We have here, then, an exchange under a new form. Exchange includes
two terms—‹to give›, and ‹to receive›. Let us inquire then how this
transaction, which from being private has become public, is affected
in the double point of view of services ‹rendered› and services
‹received›.
In the first place, it is proved beyond doubt that public services
always, or nearly always, extinguish, in law or in fact, private
services of the same nature. The State, when it undertakes a service,
generally takes care to decree that no other body shall render it,
[p431] more especially if one of its objects be to derive a revenue
from it. Witness the cases of postage, tobacco, gunpowder, etc. Did
the State not take this precaution, the result would be the same.
What manufacturer would engage to render to the public a service
which the State renders for nothing? We scarcely meet with any one
who seeks a livelihood by teaching law or medicine privately, by
the formation of high-roads, by rearing thoroughbred horses, by
founding schools of arts and design, by clearing lands in Algeria, by
establishing museums, etc. And the reason is this, that the public
will not go to purchase what the State gives it for nothing. As M. de
Cormenin has said, the trade of the shoemakers would soon be put an
end to, even were it declared inviolable by the first article of the
constitution, if Government took it into its head to furnish shoes to
everybody gratuitously.
In truth, in the word ‹gratuitous›, as applied to public services,
there lurks the grossest and most puerile of sophisms.
For my own part, I wonder at the extreme gullibility of the public in
allowing itself to be taken in with this word. What! it is said, do
you not wish gratuitous education? gratuitous studs?
Certainly I wish them, and I should also wish to have gratuitous food
and gratuitous lodging—if it were possible.
But there is nothing really gratuitous but what costs nothing to any
one. Now public services cost something to everybody; and it is just
because everybody has paid for them beforehand that they no longer
cost anything to the man who receives the benefit. The man who has
paid his share of the general contribution will take good care not to
pay for the service a second time by calling in the aid of private
industry.
Public service is thus substituted for private service. It adds
nothing either to the general labour of the nation or to its wealth.
It accomplishes by means of functionaries, what would have been
effected by private industry. The question, then, is, Which of these
arrangements entails the greatest amount of inconvenience? and the
solution of that question is the object of the present chapter.
The moment the satisfaction of a want becomes the subject of a public
service, it is withdrawn, to a great extent, from the domain of
individual liberty and responsibility. The individual is no longer
free to procure that satisfaction in his own way, to purchase what
he chooses and when he chooses, consulting only his own situation
and resources, his means, and his moral appreciations; nor can he
any longer exercise his discretion in regard to the order in which
he may judge it reasonable to provide for [p432] his various wants.
Whether he will or not, his wants are now supplied by the public,
and he obtains from society, not that measure of service which he
judges useful, as he did in the case of private services, but the
amount of service which the Government thinks it proper to furnish,
whatever be its quantity and quality. Perhaps he is in want of
bread to satisfy his hunger, and part of the bread of which he has
such urgent need is withheld from him, in order to furnish him with
education, or with theatrical entertainments, which he does not want.
He ceases to exercise free control over the satisfaction of his own
wants, and having no longer any feeling of responsibility, he no
longer exerts his intelligence. Foresight has become as useless to
him as experience. He is less his own master; he is deprived, to some
extent, of free will, he is less progressive, he is less a man. Not
only does he no longer judge for himself in a particular case; he has
got out of the habit of judging for himself in any case. The moral
torpor which thus gains upon him, gains, for the same reason, on
all his fellow-citizens, and in this way we have seen whole nations
abandon themselves to a fatal inaction.[97]
As long as a certain class of wants and of corresponding
satisfactions remains in the domain of liberty, each, in so far
as this class is concerned, lays down a rule for himself, which
he can modify at pleasure. This would seem to be both natural and
fair, seeing that no two men find themselves in exactly the same
situation; nor is there any one man whose circumstances do not vary
from day to day. In this way, all the human faculties remain in
exercise, comparison, judgment, foresight. In this way, too, every
good and judicious resolution brings its recompense and every error
its chastisement; and experience, that rude [p433] substitute for
foresight, so far at least fulfils its mission that society goes on
improving.
But when the service becomes public, all individual rules of conduct
and action disappear, and are mixed up and generalized in a written,
coercive, and inflexible law, which is the same for all, which makes
no allowance for particular situations, and strikes the noblest
faculties of human nature with numbness and torpor.
If State intervention deprive us of all self-government with
reference to the services we receive from the public, it deprives
us in a still more marked degree of all control with reference to
the services which we render in return. This counterpart, this
supplementary element in the exchange, is likewise a deduction from
our liberty, and is regulated by uniform inflexible rules, by a law
passed beforehand, made operative by force, and of which we cannot
get rid. In a word, as the services which the State renders us are
imposed upon us, those which it demands in return are also imposed
upon us, and in all languages take the name of ‹imposts›.
And here a multitude of theoretical difficulties and inconveniences
present themselves; for practically the State surmounts all obstacles
by means of an armed force, which is the necessary sequence of every
law. But, to confine ourselves to the theory, the transformation of a
private into a public service gives rise to these grave questions:—
Will the State under all circumstances demand from each citizen
an amount of taxation ‹equivalent› to the services rendered? This
were but fair; and this ‹equivalence› is exactly the result which
we almost infallibly obtain from free and voluntary transactions,
and the bargaining which precedes them. If the design of the State,
then, is to realize this ‹equivalence› (which is only justice),
it is not worth while taking this class of services out of the
domain of private activity. But equivalence is never thought of,
nor can it be. We do not stand higgling and chaffering with public
functionaries. The law proceeds on general rules, and cannot make
conditions applicable to each individual case. At the utmost, and
when it is conceived in a spirit of justice, it aims at a sort of
average equivalence, an approximate equivalence, between the two
services exchanged. Two principles—namely, the proportionality and
the progression of taxation—have appeared in many respects to carry
this approximation to its utmost limit. But the slightest reflection
will convince us that proportional taxation cannot, any more than
progressive taxation, realize the exact equivalence of services
exchanged. Public services, after having forcibly deprived the
citizens of their liberty, as regards services [p434] both rendered
and received, have, then, this farther fault of unsettling the value
of these services.
Another, and not less grave, inconvenience is, that they destroy,
or at least displace, responsibility. To man responsibility is
all-important. It is his mover and teacher, his rewarder and
avenger. Without it man is no longer a free agent, he is no longer
perfectible, no longer a moral being, he learns nothing, he is
nothing. He abandons himself to inaction, and becomes a mere unit of
the herd.
If it be a misfortune that the sense of responsibility should be
extinguished in the individual, it is no less a misfortune that it
should be developed in the State in an exaggerated form. Man, however
degraded, has always as much light left him as to see the quarter
from whence good or evil comes to him; and when the State assumes the
charge of all, it becomes responsible for all. Under the dominion of
such artificial arrangements, a people which suffers can only lay
the blame on its Government, and its only remedy, its only policy,
is to overturn it. Hence an inevitable succession of revolutions. I
say inevitable, for under such a ‹régime› the people must necessarily
suffer; and the reason of it is that public services, besides
disturbing and unsettling values, which is injustice, lead also
to the destruction of wealth, which is ruin; ruin and injustice,
suffering and discontent—four fatal causes of effervescence in
society, which, combined with the displacement of responsibility,
cannot fail to bring about political convulsions like those from
which we have been suffering for more than half a century.
Without desiring to indulge in digressions, I cannot help remarking,
that when things are organized in this fashion, when Government has
assumed gigantic proportions by the successive transformation of free
and voluntary transactions into public services, it is to be feared
that revolutions, which constitute in themselves so great an evil,
have not even the advantage of being a remedy, unless the remedy is
forced upon us by experience. The displacement of responsibility has
perverted public opinion. The people, accustomed to expect everything
from the State, never accuse Government of doing too much, but of not
doing enough. They overturn it, and replace it by another, to which
they do not say, “Do less,” but “Do more;” so that, having fallen
into one ditch, they set to work to dig another.
At length the moment comes when their eyes are opened, and it is felt
to be necessary to curtail the prerogatives and responsibilities of
Government. Here we are stopped by difficulties of another kind.
Functionaries alleging ‹vested rights› rise up and [p435] coalesce,
and we are averse to bear hard on numerous interests to which we
have given an artificial existence. On the other hand, the people
have forgotten how to act for themselves. At the moment they have
succeeded in reconquering the liberty of which they were in quest,
they are afraid of it, and repudiate it. Offer them a free and
voluntary system of education:[98] they believe that all science is
about to be extinguished. Offer them religious liberty: they believe
that atheism is about to invade us,—so often has it been dinned into
their ears that all religion, all wisdom, all science, all learning,
all morality, resides in the State or flows from it.
But we shall find a place for such reflections elsewhere, and must
now return to the argument.
We set ourselves to discover the true part which competition plays in
the development of wealth, and we found that it consisted in giving
an advantage in the first instance to the producer; then turning this
advantage to the profit of the community; and constantly enlarging
the domain of the gratuitous, and consequently the domain of equality.
But when private services become public services, they escape
competition, and this fine harmony is suspended. In fact, the
functionary is divested of that stimulant which urges on to
progress, and how can progress turn to the public advantage when
it no longer exists? A public functionary does not act under the
spur of self-interest, but under the influence of the law. The
law says to him, “You will render to the public such or such a
determinate service, and you will receive from it in return a
determinate recompense.” A little more or a little less zeal has no
effect in changing these two fixed terms. On the contrary, private
interest whispers in the ear of the free labourer, “The more you
do for others, the more others will do for you.” In this case, the
recompense depends entirely on the efforts of the workman being
more or less intense, and more or less skilful. No doubt ‹esprit
de corps›, the desire for advancement, devotion to duty, may prove
active stimulants with the functionary; but they never can supply
the place of the irresistible incitement of personal interest.
All experience confirms this reasoning. Everything which has
fallen within the domain of Government routine has remained almost
stationary. It is doubtful whether our system of education now is
better than it was in the reign of Francis the First; and no one
would think of comparing the activity of a government office with the
activity of a manufactory. [p436]
In proportion, then, as private services enter into the class of
public services, they become, at least to a certain extent, sterile
and motionless, not to the injury of those who render these services
(their salaries are fixed), but to the detriment of the public at
large.
Along with these inconveniences, which are immense, not only
in a moral and political, but in an economical point of
view—inconveniences which, trusting to the sagacity of the reader, I
have only sketched—there is sometimes an advantage in substituting
collective for individual action. In some kinds of services, the
chief merit is regularity and uniformity. It may happen that, under
certain circumstances, such a substitution gives rise to economy,
and saves, in relation to a given satisfaction, a certain amount of
exertion to the community. The question to be resolved, then, is
this: What services should remain in the domain of private exertion?
What services should pertain to collective or public exertion? The
inquiry, which we have just finished, into the essential differences
which characterize these two kinds of services, will facilitate the
solution of this important problem.
And, first of all, it may be asked, is there any principle to
enable us to distinguish what may legitimately enter the circle of
collective action, and what should remain in the circle of private
action?
I begin by intimating that what I denominate here ‹public action›
is that great organization which has for rule the ‹law›, and for
means of execution, ‹force›; in other words, ‹the Government›. Let
it not be said that free and voluntary associations display likewise
‹collective exertion›. Let it not be supposed that I use the term
private action as synonymous with ‹isolated action›. What I say is,
that free and voluntary association belongs still to the domain of
private action, for it is one of the forms of exchange, and the most
powerful form of all. It does not impair the equivalence of services,
it does not affect the appreciation of values, it does not displace
responsibilities, it does not exclude free will, it does not destroy
competition nor its effects; in a word, it has not ‹constraint› for
its principle.
But the action of Government is made general by ‹constraint›. It
necessarily proceeds on the ‹compelle intrare›. It acts in form
of ‹law›, and every one must submit to it, because a law implies
a ‹sanction›. No one, I think, will dispute these premises; which
are supported by the best of all authorities, the testimony of
universal fact. On all sides we have laws, and force to restrain the
refractory. [p437]
Hence, no doubt, has come the saying that “men, in uniting in
society, have sacrificed part of their liberty in order to preserve
the remainder,”—a saying in great vogue with those who, confounding
‹government› with ‹society›, conclude that the latter is artificial
and conventional like the former.
It is evident that this saying does not hold true in the region of
free and voluntary transactions. Let two men, determined by the
prospect of greater profit and advantage, exchange their services,
or unite their efforts, in place of continuing their isolated
exertions—is there in this any sacrifice of liberty? Is it to
sacrifice liberty to make a better use of it?
The most that can be said is this, that men sacrifice part of their
liberty to preserve the remainder, not when they unite in society,
but when they subject themselves to a Government, since the necessary
mode of action of every Government is force.
Now, even with this modification, the pretended principle is
erroneous, as long as Government confines itself to its legitimate
functions.
But what are these functions?
It is precisely this special character of having force for their
necessary auxiliary which marks out to us their extent and their
limits. I affirm that as ‹Government acts only by the intervention of
force, its action is legitimate only where the intervention of force
is itself legitimate›.
Now, where force interposes legitimately, it is not to sacrifice
liberty, but to make it more respected. So that this pretended axiom,
which has been represented as the basis of political science, and
which has been shown to be false as far as society is concerned, is
equally false as regards Government. It is always gratifying to me
to see these melancholy theoretical discordances disappear before a
closer and more searching examination.
In what cases is the employment of force legitimate? In one case,
and, I believe, in only one—‹the case of legitimate defence›. If this
be so, the foundation of Government is fully established, as well as
its legitimate limits.[99]
What is individual right?
The right which an individual possesses to enter freely and
voluntarily into bargains and transactions with his fellow-citizens,
which give rise, as far as they are concerned, to a reciprocal right.
When is this right violated? When one of the parties encroaches
[p438] on the liberty of the other. In that case, it is incorrect
to say, as is frequently done, “There is an excess, an abuse of
liberty.” We should say, “There is a want, a destruction of liberty.”
An excess of liberty, no doubt, if we regard only the aggressor, but
a destruction of liberty, if we regard the victim, or even if we
regard the phenomenon as a whole, as we ought to do.
The right of the man whose liberty is attacked, or, which comes to
the same thing, whose property, faculties, or labour is attacked,
is to defend them ‹even by force›; and this is in fact what men do
everywhere, and always, when they can.
Hence may be deduced the right of a number of men of any sort to take
counsel together, and associate, in order to defend, ‹even by their
joint force›, individual liberty and property.
But an individual has no right to employ force for any other purpose.
I cannot legitimately ‹force› my neighbours to be industrious, sober,
economical, generous, learned, devout; but I can legitimately force
them to be just.
For the same reason the collective force cannot be legitimately
applied to develop the love of industry, of sobriety, of economy,
of generosity, of science, of religious belief; but it may be
legitimately applied to ensure the predominance of justice, and
vindicate each man’s right.
For where can we seek for the origin of collective right but in
individual right?
The deplorable mania of our times is the desire to give an
independent existence to pure abstractions, to imagine a city without
citizens, a human nature without human beings, a whole without
parts, an aggregate without the individuals who compose it. They
might as well say, “Here is a man, suppose him without members,
viscera, organs, body, soul, or any of the elements of which he is
composed—still here is a man.”
If a right does not exist in any of the individuals of what for
brevity’s sake we call a nation, how should it exist in the nation
itself? How, above all, should it exist in that fraction of a nation
which exercises delegated rights of government? How could individuals
delegate rights which they do not themselves possess?
We must, then, regard as a fundamental principle in politics, this
incontestable truth, that between individuals the intervention of
force is legitimate only in the case of legitimate defence; and that
a collective body of men cannot have recourse to force legally, but
within the same limit.
Now, it is of the very essence of Government to act upon [p439]
individuals by way of constraint. Then it can have no other rational
functions than the legitimate defence of individual rights, it can
have no delegated authority except to secure respect to the lives and
property of all.
Observe that when a Government goes beyond these bounds, it enters
on an illimited career, and cannot escape this consequence, not
only that it goes beyond its mission, but annihilates it, which
constitutes the most monstrous of contradictions.
In truth, when the State has caused to be respected this fixed and
invariable line which separates the rights of the citizens, when it
has maintained among them justice, what could it do more without
itself breaking through that barrier, the guardianship of which has
been intrusted to it—in other words, without destroying with its own
hands, and by force, that very liberty and property which had been
placed under its safeguard? Beyond the administration and enforcement
of justice, I defy you to imagine an intervention of Government which
is not an injustice. Allege, as long as you choose, acts inspired
by the purest philanthropy, encouragements held out to virtue and
to industry, premiums, favour, and direct protection, gifts said to
be gratuitous, initiatives styled generous; behind all these fair
appearances, or, if you will, these fair realities, I will show you
other realities less gratifying; the rights of some persons violated
for the benefit of others, liberties sacrificed, rights of property
usurped, faculties limited, spoliations consummated. And can the
people possibly behold a spectacle more melancholy, more painful,
than that of the collective force employed in perpetrating crimes
which it is its special duty to repress?
In principle, it is enough that the Government has at its disposal,
as a necessary instrument, ‹force›, in order to enable us to discover
what the private services are which can legitimately be converted
into ‹public services›. They are those which have for their object
the maintenance of liberty, property, and individual right, the
prevention of crime—in a word, everything which involves the ‹public
security›.
Governments have yet another mission.
There are in all countries a certain amount of common property,
enjoyed by the citizens jointly—rivers, forests, roads. On the
other hand, unfortunately, there are also debts. It is the duty of
Government to administer this active and passive portion of the
public domain.
In fine, from these two functions there flows another,—that of
levying the contributions which are necessary for the ‹public
service›. [p440]
Thus:
To watch over the public security.
To administer common property.
To levy taxes.
Such I believe to be the legitimate circle within which Government
functions ought to be circumscribed, and to which they should be
brought back if they have gone beyond it.
This opinion, I know, runs counter to received opinions. “What!”
it will be said, “you wish to reduce Government to play the part
of a judge and a police-officer! You would take away from it all
initiative! You would restrain it from giving a lively impulse to
learning, to arts, to commerce, to navigation, to agriculture, to
moral and religious ideas; you would despoil it of its fairest
attribute, that of opening to the people the road of progress!”
To people who talk in this way, I should like to put a few questions.
Where has God placed the motive spring of human conduct, and the
aspiration after progress? Is it in all men? or is it exclusively
in those among them who have received, or usurped, the delegated
authority of a legislator, or the patent of a placeman? Does every
one of us not carry in his organization, in his whole being, that
boundless, restless principle of action called ‹desire›? When our
first and most urgent wants are supplied, are there not formed within
us concentric and expansive circles of desires of an order more and
more elevated? Does the love of arts, of letters, of science, of
moral and religious truth, does a thirst for the solution of those
problems which concern our present and future existence, descend
from collective bodies of men to individuals, from abstractions to
realities, from mere words to living and sentient beings?
If you set out with this assumption—absurd upon the face of it—that
moral energy resides in the State, and that the nation is passive,
do you not place morals, doctrines, opinions, wealth, all which
constitutes individual life, at the mercy of men in power?
Then, in order to enable it to discharge the formidable duty which
you would intrust to it, has the State any resources of its own?
Is it not obliged to take everything of which it disposes, down
to the last penny, from the citizens themselves? If it be from
individuals that it demands the means of execution, individuals have
realized these means. It is a contradiction, then, to pretend that
individuality is passive and inert. And why have individuals created
these resources? To minister to their own [p441] satisfactions. What
does the State do when it seizes on these resources? It does not
bring satisfactions into existence, it ‹displaces› them. It deprives
the man who earned them in order to endow a man who has no right to
them. Charged to chastise injustice, it perpetrates it.
Will it be said that in displacing satisfactions it purifies them,
and renders them more moral?—that the wealth which individuals
had devoted to gross and sensual wants the State has devoted to
moral purposes? Who dare affirm that it is advantageous to invert
violently, ‹by force›, by means of spoliation, the natural order
according to which the wants and desires of men are developed?—that
it is moral to take a morsel of bread from the hungry peasant, in
order to bring within the reach of the inhabitants of our large towns
the doubtful morality of theatrical entertainments?
And then it must be remembered, that you cannot displace wealth
without displacing labour and population. Any arrangement you can
make must be artificial and precarious when it is thus substituted
for a solid and regular order of things reposing on the immutable
laws of nature.
There are people who believe that by circumscribing the province of
Government you enfeeble it. Numerous functions and numerous agents,
they think, give the State the solidity of a broader basis. But
this is pure illusion. If the State cannot overstep the limits of
its proper and determinate functions without becoming an instrument
of injustice, of ruin, and of spoliation—without unsettling the
natural distribution of labour, of enjoyments, of capital, and
of population—without creating commercial stoppages, industrial
crises, and pauperism—without enlarging the proportion of crimes
and offences—without recurring to more and more energetic means of
repression—without exciting discontent and disaffection,—how is it
possible to discover a guarantee for stability in these accumulated
elements of disorder?
You complain of the revolutionary tendencies of men, but without
sufficient reflection. When in a great country we see private
services invaded and converted into public services, the Government
laying hold of one-third of the wealth produced by the citizens,
the law converted into an engine of spoliation by the citizens
themselves, thus impairing, under pretence of establishing, the
equivalence of services—when we see population and labour displaced
by legislation, a deeper and deeper gulf interposed between wealth
and poverty, capital, which should give employment to an increasing
population, prevented from accumulating, [p442] entire classes
ground down by the hardest privations—when we see Governments taking
to themselves credit for any prosperity which may be observable,
proclaiming themselves the movers and originators of everything,
and thus accepting responsibility for all the evils which afflict
society,—we are only astonished that revolutions do not occur more
frequently, and we admire the sacrifices which are made by the people
to the cause of public order and tranquillity.
But if laws and the Governments which enact laws confined themselves
within the limits I have indicated, how could revolutions occur?
If each citizen were free, he would doubtless be less exposed to
suffering; and if, at the same time, the feeling of responsibility
were brought to bear on him from all sides, how should he ever
take it into his head to attribute his sufferings to a law, to a
Government which concerned itself no farther with him than to repress
his acts of injustice and protect him from the injustice of others?
Do we ever find a village rising against the authority of the local
magistrate?
The influence of liberty on the cause of order is sensibly felt in
the United States. There, all, save the administration of justice and
of public property, is left to the free and voluntary transactions of
the citizens; and there, accordingly, we find fewer of the elements
and chances of revolution than in any other country of the world.
What semblance of interest, could the citizens of such a country have
in changing the established order of things by violence, when, on the
one hand, this order of things clashes with no man’s interests, and,
on the other, may be legally and readily modified if necessary?
But I am wrong. There are two active causes of revolution at work
in the United States—slavery and commercial restriction. It is
notorious that these two questions are constantly placing in jeopardy
the public peace and the federal union. Now, is it possible to
conceive a more decisive argument in support of the thesis I am
now maintaining? Have we not here an instance of the law acting
in direct antagonism to what ought to be the design and aim of
all laws? Is not this a case of law and public force sanctioning,
strengthening, perpetuating, systematizing, and protecting oppression
and spoliation, in place of fulfilling its legitimate mission of
protecting liberty and property? As regards slavery, the law says,
“I shall create a force, at the expense of the citizens, not to
maintain each in his rights, but to annihilate altogether the rights
of a portion of the inhabitants.” As regards tariffs, the law says,
“I shall create a force, at the expense of the citizens, not to
ensure the freedom of their bargains and transactions, but to [p443]
destroy that freedom, to impair the equivalence of services, to give
to one citizen the liberty of two, and to deprive another of liberty
altogether. My function is to commit injustice, which I nevertheless
visit with the severest punishment when committed by the citizens
themselves without my interposition.”
It is not, then, because we have few laws and few functionaries, or,
in other words, because we have few public services, that revolutions
are to be feared; but, on the contrary, because we have many laws,
many functionaries, and many public services. Public services, the
law which regulates them, the force which establishes them, are from
their nature never neutral. They may be enlarged without danger, on
the contrary with advantage, when they are necessary to the vigorous
enforcement of justice; but carried beyond this point they are so
many instruments of legal oppression and spoliation, so many causes
of disorder and revolutionary ferment.
Shall I venture to describe the poisonous immorality which is infused
into all the veins of the body politic, when the law thus sets
itself, upon principle, to indulge the plundering propensities of
the citizens? Attend a meeting of the national representatives when
the question happens to turn on bounties, encouragements, favours,
or restrictions. See with what shameless rapacity all endeavour to
secure a share of the spoil,—spoil which, as individuals, they would
blush to touch. The very man who would regard himself as a highway
robber, if, meeting me on the frontier and clapping a pistol to my
head, he prevented me from concluding a bargain which was for my
advantage, makes no scruple whatever in proposing and voting a law
which substitutes the public force for his own, and subjects me to
the very same restriction at my own expense. In this respect, what a
melancholy spectacle France presents at this very moment! All classes
are suffering, and in place of demanding the abolition for ever of
all legal spoliation, each turns to the law, and says, “You who can
do everything, you who have the public force at your disposal, you
who can bring good out of evil, be pleased to rob and plunder all
other classes, to put money in my pocket. Force them to come to my
shop, or pay me bounties and premiums, give my family gratuitous
education, lend me money without interest,” etc.
It is in this way that the law becomes a source of demoralization,
and if anything ought to surprise us, it is that the propensity to
individual plunder does not make more progress, when the moral sense
of the nation is thus perverted by legislation itself.
The deplorable thing is, that spoliation, when thus sanctioned by
[p444] law, and opposed by no individual scruple, ends by becoming
quite a learned theory with an attendant train of professors,
journals, doctors, legislators, sophisms, and subtleties. Among the
traditional quibbles which are brought forward in its support we may
remark this one, namely, that, ‹cæteris paribus›, an enlargement of
‹demand› is of advantage to those by whom labour is supplied, seeing
that the new relation between a more active demand and a supply which
is stationary is what increases the ‹value› of the service. From
these premises the conclusion follows that spoliation is of advantage
to everybody: to the plundering class, which it enriches directly;
to the plundered class, by its reflex influence. The plundering
class having become richer finds itself in a situation to enlarge
the circle of its enjoyments, and this it cannot do without creating
a larger ‹demand› for the ‹services› of the class which has been
robbed. Now, as regards each service, an enlargement of demand is an
increase of value. The classes, then, who are legally plundered are
too happy to be robbed, since the profit arising from the theft thus
redounds to them, and helps to find them employment.
As long as the law confined itself to robbing the many for the
benefit of the few, this quibble appeared specious, and was never
invoked but with success. “Let us hand over to the rich,” it was
said, “the taxes levied from the poor, and we shall thus augment the
capital of the wealthy classes. The rich will indulge in luxury, and
luxury will give employment to the poor.” And all, poor included,
regarded this recipe as infallible; and for having exposed its
hollowness, I have been long regarded, and am still regarded, as an
enemy of the working classes.
But since the revolution of February the poor have had a voice in
the making of our laws. Have they required that the law should cease
to sanction spoliation? Not at all. The sophism of the rebound, of
the reflex influence, has got too firmly into their heads. What is
it they have asked for? That the law should become impartial, and
consent to rob all classes in their turn. They have asked for gratis
education, gratis advances of capital, friendly societies founded
by the State, progressive taxation, etc. And then the rich have set
themselves to cry out, “How scandalous! All is over with us! New
barbarians threaten society with an irruption!” To the pretensions
of the poor they have opposed a desperate resistance, first with the
bayonet and then with the ballot-box. But for all this, have the
rich given up spoliation? They have not even dreamt of that; and the
argument of the rebound still serves as the pretext. [p445]
Were this system of spoliation carried on by them directly, and
without the intervention of the law, the sophism would become
transparent. Were you to take from the pocket of the workman a franc
to pay your ticket to the theatre, would you have the face to say to
him, “My good friend, this franc will circulate and give employment
to you and others of your class?” Or if you did, would he not be
justified in answering, “The franc will circulate just as well if
you do not steal it from me. It will go to the baker instead of the
scene-painter. It will procure me bread in place of procuring you
amusement.”
We may remark, also, that the sophism of the rebound may be invoked
by the poor in their turn. They may say in their turn to the rich,
“Let the law assist us in robbing you. We shall consume more cloth,
and that will benefit your manufactures; more meat, and that will
benefit your land estates; more sugar, and that will benefit your
shipping.”
Unhappy, thrice unhappy, nation in which such questions are raised,
in which no one thinks of making the law the rule of equity, but
an instrument of plunder to fill his own pockets, and applies the
whole power of his intellect to try to find excuses among the more
remote and complicated effects of spoliation. In support of these
reflections it may not be out of place to add here an extract from
the debate which took place at a meeting of the ‹Conseil général des
Manufactures, de l’Agriculture, et du Commerce›, on Saturday the 27th
April 1850.[100] [p446]
XVIII.
DISTURBING CAUSES.
In what state would human society have been, had the transactions
of mankind never been in any shape infected with force or fraud,
oppression or deceit?
Would Justice and Liberty have given rise inevitably to Inequality
and Monopoly?
To find an answer to these questions it would seem to me to be
necessary to study the nature of human transactions in their essence,
in their origin, in their consequences, and in the consequences of
these consequences, down to the final result; and this apart from
the consideration of contingent disturbances which might engender
injustice; for it will be readily granted that injustice is not of
the essence of free and voluntary transactions.
That the entry of Injustice into the world was inevitable, and that
society cannot get rid of it, may be argued plausibly, and I think
even conclusively, if we take man as he exists, with his passions,
his egotism, his ignorance, and his original improvidence. We must
also, therefore, direct our attention to the origin and effects of
Injustice.
But it is not the less true that economical science must set out by
explaining the theory of human transactions, assuming them to be free
and voluntary, just as physiology explains the nature and relations
of our organs, apart from the consideration of the disturbing causes
which modify these relations.
Services, as we have seen, are exchanged for services, and the great
‹desideratum› is the equivalence of the services thus exchanged.
The best chance, it would seem, of arriving at this equivalence, is
that it should be produced under the influence of Liberty, and that
every man should be allowed to judge for himself. [p447]
We know that men may be mistaken; but we know also that they have the
power given them of rectifying their mistakes; and the longer, as it
appears to us, that error is persisted in, the nearer we approximate
to its rectification.
Everything which restrains liberty would seem to disturb the
equivalence of services, and everything which disturbs the
equivalence of services engenders inequality in an exaggerated
degree, endowing some with unmerited opulence, entailing on others
poverty equally unmerited, together with the destruction of national
wealth, and an attendant train of evils, heartburnings, disturbances,
convulsions, and revolutions.
We shall not go the length of saying that Liberty—or the equivalence
of services—produces absolute equality; for we believe in nothing
absolute in what concerns man. But we think that Liberty tends to
make men approximate towards a common level, which is movable and
always rising.
We think also that the inequality which may still remain under a
free ‹régime› is either the result of accidental circumstances, or
the chastisement of faults and vices, or the compensation of other
advantages set opposite to those of wealth; and, consequently, that
this inequality ought not to introduce among men any feeling of
irritation.
In a word, we believe that ‹Liberty is Harmony›. . . . .
But in order to discover whether this harmony exists in reality, or
only in our own imagination, whether it be in us a perception or
only an aspiration, we must subject free transactions to the test of
scientific inquiry; we must study facts, with their relations and
consequences.
This is what we have endeavoured to do.
We have seen that although countless obstacles are interposed
between the wants of man and his satisfactions, so that in a state
of isolation he could not exist—yet by the union of forces, the
separation of occupations, in a word, by exchange, his faculties are
developed to such an extent as to enable him gradually to overcome
the first obstacles, to encounter the second and overcome them also,
and so on in a progression as much more rapid as exchange is rendered
more easy by the increasing density of population.
We have seen that his intelligence places at his disposal means
of action more and more numerous, energetic, and perfect, that in
proportion as capital increases, his absolute share in the produce
increases, and his relative share diminishes, while both the absolute
and relative share falling to the labourer goes on [p448] constantly
increasing. This is the primary and most powerful cause of equality.
We have seen that that admirable instrument of production called
land, that marvellous laboratory in which are prepared all things
necessary for the food, clothing, and shelter of man, has been given
him gratuitously by the Creator; that although the land is nominally
appropriated, its productive action cannot be so, but remains
gratuitous throughout the whole range of human transactions.
We have seen that Property has not only this negative effect of not
encroaching on community; but that it works directly and constantly
in enlarging its domain; and this is a second cause of equality,
seeing that the more abundant the common fund becomes, the more is
the inequality of property effaced.
We have seen that under the influence of liberty services tend to
acquire their normal value, that is to say, a value proportionate to
the labour. This is a third cause of equality.
For these reasons we conclude that there is a tendency to the
establishment among men of a natural level, not by bringing them back
to a retrograde position, or allowing them to remain stationary, but
urging them on to a state which is constantly progressive.
In fine, we have seen that it is not the tendency of the laws of
Value, of Interest, of Rent, of Population, or any other great
natural law, to introduce dissonance into the beautiful order of
society, as crude science has endeavoured to persuade us, but, on the
contrary, that all these laws lead to harmony.
Having reached this point, I think I hear the reader cry out, “The
Economists are optimists with a vengeance! It is in vain that
suffering, poverty, inadequate wages, pauperism, the desertion of
children, starvation, crime, rebellion, inequality, are before their
eyes; they chant complacently the harmony of the social laws, and
turn away from a hideous spectacle which mars their enjoyment of the
theory in which they are wrapt up. They shun the region of realities,
in order to take refuge, like the Utopian dreamers whom they blame,
in a region of chimeras. More illogical than the Socialists or the
Communists themselves—who confess the existence of suffering, feel
it, describe it, abhor it, and only commit the error of prescribing
ineffectual, impracticable, and empirical remedies—the Economists
either deny the existence of suffering, or are insensible to it,
if, indeed, they do not engender it, calling out to diseased and
distempered society, ‘‹Laissez faire, laissez passer›; all is for the
best in this best of all possible worlds.’” [p449]
In the name of science, I repel, I repudiate with all my might,
such reproaches and such interpretations of our words. We see the
existence of suffering as clearly as our opponents. Like them, we
deplore it, like them we endeavour to discover its causes, like them
we are ready to combat them. But we state the question differently.
“Society,” say they, “such as liberty of labour and commercial
transactions (that is to say, the free play of natural laws) has
made it, is detestable. Break, then, the wheels of this ill-going
machine, liberty (which they take care to nickname competition, or
oftener anarchical competition), and substitute for them, by force,
new wheels of our invention.” No sooner said than done. Millions of
inventions are paraded; and this we might naturally expect, for to
imaginary space there are no limits.
As for us, after having studied the natural and providential laws of
society, we affirm that these laws are harmonious. These laws admit
the existence of evil, for they are brought into play by men,—by
beings subject to error and to suffering. But in this mechanism evil
has itself a function to perform, which is to circumscribe more and
more its own limits, and ultimately to check its own action, by
preparing for man warnings, corrections, experience, knowledge; all
things which are comprehended and summed up in the word, Improvement.
We add that it is not true that liberty prevails among men, nor is it
true that the providential laws exert all their action. If they do
act, at least, it is to repair slowly and painfully the disturbing
action of ignorance and error. Don’t arraign us, then, for using the
words ‹laissez faire›, ‹let alone›; for we do not mean by that, let
man alone when he is doing wrong. What we mean is this: Study the
providential laws, admire them, and ‹allow them to operate›. Remove
the obstacles which they encounter from abuses arising from force and
fraud, and you will see accomplished in human society this double
manifestation of progress—equalization in amelioration.
For, in short, of two things one: either the interests of men are, in
their own nature, concordant, or they are in their nature discordant.
When we talk of one’s Interest, we talk of a thing towards which a
man gravitates necessarily, unavoidably; otherwise it would cease to
be called interest. If men gravitated towards something else, that
other thing would be termed their interest. If men’s interests, then,
are concordant, all that is necessary in order to the realization of
harmony and happiness is that these interests should be understood,
since men naturally [p450] pursue their interest. This is all we
contend for; and this is the reason why we say, ‹Eclairez et laissez
faire›, Enlighten men, and let them alone. If men’s interests are in
their nature and essence discordant, then you are right, and there
is no other way of producing harmony, but by forcing, thwarting, and
running counter to these interests. A whimsical harmony, truly, which
can result only from an external and despotic action directed against
the interests of all! For you can easily understand that men will
not tamely allow themselves to be thwarted; and in order to obtain
their acquiescence in your inventions, you must either begin by being
stronger than the whole human family, or else you must be able to
succeed in deceiving them with reference to their true interests.
In short, on the hypothesis that men’s interests are naturally
discordant, the best thing which could happen would be their being
all deceived in this respect.
Force and imposture, these are your sole resources. I defy you
to find another, unless you admit that men’s interests are
harmonious,—and if you grant that, you are with us, and will say, as
we say, Allow the providential laws to act.
Now, this you will not do; and therefore. I must repeat that your
starting-point is the antagonism of interests. This is the reason why
you will not allow these interests to come to a mutual arrangement
and understanding freely and voluntarily; this is the reason why
you advocate arbitrary measures, and repudiate liberty; and you are
consistent.
But take care. The struggle which is approaching will not be
exclusively between you and society. Such a struggle you lay your
account with, the thwarting of men’s interests being the very object
you have in view. The battle will also rage among you, the inventors
and organizers of artificial societies, yourselves; for there are
thousands of you, and there will soon be tens of thousands, all
entertaining and advocating different views. What will you do? I see
very clearly what you will do,—you will endeavour to get possession
of the Government. That is the only force capable of overcoming all
resistance. Will some one among you succeed? While he is engaged
in thwarting and opposing the Government, he will find himself set
upon by all the other inventors, equally desirous to seize upon the
Government; and their chances of success will be so much the greater,
seeing that they will be aided by that public disaffection which has
been stirred up by the previous opposition to their interests. Here,
then, we are launched into a stormy sea of eternal revolutions, and
with no other object than the solution of this question: [p451]
How, and by whom, can the interests of mankind be most effectually
thwarted?
Let me not be accused of exaggeration. All this is forced upon us if
men’s interests are naturally discordant, for on this hypothesis you
never can get out of the dilemma, that either these interests will be
left to themselves, and then disorder will follow, or some one must
be strong enough to run counter to them, and in that case we shall
still have disorder.
It is true that there is a third course, as I have already indicated.
It consists in deceiving men with reference to their true interests;
and this course being above the power of a mere mortal, the shortest
way is for the ‹organisateur› to erect himself into an oracle. This
is a part which these Utopian dreamers, when they dare, never fail to
play, until they become Ministers of State. They fill their writings
with mystical cant; and it is with these paper kites that they find
out how the wind sits, and make their first experiments on public
credulity. But, unfortunately for them, success in such experiments
is not very easily achieved in the nineteenth century.
We confess, then, frankly that, in order to get rid of these
inextricable difficulties, it is much to be desired that, having
studied human interests, we should find them harmonious. The duty of
writers and that of governments become in that case rational and easy.
As mankind frequently mistake their true interests, our duty as
writers ought to be to explain these interests, to describe them, to
make them understood, for we may be quite certain that if men once
see their interest, they will follow it. As a man who is mistaken
with reference to his own interests injures those of the public
(this results from their harmony), the duty of Government will be
to bring back the small body of dissentients and violators of the
providential laws into the path of justice, which is identical with
that of utility. In other words, the single mission of Government
will be to establish the dominion of justice; and it will no longer
have to embarrass itself with the painful endeavour to produce, at
great cost, and by encroaching on individual liberty, a Harmony which
is self-created, and which Government action never fails to destroy.
After what has been said, we shall not be regarded as such fanatical
advocates of social harmony as to deny that it may be, and frequently
is, disturbed. I will even add that, in my opinion, the disturbances
of the social order, which are caused by blind passions, ignorance,
and error, are infinitely greater and more pro [p452] longed than
are generally supposed; and it is these disturbing causes which we
are about to make the subject of our inquiry.
* * * * *
Man comes into the world having implanted in him ineradicably the
desire of happiness and aversion from pain. Seeing that he acts in
obedience to this impulse, we cannot deny that personal interest
is the moving spring of the individual, of all individuals, and,
consequently, of society. And seeing that personal interest, in the
economic sphere, is the motive of human actions and the mainspring of
society, Evil must proceed from it as well as Good; and it is in this
motive power that we must seek to discover harmony and the causes by
which that harmony is disturbed.
The constant aspiration of self-interest is to silence want, or, to
speak more generally, desire, by satisfaction.
Between these two terms, which are essentially personal and
intransmissible, want and satisfaction, there is interposed a mean
term which is transmissible and exchangeable,—effort.
Over all this mechanism we have placed the faculty of comparing,
of judging—mind, intelligence. But human intelligence is fallible.
We may be mistaken. That is beyond dispute; for were any one to
assert that man cannot err, we should at once conclude that it was
unnecessary to hold any farther argument with him.
We may be mistaken in many ways. We may, for instance, form a wrong
appreciation of the relative importance of our wants. In this case,
were we living in a state of isolation, we should give to our efforts
a direction not in accordance with our true interests. In a state of
society, and under the operation of the law of exchange, the effect
would be the same; for then we should direct demand and remuneration
to services of a kind either frivolous or hurtful, and so give a
wrong direction to labour.
We may also err, from being ignorant that a satisfaction which we
ardently seek for can only remove a suffering by becoming the source
of still greater sufferings. There is scarcely any effect which
may not in its turn become a cause. Foresight has been given us to
enable us to observe the concatenation of effects, so that we may not
sacrifice the future to the present; but we are frequently deficient
in foresight.
Here, then, is the first source of evil, error arising from the
feebleness of our judgment or the force of our passions; and it
belongs principally to the domain of morals. In this case, as the
error and the passion are individual, the resulting evil must,
to a [p453] certain extent, be individual also; and reflection,
experience, and the feeling of responsibility are its proper
correctives.
Errors of this class, however, may assume a social character, and,
when erected into a system, may give rise to widespread suffering.
There are countries, for example, in which the governing power is
strongly convinced that the prosperity of nations is measured,
not by the amount of wants which are satisfied, but by the amount
of efforts, whatever may be their results. The division of labour
assists powerfully this illusion. When we observe that each
profession sets itself to overcome a certain species of obstacle,
we imagine that the existence of that obstacle is the source of
wealth. In such countries, when vanity, frivolity, or a false love of
glory are predominant passions, and provoke corresponding desires,
and determine a portion of the national industry in that direction,
Governments believe that all will be over with them if their subjects
come to be reformed and rendered more moral. What will become now,
they say, of milliners, cooks, grooms, embroiderers, dancers,
lace-manufactures, etc.? They do not reflect that the human heart
is always large enough to contain enough of honest, reasonable, and
legitimate desires to afford employment and support to labour; that
the business is not to suppress desires, but to rectify and purify
them; and that labour, consequently, following the same evolution,
may have its direction changed and still be carried on to the same
extent as before. In countries where these melancholy doctrines
prevail, we hear it frequently said, “It is unfortunate that morals
and industry cannot march side by side. We should desire, indeed,
that the citizens should be moral, but we cannot allow them to become
idle and poor. This is the reason why we must continue to make
laws which are favourable to luxury. If necessary, we impose taxes
on the people; and for the sake of the people, and to ensure them
employment, we charge Kings, Presidents, Ambassadors, Ministers,
with the duty of ‹representing› them.” All this is said and done in
the best possible faith; and the people themselves acquiesce in it
with a good grace. It is very clear that when luxury and frivolity
thus become a legislative affair, regulated, decreed, imposed,
systematized, by public force, the law of Responsibility loses all
its moral power.[101] . . . . . [p454]
XIX.
WAR.
Of all the circumstances which contribute to impart to nations their
distinctive character and aspect, and to form and modify their
genius, their moral condition, their customs, and their laws, the one
which exerts a far more powerful influence than all the rest, because
it includes all the rest, is the manner in which they provide for
their subsistence. For this observation we are indebted to Charles
Comte, and we have reason to be surprised that it has not had a more
prominent place given to it in the moral and political sciences.
This circumstance, in fact, acts upon the human race in two ways, and
with equal power in both,—by its continuity, and by its universality.
To subsist, to better one’s condition, to bring up a family, are not
affairs of time, or place, or taste, or opinion, or choice; they
are the daily, constant, and unavoidable concern of all men, at all
times, and in all countries.
Everywhere, the greater part of their moral, intellectual, and
physical force is devoted directly or indirectly to create and
replace the means of subsistence. The hunter, the fisher, the
shepherd, the agriculturist, the manufacturer, the merchant, the
labourer, the artisan, the capitalist,—all think first of all how
they are to live (prosaic as the avowal may seem), and then how to
live better and better, if they can. The proof of it is that it is
only for this end that they are hunters, fishers, manufacturers,
agriculturists, etc. In the same way, the public functionary, the
soldier, the magistrate, enter upon their careers in order to ensure
the supply of their wants. We do not necessarily charge a man with
want of devotion or disinterestedness when we quote the proverb, ‹The
priest lives by the altar›, for before he belonged to the priesthood
he belonged to humanity; and if at this moment he sits down to write
a book against this vulgar view of human nature, the sale of his book
will demolish his argument. [p455]
God forbid that I should seek to deny the existence of self-denial
and disinterestedness. But it must be granted that they are
exceptional, and it is because they are so that they merit and
call forth our admiration. If we consider human nature in its
entirety, without having made a previous covenant with the demon of
sentimentalism, we must allow that disinterested efforts bear no
comparison, as respects their number, with those which are called
forth by the hard necessities of our condition. And it is because
those efforts, which constitute the aggregate of our employments,
engross so large a portion of each man’s life, that they cannot fail
to exert a powerful influence on national character.
M. Saint-Marc Girardin says somewhere or other that he has been led
to acknowledge the relative insignificance of political forms in
comparison with those great general laws which their employments and
their wants impose upon nations. “Do you desire to know the condition
of a people?” says he, “ask not how they are governed, but how they
are employed.”
As a general view, this is just; but the author hastens to falsify
it by converting it into a system. The importance of political
forms has been exaggerated; and what does he do? He denies their
importance altogether, or acknowledges it only to laugh at it.
Forms of government, he says, do not interest us but on the day
of an election, or when we are reading the newspapers. Monarchy
or Republic, Aristocracy or Democracy, what matters it? And what
conclusion does he arrive at? In maintaining that ‹infant› nations
resemble each other, whatever their political constitution happens
to be, he assimilates the United States to ancient Egypt, because in
both countries gigantic works have been executed. Americans clear
lands, dig canals, construct railways, and they do all this for
themselves, because they are a democracy, and their own masters.
The Egyptians raised temples, pyramids, obelisks, and palaces for
their kings and their priests, because they were slaves. And yet we
are told that the difference is a mere affair of form, not worth
regarding, or which we should regard merely to laugh at. Alas!
how the contagion of classical lore corrupts and misleads its
superstitious votaries!
M. Saint-Marc Girardin, still proceeding on his general proposition
that the prevailing occupations of a nation determine its genius,
soon after remarks that formerly we were occupied with war and
religion, but nowadays with commerce and manufactures. This is the
reason why former generations bore a warlike and religious impress.
[p456]
Rousseau had long before remarked that the care for subsistence was
the prevailing occupation only of some nations, and those the most
prosaic; and that other nations, more worthy of the name, had devoted
themselves to nobler exertions.
Now, in this have not both M. Saint-Marc Girardin and Rousseau
been the dupes of an historical illusion? Have they not mistaken
the amusements, the diversions, or the pretexts and instruments of
despotism, which give employment to some of the people, for the
occupations of all? And has the illusion not arisen from this, that
historians are always telling us about the class which does not work,
never about the class which does; and in this way we come to regard
the first of these classes as the entire nation.
I cannot help thinking that among the Greeks, among the Romans, among
the people of the Middle Ages, men just did what they do now, and
were subject to wants so pressing and so constantly recurring, that
they were obliged to provide for them under pain of death. Hence I
cannot help concluding that such employments then, as at present,
formed the principal and absorbing occupation of the great bulk of
the human race.
This much is certain, that very few people succeeded in living
without work, on the labour of the subject masses. The small number
of idlers who did so caused their slaves to construct for them
sumptuous palaces, magnificent castles, and sombre fortresses.
They loved to surround themselves with all the sensual enjoyments
of life, and with all the monuments of art. They amused themselves
by descanting on philosophy and cosmogony; and, above all, they
cultivated assiduously the two sciences to which they owed their
supremacy and their enjoyments,—the science of force, and the science
of fraud.
Although below this aristocracy there existed countless multitudes
engaged in creating for themselves the means of sustaining life,
and for their oppressors the means of revelling in pleasures, yet
as historians have never made the slightest allusion to those
multitudes, we have come to forget their existence, and never
taken them into account. Our regards are exclusively fixed on the
aristocracy. To it we give the name of ‹Old or Feudal Families›; and
we imagine that the men of those times maintained themselves without
having recourse to commerce, to manufactures, to labour, to vulgar
occupations. We admire their disinterestedness, their generosity,
their taste for the arts, their spirituality, their disdain of
servile employments, their [p457] elevation of mind and sentiment,
and, in high-sounding language, we assert that at one epoch nations
cared only for military glory, at another for the arts, at another
for philosophy, at another for religion, at another for virtue. We
sincerely lament our own condition, and give utterance to all sorts
of sarcastic observations, to the effect that, in spite of these
sublime models, we are unable to attain the same elevation, but are
reduced to assign to labour and its vulgar merits a prominent place
in the system of modern life.
Let us console ourselves with the reflection that it occupied a
no less important place among the ancients. Only, the drudgery of
labour, from which a limited number of people had succeeded in
freeing themselves, fell with redoubled weight upon the enslaved
masses, to the great detriment of justice, of liberty, of property,
of wealth, of equality, and of progress. This is the first of those
disturbing causes to which I propose to solicit the attention of the
reader.
The means, then, to which men have recourse in order to obtain the
means of subsistence cannot fail to exert a powerful influence on
their condition, physical, moral, intellectual, economical, and
political. Who can doubt that if we were in a situation to observe
different tribes of men, one of which had devoted itself exclusively
to the chase, another to fishing, a third to agriculture, a fourth
to navigation, we should discover very considerable differences in
their ideas, in their opinions, in their habits, their manners, their
customs, their laws, and their religion? No doubt we should find
human nature everywhere essentially the same; these various laws,
customs, and religions would have many points in common; and such
points we designate as the general laws of human society.
Be this as it may, there can be no doubt that in our great modern
societies we find at work all, or nearly all, the various means
of providing subsistence,—fisheries, agriculture, manufactures,
commerce, arts, and sciences, although in different proportions
in different countries. This is the reason why we do not discover
among nations so situated such marked and striking differences as
would be apparent if each devoted itself to one of these occupations
exclusively.
But if the nature of the occupations in which a people is engaged
exercises a powerful influence on its morality, its desires, and its
tastes,—its morality in its turn exercises a great influence upon
its occupations, at least upon the proportion which obtains between
these occupations. But I shall not dwell on this observation, [p458]
which I have presented in another part of this work,[102] but hasten
to the principal subject of the present chapter.
* * * * *
A man (and the same thing may be said of a people) may procure the
means of existence in two ways,—by creating them, or by stealing them.
Each of these two great sources of acquisition presents a variety of
methods.
We may ‹create› the means of existence by the chase, by fishing, by
agriculture, etc.
We may ‹steal› them by breach of trust, by violence, by force, fraud,
war, etc.
If, confining ourselves to the circle of one or other of these two
categories, we find that the predominance of one of these methods
establishes so marked a difference in the character of nations, how
much greater must the difference be between a nation which lives by
production, and a nation which lives by spoliation?
For it is not one of our faculties only, but all of them, which the
necessity of providing for our subsistence brings into exercise; and
what can be more fitted to modify the social condition of nations
than what thus modifies all the human faculties?
This consideration, important as it is, has been so little regarded,
that I must dwell upon it for an instant.
The realization of an enjoyment or satisfaction presupposes labour;
whence it follows that spoliation, far from excluding production,
presupposes it and takes it for granted.
This consideration, it seems to me, ought to modify the partiality
which historians, poets, and novel-writers have displayed for those
heroic epochs which were not distinguished by what they sneer at
under the epithet of ‹industrialism›. In these days, as in our own,
men lived, subsisted; and labour must have done its office then as
now. Only there was this difference, that nations, classes, and
individuals succeeded in laying their share of the labour and toil on
the shoulders of other nations, other classes, and other individuals.
The characteristic of production is to bring out of nothing, if
I may so speak, the satisfactions and enjoyments which sustain
and embellish life; so that a man, or a nation, may multiply ‹ad
infinitum› these enjoyments, without inflicting privation on any
other man, or any other nation. So much is this the case, that a
profound study of the economic mechanism shows us that the success
[p459] of one man’s labour opens up a field for the success of
another’s exertions.
The characteristic of spoliation, on the contrary, is this, that
it cannot confer a satisfaction on one without inflicting a
corresponding privation on another; for spoliation creates nothing,
but displaces what labour has created. It entails an absolute loss
of the exertions of both parties. So far, then, from adding to the
enjoyments of mankind, it diminishes these enjoyments, and confers
them, moreover, on those who have not merited them.
In order to produce, man must direct all his powers and faculties to
obtain the mastery over natural laws; for it is by this means that he
accomplishes his object. Hence, iron converted into a ploughshare is
the emblem of production.
To steal, on the other hand, man must direct all his powers and
faculties to obtain the mastery over his fellow-man; for it is by
this means that he attains his end. Hence, iron converted into a
sword is the emblem of spoliation.
Between the ploughshare, which brings plenty, and the sword, which
brings destruction and death, there is no greater difference than
between a nation of industrious workmen and a nation of spoliators.
They have, and can have, nothing whatever in common. They have
neither the same ideas, nor the same rules of appreciation, nor the
same tastes, manners, character, laws, morals, or religion.
No more melancholy spectacle can present itself to the eye of
philanthropy than to see an industrial age putting forth all its
efforts, in the way of education, to get inoculated with the ideas,
the sentiments, the errors, the prejudices, the vices, of an era of
spoliation. Our own era is frequently accused of wanting consistency,
of displaying little accordance between the judgments that are formed
and the conduct that is pursued; and I believe that this arises
principally from the cause which I have just pointed out.
Spoliation, in the shape of War—that is to say, pure, simple,
barefaced spoliation—has its root deep in the human heart, in the
organization of man, in the universal motives which actuate the
social world, namely, desire of happiness and repugnance to pain,—in
short, in that principle of our nature called self-interest.
I am not sorry to find myself arraigning that principle, for I have
been accused of devoting to it an idolatrous worship, of representing
its effects as productive only of happiness to mankind, and even of
elevating it above the principle of sympathy, of disinterestedness,
and of self-sacrifice. In truth, I have not so esteemed it; I have
only proved beyond the possibility of doubt [p460] its existence
and its omnipotence. I should ill appreciate that omnipotence, and I
should do violence to my own convictions, in representing personal
interest as the universal actuating motive of the human race, did I
fail now to point out the disturbing causes to which it gives rise,
just as I formerly pointed out the harmonious laws of the social
order which spring from it.
Man, as we have already said, has an invincible desire to support
himself, to improve his condition, and to attain happiness, or what
he conceives to be happiness, at least to approximate towards it. For
the same reason he shuns pain and toil.
Now labour, or the exertion we make in order to cause nature to
co-operate in production, is in itself toil or fatigue. For this
reason, it is repugnant to man, and he does not submit to it, except
for the sake of avoiding a still greater evil.
Some have maintained philosophically that labour is not an evil but
a good, and they are right, if we take into account its results. It
is a comparative good; or if it be an evil, it is an evil which saves
us from greater evils. This is precisely the reason why men have so
great a tendency to shun labour when they think that, without having
recourse to it, they may be able to reap its results.
Others maintain that labour is ‹in itself› a good; and that,
independently of its productive results, it elevates, strengthens,
and purifies man’s character, and is to him a source of health
and enjoyment. All this is strictly true; and it is an additional
evidence to us of the marvellous fertility of those final intentions
which the Creator has displayed in all parts of His works. Apart
altogether from the productions which are its direct results, labour
promises to man, as a supplementary recompense, a sound mind in a
sound body; and it is not more true that idleness is the parent of
every vice than that labour is the parent of many virtues.
But this does not at all interfere with the natural and unconquerable
inclinations of the human heart, or with that feeling which
prompts us not to desire labour for its own sake, but to compare
it constantly with its results; not to desire to expend a great
effort on what can be accomplished with a smaller effort; not of two
efforts to choose the more severe. Nor is our endeavour to diminish
the relation which the effort bears to the result inconsistent with
our desire, when we have once acquired some leisure, to devote that
leisure to new labours suited to our tastes, with the prospect of
thus securing a new and additional recompense.
With reference to all this, universal facts are decisive. At all
times, and everywhere, we find man regarding labour as [p461]
undesirable, and satisfaction as the thing in his condition which
makes him compensation for his labour. At all times, and everywhere,
we find him endeavouring to lighten his toil by calling in the aid,
whenever he can obtain it, of animals, of the wind, of water-power,
of steam, of natural forces, or, alas! of his fellow-creature, when
he succeeds in enslaving him. In this last case,—I repeat, for it is
too apt to be forgotten,—labour is not diminished, but displaced.[103]
Man, being thus placed between two evils, want or labour, and urged
on by self-interest, seeks to discover whether, by some means or
other, he cannot get rid of both. It is then that spoliation presents
itself to him as a solution of the problem.
He says to himself: “I have not, it is true, any means of procuring
the things necessary for my subsistence and enjoyments—food,
clothing, and lodging—unless these things are previously produced by
labour. But it is by no means indispensable that this should be ‹my
own› labour. It is enough that they should be produced by the labour
of ‹some one›, provided I can get the mastery.”
Such is the origin of war.