[1282] The result is that masters are nowadays held responsible whenever a workman meets with an accident, or falls ill even. They are also liable to damages whenever they pay off their men. Owners of urban property are no longer allowed to build according to their fancy, and any property set up in contravention of the sanitary regulations is immediately demolished. Further progress along these lines would lead to juridical socialism. See Les Transformations du Droit civil, by M. Charmont, and Le Droit social et le Droit individuel, by M. Duguit.
[1283] Anton Menger, of Vienna, is the protagonist of this view. See his book, Das bürgerliche Recht und die besitzlosen Volksklassen (1890). Another of his works, Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag, which has been translated into English and contains a valuable preface by Professor Foxwell Menger, maintains that at the basis of the economic order are three fundamental rights which may be compared with the political demands put forward in the Declaration of the Rights of Man. These rights are: (1) the right to the whole produce of labour, (2) the right to work, (3) the right to exist—all of which claims were put forward by Considérant, Louis Blanc, and Proudhon, the French socialists of 1848.
See also Lassalle’s book, Das System der erworbenen Rechte. Mention should also be made of M. Emmanuel Lévy de Lyon, who has published several articles of this kind, especially the pamphlet entitled Capital et Travail.
[1284] “The producer is concerned about the well-being of his clients at every moment. His sympathies are wide enough to include the whole of humanity. The merchant and the transport agent are always on the look-out for what will prove most advantageous to those for whom they are working, as well as for new clients—that is, for more persons to whom they can be of service.” These words, which might have been written by Bastiat, are taken from a small yet curious volume published by M. Yves Guyot, and entitled La Morale de la Concurrence.
[1285] “Solidarity serves as a pretext for those people who want to enjoy the fruits of the labour of others without taking a part in such labours themselves, and for politicians who want to win adherents to their cause; it is just a new name for an unhealthy kind of egoism.” (Vilfredo Pareto, Le Péril socialiste, in the Journal des Économistes, May 15, 1900.)
“The solidarist theories would simply greatly increase the number and incapacity of the unemployable.” (Demolins, La Supériorité des Anglo-Saxons.)
[1286] “The distinctive feature of evolution seems to be the growing tendency among organisms to attain to a position of independence by acquiring a certain degree of specialised skill.” (De Launay, L’Histoire de la Terre.) The crystal’s action, says de Launay, in grouping itself in the form of a polyhedron is an expression of independence as well as a means of defence. The crystal is simply the earliest individual to break away from its environment. The animal form in the ocean depths that carries in its own body the essentials of a new environment marks a second step.
[1287] “The primitive era was an age of solidarity. Crime was no individual thing then, and that the innocent should suffer for the sake of the guilty seemed a part of the order of things. It is only in an age of reflection that such dogmas appear absurd.” (Renan, Avenir de la Science, p. 307.)
[1288] Anti-kissing leagues, inspired not by any puritan motives, but arising solely out of fear of bacilli, have been formed in the United States. One must not be surprised if a league against hand-shaking is established next; although this would be rather a curious result of a doctrine of solidarity that is always represented by the device of two hands clasped in one another!
In Paul Bureau’s book La Crise morale des Temps nouveaux there is a lengthy, lively criticism of solidarism from the moral standpoint.