But Spoliation not only arms Force against Feebleness—she turns Intelligence against Credulity. What hard-working people in the world has escaped being sweated by sacerdotal theocracies, Egyptian priests, Greek oracles, Roman auguries, Gallic druids, Indian brahmins, muftis, ulemas, bonzes, monks, ministers, mountebanks, sorcerers, soothsayers,—spoliators of all garbs and of all denominations. Assuming this guise, Spoliation places the fulcrum of her lever in heaven, and sacrilegiously prides herself on the complicity of the gods! She enslaves not men’s limbs only, but their souls. She knows how to impress the iron of slavery as well upon the conscience of Séide[65] as upon the forehead of Spartacus—realizing what would seem impossible—Mental Slavery.
Mental Slavery! what a frightful association of words! O Liberty! we have seen thee hunted from country to country, crushed by conquest, groaning under slavery, insulted in courts, banished from the schools, laughed at in saloons, misunderstood in workshops, denounced in churches. It seems thou shouldst find in thought an inviolable refuge. But if thou art to surrender in this thy last asylum, what becomes of the hopes of ages, and of what value is human existence?
At length, however, the progressive nature of man causes Spoliation to develop in the society in which it exists, resistance which paralyzes its force, and knowledge which unveils its impostures. But Spoliation does not confess herself conquered for all that; she only becomes more crafty, and, enveloping herself in the forms of government and in a system of checks and counterpoises, she gives birth to Politics, long a prolific resource. We then see her usurping the liberty of citizens, the better to get hold of their wealth, [p321] and draining away their wealth to possess herself more surely of their liberty. Private activity passes into the domain of public activity. Everything is transacted through functionaries, and an unintelligent and meddling bureaucracy overspreads the land. The public treasury becomes a vast reservoir into which labourers pour their savings, to be immediately distributed among placemen. Transactions are no longer regulated by free bargaining and discussion, and the mutuality of services disappears.
In this state of things the true notion of Property is extinguished, and every one appeals to the Law to give his services a factitious value.
We enter then upon the era of privileges. Spoliation, ever improving in subtilty, fortifies herself in Monopoly, and takes refuge behind Restrictions. She displaces the natural current of exchanges, and sends capital into artificial channels, and with capital, labour—and with labour, population. She gets painfully produced in the North what is produced with facility in the South; creates precarious classes and branches of industry; substitutes for the gratuitous forces of nature the onerous fatigues of labour; cherishes establishments which can sustain no rivalry, and invokes against competitors the employment of force; provokes international jealousies; flatters patriotic arrogance; and invents ingenious theories, which make auxiliaries of her own dupes. She constantly renders imminent industrial crises and bankruptcies, shakes to its foundation all confidence in the future, all faith in liberty, all consciousness of what is just. At length, when science exposes her misdeeds, she stirs up against science her own victims, by proclaiming a Utopia! and ignores not only the science which places obstacles in her path, but the very idea of any possible science, by this crowning sentence of scepticism—There are no principles!
Under the pressure of suffering, at length the masses rise, and overturn everything which is above them. Government, taxes, legislation, everything is at their mercy, and you imagine perhaps that there is now an end to the reign of Spoliation;—that the mutuality of services is about to be established on the only possible or even imaginable basis—Liberty. Undeceive yourself. The fatal idea, alas! has permeated the masses, that Property has no other origin, no other sanction, no other legitimacy, no other foundation, than Law; and then the masses set to work legislatively to rob one another. Suffering from the wounds which have been inflicted upon them, they undertake to cure each of their members by conceding to him the right to oppress his neighbour, and call [p322] this Solidarity and Fraternity. “You have produced—I have not produced—we are solidaires—let us divide.” “You have something—I have nothing—we are brethren—let us share.” It will be our duty then to examine the improper use which has been made in these latter days of the terms association, organization, labour, gratuité du crédit, etc. We shall have to subject them to this test—Do they imply Liberty or Oppression? In other words, are they in unison with the great Economical laws, or are they disturbances of those laws?
Spoliation is a phenomenon too universal, too persistent, to permit us to attribute to it a character purely accidental. In this, as in many other matters, we cannot separate the study of natural laws from the study of their Perturbations.
But, it may be said, if spoliation enters necessarily into the play of the social mechanism as a dissonance, how can you venture to assert the Harmony of the Economic laws?
I must repeat here what I have said in another place, namely, that in all which concerns man, a being who is only perfectible because he is imperfect, Harmony consists, not in the absolute absence of evil, but in its gradual diminution. The social body, like the human body, is provided with a curative force, a vis medicatrix, the laws and infallible power of which it is impossible to study without again exclaiming, Digitus Dei est hic. [p323]