Recognising in the soil, in natural agents, and in instruments of labour, what they incontestably possess, the gift of engendering Utility, I have endeavoured to denude them of what has been erroneously attributed to them, namely, the faculty of creating Value,—a faculty which pertains exclusively to the Services which men exchange with each other.

This simple rectification, whilst it strengthens and confirms Property, by restoring to it its true character, brings to light a most important fact, hitherto, if I am not mistaken, overlooked by Economic science—the fact that there exists a real, essential, and progressive Community,—the natural result of every social system in which liberty prevails, and the evident design of which is to conduct all men, as brethren, from primitive Equality, which is the equality of ignorance and destitution, towards an ultimate Equality in the possession of truth and material prosperity.

If this radical distinction between the Utility of things and the value of services be true in itself, and in the consequences which have been deduced from it, it is impossible to misunderstand its bearing; for it leads to nothing less than the absorption of utopian theories in science, and the reconcilement of antagonistic schools in a common faith, which satisfies all minds and all aspirations.

Men of Property and leisure!—whatever be your rank in the social scale, whatever step of the social ladder you may have reached by dint of activity, probity, order, and economy—whence come the fears which have seized upon you? The perfumed but poisoned breath of Utopia menaces your existence. You are loudly told that the fortune you have amassed for the purpose of securing a little repose in your old age, and food, instruction, and an outset in life for your children, has been acquired by you at the expense of your brethren; that you have placed yourselves [p219] between the gifts of God and the poor; that, like greedy tax-gatherers, you have levied a tribute on those gifts, under the name of Property, of Interest, and of Rent; that you have intercepted the benefits which the common Father has bestowed on his children, in order to make merchandise of them. You are called upon for restitution; and what augments your terror is, that your advocates, in conducting your defence, feel themselves too often obliged to avow that the usurpation is flagrant, but that it is necessary. Such accusations I meet with a direct and emphatic negative. You have not intercepted the gifts of God. You have received them gratuitously, it is true, at the hands of nature; but you have also gratuitously transferred them to your brethren without receiving anything. They have acted the same way towards you; and the only things which have been reciprocally compensated are physical or intellectual efforts, toils undergone, dangers braved, skill exercised, privations submitted to, pains taken, services rendered and received. You may perhaps have thought only of yourselves and your own selfish interest, but that very selfish interest has been an instrument in the hand of an infinitely prescient and wise Providence to enlarge unceasingly among men the domain of Community; for without your efforts all those useful effects which you have obtained from nature, in order to distribute them without remuneration among your brethren, would have remained for ever inert. I say without remuneration, because what you have received is simply the recompense of your efforts, and not at all the price of the gifts of God. Live, then, in peace, without fear and without misgiving. You have no other property in the world but your right to services, in exchange for other services, by you faithfully rendered, and by your brethren voluntarily accepted. Such property is legitimate, unassailable; no Utopia can prevail against it, for it enters into the very constitution of our being. No theory can ever succeed in blighting or in shaking it.

Men of toil and privations! you cannot shut your eyes to this truth, that the primitive condition of the human race is that of an entire Community,—a perfect Equality,—of poverty, of destitution, and of ignorance. Man redeems himself from this estate by the sweat of his brow, and directs his course towards another Community, that of the gifts of God, successively obtained with less effort,—towards another Equality, that of material prosperity, knowledge, and moral dignity. The progress of men on the road of improvement is unequal, indeed; and you could not complain were the more hurried and precipitate march of the vanguard of progress to retard in some measure your own advance. But in [p220] truth it is quite the reverse. No ray of light penetrates a single mind without in some degree enlightening yours. No step of progress, prompted by the conscious possession of property, but is a step of progress for you. No wealth is created which does not tend to your enfranchisement; no capital, which does not increase your enjoyments in proportion to your labour; no acquisition, which does not increase your facilities of acquisition; no Property, which does not tend to enlarge, for your benefit, the domain of Community. The natural social order has been so skillfully arranged by the Divine Architect, that those who are more advanced on the road of civilisation hold out to you, voluntarily or unconsciously, a helping hand; for the order of things has been so disposed that no man can work honestly for himself without at the same time working for all. And it is rigorously true to affirm that every attack upon this marvellous order would on your part be not only a homicide, but a suicide. Human nature is an admirable chain, which exhibits this standing miracle, that the first links communicate to all the others a progressive movement more and more rapid, onwards to the last.

Men of philanthropy! lovers of equality! blind defenders, dangerous friends of the suffering classes, who are yet far behind on the road of civilisation, you who expect the reign of Community in this world, why do you begin by unsettling all interests and shaking all received opinions? Why, in your pride, should you seek to subjugate men’s wills, and bring them under the yoke of your social inventions? Do you not see that this Community after which you sigh, and which is to inaugurate the kingdom of God upon earth, has been already thought of and provided for by God himself? Does He want your aid to provide a patrimony for his children? Has He need either of your conceptions or of your violence? Do you not see that this Community is realized more and more every day, in virtue of His admirable decrees; that for the execution of these decrees He has not trusted to your chance services and puerile arrangements, nor even to the growing expression of the sympathetic principle manifested by charity; but that He has confided the realization of His providential designs to the most active, the most personal, the most permanent of all our energies—Self-interest,—a principle imbedded in our inmost nature, and which never flags, never takes rest? Study, then, the social mechanism as it comes from the hand of the Great Mechanician, and you will find that it testifies to a universal solicitude, which far outstrips your dreams and chimeras. You will then, I hope, in place of presumptuously pretending [p221] to reconstruct the divine workmanship, be content to admire and to bless it.

I say not that there is no room in this world of ours for reforms and reformers. I say not that mankind are not to call to their service, and encourage with their gratitude, men of investigation, of science, and of earnestness,—hearts faithful to the people. Such are still but too much wanted,—not to overturn the social laws,—but to combat the artificial obstacles which disturb and reverse the action of these laws. In truth, it is difficult to understand why people should keep repeating such commonplaces as this: “Political Economy is an optimist, as far as existing facts are concerned; and affirms that whatever is is right. At the sight of what is evil, as at the sight of what is good. Economists are content to exclaim, Laissez faire.” Optimists with reference to existing facts! Then we must be ignorant that the primitive condition of man is poverty, ignorance, the reign of brute force! We must be ignorant that the moving spring of human nature is aversion to all suffering, to all fatigue; and that labour being fatigue, the earliest manifestation of selfishness among men is shown in their effort to throw this painful burden on the shoulders of each other! The words cannibalism, war, slavery, privilege, monopoly, fraud, spoliation, imposture, must either have never reached our ears, or else we must see in these abominations the necessary machinery of progress! But is there not in all this a certain amount of wilful misrepresentation, a confounding of all things for the purpose of accusing us of confounding them? When we admire the providential laws which govern human transactions—when we assert that men’s interests are harmonious—when we thence conclude that they naturally tend and gravitate towards the realization of relative equality and general progress—it is surely from the play and action of these laws, not from their perturbations and disturbances, that we educe harmony. When we say laissez faire, we surely mean, allow these laws to act, not, allow these laws to be disturbed. According as we conform to these laws or violate them, good or evil is produced; in other words, men’s interests are in harmony, provided right prevail, and services are freely and voluntarily exchanged against services. But does this imply that we are ignorant of the perpetual struggle of Wrong against Right? Does this imply that we lose sight of, or approve, the efforts which have been made in all ages, and which are still making, to alter, by force or fraud, the natural equivalence of services? This is exactly when we repudiate as a violation of the natural social laws, as an attack upon property,—for, in our view, the terms, free exchange of services, justice, property, liberty, [p222] security, all express the same idea under different aspects. It is not the principle of Property which we contest, but the antagonistic principle of Spoliation. Proprietors of all ranks! reformers of all schools! this is the mission which should reconcile and unite us.

It is time, high time, that this crusade should begin. A mere theoretical war against Property is by no means the most virulent or the most dangerous. Since the beginning of the world there has existed a practical conspiracy against it which is not likely soon to cease. War, slavery, imposture, oppressive imposts, monopolies, privileges, commercial frauds, colonies, right to employment, right to credit, right to assistance, right to instruction, progressive taxation imposed in direct or inverse proportion to our power of bearing it, are so many battering-rams directed against the tottering edifice; and if the truth must come out, would you tell me whether there are many men in France, even among those who think themselves conservative, who do not, in one form or another, lend a hand to this work of destruction?

There are people to whose optics property never appears in any other form than that of a field or a bag of crown-pieces. If you do not overstep sacred landmarks, or sensibly empty their pockets, they feel quite comfortable. But is there no other kind of Property? Is there not the Property of muscular force and intellectual power, of faculties, of ideas—in a word, the Property of Services? When I throw a service into the social scale, is it not my right that it should be held there, if I may use the expression, suspended, according to the laws of its natural equivalence; that it may there form a counterpoise to any other service which my neighbour may consent to throw into the opposite scale and tender me in exchange? The law of common consent agreed to establish a public force for the protection of property thus understood. But in what situation are we placed if this very force assumes to itself the mission of disturbing the equilibrium, under the socialist pretext that liberty gives birth to monopoly, and that the doctrine of laissez faire is odious and heartless? When things go on in this way, individual theft may be rare, and may be severely punished, but spoliation is organized, legalized, and erected into a system. Comfort yourselves, Reformers! your work is not yet done—only try to understand what that work really is.

But before proceeding to analyze spoliation, whether public or private, legal or illegal, and to consider its bearing as an element in the social problem, and the part which it plays in the business [p223] of the world, it is necessary to form just ideas, if possible, of Community and Property; for, as we shall by-and-by see, spoliation forms a limit to property, just as property forms a limit to community.

From the preceding Chapters, especially that which treats of Utility and Value, we may deduce this formula:

Every man enjoys GRATUITOUSLY all the utilities furnished or created by nature, on condition of taking the trouble to appropriate them, or of returning an equivalent service to those who render him the service of taking that trouble for him.

Here we have two facts combined and mixed up together, although in their own nature distinct.

We have the gifts of nature—gratuitous materials, gratuitous forces. This is the domain of Community.

We have also human efforts devoted to the appropriation of these materials, to the direction of these forces,—efforts which are exchanged, estimated, and compensated. This is the domain of Property.

In other words, as regards both, we are not owners of the Utility of things, but of their Value, and value is simply the appreciation of reciprocal services.

Property, Community, are two ideas correlative to the ideas of onerosity and gratuitousness, on which they are founded.

That which is gratuitous is common, for every one enjoys a portion of it, and enjoys it unconditionally.

That which is onerous is appropriated, because trouble taken, effort made, is the condition of its enjoyment, as the enjoyment is the reason for taking the trouble, or making the effort.

Does an exchange intervene? It is effected by a comparative estimate of the two efforts or the two services.

This reference to trouble, to pains, implies the existence of an Obstacle. We may then conclude that the object sought for approximates more nearly to the gratuitous and the common, in proportion as the obstacle is less; as, by hypothesis, the complete absence of obstacle would render it perfectly gratuitous and common.

Now, with reference to human nature, which is progressive and perfectible, the obstacle can never be regarded as an absolute and invariable quantity. It diminishes. Then the pains taken diminish along with it—and the service with the pains—and value with the service—and property with value.

And the Utility remains the same. Then the gratuitous and the common have gained all that onerosity and property have lost. [p224]

To determine man to labour he must have a motive, and that motive is the satisfaction he has in view, or utility. His undoubted and irrepressible tendency is to realize the greatest possible satisfaction with the least possible labour, to cause the greatest amount of utility to correspond with the greatest amount of property. Whence it follows that the mission of Property, or rather of the spirit of property, is to realize, in a greater and greater degree, Community.

The starting point of the human race being the maximum of poverty, or the maximum of obstacles to be overcome, it is clear that for all that is gained from one age to another we are indebted to the spirit of property.

This being so, is there to be found in the world a single theoretical adversary of the institution of property? Is it possible to imagine a social force at once so just and so popular? The fundamental dogma of Proudhon himself is the mutuality of services. On this point we are agreed. What we differ upon is, that I give this the name of Property, because, on going to the root of the matter, I am convinced that men, if they are free, neither have, nor can have, any other property than that of value, or of services. On the contrary, Proudhon, like most Economists, thinks that certain natural agents have a value which is inherent in them, and that in consequence of that they are appropriated. But as regards property in services, far from contesting it, he adopts it as his creed. Do you wish to go still farther? to go the length of asserting that a man should not have a right of property in his own exertions? Will it be said that by exchange it is not enough to transfer gratuitously the co-operation of natural agents, but also to cede gratuitously one’s own efforts? This is indeed a dangerous doctrine; it is to glorify slavery; for to assert that certain men must render, is to assert that other men must receive, services which are not remunerated, and that is slavery. But if you say that this gratuitous interchange must be reciprocal, you get into an incomprehensible logomachy; for either there is some equity in exchange, and then the services will, in one way or another, be estimated and compensated; or they will not be estimated and compensated,—in which case the one party will render a great amount of service, and the other a small amount, and you will fall back again into slavery.

But it is impossible to contest the legitimate nature of Property in services which are exchanged on the principle of equivalence. To explain their legitimacy we have no need to have recourse to philosophy, or jurisprudence, or metaphysics. Socialists, Economists, [p225] Advocates of Equality and Fraternity,—I defy the whole body, numerous as it is, to raise even the shadow of an objection against the legitimate mutuality of voluntary services, and consequently against Property, such as I have defined it, such as it actually exists in the natural social order.

I know very well that in practice the reign of Property is far from being an undivided sway, and that we have always to deal with an antagonistic fact. There are services which are not voluntary; there is remuneration which is not freely stipulated; there are services whose equivalence is impaired by force or by fraud; in a word, there is Spoliation. The legitimate principle of Property, however, is not thereby invalidated but confirmed. The very fact of its being violated proves its existence. If we put faith in anything in this world—in facts, in justice, in universal assent, in human language—we must admit that these two words, Property and Spoliation, express ideas which are as opposite, as irreconcilable, as far from being identical as yes and no, light and darkness, good and evil, harmony and discord. Taken literally, the celebrated formula that property is theft is absurd in the very highest degree. It would not be more monstrous to say that theft is property, that what is legitimate is illegitimate, that what is is not, etc. The author of this whimsical aphorism probably wished to show how ingeniously he could support a paradox, and meant no more than this, that certain men are paid not only for work which they do but for work which they don’t do, thus appropriating to themselves, exclusively, gratuitous utility—the gifts vouchsafed by God for the good of all. In this case all that we have to do is to prove the assertion, and substitute the truism that theft is theft.

To steal means, in ordinary language, to appropriate, by force or fraud, a value, to the prejudice and without the consent of the person who has created that value. It is easy to see how a false Political Economy has succeeded in enlarging the sense of that ugly word steal. You begin by confounding utility with value. Then, as nature co-operates in the creation of utility, you conclude that nature also concurs in the creation of Value, and you say that this portion of value, being the fruit of no one’s labour, belongs to all. At length, finding that value is never transferred without remuneration, you add, that the man who exacts a recompense for a value which is the creation of nature, which is independent of all human labour, which is inherent in things, and is by the destination of Providence one of their intrinsic qualities, like weight or porosity, form or colour, commits a robbery.

An exact analysis of value overturns this scaffolding of [p226] subtilties intended to prop up a monstrous assimilation of Property with Spoliation.

God has placed certain Materials and certain Forces at the disposal of man. In order to obtain possession of these materials and forces, Labour is necessary, or it is not. If it be not necessary, no one will voluntarily consent to purchase from another, by means of an effort, what, without any effort, he can obtain from the hands of Nature. In this case, services, exchange, value, Property, are out of the question. If, on the other hand, labour be necessary, in equity it falls upon the person who is to receive the satisfaction; whence it follows that the satisfaction is the recompense of the pains taken, the effort made, the labour undergone. Here you have the principle of Property. This being so, a man takes pains, or submits to labour, for his own benefit, and becomes possessed of the whole utility realized by this labour co-operating with nature. He takes pains, or submits to labour, for another, and in that case he bargains to receive in return an equivalent service, which is likewise the vehicle of utility, and the result exhibits two Efforts, two Utilities which have changed hands, and two Satisfactions. But we must not lose sight of this, that the transaction is effected by the comparison, by the appreciation, not of the two utilities (they cannot be brought to this test), but of the two services exchanged. It is then exact to say that, in a personal point of view, man, by means of labour, becomes proprietor of natural utility (that is the object of his labour), whatever be the relation (which may vary ad infinitum) of labour to utility. But in a social point of view, or in reference to each other, men are never proprietors except of value, the foundation of which is not the liberality of nature, but human service, pains taken, danger encountered, skill displayed, in securing that liberality. In a word, in what concerns natural and gratuitous utility, the last acquirer, the person who is the recipient of the satisfaction, is placed, by exchange, in the shoes of the first labourer. The latter has found himself in presence of a gratuitous utility which he has taken the pains to appropriate; the former returns him an equivalent service, and thus substitutes himself in the other’s right and place; utility is acquired by him by the same title, that is to say, by a gratuitous title, on condition of pains taken. There is here, neither in fact nor in appearance, any improper interception of the gifts of God.

I venture, then, to lay down this proposition as unassailable:

In relation to one another, men are proprietors only of values, and values represent only services compared, and voluntarily received and rendered. [p227]

That, on the one hand, the true meaning of the word value is what I have already demonstrated it to be (Chapter V.); and that, on the other, men are never, and never can be, as regards each other, proprietors of anything but value, is evident as well from reasoning as from experience. From reasoning—for why should I go to purchase from a man, by means of an effort, what, without any effort, I can obtain from nature? From universal experience, which is too weighty to be despised in this question,—nothing being more fitted to give us confidence in a theory than the rational and practical acquiescence of men of all ages and all countries. Now I say that universal consent ratifies the sense which I give here to the word Property. When a public officer makes an inventory after a death, or by authority of justice, of when a merchant, manufacturer, or farmer does the same thing for his own satisfaction, or when it is done by officials under a bankruptcy—what do they inscribe on the stamped rolls as each object presents itself? Is it its utility, its intrinsic merit? No, it is its value, that is to say, the equivalent of the trouble which, any purchaser taken at random would have in procuring himself a similar commodity. Does a jury named by a judge to report upon a work or a commodity inquire whether it be more useful than another work or commodity? Do they take into consideration the enjoyments which may be thereby procured? Do they esteem a hammer more than a china jar, because the hammer is admirably adapted to make the law of gravitation available to its possessor? or a glass of water more than a diamond, because the former is capable of rendering more substantial service? or the work of Say more than the work of Fourier, because from the former we can draw more rational enjoyment and more solid instruction? No, they value, they set down the value, in rigorous conformity, observe, with my definition, or, to say better, it is my definition which is in conformity with their practice. They take into account, not the natural advantages, or the gratuitous utility, attached to each commodity, but the exertion which each acquirer should have to make for himself, or to require another to make for him, in order to procure it. They never think of the exertion which nature has made, if I may hazard the expression, but upon the exertion which the purchaser would have had to make. And when the operation is terminated, when the public is told the sum total of Value which is carried to the balance-sheet, they exclaim with one voice, Here is the wealth which is available to the Proprietor.

As property includes nothing but value, and as value expresses only a relation, it follows that property itself is only a relation. [p228]

When the public, on the inspection of two inventories, pronounces one man to be richer than another, it is not meant to say that the relative amount of the two properties is indicative of the relative absolute wealth of the two men, or the amount of enjoyments they can command. There enters into positive satisfactions and enjoyments a certain amount of common and gratuitous utility which alters this proportion very much. As regards the light of day, the air we breathe, the heat of the sun, all men are equal; and Inequality—as indicative of a difference in property or value —has reference only to onerous utility.

Now I have often said, and I shall probably have occasion frequently to repeat the remark (for it is the finest and most striking, although perhaps the least understood, of the social harmonies, and includes all the others), that it is of the essence of progress—and indeed in this alone progress consists—to transform onerous into gratuitous utility—to diminish value without diminishing utility—to permit each individual to procure the same things with less effort, either to make or to remunerate; to increase continually the mass of things which are common, and the enjoyment of which, being distributed in a uniform manner among all, effaces by degrees the Inequality which results from difference of fortune.

We must not omit to analyze very carefully the result of this mechanism.

In contemplating the phenomena of the social world, how often have I had occasion to feel the profound justice of Rousseau’s saying: “Il faut beaucoup de philosophie pour observer ce qu’on voit tous les jours!” It is difficult to observe accurately what we see every day; Custom, that veil which blinds the eyes of the vulgar, and which the attentive observer cannot always throw off, prevents our discerning the most marvellous of all the Economic phenomena: real wealth falling incessantly from the domain of Property into that of Community.

Let us endeavour to demonstrate and explain this democratic evolution, and, if possible, test its range and its effects.

I have remarked elsewhere that if we desire to compare two epochs as regards real wealth and prosperity, we must refer all to a common standard, which is unskilled labour measured by time, and ask ourselves this question—What difference in the amount of satisfaction, according to the degree of advancement which society has reached, is a determinate quantity of unskilled labour—for example, a day’s work of a common labourer—capable of yielding us? [p229]

This question implies two others:

What was the relation of the satisfaction to unskilled labour at the beginning of the period? What is it now?

The difference will be the measure of the advance which gratuitous utility has made relatively to onerous utility—the domain of community relatively to that of property.

I believe that for the politician no problem can be proposed more interesting and instructive than this; and the reader must pardon me if, in order to arrive at a satisfactory solution of it, I fatigue him with too many examples.

I made, at the outset, a sort of catalogue of the most common human wants: respiration, food, clothing, lodging, locomotion, instruction, amusement, etc.

Let us resume the same order, and inquire what amount of satisfactions a common day-labourer could at the beginning, and can now, procure himself, by a determinate number of days’ labour.

Respiration.—Here all is completely gratuitous and common from the beginning. Nature does all, and leaves us nothing to do. Efforts, services, value, property, progress, are all out of the question. As regards utility, Diogenes is as rich as Alexander—as regards value, Alexander is as rich as Diogenes.

Food.—At present, the value of a hectolitre of corn in France is the equivalent of from 15 to 20 days’ work of a common unskilled labourer. This is a fact which we may regard as unimportant, but it is not the less worthy of remark. It is a fact that in our day, viewing humanity in its least advanced aspect, and as represented by a penniless workman, enjoyment measured by a hectolitre of corn can be obtained by an expenditure of 15 days’ unskilled labour. The ordinary calculation is, that three hectolitres of corn annually are required for the subsistence of one man. The common labourer, then, produces, if not his subsistence, what comes to the same thing, the value of his subsistence, by an expenditure of from 45 to 60 days’ labour in the year. If we represent the type of value by one (in this case one day’s unskilled labour), the value of a hectolitre of corn will be expressed by 15, 18, or 20, according to the year. The relation of these two values is, say, one to fifteen.

To discover if progress has been made, and to measure it, we must inquire what this relation was in the early days of the human race. In truth, I dare not hazard a figure, but there is one way of clearing up the difficulty. When you hear a man declaiming against the social order, against the appropriation of the soil, against rent, against machinery, lead him into the middle [p230] of a primitive forest and in sight of a pestilential morass. Say to him, I wish to free you from the yoke of which you complain,—I wish to withdraw you from the atrocious struggles of anarchical competition, from the antagonism of interests, from the selfishness of wealth, from the oppression of property, from the crushing rivalry of machinery, from the stifling atmosphere of society. Here is land exactly like what the first clearers had to encounter. Take as much of it as you please—take it by tens, by hundreds of acres. Cultivate it yourself. All that you can make it produce is yours. I make but one condition, that you will not have recourse to that society of which you represent yourself as the victim.

As regards the soil, observe, this man would be placed in exactly the same situation which mankind at large occupied at the beginning. Now I fear not to be contradicted when I assert that this man would not produce a hectolitre of corn in two years: Ratio 15 to 600.

And now we can measure the progress which has been made. As regards corn—and despite his being obliged to pay rent for his land, interest for his capital, and hire for his tools—or rather because he pays them—a labourer now obtains with 15 days’ work what he would formerly have had difficulty in procuring with 600 days’ work. The value of corn, then, measured by unskilled labour, has fallen from 600 to 15, or from 40 to 1. A hectolitre of corn has for man the same utility it had the day after the deluge—it contains the same quantity of alimentary substance—it satisfies the same want, and in the same degree. It constitutes an equal amount of real wealth—it does not constitute an equal amount of relative wealth. Its production has been transferred in a great measure to the charge of nature. It is obtained with less human effort. It renders less service in passing from hand to hand, it has less value. In a word, it has become gratuitous—not absolutely, but in the proportion of 40 to 1.

And not only has it become gratuitous—it has become common to the same extent. For it is not to the profit of the person who produces the corn that 39-40ths of the effort have been annihilated, but to the advantage of the consumer, whatever be the kind of labour to which he devotes himself.

Clothing.—We have here again the same phenomenon. A common day-labourer enters one of the warehouses at the Marais,54 and there obtains clothing corresponding to twenty days of his labour, which we suppose to be unskilled. Were he to attempt to make [p231] this clothing himself, his whole life would be insufficient. Had he desired to obtain the same clothing in the time of Henri Quatre, it would have cost him three or four hundred days’ work. What then has become of this difference in the value of these stuffs in relation to the quantity of unskilled labour? It has been annihilated, because the gratuitous forces of nature now perform a great portion of the work, and it has been annihilated to the advantage of mankind at large.

For we must not fail to remark here, that every man owes his neighbour a service equivalent to what he has received from him. If, then, the art of the weaver had made no progress, if weaving were not executed in part by gratuitous forces, the weaver would still be occupied two or three hundred days in fabricating these stuffs, and our workman would require to give him two or three hundred days’ work in order to obtain the clothing he wants. And since the weaver cannot succeed, with all his wish to do so in obtaining two or three hundred days’ labour in recompense for the intervention of gratuitous forces, and for the progress achieved, we are warranted in saving that this progress has been effected to the advantage of the purchaser or consumer, and that it is a gain to society at large.

Conveyance.—Prior to all progress, when the human race, like our day-labourer, was obliged to make use of primitive and unskilled labour, if a man had desired to have a load of a hundredweight transported from Paris to Bayonne, he would have had only this alternative, either to take the load on his own shoulders, and perform the work himself, travelling over hill and dale, which would have required a year’s labour, or else to ask some one to perform this rough piece of work for him; and as, by hypothesis, the person who undertook this work would have to employ the same means and the same time, he would undoubtedly demand a remuneration equal to a year’s labour. At that period, then, the value of unskilled labour being one, that of transport was 300 for the weight of a cwt. and a distance of 200 leagues.

But things are changed now. In fact there is no workman in Paris who cannot obtain the same result by the sacrifice of two days’ labour. The alternative indeed is still the same. He must either do the work himself, or get others to do it for him by remunerating them. If our day-labourer perform it himself, it will still cost him a year of fatigue; but if he applies to men who make it their business, he will find twenty carriers to do what he wants for three or four francs, that is to say, for the equivalent of two days’ unskilled labour. Thus the value of such labour being [p232] represented by one, that of transport, which was represented by 300, is now reduced to two.

In what way has this astonishing revolution been brought about? Ages have been required to accomplish it. Animals have been trained, mountains have been pierced, valleys have been filled up, bridges have been thrown across rivers, sledges and afterwards wheeled carriages have been invented, obstacles, which give rise to labour, services, value, have been removed; in short, we have succeeded in accomplishing, with labour equal to two, what our remote ancestors would have effected only by labour equal to 300. This progress has been realized by men who had no thought but for their own interests. And yet, who profits by it now? Our poor day-labourer, and with him society at large.

Let no one say that this is not Community. I say that it is Community in the strictest sense of the word. At the outset the satisfaction in question was, in the estimation of all, the equivalent of 300 days’ unskilled labour, or a proportionally smaller amount of skilled labour. Now 298 parts of this labour out of 300 are performed by nature, and mankind are exonerated to a corresponding extent. Now, evidently all men are in exactly the same situation as regards the obstacles which have been removed, the distance which has been wiped out, the fatigue which has been obviated, the value which has been annihilated, since all obtain the result without having to pay for it. What they pay for is the human effort which remains still to be made, as compared with and measured by two days’ work of an unskilled labourer. In other words, the man who has not himself effected this improvement, and who has only muscular force to offer in exchange, has still to give two days’ labour to secure the satisfaction he wishes to obtain. All other men can obtain it with a smaller sacrifice of labour. The Paris lawyer, earning 30,000 francs a year, can obtain it for a twenty-fifth part of a day’s labour, etc.,—by which we see that all men are equal as regards the value annihilated, and that the inequality is restrained within the limits of the portion of value which survives the change, that is, within the domain of Property.

Economical science labours under a disadvantage in being obliged to have recourse to hypothetical cases. The reader is taught to believe that the phenomena which we wish to describe are to be discovered only in special cases, adduced for the sake of illustration. But it is evident that what we have said of corn, clothing, and means of transport, is true of everything else. When an author generalizes, it is for the reader to particularize; and [p233] when the former devotes himself to cold and forbidding analysis, the latter may at least indulge in the pleasures of synthesis.

The synthetic law may be reduced to this formula:

Value, which is social property, springs from Effort and Obstacle.

In proportion as the obstacle is lessened, effort, value, or the domain of property, is diminished along with it.

With reference to each given satisfaction, Property always recedes and Community always advances.

Must we then conclude with M. Proudhon that the days of Property are numbered? Because, as regards each useful result to be realized, each satisfaction to be obtained, Property recedes before Community, are we thence to conclude that the former is about to be absorbed and annihilated altogether?

To adopt this conclusion would be to mistake completely the nature of man. We encounter here a sophism analogous to the one we have already refuted on the subject of the interest of capital. Interest has a tendency to fall, it is said; then it is destined ultimately to disappear altogether. Value and property go on diminishing; then they are destined, it is now said, to be annihilated.

The whole sophism consists in omitting the words, for each determinate result. It is quite true that men obtain determinate results with a less amount of effort—it is in this respect that they are progressive and perfectible—it is on this account that we are able to affirm that the relative domain of property becomes narrower, looking at it as regards each given satisfaction.

But it is not true that all the results which it is possible to obtain are ever exhausted, and hence it is absurd to suppose that it is in the nature of progress to lessen or limit the absolute domain of property.

We have repeated often, and in every shape, that each given effort may, in course of time, serve as the vehicle of a greater amount of gratuitous utility, without our being warranted thence to conclude that men should ever cease to make efforts. All that we can conclude from it is, that their forces, thus rendered disposable, will be employed in combating other obstacles, and will realize, with equal labour, satisfactions hitherto unknown.

I must enlarge still farther on this idea. These are not times to leave anything to possible misconstruction when we venture to pronounce the fearful words, Property and Community.

Man in a state of isolation can, at any given moment of his existence, exert only a certain amount of effort; and the same thing holds of society. [p234]

When man in a state of isolation realizes a step of progress, by making natural agents co-operate with his own labour, the sum of his efforts is reduced by so much, in relation to the useful result sought for. It would be reduced not relatively only, but absolutely, if this man, content with his original condition, should convert his progress into leisure, and should abstain from devoting to the acquisition of new enjoyments that portion of effort which is now rendered disposable. That would take for granted that ambition, desire, aspiration, were limited forces, and that the human heart was not indefinitely expansible; but it is quite otherwise. Robinson Crusoe has no sooner handed over part of his work to natural agents, than he devotes his efforts to new enterprises. The sum total of his efforts remains the same,—but one portion of these efforts, aided by a greater amount of natural and gratuitous co-operation, has become more productive, more prolific. This is exactly the phenomenon which we see realized in society.

Because the plough, the harrow, the hammer, the saw, oxen, and horses, the sail, water-power, steam, have successively relieved mankind from an enormous amount of labour, in proportion to each result obtained, it does not necessarily follow that this labour, thus set free and rendered disposable, should lie dormant. Remember what has been already said as to the indefinite expansibility of our wants and desires—and note what is passing around you—and you will not fail to see that as often as man succeeds in vanquishing an obstacle by the aid of natural agents, he sets his own forces to grapple with other obstacles. We have more facility in the art of printing than we had formerly, but we print more. Each book corresponds to a less amount of human effort, to less value, less property; but we have more books, and, on the whole, the same amount of effort, value, property. The same thing might be said of clothing, of houses, of railways, of all human productions. It is not the aggregate of values which has diminished; it is the aggregate of utilities which has increased. It is not the absolute domain of Property which has been narrowed; it is the absolute domain of Community which has been enlarged. Progress has not paralyzed labour; it has augmented wealth.

Things that are gratuitous and common to all are within the domain of natural forces; and it is as true in theory as in fact that this domain is constantly extending.

Value and Property are within the domain of human efforts, of reciprocal services, and this domain becomes narrower and narrower as regards each given result, but not as regards the aggregate of results; as regards each determinate satisfaction, but not [p235] as regards the aggregate of satisfactions, because the amount of possible enjoyments is without limit.

It is as true, then, that relative Property gives place to Community, as it is false that absolute Property tends to disappear altogether. Property is a pioneer which accomplishes its work in one circle, and then passes into another. Before property could disappear altogether we must suppose every obstacle to have been removed, labour to have been superseded, human efforts to have become useless; we must suppose men to have no longer need to effect exchanges, or render services to each other; we must suppose all production to be spontaneous, and enjoyment to spring directly from desire; in a word, we must suppose men to have become equal to gods. Then, indeed, all would be gratuitous, and we should have all things in common. Effort, service, value, property, everything indicative of our native weakness and infirmity, would cease to exist.

In vain man raises himself in the social scale, and advances on the road of civilisation—he is as far as ever from Omnipotence. It is one of the attributes of the Divinity, as far as we can understand what is so much above human reason, that between volition and result no obstacle is interposed. God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And it is the powerlessness of man to express that to which there is so little analogous in his own nature, which reduced Moses to the necessity of supposing between the divine will and the creation of light the intervention of an obstacle in the shape even of a word to be pronounced. But whatever advance man, in virtue of his progressive nature, may be destined yet to make, we may safely affirm that he will never succeed in freeing himself entirely from the obstacles which encumber his path, or in rendering himself independent of the labour of his head and of his hands. The reason is obvious. In proportion as certain obstacles are overcome, his desires dilate and expand, and new obstacles oppose themselves to new efforts. We shall always, then, have labour to perform, to exchange, to estimate, and to value. Property will exist until the consummation of all things, increasing in mass in proportion as men become more active and more numerous; whilst at the same time each effort, each service, each value, each portion of property, considered relatively, will, in passing from hand to hand, serve as the vehicle of an increasing proportion of common and gratuitous utility.

The reader will observe that we use the word Property in a very extended sense, but a sense which on that account is not the [p236] less exact. Property is the right which a man possesses of applying to his own use his own efforts, or of not giving them away except in consideration of equivalent efforts. The distinction between Proprietors and ProlÉtaires, then, is radically false, unless it is pretended that there is a class of men who do no work, who have no control over their own exertions, or over the services which they render and those which they receive in exchange.

It is wrong to restrict the term Property to one of its special forms, to capital, to land, to what yields interest or rent; and it is in consequence of this erroneous definition that we proceed afterwards to separate men into two antagonist classes. Analysis demonstrates that interest and rent are the fruit of services rendered, and have the same origin, the same nature, the same rights as manual labour.

The world may be regarded as a vast workshop which Providence has supplied abundantly with materials and forces of which human labour makes use. Anterior efforts, present efforts, even future efforts, or promises of efforts, are exchanged for each other. Their relative merit, as established by exchange, and independently of gratuitous forces and materials, brings out the element of value; and it is of the value created by each individual that each is owner or proprietor.

But what does it signify, it may be said, that a man is proprietor only of the value, or of the acknowledged merit of his service? The possession of the value carries along with it that of the utility which is mingled with it. John has two sacks of corn. Peter has only one. John, you say, is twice as rich in value. Surely, then, he is also twice as rich in utility, even natural utility. He has twice as much to eat.

Unquestionably it is so: but has he not performed double the labour?

Let us come, nevertheless, to the root of the objection.

Essential, absolute wealth resides, as we have said, in utility. The very word implies this. It is utility alone which renders service (uti—in French servir). It alone has relation to our wants, and it is it alone which man has in view when he devotes himself to labour. Utility at all events is the ultimate object of pursuit; for things do not satisfy our hunger or quench our thirst because they include value, but because they possess utility.

We muse take into account, however, the phenomenon which society exhibits in this respect.

Man in a state of isolation seeks to realize utility without [p237] thinking about value, of which, in that state, he can have no idea.

In the social state, on the contrary, man seeks to realize value irrespective of utility. The commodity he produces is not intended to satisfy his own wants, and he has little interest in its being useful or not. It is for the person who desires to acquire it to judge of that. What concerns the producer is, that it should bear as high a value as possible in the market, as he is certain that the utilities he has to receive in return will be in proportion to the value of what he carries thither.

The division of labour and of occupation leads to this result, that each produces what he does not himself consume, and consumes what he does not himself produce. As producers, what we are in quest of is value; as consumers, what we seek is utility. Universal experience testifies to this. The man who polishes a diamond, or embroiders lace, or distils brandy, or cultivates the poppy, never inquires whether the consumption of these commodities is good or bad in itself. He gives his work, and if his work realizes value, that is enough for him.

And let me here remark in passing, that the moral or immoral has nothing to do with labour, but with desire; and that society is improved, not by rendering the producer, but the consumer, more moral. What an outcry was raised against the English on account of their cultivating opium in India for the deliberate purpose, it was said, of poisoning the Chinese! This was to misunderstand and misapply the principle of morality. No one will ever be effectually prevented from producing a commodity which, being in demand, is possessed of value. It is for the man who demands a particular species of enjoyment to calculate the effects of it; and it is in vain that we attempt to divorce foresight from responsibility. Our vine-growers produce wine, and will produce it as long as it possesses value, without troubling themselves to inquire whether this wine leads to drunkenness in Europe or to suicide in America. It is the judgment which men form as to their wants and satisfactions that determines the direction of labour. This is true even of man in an isolated state; and if a foolish vanity had spoken more loudly to Robinson Crusoe than hunger, he would, in place of devoting his time to the chase, have employed it in arranging feathers for his hat. It is the same with nations as with individuals—serious people have serious pursuits, and frivolous people devote themselves to frivolous occupations.

But to return:

The man who works for himself has in view utility. [p238]

The man who works for others has in view value.

Now Property, as I have defined it, is founded on Value, and value being simply a relation, it follows that property is also a relation.

Were there only one man upon the earth, the idea of Property would never enter his mind. Monarch of all he surveyed, surrounded with utilities which he had only to adapt to his use, never encountering any analogous right to serve as a limit to his own, how should it ever come into his head to say This is mine? That would imply the correlative assertion, This is not mine, or This belongs to another. Meum and tuum are inconsistent with isolation, and the word Property necessarily implies relation; but it gives us emphatically to understand that a thing is proper to one person, only by giving us to understand that it is not proper to anybody else.

“The first man,” says Rousseau, “who having enclosed a field, took it into his head to say This is mine, was the true founder of civil society.”

What does the enclosure mean if it be not indicative of exclusion, and consequently of relation? If its object were only to defend the field against the intrusion of animals, it was a precaution, not a sign of property. A boundary, on the contrary, is a mark of property, not of precaution.

Thus men are truly proprietors only in relation to one another; and this being so, of what are they proprietors? Of value, as we discover very clearly in the exchanges they make with each other.

Let us, according to our usual practice, take a very simple case by way of illustration.

Nature labours, and has done so probably from all eternity, to invest spring water with those qualities which fit it for quenching our thirst, and which qualities, so far as we are concerned, constitute its utility. It is assuredly not my work, for it has been elaborated without my assistance, and quite unknown to me. In this respect I can truly say that water is to me the gratuitous gift of God. What is my own proper work is the effort which I have made in going to fetch my supply of water for the day.

Of what do I become proprietor by that act?

As regards myself, I am proprietor, if I may use the expression, of all the utility with which nature has invested this water. I can turn it to my own use in any way I think proper. It is for that purpose that I have taken the trouble to fetch it. To dispute my right would be to say that, although men cannot live without [p239] drinking, they have no right to drink the water which they have procured by their own exertions. I do not believe that the Communists, although they go very far, will go the length of asserting this, and even under the rÉgime of Cabet, the lambs of Icaria would be allowed to quench their thirst in the limpid stream.

But in relation to other men, who are free to do as I do, I am not, and cannot be, proprietor except of what is called, by metonymy, the value of the water, that is to say, the value of the service which I render in procuring it.

My right to drink this water being granted, it is impossible to contest my right to give it away. And the right of the other contracting party to go to the spring, as I did, and draw water for himself, being admitted, it is equally impossible to contest his right to accept the water which I have fetched. If the one has a right to give, and the other, in consideration of a payment voluntarily bargained for, to accept, this water, the first is then the proprietor in relation to the second. It is sad to write upon Political Economy at a time when we cannot advance a step without having recourse to demonstrations so puerile.

But on what basis is the arrangement we have supposed come to? It is essential to know this, in order to appreciate the whole social bearing of the word Property,—a word which sounds so ill in the ears of democratic sentimentalism.

It is clear that, both parties being free, we must take into consideration the trouble I have had, and the trouble I have saved to the other party, as the circumstances which constitute value. We discuss the conditions of the bargain, and, if we come to terms, there is neither exaggeration nor subtilty in saying that my neighbour has acquired gratuitously, or, if you will, as gratuitously as I did, all the natural utility of the water. Do you desire proof that the conditions, more or less onerous, of the transaction are determined by the human efforts and not by the intrinsic utility? It will be granted that the utility remains the same whether the spring is distant or near at hand. It is the amount of exertion made, or to be made, which depends upon the distance; and since the remuneration varies with the exertion, it is in the latter, and not in the utility, that the principle of relative value and Property resides.

It is certain, then, that, in relation to others, I am, and can be, proprietor only of my efforts, of my services, which have nothing in common with the recondite and mysterious processes by which nature communicates utility to the things which are the subject [p240] of those services. It would be in vain for me to carry my pretensions farther—at this point we must always in fact encounter the limit of Property;—for if I exact more than the value of my services, my neighbour will do the work for himself. This limit is absolute and unchangeable. It fully explains and vindicates Property, thus reduced to the natural and simple right of demanding one service for another. It shows that the enjoyment of natural utility is appropriated only nominally and in appearance; that the expression, Property in an acre of land, in a hundredweight of iron, in a quarter of wheat, in a yard of cloth, is truly a metonymy, like the expression, Value of water, of iron, and so forth; and that so far as nature has given these things to men, they enjoy them gratuitously and in common; in a word, that Community is in perfect harmony with Property, the gifts of God remaining in the domain of the one, and human services forming alone the very legitimate domain of the other.

But from my having chosen a very simple example in order to point out the line of demarcation which separates the domain of what is common from the domain of what has been appropriated, you are not to conclude that this line loses itself and disappears, even in the most complicated transactions. It continues always to show itself in every free transaction. The labour of going to fetch water from the spring is very simple, no doubt; but when you examine the thing more narrowly, you will be convinced that the labour of raising corn is only more complicated because it embraces a series of efforts quite as simple, in each of which the work of nature co-operates with that of man, so that in fact the example I have shown may be regarded as the type of every economical fact. Take the case of water, of corn, of cloth, of books, of transport, of pictures, of the ballet, of the opera,—in all, certain circumstances, I allow, may impart such value to certain services, but no one is ever paid for anything else than services,—never certainly for the co-operation of nature,—and the reason is obvious, because one of the contracting parties has it always in his power to say, If you demand from me more than your service is worth, I shall apply to another quarter, or do the work for myself.

But I am not content to vindicate Property; I should wish to make it an object of cherished affection even to the most determined Communists. And to accomplish this, all that is necessary is to describe the popular, progressive, and equalizing part which it plays; and to demonstrate clearly, not only that it does not monopolize and concentrate in a few hands the gifts of God, but that its special mission is to enlarge continually the sphere of [p241] Community. In this respect the natural laws of society are much more ingenious than the artificial systems of Plato, Sir Thomas More, FÉnÉlon, or Monsieur Cabet.

That there are satisfactions which men enjoy, gratuitously and in common, upon a footing of the most perfect equality,—that there is in the social order, underlying Property, a real Community,—no one will dispute. To see this it is not necessary that you should be either an Economist or a Socialist, but that you should have eyes in your head. In certain respects all the children of God are treated in precisely the same way. All are equal as regards the law of gravitation, which attaches them to the earth, as regards the air we breathe, the light of day, the water of the brook. This vast and measureless common fund, which has nothing whatever to do with Value or Property, J. B. Say denominates natural wealth, in opposition to social wealth; Proudhon, natural property, in opposition to acquired property; ConsidÉrant, natural capital, in opposition to capital which is created; Saint-Chamans, the wealth of enjoyment, in opposition to the wealth of value. We have denominated it gratuitous utility, in contradistinction to onerous utility. Call it what you will, it exists, and that entitles us to say that there is among men a common fund of gratuitous and equal satisfactions.

And if wealth, social, acquired, created, of value, onerous, in a word, Property, is unequally distributed, we cannot affirm that it is unjustly so, seeing that it is in each man’s case proportional to the services which give rise to it, and of which it is simply the measure and estimate. Besides, it is clear that this Inequality is lessened by the existence of the common fund, in virtue of the mathematical rule: the relative inequality of two unequal numbers is lessened by adding equal numbers to each of them. When our inventories, then, show that one man is twice as rich as another man, that proportion ceases to be exact when we take into consideration their equal share in the gratuitous utility furnished by nature, and the inequality would be gradually effaced and wiped away if this common fund were itself progressive.

The problem, then, is to find out whether this common fund is a fixed invariable quantity, given to mankind by Providence in the beginning, and once for all, above which the appropriated fund is superimposed, apart from the existence of any relation or action between these two orders of phenomena.

Economists have concluded that the social order had no influence upon this natural and common fund of wealth; and this is their reason for excluding it from the domain of Political Economy. [p242]

The Socialists go farther. They believe that the constitution of society tends to make this common fund pass into the region of Property, that it consecrates, to the profit of a few, the usurpation of what belongs to all; and this is the reason why they rise up against Political Economy, which denies this fatal tendency, and against modern society, which submits to it.

The truth is, that Socialism, in this particular, taxes Political Economy with inconsistency, and with some justice too; for after having declared that there are no relations between common and appropriated wealth, Economists have invalidated their own assertion, and prepared the way for the socialist grievance. They did so the moment that, confounding value with utility, they asserted that the materials and forces of nature, that is to say, the gifts of God, had an intrinsic value, a value inherent in them,—for value implies, always and necessarily, appropriation. From that moment they lost the right and the means of logically vindicating Property.

What I maintain—and maintain with a conviction amounting to absolute certainty—is this: that the appropriated fund exerts a constant action upon the fund which is common and unappropriated, and in this respect the first assertion of the Economists is erroneous. But the second assertion, as developed and explained by socialism, is still more fatal; for the action in question does not take place in a way to make the common fund pass into the appropriated fund, but, on the contrary, to make the appropriated fund pass incessantly into the common domain. Property, just and legitimate in itself, because always representing services, tends to transform onerous into gratuitous utility. It is the spur which urges on human intelligence to make latent natural forces operative. It struggles, and undoubtedly for our benefit, against the obstacles which render utility onerous. And when the obstacle has been to a certain extent removed, it is found that, to that extent, it has been removed to the profit and advantage of all. Then indefatigable Property challenges and encounters other obstacles, and goes on, raising, always and without intermission, the level of humanity, realizing more and more Community, and, with Community, Equality, among the great family of mankind.

In this consists the truly marvellous Harmony of the natural social order. This harmony I am unable to describe without combating objections which are perpetually recurring, and without falling into wearisome repetitions. No matter, I submit—let the reader also exercise a little patience on his side. [p243]

Make yourself master, first of all, of this fundamental idea, that when, in any case, there is no obstacle between desire and satisfaction (there is none, for instance, between our eyes and the light of day)—there is no effort to make, no service to render, either to ourselves or to other people, and value and Property have no existence. When an obstacle exists, the whole series comes into play. First, we have Effort—then a voluntary exchange of efforts or Services—then a comparative appreciation of those services, or Value; lastly, the right of each to enjoy the utilities attached to these values, or Property.

If in this struggle against obstacles, which are always uniform, the co-operation of nature and that of labour were also always in equal proportion, Property and Community would advance in parallel lines, without changing their relative proportions.

But it is not so. The universal aim of men in all their enterprises is to diminish the proportion between effort and result, and for that purpose to enlist more and more in their work the assistance of natural agents. No agriculturist, manufacturer, merchant, artisan, shipowner, artist, but makes this his constant study. In that direction all their faculties are bent. For that purpose they invent tools and machines, and avail themselves of the chemical and mechanical forces of the elements, divide their occupations, and unite their efforts. To accomplish more with less, such is the eternal problem which they propose to themselves at all times, in all places, in all situations, in everything. Who doubts that in all this they are prompted by self-interest? What other stimulant could excite them to the same energy? Every man, moreover, is charged with the care of his own existence and advancement. What, then, should constitute the mainspring of his movements but self-interest? You express your astonishment, but wait till I have done, and you will find that if each cares for himself, God cares for us all.

Our constant study, then, is to diminish the proportion which the effort bears to the useful effect sought to be produced. But when the effort is lessened, whether by the removal of obstacles or the intervention of machinery, by the division of labour, the union of forces, or the assistance of natural agents, etc., this diminished effort is less highly appreciated in relation to others;—we render less service in making the effort for another. There is less value, and we are justified in saying that the domain of Property has receded. Is the useful effect on that account lost? By hypothesis it is not. Where then has it gone to? It has passed into the domain of Community. As regards that portion of human effort [p244] which the useful effect no longer absorbs, it is not on that account sterile—it is turned to other acquisitions. Obstacles present themselves, and will always present themselves, to the indefinite expansibility of our physical, moral, and intellectual wants, to an extent sufficient to ensure that the labour set free in one department will find employment in another. And it is in this way that the appropriated fund remaining always the same, the common fund dilates and expands, like a circle the radius of which is always enlarging.

Apart from this consideration, how could we explain progress or civilisation, however imperfect? Let us turn our regards upon ourselves, and consider our feebleness. Let us compare our own individual vigour and knowledge with the vigour and knowledge necessary to produce the innumerable satisfactions which we derive from society. We shall soon be convinced that were we reduced to our proper efforts, we could not obtain a hundred thousandth part of them, even if millions of acres of uncultivated land were placed at the disposal of each one of us. It is positively certain that a given amount of human effort will realize an immeasurably greater result at the present day than it could in the days of the Druids. If that were true only of an individual, the natural conclusion would be that he lives and prospers at the expense of his fellows. But since this phenomenon is manifested in all the members of the human family, we are led to the comfortable conclusion that things not our own have come to our aid; that the gratuitous co-operation of nature is in larger and larger measure added to our own efforts, and that it remains gratuitous through all our transactions; for were it not gratuitous, it would explain nothing.

From what we have said, we may deduce these formulas:

Property is Value, and Value is Property;

That which has no Value is gratuitous, and what is gratuitous is common;

A fall of Value is an approximation towards the gratuitous;

Such approximation is a partial realization of Community.

There are times when one cannot give utterance to certain words without being exposed to false interpretations. There are always people ready to cry out, in a critical or in a laudatory spirit, according to the sect they belong to: “The author talks of Community—he must be a Communist.” I expect this, and resign myself to it. And yet I must endeavour to guard myself against such hasty inferences.

The reader must have been very inattentive (and the most [p245] formidable class of readers are those who turn over books without attending to what they read) if he has not observed the great gulf which interposes itself between Community and Communism. The two ideas are separated by the entire domain not only of property but of liberty, right, justice, and even of human personality.

Community applies to those things which we enjoy in common by the destination of Providence; because, exacting no effort in order to adapt them to our use, they give rise to no service, no transaction, no Property. The foundation of property is the right which we possess to render services to ourselves, or to others on condition of a return.

What Communism wishes to render common is, not the gratuitous gift of God, but human effort—service.

It desires that each man should carry the fruit of his labour to the common stock, and that afterwards an equitable distribution of that stock should be made by authority.

Now, of two things one. Either the distribution is proportional to the stake which each has contributed, or it is made upon another principle.

In the first case, Communism aims at realizing, as regards result, the present order of things—only substituting the arbitrary will of one for the liberty of all.

In the second case, what must be the basis of the division? Communism answers, Equality. What! Equality, without regard to the difference of pains taken, of labour undergone! You are to have an equal share whether you have worked six hours or twelve—mechanically, or with intelligence! Of all inequalities surely that would be the most shocking; besides it would be the destruction of all liberty, all activity, all dignity, all sagacity. You pretend to put an end to competition, but in truth you only transform it. The competition at present is, who shall work most and best. Under your regime it would be, who should work worst and least.

Communism misunderstands or disowns the very nature of man. Effort is painful in itself. What urges us to make it? It can only be a feeling more painful still, a want to satisfy, a suffering to remove, a good to be realized. Our moving principle, then, is self-interest. When you ask the Communists what they would substitute for this, they answer, by the mouth of Louis Blanc, The point of honour, and by that of Monsieur Cabet, Fraternity. Enable me, then, to experience the sensations of others, in order that I may know what direction to impress upon my industry.

I should like to have it explained what this point of honour, [p246] this fraternity, which are to be set to work in society at the instigation and under the direction of Messieurs Louis Blanc and Cabet, really mean.

But it is not my business in this place to refute Communism, which is opposed in everything to the system which it is my object to establish.

We recognise the right of every man to serve himself, or to serve others on conditions freely stipulated. Communism denies this right, since it masses together and centralizes all services in the hands of an arbitrary authority.

Our doctrine is based upon Property. Communism is founded on systematic spoliation. It consists in handing over to one, without compensation, the labour of another. In fact, did it distribute to each according to his labour, it would recognise property, and would be no longer Communism.

Our doctrine is founded on liberty. In truth, property and liberty are in our eyes one and the same thing, for that which constitutes a man the proprietor of his service is his right and power of disposing of it. Communism annihilates liberty, since it leaves to no one the free disposal of his labour.

Our doctrine is founded on justice—Communism on injustice. That follows clearly from what has been already said.

There is only one point of contact, then, between the communists and us—it is the similarity of two syllables, in the words communism and community.

But this similarity of sounds should not mislead the reader. Whilst communism is the negation of Property, we find in our doctrine of Community the most explicit affirmation and the most positive demonstration of property.

If the legitimacy of property has appeared doubtful and inexplicable, even to men who are not communists, the reason is, that they believe that it concentrates in the hands of some, to the exclusion of others, those gifts of God which were originally common. We believe we have entirely dissipated that doubt by demonstrating that what is common by providential destination remains common in all human transactions,—the domain of property never extending beyond that of value—of right onerously acquired by services rendered.

Thus explained, property is vindicated; for who but a fool could pretend that men have no right to their own labour—no right to receive the voluntary services of those to whom they have rendered voluntary services?

There is another word upon which I must offer some explanation, [p247] for of late it has been strangely misapplied—I mean the word gratuitous. I need not say that I denominate gratuitous, not what costs a man nothing because he has deprived another of it, but what has cost nothing to anyone.

When Diogenes warmed himself in the sun, he might be said to warm himself gratuitously, for he obtained from the divine liberality a satisfaction which exacted no labour either from himself or his contemporaries. Nor does the heat of the sun’s rays cease to be gratuitous when the proprietor avails himself of it to ripen his corn and his grapes, seeing that in selling his grapes or his corn he is paid for his own services and not for those of the sun. This may be an erroneous view (in which case we have no alternative but to become communists); but at any rate this is the sense in which I use the word gratuitous, and this is what it evidently means.

Much has been said, since the establishment of the Republic, of gratuitous credit, and gratuitous instruction. But it is evident that a gross sophism lurks under this phraseology. Can the State shed abroad instruction like the light of day without its costing anything to anybody? Can it cover the country with institutions and professors without their being paid in one shape or another? Instead of leaving each individual to demand and to remunerate voluntarily this description of service, the State may lay hold of the remuneration, taken by taxation from the pockets of the citizens, and distribute among them instruction of its own selection, without exacting from them a second remuneration. This is all that can be effected by government interference—and in this case, those who do not learn pay for those who do, those who learn little for those who learn much, those who are destined to manual labour for those who embrace learned professions. This is communism applied to one branch of human activity. Under this rÉgime, of which I am not called upon here to give an opinion, it might very well be said that instruction is common, but it would be ridiculous to say that instruction is gratuitous. Gratuitous! Yes, for some of those who receive it, but not for those who have to pay for it, if not to the teacher, at least to the tax-gatherer.

For that matter, there is nothing which the State can give gratuitously; and if the word were not a mystification, it is not only gratuitous education which we should demand from the State, but gratuitous food, gratuitous clothing, gratuitous lodging, etc. Let us take care. The people are not far from going this length, and there are already among us those who demand gratuitous credit, gratuitous tools and instruments of labour, etc. Dupes of a word, [p248] we have made one step towards Communism; why should we not make a second, and a third, until all liberty, all justice, and all property have passed away? Will it be urged that instruction is so universally necessary that we may depart somewhat from right and principle in this instance? But then, are not food and sustenance still more necessary than education? PrimÒ vivere, deinde philosophari, the people may say; and I know not in truth what answer we can make to them.

Who knows? Those who charge me with Communism for having demonstrated the natural community of the gifts of God, are perhaps the very people who seek to violate justice in the matter of education, that is to say, to attack property in its essence. Such inconsistencies are more surprising than uncommon. [p249]