“The Saint-Simonians do not advocate community of goods, for such community would be a manifest violation of the first moral law, which they have always been anxious to uphold, and which demands that in future every one shall occupy a situation becoming his capacity and be paid according to his labour.
“In view of this law they demand the abolition of all privileges of birth without a single exception, together with the complete extinction of the right of inheritance, which is to-day the greatest of all privileges and includes every other. The sole effect of this system is to leave the distribution of social advantages to a chance few who are able to lay some pretence to it, and to condemn the numerically superior class to deprivation, ignorance, and misery.
“They ask that all the instruments of production, all lands and capital, the funds now divided among individual proprietors, should be pooled so as to form one central social fund, which shall be employed by associations of persons hierarchically arranged so that each one’s task shall be an expression of his capacity and his wealth a measure of his labour.
“The Saint-Simonians are opposed to the institution of private property simply because it inculcates habits of idleness and fosters a practice of living upon the labour of others.”
(c) Critics of private property, generally speaking, are not content with its condemnation merely from the point of view either of distribution or production. They almost invariably employ a third method of attack, which might be called the historical argument. The argument generally takes the form of a demonstration of the path which the gradual evolution of the institution of private property has hitherto followed, coupled with an attempt to show that its further transformation along the lines which they advocate is simply the logical outcome of that process. The argument has not been neglected by the Saint-Simonians.
The history of this kind of demonstration is exceedingly interesting, and the rôle it has played in literature other than that of a socialist complexion is of considerable importance. Reformers of every type, whether the immediate objective be a transformation of private property or not, always base their appeals upon a philosophy of history.
Marx’s system is really a philosophy of history in which communism is set forth as the necessary consummation of all industrial evolution. Many modern socialists, although rejecting the Marxian socialism, still appeal to history. M. Vandervelde builds his faith upon it.[484] The authors of that quite recent work Socialisme en Action rely upon it, and so do Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb and all the Fabian Socialists. Dupont-White’s State Socialism is inspired by similar ideas, and so is the socialism of M. Wagner. Friedrich List has a way of his own with history; and the earliest ambition of the Historical school was to transform political economy into a kind of philosophy of history. If we turn to the realm of philosophy itself we find somewhat similar conceptions—the best known, perhaps, being Comte’s theory of the three estates, which was borrowed directly from Saint-Simon.[485]
This is not the place to discuss historical parallels. The point will come up in a later chapter in connection with the Historical school. What we would remark here is the good use which the Saint-Simonians made of the argument. All the past history of property was patiently ransacked, and the arguments of other writers who have extolled the merits of collectivism were thus effectually forestalled.
“The general opinion seems to be,” says the Doctrine de Saint-Simon,[486] “that whatever revolutions may take place in society, this institution of private property must for ever remain sacred and inviolable; it alone is from eternity unto eternity. In reality nothing could be less correct. Property is a social fact which, along with other social facts, must submit to the laws of progress. Accordingly it may be extended, curtailed, or regulated in various ways at different times.” This principle, once it was formulated, has never failed in winning the allegiance of every reformer. Forty years later the Belgian economist Laveleye, who has probably made the most thoroughly scientific study of the question, used almost identical words in summing up his inquiry into the principal forms of property.[487]