Men are always anxiously on the outlook for something fixed. We meet sometimes with restless and unquiet spirits who have a craving for risk and adventure. But, taking mankind in the gross, we may safely affirm that what they desire is to be tranquil as regards their future, to know what they have to count upon, and be enabled to make their arrangements beforehand. To be convinced how precious fixity is in their eyes, we have only to observe how very anxious men are to obtain for themselves Government employments. Nor is this on account of the honour which such places confer, for there are many of these situations where the work is not of a very elevated description, consisting in watching and vexing their fellow-citizens, and prying into their affairs. Such places, however, are not the less sought after—and why? Because they confer an assured position. Who has not heard a father speak [p353] thus of his son: “I am soliciting for him a place as a candidate or supernumerary in such or such a Government office. It is a pity, no doubt, that so costly an education is required—an education which might have ensured his success in a more brilliant career. As a public functionary he will not get rich, but he is certain to live. He will always have bread. Four or five years hence he will begin to receive a salary of thirty pounds a year, which will rise by degrees to a hundred and twenty or a hundred and sixty. After thirty years’ service he will be entitled to retire. His livelihood then is secured, and he must learn to live upon a small income,” etc.

Fixity, then, has for most men an irresistible attraction.

And yet, when we consider the nature of man, and of his occupations, fixity would seem to be incompatible with them.

Go back in imagination to the origin of human society, and you will have difficulty in comprehending how men can ever succeed in obtaining from the community a fixed, assured, and constant quantity of the means of subsistence. Yet this is one of those phenomena which strike us less because we have them constantly before our eyes. We have public functionaries who receive fixed salaries; proprietors who can count beforehand on their revenues; men of fortune who can calculate on their dividends; workmen who earn every day the same wages. Apart from the consideration of money, which is only employed to facilitate exchanges and estimates of value, we perceive that what is fixed is the quantity of the means of subsistence, the value of the satisfactions received by the various classes of workmen. Now, I maintain that this fixity, which by degrees extends to all men and all departments of industry, is a miracle of civilisation, and a marvellous effect of that social state which, in our day, is so madly decried.

For, let us go back to a primitive social state, and suppose a nation of hunters, or fishers, or shepherds, or warriors, or agriculturists, to be told, “In proportion as you advance on the road of progress, you will know more and more beforehand what amount of enjoyment will be secured to you for each year,” they would not believe us. They would reply, “That must always depend on something which eludes calculation,—the inconstancy of the seasons, etc.” The truth is, they could form no idea of the ingenious efforts by means of which men have succeeded in establishing a sort of mutual assurance between all places and all times.

Now, this mutual assurance against all the risks and chances of the future is entirely dependent on a branch of human science which I shall denominate experimental statistics. This department [p354] of science, depending as it does upon experience, admits of indefinite progress, and consequently the fixity of which we have spoken also admits of indefinite progress. That fixity is favoured by two circumstances which are permanent in their operation: 1st, Men desire it. 2dly, They acquire every day greater facilities for realizing it.

Before showing how this fixity is established in human transactions, in which it is little thought of, let us first of all see how it operates in a transaction of which it is the special object. The reader will, in this way, comprehend what I mean by experimental statistics.

A number of men have each a house. One of these houses happens to be burnt down and its owner is ruined. All the rest immediately take alarm, and each says to himself, “The same thing may happen to me.” We cannot be surprised, then, that these proprietors should unite and divide the risk of such accidents as much as possible, by establishing a mutual assurance against fire. The bargain is very simple—here is its formula: “If the house of one of us is burnt down, the rest will club to make good the loss to the man who is burnt out.”

By this means each proprietor acquires a double security; in the first instance he must take a small share in all losses of this nature; but then he is assured that he will never himself be obliged to suffer the whole loss arising from any such misfortune.

In reality, and if we extend the calculation over a great number of years, we see that the proprietor makes, so to speak, a bargain with himself. He sets aside a sufficient fund to repair the misfortunes which may afterwards befall him.

This is association. Indeed it is to arrangements of this nature that the Socialists give exclusively the name of association. Whenever speculation intervenes, association, as they think, disappears. It is improved and perfected, as I think, and as we shall afterwards see.

What has led the proprietors to associate, to enter into this mutual assurance, is the love of fixity, of security. They prefer known risks to risks which are unknown, a multitude of small risks to one great one.

Their design, however, has not yet been completely attained, and there is still much uncertainty in their position. Each of them may say, “If accidents are multiplied, my quota will become insupportable. In any case, I should like to know beforehand, and to have insured in the same way my furniture, my merchandise, etc.” [p355]

It would seem that such inconveniences belong to the nature of things, and that it is impossible for men to get rid of them. After each step of progress we are tempted to think that all has been accomplished. How, indeed, can we elude this uncertainty, which depends upon accidents still unknown to us?

But mutual assurance has developed in the social state an experimental knowledge, namely, the average annual proportion between the values lost by accident and the values assured.

Having made all the necessary calculations, a company or an individual says to the proprietors, “In entering into a mutual assurance, you have wished to purchase freedom from anxiety, and the indeterminate quota which you reserve annually to cover accidents is the price which you pay for this immunity. But if you do not know what this price is beforehand, your tranquillity is never perfect. I now propose to you, therefore, another expedient. In consideration of a fixed annual premium which you shall pay me, I take upon myself all your chances of accidents. I will insure you all, and here is the capital which will guarantee the fulfilment of my engagement.”

The proprietors accept the proposal, even although this fixed premium should amount to somewhat more than the sum which their mutual assurance cost them; for their object is not so much to save a few shillings as to obtain perfect repose and freedom from anxiety.

At this point the Socialists pretend that the principle of association is destroyed. For my part, I think it is improved, and on the road to other improvements to which I can see no limits.

But, say the Socialists, the assured have no longer any mutual tie. They no longer see each other and come to a common understanding. Intermediary parasites have come among them, and the proof that the proprietors are now paying more than is required to cover accidents is to be found in the fact, that the insurers obtain large profits.

It is not difficult to answer this objection.

First of all, association exists, but under another form. The premium contributed by the assured is still the fund which is to make good the losses. The assured have found the means of remaining in the association without taking part in its business. This is evidently an advantage to each of them, seeing that the design they have in view is nevertheless attained; and the possibility of remaining in the association whilst they have their [p356] independence of movement and free use of their faculties restored to them, is just the characteristic of social progress.

As regards the profit obtained by the intermediate party, it is easily explained and justified. The assured remain associated for the purpose of repairing accidents and making good what is lost. But a company has stepped in which offers them the following advantages: 1st, It takes away whatever of uncertainty remained in the position of the assured; 2dly, It frees them from all care and trouble in connexion with accidents. These are services, and the rule is, service for service. The proof that the intervention of the company is a service possessed of value is to be found in the fact that it is freely accepted and paid for. The Socialists only make themselves ridiculous when they declaim against such middlemen. Do they intrude themselves into commercial transactions by force? Have they any other means of introducing themselves and their services than by saying to the parties with whom they deal, “I will cost you some trouble, but I will save you more?” How, then, can they be called parasites or even intermediaries?

I affirm, moreover, that association thus transformed is on the direct road of progress in every sense.

In fact, companies which expect to realize profits proportioned to the extent of their business, promote insurances. To aid them in this they have agents in all quarters, they establish credits, they devise a thousand combinations to increase the number of the assured—in other words, of the associated parties. They undertake a multitude of risks which were unknown to the primitive mutual insurance associations. In short, association is extended progressively to a greater number of men and things. In proportion as this development takes place, the companies find they can lower their prices; they are even forced by competition to do so. And here we again get a glimpse of the great law, that profit soon escapes from the hands of the producer to settle in those of the consumer.

Nor is this all: companies insure each other by reassurances, so that, with a view to providing for losses, which is the principal object in view, a thousand associations scattered over England, France, Germany, and America, are melted into one grand and unique association. And what is the result? If a house is burnt down at Bordeaux, Paris, or elsewhere, the proprietors of the whole world, English, Belgians, Germans, Spaniards, club together and repair the disaster.

This is an example of the degree of power, universality, and perfection, which may be reached by means of free and voluntary [p357] association. But to attain this they must be left free to manage their own business. Now, what happened when the Socialists, those great partisans of association, were in power? Their chief business was to threaten association in every form, and principally association for insurance. And why? Just because, in order to render itself more universal, it adopted those expedients which left each of its members in a state of independence. How little these unfortunate Socialists understand the social mechanism! They would bring us back to the rude and primitive forms which association assumed when society was in its infancy, and they would suppress all progress under the pretext that it has departed from these forms.

We shall see, by-and-by, that from the same prejudices, the same ignorance, arise their incessant declamations against interest. The interest and wages are fixed, and, consequently, improved forms of remuneration for the use of labour and capital.

The wages-system [salariat] has been peculiarly the butt of the Socialists. They have almost gone the length of representing it as a modified, and not greatly modified, system of slavery and thraldom. At all events, they see in it only a bargain which is one-sided and leonine, founded on liberty merely in appearance, an oppression of the weak by the strong, or the tyranny of capital over labour.

Continually wrangling about new institutions to be founded, the Socialists display in their common hatred of existing institutions, and especially of the system of remuneration by wages, a striking unanimity. If they cannot attain unity as to the new social organization to be established, they are at least marvellously united in calumniating, decrying, running down, hating, and making hated, everything which actually exists. I have assigned the reason for this elsewhere.76

Much unfortunately takes place which is beyond the domain of philosophical discussion; and the Socialist propaganda, seconded by an ignorant and cowardly press, which, without avowing Socialism, seeks for popularity in fashionable declamations, has succeeded in instilling hatred of the wages-system into the minds of the very people who live by wages. Workmen have become disgusted with this form of remuneration. It appears to them unjust, humiliating, and odious. They think it brands them with the mark of servitude. They desire to participate on another principle in the distribution of wealth. Hence they have fallen passionately in love with the most extravagant Utopias. They had but one [p358] step to take, and they have taken it. When the revolution of February broke out, the grand object of the working classes was to get rid of wages. Upon the means of accomplishing this they consulted their oracles; but when these oracles did not remain mute, they followed the usual mode by giving obscure utterances, in which the word which predominated was association, as if association and wages were incompatible. Then the workmen would try all the forms of this liberty-giving association; and, to impart to it greater attraction, they were pleased to invest it with all the charms of Solidarity, and attributed to it all the merits of Fraternity. For the moment, one would have been led to believe that the human heart itself had been about to undergo a grand transformation, and to throw off the yoke of self-interest, in order to give place to the principle of sympathy. By a singular contradiction, they hoped from association to reap at once all the glory of self-sacrifice, and material profits of hitherto unheard-of amount. They fell down before the statue of Fortune, prayed, and decreed to themselves the glory of martyrdom. It seemed as if these workmen, thus misled, and on the point of being seduced into a career of injustice, felt it necessary to shut their eyes to their true position, to glorify the methods of spoliation which had been taught them by their apostles, and place them covered with a veil in the sanctuary of a new revelation. Never, perhaps, had so many and such dangerous errors, so many and such gross contradictions, found their way before into the human brain.

Let us inquire, then, what wages really are, and consider their origin, form, and effects. Let us trace the subject to its foundation, and make sure whether, in the development of humanity, wages constitute retrogression or progress—whether in receiving wages there be anything humiliating or degrading, or which can in any degree be allied with slavery.

Services are exchanged for services, labour, efforts, pains, cares, natural or acquired ability,—these are what we give and receive. What we confer on one another is satisfaction or enjoyment. What determines the exchange is the common advantage, and its measure is the free appreciation of reciprocal services. The various combinations to which human transactions give rise have necessitated a voluminous economic vocabulary; but the words, Profits, Interest, Wages, although indicating shades of difference, do not change the nature and foundation of things. We have still the do ut des, or rather the facio ut facias, which constitutes the basis of the whole economic evolution.77 [p359]

The class which lives by wages forms no exception to this law. Examine the subject attentively. Do these men render services? Unquestionably they do. Are services rendered to them? Undoubtedly they are. Are these services exchanged freely and voluntarily? Do we perceive in this kind of transaction any appearance of fraud or violence? It is at this point, perhaps, that the grievances of the workman begin. They don’t go the length of pretending that they are deprived of their liberty, but they assert that this liberty is merely nominal and a mockery, because the man whose necessities force the determination is not really free. It remains for us to inquire, then, whether the defect of liberty thus understood does not belong to the situation of the workman rather than to the mode of his remuneration.

When one man enters into the service of another, his remuneration may consist in a part of the work produced, or in a determinate wage. In either case he must bargain for this part of the product—for it may be greater or less,—or for this wage—for it may be higher or lower. If the man is in a state of absolute destitution, if he cannot wait, if he acts on the spur of urgent necessity, he must submit, and cannot get rid of the other’s exactions. But you will observe that it is not the form of remuneration which gives rise to this dependence. Whether he runs the risk of the enterprise by stipulating for a share of the product, or bargains for a fixed remuneration whether the other gain or lose, it is his precarious situation which gives him an inferior position in the discussion which precedes the arrangement. Those innovators who have represented association to the working classes as an infallible remedy have misled them, and are themselves mistaken. They can convince themselves of this by observing attentively the circumstances in cases where the indigent workman receives part of the product in place of wages. There are assuredly no men in the country worse off than fishermen or vine-dressers, although they have the satisfaction of enjoying all the benefits which the Socialists denominate, exclusively, association.

But before proceeding to inquire into the circumstances which influence the quota of wages, I must define, or rather describe, the nature of the transaction.

Men have a tendency—which is natural, and, therefore, advantageous, moral, universal, indestructible—to desire security with reference to the means of subsistence, to seek fixity, and avoid uncertainty.

However, in the early stages of society uncertainty reigns supreme, and it has frequently astonished me that Political [p360] Economy has failed to mark the great and happy efforts which have been made to restrain this uncertainty within narrower and narrower limits.

Take the case of a tribe of hunters, or a nomad people, or a colony newly founded,—is there a single man who can say with certainty what to-morrow’s labour will be worth? Would there not even seem to be an incompatibility between the two ideas, and that nothing can be of a more causal nature than the result of labour, whether applied to the chase, to fishing, or to agriculture?

It will be difficult, then, to find, in an infant society, anything which resembles stipends, salaries, wages, revenues, rents, interest, assurance, etc., which are all things which have been invented in order to give more and more fixity to personal situations, to get quit, to a greater and greater degree, of that feeling so painful to men of uncertainty with reference to the means of subsistence.

The progress which has been made in this direction is indeed admirable, although custom has so familiarized us with this phenomenon that we fail to attend to it. In fact, since the results of labour, and consequently the enjoyments of mankind, may be so profoundly modified by events, by unforeseen circumstances, by the caprices of nature, the uncertainty of the seasons, and accidents of every kind, we may ask how it comes to pass that so great a number of men find themselves set free for a time, and some of them for life, by means of rents, salaries, and retiring pensions, from this species of eventuality, of uncertainty, which would seem to be essentially part of our nature.

The efficient cause, the motive power of this beautiful evolution of the human race, is the tendency of all men towards competency and material prosperity, of which Fixity is so essential a part. The means consist in the substitution of a fixed unconditional bargain for one dependent merely on appreciable chances, or the gradual abandonment of that primitive form of association which consists in committing all the parties concerned irrevocably to all the risks and chances of the enterprise; in other words, the improvement of association. It is singular, at least, that all our great modern reformers exhibit association to us as destroyed by the very element which improves and perfects it.

In order that men should consent to take upon themselves, unconditionally, risks which fall naturally on others, it is necessary that a species of knowledge, which I have called experimental statistics, should have made some progress; for experience alone can place them in a situation to appreciate these risks, at least [p361] approximately, and consequently to appreciate the value of the service rendered in securing them against such risks. This is the reason why the bargains and transactions of rude and ignorant nations admit no stipulations of this nature, and hence, as I have said, uncertainty exercises over such people uncontrolled power. Were a savage, grown old, and having laid up some stock of game, to take a young hunter into his service, he would not give him fixed wages, but a share in the produce of the chase. How, indeed, could either of them, from the known infer the unknown? The teachings of past experience do not permit them to insure the future beforehand.

In times of barbarism and inexperience, men, no doubt, associate, for we have demonstrated that otherwise they could not exist; but association can assume among them only that primitive and elementary form which the Socialists represent as the only one which can secure our future safety.

When two men have long worked on together, encountering equal risks, there at length comes a time when, from experience, they can estimate and appreciate the value of these risks, and one of them consents to take the entire risk upon his own shoulders, in consideration of a fixed recompense.

This arrangement is undoubtedly a step of progress, and it is shown to be so by the very fact that it has been effected freely and voluntarily by the two parties, who would not have entered into it had it not been felt to be for their mutual benefit. It is easy to see in what the benefit consists. The one party gains by obtaining the exclusive management of an undertaking of which he takes all the risks upon himself; the other by obtaining that fixity of position which is so much desired. And society at large must be benefited by having an enterprise, formerly subjected to two minds and two wills, henceforth conducted with unity of views and unity of action.

But although association is modified in this way, it by no means follows that it is dissolved. The co-operation of the two men is continued, although the mode of dividing the product of their enterprise has been changed. Association is not vitiated by an innovation voluntarily agreed to, and which satisfies all parties.

The co-operation of anterior labour and present labour is always, or almost always, required in order to realize new means of satisfaction and enjoyment. Capital and labour, in uniting in a common undertaking, are, in the first instance, forced to undertake each its share of the risk; and this continues until the value of the risk can be experimentally estimated. Then two tendencies, which are [p362] alike natural to the human heart, manifest themselves—I mean the tendencies towards unity of direction and fixity of situation. Capital then says to labour: “Experience has taught us that your eventual profit amounts, on an average, to so much. If you wish it, I will ensure you this amount, and take charge of the operation, taking upon myself the chances of profit or loss.”

Labour may possibly answer: “This proposal suits me very well. Sometimes I earned twenty pounds a year; sometimes I earn sixty. These fluctuations are very inconvenient, for they hinder me from regulating uniformly my own expenditure and that of my family. It is an advantage to me to get rid of this uncertainty, and to receive a fixed recompense of forty pounds.”

By this arrangement the terms of the contract will be changed. They will continue to unite their efforts, and to share the proceeds, and consequently the association will not be dissolved; but it will be modified in this way, that the capitalist will take all the risks with the compensation of all the extraordinary profits, whilst the labourer will be secured the advantages of fixity. Such is the origin of Wages.

The agreement may take place in the reverse way. Frequently the person who undertakes a commercial enterprise says to the capitalist: “Hitherto we have worked together, sharing the risks. Now that we are in a situation to appreciate these risks, I propose to make a fixed bargain. You have invested a thousand pounds in the undertaking, for which one year you receive twenty-five pounds, another year seventy-five. If you agree to it, I will give you fifty pounds, or 5 per cent. per annum, and free you from all risk, on condition that I have henceforth the entire management of the concern.”

The capitalist will probably answer: “Since, with great and troublesome fluctuations, I receive, on an average, only fifty pounds per annum, I should much prefer to have that sum regularly assured to me. I shall, therefore, allow my capital to remain in the concern, but I am to be exempted from all risk. My activity and intelligence will now be free to engage in some other undertaking.”

This is an advantage in a social, as well as an individual point of view.

We see that men are constantly in quest of a fixed and stable position, and that there is an incessant effort to diminish and circumscribe on all sides the element of uncertainty. Where two men participate in a common risk, this risk, having a substantive existence, cannot be annihilated; but the tendency is for one of [p363] them to take that risk upon himself. If the capitalist undertakes the risk, the labourer’s remuneration is fixed under the name of wages. If the labourer runs the chances of profit or loss, then the remuneration of the capitalist is fixed under the name of interest.

And as capital is nothing else than human services, we may say that capital and labour are two words which in reality express one and the same idea; and, consequently, the same thing may be said of interest and wages. Thus, where false science never fails to find antagonism, true science ever finds identity.

Considered, then, with reference to their origin, nature, and form, wages have in them nothing degrading or humiliating any more than interest has. Both constitute the return for present and anterior labour derived from the results of a common enterprise. Only it almost always happens that one of the two associates agrees to take upon himself the risk. If it be the present labour which claims a uniform remuneration, the chances of profit are given up in consideration of wages. If it be the anterior labour which claims a fixed return, the capitalist gives up his eventual chance of profits for a determinate rate of interest.

For my own part, I am convinced that this new stipulation which is ingrafted on the primitive form of association, far from destroying it, improves and perfects it. I have no doubt of this, when I consider that such a stipulation takes its rise from a felt want, from the natural desire of all men for stability; and, moreover, that it satisfies all parties, without injury, but, on the contrary, by serving the interests of the public.

Modern reformers, who, under pretence of having invented association, desire to bring it back to its primitive and rudimentary forms, ought to tell us in what respect these fixed bargains are opposed to justice or equity, in what respect they are prejudicial to progress, and on what principle they wish to interdict them. They ought also to tell us why, if such stipulations bear the stamp of barbarism, they are constantly and more and more mixed up with that association which is represented as the perfection of human society.

In my opinion, such stipulations are among the most marvellous manifestations, as they are among the most powerful springs, of progress. They are at once the perfection and reward of a past and very ancient civilisation, and the starting-point of a new and unlimited career of future civilisation. Had society adhered to that primitive form of association which saddles all the parties interested with a share of the risks of an enterprise, ninety-nine [p364] out of every hundred of such enterprises never would have been undertaken. The man who at the present day participates in a score of enterprises would have been tied down for ever to one. Unity of design and of will would have been wanting in all commercial operations; and mankind would never have tasted that precious good which is perhaps the source of genius—stability.

The wages-system [salariat], then, takes its rise in a natural and indestructible tendency. Observe, however, that it satisfies men’s desires but imperfectly. It renders the remuneration of workmen more uniform, more equal, and brings it nearer to an average; but there is one thing which it cannot do, and which their admission to a participation in profits and risks could not accomplish, namely, to ensure them employment.

And here I cannot help remarking how powerful the feeling is to which I have made reference throughout the whole of this chapter, and the very existence of which our modern reformers do not seem even to suspect,—I mean men’s aversion to uncertainty. It is exactly this very feeling which has made it so easy for Socialist declaimers to create such a hatred on the part of the working classes to receive their remuneration in the shape of wages.

We can conceive three phases in the condition of the labourer: the predominance of uncertainty; the predominance of stability; and an intermediate state, from which uncertainty is partly excluded, but not sufficiently so to give place to fixity and stability.

What the working classes do not sufficiently understand is, that the association which the Socialists preach up to them is the infancy of society, the period when men are groping their way, the time of quick transitions and fluctuations, of alternations of plethora and atrophy—in a word, the period when absolute uncertainty reigns supreme. The wages-system, on the contrary, forms the intermediate link between uncertainty and fixity.

Now, the working classes, being far as yet from feeling themselves in a state of stability, place their hopes—like all men ill at ease—on a certain change of position. This is the reason why it has been an easy task for Socialism to impose upon them by the use of the grand term association. The working classes fancy themselves pushed forward when they are in reality falling behind.

Yes, these unfortunate people are falling back to the primitive and rudimentary stage of the social movement; for what is the association now so loudly preached up to them but the subjection of all to all risks and contingencies? This is inevitable in times of ignorance, since fixed bargains presuppose some progress at [p365] least in experimental statistics. But the doctrine now inculcated is nothing else than a pure and simple revival of the reign of uncertainty.

The workmen who were enthusiasts for association when they knew it only in theory, were enchanted when the revolution of February seemed to render possible its practical adoption.

At that period many employers of labour, either infected with the universal infatuation, or giving way to their fears, offered to substitute a participation in the returns for payment by wages. But the workmen did not much fancy this solidarity of risk. They understood very well what was offered them; for in case the enterprise turned out a losing concern, they would have had no remuneration of any kind,—which to them was death.

We saw then what would not have been to the credit of our working classes, had the blame not lain with the pretended reformers, in whom, unhappily, they placed confidence. The working classes demanded a sort of bastard association in which the rate of wages was to be maintained, and in which they were to be entitled to a share of the profits without being subject to any of the losses.

The workmen would probably never of themselves have thought of putting forward such pretensions. There is in human nature a fund of good sense and a feeling of justice to which such barefaced iniquity is repugnant. To corrupt man’s heart, you must begin by depraving his intellect.

This is what the leaders of the Socialist school did not fail to do; and with this fact before us I am frequently asked whether their intentions were not perverse. I am always inclined to respect men’s motives; but it is exceedingly difficult, under such circumstances, to exculpate the Socialist chiefs.

After having, by the unjust and persevering declamations with which their books are filled, irritated the working classes against their employers, after having persuaded them that they were in a state of war, in which everything is fair against the enemy, they enveloped the ultimatum of the workmen in scientific subtleties, and even in clouds of mysticism. They figured an abstract being called Society, which owed to each of its members a minimum, that is to say, an assured means of subsistence. “You have, then, a right,” they told the workmen, “to demand a fixed wage.” In this way they began by satisfying the natural desire of men for stability. Then they proceeded to teach them that, independently of wages, the workmen should have a share in the profits; and when asked whether he was also to bear his share of the losses, [p366] their answer was, that in virtue of State intervention and the guarantee of the taxpayer, they had invented a system of universal industry, protected from all loss. By this means they removed all the remaining scruples of the unfortunate workmen; and when the revolution of February broke out we saw them, as I have said, disposed to make three stipulations:—

It may be said, perhaps, that these stipulations were neither so unjust nor so impossible as they appeared, seeing that they are introduced in many enterprises, having reference to newspapers, railways, etc.

I answer that there is something truly puerile in allowing oneself to be duped by high-sounding names applied to very trivial things. A little candour will at once convince us that this participation in profits, which some concerns allow to their workmen receiving wages, does not constitute association, nor merit that title, nor is it a great revolution introduced into the relations of two classes of society. It is only an ingenious and useful encouragement given to workmen receiving wages, under a form which is not exactly new, although it has been represented as an adhesion to Socialism. Employers who, in adopting this custom, devote a tenth, a twentieth, or a hundredth part of their profits, when they have any, to this largesse bestowed on their workmen, may make a great noise about it, and proclaim themselves the generous renovators of the social order; but it is really unworthy of occupying more of our time at present, and I return to my argument.

The system of payment by wages, then, was a step of progress. In the first instance, anterior labour and present labour were associated together with common risks, in common enterprises, the circle of which, in such circumstances, must have been very limited. If society had not discovered other combinations, no important work could ever have been undertaken. Men would have remained hunters and fishers, and there might have been perhaps some rude attempts at agriculture.

Afterwards, in obedience to the double feeling which prompts us to seek stability, and, at the same time, retain the direction of those operations of which we must encounter the risks, the two associates, without putting an end to the association, seek to supersede the joint hazard by a fixed bargain, and agree that one of them should give the other a fixed remuneration, and take [p367] upon himself the whole risk, along with the exclusive direction of the enterprise. When this fixity applies to the anterior labour, or capital, it is called interest; when it applies to the present labour, it is called wages.

But, as I have already said, wages serve only imperfectly to constitute a state of stability for a certain class of men, or of security in regard to the means of subsistence. It is one step, and a very marked one, towards the realization of this benefit, and so difficult that at first sight we should have thought it impossible; but it does not effect its entire realization.

And it is perhaps worthy of remark in passing, that fixity of situation, stability, resembles in one respect all the great results of which mankind are in pursuit. We are always approximating to such results, but we never fully attain them. For the very reason that stability is a good, a benefit, we must always be making efforts more and more to extend its domain; but it is not in our nature ever to obtain complete possession of it. We may even go the length of saying that to obtain such possession would not be desirable for man in his present state. Absolute good of whatever kind would put an end to all desire, all effort, all combination, all thought, all foresight, all virtue. Perfection excludes the notion of perfectibility.

The working classes having then, with the lapse of time and the progress of civilisation, reached the improved system of payment by wages, have not stopped short at that point, or relaxed their efforts to realize stability.

No doubt wages come in with certainty at the conclusion of the day’s work; but when circumstances—as, for example, an industrial crisis, or a protracted illness—have interrupted work, the wages are interrupted also. What, then, is the workman to do? Are he and his wife and children to be deprived of food?

He has but one resource, and that is, to save, while employed, the means of supplying his wants in sickness and old age.

But, in the individual case, who can estimate beforehand the comparative length of time in which he has to assist, or be assisted?

What cannot be done in the individual case may be found more practicable with reference to the masses in virtue of the law of averages. The tribute paid by the workman while employed to provide for his support in periods of stoppage answers the purpose much more effectually, and with much more irregularity and certainty, when it is centralized by association, than when it is abandoned to individual chances. [p368]

Hence the origin of Friendly Societies—admirable institutions which benevolence had given birth to long before the name of Socialism was ever heard of. It would be difficult to say who was their inventor. The true inventor, I believe, was the felt want of some such institutions—the desire of men for something fixed, the restless active instinct which leads us to remove the obstacles which mankind encounter in their progress towards stability.

I have myself seen friendly societies rise up spontaneously, more than five-and-twenty years ago, among the most destitute labourers and artisans of the poorest villages in the department of the Landes.

The obvious design of these societies is to equalize enjoyments, and to spread and distribute over all periods of life the wages earned in days of health and prosperity. In all localities in which they exist, these societies have conferred immense benefits. The contributors are sustained by a feeling of security, a feeling the most precious and consolatory which can enter the heart of man in his pilgrimage here below. Moreover, they feel their reciprocal dependence and their usefulness to each other. They see at what point the prosperity or adversity of each individual, or of each profession, becomes the prosperity or adversity of all.

They meet together on certain occasions for religious worship, as provided by their rules; and then they are called to exercise over each other that vigilant surveillance so proper to inspire self-respect, which is the first and most difficult step in the march of civilisation.

What has hitherto ensured the success of these societies,—a success which has been slow, indeed, like everything which concerns the masses,—is liberty: of this there can be no doubt.

The natural danger which they encounter is the removal of the sense of responsibility. It is never without creating great dangers and great difficulties for the future, that we set an individual free from the consequences of his own acts.78

Were all our citizens to say, “We will club together to assist those who cannot work, or who cannot find employment,” we should fear to see developed to a dangerous extent man’s natural tendency to idleness; we should fear that the laborious would soon become the dupes of the slothful. Mutual assistance, then, implies mutual surveillance, without which the common fund would soon be exhausted. This reciprocal surveillance is for such association a necessary guarantee of existence—a security for each contributor that he shall not be made to play the part of dupe; [p369] and it constitutes besides the true morality of the institution. By this means we see drunkenness and debauchery gradually disappear; for what right could that man have to assistance from the common fund who has brought disease and want of employment upon himself by his own vicious habits? It is this surveillance which re-establishes that responsibility which the association might otherwise tend to enfeeble.

Now, in order that this surveillance should operate beneficially, friendly societies must be free and select, and have the control of their own rules, as well as of their own funds. It is necessary also that they should be able to suit their rules to the requirements of each locality.

Suppose Government to interfere, it is easy to see the part which it would play. Its first business would be to lay hold of all these funds, under the pretence of centralizing them; and to give a colour to the proceeding, it would promise to enlarge the funds from resources taken from the taxpayer. “Is it not,” it would be said, “very natural and very just that the State should contribute to so great, so generous, so philanthropic, so humane a work?” This is the first injustice—to introduce the element of force into the society, and, along with the contributions, to obtrude citizens who have no right to a share of the fund. And then, under pretence of unity, of solidarity, the State would set itself to fuse all these associations into one, subject to the same rules.

But, I would ask, what will become of the morality of the institution when its funds are augmented by taxation; when no one except a Government official has an interest to defend the common stock; when every one, instead of feeling it his duty to prevent abuses, will take pleasure in favouring them; when all mutual surveillance has ceased; and when to feign disease would only be to play off a good trick on the Government? The Government, to do it justice, is well disposed to defend itself; but being no longer able to avail itself of private action, it must necessarily substitute official action. It will name examiners, controllers, inspectors. Countless formalities will be interposed between want and assistance. In short, what was originally an admirable institution will be transformed into a mere department of police.

The State will, in the first instance, perceive only the advantage of swelling the mob of its creatures, of multiplying the places at its disposal, and of extending its patronage and electioneering influence. It will not remark that in arrogating to itself a new function, it has assumed a new responsibility,—a responsibility [p370] which I venture to designate as fearful. For what must the immediate consequence be? The working classes will no longer regard the common fund as a property which they administer and keep up, and the limits of which are the limits of their rights. They will soon accustom themselves to regard assistance in cases of sickness or want of employment, not as proceeding from a limited fund prepared by their own foresight, but as a debt due to them by society. Its resources will appear to them unbounded, and they will never be contented with their share. The State will find itself under the necessity of demanding constant additions to the budget. Encountering opposition in that, the Government will find itself involved in inextricable difficulties. Abuses will go on increasing, which, year after year, they will shrink from reforming, until an explosion comes at last. And then it will be found that we have to deal with a population which can no longer act for itself, which expects everything from a minister or a prefect, even subsistence, and whose ideas are so far perverted as to have lost all rational notions of Right, Property, Liberty, or Justice.

Such are some of the reasons which alarmed me, I confess, when I saw lately that a Commission of the Legislative Assembly had been charged to prepare a project of law on friendly societies. It struck me that the hour of their destruction was approaching, and it afflicted me the more that I had thought a great future was in store for them, could we only preserve them in the bracing air of liberty. Is it then, I would ask, so very difficult a thing to leave men to make a trial, to feel their way, to make a choice, to find themselves mistaken, to rectify their mistakes, to inform themselves, to act in concert, to manage their own property and their own interests, to act for themselves on their own proper risk and peril, and on their own responsibility? Is it not evident that this is the way to make them really men? Shall we never cease to begin with the fatal hypothesis that all governors are guardians, and the governed only children?

I maintain that, left to the vigilance of the parties interested, our Friendly Societies have before them a great future, and I require no other proof of this than what has taken place on the other side of the Channel.

“In England, individual foresight has not waited for Government impulse to organize a powerful and reciprocal association between the working classes. For a long period, free associations, administering their own affairs, have been founded in all the principal towns of Great Britain,” etc..... [p371]

“The total number of these associations for the United Kingdom amounts to 33,223, including not less than 3,052,000 individuals—one-half of the adult population of Great Britain.”....

“This great confederation of the working classes, this institution of effective and practical fraternity, rests on the most solid basis. Their revenue is five millions sterling, and their accumulated capital amounts to eleven millions and two hundred thousand pounds.”

“It is upon this fund that the contributors draw when out of employment. We are astonished to see how England rallies from the immense and profound perturbations which her gigantic industry experiences from time to time, and almost periodically—and the explanation of the phenomenon is to a great extent to be found in the facts now stated.”

“Mr Roebuck wished, on account of the great importance of the question, that the Government would assume the initiative by taking the question into its own hands. . .. This was opposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

“Where individual interests are sufficient for their own free government, power, in England, judges it useless to interpose its action. It watches from above to see that all goes on regularly; but it leaves to every man the merit of his exertions, and the care of administering his affairs, according to his own notions and convenience. It is to this independence of her citizens that England assuredly owes a portion of her greatness as a nation.”79

It might have been added that it is to that independence also that the citizens owe their experience and personal worth. To that independence, too, the English Government owes its relative freedom from responsibility, and consequently its stability.

Among the institutions which may take their rise from Friendly Societies, when they shall have made that advance which has scarcely yet been begun, I should give the first place, on account of their social importance, to the labourer’s Caisse de Retraite.80

There are persons who treat such an institution as a chimera. Such people, no doubt, pretend to be acquainted with the extreme limits as regards Stability, beyond which the human race is not permitted to go. I would ask them a few simple questions: If they had never known anything beyond the social state of those barbarous tribes who live by hunting and fishing, would they have been able to anticipate the existence, I do not say of our present [p372] land revenues, of Government funds, and fixed salaries, but even of the system of payment by wages, which is the first step towards fixity in the condition of the poorest classes? And then, if they had never seen anything beyond this wages-system, as it exists in countries which have not yet displayed the spirit of association, would they have ventured to predict the destinies reserved for Friendly Societies as we find them at work in our own day in England? Do they imagine that these first steps of progress were more easy than it is for us to establish Caisses de Retraite? Is this third step more difficult to take than the other two?

For myself, I see clearly that mankind thirsts after stability. I see them, century after century, adding to their incomplete conquests, for the benefit of one class or another, and this by marvellous processes, which would seem to be much above individual invention, and I confess that I dare not venture to predict at what point men will stop short on the road of progress.

One thing is certain, that these Caisses de Retraite are universally, unanimously, ardently desired by all our workmen; and very naturally so.

I have frequently interrogated them, and I have always found that the great pain and grief of their existence is not the severity of their work, nor the smallness of their wages, nor even the irritation which the spectacle of inequality is calculated to excite. No, what affects them, discourages them, pains them, tortures them, is their uncertainty as regards the future. Whatever profession we may belong to, whether we are public functionaries, or men of independent fortune, or landed proprietors, or merchants, physicians, lawyers, soldiers, magistrates, we enjoy without perceiving it, consequently without acknowledging it, the progress which has been realized by Society—so that we cannot comprehend the torture of uncertainty. Let us place ourselves, then, in the situation of a workman, of an artisan who, on getting up every morning, is haunted by such thoughts as these: “I am young and robust; I work on, and sometimes harder than my neighbours, and have less leisure than they. And yet I have difficulty in providing for the modest wants of myself and of my wife and children. But what will become of me, what will become of them, when old age or disease shall have palsied my arm? To provide for those days of helplessness by saving from my wages would require self-control and prudence almost superhuman. Yet in spite of sickness, I have the prospect of enjoying happiness by means of a Friendly Society. Old age, however, is not an eventuality; it will come inevitably and without fail. Every day I feel its approach; it will soon [p373] overtake me; and then, after a life of honest labour, what prospect have I before me? For myself the garret, the hospital, or the jail; fur my wife, beggary; for my daughter, worse still. Oh, for some social institution which would compel me even by force, while still young, to secure a provision for old age!”

Such are the thoughts, feebly as I have expressed them, which every day, and every night, and every hour, haunt the terror-stricken imaginations of vast numbers of our fellow-men. And when a problem presents itself under such conditions, you may be very sure that it is not insoluble.

If in their efforts to impart more stability to their future, the working classes have disseminated alarm among the other classes of society, it has arisen from their having given to these efforts a false, dangerous, and unjust direction. Their first idea, according to French custom, has been to attack the treasury; to found the Caisses de Retraite on the contributions of the taxpayer, and to bring into play the State and the Law, that is to say, to secure all the profits of spoliation without incurring the dangers, or bearing the shame of it.

It is not from this quarter of the social horizon that the institutions so much desired by the working classes may be expected to come. The Caisse de Retraite, in order that its origin may be in keeping with its end and design, and to ensure its being useful, solid, and respectable, must proceed from the working classes themselves, must be the fruit of their exertions, their energy, their sagacity, their experience, their foresight. It must be supported by their contributions, and fed and nourished by their sacrifices. All they have to ask from Government is liberty of action and repression of fraud.

But has the time come when a Caisse de Retraite for the working classes is possible? I think it has. In order that an institution which brings new stability to the interests of a class should be established, a certain amount of anterior progress is necessary. It is necessary that a certain stage of civilisation should have been reached by the Society in the midst of which such an institution is to be established, a healthful atmosphere must be prepared for it. If I am not mistaken, it is to friendly societies, with the material resources which they create, and the spirit of association, the experience, the foresight, and the sense of dignity which they infuse into the working classes, that we are to owe the establishment of those kindred institutions which provide for the old age of the workman.

For if you observe what is going on in England, you will be [p374] satisfied that all such things are bound up together and depend upon each other, and that one step of progress, in order to be attainable, must be preceded by another step of progress.

In England all the adults to whom it is an object to join benefit societies have done so of their own accord; and that is a point of very great importance, seeing that operations of this kind require to be conducted on a great scale, and according to the law of averages.

These societies are possessed of large accumulated capitals, and have, besides, considerable annual revenues.

We cannot help thinking that, with the advance of civilisation, the prodigious sums which these societies now require to pay to their members will become proportionally smaller and smaller.

Good health is one of the benefits which civilisation develops. The healing art makes progress; machinery performs the harder and more painful part of labour; longevity increases. All these causes tend to lessen the calls on such associations.

A still more decisive and infallible symptom is the disappearance of great commercial crises in England. Such convulsions have had their origin sometimes in sudden manias with which the English are now and then seized for enterprises which are more than hazardous, and which entail a great loss of capital; sometimes they arise from great fluctuations in the price of food, the consequence of restrictive laws, for it is evident that when the price of bread and butcher’s meat is very high, all the resources of the people are absorbed in the purchase of necessaries, and other branches of trade languish, and a stoppage of manufactures is the inevitable result.

The first of these causes is now disappearing under the teachings of experience and public discussion; and we can already foresee that the English nation, which in former days threw itself into American loans, Mexican mines, and railway schemes with such sheep-like credulity, will now be much less a dupe than others to Californian illusions.

What shall I say of Free Trade, the triumph of which is due to Mr Cobden, not to Sir Robert Peel;—for the apostle would always have called forth a statesman, but the statesman could not have dispensed with the apostle. Here, then, we have a new power ushered into the world, which I hope will go far to do away with commercial stoppages and convulsions. Restriction has the admitted tendency and effect of placing many of the manufactures of the country, and, consequently, part of its population, in a precarious situation. As those piled-up waves which a transient force keeps for a moment above the level of the sea have a [p375] constant tendency to descend, so factitious industries, surrounded on every side by victorious competition, have a constant tendency to collapse. A modification in a single article of a single home or foreign tariff may bring ruin to them; and then comes a crisis. The variations in the price of a commodity, moreover, are much greater when you limit the field of competition. Surround a department, or a district, with custom-houses, and you render the fluctuation of prices much more marked. Liberty acts on the principle of insurance. In different countries, and in successive years, it compensates bad harvests by good ones. It sustains prices thus brought back to the average. It is a levelling and equalizing force. It contributes to stability, and it combats instability which is the great source of convulsions and stoppages. There is no exaggeration in asserting that the first fruit of Mr Cobden’s work will be to lessen many of those dangers which gave rise, in England, to friendly societies.

Mr Cobden has undertaken another task which will have a not less beneficial influence on the stability of the labourer’s lot, and I doubt not he will succeed in it; for good service in the cause of truth is always triumphant. I refer to his efforts for the suppression of war, or, what is the same thing, for the infusion of the spirit of peace into that public opinion by which the question of peace or war comes always to be decided. War constitutes always the greatest disturbing force to which a nation can be subjected in its industry, in its commerce, in the disposal of its capital, even in its tastes. Consequently, it is a powerful cause of derangement and uneasiness to those classes who have difficulty in changing their employment. The more, of course, this disturbing force is lessened, the less onerous will the burdens be which fall upon benefit societies.

On the other hand, by dint of progress, by the mere lapse of time, the resources of these societies will be extended; and a day will come when they can undertake something more decisive—with a view to lessen the instability which is inherent in human affairs. These societies might then be transformed into Caisses de Retraite, or institutions for old age, and this will undoubtedly happen, since it is the ardent and universal desire of the working classes that it should be so.

And it is worthy of remark, that while material circumstances thus pave the way for such a transformation, moral circumstances arising from the influence of these very societies tend in the same direction. These societies develop among the working classes habits, qualities, and virtues, the possession and diffusion of which [p376] are in this respect an essential preliminary. When we examine the matter closely, we must be convinced that the creation of such societies presupposes a very advanced stage of civilisation. They are at once its effect and its reward. They could, in fact, have no existence if men had not been previously in the habit of meeting, of acting in concert, and of managing in common their own affairs; they could not exist if men were prone to vices which induce premature old age; nor could they exist were the working classes brought to think that everything is fair as against the public, and that a common fund is the object at which every one intent on fraud may legitimately take aim.

In order that the establishment of Caisses de Retraite should not give rise to discord and misunderstanding, the working classes should be made to feel that they must depend upon nobody but themselves; that the common fund must be voluntarily created by those who are to have the benefit of it; and that it is supremely unjust and anti-social to call for co-operation from other classes, who are to have no share in the advantage, and who can only be made to concur by means of the tax-gatherer, that is to say, by means of force. Now, we have not yet got that length—so far from it that the frequent appeals to the State show us but too plainly what are the hopes and pretensions of the working classes. They think that their benefit society should be fed and alimented by State subventions like that for public functionaries. And thus it is that one abuse always gives rise to another.

But if these Caisses de Retraite are to be maintained exclusively by the parties interested, may it not be said that they exist already, seeing that life assurance companies present combinations which enable every workman to provide for the future by the sacrifice of the present?

I have dwelt at great length upon friendly societies and Caisses de Retraite, although these institutions are only indirectly connected with the subject of this chapter. I have given way to the desire to exhibit mankind marching gradually on to the conquest of stability, or rather (for stability implies something stationary), emerging victorious from their struggle with uncertainty—uncertainty, that standing menace which mars all the enjoyments of life, that sword of Damocles which seems so fatally suspended over the human destinies. That this menace may be progressively and indefinitely rendered less formidable by reducing to an average the risks and chances of all times, of all places, and of all men, is certainly one of the most admirable social harmonies which can be presented to the view of the philosophic economist. [p377]

We must not, however, conclude that this victory depends upon these two institutions, the establishment of which may be more or less accidental. No; did experience even demonstrate these institutions to be impracticable, the human race would not the less find its way to fixity. It is enough to know that uncertainty is an evil, in order to be assured that it will be incessantly, and, sooner or later, successfully, combated; for such is the law of our nature.

If, as we have seen, the system of remunerating labour by wages is, as regards stability, a more advanced form of association between capital and labour, it still leaves too much room for the uncertain. As long as he continues to work, the labourer knows on what he has to depend. But how long will he have employment, and how long will he be fit for work? This is what he is ignorant of, and, as regards his future, it places before him a fearful problem for solution. The uncertainty which affects the capitalist is different. With him it is not a question of life or death. “I shall always derive an interest from my means; but will that interest be higher or lower?” That is the question which affects capital or anterior labour.

Sentimental philanthropists who see in this a frightful inequality which they desire to get rid of by artificial, sometimes by unjust and violent, means, do not consider that after all we cannot change the nature of things. Anterior labour must necessarily have more security than present labour, simply for this reason, that products already created must always present more certain resources than products which are yet to be created; that services already rendered, received, and estimated, present a more solid foundation for the future than services which are still in the state of supply. If you are not surprised that of two fishermen, the one who, having long laboured and saved, possesses lines, nets, boats, and some previous supply of fish, is more at ease as regards his future than the other who has absolutely nothing but his willingness to take part in the work, why should you be astonished that the social order presents to a certain extent the same differences? In order to justify the envy, the jealousy, the absolute spitefulness with which the labourer regards the capitalist, it would be necessary to conclude that the relative stability of the one is caused by the instability of the other. But it is the reverse which is true. It is precisely the capital which pre-exists in the hands of one man which is the guarantee of the wages of another, however insufficient that guarantee may appear. But for that capital, the uncertainty of the labourer would be still greater and more striking. Would the [p378] increase, and the extension to all, of that uncertainty be any advantage to the labourer?

Two men run equal risks, which we may represent, for each, as equal to 40. One of them succeeds so well, by his labour and his foresight, that he reduces the risks which affect him to 10. Those of his companion from the same cause, and in consequence of a mysterious solidarity, are reduced, not to 10, but to 20. What can be more just than that the man who has the greater merit should reap the greater reward? What more admirable than that the other should profit by the virtues of his neighbour? Now, this is just what philanthropy repudiates under the pretext that such an order of things is opposed to equality.

Suppose that one fine day the old fisherman should thus address his companion: “You have neither boat, nor nets, nor any instrument to fish with, except your hands, and you are likely to make but a poor business of it. You have no stock of provisions, and it is poor work to fish with an empty stomach. Come along with me—it is your interest as well as mine. It is yours, for I will give you a share of the fish which we take, and, whatever the quantity be, it will at least be greater than the produce of your isolated exertions. It is my interest also, for the additional quantity caught with your assistance will be greater than the share I will have to give you. In short, the union of your labour with my labour and capital, as compared with their isolated action, will produce a surplus, and it is the division of this surplus which explains how association may be of advantage to both of us.”

They proceed in this way in the first instance; but afterwards the young fisher will prefer to receive every day a fixed quantity of fish. His uncertain and fluctuating profits are thus converted into wages, without the advantages of association being destroyed, and, by stronger reason, without the association itself being dissolved.

And it is in such circumstances as these that the pretended philanthropy of the Socialists comes to declaim against the tyranny of boats and nets, against the situation, naturally less uncertain, of him who possesses them, and who has come to possess them just because he has constructed them in order to obviate this uncertainty! It is in such circumstances that they endeavour to persuade the destitute young fisherman that he is the victim of his voluntary arrangement with the old fisherman, and that he ought instantly to return to his state of isolation!

To assert that the future of the capitalist is less uncertain than [p379] that of the workman, is just to assert that the man who already possesses is in a better situation than the man who does not yet possess. It is so, and it must be so, for it is for this very reason that men aspire to possess.

The tendency, then, is for men to cease being workmen in receipt of wages in order to become capitalists. This progress is in conformity with human nature. What workman does not desire to have tools of his own, a stock of his own, a warehouse, a workshop, a field, a dwelling-house, of his own? What workman but aspires to become an employer? Who is not delighted to command after having long obeyed? Do the great laws of the economic world, does the natural play of the social organs, favour or oppose this tendency? This is the last question which we shall examine in connexion with the subject of wages.

Can its solution be attended with any doubt?

Let us revert once more to the necessary evolution of production: gratuitous utility substituting itself incessantly for onerous utility; human efforts constantly diminishing in relation to each result, and, when rendered disposable, embarking in new enterprises; every hour’s labour corresponding to an always increasing amount of enjoyment. How, from these premises, can we fail to deduce a progressive increase of useful efforts to be distributed, consequently a sustained amelioration of the labourer’s condition, consequently, also, an endless increase and progression of that amelioration?

For here the effect having become a cause, we see progress not only advance, but become accelerated by its advance; vires acquirere eundo. In point of fact, from century to century accumulation becomes more easy, as the remuneration of labour becomes more ample. Then accumulation increases capital, increases the demand for labour, and causes an elevation of wages. This rise of wages, in its turn, facilitates accumulation and the transformation of the paid labourer into a capitalist. Between the remuneration of labour and the accumulation of capital, then, there is a constant action and reaction, which is always favourable to the labouring class, always tending to relieve that class from the yoke of urgent necessity.

It may be said, perhaps, that I have brought together here all that can dazzle the hopes of the working classes, and that I have concealed all that could cause them discouragement. If there are tendencies towards equality, it may be said, there are also tendencies towards inequality. Why do you not analyze the whole, in order to explain the true situation of the labouring classes, and [p380] thus bring science into accord with the melancholy facts to which it seems to shut its eyes? You show us gratuitous utility substituted for onerous utility, the gifts of God falling more and more into the domain of community, and, by that very fact, human labour obtaining a continually increasing recompense. From this increase of remuneration you deduce an increased facility of accumulation, and from this facility of accumulation a new increase of remuneration, leading to new and still more abundant accumulations, and so on ad infinitum. It may be that this system is as logical as it is optimist; it may be that we are not in a situation to oppose to it a scientific refutation. But where are the facts which confirm it? Where do we find realized this emancipation from paid labour? Is it in the great centres of manufactures? Is it among the agricultural labourers? And if your theoretical predictions are not accomplished, is not this the reason, that alongside the economic laws which you invoke, there are other laws which act in an opposite direction, and of which you say nothing. For instance, why do you tell us nothing of that competition which takes place among workmen, and which forces them to accept of lower wages; of that urgent want of the necessaries of life which presses upon the labourer, and obliges him to submit to the conditions of the capitalist, so that, in fact, it is the most destitute, famished, isolated, and consequently the most clamant and exacting workman who fixes the rate of wages for all? And if, in spite of so many obstacles, the condition of our unfortunate fellow-citizens comes to be improved, why do you not show us that law of population which steps in with its fatal action, multiplying the multitude, stirring up competition, increasing the supply of labour, deciding the controversy in favour of the capitalist, and reducing the workman to receive, for twelve or sixteen hours’ labour, only what is indispensable (that, forsooth, is the consecrated phrase) to the maintenance of life?

If I have not touched upon all these phases of the question, the reason is, that it is scarcely possible to include everything within the limits of a single chapter. I have already explained the general law of Competition, and we have seen that that law is far from furnishing any class, especially the poorer class, with serious reasons for discouragement. I shall, by-and-by, explain the law of Population, which will be found, I hope, in its general effects, not more severe. It is not my fault if each great solution—such, for example, as the future of a whole class of men—cannot be educed from one isolated economic law, and consequently from [p381] one chapter of this work, but must be educed from the aggregate of these laws, or from the work taken as a whole.

And here I must remind the reader of a distinction, which is by no means a subtlety, that when we have to do with an effect, we must take good care not to attribute it to the action of general and providential laws, if, on the contrary, it be found to proceed from a violation of these very laws.

I by no means ignore the calamities which, under all forms,—excessive labour, insufficient wages, uncertainty as to the future, a feeling of inferiority,—bear hard upon those of our fellow-citizens who have not yet been able, by the acquisition of Property, to raise themselves to a higher and more comfortable condition. But, then, we must acknowledge that uncertainty, destitution, and ignorance constitute the starting-point of the whole human race; and this being so, the question, it seems to me, is to discover,—1st, If the general providential laws do not tend to relieve all classes from the weight of this triple yoke; 2dly, If the conquests already secured by the more advanced classes do not constitute a facility prepared beforehand for the classes which yet lag behind. If the answer to these questions be in the affirmative, we may conclude that the social harmony is established, and that the ways of Providence are vindicated, if, indeed, they needed vindication.

Man being endowed with discretion and free will, the beneficent laws of Providence can profit him only while he conforms himself to their operation; and although I affirm that man’s nature is perfectible, I must not be understood to assert that he makes progress when he misunderstands or violates these laws. Thus, I maintain that transactions which are natural, free, voluntary, and exempt from fraud or violence, have in themselves a principle of progress for all. But that is not to affirm that progress is inevitable, and must spring from war, monopoly, or imposture. I maintain that wages have a tendency to rise, that this rise facilitates saving, and that saving, in its turn, raises wages. But if the class which lives by wages, in consequence of habits of dissipation and debauchery, neutralize at the outset this cause of progressive effects, I do not say that those effects will exhibit themselves in the same way, for the contrary is implied in my affirmation.

In order to bring the scientific deduction to the test of facts, we must take two epochs; for example, 1750 and 1850.

We must first of all establish what, at these two periods, was the proportion of prolÉtaires to propriÉtaires—of the men who live by wages without having any realized property, to the men in the actual possession of property. We shall find, I presume, that for [p382] a century the number of people who possess some resources has much increased relatively to the number of those who are in possession of no resources whatever.

We must then discover the specific situation of each of these two classes, which we cannot do otherwise than by observing the enjoyments and satisfactions which they possess; and very probably we shall find that in our day they derive a greater amount of real satisfaction and enjoyment, the one from accumulated labour, the other from present labour, than was possible in the middle of the last century.

If the respective and relative progress of these classes, especially of the working class, has not been what we could wish, we must then inquire whether it has not been more or less retarded by acts of injustice and violence, by errors, by passions—in a word, by faults incident to mankind, by contingent causes which we cannot confound with what are called the great and constant laws of the social economy. Have we not, for example, had wars and revolutions which might have been avoided? And have not these atrocities, in the first instance, absorbed and afterwards dissipated an incalculable amount of capital, consequently diminished the funds for the payment of wages, and retarded the emancipation of the working classes? Have they not diverted capital from its legitimate employment, seeking to derive from it, not enjoyment, but destruction? Have we not had monopolies, privileges, and unequal taxation? Have we not had absurd expenditure, ridiculous fashions, and a loss of power, which can be attributed only to puerile tastes and prejudices?

And what has been the consequence?

There are general laws to which man may conform himself, or which he may violate.

If it be incontestable that Frenchmen, during the last hundred years, have frequently run counter to the natural order of social development; if we cannot forbear to attribute to incessant wars, to periodical revolutions, to acts of injustice, to monopolies, to dissipation, to follies of all kinds, a fearful sacrifice of the power of capital and of labour;

And if, on the other hand, in spite of all this, which is undeniable, we can establish another fact—namely, that during this same period of a hundred years the class possessed of property has been recruited from the labouring class, and that both have at the same time had at their command a greater amount of satisfaction and enjoyment—do we not, by rigorous deduction, arrive at this conclusion, namely, that, [p383]

The general laws of the social world are in harmony, and that they tend in all respects to the improvement of the human race?

For since, after a period of a hundred years, during which these laws have been so frequently and so deeply violated, men find themselves in a more advanced state of comfort and well-being, the action of these laws must be beneficent, and sufficiently so even to compensate the action of disturbing causes.

How indeed could it be otherwise? Is there not something equivocal, or rather redundant, in the expression, beneficent general laws? How can general laws be other than beneficent? When God placed in man’s heart an irresistible impulse to what is good, and, to enable him to discern it, imparted to him sufficient light to enable him to rectify his errors, from that moment He decreed that the human race was perfectible, and that, in spite of many errors, difficulties, deceptions, oppressions, and oscillations, mankind should still march onwards on the road of progress. This onward march, while error, deception, and oppression are absent, is precisely what we denominate the general laws of the social order. Errors and oppressions are what I call the violation of these laws, or disturbing causes. It is not possible, then, to doubt that the one should be beneficent, and the other the reverse, unless we go the length of doubting whether disturbing causes may not act in a manner more regular and permanent than general laws. Now that conclusion would contradict the premises. Our intelligence, which may be deceived, can rectify its errors, and it is evident that, the social world being constituted as it is, error might sooner or later be checked by Responsibility, and that, sooner or later, oppression must be destroyed by Solidarity. Whence it follows that disturbing causes are not in their nature permanent, and it is for that reason that the laws which countervail the action of such disturbances merit the name of General laws.

In order to conform ourselves to general laws, it is necessary to be acquainted with them. Allow me then to enlarge a little on the relations, so ill understood, of the capitalist and the labourer.

Capital and labour are indispensable to one another. Perpetually confronting each other, their adjustment constitutes one of the most important and most interesting subjects which can come under the observation of the economist. And it is a solemn consideration that erroneous notions and superficial observations on this subject, if they become popular, may give rise to inveterate heartburnings, struggles, and bloodshed.

Now, I express my deliberate conviction when I say that for [p384] some years the public mind has been saturated with the falsest theories on this subject. We have been told that free and voluntary transactions between the capitalist and the labourer lead, not accidentally, but necessarily, to monopoly for the capitalist, and oppression for the labourer; from which the obvious conclusion is, that liberty ought everywhere to be put down and stifled; for, I repeat, that when men have accused liberty of engendering monopoly, they have pretended not only to assert a fact, but to establish a law. In support of this thesis they have appealed to the action of machinery and of competition. M. de Sismondi was, I believe, the founder, and M. Buret the propagator, of these unhappy doctrines, although the latter has stated his conclusions very timidly, and the former has not ventured to state any conclusion at all. But bolder spirits have succeeded them, who, after trumpeting their hatred to capitalists and men of property, after having got the masses to accept as an incontestable axiom the discovery that liberty leads inevitably to monopoly, have, whether designedly or not, induced the people to raise their hands against this accursed liberty.81 Four days of a sanguinary struggle brought emancipation, without restoring confidence; for do we not constantly discover the hand of the State (obedient in this to vulgar prejudices) ever ready to interpose in the relations of capital and labour?

We have already deduced the action of competition from our theory of value, and we shall do the same thing as regards the effects of machinery.82 We must limit ourselves in this place to an exposition of some general ideas upon the subject of the reciprocal relations of the capitalist and the labourer.

The fact with which our pessimist reformers are much struck in the outset is, that the capitalists are richer than the workmen, and obtain a greater amount of satisfactions and enjoyments; whence it results that they appropriate to themselves a greater, and consequently an unjust, share of the product elaborated by their joint exertions. It is in this direction that their statistics, more or less impartial, professing to explain the condition of the working classes, tend.

These gentlemen forget that absolute poverty and destitution is the inevitable starting-point of the human race, and that men continue inevitably in this state until they have acquired something for themselves, or have had something acquired for them by others. [p385] To remark, in the gross, that capitalists are better off than mere workmen, is simply to assert that those who have something, have more than those who have nothing.

The questions which the workman ought to ask himself are not, “Does my labour give me much? Does it give me little? Does it give me as much as it gives to another? Does it give me what I desire?” The questions he should ask himself are these: “Does my labour give me less because I employ it in the service of the capitalist? Would it give me more if I worked in a state of isolation, or if I associated my labour with that of other workmen as destitute as myself? I am ill situated, but would I be better off were there no such thing as capital in the world? If the part which I obtain in consequence of my arrangement with capital is greater than what I would obtain without that arrangement, what reason have I to complain? And then, according to what laws would our respective shares go on increasing or diminishing were transactions free? If it be of the nature of these transactions to allow me, in proportion as the total product to be divided increases, to obtain a continually increasing proportion of the excess (c. vii., p. 212), then in place of breathing hatred against capital, ought I not to treat it as a friend? If it be indisputably established that the presence of capital is favourable to my interests, and that its absence would be death to me, am I very prudent or well-advised in calumniating it, frightening it away, and forcing its dissipation or flight?” In the discussion which precedes the bargain, an inequality of situation is constantly alleged, because capital can afford to wait, but labour cannot. The one upon which the greatest pressure bears must give way to the other, so that the capitalist in reality fixes the rate of wages.

Undoubtedly, looking at the surface of things, he who has created a stock, and who in consequence of this foresight can wait on, has the advantage in the bargain. Taking even an isolated transaction, the man who says, Do ut facias, is not in such a hurry to come to a conclusion as the man who replies, Facio ut des. For, when a man can say do, he possesses something to give; and when he possesses something to give, he can wait.83

We must not, however, lose sight of this, that value has the same principle, whether it resides in the service or in the product. If one of the parties says do, in place of facio, it is because he has had the foresight to execute the facio beforehand. In reality, it is the service on both sides which is the measure of the value. Now, [p386] if delay for present labour is a suffering, for anterior labour it is a loss. We must not then suppose that a man who says do, the capitalist, will amuse himself (above all if we consider the aggregate of his transactions) by deferring the bargain. In point of fact, do we see much capital idle for this reason? Do many manufacturers stop their mills, or shipowners delay their voyages, or agriculturists defer their harvests, on purpose to depreciate wages, and get hold of their workmen by means of famine?

But without denying that the position of the capitalists in relation to the workman is favourable in this respect, is there not something else to be considered with reference to their arrangements? For instance, is it not a circumstance quite in favour of present labour that accumulated labour loses value by mere lapse of time? I have elsewhere alluded to this phenomenon. But it is important to solicit the reader’s attention again to it in this place, seeing how great an influence it has upon the remuneration of present labour.

That which in my opinion renders Adam Smith’s theory, that value comes from labour, false, or at least incomplete, is that this theory assigns to value only one element, whilst, being a relation, it has necessarily two. Besides, if value springs exclusively from labour, and represents it, it would be proportionate to that labour, which is contrary to all observed facts.

No; value comes from service received and rendered; and the service depends as much, if not more, on the pains saved to the man who receives it, as upon the pains taken by the man who renders it. In this respect the most common facts confirm our reasoning. When I purchase a product, I may indeed ask myself, “How long time has it taken to make it?” And this undoubtedly is one of the elements of my estimate of its value. But again, and above all, I ask, “How long time would it take me to make it? How long time have I taken to make the thing which is asked from me in exchange?” When I purchase a service, I not only ask how much it will cost another to render that service to me, but how much it would cost me to render that service to myself.

These personal questions, and the answers which they call forth, are such essential elements in every estimate of value, that they most frequently determine it.

Try to purchase a diamond which has been found by chance. The seller will transfer to you very little labour, but he will ask from you a great deal. Why, then, should you consent to this? Because you take into account the labour which it saves you, the [p387] labour which you would be obliged to undergo in order to satisfy by any other means your desire to possess a diamond.

When an exchange, then, takes place between anterior labour and present labour, it is not at all on the footing of their intensity or duration, but on that of their value, that is to say, of the service which they render, and their relative utility. If the capitalist shall say, “Here is a product which cost me formerly ten hours’ labour;” and if the labourer be in a situation to reply, “I can produce the same thing in five hours,” the capitalist would be forced to give up the difference; for, I repeat, that it does not concern the present acquirer of a commodity to ask how much labour it formerly cost to produce it. What concerns him is to know what labour it will save him now, what service he is to expect from it.

A capitalist, in a general sense, is a man who, having foreseen that such or such a service would be in demand, has prepared beforehand to satisfy this demand by incorporating the value in a commodity.

When labour has been thus expended by anticipation, in expectation of future remuneration, we cannot tell whether, on a definite future day, it will render exactly the same service, or save the same pains, or preserve, consequently, a uniform value. We cannot even hazard a probable conjecture as to this. The commodity may be very recherchÉ, very difficult to procure in any other way; it may come to render services which will be better appreciated, or appreciated by more people; it may acquire an increasing value with time,—in other words, it may exchange for a continually increasing proportion of present labour. Thus it is not impossible that such a product, a diamond for example, a violin of Stradivarius, a picture of RaphaËl, a vine-plant from the ChÂteau-Laffitte, may come to exchange for a thousand times more labour than they cost. In fact it just comes to this, that the anterior labour is well remunerated in these cases, because it renders a great amount of service.

The contrary may also happen. A commodity which has cost four hours’ labour may come to exchange for one which has cost only three hours’ labour of equal intensity.

But—and this appears to me extremely important as regards the interests of the working classes, of those classes who aspire so ardently to get rid of their present state of uncertainty—although the two alternatives we have stated are both possible, and each may be realized in its turn, although accumulated labour may sometimes gain, and sometimes lose value, in [p388] relation to present labour, the first alternative, nevertheless, is so rare as to be considered accidental and exceptional; while the second is the result of a general law which is inherent in the very organization of man. That man, with all his intellectual and experimental acquisitions, is of a progressive nature, is at least industrially speaking (for, in a moral point of view, the assertion might be disputed) beyond doubt. It is beyond doubt that the greater part of those commodities which exacted formerly a given amount of labour, exact at the present day a less amount, in consequence of improvements in machinery and the gratuitous intervention of natural forces; and we may assert without hesitation, that in each period of ten years, for example, a given quantity of labour will accomplish, in the majority of cases, greater results than the same quantity of labour could have accomplished in the preceding decennial period.

What is the conclusion to be drawn from this? Obviously, that anterior labour goes on constantly deteriorating in value relatively to present labour; that in every act of exchange it becomes necessary to give, of the first a greater number of hours than you receive of the second; and this without any injustice, but simply to maintain the equivalence of services. This is a consequence which progress forces upon us.

You say to me, “Here is a machine; it was made ten years ago, but it is still new. It cost 1000 days’ work to make it. I will give it to you in exchange for an equal number of days’ labour.” To this I reply, “Within the last ten years so many new tools have been invented, and so many new processes discovered, that I can now construct, or, what comes to the same thing, get constructed for me, an equally good machine, with an expenditure of only 600 days’ labour. I will not, therefore, give you more than 600 for yours.” “But I should in this way lose 400 days’ labour.” “No,” I reply; “for 6 days’ work now are worth 10 formerly. At all events, what you offer me for 1000 I can now procure for 600.” This ends the debate; if the lapse of time has deteriorated the value of your labour, there is no reason why I should bear the loss.

Again you say to me, “Here is a field. In order to bring it to its present state of productiveness, I and my ancestors have expended 1000 days’ labour. They were unacquainted, no doubt, with the use of axe, and saw, and spade, and did all by muscular exertion. But no matter; give me first of all 1000 of your days’ work, as an equivalent for the 1000 which I give to you, and then add 300 as the value of the productive power of the soil, and you [p389] shall have the field.” I answer, “I will not give you 1300, or even 1000, days’ labour for it; and here are my reasons: There are on the surface of the globe an indefinite number of productive powers which are destitute of value. We are now accustomed to handle spade, and axe, and saw, and plough, and employ many other means of abridging labour, and rendering it more productive; so that, with 600 days’ work, I can either bring an uncultivated field into the state in which yours is, or (which comes absolutely to the same thing as far as I am concerned) I can procure myself, by an act of exchange, all the advantages which you reap from your field. I will give you, then, 600 days, and no more.” “In that case, not only should I have no profit from the pretended value of the productive powers of the soil; I should not even be reimbursed for the actual labour which I and my ancestors have devoted to the cultivation of this field. Is it not strange that I should be accused by Ricardo of selling the powers of nature; by Senior of intercepting the gifts of God; by all the Economists of being a monopolist; by Proudhon of being a robber; while in reality I am only a dupe?” You are no more a dupe than a monopolist. You receive the equivalent of what you give; and it is neither natural, nor just, nor possible, that rude labour performed with the hand centuries ago should exchange, day for day, against the more intelligent and productive labour of the present time.

Thus we see that by an admirable effect of the social mechanism, when anterior and present labour are brought into juxtaposition, and when the business is to know in what proportion the joint product of both is to be divided, the specific superiority of the one and of the other is taken into account; and they participate in the distribution according to the relative services which they render. In exceptional cases it may happen that this superiority is on the side of anterior labour. But in the great majority of cases it is otherwise; and the nature of man and the law of progress cause the superiority to be manifested on the side of present labour. Progress is advanced by the latter; and the deterioration falls upon capital.

Independently of this result, which shows how vain and hollow the declamations of our modern reformers on the pretended tyranny of capital are, there is another consideration still more fitted to extinguish in the hearts of the working classes that factitious hatred of other classes, which it has been attempted but with too much success to light up.

The consideration I refer to is this:

Capital, however far it may carry its pretensions, and however [p390] successful it may be in its endeavours to ensure the triumph of these pretensions, can never place labour in a worse situation than it would occupy in a state of isolation. In other words, capital is always more favourable to labour by its presence than by its absence.

Let us revert to the example which I gave a little ago.

Two men live by fishing. One of them has nets, lines, a boat, and some provisions to enable him to wait for the fruit of his labour. The other has nothing but his personal exertions. It is their interest to associate.84 Whatever may be the terms on which they agree to share the produce, the condition of either of these two fishermen, whether the rich one or the poor one, never can be made worse, and for this obvious reason, that the moment either of them finds association disadvantageous as compared with isolation, he may return to isolation.

In savage as in pastoral, in agricultural as in industrial life, the relations of capital and labour are always represented by this example.

The absence of capital is a limit which is always within the power of labour. If the pretensions of capital go the length of rendering joint action less profitable for labour than isolated action, labour can take refuge in isolation, an asylum always open (except in a state of slavery) to voluntary association found to be disadvantageous. Labour can always say to capital, Rather than work jointly on the conditions which you offer me, I prefer to work alone.

It may be objected that this resource is illusory and ridiculous, that to labour isolated action is forbidden by a radical impossibility, and that to dispense with tools and instruments would be fatal to it.

This is no doubt true; but it just confirms the truth of my assertion, that even if capital carries its exactions to an extreme limit, it still benefits labour by the very fact of its being associated with it. Labour can be brought into a worse condition than the worst association only when all association ceases and capital retires. Cease, then, apostles of misfortune, to cry out against the tyranny of capital, since you allow that its action is always—in a greater or less degree, no doubt, but always—beneficent. Singular tyranny, whose power is beneficial to all those who desire to feel its effects, and is hurtful only when withdrawn.

But the objector may still insist that, although this might be so in the earlier stages of society, capital has at the present day [p391] invaded everything. It occupies every post, it lays hold of every field. The working man has no longer either air, or space, or soil to put his foot on, or stone to lay his head on, without the permission of capital. He is subject to its inexorable law, and you would afford him no refuge but isolation, which you admit is death!

All this displays a deplorable confusion of ideas, and a total ignorance of the social economy.

If, as has been said, capital has possessed itself of all the forces of nature, of all lands, of all space, I would ask for whose profit? For the profit of the capitalist, no doubt. But then, how does it happen that a simple workman, who has nothing but his muscular powers, can obtain in France, in England, in Belgium, a thousand, a million times greater amount of satisfaction and enjoyment than he could have reaped in a state of isolation,—not on the social hypothesis which you repudiate, but on that other hypothesis which you cherish and cling to, that which presupposes capital to have been guilty of no usurpation.

I shall continue to entertain this view of the subject, until your new science can give a better account of it; for I am convinced I have assigned valid reasons for the conclusion at which I have arrived.—(Chapter vii.)

Take the first workman you meet with on the streets of Paris. Find out the amount of his earnings and the amount of enjoyments he can procure himself, and when you have fired off both against that monster, capital, I will step in, and thus address the workman:

We are about to annihilate capital and all its works; and I am going to place you in the midst of a hundred thousand acres of the most fertile land, which I shall give you in full property and possession, with everything above and below ground. You will not be elbowed by any capitalist. You will have the full enjoyment of the four natural rights of hunting, fishing, reaping the fruits, and pasturing the land. True, you will have no capital; for if you had, you would be in precisely the situation you censure in the case of others. But you will no longer have reason to complain of landlordism, capitalism, individualism, usurers, stockjobbers, bankers, monopolists. The land will be absolutely and entirely yours. Think if you would like to accept this position.

This workman would, no doubt, imagine at first that he had obtained the fortune of a monarch. On reflection, however, he would probably say: Well, let us calculate. Even when a man possesses a hundred thousand acres of land, he must live. Now, how does the bread account stand in the two situations? At [p392] present I earn half-a-crown a day. At the present price of corn I can have three bushels a week, just as if I myself sowed and reaped. Were I proprietor of a hundred thousand acres of land, at the utmost I could not, without capital, produce three bushels of corn in two years, and in the interim I might, die of famine..... I shall, therefore, stick to my wages.

The truth is, we do not consider sufficiently the progress which the human race must have made, to be able even to maintain the wretched existence of our workmen.85 . . . . . . . . . . . .

Amelioration of the labourer’s lot found in wages themselves and in the natural laws by which wages are regulated.

1st, The labourer tends to rise to the rank of a capitalist and employer.

2d, Wages tend to rise.

Corollary.—The transition from the state of a paid workman to that of an employer becomes constantly less desirable, and more easy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. [p393]