Is your object to effect a more intimate association between labour, capital, and talent, insuring thereby to the members of the human family a greater amount of material enjoyment—enjoyment more equally distributed? If such associations are voluntary; if force and constraint do not intervene; if the cost is defrayed by those who enter these associations, without drawing upon those who refuse to enter them, in what respect are they repugnant to Political Economy? Is it not the business of Political Economy, as a science, to examine the various forms in which men may unite their powers, and divide their employments, with a view to greater and more widely diffused prosperity? Does trade not frequently afford us examples of two, three, or four persons uniting to form such associations? Is Métayage[17] not a sort of informal association of capital and labour? Have we not in recent times seen joint stock companies formed which afford to the smallest capitals the opportunity of taking part in the most extensive enterprizes? Have we not certain manufactures in which it is sought to give the labourers an interest in the profits? Does Political Economy condemn those efforts of men to make their industry more productive and profitable? Does she affirm anywhere that human nature has reached perfection? Quite the contrary. I believe that there is no science which demonstrates more clearly that society is still in its infancy.
But whatever hopes we may entertain as to the future, whatever ideas we may conceive as to the measures that men may adopt for the improvement of their mutual relations, and the diffusion of happiness, knowledge, and morality, we must never forget that society is an organization which has for its element a moral and intelligent agent, endued with free will, and susceptible of improvement. If you take away Liberty from man, he becomes nothing else than a rude and wretched machine.
Liberty would seem not to be wanted in our days. In France, the privileged land of fashion, freedom appears to be no longer in repute. For myself, I say that he who rejects liberty has no faith in human nature. Of late the distressing discovery seems to have been made that liberty leads inevitably to monopoly.[18] This monstrous union, this unnatural conjunction, does not exist; it is the imaginary fruit of an error which the light of Political Economy speedily [p062] dissipates. Freedom engender monopoly! Oppression the offspring of liberty! To affirm this is to affirm that the tendencies of human nature are radically bad—bad in themselves, in their nature, in their essence. It is to affirm that the natural bent of man is to deterioration; that the human mind is irresistibly attracted towards error. To what end, then, our schools, our studies, our inquiries, our discussions, unless to accelerate our progress towards that fatal descent; since to teach men to judge, to distinguish, to select, is only to teach them to commit suicide? And if the tendencies of human nature are essentially perverse, where are the organizers of new social systems to place the fulcrum of that lever by which they hope to effect their changes? It must be somewhere beyond the limits of the present domain of humanity. Do they search for it in themselves—in their own minds and hearts? They are not gods yet; they are men, and tending, consequently, along with the whole human race, towards the fatal abyss. Shall they invoke the intervention of the state? The state also is composed of men. They must therefore prove that they form a distinct class, for whom the general laws of society are not intended, since it is their province to make these laws. Unless this be proved the difficulty is not removed, it is not even diminished.
Let us not thus condemn human nature before studying its laws, its forces, its energies, its tendencies. Newton, after he discovered attraction, never pronounced the name of God without uncovering his head. Yet the celestial mechanism is subject to laws of which it has no consciousness; and the social world is as much superior to that which called forth the admiration of Newton as mind is superior to matter. How much more reason, then, have we to bow before Omniscience when we behold the social mechanism, which universal intelligence no less pervades (mens agitat molem); and which presents, moreover, this extraordinary phenomenon, that every atom of which it is composed is an animated thinking being, endued with marvellous energy, and with that principle of all morality, all dignity, all progress, the exclusive attribute of man—Liberty. [p063]
II.
WANTS, EFFORTS, SATISFACTIONS.[19]
What a profoundly afflicting spectacle France presents to us!
It would be difficult to say if anarchy has passed from ideas to facts, or from facts to ideas, but it is certain that it pervades all, and abounds everywhere.
The poor rise up against the rich, men without fortune or profession against property; the populace against the bourgeoisie; labour against capital; agriculture against manufactures; the country against the town; the provinces against the metropolis; the denizen against the stranger.