But it is especially the freedom of circulation that increases with an advance in civilization, and this advance, like the two preceding, first affects the home or inland circulation. Freedom of competition, the freedom of commerce and industry, technical expressions used to designate freedom in general in the domain of a nation's economy, is the natural conclusion drawn from the principles of individual independence and of private property. Hence its development is as slow as the development of these, and attains its full growth only in highly cultivated nations, their colonies and dependencies. In very low stages of economic development, the circulation of goods is hampered by the absence of legal security; later, by privileges accorded to a great number of families, corporate bodies, municipalities, classes, etc., and later yet by the mighty guardianship which the state exercises by its power of legislation and even of education.[577] Each one of these epochs constitutes [pg 294] the end of the preceding one, and is milder than it was. Finally comes the period of complete freedom, when every man is permitted to manage his own affairs even with injury to himself, provided the injury is confined to himself.
The later times of the Roman Empire are the best illustration of how, with the decline of the conditions which must precede freedom of competition, that freedom itself decays.[578]
Freedom of competition unchains all economic forces, good and bad. Hence, when the former preponderate, it hastens the time of a people's grandeur, as it does their decline where the latter gain the upper hand.[579] We may say of economic freedom what may be said of all other freedom, that the removal of external constraint can be justified and produces the greater good of the greater number only where a stern empire over self takes its place. Without this it would not prevent or avoid idleness, usury or over-population. Freedom must not be simply negative. It must be positive. If on account of the immaturity or over-maturity of a people, there be no sturdy middle class among them, unlimited competition may become what Bazard calls a general sauve-qui-peut (let the devil take the hindmost); what Fourier designates as a morcellement industriel, and a fraude commerciale; what M. Chevalier denominated “a battle-field on which the little are devoured by the [pg 295] big;” and in such case, as Bodz-Reymond says, the word competition, meaning simply that each one is permitted to run in whatever direction he may see a door open to him, is but another and a new expression for vagabondizing. But here the evil does not lie in too great competition, but in this, that on one side there is too little competition.[580] The opposing principle of competition is always monopoly, that is, as John Stuart Mill says, the taxation of industry in the interest of indolence and even rapacity; and protection against competition is synonymous with a dispensation from the necessity to be as industrious and clever as other people.
A protection of this nature, sufficiently effective to attain its end, would not fail to arrest the efforts of those who had accomplished something, and even to turn them backward. That freedom of competition is a species of declaration of war,[581] among men considered as producers, is certain; but, at the same time, it makes all men considered as consumers members of one society, in which all the members are equally interested, a fact too much overlooked by socialists.[582] It is the means especially by which the greatest and ever increasing portion of the forces of nature are raised to the character of the free and common property of the human race.[583] “Man is not the favorite of nature in the sense that nature has done everything for him, but in the sense that it has endowed him with the ability to do everything for himself. The right of freedom of competition may, therefore, be considered both [pg 296] the protection and the image of this provision of nature.” (Zachariä.)[584]
The person, therefore, who claims or asserts an exception from the rule of free competition, has to prove his position in every individual case, since the burthen of proof is on him. But the duty of interference on the part of the state is positively pointed out where any interest common to the whole people is not in a condition to assert itself; and negatively, when the custom which hitherto had prevented an undoubted abuse has grown too weak to continue to perform that service. In both regards I would call attention to the protection of factory children against the concurrent selfishness of their parents and masters.[585][586] Supra, § [39].
Section XCVIII.
How Goods Are Paid For.—The Rent For Goods.
Payment for goods (§ [1] ff.) of any kind can be made only in other goods.[587][588] Hence, the greater, more varied, and the better [pg 298] adapted to satisfy wants, production is, the more readily does any product find a remunerative market; more readily in England, for instance, in spite, or rather, because of, the great competition there, than in Greenland or Madagascar. From this it follows that, as a rule, a person is in a better condition to purchase more goods in proportion as he has produced more himself. According to official accounts, the average value of a harvest of wheat and potatoes in Prussia was formerly 332,500,000 thalers. In the year 1850, however, it was only 262,000,000 thalers. As a matter of course, the country people in that year could not purchase from the cities as much as in ordinary years, by a difference of 70,000,000 thalers. This illustrates how every class of people, who live by finding a free market for their products, are interested in the prosperity of all other classes. As Bastiat says: “All legitimate interests are harmonious.” The more flourishing a city, the better off are the towns around it, which furnish it with provisions; and the richer these towns, the more flourishing is the industry of the city which ministers to their wants.[589] It is important that this fact should be borne steadily in mind, especially in times of advanced civilization, when the feeling that we all have interests in common, is too apt to grow dormant. Nothing can better serve to awaken it again when it has become so. A nation, says Louis Blanc, in which one portion of the people is oppressed by another, is like a man [pg 299] wounded in the leg. The healthy limb is prevented by the sick one from performing its functions.[590]