“Are you quite sure of that, Pierre? If any one after working ten or twenty years has produced enough property to suffice for his wants during the remainder of his days, do you pretend to hinder him from spending in his own way, in idleness if he pleases, what he had amassed by his labors?”
“Certainly not, because such a one would be living on the product of his own toil. Let a man rest in the evening after having worked hard in the morning, and let him live in ease in his old age after having produced enough by the toil of his youth; I see no harm in that. I have no wish to condemn the members of my colony to forced labor in perpetuity. The only idlers that I wish to exclude are those who live without ever having worked at all or produced anything—the rentiers, as they call them, or idle people, who live on their income, or the interest of their money.”
“Stop now, Pierre; do you admit that a man who has obtained anything by his labor has the right to do what he pleases with it?”
“Assuredly.”
“Here is a man who has made a loaf of bread. You admit his right to eat it all if he is hungry, or to set part of it aside if he has not appetite at the time for all of it, or even to throw some of it away, as he pleases.”
“Yes, it is a consequence of my principle, A chacun le produit de son travail. He who creates wealth has the right to dispose of it as he pleases. But what has that to do with your argument?”
“Just this. If he who produces a thing can do what he pleases with it, he can surely give it where he pleases. If, then, it suits me to make every day a loaf for you, and to give it to you; still more, if it pleases me to give to you out of my property or to bequeath to you after my death enough bread, or, what comes to the same thing, enough money to support you during your life, you will have acquired the means of walking about with your hands in your pockets like an idle gentleman. You will, in fact, have become a rentier.”
Never,” said Pierre, “never. If I allowed such parasites to exist in my new society it would be no better than the old.”
“Then don't talk any more about your motto, A chacun le produit de son travail. If you adopt this principle you must adopt also its consequences, whether you like them or not. If, according to your system, you admit to every one the right of disposing of the fruit of his labor, you must admit the right to receive as well as to give. Where the worker is master of his own property it depends on him whether he will create a rentier, and you cannot prevent him except by decreeing that he is incapable of disposing of what belongs to him. Beware of what must happen otherwise. If in your new society you prevented parents from giving or leaving to their children the property they have amassed, there would be risk of their amassing far less or of dissipating what they had already been able to accumulate by their industry and thrift, which would be a great loss for all. We must allow, in fact, and it is to the honor of human nature, that there are very many in this world who work more and save more for their children and for others rather than for themselves.”
“Well, sir, if in my new society there must eventually be rich and poor, workers and non-workers: if the portion of each is not necessarily proportioned to their labor then how, I wish to know, would this new society which I have taken such trouble to plan and organise, how would it differ from the society in which we now live?”