesmen of the republic, and of the old women of my country…
What do these speeches mean? asked my youthful intelligence.
And the Church, interpreter of the Gospel, answered me:
Poverty by itself is truly shameful, because it is the penalty for sin. But, by the grace of Jesus Christ, those who, having lived in poverty, will have suffered their pain in this life will be rewarded in the next, as the divine sermonary announces in the second half of the verse: Quoniam ipsorum est regnum cælorum. Such is the order of Providence and the teaching of our holy religion.
It was enough to crush the reason of a hundred philosophers. But childhood is terrible:
How is it then that there are rich people? For if it is not misery that accuses Providence, it is wealth. Explain that.
The rich, replied the catechism, are not rich, as they imagine, by virtue of a right inherent in humanity, but by a mandate from heaven, and their property is only a deposit. This is why they are recommended to practice detachment, pauperes spiritu ; to unite in heart and through voluntary abstinence with the sufferings of the poor and to give them generosity, eleemosynam, caritatem. Without this it is as impossible for them to enter paradise as it is for a camel (others say a cable, I prefer the camel) to pass through the eye of a needle.
Up to this point everything was going fine; the system seemed to support itself:
Poverty, with a few exceptions, general: a fact of experience.
Vice and crime, also with a few exceptions, general like poverty: another fact of experience.
A causal relationship from one to the other: a probable fact.
A great expiation in the present: a possible fact.
A proportional reparation in the future: a desirable fact.
In the meantime, a more or less effective palliative, charity: a commendable fact.
These ideas followed each other, linked together with a certain whole. They seized my understanding, without, however, satisfying it. It was like a sophism that my reason could not refute, but against which my conscience protested. I went a long time without finding a way out. Woe to the Christian who ventures into this labyrinth! He is on the revolutionary slope, he races toward disbelief, he already has one foot in the abyss.
II. — Regarding this question of poverty, the Church has quite different maxims:
Blessed are the poor! — Blessed are those who are hungry! —Blessed are those who weep!
These words are taken from the Sermon on the Mount, in St. Matthew, ch. v. It is the gospel that is sung on All Saints’ Day: my teachers took care to make me recite it by heart for seven consecutive years.
There will always be poor people, said the ancient Law: Non deerunt pauperes in terrâ habitationis tuæ. (Deut. xv.) And the creator of the news did not fail to repeat this adage: You will always have the poor with you: Pauperes semper habebitis vobiscum. Here we are far from the opinion of the classics, of the statesmen of the republic, and of the old women of my country!
What do these speeches mean? asked my youthful intelligence.
And the Church, interpreter of the Gospel, answered me:
Poverty by itself is truly shameful, because it is the penalty for sin. But, by the grace of Jesus Christ, those who, living in poverty, will have suffered their pain in this life will be rewarded in the next, as the divine sermonary announces in the second half of the verse: Quoniam ipsorum est regnum cælorum. Such is the order of Providence and the teaching of our holy religion.
It was enough to crush the reason of a hundred philosophers. But childhood is terrible:
How is it then that there are rich people? For if it is not misery that accuses Providence, it is wealth. Explain that.
The rich, replied the catechism, are not rich, as they imagine, by virtue of a right inherent in humanity, but by a mandate from heaven, and their property is only a deposit. This is why they are recommended to practice detachment, pauperes spiritu; to unite in heart and through voluntary abstinence with the sufferings of the poor and to give them generosity, eleemosynam, caritatem. Without this it is as impossible for them to enter paradise as it is for a camel (others say a cable, I prefer the camel) to pass through the eye of a needle.
Up to this point everything was going fine; the system seemed to support itself:
Poverty, with a few exceptions, general: a fact of experience.
Vice and crime, also with a few exceptions, general like poverty: another fact of experience.
A causal relationship from one to the other: a probable fact.
A great expiation in the present: a possible fact.
A proportional reparation in the future: a desirable fact.
In the meantime, a more or less effective palliative, charity: a commendable fact.
These ideas followed each other, linked together with a certain whole. They seized my understanding, without, however, satisfying it. It was like a sophism that my reason could not refute, but against which my conscience protested. I went a long time without finding a way out. Woe to the Christian who ventures into this labyrinth! He is on the revolutionary slope, he races toward disbelief, he already has one foot in the abyss.
III. — Fourier recounts that the mercantile lies he witnessed when he was still young in his father’s shop were for him the first revelation of his mission as a reformer. An entirely opposite fact decided mine. My father, a simple man, could never lodge in his mind that, the society in which he lived being given over to antagonism, the well-being that every industrialist tends to procure is the spoils of war as much as the product of labor; that consequently the market price of a commodity is not measured by the cost price, but by what the need of the public, its means to purchase, the state of competition, etc., allow to extort. He added up his expenses, added so much for his work, and said: Here is my price. He did not want to hear any argument, and ruined himself. I was not twelve years old when I reasoned, without knowing it, supply and demand and net product, as Pascal, with rounds and bars, reasoned about geometry. I fully sensed what was fair and regular in the paternal method, but I also saw the risk it entailed. My conscience approved of one; the feeling of our security pushed me toward the other. It was for me a riddle that confronted Christian theory, a riddle which, if I were to solve it, threatened to swallow up my religion.
Coming out of secondary school, the workshop received me. I was nineteen. Having become a producer on my own account and a mercantilist, my daily work, my acquired education, my stronger reason, allowed me to dig deeper into the problem than I had been able to do in the past. Useless efforts: the darkness thickened more and more.
But what! I said to myself every day while pushing my lines, if by some means the producers could agree to sell their products and services at approximately what they cost, and consequently what they are worth, there would be less enriched no doubt, but there would also be fewer bankrupts; and, everything being cheap, one would see much less indigence.
Disappointment! the Church cried out to me immediately. Such an agreement of wills and interests, assuming holiness and justice in human society, is impossible. The Gospel, which knows this well, teaches us that pauperism is unfailing like crime; that the wicked and the poor will always be in greater number, pauci electi. And it is in order to combat the overflow of sin, inherent in our nature, and its inevitable consequences, that Christ came to earth, that he preached detachment, resignation, humility, and that he suffered the torture of the cross, pledge of the compensations he promises us in the next life.
This strikes me as dubious.
No positive experience, I replied, demonstrates that wills and interests cannot be balanced in such a way that peace, an imperturbable peace, is the fruit, and wealth becomes the general condition. Nothing proves that vice and crime, which we make the principle of misery and antagonism, do not have their cause precisely in this misery and this antagonism, which Catholic doctrine presents as being its punishment. The whole question is to find a principle of harmony, weighting, balance.
Now if, hypothetically, such a principle existed, if consequently the balance of forces and interests coming to be established, well-being became general, vice and crime diminishing in the same proportion as pauperism, Christianity would no longer be true! For Christianity to be true, the see-saw motion, and consequently misery and crime, must be eternal. Where am I? and to what terms have I just reduced the entire system of religion?… Thus Christianity would be interested in the maintenance of pauperism and speculation; thus, far from being the friend of the poor, their comforter and their refuge, it would be their enemy; on the other hand, far from sincerely wanting the extinction of sin, it would need it, it should protect it, love it!…
Consider, Monsignor, what a doubt this question of pauperism casts over the truth of Christianity and its morality, and how false, while awaiting the solution of this doubt, is the position of the Church! She cannot, with a sincere heart and an effective will, wish for the end of pauperism and crime; she cannot want the happiness of her children in this world. She seems dedicated by her dogma to the odious mission of combating as impious all attempts to abolish poverty; so that, while giving herself the appearance of protecting the poor and thundering against the selfishness of the rich, she exists in reality only to defend the privilege of the latter against the despair of the former!…
Whether this is a controversialist exaggeration, or the pure expression of the sentiments of the Church and of her secular practice, the discussion into which we are about to enter will teach us. But before going further, let us try to clarify our ideas.
III. — Fourier recounts that the mercantile lies he witnessed when he was still young in his father’s shop were for him the first revelation of his mission as a reformer. An entirely opposite fact decided mine. My father, a simple man, could never lodge in his mind that, the society in which he lived being given over to antagonism, the well-being that every industrialist tends to procure is the spoils of war as much as the product of labor; that consequently the market price of a commodity is not measured by the cost price, but by what the need of the public, its means to purchase, the state of competition, etc., allow to extort. He added up his expenses, added so much for his work, and said: Here is my price. He did not want to hear any argument, and ruined himself. I was not twelve years old when I reasoned, without knowing it, supply and demand and net product, as Pascal, with rounds and bars, reasoned about geometry. I fully sensed what was fair and regular in the paternal method, but I also saw the risk it entailed. My conscience approved of one; the feeling of our security pushed me toward the other. It was for me a riddle that confronted Christian theory, a riddle which, if I were to solve it, threatened to swallow up my religion.
Coming out of secondary school, the workshop received me. I was nineteen. Having become a producer on my own account and a mercantilist, my daily work, my acquired education, my stronger reason, allowed me to dig deeper into the problem than I had been able to do in the past. Useless efforts: the darkness thickened more and more.
But what! I said to myself every day while pushing my lines, if by some means the producers could agree to sell their products and services at approximately what they cost, and consequently what they are worth, there would be less enriched no doubt, but there would also be fewer bankrupts; and, everything being cheap, one would see much less indigence.
Disappointment! the Church cried out to me immediately. Such an agreement of wills and interests, assuming holiness and justice in human society, is impossible. The Gospel, which knows this well, teaches us that pauperism is unfailing like crime; that the wicked and the poor will always be in greater number, pauci electi (A). And it is in order to combat the overflow of sin, inherent in our nature, and its inevitable consequences, that Christ came to earth, that he preached detachment, resignation, humility, and that he suffered the torture of the cross, pledge of the compensations he promises us in the next life.
This strikes me as dubious.
No positive experience, I replied, demonstrates that wills and interests cannot be balanced in such a way that peace, an imperturbable peace, is the fruit, and wealth becomes the general condition. Nothing proves that vice and crime, which we make the principle of misery and antagonism, do not have their cause precisely in this misery and this antagonism, which Catholic doctrine presents as being its punishment. The whole question is to find a principle of harmony, weighting, balance.
Now if, hypothetically, such a principle existed, if consequently the balance of forces and interests coming to be established, well-being became general, vice and crime diminishing in the same proportion as pauperism, Christianity would no longer be true! For Christianity to be true, the see-saw motion, and consequently misery and crime, must be eternal. Where am I? and to what terms have I just reduced the entire system of religion?… Thus Christianity would be interested in the maintenance of pauperism and speculation; thus, far from being the friend of the poor, their comforter and their refuge, it would be their enemy; on the other hand, far from sincerely wanting the extinction of sin, it would need it, it should protect it, love it!
Consider, Monsignor, what a doubt this question of pauperism casts over the truth of Christianity and its morality, and how false, while awaiting the solution of this doubt, is the position of the Church! She cannot, with a sincere heart and an effective will, wish for the end of pauperism and crime; she cannot want the happiness of her children in this world. She seems dedicated by her dogma to the odious mission of combating as impious all attempts to abolish poverty; so that, while giving herself the appearance of protecting the poor and thundering against the selfishness of the rich, she exists in reality only to defend the privilege of the latter against the despair of the former!
Whether this is a controversialist exaggeration, or the pure expression of the sentiments of the Church and of her secular practice, the discussion into which we are about to enter will teach us. But before going further, let us try to clarify our ideas.
IV. — The problem of the distribution of goods, or more generally the economic problem, is obviously a matter for Justice. All enjoyment, in fact, presupposes an appropriation. Any appropriation presupposes a community, positive or negative, from which this appropriation derogates, but which authorizes and guarantees it. Therefore, every question relating to goods must be resolved by right.
But here the question is posed in such terms that at first sight it seems insoluble.
We know what Justice is in itself; its definition can be reduced to this formula, which is both imperative and coercive: Respect your neighbor as yourself, even though you could not love him; and do not allow him or yourself to be disrespected.
Thus determined, Justice is essentially subjective, in its principle, in its object, in its end.
How then, by virtue of this law of subjectivity, are we going to delimit relations whose object is not us; decree, decide and legislate on possession, sales and purchases, loans, rental, taxes, prescriptions, mortgages, servitudes, etc.? How are we to move from the subjective to the objective, and, by virtue of the right to respect, define the right to work or the right to property?
That’s not all.
When we observe the practice of nations, we see that economic forces, labor, exchange, credit, property, considered in themselves, in their free manifestation and prior to any contract, are subject to certain laws independent of the will of man and consequently of his justice. An example is the law of supply and demand. These laws cannot be disregarded without exposing us to disastrous mistakes: their study is the preliminary condition of all good legislation.
Now, when we know the strong and the weak of the social economy, will we go, in the name of our immanent Justice, to fight its fatality, or will we subject our dignity to it? Should man, the intelligent and free being par excellence, the king of nature by his lofty prerogatives, fight against the reason of things or sink into their organism?
One hope remains. As all truths are sisters, perhaps the same conciliation that we have found in Justice between man and man exists between the prescriptions of the legal order and the laws of the economic order. What then is this accord between subject and object, between spirit and matter, between justice and fatality? What concessions will the two principles make? What transaction is possible between powers that can only be defined by their mutual exclusion? For example, we have seen that with regard to persons, outside of equality, there is no Justice. Will this severe law be maintained in the distribution of goods and products? And if it is not maintained, what will be the tolerance granted to iniquity?
Before going any further, let’s say it once and for all!
By posing the question of right on Goods, as we posed it previously on Persons, as we will pose it later on the State, on Work, on Marriage, we in no way claim that society has remained until this moment in absolute ignorance of justice. For four or five thousand years legal matters have not ceased to be agitated among men; who are we to believe that this immense debate has produced no light? Ah! let us recognize rather, that if the human genius deserves some praise, it is especially for its persevering efforts, often successful, in the research of right. We possess a magnificent collection of maxims, of formulas, admirable in precision and elegance, of broad and fruitful theories. Languages, religions, literatures, philosophies, empires, even nations have passed; jurisprudence alone has survived. It did more than survive, it has constantly improved,
But it must also be agreed that we do not yet hold this unity and this certainty; that the contradiction exists in the acts of the legislator as much as in everyday practice, in the definitions of the school as in the decisions of the judge; that, if the materials are abundant, the construction is little advanced: so that the just judgment is a thing even rarer today than the just man, given that the sin of ignorance cannot corrupt the conscience, even when it dishonors the understanding.
I therefore say that if the contradiction is in the science, if consequently it infects the law and disturbs society, it comes from the fact that we have not yet arrived, in the matter of Justice, at the first principles, at the mother ideas, at what we will call the organic decree of practical reason, in the various categories of the social order.
This decree, which must govern from above everything related to the acquisition, possession and transmission of goods, is what I seek.
And, without going back to pagan antiquity, whose tradition our codes only follow, parallel to that of the Church that the civil legislator has abandoned, I begin by questioning the Church.
Does the Church possess a science of Justice applied to material interests?
To which I respond, as I have already done for persons:
No, the Church knows nothing either of the science of wealth or of its relations with justice.
Regarding all these things she professes ignorance, she denies the possibility of knowing them, and this denial is for her an article of faith. Just as we have seen her, in the name of inviolable Majesty, decide against man the question of personal right and dignity, so we are going to see her again, in the name of redemption and grace, decide against this same man the question of real right and wealth, and by this new judgment render social immorality irremediable.
IV. — The problem of the distribution of goods, or more generally the economic problem, is obviously a matter for Justice. All enjoyment, in fact, presupposes an appropriation. Any appropriation presupposes a community, positive or negative, from which this appropriation derogates, but which authorizes and guarantees it. Therefore, every question relating to goods must be resolved by right.
But here the question is posed in such terms that at first sight it seems insoluble.
We know what Justice is in itself; its definition can be reduced to this formula, which is both imperative and coercive: Respect your neighbor as yourself, even though you could not love him; and do not allow him or yourself to be disrespected.
Thus determined, Justice is essentially subjective, in its principle, in its object, in its end.
How then, by virtue of this law of subjectivity, are we going to delimit relations whose object is not us; decree, decide and legislate on possession, sales and purchases, loans, rental, taxes, prescriptions, mortgages, servitudes, etc.? How are we to move from the subjective to the objective, and, by virtue of the right to respect, define the right to work or the right to property (B)?
That’s not all.
When we observe the practice of nations, we see that economic forces, labor, exchange, credit, property, considered in themselves, in their free manifestation and prior to any contract, are subject to certain laws independent of the will of man and consequently of his justice. An example is the law of supply and demand. These laws cannot be disregarded without exposing us to disastrous mistakes: their study is the preliminary condition of all good legislation.
Now, when we know the strong and the weak of the social economy, will we go, in the name of our immanent Justice, to fight its fatality, or will we subject our dignity to it? Should man, the intelligent and free being par excellence, the king of nature by his lofty prerogatives, fight against the reason of things or sink into their organism?
One hope remains. As all truths are sisters, perhaps the same conciliation that we have found in Justice between man and man exists between the prescriptions of the legal order and the laws of the economic order. What then is this accord between subject and object, between spirit and matter, between justice and fatality? What concessions will the two principles make? What transaction is possible between powers that can only be defined by their mutual exclusion? For example, we have seen that with regard to persons, outside of equality, there is no Justice. Will this severe law be maintained in the distribution of goods and products? And if it is not maintained, what will be the tolerance granted to iniquity?
Before going any further, let’s say it once and for all:
By posing the question of right on Goods, as we posed it previously on Persons, as we will pose it later on the State, on Work, on Marriage, we in no way claim that society has remained until this moment in absolute ignorance of justice. For four or five thousand years legal matters have not ceased to be agitated among men; who are we to believe that this immense debate has produced no light? Ah! let us recognize rather, that if the human genius deserves some praise, it is especially for its persevering efforts, often successful, in the research of right. We possess a magnificent collection of maxims, of formulas, admirable in precision and elegance, of broad and fruitful theories. Languages, religions, literatures, philosophies, empires, even nations have passed; jurisprudence alone has survived. It did more than survive, it has constantly improved,
But it must also be agreed that we do not yet hold this unity and this certainty; that the contradiction exists in the acts of the legislator as much as in everyday practice, in the definitions of the school as in the decisions of the judge; that, if the materials are abundant, the construction is little advanced: so that the just judgment is a thing even rarer today than the just man, given that the sin of ignorance cannot corrupt the conscience, even when it dishonors the understanding.
I therefore say that if the contradiction is in the science, if consequently it infects the law and disturbs society, it comes from the fact that we have not yet arrived, in the matter of Justice, at the first principles, at the mother ideas, at what we will call the organic decree of practical reason, in the various categories of the social order.
This decree, which must govern from above everything related to the acquisition, possession and transmission of goods, is what we seek. After personal law, real law; after political legislation, economic legislation.
And, without going back to pagan antiquity, whose tradition our codes only follow, parallel to that of the Church that the civil legislator has abandoned, I begin by questioning the Church.
Does the Church possess a science of Justice applied to material interests?
To which I respond, as I have already done for persons:
No, the Church knows nothing either of the science of wealth or of its relations with justice.
Regarding all these things she professes ignorance, she denies the possibility of knowing them, and this denial is for her an article of faith. Just as we have seen her, in the name of inviolable Majesty, decide against man the question of personal right and dignity, so we are going to see her again, in the name of redemption and grace, decide against this same man the question of real right and wealth, and by this new judgment render social immorality irremediable.
CHAPTER II.
Doctrine of the Church on the distribution of Goods.
V. Wherever there is produced, outside the conditions of science, a principle of mysticism, the followers of this principle tend to constitute themselves into an independent society, or, to use the consecrated term, into a church.
This church has as its object, first, the development of principles or dogma; then, in conformity with the dogma, the government of the adhering society, the direction of its ideas, its interests, its mores.
Once constituted in its personnel and in its propaganda, the Church then tends to organize within itself the administration of the temporal in the image of the spiritual; to substitute in everything and for everything its dogmatic authority for the proper right of its members, its collectivity for their individuality, its revelation for their reason, its self for their self. Every private will must submit to the will of the Church, subalternizing, absorbing: Qui non audierit Ecclesiam, sit vobis sicut ethnicus et publicanus. So initiates say that religion is what connects them,taking the effect of religion for religion itself. They are linked, in fact: it is the characteristic of mystical ideas to subjugate the understanding through the superstition they inspire, to enchain the will, to regulate acts, by modeling practice on metaphysics; while science, which makes no claim to worship, by enlightening the mind takes nothing away from its spontaneity, leaving it free and independent.
One can verify the exactness of this observation in all the mystical sects, existing or dead: the rule is without exception. The distinction between the spiritual and the temporal is nonsense against which Communists, Saint-Simonians, Phalansterians and others also protest. This is why I say that what Christianity has done or attempted to do through its Church, all mysticism, all transcendental respect, taken as principle and as organ of practical Reason, if it manages to develop, will do: a warning to citizens who would be tempted to listen to the suggestions of the new religionists.
CHAPTER II.
Doctrine of the Church on the distribution of Goods. — Explanation of pauperism by grace; institution of Authority.
V. — Pagan corruption had resulted, among other things, in the agglomeration in a small number of hands of all the wealth: the immense majority of the inhabitants of the empire were without property, colonists of the tax authority, proletarians of the cities, slaves. A reparation was awaited: Christianity owed to this expectation, which it seemed at first to favor, the best part of its success.
The Gospel is full of anathemas against the rich and promises to the unfortunate. If ever a sect carried the scandal of excitement to envy and hatred far, it is assuredly this one. Blessed are the poor, the Master had said, because they will have their turn; blessed are the pious, because they will possess the earth; blessed are the hungry because they will be satisfied! Such is, according to the first gospel, the beginning of the messianic preaching, a beginning that it is impossible to take in any other sense than that of a claim to property.
The question of division was therefore posed from the first day, by the very mouth of Jesus Christ. What was the Church going to answer to this question? On her decision depended the future of the Christian people, the unity of the Church, the peace of the world.
The Church, naturally, could only answer according to its religion. Now, what did Christianity say here?
VI
Let us apply this principle.
Ancient corruption had resulted, among other things, in the agglomeration of properties; the immense majority of the inhabitants and subjects of the empire were dispossessed, colonists of the tax authority, if not slaves. A general reintegration was to be carried out; it was expected, and Christianity owed to this expectation, which it seemed at first to favor, a part of its success.
The Gospel is full of anathemas against the rich and promises to the poor: if ever a sect carried the scandal of excitement to envy and hatred far, it is assuredly that one. Blessed are the poor, the Master had said, because they will have their turn; blessed are the pious, because they will possess the earth; blessed are the hungry, because they will be satisfied!… Such is, according to the first of the Gospels, the beginning of the messianic preaching, a beginning that it is impossible to take otherwise than in the sense of a material claim.
But Christianity, despite its keen appetite for the temporal, rested above all on a set of religious ideas. During the very lifetime of the founder, a Church had been formed that immediately had to take over the direction of the movement, not only with a view to social reparations, but because of dogma.
Now, what did the dogma say? Two things.
1. With regard to the general condition of mankind and its final destiny:
That man is originally a sinner; that because of this sin he is subject to death, subjected to misery, exposed to damnation; but that by doing penance, willingly accepting, after the example of Christ, suffering, destitution, and humiliation in this life, he hoarded up mercy for the other; that there was the secret of religion and the true meaning of the mission of Jesus Christ.
2. With regard to the regime of the new society and the means of arriving at salvation:
That in principle man, lost through his own fault, can only save himself with the help of divine grace, the daily dispensation of which, to souls and to the churches, is the object of the assiduous care of Providence.
VI. — On the very cause of pauperism and the inequity of fortunes, all the doctors teach that this pauperism and this inequality are, like death, an effect of original sin, and that there is consequently no reason to accuse neither providence nor society; that such evil is not due to an accident of nature or civilization, but that it has its source in the depths of the moral order, in a prevarication which, after having infected the race of Adam, has sprung up in all of creation.
“Man,” says Dom Calmet, “was created in complete liberty, subject to God alone. If sin had not entered the world with the disobedience of Adam, men would have remained in this equality and this independence with respect to one another.” (Commentary on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans.)
Malebranche is strongly attached to this same principle, that vice is the only cause of inequality among men.
“It is a certain truth,” he said, “that the difference of conditions is a necessary consequence of original sin, and that often quality, riches and elevation derive their origin from injustice and the ambition of those to whom our ancestors owe their birth. Force, or the law of brutes, which has conferred the empire of animals on the lion, has become the mistress of men.” (Treatise on Morality, XIV, 1, 4, 6.)
“Five or six good-for-nothings,” said Domat, one of the doctors of Port-Royal, quoted by M. Cousin, “share the best part of the world and the richest; that is enough to let us judge what good wealth is before God!”
Thus the cause of the evil not being, according to the Church, of the temporal order, the remedy does not belong to it either. Before dealing with the things of the earth, it is necessary to clarify the affairs of heaven. The problem of pauperism being linked to that of sin, it is through the science of salvation in eternity that we must arrive at well-being in this life, if indeed salvation and wealth are not mutually exclusive.
What then, according to the Church, is this principle of salvation, our last resource against misery?
“By grace we generally mean a gift that God grants to men out of pure liberality, and without their having done anything to deserve it, whether this gift relates to the present life or relates to the future life.
“There are several kinds of graces:
“Natural grace and supernatural grace;
“Inner grace and external grace;
“Habitual grace and actual grace;
“Prevenient or operative grace, and cooperating or subsequent grace;
“Sufficient grace and effectual grace;
“Grace granted for the salvation of others, and grace granted for one’s own salvation, or, as the School says, gratia gratis data, et gratta gratum faciens. (Berger, Dict. of Théol.)
Man is therefore entirely enveloped by grace, which is essentially gratuitous and absolutely necessary: so has the Church decided.
A simple observation on this theory.
By natural graces we mean, says Bergier, the advantages of nature and society: life, health, strength, beauty, wit, genius, fortune, nobility; by supernatural graces, those that have as their object more especially the salvation of him who obtains them, such as the sacraments, the knowledge of the mysteries, a good thought, a good feeling, a holy desire, a revelation, etc.
Now, whatever care the theologians have taken to distinguish these two kinds of graces, it is evident that they have the most intimate relations between them, and that ultimately they form but one and the same category. This results from the fact that supernatural grace almost always aims to make up for the insufficiency of natural grace, often even to correct its effect. So a man born poor may be, if it please God and if his salvation requires it, enriched by supernatural grace; as also a man born rich can, by an effect of the same grace, be stripped of his goods and reduced to beggary. One man marries the woman he loves, because grace abandons him; another obtains from his own more children than he can support, by an effect of the same grace. It has no end. The distinction, admitted in theory, disappears in practice; and one has the right to say, despite the Church and its definitions, that for her everything is grace, and supernatural grace.
VII. — This principle, the opposite of sin, is grace.
“By grace we generally mean a gift that God grants to men out of pure liberality, without their having done anything to deserve it, whether this gift relates to the present life or relates to the future life.
“There are several varieties of grace:
“Natural grace and supernatural grace;
“Inner grace and external grace;
“Habitual grace and actual grace;
“Prevenient or operative grace, and cooperating or subsequent grace;
“Sufficient grace and effectual grace;
“Grace granted for the salvation of others, and grace granted for one’s own salvation, or as the School says, gratia gratis dé, et gratia gratum faciens.” (Bergier, Dict. de Théol. )
One observation before moving on. By natural graces we mean, says Bergier, the advantages of nature and of society, life, health, strength, beauty, spirit, nobility, fortune; by supernatural graces , those whose object is more especially salvation, such as the sacraments, good thoughts, revelations, the gift of miracles; or which, having only present happiness as their object, can be regarded as extraordinary liberalities of Providence, for example the wealth with which it showered the patriarchs, the protection with which it surrounded them, etc.
In this way, nature and grace henceforth form a single whole: nature, following the original prevarication, becomes incapable of fulfilling its destiny; grace, previously reduced to the creative act, and then forced to return to the charge in order to salvage the debility of nature, and correct its morbid influence.
Insofar as he does good, tends to free himself from sin and misery, man is therefore entirely enveloped by grace, which is essentially gratuitous, absolutely necessary, and which, moreover, is not is denied to anyone. It is now a question of knowing whether, with this gracious reinforcement, the stain of original sin being washed away by the blood of Christ, the Church is in a position to put an end to the inequality of conditions and to extinguish pauperism. For in the end, the neophytes of the first century, as well as the socialists of the nineteenth century, could say with reasonable insistence, you admit that earthly goods are of a completely inferior order, and cannot be compared with eternal salvation and the hopes of life beyond the grave. That is not the question. But however contemptible these goods may be, it is still necessary to deal with their distribution, if only to spare the faithful from formidable temptations, and the Church from frightful iniquities. The spiritual world is bound up with the regularization of the material. Now here we are all free, all brothers: what will be the law of work, of property, of exchange, of lending, of wages? How to apply the grace of redemption to the extinction of pauperism?
The response of the Church has never been, as far as we know, formulated in a precise manner. It exists none the less, in veiled terms; it results from the whole of the evangelical doctrine, and it is with complete certainty that we are going to summarize its substance.
VII
From the combination of the dogma of the fall, and of the necessity of doing penance that follows from it, with the dogma of grace, it resulted therefore for the Church, as regards the theory of conditions and fortunes:
That if wealth is by nature a good and a grace, poverty and suffering, the consequence of original sin and the first remedy for this sin, are also a grace; that if it is allowed to enjoy the goods that heaven sends, as one sees it by the example of the patriarchs, if one is even enjoined to be thankful for it, it is no less true, considering the state of sin in which we live here below, that these goods are for us a permanent occasion of temptation; that the surest thing is consequently to despise them, to know how to do without them, to make of them, in a spirit of mortification, a means of salvation, all the more so since the insufficiency, the inequality and the chance of their distribution, demonstrate superabundantly that the wrath of God weighs on nature as much as on humanity.
From there to making wealth the privilege of a small number of the elect, except to preach to them in their turn charity and detachment, there is only one step. Necessity has no law, says the proverb: since the thing cannot be otherwise, it is just. This is the reasoning that has been rehashed for thirty years by the adversaries, and very worldly adversaries at that, of socialism, in agreement on this point, without their suspecting it, with the double theory of original prevarication and grace.
All the doctors teach, in fact, that pauperism and inequality are the effect of original sin; that the love of wealth and property is by nature reprehensible; that there is no remedy for this, etc. It is implied that if men were wise they would deliver their goods to the Church, would become its workers, and, nourished, directed by it, would no longer occupy themselves with anything other than the life to come.
“Man,” says Dom Calmet, “was created in complete liberty, subject to God alone. If sin had not entered the world with the disobedience of Adam, men would have remained in this equality and this independence with respect to one another.” (Commentary on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans.)
Malebranche is strongly attached to this same principle, that vice is the only cause of inequality among men.
“It is a certain truth,” he said, “that the difference of conditions is a necessary consequence of original sin, and that often quality, riches and elevation derive their origin from injustice and the ambition of those to whom our ancestors owe their birth. Force, or the law of brutes, which has conferred the empire of animals on the lion, has become the mistress of men.” (Treatise on Morality, XIV, 1, 4, 6.)
“Five or six good-for-nothings,” said Domat, one of the doctors of Port-Royal, quoted by M. Cousin, “share the best part of the world and the richest; that is enough to let us judge what good wealth is before God!”
Thus the promised reparation found itself transported from the visible world to the transcendental world; the Gospels, written under the inspiration of the bishops, had the object of inculcating, along with obedience to ecclesiastical power, this doctrine of chance and resignation, and Christianity was, as the people of 1848 would have said, conjured away.
Don’t concern yourself with the vehemence of the sermons now. Like the Gospel, they will declaim, they will fulminate against the rich, but always concluding, in the name of prevarication, penance, grace and the celestial kingdom, against the poor.
VIII. — By original sin, continues the Church, man was delivered into the power of Satan and forever separated from God. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ has made reconciliation, and consequently beatitude, possible for us, but without completely freeing us from concupiscence, which remains in us as the mark of sin. So much for the spiritual.
In the temporal, things happen in an analogous way. The faith of Christ does not deliver us from sickness, poverty and death, other effects of sin: it softens, by grace, our severe trials; gives us courage, patience, resignation, detachment; renders suffering less cruel, death less horrible through the sublimity of its hopes; as for pauperism, it diminishes its leprosy by the outpouring of charity.
Let us leave sickness and death aside for the present, and concentrate exclusively on the question of goods. To properly appreciate the service rendered by the Church, one must first know how, according to her, inequality results from original sin, and what the state of society would be without this accursed influence. For it is evident, according to the declarations of the Church, that if redemption has not had the effect of entirely restoring humanity to its normal condition, at least it brings us closer to it by a few degrees, puts us on the road, gives us a foretaste of it, and, by grace, communicates to us the strength to go forward.
To this decisive question, the Church, questioned in her tradition, in her establishments, in all her practice, replies that before sin men were governed by the law of love; that then, just as there was no lust, neither was there selfishness, no distinction between thine and mine ; the fruits belonged to everyone, and the earth to no one. But, once the will of man was corrupted by sin, pride, ambition, jealousy and hatred entered the world; discord has troubled all relationships; division became inevitable, and from this division, subordinated to a multitude of random chances, to all the speculations of greed, came pauperism.
It is thus, continues the Church, that misery is the effect of original sin, and, in this life, absolutely incurable. Five or six ne’er-do-wells enjoy; the multitude is doomed to poverty. The Church may well try to convert these ne’er-do-wells to her maxims: if she succeeds in doing so, she will extract from them some alms for her poor; but that’s all. It cannot make labor, property, income, nor talent and diligence, accrue to everyone in equal measure. As long as men remain in their mortal condition, carried away by their passions, deformed by original sin, this is absolutely impossible. In a corrupt and unequal nature, there is, there could be no more commutative justice than distributive justice, no more reciprocity than charity. No certain law in the state, capable of restoring the standard of conditions; no spontaneity in individuals. All the philosophers who have dealt with matter, all legislators, jurists, economists agree. On this indestructible inequality of sin, were then molded institutions that nothing can reform, that cannot be abolished without causing society a disturbance deeper than that of inequality itself: these are, among others, property, inheritance, loans at interest, rent or farm rent, free trade, competition, wages. From all this it follows that wealth, obtained by conquest, invention, succession, change of place, combination of labor and capital, etc., is distributed according to chance, or rather Providence, which, by a divine judgment permits this disorder in order to make more apparent to all eyes the necessity of redemption and the miracle of this charity, of which the Church is both the teacher and the organ.
To conclude, the Church, starting from the double mystery of original sin considered as the cause of the inequality of fortunes, and the partial restoration of charity by the grace of Jesus Christ, teaches us two things: 1) that social perfection, as for the distribution of goods, being given in the law of love, which sets aside all selfishness, all property, it is up to the Church to realize, as far as she is capable, this blessed society, that for which she has worked incessantly through her cenobitic institutions, and subsidiarily by her benevolent establishments; 2) that the perfect life being the prerogative of the few, although all are indiscriminately called to it, it is appropriate, for the lay multitude, to accept the status quo, by simply substituting a reasoned hierarchy for an inequality of chance.
Inequality, says the Church, is, through a judgment of God, in nature; this inequality is invincible; pauperism necessarily results from it. Only God could change this law, which our duty is to consider as the expression of Justice. What is best for us to do is therefore to conform to it, with reflection, however, and discernment (C), while softening with works of beneficence what would be too hard in the legal order, while all raising ourselves, more and more, through charity.
Such is, as regards goods, the organization conceived by the Church. She understood that, slavery abolished, the unfortunate classes would not resign themselves to bear the weight of this fatality alone; and she has made the inequality of fortunes a decree of Providence, a principle of public law and of religion. At the same time, and to soften the rigor of the decree, to make it more tolerable, she lavished hopes on the poor; she threatens the great and the rich; she makes, for them, alms a condition of salvation; she multiplies religious communities, hospitals, hospices, asylums, refuges, and all charitable establishments.
IX. – That’s not all. The Church has also perfectly understood that with providence as with fate, with the law of love as with the law of servitude, society is completely arbitrary: The decrees of Providence are just as incomprehensible as the strokes of chance; inequality, like charity, knows no law. In general theory, the doctrine of the fall, of redemption, of Providence, of the social hierarchy, of any organization of charity, could pass: the proof is that for centuries society lived on it ; in the daily application, the difficulty remained complete, and it was enormous. Once dogma had been established, rules were needed, to speak reason, to observe at the very least the laws of logic. How are we, at all times, for the smallest details, to invoke incessantly the decree of Providence, and original sin, and grace? How to escape the reproach of ignorance, inconsistency, contradiction, immorality, arbitrariness? This is the objection that Bergier himself presented, with frankness, in his Dictionary.
“One sometimes hears,” he says, “good Christians complain that the code of evangelical morals is not sufficiently complacent, sufficiently detailed, to show in all cases what is commanded or forbidden, permitted or tolerated, sin, grievance or slight fault. We are fully persuaded, they say, that the Church has received from God the authority to decide morals as well as dogma; but by what organ does she make her voice heard? Among the decrees of the councils touching mores and discipline, some forbid what others seem to permit; several have not been received in certain countries; others have fallen into disuse and have ceased to be observed. The Fathers of the Church are not unanimous on all points of morals, and some of their decisions do not seem right. Theologians dispute morality as well as dogma; rarely are they in agreement on a somewhat complicated case. Among casuists and confessors, some are rigid, others relaxed. Preachers deal only with subjects that lend themselves to the imagination, and neglect all others. Finally, among the most regular people, some allow themselves what others regard as forbidden. How can we clear up our doubts and calm our scruples?”
Such is the difficulty, formulated by Bergier, the solution of which must put the seal on Christian society. To this, what does the candid theologian reply?
“We reply to these virtuous souls that a rule of morality such as they desire is absolutely impossible.. In the state of civil society, there is a prodigious inequality between conditions; what is luxury, superfluity or excess in some is not in others; what would be dangerous in youth is not so in mature age; the different degrees of knowledge or stupidity, of strength or weakness, of temptation or help, make a great difference in the extent of the duties and in the gravity of the faults. How are we to give to all a uniform rule, to prescribe to all the same measure of virtue and perfection? The lights of reason are too limited to fix with the utmost precision the duties of the natural law; and the knowledge acquired by revelation does not enable us to see with more justice the obligations imposed by positive laws.”
In short, with the inequality of conditions as a principle, whether we attribute it to pure fatality, like the ancients, or whether we project it on original sin, as does the Church; whether we stick to this hard law, after the manner of the ancient patriciate, or whether we bring to it the alleviations of the Gospel, the situation is the same: that is to say, there is no possible morality, since one cannot govern oneself by certain rules, logically deduced, which exclude all respect of persons, all partiality, all arbitrariness.
We must change the hypothesis, a philosopher would say, abandon the principle of inequality, and look elsewhere for the principle and the rules of the moral law. For it is more probable that this law exists, than it is that the inequality of conditions is a law of nature or a judgment of Providence.
But the Church does not shrink from arbitrariness. She is established on mystery; she adores an impenetrable Providence; she believes neither in the justice of man nor in his reason; she is. convinced of the necessity of misery, and she finds it more beautiful to believe than to reason. The Church will therefore complete its work with the help of a new principle, just as little philosophical as the previous ones, but fundamentally religious:
“It is for this reason,” continues our Theologian, that an ever-subsisting Authority is needed in the Church , in order to establish the discipline suitable to times and places.”
This is the last word of the System. Instead of principles, logic and exact rules, Authority; by way of Justice, discipline; for temperament, chastity. Transcendence agrees with itself: to explain a fact, it invents a mystery; to support the mystery, it supposes a revelation; to guarantee the revelation, she invokes her Authority. Of morals, none; of justice, she disdains it: does she not have charity? of reason, she rejects it: whoever believes will be saved, whoever does not believe will be condemned.
So, for persons, discipline; for goods, discipline; for all that concerns government, education, work, marriage, etc., discipline and more discipline. The law, we do not know it. We admit it without blushing, and for the greater glory of God. But Authority, it will be there for everything; there will be plenty to spare, and woe to the recalcitrant!
X. — In summary, here is what the Church replies when questioned on the question of goods:
Before the fall, men lived in perfect community, brotherhood and charity. Original sin, by unleashing concupiscence, introduced inequality and misery. The grace of Christ alone can bring some alleviation to this evil: on the one hand, by reawakening charity in hearts, by organizing benevolence, and founding model societies everywhere; on the other hand, by putting more order into inequality itself.
But all this does not form a regular system, governed by exact laws, logically deduced from Justice. The intervention of authority therefore becomes necessary: religion alone can create this authority and cause it to be received.
Such is the system of the Church, to which we are now going to give a philosophical expression.
Wherever there occurs, outside the conditions of science and law, a principle of mysticism, the followers of this principle tend to constitute themselves in a separate society, or to use the consecrated term, in a church?
This church aims, on the one hand, to develop its principle, that is to say its dogma, then to organize the social life within it in accordance with this dogma.
The dogma that served to found the society being superior, by its mystical nature, to all reason and to all will, it follows first of all that society, or the church, organ of the dogma, is superior to each of the initiates who compose it; its dogma is its authority: Qui non audierit ecclesiam, sit vobis sicut ethnicus et publicanus. Then, as the spiritual is essentially linked to the temporal, a second consequence is that this church, not content with substituting its doctrinal authority for the free reason of its members, its right for their right, its collectivity for their individuality, still tends to have the upper hand in the direction of interests, finally to attract to it all the properties.
It is thus that the Christian Church, after being formed on the messianic dogma, that of the original sin, of redemption and grace, manifested its dogmatic authority through its bishops, its councils, its popes, its tribunals of inquisition; that afterwards she extended her hand to the temporal, through her penitentiary, her ecclesiastical properties, her pact with Charlemagne. So initiates say that religion is what connects [relie] them , taking the effect of religion for religion itself. They are indeed linked in all their powers and faculties. It is proper to mystical ideas to subjugate the understanding by superstition, to enchain the will, to regulate actions, in the last analysis, to absorb all particular interests into an anonymous interest.
One can verify the accuracy of this observation in all mystical sects, existing or dead: the rule is without exception. Materialism itself, which one would like to define as the mysticism of matter, does not escape it. Destutt de Tracy admitted with rather good grace that what is called economy is only a collection of routines, imposed by necessity, by virtue of which he condemned nine-tenths of the human race to serve the other tenth in perpetuity. Necessity, such was the principle on which Destutt de Tracy and J.-B. Say made a kind of mystical reason, to excuse the innumerable contradictions of their theory. Basically, the theory of the so-called economists, so cynically formulated by Malthus, is the same as that of the Church, with this difference that, according to the Church, the inequality of conditions is not a natural institution, it is of satanic institution; while, according to the Malthusians, it is of physical and economic necessity. So charity and benevolent establishments are supremely repugnant to them. And just as the Church, convinced, as Bergier admits, of the impossibility of laying down a rule of mores, makes up for it by Authority; likewise the school of Malthus, knowing perfectly well what to believe about the value of its sophisms, makes up for it by Liberty, which means by bayonets.
Now that the question of pauperism arises again, as in the first century of the Church, should we be surprised that the answer is, above all, a thought of despotism? Socialism, from Lycurgus to Cabet, affects authority, Robespierre, neither more nor less than Napoleon, governed by authority; the Saint-Simonians govern by authority; Robert Owen, August Comte, by authority. Tomorrow we will see biologists, phrenologists, magnetizers, governing by animal fluid, turning tables, magic, wisdom, that is to say always by authority. How your soul must be rejoiced, Monsiegneur, to see these innovators of the last days, so proud of their little knowledge, so arrogant about their progress, confess unanimously that there is no Justice for the human species, that constraint alone can overcome its perversity, and thus fully vindicate your faith!
But perhaps the practice of the Church will be worth more than its theory; perhaps by following right reason, by obeying the spontaneity of conscience, she finds rules whose wisdom will cause her theology to be forgotten.
Alas! the door of the Church is like that of hell, it does not even leave hope to those who enter. If the man who sees correctly gives only imperfect works, according to this principle that all realization lags behind the idea, what will happen when the idea itself is false? This is what we are going to judge presently.
CHAPTER III
Practice of the Church from its origin until the Revolution.
X
In principle, inequality of conditions and property being, according to the Church, an effect of original sin; wealth, good by nature, become by the effect of sin an auxiliary of concupiscence; no principle of balance existing in this respect, either in society or in things, there remains for the governance of interests only this alternative: either to abandon the distribution of goods to the influence of fatal causes, occupation, conquest, confiscation, privilege, donation, concession, heredity, mortmain, etc.: this is the Malthusian theory; or else to make it the object of a discipline: this is the Catholic system.
This discipline, we have just given it as the formula: agglomeration of landed property in the hands of the clergy; administration by the priests; exploitation by the arms of the lay multitude, who everywhere, with a few exceptions, have become farmers of the Church, wage-earners or servants.
The Church, in acting in this way, not only obeyed the spirit of the dogma that is proper to her; she followed her ecclesiastical temperament.
Whatever the dogma, its importance comes much less from the idea that it expresses than from the sentiment that it aims to arouse, and by which alone in the end he can govern the masses: for man does not govern himself by the mind, he is governed by the heart.
Now, the feeling that dogma must develop is not Justice: it is incompatible with transcendence, the hypothesis of which excludes its reality.
It is philanthropy, love, or, to speak like the Gospel, charity, the principle of the animal community observed in bees (Study I, n. v), towards which the insufficiency of established law pushes sects, and whose first condition is the sacrifice of individuality.
Any church, by virtue of the philanthropy or charity of which its faith is the pledge, therefore tends to the monopolization of goods, to universal dispossession, to joint ownership. This was done or taught long before Christ, by Minos, Lycurgus, Pythagoras, Plato, the Essenes, etc. This has been done and taught in modern times by the Jesuits of Paraguay, the Moravians, the Owenites, the Saint-Simonians, the Phalansterians, the Icarians, the Mormons, and all the utopians. And at the time of writing can we forget that the disciples of Saint-Simon, having become per fas aut nefas princes of credit, chiefs of finance, matadors of the Stock Exchange, patrons and confessors of the empire, work as best they can for the realization of their great principle, the rehabilitation of the flesh, through the centralization of capital, the monopolization of fortunes, the coalition of privileges, the subalternization of the worker, the forfeiture of liberty, and this always in the name of dogma, in the name of philanthropy? Well! Transcendent mystifiers, all of you, give us Justice, and we will have nothing to do with your dogmatism; give us justice, and we will not need your charity; we will gladly do without your hospitals, your hospices, asylums, crèches, workers’ housing estates, and all your mercies!…
CHAPTER III.
Practice of the Church from its origin until the Revolution.
XI. — If the reader has followed the preceding analysis with some attention, he knows what to expect from the economic system of the Church; he possesses the key to it.
By a contradiction that is proper to it and results directly from its dogma, the Church, as far as the organization of labor and property is concerned, is at once communist and feudal.
It is communist, in that it considers pure community, without distinction of thine or mine, as the ideal of human association; this ideal, according to her, would have been realized in the terrestrial Paradise, and she hopes, with the grace of Jesus Christ, to realize it again by her cenobitic establishments.
The Church is feudal, by virtue of original sin that destroyed the law of charity, and forever created inequality among men. Now, as this inequality is invincible, as, on the other hand, not everyone can enter religious communities, the Church has judged that the most suitable thing was to regulate inequality by giving it a hierarchical form, and softening it either by the counterweight of its communities, or by charitable institutions. In this plan, the interests of the nobility are united with those of the Church; they support each other, at the same time as they contain the plebs. History proves that the nobility and the clergy have usually remained united and that they have had less to complain of each other than of the monarchy, which always tends to absolutism.
Let us now follow the history of the Church.
XI
However, such a gigantic conception could not be admitted, especially in the beginning. On the other hand, the state of sin involving resistance to grace, sole point of support for ecclesiastical authority, the solidity of the edifice was compromised: how could it be supposed that the multitude of the faithful, rich and poor, would agree to relinquish themselves to the hands of the clergy?… The Church soon understood the need to add to itself an intermediate class, whose interests would be in solidarity with its own, and which, protected in its privileges by religion, would serve the Church in its turn with its suffrage, and if need be with its arms. After having condemned Roman law in its principle, property, the Christian leaders did not hesitate to bring it within the provisions of their discipline; later they will bring in Germanic law again.
This may serve to explain how in 1831 the Saint-Simonian school declared itself anti-property, and how in 1848 it suddenly declared itself against socialism.
After the death of Jesus, the first who had received the word, taking the Gospel seriously, managed to live as brothers, to lead the perfect life; they organized agapes [communal meals]. Much nonsense has been spouted about these communities of the first centuries, whose success was as unimpressive as that of our modern communists. As much as the Church likes to recall today the meals of love for the edification of the good people, formerly it abolished them just as eagerly and persistently. Decent people, among whom must be counted in the first line the bishops, had little taste for this promiscuity. They suppressed the agapes, which I praise them for; but without replacing them with anything reminiscent of messianic hopes, of which I complain and accuse them. Discipline therefore found itself, as far as goods were concerned, established on two principles: 1) , rent or wages, with the supplement of alms, of which the Church became dispenser and centre; 2) the Roman law of property, the first cause of pagan corruption and of the spreading the gospel. Therefore, Christians might ask themselves, what good is the Church? What was Christianity for?…
From this moment, one notices in the Christian movement two distinct currents: one is the democratic current, the other the episcopal current. Democracy, ordinarily silent, but occasionally bursting out in accusatory complaints, represents the social element; the episcopate represents the religious element, by means of which it strives to give a mystical meaning to the revolutionary proclamations of the Gospel, and to contain the misery of the masses. Let us follow this new power, grappling with the demands of its dogma, of the multitude it indoctrinates, and of its own security.
The ancient Gnostics counted on an early return of Christ to have their share of temporal enjoyments; they therefore rejected poverty, judging it immoral and incompatible with the organic principle of the faith: a dangerous sect, first because of the insoluble problem it posed to the Church, then because through the reproach of spoliation it gave opportunity for the pagans to hover over religion. The Church condemned the Gnostics as impure, misunderstanding the meaning of the Gospel, and perverting tradition. Orthodoxy has accused them of all the turpitudes of which paganism itself accused it: so be it; I think that the accusation is not entirely baseless. But these heretics were also justified in asking whether Christ, who had not come, he said, to abrogate the law of Moses, but to perfect it, had also wanted to perfect that of Numa.
The Circumcellions, the Donatists, protest in their turn against the luxury and the insolence of the episcopate; for one guesses that the clergy, through whose hands so many alms passed, retained a good part of them. Who would believe it? The Circumcellions are denounced as partageux and anarchists to Constantine, who exterminates them. No doubt, and I want to believe it, these wretches misunderstood the word of the Messiah, whose empire was not of the Caesarean kind. But why not warn them that the law of the twelve tables was part of the New Testament; that Appius Clodius had been a forerunner of Christ, as much as Moses, Elijah, and John the Baptist; that Papinian, Ulpian, Modestinus and all the members of the Council of State of Septimius Severus, the rough persecutor, were to be considered fathers of the Church, neither more nor less than Tertullian and Origen?
What was the heresy of the Albigensians in the Middle Ages, and later of all these multitudes, shall I say fanatical or starving? who filled France, Italy, Bohemia? A protest against feudal law. — That is not in the Gospel, they cried; it can’t be there. There must be another morality for born-again Christians. — Who then took up the defense of the threatened privilege? who preached the crusade? who issued the excommunication? who lit the pyre? The Church, united with and participating in feudalism; the Church, for whom the principle of inequality of conditions and fortunes had become an article of faith; the Church, finally, which in the absence of positive justice had had to make a discipline of the institutions of original sin, and who then found her in the need to defend these institutions, despite their impure origin, as equal to the mysteries of the Trinity and the Redemption. The heretics burned, the inquisitors did not fail to confiscate their goods: always, in the Church, spoliation followed the torture. It is thus that the Testament of Christ was resolved into a useless and frustrating pact, for the unhappy populations whom it had seduced by disappointing promises.
XII. — After the death of Jesus, the first who had received the word manage to live as brothers and lead the perfect life. They put their assets in common, and organized the agapes. Much nonsense has been spouted about these communities of the first and second centuries, whose success was as unimpressive as that of our modern communists. As much as the Church today loves to recall these meals of love for the edification of the good people, so much she formerly displayed eagerness and perseverance in abolishing them. Decent people, including the bishops in the front line, had little taste for this promiscuity. We seize the opportunity of some scandals to suppress love feasts, which I praise the episcopate for, but without replacing them with anything that meets messianic hopes, which I would complain about, if the absence of any economic idea did not serve here as an excuse. The Roman right of property, the prerogative of the patriciate, the first cause of pagan corruption, against which the Gospel had risen, thus returned triumphant to Christianity: we have before our eyes an example of this reversal in the school of Saint-Simon, who in 1834 attacked property, and in 1848 spoke out against socialism.
From this moment, a double current appears in the Church: the democratic or communist current, and the episcopal, feudal and proprietary current. This is not to say that the people, driven by pauperism, were therefore always enemies of property, worshipers of convents and ecclesiastical immunities, and that the bishops on the other hand proscribe all community. They were the natural representatives of these two principles, property and community, like later Ghibellines and Guelphs: each party frequently took the maxims of the other, according to the passions of the moment and the contradictions of history, and we saw the plebs, like the nobility and the kings, envy the goods of the Church, demand the suppression of the tithe and of the convents, while the episcopate multiplied religioius communities around them and took them under its protection.
The ancient Gnostics counted on an early return of Christ to have their share of temporal enjoyments; they rejected poverty, judging it immoral, irreconcilable with the messianic promise, and were always in rebellion against the bishops, depositaries of the treasures of the Church, of the alms of the faithful, whose insolence and luxury were accused early on. I don’t know which emperor said that if he weren’t Caesar, he would like to be a Christian bishop. The Gnostics became dangerous, first by the insoluble problem that they posed to the Church, the problem of the extinction of pauperism, then by the reproach of spoliation that they produced among the pagans to hover over all the Christians. The Church condemned the Gnostics as impure, misunderstanding the meaning of the Gospel, and perverting tradition. Orthodoxy accused them of all the turpitudes of which paganism itself accused it: so be it, I think the accusation may not have been entirely without foundation. But these heretics were also justified in asking if Christ, who came to perfect the law, had intended to perfect only the quiritary law, the privilege of the rich, and if he had brought nothing but words to the poor.
The Circumcellions and the Donatists protest in their turn against misery; more than the Gnostics, they accuse the mystification of the Gospel and the betrayal of the bishops, gorged, they said, with the goods of the poor. We guess that the clergy, through whose hands so much wealth passed, retained a good part of it. Who would believe it? The Circumcellions are denounced as partitioners and anarchists to Constantine, who exterminates them. Undoubtedly, I want to believe it, these unfortunate people took the word of the Messiah, whose empire is not of this lower world, in the wrong way. But why not have warned them, from the beginning, that the law of the twelve tables was part of the New Testament, that Appius Clodius had been a precursor of Christ, as well as Moses, Elijah and John the Baptist; as Papinian, Ulpian, Modestinian, all the members of the council of state of Septimius Severus, the harsh persecutor, were to be considered as Fathers of the Church, neither more nor less than Tertullian and Origen?
XIII. — The history of the Church, from one end to the other, is filled with the cries of the people against poverty. The discipline invented by the Church was never accepted as Christian, although it was the purest expression of the thought of Christ. In spite of original sin, and Providence, and Charity, and Authority, and Grace, and blessed immortality, one could not accustom oneself to a regime that professed mercy only the better to cement selfishness; that, after having freed the slaves in the name of redemption, made the condition of the colonist and the mercenary worse than before; that, by organizing benevolence, only succeeded in fattening the clergy; that, finally, after having proclaimed the common life as the perfect life, reserved it for a few chosen groups, the terror of the families whose inheritances they monopolized, gnawing worms of the society to which they returned nothing. Nothing so outrageous had been seen, neither before Jesus Christ, when the world was delivered to the devil; nor since Jesus Christ, under the reign of the persecutors.
What was the heresy of the Albigensians in the Middle Ages, and later of all these multitudes—shall I say fanatical or starving?—who filled France, Italy and Bohemia? A protest against the clerical-feudal regime. — That’s not in the Gospel! they cried; it cannot be. There must be another existence for Christians. — Who then took up the defense of the threatened privilege? Who preached the crusades? Who initiated the excommunications? Who lit the stake? The Church, united with and participating in feudalism; the Church, which, in addition to the goods of its communities, possessed episcopal, curial, and canonical properties; the Church, for whom the principle of the inequality of fortunes had become an article of faith; finally the Church, which, in the absence of a positive economic law, had had to make a discipline of the institutions of sin, and which then found itself under the necessity of covering those institutions with its authority, in spite of their impure origin, and of defending them with the same zeal that it defended the Trinity, the real presence and the holy images. The heretics burned, the inquisitors did not fail to confiscate their goods: always, in the Church, spoliation followed torture. As much was to happen, under Luther, to the peasants of Westphalia and the Rhine, so that it might be demonstrated, by the example of the Reformed as well as that of the Orthodox, that the depravity of Justice, and the misery which is its continuation, is not the deed of the priesthood; it is the deed of religion.
It is thus that in all ages the Testament of Christ has been resolved into a frustrating pact for suffering peoples, who in their naivety summoned Christ, in the person of the Church, to keep his promises.
So far, however, we have little to reproach the Church for, except her mystical illusions, her ignorance of the laws of economy, at most the sensual selfishness and inertia of her ministers, living generously from the altar, while the patrons of the altar starve. We are going to see it undertake in earnest to disorganize society through general dispossession.
XII
While the Church, allied with the secular power for the defense of profane rights, raged against the most fervent and most unfortunate portion of her flock, she continued, on another side, her work of invasion.
The primitive communities and agapes having therefore not obtained the success that had been hoped for, the perfect life, that ideal life of contemplation to which Christians tended, sought to establish itself in another milieu. As it was considered incompatible with the occupations of the century, people took refuge in solitude: the prolonged persecution of Diocletian determined this movement. Paul, Anthony, Hilarion filled the deserts of Thebaid with the noise of their holiness and their miracles. Many imitators joined them; Pacôme, the first who gave his disciples a rule, united under his direction up to five thousand monks. The fourth century was the golden age of monasticism. The stories told by Athanasius, Rufinus, Jerome, Theodore, and all the pilgrims who visited them, inflamed the West with a spirit of religious competition. Groups of cenobites began to form on the model of those of Egypt: Martin, in Gaul; Cassian, in Marseilles; Honorat, in Lérins, were the main initiators. Cassiodore, Colomban, Benoît Biscop, followed closely. The most famous of all was Benedict, founder of Monte Cassino, the true father of the conventual system, which almost swallowed up humanity.
In principle, the purpose of the perfect life was to enjoy God. To achieve this goal, the means was to live alone, that is to say, free from all affection, all attachment, all interest, all business. To conquer solitude, one must be satisfied with little and be self-sufficient: a simple thing in the Thebaid, where the heat of the climate and the sobriety it imposes made these conditions easy to fulfill. In Upper Egypt, the greater part of the day was employed by solitaries in contemplation and prayer; they devoted themselves little to work, submitting to it as an instrument of discipline, rather than as a means of subsistence.
But under the European climate, in the forests and mountains of the north, hermit life became much more difficult than in the oases of Arabia and Thebaid. In 480, when Benedict was born, monasticism, embraced in a moment of fanatical exaltation, was in full decadence, on the eve of perishing, still less from lack of rules than from lack of resources. Frightful excesses were committed in this mob of hallucinators and vagabonds, all of whom aspired to prophecy and miracles, simulating as best they could the romantic life of the desert. In 520, Benedict, already famous, to whom a long practice of the contemplative life had taught its abuses and resources, began this great reform, which was nothing other than the decisive application to the races of Europe of the principles of the perfect life and Christian discipline.
These principles are reduced to four main ones: the obligation of work, the renunciation of all property, meditation or the interior life, that is for the monk; the indefinite enlargement of the conventual domain, that is for the Church.
The rule of Monte Cassino, rapidly propagated throughout Europe, thus constituted a way of life apart, equally outside of the ordinary or secular clergy and of lay society, which, according to Benoit, had no Christian elements except baptism. and participation in the mysteries. This regime, as close as possible to the life of the blessed, who no longer need to work, to pray, to read, to possess anything, since they possess God, realized the ideal of Christianity, which would reign unchallenged in the day when all property would have entered the system, when all will would be subject to its laws.
Here is how the founder proceeded to this great work:
The first and the principal means of monopolization consisted in the donations that the families seldom failed to make to those of their members who embraced the cenobitic life. After having condemned property as something detestable, diabolical, worthy of the fire, Benoît continues:
“If the neophyte has any goods, he will distribute them to the poor before making profession, or he will give them to the monastery by a solemn donation, without reserving anything at all to himself, knowing that from that day he does not even have the free disposal of his own body. This is why, from that very hour, he will be stripped of his clothes that he had on him, and will be clothed in the clothes of the monastery. However, the clothes that have been taken from him will be put in the cloakroom, to be kept there with care, so that, if it happens that by the suggestion of the devil he wants to leave the monastery (which God does not want to allow), we strip him of his monastery clothes, and that, having restored his own, he is expelled. However, they will not return his pledge, which the abbot will have removed from above the altar, but it will be kept in the monastery.”
It is obvious that the alternative presented to the neophyte, to distribute his goods to the poor or to give them to the monastery, is only there for convenience. What neophyte, full of zeal for the house of God, entering the house of such holy personages, and having wealth, would have liked to live at their own expense? Besides, did not this property given to the monastery, which received the poor as well as the rich, always belong to the poor?
But the miserly Acheron does not let go of his prey. If the cenobite’s zeal grows cold, he can withdraw whenever he wishes; he is free, the monastery does not retain him. They will give him back his layman’s clothes; but, admire this, all of you who have a notion of right and wrong, they will not return his pledge! he monastery keeps the goods, the donation of which will not benefit the salvation of the apostate, as the pledge is withdrawn from above the altar, but which will benefit the monastery, which keeps the title in its archives.
Doesn’t that seem to you, Monsignor, to border on fraud? And if morals were something in the Church, do you think that the blessed and blessed Benedict would not deserve, for this edifying stipulation, to be damned to all the devils?
Let us quote again: I know of nothing more useful to the discovery of science than this discipline of the men of God.
“If there is encountered any noble person who offers his son to God in the monastery, and the child is very small, the father and mother will make a written request to be received into the monastery, and, in addition to the offering, they shall wrap this request and the child’s hand in the altar cloth, and offer it in this manner. As for the goods that may belong to this child, they will promise with an oath in this writing that they will never give him anything, neither by themselves, nor by any intermediary, nor in any way whatsoever, and that they will not give him the opportunity or the means to possess any property. That if they do not want this and they wish to give some alms to the monastery out of gratitude, that they make a donation to the monastery, reserving, if they want, the usufruct during their life. Finally, let all things be established and ensured so that there remains for the child no subject of doubt or suspicion that could be a snare for him, to doom him, God forbid! as we have known from experience. Those who have few goods will do like the rich; but those who have nothing at all will simply make their promise in writing and their offering, and present their son in the presence of witnesses.”
Could there be a cruder and at the same time more infernal ruse? The children will be received to make profession on the presentation of the parents, but on condition that these parents will swear to disinherit them. To disinherit my child because I want to dedicate him to the service of God! What barbarism!… What a sacrifice to demand of a father’s heart! Yes, replies the legislator of monasticism; middle point between religion and property. If, however, he adds, in consideration of this dear child, you want to benefit the community in some way, you can make a donation to the monastery. But things must be ensured so well that the child, having become a man, is left with neither doubt nor suspicion that he possesses anything!…
This, however, is what earned this famous Benedict of Nursia the honors of canonization, and his rule a mad success. His order, multiplying in a thousand forms, absorbing all the others, soon filled Europe. In the cities and in the countryside, the congregations are numbered by the hundreds, the monasteries by the thousands, the religious of both sexes by the millions. In the twelfth century, the congregation of Cluny alone numbered ten thousand monks; that of the Camaldolese, three thousand; that of Fontevrault, thirty monasteries.
From the eleventh century, the order became so powerful, its revenues were so well assured, that good religious people think of rising a degree in the perfect life , by relieving themselves of the work of the hands, a coarse occupation, full of distractions, unworthy of a true ascetic. It was then that Jean Gualbert, founder of Vallombreuse, instituted the Lay or Secular Brothers, responsible for the heavy tasks. From this moment, the pious cenobites renounce the pickaxe; they engage in the copying of manuscripts and other minor literary duties; they will end up doing nothing and fattening up, as Boileau says, from a long and holy idleness.
But that time is still far off. In 1224, about a century after the important modification introduced by Jean Gualbert, Francis of Assisi, whose marvels were to eclipse those of the prophet Elijah, put the finishing touches to the work by instituting, under the name of the Friars Minor, a new congregation, composed of married men and women. The constitutions of these couple-monks were approved 68 years later by Pope Nicolas IV: this is what was called the Third Order of Saint Francis.
Maintenant l’Église peut se recruter par elle-même ; la chrétienté est au complet. Le peuple donna à ces franciscains laïques et mariés les noms de petits frères, fratricelles, frérots, béguins ou beggards, picards et turlupins. Au quinzième siècle, François de Paule enchérit encore sur François d’Assise en instituant les Minimes, surnommés Bons hommes, comme l’avaient été longtemps auparavant les Albigeois et autres dévots rigides. Ce fut le point culminant de la puissance ecclésiastique et le suprême effort de sa discipline. Le diable, qui se retrouve également là où il y a des femmes et là où il n’y en a pas, vint déranger ce plan magnifique. L’introduction du mariage dans la vie cénobitique ramena, avec l’idée de propriété, les rêveries des gnostiques du deuxième et du troisième siècle. En 1254 paraît l’Évangile éternel ; un schisme éclate ; le Tiers-ordre de Saint-François tombe sous l’animadversion populaire ; seize ans plus tard la publication des établissements de Louis IX achève la victoire de la société laïque et libre sur l’utopie monacale. Quant aux établissements unisexuels, l’impudicité, la paresse et l’ignorance y devinrent telles, que trois siècles de Renaissance, de Réforme et de Révolution, n’ont encore pu en effacer l’horreur.
The Encyclopédie nouvelle appraises in these terms the enterprise, too forgotten in our time, of the religious orders:
“At the heart of lay society, the monastery was, in the person of its abbot, a kind of living monster, a layman having several bodies to carry out his will, possessing an intelligence that dominated as many active forces as there were monks living together under his law. What power of invasion must he have had! With what strength he must have drawn to himself the riches of the outside world! Let him attack the earth, still uncultivated under the thick bark of the forests; whether it took the members of society hand to hand, one by one, isolated, reduced to the strength of their own individuality, or engaged in the bonds of coalitions rained on by an infinite multitude of jealous rivalries, opposed, tearing up inside, the monastery or the abbot had to come out of this struggle always victorious. There was nothing in that monastic organization which was not an organ of prehension, and the eye cannot discover in it a cause of dispersion of wealth. The most severe economy reigned within. Free from all the cares and all the struggles that the possession of things incessantly coveted entails, each monk was a vital force at his disposal, which the abbot directed outward against the world, with a common and hostile aim, in a place fixed in advance and according to a concerted plan. Death itself disturbed nothing in the forecasts of the intelligence completely directed towards the goal: the monk who died left behind him no void, no cause of trouble and division; he was the living molecule of an organic body whose death has no influence on the life of the being of which he was a part.
“The monastery was therefore an extremely powerful being, thanks to its means of grasping. Lay society had nothing like it to oppose to it; so it was not long in fearing and dreading its incessant invasions. As long as this activity and this power of the monastic society seemed to be devoted only to exploiting the fallow land, to cutting down the forests, to populating the deserts and the summits of the mountains, to teaching the people to read, the lay society applauded. But when the monks, growing in number under the shadow of the cross, descended on the cultivated countryside and the cities, and threatened to absorb, with soil and wealth, the free population itself, then secular society began to resist them, until the day when, loudly declaring war on them, it crossed out, with its powerful and victorious hand, the charter that constituted them into so-called religious communities within the nation.”
XIV. — The primitive communities and agapes having therefore not obtained the success that had been hoped for, the perfect life, that ideal life of contemplation to which Christians tended, sought to establish itself in another milieu. As it was considered incompatible with the occupations of the century, people took refuge in solitude: the prolonged persecution of Diocletian determined this movement. Paul, Anthony, Hilarion filled the deserts of Thebaid with the noise of their holiness and their miracles. Many imitators joined them; Pacôme, the first who gave his disciples a rule, united under his direction up to five thousand monks. The fourth century was the golden age of monasticism. The stories told by Athanasius, Rufinus, Jerome, Theodore, and all the pilgrims who visited them, inflamed the West with a spirit of religious competition. Groups of cenobites began to form on the model of those of Egypt: Martin, in Gaul; Cassian, in Marseilles; Honorat, in Lérins, were the main initiators. Cassiodore, Colomban, Benoît Biscop, followed closely. The most famous of all was Benedict, founder of Monte Cassino, the true father of the conventual system, which almost swallowed up Christianity.
In principle, the purpose of the perfect life was to enjoy God. To achieve this goal, the means was to live alone, that is to say, free from all affection, all attachment, all interest, all business. To conquer solitude, one must be satisfied with little and be self-sufficient: a simple thing in the Thebaid, where the heat of the climate and the sobriety it imposes made these conditions easy to fulfill. In Upper Egypt, the greater part of the day was employed by solitaries in contemplation and prayer; they devoted themselves little to work, submitting to it as an instrument of discipline, rather than as a means of subsistence.
But under the European climate, in the forests and mountains of the north, hermit life became much more difficult than in the oases of Arabia and Thebaid. In 480, when Benedict was born, monasticism, embraced in a moment of fanatical exaltation, was in full decadence, on the eve of perishing, still less from lack of rules than from lack of resources. Frightful excesses were committed in this mob of hallucinators and vagabonds, all of whom aspired to prophecy and miracles, simulating as best they could the romantic life of the desert. In 520, Benedict, already famous, to whom a long practice of the contemplative life had taught its abuses and resources, began this great reform, which was nothing other than the decisive application to the races of Europe of the principles of the perfect life and Christian discipline.
These principles are reduced to four main ones: the obligation of work, the renunciation of all property, meditation or the interior life, that is for the monk; the indefinite enlargement of the conventual domain, that is for the Church.
The rule of Monte Cassino, rapidly propagated throughout Europe, thus constituted a way of life apart, equally outside of the ordinary or secular clergy and of lay society, which, according to Benoit, had no Christian elements except baptism. and participation in the mysteries. This regime, as close as possible to the life of the blessed, who no longer need to work, to pray, to read, to possess anything, since they possess God, realized the ideal of Christianity, which would reign unchallenged in the day when all property would have entered the system, when all will would be subject to its laws.
Here is how the founder proceeded to this great work. The first and the principal means of monopolization consisted in the donations that the families seldom failed to make to those of their members who embraced the cenobitic life. After having condemned property as something detestable, diabolical, worthy of the fire, Benoît continues:
“If the neophyte has any goods, he will distribute them to the poor before making profession, or he will give them to the monastery by a solemn donation, without reserving anything at all to himself, knowing that from that day he does not even have the free disposal of his own body. This is why, from that very hour, he will be stripped of his clothes that he had on him, and will be clothed in the clothes of the monastery. However, the clothes that have been taken from him will be put in the cloakroom, to be kept there with care, so that, if it happens that by the suggestion of the devil he wants to leave the monastery (which God does not want to allow), we strip him of his monastery clothes, and that, having restored his own, he is expelled. However, they will not return his pledge, which the abbot will have removed from above the altar, but it will be kept in the monastery.”
It is obvious that the alternative presented to the neophyte, to distribute his goods to the poor or to give them to the monastery, is only there for convenience. What neophyte, full of zeal for the house of God, entering the house of such holy personages, and having wealth, would have liked to live at their own expense? Besides, did not this property given to the monastery, which received the poor as well as the rich, always belong to the poor?
But the miserly Acheron does not let go of his prey. If the cenobite’s zeal grows cold, he can withdraw whenever he wishes; he is free, the monastery does not retain him. They will give him back his layman’s clothes; but, admire this, all of you who have a notion of right and wrong, they will not return his pledge! he monastery keeps the goods, the donation of which will not benefit the salvation of the apostate, as the pledge is withdrawn from above the altar, but which will benefit the monastery, which keeps the title in its archives.
Doesn’t that seem to you, Monsignor, to border on fraud? And if morals were something in the Church, do you think that the blessed and blessed Benedict would not deserve, for this edifying stipulation, to be damned to all the devils?
Let us quote again: I know of nothing more useful to science than this discipline of the men of God.
“If there is encountered any noble person who offers his son to God in the monastery, and the child is very small, the father and mother will make a written request to be received into the monastery, and, in addition to the offering, they shall wrap this request and the child’s hand in the altar cloth, and offer it in this manner. As for the goods that may belong to this child, they will promise with an oath in this writing that they will never give him anything, neither by themselves, nor by any intermediary, nor in any way whatsoever, and that they will not give him the opportunity or the means to possess any property. That if they do not want this and they wish to give some alms to the monastery out of gratitude, that they make a donation to the monastery, reserving, if they want, the usufruct during their life. Finally, let all things be established and ensured so that there remains for the child no subject of doubt or suspicion that could be a snare for him, to doom him, God forbid! as we have known from experience. Those who have few goods will do like the rich; but those who have nothing at all will simply make their promise in writing and their offering, and present their son in the presence of witnesses.”
Could there be a cruder and at the same time more infernal ruse? The children will be received to make profession on the presentation of the parents, but on condition that these parents will swear to disinherit them. To disinherit my child because I want to dedicate him to the service of God! What barbarism! What a sacrifice to demand of a father’s heart! Yes, replies the legislator of monasticism; middle point between religion and property. If, however, he adds, in consideration of this dear child, you want to benefit the community in some way, you can make a donation to the monastery. But things must be ensured so well that the child, having become a man, is left with neither doubt nor suspicion that he possesses anything!
This, however, is what earned this famous Benedict of Nursia the honors of canonization, and his rule a mad success. His order, multiplying in a thousand forms, absorbing all the others, soon filled Europe. In the cities and in the countryside, the congregations are numbered by the hundreds, the monasteries by the thousands, the religious of both sexes by the millions. In the twelfth century, the congregation of Cluny alone numbered ten thousand monks; that of the Camaldolese, three thousand; that of Fontevrault, thirty monasteries.
From the eleventh century, the order became so powerful, its revenues were so well assured, that good religious people think of rising a degree in the perfect life , by relieving themselves of the work of the hands, a coarse occupation, full of distractions, unworthy of a true ascetic. It was then that Jean Gualbert, founder of Vallombreuse, instituted the Lay or Secular Brothers, responsible for the heavy tasks. From this moment, the pious cenobites renounce the pickaxe; they engage in the copying of manuscripts and other minor literary duties; they will end up doing nothing and fattening up, as Boileau says, from a long and holy idleness.
But that time is still far off. In 1224, about a century after the important modification introduced by Jean Gualbert, Francis of Assisi, whose marvels were to eclipse those of the prophet Elijah, put the finishing touches to the work by instituting, under the name of the Friars Minor, a new congregation, composed of married men and women. The constitutions of these couple-monks were approved 68 years later by Pope Nicolas IV: this is what was called the Third Order of Saint Francis.
Now the Church can recruit by itself; Christendom is complete. The people gave to these lay and married Franciscans the names of little brethren, Fraticelli, frerots, beguins or beggards, picards and turlupins. In the 15th century, François de Paule outdid Francis of Assisiagain by instituting the Minimes, nicknamed Good Men, as the Albigensians and other rigid devotees had been long before. It was the culmination of ecclesiastical power, and the supreme effort of its discipline. The devil, who is found where there are women and where there are none, came to disturb this magnificent plan. The introduction of marriage into cenobitic life brought back, together with the idea of property, the reveries of the Gnostics of the third and third centuries. In 1254 the Eternal Gospel [Joachim of Fiore] appeared; a schism breaks out; the Third Order of Saint Francis falls under the popular animadversion. Sixteen years later, the publication of the establishments of Louis IX completed the victory of secular and free society over the monastic utopia. As for unisexual establishments, immodesty, laziness and ignorance there became such that three centuries of Renaissance, Reformation and Revolution have not yet been able to erase their horror.
The Encyclopédie nouvelle appraises in these terms the enterprise, too forgotten in our time, of the religious orders:
“At the heart of lay society, the monastery was, in the person of its abbot, a kind of living monster, a layman having several bodies to carry out his will, possessing an intelligence that dominated as many active forces as there were monks living together under his law. What power of invasion must he have had! With what strength he must have drawn to himself the riches of the outside world! Let him attack the earth, still uncultivated under the thick bark of the forests; whether it took the members of society hand to hand, one by one, isolated, reduced to the strength of their own individuality, or engaged in the bonds of coalitions rained on by an infinite multitude of jealous rivalries, opposed, tearing up inside, the monastery or the abbot had to come out of this struggle always victorious. There was nothing in that monastic organization which was not an organ of prehension, and the eye cannot discover in it a cause of dispersion of wealth. The most severe economy reigned within. Free from all the cares and all the struggles that the possession of things incessantly coveted entails, each monk was a vital force at his disposal, which the abbot directed outward against the world, with a common and hostile aim, in a place fixed in advance and according to a concerted plan. Death itself disturbed nothing in the forecasts of the intelligence completely directed towards the goal: the monk who died left behind him no void, no cause of trouble and division; he was the living molecule of an organic body whose death has no influence on the life of the being of which he was a part.
“The monastery was therefore an extremely powerful being, thanks to its means of grasping. Lay society had nothing like it to oppose to it; so it was not long in fearing and dreading its incessant invasions. As long as this activity and this power of the monastic society seemed to be devoted only to exploiting the fallow land, to cutting down the forests, to populating the deserts and the summits of the mountains, to teaching the people to read, the lay society applauded. But when the monks, growing in number under the shadow of the cross, descended on the cultivated countryside and the cities, and threatened to absorb, with soil and wealth, the free population itself, then secular society began to resist them, until the day when, loudly declaring war on them, it crossed out, with its powerful and victorious hand, the charter that constituted them into so-called religious communities within the nation.”
XIII
When the French Revolution broke out, the clergy possessed a third of the territory in France. The National Assembly having decided that the property of the clergy should be collected and sold, the deputies of this order, supported by royalty and the nobility, protested forcefully, crying spoliation and invoking the right of property. Those who answered them asserted in turn the intention of the donors, the abuse of ecclesiastical property, the compensation offered to the clergy, the need for the treasury, and so on. The state, according to Kant, could never be bound by the authorization it had formerly given to the clergy to possess such property. As if the right to property were a concession of the state! The real truth was not told by anyone.
Now, the truth is that the principle of appropriation, without which there is no public economy, is of polytheistic and anti-Christian origin; that such has been, since the age of the apostles, the doctrine of the Church; that the Antoines, the Pacômes, the Benedicts, all those heroes of communism whom the Church has made saints, have had as their object only the destruction of this damnable institution, by monopolizing, in the name of the Church, the goods and property of families; that thus the formation of ecclesiastical property was the effect of a conspiracy directed by the Church against property itself; that consequently the nation, henceforth obeying other principles, had to return these goods surreptitiously obtained; that the Revolution was made against ecclesiastical parasitism as much as against feudal tyranny; and that by revoking these superstitious donations, by dispersing the flock of Jesus Christ by the suppression of the convents, it only restored things to the state in which they were when Barnabas, selling his patrimony and depositing the price at the feet of the apostles, gave by his example the signal for universal disappropriation.
Between the Revolution and the Church, the question relative to the goods of the clergy was not, as it seemed to superficial observers, a question of property, in the sense posed by the Abbe Maury; it was a question of institutions and of social economy.
If the principle of property is a just principle, indispensable to the order of societies, why does the Church teach the contrary in her cenobitic constitutions? Why this development of religious orders, going as far as the absorption of society as a whole? Why this continual invasion of family property? What does this conspiracy against the social order mean? Why, still in the nineteenth century, did the vicar of Jesus Christ excommunicate Piedmont and Spain, guilty, like France of 89, of having sold the goods of the clergy?
If, on the contrary, the principle of property is false, incompatible with the faith of Christ, with the discipline of the Church, with human destiny, why did the Church condemn the communists of the first centuries, gnostics, Circumcellions, etc.? Why did it massacre the Albigensians, the Waldensians, the Anabaptists, who all claimed to belong to the primitive tradition and the agapes? Why, before our eyes, did it anathematize the socialists and provoke their extermination?
May the Church deign to tell us what is, in the final analysis, its juridical principle, what is its morality?
La morale de l’Église, sa loi économique, je l’ai dit, elle n’en a point ; elle n’admet pas en principe qu’il y en ait une. C’est pour cela qu’elle a créé une discipline, où la communauté est la règle, la propriété l’exception ; d’après laquelle quiconque, peuple ou gouvernement, citoyen ou prince, porte atteinte aux établissements de l’Église ou aux fiefs qu’elle autorise, est également coupable de désobéissance et encourt l’excommunication.
The vulgar, completely occupied with material interests, are inclined to judge the conscience of the clergy according to their own; I attribute to motives of cupidity and ambition a cordiality which among laymen it is impossible, in fact, to explain otherwise.
But it is evident, and you cannot but subscribe to this opinion, Monsignor, that independent of the worldly considerations which may direct its members, the Church is governed by an idea; that, if this idea had something in common with the secular practice, the Church and the age would long be in agreement, and that the spiritual power regulating its interests according to the same law as the temporal, the fusion would be made, or, to put it better, there would never have been a split. We would not have waited, for example, until 1789 to assign to the ecclesiastical functionaries their legitimate salary; The Church had no need for that to preach community to the perfect, and to expose itself to the reproach of spoliation. It sufficed to establish a fixed and proportional tax on the mass of the Christian people.
But the Catholic Church could not, without abandoning her tradition and denying her faith, lend herself to this transaction of entirely human Justice, accept as the rule of her morals a principle of rational law, which tends to nothing less than to chase the Divinity from his temple, by substituting even in the sanctuary the theory of immanence for that of revelation.
Certes, les déclamations d’un abbé Maury et les excommunications d’un Pie IX me donnent envie de rire ; mais comment de soi-disant ministres du saint Évangile osent-ils se dire chrétiens, quand cette parole de Dieu qu’ils annoncent leur est tarifée comme une leçon d’éloquence ? Ignorent-ils que le prêtre du Christ, par la nature de son dogme, est en dehors de l’économie vulgaire ; que son service n’est point matière échangeable et vénale, et ne peut pas plus que l’amour être soumis au salaire ; qu’organe d’une pensée communiste, il est censé vivre en communauté avec les fidèles, dont il est le chef spirituel ; qu’il est le régisseur de cette communauté, dont le dogme transcendant prime toutes les lois ; et que le jour où pasteur et brebis sortent de l’indivision, c’est comme s’ils rompaient le lien religieux, l’Église est dissoute, et le christianisme évanoui ?
Soyons donc logiques : c’est le seul moyen, pour vous, Monseigneur, de rester sans reproche, et pour moi, qui accuse votre religion en respectant votre personne, d’être juste. Les biens que l’Église accumule sont le trésor des pauvres, c’est-à-dire de la multitude inférieure vouée à la non-propriété ; de même que les indulgences qu’elle dispense sont le trésor des âmes du purgatoire. Toute son économie, en ce monde et en l’autre, est comprise dans cette double attribution. Lorsqu’elle emplit le premier de ces trésors en versant sur le monde les richesses du second, qui pourrait l’accuser de simonie ? Le vrai simoniaque est celui qui, oubliant le décret évangélique, assimile le sacerdoce à une fonction salariée, et fait ainsi de la prédication et de l’administration des sacrements un objet d’échange.
Once again, if such were not the pure doctrine of the Church, if its constant discipline had to be interpreted differently, I ask, how could this incessant work of reconstituting ecclesiastical property be justified, these acts of capture and all this traffic to which the Church delivers itself without shame, and which shocks the social economist no less than vulgar morals?
But this touches on the deeds of the contemporary reaction, and deserves to be treated separately.
XV. — When the French Revolution broke out, the clergy possessed a third of the territory in France. The National Assembly having decided that the property of the clergy should be collected and sold, the deputies of this order, supported by royalty and the nobility, protested forcefully, crying spoliation and invoking the right of property. Those who answered them asserted in turn the intention of the donors, the abuse of ecclesiastical property, the compensation offered to the clergy, the need for the treasury, and so on. The state, according to Kant, could never be bound by the authorization it had formerly given to the clergy to possess such property. As if the right to property were a concession of the state! The real truth was not told by anyone.
Now, the truth is that the principle of appropriation, without which there is no public economy, is of polytheistic and anti-Christian origin; that such has been, since the age of the apostles, the doctrine of the Church; that the Antoines, the Pacômes, the Benedicts, all those heroes of communism whom the Church has made saints, have had as their object only the destruction of this damnable institution, by monopolizing, in the name of the Church, the goods and property of families; that thus the formation of ecclesiastical property was the effect of a conspiracy directed by the Church against property itself; that consequently the nation, henceforth obeying other principles, had to return these goods surreptitiously obtained; that the Revolution was made against ecclesiastical parasitism as much as against feudal tyranny; and that by revoking these superstitious donations, by dispersing the flock of Jesus Christ by the suppression of the convents, it only restored things to the state in which they were when Barnabas, selling his patrimony and depositing the price at the feet of the apostles, gave by his example the signal for universal disappropriation.
Between the Revolution and the Church, the question relative to the goods of the clergy was not, as it seemed to superficial observers, a question of property, in the sense posed by the Abbe Maury; it was a useful question of social economy.
If the principle of property is a just principle, indispensable to the order of societies, why does the Church teach the contrary in her cenobitic constitutions? Why this development of religious orders, going as far as the absorption of society as a whole? Why this continual invasion of family property? What does this conspiracy against the social order mean? Why, still in the nineteenth century, did the vicar of Jesus Christ excommunicate Piedmont and Spain, guilty, like France of 89, of having reestablished the true practice of property, by selling the goods of the clergy?
If, on the contrary, the principle of property is false, incompatible with the faith of Christ, with the discipline of the Church, with human destiny, why did the Church condemn the communists of the first centuries, gnostics, Circumcellions, etc.? Why did it massacre the Albigensians, the Waldensians, the Anabaptists, who all claimed to belong to the primitive tradition and the agapes? Why, before our eyes, did it anathematize the socialists and provoke their extermination?
May the Church deign to tell us what is, in the final analysis, its juridical principle, what is its morality?
The morality of the Church, its economic law, as I have said, is double, communist and proprietary at the same time, which means that in economic matters the Church has no law, she does not admit in principle that there is one. This is why she created a discipline, where community is the rule, property the exception; according to which whoever, people or government, citizen or prince, interferes with the establishments of the Church or the fiefs that it authorizes, is equally guilty of disobedience and incurs excommunication.
The vulgar, completely occupied with material interests, are inclined to judge the conscience of the clergy according to their own; I attribute to motives of cupidity and ambition a cordiality which among laymen it is impossible, in fact, to explain otherwise.
But it is evident, and you cannot but subscribe to this opinion, Monsignor, that independent of the worldly considerations which may direct its members, the Church is governed by an idea; that, if this idea had something in common with the secular practice, the Church and the age would long be in agreement, and that the spiritual power regulating its interests according to the same law as the temporal, the fusion would be made, or, to put it better, there would never have been a split. We would not have waited, for example, until 1789 to assign to the ecclesiastical functionaries their legitimate salary; The Church had no need for that to preach community to the perfect, and to expose itself to the reproach of spoliation. It sufficed to establish a fixed and proportional tax on the mass of the Christian people.
But the Catholic Church could not, without abandoning her tradition and denying her faith, lend herself to this transaction of entirely human Justice, accept as the rule of her morals a principle of rational law, which tends to nothing less than to chase the Divinity from his temple, by substituting even in the sanctuary the theory of immanence for that of revelation.
Certainly, the declamations of an Abbe Maury and the excommunications of a Pius IX make me want to laugh; but how do the so-called ministers of the holy Gospel dare to call themselves Christians, when this word of God that they announce is charged to them like a lesson in eloquence? Don’t they know that the priest of Christ, by the nature of his dogma, is outside the vulgar economy; that his service is not exchangeable and venal material, and cannot, any more than love, be subjected to wages; that as an organ of communist thought, he is supposed to live in community with the faithful, of whom he is the spiritual leader; that he is the steward of this community, whose transcendent dogma takes precedence over all laws; and that on the day when pastor and sheep come out of joint ownership, it is as if they were breaking the religious bond: the Church tends to dissolve, and Christianity is in danger? Saint Paul made tents, so that it would not be said that he lived from the Gospel, like the artisan of his trade; others received aid from the community, from community, do you hear? which excludes the idea of an exchange.
Let us therefore be logical: it is the only way for you, Monsignor, to remain blameless, and for me, who accuses your religion while respecting your person, to be just. The goods that the Church accumulates are the treasury of the poor, that is to say, of the inferior multitude doomed to non-property; just as the indulgences she dispenses are the treasure of the souls in purgatory. Her entire economy, in this world and in the next, is included in this double attribution. When she fills the first of these treasures by pouring on the world the riches of the second, who could accuse her of simony? The true simonist is he who, forgetting the Gospel decree, assimilates the priesthood to a salaried function, and thus makes preaching and the administration of the sacraments an object of exchange.
Once again, if such were not the pure doctrine of the Church, if its constant discipline had to be interpreted differently, I ask, how could this incessant work of reconstituting ecclesiastical property be justified, these acts of capture and all this traffic to which the Church delivers itself without shame, and which shocks the social economist no less than vulgar morals?
But this touches on the deeds of the contemporary reaction, and deserves to be treated separately.
CHAPTER IV.
XIV
When on the night of August 4, 1789, the Constituent Assembly abolished the feudal system, it did not touch the properties of the nobles: the confiscations that took place later were the effect of the penal laws passed against emigration, in no way a measure of war directed against the nobility. Those who remained in France kept their possessions, and 36 years later, in 1825, the nation compensated those of the emigrants who had lost them.
And yet the feudal system did not recover; the nobility, even retaining its titles, was no longer anything. Even today, despite the reaction that carries society away, it cannot reform or be reborn. Why is that?
It is because in 1789, in attacking feudalism, war was not waged either on persons, or on families, or on memories, or on a class of citizens, but on a principle. It was the system, the idea, that was blamed; it is the principle that is directly and nominally demolished; and as one only demolishes a principle with principles, feudalism disappeared forever in the deluge of revolutionary ideas.
It was not the same for the Church.
When the same constituent assembly seized ecclesiastical property, giving the clergy a civil constitution, assigning to the priests a salary out of the budget, suppressing the convents, abolishing the monastic vows, etc., it doubtless believed that it had extirpated from the bosom of the nation this unsocial property. But it did not touch the idea; it respected the principle; in short it made a profession of religion itself; and sooner or later the religious idea, saved from the shipwreck of ’93 by the Robespierres, the Grégoires, the Laréveillère-Lépeaux, the Bonapartes, brought back into fashion by the Bernardins of Saint-Pierre, the Chateaubriands, the de Maistres, the de Bonalds, the Lamennais, the Lamartines and the whole romantic school, the religious idea, I say, was to reappear in its material organism, the soul to return to its body, the Church to reform its domains.
The Church wants to take its properties back, and, the interdict that weighed since 1789 on it having been lifted, the reaction of the time letting it go, it will take them. The earth belongs to Jehovah, says the Scripture; which the Gospel translates as follows: Blessed are the pious, — hassidim, that is to say the monks, — because they will possess the earth! The hour has come for the Church to reap the fruit of that promise, and she sets to work with a courage, a certainty of success, that bears witness to the good dispositions of the century, not to say its complicity. Already, at the news that the Spanish government was seizing ecclesiastical property, as the constituent assembly had done in 1789, the French clergy, according to a newspaper report, had the idea of buying it up en bloc: how prosperous is the business of our Gallican Church! Doubtless it feared the outburst of such a gigantic operation; it preferred to let the storm pass, to act in detail, in the shadows and without noise.
It is said, Monsignor, that since your accession to the Archdiocese of Besançon you have, on behalf of the Church, purchased so many buildings that you will soon own a quarter of the town and the department. I do not ask you if your deeds of acquisition are in order, nor what you can do with all this wealth: I know your ability in business, and I have heard of your sobriety. But since it is proven that in all this the Church, devoid of principles, obeys a discipline that is proper to her and, on the other hand, that this discipline has been solemnly condemned by the country; that the Law that forbids you property still endures; that you have implicitly submitted to it by accepting a salary, entering into the Concordat, by occupying a seat in the councils of the nation, I ask you then what guarantee you have of the loyalty and honesty of your actions? In evading, by violating as you are doing, the law and the Revolution to which you have taken an oath, do you feel absolved in your heart of hearts? And doesn’t this revelation, which leads you to such a strange lack of faith, against which the moral sense of the people protests, raise in your soul any doubt?
I know that you are taking advantage of the authorization of the government. According to the legislation governing the clergy, any increase in the ecclesiastical domain, any donation made to the Church, inter vivos or by will, must be approved by the Council of State. It is a guarantee that the legislator of ’89, in allowing the cult to subsist, had taken against the encroachments of the clergy. Now, you answer, if the power authorizes it, what have we to complain about? Is it not the representative of the public conscience and the guardian of property?
Let’s go further: I wouldn’t want to hide anything that could serve as your excuse.
From whom does the Church receive the goods that come to her every day? From the country itself, from the possessing class, from the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie, at this moment, is redoing in its own way the work of Charlemagne. Having become devout for fear of socialism, it began, some a little bit, some a lot, to equip the clergy. The wealth that the bourgeoisie accumulates, God knows how, it shares with the Church. Ce qui vient de la flûte, says the proverb, va au tambour. Easy come, easy go. The government, the savior of the bourgeois, has, with its authorizations, only given the exequatur to their wishes.
Puis, il est juste de rappeler encore, à propos de ces détournements d’héritages que l’on reproche à l’Église, la complicité des sectes modernes, saint-simoniens, phalanstériens, communistes, et de la majorité des démocrates. Quand de prétendus novateurs attaquent avec un tel acharnement l’hérédité, quelle merveille que l’Église, autant qu’il est en elle, corrige ces hasards de la naissance, ces caprices de la fortune, ces abus de la propriété ? On demandait pour l’État, pour la communauté, quart, tiers, moitié, des successions : l’Église se charge de la besogne. Est-ce au père Enfantin ou à ses acolytes de se plaindre ?
Si donc nous disputions devant le juge, certainement j’aurais tort. Mais il ne s’agit point ici de la politique du gouvernement, qui peut s’égarer aussi bien que la conscience du pays, mais de l’influence à laquelle obéit le gouvernement, et dont la source est en dernière analyse la religion. Jamais le pouvoir ne s’est donné pour maître de théologie ; c’est à l’Église que l’opinion attribue cette prérogative, devant laquelle s’incline le pouvoir. Forte de cette direction des âmes, qu’on ne lui dispute pas, l’Église a toujours fait du pouvoir ce qu’elle a voulu. Sous Louis-Philippe, les jésuites de Lyon, condamnés par la loi de 1828 à sortir du royaume et à se défaire de leurs propriétés, furent autorisés secrètement à conserver leurs biens : c’était un effet de la protection de la reine Marie-Amélie. Que firent les jésuites ? Ils continuèrent d’acquérir, et plus que jamais ils acquièrent.
La question est donc plus haute que le conseil d’État. Il se peut très-bien que le Temporel ne sache pas ce qu’il fait, Ignosce illis, Domine ! mais le Spirituel le sait, et c’est vous, vous seule, Église du Christ, que j’interpelle ; c’est vous que je somme de justifier vos actes, dans leur principe, dans leur but et dans leur forme. Que signifient ces concessions, ces donations, ces subventions, ce cumul d’emplois, ces monopoles, ces priviléges, ce commerce, cette industrie, ces banques, tous ces moyens plus ou moins licites, empruntés à la pratique séculière, dont l’Église se sert pour gagner de l’argent et étendre ses possessions ?
CHAPTER IV.
Practice of the Church since the Revolution.
XVI. — When on the night of August 4, 1789, the Constituent Assembly abolished the feudal system, it did not touch the properties of the nobles: the confiscations that took place later were the effect of the penal laws passed against emigration, in no way a measure of war directed against the nobility. Those who remained in France kept their possessions, and 36 years later, in 1825, the nation compensated those of the emigrants who had lost them.
And yet the feudal system did not recover; the nobility, even retaining its titles, was no longer anything. Even today, despite the reaction that carries society away, it cannot reform or be reborn. Why is that?
It is because in 1789, in attacking feudalism, war was not waged either on persons, or on families, or on memories, or on a class of citizens, but on a principle. It was the system, the idea, that was blamed; it is the principle that is directly and nominally demolished; and as one only demolishes a principle with principles, feudalism disappeared forever in the deluge of revolutionary ideas.
It was not the same for the Church.
When the same constituent assembly seized ecclesiastical property, giving the clergy a civil constitution, assigning to the priests a salary out of the budget, suppressing the convents, abolishing the monastic vows, etc., it doubtless believed that it had extirpated from the bosom of the nation this unsocial property. But it did not touch the idea; it respected the principle; in short it made a profession of religion itself; and sooner or later the religious idea, saved from the shipwreck of ’93 by the Robespierres, the Grégoires, the Laréveillère-Lépeaux, the Bonapartes, brought back into fashion by the Bernardins of Saint-Pierre, the Chateaubriands, the de Maistres, the de Bonalds, the Lamennais, the Lamartines and the whole romantic school, the religious idea, I say, was to reappear in its material organism, the soul to return to its body, the Church to reform its domains.
The Church wants to take its properties back, and, the interdict that weighed since 1789 on it having been lifted, the reaction of the time letting it go, it will take them. The earth belongs to Jehovah, says the Scripture; which the Gospel translates as follows: Blessed are the pious, — hassidim, that is to say the monks, — because they will possess the earth! The hour has come for the Church to reap the fruit of that promise, and she sets to work with a courage, a certainty of success, that bears witness to the good dispositions of the century, not to say its complicity. Already, at the news that the Spanish government was seizing ecclesiastical property, as the constituent assembly had done in 1789, the French clergy, according to a newspaper report, had the idea of buying it up en bloc: how prosperous is the business of our Gallican Church! Doubtless it feared the outburst of such a gigantic operation; it preferred to let the storm pass, to act in detail, in the shadows and without noise.
It is said, Monsignor, that since your accession to the Archdiocese of Besançon you have, on behalf of the Church, purchased so many buildings that you will soon own a quarter of the town and the department. I do not ask you if your deeds of acquisition are in order, nor what you can do with all this wealth: I know your ability in business, and I have heard of your sobriety. But since it is proven that in all this the Church, devoid of principles, obeys a discipline that is proper to her and, on the other hand, that this discipline has been solemnly condemned by the country; that the Law that forbids you property still endures; that you have implicitly submitted to it by accepting a salary, entering into the Concordat, by occupying a seat in the councils of the nation, I ask you then what guarantee you have of the loyalty and honesty of your actions? In evading, by violating as you are doing, the law and the Revolution to which you have taken an oath, do you feel absolved in your heart of hearts? And doesn’t this revelation, which leads you to such a strange lack of faith, against which the moral sense of the people protests, raise in your soul any doubt?
I know that you are taking advantage of the authorization of the government. According to the legislation governing the clergy, any increase in the ecclesiastical domain, any donation made to the Church, inter vivos or by will, must be approved by the Council of State. It is a guarantee that the legislator of ’89, in allowing the cult to subsist, had taken against the encroachments of the clergy. Now, you answer, if the power authorizes it, what have we to complain about? Is it not the representative of the public conscience and the guardian of property?
Let’s go further: I wouldn’t want to hide anything that could serve as your excuse.
From whom does the Church receive the goods that come to her every day? From the country itself, from the possessing class, from the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie, at this moment, is redoing in its own way the work of Charlemagne. Having become devout for fear of socialism, it began, some a little bit, some a lot, to equip the clergy. The wealth that the bourgeoisie accumulates, God knows how, it shares with the Church. Ce qui vient de la flûte, says the proverb, va au tambour. Easy come, easy go. The government, the savior of the bourgeois, only gave the exequatur to their wishes.
Then, it is fair to recall, in connection with these embezzlements of inheritances which the Church is accused of, the complicity of the modern sects, Saint-Simonians, communists, and of the majority of democrats. When so-called innovators attack heredity with such fury, what wonder that the Church, so far as it is in her, corrects these chances of birth, these caprices of fortune, these abuses of property? A quarter, a third, a half of successions are demanded for the state: the Church does the same for herself. Is it up to Father Enfantin to complain?
If we argued in front of the judge, I would certainly be wrong. But it is not a question here of the policy of the government, which can go astray as well as the conscience of the country, but of the influence that the government obeys, the source of which is, in the last analysis, religion. The political power has never presented itself as the master of theology; it is to the Church that public opinion attributes this prerogative, before which power bows. Strengthened by this direction of souls, which is not disputed, the Church has always made the power what she wanted. Under Louis-Philippe, the Jesuits of Lyons and Nantes, condemned by the law of 1828 to leave the kingdom and to get rid of their properties, were secretly authorized to keep them. What did the Jesuits do? They continued to acquire, and they acquired more than ever.
The question is therefore higher than the Council of State. The Temporal may not know what it is doing, Ignosce illis, Domine! But the Spiritual knows it, and it is you, Church of Christ, that I call upon; it is you whom I summon to justify your acts, in their principle, in their aim and in their form. What is the meaning of these concessions, these donations, these subsidies, this accumulation of employments, these monopolies, these privileges, this commerce, this industry, these banks, and all these more or less licit means, borrowed from secular practice, that the Church uses to earn money and extend her possessions?
XV
Everywhere the Church labors to change its condition, conspires against the division and circulation of real property, a prelude, though its restorations and redemptions, to the conversion of democratic and free property into ecclesiastical and mortmain property. To achieve her ends, no means is repugnant to her. In the first rank must be placed those contributions in pennies and deniers that she knew how to levy on the piety of the faithful, and whose proceeds reached fabulous sums.
“The papacy,” M. Blanqui, the professor of political economy , said one day at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, before a meeting of five hundred people, “presents the strange phenomenon of a state founded solely on begging. There, for centuries, the alms of the universe have flowed. It is on these subsidies that the pope, cardinals, the entire Roman clergy, with its police and its small army, live, while the Transteverean populace swarms around them in barbarism and superstition. While elsewhere the state, functionary of the nation, derives its income from national production, here it is the people who live on state salaries, who are nourished and sustained by the piety of the Orthodox throughout the world. The only men who do a little business are the Israelites, confined in the Ghetto, objects of the most humiliating insults.”
This manner of procuring revenues is an apostolic institution, and there is no one in Europe who cannot observe its effects. It was modeled on the practice of the pontificate of Jerusalem, which in the last days of the nation received the offerings of all the Israelites spread over the globe. We see, in the book of Acts, Paul and Barnabas, appointed by the Christians for the apostolate of the Gentiles, seizing the synagogues of the provinces, diverting for the benefit of the sect the funds intended for the Jewish temple: this was not the least reason for the hatred that the Pharisees and the princes of the priests vowed against them.
The Christian priesthood, foreign to economic notions, has never agreed to regard its function in society as a useful one, analogous to the magistracy, the university or the army. It placed himself above and outside; so that the priest, unable to live on nothing and aspiring to absolute domination, found himself to be only an organ of prehension, a parasite. Charlemagne’s and Princess Mathilde’s donations, and those much more important donations from individuals, did not change anything in this respect in the primitive spirit. The indigence of the priest disappeared, but the genius for absorption remained in him.
After the ordinary and extraordinary contributions, come the pious legacies, the donations in extremis. The newspapers told the public about the lawsuit brought by the Boulnois heirs against Mgr Bonamie, archbishop in partibus of Chalcedon and superior of the house of Picpus: the sum claimed was 668,000 francs. The claim of Madame de Guerry against the same house of Picpus, whose properties today exceed 3 millions, is even more considerable: 1,303,783 fr. The cause was pleaded under a ban on publishing the debates, as if it had acted as an insult to public morals. And the Bourdeau succession, for which you, Monseigneur, did not disdain, it is said, to make the trip from Besançon to Vesoul in person: how much has it produced for the Church? 1,400,000 francs, I was assured. It is believed, it is true, that the fees of the testamentary executor, nephew of one of your vicars general, will have diminished it somewhat: he at least will have worked for his money.
Similar deeds happen every day, and what tricks are used to escape the surveillance of families and the prescriptions of justice! What pious frauds! What trials! We must see with what a light conscience these heroines of the Church learn to lie to the law, with what disdain for their kinship they dispose of these fortunes from which they have not earned the first penny! It is above all to young heiresses that the Church addresses herself; and it is always the confessor who is the architect of this kind of abduction. Flattered, exhilarated, these young girls imagine themselves clothed with the honors of holiness, their names inserted in the calendar.
A young person, heiress of half a million, but more devoted to piety than was befitting the safety of her fortune, sees herself cajoled by the priests, who, by dint of repeating to her that she can save the religion, becoming a Judith, a Jahel, ends up pushing her, against her father’s will, to the convent. The goods coming from the mother and the young girl having reached her majority, she is urged to donate her 25,000 pounds in pension to the Church. Caresses, sweets, jams, praise, everything is used to seduce her. If she says that the goods were not the product of her labor, therefore it seemed right to her to leave in her family, one resorts to discipline: penance, mortifications, ill-treatment, sequestration. For two years the letters that her father wrote to her, those that she addressed to him, were intercepted; so much so that the worried father threw himself at the bishop’s knees and demanded to see his daughter. Then everything is revealed, the indignant young person leaves the convent, and asks to be released from her vows. But see the column! The court of Rome consented to relieve her of the vow of poverty, that is to say that the Church renounced the donation; but she maintained the vow of chastity, which evidently she cares much less about. Revenge of the priests! The property escapes; the owner is caught by celibacy.
I find in the Memorandum published by Madame de Meillac, superior of the community of Notre-Dame de Bordeaux, against the archbishop-cardinal Mgr. Donnet, the state of the situation below, which shows how quickly, in even slightly skillful hands, ecclesiastical property increases:
“When Madame de Meillac took over the house of Notre-Dame de Bordeaux in 1839, she found there only debts, which she has paid; she leaves it, in December 1854, in the following situation:
| « 1o Maison rue du Palais Gallien, chapelle, classes, jardins |
133,300 | fr. |
| « 2o Établissement des religieuses | 86,660 | |
| « 3o Hôtel du Pavillon, ibid. | 86,660 | |
| « 4o Caveau de la Chartreuse | 2,000 | |
| « 5o Mobilier inventorié | 18,989 | |
| « 6o Créances inventoriées | 19,910 | |
| ———– | ||
| « Total | 347,519 | |
| À déduire, créances hypothécaires et cherographaires |
139,150 | |
| ———– | ||
| « Reste net | 208,309 |
“The revenues of the establishment, if it had not been destroyed, were sufficient to release the community, at the end of the terms, from what it owed.”
Voilà ce que dit l’avoué de madame de Meillac. Mais si l’établissement, consacré alors à l’éducation des jeunes personnes, donnait, sous l’administration de madame de Meillac, de si beaux revenus, lesdits revenus n’étaient pas la seule ressource de la communauté. D’après un autre état publié dans le mémoire, la communauté avait encaissé, avant l’année 1839, les sommes ci-après, dont l’emploi ne put être justifié :
| « Sœur Saint-Étienne, pour son trousseau | 2,500 | fr |
| « Sœur Saint-Léon, pour sa dot | 9,000 | |
| « Sœur Saint-Pierre, pour son trousseau | 7,000 | |
| « Sœur Saint-Joseph | 8,000 | |
| « Sœur Marie-Thérèse | 58,981 | |
| « Dépôts divers | 4,000 | |
| ———- | ||
| « Total | 89,481 |
To explain how, with these ladies, the trousseau for one is 2,500 francs, while for the other it is 7,000; the dowry for this one 8,000, and for that one 60,000, obviously cannot be accomplished by any commutative rule of justice, or any summary of expenditures. In community, everyone must bring everything that they own; the slightest restraint is a crime against the Holy Spirit, worthy of capital punishment, as seen in the tragic story of Ananias and Sapphira. In this respect modern communities, authorized or not, use it absolutely as did Saint Benedict. Expropriation, under the name of vow of poverty and obedience, is the first article of all constitutions, the first condition of admission. This is how the grasping organ works, according to the statutes and providences of the inventor Benoît. When the sister passes away, the goods remain; the community is enriched, and by spreading it extends the temporal and spiritual power of the Church. The revolution has changed nothing in this regime.
A suffering widow had a son and a daughter. The young man devoted himself to the arts and embraced a career in the theater. On the day that she was old enough, the sister, left alone at the bedside of the patient, escapes, enters a convent; and when, in the middle of the night, the young man arrives, he finds his mother abandoned. Compensation for the works of Satan: one goes up on the stage, the other enters religion. That’s the spirit! But isn’t it strange that it is the reprobate who practices the fourth commandment, and the saint who breaks it?
A priest is called to confess an old woman who was known to have some money. Already she has glassy eyes, her head lolls. The confessor sends out the nurse and remains alone for an hour, urging the old woman, who is a tightwad. From the next room, the maid heard the sound of a key in a lock, then a door closing, then nothing. Five minutes later they saw the confessor come out, a bundle under his cassock. The heirs picked up the clothes, but found no money. Do you think, Monsignor, that I accuse this priest of theft? Heavens, no! He was only guilty of righteous works. The bag well and duly handed over to the Church, he would have accomplished his duty as confessor and Christian.
Thus this law of the family that enjoins the children to look after their authors until death, you do not respect it. This law of inheritance which, despite its inevitable imperfection in an antagonistic society, forms the link between generations, you violate it. These protective forms with which the legislator has surrounded the faculty of giving and testing, in order to guarantee the family against the passion or the madness of its members, you evade them as far as you are able. While by natural succession the legislator maintains family perpetuity and individuality, you, with your communism, break this filiation; or if, in favor of the noble caste, you maintain the principle of inheritance, you immediately corrupt it, according to your views, by introducing into it the right of ancestry, biblical right, Christian right, by virtue of which the superfluity of aristocratic reproduction is driven back into plebeian misery.
XVII. — Everywhere the Church labors to change its condition, conspires against the division and circulation of real property, a prelude, though its restorations and redemptions, to the conversion of democratic and free property into ecclesiastical and mortmain property. To achieve her ends, no means is repugnant to her. In the first rank must be placed those contributions in pennies and deniers that she knew how to levy on the piety of the faithful, and whose proceeds reached fabulous sums.
“The papacy,” M. Blanqui, the professor of political economy , said one day at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, before a meeting of five hundred people, “presents the strange phenomenon of a state founded solely on begging. There, for centuries, the alms of the universe have flowed. It is on these subsidies that the pope, cardinals, the entire Roman clergy, with its police and its small army, live, while the Transteverean populace swarms around them in barbarism and superstition. While elsewhere the state, functionary of the nation, derives its income from national production, here it is the people who live on state salaries, who are nourished and sustained by the piety of the Orthodox throughout the world. The only men who do a little business are the Israelites, confined in the Ghetto, objects of the most humiliating insults.”
This manner of procuring revenues is an apostolic institution, and there is no one in Europe who cannot observe its effects. It was modeled on the practice of the pontificate of Jerusalem, which in the last days of the nation received the offerings of all the Israelites spread over the globe. We see, in the book of Acts, Paul and Barnabas, appointed by the Christians for the apostolate of the Gentiles, seizing the synagogues of the provinces, diverting for the benefit of the sect the funds intended for the Jewish temple: this was not the least reason for the hatred that the Pharisees and the priests vowed against them.
The Christian priesthood, foreign to economic notions, has never agreed to regard its function in society as a useful one, analogous to the magistracy, the university or the army. It placed himself above and outside; so that the priest, unable to live on nothing and aspiring to absolute domination, found himself to be only an organ of prehension, a parasite. Charlemagne’s and Princess Mathilde’s donations, and those much more important donations from individuals, did not change anything in this respect in the primitive spirit. The indigence of the priest disappeared, but the genius for absorption remained in him.
After the ordinary and extraordinary contributions, come the pious legacies, the donations in extremis. The newspapers told the public about the lawsuit brought by the Boulnois heirs against Mgr Bonamie, archbishop in partibus of Chalcedon and superior of the house of Picpus: the sum claimed was 668,000 francs. The claim of Madame de Guerry against the same house of Picpus, whose properties today exceed 3 millions, is even more considerable: 1,303,783 fr. The cause was pleaded under a ban on publishing the debates, as if it had acted as an insult to public morals. And the Bourdeau succession, for which you, Monseigneur, did not disdain, it is said, to make the trip from Besançon to Vesoul in person: how much has it produced for the Church? 1,400,000 francs, I was assured. It is believed, it is true, that the fees of the testamentary executor, nephew of one of your vicars general, will have diminished it somewhat: he at least will have worked for his money.
Similar deeds happen every day, and what tricks are used to escape the surveillance of families and the prescriptions of justice! What pious frauds! What trials! We must see with what a light conscience these heroines of the Church learn to lie to the law, with what disdain for their kinship they dispose of these fortunes from which they have not earned the first penny! It is above all to young heiresses that the Church addresses herself; and it is always the confessor who is the architect of this kind of abduction. Flattered, exhilarated, these young girls imagine themselves clothed with the honors of holiness, their names inserted in the calendar.
A young person, heiress of half a million, but more devoted to piety than was befitting the safety of her fortune, sees herself cajoled by the priests, who, by dint of repeating to her that she can save the religion, becoming a Judith, a Jahel, ends up pushing her, against her father’s will, to the convent. The goods coming from the mother and the young girl having reached her majority, she is urged to donate her 25,000 pounds in pension to the Church. Caresses, sweets, jams, praise, everything is used to seduce her. If she says that the goods were not the product of her labor, therefore it seemed right to her to leave in her family, one resorts to discipline: penance, mortifications, ill-treatment, sequestration. For two years the letters that her father wrote to her, those that she addressed to him, were intercepted; so much so that the worried father threw himself at the bishop’s knees and demanded to see his daughter. Then everything is revealed, the indignant young person leaves the convent, and asks to be released from her vows. But see the column! The court of Rome consented to relieve her of the vow of poverty, that is to say that the Church renounced the donation; but she maintained the vow of chastity, which evidently she cares much less about. Revenge of the priests! The property escapes; the owner is caught by celibacy.
I find in the Memorandum published by Madame de Meillac, superior of the community of Notre-Dame de Bordeaux, against the archbishop-cardinal Mgr. Donnet, the state of the situation below, which shows how quickly, in even slightly skillful hands, ecclesiastical property increases (D).
“When Madame de Meillac took over the house of Notre-Dame de Bordeaux in 1839, she found there only debts, which she has paid; she leaves it, in December 1854, in the following situation:
| 1o House rue du Palais Gallien, chapel, classrooms, gardens | 133,300 | fr. |
| 2o Establishment of nuns | 86,660 | |
| 3o Hôtel du Pavillon, ibid. | 86,660 | |
| 4o Caveau de la Chartreuse | 2,000 | |
| 5o Furniture inventoried | 18,989 | |
| 6o Receivables inventories | 19,910 | |
| ———– | ||
| Total | 347,519 | |
| To be deducted, mortgages and unsecured claims | 139,150 | |
| ———– | ||
| Net | 208,309 |
“The revenues of the establishment, if it had not been destroyed, were sufficient to release the community, at the end of the terms, from what it owed.”
This is what Madame de Meillac’s attorney says. But if the establishment, then devoted to the education of young people, gave, under the administration of Madame de Meillac, such handsome revenues, the said revenues were not the only resource of the community. According to another statement published in the memorandum, the community had collected, before the year 1839, the following sums, the use of which could not be justified:
| “Sister Saint-Étienne, for her trousseau | 2,500 | fr |
| “Sister Saint-Léon, for her dowry | 9,000 | |
| “Sister Saint-Pierre, for her trousseau | 7,000 | |
| “Sister Saint-Joseph | 8,000 | |
| “Sister Marie-Thérèse | 58,981 | |
| “Miscellaneous deposits | 4,000 | |
| ———- | ||
| “Total | 89,481 |
To explain how, with these ladies, the trousseau for one is 2,500 francs, while for the other it is 7,000; the dowry for this one 8,000, and for that one 60,000, obviously cannot be accomplished by any commutative rule of justice, or any summary of expenditures. In community, everyone must bring everything that they own; the slightest restraint is a crime against the Holy Spirit, worthy of capital punishment, as seen in the tragic story of Ananias and Sapphira. In this respect modern communities, authorized or not, use it absolutely as did Saint Benedict. Expropriation, under the name of vow of poverty and obedience, is the first article of all constitutions, the first condition of admission. This is how the grasping organ works, according to the statutes and providences of the inventor Benoît. When the sister passes away, the goods remain; the community is enriched, and by spreading it extends the temporal power of the Church. The revolution has changed nothing in this regime (E).
A suffering widow had a son and a daughter. The young man devoted himself to the arts and embraced a career in the theater. On the day that she was old enough, the sister, left alone at the bedside of the patient, escapes, enters a convent; and when, in the middle of the night, the young man arrives, he finds his mother abandoned. Compensation for the works of Satan: one goes up on the stage, the other enters religion. That’s the spirit! But isn’t it strange that it is the reprobate who practices the fourth commandment, and the saint who breaks it?
A priest is called to confess an old woman who was known to have some money. Already she has glassy eyes, her head lolls. The confessor sends out the nurse and remains alone for an hour, urging the old woman, who is a tightwad. From the next room, the maid heard the sound of a key in a lock, then a door closing, then nothing. Five minutes later they saw the confessor come out, a bundle under his cassock. The heirs picked up the clothes, but found no money. Do you think, Monsignor, that I accuse this priest of theft? Heavens, no! He was only guilty of righteous works. The bag well and duly handed over to the Church, he would have accomplished his duty as confessor and Christian.
Thus this law of the family that enjoins the children to look after their authors until death, you do not respect it. This law of inheritance which, despite its inevitable imperfection in an antagonistic society, forms the link between generations, you violate it. These protective forms with which the legislator has surrounded the faculty of giving and testing, in order to guarantee the family against the passion or the madness of its members, you evade them as far as you are able. While by natural succession the legislator maintains family perpetuity and individuality, you, with your communism, break this filiation; or if, in favor of the noble caste, you maintain inheritance, you immediately corrupt it, according to your views, by introducing into it the right of ancestry, biblical right, Christian right, by virtue of which the superfluity of aristocratic reproduction is driven back into plebeian misery.
XVI
Let us talk about your commercial operations: I have to cite some facts to you that you will not challenge.
Lorsque j’étais imprimeur à Besançon, en 1840, je vendais le cent de catéchismes, cinq feuilles in-12, broché et rogné, 18 fr., soit, au détail, 20 centimes l’exemplaire. Quelques années après, ayant quitté le métier, et passant par ma ville, je trouvai les choses toutes changées. Mgr Mathieu ayant prétendu, en vertu de je ne sais quelle loi de l’ancienne Constituante, que tous les livres liturgiques ressortissaient de l’archevêché, s’en était attribué l’exploitation exclusive et la vente. Qu’arriva-t-il ? le prix du catéchisme monta de 20 centimes à 40, où il est encore : soit, pour 100,000 exemplaires au moins qui forment l’importance de la consommation annuelle du diocèse, un produit net de 20,000 fr. au profit de l’archevêché.
Croyez-vous. Monseigneur, que ce que vous avez fait là soit une chose essentiellement juste ? Les économistes nous enseignent tous que certains objets, l’eau, l’air, la lumière, ne sont pas appropriables. Vos prédécesseurs avaient pensé que, la parole divine étant sans comparaison plus précieuse, la vente des livres de prière devait se faire au plus bas prix, sans bénéfice surtout pour l’Église, être conséquemment abandonnée à la libre concurrence. Vous, usant ou abusant de la lettre d’une loi de l’État qui n’y avait pas regardé d’aussi près, vous avez changé le régime de bon marché en un régime de contribution forcée. Vous avez usé de votre droit, si droit il y a, je le veux : droit étroit, jus strictum, droit de propriétaire. Je pourrais demander si une possession qui datait au moins de Mgr de Durfort, c’est-à-dire de plus de deux siècles, ne formait pas contre votre récent monopole une prescription suffisante ; je laisse ce moyen de droit, qui vous fournirait matière à réplique. Aussi bien je ne prétends pas que les 20,000 fr. entrent dans votre pécule. Mais n’est-il pas vrai qu’en faisant payer à vos diocésains, malgré qu’ils en aient, le catéchisme le double de sa valeur, votre pensée est d’affranchir l’Église, comme vous dites, et de reformer ce que vous appelez le patrimoine des pauvres ; qu’ainsi vous poursuivez une œuvre de discipline dont l’objet final, la pensée théologique et transcendante, est de purger, dans l’intérêt de son salut, le peuple chrétien, de l’abomination de la propriété ?
Now, if such is your secret goal, and you cannot allege another, I will ask you a new question: Is it permissible, in order to achieve even an honest goal, to employ a means that obviously is not, such as monopoly? For, in the end, however much you say that the discipline of the Church is above economic definitions, monopoly is the abuse of force, condemned by the Gospel.
In addition to the sale of Catechisms, Hours, Conducting Angels, Pensez-y-biens, Missals, Graduals, Antiphonaries, Breviaries, etc., the clergy also seizes those of crosses, medals, images, rosaries, scapulars, chasubles, and of all kinds of Church furniture and ornaments. It holds fairs for missions, jubilees, novenas and retreats. The Parisians were able to admire, in January 1833, during the reopening of Sainte-Geneviève, formerly the Pantheon, an exhibition of this kind. It wasn’t as pretty as the World’s Fair, for sure, but it was getting there. More than sixty stalls offered to enthusiasts the products of ecclesiastical industry. Under these vaults erected by Soufllot, formerly consecrated to humanitarian worship, took place the exhortation, what the people call the boniment. A large reliquary in gilded cardboard—we will have it one day in solid gold—which seemed to be a gift to the Sainte, especially attracted the attention of those present.
Que l’Église trafique, malgré ses canons, et fasse des bénéfices, je le comprends si elle est une maison de commerce, si elle ne fait autre chose, selon les règles de l’économie politique, que recueillir de ses produits et services ce que dans la pratique mercantile on nomme profit et salaire. Sermons, prières, chant grégorien, baptêmes, mariages, messes pour les morts, si, à l’exemple de J.-B. Say, vous assimiler tout cela aux choses vénales, je n’ai rien à dire. Je vous permets même, dans l’intérêt de la vente, d’employer avec votre clientèle tous les prestiges de l’éloquence, dans les limites de la vérité. Mais prenez garde : en mettant en jeu certaines passions, certaines opinions, étrangères à la valeur intrinsèque des objets et à la composition de leur prix ; en invoquant certains motifs, comme ce concessionnaire des chemins de fer romains qui, dans l’intérêt de la prime, fait appel à la piété des orthodoxes, vous vous rendez coupable des manœuvres prévues par l’art. 405 du code pénal. Au monopole vous joignez la supercherie.
Dans une mission prêchée en province, un missionnaire annonçait dans les termes suivants le sermon du surlendemain : Mardi, on prêchera les hommes ; venez-y tous : ce sera salé !… Aussi, dans l’espoir du scandale, les places se payaient jusqu’à 3 fr. — À Chartres, à la procession de la Vierge-Noire, les cordons de la châsse furent tenus par quatre dames des plus qualifiées ; lesquelles avaient dû payer, dit-on, pour cet honneur insigne, chacune 1,000 fr. Quinze l’avaient sollicité aux mêmes conditions. C’est le cas de dire avec l’Église : Sainte Vierge, priez pour les dévotes ! Intercede pro devoto fœmineo sexu.
The more I advance, the more I realize that by following the Church in the operations of its industrious discipline, I will call into question the very morality of its purpose, the morality of its Paradise and of its God.
Le clergé spécule aujourd’hui sur tout, fait argent de tout ; il ne s’interdit aucun commerce, aucune industrie. On sait quel scandale produisit au siècle passé la révélation du négoce que faisaient les jésuites dans les quatre parties du monde ; la Presse du 26 mars a réjoui ses lecteurs à propos du monopole que faisaient les bons pères de l’écorce de quinquina. Voici un fait moins connu, et qui prouve combien la Compagnie fut de tout temps à l’unisson du clergé : En 89, lors de la rédaction des cahiers pour les États généraux, le clergé de Colmar émit le vœu que la faculté de prêter de l’argent fût ôtée aux Juifs par toute l’Alsace ; et dans le même temps le clergé de Schlestadt exprimait le désir que les maisons religieuses fussent investies, pour la même province, du privilége de la Banque. Le trait est joli et mérite d’être conservé. Tandis que le vieux chêne de la féodalité terrienne tombait sous la hache révolutionnaire, le clergé alsacien, longtemps avant Fourier, avant Saint-Simon, avant M. Péreire, devinait la féodalité financière : il organisait dans sa pensée la bancocratie, et toujours, bien entendu, par esprit de religion.
Currently, it seems to have taken on the task of realizing this great idea. Master, or nearly so, of public instruction, it seized institutions and boarding schools, rehearsals at home as well as primary and secondary schools. In one department there are as many as sixteen clerical establishments: how would secular education hold up against this competition? By itself, through its creatures or through its sponsorship, the clergy exploits the printing press, the bookshop, journalism; it commands the academies, it imposes its candidates on them, it furnishes the railway libraries, it has control over the theaters, it reigns supreme over the republic of letters. A little longer, there will be no scholars other than those it maintains in its pay. Father Migne, director of the Petit Montrouge typographical establishment, in a very honest letter, moreover, proposed to me last year the correction of the proofs of the Greek Fathers, of which he is currently preparing a new edition. What printer today would dare undertake such an enterprise?
The clergy have their hands everywhere. It is they who have the direction of the hospitals, the refuges, the asylums, the ambulances, and our soldiers have not always had to praise them for it. An officer in the Crimean army complained that the so-called Sisters of Charity neglected the sick who did not confess. By public benevolence, the institution of which is entirely Christian, the clergy insinuate themselves into public utility, industry and commerce. They practice medicine and pharmacy, place the servants, perform the deliveries. They have marriage agencies. A friend of mine tells me that in the West, especially in Deux-Sèvres, the medicine of the sisters has completely ousted that of the doctors. They bleed, they suck, purge, pop back into place, cauterize, clysterium donare, and the rest. Yesterday I was told of a shipping company sponsored, it was said, by Jesuits.What shall I tell you? Father Coquand, having put the church of Saint-Eugene into action, was prevented from doing so, one does not know why, by Bishop Sibour; and everyone knows that the famous lottery of Saint-Roch, with a capital of 120,000 francs, recommended by the Bishop of Montpellier, has also received by special writ the approval of the Holy Father. Society newspapers are scandalized by this traffic. Innocents! Their sensitivity assures the triumph of the Church: it proves that the century still believes in the morality of the religious institution.
The Republic of 1848 had given rise to a host of workers’ societies, which were soon dissolved, for the most part, by poverty, inexperience, and the animadversion of power. The clergy seizes this lever: it has its own world, its professional schools, its workshops, its stores, by means of which it reorganizes as well as possible the brotherhoods and corporations. In Vesoul, all the workers joined the brotherhood of the Virgin: they felt that it was not good for them to evade the protection of the clergy. The bourgeois hires himself in his turn: there is no longer any way of defending himself against it. The trader, the badly rated industrialist sees a void forming around him; his clientele diminishes, his credit weakens: he is lost. Finally, like everyone else, the clergy speculates; it has his share of the securities quoted on the Stock Exchange, and by the Stock Exchange, as by education and power, it makes its decisive return to the temporal. It disposes of jobs, pensions, sinecures, benefits. For it, prefects or ministers have no refusal. Dominating by its spiritual and extra-spiritual influence all transactions, it will soon be able to lay down the law on industry and commerce, as it hopes to do later, by the recomposition of his properties, on agriculture. It does not lack men; it has them for all the specialties: agents all the more indefatigable because no human affection burdens their soul and because, in the solitude that religion gives them, they find a kind of misanthropic voluptuousness in the use of all their might to procure the defeat of society, Ad majorem Dei gloriam.
This alliance of mercantilism with holy ministry sometimes produces comic scenes. A parish priest from Franche-Comté… Hey! Monseigneur, you knew him: he was Abbé Petit-Cuenot, parish priest of Pierre-Fontaine, the one who one day lost the good Lord in a pile of wood. The whole country laughed at it, as one only laughs in Franche-Comté.
M. Petit-Cuenot, in addition to the service of his parish priest, carried on a considerable trade in wood, for construction and heating. No one could compete with him, either on the quality or on the price. He was a man out of line, of the strength of the former superior of your seminary, Father Breuillot. One day he was called to give the sacraments to a sick person who lived in a barn, far from the village. There was a section to cross which he had just successfully purchase, where he made the woodcutters work. The priest, having dispatched his patient, wanted to make a round in the section and count his moules: this is the name given to a pile of logs, about one cubic meter. The wafer-box hindering him, he placed it in a pile, but in such a distracted state that, when his round was over, he could not find the place and take away the holy ciborium. It was not until several months later, when the wood was sold and people came to load it, that they discovered the hosts between two logs, covered with mold, half devoured by ants.
Sacrilege apart (this question does not concern me), do you find, Monsignor, this traffic in which the clergy indulge, an honorable thing? The proverb says: Each one to his trade, the cows are well kept. [Florian, “Le Vacher et le Garde-chasse”] It is from this proverb that political wisdom has deduced, as far as administration and justice are concerned, the principle that prohibits accumulation, in electoral matters that of incompatibilities, in matters of government that of the distinction of powers. For my part, I find this proverb, while a bit rustic, as sublime as the famous “Love one another” of St. John.
How did the Church, charged with the service of worship and the teaching of morals, for this purpose endowed with properties by the country, salaried by the State, elevated above the sphere of interests, enjoying for all these reasons an exaggerated consideration, an imprudent confidence, dare to interfere in the operations of industry and exchange! It is an axiom that the State cannot and must not by itself take charge of any industrial enterprise, any mercantile speculation, intervene, from near or far, in the production and circulation of wealth. More than once, Napoleon III has declared, through the organ of the Monitor, his intention to comply with this law. How would the Church, higher placed in the opinion of the people than the State; the Church, which the former Constituent Assembly, by withdrawing its goods and subjecting it to wages, had warned of its inability to possess and acquire, be relieved of an exclusion on which the entire order of societies depends? Is it not obvious that, by the mere fact of the centralization of the priesthood and by the entirely spiritual nature of its functions, any matter of interest handled by an ecclesiastic, apart from the needs of his personal consumption, is tainted with abuse, if not of fraud? Will you tell me, Monsignor, by which direction d’intention you justify your daily practice?
What! here is a corporation spread over the entire surface of the empire, disposing of unknown resources, marching as one man, for which there are no secrets; this corporation is paid for a function, which has been devolved to it without sharing, and it secretly exercises another, which paralyzes the nation, which strips it and places it in vassalage! From the point of view of the spiritual constitution of the Church, which has received, with the keys of heaven, the power to bind and to loose, that is to say, to define what is good and what is bad, there is no doubt that this insidious invasion of the clergy into the secular domain seems to you a holy and glorious work. But from the point of view of the universal conscience, such conduct is dishonest. And since the end cannot be separated from the means, since the two form a connected and interdependent whole, how do you expect me, who has no other guide than reason, without admixture of any revelation, not to say that your end, that is to say your Paradise, is a robbery, and the God you serve the Devil?
XVIII. — Let us talk about your commercial operations: I have to cite some facts to you that you will not challenge.
When I was a printer in Besançon, in 1840, I sold a hundred catechisms, five sheets in-42, paperback and trimmed, 18 francs, that is, at retail, 20 centimes a copy. A few years later, having left the profession, and passing through my town, I found things all changed. Monseigneur Mathieu having claimed, by virtue of I don’t know what law from the former Constituent Assembly, that all liturgical books belonged to the archdiocese, had assumed the exclusive exhibition and sale of them. What happened? The price of the catechism increased 20 cents, to 40, where it remains: that is to say, on the 400,000 copies, at least, that form the importance of the annual consumption of the diocese, a net product of 20,000 francs.
Do you believe, Monsignor, that what you have done is essentially right? Notable economists all teach that certain objects—water, air, light—cannot be appropriated. Your predecessors had thought that, the divine word being incomparably precious, the sale of prayer books should be made at a lower price, without profit especially for the Church, and consequently left to free competition. You, using or abusing the letter of a state law that did not look so closely at things, changed the cheap regime into one of forced contribution. You have used your right, if right there is, I suppose: a narrow right, jus strictum, right of ownership. I could ask if a possession that dated at least from Mgr. de Durfort, that is to say more than two centuries, did not form a sufficient preservation against your recent monopoly; I leave this plea of law, which would provide you with material for reply. Besides, I do not claim that the 20,000 fr. go into your nest egg. But isn’t it true that by making the people your diocesan pay twice the value for the catechism, despite having it, your intention is to free the Church, as you say, and to reestablish what you call the patrimony of the poor that thus you pursue a work of discipline whose final object, theological and transcendent thought, is to inculcate, in the interests of salvation, charity to the detriment of justice?
Now, if such is your secret goal, and you cannot allege another, I will ask you a new question: Is it permissible, in order to achieve even an honest goal, to employ a means that obviously is not, such as monopoly? For, in the end, however much you say that the discipline of the Church is above economic definitions, monopoly is the abuse of force, condemned by the Gospel.
In addition to the sale of Catechisms, Hours, Conducting Angels, Pensez-y-biens, Missals, Graduals, Antiphonaries, Breviaries, etc., the clergy also seizes those of crosses, medals, images, rosaries, scapulars, chasubles, and of all kinds of Church furniture and ornaments. It holds fairs for missions, jubilees, novenas and retreats. The Parisians were able to admire, in January 1833, during the reopening of Sainte-Geneviève, formerly the Pantheon, an exhibition of this kind. It wasn’t as pretty as the World’s Fair, for sure, but it was getting there. More than sixty stalls offered to enthusiasts the products of ecclesiastical industry. Under these vaults erected by Soufllot, formerly consecrated to humanitarian worship, took place the exhortation, what the people call the boniment. A large reliquary in gilded cardboard—we will have it one day in solid gold—which seemed to be a gift to the Sainte, especially attracted the attention of those present.
That the Church traffics, despite its canons, and makes profits, I would understand that if it is a trading house, if it does nothing else, according to the rules of political economy, than collect from its products and services what in mercantile practice are called profits and wages. Sermons, prayers, Gregorian chants, baptisms, weddings, masses for the dead, if you equate all that to venal things, I have nothing to say. I even allow you, in the interest of the sale, to employ with your customers all the prestige of eloquence, within the limits of the truth. But beware: by bringing into play certain feelings, unrelated to the intrinsic value of objects and to the composition of their price, like that dealer of the Roman railways who, in the interest of the premium, appeals to the piety of the orthodox, you make yourself guilty of the maneuvers provided for in article 405 of the penal code. To monopoly you add trickery.
In a mission preached in the provinces, a missionary announced the sermon of the day after tomorrow in the following terms: Tuesday, we will preach to the men; everyone come: it will be dirty!… So, in the hope of scandal, as much as 3 francs was paid for places. — At Chartres, at the procession of the Black Virgin, the cords of the reliquary were held by four ladies of the highest quality, who each had to pay, it is said, for this signal honor, 1000 francs. Fifteen had requested it on the same terms. We can say with the Church: Blessed Virgin, pray for the pious women! Intercede pro devoto fœmineo sexu.
But I realize that by following the Church in the operations of its industrious discipline, I will call into question the very morality of its purpose, the morality of its Paradise and of its God.
The clergy today speculates on everything, makes money from everything; no trade, no industry is prohibited. We know what scandal was produced in the last century by the revelation of the trade of the Jesuits in the four corners of the world; the Presse of March 26 delighted its readers in connection with the monopoly that the good fathers made of cinchona bark. Here is a lesser known fact, which proves how much the Company was always in unison with the clergy. In ’89, during the drafting of the notebooks for the Estates General, the clergy of Colmar expressed the wish that the faculty of lending money be taken away from the Jews throughout Alsace; at the same time the clergy of Schelestadt expressed the desire that the religious houses should be invested, for the same province, with the privilege of banking. The feature deserves to be preserved. While the old oak tree of landed feudalism fell under the revolutionary axe, the Alsatian clergy, long before Fourier, Saint-Simon and the Péreires, divined financial feudalism: they organized the bankocracy in their minds, always of course, through the spirit of religion.
Currently, it seems to have taken on the task of realizing this great idea. Master, or nearly so, of public instruction, it seized institutions and boarding schools, rehearsals at home as well as primary and secondary schools. In one department there are as many as sixteen clerical establishments: how would secular education hold up against this competition? By itself, through its creatures or through its sponsorship, the clergy exploits the printing press, the bookshop, journalism; it commands the academies, it imposes its candidates on them, it furnishes the railway libraries, it has control over the theaters, it reigns supreme over the republic of letters. A little longer, there will be no scholars other than those it maintains in its pay. Father Migne, director of the Petit Montrouge typographical establishment, in a very honest letter, moreover, proposed to me last year the correction of the proofs of the Greek Fathers, of which he is currently preparing a new edition. What printer today would dare undertake such an enterprise?
The clergy have their hands everywhere. It is they who have the direction of the hospitals, the refuges, the asylums, the ambulances, and our soldiers have not always had to praise them for it. An officer in the Crimean army complained that the so-called Sisters of Charity neglected the sick who did not confess. By public benevolence, the institution of which is entirely Christian, the clergy insinuate themselves into public utility, industry and commerce. They practice medicine and pharmacy, place the servants, perform the deliveries. They have marriage agencies. A friend of mine tells me that in the West, especially in Deux-Sèvres, the medicine of the sisters has completely ousted that of the doctors. They bleed, they suck, purge, pop back into place, cauterize, clysterium donare, and the rest. Yesterday I was told of a shipping company sponsored, it was said, by Jesuits.What shall I tell you? Father Coquand, having put the church of Saint-Eugene into action, was prevented from doing so, one does not know why, by Bishop Sibour; and everyone knows that the famous lottery of Saint-Roch, with a capital of 120,000 francs, recommended by the Bishop of Montpellier, has also received by special writ the approval of the Holy Father. Society newspapers are scandalized by this traffic. Innocents! Their sensitivity assures the triumph of the Church: it proves that the century still believes in the morality of the religious institution.
The Republic of 1848 had given rise to a host of workers’ societies, which were soon dissolved, for the most part, by poverty, inexperience, and the animadversion of power. The clergy seizes this lever: it has its own world, its professional schools, its workshops, its stores, by means of which it reorganizes as well as possible the brotherhoods and corporations. In Vesoul, all the workers joined the brotherhood of the Virgin: they felt that it was not good for them to evade the protection of the clergy. The bourgeois hires himself in his turn: there is no longer any way of defending himself against it. The trader, the badly rated industrialist sees a void forming around him; his clientele diminishes, his credit weakens: he is lost. Finally, like everyone else, the clergy speculates; it has his share of the securities quoted on the Stock Exchange, and by the Stock Exchange, as by education and power, it makes its decisive return to the temporal. It disposes of jobs, pensions, sinecures, benefits. For it, prefects or ministers have no refusal. Dominating by its spiritual and extra-spiritual influence all transactions, it will soon be able to lay down the law on industry and commerce, as it hopes to do later, by the recomposition of his properties, on agriculture. It does not lack men; it has them for all the specialties: agents all the more indefatigable because no human affection burdens their soul and because, in the solitude that religion gives them, they find a kind of misanthropic voluptuousness in the use of all their might to procure the defeat of society, Ad majorem Dei gloriam.
This alliance of mercantilism with holy ministry sometimes produces comic scenes. A parish priest from Franche-Comté… Hey! Monseigneur, you knew him: he was Abbé Petit-Cuenot, parish priest of Pierre-Fontaine, the one who one day lost the good Lord in a pile of wood. The whole country laughed at it, as one only laughs in Franche-Comté.
M. Petit-Cuenot, in addition to the service of his parish priest, carried on a considerable trade in wood, for construction and heating. No one could compete with him, either on the quality or on the price. He was a man out of line, of the strength of the former superior of your seminary, Father Breuillot. One day he was called to give the sacraments to a sick person who lived in a barn, far from the village. There was a section to cross which he had just successfully purchase, where he made the woodcutters work. The priest, having dispatched his patient, wanted to make a round in the section and count his moules: this is the name given to a pile of logs, about one cubic meter. The wafer-box hindering him, he placed it in a pile, but in such a distracted state that, when his round was over, he could not find the place and take away the holy ciborium. It was not until several months later, when the wood was sold and people came to load it, that they discovered the hosts between two logs, covered with mold, half devoured by ants.
Sacrilege apart (this question does not concern me), do you find, Monsignor, this traffic in which the clergy indulge, an honorable thing? The proverb says: Each one to his trade, the cows are well kept. [Florian, “Le Vacher et le Garde-chasse”] It is from this proverb that political wisdom has deduced, as far as administration and justice are concerned, the principle that prohibits accumulation, in electoral matters that of incompatibilities, in matters of government that of the distinction of powers. For my part, I find this proverb, while a bit rustic, as sublime as the famous Love one another.
How did the Church, charged with the service of worship and the teaching of morals, for this purpose endowed with properties by the country, salaried by the State, elevated above the sphere of interests, enjoying for all these reasons an exaggerated consideration, an imprudent confidence, dare to interfere in the operations of industry and exchange! It is an axiom that the State cannot and must not by itself take charge of any industrial enterprise, any mercantile speculation, intervene, from near or far, in the production and circulation of wealth. More than once, Napoleon III has declared, through the organ of the Monitor, his intention to comply with this law. How would the Church, higher placed in the opinion of the people than the State; the Church, which the former Constituent Assembly, by withdrawing its goods and subjecting it to wages, had warned of its inability to possess and acquire, be relieved of an exclusion on which the entire order of societies depends? Is it not obvious that, by the mere fact of the centralization of the priesthood and by the entirely spiritual nature of its functions, any matter of interest handled by an ecclesiastic, apart from the needs of his personal consumption, is tainted with abuse? Will you tell me, Monsignor, by which direction d’intention you justify your daily practice?
What! here is a corporation spread over the entire surface of the empire, disposing of unknown resources, marching as one man, for which there are no secrets; this corporation is paid for a function, which has been devolved to it without sharing, and it secretly exercises another, which paralyzes the nation, which strips it and places it in vassalage! From the point of view of the spiritual constitution of the Church, which has received, with the keys of heaven, the power to bind and to loose, that is to say, to define what is good and what is bad, there is no doubt that this insidious invasion of the clergy into the secular domain seems to you a holy and glorious work. But from the point of view of the universal conscience, such conduct is dishonest. And since the end cannot be separated from the means, since the two form a connected and interdependent whole, how do you expect me, who has no other guide than reason, without admixture of any revelation, not to say that your end, that is to say your Paradise, is a robbery, and the God you serve the Devil?
XVII
Cependant, il faut le reconnaître, en attirant à elle la propriété du sol, de toute industrie et de toute rente, l’Église n’a pas seulement en vue de reconstituer la société partie en communautés régulières, comme celles du Mont-Cassin et de la Trappe, partie en confréries de Bons-Hommes, de Turlupins, de Béguins et de Fratricelles. La richesse créée, il lui faut un écoulement : sans cela à quoi bon la richesse ? à quoi servirait de produire ?
L’Église, de même qu’elle a sa théorie sociétaire, a donc aussi sa théorie de consommation. Dans l’ordre de la foi, comme dans l’économie profane, la richesse et le luxe trouvent leur emploi. Mais que la chair et le sang ne se réjouissent pas : le démon n’y gagnera rien. Le sacerdoce catholique, voué à la continence, à l’abstinence, à tous les genres de mortifications et de contrainte, qui souffre en regardant les plaisirs du peuple, qui soupire en voyant danser les femmes, ne permettra pas que ses ouailles s’engraissent pour l’enfer ; il saura, en étalant à leurs yeux les prodiges de l’industrie, les pousser au ciel par un sentier de ronces et de pierres.
Des richesses qu’il accumule le clergé fait deux parts, l’une destinée aux établissements religieux qui se multiplient de tous côtés, selon les vues de Benoît et d’Ignace ; l’autre réservée au culte, pour l’enivrement des imaginations vulgaires : car à Dieu seul appartiennent la richesse et la gloire, dit l’Apocalypse, Dignus est… accipere divitiam et honorem, et gloriam. Il en est de l’Église et de la religion comme de la royauté : plus elle s’entoure de magnificence, plus le peuple admire ; et plus il admire, plus il adore !
Qui pourrait compter les millions qui s’engloutissent chaque année dans les fantaisies du culte ?… Je fais abstraction de ce qu’en distraient les ecclésiastiques mondains, qui profitent en passant et font profiter leurs familles de la vendange du Seigneur et du patrimoine des pauvres.
Sainte-Geneviève, 1 million.
Sainte-Clotilde, plusieurs millions.
Saint-Eugène ou Eugénie, 1,400,000 fr.
Notre-Dame, 10 millions.
Les églises de France, ensemble, et par un seul décret, 60 millions.
Les plus pauvres bourgades, les moindres hameaux, suivent le branle de la capitale : c’est là surtout qu’il faut étudier ce gaspillage.
Dans une commune, dont je ne cite pas le département, afin de laisser à chacun de mes lecteurs le plaisir de la reconnaître dans le sien, on bâtit une église neuve, qui coûtera 300,000 fr. La commune n’a pas de fontaine.
Ailleurs, le conseil municipal, sous l’influence du curé, vote un beau jour 6,000 francs pour une cloche. Or la commune est endettée ; elle n’a pas de pompe à incendie, pas de lavoir couvert pour les femmes, obligées de laver leur lessive les pieds dans la boue et le corps à la pluie. Depuis cinq ans le vigneron ne récolte rien et délaisse les vignes. Sans compter qu’on n’avait pas un besoin urgent de cloche, puisque l’église en possédait une. Mais comment se passer de deux cloches, une pour les Angelus, l’autre pour la grand’messe ?
Dans une autre paroisse, qui compte au plus six cents âmes, et dont le budget est fort en retard, le conseil municipal, toujours sous la même influence, vote 13,000 fr. pour une maison curiale. L’ancienne, qui servait depuis deux siècles, pouvait être réparée. Mais l’archevêque entend que chacun de ses desservants ait au moins huit chambres, avec caves, grenier, cour et basse-cour, jardin, verger, aisances et dépendances. Cependant le maître d’école reçoit à peine quatre cents francs, tant de la commune que de l’État ; il donne de la science pour quatre cents francs. Ab uno disce omnes.
Certain prélat, visitant son pays natal qu’il n’avait pas revu depuis sa promotion à l’épiscopat, s’arrête à D…. Il trouve le curé, son neveu, logé d’une manière peu digne de l’Église, et s’en plaint au préfet du département. On assure cependant que la cure était très-logeable, solidement bâtie ; jamais desservant ne s’en était plaint. À quelques jours de là, le maire de D…. reçoit de la Préfecture une lettre conçue à peu près en ces termes :
« Monsieur le maire, Son Éminence Mgr le cardinal de ***, s’est plaint de la mesquinerie de votre maison curiale. Je vous invite, en conséquence, monsieur le maire, aussitôt la présente reçue, à réunir votre conseil, et à voter les fonds nécessaires pour la construction d’une nouvelle cure ; faute de quoi je me verrais dans la nécessité d’y pourvoir d’office, et d’envoyer les ouvriers. »
Je n’ai pas lu la lettre ; mais une personne qui l’avait lue m’en a donné l’analyse.
On all sides abandoned churches are being rebuilt, chapels are being restored, monasteries are being exhumed, abbeys are being revived, cathedrals are being built. Gold, silver, bronze and steel; painting, statuary, goldsmithery, tapestry, embroidery; the most precious materials, industry, science and art, everything is put in requisition to decorate worship and erect monuments to it. In a department of the south, a statue ninety feet high is erected on a mountain of the Immaculate Virgin. Visitors to the Exhibition have admired the astronomical clock that you have acquired for your metropolitan church: it is assured that it will cost no less than 40,000 fr. For the administrator, the expense was not of primary necessity, far from it, but for the bishop, what an edification!
I quote the following fact from a serious newspaper:
« La reine d’Espagne Isabelle II a envoyé au pape une tiare estimée 400,000 fr. Le pape lui a expédié en retour le corps de saint Félix, martyr, lequel a été ramené en Espagne par l’archevêque de Tolède, et déposé solennellement dans la chapelle du palais d’Aranjuez. »
Tandis que le ministère espagnol vend les biens de l’Église, la reine proteste de son dévouement à l’Église, et fait cadeau d’une tiare au Pape ; la chère dame tient à dégager sa cause de celle de ses sujets. Il y a soixante et cinq ans, cela aurait passé, en France, pour trahison ; mais ce n’est pas de quoi il s’agit. Le pape, un vieux moine exténué d’austérités, qui fait son repas d’un œuf à la coque et ne boit que de l’eau, le pape porte sur son bonnet trois couronnes. Voilà le symbole de la félicité chrétienne et de l’économie cléricale.
Et toutes ces prodigalités, tout cet orgueil, marié à tout ce dénûment, afin que les Chateaubriand de l’avenir, témoins de quelque nouveau 93, écrivent des lamentations en prose poétique sur le génie chrétien, le style ogival, le son des cloches, le gâteau des rois, la procession de la Fête-Dieu, et le pauvre vicaire de campagne, cheminant à minuit par la bruyère, le sacrement dans les mains, vers le paysan moribond qui attend son Dieu sur la feuillée, pendant que sa vieille épouse lui récite les prières des agonisants ! Ô bavards !…
XIX. —However, it must be recognized that in attracting property, industry, and income to itself, the Church not only aims to reconstitute the commoners into regular communities and brotherhoods: the wealth created, it must flow. Without that, what good is wealth? What would be the use of producing?
The Church, just as it has its theory of society, therefore also has its theory of consumption. In the order of faith, as in the profane economy, wealth and luxury find their employment. But let not flesh and blood rejoice; the devil will gain nothing. The Catholic priesthood, dedicated to continence, to abstinence, which suffers when looking at the pleasures of the people, which sighs when seeing women dancing, will not allow its flock to fatten up for hell. It will be able, by displaying to their eyes the prodigies of industry, to push them to heaven by a path of brambles and stones.
The clergy divides the wealth it accumulates into two parts, one destined for the religious establishments that are multiplying on all sides, according to the views of Benedict and Ignatius; the other reserved for worship, for the intoxication of popular imaginations. For to God alone belong wealth and glory, Dignus est… accipere divitiam, et honorem, et gloriam . It is with the Church and with religion as with royalty: the more she surrounds herself with magnificence, the more the people admire; and the more they admire, the more they worship.
Who could count the millions that are gobbled up each year in the fancies of worship?…. I disregard what the worldly ecclesiastics say about it, they who profit and make their families profit from the Lord’s vintage and the patrimony of the poor.
Sainte-Geneviève, 1 million.
Sainte-Clotilde, severak millions.
Saint-Eugène or Eugénie, 1,400,000 fr.
Notre-Dame, 10 million francs.
The churches of France, together, and by a single decree, 60 million francs (F).
The poorest towns, the smallest hamlets, follow the bustle of the capital: it is there above all that this waste must be studied.
In a commune, whose department I will not mention, in order to leave to each of my readers the pleasure of recognizing it in his own, a new church is being built, which will cost 300,000 francs. The town has no fountain.
Elsewhere, the municipal council, under the influence of the priest, voted one fine day 6,000 francs for a bell. But the commune is in debt; it has no fire pump, no covered laundry for the women, who have to wash their laundry with their feet in the mud and their bodies in the rain. For five years the winegrower has not harvested anything and has abandoned the vines. Not to mention that they didn’t urgently need a bell, since the church had one. But how to do without two bells, one for the Angelus, the other for high mass?
In another parish, which has at most six hundred souls, and whose budget is far behind, the municipal council, still under the same influence, votes 13,000 fr. for a curial house. The old one, which had been in use for two centuries, could be repaired. But the archbishop wants each of his servants to have at least eight bedrooms, with cellar, attic, courtyard and barnyard, garden, orchard, lavatories and outbuildings. However, the schoolmaster barely receives four hundred francs, both from the commune and from the State: he gives science for four hundred francs. Abuno disce omnes .
Certain prélat, visitant son pays natal qu’il n’avait pas revu depuis sa promotion à l’épiscopat, s’arrête à D… Al trouve le curé, son neveu, logé d’une manière peu digne de l’Église, et s’en plaint au préfet du département. On assure cependant que la cure était très-logeable, solidement bâtie; jamais desservant ne s’en était plaint. A quelques jours de là, le maire de D… reçoit de la Préfecture une lettre conçue à peu près en ces termes :
“Mr. Mayor, His Eminence the Cardinal of •••, has complained about the pettiness of your parish house. I therefore invite you, as soon as this letter has been received, to convene your council and vote the funds necessary for the construction of a new vicarage; failing which I would find myself in the need to provide for by decree, and to send the workmen.”
I haven’t read the letter; but a person who had read it reported it to me, and I saw the masons at work.
On all sides abandoned churches are being rebuilt, chapels are being restored, monasteries are being exhumed, abbeys are being revived, cathedrals are being built. Gold, silver, bronze and steel; painting, statuary, goldsmithery, tapestry, embroidery; the most precious materials, industry, science and art, everything is put in requisition to decorate worship and erect monuments to it. In a department of the south, a statue ninety feet high is erected on a mountain of the Immaculate Virgin. Visitors to the Exhibition have admired the astronomical clock that you have acquired for your metropolitan church: it is assured that it will cost no less than 40,000 fr. For the administrator, the expense was not of primary necessity, far from it, but for the bishop, what an edification!
I quote the following fact from a serious newspaper:
“The Queen of Spain, Isabella II, sent the Pope a tiara estimated at 400,000 francs. The pope sent him in return the body of Saint Felix, martyr, which was brought back to Spain by the archbishop of Toledo, and solemnly deposited in the chapel of the palace of Aranjuez.”
While the Spanish ministry sold the goods of the Church, the queen protested her devotion to the Church, and presented a tiara to the Pope: the dear lady wished to free her cause from that of her subjects. Seventy years ago, in France, this would have passed for treason; but that’s not what it is about. The pope, an old monk exhausted by austerities, who makes his meal of a boiled egg and drinks only water, the pope wears three crowns on his cap. This is the symbol of Christian happiness and of clerical economy (G).
And all this prodigality, all this pride, married to all this destitution, so that the Chateaubriands of the future, witnesses of some new ’93, write lamentations in poetic prose on Christian genius, the ogival style, the sound of bells, the cake of kings, the procession of Corpus Christi, and the poor country vicar, walking at midnight through the heather, the sacrament in his hands, towards the dying peasant who waits for his God on the leafy ground, while his old wife recites to him the prayers of the dying! O, chatterboxes!
XVIII
Je me résume.
Le christianisme venant réformer la société, ses chefs durent comprendre que la réforme devait porter autant sur les conditions de fortune que sur la liberté des personnes. Les deux termes étaient corrélatifs, le courant de l’opinion y poussait, l’Évangile sans cela eût été boiteux.
Maintenant qu’a fait l’Église ? A-t-elle répondu à l’attente des peuples ? Quelle a été, sur l’économie des biens, son principe, sa méthode ? Comment a-t-elle compris le rôle de la richesse, les lois de sa production, de sa distribution, le rapport du travail au capital, le fonctionnement de la propriété ? Sur ces points essentiels l’Église, développant l’idée chrétienne, a-t-elle produit une théorie juridique, une science morale ? Pouvait-elle en produire une ?
We know the answer.
Fidèle à son dogme, l’Église condamne la richesse, dont Dieu seul est digne, et se contente de la montrer à l’homme, dans les exhibitions du culte, comme une perspective de la céleste béatitude. Elle affirme, comme nécessaire et providentielle tout à la fois, l’inégalité des conditions ; elle fait du paupérisme un jugement de Dieu ; elle organise, comme palliatif, la charité, et pousse de toutes ses forces, par l’agglomération des biens aux mains du clergé, la masse travailleuse, partie au communisme conventuel, partie au servage ou salariat féodal.
Et c’est logique : après avoir créé le bon homme, l’Église glorifie le bon pauvre. Un peuple de Lazares, de Lazarilles, de Lazaroni, quel idéal !
Forcée néanmoins de ménager et d’entretenir une classe intermédiaire, noblesse ou bourgeoisie, entre le clergé, tant régulier que séculier, et le peuple, l’Église ne fait aucune difficulté de retenir pour cette classe le droit païen de propriété, droit, selon elle, né de la force et du hasard, droit sans principe, que le parti prêtre affecte depuis 1848 de défendre, avec le même acharnement qu’il défendait en 1789 les biens revendiqués par la Révolution.
Est-ce là une justice ?
Est-ce une justice que cette classification artificielle, créée pour le besoin du système, d’une nation en propriétaires, traitants, agioteurs, seigneurs, et communiers, mainmortables, serfs ou salariés ?
Le Décalogue avait dit en deux mots : Tu ne tueras pas, tu ne voleras pas. Il appartenait à la théologie chrétienne de rechercher si la servitude, même déguisée sous le nom de salariat, n’était pas une manière indirecte de tuer le corps et l’âme ; si le salariat n’impliquait pas spoliation du travailleur, usurpation à son détriment, par le capitaliste-entrepreneur-propriétaire. La théologie n’a point étendu de ce côté ses recherches : l’idée qui l’inspirait ne le souffrait pas. Elle s’est tenue à la lettre du Décalogue, à la loi servile.
Béranger a chanté, au nom de la Révolution, le Dieu des bonnes gens, et l’on dit que le bon chansonnier s’est épris pour son idole d’une vraie piété. La pratique chrétienne et le témoignage de l’Église démontrent que la théologie, si gracieuse et charitable qu’on la fasse, n’a rien de commun avec la Révolution. Il n’y a pas d’autre dieu que le dieu des aristocrates.
L’Église est incapable, de par sa morale et son droit canon, de marquer les limites du tien et du mien : de là ces étranges solutions des casuistes, dont l’auteur des Provinciales scandalisa le dix-septième siècle, et dont il aurait accusé l’Église tout entière, et non pas les Jésuites, s’il eût été de bonne foi. Pascal philosophe pouvait avoir une notion de la justice et de la propriété ; Pascal chrétien ne le pouvait pas. Il n’avait qu’à jeter les yeux sur la communauté de Port-Royal, écouter ce qui s’y prêchait sur l’indignité de l’homme et l’inégalité des conditions, pour s’en convaincre.
Du reste, et il importe de le rappeler, telle est ici la discipline de l’Église, telle sera celle de toute corporation religieuse.
La religion, quelle qu’elle soit, ayant pour objet de servir de principe, de moyen et de sanction à la Justice ; faisant découler la Justice de son dogme, créant une église à l’effet de propager le dogme et d’y ramener incessamment la morale, la religion, dis-je, implique, dans l’âme du fidèle, la subordination de la Justice, à la foi, partant le mépris de la Justice. Car la Justice, de même que la religion, n’est rien si elle n’est tout : d’où cette conséquence, que comme la Justice s’étiole à l’ombre de la religion, tout de même la religion, sous l’autocratie de la Justice, s’évanouit. Les églises prétendues réformées en fournissent un exemple. Là, le dogme ayant été dissous par le libre examen, et l’enseignement de la morale ramené aux principes de la pure raison, le ministère évangélique n’est plus qu’un professorat humain, une école scientifique sans autorité, sans foi, sans religion. C’est ce que le cardinal Maury a parfaitement démontré, à propos de Massillon, dans son Essai sur l’éloquence de la chaire, quand il a fait voir par l’exemple de Bossuet, de Bourdaloue, de Fénelon et de tous les grands sermonnaires, que la morale ne pouvait être séparée du dogme, à peine de suicide pour l’Église et le christianisme.
XX. — I summarize.
Christianity having come to reform society, its leaders had to understand that the reform had to bear as much on the conditions of fortune as on the freedom of persons. These terms were correlative; the current of opinion pushed there, the Gospel without it would have been shaky.
Now has the Church responded to the expectations of the peoples? How did she understand the role of wealth, the laws of its production, its distribution, the relationship of labor to capital, the functioning of property? On these essential points, has the Church, developing the Christian idea, produced an economic, juridical theory, a moral science?
We know the answer.
Faithful to its dogma, the Church condemns wealth, of which God alone is worthy, and is content to show it to man, in the exhibitions of worship, as a prospect of celestial beatitude. It affirms, as invincible and providential, the inequality of conditions; it makes pauperism a judgment of God; then, organizing charity as a palliative, it pushes with all its might, by the agglomeration of goods in the hands of the clergy and the nobility, the working masses, in part to conventual communism, in part to serfdom or feudal wage-labor.
After having created the good man, the Church glorifies the good poor. A common class of Lazares, Lazarilles, Lazzaroni, side by side with a fat bourgeoisie, a resplendent aristocracy and a deified clergy; this is her ideal. This is why the Church preaches alternately, indifferently, white and black; why it declares property an institution of sin, and yet sustains property; why it affirms community as the original, divine form of society, and why, however, while multiplying its congregations, its brotherhoods and its convents, it fiercely fights the communists, as enemies of the family and of religion .
Is it justice, logic, this artificial classification, imagined for the need of the religious cause, of a nation into owners, contractors, speculators, lords, clerks, and communiers, mainmortables, serfs or wage-earners. Is it just good faith?
The Decalogue had said in two words: You will not kill, you will not steal. It belonged to Christian theology to investigate whether servitude, even disguised under the name of wage-earning, was not an indirect way of killing body and soul; if wage-earning did not imply spoliation of the worker, usurpation to his detriment by the capitalist-entrepreneur-owner. Theology has not extended its researches in this direction: the idea that inspired it did not trouble it. It stuck to the letter that kills; it has neglected the spirit that gives life.
The Church is incapable, by its morality and its canon law, of marking the limits of yours and mine: hence these strange solutions of the casuists, of which the author of the Provincialss would have accused the whole Church, and not the Jesuits, if he had been in good faith. The philosopher Pascal could have a notion of justice and property: Christian Pascal could not. He had only to cast his eyes over the community of Port-Royal, listen to what was preached there about the unworthiness of man and the inequality of conditions, to be convinced of it.
Moreover, such is here the discipline of the Church, such will be that of any religious corporation.
Religion, whatever it may be, having the aim of serving as a principle, a means and a sanction for Justice; making justice flow from its dogma, creating a church for the purpose of propagating dogma and incessantly bringing back to it morality, religion, I say, implies, in the soul of the faithful, the subordination of right to faith, of reason to authority, of personality to community, hence the destruction of Justice. For Justice, like religion, is nothing if not everything: whence this consequence, that as Justice withers in the shadow of religion, all the same religion is annihilated under the autocracy of Justice. The so-called reformed churches provide an example. There, dogma having been dissolved by free inquiry, and the teaching of morality reduced to the principles of pure reason, the evangelical ministry is no more than a human professorship, a scientific school, whose authority, religion, God, is the conscience of the hearer. This is what Cardinal Maury has perfectly demonstrated, with regard to Massillon, in his Essai sur l’éloquence de la chaire, when he showed by the example of Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fénélon and all the great sermonizers, that morality could not be separated from dogma, on pain of suicide for the Church and Christianity.
CHAPTER V.
Principles of the Revolution on the distribution of wealth. — Accord of the laws of Economy and Justice: EQUALITY.
XIX
I have told you, Monsignor, how my first doubts arose, both about the economic constitution of society and about the transcendental explanation provided by the Church. I am now going to tell you how I arrived at the discovery of a principle that, without borrowing anything from the religious hypothesis, being even diametrically opposed to it, seems to me to satisfy both the justice of man and the reason of things.
Let’s first listen to my biographer. My biographer, Monseigneur, I have the right to say that it is you.
« La détresse de la famille augmentait de jour en jour, et Pierre-Joseph, au lieu de puiser au logis des principes de résignation et de patience, n’y trouvait que l’amertume de la plainte, le blasphème et le désespoir sombre. La parole du Christ n’avait point d’écho dans cette maison désolée. Au lieu de regarder le ciel on regardait la terre… On y voyait des riches… Proudhon mangea le pain de l’envie. »
To obtain these interior details, the date of which goes back thirty-five or forty years, you must have established an investigation and questioned all the old devotees of the parish. But let’s move on.
The bread of envy! This is not entirely correct. And however skillful your doctrine of inequality has made you in anticipating the feelings of the poor and their secret murmurs, I dare say, Monsignor, that experience would have taught you still more. Let me tell you exactly what happens in the brain of a poor child, when by chance he is forced to reason about his poverty.
I was baptized into the Catholic Church and then, and to a large extent, raised by it. The starting point of my education, on the subject that occupies us, was thus the distinction of the classes, in other words the unequal distribution of wealth. An unhealthy principle, the influence of which causes the perdition of thousands of souls, and which the Church should pursue as the equal of idolatry and heresy.
The first feeling that the spectacle of my relative inferiority inspired in me was shame. I blushed at my poverty as a punishment. I confusedly felt the truth of the old woman’s words, that poverty is not vice, but is worse; that it belittles us, debases us, and little by little makes us worthy of it.
Unable to live with shame, indignation succeeded. At first it was only a noble competitive spirit to raise myself, by my work and my intelligence, to the level of the fortunate: so true is it that there is not a passion that, taken in a certain measure and by a certain bias, cannot become a virtue. But the calculation had soon shown me that by remaining in my sphere of workman I would never become rich: then the ambition changed into anger, and the anger led me, you guess where, to seek, a little better than Rousseau had not done, the origin of the inequality of conditions and fortunes.
Another would have become a smuggler or a cellar rat: the most cowardly, the most sensual, become thieves. I resolved to study in depth, piece by piece, this economic machine that the Church absolved, and that inevitably produced, according to J.-B. Say and Destutt de Tracy, inequality. To know is to possess, I tell myself, since science is wealth and capital; with science, I will have my share. And I promised myself, if I managed to know something, not to be stingy with my discoveries: for to give is still to possess, it is the ne plus ultra of possession.
Je commençai donc par rejeter de ma croyance la morale chrétienne et toute espèce de morale, prenant pour règle de ne reconnaître comme bien ou mal que ce que ma conscience, assistée de ma raison, m’aurait démontré clairement être tel ; cherchant en moi-même, comme avait fait Descartes pour la philosophie générale, le principe premier des lois, l’aliquid inconcussum sur lequel je pourrais fonder l’édifice de mes droits et de mes devoirs, me conformant du reste, dans toute ma conduite, aux institutions établies, sans les rejeter ni les admettre.
CHAPTER V.
Principles of the Revolution on the distribution of wealth. — Accord of the laws of Economy and Justice: EQUALITY.
XXI. — I have told you, Monsignor, how my first doubts arose, both about the economic constitution of society and about the transcendental explanation provided by the Church. I am now going to tell you how I arrived at the discovery of a principle that, without borrowing anything from the religious hypothesis, being even diametrically opposed to it, seems to me to satisfy both the justice of man and the reason of things.
Let’s first listen to my biographer. My biographer, Monseigneur, I have the right to say that it is you.
“The distress of the family increased day by day, and Pierre-Joseph, instead of drawing from the house the principles of resignation and patience, found there only the bitterness of complaint, blasphemy and gloomy despair. The word of Christ had no echo in this desolate house. Instead of looking to heaven, they looked at the earth… They saw the rich there. Proudhon ate the bread of envy.”
To obtain these interior details, the date of which goes back thirty-five or forty years, you must have established an investigation and questioned all the old devotees of the parish. But let’s move on.
The bread of envy! This is not entirely correct. And however skillful your doctrine of inequality has made you in anticipating the feelings of the poor and their secret murmurs, I dare say, Monsignor, that experience would have taught you still more. Let me tell you exactly what happens in the brain of a poor child, when by chance he is forced to reason about his poverty.
I was baptized into the Catholic Church and then, and to a large extent, raised by it. The starting point of my education, on the subject that occupies us, was thus the distinction of the classes, in other words the unequal distribution of wealth. An unhealthy principle, the influence of which causes the perdition of thousands of souls, and which the Church should pursue as the equal of idolatry and heresy.
The first feeling that the spectacle of my relative inferiority inspired in me was shame. I blushed at my poverty as a punishment. I confusedly felt the truth of the old woman’s words, that poverty is not vice, but is worse; that it belittles us, debases us, and little by little makes us worthy of it.
Unable to live with shame, indignation succeeded. At first it was only a noble competitive spirit to raise myself, by my work and my intelligence, to the level of the fortunate: so true is it that there is not a passion that, taken in a certain measure and by a certain bias, cannot become a virtue. But the calculation had soon shown me that by remaining in my sphere of workman I would never become rich: then the ambition changed into anger, and the anger led me, you guess where, to seek, a little better than Rousseau had not done, the origin of the inequality of conditions and fortunes.
Another would have become a smuggler or a cellar rat: the most cowardly, the most sensual, become thieves. I resolved to study in depth, piece by piece, this economic machine that the Church absolved, and that inevitably produced, according to J.-B. Say and Destutt de Tracy, inequality. To know is to possess, I tell myself, since science is wealth and capital; with science, I will have my share. And I promised myself, if I managed to know something, not to be stingy with my discoveries: for to give is still to possess, it is the ne plus ultra of possession.
I therefore began by discarding from my belief Christian morals and all kinds of morals, taking as a rule to recognize as good or bad only what my conscience, assisted by my reason, would have clearly demonstrated to me to be such, seeking within myself, as Descartes had done for metaphysics, the first principle of laws, the aliquid inconcussum on which I could establish the edifice of my rights and my duties, conforming myself moreover, in all my conduct, to established institutions, without rejecting or accepting them.
XX
Sur la fin de 1838, je vins à Paris pour y suivre mes études. Vous savez, Monseigneur, à qui je dus cet avantage ; vous fûtes, je crois, l’un des académiciens qui me donnèrent leur suffrage : permettez-moi de vos en témoigner ici ma reconnaissance,
Leafing through the catalog of the library of the Institute, I came across this division: Political economy. It was just eighty years since Quesnay published his Tableau, without my having heard of it. I said to myself: Who are these people? And I started to read.
Reading the economists soon convinced me of two things, for me of capital importance:
La première, que dans la seconde moitié du dix-huitième siècle, une science avait été signalée et fondée en dehors de toute tradition chrétienne et de toute suggestion religieuse, science qui avait pour objet de déterminer, indépendamment des coutumes établies, des hypothèses légales, des préjugés et routines régissant la matière, les lois naturelles de la production, de la distribution et de la consommation des richesses. — C’était juste mon affaire.
L’autre chose dont je restai également convaincu, c’est que dans l’Économie politique, telle qu’il avait été donné aux fondateurs de la concevoir, la notion du droit n’entrait pour rien, les auteurs se bornant à exposer les faits de la pratique, tels qu’ils se passaient sous leurs yeux, et indépendamment de leur accord ou de leur désaccord avec la Justice.
For example — this observation is from Rossi — it is demonstrated, and the proper object of economics is to make this demonstration, that the division of labor is the most powerful process of industry, and the most fruitful source of wealth, — but that it tends at the same time to brutalize the workman, and consequently to create a class of serfs. The two phenomena are equally certain and intimately linked, to such an extent that, if industry were to submit to the law of personal respect, it would have to, it seems, abandon its creations, which would bring back the society of poverty; and reciprocally, if justice were to be subordinated to production, pauperism, vice and crime would develop continuously, in proportion to production itself.
C’est à une science supérieure, ajoute Rossi, de concilier les deux termes. Mais ce dont il n’est pas permis de douter, c’est que sur le même phénomène l’économie semble dire oui, la Justice non.
La question est ainsi de savoir comment la société conservera les bénéfices de la division du travail en la développant toujours ; comment d’autre part elle satisfera à la Justice, en empêchant la dépravation des classes ouvrières.
Nous en sommes là. Le problème est difficile, la situation périlleuse ; mais avouez, Monseigneur, que la théologie chrétienne n’eût jamais trouvé de pareilles choses.
XXII. — At the end of 1838, I came to Paris to follow my studies. You know, Monseigneur, to whom I owe this advantage; you were, I believe, one of the academicians who gave me their vote: allow me to show you here my gratitude.
Leafing through the catalog of the library of the Institute, I came across this division: Political economy. It was just eighty years since Quesnay published his Tableau, without my having heard of it. I said to myself: Who are these people? And I started to read.
Reading the economists soon convinced me of two things, for me of capital importance:
The first, that in the second half of the nineteenth century, a science had been announced and founded outside of all Christian tradition and all religious suggestion, a science whose object was to determine, independently of established customs, legal hypotheses, prejudices and the routines governing the matter, the natural laws of the production, distribution and consumption of wealth. — This was my business, by God.
The other thing of which I also remained convinced was that in political economy, as it had been given to the founders to conceive it and as it was taught by their disciples, the notion of right did not enter for nothing, the authors confining themselves to exposing the facts of the practice, as they happened before their eyes, and deducing the consequences, independently of their agreement or disagreement with Justice.
For example — this observation is from Rossi — it is demonstrated, and the proper object of economics is to make this demonstration, that the division of labor is the most powerful process of industry, and the most fruitful source of wealth, — but that it tends at the same time to brutalize the workman, and consequently to create a class of serfs. The two phenomena are equally certain and intimately linked, to such an extent that, if industry were to submit to the law of personal respect, it would have to, it seems, abandon its creations, which would bring back the society of poverty; and reciprocally, if justice were to be subordinated to production, pauperism, vice and crime would develop continuously, in proportion to production itself.
It is up to a superior science, adds Rossi, to reconcile the two terms. But what cannot be doubted is that on the same phenomenon the economy seems to say yes, Justice no. (H)
The question is therefore to know how society will preserve the benefits of the division of labor by always developing it; how on the other hand it will satisfy Justice, by preventing the depravity of the working classes. We are there. The problem is difficult, the situation perilous; but confess, Monseigneur, that Christian theology would never have found such things.
XXI
Généralisant aussitôt l’observation de Rossi, je n’eus pas de peine à me convaincre que ce qu’il avait dit de la division du travail, de l’emploi des enfants dans les manufactures, des industries insalubres, on pouvait et l’on devait le dire de la concurrence, du prêt à intérêt ou crédit, de la propriété, du gouvernement, en un mot de toutes les catégories économiques, et par suite de toutes les institutions sociales. Partout vous découvrez une immoralité qui se déroule proportionnellement à l’effet économique obtenu, en sorte que la société semble reposer sur cette dualité fatale et indissoluble, richesse et dépravation. Et comme les économistes démontrent en outre que la Justice est elle-même une puissance économique, que partout où la Justice est violée, soit par l’esclavage, soit par le despotisme, soit par le manque de sécurité, etc., la production est atteinte, la richesse diminue, et la barbarie se remontre, il s’ensuit que l’économie politique, c’est-à-dire la société tout entière, est en contradiction avec elle-même, ce que Rossi n’avait point aperçu, ou que peut-être il n’avait osé dire.
Devant cette antinomie, dont vous trouverez l’exposition largement détaillée dans mes Contradictions économiques, quel parti prend le monde savant et officiel ?
Les uns, disciples à outrance de Malthus, se prononcent bravement contre la Justice. Avant tout, ils demandent, coûte que coûte, la richesse, dont ils espèrent avoir leur part ; ils font bon marché de la vie, de la liberté, de l’intelligence des masses. Sous prétexte que telle est la loi économique, qu’ainsi le veut la fatalité des choses, ils sacrifient, sans nul remords, l’humanité à Mammon. C’est par là que s’est signalée, dans sa lutte contre le socialisme, l’école économiste : que ce soit son crime et sa honte devant l’histoire !
Les autres reculent effrayés devant le mouvement économique, et se retournent avec angoisse vers les temps de la simplicité industrielle, de la filature domestique, et du four banal : ils se font rétrogrades.
Ici encore je crois être le premier qui, avec une pleine intelligence du phénomène, ait osé soutenir que la Justice et l’économie devaient, non pas se limiter l’une l’autre, se faire de vaines concessions, ce qui n’aboutirait qu’à une mutilation réciproque et n’avancerait rien, mais se pénétrer systématiquement, la première servant de formule constante à la seconde ; qu’ainsi, au lieu de restreindre les forces économiques, dont l’exagération nous assassine, il fallait les balancer les unes par les autres, en vertu de ce principe, peu connu et encore moins compris, que les contraires doivent, non s’entre-détruire, mais se soutenir, précisément parce qu’ils sont contraires.
C’est ce que j’appellerais volontiers l’application de la Justice à l’économie politique, à l’imitation de Descartes, qui appelait son analyse application de l’algèbre à la géométrie. En cela, dit Rossi, consiste la Science nouvelle, la véritable Science sociale.
XXIII. — Immediately generalizing Rossi’s observation, I had no difficulty in convincing myself that what he had said about the division of labor, the employment of children in factories, unhealthy industries, one could and This was to be said of competition, of loans at interest or credit, of property, of government, in a word, of all economic categories, and consequently of all social institutions. Everywhere you discover an immorality that unfolds in proportion to the economic effect obtained, so that society seems to rest on this fatal and indissoluble duality, wealth and misery, improvement and depravity. And as economists further demonstrate that Justice is itself an economic power, that wherever Justice is violated, whether by slavery, or despotism, or lack of security, etc., production is attacked, wealth diminishes, and barbarism reappears, it follows that political economy, that is to say, society as a whole, is in contradiction with itself, which Rossi had not perceived, or which perhaps he hadn’t dared to say.
Faced with this antinomy, which you will find extensively exposed in my Economic Contradictions, what side does the scholarly and official world take?
Some, outspoken disciples of Malthus, come out bravely against Justice. Above all, they demand, at all costs, wealth, of which they hope to have their share; they dispense cheaply with the life, the liberty and the intelligence of the masses. Under the pretext that such is the economic law, that such is the fate of things, they sacrifice, without any remorse, humanity to Mammon. This is how, in its struggle against socialism, the economizing school has signaled itself: let this be its crime and its shame in the face of history.
The others recoil frightened before the economic movement, and look back with anguish towards the times of industrial simplicity, of domestic spinning and the communal oven: they become retrograde.
Here again I believe I was the first who, with a full understanding of the phenomenon, dared to maintain that Justice and economy should not limit each other, making vain concessions, which would only lead to a reciprocal mutilation, and would advance nothing, but to suffuse one another systematically, the first serving as a law for the second; that thus, instead of restraining the economic forces, the exaggeration of which assassinates us, it was necessary to balance them one by the other, by virtue of this principle, little known and even less understood, that opposites must not destroy each other, but compensate each other, precisely because they are opposites.
This is what I would gladly call the application of Justice to political economy, in imitation of Descartes, who called his analysis the application of algebra to geometry. (I) In this, says Rossi, consists the new science, the true social science.
XXII
At first glance, this conciliation seems impracticable; it seems repugnant to the subjective nature of Justice.
Nous savons en effet ce qu’est la Justice relativement aux personnes. Respect égal et réciproque. Mais nous ne voyons pas pour cela ce qu’elle peut devenir quant aux propriétés, fonctions, produits et échanges. Comment l’égalité personnelle, qui est l’essence de la Justice, deviendra-t-elle une égalité réelle ? Est-il seulement à présumer que celle-ci puisse et doive être une conséquence de celle-là ?… Tel est le problème qui se pose, comme un piége, devant les théologiens, les philosophes, les légistes, les économistes, les hommes d’État, et que tous, jusqu’à ce jour, se sont accordés à trancher négativement.
The equality of goods and fortunes, they say, is not justice; they even go so far as to say that it is contrary to justice.
“It is by breaking equality that society was born,” says M. Blanc-Saint-Bonnet; “this is why charity is the last law of the earth…”
“You repeat that the Gospel proclaimed the equality of men: this is false. Equality is a false name for Justice. The Gospel knew so well the inequality that results from our liberty, that it instituted charity for this world, reversibility for the next. Equality is the law of brutes; merit is the law of man.” (De la Restauration française, p. 90 and 124)
Voilà ce que dit par la bouche de ses apologistes la sagesse chrétienne. Suivant l’Église, car depuis la découverte de la science économique l’Église a voulu dire aussi son mot sur la matière, suivant l’Église donc l’économie politique est un corollaire de la révélation. Le péché ayant envahi la nature, l’égalité de misère est devenue le fait primitif, fatal, d’où la civilisation ne peut surgir que par la religion, c’est-à-dire ici par la consécration de l’inégalité.
Nous savons ce que valent les décisions de la transcendance. Ceux qui affirment l’inégalité par principe de religion seront bien surpris quand tout à l’heure nous leur prouverons que leur prétendu principe est en contradiction avec les lois de la mécanique universelle. Serrons la difficulté, portons sur elle le flambeau de l’analyse, et bientôt nous rougirons de la témérité des jugements antiques.
Les lois de l’économie, publique et domestique, sont, par leur nature objective et fatale, affranchies de tout arbitraire humain ; elles s’imposent inflexiblement à notre volonté. En elles-mêmes, ces lois sont vraies, utiles : le contraire impliquerait contradiction. Elles ne nous paraissent nuisibles, ou, pour mieux dire, contrariantes, que par le rapport que nous soutenons avec elles, et qui n’est autre que l’opposition éternelle entre la nécessité et la liberté.
Toutes les fois qu’il y a rencontre entre l’esprit libre et la fatalité de la nature, la dignité du moi en est froissée et amoindrie ; elle rencontre là quelque chose qui ne la respecte pas, qui ne lui rend pas justice pour justice et ne lui laisse que le choix entre la domination et la servitude. Le moi et le non-moi ne se font pas équilibre. Là est le principe qui fait de l’homme le régisseur de la nature, sinon son esclave et sa victime.
Ceci établi, le problème de l’accord entre la Justice et l’économie se pose en ces termes, je reprends l’exemple cité plus haut de la division du travail :
Étant donnée une société où le travail est divisé, on demande qui subira les inconvénients de cette division.
On conçoit en effet que dans le cercle de la famille, voire même de la tribu, la prérogative du chef, père de famille ou patriarche, soit plus élevée que celle des enfants, apprentis, compagnons, domestiques. Non-seulement la pratique des nations démontre que cela est possible sans injustice ; l’ordre même de la famille, son bonheur, sa sécurité, le réclament.
C’est sur ce type de la hiérarchie familiale que s’est ensuite formée l’organisation des sociétés, dans lesquelles la prérogative personnelle va décroissant, depuis le prince jusqu’à l’esclave.
On demande donc ce que prescrit ici la Justice : si le principe de hiérarchie et d’autorité doit embrasser la société tout entière, à l’instar d’une grande famille, auquel cas les conséquences de la fatalité économique pèseront de plus en plus sur les classes inférieures et de moins en moins sur les supérieures ; ou bien si les familles doivent être considérées comme également respectables, auquel cas la fatalité économique se répartissant, à la manière d’un risque, entre tous les membres de la société, la servitude qu’elle créait se trouve annulée, et devient même un principe d’ordre.
De cette double hypothèse naissent deux systèmes que nous appellerons dès à présent, l’un, système de la subordination des services, l’autre, système de la réciprocité des services. Ai-je besoin d’ajouter que le premier de ces systèmes est celui de l’Église, le second celui de la Révolution ?
Je ne perdrai pas le temps à démontrer comment le principe de la réciprocité du respect se convertit logiquement en celui de la réciprocité des services. Chacun comprend que, si les hommes sont subjectivement égaux les uns au regard des autres devant la Justice, ils ne le seront pas moins devant la nécessité ; et que celui qui prétend se décharger sur ses frères de cette servitude imminente, que le droit et le devoir de la société est de vaincre, celui-là est injuste.
Ce que je veux seulement relever, c’est d’abord qu’une idée si simple ait pu paraître jusqu’à la Révolution un paradoxe abominable ; c’est, en second lieu, l’absurde sophisme sur lequel se fonde la prétendue loi de l’inégalité.
XXIV. — At first glance, this conciliation seems impracticable; it seems repugnant to the subjective nature of Justice.
We indeed know what Justice is with respect to people: Equal and reciprocal respect. But we do not therefore see clearly what it can become in terms of properties, functions, products and exchanges. How will personal equality, which is the essence of justice, become equality of fortunes? Is it only to be presumed that the latter can and must be a consequence of the former?… Such is the problem that arises, like a trap, before theologians, philosophers, jurists, economists and men of State, which all, to date, have agreed to decide in the negative.
The equality of goods and fortunes, they say, is not justice; they even go so far as to say that it is contrary to justice.
“It is by breaking equality that society was born,” says M. Blanc-Saint-Bonnet; “this is why charity is the last law of the earth…”
“You repeat that the Gospel proclaimed the equality of men: this is false. Equality is a false name for Justice. The Gospel knew so well the inequality that results from our liberty, that it instituted charity for this world, reversibility for the next. Equality is the law of brutes; merit is the law of man.” (De la Restauration française, p. 90 and 124)
This is what Christian wisdom says, through the mouths of its apologists. According to the Church, for since the discovery of economic science the Church has also wanted to say its word on the matter, political economy is a corollary of revelation. Sin having invaded nature, equality of misery has become the primitive, fatal fact from which civilization emerges only through religion, that is to say here through the consecration of inequality, having charity as a counterweight.
Those who affirm inequality as a principle of religion will be very surprised when later we will prove to them that their alleged principle is in contradiction with the laws of universal mechanics. Let us grasp the difficulty, shine the torch of analysis upon it, and soon we will blush at the temerity of ancient judgments.
The laws of economy, public and domestic, are, by their objective and fatal nature, freed from all human arbitrariness; they impose themselves inflexibly on our will. In themselves, these laws are true and useful: the contrary would imply contradiction. They appear to us harmful, or, to put it better, vexing, only through the relationship that we maintain with them, which is none other than the eternal opposition between necessity and liberty.
Every time there is an encounter between the free spirit and the fatality of nature, the dignity of the self is offended and diminished; there it encounters something which does not respect it, which does not do it justice for justice’s sake and leaves it only the choice between domination and servitude. The me and the non-me do not balance each other. This is the principle that makes man the steward of nature, if not its slave and its victim.
This established, the problem of the agreement between Justice and the economy arises in these terms, I take the example cited above of the division of labor:
Given a society where labor is divided, one asks who will suffer the disadvantages of this division.
It is conceivable that in the circle of the family, or even of the tribe, the prerogative of the chief is higher than that of the children, apprentices, companions, servants. Not only does the practice of nations demonstrate that this is possible without injustice; the very order of the family, its security, demands it.
It is on the basis of this type of family hierarchy, in which the personal prerogative decreases, from the prince to the slave, that societies have been organized.
We therefore ask what Justice prescribes here: if the principle of hierarchy and authority must embrace society as a whole, like a large family, in which case the consequences of economic fatality will weigh more and more on the lower classes and less and less on the upper ones; or else if families are to be considered as equally respectable, in which case the economic fatality is distributed, like a risk, among all the members of society, the servitude which it created is canceled and can even become a principle of order.
From this double hypothesis are born two systems which we will call, from now on, one, the system of the subordination of services, the other, the system of reciprocity of services. (J) Need I add that the first of these systems is that of the Church, the second that of the Revolution?
I will not waste time demonstrating how the principle of the reciprocity of respect is logically converted into that of the reciprocity of services. Everyone understands that, if men are equal with respect to each other before Justice, this equality will not cease in the face of necessity, and that he who claims to discharge on his brothers the servitudes of nature is unjust.
What I only want to point out is, first of all, that such a simple idea could have seemed an abominable paradox until the Revolution: it is, secondly, the absurd sophism on which the so-called law of inequality is based.
XXIII
The year 1789 has struck. All the old legal hypotheses, hitherto accepted as the pure expression of Justice and sanctioned by religion, are reproached by the new legislator: seigniorial rights, hierarchy of classes, nobility, third estate, vilainie, corporations, commands, privileges of functions, steeples, provinces, bankocracy and proletariat. In place of this systematic inequality, created by pride and force, consecrated by all the priesthoods, the Revolution affirms, as identical propositions, 1. the equality of persons; 2. political and civil equality; 3. equality of functions, equivalence of services and products, identity of values, balance of powers, unity of law, community of jurisdiction; from which results, except what the individual faculties, exercising themselves in complete freedom, can bring about modifications, 4. the equality of conditions and fortunes.
Pareille chose, ni depuis le commencement du monde ni depuis l’origine du christianisme, ne s’était vue. L’insistance avec laquelle la Révolution a proclamé ce principe si nouveau, si odieux à l’Église, et encore si peu compris, de l’Égalité, mérite que je m’y arrête.
Déclaration du 27 juillet-31 août 1789 ;
« Art. 2. La nature a fait les hommes libres et égaux en droits. »
Et pour faire ressortir l’origine humaine de cette égalité, son indépendance de toute sanction supérieure, la Déclaration ajoute que l’égalité des droits a pour fondement et garantie leur reconnaissance mutuelle :
« Art 5. Pour s’assurer le libre et entier usage de ses facultés, chaque homme doit reconnaître et faciliter dans ses semblables le libre exercice des leurs. »
Constitution du 6 septembre 1791 :
« Art. 1er. Les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et égaux en droits. »
Déclaration du 15-16 février 1793 :
« Art. 1er. Les droits naturels, civils et politiques des hommes sont : la liberté, l’Égalité, la sûreté, la propriété, la garantie sociale, la résistance à l’oppression. »
Déclaration du 24 juin 1793 :
« Art. 2. Ces droits sont : l’Égalité, la liberté, la sûreté, la propriété.
« Art. 3. Tous les hommes sont égaux par la nature et devant la loi. »
Constitution de l’an III (22 août 1795) :
« Art. 1er. Les droits de l’homme en société sont : la liberté, l’Égalité, la sûreté, la propriété. »
« Art. 3. L’Égalité consiste en ce que la loi est la même pour tous, soit qu’elle protège, soit qu’elle punisse. »
Constitution de l’an VIII (15 décembre 1799) :
« La Constitution est fondée sur les vrais principes du gouvernement représentatif, sur les droits sacrés de la propriété, de l’Égalité, de la liberté.
« Citoyens, ajoutent les consuls dans leur proclamation, la Révolution est fixée aux principes qui l’ont commencée : elle est finie. »
Charte de 1814 :
« Art. 1er. Les Français sont égaux devant la loi. »
Chose à noter : le projet de Constitution du sénat conservateur, décrété le 6 avril pour être proposé à l’acceptation de Louis XVIII, ne faisait aucune mention de l’égalité des Français ; c’est le roi qui la rappela.
Les Constitutions de 1830 et 1848 n’ont fait que copier les anciennes.
Ainsi, d’après la Révolution, la Justice, dans son application à l’économie, a trouvé sa formule ; l’ordre économique possède sa loi d’équilibre.
Avant 89, il est bon de le redire, les hommes n’étaient pas tous égaux en droit, égaux par la naissance, égaux devant la loi. Il y avait des inégalités légales, qui se manifestaient jusque dans le supplice : et tout le monde sait avec quelle jubilation Paris assista à l’exécution de l’infortuné marquis de Favras, pendu comme un simple roturier. Le paganisme, pendant 2,000 ans, le christianisme à son tour, pendant 18 siècles, assistèrent, sans un mot de protestation, à cette monstrueuse iniquité.
Depuis 1789, et non auparavant, l’égalité devant la loi, l’égalité devant les servitudes de la nature, est entrée dans le droit public : par ce principe, l’économie sociale a été virtuellement changée ; et tous les problèmes que peut soulever la question des biens peuvent, quand on le voudra, recevoir leur solution. Une immense division de la science morale, tranchée jusqu’ici par le sabre du despotisme, la lance du noble et le glaive de l’Église, va s’élaborer en équations rigoureuses, en dehors de la raison théologique, qui n’a rien su, rien vu, rien compris, et dont la calomnie, depuis 70 ans, proteste avec rage.
Réciprocité du respect, premier article du code révolutionnaire ; réciprocité du service, c’est-à-dire réciprocité dans la propriété, dans le travail, dans l’éducation, dans le crédit, dans l’échange, dans l’impôt, dans la critique, dans le pouvoir, dans le jugement : deuxième article.
Voilà contre quoi s’élève l’Église, de quel sujet de plainte elle remplit ses chaires, ses écoles, ses conciliabules, pourquoi elle accuse la Révolution de prêcher le matérialisme, le sensualisme, l’épicuréisme, et de perdre la morale.
Il est évident en effet que si, par une simple déduction de l’idée de Justice telle que nous l’avons précédemment définie, les hommes peuvent être faits égaux et maintenus libres, l’esprit des mœurs et des lois est changé de fond en comble. Plus de subordination de l’homme à l’homme, par conséquent plus de hiérarchie, plus d’Église, plus de dogme, plus de foi, plus de raison transcendantale. Toutes ces choses n’ayant de raison d’être que dans la nécessité présumée de faire prévaloir, soit par la religion, soit par la force, la société contre l’égoïsme, elles disparaissent dans un système où le droit, devenu adéquat à la liberté, trouve sa garantie dans la conscience, où la maxime de Justice ne peut tarder par conséquent de paraître identique à la maxime de félicité elle-même.
Le moins qui puisse arriver ici au christianisme est d’être déclaré superflu. C’est ce qu’a très-bien compris l’école de MM. Buchez et Ott, représentants modernes de la démocratie chrétienne. Il résulte de leurs publications (voir entre autres le Traité d’économie politique de M. Ott, Paris, Guillaumin), que l’égalité n’est pas réellement le produit des forces économiques balancées par la Justice, mais le décret d’une société dont le principe et le mobile ne peuvent être donnés que par la religion. Pour être associés, et par ce moyen devenir égaux, selon MM. Buchez et Ott, il faut une foi, une grâce surnaturelle, une théologie. À ce compte, MM. Buchez et Ott sont d’accord avec l’épiscopat : ils ont tort de faire schisme. N’est-ce pas la gloire de l’épiscopat de pouvoir dire : L’idolâtrie, la philosophie, l’économie politique, la Justice et la nature vous avaient faits ennemis ; l’Évangile seul vous a rendus frères ?….
XXV. — The year 1789 has struck. All the old legal hypotheses, hitherto accepted as the pure expression of Justice and sanctioned by religion, are reproached by the new legislator: seigniorial rights, hierarchy of classes, nobility, third estate, vilainie, corporations, commands, privileges of functions, steeples, provinces, bankocracy and proletariat. In place of this systematic inequality, created by pride and force, consecrated by all the priesthoods, the Revolution affirms, as identical propositions, 1. the equality of persons; 2. political and civil equality; 3. equality of functions, equivalence of services and products, identity of values, balance of powers, unity of law, community of jurisdiction; from which results, except what the individual faculties, exercising themselves in complete freedom, can bring about modifications, 4. the equality of conditions and fortunes.
Such a thing had never been seen, neither since the beginning of the world nor since the origin of Christianity. The insistence with which the Revolution proclaimed this principle Equality, so new, so odious to the Church, and still so little understood, deserves that I dwell on it.
Declaration of July 27 – August 31, 1789:
“Art. 2. Nature has made men free and equal in rights.”
And to bring out the human origin of this equality, its independence from any superior sanction, the Declaration adds that equality of rights has as its foundation and guarantees their leur mutual recognition:
“Art. 5. To ensure the free and entire use of his faculties, each man must recognize and facilitate in his fellows the free exercise of theirs.”
Constitution of September 6, 1791:
“Art. 1. Men are born and remain free, equal in rights.”
Declaration of February 15-16, 1793:
“Art. 1. The natural, civil and political rights of men are: liberty, Equality, security, property, social guarantee, resistance to oppression.”
Declaration of June 24, 1793:
“Art. 2. These rights are: equality, liberty, security, property.
“Art. 3. All men are equal by nature and before the law.”
Constitution of Year III (August 22, 1795):
“Art. 1. The rights of man in society are: liberty, equality, security, property.
“Art. 2. Equality consists in the fact that the law is the same for all, whether it protects or punishes.”
Constitution of Year VIII (December 15, 1199):
“The Constitution is founded on the true principles of representative government, on the sacred rights of property, of equality, of liberty.”
“Citizens,” add the consuls in their proclamation, “the Revolution is fixed on the principles with which it began; it is finished.”
Charter of 1841 :
“Art. 1. The French are equal before the law.”
(One thing to note: the draft Constitution of the Conservative Senate, decreed on April 6 to be proposed for the acceptance of Louis XVIII, made no mention of the equality of the French; it was the king who recalled it.)
The Constitutions of 1830 and 1848 only copied the old ones.
Thus, after the Revolution, Justice, in its application to the economy, found its formula; the economic order has its law of equilibrium.
Before ’89, it is worth repeating, men were not all equal in rights, equal by birth, equal before the law. There were legal inequalities that manifested themselves even in torture: and everyone knows with what jubilation Paris witnessed the execution of the unfortunate Marquis de Favras, hanged like a simple commoner. Paganism, for 2,000 years, Christianity in its turn, for 48 centuries, witnessed, without a word of protest, this monstrous iniquity.
Since 1789, and not before, equality before the law, equality before the servitudes of nature, has entered into public right: by this principle the social economy has been virtually changed, and all the problems to which the question of goods may give rise can, when one wishes, receive their solution. An immense division of moral science, cut up to now by the saber of despotism, the lance of the noble and the sword of the Church, will be worked out in rigorous equations, apart from theological reason, which has nothing known, seen nothing, understood nothing, and whose calumny, for 70 years, protests with rage.
Reciprocity of respect, first article of the revolutionary code; reciprocity of service, that is, reciprocity in property, in labor, education, credit, exchange, taxation, criticism, power, judgment: second article.
This is what the Church protests against; with what complaint she fills her pulpits, her schools, her councils; why she accuses the Revolution of preaching materialism, sensualism, Epicureanism, and of losing morals.
It is evident in fact that if, by a simple deduction from the idea of Justice as we have previously defined it, men can be made equal and kept free, the spirit of mores and laws is changed from top to bottom. No more subordination of man to man, consequently no more hierarchy, no more Church, no more dogma, no more faith, no more transcendental reason. All these things having no raison d’etre except in the presumed necessity of making society prevail, either by religion or by force, against selfishness, they disappear in a system where right, having become adequate to liberty, found its guarantee in the conscience, where the maxim of Justice cannot delay consequently to appear identical with the maxim of happiness itself.
The least that can happen to Christianity here is to be declared superfluous. This is what the school of MM. Buchez and Ott, modern representatives of Christian Democracy, understand. It follows from their publications (see among others the Traité d’économie politique by M. Ott, Paris, Guillaumin), that equality is not really the product of economic forces balanced by Justice, but the decree of a society whose principle and motive can only be given by religion. To be associated, and by this means to become equals, according to MM. Buchez and Ott, one needs a faith, a supernatural grace, a theology. On this account, Messrs. Buchez and Ott agree with the episcopate: they are wrong to make a schism. Is it not the glory of the episcopate to be able to say: Idolatry, philosophy, political economy, justice and nature had made you enemies; the Gospel alone has made you brothers?
XXIV
J’arrive à l’argument des théoriciens de l’inégalité.
La Justice, disent-ils, est égalitaire ; la nature ne l’est pas. Or, les phénomènes économiques appartiennent à la fatalité objective ; prétendre les plier aux convenances de la Justice, ce serait vouloir mettre la nature sur le lit de Procuste, faire violence à la nécessité, une folie monstrueuse.
Cet argument a été rebattu à satiété par les économistes et théodicastres, criant à tue-tête que l’égalité n’existe nulle part, qu’elle viole la nature et l’humanité ; que l’inégalité est la loi du monde, la loi de l’art, la loi de la morale.
M. Jobard, l’âpre monautopoliseur bruxellois, qui, comme tant d’autres, avec tout l’esprit du monde ne regarde jamais les choses que de l’œil gauche, n’a pas assez de sifflets pour cette malheureuse égalité.
« Il est certain, dit ce penseur, que si nous avions appris à modeler nos institutions sur les lois qui régissent l’univers, nous ne pourrions plus nous tromper aussi grossièrement que nous l’avons si souvent fait, en prenant, par exemple, l’égalité pour une loi naturelle, quand la Providence a eu soin d’écrire en tête de toutes les pages de sa grande Bible : inégalité, inégalité, en tout, partout et pour tout, tant elle paraît avoir eu à cœur de nous épargner cette funeste méprise. » (Organon de la propriété intellectuelle.)
À mon tour je demanderai à M. Jobard :
où donc avez-vous aperçu l’inégalité dans la nature autrement que comme une anomalie ?
Oui, tout est variable, irrégulier, inconstant, inégal dans l’univers : c’est là le fait brut, que le premier regard jeté sur les choses y fait apercevoir. Mais cette variabilité, anomalie, inconstance, cette inégalité, enfin, est renfermée partout dans des bornes étroites, posées par une loi supérieure à laquelle se ramènent tous les faits bruts, et qui est l’égalité même.
Les jours de l’année sont égaux, les années égales ; les révolutions de la lune, variables dans une certaine limite, se ramènent toujours à l’égalité. La législation des mondes est une législation égalitaire. Descendons sur notre globe : est-ce que la quantité de pluie qui tombe chaque année en tout pays n’est pas sensiblement égale ? Quoi de plus variable que la température ? Et cependant, en hiver, été, de jour, de nuit, l’égalité est encore sa loi. L’égalité gouverne l’Océan, dont le flux et le reflux, dans leurs moyennes, marchent avec la régularité du pendule. Considérez les animaux et les plantes, chacun dans son espèce : partout vous retrouvez, sous des variations restreintes, causées par des influences extérieures, la loi d’égalité. L’inégalité, pour tout dire, ne vient pas de l’essence des choses, de leur intimité ; elle vient du dehors. Ôtez cette influence de hasard, et tout rentre dans l’égalité absolue. La feuille est égale à la feuille, la fleur à la fleur, la graine à la graine, l’individu à l’individu. Le monde, dit le Sage, a été fait avec nombre, poids et mesure ; tout ce qu’il contient est pesé dans la balance, c’est-à-dire soumis à l’égalité. Cherchez un fait, un seul, dont la loi ne soit pas un accord, une symétrie, une harmonie, une équation, un équilibre, en un mot l’égalité ? il existe un ordre de connaissances créé à priori, et qui, par un accord admirable, se trouve régir à la fois les phénomènes de la nature et ceux de l’humanité : ce sont les mathématiques. Or, les mathématiques, que sont-elles autre chose que la science de l’égalité, en tout, partout et pour tout, comme dit M. Jobard ?
Un statisticien peu favorable au socialisme, M. A. Guillard, a entrevu cette vérité :
« La certitude dans les connaissances humaines, dit-il, est en raison directe de l’application de l’idée d’égalité. Si l’économie a été jusqu’à présent incertaine et contestée, c’est qu’elle a repoussé plus ou moins l’idée d’égalité. Lorsque la science sociale, dégagée de la fange des abus acquis et du faux éclat des systèmes, ne sera plus que le développement pur de cette idée et son application à tous les rapports des hommes entre eux, cette science atteindra le plus haut degré de certitude et d’évidence » (Éléments de statistique humaine, p. 209.)
Rien, dit-on, n’est égal dans la nature ! Veut-on dire qu’un homme est moins gros qu’un éléphant ? L’idée serait ridicule. L’égalité qu’on entend nier est celle des êtres semblables. Or nous venons de voir que cette négation est précisément le contraire de la vérité ; elle résulte d’une appréciation superficielle des choses. Appliquée à l’homme, elle a son point de départ dans la religion.
De même donc qu’elle est la loi du monde, l’égalité est la loi du genre humain. Hors de cette loi il n’y a pas pour lui de stabilité, de paix, de bonheur, puisqu’il n’y a pas d’équilibre (ax. 4) : il est étrange qu’une vérité aussi élémentaire rencontre des contradicteurs. Vouloir que la société soit fondée sur l’inégalité, c’est soutenir qu’une chose peut être balancée par rien, établie sur rien, ce qui est absurde.
Tous les individus dont se compose la société sont, en principe, de même essence, de même calibre, de même type, de même module : si quelque différence entre eux se manifeste, elle provient, non de la pensée créatrice qui leur a donné l’être et la forme, mais des circonstances extérieures sous lesquelles les individualités naissent et se développent. Ce n’est pas en vertu de cette inégalité, singulièrement exagérée d’ailleurs, que la société se soutient, c’est malgré cette inégalité.
XXVI. — I come to the argument of the theoreticians of inequality.
Justice, they say, is egalitarian; nature is not. Now, economic phenomena belong to objective fatality; to pretend to bend them to the proprieties of justice would be to want to put nature on the bed of Procrustes, to do violence to necessity.
This argument has been done to death by economists and theodicasters, shouting at the top of their voices that equality does not exist anywhere, that it violates nature and humanity, that inequality is the law of the world, law of art, the law of morals.
Mr. Jobard, the bitter monautopoliseur from Brussels, who, like so many others, with all the wit in the world never looks at things except with his left eye, does not have enough hisses for this unfortunate equality:
“It is certain,” says this scoffer, “that if we had learned to model our institutions on the laws that govern the universe, we could no longer deceive ourselves so grossly as we have so often done, by taking, for example, equality for a natural law, when Providence has taken care to write at the beginning of all the pages of its great Bible: inequality, inequality, in everything, everywhere and for everything: so much does it seem to have taken it to heart to spare us this disastrous mistake.” (Organon de la propriété intellectuelle.)
In my turn, I will ask Mr. Jobard:
Good man, who sees so many things,
where then have you seen inequality in nature other than as an anomaly?
Yes, everything is variable, irregular, inconstant, unequal in the universe: this is the raw fact, which the first glance cast at things reveals. But this variability, anomaly, inconstancy, this inequality, in short, is confined everywhere within narrow limits, set by a superior law to which all the raw facts are reduced, and which is equality itself.
The days of the year are equal, the years equal; the revolutions of the moon, variable within a certain limit, always reduce to equality. The legislation of the worlds is an egalitarian legislation. Let us descend to our globe: is not the quantity of rain that falls each year in every country sensibly equal? What is more variable than the temperature? And yet, in winter, in summer, by day, by night, equality is still its law. Equality governs the ocean, whose ebb and flow, in their averages, work with the regularity of the pendulum. Consider animals and plants, each in its own kind: everywhere you find, under restricted variations, caused by external influences, the law of equality. Inequality, to put it bluntly, does not come from the essence of things, from their intimacy; it comes from the environment. Take away this influence of chance, and everything returns to absolute equality. Leaf equals leaf, flower equals flower, seed equals seed, individual equals individual. The world, says the Sage, was made with number, weight and measure; everything it contains is weighed in the balance, that is to say, subject to equality. Look for a fact, a single one, whose law is not an agreement, a symmetry, a harmony, an equation, an equilibrium, in a word, **equality? There exists an order of knowledge created a priori, which, by an admirable harmony, happens to govern at the same time the phenomena of nature and those of humanity: this is mathematics. Now, what is mathematics, but the science of equality, in everything, everywhere and for everything, as M. Jobard says? No industry can manufacture a perfect sphere: does that prevent us from saying that all the radii of the sphere are equal? And would the ball, pushed by the hand of the player, fulfill its function if it were cut on the principle of inequality?
A statistician unfavorable to socialism, A Guillard, has glimpsed this truth:
“Certainty in human knowledge,” he says, “is in direct proportion to the application of the idea of equality. If economics has been uncertain and contested up to now, it is because it has more or less rejected the idea of equality. When social science, freed from the filth of acquired abuses and the false brilliance of systems, will be no more than the pure development of this idea and its application to all the relations of men among themselves, this science will reach the highest degree of certainty and self-evidence. (Éléments de statistique humaine, p. 209.)
Nothing, it is said, is equal in nature. Do we mean that a man is less fat than an elephant? The idea would be ridiculous. The equality we intend to deny is that of similar beings. Now we have just seen that this negation is precisely the opposite of the truth; it results from a superficial appreciation of things. Applied to man, it has its point of departure in religion.
Just as it is the law of the world, so equality is the law of the human race. Outside of this law there is for him no stability, peace or happiness, since there is no balance: it is strange that such an elementary truth encounters contradictors. To want society to be founded on inequality is to maintain that a thing can be balanced by nothing, established on nothing, which is absurd.
All the individuals of which society is composed are, in principle, of the same essence, of the same caliber, of the same type, of the same modulus: if any difference between them manifests itself, it comes, not from the creative thought that gave them being and form, but from the external circumstances under which individualities are born and develop. It is not by virtue of this inequality, singularly exaggerated moreover, that society sustains itself, it is in spite of this inequality.
XXV
Ainsi la loi de nature de même que la loi de Justice étant l’égalité, le vœu de l’une et de l’autre identique, le problème, pour l’économiste et pour l’homme d’État, n’est plus de savoir si l’économie sera sacrifiée à la Justice ou la Justice à l’économie ; il consiste à découvrir quel sera le meilleur parti à tirer des forces physiques, intellectuelles, économiques, que le génie incessamment découvre, afin de rétablir l’équilibre social, un instant troublé par les hasards du climat, de la génération, de l’éducation, des maladies, et de tous les accidents de force majeure.
Un homme, par exemple, est plus grand et plus fort ; un autre a plus de génie ou d’adresse. Tel réussit mieux dans l’agriculture, tel autre dans l’industrie ou la navigation. Celui-ci embrasse d’un coup d’œil un vaste ensemble d’opérations ou d’idées ; celui là n’a pas de rivaux dans une spécialité plus restreinte. Dans tous ces cas, une compensation est indiquée, un nivellement à opérer, source d’émulation énergique et d’heureuse concurrence. Pour balancer les supériorités émergentes, créer sans cesse à l’égalité de nouveaux moyens dans les forces inconnues de la nature et de la société, la constitution de l’âme humaine et la division industrielle présentent des ressources infinies.
Telle est donc la pensée radicale, irréconciliable à jamais, qui sépare l’économie chrétienne, malthusienne, économie à la fois matérialiste et mystique, de l’économie révolutionnaire.
La première, jugeant d’après les anomalies superficielles des choses, n’hésite point à déclarer les hommes inégaux par nature ; et sans se donner la peine de les comparer dans leurs œuvres, sans attendre le résultat du travail, de l’éducation et de la séparation des industries, se gardant surtout de rechercher avec exactitude la part qui revient à chacun dans le produit collectif, et de mesurer la dotation à la contribution, elle conclut de cette inégalité prétendue à la consécration du privilége, tant d’exploitation que de propriété.
La Révolution, au contraire, partant du principe que l’égalité est la loi de toute la nature, suppose que l’homme par essence est égal à l’homme, et que si, à l’épreuve, il s’en trouve qui restent en arrière, c’est qu’ils n’ont pas voulu ou pas su tirer parti de leurs moyens. Elle considère l’hypothèse de l’inégalité comme une injure gratuite, que dément chaque jour le progrès de la science et de l’industrie, et elle travaille de toutes ses forces, par la législation et par l’équation de plus en plus approchée des services et des salaires, à redresser la balance qu’a fait pencher le préjugé. C’est pour cela qu’elle déclare tous les hommes égaux en droits et devant la loi, voulant, d’une part, que toutes industries, professions, fonctions, arts, sciences, métiers, soient considérés comme également nobles et méritoires ; de l’autre, qu’en tout litige, en toute compétition, les parties, sauf évaluation des produits et services, soient réputées égales, et, afin de réaliser de plus en plus dans la société cette Justice égalitaire, que tous les citoyens jouissent de moyens égaux de développement et d’action…
On insiste : les races humaines ne sont point de valeur ou qualité égale ; il en est dont la meilleure éducation ne servira jamais qu’à montrer l’infériorité, tranchons le mot, la déchéance.
Je ne sais. Le catholicisme fait pourtant grand bruit de l’unité originelle de notre espèce, racontée dans la Bible. Mais admettons qu’il en soit ainsi qu’on le prétend ; que les races de l’Afrique, de l’Amérique et de l’Océanie, ne puissent soutenir la comparaison avec la caucasienne. Alors il en sera de ces races mal nées ou abâtardies comme il en est, dans notre société civilisée, des créatures souffreteuses, chétives, contrefaites, objets de la charité des familles, et qui cessent de contribuer à la population : elles seront absorbées et finiront par s’éteindre. La justice ou la mort ! telle est la loi de la Révolution.
XXVII. — The law of nature as well as the law of justice being equality, the wish of both identical, the problem, for the economist and for the statesman, is no longer to know if the economy will be sacrificed to Justice or Justice to the economy; it consists in discovering what will be the best advantage to draw from physical, intellectual, economic forces, which genius incessantly discovers, in order to re-establish the social equilibrium, momentarily disturbed by the hazards of the climate, of the generation, of the education, illnesses, and by all the accidents of force majeure.
One man, for example, is taller and stronger, another has more genius and skill. One succeeds better in agriculture, another in industry or navigation. The latter embraces at a glance a vast set of operations or ideas, the former has no rivals in a more restricted specialty. In all these cases, a compensation is indicated, a leveling to operate, a source of energetic emulation and happy competition. To balance emerging superiorities, to constantly create the equality of new means in the unknown forces of nature and society, the constitution of the human soul and industrial division present infinite resources.
Such, then, is the radical difference, irreducible forever, that separates the Christian, Malthusian economy, an economy that is both materialist and mystical, from the revolutionary economy.
The first, judging from the accidental anomalies of things, does not hesitate to declare men unequal by nature; then, without taking the trouble to compare them in their works, without waiting for the result of work, education and the separation of industries, being careful above all not to seek with exactitude the share that belongs to each in the collective product, and to measure the endowment with the contribution, it concludes from this supposed inequality to the consecration of privilege, as much of exploitation as of property.
The Revolution, on the contrary, starting from the principle that equality is the law of all nature, supposes that man in essence is equal to man, and that if, in the test, there are those who remain behind, it is because they did not want or did not know how to take advantage of their means. It considers the hypothesis of inequality as a gratuitous insult, which the progress of science and industry denies every day, and it works with all its might, by legislation and by the increasingly approximate equation of services and wages, to redress the balance tipped by prejudice. This is why it declares all men equal in rights and before the law, desiring, on the one hand, that all industries, professions, functions, arts, sciences, trades, be considered as equally noble and meritorious; on the other, that in any dispute, in any competition, the parties, except for the evaluation of products and services, be deemed equal, and, in order to achieve more and more in society this egalitarian justice, that all citizens enjoy equal means of development and action.
It is insisted: The human races are not of equal value or quality; there are some whose best education will only ever serve to show their inferiority, let us not avoi the word, their degradation.
I do not know. Catholicism, however, makes a great noise about the original unity of our species, as recounted in the Bible. But let it be as it is claimed, that the races of Africa, America, and Oceania cannot bear comparison with the Caucasian, and that no cross-breeding can redeem them. So it will be with these ill-born or bastardized races, as it is in our civilized society with the sickly, puny, counterfeit creatures, objects of the charity of families, who cease to contribute to the population: they will be absorbed and will end by passing away. Equality or death! such is the law of the Revolution.
XXVI
Cette théorie, si nette, si rationnelle, si bien fondée en fait et en droit, de l’égalité sociale ; qui affranchit l’homme du fatalisme économique, de la tyrannie aristocratique et de l’absorption communautaire ; sur laquelle nous avons vu la Révolution se prononcer d’une manière si explicite ; cette théorie, dis-je, n’a pas encore pu se faire comprendre, même des socialistes, même des républicains. Tant l’esprit humain a de peine à revenir à la nature, une fois que le despotisme et la théologie l’en ont écarté.
On connaît la formule religieuse, pour ne pas dire monacale, des communistes :
À chacun suivant ses besoins ; de chacun suivant ses moyens.
C’est la loi de famille appliquée à la société. Là, en effet, il n’est pas question d’égalité ou de non-égalité de forces, de talents, de moyens ; c’est de la fraternité pure, comme entre parents et enfants, entre frères et sœurs. Mais la famille est la sphère de l’autorité et de la subordination ; et quand le communisme sera logique, il reconnaîtra qu’en prenant dans la famille le type de la société il aboutit au système féodal. Pour obéir à une pareille loi, il faut une révélation, dit très-bien M. Buchez. Cette révélation a manqué au Luxembourg.
À chacun suivant sa capacité, à chaque capacité suivant ses œuvres, ont répliqué les saint-simoniens, tirant hardiment la conséquence du principe communiste.
Ici, plus d’égalité, ni de fait ni de droit. Sous prétexte de sauver la chair, l’église de Saint-Simon professe le plus profond mépris pour la personne. Ici, peut-elle dire, ici l’on juge et l’on jauge les capacités ; on tarife les intelligences, on estampille les âmes et les corps, on appose sur l’esprit, sur le caractère, sur la conscience, une marque de fabrique. C’est M. Enfantin qui a trouvé ces belles choses : que la postérité lui soit légère ! Nolite judicare, et non judicabimini.
Au phalanstère, autre système. Plus de sacerdoce appréciateur-juré ; ce sont tous les producteurs qui, par la cabbaliste, se toisent et s’évaluent les uns les autres. La réciproque y est, si l’on veut ; mais le principe de cette réciprocité est arbitraire et son objet odieux : la cabbaliste, appliquée à la personne, tue la Justice.
Combien la pratique immémoriale de l’humanité, dont la Révolution n’a fait que donner la formule juridique, est plus simple, surtout plus digne ! Point d’estimation des capacités, ni de la part du supérieur, ni de la part de l’égal : c’est une offense à la dignité personnelle. On n’apprécie que les produits, ce qui sauve l’amour-propre, et ramène toute l’organisation économique à cette formule si simple, l’échange !…
Que pensez-vous, Monseigneur, de cette judiciaire ? Trouvez-vous qu’elle ne vaille pas votre discipline, si sottement renouvelée par les saint-simoniens et icariens ? Ne vous semble-t-il pas que l’inspiration de 89 a été au moins aussi heureuse que celle de l’Évangile, et que, si c’était à refaire, les révolutionnaires de la Constituante et de la Convention auraient bien quelque chose à enseigner aux Apôtres ?…
Je ne quitterai pas cette étude sans toucher quelques-unes des questions les plus pratiques de l’Économie. Ce n’est pas une médiocre besogne, dans la société, d’établir la balance du Droit et du Devoir, ou, pour me servir des mots techniques, du crédit et du débit dans la Justice. C’est une entreprise bien délicate d’accorder le respect dû aux personnes avec les nécessités organiques de la production ; d’observer l’égalité sans porter atteinte à la liberté, ou moins sans imposer à la liberté d’autre entrave que le Droit. De tels problèmes requièrent une science à part, objective et subjective tout à la fois, moitié de la fatalité et moitié de la liberté ; science aussi simple que sûre, qui a ses principes à la source même de l’esprit, à une profondeur plus grande que les mathématiques, et dont on me pardonnera de ne pouvoir donner ici qu’une idée fort imparfaite, par l’exemple de quelques-uns de ses résultats.
XXVIII. — This theory of social equality, so clear, so rational, so well founded in fact and in droit, which frees man from economic fatalism, aristocratic tyranny and communal absorption; on which we have seen the Revolution express itself in such an explicit manner; this theory, I say, has not yet been able to make itself understood, even by socialists, even by republicans. So hard is it for the human mind to return to nature once despotism and theology have driven it away.
We know the religious, not to say monastic formula of the communists:
To each according to his needs; from each according to his means.
It is the family law applied to society. There, in fact, there is no question of equality or non-equality of forces, talents, means; it is pure fraternity, as between parents and children, between brothers and sisters. But the family is the sphere of authority and subordination; and when communism is logical, it will recognize that by taking the type of society from the family it ends in despotism. To obey such a law, a revelation is necessary, says M. Buchez very well. This revelation was missed at the Luxembourg.
To each according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its works, replied the Saint-Simonians, boldly drawing the conclusion from the communist principle.
Here, no more equality, neither in fact nor in law. Under the pretext of saving the flesh, the Church of Saint-Simon professes the deepest contempt for the person. Here, it can say, here one judges and gauges capacities; intelligences are priced, souls and bodies are stamped, a trademark is affixed to the mind, to the character, to the conscience. It was M. Enfantin who found these beautiful things: may posterity be light to him! Nolite judicare, not judicabimini.
In the phalanstery, another system. No more assessor-sworn priesthood; it is the producers who, through the kabbalist, evaluate each other mutually. The reciprocal is there: so we have always maintained that the phalansterians, by caballing against each other, would end in equality.
How much simpler, above all more worthy, is the immemorial practice of humanity, of which the Revolution has only given the juridical formula! No estimation of capacities, neither on the part of the superior, nor on the part of the equal: it is an offense to personal dignity. One appreciates only the products, which saves the self-love, and brings back all the economic organization to this simple formula, the **exchange.
What do you think, Monsignor, of this judiciary? Do you find that it is not worth your discipline, so foolishly renewed by the Saint-Simonians and the Icarians? Doesn’t it seem to you that the inspiration of ’89 was at least as happy as that of the Gospel, and that, if it had to be done again, the revolutionaries of the Constituent Assembly and the Convention would have something to teach the Apostles?
I will not leave this study without touching on some of the more practical questions of Economics. It is not a mediocre task in society to establish the balance between Right and Duty, or, to use technical words, between credit and debit in Justice. It is a very delicate enterprise to accord respect to persons with the organic necessities of production; to observe equality without infringing on liberty, or at least without imposing on liberty any hindrance other than Right. Such problems require a science apart, objective and subjective at the same time, half fatality and half liberty; a science as simple as it is sure, which has its principles at the very source of the mind, at a greater depth than mathematics, and of which you will forgive me for only being able to give here a very imperfect idea, through the example of some of its results.
CHAPITRE VI.
XXII
If Justice, in what concerns persons, is established on a religious basis, that will be all that is desired, except respect for humanity; — if it is established on the authentic laws of conscience, and without any transcendental consideration, it will be respect for humanity, and it cannot be anything else. I demonstrated this proposition in my previous study.
I continue my discourse, and I add:
If Justice, as regards goods, has a theological idea for its basis, it will be anything that you want, except equality—if it rests on the principle of human reciprocity, given in consciousness by the feeling that man has of his dignity in others, it will be equality and nothing but equality. I demonstrated this in the first five paragraphs of this third study, and I will demonstrate it even better presently.
All human morality, in the family, in the city, in the state, in education, in speculation, in the economic constitution, and even in love, depends on this single principle: Equal and reciprocal respect for human dignity, in all relations that have as their object either persons or interests.
La théorie de la Justice divine, qui n’est autre chose, au fond, que l’élévation à la suprême puissance de la justice unilatérale des compagnons de Romulus, aboutit fatalement à la spoliation mutuelle, au brigandage organisé, à la guerre sociale. C’est elle qui produit ce système de priviléges, de monopoles, de concessions, de subventions, de prélibations, de pots-de-vin, de primes, où les biens du prince sont confondus avec ceux de la nation, la propriété individuelle avec la propriété collective ; système dont le dernier mot est l’extermination des citoyens les uns par les autres, figurée par le mythe chrétien de l’enfer.
The theory of human justice, in which the reciprocity of respect is converted into reciprocity of service, has as a consequence more and more approximated equality in all things. It alone produces stability in the state, union in families, education and well-being for all, according to our 5th axiom, misery nowhere.
The application of justice to the economy is therefore the most important of the sciences. The order of intellectual development wanted it to be the last.
CHAPITER VI.
Economic balances.
XXIX. — If Justice, in what concerns persons, is established on a religious basis, that will be all that is desired, except respect for humanity; — if it is established on the authentic laws of conscience, and without any transcendental consideration, it will be respect for humanity, and it cannot be anything else. I demonstrated this proposition in my previous study.
I continue my discourse, and I add:
If Justice, as regards goods, has a theological idea for its basis, it will be anything that you want, except equality—if it rests on the principle of human reciprocity, given in consciousness by the feeling that man has of his dignity in others, it will be equality and nothing but equality. I demonstrated this in the first five paragraphs of this third study, and I will demonstrate it even better presently.
All human morality, in the family, in the city, in the state, in education, in speculation, in the economic constitution, and even in love, depends on this single principle: Equal and reciprocal respect for human dignity, in all relations that have as their object either persons or interests.
The theory of divine justice, which is nothing else, as we have seen, than a combination of authority, inequality and community, inevitably leads to mutual spoliation, organized robbery, to social war. It is this theory that produces this system of privileges, monopolies, concessions, subsidies, prelibations, bribes, bonuses, where the goods of the prince are confused with those of the nation, individual property with collective ownership; a system whose last word is the extermination of citizens by one another, represented by the Christian myth of hell.
The theory of human justice, in which the reciprocity of respect is converted into reciprocity of service, has as a consequence more and more approximated equality in all things. It alone produces stability in the state, union in families, education and well-being for all, according to our 5th axiom, misery nowhere.
The application of justice to the economy is therefore the most important of the sciences. The order of intellectual development wanted it to be the last.
XXVIII
Ouvriers et Maîtres.
De temps immémorial la classe des producteurs s’est divisée en deux sections, les ouvriers et les maîtres.
Comment ceux-ci sont-ils nés de ceux-là ? De la même manière que le despotisme naît sans cesse de la démocratie. En tant qu’il appartient au règne animal, l’homme obéit à des instincts divers, que la Justice a pour but de redresser, et dont l’un des plus puissants est celui qui pousse la multitude à se donner des patrons, des commandants, imperatores, τυρἀννους, absolument comme les chevaux sauvages et autres espèces dites sociables, qu’on pourrait aussi bien nommer serviles.
Le christianisme a reçu cette division, qui ne lui a fait faire aucune réserve. Il s’est contenté de recommander aux serviteurs d’obéir à leurs maîtres, aux maîtres d’être bienveillants pour leurs ouvriers : ce qui n’exigeait certes pas un grand effort de génie et n’a pas dû fatiguer beaucoup la sainte Sagesse.
La Révolution, qui la première posa en 1789, avec le principe d’Égalité, le droit au travail, n’a pas voulu semer la haine entre les citoyens en jetant ex abrupto l’interdit sur cette distinction séculaire. Elle s’est contentée d’abolir les priviléges corporatifs, le privilége de maîtrise, d’assurer la concurrence, et de laisser faire au temps.
Or, en vertu de cette égalité de respect consacrée par la Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, l’Économie et la Justice, désormais inséparables, se demandent si le contrat de louage d’ouvrage entre le maître et l’ouvrier, tel qu’il se pratique dans les grands ateliers, est établi sur des principes équitables, si la réciprocité du service est observée, en autres termes si la détermination du salaire est juste ?
Pour que le service soit réciproque, il faut que le maître, je veux dire le représentant de l’entreprise, rende à l’ouvrier autant que l’ouvrier lui donne : ce qui implique, non pas l’égalité des salaires entre eux y compris celui du chef, puisqu’il est possible que les services ne soient point égaux, puisque l’égalité sociale des personnes ne préjuge point l’égalité effective des services, mais ce qui implique l’égalité entre le salaire de chaque ouvrier et son produit.
Égalité du produit et du salaire, telle est ici la traduction exacte de la loi de réciprocité, tel est le principe qui depuis la Révolution est censé régir le travail. Celui-là sera grand dans l’histoire, et aura bien mérité des ouvriers, qui aura fait de ce principe une vérité.
Or, abstraction faite du contrat à prix ferme ou forfait, par lequel nombre de travailleurs aiment à se libérer des chances aléatoires qui pèsent sur les entrepreneurs, contrat qui n’a rien en soi d’immoral quand il est libre, rien de dangereux quand il ne se multiplie pas outre mesure, il est évident, aujourd’hui, que la Justice ne préside point à la condition de l’immense majorité des ouvriers, lesquels n’ont pas la liberté du choix, et pour qui le salaire alloué par les compagnies ou entrepreneurs est loin d’exprimer une réciprocité.
Voici ce qui se passe dans une maison de confection que je puis citer.
Une ouvrière habile peut gagner jusqu’à 1 sou par heure, soit, pour une journée de travail de 12 heures, 12 sous : la journée ordinaire est payée 50 centimes.
Une ouvrière occupée à domicile porte au bout de deux mois sa note, montant à 30 fr. Elle a donc, pendant ces deux mois, fait crédit de son travail à l’établissement. Vous croyez qu’on va lui compter ses 30 fr. ? Point du tout : on lui retient sur la somme, à titre d’escompte, à raison de 6 p. 0/0 l’an, pour trois mois, 45 cent., neuf sous.
C’est à Paris, en l’an de grâce 1857, que se commet ce grapillage.
Je sais tout ce l’on peut dire sur les risques d’entreprise, les nécessités de la concurrence, les charges du commerce, etc. Ce n’est pas le bourgeois qui a fait le régime où il est engagé : une juste rémunération est due à son initiative. Qu’on la règle, cette rémunération, sur une base équitable, je ne m’y oppose pas. Mais cette retenue de 45 cent. pour un crédit prétendu de trois mois, alors que l’ouvrière en a fait un de deux mois dont on ne lui tient pas compte, n’est-ce pas un fait qui crie vengeance ? Le denier de la veuve si bien raconté dans l’Évangile m’attendrit aux larmes ; ce demi-centime volé jour par jour à la jeune fille m’embrase de fureur. Et ce n’est pas la spoliation seulement que je considère, c’est l’outrage…
Or, si je réfléchis que pour abaisser la journée de la lingère à 50 centimes il a fallu passer par une série de pilleries analogues, transformées successivement en principe et passées en tarif ; si j’ajoute que ce cas particulier est celui de l’immense majorité des ouvriers, n’ai-je pas le droit de conclure que le défaut de réciprocité est ici la cause première de la misère des uns et de la fortune des autres, en sorte que cette inégalité de fortunes tant célébrée n’est le plus souvent autre chose que l’expression de l’iniquité même ?
Je reviendrai, dans une étude spéciale, sur la question du travail ; mais je le dis dès à présent : Faites justice, et vous aurez supprimé, dans notre société industrielle, la cause première de l’inégalité, l’inexactitude du salaire.
Mais que dis-je ? le cas semble prévu par notre législation chrétienne, ennemie de l’égalité, et qui a tout fait pour la sécurité de l’usurpation, rien pour le droit du producteur.
Que les patrons s’entendent, que les entrepreneurs se coalisent, que les compagnies se fusionnent, le ministère public y peut d’autant moins que le Pouvoir pousse à la centralisation des intérêts capitalistes et l’encourage ; mais que les ouvriers, qui ont le sentiment du droit que leur a légué la Révolution, protestent et se mettent en grève, seul moyen qu’ils aient de faire admettre leurs réclamations, ils sont châtiés, transportés sans pitié, voués aux fièvres de Cayenne et Lambessa. Le serf du moyen âge était-il autrement attaché à la glèbe ?
XXX. — Workers and Masters.
From time immemorial the class of producers has been divided into two sections, the workers and the masters.
How did the latter arise from the former? In the same way that despotism constantly arises from democracy. As he belongs to the animal kingdom, man obeys various instincts, which Justice aims to rectify, and one of the most powerful of which is that which pushes the multitude to give themselves bosses, commanders, imperatores, τυρἀννους, absolutely like wild horses and other so-called sociable species, which one might as well call servile.
Christianity received this distinction without expressing any reservations. It contented itself with recommending to servants to obey their masters, to masters to be benevolent towards their workmen: which certainly did not require a great effort of genius and could not have fatigued the Holy Wisdom very much.
The Revolution, which first posed in 1789, with the principle of equality, the right to work, did not want to sow hatred between citizens by imposing ex abrupto a ban on this age-old distinction. It contented itself with abolishing corporate privileges, the privilege of control, ensuring competition, and letting time do its work.
Now, by virtue of this equality of respect enshrined in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Economy and Justice, henceforth inseparable, asked one another whether the work contract between the master and the worker, as practiced in large workshops, is established on equitable principles, whether reciprocity of service is observed, in other words, whether the determination of wages is just
For the service to be reciprocal, the master, I mean the representative of the enterprise, must render to the worker as much as the worker gives him: which implies, not the equality of all wages between them, including those of the chiefs, since it is possible that the services are not equal, since the social equality of the people does not prejudge the effective equality of the services; but which implies equality between the wages of each workman and his product.
Equality of product and wages, this is here the exact translation of the law of reciprocity; such is the principle that, since the Revolution, is supposed to govern work. This one will be great in history and will have well deserved workers, who will have made a truth of this principle.
However, setting aside the contract at fixed price or flat rate, by which many workers like to free themselves from the uncertain chances that weigh on the contractors, a contract which in itself has nothing immoral when it is free, nothing dangerous when it does not multiply beyond measure, it is obvious, today, that Justice does not preside over the condition of the immense majority of workers, who do not have freedom of choice, and for whom the salary allocated by companies or entrepreneurs is far from expressing reciprocity.
Here is what happens in a clothing house that I can cite. I cite the fact for its very eccentricity.
A skilled worker can earn up to 1 sou per hour, or, for a 12-hour working day, 12 sous: the ordinary day is paid 50 centimes.
A worker employed at home presents her bill after two months, amounting to 30 francs. She therefore, during these two months, gave credit for her work to the manufacturer. Do you think we’re going to count his 30 francs? Not at all: it is deducted from the sum, by way of discount, at the rate of 6% a year, for three months, 45 centimes, nine sous. It was in Paris, in the year of grace 1857, that this scrounging took place.
I know everything that can be said about business risks, competitive necessities, trade charges, etc. It is not the bourgeois who made the regime in which he is engaged: a fair remuneration is due to his initiative. Let this compensation be settled on an equitable basis; I have no objection to it. But this holdback of 45 cents. for a so-called credit of three months, whereas the worker has made one of two months which she has not taken into account, isn’t this a fact that cries out for revenge? The widow’s mite, so well told in the Gospel, moved me to tears; this half-cent stolen day by day from a young girl sets me ablaze with fury. And it is not the spoliation alone that I am considering; it is the outrage.
Now, if I reflect that in order to lower the day of the seamstress to 50 centimes it was necessary to go through a series of similar lootings, successively transformed into principle and passed into tariffs, if I add that this particular case is that of the immense majority of the workers, am I not entitled to conclude that the lack of reciprocity is here the first cause of the misery of some and of the fortune of others, so that this much celebrated inequality of fortunes is not most often anything other than the expression of iniquity itself?
I will return, in a special study, to the question of work; but I say it from now on: Do justice, and you will have suppressed, in our industrial society, the primary cause of inequality, the inaccuracy of wages.
But what am I saying? the case seems foreseen by our Christian legislation, enemy of equality, which has done everything for the security of usurpation, nothing for the right of the producer.
Let the bosses get along, let the entrepreneurs coalesce, let the companies merge, the public prosecutor can do that much less about it as the governmental power pushes for the centralization of capitalist interests and encourages it. But let the workers, who have the feeling of the right that the Revolution has bequeathed to them, protest and go on strike, the only means they have of having their claims admitted, they are chastised, transported without pity, doomed to the heat of Cayenne and Lambessa. Was the serf of the Middle Ages otherwise attached to the soil?
XXIX
Vendeurs et Acheteurs.
If it is a consequence of Justice that the wage is equal to the product, it is another that, two dissimilar products having to be exchanged, the exchange must be made on account of the respective values, that is to say of the cost of each product.
Par frais de production ou prix de revient on entend en général la dépense en outils et matières premières, la consommation personnelle du producteur, plus une prime pour les accidents et non-valeurs dont est semée sa carrière, maladies, vieillesse, paternité, chômages, etc.
Reciprocity in exchange only exists on this condition. Any addition, fictitious or forced, to the cost price is a commercial lie; any sale of merchandise whose value is overstated or surcharged with extraneous charges, is theft. If, for example, between the producer-consumers who exchange their products there exists a series of intermediaries, whose commissions, interest, brokerage, artificially increase the price of the goods, as in the end this surcharge is levied on the goods themselves, it It will happen that the said producer-consumers, each bringing a value of 400 to the exchange, will all receive only 15, 20, 30, 50 at most. Their position is the same as that of the worker we were talking about earlier, who for a labor of 100 receives only a salary of 15, 20, 30, 50, the surplus making the profit of the boss.
Equality in exchange, here, then, is another principle outside of which there is no justice. Now this principle, the Church and all antiquity misunderstood; nowadays the conservative economists of privilege strive to stifle it under the mystification of free trade.
Si l’égalité dans le commerce était réalisée, un nouveau progrès, un progrès immense serait accompli vers l’égalité des fortunes… Mais, en persévérant dans cette direction égalitaire, que deviendrait tout à l’heure la hiérarchie, le système de subordination et d’autorité ?
Dans ces derniers temps, le gouvernement impérial a essayé de réglementer le commerce de la viande et de la boulangerie, la production des alcools, etc. À force d’amendes il est parvenu à faire observer ses taxes ; mais comme il ne dépend pas du gouvernement d’assigner le prix naturel des choses, bien moins encore d’éliminer du prix courant les surcharges dont le parasitisme le grève, le gouvernement n’a réussi qu’à constater officiellement que le pain était cher, la viande hors de prix, les eaux-de-vie inabordables, et à donner sa sanction à cette cherté.
Le gouvernement, qui ne garantit aucune intention, s’est avisé tout à coup, pour le bien du peuple, de garantir la cherté des subsistances : quelle philanthropie !
Cependant un capitaliste (M. Delamarre), mettant à profit une idée socialiste, se dit : Je n’aspire point à fixer le prix des choses ; mais je ferai du commerce véridique, de la vie à meilleur marché, sinon tout à fait encore de l’échange égal. Je ferai de la loyauté commerciale, non par vertu, comme la police fait des soupes, mais par spéculation ; et j’obtiendrai de meilleurs résultats que la police.
M. Delamarre a donc ouvert un vaste magasin où il offre au public, à prix de revient, toute espèce de produits, garantis de nature, quantité, qualité et poids.
Par prix de revient M. Delamarre entend les frais du producteur, qu’il ne discute pas, augmentés de 10 0/0, savoir, 5 0/0 de bénéfice pour le producteur, 2½ pour les frais de magasin, 2½ pour le bénéfice de lui Delamarre.
C’est, comme il le dit lui-même, de la loyauté commerciale ; ce n’est pas encore de l’égalité, puisque dans les frais du producteur et dans les 10 0/0 de supplément il entre encore, en grand nombre, des éléments parasites.
Que faudrait-il pour que la réciprocité fût complète ?
Il faudrait, indépendamment de l’expurgation absolue du parasitisme, ce qui suppose d’abord la réciprocité des services, comme nous le disions tout à l’heure, ensuite la réciprocité de crédit et de propriété ; il faudrait, dis-je, que le magasin général, ou dock, au lieu d’être au compte d’un entrepreneur de loyauté et garantie, fût au compte des producteurs eux-mêmes, se garantissant loyauté et sincérité les uns aux autres.
À qui peut-il appartenir de débattre et fixer, selon l’heure et le lieu, le prix exact de chaque chose, si ce n’est aux producteurs-consommateurs, réciproquement intéressés, soit pour la vente, soit pour l’achat ?… Rien de plus simple que ce système, qui ferait disparaître les trois quarts des boutiques, et rendrait à la production une multitude d’intelligences et de bras, absorbés, ruinés dans un trafic inutile.
Mais justement la majorité préfère le trafic au travail ; les propriétaires de maisons applaudissent à ce régime, qui leur vaut en loyers des sommes énormes ; la banque l’encourage, dans l’intérêt de sa circulation usuraire ; le fisc le favorise par ses patentes ; l’agioteur lui réserve ses capitaux ; enfin l’école académique le prône, sous le nom de liberté du commerce. Il ne faudra pas moins qu’une catastrophe pour trancher ce problème de l’égal échange, le plus simple de toute l’économie.
La fin de non-recevoir qu’on oppose à cette réforme, commandée par la Justice, est la difficulté de s’entendre. À la bonne heure ! Oncques ne prétendîmes que la Justice ne devait coûter aucun effort. Pour végéter dans une honteuse licence, rien à faire ; pour appliquer le droit, et par ce moyen arriver à l’ordre et à la richesse, il faut vouloir : ne voilà-t-il pas une puissante exception !…
L’année dernière, des capitalistes anglais, prévoyant une hausse sur les sucres, achètent tout ce qui existait en magasins : leur entremise coûte aux consommateurs 12 millions. Cette année, trois récoltes sont achetées d’avance par le commerce. Et la boutique d’admirer, comme la canaille admire les numéros gagnants d’une loterie, comme nos soldats d’Afrique admirent une razzia. Elle ne serait pas la boutique, en effet, si elle avait le discernement du juste et de l’injuste.
Il se fabrique en France, chaque année, pour 4 à 500 millions de soieries : avec 10 millions comptant on accaparerait toute la matière première qui sert à cette fabrication. Que dirait-on si Paris tout entier était miné, et qu’il fût permis au premier venu de mettre le feu aux poudres !… Or, ce n’est pas seulement sur la soie et le sucre que la spéculation opère : c’est sur les grains, les boissons, la viande, la houille, les bois, sur toutes les denrées de première nécessité. Un négociant de Bordeaux, bien renseigné sur ces matières, m’assure que le riz, qui se vend couramment 20 fr. le petit quintal, pourrait ne coûter que 7 fr. En 1856, la récolte du vin a été achetée sur pied. Des sociétés spéciales d’accaparement, des coalitions de marchands existent sur tous les points du territoire, tantôt avec privilége de l’État, tantôt sans privilége et sous seing privé.
Pour conjurer de tels périls, créer aux producteurs-consommateurs de sérieuses garanties, la police n’est de rien : il faut le Droit. Un système de docks résoudrait la question ; mais le gouvernement concède les docks, c’est-à-dire qu’à la place des milliers de trafiquants au détail, il crée des compagnies de monopole ! On en a vu les prémices… Une fois pourtant le Pouvoir se fâcha, lors des approvisionnements de lard pour l’armée d’Orient. Une demi-douzaine de charcutiers furent mis à l’amende par le tribunal correctionnel : la boutique cria au scandale ; puis tout rentra dans le repos. Un jour on concédera le commerce des cochons, et ceux qui les mangent n’en penseront pas davantage.
Et vous demandez d’où viennent les révolutions ? De ce que la Justice est exclue des transactions humaines, l’économie sociale livrée au privilége, quand elle n’est pas abandonnée au hasard.
XXXI. — Sellers and Buyers.
If it is a consequence of Justice that the wage is equal to the product, it is another that, two dissimilar products having to be exchanged, the exchange must be made on account of the respective values, that is to say of the cost of each product.
By cost of production or cost price we generally mean the expenditure on tools and raw materials, the personal consumption of the producer, plus a premium for the accidents and non-values with which his career is sown, illnesses, old age, paternity, unemployment, etc
Reciprocity in exchange only exists on this condition. Any addition, fictitious or forced, to the cost price is a commercial lie; any sale of merchandise whose value is overstated or surcharged with extraneous charges, is theft. If, for example, between the producer-consumers who exchange their products there exists a series of intermediaries, whose commissions, interest, brokerage, artificially increase the price of the goods, as in the end this surcharge is levied on the goods themselves, it It will happen that the said producer-consumers, each bringing a value of 400 to the exchange, will all receive only 15, 20, 30, 50 at most. Their position is the same as that of the worker we were talking about earlier, who for a labor of 100 receives only a salary of 15, 20, 30, 50, the surplus making the profit of the boss.
Equality in exchange, here, then, is another principle outside of which there is no justice. Now this principle, the Church and all antiquity misunderstood; nowadays the conservative economists of privilege strive to stifle it under the mystification of free trade.
If equality in commerce were realized, a new progress, an immense progress would be accomplished towards equality of fortunes. But, by persevering in this egalitarian direction, what would shortly become of the hierarchy, the system of subordination and authority?
In recent times the imperial government has tried to regulate the trade in meat and bakery, the production of spirits, etc. By the use of fines it succeeded in having its taxes observed; but, as it does not depend on the government to assign the natural price of things, much less to eliminate from the current price the surcharges with which parasitism burdens it, the government only succeeded in officially noting that bread was expensive, meat overpriced, spirits unaffordable, and giving its sanction to this dearness. The government, which does not guarantee any invention, has suddenly decided, for the good of the people, to guarantee subsistence at a high cost: what philanthropy!
However, a capitalist (M. Delamarre), taking advantage of a socialist idea, says to himself: I do not aspire to fix the price of things; but I will make truthful trade, cheaper life, if not quite still equal trade. I’ll do commercial loyalty, not by virtue, like the police make soup, but by speculation, and I’ll get better results than the police.
Mr. Delamarre has therefore opened a vast store where he offers to the public, at cost price, all kinds of products, subject to nature, quantity, quality and weight. — By cost price Mr. Delamarre means the producer’s costs, which he does not discuss, increased by 10%, namely, 5% profit for the producer, 2½ for store costs, 2½ for the benefit of himself, Delamarre. It is, as he says himself, commercial loyalty; it is not yet equality, since in the producer’s costs and in the 10% supplement there are still a large number of parasitic elements. (K)
What would it take for reciprocity to be complete?
It would take, independently of the absolute expurgation of parasitism, which supposes first of all the reciprocity of services, as we said just now, then the reciprocity of credit and property; it would be necessary, I say, that the general store, or dock, instead of being at the account of a contractor of loyalty and guarantee, was at the account of the producers themselves, guaranteeing loyalty and sincerity to each other.
To whom can it belong to discuss and fix, according to the hour and the place, the exact price of each thing, if it is not with the producer-consumers, reciprocally interested, either in the sale or in the purchase? Nothing could be simpler than this system, which would make three-quarters of the shops disappear, and would restore to production a multitude of intelligence and hands, absorbed in useless traffic.
But the majority rightly prefers traffic to work; the owners of houses applaud this regime, which brings them enormous sums in rent; the bank encourages it, in the interest of its usurious circulation; the treasury favors it by its patents; the speculator reserves his Capital for himself; finally, the academic school advocates it, under the name of freedom of trade. It will take no less than a catastrophe to settle this problem of equal exchange, the simplest of all economics.
The outright refusal that we oppose to this reform, ordered by Justice, is the difficulty of getting along. All in good time! No one claimed that justice should cost no effort. To vegetate in a shameful license, nothing to do; to apply the law, and by this means to arrive at order and wealth, one must will: is this not a powerful exception!
Last year, English capitalists, anticipating a rise in sugar prices, bought everything that existed in stores: their mediation cost consumers 12 million. This year, three harvests are purchased in advance by the trade. And the shop to admire, as the rabble admires the winning numbers of a lottery, as our soldiers in Africa admire a raid. It wouldn’t be the shop, indeed, if it had the discernment of the just and the unjust.
There is manufactured in France, each year, for 400 to 500 million silks: with 40 million in cash, we would monopolize all the raw material used for this manufacture. What would we say if the whole of Paris were mined, and the first wind was allowed to set fire to the powder! Now, it is not only on silk and sugar that speculation operates: it is on grains, drinks, meat, coal, wood, on all the foodstuffs of prime necessity. A Bordeaux merchant, well informed on these matters, assures me that the rice, which is currently sold for 20 francs the small quintal, could cost only 7 francs. In 1856, the wine harvest was purchased unharvested. Special monopolizing societies, coalitions of merchants exist at all points of the territory, sometimes with the privilege of the State, sometimes without privilege and under private seal. (L)
To ward off such perils, to create serious guarantees for producer-consumers, the police are useless: Right is needed. A dock system would solve the issue; but the government concedes the docks, that is to say, in place of the thousands of retail traders, it creates monopoly companies. We have seen the signs. Once, however, Power got angry, during the provisioning of bacon for the Army of the East. Half a dozen chairmen were fined by the criminal court: the shop cried foul; then everything returned to rest. One day we will concede the trade in pigs, and those who eat them will think no more of it.
And you ask where do revolutions come from? From the fact that Justice is excluded from human transactions, the social economy given over to privilege, when it is not left to chance.
XXX
Circulation et Escompte.
Remarquez que toutes les opérations de l’économie roulent sur deux termes : ouvriers-patrons, vendeurs-acheteurs, créanciers-débiteurs, circulateurs-escompteurs, etc. C’est un dualisme perpétuel, systématique, traînant à sa suite une équation inévitable. L’économie est par essence, par son principe, par sa méthode, par la loi de ses oscillations, par son but, la science de l’équilibre social, ce qui veut dire de l’égalité des fortunes. Cela est aussi vrai que les mathématiques sont la science des équations entre les grandeurs. Vous allez en voir un nouvel exemple.
Tout le monde sait que la masse de numéraire qui circule dans un pays est fort loin de représenter l’importance des échanges qui, à un jour donné, s’effectuent dans ce même pays. Cela se voit par la Banque de France, dont l’encaisse, au 10 juillet 1856, était de 232 millions, et les obligations de 632.
Pour subvenir à cette insuffisance, qui par parenthèse ne peut pas ne pas exister, puisque le numéraire n’a de valeur qu’autant qu’il forme, comme métal, une fraction proportionnelle de la richesse totale du pays, les commerçants sont dans l’usage, en attendant leur tour de remboursement en espèces, de tirer les uns sur les autres des lettres de change, ou bien, ce qui est la même chose, mais en sens inverse, de se souscrire réciproquement des billets à ordre, dont la circulation fait, jusqu’à un jour désigné qu’on nomme échéance, office de monnaie.
Le banquier est l’industriel qui se charge, moyennant intérêt et commission, d’opérer en temps et lieu la liquidation de toutes ces créances ; par suite, de faire aux commerçants, en échange de leurs titres, l’avance des sommes dont ils ont besoin.
Cette opération a nom escompte.
De même que l’échange ne se fait pas sans une perte de temps, et donne lieu en conséquence à un service particulier qui est celui du négociant, pareillement l’escompte ne s’opère pas non plus sans une peine, et comme tout service mérite salaire, celui du banquier est légitiment rémunérable.
Mais toute chose a sa mesure ; et puisque nous avons fait la balance des droits du négociant, nous devons faire aussi celle des droits du banquier.
Dernièrement le teneur de livres d’une maison de banque me priait de lui expliquer le mécanisme de la Banque du peuple, m’avouant ingénument n’y rien comprendre.
— Rien de plus facile, lui dis-je : en dix minutes vous allez en savoir autant que moi. Combien votre maison tire-t-elle, en moyenne, de ses capitaux ?
— 15 0/0, répondit-il. En voici le compte parfaitement exact :
Notre maison, l’une des mieux ordonnées qui existent, ne prend de papier qu’à trente jours, quarante-cinq jours au plus.
L’intérêt est compté à 6 0/0.
Supposons l’échéance moyenne du papier à un mois, et par conséquent le renouvellement des opérations pendant l’année de douze, le produit du trafic, pour un capital de 100 fr. en espèces, sera donc :
| 1. Intérêts du capital à 6 0/0 l’an | 6 | fr. |
| 2. Commission pour l’admission du papier, 1/4 0/0, ou 25 c. par chaque opération, X par 12 = |
3 | |
| 3. Commission pour la remise des espèces, 1/4 0/0, ou 25 c. par chaque opération, X par 12 = |
3 | |
| 4. Ajoutez : Frais divers d’enregistrement, ports, etc ; plus le crédit dont le banquier jouit à la Banque de France, laquelle lui remet à 4 ou 5 0/0 des espèces dont il tire 6 0/0, soit encore 25 c. X 12 = |
3 | |
| —— | ||
| Total des intérêts et commissions | 15 |
Sur ce, je repris la parole :
— Vous observerez d’abord, dis-je à mon interlocuteur, que votre patron travaille pour son propre compte, à ses risques et périls, sans engagement de la part de sa clientelle, vis-à-vis de laquelle il n’est tenu par aucun lien de droit. Dans ces conditions, qui sont celles de l’état de guerre, le prix de son service ne peut être limité que par la guerre, c’est-à-dire par la concurrence.
Or, telle n’est pas vis-à-vis du public la position de la Banque de France : elle est engagée par un contrat synallagmatique ou de réciprocité, dont il ne s’agit plus que de déterminer, avec précision, les articles.
En premier lieu, le capital social de la Banque, fixé à 91 millions, est placé en rentes sur l’État, qui en sert l’intérêt. De ce côté donc rien n’est dû par le commerce escompteur, puisque l’État qui paye à la Banque l’intérêt de son capital n’est autre que la société, le commerce lui-même, et qu’il est de principe en matière de commerce que le même service ne peut être payé deux fois.
Mais, demandez-vous, sur quel capital opère la Banque, puisque le sien est placé en rentes sur l’État ? — Elle opère, en premier lieu, sur le numéraire circulant, auquel elle substitue peu à peu les billets qu’elle a le privilége d’émettre, et qui vient ainsi s’engouffrer dans ses caves : c’est ainsi, lorsque la Banque émettait des coupures de 100 et de 50 fr., qu’on a vu son encaisse s’élever jusqu’à la somme énorme de 600 millions. — Elle opère en second lieu sur le crédit public, représenté par son portefeuille, dont chaque valeur, revêtue de trois signatures, porte en soi une garantie égale à celle du numéraire.
Le capital social de 91 millions 250,000 fr., placé en rentes sur l’État, ne sert que de cautionnement à la ponctualité et à la prudence de la Banque, comme le cautionnement d’un notaire ou d’un receveur général.
C’était la pensée de la note du 29 mai 1810, rédigée par ordre de l’empereur.
« Une banque publique bien administrée, disait cette Note, doit opérer sans capital. »
Reste donc à payer à la Banque, en rémunération du service qu’elle rend au public, 1o une prime pour le risque que court son capital dans une si grande entreprise ; 2o une commission pour ses frais d’administration.
Faisons-en le compte.
Supposons que le capital, crédit et espèces, représenté par l’émission des billets, sur lequel opère la Banque, soit de 600 millions. — Le 31 juillet 1866, le chiffre de la circulation était de 667 millions.
Supposons également l’échéance moyenne du papier reçu à l’escompte de quarante-cinq jours. Le renouvellement s’opérant neuf fois dans l’année, la masse des opérations sera de 5 milliards 400 millions. — En 1856, elle a atteint 5 milliards 809 millions, dont 4 milliards 676 millions pour les escomptes.
Moyennant une retenue de 1/8 0/0, soit 12 cent. 5, pour commission, change, agio, prime d’assurance, etc., le produit de la Banque pour l’année sera de 6,750,000 fr. — En 1866, ce produit a été de 37,059,226 fr. 40 ; soit 63 cent. 8 dixièmes pour 0/0 sur une masse d’opérations de 5 milliards 809 millions, en supposant le crédit moyen accordé par la Banque à quarante-cinq jours.
Les dépenses ordinaires de l’administration, d’après le compte-rendu de 1856, ont été de 5,100,000 fr. ; le chiffre des pertes, provenant de billets impayés, zéro. Reste, par conséquent, pour bénéfice de la Compagnie, dans l’hypothèse que nous avons faite, 1,650,000 fr., soit 18 fr. par action, ce qui porte l’intérêt du capital, dividende compris, à 5 fr. 80 c. 0/0. Rémunération honnête, dont se contentent en temps ordinaire les plus difficiles. — En 1856, le produit de ce capital, grossi par le privilége, a été de 272 fr. par action, ou 27 fr. 20 c. 0/0.
Je dis donc que la Banque de France, à qui son privilége constitue vis-à-vis du pays un engagement synallagmatique, manque à la réciprocité, puisque, tandis que l’État lui paye 3,686,481 fr. pour intérêt de son capital, elle, de son côté, ne paye rien pour les 600 millions, espèces et garantie, dont elle dispose ; qu’elle s’adjuge ainsi 24 millions d’intérêts qui ne lui appartiennent pas ; qu’à cet effet elle grève arbitrairement l’escompte, à l’échéance moyenne de quarante-cinq jours, de 41 c. 3, en autres termes, de 3 fr. 70 c. pour 0/0 l’an ; et qu’en conséquence il y a lieu, pour toutes ces raisons, de faire subir au bilan de la Banque un redressement.
Retranchant donc 24 millions, indûment perçus, des 37,059,226 fr. 40 c. formant le produit de 1856, resterait 13,059,226 fr 40 c, qui, les dépenses ordinaires payées, laisseraient à la Compagnie 7,959,226 fr. 40 c. de bénéfice, soit, avec l’intérêt payé par l’État, un revenu net de 12 fr. 72 c. pour 0/0,
Revenu, direz-vous, bien supérieur aux 5.80 auxquels nous a conduits tout à l’heure l’hypothèse. Oui, mais croyez-vous que si la loi de 1840, au lieu de proroger purement et simplement le privilége de la Banque, si, le 9 mai 1857, le Corps législatif, au lieu d’allonger de trente années cette prorogation, l’avait mise à la sous-enchère comme on faisait d’abord pour les compagnies de chemins de fer, il ne se serait pas trouvé de capitalistes qui pour un revenu moindre eussent consenti à faire l’escompte au commerce français au taux moyen de 20, et même 15 c. 0/0, pour le papier à quarante-cinq jours, c’est-à-dire à raison de 1 fr. 80 et 1 fr. 35 0/0 l’an ? Croyez-vous enfin qu’il n’eût pas été possible avant 1897, date d’expiration du privilége, d’abaisser cet escompte à 10 c. ce qui aurait été presque la même chose pour le commerce que de régler toutes les opérations au comptant ?
On a dit à cela que le bas prix de l’escompte amènerait bientôt, par la demande de remboursement des billets, la sortie de tout le numéraire.
Eh bien ! voulez-vous au contraire que ce même bas prix amène à la Banque tout le numéraire de l’étranger ? Le moyen est facile : c’est d’ajouter au taux ordinaire de l’escompte un agio de 3, 4 ou 5 0/0, lorsque le numéraire sera demandé de préférence aux billets. La différence fera vite rechercher ceux-ci, et affluer de tous les points du globe le numéraire.
Voilà ce qu’était la fameuse banque du peuple. Il n’y a pas là d’utopie : c’est de la pratique la plus élémentaire, comme l’avait comprise l’empereur Napoléon Ier et du droit le plus positif, comme l’entend le Code. L’Église ne l’a pas trouvé, il faut le reconnaître ; l’école de Malthus n’y veut point entendre, j’en conviens encore ; la boutique n’y comprend goutte, comprend-elle quelque chose ? le parasitisme et l’agiotage ne s’en accommoderaient pas, je l’avoue humblement, et le parasitisme et l’agiotage sont les maîtres ; le gouvernement tire son lopin du système par les emprunts qu’il fait à la Banque, et j’en plains mon pays ; la vieille démocratie enfin se gausse de mes idées et les tient pour suspectes. Tout ce monde est aussi dépourvu de sens civique que de sens moral ; mais vous, jeune lecteur, qui n’aviez pas quitté le collége
Quand apparut la République
Dans les éclairs de février,
croyez-vous que j’aie mérité l’anathème pour avoir dit qu’il n’y avait pas avantage pour le commerce à payer 4, 5, et 6 fr. un service que nous pouvons nous procurer à 90 cent., et même au-dessous ?
XXXII. — Circulation and Discount.
Note that all the operations of the economy revolve around two antithetical terms: workers-bosses, sellers-buyers, creditors-debtors, circulators-discounters, etc. It is a perpetual, systematic dualism, leading to an inevitable equation. Economics is by essence, by its principle, by its method, by the law of its oscillations, by its goal, the science of social equilibrium, which means of the equality of fortunes. This is as true as mathematics is the science of equations between quantities. You will see a new example.
Everyone knows that the mass of cash that circulates in a country is very far from representing the importance of the exchanges which take place in this same country. This can be seen by the Banque de France, whose cash on July 40, 1856, was 232 million, and obligations 632.
To provide for this insufficiency, which incidentally cannot but exist, since cash only has value insofar as it forms, as metal, a proportionate fraction of the wealth of the country, traders are accustomed, while waiting for their turn to be reimbursed in cash, to drawing bills of exchange on each other, or else, which is the same thing, but in the opposite direction, of reciprocally subscribing to promissory notes, the circulation of which serves, until a designated day that is called maturity, as money.
The banker is the industrialist who undertakes, in return for interest and commission, to operate in time and place the liquidation of all these debts; consequently, to make to the merchants, in exchange for their titles, the cash advance of the sums that they need.
This operation has the name discount.
Just as exchange does not take place without a loss of time, and consequently gives rise to a special service which is that of the merchant, similarly discounting does not take place without a penalty either, and like all service that deserves a salary, that of the banker is legitimately remunerable.
But everything has its measure; and since we have made the balance of the rights of the merchant, we must also make that of the rights of the banker.
Recently, the bookkeeper of a banking house asked me to explain the mechanism of the People’s Bank, naively admitting that he did not understand anything about it. — Nothing could be easier, I said to him: in ten minutes you will know as much as I do. How much does your house make, on average, from its capital? — 15%. Here is the perfectly exact account of it: Our house, one of the best order that exists, takes up paper only at 30, 45 days at the most. Interest is charged at 6%. Let us suppose the average maturity of the paper at one month, consequently the number of operations during the year of twelve, the product of the traffic, for a capital of 400 fr. in cash, will be:
| 1. Interest on capital at 6% per annum | 6 | fr. |
| 2. Commission for the admission of paper, 1/4%, or 25 c. by each operation, X by 12 = | 3 | |
| 3. Cash remittance commission, 1/4%, or 25 c. by each operation, X by 12 = |
3 | |
| 4. Add: Miscellaneous registration fees, ports, etc.; plus the credit the banker enjoys at the Banque de France, which gives him 4 or 5 per cent of the specie from which he draws 6 per cent, or another 25 c. x 12 = |
3 | |
| —— | ||
| Total interest and commissions | 15 |
With that, I began again:
— You will observe first that your boss works on his own account, at his own risk and peril, without commitment on the part of his clientele, with which he is not bound by any legal relationship. Under these conditions, which are those of a state of war, the price of the service can only be limited by war, that is to say by competition.
Now, this is not the position of the Banque de France with regard to the public: it is bound by a synallagmatic or reciprocal contract, the articles of which only need to be determined with precision.
In the first place, the share capital of the Bank, fixed at 94 million, is invested in annuities on the State, which pays the interest. On this side, therefore, nothing is owed by discounting trade, since the State, which pays the Bank the interest on its Capital, is none other than society, trade itself, and it is principle in commerce that the same service cannot be paid for twice.
But, you ask, on what capital does the Bank operate, since its own is invested in State income? — It operates, in the first place, on circulating cash, for which it gradually replaces the notes that it has the privilege of issuing, and which thus comes to engulf itself in its cellars: it is thus, when the Bank issued denominations of 400 and 50 fr., that we have seen its cash balance rise to the enormous sum of 600 million. — Secondly, it operates on public credit, represented by its portfolio, each security of which, bearing three signatures, carries in itself a guarantee equal to that of cash.
The share capital of 94 million, invested in annuities on the State, only serves as security for the punctuality and prudence of the Bank, like the security of a notary or a receiver-general. (M)
This was the thought of the note of May 29, 1840, drawn up by order of the Emperor.
“A well-administered public bank, said this Note, must operate without capital.”
It therefore remains to pay the Bank, in remuneration for the service it renders to the public, (1) a premium for the risk that its capital runs in such a large enterprise; (2) a commission for its administration costs.
Let’s count it.
Let us suppose that the capital, credit and specie, represented by the issue of notes, on which the Bank operates, be 600 millions. — On July 34, 1856, the circulation figure was 667 million.
Let us also assume the average maturity of the paper received at the discount of forty-five days. The renewal taking place nine times in the year, the mass of transactions will be 8 billion 400 million. — In 1856, it reached 3,809 millions, including 4,676 million for discounts.
With a deduction of 1/8%, or 42 cents. 5, for commission, exchange, agio, insurance premium, etc., the proceeds of the Bank for the year will be 6,730,000 fr. — In 1856, this product was 37,059,226 fr. 40; or 63 cents. 8 tenths per%, on a mass of operations of 5 billion 809 millions, supposing the average credit granted by the Bank at forty-five days.
The ordinary expenses of the administration, according to the report of 1856, were 5,100,000 fr.; the loss figure, from unpaid tickets, zero. There remains, therefore, for the benefit of the Company, on the assumption that we have made, 1,630,000 fr., or 48 fr. per share, which brings the interest on the capital, including the dividend, to 5 fr. 80 c. %. Honest remuneration, with which the most difficult are content in ordinary times. — In 1836, the product of this capital, increased by the privilege, was 272 fr. per share, or 27 fr. 20 c. %.
I therefore say that the Bank of France, to which its privilege constitutes a synallagmatic commitment vis-a-vis the country, fails in reciprocity, since, while the State pays 3,686,481 fr. for interest on its capital, it, on its side, pays nothing for the 600 millions, cash and guarantee, which it has; that it thus awards itself 24 millions of interests which do not belong to it; that for this purpose it arbitrarily encumbers the discount, at the average maturity of forty-five days, of 43 c. 3, in other words, from 3 fr. 70 c. for % the year; and that consequently, for all these reasons, the Bank’s balance sheet should be adjusted.
Deducting therefore 24 millions, unduly collected, from the 37,059,226 fr. 40 c. forming the product of 186, would remain 43,059,226 fr. 40 c., which, the ordinary expenses paid, would leave the Company 7,959,226 fr. 40 c. of profit, or, with the interest paid by the State, a net income of 12 fr. 72 . per %.
Revenue, you will say, much higher than the 5.80 to which the hypothesis led us just now. Yes, but do you believe that if the law of 1840, instead of purely and simply extending the privilege of the Bank; if, on May 9, 1857, the Legislative Body, instead of extending this prorogation by thirty years, had put it up for auction, as was first done for the railway companies, it would not have found capitalists who, for a lesser income, would have consented to discount French commerce at the average rate of 20 and even 15 cents. % for paper at forty-five days, that is to say at the rate of 1 fr. 80 and 1 fr. 35% per year? Finally, do you believe that it would not have been possible before 1897, the date on which the privilege expired, to lower this discount to 10 c., which would have been nearly the same thing for the commerce as settling all trades in cash?
It was said to this that the low price of the discount would soon bring about, by the demand for reimbursement of the notes, the departure out of the country of all the specie.
Well! Do you, on the contrary, want this same low price to bring all the money from abroad to the Bank? The means is easy: it is to add to the ordinary rate of discount an agio of 3, 4, or 3 per cent, when specie is demanded in preference to notes. The difference made them quickly sought out, and the species flowed in from all points of the globe.
This was the famous bank of the people. There is no utopia here: it is the most elementary practice, as the Emperor Napoleon I understood it, and the most positive law, as understood by the Code. The Church has not found it, it must be admitted; the school of Malthus does not want to listen to it, I still agree; the shop does not understand a drop of it, can it understand anything? Parasitism and speculation would not put up with it, I humbly confess, and parasitism and speculation are the masters; the government draws its share of the system by the loans which it makes with the Bank, and I pity my country for it; finally, the old democracy makes fun of my ideas and holds them suspect. All these people are as devoid of civic sense as of moral sense; but you, young reader, who had not left college
When the Republic appeared
in the lightning of February,
do you believe that I deserved anathema for having said that there was no advantage for commerce in paying 4.5 cts 6 fr. a service that he can get at 90 cents. and below?
XXXI
Lenders and Borrowers.
The balance of discount leads directly to that of credit or loans.
If there is a question on which the Church, communist by her dogma, patrician by her hierarchy, pulled in opposite directions by the double spirit of her constitution, has varied, wandered and prevaricated, it is without a doubt this one.
It is a fact that all antiquity, pagan and Jewish, agreed to condemn the loan at interest, although this loan is only a form of rent, which is universally admitted; although trade derives great benefit from the loan and in no way can do without it; although it is impossible, even unjust, to require the capitalist to advance his funds without emoluments.
All this has been demonstrated by the casuists of our century as well as by the economists; and it is known that I have no difficulty in recognizing the legitimacy of interest, in the conditions of inorganic and individualistic economy in which the old society lived.
Since the Church, following the example of philosophy, returning to common sense, thought it necessary in recent times to recant on the question of interest; since it abjured its ancient doctrine, was it therefore wrong, was it iniquitous and senseless, when it proscribed this same interest at a time when it combined all the characteristics of necessity, and therefore of right? How does the Church justify this variation? She who never ceased to raise an outcry against the Jews about their usury, and who was the cause of so many spoliations and massacres, how did she end up on the side of the publicans, the Cahorsins, Lombards and Jews? How did she bow down to Mammon?
The Church, you will say, has not changed its maxims. Understanding the necessities of the times, she just adapts her discipline to them; she practices tolerance.
The Church plays with misfortune in truth: it prohibits lending at interest when the world needs it most and when there is no possibility of free lending; she authorizes it when we can do without it.
En 1848 et 1849, j’ai prouvé, dans de nombreuses publications, que, le principe de la Justice étant la réciprocité du respect ; le principe de l’organisation du travail, dans une société bien constituée, la réciprocité du service ; le principe du commerce, la réciprocité de l’échange ; le principe de la Banque, la réciprocité de l’escompte, le principe du prêt devait être la réciprocité de prestation, d’autant mieux que le prêt n’est au fond qu’une forme de l’escompte, comme l’escompte est une forme de l’échange, et l’échange une forme de la division du travail même.
Let us organize, as I said, according to this principle, real estate credit, personal property credit, and all kinds of credit. From then on, no more usury, no more interest, neither legal nor illegal: a simple fee, very modest, for verification and registration costs, like a discount. The abolition of usury, so long and so vainly pursued by the Church, is accomplished by itself. Reciprocal lending or free credit is no more difficult to achieve than reciprocal discount, reciprocal exchange, reciprocal service, reciprocal respect, JUSTICE.
Certainly, having to defend here, with the interest of the masses, pure revolutionary morals and Catholic tradition, I had to count on two kinds of auxiliaries, democracy and the Church. The socialists, who preached workers’ association, were to open their arms to me. What, in fact, is the reciprocity of credit if not the sponsorship of labor substituted for the sponsorship of capital? Let the governmental power, in the absence the spontaneous action of the citizens, set the ball rolling, and in one day, in one hour, all these reforms, all these revolutions can be accomplished.
But see the misfortune! This broad application of Justice to the economy, displacing the focus of interests, inverting relations, changing ideas, leaving nothing to arbitrariness, nothing to force, nothing to chance, aroused against it all those who, living on privileges and parasitic functions, refused to leave an anomalous position in which they were established, for another, more rational, but which they did not know. It confounded the old school of so-called economists; it seized unexpectedly the old people of the republic, whose education had to be redone; what is worse, it annulled the recent decisions of the Church on the question of interest, and by the chaining of ideas, killed its dogma.
Too many interests and self-esteems were compromised: I was bound, in this first instance, to lose my case. A man was found to defend, in the name of individual liberty and general happiness, subordinate labor against reciprocal service, speculative trade against equality of exchange, the 15% discount against discount at 1⁄8%, homicidal usury against gratuitous, agricultural and industrial sponsorship. M. Bastiat, who had not even broached the question, satisfied that I had declared the former lenders, on account of their good faith and necessity, not guilty, by a unanimous vote was declared victorious. The economists uttered a cry of joy; the politicians of the Revolution, no doubt counting on jobs in the republic, applauded the defeat of anarchy. People’s Bank! Free credit! Follies! once again wrote, after Daniel Stern, M. de Lamartine. The socialists saw with happiness the rout of this egalitarian Justice, which threatened to engulf both the holy hierarchy and the gentle fraternity.
Unfortunate Bastiat! He went to die in Rome, in the arms of priests. At his last moment he exclaimed, like Polyeucte: I see, I believe, I know, I am a Christian! … What did he see? What all mystics see who imagine they possess the Spirit, because they have the blindfold of faith over their eyes: that pauperism and crime are indestructible; that they enter into the plan of Providence; that such is the reason for the inconsistencies of society and the contradictions of political economy; that it is impiety to claim to make Justice reign in this chaos, and that there is truth, morality and order only in a superior life. Amen .
Cependant, Monseigneur, malgré la rigueur du régime infligé à la presse, malgré les menaces de pendaison et de guillotine que vomissent à l’unisson contre les libres penseurs les partis rétrogrades, nous ne sommes plus tout à fait au siècle où les questions qui avaient le malheur de déplaire étaient étouffées sur l’échafaud. Je puis dire, en jetant les yeux autour de moi, que je suis le vaincu des vaincus : soit ! Je n’ai nulle envie de recommencer la controverse de 1848 ; mais quand je garderais le silence, la conscience publique, la vôtre est là, qui vous somme de répondre.
L’Église a tour à tour condamné et soutenu le prêt à intérêt.
« Depuis les conciles d’Elvire, d’Arles et de Nicée, en 300, 314 et 325, plus de dix-huit conciles ont interdit de prêter à intérêt. En outre, les décrétales et les encycliques de plus de quatorze papes, depuis saint Léon jusqu’à Benoit XIV, ont anathématisé ceux qui veulent tirer un intérêt de l’argent prêté. À partir de saint Jérôme, les Pères, jusqu’à saint Thomas et saint Bernard, prêchèrent qu’il était illicite en soi de recevoir un prix pour l’usage de l’argent. Ce principe reçut son application en France pendant neuf siècles, depuis les Capitulaires de Charlemagne jusqu’aux approches du règne de Louis XIV. » (Blanc Saint-Bonnet, De la Restauration française, p. 70.)
This whole discipline is changed. The Church, at the hour when I speak, makes common cause with the great privileges, whose hierarchical and usurious exploitation she blesses. Let the Church therefore explain herself once and for all.
Quelle est définitivement sa doctrine sur le prêt à intérêt ? Ne parlons pas des difficultés du moment : je comprends, j’accepte la nécessité des transitions, et n’impose à personne, pas même à l’Église, de miracles. Je demande où va le progrès ? Est-ce à l’égalité, ou à l’inégalité ? à l’égalité par le crédit mutuel, ou à l’inégalité par la prélibation de l’intérêt ? Expliquerez-vous ce changement de tactique, comme le fait l’écrivain que je viens de citer, par le désir de mettre obstacle à la formation du capital industriel, cause de notre corruption, en empêchant le crédit, d’abord par l’interdiction de l’intérêt, puis par la cherté de l’intérêt ? — Méfiez-vous du crédit, s’écrie cet auteur. Est-ce aussi votre opinion ? Vous nous devez une réponse, décisive, catégorique, comme il appartient à une église ayant pouvoir d’enseigner, et dont les décisions sont infaillibles. Êtes-vous aujourd’hui, comme autrefois, contre l’intérêt du prêt, avec la Bible, l’Évangile, la philosophie, les Pères, les conciles, les docteurs, les papes, la Révolution ? ou bien êtes-vous pour l’intérêt du prêt, avec les casuistes mitigés du dernier siècle et du nôtre, Grotius, Saumaise, Bergier, le cardinal de la Luzerne, assistés d’Adam Smith, J.-B. Say, David Ricardo, Malthus, Bastiat, Lamartine, Daniel Stern et la contre-révolution ?
Il faut répondre, Monseigneur, ou laisser dire, ce qu’à Dieu ne plaise, que vous êtes une Église de déception et d’improbité.
XXXIII. — Lenders and Borrowers.
The balance of discount leads directly to that of credit or loans.
If there is a question on which the Church, communist by her dogma, patrician by her hierarchy, pulled in opposite directions by the double spirit of her constitution, has varied, wandered and prevaricated, it is without a doubt this one.
It is a fact that all antiquity, pagan and Jewish, agreed to condemn the loan at interest, although this loan is only a form of rent, which is universally admitted; although trade derives great benefit from the loan and in no way can do without it; although it is impossible, even unjust, to require the capitalist to advance his funds without emoluments.
All this has been demonstrated by the casuists of our century as well as by the economists; and it is known that I have no difficulty in recognizing the legitimacy of interest, in the conditions of inorganic and individualistic economy in which the old society lived.
Since the Church, following the example of philosophy, returning to common sense, thought it necessary in recent times to recant on the question of interest; since it abjured its ancient doctrine, was it therefore wrong, was it iniquitous and senseless, when it proscribed this same interest at a time when it combined all the characteristics of necessity, and therefore of right? How does the Church justify this variation? She who never ceased to raise an outcry against the Jews about their usury, and who was the cause of so many spoliations and massacres, how did she end up on the side of the publicans, the Cahorsins, Lombards and Jews? How did she bow down to Mammon?
The Church, you will say, has not changed its maxims. Understanding the necessities of the times, she just adapts her discipline to them; she practices tolerance.
The Church plays with misfortune in truth: it prohibits lending at interest when the world needs it most and when there is no possibility of free lending; she authorizes it when we can do without it.
In 1848 and 4849 I proved, in many publications, that, the principle of Justice being the reciprocity of respect; the principle of the organization of labor, in a well-constituted society, the reciprocity of service; the principle of commerce, the reciprocity of exchange; the principle of the Bank, the reciprocity of discount, the principle of the loan had to be the reciprocity of service, all the more so since the loan is basically only a form of the discount, as the discount is a form of exchange, and exchange a form of the division of labor.
Let us organize, as I said, according to this principle, real estate credit, personal property credit, and all kinds of credit. From then on, no more usury, no more interest, neither legal nor illegal: a simple fee, very modest, for verification and registration costs, like a discount. The abolition of usury, so long and so vainly pursued by the Church, is accomplished by itself. Reciprocal lending or free credit is no more difficult to achieve than reciprocal discount, reciprocal exchange, reciprocal service, reciprocal respect, justice.
Certainly, having to defend here, with the interest of the masses, pure revolutionary morals and Catholic tradition, I had to count on two kinds of auxiliaries, democracy and the Church. The socialists, who preached workers’ association, were to open their arms to me. What, in fact, is the reciprocity of credit if not the sponsorship of labor substituted for the sponsorship of capital? Let the governmental power, in the absence the spontaneous action of the citizens, set the ball rolling, and in one day, in one hour, all these reforms, all these revolutions can be accomplished.
But see the misfortune! This broad application of Justice to the economy, displacing the focus of interests, inverting relations, changing ideas, leaving nothing to arbitrariness, nothing to force, nothing to chance, aroused against it all those who, living on privileges and parasitic functions, refused to leave an anomalous position in which they were established, for another, more rational, but which they did not know. It confounded the old school of so-called economists; it seized unexpectedly the old people of the republic, whose education had to be redone; what is worse, it annulled the recent decisions of the Church on the question of interest, and by the chaining of ideas, killed its dogma.
Too many interests and self-esteems were compromised: I was bound, in this first instance, to lose my case. A man was found to defend, in the name of individual liberty and general happiness, subordinate labor against reciprocal service, speculative trade against equality of exchange, the 15% discount against discount at 1⁄8%, homicidal usury against gratuitous, agricultural and industrial sponsorship. M. Bastiat, who had not even broached the question, satisfied that I had declared the former lenders, on account of their good faith and necessity, not guilty, by a unanimous vote was declared victorious. The economists uttered a cry of joy; the politicians of the Revolution, no doubt counting on jobs in the republic, applauded the defeat of anarchy. People’s Bank! Free credit! Follies! once again wrote, after Daniel Stern, M. de Lamartine. The socialists saw with happiness the rout of this egalitarian Justice, which threatened to engulf both the holy hierarchy and the gentle fraternity.
Unfortunate Bastiat! He went to die in Rome, in the arms of priests. At his last moment he exclaimed, like Polyeucte: I see, I believe, I know, I am a Christian!… What did he see? What all mystics see who imagine they possess the Spirit, because they have the blindfold of faith over their eyes: that pauperism and crime are indestructible; that they enter into the plan of Providence; that such is the reason for the inconsistencies of society and the contradictions of political economy; that it is impiety to claim to make Justice reign in this chaos, and that there is truth, morality and order only in a superior life. Amen.
However, Monsignor, despite the rigor of the regime inflicted on the press, despite the threats of hanging and the guillotine that the retrograde parties vomit against free thinkers in unison, we are no longer quite in the century when questions which had the misfortune of displeasing were smothered on the scaffold. I can say, casting my eyes around me, that I am the vanquished of the vanquished: so be it! I have no desire to recommence the controversy of 1848; but even if I remain silent, the public conscience, your conscience is there, summoning you to answer.
The Church has alternately condemned and supported the loan at interest.
“Since the councils of Elvira, Arles and Nicaea, in 300, 314 and 325, more than eighteen councils have prohibited lending at interest. Moreover, the decretals and encyclicals of more than fourteen popes, from Saint Leo to Benedict XIV, have anathematized those who want to earn interest from money lent. From Saint Jerome, the Fathers, down to Saint Thomas and Saint Bernard, preached that it was illicit in itself to receive a prize for the use of money. This principle was applied in France for nine centuries, from the Capitularies of Charlemagne to the approach of the reign of Louis XIV. (Blanc Saint-Bonnet, De la Restauration française, p. 70.)
This whole discipline is changed. The Church, at the hour when I speak, makes common cause with the great privileges, whose hierarchical and usurious exploitation she blesses. Let the Church therefore explain herself once and for all.
What definitely is her doctrine on lending at interest? Let’s not talk about the difficulties of the moment: I understand, I accept the need for transitions, and do not impose miracles on anyone, not even the Church. I ask where is the progress going? Is it toward equality or inequality? Toward equality by mutual credit, or to inequality by prelibation of interest? Will you explain this change of tactics, as the pious writer I have just quoted does, by the desire to put obstacles in the way of the formation of industrial capital, the cause of our corruption? Will you say that it was with a view to salvation that the Church took so much care to stop the development of credit, first by the prohibition of interest, then by the dearness of interest? — Beware of credit!exclaims M. Blanc Saint-Bonnet. Is this also your opinion? You owe us an answer, decisive, categorical, as it belongs to a Church with the power to teach, and whose decisions are infallible. Are you today, as before, against the interest of the loan, with the Bible, the Gospel, philosophy, the Fathers, the councils, the doctors, the popes, the Revolution? Or are you for the interest of the loan, with the mixed casuists of the last century and ours, Grotius, Saumaise, Bergier, Cardinal de la Luzerne, assisted by Adam Smith, J.-B. Say, David Ricardo, Malthus, Bastiat, Lamartine, Daniel Stern and the counter-revolution? You must answer, Monsignor, or let it be said, God forbid, that you are a Church of disappointment and dishonesty.
XXXII
Propriétaires et Locataires.
Puisque je vais parler de la propriété, qu’on me permette d’abord de vider une question de propriété. Il s’agit d’un fait personnel.
J’ai écrit quelque part, tout le monde le sait : La propriété, c’est le vol ; et plus tard, je ne saurais dire où, car je ne me relis point : « Cette définition est mienne ; je ne la céderais pas pour tous les millions de Rothschild. »
Or, voici que Louis Blanc et Daniel Stern, le premier dans son Histoire de la Révolution Française, le second dans son Histoire de la Révolution de 1848, me reprochent d’avoir volé cette définition à Brissot de Varville, le chef du parti girondin. C’est Brissot, que je n’ai pas lu, qui aurait dit le premier : La propriété, c’est le vol !
De par le tribun et la femme savante, je suis atteint et convaincu d’avoir brissoté Brissot. Deux mots faisaient ma gloire, elle m’est ravie. Il ne me reste que la honte du plagiat.
Hélas ! qu’on dit bien vrai, qu’il n’y a rien de nouveau sous le soleil ! Encore un peu, et je me vois dépouillé de toutes mes plumes. Le crédit réciproque ne m’appartient plus ; la banque du peuple, cette pauvreté, selon Daniel Stern, on vient de découvrir qu’elle est de l’invention de Napoléon Ier; le crédit gratuit, cette folie, selon M. de Lamartine, à laquelle commencent à venir les adhésions en France et à l’étranger, se retrouvera tôt ou tard dans Ricardo ou quelque autre juif ; l’anarchie a été aperçue partout. Pauvre Érostrate que je suis ! quel temple d’Éphèse me reste-t-il à brûler, pour que la postérité parle de moi ?…
Mais le propriétaire, précisément parce qu’il est voleur, ne se laisse pas dessaisir : son instinct de rapine le lui défend. Et moi je ne me dessaisirai pas non plus. Brissot, après Rousseau, a pu dire le mot, sans que cela tirât à conséquence : en matière philosophique, pour qu’il y ait appréhension, et partant propriété, il faut que l’idée, non le mot seul, ait été appréhendée, c’est-à-dire comprise ; sans cela elle reste dans l’indivision. La division du travail existait apparemment quand Adam Smith l’observa chez un fabricant d’épingles : ce qui n’empêche pas qu’on ne fasse honneur à Adam Smith de la priorité de l’observation. Que l’on me prouve que Brissot a su ce qu’il disait, et je passe condamnation ; sinon, j’accuse à mon tour Louis Blanc et Daniel Stern de calomnie ; qui pis est, de sottise.
La difficulté du problème consiste en ce que la propriété apparaît d’abord comme un fait aussi nécessaire à l’existence de l’individu qu’à la vie sociale, et qu’on démontre ensuite, par une analyse rigoureuse, que ce fait, indispensable, fécond, émancipateur, sauveur, est de même nature, quant au fond, que celui que la conscience universelle condamne sous le nom de vol.
De cette contradiction mise par moi dans tout son jour, et que l’on n’aurait jamais dû traîner sur la place publique, on a conclu que je voulais détruire la propriété. Détruire une conception de l’esprit, une force économique, détruire l’institution que cette force et cette conception engendrent, est aussi absurde que de détruire la matière. Rien n’existe en vue de rien ; Rien ne peut retourner à rien : ces axiomes sont aussi vrais des idées que des éléments.
Ce que je cherchais, dès 1840, en définissant la propriété, ce que je veux aujourd’hui, ce n’est pas une destruction, je l’ai dit à satiété : c’eût été tomber avec Rousseau, Platon, Louis Blanc lui-même et tous les adversaires de la propriété, dans le communisme, contre lequel je proteste de toutes mes forces ; ce que je demande pour la propriété est une balance.
Ce n’est pas pour rien que le génie des peuples a armé la Justice de cet instrument de précision. La Justice, en effet, appliquée à l’économie, n’est autre chose qu’une balance perpétuelle ; ou, pour m’exprimer d’une manière encore plus exacte, la Justice, en ce qui concerne la répartition des biens, n’est autre chose que l’obligation imposée à tout citoyen et à tout État, dans leurs rapports d’intérêt, de se conformer à la loi d’équilibre qui se manifeste partout dans l’économie, et dont la violation, accidentelle ou volontaire, est le principe de la misère.
Les économistes prétendent qu’il n’appartient pas à la raison humaine d’intervenir dans la détermination de cet équilibre, qu’il faut laisser le fléau osciller à sa guise, et le suivre pas à pas dans nos opérations. Je soutiens que c’est là une idée absurde ; qu’autant vaudrait reprocher à la Convention d’avoir réformé les poids et mesures, par la raison que, ne connaissant pas le mètre dont Dieu s’est servi pour organiser le monde, le plus sûr était de laisser chacun se faire une mesure arbitraire. Liberté de poids et de mesures ! c’est la conséquence du libre échange. Ce précieux corollaire a échappé à Bastiat.
De même que tout est en oscillation continuelle dans la nature, de même tout est soumis à la loi du nombre, du poids et de la mesure, à la loi d’équilibre ; j’ajoute seulement que, la formule d’équilibre trouvée, il est de notre droit et de notre devoir, en notre qualité d’êtres intelligents et moraux, de nous y conformer, à peine de subversion sociale. C’est cette obligation de l’équilibre que j’appelle Justice ou réciprocité dans l’économie.
Ainsi, balance et réciprocité du travail et du produit, balance de l’offre et de la demande, balance du commerce, balance du crédit, balance de l’escompte, balance de la population, balance partout : l’économie sociale est un vaste système de balances, dont le dernier mot est l’égalité.
Qu’est-ce que la balance de la propriété ?
Avant de répondre à cette question, il faut savoir ce qu’est la propriété elle-même.
Si j’interroge sur l’origine et l’essence de la propriété les théologiens, les philosophes, les jurisconsultes, les économistes, je les trouve partagés entre cinq ou six théories dont chacune exclut les autres et se prétend seule orthodoxe, seule morale. En 1848, lorsqu’il s’agissait de sauver la société, les définitions surgirent de toutes parts : M. Thiers avait la sienne, combattue aujourd’hui par M. l’abbé Mitraud ; M. Troplong avait la sienne ; M. Cousin, M. Passy, M. Léon Faucher, comme autrefois Robespierre, Mirabeau, Lafayette, chacun la sienne. Droit romain, droit féodal, droit germanique, droit américain, droit canon, droit arabe, droit russe, tout fut mis à contribution sans qu’on pût parvenir à s’entendre. Une chose ressortait seulement de cette macédoine de définitions, c’est qu’en vertu de la propriété, que chacun du reste s’accordait à regarder comme sacrée, et à moins qu’un autre principe n’en vînt corriger les effets, on devait regarder l’inégalité des conditions et des fortunes comme la loi du genre humain.
Certainly there was a task for the Church worthy of her high mission, and of the breaths of that Spirit who never abandons her. From the uncertainty of the definition, in fact, results that of the theory, from which then arises the instability of the institution itself. What a service the Church would have rendered to the world if she had been able to define this principle of social economy, as she has defined her mysteries!
Chose étrange, qu’après avoir fait quinze ans durant la guerre à la propriété, je sois peut-être destiné à la sauver des mains inhabiles qui la défendent, de l’empire, qui l’absorbe dans son domaine ; de l’Église, qui la convertit en main-morte ; de la bancocratie, qui la monétise et l’accapare ! Et croyez-vous, Monseigneur, que j’aie besoin pour cela de rétracter un seul mot de ma critique ? Vous seriez dans une grave erreur. La propriété est bien réellement ce que j’ai dit, et que la qualifient in petto les théologiens. Elle ne serait plus une force économique, elle cesserait de fonctionner et de servir, si elle pouvait devenir autre chose que ce que j’ai dit. Mais ce que nul ne pouvait prévoir, tant nous sommes ignorants des lois de l’économie et de la morale, c’est que la Révolution, appliquant à la propriété sa formule égalitaire, la pénétrant de Justice, la soumettant à la balance, saurait faire un jour de cette institution de péché, de ce principe de vol, cause de tant de haines et de massacres, le gage solide de la fraternité et de l’ordre.
Dites-moi, Monseigneur, ce que vous fumez ou respirez dans le tabac, que vous dégustez dans le kirsch, que vous mangez dans le vinaigre, ne sont-ce pas des poisons, et les plus violents de tous les poisons ?… Eh bien ! il en est ainsi de certains principes que la nature a mis en nos âmes, et qui sont essentiels à la constitution de la société : nous ne pourrions exister sans eux ; mais pour peu que nous en étendions ou concentrions la dose, que nous en altérions l’économie, nous périssons infailliblement par eux. Autant, dans le régime de bascule et de faux poids où nous vivons, la division du travail est funeste à l’ouvrier, la concurrence désastreuse, la spéculation dévergondée, la centralisation écrasante, autant j’ajoute que la propriété est immorale et funeste. Comme l’amende amère, réduite par l’analyse chimique à la pureté de son élément, devient acide prussique, ainsi la propriété, réduite à la pureté de sa notion, est la même chose que le vol. Toute la question, pour l’emploi de cet élément redoutable, est, je le répète, d’en trouver la formule, en style d’économiste la balance : chose qu’entend à merveille le dernier des commis, mais qui dépasse la portée d’une religion.
Is it then so difficult to understand that property considered in itself, being reduced to a simple psychological phenomenon, to a faculty of grasping, appropriating, possessing, dominating, as you please, is foreign by its nature, or to use a milder term, indifferent to Justice; that if it results from the necessity in which man finds himself, an intelligent and free subject, to dominate nature, blind and fatal, on pain of being dominated by it; if, as a fact or product of our faculties, property is prior to society and to right, it nevertheless derives its morality only from right, which applies the balance to it, and outside of which it can always be reproached?
C’est par la Justice que la propriété se conditionne, se purge, se rend respectable, qu’elle se détermine civilement, et par cette détermination, qu’elle ne tient pas de sa nature, devient un élément économique et social.
As long as property has not received the infusion of right, it remains, as I demonstrated in my first memoir, a vague, contradictory fact, capable of producing good and evil indiscriminately, a fact consequently of an equivocal morality, which it is impossible to distinguish theoretically from the acts of prehension that morality condemns.
The error of those who undertook to avenge property for the attacks of which it was the object was not to see that property is one thing and legitimation by the right of property another; it is to have believed, with Roman theory and spiritualist philosophy, that property, the manifestation of the self, was holy by the sole fact that it expressed the self; that it was of right, because it was of need; that the right was inherent in it, as it is in humanity itself.
Mais il est clair qu’il n’en peut être ainsi, puisque autrement le moi devrait être réputé juste et saint dans tous ses actes, dans la satisfaction quand même de tous ses besoins, de toutes ses fantaisies ; puisque, en un mot, ce serait ramener la Justice à l’égoïsme, comme le faisait le vieux droit romain par sa conception unilatérale de la dignité. Il faut, pour que la propriété entre dans la société, qu’elle en reçoive le timbre, la légalisation, la sanction.
Or, je dis que sanctionner, légaliser la propriété, lui donner le caractère juridique qui seul peut la rendre respectable, cela ne se peut faire que sous la condition d’une balance ; et qu’en dehors de cette réciprocité nécessaire, ni les décrets du prince, ni le consentement des masses, ni les licences de l’Église, ni tout le verbiage des philosophes sur le moi et le non-moi, n’y servent de rien.
Citons des faits.
On sait quelle hausse sur les loyers a eu lieu, principalement à Paris, depuis le coup d’État. Si j’avais la fatuité de me prévaloir, pour la justification d’une théorie, du sentiment public, je pourrais dire que tout le monde aujourd’hui pense sur la propriété comme le publiciste qui, en 1840, en donnait une si énergique définition. Le scandale est allé si loin qu’un jour le Constitutionnel, après une sortie virulente contre les propriétaires, annonça l’intention d’examiner le droit de l’État d’intervenir dans la fixation des loyers, et qu’une brochure a paru il y a six mois, avec le laissez-passer de la police, sous ce titre : Pourquoi des propriétaires à Paris ? J’ignore ce que peut cacher ce ballon d’essai ; mais il ne peut que m’être agréable de voir les feuilles de l’empire rivaliser, à propos du terme, avec le Représentant du Peuple.
Un négociant remet son fonds : naturellement son acquéreur continue le loyer. Mais le propriétaire : Vous n’avez pas le droit, dit-il à son ancien locataire, de céder votre bail sans mon consentement ; et il exige, à titre de dédommagement, un pot-de-vin de 5,000 fr., plus 100 fr. par an pour son portier. Et force fut aux deux contractants d’en passer par là. — Vol.
Un autre, établi sur le boulevard, occupait un magasin de 4,000 fr. Il passait pour faire d’excellentes affaires ; la maison était connue, achalandée. La fin du bail venue, le propriétaire porte le loyer de 4,000 à 16,000 fr., plus un pourboire de 40,000 fr. Et force fut encore à l’industriel de subir la loi. — Vol.
Des faits pareils, il en fourmille.
Un père de famille loue un appartement, convient de prix avec le propriétaire : les meubles emménagés, il arrive avec deux enfants. Le propriétaire se récrie : Vous ne m’avez point averti que vous aviez des enfants, vous n’entrerez pas ; vous allez enlever vos meubles. Et il se met en devoir de chasser cette famille et de fermer les portes. Le père essaie d’abord quelques représentations, se fâche à son tour : on se querelle. Le propriétaire se permet des injures accompagnées de voies de fait, tant et si bien que le locataire, dans un accès de rage, le saisit à bras le corps, et le jette d’un troisième étage par la fenêtre ; il en fut quitte pour quelques contusions. Dans un autre quartier, la chose ne se passa pas si heureusement : le propriétaire, ayant voulu, et pour le même motif, colleter un locataire, fut jeté contre le mur avec tant de violence que sa tête s’y brisa, il périt sur le coup.
Ici je ne dirai pas comme tout à l’heure : Vol ; je dis : Brigandage. Tout citoyen adulte doit être censé marié et père : c’est le célibat qui est l’exception.
Du reste, il est juste de remarquer que tous les propriétaires ne ressemblent pas à ceux-là : on m’en a cité qui depuis 1848 n’ont pas voulu augmenter leurs loyers. Cette modération est fort louable, mais elle ne peut faire règle, et nous avons à déterminer ce qui dans la propriété constitue le droit et le non-droit.
Remarquez qu’en thèse générale la loi protège le propriétaire. Le bail expiré, il est maître de laisser ou de reprendre sa chose. L’ancien droit romain, qui faisait dépendre la propriété de la dignité individuelle, unilatérale, du moi pur, indépendamment de toute considération de réciprocité, le justifie. L’école malthusienne, fataliste et aléatoire, y donne les mains : hausse et baisse, dit-elle ; c’est la loi de l’offre et de la demande. L’Église, qui de tout temps a autorisé la dîme, la mainmorte, le droit du seigneur, qui tout récemment s’est ralliée à la doctrine de l’intérêt, l’Église approuve : son silence du moins équivaut à une approbation.
Et cependant la conscience publique dit que cela est injuste, immoral ; la presse s’en émeut, le pouvoir s’indigne. Quoi ! il y a à Paris trente mille maisons, possédées par douze à quinze mille propriétaires et servant à loger plus d’un million d’âmes ; et il dépend de ces quinze mille propriétaires, contre rime et raison, de rançonner, pressurer, sinon mettre hors, un million d’habitants ! de grever le travail, les produits, le commerce, par suite de ruiner les patrons, et d’affamer les ouvriers ! On ne travaille plus, on ne gagne plus, s’écrie-t-on de tous côtés, que pour payer le loyer !… Non, cela n’est pas possible : le Code et la tradition n’y ont rien compris, les économistes ont menti, l’Église est absurde.
Comment sortir de cette souricière ?
Analysons, s’il vous plaît, et nous aurons bientôt trouvé une issue.
Que blâme-t-on chez le propriétaire ?
Est-ce le fait de préhension, je veux dire l’acte par lequel il se fait payer un loyer ?
Non, puisque, comme il a été reconnu plus haut, la préhension, ou le fait simple d’appropriation, est de sa nature indifférent au droit ; qu’il ne se distingue pas du fait de jouissance, usage ou consommation, indispensable à tout être vivant ; qu’il constitue le domaine éminent de l’homme sur les choses, domaine qui se résume primitivement en ces termes, chasse, pêche, cueillette, pâture, habitation, et hors duquel l’homme serait esclave des choses mêmes ; mais domaine qui s’arrête devant le respect que je dois à autrui.
Or, le prix du bail représente la préhension que le propriétaire a faite d’une certaine partie du sol, sur laquelle il a élevé ou fait élever un bâtiment, dont il s’est ensuite dessaisi en faveur du locataire. En soi, le prix du loyer peut paraître un fait naturel, normal, et comme tel légalisable.
Ce que l’on blâme et contre quoi l’opinion se soulève est la quotité de la préhension, que l’on trouve exorbitante.
D’où vient donc cette exorbitance ?
C’est évidemment qu’il n’y a pas compensation entre la somme exigée et le service rendu ; en autres termes, que le propriétaire est un échangiste léonin.
Le propriétaire a pris la terre : soit. Il la possède par conquête, travail, prescription, concession formelle ou tacite : on n’en fera pas la recherche. La Révolution, il est vrai, a aboli le droit d’épaves, et la plus vulgaire probité oblige à rapporter au commissaire de police tout objet perdu sur la voie publique : n’importe ; on accorde que le propriétaire terrien pouvait s’emparer de ce qui n’était occupé, en apparence, par personne. Ce qu’on lui demande est de ne pas exiger ensuite de sa propriété, quand il la présente à l’échange, plus qu’elle ne vaut, une telle prétention impliquant double vol, vol à la deuxième puissance, ce que la société ne saurait tolérer.
Allons-nous donc taxer les loyers, comme on a taxé le pain et la viande ?
Nous connaissons le résultat de semblables taxes : il n’est pas assez brillant pour qu’on y persiste, encore moins pour qu’on le généralise.
Il faut en revenir à la balance, seul mode de détermination des valeurs.
Remarquez que tout fait d’appropriation d’une chose inoccupée, qu’il s’agisse de la terre ou de ses produits, d’un instrument de travail, d’un procédé industriel, d’une idée, est primitif, antérieur à la Justice, et qu’il ne tombe sous l’empire du droit, que du moment où il entre dans la sphère des transactions sociales. La préhension, l’usurpation, la conquête, l’appropriation, tout ce qu’il vous plaira, ne constitue donc pas un droit ; mais comme tout, dans l’économie sociale, a son commencement dans une préhension préalable, on est convenu de reconnaître pour légitime propriétaire le premier qui a saisi la chose : c’est ce qu’on appelle, par une pure fiction de la loi, le droit de premier-occupant.
Ce n’es t que plus tard, lorsque ce premier-occupant entre en rapport d’économie avec ses semblables, que la propriété tombe définitivement sous le coup de la Justice.
Or, si nous avons su trouver déjà la balance de l’ouvrier et du patron, du producteur et du consommateur, du financier escompteur et du négociant qui circule, du prêteur et de l’emprunteur, pourquoi ne trouverions-nous pas de même la balance non-seulement de propriétaire à propriétaire, non-seulement de propriétaire à commune, mais de propriétaire à locataire ?
Que dis-je ? il est indispensable que nous la trouvions, cette balance ; puisque, l’entrepreneur, l’ouvrier, le vendeur, l’acheteur, le banquier, le négociant, le capitaliste, l’emprunteur, n’étant tous, à divers points de vue, que des propriétaires soumis à la balance, il est impossible que le propriétaire foncier échappe à la condition commune ; sans cela il profiterait, comme travailleur, échangiste, emprunteur, du bénéfice de la balance, et ne s’y soumettant pas en tant que propriétaire, il serait en débet vis-à-vis des autres, il violerait leur droit personnel : ce serait un voleur, et, s’il prétendait user de la force, un brigand.
Donc, que ledit propriétaire fournisse ses comptes ; que l’on sache ce que lui coûte la propriété, en capital, entretien, surveillance, impôt, intérêt même et rente, là où la rente et l’intérêt se payent. Le prix du loyer, égal à une fraction du total, sera considéré, selon la convenance des parties et la nature de l’immeuble, soit comme annuité portée en remboursement, soit comme équivalent des frais d’entretien et amortissement, plus une rémunération pour garde, service et risques de l’entrepreneur.
Tel est le principe, je ne dis pas du fait de propriété, qui par lui-même n’a rien de juridique, mais de la consécration de la propriété par le droit, et conséquemment de sa balance. Je ne m’étendrai pas sur l’exécution ; affaire de police et de comptabilité, dont le mode peut varier à l’infini.
Le défrichement du sol, les constructions de bâtiments, etc., en vue desquels a lieu l’occupation du sol et subséquemment la reconnaissance de la propriété, sont des industries comme les autres, sujettes par conséquent à la même loi de réciprocité et d’équilibre. Dès lors donc que le propriétaire fait acte d’industrie, qu’à cet acte il en joint un autre de commerce, sa propriété, jusque là simple manifestation de son autonomie, tombe définitivement sous la règle du droit, qui est la réciprocité ou l’équivalence. À ce titre seul elle devient respectable et sacrée, elle fait partie du pacte social.
L’application de la Justice à la propriété n’a jamais été faite, si ce n’est par cas fortuit et d’une manière irrégulière. Ni le droit romain, ni le droit canon, ni aucun droit ancien ou moderne, n’en ont reconnu la théorie exacte. De là ces innombrables antinomies, que la jurisprudence est demeurée jusqu’ici impuissante à résoudre, et qui sont la honte de l’école. La Révolution appelait une réforme radicale ; ses légistes, étrangers à la science économique, et qui définissaient la Justice comme le préteur, nous ont donné le Code Napoléon.
Tout est à faire.
XXXIV. — Proprietors and Tenants.
Since I am going to talk about property, let me first clear up a question of ownership. It is a question of a personal fact.
I wrote somewhere, everyone knows it, that Property is theft; and later, I couldn’t say where, because I hardly reread myself: “This definition is mine; I wouldn’t give it up for all the Rothschild millions.” [The sentiment appears in Chapter XI of The System of Economic Contradictions.]
Now, here is that Louis Blanc and Daniel Stern, the first in his History of the French Revolution, the second in his History of the Revolution of 1848, reproach me for having stolen this definition from Brissot de Varville, the leader of the Girondin party. It was Brissot, whom I have not read, who was the first to say: Property is theft!
Through the tribune and the learned woman, I am attacked and convicted of having brissoté Brissot. A few words made my glory; it has delighted me. All I have left is the shame of plagiarism.
Alas! How true it is to say, that there is nothing new under the sun! A little more, and I see myself stripped of all my feathers. Reciprocal credit no longer belongs to me; the bank of the people, that poverty, according to Danid Stern, we have just discovered that it is the invention of Napoleon I; free credit, that madness, according to M. de Lamartine, to which adhesions in France and abroad are beginning to come, will sooner or later be found in Ricardo or some other Jew; anarchy was seen everywhere. Poor Herostratus that I am! What temple of Ephesus remains for me to burn, so that posterity will speak of me?
But the proprietor, precisely because he is a thief, does not allow himself to be divested: his instinct for rapine forbids it. And I won’t give up either. Brissot, after Rousseau, was able to say the word, without this having any consequence: in philosophical matters, for it to have apprehension, and therefore property, the idea, not the word alone, must have been apprehended, that is to say understood; otherwise it remains in joint possession. The division of labor apparently existed when Adam Smith observed it in a pin-maker: which does not prevent Adam Smith from being credited with the priority of observation. If someone proves to me that Brissot knew what he was saying, I pass judgment; if not, I in turn accuse Louis Blanc and Daniel Stern of calumny or, what is worse, of stupidity.
The difficulty of the problem consists in the fact that property first appears as a fact as necessary to the existence of the individual as to social life, and that one then demonstrates, by a rigorous analysis, that this fact, indispensable, fruitful, emancipatory, savior, is of the same nature, in substance, as that which the universal conscience condemns under the name of theft.
From this contradiction, presented in all its clarity by me, which should never have been dragged into the public square, it was concluded that I wanted to destroy property. To destroy a conception of the mind, an economic force, to destroy the institution that this force and this conception engender, is as absurd as to destroy matter. Nothing can return to nothing : this axiom is as true of ideas as of atoms.
What I was looking for, from 1840, in defining property, what I want today, is not destruction, I have said it to satiety: it would have been to fall with Rousseau, Plato, Louis Blanc himself and all the adversaries of property, into communism, against which I protest with all my might; what I’m asking for property is justification; it is that we make its balance.
It is not for nothing that the genius of the people has armed Justice with this precision instrument. Justice, in fact, applied to the economy, is nothing other than a perpetual balance; or, to express myself in an even more exact manner, Justice, with regard to the distribution of goods, is nothing other than the obligation imposed on every citizen and on every state, in their relations of interest, to conform to the law of balance that manifests itself everywhere in the economy, and the violation of which, whether accidental or intentional, is the principle of misery.
The economists claim that it is not for human reason to intervene in the determination of this balance, that we must let the scale oscillate as it pleases, and follow it step by step in our operations. I maintain that this is an absurd idea; that it would be as well to reproach the Convention for having reformed the weights and measures, for the reason that, not knowing the meter that God used to organize the world, the safest thing was to let everyone make an arbitrary measurement Freedom of weights and measures! This is the consequence of free trade. This precious corollary escaped Bastiat.
Just as everything is in continual oscillation in nature, so everything is subject to the law of number, of weight and measure, to the law of balance; I only add that, once the formula of equilibrium has been found, it is our right and our duty, as intelligent and moral beings, to conform to it, on pain of social subversion. It is this obligation of balance that I call Justice, or reciprocity, in the economy.
Thus, balance or reciprocity of labor and product, balance of supply and demand, balance of trade, balance of credit, balance of discount, balance of population, balance everywhere: the social economy is a vast system of scales, the last word of which is equality.
What is the balance of property?
Before answering this question, it is necessary to know this property in itself.
If I question the theologians, philosophers, jurists and economists on the origin and essence of property, I find them divided between five or six theories, each of which excludes the others and claims to be the only orthodox, the only moral theory. In 1848, when it was a question of saving society, definitions arose from all sides: M. Thiers had his own, opposed today by M. l’abbé Mitraud; M. Troplong had his; M. Cousin, M. Passy, M. Léon Faucher, as before Robespierre, Mirabeau, Lafayette, each had his own. Roman law, feudal law, Germanic law, American law, canon law, Arab law, Russian law, everything was brought to bear without any agreement being reached. One thing only emerged from this mix of definitions, which is that by virtue of property, which everyone else agreed to regard as sacred, and unless another principle came to correct its effects, we should regard the inequality of conditions and fortunes as the law of the human race.
Certainly there was a task for the Church worthy of her high mission, and of the breaths of that Spirit who never abandons her. From the uncertainty of the definition, in fact, results that of the theory, from which then arises the instability of the institution itself. What a service the Church would have rendered to the world if she had been able to define this principle of social economy, as she has defined her mysteries!
It is a strange thing, that after having spent fifteen years continuing the war on property, I am perhaps destined to save it from the clumsy hands that defend it, from the empire that absorbs it into its domain, from the Church that converts it into mortmain, from the bankocracy that monetizes and monopolizes it! And do you believe, Monsignor, that I need to retract a single word of my criticism for that? You would be making a big mistake. Property is really what I said, and what the theologians qualify it in petto. It would no longer be an economic force, it would cease to function and serve, if it could become anything other than what I have said. But what no one could foresee, as ignorant are we of the laws of economy and morality, is that the Revolution, applying its egalitarian formula to property, penetrating it with Justice, subjecting it to the balance, would know how to one day to make this institution of sin, this principle of theft, the cause of so much hatred and massacres, the solid pledge of fraternity and order.
Tell me, Monseigneur, what you smoke or inhale in tobacco, what you taste in kirsch, what you eat in vinegar, aren’t these poisons, and the most violent of all poisons? Well! it is thus with certain principles that nature has placed in our souls, which are essential to the constitution of society: we could not exist without them; but however little we extend or concentrate the dose, however we alter the economy, we infallibly perish by them. In the regime of scales and false weights in which we live, the division of labor is just as fatal to the worker, prompting disastrous competition, wanton speculation, crushing centralization, as property is immoral and fatal. Like the bitter almond, reduced by chemical analysis to the purity of its element, becomes prussic acid, thus property, reduced to the purity of its notion, is the same thing as theft. The whole question, for the use of this formidable element, is, I repeat, to find the formula for it, in the style of an economist, the balance: something that the lowest clerk understands perfectly, but which goes beyond the scope of a religion.
Is it then so difficult to understand that property considered in itself, being reduced to a simple psychological phenomenon, to a faculty of grasping, appropriating, possessing, dominating, as you please, is foreign by its nature, or to use a milder term, indifferent to Justice; that if it results from the necessity in which man finds himself, an intelligent and free subject, to dominate nature, blind and fatal, on pain of being dominated by it; if, as a fact or product of our faculties, property is prior to society and to right, it nevertheless derives its morality only from right, which applies the balance to it, and outside of which it can always be reproached?
It is through justice that property conditions itself, purges itself, makes itself respectable, determines itself civilly, and becomes by this determination an economic and social element.
As long as property has not received the infusion of right, it remains, as I demonstrated in my first memoir, a vague, contradictory fact, capable of producing good and evil indiscriminately, a fact consequently of an equivocal morality, which it is impossible to distinguish theoretically from the acts of prehension that morality condemns.
The error of those who undertook to avenge property for the attacks of which it was the object was not to see that property is one thing and legitimation by the right of property another; it is to have believed, with Roman theory and spiritualist philosophy, that property, the manifestation of the self, was holy by the sole fact that it expressed the self; that it was of right, because it was of need; that the right was inherent in it, as it is in humanity itself.
But it is clear that this cannot be so, since otherwise the self should be reputed to be just and holy in all its acts, in the satisfaction all the same of all its needs, of all its fancies; since, in a word, it would reduce Justice to selfishness, as the old Roman law did by its unilateral conception of dignity. For property to enter society, it must receive its stamp, legalization, signature.
Now, I say that to sanction, to legalize property, to give it the juridical character that alone can make it respectable, this can only be done under the condition of a balance; and that apart from this necessary reciprocity, neither the decrees of the prince, nor the consent of the masses, nor the licenses of the Church, nor all the verbiage of the philosophers on the me and the not-me, serve as at all.
Let us cite facts.
We know what rise in rents has taken place, mainly in Paris, since the coup d’état. If I had the fatuity to take advantage, for the justification of a theory, of public feeling, I could say that everyone today thinks about property like the publicist who, in 1840, gave such an energetic definition of it. The scandal has gone so far that one day the Constitutionnel after a virulent outburst against landlords, announced the intention to examine the right of the State to intervene in the fixing of rents, and a pamphlet appeared some months ago, with the laissez-passez of the police, under this title: Pourquoi des propriétaires à Paris? I don’t know what this trial balloon may hide; but it cannot but please me to see the sheets of the empire rival, with regard to the term, Le Représentant du Peuple.
A merchant hands over his stock: naturally his purchaser continues the rent. But the landlord says to his former tenant: You have no right to assign your lease without my consent; and he demands, as compensation, a bribe of 3,000 fr., plus 100 fr. per year for his doorman. And the two contracts were forced to go through it. — Theft.
Another, established on the boulevard, occupied a warehouse at 4,000 francs. He was supposed to do excellent business; the house was known, busy. When the lease comes to an end, the landlord increases the rent from 4,000 to 15,000 fr., plus a gratuity of 40,000 fr. And the industrialist still had to submit to the law. — Theft.
Such facts abound.
A father rents an apartment, agrees on the price with the owner: the furniture moved in, he lives with two children. The owner cries out: You didn’t tell me you had children, you won’t come in; you must remove your furniture. And he takes it upon himself to drive out this family and close the doors. The father first tries some representations, gets angry in his turn: they quarrel. The owner allowed himself insults accompanied by assault, so much so that the tenant, in a fit of rage, seized him round the body and threw him from a third floor, through the window. He got off with a few bruises. In another district the thing did not happen so fortunately: the owner having wanted, and for the same reason, to snare a tenant, was thrown against the wall with such violence that his head broke on it; he perishes instantly.
Here I will not say, as before, Theft; I say, Contempt for mores. Every adult citizen must be considered married and a father: it is the celibate who is the exception.
Moreover, it is fair to remark that not all landlords are like these: I have been told of some who since 1848 have refused to increase their rents. This moderation is very laudable, but it cannot make a rule, and we have to determine what in property constitutes the right and the non-right.
Note that as a general thesis the law protects the proprietor. The lease expired, he is free to leave or take back his thing. The ancient Roman law, which made property depend on individual, unilateral dignity, on the pure self, independent of any consideration of reciprocity, justifies it. The Malthusian school, fatalistic and unpredictable, joins hands: rise and fall, she says; it is the law of supply and demand. The Church, which has always authorized the tithe, the mortmain, the right of the lord, which very recently rallied to the doctrine of interest, the Church approves: its silence at least is equivalent to an approbation.
And yet conscience says that such a principle, followed in its consequences, is immoral; the press is moved by it, the governmental Power is indignant. What! There are thirty thousand houses in Paris, owned by twelve to fifteen thousand proprietors and used to lodge more than a million souls; and it depends on these fifteen thousand proprietors, against rhyme and reason, to ransom, squeeze, if not expel, a million inhabitants! to encumber labour, products, commerce, in consequence of ruining the bosses, and starving the workmen! We no longer work, we no longer earn, people cry out on all sides, except to pay the rent!… No, that is not possible: the Code and tradition have understood nothing of this, the economists lied, the Church is absurd.
How to get out of this mousetrap?
Let us analyze, if you please, and we’ll soon find a way out.
What do we blame in the proprietor?
Is it the fact of prehension , I mean the act by which he gets paid rent?
No, since, as has been recognized above, prehension, or the simple fact of appropriation, is by its nature indifferent to the right; since it is not distinguished from the fact of enjoyment, use or consumption, essential to all living beings; since it constitutes the eminent domain of man over things, a domain that is primitively summed up in these terms, hunting, fishing, gathering, grazing, dwelling, and outside of which man would be a slave to things themselves, but a domain that stops before the respect that I owe to others.
Now, the price of the lease represents the prehension that the owner has made of a certain part of the ground, on which he has erected or caused to be erected a building, of which he then relinquished possession in favor of the tenant. In itself, the price of the rent may seem a natural, normal and, as such, legalizable fact.
What we blame and that against which public opinion rises is the proportion of prehension, which we find exorbitant.
Where does this exorbitance come from?
It is obviously in the fact that there is no compensation between the sum demanded and the service rendered, in other words, that the owner is a leonine mercantilist.
The proprietor has taken the land: so be it. He possesses it by conquest, work, prescription, formal or tacit concession: we will not search for the cause. The Revolution, it is true, abolished the right of wrecks, and the most vulgar probity obliges us to report to the commissioner of police any object lost on the public highway: no matter, it is granted that the landowner could seize that which apparently was not occupied by anyone. What is required of him is not to exact from his property, when he presents it for exchange, more than it is worth, such a claim implying double theft, theft to the second power, which society cannot tolerate.
Are we therefore going to tax rents, as we taxed bread and meat? We know the result of such taxes: it is not brilliant enough to persist in, still less to generalize. We must return to the balance, the only way of determining values.
Note that any act of appropriation of an unoccupied thing, whether it be the earth or its products, an instrument of labor, an industrial process, an idea, is primitive, prior to justice, and that it falls under the empire of right only when it enters the sphere of social transactions. Seizure, usurpation, conquest, appropriation, whatever you please, does not therefore constitute a right; but, as everything in the social economy has its beginning in a preliminary prehension, it is agreed to recognize as the legitimate proprietor the first who seized the thing: this is what is called, by a fiction of the law, the right of first occupancy. It is only later, when this first occupant enters into contact with his fellows, that the property falls definitively within the scope of Justice.
Now, if we have already been able to find the balance of the worker and the boss, of the producer and the consumer, of the financial discounter and the merchant who circulates, of the lender and the borrower, why should we not find the same balance not only from proprietor to proprietor, not only from proprietor to municipality, but from proprietor to tenant?
What did I say? It is essential that we find this balance; since the entrepreneur, the worker, the seller, the buyer, the banker, the merchant, the capitalist, the borrower, being all, from various points of view, only proprietors subject to the balance, it is impossible for the landowner to escape the common condition; Without this he would profit, as worker, trader, borrower, from the profit of the balance, and not submitting to it as proprietor, he would be in debt with regard to others, he would violate their personal rights: he would be a thief, and, if he claimed the use of force, a brigand.
Therefore, let the said owner provide his accounts; let it be known what property costs him, in capital, maintenance, supervision, tax, even interest and rent, where rent and interest are paid. The price of the rent, equal to a fraction of the total, will be considered, according to the convenience of the parties and the nature of the building, either as an annuity reimbursed, or as the equivalent of maintenance and depreciation costs, plus remuneration for custody, service and risks of the entrepreneur.
Such is the principle, I am not saying of the fact of property, which by itself has no juridical character, but of the consecration of property by right and consequently of its balance. I will not dwell on the execution, a matter of police and accounting, the mode of which can vary ad infinitum.
The clearing of the ground, the construction of buildings, etc., in view of which the occupation of the ground takes place and subsequently the recognition of the property, are industries like the others, subject consequently to the same law of reciprocity and balance. From the moment, therefore, that the owner makes an act of industry, that to this act he adds another of commerce, his property, hitherto a simple manifestation of his autonomy, falls definitively under the rule of right, which is reciprocity or equivalence. For this reason alone it becomes respectable and sacred, it is part of the social pact.
The application of Justice to property has never been made, except by chance and in an irregular manner. Neither Roman right, nor canon right, nor any ancient or modern right, has recognized its exact theory. Hence those innumerable antinomies, which jurisprudence has hitherto remained powerless to resolve, and which are the shame of the school. The Revolution called for a radical reform: its lawyers, strangers to economic science, who defined Justice like the moneylender, gave us the Napoleonic Code. Everything remain to be done.
XXXIII
Impôt et Rente.
On n’a rien laissé à dire sur l’impôt ; toutes les combinaisons dont il est susceptible ont été essayées, proposées, discutées ; et, quoi qu’on ait fait et qu’on ait dit, il est resté comme une énigme insoluble, où l’arbitraire, la contradiction et l’iniquité se croisent sans fin.
L’impôt foncier agit sur l’agriculture comme le jeûne sur le sein d’une nourrice : c’est l’amaigrissement du nourrisson. Le gouvernement en est convaincu, mais, dit-il, il faut que je vive !
L’impôt des portes et fenêtres est une taxe sur le soleil et l’air, que nous payons en affections pulmonaires, scrofules, autant qu’avec notre argent. Le fisc n’en doute pas, mais, répète-t-il toujours, il faut que je vive !
L’impôt des patentes est un empêchement au travail, un gage donné au monopole.
L’impôt du sel un obstacle à l’élève du bétail, une interdiction de la salubrité.
L’impôt sur les vins, la viande, le sucre et tous les objets de consommation, en élevant arbitrairement le prix des choses, arrête la vente, restreint la consommation, pousse à la falsification, est une cause permanente de disette et d’empoisonnement.
L’impôt sur les successions, renouvelé de la main-morte, est une spoliation de la famille, d’autant plus odieuse que dans la majorité des cas la famille privée de son chef, d’un membre utile, voit sa puissance diminuer, et tombe dans l’inertie et l’indigence.
L’impôt sur le capital, qui a la prétention de simplifier tout en généralisant tout, ne fait que généraliser les vices de tous les autres impôts réunis ; c’est une diminution du capital. La belle idée !…
Pas d’impôt dont on ne puisse dire qu’il est un empêchement à la production, un empêchement à l’impôt ! Et comme l’inégalité la plus criante est inséparable de toute fiscalité, pas d’impôt dont on ne puisse dire encore qu’il est un auxiliaire du parasitisme contre le travail et la Justice. Le pouvoir sait toutes ces choses, mais il n’y peut que faire, et il faut qu’il vive !
Le peuple, toujours dupe de son imagination, est favorable à l’impôt somptuaire. Il applaudit aussi à l’impôt progressif, qui lui semble devoir rejeter sur la classe riche le fardeau qui écrase le peuple.
Je ne connais pas de spectacle plus affligeant que celui d’une plèbe menée par ses instincts.
Quoi ! vous voulez qu’on dégrève les patentes, les loyers, le taux de l’intérêt, les taxes de douane, les droits de circulation et d’entrée, toutes réformes qui naturellement permettraient de produire en plus grande quantité les objets dits de luxe, et, cela fait, vous demandez qu’on rançonne ceux qui les achètent ! Savez-vous qui payera l’impôt de luxe ? L’ouvrier de luxe ; cela est de nécessité mathématique et commerciale.
Vous voulez qu’on impose la richesse à mesure qu’elle se forme, ce qui signifie que vous défendez à quiconque de s’enrichir, à peine de confiscation progressive. Franchise au pain d’avoine, taxe sur le pain de froment : quelle perspective encourageante ! quelle économie !
On parle beaucoup d’un impôt sur les valeurs mobilières. En matière d’impôt, il est difficile d’imaginer rien de plus agréable au peuple, qui généralement ne touche pas de dividendes. Le principe conduirait à imposer le revenu des cautionnements, l’intérêt de la dette consolidée et de la dette flottante, les pensionnaires de l’État, ce qui équivaudrait à une réduction générale des rentes et traitements. Mais ne craignez pas que le fisc procède avec cette généralité, ni qu’il fasse grand mal aux capitalistes que la mesure doit atteindre. Réduire, par l’impôt, le capital à la portion congrue, après l’avoir appelé dans la commandite et l’emprunt par l’appât d’un fort bénéfice, serait une contradiction choquante, qui perdrait le crédit de l’État et des compagnies et disloquerait la système.
Il y a des riches, soi-disant amis du peuple, qui trouvent ces inventions superbes : hypocrites, qui savent à fond comment on leurre la multitude, et qui dans la conscience de leur iniquité jugent prudent de faire eux-mêmes à la misère populaire la part du feu !
La balance des produits et des besoins, de la circulation et de l’escompte, du crédit et de l’intérêt, de la commandite, du droit d’invention et du risque d’entreprise, est-elle faite ? Si oui, vous n’avez plus rien à demander à l’industrie et au commerce, rien à leurs actionnaires, rien à l’anonyme. Si non, il faut la faire : jusque là votre projet d’impôt ne peut servir qu’à sauvegarder le parasitisme, en ayant l’air de le frapper : c’est une jonglerie.
Je disais à un de ces habiles :
Il existe, en dehors de la série fiscale, une matière imposable, la plus imposable de toutes, et qui ne l’a jamais été ; dont la taxation, poussée jusqu’à l’absorption intégrale de la matière, ne saurait jamais préjudicier en rien ni au travail, ni à l’agriculture, ni à l’industrie, ni au commerce, ni au crédit, ni au capital, ni à la consommation, ni à la richesse ; qui, sans grever le peuple, n’empêcherait personne de vivre selon ses facultés, dans l’aisance, voire le luxe, et de jouir intégralement du produit de son talent et de sa science ; un impôt qui de plus serait l’expression de l’égalité même.
— Indiquez cette matière : vous aurez bien mérité de l’humanité.
— La rente foncière.
Allons, faux philanthrope, laissez-là votre impôt somptuaire, votre impôt progressif, et toutes vos adulations à la multitude envieuse ; imposez la rente de tout ce dont vous voudriez dégrever les autres impôts : personne n’en ressentira de gêne. L’agriculture demeurera prospère ; le commerce n’éprouvera jamais d’entraves : l’industrie sera au comble de la richesse et de la gloire. Plus de privilégiés, plus de pauvres : tous les hommes égaux devant le fisc comme devant la loi économique…
Démontrer cette proposition, c’est faire tout à la fois la théorie de la rente et de l’impôt, et, après en avoir expliqué la nature, en opérer la balance.
Les économistes ne sont point d’accord sur la nature de la rente : je vais, en disant moi-même ce qu’elle est, montrer la cause de ce dissentiment.
Point de richesse sans travail, ne fût-ce que celui de la simple appréhension : tout le monde est d’accord de ce premier principe.
Point de travail sans dépense de forces, laquelle dépense peut se ramener à quatre catégories : nourriture, vêtement, habitation, frais généraux, comprenant l’éducation du sujet, la pension de retraite, les chômages, maladies, sinistres. Ce second point n’offre de même aucune difficulté.
Prenant un travail quelconque, le coût de ce travail sera donc égal à la moyenne de ce que dépense un travailleur moyen pour se nourrir, se vêtir, se loger, etc., pendant tout le temps du travail.
Ceci posé, il peut se présenter trois cas :
Si le produit obtenu par le travail en rembourse les frais, il y a compensation : l’homme est dit vivre en travaillant, vivre au jour la journée, nouer les deux bouts… Cette condition, pendant quelque temps, peut paraître tolérable ; avec le temps, elle est insuffisante.
Si le produit, après avoir remboursé le travail de ses avances, donne un excédant, cet excédant est dit profit ou bénéfice ; entendu de la terre et des immeubles, il prend le nom de rente.
Si le produit ne couvre pas les frais du travail, il y a déficit : le travailleur se ruine, et, s’il s’obstine, il se consume infailliblement et meurt. Quand le travail ne se rembourse pas par le produit, il se rembourse par le sang, ce qui ne peut mener loin.
Mais, en partant de l’hypothèse d’une dépense moyenne et d’un travailleur moyen, nous sommes partis d’une hypothèse essentiellement variable : qui dit moyenne suppose variation, à l’infini. On conçoit donc que la rente, quelque nette qu’en soit l’idée, est au fond indéterminable : il est impossible de la séparer distinctement et avec précision du salaire.
En effet, si le travail est plus demandé, le produit plus offert, la rente baisse et tend à s’éteindre ; tout passe au salaire, il ne reste rien pour la rente. Si au contraire il y a demande des produits et offre du travail, la rente renaît et se multiplie ; le rentier s’engraisse pendant que le travailleur s’étiole.
En termes plus simples, si par quelque moyen le travail réduit ses frais ou est forcé de les réduire, la part regardée comme bénéfice sera plus grande, soit qu’elle aille tout entière à un maître ou propriétaire, soit qu’une partie reste aux mains du travailleur. Si les frais augmentent, la rente y passe ; il n’y a de surplus, de profit pour personne.
C’est donc en soi quelque chose d’éminemment variable, arbitraire et aléatoire que la rente ; quelque chose dont nous avons le concept, mais qui ne se définit que par le contrat, c’est-à-dire par un acte juridique étranger à la chose ; comme nous avons vu que la propriété se définit par la loi. Dans cette définition qu’opère seule la volonté des parties, le chiffre qui sert à désigner la rente peut n’être pas exact ; le fût-il, d’ailleurs, à un moment donné, que le moment d’après il ne le serait plus. Par le contrat, au contraire, en supposant la liberté et la bonne foi égales des deux parts, ce chiffre est réputé juste ; ce qui tombe au delà ou en deçà de la moyenne n’affecte pas le droit, c’est de la matière. C’est cette variabilité propre de la rente, que la volonté de deux contractants est seule capable par une fiction de droit de fixer, qui fait tant divaguer les économistes, la plupart, pour ne pas dire tous, s’efforçant de donner une définition fixe d’une chose qui de sa nature n’en comporte pas, et de subordonner à une pareille définition la science tout entière. (Voir au Dictionnaire de l’Économie politique l’opinion de MM. Ricardo, Carey, Passy, Bastiat.)
Mais il est encore une autre cause de division pour les économistes, et qui a son principe dans la première : elle consiste en ce que, la rente étant par elle-même indéterminable et ne pouvant se distinguer nettement du salaire, il est impossible, à priori et de par la théorie pure, de dire à qui doit être attribuée la rente, du propriétaire ou du travailleur.
M. Blanc Saint-Bonnet voit dans la rente la source des capitaux. « La propriété, dit-il, est le réservoir du capital. » Cette théorie de la formation des capitaux prend sous sa plume un air mystique qui en fait presque un huitième sacrement. Soit : je ne réfuterai pas une idée plus vieille qu’Ésope, et dont l’analyse a démontré de nos jours la pauvreté et l’insuffisance. Reste à savoir à qui sera attribué le capital.
Au fond, et à considérer le fait dans sa primitivité, la rente est la récompense du travail ; elle est son salaire légitime, elle lui appartient. Il ne vient pas à l’esprit du sauvage, quand il a tué un daim et qu’il se dispose à le manger avec sa famille, de faire deux parts de sa chasse et de dire : Ceci est ma rente, ceci est mon salaire. Et si, en raison du conflit économique et de l’exercice de la propriété, la coutume s’est établie parmi les propriétaires et entrepreneurs de réduire à la plus mince expression le salaire de l’ouvrier, afin de grossir d’autant leur rente, il ne faut pas s’imaginer pour cela que la rente soit donnée dans la nature des choses, au point que l’on puisse sans difficulté la reconnaître, comme on reconnaît un noyer au milieu d’une vigne. En fait, salaire et rente, à l’origine, se confondent ; et s’il fallait, à priori, décider à qui cette dernière, dans le cas où elle existe, doit être adjugée, la présomption serait acquise au travailleur.
En effet, on admet en principe que tout travail entrepris dans de bonnes conditions doit laisser au travailleur, en sus d’une consommation modérée, un excédant, une rente. La raison en est que la consommation elle-même est variable ; que, les premiers besoins satisfaits, il s’en manifeste d’autres, de plus en plus raffinés et coûteux, dont la satisfaction exige par conséquent qu’il puisse être largement pourvu aux autres. L’excédant de produit est donc tout à fait conforme à la dignité humaine, à notre faculté de prévision, de spéculation, d’entreprise ; en un mot, cet excédant est de notre droit. Le rentier présumé, ce serait donc, je le répète, à ne consulter que le fait brut, le travailleur.
Cependant la pratique sociale n’a pas voulu qu’il en fût ainsi ; et, quelque lésée que la classe travailleuse puisse se dire aujourd’hui, quelque revendication qu’elle ait droit d’élever, ce n’est pas sans une raison sérieuse que s’est faite cette distinction fondamentale de la rente et du salaire. C’est ce que je ferai toucher du doigt.
Pour que le travail soit fécond et puisse laisser une rente, bien des conditions sont requises, dont plusieurs ne dépendent pas de l’ouvrier, ne résultent point de son libre arbitre :
1o Conditions dans le travail : choix des instruments, méthode, talent, diligence ;
2o Conditions dans le sol et le climat ;
3o Conditions dans la société : demande des produits, facilité de transport, sécurité du marché, etc.
De cette classification il résulte que, si la condition première, nécessaire, de toute rente est le travail, une autre série de conditions dépend de la nature, et une troisième appartient à la société.
D’où il suit que la rente, en supposant toujours qu’elle existe, appartient pour une part au travailleur, qui la rend perceptible ; pour une seconde part à la nature, et pour une troisième part à la société, qui y contribue par ses institutions, ses idées, ses instruments, ses marchés.
La part de rente revenant au travailleur lui sera donc payée avec le salaire, duquel, dans la pratique, elle ne se distingue pas ;
La part revenant à la nature est payée au propriétaire foncier, qui est censé le créateur et l’ayant-droit du sol ;
La part revenant à la société lui arrive, partie par l’impôt, partie par la réduction du prix des choses, résultant de la facilité des relations et de la concurrence des producteurs.
Toute la question est donc de régulariser cette répartition, en faisant une balance exacte du doit et de l’avoir de chaque partie.
D’abord, il est un de ces comptes qui tend à disparaître : c’est le second, cette fiction légale par laquelle une part de la rente est assignée au sol, représenté par le tenancier ou propriétaire.
La propriété, avons-nous dit, est l’acte de préhension par lequel l’homme, antérieurement à toute justice, établit son domaine sur la nature, à peine d’être dominé par elle. Mais par cela même il implique contradiction que cet acte de préhension lui devienne un titre de redevance perpétuelle vis-à-vis du travailleur qu’il se substitue sur le sol, puisque ce serait lui attribuer vis-à-vis de celui-ci une action juridique en vertu d’un titre qui n’a rien de juridique, la préhension ; puisqu’en outre ce serait subordonner de fait le travailleur à la terre, tandis que le propriétaire qui renonce à l’exploiter obtiendrait sur elle un domaine métaphysique, ou, comme disent les légistes, éminent, qui primerait l’action effective du travailleur : ce qui répugne. La société autorise la préhension, dans certains cas elle l’encourage, la récompense même ; elle ne la pensionne pas.
Ajoutons qu’en suite de la balance qui a été faite entre le maître et le fermier, d’après les solutions précédentes, le propriétaire est devenu un producteur sui generis, dont les intérêts et les droits se confondent, vis-à-vis de la rente, avec ceux du fermier.
Resteraient donc en présence deux parties prenantes : l’exploitant, et la société.
Quelle sera d’abord la part de l’un et de l’autre ? Et le partage fait, qui percevra pour la société ?
La rente étant définie conventionnellement Ce qui excède la moyenne des frais d’exploitation, mon opinion est que, cette moyenne étant connue, ou autant que possible approximée, l’exploitant doit prélever, en sus du remboursement de ses avances, une part de rente, variable, selon les circonstances, de 25 à 50 p. 0/0 de la rente, et le surplus appartenir à la société.
Il n’est pas possible de donner une formule absolue de partage pour un compte dont les éléments peuvent varier à l’infini. Tout ce qu’il importe de dire, quant à présent, c’est que l’exploitant doit être servi le premier, conformément au principe du salaire ; et que le revenu social, ou l’impôt, doit se trouver principalement dans la rente. C’était la pensée des physiocrates que la rente foncière devait acquitter sinon la totalité, au moins la majeure partie de l’impôt ; c’est cette même pensée qui a fait commencer le cadastre.
Toutefois, il ne me semblerait pas bon que l’État absorbât chaque année pour ses dépenses la totalité de la rente, et cela pour plusieurs raisons : d’abord parce qu’il importe de restreindre toujours, le plus possible, les dépenses de l’État ; en second lieu, parce que ce serait reconnaître dans l’État, seul rentier désormais et propriétaire, une souveraineté transcendante, incompatible avec la notion révolutionnaire de Justice, et qu’il est meilleur pour la liberté publique de laisser la rente à un certain nombre de citoyens, exploitant ou ayant exploité, que de la livrer tout entière à des fonctionnaires ; enfin, parce qu’il est utile à l’ordre économique de conserver ce ferment d’activité qui, dans les limites et sous les conditions qui viennent d’être déterminées, ne parait pas susceptible d’abus, et fournit au contraire, contre les envahissements du fisc, le plus énergique contrepoids. Sur les 50 ou 75 p. 0/0 restants de la rente, une part sera donc prélevée pour le budget ; l’autre appartiendra au propriétaire.
Que l’on dise, si l’on veut, que la proportion suivant laquelle je propose de répartir la rente manque de précision, c’est un inconvénient que je reconnais d’autant plus volontiers qu’il exprime le fait fondamental sur lequel repose toute la théorie, à savoir l’indéfinissabilité de la rente.
Mais ce que l’on ne me fera jamais regarder comme juste, c’est que, tandis que l’État n’accorde aux brevetés d’invention qu’une jouissance de quatorze ans, il livre à perpétuité la rente du sol ; c’est qu’il n’en réserve rien pour le fermier ; c’est qu’il écrase d’impôts l’industrie, le commerce, le travail, pendant qu’il se prosterne devant une prélibation trop souvent parasite, et qui ne peut invoquer en sa faveur que le préjugé des siècles, le silence de la multitude et la mythologie du culte.
Quoi ! la communauté a d’innombrables charges, des travaux à exécuter, une police, une administration, des écoles à entretenir, et vous prétendez couvrir ces frais, balancer ces dépenses avec mon salaire ? Mais mon salaire, la moyenne de ce qu’un travailleur moyen dépense par jour, mon salaire c’est mon sang, c’est ma vie ; vie pesée, mesurée, balancée, nombrée, avec toute la sévérité de la Justice. Prenez la rente !
Vous voulez imposer la circulation, l’étalage, l’habitation, les mutations, l’initiative personnelle, le jour, la nuit, l’air, l’eau, le feu, la naissance, le mariage, la mort !… Mais toutes ces choses sont comme le travail et le salaire : la balance faite, il n’y a plus rien à en tirer. Là ne peut être votre revenu, parce que là il n’y a point d’excédant, point de reste. Encore une fois, adressez-vous à la rente.
La rente, part du roi, part du seigneur, part de l’Église, chez toutes les nations à l’état féodal, la rente est le revenu naturel de l’État, là où le roi, le noble et le prêtre ont disparu pour faire place à la démocratie ; et après l’État, de la nue propriété, objet de la compétition universelle, marque de la plus haute dignité civique : la rente, en un mot, c’est encore l’égalité, c’est l’impôt.
XXXV. — Taxation and Rent .
We have left nothing to say about taxation. All the combinations of which it is susceptible have been tried, proposed, discussed; and, whatever has been done and said, it has remained like an insoluble enigma, where arbitrariness, contradiction and iniquity intersect endlessly.
The land tax acts on agriculture like fasting on the breast of a nurse: it is the dwindling of the infant. The government is convinced of this; but, it says, I must live!
The tax on doors and windows is a tax on the sun and the air, which we pay in pulmonary afflictions, scrofula, as much as with our money. The tax authority does not doubt it; but, it always repeats, I must live!
The tax on patents is an impediment to work, a pledge given to monopoly.
The salt tax an obstacle to the rearing of cattle, a prohibition of salubrity.
The tax on wine, meat, sugar and all articles of consumption, by arbitrarily raising the price of things, stops the sale, restricts consumption, encourages falsification, and is a permanent cause of scarcity and poisoning. .
The inheritance tax, renewed by mortmain, is a spoliation of the family, all the more odious since, in the majority of cases, the family, deprived of its head, of a useful member, sees its power diminish, and falls into inertia and poverty.
The tax on capital, which claims to simplify while generalizing everything, only generalizes the vices of all the other taxes put together; it is a decrease in capital. What a fine idea!
There is no tax that cannot be said to be an impediment to production, an impediment to taxation! And since the most glaring inequality is inseparable from all taxation, there is no tax that cannot also be said to be an auxiliary of parasitism against work and justice. Power knows all these things, but it can do nothing about it: it must live!
The people, always taken in by their imagination, are in favor of the sumptuary tax. It also applauds the progressive tax, which seems to it to have to throw on the rich class the burden that crushes the people.
I know of no sight more distressing than that of the masses led by their instincts.
What! You want us to reduce patents, rents, interest rates, customs taxes, traffic and entry fees, all reforms that naturally would allow the production of so-called luxury goods in greater quantities, and, that done, you ask that those who buy them be chastised! Do you know who will pay the luxury tax? The luxury worker: this is of mathematical and commercial necessity.
You want wealth to be taxed as it is formed, which means that you forbid anyone to get rich, on pain of progressive confiscation. Exemption on oat bread, tax on wheat bread: what an encouraging prospect! What economy!
There is a lot of talk about a securities tax. In terms of tax, it is difficult to imagine anything more pleasing to the people, who generally do not receive dividends. The principle would lead to taxation of the income from sureties, the interest of the consolidated debt and the floating debt, the pensioners of the State, which would be equivalent to a general reduction of rents and salaries. But do not be afraid that the tax authority will proceed with this generality, nor that it will do great harm to the capitalists whom the measure must affect. Reducing, through taxation, the capital to the minimum portion, after having called it into sponsorship and borrowing for the lure of a large profit, would be a shocking contradiction, which would lose the credit of the State and companies and disrupt the system.
There are rich people, so-called friends of the people, who find these inventions superb: hypocrites, who know thoroughly how to deceive the multitude, and who, in the consciousness of their iniquity, judge it prudent to make sacrifices to the popular misery!
Is the balance of products and needs, of circulation and discount, of credit and interest, of sponsorship, of the right of invention and of business risk, established? If so, you have nothing more to ask of industry and commerce, nothing of their shareholders, nothing of the anonymous. If not, it must be done: until then your tax project can only be used to safeguard parasitism, while seeming to strike it: it’s a jugglery.
I said to one of these skillful people:
There exists, apart from the fiscal series, a taxable subject, the most taxable of all, which has never been taxed; the taxation of which, pushed to the point of the integral absorption of the matter, can never prejudice in any way neither labor, nor agriculture, nor industry, nor commerce, nor credit, nor capital, neither to consumption nor to wealth; which, without encumbering the people, would not prevent anyone from living according to their faculties, in ease, even luxury, and from fully enjoying the product of their talent and science; a tax which, moreover, would be the expression of equality itself.
— Indicate this matter: you will have deserved well from humanity.
— The land rent.
Come, false philanthropist, leave there your sumptuary tax, your progressive tax, and all your adulations to the envious multitude; tax the income of all that you would like to deduct from the other taxes: no one will feel any embarrassment. Agriculture will remain prosperous; commerce will never experience obstacles: industry will be at the height of wealth and glory. More privileged, more poor: all men equal before the tax authorities as before economic law.
To demonstrate this proposition is to establish the theory of rent and tax at the same time, and, after having explained their nature, to work out their balance.
Economists are not in agreement on the nature of rent: I am going, by saying what it is myself, to show the cause of this disagreement.
There is no wealth without work, if only that of simple apprehension: everyone is in agreement with this first principle.
There is no work without expenditure of forces, which expenditure can be reduced to four categories: food, clothing, housing, general expenses, including the education of the subject, retirement pension, unemployment, illnesses, disasters. This second point likewise offers no difficulty.
Taking any work, the cost of this work will therefore be equal to the average of what an average worker spends on food, clothing, lodging, etc., during the whole time of work.
This being said, three cases can present themselves:
If the product obtained by the work reimburses the costs, there is compensation: the man is said to live by working, to live from day to day, to make ends meet. This condition, for some time, may seem tolerable; over time, it is insufficient.
If the product, after having reimbursed the work of its advances, yields a surplus, this surplus is said to be profit or benefit; when said of the land (woods, meadows, vines, arable land, etc.), it takes the name of rent.
If the product does not cover the cost of the work, there is a deficit: the worker is ruined, and if he persists, he is infallibly consumed and dies. When the work is not reimbursed by the product, it is reimbursed by the blood, which cannot go far.
But, starting from the hypothesis of an average expenditure and an average worker, we started from an essentially variable datum: who says average supposes variation, ad infinitum. We therefore conceive that rent, however clear the idea, is basically indeterminable: it is impossible to separate it distinctly and precisely from wages.
Indeed, if the demand for labor increases, with more product offered, rent falls and tends to be extinguished; everything goes to wages, and there is nothing left for rent. If, on the contrary, there is demand for products and supply of labour, rent is reborn and multiplies; the rentier grows fat while the worker withers away.
In simpler terms: if by any means labor reduces its costs or is forced to reduce them, the share regarded as profit will be greater, whether it all goes to a master or proprietor, or a part remains in the hands of the worker, if the costs increase, the rent goes there, and there is no surplus for anyone.
Rent is therefore in itself something eminently variable, arbitrary and random; something of which the comparison of the product of different lands gives us the concept, but which is really defined only by the contract, that is to say by a juridical act foreign to the thing, as we have seen that the property is defined by law. In this definition, which operates solely the will of the parties, the figure that serves to designate the rent may not be exact; were it, moreover, at a given moment, that the next moment it would no longer be so. By the contract, on the contrary, assuming equal freedom and good faith on both sides, this figure is deemed to be fair; what falls above or below the average does not affect the right, it is the material. It is this inherent variability of rent, which the will of two contracting parties is alone capable, by a fiction of law, of fixing, that makes economists ramble so much, most, if not all, endeavoring to give a fixed definition of a thing that by its nature cannot entail one, and to subordinate the whole of science to such a definition. (See in the Dictionary of Political Economy the opinion of MM. Ricardo, Carey, Passy, Bastiat.)
But there is yet another cause of division for economists, which has its principle in the first: it consists in the fact that, rent being in itself indeterminable and not being able to be clearly distinguished from wages, it is impossible, a priori and by pure theory, to say to whom the rent should be attributed, to the owner or to the worker.
M. Blanc Saint-Bonnet sees in rent the source of capital. “Property , he says, is the reservoir of capital.” This theory of capital formation takes on a mystical air from his pen, which makes it almost an eighth sacrament. So be it: I will not refute an idea older than Aesop, whose analysis has demonstrated, in our day, its poverty and insufficiency. It remains to be seen to whom the capital will be allocated.
At base, and considering the fact in its crudest form, rent is the reward for labor; it is its legitimate wage, it belongs to it. It does not occur to the mind of the savage, when he has killed a deer and is about to eat it with his family, to make two parts of his hunt and to say: This is my income, this is my salary. And if, because of the economic conflict and the exercise of property, the custom has become established among owners and contractors of reducing the wage of the worker to the smallest expression, in order to increase their rent by the same amount, we must not imagine for that that rent is given in the nature of things, to the point that we can recognize it without difficulty, as we recognize a walnut tree in the middle of a vine. In fact, salary and rent, originally, merge: this becomes noticeable when the land is very divided, and all the cultivators being proprietors, each lives on his own harvest. If there were, a priori, to decide to whom the rent must be awarded, in the cases where it exists, the presumption would be acquired by the worker.
Indeed, it is accepted in principle that any work undertaken under good conditions must leave the worker, in addition to a moderate consumption, a surplus, a rent. The reason is that consumption itself is variable; that, the first needs satisfied, others appear, more and more refined and expensive, whose satisfaction consequently requires that it can be largely provided for the others. The surplus of product is therefore completely in conformity with human dignity, with our faculty of forecasting, speculation, enterprise; in a word, this excess is our right. The presumed rentier would therefore be, I repeat, to consult only the raw fact, the worker.
However, social practice did not want it to be so; and, however wronged the working class may say it is today, whatever claim it had to the right to rise, it is not without a serious reason that this fundamental distinction between rent and wages has been made. This is what I will put my finger on.
For labor to be fruitful and to be able to leave a rent, many conditions are required, several of which do not depend on the worker, do not result from his free will:
1° Conditions in the labor: choice of instruments, method, talent, diligence;
2° Conditions in the soil and climate;
3° Conditions in society: demand for products, ease of transport, security of the market, etc.
From this classification it follows that, if the first and necessary condition of all rent is labor, another series of conditions depends on nature, and a third pertains to society.
From which it follows that rent, always supposing that it exists, belongs in part to the worker, who makes it perceptible; for a second part to nature, and for a third part to society, which contributes to it by its institutions, its ideas, its instruments, its outlets.
The share of rent due to the worker will therefore be paid to him with the wage, from which, in practice, it is indistinguishable;
Nature’s share is paid to the landowner, who is deemed to be the creator and beneficiary of the land;
The share due to society comes to it, partly through taxes, partly through the reduction in the price of things, resulting from the facility of relations and the competition of producers.
The whole question is therefore to regularize this distribution, by making an exact balance of the debit and the asset of each party.
First of all, there is one of those accounts which, if we relied on the partisans of the indivisibility and inalienability of the soil, should disappear: it is the second, this legal fiction by which a part of the rent is assigned to the ground, represented by the tenant or proprietor. Property, they say, is the act of prehension by which man, prior to any justice, establishes his domain over nature, on pain of being dominated by her. But by that very fact it implies a contradiction that this act of prehension becomes for him a title of perpetual royalty over the worker whom he replaces on the ground, since this would be to attribute to him in respect to the latter a legal action under a non-legal title, prehension; since moreover it would be in fact subordinating the worker to the land, while the owner who renounces exploiting it would obtain over it a metaphysical domain, or, as the jurists say, eminent, which would take precedence over the effective action of the worker: which is repellent. Society permits prehension, in some cases encourages it, even rewards it; it does not pension it. Such is the right which, after the emancipation of the serfs and the reimbursement of the seigneurial rights, would govern the commune in Russia.
There would therefore remain two stakeholders: the worker exploiting the land and the society.
What will be the share of one and the other? And the sharing done, who will collect for society?
The rent being defined conventionally — as That which exceeds the average of the operating costs — my opinion is that, this average being known, or as much as possible approximated, the operator must take, in addition to the reimbursement of his advances, a portion of the rent, variable, according to the circumstances, from 25 to 50% of the rent, and the surplus belongs to society.
It is not possible to give an absolute formula for sharing for an account whose elements can vary ad infinitum. All that it is important to say, for the present, is that the operator must be served first, in accordance with the principle of wages; and that the social revenue, or tax, must be mainly in the rent. It was the thought of the Physiocrats that ground rent should discharge, if not the whole, at least the greater part of the tax; it is this same thought that caused the land registry to be established.
However, it would not seem to me good for the State to absorb each year for its expenditure the totality of the rent, and this for several reasons: first, because it is important always to restrict, as much as possible, the expenditure of State; in the second place, because it would be to recognize in the State, henceforth the sole rentier and proprietor, a transcendent sovereignty, incompatible with the revolutionary notion of Justice, and because it is better for public liberty to leave the rent to a certain number of citizens, exploiting or having exploited, than to hand it over to officials; finally, because it is useful to the economic order to preserve this ferment of activity that, within the limits and under the conditions which have just been determined, does not appear susceptible of abuse, and provides on the contrary, against the invasions of the tax authority, the most energetic counterweight.
Of the 50 or 75% remaining of the rent, a portion will therefore be deducted for the budget; the other will belong to the proprietor.
Let it be said, if you will, that the proportion according to which I propose to distribute the rent lacks precision, it is a disadvantage that I recognize all the more willingly in that it expresses the fundamental fact on which the whole theory rests, namely the indefinability of rent.
But what I will never be made to regard as fair is that, while the State only grants to patentees of invention a enjoyment of fourteen years, it delivers the rent of the soil in perpetuity; it is that it reserves nothing of it for the farmer; it crushes industry, commerce, labor with taxes, while it prostrates itself before a too often parasitic prelibation, which can only invoke in its favor the prejudice of centuries, the silence of the multitude and the mythology of the cult.
What! The community has innumerable charges, works to execute, a police, an administration, schools to maintain, and you claim to cover these costs, balance these expenses with a deduction from my salary? But my salary, the average of what an average worker spends per day, my salary is my blood, it is my life, life weighed, measured, balanced, numbered, with all the severity of Justice. Take the rent!
You want to impose circulation, display, habitation, mutations, personal initiative, day, night, air, water, fire, birth, marriage, death!… But all these things are like work and wages: the balance made, there is nothing more to be gained from it. Your income cannot be there, because there is no surplus, no remainder. Again, address yourself to the rent.
The rent, portion of the king, portion of the lord, portion of the Church, among all nations in the feudal state, the rent is the natural revenue of the State, where the king, the noble and the priest have disappeared to make room for democracy; and, after the State, naked property, object of universal competition, mark of the highest civic dignity. Rent, in a word, is still equality, it is taxation. (N)
XXXIV
Population et Subsistances.
Si l’on réfléchit sur les balances dont je viens de donner les formules, on verra qu’elles reposent toutes sur ces quatre principes : d’un côté, que rien ne peut être tiré de rien, se produire en vertu de rien, être balancé par rien (ax. 2, 3 et 6); de l’autre, que l’homme veut être respecté dans sa chose comme dans sa personne, faute de quoi la Justice est violée.
Toute transaction entre l’homme et l’homme relativement aux objets de leur consommation et de leur industrie implique donc que le produit soit balancé par le produit, le travail par le travail, la dépense par la dépense, le service par le service, le crédit par le crédit, le privilége par le privilége, en deux mots la valeur par la valeur.
Il n’y a plus balance, il y a injustice, partant vol, désordre, crime et guerre latente, dès que l’un est obligé de fournir une valeur plus considérable pour une valeur moindre.
Dans l’incertitude où l’on est presque toujours de la valeur exacte des choses, ce n’est pas chose toujours facile que d’établir toutes ces balances : aussi peut-on dire qu’autant la spéculation agioteuse, basée sur l’anarchie, est intéressée à entretenir l’incertitude, autant la société est intéressée elle-même à entourer les transactions de toutes les lumières et garanties possibles.
Mais il n’y a pas rien à balancer que des valeurs dans la société ; il faut trouver aussi la balance des forces.
Les forces, en économie, sont de deux espèces.
J’appelle de ce nom, en premier lieu, tout principe d’action, tout mobile animique ou passionnel, toute combinaison de moyens servant à la production et à la multiplication des valeurs. Le travail est une force ; la division du travail ou son groupement est encore une force ; la propriété, la concurrence, l’échange, le crédit, la science appliquée à l’industrie, l’ambition, le luxe même et la rente, dans les limites que nous venons de lui assigner, sont des forces, les véritables forces du monde économique.
Toute force requiert, pour se manifester et agir, un lieu, une matière qui la récèle, d’où elle part comme la foudre part de la nue, la chaleur du soleil, l’attraction du corps grave.
Le foyer des forces économiques proprement dites est dans les forces de la nature, lesquelles deviennent ainsi pour l’économiste une seconde espèce de forces : la terre, la chaleur, l’électricité, l’eau, l’air, la végétation, les affinités chimiques, la vie, etc., capital primitif de l’humanité, instrument de son industrie et matière de sa richesse. L’homme lui-même, dont l’éducation est si longue, l’entretien si coûteux, peut être à son tour considéré comme une force naturelle : en sorte que, selon le point de vue où l’on se place, il participe des deux espèces de forces, et forme la transition qui unit le monde social à l’univers.
D’après ces définitions, la population est une force, une des grandes forces de l’économie.
Toutes ces forces doivent être balancées entre elles, dans chaque catégorie, et de l’une à l’autre catégorie.
Sur ce terrain, la science est fort peu avancée. Les économistes n’entendent généralement forces de production que les forces naturelles ; et parmi les problèmes que la balance des forces soulève ils ne se sont guère occupés que d’un seul, celui dont la matérialité devait frapper le plus leur imagination, le problème, comme ils l’appellent, de la population et des subsistances.
C’est celui dont nous allons essayer la solution.
XXXVI. — Population and Subsistances.
If we reflect on the equations whose formulas I have just given, we will see that they are all based on these four principles: on the one hand, that nothing can be drawn from nothing, be produced by virtue of nothing, be balanced by by nothing (ax. 2, 3 and 8); on the other, that man wants to be respected in his possesses as in his person, failing which Justice is violated.
Any transaction between man and man relative to the objects of their consumption and their industry therefore implies that product is balanced by product, labor by labor, expenditure by expense, service by service, credit by credit, privilege by privilege, in short, value by value.
There is no longer balance, there is injustice, hence theft, disorder, crime and latent war, as soon as one is obliged to furnish a greater value for a lesser value.
In the uncertainty that one almost always experiences regarding the exact value of things, it is not an easy thing to establish these balances: so one can say that as much as speculative speculation, based on anarchy, is interested in maintaining uncertainty, so much society is interested itself in surrounding the transactions with all possible light and guarantees.
But there are not only values to equalize in society; it is also necessary to find the balance of forces.
Forces in economics are of two kinds.
I call by this name, in the first place, any principle of action, any motive of the soul or passion, any combination of means serving for the production and multiplication of values. Work is force; the division of labor or its grouping is still a force; property, competition, exchange, credit, science applied to industry, ambition, even luxury and rent, within the limits we have just assigned to them, are forces, the true forces of the economic world.
All force requires, in order to manifest itself and act, a place, a matter that receives it, from which it leaves as lightning leaves the cloud, the heat of the sun, the attraction of the grave body. The focus of economic forces, such as we have just enumerated, is found originally in the forces of nature, which thus become for the economist a second kind of force: earth, heat, electricity, water. , air, vegetation, chemical affinities, life, etc., primitive capital of humanity, instrument of its industry and raw material of its wealth. Man himself, whose education is so long, can in his turn be considered as a fatherly force: so that, depending upon the point of view from which we orient ourselves, he participates in two kinds of forces, and forms the transition that unites the social world to the universe.
According to these definitions, population is a force, one of the great forces of the economy. Association, the political organization, the family, are also forces.
All these forces must be balanced among themselves, in each category, and from one to another category.
On this terrain, science has advanced very little. Economists generally understand by forces of production only natural forces; and among the problems that the balance of forces raises, they are hardly occupied with a single one, the one whose materiality was to strike their imagination the most, the problem, as they call it, of population and subsistence.
This is the one whose solution we are going to attempt.
L’homme est tout à la fois puissance de production, puissance de consommation et puissance de génération. Il crée la richesse et il la consomme ; de plus, en produisant et consommant, il se multiplie. En tant qu’il rassemble en sa personne toutes les forces de la première espèce, sa puissance productrice peut être considérée, de même que sa puissance génératrice, comme illimitée. Mais les forces naturelles dont il dispose ont une limite ; et l’on peut prévoir le jour où la terre et tout ce qu’elle contient manquera à l’homme, où le capital ne sera pas en proportion du groupe travailleur et de la consommation. On demande comment doit s’opérer l’équilibre.
La solution proposée par Malthus est connue. J’ose dire que la conscience publique, du moins en France, s’est irrévocablement prononcée contre son école, et l’on pardonnera à ma vanité de croire que je ne suis pas tout à fait pour rien dans le blâme qui l’a frappée. Le socialisme peut se vanter d’avoir été, sur la question de la population, le vengeur de l’honnêteté publique : il le sera jusqu’à la fin.
Je regrette que M. Joseph Garnier, dont je ne puis m’empêcher de reconnaître la parfaite loyauté et la franchise, se soit cru autorisé par l’exemple de l’Académie des Sciences morales et politiques à attacher son nom à la turpitude malthusienne ; mais, puisqu’il a cru devoir, dans une publication récente, relever cette scabreuse controverse, où mon nom se trouve mêlé, il ne trouvera pas mauvais que je lui réponde.
Voyons d’abord comment Malthus a posé le problème, et comment il en a compris l’équation. Ses disciples ont l’habitude d’accuser leurs adversaires de ne l’avoir pas lu et de n’en connaître que le fameux passage auquel Malthus doit sa célébrité. Je commence par déclarer que j’ai parfaitement lu Malthus, ainsi que le dernier ouvrage de M. Joseph Garnier, son disciple et continuateur, auquel j’emprunterai quelques citations.
La doctrine de Malthus, puisque doctrine il y a, se résume en cinq propositions.
1. — En principe, dit Malthus, et après lui M. Joseph Garnier, nous pouvons tenir pour certain que la population, si aucun obstacle ne s’y opposait, se développerait incessamment, suivant une progression géométrique et sans limites assignables, au point de doubler en peu d’années.
Une partie du livre de Malthus est employée à recueillir les faits qui prouvent cette tendance de la population.
2. — En fait, nous sommes en état de prononcer, en partant de l’état actuel de la terre habitée, que les moyens de subsistance, dans les circonstances les plus favorables à l’industrie, ne peuvent jamais augmenter plus rapidement que selon une progression arithmétique.
Suit encore l’exposé des faits qui, selon Malthus, démontrent cette seconde proposition.
3. — Qu’arrive-t-il, se demande alors le laborieux compilateur, lorsque la population, obéissant à sa tendance, dépasse les moyens qu’elle a de subsister ? — Le surplus est expulsé par la famine et les maladies, auxquelles il faut joindre les infanticides, les avortements, les expositions d’enfants, la guerre.
Un large espace est consacré par l’auteur à l’exposition de ces moyens répressifs, que la nature et l’homme emploient pour ramener l’équilibre.
4. — Mais, observe ici Malthus, ce système de répression est anormal ; il accuse l’imprévoyance de l’homme ; la raison le repousse, et la morale avec elle.
Ce que la force des choses exécute par la famine, et le désespoir de l’homme par le carnage, il dépend de notre liberté de l’opérer par la limitation préventive du nombre des naissances, ou pour mieux dire des grossesses. Ce moyen de prévention est ce que Malthus nomme moral restreint, restriction ou contrainte morale.
5. — Ici Malthus et son école ont parfaitement senti que la pudeur publique s’effaroucherait ; qu’elle trouverait le système préventif aussi déplorable que le système répressif, et non moins immoral.
Les Malthusiens soutiennent donc la moralité de l’onanisme, qu’ils recommandent sous le nom de restriction morale. Ils combattent le préjugé biblique qui a fait de cette pratique une chose honteuse et détestable, rem detestabilem, et s’attachent à détruire les scrupules, en montrant que la perte volontaire des germes est chose aussi insignifiante de sa nature que les pollutions qui arrivent dans le sommeil, en effrayant les parents sur les suites de leur indiscrétion, etc.
Ils insistent surtout sur l’inutilité des moyens proposés comme remèdes à l’excès de population, tels que émigration, augmentation de produit, diminution des charges publiques, destruction du parasitisme, réformes sociales, etc.
Telle est, dans son ensemble, la théorie dite de Malthus.
Afin qu’on ne m’accuse pas de chicaner sur les mots, je ferai observer, avec toute l’école, que Malthus, en opposant la progression géométrique 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, à la progression arithmétique 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc., la première représentant la tendance de la population, la seconde l’accroissement effectif des subsistances, n’a pas entendu dire qu’elles fussent ni l’une ni l’autre l’expression littérale de deux lois économiques, mais seulement une comparaison servant à expliquer le rapport de deux mouvements, l’un tendantiel et possible, celui de la population ; l’autre effectif, celui de la richesse.
« En deux mots, dit M. Joseph Garnier, la population a une tendance organique et virtuelle à s’accroître plus rapidement que les moyens d’existence : d’où résulte le progrès de la misère. »
Du reste, les économistes du restreint moral, MM. Joseph Garnier, Gustave de Molinari, Rossi, Dunoyer, John Stuart Mill, Guizot, l’Académie des Sciences morales et politiques, se plaignent de l’impopularité qui, en Angleterre et en France, s’est attachée au nom de Malthus. Ils accusent le clergé de toutes les églises d’entretenir sur ce point l’ignorance, la superstition, c’est-à-dire l’incontinence génératrice, et par suite le paupérisme ; ils recommandent la recette à l’attention des hommes d’État, demandant qu’elle soit prêchée en chaire et enseignée dans les écoles, aussi bien que les dix commandements de Dieu, affirmant qu’il n’y a pas d’autre remède au paupérisme et au crime, pas d’autre préservatif contre le socialisme et la Révolution.
XXXVII. — Man is simultaneously a power of production, a power of consumption and a power of generation. He creates wealth and he consumes it; moreover, by producing and consuming, he multiplies. Insofar as he gathers in his person all the forces of the first kind, labor, credit, exchange, etc., his productive power can be considered, like his generative power, as unlimited. But the natural forces at his disposal have a limit; and we can foresee the day when the earth and all that it contains fails man, when the natural capital will not be in proportion to the working group and its consumption. We wonder how the equilibrium will be accomplished.
The solution proposed by Malthus is well known. I dare to say that the public conscience, at least in France, has decided irrevocably against his school, and my vanity will be forgiven for believing that I am not entirely irresponsible in the blame which has struck it. Socialism can boast of having been, on the question of population, the avenger of public honesty: it will be so until the end.
I regret that M. Joseph Garnier, whose perfect loyalty and frankness I cannot help recognizing, believed himself authorized by the example of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences to attach his name to Malthusian turpitude; but, since he has, in a recent publication, thought fit to raise this scabrous controversy in which my name is involved, he will not find it amiss that I reply to him.
Let us first see how Malthus posed the problem and how he understood the equation. His disciples are in the habit of accusing their adversaries of not having read him and of knowing only the famous passage to which Malthus owes his fame. I begin by declaring that I have read Malthus perfectly, as well as the last work of M. Joseph Garnier, his disciple and successor, from whom I will borrow a few passages.
The doctrine of Malthus, since there is a doctrine, can be summed up in five propositions.
1. — In principle, said Malthus, and after him M. Joseph Garnier, we can take it for certain that the population, if no obstacle opposed it, would develop incessantly, following a geometric progression and without assignable limits, to the point of doubling in a few years.
A part of Malthus’s book is employed in collecting the facts that prove this tendency of the population.
2. — In fact, we are in a position to pronounce, starting from the present state of the inhabited earth, that the means of subsistence, under the circumstances most favorable to industry, can never increase more rapidly than according to an arithmetic progression.
Then follows the account of the facts that, according to Malthus, demonstrate this second proposition.
3. What happens, then asks the laborious compiler, when the population, obeying its tendency, exceeds the means it has of subsisting? — The surplus is expelled by famine and disease, to which must be added infanticide, abortion, exposure of children, war.
A large space is devoted by the author to the exposition of these repressive means, which nature and man employ to restore balance.
4. But, observes Malthus here, this system of repression is abnormal; he accuses the lack of foresight of man; reason rejects it, and morality with it.
What the force of things executes by famine, and the despair of man by carnage, our liberty must accomplish by the preventive limitation of the number of births, or to speak better of pregnancies. This means of prevention is what Malthus calls moral restraint.
5. Here Malthus and his school sensed perfectly that public modesty would be startles; that it would find the preventive system as deplorable as the repressive system, and no less immoral.
The Malthusians therefore uphold the morality of onanism, which they recommend under the name of moral restraint. They combat the biblical prejudice that has made this practice a shameful and detestable thing, rem detestabilem; and they endeavor to destroy scruples, by showing that the voluntary loss of germs is a thing as insignificant in its nature as the pollutions that occur in sleep, by frightening the parents with the consequences of their indiscretion, etc.
They insist above all on the uselessness of the means proposed as remedies for the excess of population, such as emigration, increase in produce, reduction of public charges, destruction of parasitism, social reforms, &c.
Such, as a whole, is the so-called Malthusian theory. Lest I be accused of quibbling over words, I will point out, with the whole school, that Malthus, in contrasting the geometric progression 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, to the arithmetic progression 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc., the first representing the tendency of the population, the second the effective increase in subsistence, did not mean to say that either were the literal expression of two economic laws, but only a comparison serving to explain the relationship of two movements, one tendential and, if nothing delays it, unmistakable, that of the population; the other effective, that of wealth.
“In short,” says M. Joseph Garnier, “population has an organic and virtual tendency to increase more rapidly than the means of existence: whence results the progress of misery.”
Moreover, the economists of moral restraint, MM. Joseph Garnier, Gustave de Molinari, Rossi, Dunoyer, Jon Stuart Mill, Guizot, the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, complain of the unpopularity which, in England and in France, has attached to the name of Malthus. They accuse the clergy of all the churches of maintaining on this point ignorance, superstition, that is to say generative incontinence, and consequently pauperism; they commend the recipe to the attention of statesmen, demand that it be preached from the pulpit and taught in the schools, as well as the ten commandments of God, affirming that there is no other remedy for pauperism and crime, no other preservative against socialism and the Revolution.
Si quelque chose m’a jamais étonné, c’est que des hommes instruits, des académiciens, des professeurs rompus aux règles de la logique et des mathématiques, aient pu découvrir dans les cinq propositions de Malthus une ombre de sens commun.
Est-ce donc ainsi que procèdent les savants dans la construction de ces belles théories qui ont pour objet d’expliquer les phénomènes de la nature et l’ordre de l’univers ?
En premier lieu, Malthus nous dénonce une tendance de la population à doubler, si rien ne lui fait obstacle, dans une courte période, soit tous les dix-huit, vingt-cinq ou trente ans.
Je regarde pour ma part cette tendance comme empiriquement prouvée ; et ce qu’on a dit pour l’infirmer me semble pur verbiage.
Mais tout phénomène a une cause, une raison ; il rentre dans une série ; et ici se présente une question dont Malthus n’a dit mot.
Toutes les forces économiques sont dans le même cas que la population : si rien ne leur fait obstacle, elles tendent à se développer indéfiniment, et à envahir le système. J’en citerai tout à l’heure un exemple. C’est cette tendance, mal dirigée, mal équilibrée, des forces économiques, qui produit les anomalies sociales et appelle les révolutions.
Il s’agit donc de savoir si la cause qui entraîne la population à ce développement exorbitant est normale ou anormale. Est-ce un fait de l’ordre zoologique ou de l’ordre humain ? Appartient-elle à la société régulièrement organisée, constituée selon la Justice ? ou ne serait-elle par hasard que la résultante de l’anarchie économique, de ce régime de subversion et d’inégalité, entretenu depuis tant de siècles, qui sous couleur de religion subordonne la nature humaine à la nature animale, et que l’école de Malthus s’efforce de consacrer par sa prétendue science et son autorité ?
La chose valait la peine qu’on l’examinât : comment argumenter d’une tendance quand on n’en connaît ni le principe ni la signification ? Comment ériger sur cette tendance un système ?
Je nie, quant à moi, la tendance au doublement dans une population égalitaire ; je l’impute, cette tendance, au défaut d’équilibre qui règne dans toutes les parties du corps social ; je soutiens que, la balance faite, d’abord entre les valeurs, puis entre les forces économiques proprement dites, elle existerait, ipso facto, entre celles-ci et les forces naturelles : j’expliquerai tout à l’heure cette équation. Malthus et l’Académie des Sciences morales soutiendront-ils que cette balance préalable est inutile ; que la différence des milieux ne change rien au phénomène ; que la science économique n’admet pas les anomalies, les subversions, les perturbations, les monstres ?…
Passons à la seconde proposition.
Après avoir dénoncé la tendance au doublement de la population dans une courte période, Malthus signale un fait bien autrement épouvantable : c’est que tandis que la population suivrait, si rien ne s’y opposait, une progression géométrique, l’accroissement des subsistances n’aurait lieu que selon une progression arithmétique.
J’admets encore ce fait, au même titre que j’ai admis tout à l’heure la tendance, c’est-à-dire comme un résultat empirique de l’observation.
Mais je réitère ma demande : ce fait est-il normal ou anormal ? Nous donne-t-il l’expression exacte du développement de la richesse, comparé à celui de la population, dans un milieu régulier ? ou ne faut-il pas y voir un nouveau phénomène de subversion, résultant de l’inégalité générale ?
Il est démontré que la balance entre les parties du livre social n’existe nulle part ; que partout il y a erreur, fraude et rapine ; que l’inégalité des conditions et des fortunes, supposée naturelle et providentielle, résulte au contraire de la violation de la Justice dans les rapports économiques ; enfin, que c’est l’absence de Justice dans la répartition des produits, le défaut de balance dans les transactions et les comptes, qui empêche le développement des forces économiques, arrête la production et crée le déficit. Tout cela est aujourd’hui prouvé ; Malthus et son école n’ont certes pas établi le contraire. Ils acceptent de confiance le statu quo ; ils ne le justifient pas.
De quel droit donc, après avoir pris pour majeure de leur syllogisme une tendance organique, sans se demander si cette tendance est légitime ou illégitime, effet du hasard ou de la civilisation, acceptent-ils pour mineure un fait, sans examiner davantage si ce fait est l’expression fidèle de la vérité, s’il ne couvre pas lui-même une tendance qui corrige, annule ou compense l’effet de la première ; s’il est, en un mot, de subversion ou d’ordre ? Tout cela est-il d’une logique sévère, d’une observation méthodique et rationnelle ?
J’insiste sur ce point, qui est capital dans la question.
D’après les statistiques officielles, la population des États-Unis, ne rencontrant pas d’obstacle à sa tendance, a doublé, de 1782 à 1850, à peu près tous les vingt ou vingt-cinq ans. Mais on oublie d’ajouter que la richesse des États-Unis, ne rencontrant pas non plus d’obstacles, a doublé et plus que doublé dans la même période. Et c’est tout simple. Des hommes qui s’associent, qui combinent leurs efforts, qui au travail manuel ajoutent comme moyen d’action les grandes forces économiques, la division du travail, le groupement des forces, la mécanique, etc. ; des hommes placés dans de telles conditions développent plus de richesse que de population ; ils produisent plus vite qu’ils n’engendrent, et, tandis que le mouvement des générations parmi eux semble confirmer la théorie de Malthus, le mouvement de la production la contredit. C’est là un fait grave, de moins en moins aperçu, il est vrai, dans nos vieilles sociétés anti-juridiques, mais dont il importe de tenir compte.
« Je suppose que deux hommes, isolés, sans instruments, disputant aux bêtes leur chétive nourriture, rendent une valeur égale à 2 : que ces deux hommes changent de régime et unissent leurs efforts ; qu’ils multiplient leur puissance par la division, par les machines, par l’émulation qui vient à la suite, leur produit ne sera plus comme 2, il sera, je suppose, comme 3, puisque chacun ne produit plus seulement par soi, mais aussi par son compagnon. Si le nombre des travailleurs est doublé, la division devenant, en raison de ce doublement, plus grande qu’auparavant, les machines plus puissantes, le concours plus énergique, ils produiront comme 6 ; si leur nombre est quadruplé, comme 12. Cette multiplication du produit par la division du travail, les machines, la concurrence, etc., a été démontrée maintes fois par les économistes : c’est une des plus belles parties de la science, le point sur lequel tous les auteurs sont unanimes…
« Donc, si la puissance de reproduction génitale est comme 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, la puissance de reproduction industrielle sera comme 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96. — En autres termes, dans une société régulièrement organisée, tandis que la population s’accroît selon une progression géométrique dont le premier terme est 2, la production s’accroît selon une progression géométrique dont le premier terme est 3. » (Système des Contradictions économiques, t. II, p. 319, édition de Garnier frères.)
Voilà ce que j’écrivais en 1845, après avoir lu Malthus. Serait-ce un parti pris chez ses disciples, après avoir crié qu’on ne les lit pas, de ne pas lire non plus leurs adversaires ?
XXXVIII. — If anything has ever surprised me, it’s that educated men, academicians, professors experienced in the rules of logic and mathematics, have been able to discover in Malthus’ five propositions a shadow of common sense.
Is this then how scientists proceed in the construction of those beautiful theories that have for their object to explain the phenomena of nature and the order of the universe?
In the first place, Malthus denounces to us a tendency of the population to double, if nothing prevents it, in a short period, that is to say every eighteen, twenty-five or thirty years.
For my part, I regard the tendency to doubling as empirically proven, and what has been said to invalidate it is pure verbiage. It is a law of nature. All economic forces are in the same situation: if nothing brings them into balance, they tend to develop ad infinitum, and to invade everything. Presently we will cite an example. It is this general tendency of forces that calls for a law of balance, without which society, left entirely to anomalies, is no more than a theater of catastrophes.
It is therefore a question of knowing what makes the tendency of the population to double, perfectly normal in its nature, meeting no longer any counterpoise, and marching faster than the production of subsistence, translate into a disastrous reality. Because nothing has been said, I repeat, by acknowledging a trend and pointing out its effects. We must say how and why the balance is disturbed. Would the precession of the population, if I dare say so, manifest itself in a society constituted according to economic law, where the forces of energy would be balanced? This is what we need to know, and about which Malthus and his followers say nothing.
I deny, for my part, that this precession takes place in an egalitarian population; I impute it, where it is rife, to the lack of balance between forces, services, salaries, and values; and I therefore maintain that, the balance restored everywhere, first between values, then between wages and services, finally between economic forces, the population ipso facto will return to its bed: I will explain this equation shortly. Will Malthus and the Academy of Moral Sciences maintain that this preliminary balance is useless; that the difference of the modes does not change anything in the phenomenon; that the economic order does not admit anomalies, subversions, disturbances, monsters?
Let us pass to the second Malthusian proposition.
After having denounced, without understanding it, the tendency to the doubling of the population in a short period, Malthus points out a much more frightening fact: it is that, while the population would follow, if nothing opposed it, a geometric progression, the increase in subsistence would only take place according to an arithmetical progression.
I admit the fact of the delay in production of foodstuff in the same way as I admitted earlier that of the precession of the population, that is to say as an empirical result of observation.
But I repeat my question: are these two facts, so manifestly correlative in their inversion, not due to the same cause? Do we have here the expression of the development of wealth compared to that of the population, in a regular environment? Or should we not see a new phenomenon of subversion, resulting from a lack of balance in the system?
It is demonstrated that the balance between the parts of the social livre does not exist anywhere; that everywhere there is error, fraud and rapine; that the inequality of conditions and fortunes, supposedly natural and providential, results on the contrary from the violation of justice in economic relations; finally, that it is the absence of Justice in the distribution of products, the lack of balance in transactions and accounts, that prevents the development of the economic forces, stops production and creates the deficit. All this is proven today. Malthus and his school have certainly not established the contrary. They trust the status quo; they don’t justify it.
The generative power, if nothing hinders it, will double the population in a short period: this is proven. But conversely can it not be that the productive power, if nothing stands in its way, also tends to double and more than double the wealth in the same period, so that, this second tendency compensating for the effect of the first, the things would stay in perfect order? This is what must be examined: until then, we do not have the right to accept as definitive and conclusive the excess that manifests itself on the one hand and the deficit that is recognized on the other, in order to accuse the extravagance of nature and the improvidence of man.
I insist on this point, which is crucial in the question.
According to official statistics, the population of the United States, meeting no obstacle to its trend, doubled, from 1782 to 1850, about every twenty or twenty-five years. But we forget to add that the wealth of the United States, not encountering any obstacles either, has doubled and more than doubled in the same period. And it is quite simple. Men who associate, who combine their efforts, who add to manual labor as a means of action the great economic forces, the division of labor, the grouping of forces, mechanics, etc., men placed in such conditions develop more wealth than population; they produce faster than they beget, and while the movement of generations among them seems to confirm Malthus’s theory, the movement of production contradicts it.
“I suppose that two men, isolated, without instruments, competing with the animals for their food, create a value equal to 2. Let these two men change their diet and unite their efforts; let them multiply their power by division, by machines, by the emulation that follows, their product will no longer be like 2, it will be, I suppose, like 3, since each one no longer produces only by himself, but also with his companion. If the number of workers is doubled, the division becoming, because of this doubling, greater than before, the machines more powerful, the competition more energetic, they will produce like 6; if their number is fourfold, like 12. This multiplication of the product by the division of labor, machines, competition, etc., has been demonstrated many times by economists: it is one of the finest parts of the science, the point on which all the authors are unanimous.
“So if the genital reproductive power is like 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, the industrial reproductive power will be like 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96. — In other words, in a regularly organized society, while the population increases according to a geometric progression whose first term is 2 and the multiplier 2, production increases according to a geometric progression whose first term is 3 and the multiplier 3. (Système des Contradictions économiques, T. II, p. 319, edition of Garnier frères.)
This is what I wrote in 1845, after having read Malthus. Could it be a bias among his disciples, after having cried that they are not read, not to read their adversaries?
De ces deux redressements, tant sur la tendance de la population que sur celle de la production, il résulte déjà que le problème a été mal posé par Malthus. Il devait dire :
1. En principe la population, considérée dans sa cause purement organique, tend à s’accroître, si rien ne lui fait obstacle, selon une progression géométrique, par chaque période de 18, 2o, 30 ans ou au delà.
Sous ce rapport, il en est de la race humaine comme de toutes les espèces animales et végétales : sa puissance de reproduction est de soi illimitée ; et elle agit avec une rapidité prodigieuse.
2. En principe aussi la production, si rien ne l’entrave, tend à s’augmenter à son tour selon une progression géométrique, plus rapide encore que la première.
De cette manière, la production dans une société travailleuse allant plus vite que la population, il resterait à la fin de chaque période un solde de richesse non consommée, expression du progrès social dans l’industrie et le bien-être.
3. Or, en fait, et nonobstant les quelques exemples qu’on peut citer de cet accroissement rapide et simultané de la population et de la richesse, ce n’est pas ainsi, dans notre vieux monde, que les choses se passent. D’un côté, ni la population ni la production ne vont de ce pas, et, ce qui est plus étrange, la seconde est toujours en arrière de la première. D’autre part, il est manifeste que, la terre, étant limitée, par conséquent le capital naturel de l’humanité ayant des bornes, population et richesse ne peuvent s’augmenter indéfiniment.
4. Plusieurs questions se présentent donc à résoudre.
En premier lieu, la raison, le travail et la Justice, les trois grandes facultés qui distinguent l’homme du reste des animaux, ne modifient-elles pas, par leur développement, la fécondité naturelle de l’espèce ?
Qu’est-ce qui, d’un autre côté, trouble le développement de la production et retarde sa marche ?
Enfin, élimination faite des éléments subversifs et anormaux dont la présence peut être signalée dans les deux séries, quelle est la loi d’équilibre de la population, dans ses rapports avec la richesse produite et avec l’étendue du globe ?
Nul doute que, si Malthus se fût posé le problème en ces termes, il ne fût arrivé à des conclusions toutes différentes.
Il n’eût pas accolé ensemble, comme prémisses de son raisonnement, deux quantités incommensurables, une tendance organique et un fait empirique ; la première acceptée de confiance et sans discernement, le second contraire à toutes les données de la science.
Il aurait compris que l’équilibre cherché devait se trouver entre deux forces corrélatives agissant en pleine liberté, dégagées par conséquent de toutes les causes perturbatrices qui en faussent l’expression.
Il se serait dit que, si la famine, les maladies, la guerre, l’infanticide, la prostitution et l’avortement, sont les moyens, anormaux et violents, qu’emploie la nature contre les populations indisciplinées et exorbitantes, il n’y aurait pas plus de raison dans le restreint moral imaginé par lui pour remplacer les susdits moyens ; qu’une pareille intervention du libre arbitre, loin de remédier au mal, ne ferait que le consacrer, en accusant l’imprévoyance de la nature, l’absurdité de la science, et l’ignominie de la société.
XXXIX. — From these two corrections, as much on the tendency of the population as on that of production, it already follows that the problem was badly posed by Malthus. He should have said:
1. In principle, the population considered in its purely organic cause tends to increase, if nothing hinders it, according to a geometric progression, by each period of 18, 25, 30 years or beyond. In this respect, it is with the human race as with all animal and vegetable species: its reproductive power is of itself unlimited, and it acts with prodigious rapidity.
2. In principle also production, if nothing hinders it, tends to increase in its turn according to a geometric progression, even faster than the first.
So that production in a working society goes faster than the population, and there would remain at the end of each period a balance of unconsumed wealth, an expression of social progress in industry and well-being.
8. Now, in fact, and notwithstanding the few examples that can be cited of this rapid and simultaneous increase in population and wealth, it is not thus, in our old world, that things happen. On the one hand, neither the population nor the production are progressing this way, and, what is stranger, the second is always behind the first. On the other hand, it is obvious that, the earth being limited, consequently the natural capital of humanity having limits, population and wealth cannot increase indefinitely.
4. Several questions therefore present themselves to be resolved.
In the first place, reason, work and justice, the three great faculties that distinguish man from the rest of the animals, do they not modify, by their development, the natural fertility of the species?
What, on the other hand, disturbs the development of production and retards its progress?
Finally, having eliminated the subversive and abnormal elements whose presence may be indicated in the two series, what is the law of equilibrium of the population, in its relations with the wealth produced and with the extent of the globe?
There is no doubt that, if Malthus had posed the problem in these terms, he would have arrived at quite different conclusions.
He would have understood that the balance sought had to be found between two correlative forces acting in complete liberty, consequently freed from all the disturbing causes that falsify their expression.
He would have said to himself that if famine, disease, war, infanticide, prostitution and abortion, are the abnormal and violent means that nature employs against undisciplined and exorbitant populations, there is no would be no more reason in the moral restraint devised by him to replace the above means; that such an intervention of free will, far from remedying the evil, would only consecrate it, by accusing the anomaly of nature, the absurdity of science, and the ignominy of society.
Arrêtons-nous un moment sur cette étrange morale de Malthus, publiquement enseignée et encouragée par l’Académie des Sciences morales et politiques.
Si vous disiez à un enfant : Voici une montre, je vous la donne ; elle ne marche pas toute seule ; mais, chaque fois que vous entendrez sonner l’horloge à la ville, vous n’avez qu’à pousser l’aiguille et la mettre sur l’heure, — cet enfant rirait de vous. — C’est assez que je la remonte tous les soirs, répondrait-il ; je ne dois pas m’occuper du reste.
Il en est ainsi de l’organisme social, avec cette différence cependant que la société, pas plus que le système planétaire, n’a jamais besoin qu’on la remonte ; le mouvement lui est donné et son équilibre assuré pour l’éternité. Tout ce qu’elle nous demande est de marcher avec elle, c’est-à-dire de travailler, et de pratiquer la Justice. À cette condition la terre, quoiqu’elle n’ait que dix mille lieues de circonférence, et que les trois quarts de sa superficie soient couverts par l’Océan, ne nous manquera pas, le couvert non plus.
L’école de Malthus n’est pas de cet avis.
Elle, qui à l’occasion affecte le plus profond respect pour la religion et la Providence, sur la question de population se montre d’une incrédulité brutale. Elle, qui en tout et partout professe le laissez-faire laissez-passer, qui reproche aux socialistes de substituer leurs conceptions aux lois de la nature, qui proteste contre toute intervention de l’État, et réclame à cor et à cri la liberté, rien que la liberté, n’hésite pas, dès qu’il s’agit de la fécondité conjugale, à crier aux époux : Halte, malheureux ! quel démon vous sollicite ? Ne pouvez-vous faire l’amour sans faire d’enfants ?… Oubliez-vous que la population tend à croître en progression géométrique, tandis que les subsistances ne s’augmentent qu’en raison arithmétique ?…
Bref, l’école de Malthus enseigne que, le mouvement de la population allant trop vite, sans qu’elle puisse dire pourquoi, il faut serrer le frein… Nous ne devons pas de médiocres remercîments à M. Joseph Garnier d’avoir enfin eu le courage de jeter la honte aux chiens, et de dire en termes catégoriques en quoi consiste la recette préventive de Malthus, ou moral restreint.
Vous connaissez. Monseigneur, l’histoire de ce petit-fils de Jacob qui, invité par son père Judas, en vertu du lévirat, à s’approcher de sa belle-sœur Thamar, devenue veuve sans enfants, et à créer par son union avec elle une postérité à son frère défunt, trompait la nature, semen fundebat in terram, et fut frappé de Dieu pour cette abomination, quòd rem detestabilem faceret. Le nom d’Onan a passé à la postérité par son infamie : il sert à désigner le vice honteux qui décime la jeunesse, et dont Tissot a fait une peinture si effrayante, l’onanisme.
Eh bien ! l’onanisme, l’onanisme à deux, entendons-nous, est le moyen préventif indiqué par Malthus contre la sur-procréation des enfants : c’est ce qu’il appelle restreint moral. C’est ainsi que la science sait relever les œuvres même du péché. Désormais il ne faut plus dire onanisme, il faut dire malthusianisme.
Le raisonnement est très-simple : Si la thèse fondamentale de Malthus est prouvée, — la tendance de la population à s’accroître en progression géométrique, pendant que les subsistances ne s’augmentent qu’en progression arithmétique, — ne vaut-il pas mieux, par une sage prévoyance, prévenir la conception que de donner le jour à des êtres condamnés à mourir de faim ?
M. Joseph Garnier cite ses autorités.
En 1832, M. Ch. Dunoyer, aujourd’hui membre de l’Académie des Sciences morales, étant préfet d’Amiens, n’hésitait pas à donner aux classes indigentes de son département le conseil de Malthus.
« Les classes les plus à plaindre de la société, disait-il, ne parviennent à s’affranchir de leur douloureux état qu’à force d’activité, de raison, de prudence, de prudence surtout dans l’union conjugale, et en mettant un soin extrême à éviter de rendre leur mariage plus prolifique que leur industrie. »
Ces paroles furent vivement critiquées par le clergé du diocèse et une partie de la presse parisienne. M. Dunoyer y répondit dans un Mémoire à consulter, Paris, 1835 :
« Il est incroyable, dit-il, que l’action d’appeler des hommes à la vie, celle sans contredit des actions humaines qui tire le plus à conséquence, soit précisément celle qu’on a le moins senti le besoin de régler, ou qu’on a réglée le plus mal. On y a mis, il est vrai, la façon de l’acte civil et du sacrement ; mais, le mariage une fois contracté, on a voulu que ses suites fussent laissées, pour ainsi dire, à la volonté de Dieu. La seule règle prescrite a été qu’il fallait, ou s’abstenir de tout rapprochement, ou ne rien omettre de ce qui pourrait rendre l’union féconde. Tant que des époux peuvent croire qu’ils ne font pas une œuvre vaine, la morale des casuistes ne trouve rien à leur reprocher ; qu’ils se manquent à eux-mêmes, qu’ils abusent l’un de l’autre, qu’ils se dispensent surtout de songer au tiers absent et peut-être infortuné qu’ils vont appeler à la vie sans s’inquiéter du sort qui l’attend, peu importe : l’essentiel n’est pas qu’ils s’abstiennent d’un acte triplement nuisible, l’essentiel est qu’ils évitent de faire un acte vain. Telle est la morale des casuistes ; morale à rebours de tout bon sens et de toute morale, car ce que veulent le bon sens et la morale, ce n’est sûrement pas tant qu’on s’abstienne de faire des actes vains que de faire des actes nuisibles.
« Aussi la vérité, en dépit de ces graves sottises, est-elle que, si des époux ne doivent pas regarder comme blâmable tout rapprochement qui ne tendrait pas à accroître leur postérité, ils ont pourtant, même dans les rapprochements les plus autorisés et au sein de l’union la plus légitime, des ménagements à garder, soit envers eux-mêmes, soit l’un envers l’autre, soit l’un et l’autre envers les tiers qui peuvent être les fruits de leur union. »
Consulté à diverses reprises, par MM. Louis Leclerc et Joseph Garnier, sur la moralité d’une telle prudence, M. Dunoyer répond qu’il trouve un pareil doute peu raisonnable. Il va jusqu’à dire que le précepte de Malthus est tout aussi pudique que le sixième et le neuvième commandement du Décalogue, et qu’après ce distique :
L’œuvre de chair ne désireras
Qu’en mariage seulement,
il serait à propos de placer cette autre recommandation, bien plus essentielle :
L’œuvre de chair accompliras
En mariage prudemment.
M. John Stuart Mill, dans ses Éléments d’économie politique, 1845, s’exprime avec la même rondeur que M. Dunoyer, et il fait cette réflexion :
« Le peuple ne se doute guère de tout ce que lui coûte cette pruderie de langage. On ne peut pas plus prévenir et guérir les maladies sociales que les maladies du corps sans en parler clairement. »
Et ailleurs :
« Il n’y a pas d’autre sauvegarde pour les salariés que la restriction du progrès de population… Malheureusement le sentimentalisme, plutôt que le sens commun, domine les discussions qui ont lieu sur cette matière. »
À en croire ces messieurs, c’est dans l’intérêt du peuple, dans l’intérêt de la femme comme dans celui des malheureux enfants destinés à périr, qu’ils insistent sur le commandement malthusien.
Rossi va jusqu’à accuser la classe exploitante, la bourgeoisie, de pousser à l’excès de population par un motif de cupidité. En multipliant outre mesure les ouvriers, dit-il, elle s’assure le bas prix de la main-d’œuvre. Si pareille calomnie tombait d’une bouche socialiste, la Justice, jugeant sans jury, condamnerait le diffamateur à trois ans de prison et à la perte de ses droits civils.
« Les simples ne comprennent pas et ne comprendront jamais la question. L’économie sociale est pour eux lettre close. Ils ne voient dans l’affaire que les vives amorces du jeune âge, et le danger que ces flammes comprimées n’éclatent par quelque désordre…
« Les habiles au contraire connaissent le fond des choses :pour eux ces lieux communs (providence, confiance, espérance) ne sont pas l’expression, mais le déguisement de la vérité. Ils savent que plus il y a de travailleurs, plus, toutes choses égales d’ailleurs, les salaires sont bas et les profits élevés. Tout s’explique par cette formule, et en particulier le pacte d’alliance entre les habiles et les simples. Ils sont du même avis, parce que les uns ne saisissent point, et que les autres saisissent très-bien le fond de la question…
« Quant à nous, nous dirons aux travailleurs, aux jeunes gens : Que la prudence pénètre dans les mariages et préside à l’établissement de chaque famille, et l’on n’aura plus à s’inquiéter du sort de l’humanité… »
Je ne reconnais pas à ce langage le prudent économiste qui, à propos de la division du travail, faisait remarquer qu’autre chose est l’économie politique et autre chose la morale ; que, si l’application du principe de division entraîne à des conséquences incompatibles avec la dignité humaine, cela n’infirme pas la valeur du principe, mais soulève un problème à résoudre ultérieurement par la science sociale.
Que ne faisait-il de même pour la population ! En l’état actuel des choses, aurait-il dit simplement, il y a défaut de balance entre le mouvement de la population et celui des subsistances. Cette disproportion accuse tout à la fois une lacune dans la science et un désordre dans la pratique sociale. Elle soulève un problème que l’économie politique, d’accord avec la physiologie, la psychologie et la morale, doit résoudre, mais que Malthus a tranché sans l’entendre.
Bastiat lui-même, le chaste Bastiat, apporte à la thèse la pompe de son style. Les autres avaient parlé au nom de l’humanité, au nom de la morale, au nom des intérêts sacrés de la femme et de l’ouvrier ; lui, il parlera au nom de la pudeur.
L’onanisme pratiqué à la mode de Malthus, dans le but indiqué par Malthus, suivant Bastiat est une loi de la pudeur même. Il en trouve la preuve dans la réserve dont s’entoure l’amour honnête, dans la sévérité de l’opinion, qui flétrit la fornication, le concubinage, l’inceste, et jusque dans l’institution sacrée du mariage. Toutes ces choses, à son avis, n’ont de sens et de valeur que parce qu’elles sont une révélation spontanée du moral restreint :
« Qu’est-ce que cette sainte ignorance du premier âge, la seule ignorance sans doute qu’il soit criminel de dissiper, que chacun respecte, et sur laquelle la mère craintive veille comme sur un trésor ?
« Qu’est-ce que la pudeur qui succède à l’ignorance, arme mystérieuse de la jeune fille, qui enchante et intimide l’amant, et prolonge, en l’embellissant, la saison des innocentes amours ?…
« Qu’est-ce que cette puissance de l’opinion qui flétrit les relations illicites, cette rigide réserve, ces institutions sacrées ;que sont toutes ces choses, sinon l’action de la loi de limitation manifestée dans l’ordre intelligent, moral, préventif ?
« Est-il possible de nier que l’humanité intelligente n’a pas été traitée par le Créateur comme l’animalité brutale, et qu’il est en sa puissance de transformer la limitation répressive en limitation préventive ?… » (Harmonies économiques, 2e édit.)
M. Joseph Garnier donne le compte-rendu d’une séance de l’Académie des Sciences morales et politiques dans laquelle MM. Dunoyer, Villermé, Guizot, Léon Faucher et lord Brougham prirent successivement la parole sur la question de population. Tous, en ce qui concerne le moral restreint, sont de l’avis de Malthus. S’ils font quelques réserves, c’est sur l’énoncé mathématique de ses deux premières propositions : pour ce qui est de la prévoyance recommandée par Malthus, et de sa morale, pas la moindre difficulté. M. Passy reconnaît les éminents services que Malthus a rendus à la science ; M. Guizot le loue au nom de la législation et de la politique ; M. Léon Faucher, parlant pour ne rien dire, se réunit à l’opinion de M. Passy, que confirme celle de M. Guizot.
Enfin, dit M. Joseph Garnier, les idées de Malthus ont été professées et défendues par la plupart des économistes modernes, parmi lesquels J.-B. Say, Destutt de Tracy, James Mill, Mac-Culloch, Sismondi, Duchâtel, Chalmers, Dunoyer, Rossi, Thobnton, John Stuart-Mill, Gust. de Molinari, Dupuynode, lui paraissent mériter une mention particulière. Je pourrais citer beaucoup d’autres noms ; je ne crois pas que les titulaires y tiennent.
XL. — Let us dwell for a moment on this strange morality of Malthus, publicly taught and encouraged by the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.
If you said to a child: Here is a watch, I give it to you; it does not work on its own; but, each time you hear the clock chime in the city, you have only to push the hand and set it to the hour, that child would laugh at you. — If it doesn’t work on its own, he would say, I don’t need it.
So it is with the social organism, with this difference, however, that society, no more than the planetary system, needs to be reassembled; movement is given to it and its balance assured for eternity. All it asks of us is to walk with it, that is, to work and to practice Justice. On this condition the earth, although it is only ten thousand leagues in circumference, and three-quarters of its surface is covered by the ocean, will not be lacking to us, nor will shelter.
The school of Malthus disagrees.
This school, which on occasion affects the deepest respect for religion and Providence, on the question of population shows a brutal incredulity. It, which in everything and everywhere professes laissez faire laissez passer, which reproaches socialists for substituting their conceptions for the laws of nature, which protests against any intervention by the State, and cries out for liberty, nothing but liberty, does not hesitate, when it is a question of conjugal fertility, to cry out to the spouses: Stop, unhappy man! What demon solicits you? Can’t you make love without having children?… Do you forget that the population tends to grow in geometric progression, while subsistence increases only in arithmetic ratio?
In short, the school of Malthus teaches that, the movement of the population going too fast, without it being able to say why, it is necessary to tighten the brake. We owe no mediocre thanks to M. Joseph Garnier for having finally had the courage to put the dogs to shame, and to say in categorical terms in what consists the preventive recipe of Malthus, or moral restraint.
You know, Monsignor, the story of this grandson of Jacob who, invited by his father Judas, by virtue of the levirate, to approach his sister-in-law Thamar, who had become a childless widow, and to create through union with her a posterity to his deceased brother, deceived nature, semen fundebat in terram, and was struck by God for this abomination, quèd rem detestabilem faceret. The name of Onan has passed on to posterity through its infamy: it is used to designate the shameful vice that decimates youth, of which Tissot made such a frightening painting, onanism.
Well, onanism, double onanism, we understand, is the preventive means indicated by Malthus against the over-production of children: this is what he calls moral restraint. It is thus that science knows how to raise up the very works of sin. Henceforth we must no longer say onanism, we must say Malthusianism.
The reasoning is very simple: If the fundamental thesis of Malthus is proven—the tendency of population to increase in geometrical progression, while subsistence increases only in arithmetical progression—is it not better, by a wise foresight, to prevent conception than to give birth to beings condemned to starve?
Mr. Joseph Garnier cites his authorities.
In 1832, M. Ch. Dunoyer, now a member of the Academy of Moral Sciences, being prefect of Amiens, did not hesitate to give the poor classes of his department the advice of Malthus.
“The classes most to be pitied in society,” he said, “are able to free themselves from their painful state only with a great deal of activity, reason, prudence, prudence especially in the conjugal union, and in taking extreme care to avoid making their marriage more prolific than their industry.”
These words were strongly criticized by the clergy of the diocese and part of the Parisian press. M. Dunoyer replied to this in a Mémoire à consulter, Paris, 1835:
“It is incredible,” he said, “that the action of calling men to life, the one without a doubt of human actions that has the most consequence, is precisely the one that we have felt the least need to regulate, or that we have settled the worst. They have included, it is true, the manner of the civil act and the sacrament; but, the marriage once contracted, it was desired that its consequences should be left, so to speak, to the will of God. The only prescribed rule was that it was necessary either to abstain from all coming together, or to omit nothing that could make the union fruitful. As long as spouses can believe that they are not doing a vain work, the morality of casuists finds nothing to reproach them with; that they doom themselves, that they abuse each other, that they dispense above all with thinking of the absent and perhaps unfortunate third party whom they are going to call to life without worrying about the fate that awaits him, it matters little: the essential thing is not that they abstain from a triply harmful act, the main thing is that they avoid doing a vain act. Such is the morality of casuists; morality contrary to all common sense and all morality, because, what good sense and morality want, it is surely not so much that one refrains from doing vain acts as from doing harmful acts.
“So the truth, in spite of these serious follies, is that, if spouses should not regard as blameworthy any coming together that would not tend to increase their posterity, they have nevertheless, even in the most authorized of such acts and the within the most legitimate union, consideration to be kept, either towards themselves, or towards each other, or both towards third parties who may be the fruits of their union.”
Consulted on various occasions by MM. Louis Leclerc and Joseph Garnier on the morality of such caution, Mr. Dunoyer replies that he finds such a doubt unreasonable. He goes so far as to say that the precept of Malthus is just as modest as the sixth and ninth commandments of the Decalogue, and that after this couplet:
L’œuvre de chair ne désireras
Qu’en mariage seulement,
[the commandment against sex outside of marriage] it would be appropriate to place this other, much more essential recommendation:
L’œuvre de chair accompliras
En mariage prudemment.
[The work of the flesh will be performed in marriage prudently.] Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his Elements of Political Economy, 1845, expresses himself with the same straightforwardness as Mr. Dunoyer, and he makes this reflection:
“The people have little idea of the cost to them of this prudery of language. We can no more prevent and cure social illnesses than bodily illnesses without talking about them clearly.”
And elsewhere :
“There is no other safeguard for wage-earners than the restriction of the progress of population. Unfortunately sentimentality, rather than common sense, dominates the discussions that take place on this matter.”
According to these gentlemen, it is in the interest of the people, in the interest of women as well as in that of the unfortunate children destined to perish, that they insist on the Malthusian commandment.
Rossi goes so far as to accuse the exploiting class, the bourgeoisie, of driving excess population out of a motive of greed. By multiplying the workers beyond measure, he says, it assures itself of the low price of labour. If such a slander fell from a socialist mouth, Justice, judging without a jury, would condemn the slanderer to three years in prison and the loss of his civil rights.
“The simple do not understand and will never understand the question. The social economy is for them a closed book. They see in the affair only the lively beginnings of the game of age, and the danger that these suppressed flames will not burst into some disorder.
“The skillful, on the contrary, know the essence of things: for them these platitudes (providence, confidence, hope) are not the expression, but the disguise of the truth. They know that the more workers there are, the more, other things being equal, wages are low and profits high. Everything is explained by this formula, and in particular the pact of alliance between the clever and the simple. They are of the same opinion, because some do not understand, and others know very well the essence of the question…
“As for us, we will say to the workers, to the young people: Let prudence enter marriages and preside over the establishment of each family, and we will no longer have to worry about the fate of humanity…”
I do not recognize in this language the prudent economist who, apropos of the division of labor, pointed out that political economy is one thing and morality another; that, if the application of the principle of division leads to consequences incompatible with human dignity, this does not invalidate the value of the principle, but raises a problem to be solved later by social science.
What didn’t he do the same for population! In the present state of things, he would simply have said, there is a lack of balance between the movement of the population and that of subsistence. This disproportion reveals both a lacuna in science and a disorder in social practice. It raises a problem that political economy, in agreement with physiology, psychology and morality, must solve, but which Malthus decided without hearing it.
Bastiat himself, the chaste Bastiat, brings to the thesis the pomp of his style. The others had spoken in the name of humanity, in the name of morals, in the name of the sacred interests of woman and workman; he will speak in the name of modesty.
Onanism practiced in the fashion of Malthus, for the purpose indicated by Malthus, following Bastiat, is a law of modesty itself. He finds the proof of it in the reserve with which honest love surrounds itself, in the severity of opinion that stigmatizes fornication, concubinage, incest, even in the sacred institution of marriage. All of these things, in his view, have meaning and value only because they are a spontaneous revelation of moral restraint:
“What is this holy ignorance of infancy, the only ignorance no doubt that it would be criminal to dissipate, that everyone respects, and over which the fearful mother watches as over a treasure?
“What is the modesty that follows ignorance, the young girl’s mysterious weapon, which enchants and intimidates the lover, and prolongs, by embellishing, the season of innocent loves?…
“What is this power of opinion that stigmatizes illicit relations, this rigid reserve, these sacred institutions; what are all these things if not the action of the law of limitation manifested in the intelligent, moral, preventive order?
“Is it possible to deny that intelligent humanity has not been treated by the Creator like brutal animality, and that it is in his power to transform repressive limitation into preventive limitation? (Economic Harmonies, 2nd ed.)
Mr. Joseph Garnier gives the report of a session of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in which MM. Dunoyer, Villermé, Guizot, Léon Faucher and Lord Brougham successively took the floor on the question of population. All, as far as moral restraint is concerned, are of Malthus’s opinion. If they make any reservations, it is on the mathematical statement of his first two propositions: as regards the foresight recommended by Malthus and his morals, not the slightest difficulty. M. Passy recognizes the eminent services that Malthus has rendered to science; M. Guizot praises him for legislation and politics; M. Léon Faucher, speaking to say nothing, agrees with the opinion of M. Passy, which is confirmed by that of M. Guizot.
Finally, says M. Joseph Garnier, the ideas of Malthus have been professed and defended by most modern economists, among whom J.-B. Say, Destutt de Tracy, James Mill, Mac-Culloch, Sismondi, Duchâtel, Chalmers, Dunoyer, Rossi, Thornton, John Stuart-Mill, Gust. de Molinari, Dupuynode, seem to him to deserve special mention. I could name many other names; I don’t think that their bearers want it. (O)
Il me semble avoir écrit quelque part, je ne sais plus où, à propos de cette morale des malthusiens, morale de cochons !… Je demande pardon de la grossièreté de l’épithète, que je n’entends certes appliquer à personne. Mais quel sentiment puis-je éprouver à la vue de ce cénacle de soi-disant économistes, vieux praticiens du restreint moral, refaisant les lois de la pudeur, caricaturant le Décalogue, décidant avec gravité qu’il y a urgence de guérir le peuple de ses scrupules à l’endroit de la masturbation conjugale, et tout cela pour l’honneur d’une prétendue doctrine qui serait la honte de la science, quand elle ne serait pas la honte de la morale ?
C’est au palais de l’Institut, à l’Académie des Sciences morales et politiques, tribunal suprême des mœurs françaises, que se tiennent ces conférences. Ceux qui prennent part à la délibération sont les plus haut placés dans l’administration et l’enseignement. M. Dunoyer a été préfet ; M. Duchâtel, ministre ; M. Léon Faucher, ministre ; M. Guizot, ministre et professeur : on l’a surnommé, je ne sais pourquoi, l’austère ; Rossi était professeur ; J.-B. Say professeur ; M. Joseph Garnier est professeur ; tous défenseurs de la religion, de la morale, du mariage et de la famille, contre le socialisme anti-malthusien, et, hors ce qui regarde la procréation des enfants, partisans du laissez faire laissez passer.
Voyez-vous la jeunesse française, celle qui suit les cours du collége de France et de la Sorbonne, tous ces étudiants de l’école de droit, de l’école de médecine, de l’école normale, de l’école polytechnique, de l’école des mines, de l’école des ponts et chaussées, s’instruisant, à dix-huit ans, à la pratique de la restriction préventive, passant des leçons de Malthus à la Closerie des Lilas, et se préparant par l’amour libre, garanti sans progéniture, à la stérilité du mariage, qu’ils devront plus tard, comme magistrats, professeurs, médecins, ingénieurs, propager parmi le peuple ?… M. Thiers, qui ne se pique pas d’austérité, lui, a eu le malheur de qualifier cette débauche d’outrage à la nature : on lui a prouvé qu’il n’avait pas le sens commun. Niais, en effet, qui s’en va prendre au sérieux le travail, la propriété, l’hérédité, la Révolution aussi sans doute, et qui ne s’aperçoit pas que la question économique et sociale se résout en un mot, l’expulsion des germes inutiles !
Le lapin, dans l’intérêt de ses plaisirs, châtre ses petits ; le matou dévore les siens. L’antiquité, obéissant à cet instinct de brutes, pratiqua l’avortement, l’exposition des enfants, la castration, la prostitution, la polyandrie ; plus de dix-sept siècles avant J.-C. nous voyons le restreint moral en usage parmi les patriarches. Je ne parle pas de l’esclavage, de la misère et de la guerre, qui complètent cet affreux système. C’est ainsi que sous la loi d’inégalité s’établit l’équilibre entre les subsistances et la population.
Mais la conscience des peuples n’a cessé de protester contre ce hideux système. L’esclavage a en partie disparu ; l’avortement, la castration, l’exposition des enfants sont réputés crimes ; la prostitution est flétrie ; le commerce international amortit le coup des disettes ; la guerre elle-même tend à disparaître. Reste l’onanisme, irrévocablement condamné chez le solitaire, mais dont il ne tiendra pas à Malthus, à MM. Guizot, Dunoyer, Rossi et consorts, que nous ne fassions, dans le mariage, une vertu !
Me fais-je donc illusion ? Et quand, appelant le restreint moral de son véritable nom, je le range dans la série des moyens répressifs que Malthus lui-même a repoussés ; quand je fais de la pratique onaniste le dernier terme ou le premier, comme on voudra, d’une série abominable, est-ce moi qui suis le sophiste, comme j’ai eu l’honneur de me l’entendre dire tant de fois, et les autres sont-ils les vrais savants, les vrais moralistes, les vrais sages ?
Ne saurait-on comprendre, d’abord, qu’entre le moyen mécanique préconisé par Malthus et par l’Académie des Sciences morales, et l’avortement, il n’y a pas, au point de vue de la morale, de différence essentielle ; que, si les époux ont des ménagements à garder, comme dit M. Dunoyer, envers le tiers non conçu, ils n’en ont pas de moindres envers ce même tiers après qu’il a été conçu ; que par conséquent le père, la mère, ou tous les deux, bientôt on dira l’État, étant juge du sort qui attend ce tiers infortuné, il n’y a pas plus de crime dans le ministère de la sage-femme qui détruit un fœtus de quarante jours ou de trois mois que dans l’acte du père qui supprime le germe, semen fundit in terram, avant la conception ? Et, ce pas franchi, la répression ne s’arrête plus : nous rétrogradons de terme en terme jusqu’au cannibalisme.
D’autre part, est-il si difficile de concevoir que, le restreint moral étant la condition désormais obligée des relations amoureuses, le mariage, considéré jusqu’ici comme une union sacramentelle, se résout en fornication simple ; qu’avec lui s’évanouit la famille ; de sorte que nous n’échappons à la sur-population que pour tomber dans la dépopulation ?
Pour moi, je le déclare au risque de me voir traiter une fois de plus de Cassandre, si les idées de Malthus devaient un jour prévaloir, ce serait fait de l’humanité.
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XLI. — It seems to me that I wrote somewhere, I don’t know where, about this morality of the Malthusians, morality of pigs!.… [The phrase appears in “Les Malthusiens.”] I beg your pardon for the crudeness of the epithet, which I certainly do not intend to apply to anyone. But what sentiment can I experience at the sight of this cenacle of so-called economists, old practitioners of moral restraint, redoing the laws of modesty, caricaturing the Decalogue, deciding with gravity that it is urgent to cure the people of his scruples with regard to conjugal masturbation, and all that for the honor of a pretended doctrine which would be the shame of science, when it would not be the shame of morality?
It is at the Palace of the Institute, at the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, the supreme tribunal of French morals, that these conferences are held. Those who take part in the deliberation are the highest placed in the administration and in education. M. Dunoyer was prefect; Mr. Duchatel, Minister; Mr. Léon Faucher, Minister; M. Guizont, minister and professor: he has been nicknamed, I don’t know why, the austere. Rossi was a teacher; J.-B. Say a professor; Mr. Joseph Garnier is a teacher; all are defenders of religion, morals, marriage and the family, against anti-Malthusian socialism, and, apart from what concerns the procreation of children, partisans of laissez faire laissez passer.
Do you see the French youth, those who follow the courses of the college of France and the Sorbonne, all these students of the school of law, the school of medicine, the normal school, the polytechnic school, the school of mines, the school of bridges and roads, instructing himself, at the age of eighteen, in the practice of preventive restriction, passing from the lessons of Malthus to the exercises of the Closerie des Lilas, and preparing by free love, guaranteed without offspring, the sterility of marriage, which they will later, as magistrates, professors, doctors, engineers, propagate among the people?… M. Thiers, who does not pride himself on austerity, had the misfortune to qualify this debauchery as an outrage to nature: he was proven to have no common sense. A simpleton, in fact, whoever is going to take seriously work, property, heredity, the Revolution also without doubt, and who does not notice that the economic and social question is resolved in a word, the expulsion of unnecessary germs!
The rabbit, in the interest of its pleasures, castrates its young; the tomcat devours his own. Antiquity, obeying this brute instinct, practiced abortion, the exposure of children, castration, prostitution, polyandry; over seventeen centuries before Christ we see moral restraint in use among the patriarchs. Add slavery and war: it is thus that, under the law of inequality, the balance is established between subsistence and population.
But the conscience of the people has never ceased to protest against this hideous system. Slavery has partly disappeared; abortion, castration, exposure of children are considered crimes; prostitution has withered; international trade softens the blow of food shortages; war itself tends to disappear. There remains onanism, which is irrevocably condemned among the solitary, but it will not be because of Malthus, Guizot, Dunoyer, Rossi and others, if we do not make it a virtue in marriage!
Am I deluding myself? And when, calling restraining morale by its true name, I place it in the series of repressive means that Malthus himself rejected; when I make onanist practice the last term or the first, as you like, of an abominable series, am I the sophist, as I have had the honor of hearing said of myself so many times, and are the others the true scholars, the true moralists, the true sages?
Can we not understand, first of all, that between the mechanical means advocated by Malthus and by the Academy of Moral Sciences, and abortion, there is, from the point of view of morality, no essential difference; that, if the spouses have considerations to keep, as M. Dunoyer says, towards the unconceived third party, they have no less towards this same third party after it has been conceived; that consequently the father, the mother, or both, soon we will say the State, being judge of the fate that awaits this unfortunate third party, there is no more crime in the ministry of the midwife who destroys a fetus of forty days or three months than in the act of the father who suppresses the germ, semen fundit in terram, before conception? And once this step has been taken, the repression does not stop: we are retrograding from term to term to cannibalism.
On the other hand, it is so difficult to conceive that, moral restraint being henceforth the obligatory condition of amorous relations, marriage, considered up to now as a sacramental union, resolves itself into simple fornication; that with it the family vanishes, so that we escape overpopulation only to fall into depopulation?
For my part I declare, at the risk of seeing myself once again called Cassandra, if the ideas of Malthus should one day prevail, it would be the end of humanity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Je dirai en peu de mots en quoi consiste la balance de la population, renvoyant pour le développement des principes sur lesquels repose toute cette théorie à d’autres études.
Le monde moral, comme le monde de la nature, existe par lui-même, assis sur des lois certaines, équilibré dans toutes ses parties.
De même que dans les transactions mercantiles et industrielles, la valeur balance ou paye la valeur, que le salaire fait équilibre au produit, le loyer au prêt, le service au service, ainsi, dans l’économie générale, la puissance ou la force fait équilibre à la force. C’est par leur opposition mutuelle, non par une restriction arbitraire, que les forces économiques se contiennent l’une l’autre, que la propriété, par exemple, sert de contre-poids à la communauté, la force collective à la division, la concurrence au privilége, etc.
Dans le problème de la population et des subsistances, quelle est la force qui pousse à la multiplication des sujets ? — La force génératrice.
Tandis que Malthus, en vrai doctrinaire, ose intervenir entre l’homme et la femme au moment de l’union, et arrêter, par un procédé qui ne diffère en rien des moyens de répression condamnés par lui-même, l’absorption de la semence, il s’agit simplement pour moi de découvrir la force dont le développement doit faire équilibre à la puissance génératrice, et de lui donner l’essor.
Cette force, quelle est-elle ?
Dans mon Système des contradictions économiques, publié en 1845, j’avais cru la découvrir dans le travail.
L’homme qui fait une dépense considérable de force, soit musculaire, soit cérébrale, ne peut pas, disais-je, vaquer dans la même proportion aux œuvres de l’amour : il s’épuiserait rapidement. — Il y a donc opposition entre les deux forces ; et dans une société bien ordonnée, établie sur la Justice, l’égalité de condition, l’équivalence de l’instruction, la somme du travail croissant d’ailleurs toujours pour la société et pour les individus, la chasteté des mœurs allant du même pas, il est rationnel de présumer que l’équilibre s’établira de lui-même.
Telle était en substance la théorie que j’opposais dès 1845 à la prétendue doctrine de Malthus. Elle offre cet incontestable avantage d’être conçue dans les principes de la science économique, qui n’est autre que la science de l’équilibre des forces et des valeurs ; de plus, elle est irréprochable au point de vue de l’éthique. Il a plu à MM. Joseph Garnier et Gustave de Molinari de voir dans cette théorie une adhésion déguisée aux idées de Malthus, un restreint moral d’une espèce peut-être plus pudique, mais qui en définitive rentrait dans la prévention malthusienne. Je laisse au lecteur le soin d’apprécier cette assimilation.
Dans le milieu créé par l’inégalité traditionnelle, et défendu comme légitime par les malthusiens, l’homme, ainsi que je le démontrerai plus tard, est lascif et incontinent ; comme la bête, dont il partage la condition, il tend à une multiplication illimitée, aveugle. De là le système répressif, déchaîné par la nature, et dont Malthus retient le premier terme, l’onanisme.
Au contraire, dans le régime de Justice appliquée, et conséquemment d’équilibre général, que le but de la Révolution est d’établir, l’homme, chaste par prédilection, ordonné dans son mariage, dans ses amours, dans toute sa vie, n’a plus besoin qu’on le retienne : il est ce qu’il doit être, et la population se trouve, comme lui, en équilibre.
Cette théorie, tout incomplète qu’elle fût, avait frappé Bastiat, qui tâcha de s’en rapprocher dans ses Harmonies économiques, et aurait sans doute rendu justice à l’auteur, s’il n’était de principe entre malthusiens qu’un socialiste ne peut jamais avoir raison.
De nouvelles réflexions m’ont conduit à modifier cette théorie, dont le défaut grave était de reposer sur une base trop exclusivement physiologique, tandis qu’elle doit reposer avant tout sur un principe moral, en présence duquel la physiologie ne joue plus que le second rôle.
XLII. — I will say in a few words what the balance of population consists of, referring to other studies for the development of the principles on which this whole theory rests.
The moral world, like the natural world, exists by itself, based on certain laws, balanced in all its parts.
Just as in mercantile and industrial transactions, value balances or pays for value, as wages balance the product, rent the loan, service the service, so, in the general economy, power or force makes force balance. It is by their mutual opposition, not by an arbitrary restriction, that economic forces restrain each other, that property, for example, serves as a counterweight to community, collective force to division, competition to privilege, etc.
In the problem of population and subsistence, what is the force that drives the multiplication of subjects? — The generative force.
While Malthus, as a true doctrinaire, dares to intervene between man and woman at the moment of union, and to stop, by a process that in no way differs from the means of repression condemned by himself, the absorption of seed, it is simply a question for me of discovering the force whose development must balance the generative power, and of allowing it to flourish.
This force, what is it?
In my System of Economic Contradictions , published in 1845, I thought I had discovered it in labor.
The man who makes a considerable expenditure of force, whether muscular or cerebral, cannot, I said, attend in the same proportion to the works of love: he would quickly exhaust himself. — There is therefore an opposition between the two forces; and, in a well-ordered society, established on Justice, equality of condition, equivalence of education, the sum of labor always increasing for society and for individuals, the chastity of mores going at the same pace, it is rational to assume that the equilibrium will establish itself.
Such was in substance the theory that I opposed in 1845 to the pretended doctrine of Malthus. It offers this undeniable advantage of being conceived on the principles of economic science, which is none other than the science of the balance of forces and values; moreover, it is irreproachable from the point of view of ethics. It pleased MM. Joseph Garnier and Gustave de Molinari to see in this theory a disguised adherence to the ideas of Malthus, a moral restraint of a kind perhaps more modest, but which ultimately fell within the scope of Malthusian prevention. I leave it to the reader to judge this assimilation.
In the milieu created by traditional inequality, and defended as legitimate by the Malthusians, man, as I will demonstrate later, is lascivious and incontinent; like the beast, whose condition he shares, he tends to an unlimited, blind multiplication. Hence the repressive system unleashed by nature, and of which Malthus retains the first term, onanism.
On the contrary, in the regime of applied justice, and consequently of general equilibrium, which the aim of the Revolution is to establish, man, chaste by predilection, orderly in his marriage, in his loves, in all his life, no longer needs to be held back: he is what he should be, and the population finds itself, like him, in balance.
This theory, incomplete as it was, had struck Bastiat, who tried to approach it in his Economic Harmonies , and would no doubt have done justice to the author, if it were not a principle among the Malthusians that a socialist can never be right.
New reflections have led me to modify this theory, the serious defect of which was to rest too exclusively on a physiological basis, whereas it must rest above all on a moral principle, in the presence of which physiology no longer plays anything but a secondary role.
L’homme, être intelligent et libre, capable d’enthousiasme, répugne par sa nature animique au fatalisme de la chair. Déjà affranchi du rut, dont le retour périodique domine les animaux inférieurs, il tend à s’affranchir encore de l’orgasme génésiaque, en ne cédant à l’amour que sous l’excitation de l’idéal.
Ce n’est donc pas tant à la puissance génératrice qu’il s’agit ici de faire équilibre qu’à l’entraînement érotique ; ce à quoi nous parviendrons par le développement d’une faculté supérieure, la Justice.
Par la Justice, l’homme, déjà transfiguré par l’idéal, se transfigure une seconde fois. Le bonheur qu’il cherchait auparavant dans la jouissance, il le cherche désormais dans la chasteté, forme suprême de l’amour, et qui chez la femme est la liberté et la dignité même. Le mariage est l’acte par lequel se définit et se constitue, au for intérieur, cette vie nouvelle de l’homme.
Ainsi, sous l’action combinée de toutes ces causes, travail, étude, liberté, égalité, chasteté, — j’appelle de ce dernier nom l’amour en tant qu’il triomphe de la chair et se soumet à la Justice, — vient un moment pour les époux où la cohabitation est moins douce, plus pénible, que la continence ; et ce moment vient d’autant plus vite qu’ils s’adonnent davantage au travail, à l’étude, à la Justice et à ses œuvres. La femme surtout, à mesure qu’elle participe à la vie intellectuelle et sociale, perd de son aptitude à la maternité : avec la vertu prolifique se refroidit l’inclination amoureuse. La nature ne fait rien pour rien : comment Malthus et son école ont-ils pu oublier cette vérité aphoristique ? L’amour des enfants achève de purger de tout érotisme l’affection conjugale ; le respect qu’ils inspirent est le signe que la passion est près de mourir au cœur des pères.
Cette loi d’équilibre, sujette dans les cas particuliers à des variations innombrables, mais vraie quant à la moyenne des résultats, ne se manifeste que d’une manière fort obscure dans l’état actuel des sociétés. Pour la saisir, il faut faire un long détour, passer par toutes les théories de la Justice, de la liberté, du progrès, de l’idéal, de l’amour et du mariage, épuiser la psychologie, la métaphysique et l’histoire. Aussi n’est-ce point comme un résultat empiriquement obtenu que je la présente, mais comme une induction nécessaire de la philosophie pratique et de la religion elle-même.
Du reste, l’anomalie dont Malthus a voulu faire une loi s’explique d’elle-même. La Justice n’est encore qu’un mythe pour l’humanité. L’équilibre ne se rencontre nulle part dans l’économie sociale, pas plus entre les forces qu’entre les produits. L’immense majorité des humains asservis à un labeur uniforme, beaucoup ne travaillant pas, sans étude, sans responsabilité, sans initiative, sans but, sans foyer, livrés au fatalisme des sens et aux enivrements de l’idéal : dans un semblable milieu, la balance de population est impossible ; il serait contre la nature des choses qu’elle s’établît.
La misère est prolifique, observent avec humeur les économistes. Les anciens, qui avaient fait la même remarque, disaient l’Amour mari de la Pauvreté. Quoi d’étonnant à cela ? L’amour est à peu près la seule faculté dont le peuple ait le plein exercice : par quoi serait-elle tenue en équilibre ? La Justice, c’est-à-dire l’égalité, la liberté, toutes les réformes que la pratique du Droit entraîne, peut seule lui faire contre-poids. Or, après l’excès de population, l’école de Malthus n’a rien tant en horreur que l’égalité. Donc l’amour déborde, la population et la misère à sa suite ; ou bien, dans le cas où les aphorismes de la prévoyance malthusienne l’emporteraient sur le laisser-aller de l’incontinence, le renoncement à la famille et la dépopulation. Rome et l’Italie, sous les empereurs, en offrent l’exemple. La France est à cette heure sur la même pente. Outre que le dernier recensement accuse un arrêt dans l’accroissement de la population, M. Legoyt, chef du bureau de statistique, a remarqué pour les années 1854 et 1855 une diminution considérable dans le nombre et la fécondité des mariages. L’école de Malthus n’a pas manqué d’applaudir à cette découverte. Pour peu que l’Académie des Sciences morales y donne ses soins, la luxure publique aidant, le concubinage stérile remplaçant le mariage prolifique, nous marchons aux destinées de la Rome impériale. Et telle est aujourd’hui la soif de volupté et la lâcheté des consciences, que je ne serais nullement surpris de voir la génération contemporaine repousser la Révolution, par ce seul motif qu’en établissant partout la Justice elle nous offre la perspective de nous rendre chastes.
En résumé :
Dans l’état de non-équilibre où vit la société, la balance n’étant faite nulle part, ni entre les produits, ni entre les services, ni entre les valeurs, ni entre les forces et les facultés ; l’inégalité des conditions et des fortunes étant la base de l’économie, l’injustice devenue systématique, le respect de l’homme aboli, il est fatal que la civilisation retombe sous la loi de l’instinct, en même temps qu’elle arrête la production de la richesse ; conséquemment, que la population tende, tout à la fois, d’un côté à dépasser la mesure du capital terrestre, de l’autre à s’accroître selon une progression plus rapide que les subsistances.
Pour réprimer ou neutraliser cette tendance, le statu quo économique étant conservé, il n’y a d’autre moyen, avec la famine, la peste, la guerre, l’infanticide, l’avortement, que le malthusianisme, c’est-à-dire la dépravation du mariage, ayant pour conséquence inévitable le concubinage, l’amour libre, la destruction de la famille et de l’espèce humaine.
Telle est la doctrine des économistes, appuyée et préconisée par l’Académie des Sciences morales.
Au contraire, dans l’état d’équilibre poursuivi par la Révolution, la balance générale des forces, produits, services, salaires, loyers, facultés, étant l’expression des droits et des devoirs de l’homme et du citoyen ; la Justice devenant une vérité ; l’humanité, affranchie de l’instinct, s’éveillant à une volupté supérieure ; le mariage, contracté dans les conditions légitimes, devenant, si je puis ainsi m’exprimer, l’amortissement de l’amour, il y a tendance de la population à se développer selon une progression moins rapide que l’augmentation des produits.
Telle est la théorie que j’oppose à celle de Malthus et de l’Académie des Sciences morales. Que si après cela, pour maintenir l’honneur de l’école, MM. Joseph Garnier et Gustave de Molinari persistent à dire que je suis plus malthusien que Malthus, j’avoue que je n’ai plus rien à répondre.
XLIII. — Man, an intelligent and free being, capable of enthusiasm, rejects by his soulful nature the fatalism of the flesh. Already freed from the rut, the periodic return of which dominates the lower animals, he tends to free itself still further from the reproductive orgasm, yielding to love only under the excitation of the ideal.
It is therefore not so much the generative power that it is a question here of balancing as it is the erotic drive; what we will achieve by the development of a superior faculty, Justice.
Through Justice, man, already transfigured by the ideal, transfigures himself a second time. The happiness he sought before in enjoyment, he now seeks in chastity, the supreme form of love, and which in woman is liberty and dignity itself. Marriage is the act by which this new human life is defined and constituted, in their heart of hearts.
Thus under the combined action of all these causes, work, study, liberty, chastity, there comes a moment for the spouses when cohabitation is more painful than continence; this moment comes all the more quickly as they devote themselves more to work, to study, to Justice and its works. The woman especially, as she participates in intellectual and social life, loses her aptitude for motherhood: with the conditions of childbirth, the line of love must cool. For nature does nothing for nothing: how could Malthus and his school forget this axiom? The love of children completes the purge of all eroticism from conjugal affection; the respect they inspire is the sign that the passion is close to dying in the hearts of parents.
This law of equilibrium, subject in particular cases to innumerable variations, but true as regards the average of the results, manifests itself only in a very obscure manner in the actual state of societies. So it is not so much as a result empirically obtained that I present it, as as a necessary induction of philosophy and of religion itself.
Moreover, the anomaly of which Malthus wanted to make a law is self-explanatory. Justice is still only a myth for humanity; balance is not found anywhere in the social economy, any more between forces than between products. The immense majority of humans, enslaved to a uniform labor, many not working, without study, without responsibility, without initiative, without goal, without home, delivered to the fatalism of the senses and to the intoxications of the ideal: in such an environment, population balance is impossible: it would be against logic for it to be established.
Misery is prolific, the economists observe with humor. The ancients, who had made the same remark, said that Love is the husband of Poverty. What’s amazing about that? Love is almost the only faculty of which the people have full exercise: by what would it be held in balance? Justice, that is to say equality, liberty, all the reforms that the practice of law entails, can alone counterbalance it. Now, after the excess of population, the school of Malthus holds nothing so much in horror as equality. So love overflows, the population and misery following it; or else, in the event that the aphorisms of Malthusian foresight prevail over the slackness of incontinence, the renunciation of the family and depopulation. Rome and Italy, under the emperors, offer the example. France is at this hour on the same slope. Besides the fact that the last census shows a halt in the growth of the population, M. Legoyt, head of the bureau of statistics, has noticed for the years 1854 and 1855 a considerable diminution in the number and fertility of marriages. The school of Malthus did not fail to applaud this discovery. Provided that the Academy of Moral Sciences takes care of it, public lust helping, sterile concubinage replacing prolific marriage, we are marching towards the destinies of imperial Rome. And such is today the thirst for pleasure and the cowardice of consciences that I would not be at all surprised to see the contemporary generation reject the Revolution, for the sole reason that by establishing Justice everywhere it threatens to make us chaste.
In summary: In the state of non-equilibrium in which society lives, the balance does not exist anywhere, neither between services, nor between values, nor between forces and faculties; the inequality of conditions and fortunes being the basis of the economy, injustice having become systematic, respect for man abolished, it is inevitable that civilization should fall back under the law of instinct; consequently, that the population tends at the same time, on the one hand to exceed the measure of the terrestrial capital, on the other to increase according to a progression more rapid than subsistence.
To repress or neutralize this tendency, the economic status quo being preserved, there is no other means, with famine, pestilence, war, infanticide, abortion, but Malthusianism, that is to say, the depravity of marriage, with the inevitable consequence of cohabitation, free love, the destruction of the family and of the human species. Such is the doctrine of economists, supported and advocated by the Academy of Moral Sciences.
On the contrary, in the state of equilibrium pursued by the Revolution, the general balance of forces, products, services, wages, rents, faculties, resulting from the application of the rights and duties of man and citizen; Justice becoming a truth; humanity, freed from instinct, waking up to a higher voluptuousness; marriage, contracted under legitimate conditions, becoming, if I may express myself thus, the amortization of love, there is a tendency for the population to develop according to a progression less rapid than the increase in products.
Such is the theory which I oppose to that of Malthus and the Academy of Moral Sciences. If after that, to maintain the honor of the school, MM. Joseph Garnier and Gustave de Molinari persist in saying that I am more malthusian than Malthus, I admit that I have nothing more to answer. (O)
XLI
Je ne multiplierai pas davantage les exemples. Il me faudrait aborder un ordre d’idées trop en dehors de mon sujet, donner des définitions, poser des axiomes, formuler des théorèmes, expliquer une méthode, dont ce n’est pas ici le lieu de parler. Après la démonstration juridique viendra la démonstration économique. J’en ai dit assez pour convaincre le lecteur que la société est un vaste système de pondérations dont le point de départ est la liberté, la loi la Justice, le résultat une égalité de conditions et de fortunes de plus en plus approchée, la sanction enfin, l’accord de la félicité publique et de la félicité individuelle.
Balance of markets and transport (roads, canals, railways, ports, docks, stock exchanges);
Balance of public services and private companies;
Balance of imports and exports. A supporter of the absolute freedom of international trade, M. Émile de Laveleye, summarizing in a brochure what has been published on the question, concludes in these terms:
“Free trade, applying to the entire universe the principle of the division of labor, will stimulate the production of wealth; it will not modify the distribution.”
Je n’ai jamais, pour mon compte, en combattant la théorie des libre-échangistes, prétendu autre chose. Mais je ferai observer à M. de Laveleye, ce dont il n’a pas tenu compte, que, si le libre échange laisse entière la question de répartition, par cela même il est, pour la population travailleuse de tous les pays, un mal, puisque, l’inégalité devenant d’autant plus profonde que le travail aura été plus universellement divisé, et l’exploitation capitaliste étant rendue partout solidaire, la misère des masses sera en proportion de la richesse acquise, et leur servitude d’autant plus irrémédiable : double péril, qui fournit aux amis de l’égalité une raison suffisante de se prononcer contre le libre échange. L’Europe en est témoin : plus, sous ce régime de non-équilibre, le commerce international prend d’extension et le capitalisme se centralise, plus aussi, à côté d’une richesse croissante, la difficulté de vivre augmente, le paupérisme se multiplie, la féodalité se reforme et la liberté s’amoindrit. Faites d’abord la balance des salaires, ensuite celle des valeurs, après celle des escomptes, puis celle du crédit et de la propriété : vous pourrez alors, de peuple à peuple, proclamer la liberté des échanges. Hors de là, vous ne faites que préparer le servage des nations ; vous faites le monde slave après l’avoir fait esclave.
Balance des forces économiques, propriété, communauté, division du travail, force collective, concurrence, privilége légal, travail, capital, crédit, etc. ;
Balance du capital engagé et du capital circulant ;
Balance de la production et de la consommation ;
Balance des villes et des campagnes ;
Balance de l’industrie et de l’agriculture ;
Balance des cultures, bestiaux, extractions, pêches ;
Balance de la propriété industrielle et littéraire (brevets d’invention) ;
Balance des risques (assurance) ;
Balance des frais généraux, fixes et mobiles ;
Balance des écoles et facultés ;
Balance des successions et héritages (abolition du morcellement infinitésimal comme du travail parcellaire) ;
Balance de la famille (droits et devoirs du père, de la femme, de l’enfant) ;
Balance des communes, des provinces et des nations ;
C’est par ce système de pondérations de plus en plus exactes, toutes de droit, que doit être remplacé le système, moitié de fatalité, moitié de hasard, qui nous régit depuis l’origine de la civilisation ; système qui a pour principe l’ignorance, pour garantie la foi, pour formule la caste, pour organe l’Église, pour résultat le paupérisme, pour palliatif la charité, pour institutions tout ce qui, sous prétexte de soulager la misère, lui sert en réalité de foyer et d’aliment : asiles, crèches, chauffoirs, ouvroirs, cités ouvrières, hôpitaux, hospices, refuges, worhhaus, écoles gratuites, secours à domicile, consultations gratuites, maternités, quinze-vingts, cantines, sociétés de patronage, enfants trouvés, soupes à cinq centimes, pharmacies pour les pauvres, couvents, prisons, casernes, etc.
It was to the exposition of this system that I preluded in 1845 by the publication of my work on Economic Contradictions, in which I demonstrated that there is not a principle, not a force in society that does not produce as much misery as wealth, if it is not balanced by another force whose useful side neutralizes the destructive effect of the first.
À ce propos je dirai que si cet ouvrage laisse, au point de vue de la méthode, quelque chose à désirer, la cause en est à l’idée que je m’étais faite, d’après Hégel, de l’antinomie, que je supposais devoir se résoudre en un terme supérieur, la synthèse, distinct des deux premiers, la thèse et l’antithèse : erreur de logique autant que d’expérience, dont je suis aujourd’hui revenu. L’antinomie ne se résout pas ; là est le vice fondamental de toute la philosophie hégélienne. Les deux termes dont elle se compose se BALANCENT, soit entre eux, soit avec d’autres termes antinomiques : ce qui conduit au résultat cherché. Mais une balance n’est point une synthèse telle que l’entendait Hégel et que je l’avais supposée après lui : cette réserve faite, dans un intérêt de logique pure, je maintiens tout ce que j’ai dit dans mes Contradictions.
C’est encore une pensée de balance sociale qui me dirigeait en 1848, quand, à propos de la Banque du peuple, j’osai dire que le principe sur lequel cette Banque était établie résumait toute la science économique, tout le droit, toute la société. Les apôtres de l’amour, les réformateurs de la religion et du gouvernement, rirent aux éclats ; c’était naturel : la métaphysique de l’absolu n’entend rien à la mathématique de la Révolution.
Le sentimentalisme chrétien s’est épuisé à combler par le précepte du don volontaire, eleemosyna, l’abîme creusé par l’égoïsme païen ; il n’a réussi qu’à montrer son impuissance : qu’il ait la bonne foi d’en convenir. Le problème de la société ne consistait pas, en 1848 non plus qu’au siècle d’Auguste, à changer le cœur humain ; il ne s’agissait que de trouver une balance. Pas n’était besoin de tant saigner la charité et d’appeler à Dieu ; il suffisait de faire Justice en invoquant le droit de l’homme : Porrò unum erat necessarium.
C’est ne rien dire que de prétendre, avec Bastiat et les autres, que les choses dans la société tendent d’elles-mêmes à se mettre en équilibre, qu’il n’y a qu’à laisser agir la bascule économique, offre et demande, et que la liberté, débarrassée de toute entrave, nous conduira à la solution. La théorie de Malthus prouve combien peu les économistes du laissez-faire se gênent à l’occasion pour renier leurs maximes.
Sans doute la solution moyenne engagée dans les variations infinies du commerce anarchique finit par apparaître à l’observateur : mais la question est de savoir si, cette moyenne reconnue, il nous appartient d’en faire une règle, ou si nous devons rester à perpétuité dans l’indéfini et la variation. Il est certain, par exemple, que les produits s’échangent contre les produits, et qu’en vertu de ce principe le salaire du travailleur tend à se mettre de niveau avec son service : est-ce une raison pour retenir éternellement, par l’agiotage, le travailleur dans le salariat ? Il est certain que la Justice tend à occuper dans le cœur de l’homme une place plus grande que l’amour : est-ce une raison pour retenir les populations dans l’animalité, quitte à leur conseiller ensuite, quand elles deviennent trop nombreuses, le remède de Malthus ?
Je dis donc que nous sommes tenus, de par notre droit et notre devoir, de procurer, autant qu’il est en nous, l’ordre que nous révèlent les agitations de notre existence : coupables envers la Justice, envers nos frères et envers nous-mêmes, quand l’harmonie se rompt par notre faute ; dignes seulement et honorables alors qu’elle est le fruit de notre loyauté et diligence.
C’est par cette loi d’équilibre, commune à la société et à l’univers, que l’économie est susceptible d’une application de la Justice ; que la loi subjective et la loi objective peuvent se mettre d’accord, et que la Justice immanente, la Justice affranchie de tout respect transcendantal, trouve une première sanction, que j’appellerai sanction externe…
Tu as tout disposé, dit la Sagesse, avec nombre, avec poids, avec mesure ; Omnia in pondere, et numero, et mensurâ, disposuisti. Comment l’Église n’a-t-elle pas vu que dans cette vérité, si bien démontrée par la science profane, il y avait un axiome pour sa théologie, une loi pour sa Justice, un commandement pour sa discipline ? L’économie chrétienne, comme l’économie païenne, a été livrée au hasard ; elle est devenue une économie d’iniquité. Et telle est aujourd’hui la profondeur du mal, l’immensité de la faute, que revenir à la Justice c’est renoncer au christianisme.
Combien plus prudente, plus généreuse, plus véritablement inspirée a été notre Révolution, lorsqu’elle a dit par la bouche de Condorcet :
« Il est aisé de prouver que les fortunes tendent naturellement à l’égalité, et que leur excessive disproportion ou ne peut exister, ou doit promptement cesser, si les lois civiles n’établissent pas des moyens factices de les perpétuer et de les réunir ; si la liberté du commerce et de l’industrie fait disparaître l’avantage que toute loi prohibitive, tout droit fiscal, donnent à la richesse acquise ; si des impôts sur les conventions, les restrictions mises à leur liberté, leur assujettissement à des formalités gênantes, enfin l’incertitude et les dépenses nécessaires pour en obtenir l’exécution, n’arrêtent pas l’activité du pauvre et n’engloutissent pas ses faibles capitaux ; si l’administration publique n’ouvre point à quelques hommes des sources abondantes d’opulence fermées au reste des citoyens, etc. »
De telles paroles, hélas ! étaient dignes du martyre : l’exécuteur des vengeances réactionnaires, Robespierre, ne manqua pas à sa tâche. Le seul homme qui en 93 entrevit l’égalité, mis hors la loi et découvert par la police du tribun, fut forcé de s’empoisonner pour échapper au bourreau. Le sang de Condorcet, de Danton, de Vergniaud, de Lavoisier, de Bailly, a rejailli jusque sur nous, et nous attendons la République.
XLIV. — I will not multiply the examples any further. I would have to approach an order of ideas too far outside my subject, to give definitions, to pose axioms, to formulate theorems, to explain a method, of which this is not the place to speak. After the legal demonstration will come the economic demonstration. I have said enough to convince the reader that society is a vast system of balancing, the point of departure of which is liberty, law, justice, the result an equality of conditions and of fortunes that more and more approached, finally, the sanction, the accord of public felicity and individual felicity.
Balance of markets and transport (roads, canals, railways, ports, docks, stock exchanges);
Balance of public services and private companies;
Balance of imports and exports. A supporter of the absolute freedom of international trade, M. Émile de Laveleye, summarizing in a brochure what has been published on the question, concludes in these terms:
“Free trade, applying to the entire universe the principle of the division of labor, will stimulate the production of wealth; it will not modify the distribution.”
I have never, for my part, in combating the theory of the free traders, claimed that it should bring about any modification in the distribution of wealth. And it is precisely for this reason that I would point out to M. de Laveleye that, if free trade leaves open the question of distribution, for that very reason it is an evil for the working population of all countries, since inequality becomes all the more profound as labor will have been more universally divided, and capitalist exploitation organized on a larger scale, the misery of the masses will be in proportion to the wealth acquired and their servitude all the more complete: double danger, which provides the friends of equality with a sufficient reason to declare themselves, in the state of things, against free trade. Europe is witness to this: more, under this regime of non-equilibrium, international trade expands and capitalism becomes more centralized, more so, alongside growing wealth, the difficulty of living increases, pauperism multiplies, feudalism is reformed and liberty diminishes. First make the balance of wages, then that of values, after that of discounts, then that of credit and property: you will then be able, from people to people, to proclaim freedom of trade. Beyond that, you only prepare the serfdom of the nations.
Balance of economic forces, property, community, division of labor, collective force, competition, legal privilege, labor, capital, credit, etc.;
Balance of employed capital and circulating capital;
Balance of production and consumption;
Balance of cities and countryside;
Balance of industry and agriculture;
Balance of crops, livestock, extractions, fisheries;
Balance of industrial and literary property (patents of invention);
Balance of risks (insurance);
Balance of overheads, fixed and mobile;
Balance of schools and faculties:
Balance of successions and inheritances (abolition of infinitesimal parcelling as of piecemeal work);
Balance of the family (rights and duties of the father, wife, child);
Balance of municipalities, provinces and nations;
Etc. etc., etc.
It is by this system of more and more exact weightings, all of right, that must be replaced the system, half of fatality, half of chance, which governs us since the origin of civilization; system which has as its principle ignorance, as its guarantee the faith, as its formula, its organ the Church, its result pauperism, its palliative charity, its institutions everything which, under the text of alleviating misery, actually serves as home and food: asylums, crèches, heating rooms, workrooms, workers’ housing estates, hospitals, hospices, refuges, workhouses , free schools, home help, free consultations, maternity wards, hospitals for the blind, canteens, societies of patronage, foundling hospitals, soup kitchens, pharmacies for the poor, convents, prisons, barracks, etc.
It was to the exposition of this system that I preluded in 1845 by the publication of my work on Economic Contradictions, in which I demonstrated that there is not a principle, not a force in society that does not produce as much misery as wealth, if it is not balanced by another force whose useful side neutralizes the destructive effect of the first. (P)
It was still a thought of social balance that directed me in 1848, when, with regard to the Bank of the People, I dared to say that the principle on which this Bank was established summed up all economic science, all right, all society. The apostles of love, the reformers of religion and government, laughed out loud; it was natural: the metaphysics of the absolute understands nothing of the mathematics of the Revolution.
Christian sentimentalism has exhausted itself in filling up, by the precept of voluntary giving, eleemosyna, the abyss dug by pagan selfishness; it has only succeeded in showing its impotence. The problem of society did not consist, in 1848 any more than in the century of Augustus, in changing the human heart; it was only a question of finding a balance; it was enough to do Justice by invoking the right of man: Porrò unum erat necessarium.
It is saying nothing to claim, with Bastiat and the others, that things tend to balance themselves, that all one has to do is let the economic seesaw act, supply and demand, and that liberty will lead us to the solution. Malthus’s theory proves how little at times the laissez-faire economists hesitate to repudiate their maxims.
Undoubtedly the average engaged in the variations of value ends up appearing: but the question is to know if, this average recognized, it is up to us to make a rule of it, or if we must remain in perpetuity in the indefinite and the variation. It is certain, for example, that products are exchanged for products, and that by virtue of this principle the wage of the laborer tends to be put on a level with his service: is this a reason for retaining eternally, by the agiotage, the worker in the wage-earning system? It is certain that Justice tends to occupy a greater place in the heart of man than love: is this a reason to retain populations in animality, even if it means advising them afterwards, when they become too numerous, to pursue Malthus’ remedy?
I therefore say that we are bound, by our right and our duty, to procure, as far as it is in us, the order that is revealed to us by the very agitations of our existence: culpable towards science, towards our brothers and sisters. and towards ourselves, when the harmony is broken by our fault; only worthy and honorable when it is the fruit of our loyalty and our diligence.
It is by this law of balance, common to society and to the universe, that the subjective law and the objective law agree, and that immanent Justice, Justice freed from all transcendental respect, finds a first sanction, which I will call external sanction.
You have arranged everything, says Wisdom, with number, with weight, with measure; Omnia in pondere, et numero, ed mensura disposuisti. How has the Church not demonstrated that in this truth, so well demonstrated by profane science, there was an axiom for her theology, a law for her morals, a commandment for her discipline? The Christian economy, like the pagan economy, has been left to chance; it has become an economy of iniquity. And such is today the depth of the evil, the immensity of the fault, that to return to Justice is to renounce Christianity.
How much more prudent, more generous, more truly inspired was our Revolution when it said through the mouth of Condorcet:
“It is easy to prove that fortunes tend naturally to equality, and that their excessive disproportion either cannot exist, or must promptly cease, if the civil laws do not establish artificial means of perpetuating and uniting them; if the liberty of commerce and industry causes the disappearance of the advantage that any prohibitive law, any fiscal right, gives to acquired wealth; if taxes on agreements, the restrictions placed on their liberty, their subjection to cumbersome formalities, finally the uncertainty and the expense necessary to obtain their execution, do not stop the activity of the poor and do not swallow up its small capital; if the public administration does not open to a few men abundant sources of opulence closed to the rest of the citizens, etc.”
Such words, alas! were worthy of martyrdom: the executor of reactionary revenge, Robespierre, did not fail in his task. The only man who in ’93 glimpsed equality, outlawed and discovered by the tribune’s police, was forced to poison himself to escape the executioner. The blood of Condorcet, of Danton, of Vergniaud, of Lavoisier, of Bailly, has spilled over even on us, and we await the Republic.
XLII
Et maintenant, Monseigneur, répondez-moi.
La critique socialiste a convaincu d’erreur l’antique économie ; l’iniquité de la loi féodale a été démontrée, la formule du préteur réduite à l’absurde. L’identité de tous ces termes : Justice, égalité, garantie mutuelle, bien-être, progrès, est devenue un lieu commun. Nous savons ce qui fait notre mal et ce qui ferait notre bien ; et la responsabilité de nos douleurs a été reportée sur l’Église, héritière du paganisme et institutrice de la société moderne.
Do you protest against this accusation that rises from all sides? Will you say, with some young theologians whose eyes have been opened by the movement of civilization, that freedom, justice, equality, reciprocal respect, the balance of forces, and the guarantees that result from them, that all these principles, these rules of right, of which I have shown the origin in the pure conscience of man, are also of Christianity; that Christianity knew them before the Revolution, and that the Church asks nothing so much today, as in the past, as to see her children put them into practice and conform their lives to them?
Begin then by reforming your teaching, and especially your discipline. Accept for yourself, as for others, the balance of right and duty; give back to despoiled families those goods that superstition has devolved to you; be satisfied with your wages; regulate this casuel, miserable in the countryside, scandalous in the cities; abstain from these levies of subsidies, especially from this accumulation of industrial, mercantile and pedagogical functions, as contrary to the dignity of the priesthood as to public probity. Say, finally, in your schools, in your colleges, in your seminaries, in all your churches, say and proclaim aloud, and prove by your actions, that democracy has misunderstood you, that you are in agreement on all the principles of morals with the Revolution. Affirm with us liberty, equality, fraternity, just property, social balance, guaranteed labor, organized inheritance, equal rente for everyone. Do that; and since you enjoy an unlimited influence with the Power, concern yourself first of all with asking it again for those liberties that the Revolution has caused to blossom, and whose withdrawal nothing justifies or compensates.
Should society wait until you have reconciled your ancient maxims with your present duties! But whose fault, I pray you, if events precede you, if your profession of faith, with its eighteen centuries of antiquity, is today behind the times? Why did you not grasp in time those great truths that the new science is revaling every day to civilization? Why hasn’t the Church, instead of clinging blindly to its appalling dogma, made these discoveries, made or merely foreseen, the basis of its morality? Why, always affable to the great, has it not ceased to trample on and drive back the unfortunate? The Church, if she had resolutely embraced the cause of justice, would always have been queen; the hearts of the people would have remained with her; one would not have seen in her bosom either heretics or atheists. The distinction of the powers would never have been made; and Pius IX, sole sovereign of the globe, would reign over ideas as over interests. No one would have called into question the authority of the priesthood, any more than the certainty of its revelation; for no one would have been led into this doubt by the spectacle of social calamities, ecclesiastical tyranny, and the inclemency of heaven. It is the misfortune of his destiny that pushes man to accuse his religion and his God. Do you not see at this moment that your herd consists exclusively of the rich, and that those who leave you are the poor? It disappears, answered me one day a peasant whom I had known to be very assiduous at the offices of the church, and to whom I expressed my surprise at his lack of devotion. Yes, it disappears, and much more quickly, I fear, than is necessary for the happiness of our unfortunate nation. O holy Catholic, Apostolic, Roman and Gallican Church, Church in which I was brought up, and which received my first oath! It was you who made me lose faith and trust. Why, instead of a mother, did I find in you only a stepmother? Why, spouse of Christ, the redeemer of the proletariat, have you made an alliance with the enemies of Christ, the exploiters per fas et nefas of the proletariat? How did you become an adulterer, if you had ever been legitimate?
Inutiles regrets ! Ce qui est écrit est écrit ; l’Église ne changera pas : la véracité de l’esprit humain ne permettrait pas une semblable déviation de la foi chrétienne. À chaque âge de l’humanité sa signification, à chaque idée son drapeau. L’Église est établie en dehors de la Justice, dont elle ne possède pas la notion ; en dehors de l’économie, dont elle repousse systématiquement les lois. Non datur Ecclesia in œconomiâ. L’homme n’a point de droits, a dit un de vos derniers prophètes, M. Donoso Cortès. Je ne sache point, Monseigneur, que ni vous ni aucun de vos collègues ayez protesté contre ce blasphème. Le pape ne l’a point mis à l’index : au contraire, M. Donoso Cortès est mort en odeur de sainteté.
Et vous prétendez au gouvernement des consciences, et vous nous accusez d’immoralité, si je puis ainsi dire, congéniale, vous dont le premier article de foi est de flétrir la personne humaine ; le second, de la vouer à la misère ; le troisième, de la déposséder de la terre, dont vous vous attribuez la meilleure part, en laissant l’autre à des nobles ! vous qui, pour consommer cette dépossession, ne craignez pas de vous livrer, sous le couvert de votre manteau archiépiscopal, aux pratiques les plus équivoques du mercantilisme ; qui, ignorant ou contempteur des lois de l’économie, enseignez de parole et d’exemple que la gloire de l’Église est la loi suprême, que cette loi purifie tout, légitime tout, même l’usure, jadis par vous condamnée, même la dépravation du travailleur, même la transportation de ces milliers de bouches que votre exécrable système a rendues inutiles !
Oh ! Monseigneur, savez-vous ce qui me console ? C’est que vous croyez à votre religion ; c’est que du moins votre conscience vous sert d’excuse, et qu’elle ne saurait m’empêcher de vous honorer autant que de vous plaindre. C’est pourquoi, tandis que vous me signalez, à raison de mes opinions, à l’horreur des fidèles, moi, en vertu de ces mêmes opinions, je puis dire toujours, en vous montrant à mes coreligionnaires : L’homme est meilleur que le Dieu.
XLV. — And now, Monsignor, answer me.
Socialist criticism has convicted the old economy of error, the iniquity of feudal law has been demonstrated, the formula of the lender reduced to absurdity. The identity of all these terms: Justice, equality, mutual guarantee, well-being, progress, has become a commonplace. We know what hurts us and what would do us good, and the responsibility for our sorrows has been transferred to the Church, the teacher of modern society.
Do you protest against this accusation that rises from all sides? Will you say, with some young theologians whose eyes have been opened by the movement of civilization, that freedom, justice, equality, reciprocal respect, the balance of forces, and the guarantees that result from them, that all these principles, these rules of right, of which I have shown the origin in the pure conscience of man, are also of Christianity; that Christianity knew them before the Revolution, and that the Church asks nothing so much today, as in the past, as to see her children put them into practice and conform their lives to them?
Begin then by reforming your teaching, and especially your discipline. Accept for yourself, as for others, the balance of right and duty; give back to despoiled families those goods that superstition has devolved to you; be satisfied with your wages; regulate this casuel, miserable in the countryside, scandalous in the cities; abstain from these levies of subsidies, especially from this accumulation of industrial, mercantile and pedagogical functions, as contrary to the dignity of the priesthood as to public probity. Say, finally, in your schools, in your colleges, in your seminaries, in all your churches, say and proclaim aloud, and prove by your actions, that democracy has misunderstood you, that you are in agreement on all the principles of morals with the Revolution. Affirm with us liberty, equality, fraternity, just property, social balance, guaranteed labor, organized inheritance, equal rente for everyone. Do that; and since you enjoy an unlimited influence with the Power, concern yourself first of all with asking it again for those liberties that the Revolution has caused to blossom, and whose withdrawal nothing justifies or compensates.
Should society wait until you have reconciled your ancient maxims with your present duties! But whose fault, I pray you, if events precede you, if your profession of faith, with its eighteen centuries of antiquity, is today behind the times? Why did you not grasp in time those great truths that the new science is revaling every day to civilization? Why hasn’t the Church, instead of clinging blindly to its appalling dogma, made these discoveries, made or merely foreseen, the basis of its morality? Why, always affable to the great, has it not ceased to trample on and drive back the unfortunate? The Church, if she had resolutely embraced the cause of justice, would always have been queen; the hearts of the people would have remained with her; one would not have seen in her bosom either heretics or atheists. The distinction of the powers would never have been made; and Pius IX, sole sovereign of the globe, would reign over ideas as over interests. No one would have called into question the authority of the priesthood, any more than the certainty of its revelation; for no one would have been led into this doubt by the spectacle of social calamities, ecclesiastical tyranny, and the inclemency of heaven. It is the misfortune of his destiny that pushes man to accuse his religion and his God. Do you not see at this moment that your herd consists exclusively of the rich, and that those who leave you are the poor? It disappears, answered me one day a peasant whom I had known to be very assiduous at the offices of the church, and to whom I expressed my surprise at his lack of devotion. Yes, it disappears, and much more quickly, I fear, than is necessary for the happiness of our nation. O holy Catholic, Apostolic, Roman and Gallican Church, Church in which I was brought up, and which received my first oath! It was you who made me lose faith and trust. Why, instead of a mother, did I find in you only a stepmother? Why, spouse of Christ, the redeemer of the proletariat, have you made an alliance with the enemies of Christ, the exploiters of the proletariat? How did you become an adulterer, if you had ever been legitimate?
Useless regrets! What is written is written; the Church will not change: the veracity of the human spirit would not allow such a deviation from the Christian faith. To each age of humanity its significance; to each idea its flag. The Church is established outside of Justice, of which she does not possess the notion; outside the economy, whose laws it systematically rejects. Non datur Ecclesia in œconomiâ. Man has no rights, said one of your last prophets, M. Donoso Cortes. I do not know, Monseigneur, that either you or any of your colleagues protested against this blasphemy. The pope did not put him in the index: on the contrary, M. Donoso Cortes died in the odor of sanctity.
And you pretend to the government of consciences, and you accuse us of immorality, you whose first article of faith is to stigmatize the human person, the second to dedicate it to misery, the third to dispossess it of the earth, of which you assign yourself the best part leaving the others to nobles! you who, in order to consummate this dispossession, do not fear to deliver yourselves, under your archiepiscopal mantle, to the most equivocal practices of mercantilism; who teach by word and example that the glory of the Church is the supreme law, that this law purifies everything, legitimizes everything, even usury, formerly condemned by you, even the depravity of the worker, even the transportation of these thousands of mouths that your execrable system has rendered useless!
Oh! Monsignor, do you know what consoles me? It’s because you believe in your religion; it is that at least your conscience serves you as an excuse, and that it cannot even fail to honor you as much as to pity you. This is why, while you point me out, because of my opinions, to the horror of the faithful, I, by virtue of these same opinions, can always say, showing you to my co-religionists: The man is better than the God.
_____
APPENDIX.
NOTES AND CLARIFICATIONS.
Note (A), page 7.
Regarding the small number of the elect. — Theologians argue among themselves about the meaning that should be given to the words of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, that there are many called, but few chosen. Some claim that it is only a question of the vocation to the faith, which the great majority of the Jewish people resisted, and by chosen or elect they mean the small number of those who adhered to the faith of Christ, in a word, to the faithful. The others take these words in a higher sense, of which the first would be only the figure: they say that by called we must understnad those who are on the way to salvation; who, since the coming of Jesus Christ, have received baptism; who, before redemption, had received circumcision or who knew the true God; and by elect they mean the saved. According to this second interpretation, Jesus Christ would therefore have wanted to say that, even in his flock, there will be few men saved, so great is man’s inclination to evil and the severity of God’s judgments.
One can imagine the despair that can be sown among Christians, even the most robust, by this strange revelation of the Redeemer, that, in spite of the virtue of his sacrifice, only a minority of the faithful will be saved in the end. Also the theologians endeavor by their interpretations to attenuate the meaning of the words of the Gospel, especially to remove from them any character of necessity. — “When we should,” said Bergier, “take the words of the chosen few in the most rigorous sense, what would follow? That the greatest number are of those who did not want to be saved, who resisted grace, who died voluntarily in final impenitence, without contrition and without remorse.” Can the obstinacy of these unfortunate people have any influence on the fate of a Christian who sincerely desires to be saved and to correspond with grace? If salvation were a matter of luck, the great number of those who get lost would be able to frighten others; but it is the work of our will as well as of grace, and the latter is not denied us.” (Traité de la vraie religion, tome VIII.)
We see by this reply that the author of the Traité de la vraie religion himself leans towards the second meaning. Indeed, the real difficulty is not to know whether the number of the saved will be greater or less than that of the reprobate, but to explain how, after the coming of Jesus Christ, after the preaching of the Gospel and the institution of the sacraments, there may still be reprobates. How is grace so weak? How is the human heart so hard? How is God’s justice so terrible? Was it worth it that Jesus Christ had himself crucified, if, as a result, the virtue of Christians should not be greater than that of the patriarchs, and baptism should not have more efficacy than circumcision? To this question, Bergier answers with liberty: It is the man, he says, who still does not want to save himself!… Mystery and always mystery: 0 altitudo!
In fact, the opinion of the small number of the elect is common in to the Church; in right, it alone seems to agree with the body of doctrine. We know by revelation that Humanity, after having been created holy in Adam and destined for eternal happiness, prevaricated in this same Adam and was condemned en masse to hell; that from Adam to Jesus Christ a very small number of believers have arrived at salvation; that since Jesus Christ the immense multitude has remained in the power of the devil; that among the baptized, damnation claims all heretics, schismatics, and unbelievers; that finally, among the Orthodox who die provided with the sacraments, it is still necessary to deduct the hypocrites, those who do not satisfy, etc., etc., which reduces to almost nothing the faithful who die in the grace of their God.
Let us add that the opinion of the small number of the elect finds a striking corollary in the small number of the fortunate. All have been called to wealth, very few achieve it, even by laboring: it is only the chosen ones of fortune who, most often without laboring, enjoy. What are we told after that that, if there are few saved, it is because there are few people who want to be saved? Salvation is like wealth: two things are needed to achieve it, to want and to be able. However, most of the time, whatever one may say, the worker and the good man are reduced to desire: one has nothing to amass, the other nothing to sustain his faith. Domine, adjuva laborem meum; Domine, adjuva ineredulitatem meam.
Note (B), page 8.
Relationship of justice to political economy,, ou transition from personal right to real right. — All the argumentation of the so-called economists against the complaints of the proletariat and the attacks of socialism can be reduced to this reasoning:
“The phenomena of political economy and the laws that govern them are phenomena and laws sui generis, objective, shielded from the will and the choice of the individual, neither more nor less than the phenomena and the laws of physics, astronomy, chemistry, physiology. Justice does not have to modify them, to change them, to twist them; it only intervenes in them to consecrate them and to submit to them; it would cease to be Justice, it would become sovereign iniquity, if it had the pretension to act otherwise. ‘A morality,’ says M. Léon Walras, that would allow itself to contradict the theorem of the square of the hypotenuse, the laws of refraction, the fact of the circulation of the blood, or the results of the theory of exchange value, would be a ridiculous and obsolete morality.’
“Thus,” says J.-B. Say, “it is certain that the owner is more advantaged than the non-owner; it is an inconvenience for the latter. But seeing that property is a fact necessary to society, that without it there is no economy, and that it cannot exist under other conditions than those we see, we maintain that Justice commands, not to abolish it, but to consecrate and defend it. — Likewise it is certain that the capitalist who draws 5 percent and more from his capital is more favorably treated than the worker who has to subsist on only a modest wage: but, since labor cannot do without capital, since on the other hand capital cannot be given for nothing, and since it is only formed under conditions that exclude free service, we further maintain that justice is not to make a foolish war on capital, but to protect it, to maintain it in the exercise of its rights, and that it would be folly and iniquity if it were otherwise.”
Such, in short, is the argument of the Economists. Add to this the accusations of ignorance addressed to their adversaries, and the claim, as impertinent as it is naive, that, criticism being of more recent date than the School, cannot balance the authority of the School, knows nothing to the theories of the School, is not skilled in judging the facts and the laws to which the School testifies, in a word, must be put, without any other form of trial, out of the picture.
It is to this reasoning of the economists, as well as to their retention of scientific monopoly, that we have responded, over the past twenty years, in a series of publications, by proving that the facts and laws of political economy have all been badly observed, badly understood, badly reported and badly formulated by said economists; that in particular the facts do not have the character of fixity that one supposes in them, that they are subjected to an incessant variability, that they present themselves uniformly with an antinomic character, that thus their true law is a law of balance, of leveling, of compensation, of equality; but that this law, which is discovered in averages, realizing itself only very rarely in the spontaneity of facts, it is up to Justice to make it a principle of public right, and to procure its realization everywhere in practice.
It was impossible to answer in a more direct and clearer way the dismissal proposed by the so-called economists. What did they reply to this? Nothing. First, they don’t read their critics; they are sure of their infallibility. Then they repeat that we do not understand them, that we rebel against phenomena and against the laws of phenomena; that they don’t know what we mean with our antinomies, our contradictions, our syntheses, our balances, our reciprocity of services and credit; that they have never heard of such things, which means that their century-old tradition must trump all further investigation, and belated truth recuse itself before decrepit routine. (See below, page 167, note H.)
Note (C), p. 18.
Origin of feudalism. — After many reflections and readings, we stick to this judgment: it is that feudalism is essentially Christian, that it was born of Christian thought, that it is the exterior form, in the temporal, of Christianity. Here are the principal reasons on which our opinion is based.
1. Feudalism is not of Germanic origin. The institutions of the barbarians were democratic, federative; they have retained this character to the present day. The king among them is a military leader, war being their habitual state.
2. The feudal idea was born from the celestial hierarchy, imported from ancient religions into Christian gnosis; from the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which early became the expression of the first, and from the imperial hierarchy, organized by Diocletian under the same conditions and under the same influences.
3. The word feudal, or feudatory, feudum, seems to us to be derived originally from fides: that is to say, feudalism is nothing other than faith, the very religion of Christ.
4. The most ancient authority among Christians is that of the bishop: under the Caesars, the bishops set themselves up as magistrates, and form a state within a state; after the fall of the empire, they become chiefs of the cities; they are the ones who direct the business: the pope takes the place of the emperor. The first place was reserved in advance, in feudalism, for the clergy.
5. Charlemagne’s pact, an unwritten pact, but universally believed and affirmed, is the decisive moment of feudal formation. By virtue of this pact, the emperor reports to the sovereign pontiff, who crowns him; and the sovereign pontiff, as a temporal prince, is in turn dependent on the emperor. The clerical hierarchy and the military, noble hierarchy join to form only one dualized hierarchy.
6. Papal preponderance is essential to feudalism. Take away the pope, and the system collapses: there is no longer any right for the king, nor for the count, nor for any of the barons; the serf is free: Christianity is dissolved. This explains why the decadence of feudalism and the defeat of the great feudatories are contemporaneous with the subalternization of the pontificate.
7. Any attack on the feudal system is heresy, and as such struck by the wrath of the Church: hence the war against the Albigensians; hence also the opposition made by the bishops to communal liberties.
8. As nations convert to Christianity, they imitate the institutions of feudalism; they create for themselves a nobility and serfs, and their king reports to the emperor. The history of Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, Muscovy, and generally of all the Slavic peoples is largely explained by this.
9. The Establishments of Saint Louis can be considered as a return of the communes, heretical by their emancipation, to feudal orthodoxy. The industrious and proprietary bourgeoisie becomes, after the clergy and the nobility, a third hierarchical caste, a Third Estate. Each profession is placed under the invocation of a saint: it looks like the conversion of new Gentiles. — And that is why the Church today shows itself so favorable to capitalist, industrial, and proprietary feudalism; why the Voltairian bourgeois gets close the Church, and procures for it funds, troops, a general. Through its Emperor Napoleon III, new Henry IV, new Frederick II, France is Ghibelline; through its bourgeoisie reconciled with the Church, it becomes Guelph again: the leader of the opposition, at this hour, is no longer either M. Guizot or M. Thiers; it is General de Lamoriciere.
10. A last motive is the division of the clergy into regular clergy and secular clergy, a division that is nothing other than an application of feudal dualism to the Church itself. It is as if to say spiritual clergy and temporal clergy. The first leads a life in common, is subject to a strict observance, devotes itself to works of spirituality and charity, conducts missions, cares for the sick, in a word, represents the heavenly, ideal Church; the second takes care of the ecclesiastical administration, which embraces a part of the temporal, directs the militant Church, and enjoys own goods or feudal properties,
Note (D), page 47.
The facts clarified in the text guarantee the accuracy of the others. We possess a copy of Mademoiselle Bourdeau’s will, in which Mgr. Mathieu played the principal role: he is a model of foresight and clerical shrewdness. The most scandalous rumors circulated during this trial: among these rumors, some accuse the morals of the ladies of the Community, others accuse the archdiocese, all have their source in the reciprocal recriminations of the parties. Justice has refrained from investigating anything; criticism therefore has nothing to say. — As for the young sequestrated person, the fact happened in the diocese of one of the honorable bishops who figured in the Constituent Assembly in 1848: it was himself who had the young lady released.
Note (E), pages 48 et 58.
Progress of religious congregations. — Since, by the will or by the awkwardness of the imperial government, the Pope was stripped of a part of his estates, the convents continue nonetheless to multiply in France, the cult to be flourishing, and ecclesiastical property to increase: proof that between the Pope and the Emperor it is only a question, as in the Middle Ages, of a divergence of views, a conflict of prerogatives, and that at bottom the policy of either is immutable. The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul was suppressed as hostile and seditious: a kind of warning from the temporal to the spiritual. But it will reform under another name: the devil and the good Lord will lose nothing by it. The Emperor is devoted to the Church, to the Jesuits and to their works, except for his prerogative, which naturally in his eyes must take precedence over everything. How do the priests, so skillful, not understand that if he retreated before the insurrection of the Romagnas, it was because it was force majeure for him? Must he not claim in turn the Revolution, the sovereignty of the people, universal suffrage, as well as religion, authority and property? Must he not here glorify nationalities, and there treat by virtue of divine right? Must he not profess freedom of thought, seizing the books of the philosophers? Quite recently, the municipal council of Paris, which is none other than one of the private councils of the emperor, voted to build three churches. Suppose that tomorrow the government takes it into its head to return the Pantheon to the revolutionaries, it would only be compensation, and if the chauvinists were satisfied, of what could ultramontanes complain? But the Church does not hear from that ear. No one, she says, can serve two masters: You have to choose between Christ and Belial. And we are completely of the opinion of the Church: We must be in the Revolution, or in the counter-Revolution.
Note (F), page 60.
Wealth of the clergy. — We would be making a great mistake if we imagined that the passion for wealth is peculiar to the Catholic clergy. Every church forms a state within a state: every priesthood is a government personnel whose dowry varies according to rank, and whose power is measured by income. Protestantism has nothing in this respect to reproach Popery with. In a statistic published by M. Ledru-Rollin (Décadence de l’Angleterre, vol. IV, 1850), we find that the income of the Anglican Church is almost equal to that of all the other Christian churches, Roman, Reformed and Greek, put together. This revenue is 236,489.125 francs for the Church of England, and only 248,725,000 francs for all other churches. The country from which the church enjoys the smallest revenue, proportionately to the number of flocks, is Russia. is also the least religious country in Europe. So that faith is measured by what it costs: in this respect England comes in the first line; then, but at a great distance, Spain, then and successively, Portugal, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, France, the United States, etc.
Note that the income of the Anglican Church comes from the same sources as before the Reformation: tithes figure there for 162 million; the bishoprics, 5 million; cathedral and collegiate churches, 9 million; the incidental, 12 million; pious foundations, 23 million; presbyteries, 6 million, etc. — The avowed and avowable revenue of a bishop varies, according to the importance of the diocese, from 22,000 to 700,000 francs. But, observes the writer, this is only the smallest part of his emoluments. The high reverends, with the aid of Jesuitical interpretations and maneuvers, easily found a way to elude the statutes. Thus it was proved in the House of Commons, April 4, 1849, that the Bishop of Durham, limited by law to 8,000 lb. st. (200,000 fr.), however received in a single year 26,000 lb. (650,000 fr.), and another year, 37,000 lb. (925,000 fr.). In 1845 the Bishop of Salisbury received £26,000. (425,000 francs); the last Archbishop of York, during the time he occupied his seat, gleaned £2,000,000 (fifty million francs) on the field of the Church; a single relief earned him 30,000 pounds. (750,000 fr.)
What is most odious is to see Catholic Ireland obliged to pay the Anglican Church a tribute of 18 million francs for absolutely no service; the only Protestants there were in Ireland at the time when this statistics was compiled belonged to the conquering race, and almost none to the conquered people. Mahomet effected conversions with the scimitar; the Anglican Church uses tithe, parish tithe, episcopal tithe, canonical tithe, deaneries, prebends, etc. Also nothing is more common than to see an Anglican bishop, in purtibus Hiberniae, having nothing at all to do, leave on dying to his heirs one, two, three, six, seven, and up to ten million francs. Believe, after that, in reforms!
Now, as goes the church, so goes the monarchy. From the accession of George III, in 1760, until 1850, the upkeep of royalty cost England two billion five hundred sixty-two million four hundred forty-five thousand one hundred seventy-five francs, or 28,471,618 francs per year. The total revenue of the crown is now 41 million. — The civil list of Louis-Philippe, an almost legitimate and scarcely devout king, was only 13 million. That of Napoleon III, an eminently religious prince, is 25 million; according to some, it is as much at 36 million. So goes the world:
God bestows all goods
On those who vow to be his.
Note (G), page 67.
Agreement of political economy and morals. — The socialist critique has struck a blow. Doubt begins to be felt within the Malthusian school; the newcomers no longer swear, as much as they did in 1840, by A. Smith, J.-B. Say, Ricardo and Malthus. It is recognized that the light is not shed in science; we agree that the basis has yet to be established, the starting point to be fixed, the definitions to be found, the method to be determined, the problems to be posed and the solutions to be given. Of course, nothing that comes from the socialist critique is accepted: but isn’t it something to have forced economic pedantry to come back to study?
The question that seems above all to preoccupy economists today is the agreement of the current data of their science with morality. Since the first edition of this book, there has appeared at Guillaumin, Paris, rue Richelieu, 14:
Manuel de morale et d’Économie politique, by Rapet, 1 large volume.
Etudes de philosophie morale et d’Économie politique, by Baudrillard, 2 volumes.
Tout par le travail, manuel de morale et d’Économie politique, by Lemaire, 1 volume.
Le Juste et l’Utile, ou Rapports de l’Économie politique avec la morale, a work awarded by the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, by Dameth, 1 volume.
L’Économie politique et la Justice, examen critique et réfutation des doctrines économiques de M. P.-J. Proudhon, par Léon Walras, 1 volume.
These titles alone prove that if the interests are worried, consciences are no more calm, and that the sect, after having, several times already since Quesnay, changed its maxims, does not believe itself today better assured in its statements. Political economy, a science to be constructed, a science both juridical and physico-mathematical, having to bring together all sorts of certainties, certainty of right, certainty of experience, certainty of number or of proportions; political economy can be compared to a steep summit that everyone, seeing it from afar, fancies themselves reaching, but on which no one to this day can boast of having planted the flag.
Our project is to later take up the economic critique and recognize its principles; on this occasion, we will report on the current movement. The last twelve years have changed the attitude of the school: and what is better, and promises more, the hitherto indifferent public has begun since the February revolution to take an interest in the debate. The generation will not pass, it is to be hoped, without the most important questions being resolved. But what was most urgent was to recognize, at least in a general way, the principle which must play the first role, right.
Note (H), page 69.
Application of justice to political economy. — I purposely allow the comparison between the application of justice to economics and the application of algebra to geometry to subsist in the text, although this comparison perhaps leaves something to be desired as far as correctness is concerned. Every comparison leaves something to be desired. If M. Léon Walras had stuck to this observation, I would have submitted to his criticism in all humility; but since he starts from there precisely to conclude, against the economic doctrines of M. Proudhon, that it is up to Justice to subordinate itself to political economy, not to political economy to receive its law and its constitution from Justice, I cannot do otherwise than take up the words of my censor, and maintain the exactness of mine.
I had believed until now that algebraic analysis, by generalizing by means of abstract formulas the demonstrations of geometry, had added something to the sublimity of this science. All truth gains from being seen from several sides; any generalization, although it adds nothing to the reality of things, making them more highly intelligible, adds to their certainty. I supposed, therefore, that algebra, by its profound generalizations, was a powerful aid to the geometrician. If I am wrong, if algebraic analysis is nothing more than a mathematical curiosity, as one might infer from the somewhat pedantic criticism of M. Léon Walras, I have only to to withdraw my words, and to ask pardon of algebra for having formed such a high opinion of her.
Whatever the more or less exact idea I had of the application of algebra to geometry, here is, by analogy, how I understand the application of the rules of right to economic questions.
What distinguishes all the facts of the economic order is their excessive variability. For example, what is the market price (exchange value) of wheat in France on April 30, 1860? Consult the price sheets, this price varies ad infinitum. It not only varies from market to market, it also varies, in the same market, from merchant to merchant. The causes of this variation are innumerable, and they are themselves due to the variation in value of the elements that constitute for each merchant the cost price of his corn. So that we can say that everything is variation in the price of things, and variation ad infinitum. And the same is true of all economic phenomena: division of labor, use of machines, yield of land, capacity of the worker, movement of the population, collection of taxes, etc.
Now, political economy, as taught and claimed to be maintained by the representatives of the Malthusian tradition, would have the sole aim of recognizing these variations, of noting them, of showing the greater or lesser differences, but without asking them to account for their greater or lesser legitimacy, without aspiring to contain them within just limits, to dominate them by a superior reason. Political economy, in a word, has hitherto remained a science of capricious facts, for which the whole philosophy of economists consists in claiming the greatest liberty. Laissez faire, laissez passer is the alpha and omega of their science. You don’t need algebra for that.
However, philosophical reason, like vulgar reason, asks itself, it cannot fail to ask itself what is, through these innumerable variations, the real truth? What is, for example, the fair price of wheat, what is the fair wage, what is the true form of taxation, how far should the division of labor go, etc., etc., etc. Reason, I say, asks itself these questions, and all the more legitimately because they are suggested to it by the facts themselves. On the one hand, we see the economic phenomena each oscillate below and beyond a fixed point, between maxima and minima which, compensating for each other, give what are called averages. On the other hand, it is proven by the same experience that the distribution of profits and losses in society has its main cause in these same variations: those whom the rise favors become richer, those whom the fall hits become poorer.
The question is therefore to know whether and to what extent this oscillatory fatality can be controlled, in such a way as to prevent dangerous deviations from it, to allow of all these variations to remain only those which come from the nature of things, and to distribute among all producers and consumers, as equitably as possible, the advantages and disadvantages. So there is plenty of wheat; the grain falls at a low price: it is the plowman who suffers. On the contrary, wheat is scarce; the price rises by 25 or 50%: it is the consumer who pays, while the farmer and the speculator get richer. One asks whether it would not be possible, in both cases, to regulate things in such a way that abundance would be equally profitable, scarcity equally burdensome to all?
To tell the truth, it is at this moment that the mission of the economist begins. So far he has collected facts, variable facts, none of which consequently proves anything rigorously. In order to obtain a just and complete idea of the phenomenon, it is necessary to compare the facts with each other, to compensate for the minima and maxima, to bring out the averages; then — unless one maintains that political economy is like algebraic analysis, according to M. Walras, that is to say that it is a matter of pure curiosity — to seek how, the average of each oscillation obtained, we can use it for the greater good and the lesser evil of all.
The problem thus posed, minds are divided. Some, they are our so-called economists, maintain with M. Walras that it does not belong to the reason of man to intervene in an order of phenomena that touches him so closely; that value, the division of labor, etc., must be left to oscillate as they please; that equilibrium will establish itself; that all there is to do is to make all forces, all industries, all commerce as free as possible; to secure oneself, each according to his foresight and his interest, against the variations of fortune, against its avalanches and its reversals; and that done, to resign ourselves to what Fate will have decided for each of us. It is seen that, in this system of the libertist economy, all the fatalities which besiege man must remain free; only reason and conscience have nothing to say or do. To the one it is forbidden to generalize and to conclude, to the other it is forbidden to act. Economic science, for these gentlemen, ends where fatality ends, where free will and consequently morals begin.
I maintain against the economists that it is precisely then that it is up to Justice to intervene, and, by the application of its maxims, to construct, according to reason and for the common utility, the materials collected by observation. This is what I call, with more or less accuracy, the application of Justice to the economy.
Political economy, as taught and defended by the adepts of the old school, is a purely objective and fatal science, a science that has nothing human about it, and is reduced to collecting and describing phenomena. It is wrongly called political economy, given that the political, social, legal element has nothing to do with it, everything having to remain subject, according to the economists, to the chance of fate. The very name of economy (household legislation) does not suit it: the household, public or private, necessarily implying the subordination of things to the use of man, consequently, a certain legislation of work, of exchange, property, etc.
Political economy, as the Malthusians want and preach it, reduced to phenomena of pure fatality, is not even a science, because it is not true. The economic world is, as I have said, a world of phenomenal variations and oscillations; in these oscillations are constantly noted a thesis, an antithesis and a synthesis, or if you prefer, a maximum, a minimum and an average. In an order of phenomena where reality is essentially variable, constantly increasing and decreasing, it is certain that the greatest sum of truth is in the averages, the smallest part in the minima and maxima, in other words in the extremes. And since economic science has for its main object the well-being of man, since this well-being is due to the truth known and put into practice, it is rational to say that the economy of a people is as much more perfect, consequently science all the more advanced, as all things are there regulated more closely by the law of averages. Now, this is not how the economists of the old doctrine understand it. For them all variations are equal; the truth is the same everywhere; they do not admit realities, truths, ideas, which increase and decrease; with much more reason, they reject the claim of socialism to put order in this chaos, to seek the greatest clarity, to prevent the loss of light, and to turn to the general good phenomena which are half of our lives, governing them by the very law that characterizes them. That would be, they say, remaking nature, putting fantasy in the place of reality, and violating liberty!
As for me, taking up economic questions in 1840 at the point where they had left off then and where the old school still claims to maintain them today, I said, and I believe I have proven, that this variable, oscillatory, antinomic nature, the word doesn’t matter, of the phenomena of the economy, was the index of a scientific construction to operate, that is to say of a social revolution. I now say that this construction, which has nothing in common with the utopias that have delighted the imagination of philosophers and the despair of the multitudes for twenty-five centuries, can only be carried out by Justice, by virtue of its authority, and using its formulas.
Society cannot persevere much longer in the economic chaos into which it has fallen: it is indignity, the reciprocity of theft and cannibalism. Already civilization is no longer advancing: this is the principle of all the corruptions and failings of the time.
To get out of this chaos, we must appeal to the right of the masses, so unworthily exploited through this darkness; to universal Justice, in which resides all reason and all certainty. To reorganize the social household, no longer at the chance of leonine transactions, but according to the law which governs all transactions: this is what Justice prescribes to us, and, what is better, what it provides the formula for.
This formula, I have given it in the text, accompanied by numerous examples that I ask the reader to meditate on: it is reciprocity.
Reciprocity of respect, such is the principle of personal right;
Reciprocity of service, such is the principle of real or economic right. The second is an application of the first: hence the expression I have used, application of justice to political economy.
Justice does not create economic facts, as people seem to have me say; it does not misunderstand them; it does not disguise them for her use; it does not impose foreign laws on them. It confines itself to noting their variable and contradictory nature; in this antinomy, it grasps a law of balance; and of this law of balance, similar to itself, it makes a practical principle, a general truth for society, an obligation. Isn’t this how algebra proceeds vis-à-vis geometry?
Political economy, in the state in which the economists want it, with the integrity of its oscillations, the inviolability of its deviations, the conflict of its oppositions, is not a science: for it affirms the yes and the no, it demands the least and the most, it consecrates indiscriminately the just and the unjust. Under these conditions, political economy is nothing more than a mass of organic matter, a storehouse of shreds of science. Justice alone, by its law of equilibrium, its formula of reciprocity, can restore order there, create unity, in short, reduce all this variable and contradictory phenomenality to a general and constant law: isn’t this an analogous service, though assuredly much less, that algebraic analysis renders to geometry?
“The first formula of analysis,” says M. Walras, “implies geometry as a whole.” — I can say the same, and with much more reason, of Justice. Its first formula implies all that is called today, but improperly, Political Economy, that is to say that the law of reciprocity, or of equilibrium, implies, as given, the oscillation of phenomena, their antinomic relation, their growth and their decrease, etc. Only, while figurative geometry exists by itself, to a large extent, and without the help of algebra, political economy, without the help of justice, is reduced to a chaos of contradictory elements and antagonistic forces, refractory to any scientific construction and any social order. The lack of harmony that can be seen in society, the faint gleams diffused in economic science, come, make no mistake about it, from Justice. If Mr. Walras, very competent, I like to think in algebra, had looked at it more closely, he would not have attacked me on my principle; he would have sought to catch me at fault on the applications.
I will not expand further at this moment on the refutation that M. Waltras flatters himself to have made of my doctrines. I have been refuted for twenty years, and I am still here. For a refutation to deserve a response, the person who refutes must first have understood the work he is refuting, and then he must know what is in question in the said work. Now, it does not seem to me that M. Walras has meditated sufficiently on the nature of economic facts, much less that he has done me the honor of understanding me. In this he resembles most of his co-religionists in economics. M. Walras denies, with his young and new authority, facts long recognized by the teachers of the school; he calls J.-B. Say impertinent; he claims that morality (I say Justice, Law) is not a science, but an art: what does the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences think of it? He plays havoc on the antinomy, in which he was unable to recognize a phenomenon of the understanding that is just as positive as that of exchange value. What can I have to reply to a critic for whom there is nothing more acquired, neither philosophy, nor logic, nor the classification of the sciences, nor competence, I take care not to say the infallibility, of the masters, nor their observations, nor the facts? It was not with the refutation of M. Proudhon that M. Walras should begin, but with a renovation of philosophy and a reform of experience.
Note (I), page 69.
The principle of reciprocity was laid down for us with brilliance, in 1848, in the midst of the revolutionary effervescence, in a pamphlet of 50 to 60 pages, entitled De l’Organisation du credit et de la circulation. It was then that for the first time was affirmed and theoretically demonstrated the corollary, since so famous, of the gratuity of credit. Since that time the principle of reciprocity has slipped into discussions, into newspapers, into books: it can be said that at this time it has become part of the public consciousness. But it is not quite the same with its corollary, reciprocal credit, that is to say, credit without interest. One admits without difficulty the reciprocity of respect, because a tip of the hat costs nothing. One also admits the reciprocity of services, serfdom being abolished, but with the reservation claim that certain categories of employment must be paid more than the others, which destroys, as we will prove it elsewhere, reciprocity. But we recoil before the reciprocity of credit, which would entail the almost total abolition of discount charges and interest on capital. So true it is, for the mass of men, that to the certainty of reason and the law of conscience must be added the homologation of selfishness!…
The economists are there. Do they accept, yes or no, in all its consequences, the principle of reciprocity? We have been waiting twelve years for their response.
Note (J), page 88.
Delamarre establishment. — This establishment still existed, in the center of Paris, in 1858. We do not know if it has since been closed, or if, as the founder announced, it added branches. Nor can we say whether the entrepreneur made a profit, although, by the quality of his goods, he must have won the best customers. It is conceivable that, alone of its kind, an establishment such as this succumbs, without the principle on which it was created being compromised in the least. There are innovations that cannot be the result of private initiative: they require the cooperation of interests, the support of the government or of public opinion. Now, the pauperism is such, the stupidity so great among the consumers, that many prefer the cheapest to the quality; add the competition, very capable of following the innovator on his own ground, and, after having effaced and ruined it, of crying: Victory to commercial anarchy!
Note (K), page 40.
Speculation on merchandise. — As soon as the treaty of commerce between the Emperor of the French and England was signed, an increase was produced immediately and everywhere in wines. On the other hand, prices fell and orders came to a halt. Thus is verified what we said in our first installment, page lxxiii, with regard to free trade: the French proletarian will have cotton cheaper, but he will pay more for wine; the result for general well-being, zero. And since, thanks to the treaty, the operations will be carried out on a larger scale, there will be, on the one hand, an increase in capitalist power, on the other, a reduction in the middle class, a development of the proletariat, and consequently, the decadence of the nation. Thus is verified again what we advanced in the second installment (News of the Revolution, page 140): Under a government without principles, where the good pleasure of the autocrat takes the place of laws; where property, work and trade are the prerogative of the prince; where the public economy is subordinated to reasons of state, the subsistence of the people depends on the whims of power, which can make of it both a means of extortion and an instrument of rulership. Today the Emperor serves the wine interests, he sacrifices spinning mills and forges; in 1854 he served agricultural interests, which were sacrificed in turn a little later. Thanks to the railways and the electric telegraphs, it is just as easy to centralize the operations of commerce as those of the police, and the pretexts would not be lacking. Suppose it pleases the Imperial Government to authorize sociétés de garantie for the trade in wine, wheat, iron, coal, etc., nothing prevents it. So the pact of famine is decreed, universalized. What a situation! What a regime!
Note (L), page 94.
Bank of France. — The capital of this establishment, which in 1857 was 91 million, already more than sufficient to guarantee the country against a risk of suspension of payments that had become illusory, was increased in 1858, by virtue of a simple imperial decree, to 200 million. It is a forced loan, without authorization from the Legislative Body, without consent from the country, without discussion or examination. If there is ever an accounting regarding it, it will be after the fall of the Imperial throne. In exchange for this loan, the privilege of the Bank was extended until the end of the century; the Country, therefore, which could have the discount, guaranteed in all circumstances, at 3%, at 2½, at 2, at 1, at 0.50, the Country is condemned to pay 4, 5, 6, 7% for forty years, unless it is redeemed by a large indemnity. Isn’t it as if the State, who no longer balances accounts and whose policy hovers over the country like a hailstorm, was selling the nation to the capitalists? And notice that after having thus burdened French products with a commercial interest of 4, 5, 6, and 7%, paid for as many times as the said products, by changing hands, give rise to new transactions, the imperial government speaks of reducing tariffs and entering the path of free trade! Wouldn’t it have been better to reduce the costs of commerce and industry, by reducing the capital of the bank and demanding better conditions from the company?
But the imperial government needed these 110 million to fulfill commitments that the nation does not know, to balance accounts that are not submitted to it, to support a luxury that makes that of all previous governments pale, to meet the expenses of expeditions undertaken without leave, and whose only result is to consecrate the state of war in perpetuity. From then on, there was no hesitation; and no one will contradict it. France pays for her glory: what could be fairer? But she squeezes her stomach: if it lasts, England will drink the wines of France, eat her wheat, her meat, her butter, her game, her vegetables, she will have her silks, her fashions, cheaper than the French. Because England is richer than France: for what the latter pays 4, England can pay 6, which means that the more glory we acquire, the faster, with the commercial treaty helping, we will be munched on by the English.
Note (M), page 123.
Rent and taxation. — To fully understand this theory and grasp its correctness, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that it implies and presupposes, as a prerequisite, the balance of products, services and wages, the repayment of the debt, the organization of credit and mortgages, the redemption of railways, canals and mines, the reduction of large salaries and the institution of workers’ societies. In the present state, where commerce, agriculture and industry are delivered up at the same time to anarchic competition and to private exploitation, where monopoly and privilege are a political institution, where the nobility flourishes again, it is clear that the exclusive allocation of ground rent to taxation would be iniquitous.
The proprietors living off their farm rents are not today the most advantaged class: there exists outside this framework a host of capitalists, state rentiers, bankers, company shareholders, pawnbrokers and mortgage lenders, speculators, contractors, concessionnaires and senior civil servants, who would also have to be made to pay, and whom the tax authorities have difficulty reaching. Privilege calls privilege, abyssus abyssum invocat; and it is the working multitude that in the final analysis pays for everyone. Barring a revolution, it cannot be otherwise.
Note (N), page 140.
Moral restraint. — One day, in Paris, I received a visit from a poor devil, looking, like so many others, for a little work that would give him and his family enough to eat. He told me that he had been a Saint-Simonian, that he had followed the Father in his retreat to Menikmontant, and that after the dispersion of the sect he had married and resumed the exercise of his profession. — “Don’t your superiors in Saint-Simon, now enriched, help you a little?” I asked him. “They call me a false brother,” he replied. “I went to see M***: he asked me why I had married, how many children I had, and how old they were. On my answer: How! he exclaimed, you are past fifty, and you are having children for your wife! You don’t deserve to have others interested in your fate. Go, go, my friend, and remember that prudence is the first duty of married people!”
This is how the apostles of the Flesh welcome the unfortunates who cultivate it too indiscreetly. They are unaware, and I congratulate them on it, that poverty is like war, that it irritates the reproductive appetite and drives man almost irresistibly into heat. They haven’t had the sad experience that continence requires well-being; that the father and mother of poor families have only one bed; that the contact of bodies is electric, and that poor people already have enough of their poverty without adding to it the horror of Malthusian sterility.
Note (O), page 148.
Moral restraint. — For 25 or 30 years, according to the testimony of a certain Abbé Lelong that has been reported to us, a revolution has been taking place in the practice of confessors on the facts of usury and marital onanism, or moral restraint. The new casuists, a hundred times worse than those whom Pascal mocked, excuse, tolerate, permit, almost encourage it. A friend of ours, a very learned man, moreover a fervent Christian, but opposed to the episcopate, assured us that he had read from a casuist of the Society of Jesus something which would constitute a semi-Malthusianism. We know nothing positive in this respect: it is rather the opposite excess for which we have heard confessors reproached. But the Church is on the slope, and the principle of its discipline carries it along. Without speaking of the erotic excitement, inherent in all religion, we will remind our readers that the Church, which condemns concupiscence, nevertheless sacrifices to it, when it recognizes the inequality of conditions as the foundation of the social order, when afterwards it admits the legitimacy of the loan at interest. Moreover, Malthusianism is not new in the Church, although it has never been received as orthodox: it was part of the Gnostic turpitudes, indicated in the Apocalypse, and condemned en masse by the Puritans of the Third century.
Note (P), page 151.
Economic contradictions. — In connection with this work, I renew here the observation already made, on page xxxi of the Program of Popular Philosophy (1st issue), regarding Hegel, on whose example I had adopted the idea that the antinomy should be resolved in a superior term, the synthesis, distinct from the first two, the thesis and the antithesis: an error of logic as much as of experience, from which I have returned today. The antinomy does not resolve itself; therein lies the fundamental vice of all Hegelian philosophy. The two terms of which it is composed BALANCE, either between themselves or with other antinomic terms: which leads to the desired result. A balance is not a synthesis such as Hegel understood it and which I had supposed after him: this reservation made, in the interests of pure logic, I maintain everything that I said in my Contradictions.
NEWS OF THE REVOLUTION.
Brussels, April 20, 1860.
General regression. — Those of our readers who like to seek the explanation of events in ideas need only remember what we said in our first two installments, namely, that the revolution of December 2 was made in hatred. of the principles and aspirations of social democracy, and to follow what is happening.
State of war in perpetuity. — The Revolution of 1789 was federative; it asserted itself as such in its federations. It is therefore anti-centralizing, anti-unitarian and, consequently, opposed to the spirit of conquest. It proclaimed the universal federation. The military system is incompatible with the liberty of the man and the citizen, with the liberty of the commune, of the province, of the departments; with free inspection, free tribune and free press. Annexations, questions of natural borders, do not exist for the Republicans. Republicans want the fatherland as they want property, for everyone. But what do we see? Since the Revolution was proscribed, the state of war became general throughout Europe; the bourgeois, industrious and peaceful, becomes the child of the soldier and the priest. This state of hostility results in the abolition of treaties, with which we cannot live, without which we cannot agree. This is where the excessive reaction leads us: it won’t stop; it must break.
Dissolution of parties. — All want the economic and social status quo, and for this purpose power; all are equal, so all recognize each other. The old Jacobin-chauvinist party recognizes itself in its emperor, and gravitates toward the Tuileries; Orleanism and legitimacy are getting closer: all the quests pay their court to the Church, which for twelve years has been spoiled for choice. Their language is not the same to me, no doubt; but, in principle, all declare themselves faithful to God and to his Christ: on good understanding half a word. The political and religious shades fade away, in hatred of the economic revolution. Is it clear that there are only two parties left in Europe, the party of capital and the party of labor; only two peoples, the fat people and the lean people?
Economic situation. — Always and more and more bad, bad in proportion to the rise that is manifested on the Stock Exchange. For a month, the 3% has risen above 70: but at the same time an economist warns us that the public debt has increased, from 1852 to 1860, by three billion five hundred and ninety-seven million one hundred five thousand and four hundred francs. So it is a question of a new conversion. Waste, prodigality, deficit, bankruptcy: this is the balance sheet of the party of order. More serious business: fortunes tend to shrink into smaller volume, in more portable form. — Gambling, speculation, deportation, postponement: do we need land, houses, machines for that? All you need is gold and banknotes. Where is the bourgeoisie going with this regime? To misery.
Church Affairs. — General de Lamoriciere has taken command of the pontifical army. The Emperor’s government, which could refuse his authorization, did not dare to do so: but, while before the Legislative Body it avails itself of its condescension, it has the general denounced in its newspapers. What does this double game mean? On the one hand, there is a rapprochement between the Orleans-Legitimist party and the Church, an insurance contract between the conservatives against the whims of His Imperial Majesty; on the other hand, there is the desperate effort of the Senate, of the Council of State, of the ministers, of the Legislative Body, to bring back to the Napoleonic Idea this precious support of the clergy, which a formidable opposition disputes with it. The empire attacks the leader of Catholicism; the Catholic world unites against the empire. It is therefore a question of repairing an immense fault: but the empire again spoils its position by becoming Gallican; the fusion loses ground by inclining towards ultramontanism and by moving away from this eclectic happy medium celebrated by M. Thiers and formulated in the Concordat. Where will they both stop? At pragmatic-sanction, or at the pact of Charlemagne?
Italy. — All the progress obtained for a year is compromised: notice to the nations who call the autocrats, instead of principles, to their aid. The pope, aided by Catholicism, does not lack money: he has an army, a good general; he will soon have Zouaves. Let the Sicilian insurrection be suppressed: what can Piedmont do, enclosed between Austria, the Pope and the King of Naples? The italic movement would be stopped; the patriots mystified. At the slightest shock, Victor Emmanuel could have Lombardy and Tuscany taken from him: would he then have Nice and Savoy returned?… The Revolution failed Italy. Italy is from all eternity pontifical and imperial: could anyone believe that it would suffice, to deprive it of this character, to make it constitutional, Jacobinic and bancocratic? If Italy retreats, it is because the spirit in which its emancipation was undertaken was already a retreat.
Paris. — The disorder of the minds, so far as it is permissible to judge from a distance, appears to be at its height. The daily and weekly press is hounding Béranger: yet another idol down, It is the Napoleonic idea that is being knocked out on this poor corpse. On the other hand, one exalts, across the board, the last volume of M. Thiers, a reductio ad absurdum, in 900 pages, of the first empire. We make fun of the Constitutionnel became a theologian, and we appreciate, as we did it ourselves, the conquest of Nice and Savoy. It is all for the best. But who ordered M. Jules Favre, orator of the Republic, to be flattened in the midst of the Legislative Body by M. Granier de Cassagnac? Can you conceive of a leader of the Republican opposition who, persisting in judging the Italian question from his Jacobin point of view, finds that the Emperor is wrong to reduce the army, who demands that the contingent be kept at 140,000 men, that we start again, if necessary, the Lombard expedition, and if necessary that we carry it on the Rhine?… Also, by what unfortunate inspiration does a newspaper of the same opinion risk saying, apropos of General de Lamoricière’s proclamation, that Revolution is a meaningless word, a label without an idea, that it is time to replace by this other, Liberty? Are we therefore going to return to the liberalism of the fifteen years ago? Liberty, certainly, is an excellent thing; unfortunately it serves as a standard for all parties, for M. de Montalembert as well as for M. de Girardin. Whereas the Revolution is right, human right, which the Church does not want; right, which you cannot name without insult before the Emperor; right, I say, with which you have everything, including liberty. Ah! please, let us not blush at the Revolution.
The drop in the barometer indicates the approach of the earthquake. Is it a European December 2 coming up, or a February 24? Austria, it is said, is taking a step forward: He is quite mad who trusts it! What is certain is that the Tsar is backing down; he no longer dares to speak of the emancipation of his peasants.
END OF THE THIRD STUDY.
