[393] Wealth of Nations, Book II, chap. 2, in fine.
[394] Nouveaux Principes, vol. i, p. 92.
[395] Études sur l’Économie politique, vol. i, p. 35.
[396] Ibid., pp. 274-275.
[397] Nouveaux Principes, vol. i, p. 103.
[398] On this point we must dissociate ourselves from the interpretation placed upon the passage by M. Aftalion in his otherwise excellent monograph, L’Œuvre économique de Simonde de Sismondi (Paris, 1899), as well as from the view expressed by M. Denis (Histoire des Systèmes économiques, vol. ii, p. 306). But Sismondi’s text appears to us to leave no room for doubt. “As against land we might combine the other two sources of wealth, life which enables a man to work and capital which employs him. These two powers when united possess an expansive characteristic, so that the labour which a worker puts in his work one year will be greater than that put in the preceding year—upon the product of which the worker will have supported himself. It is because of this surplus value [mieux value], which increases as the arts and sciences are progressively applied to industry, that society obtains a constant increment of wealth.” (Nouveaux Principes, vol. i, p. 103.)
[399] Nouveaux Principes, vol. i, pp. 111-112. Cf. also p. 87: “Wealth, however, co-operates with labour. And its possessor withholds from the worker the part which the worker has produced beyond his cost of maintenance—as compensation for the help which he has given him.” It is true that this proportion is a considerable one. “The entrepreneur is bound to leave to the worker just enough to keep him alive, reserving for himself all that the worker has produced over and above this.” (P. 103.) But this is not a matter of necessity—a deduction from the laws of value, as it is with Marx.
[400] “The poor man, by his labour and his respect for the property of others, acquires a right to his home, to warm, proper clothing, to ample nourishment sufficiently varied to maintain health and strength.… Only when all these things have been secured to the poor as the fruit of their labour does the claim of the rich come in. What is superfluous, after supplying the needs of everyone, that should constitute the revenue of opulence.” (Études sur l’Économie politique, vol. i, p. 273.) Here we see quite clearly the sense in which Sismondi uses the term “spoliation.”
[401] Nouveaux Principes, vol. i, p. 407. Cf. also pp. 200, 201.
[402] “Everyone’s interest if checked by everybody else’s would in reality represent the common interest. But when everyone is seeking his own interest at the expense of others as well as developing his own means, it does not always happen that he is opposed by equally powerful forces. The strong thus find it their interest to seize and the weak to acquiesce, for the least evil as well as the greatest good is a part of the aim of human policy.” (Ibid., p. 407.) Cf. also infra, [p. 188, note 1].