To sum up this proposition:—
Property sells products to the laborer for more than it pays him for them; therefore it is impossible.
APPENDIX TO THE FIFTH PROPOSITION.
I. Certain reformers, and even the most of the publicists—who, though belonging to no particular school, busy themselves in devising means for the amelioration of the lot of the poorer and more numerous class—lay much stress now-a-days on a better organization of labor. The disciples of Fourier, especially, never stop shouting, "ON TO THE PHALANX!" declaiming in the same breath against the foolishness and absurdity of other sects.
They consist of half-a-dozen incomparable geniuses who have discovered that FIVE AND FOUR MAKE NINE; TAKE TWO AWAY, AND NINE REMAIN,—and who weep over the blindness of France, who refuses to believe in this astonishing arithmetic. [*]
* Fourier, having to multiply a whole number by a fraction,
never failed, they say, to obtain a product much greater than the
multiplicand. He affirmed that under his system of harmony the mercury
would solidify when the temperature was above zero. He might as well
have said that the Harmonians would make burning ice. I once asked an
intelligent phalansterian what he thought of such physics. "I do not
know," he answered; "but I believe." And yet the same man disbelieved in
the doctrine of the Real Presence.
In fact, the Fourierists proclaim themselves, on the one hand, defenders of property, of the right of increase, which they have thus formulated: TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS CAPITAL, HIS LABOR, AND HIS SKILL. On the other hand, they wish the workingman to come into the enjoyment of all the wealth of society; that is,—abridging the expression,—into the undivided enjoyment of his own product. Is not this like saying to the workingman, "Labor, you shall have three francs per day; you shall live on fifty-five sous; you shall give the rest to the proprietor, and thus you will consume three francs"?
If the above speech is not an exact epitome of Charles Fourier's system, I will subscribe to the whole phalansterian folly with a pen dipped in my own blood.
Of what use is it to reform industry and agriculture,—of what use, indeed, to labor at all,—if property is maintained, and labor can never meet its expenses? Without the abolition of property, the organization of labor is neither more nor less than a delusion. If production should be quadrupled,—a thing which does not seem to me at all impossible,—it would be labor lost: if the additional product was not consumed, it would be of no value, and the proprietor would decline to receive it as interest; if it was consumed, all the disadvantages of property would reappear. It must be confessed that the theory of passional attraction is gravely at fault in this particular, and that Fourier, when he tried to harmonize the PASSION for property,—a bad passion, whatever he may say to the contrary,—blocked his own chariot-wheels.