I mean by competition, not only the rivalry between two parties engaged in the same business, but the general and simultaneous effort of all kinds of business to get ahead of each other.This effort is to-day so strong, that the price of merchandise scarcely covers the cost of production and distribution; so that, the wages of all laborers being lessened, nothing remains, not even interest for the capitalists.
The primary cause of commercial and industrial stagnations is, then, interest on capital,--that interest which the ancients with one accord branded with the name of usury, whenever it was paid for the use of money, but which they did not dare to condemn in the forms of house-rent, farm-rent, or profit: as if the nature of the thing lent could ever warrant a charge for the lending;that is, robbery.
In proportion to the increase received by the capitalist will be the frequency and intensity of commercial crises,--the first being given, we always can determine the two others; and vice versa.Do you wish to know the regulator of a society?
Ascertain the amount of active capital; that is, the capital bearing interest, and the legal rate of this interest.The course of events will be a series of overturns, whose number and violence will be proportional to the activity of capital.
In 1839, the number of failures in Paris alone was one thousand and sixty-four.This proportion was kept up in the early months of 1840; and, as I write these lines, the crisis is not yet ended.It is said, further, that the number of houses which have wound up their business is greater than the number of declared failures.By this flood, we may judge of the waterspout's power of suction.
The decimation of society is now imperceptible and permanent, now periodical and violent; it depends upon the course which property takes.In a country where the property is pretty evenly distributed, and where little business is done,--the rights and claims of each being balanced by those of others,--the power of invasion is destroyed.There--it may be truly said--property does not exist, since the right of increase is scarcely exercised at all.The condition of the laborers--as regards security of life--is almost the same as if absolute equality prevailed among them.They are deprived of all the advantages of full and free association, but their existence is not endangered in the least.
With the exception of a few isolated victims of the right of property--of this misfortune whose primary cause no one perceives--the society appears to rest calmly in the bosom of this sort of equality.But have a care; it is balanced on the edge of a sword: at the slightest shock, it will fall and meet with death!
Ordinarily, the whirlpool of property localizes itself.On the one hand, farm-rent stops at a certain point; on the other, in consequence of competition and over-production, the price of manufactured goods does not rise,--so that the condition of the peasant varies but little, and depends mainly on the seasons.The devouring action of property bears, then, principally upon business.We commonly say COMMERCIAL CRISES, not AGRICULTURAL CRISES; because, while the farmer is eaten up slowly by the right of increase, the manufacturer is swallowed at a single mouthful.This leads to the cessation of business, the destruction of fortunes, and the inactivity of the working people; who die one after another on the highways, and in the hospitals, prisons, and galleys.
To sum up this proposition:--
Property sells products to the laborer for more than it pays him for them; therefore it is impossible.
APPENDIX TO THE FIFTH PROPOSITION.
I.Certain reformers, and even the most of the publicists--who, though belonging to no particular school, busy themselves in devising means for the amelioration of the lot of the poorer and more numerous class--lay much stress now-a-days on a better organization of labor.The disciples of Fourier, especially, never stop shouting, "ON TO THE PHALANX!" declaiming in the same breath against the foolishness and absurdity of other sects.
They consist of half-a-dozen incomparable geniuses who have discovered that FIVE AND FOUR MAKE NINE; TAKE TWO AWAY, AND NINEREMAIN,--and who weep over the blindness of France, who refuses to believe in this astonishing arithmetic.
Fourier, having to multiply a whole number by a fraction, never failed, they say, to obtain a product much greater than the multiplicand.He affirmed that under his system of harmony the mercury would solidify when the temperature was above zero.He might as well have said that the Harmonians would make burning ice.I once asked an intelligent phalansterian what he thought of such physics."I do not know," he answered; "but I believe."And yet the same man disbelieved in the doctrine of the Real Presence.
In fact, the Fourierists proclaim themselves, on the one hand, defenders of property, of the right of increase, which they have thus formulated: TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS CAPITAL, HIS LABOR, AND HIS SKILL.On the other hand, they wish the workingman to come into the enjoyment of all the wealth of society; that is,--abridging the expression,--into the undivided enjoyment of his own product.Is not this like saying to the workingman, "Labor, you shall have three francs per day; you shall live on fifty-five sous; you shall give the rest to the proprietor, and thus you will consume three francs"?
If the above speech is not an exact epitome of Charles Fourier's system, I will subscribe to the whole phalansterian folly with a pen dipped in my own blood.
Of what use is it to reform industry and agriculture,--of what use, indeed, to labor at all,--if property is maintained, and labor can never meet its expenses? Without the abolition of property, the organization of labor is neither more nor less than a delusion.If production should be quadrupled,--a thing which does not seem to me at all impossible,--it would be labor lost:
