Concluding Observations

In the first part of this work—alas! too hastily written—I have endeavored to keep the reader’s attention fixed upon the line of demarcation, always flexible, but always marked, that separates the two regions of the economic world—natural co-operation and human labor—the bounty of God and the work of man— the gratuitous, and the onerous—that which in exchange is remunerated and that which is transferred without remuneration—aggregate utility and the fractional and supplementary utility that constitutes value—absolute wealth and relative wealth— the co-operation of chemical or mechanical forces, constrained to aid production by the instruments that render them available, and the just recompense of the labor that has created these instruments themselves—Community and Property.

It is not enough to mark these two orders of phenomena that are so essentially different, it is necessary also to describe their relations and, if I may so express myself, their harmonious evolutions. I have essayed to explain how the business of Property consists in conquering utility for the human race and, casting it into the domain of Community, to move on to new conquests—so that each given effort, and consequently the aggregate of efforts, should continually be delivering over to mankind satisfactions which are always increasing. Human services exchanged, while preserving their relative value, become the vehicle of an always increasing proportion of utility that is gratuitous, and, therefore common; and in this consists progress. The possessors of value, then, whatever form it assumes, far from usurping and monopolizing the gifts of God, multiply these gifts; without causing them to lose the character that Providence has affixed to them, of being—Gratuitous.

In proportion as the satisfactions that are handed over by progress to the charge of nature fall by that very fact into the domain of Community, they become equal—it being impossible for us even to conceive inequality except in the domain of human services, which are compared, appreciated, and estimated with a view to an exchange; whence it follows that Equality among men is necessarily progressive. It is so, likewise, in another respect, the action of Competition having for its inevitable result to level and equalize the services themselves, and to bring their recompense more and more into proportion with their merit.

Let us now throw a glance back on the ground over which we have passed.

By the light of the theory, the foundation of which has been laid in the present volume, we shall have to investigate:

The relations of man with the Economic phenomena, in his capacity of producer, and in his character of consumer;

The law of Rent;

That of Wages;

That of Credit;

That of Taxation, which, introducing us into the domain of Politics, properly so called, will lead us to compare those services that are private and voluntary with those that are public and compulsory;

The law of Population.

We shall then be in a situation to solve some practical problems that are still disputed—Free trade, Machinery, Luxury, Leisure, Association, Organization of labor, etc.

I hesitate not to say, that the result of this exposition may be expressed beforehand in these terms: The constant approximation of all men toward a level that is always rising—in other terms: Improvement and Equalization; in a single word, Harmony.

Such is the definitive result of the arrangements of Providence—of the great laws of nature—when they act without impediment, when we regard them as they are in themselves, and apart from any disturbance of their action by error and violence. On beholding this Harmony, the Economist may well exclaim, like the astronomer who regards the planetary movements, or the physiologist who contemplates the structure and arrangement of the human organs—Digitus Dei est hic!

But man is a free agent, and consequently fallible. He is subject to ignorance and to passion. His will, which is liable to err, enters as an element into the play of the economic laws. He may misunderstand them, forget them, divert them from their purpose. As the physiologist, after admiring the infinite wisdom displayed in the structure and relations of our organs and viscera, studies these organs likewise in their abnormal state when sickly and diseased, we shall have to penetrate into a new world—the world of social Disturbances.

We shall pave the way for this new study by some considerations on man himself. It would be impossible for us to give an account of social evil, of its origin, its effects, its design—of the limits, always more and more contracted, within which it is shut up by its own action (which constitutes what I might almost venture to call a harmonic dissonance), did we not extend our investigation to the necessary consequences of Free Will, to the errors of Self interest, which are constantly corrected, and to the great laws of human Responsibility and Solidarity.

We have seen the germ of all the social Harmonies included in these two principles—Property and Liberty. We shall see that all social Dissonances are only the development of these two antagonistic principles—Spoliation and Oppression.

The words Property and Liberty, in fact, express only two aspects of the same idea. In an economical point of view, Liberty is allied to the act of production—Property to the things produced. And since Value has its foundation in the human act, we may conclude that Liberty implies and includes Property. The same relation exists between Oppression and Spoliation.

Liberty! here at length we have the principle of harmony. Oppression! here we have the principle of dissonance. The struggle of these two powers fills the annals of the human race.

And as the design of Oppression is to effect an unjust appropriation, as it resolves itself into and is summed up in spoliation, it is Spoliation that must form the subject of our inquiry.

Man comes into this world bound to the yoke of Want, which is pain.

He cannot escape from it but by subjecting himself to the yoke of labor, which is pain also.

He has, then, only a choice of pains, and he detests pain.

This is the reason why he looks around him, and if he sees that his fellow-man has accumulated wealth, he conceives the thought of appropriating it. Hence comes false property, or Spoliation.

Spoliation! here we have a new element in the economy of society. From the day when it first made its appearance in the world down to the day when it shall have completely disappeared, if that day ever come, this element has affected and will affect profoundly the whole social mechanism; it will disturb, and to the extent of rendering them no longer recognizable, those laws of social harmony we have endeavored to discover and describe.

Our duty, then, will not have been accomplished until we have completed the monography of Spoliation.

It may be imagined that we have here to do with an accidental and exceptional fact, a transient derangement unworthy of the investigations of science.

But in truth it is not so. On the contrary, Spoliation, in the traditions of families, in the history of nations, in the occupations of individuals, in the physical and intellectual energies of classes, in the schemes and designs of governments, occupies nearly as prominent a place as Property itself.

No; Spoliation is not an ephemeral scourge, affecting accidentally the social mechanism, and which economical science may disregard as exceptional.

The sentence pronounced upon man in the beginning was, In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread. Whence it appears that effort and satisfaction are indissolubly united, and that the one must be always the recompense of the other. But on all sides we find man revolting against this law, and saying to his brother, Thine be the labor, and mine the fruit of that labor.

Repair to the hut of the savage hunter, or to the tent of the nomad shepherd, and what spectacle meets your eyes? The wife, lank, pale, disfigured, affrighted, prematurely old, bears the whole burden of the household cares, while the man lounges in idleness. What idea can we form of family Harmonies? The idea has disappeared, for Strength here throws upon Feebleness the weight of labor. And how many ages of civilizing effort will be needed to raise the wife from this state of frightful degradation?

Spoliation, in its most brutal form, armed with torch and sword, fills the annals of the world. Of what names is history made up? Cyrus, Sesostris, Alexander, Scipio, Caesar, Attila, Tamerlane, Mahomet, Pizarro, William the Conqueror—pure Spoliation from beginning to end in the shape of Conquest. Hers are the laurels, the monuments, the statues, the triumphal arches, the song of the poet, the intoxicating enthusiasm of the maidens!

The Conqueror soon finds that he can turn his victories to more profitable account than by putting to death the vanquished; and Slavery covers the earth. Down to our own times, all over the world this has been the form in which societies have existed, bringing with it hatreds, resistance, internal struggles, and revolutions. And what is Slavery but organized oppression—organized for the purpose of Spoliation?

But Spoliation not only arms Force against Feebleness—she turns Intelligence against Credulity. What hard-working people in the world has escaped being mulcted by sacerdotal theocracies, Egyptian priests, Greek oracles, Roman auguries, Gallic druids, Indian brahmans, muftis, ulemas, bonzes, monks, ministers, mountebanks, sorcerers, soothsayers—spoliators of all garbs and of all denominations. Assuming this guise, Spoliation places the fulcrum of her lever in heaven, and sacrilegiously prides herself on the complicity of the gods! She enslaves not men’s limbs only, but their souls. She knows how to impress the iron of slavery as well upon the conscience of Seide¹ as upon the forehead of Spartacus—realizing what would seem impossible—Mental Slavery.

Mental Slavery! what a frightful association of words! O Liberty! we have seen thee hunted from country to country, crushed by conquest, groaning under slavery, insulted in courts, banished from schools, laughed at in saloons, misunderstood in workshops, denounced in churches. It seems thou shouldst find in thought an inviolable refuge. But if thou art to surrender in this thy last asylum, what becomes of the hopes of ages, and the boasted courage of the human race?

At length, however, the progressive nature of man causes Spoliation to produce, in the society in which it exists, resistance that paralyzes its force, and knowledge that unveils its impostures. But Spoliation does not confess herself conquered for all that; she only becomes more crafty, and, enveloping herself in the forms of government and in a system of checks and balances, she gives birth to Politics, long a prolific resource. We then see her usurping the liberty of citizens, the better to get hold of their wealth, and draining away their wealth to possess herself more surely of their liberty. Private activity passes into the domain of public activity. Everything is transacted through functionaries, and an unintelligent and meddling bureaucracy overspreads the land. The public treasury becomes a vast reservoir into which laborers pour their savings, to be immediately distributed among bureaucrats. Transactions are no longer regulated by free bargaining and discussion, and the mutuality of services disappears.

In this state of things the true notion of Property is extinguished, and everyone appeals to the Law to give his services a factitious value.

We enter then upon the era of privileges. Spoliation, ever improving in subtlety, fortifies herself in Monopoly, and takes refuge behind Restrictions. She displaces the natural current of exchanges, and sends capital into artificial channels, and with capital, labor—and with labor, population. She gets painfully produced in the North what is produced with facility in the South; creates precarious classes and branches of industry; substitutes for the gratuitous forces of nature the onerous fatigues of labor; cherishes establishments that can sustain no rivalry, and invokes against competitors the employment of force; provokes international jealousies; flatters patriotic arrogance; and invents ingenious theories, which make accomplices of her own dupes. She constantly renders imminent industrial crises and bankruptcies, shakes to its foundation all confidence in the future, all faith in liberty, all consciousness of what is just. At length, when science exposes her misdeeds, she stirs up against science her own victims, by proclaiming a Utopia! and ignores not only the science that places obstacles in her path, but the very idea of any possible science, by this crowning sentence of skepticism—There are no principles!

Under the pressure of suffering, at length the masses rise, and overturn everything that is above them. Government, taxes, legislation, everything is at their mercy, and you imagine perhaps that there is now an end to the reign of Spoliation;—that the mutuality of services is about to be established on the only possible, or even imaginable basis—Liberty. Undeceive yourself. The fatal idea, alas! has permeated the masses, that Property has no other origin, no other sanction, no other legitimacy, no other foundation, than Law; and then the masses set to work legislatively to rob one another. Suffering from the wounds that have been inflicted upon them, they undertake to cure each of their members by conceding to him the right to oppress his neighbor, and call this Solidarity and Fraternity. “You have produced—I have not produced—we are solidaires—let us divide.” “You have something—I have nothing—we are brethren—let us share.” It will be our duty then to examine the improper use that has been made in these latter days of the terms association, organization, labor, gratuite du credit, etc. We shall have to subject them to this test—Do they imply Liberty or Oppression? In other words, are they in unison with the great Economic laws, or are they distortions of those laws?

Spoliation is a phenomenon too universal, too persistent, to permit us to attribute to it a character purely accidental. In this, as in many other matters, we cannot separate the study of natural laws from the study of their Perturbations.

But, it may be said, if spoliation enters necessarily into the play of the social mechanism as a dissonance, how can you venture to assert the Harmony of the Economic laws?

I must repeat here what I have said in another place, namely, that in all that concerns man, a being who is only perfectible because he is imperfect, Harmony consists not in the absolute absence of evil, but in its gradual diminution. The social body, like the human body, is provided with a curative force, a vis medicatrix, the laws and infallible power of which it is impossible to study without again exclaiming, Digitus Dei est hic.

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¹See Voltaire’s tragedy, Le Fanatisme.—Translator.