[498] “The object of credit,” says Enfantin (Économie politique et Politique, p. 53), “in a society where one set of people possess the instruments of production but lack capacity or desire to employ them, and where another have the desire to work but are without the means, is to help the passage of these instruments from the former’s possession into the hands of the latter.” No better definition was ever given.
[499] Doctrine, p. 226. Cf. p. 223 for an eloquent passage denouncing Ricardo and Malthus, who, as the result of their “profound researches into the question of rent,” undertake to defend the institution of private property.
[500] The article is entitled De la Classe ouvrière, and may be found in vol. iv of Le Producteur. See particularly [pp. 308 et seq.]
[501] Engels, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, p. 277.
[502] “The majority of economists, and especially Say, whose work we have just reviewed, regard property as a fixed factor whose origin and progress is no concern of theirs, but whose social utility alone concerns them. The conception of a distinctively social order is more foreign still to the English writers.” (Doctrine, pp. 221 and 223.) No exception is made in favour of Sismondi or Turgot.
[503] Le Producteur, vol. iii, p. 385.
[504] In the preface to Économie politique et Politique, Enfantin again writes: “All questions of political economy should be linked together by a common principle, and in order to judge of the social utility of a measure or idea in economics it is absolutely necessary to consider whether this idea or measure is directly advantageous to the workers or whether it indirectly contributes to the amelioration of their lot by discrediting idleness.” It is a pleasure to be able to concur in the opinion expressed by M. Halévy in his article on Saint-Simon (Revue du Mois for December 1907), in which he maintains that this idea is the distinctive trait of Saint-Simon’s socialism. We have already called attention to another feature that seems to us equally important, namely, the suggested substitution of industrial administration for political government.
[505] It is impossible not to make a special mention of Anton Menger’s excellent little book. Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag (1886) (the English translation, with an excellent introduction by Professor Foxwell, is unfortunately out of print). It is indispensable in any history of socialism. We must also mention, with deep acknowledgments, Pareto’s Les Systèmes socialistes (Paris, 1902, 2 vols.)—the most originally critical work yet published on this subject, though not always the most impartial—and Bourguin’s Les Systèmes socialistes et l’Évolution économique (Paris, 1906), as containing the most scientific criticism of the economic theories of socialism.
[506] “Association, which is destined to put an end to antagonism, has not yet found its true form. Hitherto it has consisted of separate groups which have been at war with one another. Accordingly antagonism has not yet become extinct, but it certainly will as soon as association has become universal.” (Doctrine de Saint-Simon, Exposition, Première Année, p. 177.)
[507] In Owen’s paper, the Economist, for August 11, 1821, we meet with the following words: “The secret is out!… The object sought to be obtained is not equality in rank or possessions, is not community of goods, but full, complete, unrestrained co-operation on the part of all the members for every purpose of social life.” Fourier writes in a similar strain: “Association holds the secret of the union of interests.” (Assoc. domestique, vol. i, p. 133.) Elsewhere he writes: “To-day, Good Friday, I discovered the secret of association.”