I really cannot comprehend how these schools, so opposite in other respects, but so unanimous in this, should not perceive the contradiction into which they fall.
On the one hand, wealth, according to the leaders of these schools, has a deleterious and demoralizing action, which debases the soul, hardens the heart, and leaves behind only a taste for depraved enjoyments. The rich have all manner of vices. The poor have all manner of virtues—they are just, sensible, disinterested, generous,—such is the favourite theme of these authors.
On the other hand, all the efforts of the Socialists’ imagination, all the systems they invent, all the laws they wish to impose upon us, tend, if we are to believe them, to convert poverty into riches. . . . . . .
Morality of wealth proved by this maxim; the profit of one is the profit of another. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [p196]
VII.
CAPITAL.
The economic laws will be found to act on the same principle, whether we take the case of a numerous agglomeration of men or of only two individuals, or even of a single individual condemned by circumstances to live in a state of isolation.
Such an individual, if he could exist for some time in an isolated state, would be at once capitalist, employer, workman, producer, and consumer. The whole economic evolution would be accomplished in him. Observing each of the elements of which that evolution is made up—want, effort, satisfaction—gratuitous utility, and onerous utility—he would be enabled to form an idea of the entire mechanism, even when thus reduced to its greatest simplicity.
One thing is obvious enough, that he could never confound what was gratuitous with what exacted efforts; for that would imply a contradiction in terms. He would know at once when a material or a force was furnished to him by nature without the co-operation of his labour, even when his own labour was assisted by natural agents, and thus rendered more productive.