CHAPTER IX - Concluding Remarks

CI-IAPTER IX. CONCLUDING REMARKS.-DIF}<"'ICULTY OF RECON.. CILING THE PRINCIPI4E 0.1" j<"'REE LABOUR 'VITH THAT OF Tll}O~ :FREEDOl\1 OF ASSOCIA.. TION.-TURGOT'S LETTER TO DOCTOR PRICE. T fIERE are two schools at the present day which ask for the re-establishment of corporations through the unrestricted and unreserved application of the freedom of association; the one is the socialist radical school, the other is the Roman Catholic economic school. These two schools call for the interference of the State in questions relating to labour, extending its attributions beyond the limits which economists consider as natural; but the socialist radical school is inclinedto recommend close corporations, whereas the Roman Catholic school is in favour of open ones. Both look upon Turgot as their great enemy. lIe it is who must be hurled down. Some reproach him for having abolished workmen's privileges; the others find fault with him for not having respected their -liberty_ The French Catholic economic school proceeds from the German Christian socialism which ,vas born in Prussia after 1848, and pretended to have found the 201 solution of the social problem in the union of the Church, mnnifesting itself by a thousand (orms of bencfkencc, with the State, permeating the inner life of the nation through the tuxes and the org:misa.tion of numerous local boards. The German Christian socialism struggled with equal ardour against the liberal et~onomic system of Adam Smithand J. D. Say.and againstthe politicalliberal school which {rom Ie:nglandspreadthroughout the whole of Europe the system of parliamentary and representa ti\"e government.

Severnl branches have spurng up from the parent stem. Prince Bismarck pretends to connect State socialism with it. lIe said one day at the Reichstag: U It is not socialism we are making; it is, if you like, Christianity saIlS phrases,. we wish to give to the people, not hollow phrases, but something substantia-I." The Austrian Catholics caught the inspiration. In 1875, the popular meetingof Lower Austria declared in a solemn resolution that H the social question could be solved only by the legislative autonomy of the corpora tions in their own affairs, and under the protection (If a Christian government:' Prince Lichtenstein, speaking in the name of the party. asked and obtained the recon stitution of corporations, compulsory {or industry of a smaller kind. The law affecting sman industries was voted in 1883; but the formation of district~corporations for the establishmentof more important industries has been reserved 3S the object of another law.

The Fren<.~h Catholics have entered into the same o 202 l1ergot. direction as the Austrian ones, and the long residence of the CQunt de Chambord in Austria has contributed to their evolution. At the same time we must acknowledge that they have made considerable progress, if we compare them to the Austrian Catholics. The corporations which they want to sec instituted would be free, open, exclusive of monopoly, and constituted hy a very broad application of the principle of association. According to them, 'furgot's great crime does not lie in his having suppressed old ~\ssodations in which had evidently crept many intolerable abuses, but in his h~tving prevented the formation of fresh associations which might have been organised without allowing anything to the spirit of monopoly, and solely to protect those persons who belonged to them . .Familial industry, they say, has perished with the trades-guilds. U Great industry," which has taken its place, has obtained the mastery of the nineteenth century, dragging along with it a train of misery: p<1llpcrism, strikes, the struggle between class and class, the disorganisation of the family, and the rest. tfhe whole evil, they add, has arisen not (rom the abolition of abusive and degenerate corporations, but from the oppression of a Jacobin law copied on the 14th Article of Turgot's edict: "'Ve likewise forbid all masters, com panions, workmen, and apprentices belonging to the afore..

named bodies and communities," so it was said in the fourteenth article, "to form any association or assembly amongst themselves under any pretext whatever."

Fa1Jlilial Industr)!. 2°3 'Vhen people say of /amilial industry that it has per.. ished because free labour has isolated the workman, and bC('.3U5C it has allowed the patrons to enlarge their factories, to absorb aU the work in inlmcnse work~h()ps, nnd all the trade in colossal depositories; when they speak of these extensions as if they were the cause of all the misfortunes of our times, they are guilty of a twofold exaggeration; first of all, they give a "ery inaccurate picture of the eighteenth Ct~ntury and of its jamili'al industry, placing them in too favourable alight j secondly, they ascribe, to begin with, to freedom of work effects which it has not produced, and then, to the prescnt time vices which arc not peculiar to it. The eighteenth century is represented as if it had known neither misery, nor class¥struggles, nor difficulties amongst workmen, nor strikes; as if the morality of workmen's families was much superior to that of the workmen of our da}'s; as if the workmen were always brethren, and the apprentices always like sons in their relations with the virtuous masters who employed them, and who were not yet tormented by that eagerness for gain which is supposed to be the characteristic of our modern commerc:ial men.

The truth is that the condition of the labouring classes under the QllI:ien regime was neither happier nor more virtuous than it is just now, Those who have studied the historyof workmen know perfectlywell that since a century the progress of their comforts has been immense, and if that of their morality has been slower, it is far 2°4 Tttrgot. from having proved nun. The workmen of the nine teenth c(~ntury are in a much greater state of prosperity, and in a state of morality considerably higher, and from that point of view they have no reason to envy the workmen of days gone by. It is free labour, some say, which has disorganised familial labour, and created industry on a large scale. That it is a mistake. It is true that industry has endeavoured to follow the progress of wants, and that liberty has enabled it to do so. In order to reach that end, it has been obliged to study the conditions of cheapness, and submit to these conditions. But if familial industry has disappeared, it is not on account of freedom of labour, but through the impossibility of producing at a cheap rate. Can anyone desire the reconstitution of familial industry at the cost of a factitious rise in the price of all the things most necessary to existence, coupled with the natural and progressi"oe increase in the burdens resulting from a more intenseway of living? If we did not shrink from such a consequence, is it to be supposed that we could succeed in obtaining?

we must evidently give up the thought of doing so. Success, here, is impossible. All the discussions on o,,-er-production, on the obligations incum bent upon manufacturers to work on a large s(',ale in order to diminish on every article the weight of general expenses-all these discussions belong to a different order from economic problems. Their real object is the increase of our wants, the taste for lllopi'a1t Views 0/ Political EC01Z01IlY. 205 luxury, the progress of civilisation, the destinies of man ft kind. Those who regret the expansion of industry on a large scale, regret that mankind should have increasing wants. They would stop it in this direction, and they condemn the means employed by industry to satisfy the increase of our wants. But is it not idle to try and recast the human race into a new mould? Is it not Utopian to think that manA kind can be denied the satisfactions they require, because these satisfactions are deemed useless or dangerous for morality? Such discussions have no practical value; they do not prevent humanityCrom moving on, obe}'ing laws which cannot be abolished in a chamber of depu ties. The modern schools are weak, when they ('..all free labour to account, when they think they can find in the suppression of freedom a remedy for the labour problem of our day. They run at every moment the risk of falling into the Utopias of the organisation of work, and they will find it difficult to reconcileto them the public mind under a s)'stem of discussion and of political liberty. But what is the liberty in question here? ~Iust we not take prer.autionsagainst the possible crushing of individuals by associations which would be free to do what they pleased? Turgot did not consider as an enlightened friend of liberty the man who gave the name of liberty to the right of fordng everything upon others, if only the majority gave its consent. This is what he wrote to Doctor Price in the letter he addressed to him on the 22nd of 1\larch in 1778: 206 Turgot.

"How is it that you are nearly the first among your men of letters who has given correct notions of liberty, and who has proved the falseness of the idea stated over and over again by all republican writers, namely, that 'liberty consists in being subject to the laws alone,' as if a man oppressed by an unjust law was free? This would not be true, even on the supposition that all the laws are the work of the assembled nation; for, after all, the individual has also his rights, which cannot be taken from him except by violence, and by unlawful use of the general stren~h. Although you have taken account of this truth, and explained yourself on the subject, yet it might be worth while your developing it at greater length, considering the small amount of attention bestowed upon it even by the most zealous cha.mpions of liberty." It seems that we could not end what had to be said on Turgot more worthily than by repeating these noble and courageous words.