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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Socialism, by John Stuart Mill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Socialism
+
+Author: John Stuart Mill
+
+Release Date: November 25, 2011 [EBook #38138]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIALISM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Adrian Mastronardi and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
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+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has     |
+    | been preserved.                                           |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+  SOCIALISM.
+
+
+  BY
+  JOHN STUART MILL.
+
+
+  _Reprinted from the Fortnightly Review._
+
+
+  CHICAGO.
+  BELFORDS, CLARKE & CO.
+  MDCCCLXXIX.
+
+
+
+
+  MANUFACTURED _BY_
+  DONOHUE
+  HENNEBERRY.
+  _CHICAGO, ILL._
+
+
+
+
+PRELIMINARY NOTICE.
+
+
+It was in the year 1869 that, impressed with the degree in which, even
+during the last twenty years, when the world seemed so wholly occupied
+with other matters, the socialist ideas of speculative thinkers had
+spread among the workers in every civilized country, Mr. Mill formed
+the design of writing a book on Socialism. Convinced that the
+inevitable tendencies of modern society must be to bring the questions
+involved in it always more and more to the front, he thought it of
+great practical consequence that they should be thoroughly and
+impartially considered, and the lines pointed out by which the best
+speculatively-tested theories might, without prolongation of suffering
+on the one hand, or unnecessary disturbance on the other, be applied
+to the existing order of things. He therefore planned a work which
+should go exhaustively through the whole subject, point by point; and
+the chapters now printed are the first rough drafts thrown down
+towards the foundation of that work. These chapters might not, when
+the work came to be completely written out and then re-written,
+according to the author's habit, have appeared in the present order;
+they might have been incorporated into different parts of the work. It
+has not been without hesitation that I have yielded to the urgent wish
+of the editor of this Review to give these chapters to the world; but
+I have complied with his request because, while they appear to me to
+possess great intrinsic value as well as special application to the
+problems now forcing themselves on public attention, they will not, I
+believe, detract even from the mere literary reputation of their
+author, but will rather form an example of the patient labor with
+which good work is done.
+
+                                                    HELEN TAYLOR.
+
+  _January, 1879._
+
+
+
+
+SOCIALISM.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+In the great country beyond the Atlantic, which is now well-nigh the
+most powerful country in the world, and will soon be indisputably so,
+manhood suffrage prevails. Such is also the political qualification of
+France since 1848, and has become that of the German Confederation,
+though not of all the several states composing it. In Great Britain
+the suffrage is not yet so widely extended, but the last Reform Act
+admitted within what is called the pale of the Constitution so large a
+body of those who live on weekly wages, that as soon and as often as
+these shall choose to act together as a class, and exert for any
+common object the whole of the electoral power which our present
+institutions give them, they will exercise, though not a complete
+ascendency, a very great influence on legislation. Now these are the
+very class which, in the vocabulary of the higher ranks, are said to
+have no stake in the country. Of course they have in reality the
+greatest stake, since their daily bread depends on its prosperity. But
+they are not engaged (we may call it bribed) by any peculiar interest
+of their own, to the support of property as it is, least of all to the
+support of inequalities of property. So far as their power reaches, or
+may hereafter reach, the laws of property have to depend for support
+upon considerations of a public nature, upon the estimate made of
+their conduciveness to the general welfare, and not upon motives of a
+mere personal character operating on the minds of those who have
+control over the Government.
+
+It seems to me that the greatness of this change is as yet by no means
+completely realized, either by those who opposed, or by those who
+effected our last constitutional reform. To say the truth, the
+perceptions of Englishmen are of late somewhat blunted as to the
+tendencies of political changes. They have seen so many changes made,
+from which, while only in prospect, vast expectations were
+entertained, both of evil and of good, while the results of either
+kind that actually followed seemed far short of what had been
+predicted, that they have come to feel as if it were the nature of
+political changes not to fulfil expectation, and have fallen into a
+habit of half-unconscious belief that such changes, when they take
+place without a violent revolution, do not much or permanently disturb
+in practice the course of things habitual to the country. This,
+however, is but a superficial view either of the past or of the
+future. The various reforms of the last two generations have been at
+least as fruitful in important consequences as was foretold. The
+predictions were often erroneous as to the suddenness of the effects,
+and sometimes even as to the kind of effect. We laugh at the vain
+expectations of those who thought that Catholic emancipation would
+tranquilize Ireland, or reconcile it to British rule. At the end of
+the first ten years of the Reform Act of 1832, few continued to think
+either that it would remove every important practical grievance, or
+that it had opened the door to universal suffrage. But five-and-twenty
+years more of its operation had given scope for a large development of
+its indirect working, which is much more momentous than the direct.
+Sudden effects in history are generally superficial. Causes which go
+deep down into the roots of future events produce the most serious
+parts of their effect only slowly, and have, therefore, time to become
+a part of the familiar order of things before general attention is
+called to the changes they are producing; since, when the changes do
+become evident, they are often not seen, by cursory observers, to be
+in any peculiar manner connected with the cause. The remoter
+consequences of a new political fact are seldom understood when they
+occur, except when they have been appreciated beforehand.
+
+This timely appreciation is particularly easy in respect to tendencies
+of the change made in our institutions by the Reform Act of 1867. The
+great increase of electoral power which the Act places within the
+reach of the working classes is permanent. The circumstances which
+have caused them, thus far, to make a very limited use of that power,
+are essentially temporary. It is known even to the most inobservant,
+that the working classes have, and are likely to have, political
+objects which concern them as working classes, and on which they
+believe, rightly or wrongly, that the interests and opinions of the
+other powerful classes are opposed to theirs. However much their
+pursuit of these objects may be for the present retarded by want of
+electoral organization, by dissensions among themselves, or by their
+not having reduced as yet their wishes into a sufficiently definite
+practical shape, it is as certain as anything in politics can be, that
+they will before long find the means of making their collective
+electoral power effectively instrumental to the proportion of their
+collective objects. And when they do so, it will not be in the
+disorderly and ineffective way which belongs to a people not
+habituated to the use of legal and constitutional machinery, nor will
+it be by the impulse of a mere instinct of levelling. The instruments
+will be the press, public meetings and associations, and the return to
+Parliament of the greatest possible number of persons pledged to the
+political aims of the working classes. The political aims will
+themselves be determined by definite political doctrines; for politics
+are now scientifically studied from the point of view of the working
+classes, and opinions conceived in the special interest of those
+classes are organized into systems and creeds which lay claim to a
+place on the platform of political philosophy, by the same right as
+the systems elaborated by previous thinkers. It is of the utmost
+importance that all reflecting persons should take into early
+consideration what these popular political creeds are likely to be,
+and that every single article of them should be brought under the
+fullest light of investigation and discussion, so that, if possible,
+when the time shall be ripe, whatever is right in them may be adopted,
+and what is wrong rejected by general consent, and that instead of a
+hostile conflict, physical or only moral, between the old and the new,
+the best parts of both may be combined in a renovated social fabric.
+At the ordinary pace of those great social changes which are not
+effected by physical violence, we have before us an interval of about
+a generation, on the due employment of which it depends whether the
+accommodation of social institutions to the altered state of human
+society, shall be the work of wise foresight, or of a conflict of
+opposite prejudices. The future of mankind will be gravely imperilled,
+if great questions are left to be fought over between ignorant change
+and ignorant opposition to change.
+
+And the discussion that is now required is one that must go down to
+the very first principles of existing society. The fundamental
+doctrines which were assumed as incontestable by former generations,
+are now put again on their trial. Until the present age, the
+institution of property in the shape in which it has been handed down
+from the past, had not, except by a few speculative writers, been
+brought seriously into question, because the conflicts of the past
+have always been conflicts between classes, both of which had a stake
+in the existing constitution of property. It will not be possible to
+go on longer in this manner. When the discussion includes classes who
+have next to no property of their own, and are only interested in the
+institution so far as it is a public benefit, they will not allow
+anything to be taken for granted--certainly not the principle of
+private property, the legitimacy and utility of which are denied by
+many of the reasoners who look out from the stand-point of the working
+classes. Those classes will certainly demand that the subject, in all
+its parts, shall be reconsidered from the foundation; that all
+proposals for doing without the institution, and all modes of
+modifying it which have the appearance of being favorable to the
+interest of the working classes, shall receive the fullest
+consideration and discussion before it is decided that the subject
+must remain as it is. As far as this country is concerned, the
+dispositions of the working classes have as yet manifested themselves
+hostile only to certain outlying portions of the proprietary system.
+Many of them desire to withdraw questions of wages from the freedom of
+contract, which is one of the ordinary attributions of private
+property. The more aspiring of them deny that land is a proper subject
+for private appropriation, and have commenced an agitation for its
+resumption by the State. With this is combined, in the speeches of
+some of the agitators, a denunciation of what they term usury, but
+without any definition of what they mean by the name; and the cry does
+not seem to be of home origin, but to have been caught up from the
+intercourse which has recently commenced through the Labor Congresses
+and the International Society, with the continental Socialists who
+object to all interest on money, and deny the legitimacy of deriving
+an income in any form from property apart from labor. This doctrine
+does not as yet show signs of being widely prevalent in Great Britain,
+but the soil is well prepared to receive the seeds of this
+description which are widely scattered from those foreign countries
+where large, general theories, and schemes of vast promise, instead of
+inspiring distrust, are essential to the popularity of a cause. It is
+in France, Germany, and Switzerland that anti-property doctrines in
+the widest sense have drawn large bodies of working men to rally round
+them. In these countries nearly all those who aim at reforming society
+in the interest of the working classes profess themselves Socialists,
+a designation under which schemes of very diverse character are
+comprehended and confounded, but which implies at least a remodelling
+generally approaching to abolition of the institution of private
+property. And it would probably be found that even in England the more
+prominent and active leaders of the working classes are usually in
+their private creed Socialists of one order or another, though being,
+like most English politicians, better aware than their Continental
+brethren that great and permanent changes in the fundamental ideas of
+mankind are not to be accomplished by a _coup de main_, they direct
+their practical efforts towards ends which seem within easier reach,
+and are content to hold back all extreme theories until there has been
+experience of the operation of the same principles on a partial scale.
+While such continues to be the character of the English working
+classes, as it is of Englishmen in general, they are not likely to
+rush head-long into the reckless extremities of some of the foreign
+Socialists, who, even in sober Switzerland, proclaim themselves
+content to begin by simple subversion, leaving the subsequent
+reconstruction to take care of itself; and by subversion, they mean
+not only the annihilation of all government, but getting all property
+of all kinds out of the hands of the possessors to be used for the
+general benefit; but in what mode it will, they say, be time enough
+afterwards to decide.
+
+The avowal of this doctrine by a public newspaper, the organ of an
+association (_La Solidarite_ published at Neuchatel), is one of the
+most curious signs of the times. The leaders of the English
+working-men--whose delegates at the congresses of Geneva and Bale
+contributed much the greatest part of such practical common sense as
+was shown there--are not likely to begin deliberately by anarchy,
+without having formed any opinion as to what form of society should be
+established in the room of the old. But it is evident that whatever
+they do propose can only be properly judged, and the grounds of the
+judgment made convincing to the general mind, on the basis of a
+previous survey of the two rival theories, that of private property and
+that of Socialism, one or other of which must necessarily furnish most
+of the premises in the discussion. Before, therefore, we can usefully
+discuss this class of questions in detail, it will be advisable to
+examine from their foundations the general question raised by
+Socialism. And this examination should be made without any hostile
+prejudice. However irrefutable the arguments in favor of the laws of
+property may appear to those to whom they have the double prestige of
+immemorial custom and of personal interest, nothing is more natural
+than that a working man who has begun to speculate on politics, should
+regard them in a very different light. Having, after long struggles,
+attained in some countries, and nearly attained in others, the point at
+which for them, at least, there is no further progress to make in the
+department of purely political rights, is it possible that the less
+fortunate classes among the "adult males" should not ask themselves
+whether progress ought to stop there? Notwithstanding all that has been
+done, and all that seems likely to be done, in the extension of
+franchises, a few are born to great riches, and the many to a penury,
+made only more grating by contrast. No longer enslaved or made
+dependent by force of law, the great majority are so by force of
+poverty; they are still chained to a place, to an occupation, and to
+conformity with the will of an employer, and debarred by the accident
+of birth both from the enjoyments, and from the mental and moral
+advantages, which others inherit without exertion and independently of
+desert. That this is an evil equal to almost any of those against
+which mankind have hitherto struggled, the poor are not wrong in
+believing. Is it a necessary evil? They are told so by those who do not
+feel it--by those who have gained the prizes in the lottery of life.
+But it was also said that slavery, that despotism, that all the
+privileges of oligarchy were necessary. All the successive steps that
+have been made by the poorer classes, partly won from the better
+feelings of the powerful, partly extorted from their fears, and partly
+bought with money, or attained in exchange for support given to one
+section of the powerful in its quarrels with another, had the strongest
+prejudices opposed to them beforehand; but their acquisition was a sign
+of power gained by the subordinate classes, a means to those classes of
+acquiring more; it consequently drew to those classes a certain share
+of the respect accorded to power, and produced a corresponding
+modification in the creed of society respecting them; whatever
+advantages they succeeded in acquiring came to be considered their due,
+while, of those which they had not yet attained, they continued to be
+deemed unworthy. The classes, therefore, which the system of society
+makes subordinate, have little reason to put faith in any of the maxims
+which the same system of society may have established as principles.
+Considering that the opinions of mankind have been found so wonderfully
+flexible, have always tended to consecrate existing facts, and to
+declare what did not yet exist, either pernicious or impracticable,
+what assurance have those classes that the distinction of rich and poor
+is grounded on a more imperative necessity than those other ancient and
+long-established facts, which, having been abolished, are now condemned
+even by those who formerly profited by them? This cannot be taken on
+the word of an interested party. The working classes are entitled to
+claim that the whole field of social institutions should be
+re-examined, and every question considered as if it now arose for the
+first time; with the idea constantly in view that the persons who are
+to be convinced are not those who owe their ease and importance to the
+present system, but persons who have no other interest in the matter
+than abstract justice and the general good of the community. It should
+be the object to ascertain what institutions of property would be
+established by an unprejudiced legislator, absolutely impartial between
+the possessors of property and the non-possessors; and to defend and to
+justify them by the reasons which would really influence such a
+legislator, and not by such as have the appearance of being got up to
+make out a case for what already exists. Such rights or privileges of
+property as will not stand this test will, sooner or later, have to be
+given up. An impartial hearing ought, moreover, to be given to all
+objections against property itself. All evils and inconveniences
+attaching to the institution in its best form ought to be frankly
+admitted, and the best remedies or palliatives applied which human
+intelligence is able to devise. And all plans proposed by social
+reformers, under whatever name designated, for the purpose of attaining
+the benefits aimed at by the institution of property without its
+inconveniences, should be examined with the same candor, not prejudged
+as absurd or impracticable.
+
+
+SOCIALIST OBJECTIONS TO THE PRESENT ORDER OF SOCIETY.
+
+As in all proposals for change there are two elements to be
+considered--that which is to be changed, and that which it is to be
+changed to--so in Socialism considered generally, and in each of its
+varieties taken separately, there are two parts to be distinguished,
+the one negative and critical, the other constructive. There is,
+first, the judgment of Socialism on existing institutions and
+practices and on their results; and secondly, the various plans which
+it has propounded for doing better. In the former all the different
+schools of Socialism are at one. They agree almost to identity in the
+faults which they find with the economical order of existing society.
+Up to a certain point also they entertain the same general conception
+of the remedy to be provided for those faults; but in the details,
+notwithstanding this general agreement, there is a wide disparity. It
+will be both natural and convenient, in attempting an estimate of
+their doctrines, to begin with the negative portion which is common to
+them all, and to postpone all mention of their differences until we
+arrive at that second part of their undertaking, in which alone they
+seriously differ.
+
+This first part of our task is by no means difficult; since it
+consists only in an enumeration of existing evils. Of these there is
+no scarcity, and most of them are by no means obscure or mysterious.
+Many of them are the veriest commonplaces of moralists, though the
+roots even of these lie deeper than moralists usually attempt to
+penetrate. So various are they that the only difficulty is to make any
+approach to an exhaustive catalogue. We shall content ourselves for
+the present with mentioning a few of the principal. And let one thing
+be remembered by the reader. When item after item of the enumeration
+passes before him, and he finds one fact after another which he has
+been accustomed to include among the necessities of nature urged as
+an accusation against social institutions, he is not entitled to cry
+unfairness, and to protest that the evils complained of are inherent
+in Man and Society, and are such as no arrangements can remedy. To
+assert this would be to beg the very question at issue. No one is more
+ready than Socialists to admit--they affirm it indeed much more
+decidedly than truth warrants--that the evils they complain of are
+irremediable in the present constitution of society. They propose to
+consider whether some other form of society may be devised which would
+not be liable to those evils, or would be liable to them in a much
+less degree. Those who object to the present order of society,
+considered as a whole and who accept as an alternative the possibility
+of a total change, have a right to set down all the evils which at
+present exist in society as part of their case, whether these are
+apparently attributable to social arrangements or not, provided they
+do not flow from physical laws which human power is not adequate, or
+human knowledge has not yet learned, to counteract. Moral evils and
+such physical evils as would be remedied if all persons did as they
+ought, are fairly chargeable against the state of society which admits
+of them; and are valid as arguments until it is shown that any other
+state of society would involve an equal or greater amount of such
+evils. In the opinion of Socialists, the present arrangements of
+society in respect to Property and the Production and Distribution of
+Wealth, are as means to the general good, a total failure. They say
+that there is an enormous mass of evil which these arrangements do not
+succeed in preventing; that the good, either moral or physical, which
+they realize is wretchedly small compared with the amount of exertion
+employed, and that even this small amount of good is brought about by
+means which are full of pernicious consequences, moral and physical.
+
+First among existing social evils may be mentioned the evil of
+Poverty. The institution of Property is upheld and commended
+principally as being the means by which labor and frugality are
+insured their reward, and mankind enabled to emerge from indigence.
+It may be so; most Socialists allow that it has been so in earlier
+periods of history. But if the institution can do nothing more or
+better in this respect than it has hitherto done, its capabilities,
+they affirm, are very insignificant. What proportion of the
+population, in the most civilized countries of Europe, enjoy in their
+own persons anything worth naming of the benefits of property? It may
+be said, that but for property in the hands of their employers they
+would be without daily bread; but, though this be conceded, at least
+their daily bread is all that they have; and that often in
+insufficient quantity; almost always of inferior quality; and with no
+assurance of continuing to have it at all; an immense proportion of
+the industrious classes being at some period or other of their lives
+(and all being liable to become) dependent, at least temporarily, on
+legal or voluntary charity. Any attempt to depict the miseries of
+indigence, or to estimate the proportion of mankind who in the most
+advanced countries are habitually given up during their whole
+existence to its physical and moral sufferings, would be superfluous
+here. This may be left to philanthropists, who have painted these
+miseries in colors sufficiently strong. Suffice it to say that the
+condition of numbers in civilized Europe, and even in England and
+France, is more wretched than that of most tribes of savages who are
+known to us.
+
+It may be said that of this hard lot no one has any reason to
+complain, because it befalls those only who are outstripped by others,
+from inferiority of energy or of prudence. This, even were it true,
+would be a very small alleviation of the evil. If some Nero or
+Domitian was to require a hundred persons to run a race for their
+lives, on condition that the fifty or twenty who came in hindmost
+should be put to death, it would not be any diminution of the
+injustice that the strongest or nimblest would, except through some
+untoward accident, be certain to escape. The misery and the crime
+would be that they were put to death at all. So in the economy of
+society; if there be any who suffer physical privation or moral
+degradation, whose bodily necessities are either not satisfied or
+satisfied in a manner which only brutish creatures can be content
+with, this, though not necessarily the crime of society, is _pro
+tanto_ a failure of the social arrangements. And to assert as a
+mitigation of the evil that those who thus suffer are the weaker
+members of the community, morally or physically, is to add insult to
+misfortune. Is weakness a justification of suffering? Is it not, on
+the contrary, an irresistible claim upon every human being for
+protection against suffering? If the minds and feelings of the
+prosperous were in a right state, would they accept their prosperity
+if for the sake of it even one person near them was, for any other
+cause than voluntary fault, excluded from obtaining a desirable
+existence?
+
+One thing there is, which if it could be affirmed truly, would relieve
+social institutions from any share in the responsibility of these
+evils. Since the human race has no means of enjoyable existence, or of
+existence at all, but what it derives from its own labor and
+abstinence, there would be no ground for complaint against society if
+every one who was willing to undergo a fair share of this labor and
+abstinence could attain a fair share of the fruits. But is this the
+fact? Is it not the reverse of the fact? The reward, instead of being
+proportioned to the labor and abstinence of the individual, is almost
+in an inverse ratio to it: those who receive the least, labor and
+abstain the most. Even the idle, reckless, and ill-conducted poor,
+those who are said with most justice to have themselves to blame for
+their condition, often undergo much more and severer labor, not only
+than those who are born to pecuniary independence, but than almost any
+of the more highly remunerated of those who earn their subsistence;
+and even the inadequate self-control exercised by the industrious poor
+costs them more sacrifice and more effort than is almost ever required
+from the more favored members of society. The very idea of
+distributive justice, or of any proportionality between success and
+merit, or between success and exertion, is in the present state of
+society so manifestly chimerical as to be relegated to the regions of
+romance. It is true that the lot of individuals is not wholly
+independent of their virtue and intelligence; these do really tell in
+their favor, but far less than many other things in which there is no
+merit at all. The most powerful of all the determining circumstances
+is birth. The great majority are what they were born to be. Some are
+born rich without work, others are born to a position in which they
+can become rich _by_ work, the great majority are born to hard work
+and poverty throughout life, numbers to indigence. Next to birth the
+chief cause of success in life is accident and opportunity. When a
+person not born to riches succeeds in acquiring them, his own industry
+and dexterity have generally contributed to the result; but industry
+and dexterity would not have sufficed unless there had been also a
+concurrence of occasions and chances which falls to the lot of only a
+small number. If persons are helped in their worldly career by their
+virtues, so are they, and perhaps quite as often, by their vices: by
+servility and sycophancy, by hard-hearted and close-fisted
+selfishness, by the permitted lies and tricks of trade, by gambling
+speculations, not seldom by downright knavery. Energies and talents
+are of much more avail for success in life than virtues; but if one
+man succeeds by employing energy and talent in something generally
+useful, another thrives by exercising the same qualities in
+out-generalling and ruining a rival. It is as much as any moralist
+ventures to assert, that, other circumstances being given, honesty is
+the best policy, and that with parity of advantages an honest person
+has a better chance than a rogue. Even this in many stations and
+circumstances of life is questionable; anything more than this is out
+of the question. It cannot be pretended that honesty, as a means of
+success, tells for as much as a difference of one single step on the
+social ladder. The connection between fortune and conduct is mainly
+this, that there is a degree of bad conduct, or rather of some kinds
+of bad conduct, which suffices to ruin any amount of good fortune; but
+the converse is not true: in the situation of most people no degree
+whatever of good conduct can be counted upon for raising them in the
+world, without the aid of fortunate accidents.
+
+These evils, then--great poverty, and that poverty very little
+connected with desert--are the first grand failure of the existing
+arrangements of society. The second is human misconduct; crime, vice,
+and folly, with all the sufferings which follow in their train. For,
+nearly all the forms of misconduct, whether committed towards ourselves
+or towards others, may be traced to one of three causes: Poverty and
+its temptations in the many; Idleness and _desoeuvrement_ in the few
+whose circumstances do not compel them to work; bad education, or want
+of education, in both. The first two must be allowed to be at least
+failures in the social arrangements, the last is now almost universally
+admitted to be the fault of those arrangements--it may almost be said
+the crime. I am speaking loosely and in the rough, for a minuter
+analysis of the sources of faults of character and errors of conduct
+would establish far more conclusively the filiation which connects them
+with a defective organization of society, though it would also show the
+reciprocal dependence of that faulty state of society on a backward
+state of the human mind.
+
+At this point, in the enumeration of the evils of society, the mere
+levellers of former times usually stopped; but their more far-sighted
+successors, the present Socialists, go farther. In their eyes the very
+foundation of human life as at present constituted, the very principle
+on which the production and repartition of all material products is now
+carried on, is essentially vicious and anti-social. It is the principle
+of individualism, competition, each one for himself and against all the
+rest. It is grounded on opposition of interests, not harmony of
+interests, and under it every one is required to find his place by a
+struggle, by pushing others back or being pushed back by them.
+Socialists consider this system of private war (as it may be termed)
+between every one and every one, especially fatal in an economical
+point of view and in a moral. Morally considered, its evils are
+obvious. It is the parent of envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness; it
+makes every one the natural enemy of all others who cross his path, and
+every one's path is constantly liable to be crossed. Under the present
+system hardly any one can gain except by the loss or disappointment of
+one or of many others. In a well-constituted community every one would
+be a gainer by every other person's successful exertions; while now we
+gain by each other's loss and lose by each other's gain, and our
+greatest gains come from the worst source of all, from death, the death
+of those who are nearest and should be dearest to us. In its purely
+economical operation the principle of individual competition receives
+as unqualified condemnation from the social reformers as in its moral.
+In the competition of laborers they see the cause of low wages; in the
+competition of producers the cause of ruin and bankruptcy; and both
+evils, they affirm, tend constantly to increase as population and
+wealth make progress; no person (they conceive) being benefited except
+the great proprietors of land, the holders of fixed money incomes, and
+a few great capitalists, whose wealth is gradually enabling them to
+undersell all other producers, to absorb the whole of the operations of
+industry into their own sphere, to drive from the market all employers
+of labor except themselves, and to convert the laborers into a kind of
+slaves or serfs, dependent on them for the means of support, and
+compelled to accept these on such terms as they choose to offer.
+Society, in short, is travelling onward, according to these
+speculators, towards a new feudality, that of the great capitalists.
+
+As I shall have ample opportunity in future chapters to state my own
+opinion on these topics, and on many others connected with and
+subordinate to them, I shall now, without further preamble, exhibit
+the opinions of distinguished Socialists on the present arrangements
+of society, in a selection of passages from their published writings.
+For the present I desire to be considered as a mere reporter of the
+opinions of others. Hereafter it will appear how much of what I cite
+agrees or differs with my own sentiments.
+
+The clearest, the most compact, and the most precise and specific
+statement of the case of the Socialists generally against the existing
+order of society in the economical department of human affairs, is to
+be found in the little work of M. Louis Blanc, _Organisation du
+Travail_. My first extracts, therefore, on this part of the subject,
+shall be taken from that treatise.
+
+    "Competition is for the people a system of extermination. Is the
+    poor man a member of society, or an enemy to it? We ask for an
+    answer.
+
+    "All around him he finds the soil preoccupied. Can he cultivate
+    the earth for himself? No; for the right of the first occupant
+    has become a right of property. Can he gather the fruits which
+    the hand of God ripens on the path of man? No; for, like the
+    soil, the fruits have been _appropriated_. Can he hunt or fish?
+    No; for that is a right which is dependent upon the government.
+    Can he draw water from a spring enclosed in a field? No; for the
+    proprietor of the field is, in virtue of his right to the
+    field, proprietor of the fountain. Can he, dying of hunger and
+    thirst, stretch out his hands for the charity of his
+    fellow-creatures? No; for there are laws against begging. Can
+    he, exhausted by fatigue and without a refuge, lie down to sleep
+    upon the pavement of the streets? No; for there are laws against
+    vagabondage. Can he, dying from the cruel native land where
+    everything is denied him, seek the means of living far from the
+    place where life was given him? No; for it is not permitted to
+    change your country except on certain conditions which the poor
+    man cannot fulfil.
+
+    "What, then, can the unhappy man do? He will say, 'I have hands
+    to work with, I have intelligence, I have youth, I have
+    strength; take all this, and in return give me a morsel of
+    bread.' This is what the working-men do say. But even here the
+    poor man may be answered, 'I have no work to give you.' What is
+    he to do then?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "What is competition from the point of view of the workman? It
+    is work put up to auction. A contractor wants a workman: three
+    present themselves.--How much for your work?--Half-a-crown; I
+    have a wife and children.--Well; and how much for yours?--Two
+    shillings: I have no children, but I have a wife.--Very well;
+    and now how much for you?--One and eightpence are enough for me;
+    I am single. Then you shall have the work. It is done; the
+    bargain is struck. And what are the other two workmen to do? It
+    is to be hoped they will die quietly of hunger. But what if they
+    take to thieving? Never fear; we have the police. To murder? We
+    have got the hangman. As for the lucky one, his triumph is only
+    temporary. Let a fourth workman make his appearance, strong
+    enough to fast every other day, and his price will run down
+    still lower; then there will be a new outcast, a new recruit for
+    the prison perhaps!
+
+    "Will it be said that these melancholy results are exaggerated;
+    that at all events they are only possible when there is not work
+    enough for the hands that seek employment? But I ask, in answer,
+    Does the principle of competition contain, by chance, within
+    itself any method by which this murderous disproportion is to be
+    avoided? If one branch of industry is in want of hands, who can
+    answer for it that, in the confusion created by universal
+    competition, another is not overstocked? And if, out of
+    thirty-four millions of men, twenty are really reduced to theft
+    for a living, this would suffice to condemn the principle.
+
+    "But who is so blind as not to see that under the system of
+    unlimited competition, the continual fall of wages is no
+    exceptional circumstance, but a necessary and general fact? Has
+    the population a limit which it cannot exceed? Is it possible
+    for us to say to industry--industry given up to the accidents of
+    individual egotism and fertile in ruin--can we say, 'Thus far
+    shalt thou go, and no farther?' The population increases
+    constantly: tell the poor mother to become sterile, and
+    blaspheme the God who made her fruitful, for if you do not, the
+    lists will soon become too narrow for the combatants. A machine
+    is invented: command it to be broken, and anathematize science,
+    for if you do not, the thousand workmen whom the new machine
+    deprives of work will knock at the door of the neighboring
+    workshop, and lower the wages of their companions. Thus
+    systematic lowering of wages, ending in the driving out of a
+    certain number of workmen, is the inevitable effect of unlimited
+    competition. It is an industrial system by means of which the
+    working-classes are forced to exterminate one another."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "If there is an undoubted fact, it is that the increase of
+    population is much more rapid among the poor than among the
+    rich. According to the _Statistics of European Population_, the
+    births at Paris are only one-thirty-second of the population in
+    the rich quarters, while in the others they rise to
+    one-twenty-sixth. This disproportion is a general fact, and M.
+    de Sismondi, in his work on Political Economy, has explained it
+    by the impossibility for the workmen of hopeful prudence. Those
+    only who feel themselves assured of the morrow can regulate the
+    number of their children according to their income; he who lives
+    from day to day is under the yoke of a mysterious fatality, to
+    which he sacrifices his children as he was sacrificed to it
+    himself. It is true the workhouses exist, menacing society with
+    an inundation of beggars--what way is there of escaping from the
+    cause?... It is clear that any society where the means of
+    subsistence increase less rapidly than the numbers of the
+    population, is a society on the brink of an abyss....
+    Competition produces destitution; this is a fact shown by
+    statistics. Destitution is fearfully prolific; this is shown by
+    statistics. The fruitfulness of the poor throws upon society
+    unhappy creatures who have need of work and cannot find it; this
+    is shown by statistics. At this point society is reduced to a
+    choice between killing the poor or maintaining them
+    gratuitously--between atrocity or folly."[1]
+
+So much for the poor. We now pass to the middle classes.
+
+    "According to the political economists of the school of Adam
+    Smith and Leon Say, _cheapness_ is the word in which may be
+    summed up the advantages of unlimited competition. But why
+    persist in considering the effect of cheapness with a view only
+    to the momentary advantage of the consumer? Cheapness is
+    advantageous to the consumer at the cost of introducing the
+    seeds of ruinous anarchy among the producers. Cheapness is, so
+    to speak, the hammer with which the rich among the producers
+    crush their poorer rivals. Cheapness is the trap into which the
+    daring speculators entice the hard-workers. Cheapness is the
+    sentence of death to the producer on a small scale who has no
+    money to invest in the purchase of machinery that his rich
+    rivals can easily procure. Cheapness is the great instrument in
+    the hands of monopoly; it absorbs the small manufacturer, the
+    small shopkeeper, the small proprietor; it is, in one word, the
+    destruction of the middle classes for the advantage of a few
+    industrial oligarchs.
+
+    "Ought we, then, to consider cheapness as a curse? No one would
+    attempt to maintain such an absurdity. But it is the specialty
+    of wrong principles to turn good into evil and to corrupt all
+    things. Under the system of competition cheapness is only a
+    provisional and fallacious advantage. It is maintained only so
+    long as there is a struggle; no sooner have the rich competitors
+    driven out their poorer rivals than prices rise. Competition
+    leads to monopoly, for the same reason cheapness leads to high
+    prices. Thus, what has been made use of as a weapon in the
+    contest between the producers, sooner or later becomes a cause
+    of impoverishment among the consumers. And if to this cause we
+    add the others we have already enumerated, first among which
+    must be ranked the inordinate increase of the population, we
+    shall be compelled to recognize the impoverishment of the mass
+    of the consumers as a direct consequence of competition.
+
+    "But, on the other hand, this very competition which tends to
+    dry up the sources of demand, urges production to over-supply.
+    The confusion produced by the universal struggle prevents each
+    producer from knowing the state of the market. He must work in
+    the dark, and trust to chance for a sale. Why should he check
+    the supply, especially as he can throw any loss on the workman
+    whose wages are so pre-eminently liable to rise and fall? Even
+    when production is carried on at a loss the manufacturers still
+    often carry it on, because they will not let their machinery,
+    &c., stand idle, or risk the loss of raw material, or lose their
+    customers; and because productive industry as carried on under
+    the competitive system being nothing else than a game of chance,
+    the gambler will not lose his chance of a lucky stroke.
+
+    "Thus, and we cannot too often insist upon it, competition
+    necessarily tends to increase supply and to diminish
+    consumption; its tendency therefore is precisely the opposite
+    of what is sought by economic science; hence it is not merely
+    oppressive but foolish as well."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "And in all this, in order to avoid dwelling on truths which
+    have become commonplaces, and sound declamatory from their very
+    truth, we have said nothing of the frightful moral corruption
+    which industry, organized, or more properly speaking,
+    disorganized, as it is at the present day, has introduced among
+    the middle classes. Everything has become venal, and competition
+    invades even the domain of thought.
+
+    "The factory crushing the workshop; the showy establishment
+    absorbing the humble shop; the artisan who is his own master
+    replaced by the day-laborer; cultivation by the plow superseding
+    that by the spade, and bringing the poor man's field under
+    disgraceful homage to the money-lender; bankruptcies multiplied;
+    manufacturing industry transformed by the ill-regulated
+    extension of credit into a system of gambling where no one, not
+    even the rogue, can be sure of winning; in short a vast
+    confusion calculated to arouse jealousy, mistrust, and hatred,
+    and to stifle, little by little, all generous aspirations, all
+    faith, self-sacrifice, and poetry--such is the hideous but only
+    too faithful picture of the results obtained by the application
+    of the principle of competition."[2]
+
+The Fourierists, through their principal organ, M. Considérant,
+enumerate the evils of the existing civilisation in the following
+order:--
+
+1. It employs an enormous quantity of labor and of human power
+unproductively, or in the work of destruction.
+
+    "In the first place there is the army, which in France, as in
+    all other countries, absorbs the healthiest and strongest men, a
+    large number of the most talented and intelligent, and a
+    considerable part of the public revenue.... The existing state
+    of society develops in its impure atmosphere innumerable
+    outcasts, whose labor is not merely unproductive, but actually
+    destructive: adventurers, prostitutes, people with no
+    acknowledged means of living, beggars, convicts, swindlers,
+    thieves, and others whose numbers tend rather to increase than
+    to diminish....
+
+    "To the list of unproductive labor fostered by our state of
+    Society must be added that of the judicature and of the bar, of
+    the courts of law and magistrates, the police, jailers,
+    executioners, &c.,--functions indispensable to the state of
+    society as it is.
+
+    "Also people of what is called 'good society'; those who pass
+    their lives in doing nothing; idlers of all ranks.
+
+    "Also the numberless custom-house officials, tax-gatherers,
+    bailiffs, excise-men; in short, all that army of men which
+    overlooks, brings to account, takes, but produces nothing.
+
+    "Also the labors of sophists, philosophers, metaphysicians,
+    political men, working in mistaken directions, who do nothing to
+    advance science, and produce nothing but disturbance and sterile
+    discussions; the verbiage of advocates, pleaders, witnesses, &c.
+
+    "And finally all the operations of commerce, from those of the
+    bankers and brokers, down to those of the grocer behind his
+    counter."[3]
+
+Secondly, they assert that even the industry and powers which in the
+present system are devoted to production, do not produce more than a
+small portion of what they might produce if better employed and
+directed:--
+
+    "Who with any good-will and reflection will not see how much the
+    want of coherence--the disorder, the want of combination, the
+    parcelling out of labor and leaving it wholly to individual
+    action without any organization, without any large or general
+    views--are causes which limit the possibilities of production,
+    and destroy, or at least waste, our means of action? Does not
+    disorder give birth to poverty, as order and good management
+    give birth to riches? Is not want of combination a source of
+    weakness, as combination is a source of strength? And who can
+    say that industry, whether agricultural, domestic,
+    manufacturing, scientific, artistic, or commercial, is organized
+    at the present day either in the state or in municipalities? Who
+    can say that all the work which is carried on in any of these
+    departments is executed in subordination to any general views,
+    or with foresight, economy, and order? Or, again, who can say
+    that it is possible in our present state of society to develop,
+    by a good education, all the faculties bestowed by nature on
+    each of its members; to employ each one in functions which he
+    would like, which he would be the most capable of, and which,
+    therefore, he could carry on with the greatest advantage to
+    himself and to others? Has it even been so much as attempted to
+    solve the problems presented by varieties of character so as to
+    regulate and harmonize the varieties of employments in
+    accordance with natural aptitudes? Alas! The Utopia of the most
+    ardent philanthropists is to teach reading and writing to
+    twenty-five millions of the French people! And in the present
+    state of things we may defy them to succeed even in that!
+
+    "And is it not a strange spectacle, too, and one which cries out
+    in condemnation of us, to see this state of society where the
+    soil is badly cultivated, and sometimes not cultivated at all;
+    where man is ill lodged, ill clothed, and yet where whole masses
+    are continually in need of work and pining in misery because
+    they cannot find it? Of a truth we are forced to acknowledge
+    that if the nations are poor and starving it is not because
+    nature has denied the means of producing wealth, but because of
+    the anarchy and disorder in our employment of those means; in
+    other words, it is because society is wretchedly constituted and
+    labor unorganized.
+
+    "But this is not all, and you will have but a faint conception
+    of the evil if you do not consider that to all these vices of
+    society, which dry up the sources of wealth and prosperity, must
+    be added the struggle, the discord, the war, in short under many
+    names and many forms which society cherishes and cultivates
+    between the individuals that compose it. These struggles and
+    discords correspond to radical oppositions--deep-seated
+    antinomies between the various interests. Exactly in so far as
+    you are able to establish classes and categories within the
+    nation; in so far, also, you will have opposition of interests
+    and internal warfare either avowed or secret, even if you take
+    into consideration the industrial system only."[4]
+
+One of the leading ideas of this school is the wastefulness and at the
+same time the immorality of the existing arrangements for distributing
+the produce of the country among the various consumers, the enormous
+superfluity in point of number of the agents of distribution, the
+merchants, dealers, shopkeepers and their innumerable, employés, and
+the depraving character of such a distribution of occupations.
+
+    "It is evident that the interest of the trader is opposed to
+    that of the consumer and of the producer. Has he not bought
+    cheap and under-valued as much as possible in all his dealings
+    with the producer, the very same article which, vaunting its
+    excellence, he sells to you as dear as he can? Thus the interest
+    of the commercial body, collectively and individually, is
+    contrary to that of the producer and of the consumer--that is to
+    say, to the interest of the whole body of society.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "The trader is a go-between, who profits by the general anarchy
+    and the non-organization of industry. The trader buys up
+    products, he buys up everything; he owns and detains everything,
+    in such sort that:--
+
+    "1stly. He holds both Production and Consumption _under his
+    yoke_, because both must come to him either finally for the
+    products to be consumed, or at first for the raw materials to be
+    worked up. Commerce with all its methods of buying, and of
+    raising and lowering prices, its innumerable devices, and its
+    holding everything in the hands of _middle-men_, levies toll
+    right and left; it despotically gives the law to Production and
+    Consumption, of which it ought to be only the subordinate.
+
+    "2ndly. It robs society by its _enormous profits_--profits
+    levied upon the consumer and the producer, and altogether out of
+    proportion to the services rendered, for which a twentieth of
+    the persons actually employed would be sufficient.
+
+    "3rdly. It robs society by the subtraction of its productive
+    forces; taking off from productive labor nineteen-twentieths of
+    the agents of trade who are mere parasites. Thus, not only does
+    commerce rob society by appropriating an exorbitant share of the
+    common wealth, but also by considerably diminishing the
+    productive energy of the human beehive. The great majority of
+    traders would return to productive work if a rational system of
+    commercial organization were substituted for the inextricable
+    chaos of the present state of things.
+
+    "4thly. It robs society by the _adulteration_ of products,
+    pushed at the present day beyond all bounds. And in fact, if a
+    hundred grocers establish themselves in a town where before
+    there were only twenty, it is plain that people will not begin
+    to consume five times as many groceries. Hereupon the hundred
+    virtuous grocers have to dispute between them the profits which
+    before were honestly made by the twenty; competition obliges
+    them to make it up at the expense of the consumer, either by
+    raising the prices as sometimes happens, or by adulterating the
+    goods as always happens. In such a state of things there is an
+    end to good faith. Inferior or adulterated goods are sold for
+    articles of good quality whenever the credulous customer is not
+    too experienced to be deceived. And when the customer has been
+    thoroughly imposed upon, the trading conscience consoles itself
+    by saying, 'I state my price; people can take or leave; no one
+    is obliged to buy.' The losses imposed on the consumers by the
+    bad quality or the adulteration of goods are incalculable.
+
+    "5thly. It robs society by _accumulations_, artificial or not,
+    in consequence of which vast quantities of goods, collected in
+    one place, are damaged and destroyed for want of a sale. Fourier
+    (Th. des Quat. Mouv., p. 334, 1st ed.) says: 'The fundamental
+    principle of the commercial systems, that of _leaving full
+    liberty to the merchants_, gives them absolute right of property
+    over the goods in which they deal: they have the right to
+    withdraw them altogether, to withhold or even to burn them, as
+    happened more than once with the Oriental Company of Amsterdam,
+    which publicly burnt stores of cinnamon in order to raise the
+    price. What it did with cinnamon it would have done with corn;
+    but for the fear of being stoned by the populace, it would have
+    burnt some corn in order to sell the rest at four times its
+    value. Indeed, it actually is of daily occurrence in ports, for
+    provisions of grains to be thrown into the sea because the
+    merchants have allowed them to rot while waiting for a rise. I
+    myself, when I was a clerk, have had to superintend these
+    infamous proceedings, and in one day caused to be thrown into
+    the sea some forty thousand bushels of rice, which might have
+    been sold at a fair profit had the withholder been less greedy
+    of gain. It is society that bears the cost of this waste, which
+    takes place daily under shelter of the philosophical maxim of
+    _full liberty for the merchants_.'
+
+    "6thly. Commerce robs society, moreover, by all the loss,
+    damage, and waste that follows from the extreme scattering of
+    products in millions of shops, and by the multiplication and
+    complication of carriage.
+
+    "7thly. It robs society by shameless and unlimited
+    _usury_--usury absolutely appalling. The trader carries on
+    operations with fictitious capital, much higher in amount than
+    his real capital. A trader with a capital of twelve hundred
+    pounds will carry on operations, by means of bills and credit,
+    on a scale of four, eight, or twelve thousand pounds. Thus he
+    draws from capital _which he does not possess_, usurious
+    interest, out of all proportion with the capital he actually
+    owns.
+
+    "8thly. It robs society by innumerable _bankruptcies_, for the
+    daily accidents of our commercial system, political events, and
+    any kind of disturbance, must usher in a day when the trader,
+    having incurred obligations beyond his means, is no longer able
+    to meet them; his failure, whether fraudulent or not, must be a
+    severe blow to his creditors. The bankruptcy of some entails
+    that of others, so that bankruptcies follow one upon another,
+    causing widespread ruin. And it is always the producer and the
+    consumer who suffer; for commerce, considered as a whole, does
+    not produce wealth, and invests very little in proportion to the
+    wealth which passes through its hands. How many are the
+    manufactures crushed by these blows! how many fertile sources of
+    wealth dried up by these devices, with all their disastrous
+    consequences!
+
+    "The producer furnishes the goods, the consumer the money. Trade
+    furnishes credit, founded on little or no actual capital, and
+    the different members of the commercial body are in no way
+    responsible for one another. This, in a few words, is the whole
+    theory of the thing.
+
+    "9thly. Commerce robs society by the _independence_ and
+    _irresponsibility_ which permits it to buy at the epochs when
+    the producers are forced to sell and compete with one another,
+    in order to procure money for their rent and necessary expenses
+    of production. When the markets are overstocked and goods cheap,
+    trade purchases. Then it creates a rise, and by this simple
+    manoeuvre despoils both producer and consumer.
+
+    "10thly. It robs society by a considerable _drawing off_ of
+    _capital_, which will return to productive industry when
+    commerce plays its proper subordinate part, and is only an
+    agency carrying on transactions between the producers (more or
+    less distant) and the great centres of consumption--the
+    communistic societies. Thus the capital engaged in the
+    speculations of commerce (which, small as it is, compared to the
+    immense wealth which passes through its hands, consists
+    nevertheless of sums enormous in themselves), would return to
+    stimulate production if commerce was deprived of the
+    intermediate property in goods, and their distribution became a
+    matter of administrative organization. Stock-jobbing is the most
+    odious form of this vice of commerce.
+
+    "11thly. It robs society by the _monopolising_ or buying up of
+    raw materials. 'For' (says Fourier, Th. des Quat. Mouv., p. 359,
+    1st ed.), 'the rise in price on articles that are bought up, is
+    borne ultimately by the consumer, although in the first place by
+    the manufacturers, who, being obliged to keep up their
+    establishments, must make pecuniary sacrifices, and manufacture
+    at small profits in the hope of better days; and it is often
+    long before they can repay themselves the rise in prices which
+    the monopoliser has compelled them to support in the first
+    instance...."
+
+    "In short, all these vices, besides many others which I omit,
+    are multiplied by the extreme complication of mercantile
+    affairs; for products do not pass once only through the greedy
+    clutches of commerce; there are some which pass and repass
+    twenty or thirty times before reaching the consumer. In the
+    first place, the raw material passes through the grasp of
+    commerce before reaching the manufacturer who first works it up;
+    then it returns to commerce to be sent out again to be worked up
+    in a second form; and so on until it receives its final shape.
+    Then it passes into the hands of merchants, who sell to the
+    wholesale dealers, and these to the great retail dealers of
+    towns, and these again to the little dealers and to the country
+    shops; and each time that it changes hands, it leaves something
+    behind it.
+
+    "... One of my friends who was lately exploring the Jura, where
+    much working in metal is done, had occasion to enter the house
+    of a peasant who was a manufacturer of shovels. He asked the
+    price. 'Let us come to an understanding,' answered the poor
+    laborer, not an economist at all, but a man of common sense; 'I
+    sell them for 8_d._ to the trade, which retails them at 1_s._
+    8_d._ in the towns. If you could find a means of opening a
+    direct communication between the workman and the consumer, you
+    might have them for 1_s._ 2_d._, and we should each gain 6_d._
+    by the transaction.'"[5]
+
+To a similar effect Owen, in the _Book of the New Moral World_, part
+2, chap. iii.
+
+    "The principle now in practice is to induce a large portion of
+    society to devote their lives to distribute wealth upon a large,
+    a medium, and a small scale, and to have it conveyed from place
+    to place in larger or smaller quantities, to meet the means and
+    wants of various divisions of society and individuals, as they
+    are now situated in cities, towns, villages, and country places.
+    This principle of distribution makes a class in society whose
+    business is to _buy from_ some parties and to _sell to_ others.
+    By this proceeding they are placed under circumstances which
+    induce them to endeavor to buy at what appears at the time a low
+    price in the market, and to sell again at the greatest permanent
+    profit which they can obtain. Their real object being to get as
+    much profit as gain between the seller to, and the buyer from
+    them, as can be effected in their transactions.
+
+    "There are innumerable errors in principle and evils in practice
+    which necessarily proceed from this mode of distributing the
+    wealth of society.
+
+    "1st. A general class of distributers is formed, whose interest
+    is separated from, and apparently opposed to, that of the
+    individual from whom they buy and to whom they sell.
+
+    "2nd. Three classes of distributers are made, the small, the
+    medium, and the large buyers and sellers; or the retailers, the
+    wholesale dealers, and the extensive merchants.
+
+    "3rd. Three classes of buyers thus created constitute the small,
+    the medium, and the large purchasers.
+
+    "By this arrangement into various classes of buyers and sellers,
+    the parties are easily trained to learn that they have separate
+    and opposing interests, and different ranks and stations in
+    society. An inequality of feeling and condition is thus created
+    and maintained, with all the servility and pride which these
+    unequal arrangements are sure to produce. The parties are
+    regularly trained in a general system of deception, in order
+    that they may be the more successful in buying cheap and selling
+    dear.
+
+    "The smaller sellers acquire habits of injurious idleness,
+    waiting often for hours for customers. And this evil is
+    experienced to a considerable extent even amongst the class of
+    wholesale dealers.
+
+    "There are, also, by this arrangement, many more establishments
+    for selling than are necessary in the villages, towns, and
+    cities; and a very large capital is thus wasted without benefit
+    to society. And from their number opposed to each other all over
+    the country to obtain customers, they endeavor to undersell each
+    other, and are therefore continually endeavoring to injure the
+    producer by the establishment of what are called cheap shops and
+    warehouses; and to support their character the master or his
+    servants must be continually on the watch to buy bargains, that
+    is, to procure wealth for less than the cost of its production.
+
+    "The distributers, small, medium, and large, have all to be
+    supported by the producers, and the greater the number of the
+    former compared with the latter, the greater will be the burden
+    which the producer has to sustain; for as the number of
+    distributers increases, the accumulation of wealth must
+    decrease, and more must be required from the producer.
+
+    "The distributers of wealth, under the present system, are a
+    dead weight upon the producers, and are most active demoralisers
+    of society. Their dependent condition, at the commencement of
+    their task, teaches or induces them to be servile to their
+    customers, and to continue to be so as long as they are
+    accumulating wealth by their cheap buying and dear selling. But
+    when they have secured sufficient to be what they imagine to be
+    an independence--to live without business--they are too often
+    filled with a most ignorant pride, and become insolent to their
+    dependents.
+
+    "The arrangement is altogether a most improvident one for
+    society, whose interest it is to produce the greatest amount of
+    wealth of the best qualities; while the existing system of
+    distribution is not only to withdraw great numbers from
+    producing to become distributers, but to add to the cost of the
+    consumer all the expense of a most wasteful and extravagant
+    distribution; the distribution costing to the consumer many
+    times the price of the original cost of the wealth purchased.
+
+    "Then, by the position in which the seller is placed by his
+    created desire for gain on the one hand, and the competition he
+    meets with from opponents selling similar productions on the
+    other, he is strongly tempted to deteriorate the articles which
+    he has for sale; and when these are provisions, either of home
+    production or of foreign importation, the effects upon the
+    health, and consequent comfort and happiness of the consumers,
+    are often most injurious, and productive of much premature
+    death, especially among the working classes, who, in this
+    respect, are perhaps made to be the greatest sufferers, by
+    purchasing the inferior or low-priced articles.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "The expense of thus distributing wealth in Great Britain and
+    Ireland, including transit from place to place, and all the
+    agents directly and indirectly engaged in this department, is,
+    perhaps, little short of one hundred millions annually, without
+    taking into consideration the deterioration of the quality of
+    many of the articles constituting this wealth, by carriage, and
+    by being divided into small quantities, and kept in improper
+    stores and places, in which the atmosphere is unfavorable to the
+    keeping of such articles in a tolerably good, and much less in
+    the best, condition for use."
+
+In further illustration of the contrariety of interests between person
+and person, class and class, which pervades the present constitution
+of society, M. Considérant adds:--
+
+    "If the wine-growers wish for free trade, this freedom ruins the
+    producer of corn, the manufacturers of iron, of cloth, of
+    cotton, and--we are compelled to add--the smuggler and the
+    customs' officer. If it is the interest of the consumer that
+    machines should be invented which lower prices by rendering
+    production less costly, these same machines throw out of work
+    thousands of workmen who do not know how to, and cannot at once,
+    find other work. Here, then, again is one of the innumerable
+    _vicious circles_ of civilisation ... for there are a thousand
+    facts which prove cumulatively that in our existing social
+    system the introduction of any good brings always along with it
+    some evil.
+
+    "In short, if we go lower down and come to vulgar details, we
+    find that it is the interest of the tailor, the shoemaker, and
+    the hatter that coats, shoes, and hats should be soon worn out;
+    that the glazier profits by the hail-storms which break windows;
+    that the mason and the architect profit by fires; the lawyer is
+    enriched by law-suits; the doctor by disease; the wine-seller by
+    drunkenness; the prostitute by debauchery. And what a disaster
+    it would be for the judges, the police, and the jailers, as well
+    as for the barristers and the solicitors, and all the lawyers'
+    clerks, if crimes, offences, and law-suits were all at once to
+    come to an end!"[6]
+
+The following is one of the cardinal points of this school:--
+
+    "Add to all this, that civilisation, which sows dissension and
+    war on every side; which employs a great part of its powers in
+    unproductive labor or even in destruction; which furthermore
+    diminishes the public wealth by the unnecessary friction and
+    discord it introduces into industry; add to all this, I say,
+    that this same social system has for its special characteristic
+    to produce a repugnance for work--a disgust for labor.
+
+    "Everywhere you hear the laborer, the artisan, the clerk
+    complain of his position and his occupation, while they long for
+    the time when they can retire from work imposed upon them by
+    necessity. To be repugnant, to have for its motive and pivot
+    nothing but the fear of starvation, is the great, the fatal,
+    characteristic of civilised labor. The civilised workman is
+    condemned to penal servitude. So long as productive labor is so
+    organized that instead of being associated with pleasure it is
+    associated with pain, weariness and dislike, it will always
+    happen that all will avoid it who are able. With few exceptions,
+    those only will consent to work who are compelled to it by want.
+    Hence the most numerous classes, the artificers of social
+    wealth, the active and direct creators of all comfort and
+    luxury, will always be condemned to touch closely on poverty and
+    hunger; they will always be the slaves to ignorance and
+    degradation; they will continue to be always that huge herd of
+    mere beasts of burden whom we see ill-grown, decimated by
+    disease, bowed down in the great workshop of society over the
+    plow or over the counter, that they may prepare the delicate
+    food, and the sumptuous enjoyments of the upper and idle
+    classes.
+
+    "So long as no method of attractive labor has been devised, it
+    will continue to be true that 'there must be many poor in order
+    that there may be a few rich;' a mean and hateful saying, which
+    we hear every day quoted as an eternal truth from the mouths of
+    people who call themselves Christians or philosophers. It is
+    very easy to understand that oppression, trickery, and
+    especially poverty, are the permanent and fatal appanage of
+    every state of society characterized by the dislike of work,
+    for, in this case, there is nothing but poverty that will force
+    men to labor. And the proof of this is, that if every one of all
+    the workers were to become suddenly rich, nineteen-twentieths of
+    all the work now done would be abandoned."[7]
+
+In the opinion of the Fourierists, the tendency of the present order
+of society is to a concentration of wealth in the hands of a
+comparatively few immensely rich individuals or companies, and the
+reduction of all the rest of the community into a complete dependence
+on them. This was termed by Fourier _la jeodalite industrielle_.
+
+    "This feudalism," says M. Considérant, "would be constituted as
+    soon as the largest part of the industrial and territorial
+    property of the nation belongs to a minority which absorbs all
+    its revenues, while the great majority, chained to the
+    work-bench or laboring on the soil, must be content to gnaw the
+    pittance which is cast to them."[8]
+
+This disastrous result is to be brought about partly by the mere
+progress of competition, as sketched in our previous extract by M.
+Louis Blanc; assisted by the progress of national debts, which M.
+Considérant regards as mortgages of the whole land and capital of the
+country, of which "les capitalistes prêteurs" become, in a greater and
+greater measure, co-proprietors, receiving without labor or risk an
+increasing portion of the revenues.
+
+
+THE SOCIALIST OBJECTIONS TO THE PRESENT ORDER OF SOCIETY EXAMINED.
+
+It is impossible to deny that the considerations brought to notice in
+the preceding chapter make out a frightful case either against the
+existing order of society, or against the position of man himself in
+this world. How much of the evils should be referred to the one, and
+how much to the other, is the principal theoretic question which has
+to be resolved. But the strongest case is susceptible of exaggeration;
+and it will have been evident to many readers, even from the passages
+I have quoted, that such exaggeration is not wanting in the
+representations of the ablest and most candid Socialists. Though much
+of their allegations is unanswerable, not a little is the result of
+errors in political economy; by which, let me say once for all, I do
+not mean the rejection of any practical rules of policy which have
+been laid down by political economists, I mean ignorance of economic
+facts, and of the causes by which the economic phenomena of society
+as it is, are actually determined.
+
+In the first place it is unhappily true that the wages of ordinary
+labor, in all the countries of Europe, are wretchedly insufficient to
+supply the physical and moral necessities of the population in any
+tolerable measure. But, when it is further alleged that even this
+insufficient remuneration has a tendency to diminish; that there is,
+in the words of M. Louis Blanc, _une baisse continue des salaires_;
+the assertion is in opposition to all accurate information, and to
+many notorious facts. It has yet to be proved that there is any
+country in the civilized world where the ordinary wages of labor,
+estimated either in money or in articles of consumption, are
+declining; while in many they are, on the whole, on the increase; and
+an increase which is becoming, not slower, but more rapid. There are,
+occasionally, branches of industry which are being gradually
+superseded by something else, and, in those, until production
+accommodates itself to demand, wages are depressed; which is an evil,
+but a temporary one, and would admit of great alleviation even in the
+present system of social economy. A diminution thus produced of the
+reward of labor in some particular employment is the effect and the
+evidence of increased remuneration, or of a new source of
+remuneration, in some other; the total and the average remuneration
+being undiminished, or even increased. To make out an appearance of
+diminution in the rate of wages in any leading branch of industry, it
+is always found necessary to compare some month or year of special and
+temporary depression at the present time, with the average rate, or
+even some exceptionally high rate, at an earlier time. The
+vicissitudes are no doubt a great evil, but they were as frequent and
+as severe in former periods of economical history as now. The greater
+scale of the transactions, and the greater number of persons involved
+in each fluctuation, may make the fluctuation appear greater, but
+though a larger population affords more sufferers, the evil does not
+weigh heavier on each of them individually. There is much evidence of
+improvement, and none, that is at all trustworthy, of deterioration,
+in the mode of living of the laboring population of the countries of
+Europe; when there is any appearance to the contrary it is local or
+partial, and can always be traced either to the pressure of some
+temporary calamity, or to some bad law or unwise act of government
+which admits of being corrected, while the permanent causes all
+operate in the direction of improvement.
+
+M. Louis Blanc, therefore, while showing himself much more enlightened
+than the older school of levellers and democrats, inasmuch as he
+recognizes the connection between low wages and the over-rapid
+increase of population, appears to have fallen into the same error
+which was at first committed by Malthus and his followers, that of
+supposing that because population has a greater power of increase than
+subsistence, its pressure upon subsistence must be always growing more
+severe. The difference is that the early Malthusians thought this an
+irrepressible tendency, while M. Louis Blanc thinks that it can be
+repressed, but only under a system of Communism. It is a great point
+gained for truth when it comes to be seen that the tendency to
+over-population is a fact which Communism, as well as the existing
+order of society, would have to deal with. And it is much to be
+rejoiced at that this necessity is admitted by the most considerable
+chiefs of all existing schools of Socialism. Owen and Fourier, no less
+than M. Louis Blanc, admitted it, and claimed for their respective
+systems a pre-eminent power of dealing with this difficulty. However
+this may be, experience shows that in the existing state of society
+the pressure of population on subsistence, which is the principal
+cause of low wages, though a great, is not an increasing evil; on the
+contrary, the progress of all that is called civilization has a
+tendency to diminish it, partly by the more rapid increase of the
+means of employing and maintaining labor, partly by the increased
+facilities opened to labor for transporting itself to new countries
+and unoccupied fields of employment, and partly by a general
+improvement in the intelligence and prudence of the population. This
+progress, no doubt, is slow; but it is much that such progress should
+take place at all, while we are still only in the first stage of that
+public movement for the education of the whole people, which when more
+advanced must add greatly to the force of all the two causes of
+improvement specified above. It is, of course, open to discussion what
+form of society has the greatest power of dealing successfully with
+the pressure of population on subsistence, and on this question there
+is much to be said for Socialism; what was long thought to be its
+weakest point will, perhaps, prove to be one of its strongest. But it
+has no just claim to be considered as the sole means of preventing the
+general and growing degradation of the mass of mankind through the
+peculiar tendency of poverty to produce over-population. Society as at
+present constituted is not descending into that abyss, but gradually,
+though slowly, rising out of it, and this improvement is likely to be
+progressive if bad laws do not interfere with it.
+
+Next, it must be observed that Socialists generally, and even the most
+enlightened of them, have a very imperfect and one-sided notion of the
+operation of competition. They see half its effects, and overlook the
+other half; they regard it as an agency for grinding down every one's
+remuneration--for obliging every one to accept less wages for his
+labor, or a less price for his commodities, which would be true only
+if every one had to dispose of his labor or his commodities to some
+great monopolist, and the competition were all on one side. They
+forget that competition is a cause of high prices and values as well
+as of low; that the buyers of labor and of commodities compete with
+one another as well as the sellers; and that if it is competition
+which keeps the prices of labor and commodities as low as they are, it
+is competition which prevents them from falling still lower. In truth,
+when competition is perfectly free on both sides, its tendency is not
+specially either to raise or to lower the price of articles, but to
+equalize it; to level inequalities of remuneration, and to reduce all
+to a general average, a result which, in so far as realized (no doubt
+very imperfectly), is, on Socialistic principles, desirable. But if,
+disregarding for the time that part of the effects of competition
+which consists in keeping up prices, we fix our attention on its
+effect in keeping them down, and contemplate this effect in reference
+solely to the interest of the laboring classes, it would seem that if
+competition keeps down wages, and so gives a motive to the laboring
+classes to withdraw the labor market from the full influence of
+competition, if they can, it must on the other hand have credit for
+keeping down the prices of the articles on which wages are expended,
+to the great advantage of those who depend on wages. To meet this
+consideration Socialists, as we said in our quotation from M. Louis
+Blanc, are reduced to affirm that the low prices of commodities
+produced by competition are delusive and lead in the end to higher
+prices than before, because when the richest competitor has got rid of
+all his rivals, he commands the market and can demand any price he
+pleases. Now, the commonest experience shows that this state of
+things, under really free competition, is wholly imaginary. The
+richest competitor neither does nor can get rid of all his rivals, and
+establish himself in exclusive possession of the market; and it is not
+the fact that any important branch of industry or commerce formerly
+divided among many has become, or shows any tendency to become, the
+monopoly of a few.
+
+The kind of policy described is sometimes possible where, as in the
+case of railways, the only competition possible is between two or
+three great companies, the operations being on too vast a scale to be
+within the reach of individual capitalists; and this is one of the
+reasons why businesses which require to be carried on by great
+joint-stock enterprises cannot be trusted to competition, but, when
+not reserved by the State to itself, ought to be carried on under
+conditions prescribed, and, from time to time, varied by the State,
+for the purpose of insuring to the public a cheaper supply of its
+wants than would be afforded by private interest in the absence of
+sufficient competition. But in the ordinary branches of industry no
+one rich competitor has it in his power to drive out all the smaller
+ones. Some businesses show a tendency to pass out of the hands of many
+small producers or dealers into a smaller number of larger ones; but
+the cases in which this happens are those in which the possession of a
+larger capital permits the adoption of more powerful machinery, more
+efficient by more expensive processes, or a better organized and more
+economical mode of carrying on business, and thus enables the large
+dealer legitimately and permanently to supply the commodity cheaper
+than can be done on the small scale; to the great advantage of the
+consumers, and therefore of the laboring classes, and diminishing,
+_pro tanto_, that waste of the resources of the community so much
+complained of by Socialists, the unnecessary multiplication of mere
+distributors, and of the various other classes whom Fourier calls the
+parasites of industry. When this change is effected, the larger
+capitalists, either individual or joint stock, among which the
+business is divided, are seldom, if ever, in any considerable branch
+of commerce, so few as that competition shall not continue to act
+between them; so that the saving in cost, which enabled them to
+undersell the small dealers, continues afterwards, as at first, to be
+passed on, in lower prices, to their customers. The operation,
+therefore, of competition in keeping down the prices of commodities,
+including those on which wages are expended, is not illusive but real,
+and, we may add, is a growing, not a declining, fact.
+
+But there are other respects, equally important, in which the charges
+brought by Socialists against competition do not admit of so complete
+an answer. Competition is the best security for cheapness, but by no
+means a security for quality. In former times, when producers and
+consumers were less numerous, it was a security for both. The market
+was not large enough nor the means of publicity sufficient to enable a
+dealer to make a fortune by continually attracting new customers: his
+success depended on his retaining those that he had; and when a dealer
+furnished good articles, or when he did not, the fact was soon known
+to those whom it concerned, and he acquired a character for honest or
+dishonest dealing of more importance to him than the gain that would
+be made by cheating casual purchasers. But on the great scale of
+modern transactions, with the great multiplication of competition and
+the immense increase in the quantity of business competed for, dealers
+are so little dependent on permanent customers that character is much
+less essential to them, while there is also far less certainty of
+their obtaining the character they deserve. The low prices which a
+tradesman advertises are known, to a thousand for one who has
+discovered for himself or learned from others, that the bad quality of
+the goods is more than an equivalent for their cheapness; while at the
+same time the much greater fortunes now made by some dealers excite
+the cupidity of all, and the greed of rapid gain substitutes itself
+for the modest desire to make a living by their business. In this
+manner, as wealth increases and greater prizes seem to be within
+reach, more and more of a gambling spirit is introduced into
+commerce; and where this prevails not only are the simplest maxims of
+prudence disregarded, but all, even the most perilous, forms of
+pecuniary improbity receive a terrible stimulus. This is the meaning
+of what is called the intensity of modern competition. It is further
+to be mentioned that when this intensity has reached a certain height,
+and when a portion of the producers of an article or the dealers in it
+have resorted to any of the modes of fraud, such as adulteration,
+giving short measure, &c., of the increase of which there is now so
+much complaint, the temptation is immense on these to adopt the
+fraudulent practises, who would not have originated them; for the
+public are aware of the low prices fallaciously produced by the
+frauds, but do not find out at first, if ever, that the article is not
+worth the lower price, and they will not go on paying a higher price
+for a better article, and the honest dealer is placed at a terrible
+disadvantage. Thus the frauds, begun by a few, become customs of the
+trade, and the morality of the trading classes is more and more
+deteriorated.
+
+On this point, therefore, Socialists have really made out the
+existence not only of a great evil, but of one which grows and tends
+to grow with the growth of population and wealth. It must be said,
+however, that society has never yet used the means which are already
+in its power of grappling with this evil. The laws against commercial
+frauds are very defective, and their execution still more so. Laws of
+this description have no chance of being really enforced unless it is
+the special duty of some one to enforce them. They are specially in
+need of a public prosecutor. It is still to be discovered how far it
+is possible to repress by means of the criminal law a class of
+misdeeds which are now seldom brought before the tribunals, and to
+which, when brought, the judicial administration of this country is
+most unduly lenient. The most important class, however, of these
+frauds, to the mass of the people, those which affect the price or
+quality of articles of daily consumption, can be in a great measure
+overcome by the institution of co-operative stores. By this plan any
+body of consumers who form themselves into an association for the
+purpose, are enabled to pass over the retail dealers and obtain their
+articles direct from the wholesale merchants, or, what is better (now
+that wholesale co-operative agencies have been established), from the
+producers, thus freeing themselves from the heavy tax now paid to the
+distributing classes and at the same time eliminate the usual
+perpetrators of adulterations and other frauds. Distribution thus
+becomes a work performed by agents selected and paid by those who have
+no interest in anything but the cheapness and goodness of the article;
+and the distributors are capable of being thus reduced to the numbers
+which the quantity of work to be done really requires. The
+difficulties of the plan consist in the skill and trustworthiness
+required in the managers, and the imperfect nature of the control
+which can be exercised over them by the body at large. The great
+success and rapid growth of the system prove, however, that these
+difficulties are, in some tolerable degree, overcome. At all events,
+if the beneficial tendency of the competition of retailers in
+promoting cheapness is fore-gone, and has to be replaced by other
+securities, the mischievous tendency of the same competition in
+deteriorating quality is at any rate got rid of; and the prosperity of
+the co-operative stores shows that this benefit is obtained not only
+without detriment to cheapness, but with great advantage to it, since
+the profits of the concerns enable them to return to the consumers a
+large percentage on the price of every article supplied to them. So
+far, therefore, as this class of evils is concerned, an effectual
+remedy is already in operation, which, though suggested by and partly
+grounded on socialistic principles, is consistent with the existing
+constitution of property.
+
+With regard to those greater and more conspicuous economical frauds,
+or malpractices equivalent to frauds, of which so many deplorable
+cases have become notorious--committed by merchants and bankers
+between themselves or between them and those who have trusted them
+with money, such a remedy as above described is not available, and the
+only resources which the present constitution of society affords
+against them are a sterner reprobation by opinion, and a more
+efficient repression by the law. Neither of these remedies has had any
+approach to an effectual trial. It is on the occurrence of
+insolvencies that these dishonest practices usually come to light; the
+perpetrators take their place, not in the class of malefactors, but in
+that of insolvent debtors; and the laws of this and other countries
+were formerly so savage against simple insolvency, that by one of
+those reactions to which the opinions of mankind are liable,
+insolvents came to be regarded mainly as objects of compassion, and it
+seemed to be thought that the hand both of law and of public opinion
+could hardly press too lightly upon them. By an error in a contrary
+direction to the ordinary one of our law, which in the punishment of
+offences in general wholly neglects the question of reparation to the
+sufferer, our bankruptcy laws have for some time treated the recovery
+for creditors of what is left of their property as almost the sole
+object, scarcely any importance being attached to the punishment of
+the bankrupt for any misconduct which does not directly interfere with
+that primary purpose. For three or four years past there has been a
+slight counter-reaction, and more than one bankruptcy act has been
+passed, somewhat less indulgent to the bankrupt; but the primary
+object regarded has still been the pecuniary interest of the
+creditors, and criminality in the bankrupt himself, with the exception
+of a small number of well-marked offences, gets off almost with
+impunity. It may be confidently affirmed, therefore, that, at least in
+this country, society has not exerted the power it possesses of making
+mercantile dishonesty dangerous to the perpetrator. On the contrary,
+it is a gambling trick in which all the advantage is on the side of
+the trickster: if the trick succeeds it makes his fortune, or
+preserves it; if it fails, he is at most reduced to poverty, which was
+perhaps already impending when he determined to run the chance, and
+he is classed by those who have not looked closely into the matter,
+and even by many who have, not among the infamous but among the
+unfortunate. Until a more moral and rational mode of dealing with
+culpable insolvency has been tried and failed, commercial dishonesty
+cannot be ranked among evils the prevalence of which is inseparable
+from commercial competition.
+
+Another point on which there is much misapprehension on the part of
+Socialists, as well as of Trades Unionists and other partisans of
+Labor against Capital, relates to the proportions in which the produce
+of the country is really shared and the amount of what is actually
+diverted from those who produce it, to enrich other persons. I forbear
+for the present to speak of the land, which is a subject apart. But
+with respect to capital employed in business, there is in the popular
+notions a great deal of illusion. When, for instance, a capitalist
+invests £20,000 in his business, and draws from it an income of
+(suppose) £2,000 a year, the common impression is as if he was the
+beneficial owner both of the £20,000 and of the £2,000, while the
+laborers own nothing but their wages. The truth, however, is, that he
+only obtains the £2,000 on condition of applying no part of the
+£20,000 to his own use. He has the legal control over it, and might
+squander it if he chose, but if he did he would not have the £2,000 a
+year also. As long as he derives an income from his capital he has not
+the option of withholding it from the use of others. As much of his
+invested capital as consists of buildings, machinery, and other
+instruments of production, are applied to production and are not
+applicable to the support or enjoyment of any one. What is so
+applicable (including what is laid out in keeping up or renewing the
+buildings and instruments) is paid away to laborers, forming their
+remuneration and their share in the division of the produce. For all
+personal purposes they have the capital and he has but the profits,
+which it only yields to him on condition that the capital itself is
+employed in satisfying not his own wants, but those of laborers. The
+proportion which the profits of capital usually bear to capital itself
+(or rather to the circulating portion of it) is the ratio which the
+capitalist's share of the produce bears to the aggregate share of the
+laborers. Even of his own share a small part only belongs to him as
+the owner of capital. The portion of the produce which falls to
+capital merely as capital is measured by the interest of money, since
+that is all that the owner of capital obtains when he contributes
+nothing to production except the capital itself. Now the interest of
+capital in the public funds, which are considered to be the best
+security, is at the present prices (which have not varied much for
+many years) about three and one-third per cent. Even in this
+investment there is some little risk--risk of repudiation, risk of
+being obliged to sell out at a low price in some commercial crisis.
+
+Estimating these risks at 1/3 per cent., the remaining 3 per cent. may
+be considered as the remuneration of capital, apart from insurance
+against loss. On the security of a mortgage 4 per cent. is generally
+obtained, but in this transaction there are considerably greater
+risks--the uncertainty of titles to land under our bad system of law;
+the chance of having to realize the security at a great cost in law
+charges; and liability to delay in the receipt of the interest even
+when the principal is safe. When mere money independently of exertion
+yields a larger income, as it sometimes does, for example, by shares
+in railway or other companies, the surplus is hardly ever an
+equivalent for the risk of losing the whole, or part, of the capital
+by mismanagement, as in the case of the Brighton Railway, the dividend
+of which, after having been 6 per cent. per annum, sunk to from
+nothing to 1-1/2 per cent., and shares which had been bought at 120
+could not be sold for more than about 43. When money is lent at the
+high rates of interest one occasionally hears of, rates only given by
+spend-thrifts and needy persons, it is because the risk of loss is so
+great that few who possess money can be induced to lend to them at
+all. So little reason is there for the outcry against "usury" as one
+of the grievous burthens of the working-classes. Of the profits,
+therefore, which a manufacturer or other person in business obtains
+from his capital no more than about 3 per cent. can be set down to the
+capital itself. If he were able and willing to give up the whole of
+this to his laborers, who already share among them the whole of his
+capital as it is annually reproduced from year to year, the addition
+to their weekly wages would be inconsiderable. Of what he obtains
+beyond 3 per cent. a great part is insurance against the manifold
+losses he is exposed to, and cannot safely be applied to his own use,
+but requires to be kept in reserve to cover those losses when they
+occur. The remainder is properly the remuneration of his skill and
+industry--the wages of his labor of superintendence. No doubt if he is
+very successful in business these wages of his are extremely liberal,
+and quite out of proportion to what the same skill and industry would
+command if offered for hire. But, on the other hand, he runs a worse
+risk than that of being out of employment; that of doing the work
+without earning anything by it, of having the labor and anxiety
+without the wages. I do not say that the drawbacks balance the
+privileges, or that he derives no advantage from the position which
+makes him a capitalist and employer of labor, instead of a skilled
+superintendent letting out his services to others; but the amount of
+his advantage must not be estimated by the great prizes alone. If we
+subtract from the gains of some the losses of others, and deduct from
+the balance a fair compensation for the anxiety, skill, and labor of
+both, grounded on the market price of skilled superintendence, what
+remains will be, no doubt, considerable, but yet, when compared to the
+entire capital of the country, annually reproduced and dispensed in
+wages, it is very much smaller than it appears to the popular
+imagination; and were the whole of it added to the share of the
+laborers it would make a less addition to that share than would be
+made by any important invention in machinery, or by the suppression of
+unnecessary distributors and other "parasites of industry." To
+complete the estimate, however, of the portion of the produce of
+industry which goes to remunerate capital we must not stop at the
+interest earned out of the produce by the capital actually employed in
+producing it, but must include that which is paid to the former owners
+of capital which has been unproductively spent and no longer exists,
+and is paid, of course, out of the produce of other capital. Of this
+nature is the interest of national debts, which is the cost a nation
+is burthened with for past difficulties and dangers, or for past folly
+or profligacy of its rulers, more or less shared by the nation itself.
+To this must be added the interest on the debts of landowners and
+other unproductive consumers; except so far as the money borrowed may
+have been spent in remunerative improvement of the productive powers
+of the land. As for landed property itself--the appropriation of the
+rent of land by private individuals--I reserve, as I have said, this
+question for discussion hereafter; for the tenure of land might be
+varied in any manner considered desirable, all the land might be
+declared the property of the State, without interfering with the right
+of property in anything which is the product of human labor and
+abstinence.
+
+It seemed desirable to begin the discussion of the Socialist question
+by these remarks in abatement of Socialist exaggerations, in order
+that the true issues between Socialism and the existing state of
+society might be correctly conceived. The present system is not, as
+many Socialists believe, hurrying us into a state of general indigence
+and slavery from which only Socialism can save us. The evils and
+injustices suffered under the present system are great, but they are
+not increasing; on the contrary, the general tendency is towards their
+slow diminution. Moreover the inequalities in the distribution of the
+produce between capital and labor, however they may shock the feeling
+of natural justice, would not by their mere equalisation afford by any
+means so large a fund for raising the lower levels of remuneration as
+Socialists, and many besides Socialists, are apt to suppose. There is
+not any one abuse or injustice now prevailing in society by merely
+abolishing which the human race would pass out of suffering into
+happiness. What is incumbent on us is a calm comparison between two
+different systems of society, with a view of determining which of them
+affords the greatest resources for overcoming the inevitable
+difficulties of life. And if we find the answer to this question more
+difficult, and more dependent upon intellectual and moral conditions,
+than is usually thought, it is satisfactory to reflect that there is
+time before us for the question to work itself out on an experimental
+scale, by actual trial. I believe we shall find that no other test is
+possible of the practicability or beneficial operation of Socialist
+arrangements; but that the intellectual and moral grounds of Socialism
+deserve the most attentive study, as affording in many cases the
+guiding principles of the improvements necessary to give the present
+economic system of society its best chance.
+
+
+THE DIFFICULTIES OF SOCIALISM.
+
+Among those who call themselves Socialists, two kinds of persons may
+be distinguished. There are, in the first place, those whose plans for
+a new order of society, in which private property and individual
+competition are to be superseded and other motives to action
+substituted, are on the scale of a village community or township, and
+would be applied to an entire country by the multiplication of such
+self-acting units; of this character are the systems of Owen, of
+Fourier, and the more thoughtful and philosophic Socialists generally.
+The other class, who are more a product of the Continent than of Great
+Britain and may be called the revolutionary Socialists, propose to
+themselves a much bolder stroke. Their scheme is the management of the
+whole productive resources of the country by one central authority,
+the general government. And with this view some of them avow as their
+purpose that the working classes, or somebody in their behalf, should
+take possession of all the property of the country, and administer it
+for the general benefit.
+
+Whatever be the difficulties of the first of these two forms of
+Socialism, the second must evidently involve the same difficulties and
+many more. The former, too, has the great advantage that it can be
+brought into operation progressively, and can prove its capabilities
+by trial. It can be tried first on a select population and extended to
+others as their education and cultivation permit. It need not, and in
+the natural order of things would not, become an engine of subversion
+until it had shown itself capable of being also a means of
+reconstruction. It is not so with the other: the aim of that is to
+substitute the new rule for the old at a single stroke, and to
+exchange the amount of good realised under the present system, and its
+large possibilities of improvement, for a plunge without any
+preparation into the most extreme form of the problem of carrying on
+the whole round of the operations of social life without the motive
+power which has always hitherto worked the social machinery. It must
+be acknowledged that those who would play this game on the strength of
+their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by any experimental
+verification--who would forcibly deprive all who have now a
+comfortable physical existence of their only present means of
+preserving it, and would brave the frightful bloodshed and misery that
+would ensue if the attempt was resisted--must have a serene confidence
+in their own wisdom on the one hand and a recklessness of other
+people's sufferings on the other, which Robespierre and St. Just,
+hitherto the typical instances of those united attributes, scarcely
+came up to. Nevertheless this scheme has great elements of popularity
+which the more cautious and reasonable form of Socialism has not;
+because what it professes to do it promises to do quickly, and holds
+out hope to the enthusiastic of seeing the whole of their aspirations
+realised in their own time and at a blow.
+
+The peculiarities, however, of the revolutionary form of Socialism
+will be most conveniently examined after the considerations common to
+both the forms have been duly weighed.
+
+The produce of the world could not attain anything approaching to its
+present amount, nor support anything approaching to the present number
+of its inhabitants, except upon two conditions: abundant and costly
+machinery, buildings, and other instruments of production; and the
+power of undertaking long operations and waiting a considerable time
+for their fruits. In other words, there must be a large accumulation
+of capital, both fixed in the implements and buildings, and
+circulating, that is employed in maintaining the laborers and their
+families during the time which elapses before the productive
+operations are completed and the products come in. This necessity
+depends on physical laws, and is inherent in the condition of human
+life; but these requisites of production, the capital, fixed and
+circulating, of the country (to which has to be added the land, and
+all that is contained in it), may either be the collective property of
+those who use it, or may belong to individuals; and the question is,
+which of these arrangements is most conducive to human happiness. What
+is characteristic of Socialism is the joint ownership by all the
+members of the community of the instruments and means of production;
+which carries with it the consequence that the division of the produce
+among the body of owners must be a public act, performed according to
+rules laid down by the community. Socialism by no means excludes
+private ownership of articles of consumption; the exclusive right of
+each to his or her share of the produce when received, either to
+enjoy, to give, or to exchange it. The land, for example, might be
+wholly the property of the community for agricultural and other
+productive purposes, and might be cultivated on their joint account,
+and yet the dwelling assigned to each individual or family as part of
+their remuneration might be as exclusively theirs, while they
+continued to fulfil their share of the common labors, as any one's
+house now is; and not the dwelling only, but any ornamental ground
+which the circumstances of the association allowed to be attached to
+the house for purposes of enjoyment. The distinctive feature of
+Socialism is not that all things are in common, but that production is
+only carried on upon the common account, and that the instruments of
+production are held as common property. The _practicability_ then of
+Socialism, on the scale of Mr. Owen's or M. Fourier's villages, admits
+of no dispute. The attempt to manage the whole production of a nation
+by one central organization is a totally different matter; but a mixed
+agricultural and manufacturing association of from two thousand to
+four thousand inhabitants under any tolerable circumstances of soil
+and climate would be easier to manage than many a joint stock company.
+The question to be considered is, whether this joint management is
+likely to be as efficient and successful as the managements of private
+industry by private capital. And this question has to be considered in
+a double aspect; the efficiency of the directing mind, or minds, and
+that of the simple workpeople. And in order to state this question in
+its simplest form, we will suppose the form of Socialism to be simple
+Communism, _i.e._ equal division of the produce among all the sharers,
+or, according to M. Louis Blanc's still higher standard of justice,
+apportionment of it according to difference of need, but without
+making any difference of reward according to the nature of the duty
+nor according to the supposed merits or services of the individual.
+There are other forms of Socialism, particularly Fourierism, which do,
+on considerations of justice or expediency, allow differences of
+remuneration for different kinds or degrees of service to the
+community; but the consideration of these may be for the present
+postponed.
+
+The difference between the motive powers in the economy of society
+under private property and under Communism would be greatest in the
+case of the directing minds. Under the present system, the direction
+being entirely in the hands of the person or persons who own (or are
+personally responsible for) the capital, the whole benefit of the
+difference between the best administration and the worst under which
+the business can continue to be carried on accrues to the person or
+persons who control the administration: they reap the whole profit of
+good management except so far as their self-interest or liberality
+induce them to share it with their subordinates; and they suffer the
+whole detriment of mismanagement except so far as this may cripple
+their subsequent power of employing labor. This strong personal motive
+to do their very best and utmost for the efficiency and economy of the
+operations, would not exist under Communism; as the managers would
+only receive out of the produce the same equal dividend as the other
+members of the association. What would remain would be the interest
+common to all in so managing affairs as to make the dividend as large
+as possible; the incentives of public spirit, of conscience, and of
+the honor and credit of the managers. The force of these motives,
+especially when combined, is great. But it varies greatly in different
+persons, and is much greater for some purposes than for others. The
+verdict of experience, in the imperfect degree of moral cultivation
+which mankind have yet reached, is that the motive of conscience and
+that of credit and reputation, even when they are of some strength,
+are, in the majority of cases, much stronger as restraining than as
+impelling forces--are more to be depended on for preventing wrong,
+than for calling forth the fullest energies in the pursuit of ordinary
+occupations. In the case of most men the only inducement which has
+been found sufficiently constant and unflagging to overcome the
+ever-present influence of indolence and love of ease, and induce men
+to apply themselves unrelaxingly to work for the most part in itself
+dull and unexciting, is the prospect of bettering their own economic
+condition and that of their family; and the closer the connection of
+every increase of exertion with a corresponding increase of its
+fruits, the more powerful is this motive. To suppose the contrary
+would be to imply that with men as they now are, duty and honor are
+more powerful principles of action than personal interest, not solely
+as to special acts and forbearances respecting which those sentiments
+have been exceptionally cultivated, but in the regulation of their
+whole lives; which no one, I suppose, will affirm. It may be said that
+this inferior efficacy of public and social feelings is not
+inevitable--is the result of imperfect education. This I am quite
+ready to admit, and also that there are even now many individual
+exceptions to the general infirmity. But before these exceptions can
+grow into a majority, or even into a very large minority, much time
+will be required. The education of human beings is one of the most
+difficult of all arts, and this is one of the points in which it has
+hitherto been least successful; moreover improvements in general
+education are necessarily very gradual because the future generation
+is educated by the present, and the imperfections of the teachers set
+an invincible limit to the degree in which they can train their pupils
+to be better than themselves. We must therefore expect, unless we are
+operating upon a select portion of the population, that personal
+interest will for a long time be a more effective stimulus to the most
+vigorous and careful conduct of the industrial business of society
+than motives of a higher character. It will be said that at present
+the greed of personal gain by its very excess counteracts its own end
+by the stimulus it gives to reckless and often dishonest risks. This
+it does, and under Communism that source of evil would generally be
+absent. It is probable, indeed, that enterprise either of a bad or of
+a good kind would be a deficient element, and that business in general
+would fall very much under the dominion of routine; the rather, as the
+performance of duty in such communities has to be enforced by external
+sanctions, the more nearly each person's duty can be reduced to fixed
+rules, the easier it is to hold him to its performance. A circumstance
+which increases the probability of this result is the limited power
+which the managers would have of independent action. They would of
+course hold their authority from the choice of the community, by whom
+their function might at any time be withdrawn from them; and this
+would make it necessary for them, even if not so required by the
+constitution of the community, to obtain the general consent of the
+body before making any change in the established mode of carrying on
+the concern. The difficulty of persuading a numerous body to make a
+change in their accustomed mode of working, of which change the
+trouble is often great, and the risk more obvious to their minds than
+the advantage, would have a great tendency to keep things in their
+accustomed track. Against this it has to be set, that choice by the
+persons who are directly interested in the success of the work, and
+who have practical knowledge and opportunities of judgment, might be
+expected on the average to produce managers of greater skill than the
+chances of birth, which now so often determine who shall be the owner
+of the capital. This may be true; and though it may be replied that
+the capitalist by inheritance can also, like the community, appoint a
+manager more capable than himself, this would only place him on the
+same level of advantage as the community, not on a higher level. But
+it must be said on the other side that under the Communist system the
+persons most qualified for the management would be likely very often
+to hang back from undertaking it. At present the manager, even if he
+be a hired servant, has a very much larger remuneration than the other
+persons concerned in the business; and there are open to his ambition
+higher social positions to which his function of manager is a
+stepping-stone. On the Communist system none of these advantages would
+be possessed by him; he could obtain only the same dividend out of the
+produce of the community's labor as any other member of it; he would
+no longer have the chance of raising himself from a receiver of wages
+into the class of capitalists; and while he could be in no way better
+off than any other laborer, his responsibilities and anxieties would
+be so much greater that a large proportion of mankind would be likely
+to prefer the less onerous position. This difficulty was foreseen by
+Plato as an objection to the system proposed in his Republic of
+community of goods among a governing class; and the motive on which he
+relied for inducing the fit persons to take on themselves, in the
+absence of all the ordinary inducements, the cares and labors of
+government, was the fear of being governed by worse men. This, in
+truth, is the motive which would have to be in the main depended upon;
+the persons most competent to the management would be prompted to
+undertake the office to prevent it from falling into less competent
+hands. And the motive would probably be effectual at times when there
+was an impression that by incompetent management the affairs of the
+community were going to ruin, or even only decidedly deteriorating.
+But this motive could not, as a rule, expect to be called into action
+by the less stringent inducement of merely promoting improvement;
+unless in the case of inventors or schemers eager to try some device
+from which they hoped for great and immediate fruits; and persons of
+this kind are very often unfitted by over-sanguine temper and
+imperfect judgment for the general conduct of affairs, while even when
+fitted for it they are precisely the kind of persons against whom the
+average man is apt to entertain a prejudice, and they would often be
+unable to overcome the preliminary difficulty of persuading the
+community both to adopt their project and to accept them as managers.
+Communistic management would thus be, in all probability, less
+favorable than private management to that striking out of new paths
+and making immediate sacrifices for distant and uncertain advantages,
+which, though seldom unattended with risk, is generally indispensable
+to great improvements in the economic condition of mankind, and even
+to keeping up the existing state in the face of a continual increase
+of the number of mouths to be fed.
+
+We have thus far taken account only of the operation of motives upon
+the managing minds of the association. Let us now consider how the
+case stands in regard to the ordinary workers.
+
+These, under Communism, would have no interest, except their share of
+the general interest, in doing their work honestly and energetically.
+But in this respect matters would be no worse than they now are in
+regard to the great majority of the producing classes. These, being
+paid by fixed wages, are so far from having any direct interest of
+their own in the efficiency of their work, that they have not even
+that share in the general interest which every worker would have in
+the Communistic organization. Accordingly, the inefficiency of hired
+labor, the imperfect manner in which it calls forth the real
+capabilities of the laborers, is matter of common remark. It is true
+that a character for being a good workman is far from being without
+its value, as it tends to give him a preference in employment, and
+sometimes obtains for him higher wages. There are also possibilities
+of rising to the position of foreman, or other subordinate
+administrative posts, which are not only more highly paid than
+ordinary labor, but sometimes open the way to ulterior advantages. But
+on the other side is to be set that under Communism the general
+sentiment of the community, composed of the comrades under whose eyes
+each person works, would be sure to be in favor of good and hard
+working, and unfavorable to laziness, carelessness, and waste. In the
+present system not only is this not the case, but the public opinion
+of the workman class often acts in the very opposite direction: the
+rules of some trade societies actually forbid their members to exceed
+a certain standard of efficiency, lest they should diminish the number
+of laborers required for the work; and for the same reason they often
+violently resist contrivances for economising labor. The change from
+this to a state in which every person would have an interest in
+rendering every other person as industrious, skilful, and careful as
+possible (which would be the case under Communism), would be a change
+very much for the better.
+
+It is, however, to be considered that the principal defects of the
+present system in respect to the efficiency of labor may be corrected,
+and the chief advantages of Communism in that respect may be obtained,
+by arrangements compatible with private property and individual
+competition. Considerable improvement is already obtained by
+piece-work, in the kinds of labor which admit of it. By this the
+workman's personal interest is closely connected with the quantity of
+work he turns out--not so much with its quality, the security for
+which still has to depend on the employer's vigilance; neither does
+piece-work carry with it the public opinion of the workman class,
+which is often, on the contrary, strongly opposed to it, as a means of
+(as they think) diminishing the market for laborers. And there is
+really good ground for their dislike of piece-work, if, as is alleged,
+it is a frequent practice of employers, after using piece-work to
+ascertain the utmost which a good workman can do, to fix the price of
+piece-work so low that by doing that utmost he is not able to earn
+more than they would be obliged to give him as day wages for ordinary
+work.
+
+But there is a far more complete remedy than piece-work for the
+disadvantages of hired labor, viz., what is now called industrial
+partnership--the admission of the whole body of laborers to a
+participation in the profits, by distributing among all who share in
+the work, in the form of a percentage on their earnings, the whole or
+a fixed portion of the gains after a certain remuneration has been
+allowed to the capitalist. This plan has been found of admirable
+efficacy, both in this country and abroad. It has enlisted the
+sentiments of the workmen employed on the side of the most careful
+regard by all of them to the general interest of the concern; and by
+its joint effect in promoting zealous exertion and checking waste, it
+has very materially increased the remuneration of every description of
+labor in the concerns in which it has been adopted. It is evident that
+this system admits of indefinite extension and of an indefinite
+increase in the share of profits assigned to the laborers, short of
+that which would leave to the managers less than the needful degree of
+personal interest in the success of the concern. It is even likely
+that when such arrangements become common, many of these concerns
+would at some period or another, on the death or retirement of the
+chief's pass, by arrangement, into the state of purely co-operative
+associations.
+
+It thus appears that as far as concerns the motives to exertion in the
+general body, Communism has no advantage which may not be reached
+under private property, while as respects the managing heads it is at
+a considerable disadvantage. It has also some disadvantages which seem
+to be inherent in it, through the necessity under which it lies of
+deciding in a more or less arbitrary manner questions which, on the
+present system, decide themselves, often badly enough but
+spontaneously.
+
+It is a simple rule, and under certain aspects a just one, to give
+equal payment to all who share in the work. But this is a very
+imperfect justice unless the work also is apportioned equally. Now the
+many different kinds of work required in every society are very
+unequal in hardness and unpleasantness. To measure these against one
+another, so as to make quality equivalent to quantity, is so difficult
+that Communists generally propose that all should work by turns at
+every kind of labor. But this involves an almost complete sacrifice of
+the economic advantages of the division of employments, advantages
+which are indeed frequently over-estimated (or rather the counter
+considerations are under-estimated) by political economists, but which
+are nevertheless, in the point of view of the productiveness of labor,
+very considerable, for the double reason that the co-operation of
+employment enables the work to distribute itself with some regard to
+the special capacities and qualifications of the worker, and also that
+every worker acquires greater skill and rapidity in one kind of work
+by confining himself to it. The arrangement, therefore, which is
+deemed indispensable to a just distribution would probably be a very
+considerable disadvantage in respect of production. But further, it is
+still a very imperfect standard of justice to demand the same amount
+of work from every one. People have unequal capacities of work, both
+mental and bodily, and what is a light task for one is an
+insupportable burthen to another. It is necessary, therefore, that
+there should be a dispensing power, an authority competent to grant
+exemptions from the ordinary amount of work, and to proportion tasks
+in some measure to capabilities. As long as there are any lazy or
+selfish persons who like better to be worked for by others than to
+work, there will be frequent attempts to obtain exemptions by favor or
+fraud, and the frustration of these attempts will be an affair of
+considerable difficulty, and will by no means be always successful.
+These inconveniences would be little felt, for some time at least, in
+communities composed of select persons, earnestly desirous of the
+success of the experiment; but plans for the regeneration of society
+must consider average human beings, and not only them but the large
+residuum of persons greatly below the average in the personal and
+social virtues. The squabbles and ill-blood which could not fail to be
+engendered by the distribution of work whenever such persons have to
+be dealt with, would be a great abatement from the harmony and
+unanimity which Communists hope would be found among the members of
+their association. That concord would, even in the most fortunate
+circumstances, be much more liable to disturbance than Communists
+suppose. The institution provides that there shall be no quarrelling
+about material interests; individualism is excluded from that
+department of affairs. But there are other departments from which no
+institutions can exclude it: there will still be rivalry for
+reputation and for personal power. When selfish ambition is excluded
+from the field in which, with most men, it chiefly exercises itself,
+that of riches and pecuniary interest, it would betake itself with
+greater intensity to the domain still open to it, and we may expect
+that the struggles for pre-eminence and for influence in the
+management would be of great bitterness when the personal passions,
+diverted from their ordinary channel, are driven to seek their
+principal gratification in that other direction. For these various
+reasons it is probable that a Communist association would frequently
+fail to exhibit the attractive picture of mutual love and unity of
+will and feeling which we are often told by Communists to expect, but
+would often be torn by dissension and not unfrequently broken up by
+it.
+
+Other and numerous sources of discord are inherent in the necessity
+which the Communist principle involves, of deciding by the general
+voice questions of the utmost importance to every one, which on the
+present system can be and are left to individuals to decide, each for
+his own case. As an example, take the subject of education. All
+Socialists are strongly impressed with the all-importance of the
+training given to the young, not only for the reasons which apply
+universally, but because their demands being much greater than those
+of any other system upon the intelligence and morality of the
+individual citizen, they have even more at stake than any other
+societies on the excellence of their educational arrangements. Now
+under Communism these arrangements would have to be made for every
+citizen by the collective body, since individual parents, supposing
+them to prefer some other mode of educating their children, would
+have no private means of paying for it, and would be limited to what
+they could do by their own personal teaching and influence. But every
+adult member of the body would have an equal voice in determining the
+collective system designed for the benefit of all. Here, then, is a
+most fruitful source of discord in every association. All who had any
+opinion or preference as to the education they would desire for their
+own children, would have to rely for their chance of obtaining it upon
+the influence they could exercise in the joint decision of the
+community.
+
+It is needless to specify a number of other important questions
+affecting the mode of employing the productive resources of the
+association, the conditions of social life, the relations of the body
+with other associations, &c., on which difference of opinion, often
+irreconcilable, would be likely to arise. But even the dissensions
+which might be expected would be a far less evil to the prospects of
+humanity than a delusive unanimity produced by the prostration of all
+individual opinions and wishes before the decree of the majority. The
+obstacles to human progression are always great, and require a
+concurrence of favorable circumstances to overcome them; but an
+indispensable condition of their being overcome is, that human nature
+should have freedom to expand spontaneously in various directions,
+both in thought and practice; that people should both think for
+themselves and try experiments for themselves, and should not resign
+into the hands of rulers, whether acting in the name of a few or of
+the majority, the business of thinking for them, and of prescribing
+how they shall act. But in Communist associations private life would
+be brought in a most unexampled degree within the dominion of public
+authority, and there would be less scope for the development of
+individual character and individual preferences than has hitherto
+existed among the full citizens of any state belonging to the
+progressive branches of the human family. Already in all societies the
+compression of individuality by the majority is a great and growing
+evil; it would probably be much greater under Communism, except so far
+as it might be in the power of individuals to set bounds to it by
+selecting to belong to a community of persons like-minded with
+themselves.
+
+From these various considerations I do not seek to draw any inference
+against the possibility that Communistic production is capable of
+being at some future time the form of society best adapted to the
+wants and circumstances of mankind. I think that this is, and will
+long be an open question, upon which fresh light will continually be
+obtained, both by trial of the Communistic principle under favorable
+circumstances, and by the improvements which will be gradually
+effected in the working of the existing system, that of private
+ownership. The one certainty is, that Communism, to be successful,
+requires a high standard of both moral and intellectual education in
+all the members of the community--moral, to qualify them for doing
+their part honestly and energetically in the labor of life under no
+inducement but their share in the general interest of the
+association, and their feelings of duty and sympathy towards it;
+intellectual, to make them capable of estimating distant interests and
+entering into complex considerations, sufficiently at least to be able
+to discriminate, in these matters, good counsel from bad. Now I reject
+altogether the notion that it is impossible for education and
+cultivation such as is implied in these things to be made the
+inheritance of every person in the nation; but I am convinced that it
+is very difficult, and that the passage to it from our present
+condition can only be slow. I admit the plea that in the points of
+moral education on which the success of communism depends, the present
+state of society is demoralizing, and that only a Communistic
+association can effectually train mankind for Communism. It is for
+Communism, then, to prove, by practical experiment, its power of
+giving this training. Experiments alone can show whether there is as
+yet in any portion of the population a sufficiently high level of
+moral cultivation to make Communism succeed, and to give to the next
+generation among themselves the education necessary to keep that high
+level permanently If Communist associations show that they can be
+durable and prosperous, they will multiply, and will probably be
+adopted by successive portions of the population of the more advanced
+countries as they become morally fitted for that mode of life. But to
+force unprepared populations into Communist societies, even if a
+political revolution gave the power to make such an attempt, would end
+in disappointment.
+
+If practical trial is necessary to test the capabilities of Communism,
+it is no less required for those other forms of Socialism which
+recognize the difficulties of Communism and contrive means to surmount
+them. The principal of these is Fourierism, a system which, if only as
+a specimen of intellectual ingenuity, is highly worthy of the
+attention of any student, either of society or of the human mind.
+There is scarcely an objection or a difficulty which Fourier did not
+forsee, and against which he did not make provision beforehand by
+self-acting contrivances, grounded, however, upon a less high
+principle of distributive justice than that of Communism, since he
+admits inequalities of distribution and individual ownership of
+capital, but not the arbitrary disposal of it. The great problem which
+he grapples with is how to make labor attractive, since, if this
+could be done, the principal difficulty of Socialism would be
+overcome. He maintains that no kind of useful labor is necessarily or
+universally repugnant, unless either excessive in amount or devoid of
+the stimulus of companionship and emulation, or regarded by mankind
+with contempt. The workers in a Fourierist village are to class
+themselves spontaneously in groups, each group undertaking a different
+kind of work, and the same person may be a member not only of one
+group but of any number; a certain minimum having first been set apart
+for the subsistence of every member of the community, whether capable
+or not of labor, the society divides the remainder of the produce
+among the different groups, in such shares as it finds attract to each
+the amount of labor required, and no more; if there is too great a run
+upon particular groups it is a sign that those groups are
+over-remunerated relatively to others; if any are neglected their
+remuneration must be made higher. The share of produce assigned to
+each group is divided in fixed proportions among three elements--labor,
+capital, and talent; the part assigned to talent being awarded by the
+suffrages of the group itself, and it is hoped that among the variety
+of human capacities all, or nearly all, will be qualified to excel in
+some group or other. The remuneration for capital is to be such as is
+found sufficient to induce savings from individual consumption, in
+order to increase the common stock to such point as is desired. The
+number and ingenuity of the contrivances for meeting minor
+difficulties, and getting rid of minor inconveniencies, is very
+remarkable. By means of these various provisions it is the expectation
+of Fourierists that the personal inducements to exertion for the public
+interest, instead of being taken away, would be made much greater than
+at present, since every increase of the service rendered would be much
+more certain of leading to increase of reward than it is now, when
+accidents of position have so much influence. The efficiency of labor,
+they therefore expect, would be unexampled, while the saving of labor
+would be prodigious, by diverting to useful occupations that which is
+now wasted on things useless or hurtful, and by dispensing with the
+vast number of superfluous distributors, the buying and selling for the
+whole community being managed by a single agency. The free choice of
+individuals as to their manner of life would be no further interfered
+with than would be necessary for gaining the full advantages of
+co-operation in the industrial operations. Altogether, the picture of a
+Fourierist community is both attractive in itself and requires less
+from common humanity than any other known system of Socialism; and it
+is much to be desired that the scheme should have that fair trial which
+alone can test the workableness of any new scheme of social life.[9]
+
+The result of our review of the various difficulties of Socialism has
+led us to the conclusion that the various schemes for managing the
+productive resources of the country by public instead of private
+agency have a case for a trial, and some of them may eventually
+establish their claims to preference over the existing order of
+things, but that they are at present workable only by the _élite_ of
+mankind, and have yet to prove their power of training mankind at
+large to the state of improvement which they presuppose. Far more, of
+course, may this be said of the more ambitious plan which aims at
+taking possession of the whole land and capital of the country, and
+beginning at once to administer it on the public account. Apart from
+all consideration of injustice to the present possessors, the very
+idea of conducting the whole industry of a country by direction from a
+single centre is so obviously chimerical, that nobody ventures to
+propose any mode in which it should be done; and it can hardly be
+doubted that if the revolutionary Socialists attained their immediate
+object, and actually had the whole property of the country at their
+disposal, they would find no other practicable mode of exercising
+their power over it than that of dividing it into portions, each to be
+made over to the administration of a small Socialist community. The
+problem of management, which we have seen to be so difficult even to a
+select population well prepared beforehand, would be thrown down to be
+solved as best it could by aggregations united only by locality, or
+taken indiscriminately from the population, including all the
+malefactors, all the idlest and most vicious, the most incapable of
+steady industry, forethought, or self-control, and a majority who,
+though not equally degraded, are yet, in the opinion of Socialists
+themselves as far as regards the qualities essential for the success
+of Socialism, profoundly demoralised by the existing state of society.
+It is saying but little to say that the introduction of Socialism
+under such conditions could have no effect but disastrous failure, and
+its apostles could have only the consolation that the order of society
+as it now exists would have perished first, and all who benefit by it
+would be involved in the common ruin--a consolation which to some of
+them would probably be real, for if appearances can be trusted the
+animating principle of too many of the revolutionary Socialists is
+hate; a very excusable hatred of existing evils, which would vent
+itself by putting an end to the present system at all costs even to
+those who suffer by it, in the hope that out of chaos would arise a
+better Kosmos, and in the impatience of desperation respecting any
+more gradual improvement. They are unaware that chaos is the very most
+unfavorable position for setting out in the construction of a Kosmos,
+and that many ages of conflict, violence, and tyrannical oppression
+of the weak by the strong must intervene; they know not that they
+would plunge mankind into the state of nature so forcibly described by
+Hobbes (_Leviathan_, Part I. ch. xiii.), where every man is enemy to
+every man:--
+
+    "In such condition there is no place for industry, because the
+    fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the
+    earth, no navigation, no use of the commodities that may be
+    imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of
+    moving and removing such things as require much force, no
+    knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts,
+    no letters, no society; and, which is worst of all, continual
+    fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary,
+    poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
+
+If the poorest and most wretched members of a so-called civilised
+society are in as bad a condition as every one would be in that worst
+form of barbarism produced by the dissolution of civilised life, it
+does not follow that the way to raise them would be to reduce all
+others to the same miserable state. On the contrary, it is by the aid
+of the first who have risen that so many others have escaped from the
+general lot, and it is only by better organization of the same process
+that it may be hoped in time to succeed in raising the remainder.
+
+
+THE IDEA OF PRIVATE PROPERTY NOT FIXED BUT VARIABLE.
+
+The preceding considerations appear sufficient to show that an entire
+renovation of the social fabric, such as is contemplated by Socialism,
+establishing the economic constitution of society upon an entirely new
+basis, other than that of private property and competition, however
+valuable as an ideal, and even as a prophecy of ultimate
+possibilities, is not available as a present resource, since it
+requires from those who are to carry on the new order of things
+qualities both moral and intellectual, which require to be tested in
+all, and to be created in most; and this cannot be done by an Act of
+Parliament, but must be, on the most favorable supposition, a work of
+considerable time. For a long period to come the principle of
+individual property will be in possession of the field; and even if in
+any country a popular movement were to place Socialists at the head of
+a revolutionary government, in however many ways they might violate
+private property, the institution itself would survive, and would
+either be accepted by them or brought back by their expulsion, for the
+plain reason that people will not lose their hold of what is at
+present their sole reliance for subsistence and security until a
+substitute for it has been got into working order. Even those, if any,
+who had shared among themselves what was the property of others would
+desire to keep what they had acquired, and to give back to property in
+the new hands the sacredness which they had not recognised in the old.
+
+But though, for these reasons, individual property has presumably a
+long term before it, if only of provisional existence, we are not,
+therefore, to conclude that it must exist during that whole term
+unmodified, or that all the rights now regarded as appertaining to
+property belong to it inherently, and must endure while it endures. On
+the contrary, it is both the duty and the interest of those who derive
+the most direct benefit from the laws of property to give impartial
+consideration to all proposals for rendering those laws in any way
+less onerous to the majority. This, which would in any case be an
+obligation of justice, is an injunction of prudence also, in order to
+place themselves in the right against the attempts which are sure to
+be frequent to bring the Socialist forms of society prematurely into
+operation.
+
+One of the mistakes oftenest committed, and which are the sources of
+the greatest practical errors in human affairs, is that of supposing
+that the same name always stands for the same aggregation of ideas. No
+word has been the subject of more of this kind of misunderstanding
+than the word property. It denotes in every state of society the
+largest powers of exclusive use or exclusive control over things (and
+sometimes, unfortunately, over persons) which the law accords, or
+which custom, in that state of society, recognizes; but these powers
+of exclusive use and control are very various, and differ greatly in
+different countries and in different states of society.
+
+For instance, in early states of society, the right of property did
+not include the right of bequest. The power of disposing of property
+by will was in most countries of Europe a rather late institution; and
+long after it was introduced it continued to be limited in favor of
+what were called natural heirs. Where bequest is not permitted,
+individual property is only a life interest. And in fact, as has been
+so well and fully set forth by Sir Henry Maine in his most instructive
+work on Ancient Law, the primitive idea of property was that it
+belonged to the family, not the individual. The head of the family had
+the management and was the person who really exercised the proprietary
+rights. As in other respects, so in this, he governed the family with
+nearly despotic power. But he was not free so to exercise his power as
+to defeat the co-proprietors of the other portions; he could not so
+dispose of the property as to deprive them of the joint enjoyment or
+of the succession. By the laws and customs of some nations the
+property could not be alienated without the consent of the male
+children; in other cases the child could by law demand a division of
+the property and the assignment to him of his share, as in the story
+of the Prodigal Son. If the association kept together after the death
+of the head, some other member of it, not always his son, but often
+the eldest of the family, the strongest, or the one selected by the
+rest, succeeded to the management and to the managing rights, all the
+others retaining theirs as before. If, on the other hand the body
+broke up into separate families, each of these took away with it a
+part of the property. I say the property, not the inheritance, because
+the process was a mere continuance of existing rights, not a creation
+of new; the manager's share alone lapsed to the association.
+
+Then, again, in regard to proprietary rights over immovables (the
+principal kind of property in a rude age) these rights were of very
+varying extent and duration. By the Jewish law property in immovables
+was only a temporary concession; on the Sabbatical year it returned to
+the common stock to be redistributed; though we may surmise that in
+the historical times of the Jewish state this rule may have been
+successfully evaded. In many countries of Asia, before European ideas
+intervened, nothing existed to which the expression property in land,
+as we understand the phrase, is strictly applicable. The ownership was
+broken up among several distinct parties, whose rights were determined
+rather by custom than by law. The government was part owner, having
+the right to a heavy rent. Ancient ideas and even ancient laws limited
+the government share to some particular fraction of the gross produce,
+but practically there was no fixed limit. The government might make
+over its share to an individual, who then became possessed of the
+right of collection and all the other rights of the state, but not
+those of any private person connected with the soil. These private
+rights were of various kinds. The actual cultivators or such of them
+as had been long settled on the land, had a right to retain
+possession; it was held unlawful to evict them while they paid the
+rent--a rent not in general fixed by agreement, but by the custom of
+the neighborhood. Between the actual cultivators and the state, or the
+substitute to whom the state had transferred its rights, there were
+intermediate persons with rights of various extent. There were
+officers of government who collected the state's share of the produce,
+sometimes for large districts, who, though bound to pay over to
+government all they collected, after deducting a percentage, were
+often hereditary officers. There were also, in many cases village
+communities, consisting of the reputed descendants of the first
+settlers of a village, who shared among themselves either the land or
+its produce according to rules established by custom, either
+cultivating it themselves or employing others to cultivate it for
+them, and whose rights in the land approached nearer to those of a
+landed proprietor, as understood in England, than those of any other
+party concerned. But the proprietary right of the village was not
+individual, but collective; inalienable (the rights of individual
+sharers could only be sold or mortgaged with the consent of the
+community) and governed by fixed rules. In mediæval Europe almost all
+land was held from the sovereign on tenure of service, either military
+or agricultural; and in Great Britain even now, when the services as
+well as all the reserved rights of the sovereign have long since
+fallen into disuse or been commuted for taxation, the theory of the
+law does not acknowledge an absolute right of property in land in any
+individual; the fullest landed proprietor known to the law, the
+freeholder, is but a "tenant" of the Crown. In Russia, even when the
+cultivators of the soil were serfs of the landed proprietor, his
+proprietary right in the land was limited by rights of theirs
+belonging to them as a collective body managing its own affairs, and
+with which he could not interfere. And in most of the countries of
+continental Europe when serfage was abolished or went out of use,
+those who had cultivated the land as serfs remained in possession of
+rights as well as subject to obligations. The great land reforms of
+Stein and his successors in Prussia consisted in abolishing both the
+rights and the obligations, and dividing the land bodily between the
+proprietor and the peasant, instead of leaving each of them with a
+limited right over the whole. In other cases, as in Tuscany, the
+_metayer_ farmer is virtually co-proprietor with the landlord, since
+custom, though not law, guarantees to him a permanent possession and
+half the gross produce, so long as he fulfils the customary conditions
+of his tenure.
+
+Again: if rights of property over the same things are of different
+extent in different countries, so also are they exercised over
+different things. In all countries at a former time, and in some
+countries still, the right of property extended and extends to the
+ownership of human beings. There has often been property in public
+trusts, as in judicial offices, and a vast multitude of others in
+France before the Revolution; there are still a few patent offices in
+Great Britain, though I believe they will cease by operation of law on
+the death of the present holders; and we are only now abolishing
+property in army rank. Public bodies, constituted and endowed for
+public purposes, still claim the same inviolable right of property in
+their estates which individuals have in theirs, and though a sound
+political morality does not acknowledge this claim, the law supports
+it. We thus see that the right of property is differently interpreted,
+and held to be of different extent, in different times and places;
+that the conception entertained of it is a varying conception, has
+been frequently revised, and may admit of still further revision. It
+is also to be noticed that the revisions which it has hitherto
+undergone in the progress of society have generally been improvements.
+When, therefore, it is maintained, rightly or wrongly, that some
+change or modification in the powers exercised over things by the
+persons legally recognised as their proprietors would be beneficial to
+the public and conducive to the general improvement, it is no good
+answer to this merely to say that the proposed change conflicts with
+the idea of property. The idea of property is not some one thing,
+identical throughout history and incapable of alteration, but is
+variable like all other creations of the human mind; at any given time
+it is a brief expression denoting the rights over things conferred by
+the law or custom of some given society at that time; but neither on
+this point nor on any other has the law and custom of a given time and
+place a claim to be stereotyped for ever. A proposed reform in laws
+or customs is not necessarily objectionable because its adoption would
+imply, not the adaptation of all human affairs to the existing idea of
+property, but the adaptation of existing ideas of property to the
+growth and improvement of human affairs. This is said without
+prejudice to the equitable claim of proprietors to be compensated by
+the state for such legal rights of a proprietary nature as they may be
+dispossessed of for the public advantage. That equitable claim, the
+grounds and the just limits of it, are a subject by itself, and as
+such will be discussed hereafter. Under this condition, however,
+society is fully entitled to abrogate or alter any particular right of
+property which on sufficient consideration it judges to stand in the
+way of the public good. And assuredly the terrible case which, as we
+saw in a former chapter, Socialists are able to make out against the
+present economic order of society, demands a full consideration of all
+means by which the institution may have a chance of being made to work
+in a manner more beneficial to that large portion of society which at
+present enjoys the least share of its direct benefits.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] See Louis Blanc, "Organisation du Travail," 4me edition, pp. 6, 11,
+53, 57.
+
+[2] See Louis Blanc, "Organisation du Travail," pp. 58-61, 65-66, 4me
+edition. Paris, 1845.
+
+[3] See Considérant, "Destinée Sociale," tome i. pp. 35, 36, 37, 3me
+ed. Paris, 1848.
+
+[4] See "Destinée Sociale," par V. Considérant, tome i. pp. 38-40.
+
+[5] See Considérant, "Destinée Sociale," tome i. pp. 43-51, 3me.
+edition, Paris, 1848.
+
+[6] Considérant, "Destinée Sociale," tome i., pp. 59, 60.
+
+[7] Considérant, "Destinée Sociale," tome i., pp. 60, 61.
+
+[8] Considérant, "Destinée Sociale," tome i., p. 134.
+
+[9] The principles of Fourierism are clearly set forth and powerfully
+defended in the various writings of M. Victor Considérant, especially
+that entitled _La Destinée Sociale_; but the curious inquirer will do
+well to study them in the writings of Fourier himself; where he will
+find unmistakable proofs of genius, mixed, however with the wildest and
+most unscientific fancies respecting the physical world, and much
+interesting but rash speculation on the past and future history of
+humanity. It is proper to add that on some important social questions,
+for instance on marriage, Fourier had peculiar opinions, which,
+however, as he himself declares, are quite independent of, and
+separable from, the principles of his industrial system.
+
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Socialism, by John Stuart Mill
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Socialism, by John Stuart Mill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Socialism
+
+Author: John Stuart Mill
+
+Release Date: November 25, 2011 [EBook #38138]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIALISM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Adrian Mastronardi and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen" style="font-weight: bold;">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<br />
+<p class="noin">Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has been preserved.</p>
+<p class="noin" style="text-align: left;">Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+For a complete list, please see the <span style="white-space: nowrap;"><a href="#TN">end of this document</a>.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<h1>SOCIALISM.</h1>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+<h2>JOHN STUART MILL.</h2>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4><i>Reprinted from the Fortnightly Review.</i></h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>CHICAGO.<br />
+BELFORDS, CLARKE &amp; CO.<br />
+MDCCCLXXIX.</h4>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<div class="img">
+<img border="0" src="images/deco.jpg" width="30%" alt="Publisher's Mark" />
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>PRELIMINARY NOTICE.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>It was in the year 1869 that, impressed with the degree in which, even
+during the last twenty years, when the world seemed so wholly occupied
+with other matters, the socialist ideas of speculative thinkers had
+spread among the workers in every civilized country, Mr. Mill formed
+the design of writing a book on Socialism. Convinced that the
+inevitable tendencies of modern society must be to bring the questions
+involved in it always more and more to the front, he thought it of
+great practical consequence that they should be thoroughly and
+impartially considered, and the lines pointed out by which the best
+speculatively-tested theories might, without prolongation of suffering
+on the one hand, or unnecessary disturbance on the other, be applied
+to the existing order of things. He therefore planned a work which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+should go exhaustively through the whole subject, point by point; and
+the chapters now printed are the first rough drafts thrown down
+towards the foundation of that work. These chapters might not, when
+the work came to be completely written out and then re-written,
+according to the author's habit, have appeared in the present order;
+they might have been incorporated into different parts of the work. It
+has not been without hesitation that I have yielded to the urgent wish
+of the editor of this Review to give these chapters to the world; but
+I have complied with his request because, while they appear to me to
+possess great intrinsic value as well as special application to the
+problems now forcing themselves on public attention, they will not, I
+believe, detract even from the mere literary reputation of their
+author, but will rather form an example of the patient labor with
+which good work is done.</p>
+
+<p class="right sc">Helen Taylor.</p>
+
+<p><i>January, 1879.</i></p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span><br />
+
+<h1>SOCIALISM.</h1>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h2>INTRODUCTORY.</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>In the great country beyond the Atlantic, which is now well-nigh the
+most powerful country in the world, and will soon be indisputably so,
+manhood suffrage prevails. Such is also the political qualification of
+France since 1848, and has become that of the German Confederation,
+though not of all the several states composing it. In Great Britain
+the suffrage is not yet so widely extended, but the last Reform Act
+admitted within what is called the pale of the Constitution so large a
+body of those who live on weekly wages, that as soon and as often as
+these shall choose to act together as a class, and exert for any
+common object the whole of the electoral power which our present
+institutions give them, they will exercise, though not a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>complete
+ascendency, a very great influence on legislation. Now these are the
+very class which, in the vocabulary of the higher ranks, are said to
+have no stake in the country. Of course they have in reality the
+greatest stake, since their daily bread depends on its prosperity. But
+they are not engaged (we may call it bribed) by any peculiar interest
+of their own, to the support of property as it is, least of all to the
+support of inequalities of property. So far as their power reaches, or
+may hereafter reach, the laws of property have to depend for support
+upon considerations of a public nature, upon the estimate made of
+their conduciveness to the general welfare, and not upon motives of a
+mere personal character operating on the minds of those who have
+control over the Government.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me that the greatness of this change is as yet by no means
+completely realized, either by those who opposed, or by those who
+effected our last constitutional reform. To say the truth, the
+perceptions of Englishmen are of late somewhat blunted as to the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>tendencies of political changes. They have seen so many changes made,
+from which, while only in prospect, vast expectations were
+entertained, both of evil and of good, while the results of either
+kind that actually followed seemed far short of what had been
+predicted, that they have come to feel as if it were the nature of
+political changes not to fulfil expectation, and have fallen into a
+habit of half-unconscious belief that such changes, when they take
+place without a violent revolution, do not much or permanently disturb
+in practice the course of things habitual to the country. This,
+however, is but a superficial view either of the past or of the
+future. The various reforms of the last two generations have been at
+least as fruitful in important consequences as was foretold. The
+predictions were often erroneous as to the suddenness of the effects,
+and sometimes even as to the kind of effect. We laugh at the vain
+expectations of those who thought that Catholic emancipation would
+tranquilize Ireland, or reconcile it to British rule. At the end of
+the first <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>ten years of the Reform Act of 1832, few continued to think
+either that it would remove every important practical grievance, or
+that it had opened the door to universal suffrage. But five-and-twenty
+years more of its operation had given scope for a large development of
+its indirect working, which is much more momentous than the direct.
+Sudden effects in history are generally superficial. Causes which go
+deep down into the roots of future events produce the most serious
+parts of their effect only slowly, and have, therefore, time to become
+a part of the familiar order of things before general attention is
+called to the changes they are producing; since, when the changes do
+become evident, they are often not seen, by cursory observers, to be
+in any peculiar manner connected with the cause. The remoter
+consequences of a new political fact are seldom understood when they
+occur, except when they have been appreciated beforehand.</p>
+
+<p>This timely appreciation is particularly easy in respect to tendencies
+of the change made in our institutions by the Reform Act of 1867. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>The
+great increase of electoral power which the Act places within the
+reach of the working classes is permanent. The circumstances which
+have caused them, thus far, to make a very limited use of that power,
+are essentially temporary. It is known even to the most inobservant,
+that the working classes have, and are likely to have, political
+objects which concern them as working classes, and on which they
+believe, rightly or wrongly, that the interests and opinions of the
+other powerful classes are opposed to theirs. However much their
+pursuit of these objects may be for the present retarded by want of
+electoral organization, by dissensions among themselves, or by their
+not having reduced as yet their wishes into a sufficiently definite
+practical shape, it is as certain as anything in politics can be, that
+they will before long find the means of making their collective
+electoral power effectively instrumental to the proportion of their
+collective objects. And when they do so, it will not be in the
+disorderly and ineffective way which belongs to a people not
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>habituated to the use of legal and constitutional machinery, nor will
+it be by the impulse of a mere instinct of levelling. The instruments
+will be the press, public meetings and associations, and the return to
+Parliament of the greatest possible number of persons pledged to the
+political aims of the working classes. The political aims will
+themselves be determined by definite political doctrines; for politics
+are now scientifically studied from the point of view of the working
+classes, and opinions conceived in the special interest of those
+classes are organized into systems and creeds which lay claim to a
+place on the platform of political philosophy, by the same right as
+the systems elaborated by previous thinkers. It is of the utmost
+importance that all reflecting persons should take into early
+consideration what these popular political creeds are likely to be,
+and that every single article of them should be brought under the
+fullest light of investigation and discussion, so that, if possible,
+when the time shall be ripe, whatever is right in them may be adopted,
+and what is wrong <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>rejected by general consent, and that instead of a
+hostile conflict, physical or only moral, between the old and the new,
+the best parts of both may be combined in a renovated social fabric.
+At the ordinary pace of those great social changes which are not
+effected by physical violence, we have before us an interval of about
+a generation, on the due employment of which it depends whether the
+accommodation of social institutions to the altered state of human
+society, shall be the work of wise foresight, or of a conflict of
+opposite prejudices. The future of mankind will be gravely imperilled,
+if great questions are left to be fought over between ignorant change
+and ignorant opposition to change.</p>
+
+<p>And the discussion that is now required is one that must go down to
+the very first principles of existing society. The fundamental
+doctrines which were assumed as incontestable by former generations,
+are now put again on their trial. Until the present age, the
+institution of property in the shape in which it has been handed down
+from the past, had not, except by a few <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>speculative writers, been
+brought seriously into question, because the conflicts of the past
+have always been conflicts between classes, both of which had a stake
+in the existing constitution of property. It will not be possible to
+go on longer in this manner. When the discussion includes classes who
+have next to no property of their own, and are only interested in the
+institution so far as it is a public benefit, they will not allow
+anything to be taken for granted&mdash;certainly not the principle of
+private property, the legitimacy and utility of which are denied by
+many of the reasoners who look out from the stand-point of the working
+classes. Those classes will certainly demand that the subject, in all
+its parts, shall be reconsidered from the foundation; that all
+proposals for doing without the institution, and all modes of
+modifying it which have the appearance of being favorable to the
+interest of the working classes, shall receive the fullest
+consideration and discussion before it is decided that the subject
+must remain as it is. As far as this country is concerned, the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>dispositions of the working classes have as yet manifested themselves
+hostile only to certain outlying portions of the proprietary system.
+Many of them desire to withdraw questions of wages from the freedom of
+contract, which is one of the ordinary attributions of private
+property. The more aspiring of them deny that land is a proper subject
+for private appropriation, and have commenced an agitation for its
+resumption by the State. With this is combined, in the speeches of
+some of the agitators, a denunciation of what they term usury, but
+without any definition of what they mean by the name; and the cry does
+not seem to be of home origin, but to have been caught up from the
+intercourse which has recently commenced through the Labor Congresses
+and the International Society, with the continental Socialists who
+object to all interest on money, and deny the legitimacy of deriving
+an income in any form from property apart from labor. This doctrine
+does not as yet show signs of being widely prevalent in Great Britain,
+but the soil is well prepared to receive the seeds of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>this
+description which are widely scattered from those foreign countries
+where large, general theories, and schemes of vast promise, instead of
+inspiring distrust, are essential to the popularity of a cause. It is
+in France, Germany, and Switzerland that anti-property doctrines in
+the widest sense have drawn large bodies of working men to rally round
+them. In these countries nearly all those who aim at reforming society
+in the interest of the working classes profess themselves Socialists,
+a designation under which schemes of very diverse character are
+comprehended and confounded, but which implies at least a remodelling
+generally approaching to abolition of the institution of private
+property. And it would probably be found that even in England the more
+prominent and active leaders of the working classes are usually in
+their private creed Socialists of one order or another, though being,
+like most English politicians, better aware than their Continental
+brethren that great and permanent changes in the fundamental ideas of
+mankind are not to be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>accomplished by a <i>coup de main</i>, they direct
+their practical efforts towards ends which seem within easier reach,
+and are content to hold back all extreme theories until there has been
+experience of the operation of the same principles on a partial scale.
+While such continues to be the character of the English working
+classes, as it is of Englishmen in general, they are not likely to
+rush head-long into the reckless extremities of some of the foreign
+Socialists, who, even in sober Switzerland, proclaim themselves
+content to begin by simple subversion, leaving the subsequent
+reconstruction to take care of itself; and by subversion, they mean
+not only the annihilation of all government, but getting all property
+of all kinds out of the hands of the possessors to be used for the
+general benefit; but in what mode it will, they say, be time enough
+afterwards to decide.</p>
+
+<p>The avowal of this doctrine by a public newspaper, the organ of an
+association (<i>La Solidarite</i> published at Neuchatel), is one of the
+most curious signs of the times. The leaders of the English
+working-men&mdash;whose delegates at the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>congresses of Geneva and Bale
+contributed much the greatest part of such practical common sense as
+was shown there&mdash;are not likely to begin deliberately by anarchy,
+without having formed any opinion as to what form of society should be
+established in the room of the old. But it is evident that whatever
+they do propose can only be properly judged, and the grounds of the
+judgment made convincing to the general mind, on the basis of a
+previous survey of the two rival theories, that of private property and
+that of Socialism, one or other of which must necessarily furnish most
+of the premises in the discussion. Before, therefore, we can usefully
+discuss this class of questions in detail, it will be advisable to
+examine from their foundations the general question raised by
+Socialism. And this examination should be made without any hostile
+prejudice. However irrefutable the arguments in favor of the laws of
+property may appear to those to whom they have the double prestige of
+immemorial custom and of personal interest, nothing is more natural
+than that a working <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>man who has begun to speculate on politics, should
+regard them in a very different light. Having, after long struggles,
+attained in some countries, and nearly attained in others, the point at
+which for them, at least, there is no further progress to make in the
+department of purely political rights, is it possible that the less
+fortunate classes among the "adult males" should not ask themselves
+whether progress ought to stop there? Notwithstanding all that has been
+done, and all that seems likely to be done, in the extension of
+franchises, a few are born to great riches, and the many to a penury,
+made only more grating by contrast. No longer enslaved or made
+dependent by force of law, the great majority are so by force of
+poverty; they are still chained to a place, to an occupation, and to
+conformity with the will of an employer, and debarred by the accident
+of birth both from the enjoyments, and from the mental and moral
+advantages, which others inherit without exertion and independently of
+desert. That this is an evil equal to almost any of those against
+which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>mankind have hitherto struggled, the poor are not wrong in
+believing. Is it a necessary evil? They are told so by those who do not
+feel it&mdash;by those who have gained the prizes in the lottery of life.
+But it was also said that slavery, that despotism, that all the
+privileges of oligarchy were necessary. All the successive steps that
+have been made by the poorer classes, partly won from the better
+feelings of the powerful, partly extorted from their fears, and partly
+bought with money, or attained in exchange for support given to one
+section of the powerful in its quarrels with another, had the strongest
+prejudices opposed to them beforehand; but their acquisition was a sign
+of power gained by the subordinate classes, a means to those classes of
+acquiring more; it consequently drew to those classes a certain share
+of the respect accorded to power, and produced a corresponding
+modification in the creed of society respecting them; whatever
+advantages they succeeded in acquiring came to be considered their due,
+while, of those which they had not yet attained, they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>continued to be
+deemed unworthy. The classes, therefore, which the system of society
+makes subordinate, have little reason to put faith in any of the maxims
+which the same system of society may have established as principles.
+Considering that the opinions of mankind have been found so wonderfully
+flexible, have always tended to consecrate existing facts, and to
+declare what did not yet exist, either pernicious or impracticable,
+what assurance have those classes that the distinction of rich and poor
+is grounded on a more imperative necessity than those other ancient and
+long-established facts, which, having been abolished, are now condemned
+even by those who formerly profited by them? This cannot be taken on
+the word of an interested party. The working classes are entitled to
+claim that the whole field of social institutions should be
+re-examined, and every question considered as if it now arose for the
+first time; with the idea constantly in view that the persons who are
+to be convinced are not those who owe their ease and importance to the
+present <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>system, but persons who have no other interest in the matter
+than abstract justice and the general good of the community. It should
+be the object to ascertain what institutions of property would be
+established by an unprejudiced legislator, absolutely impartial between
+the possessors of property and the non-possessors; and to defend and to
+justify them by the reasons which would really influence such a
+legislator, and not by such as have the appearance of being got up to
+make out a case for what already exists. Such rights or privileges of
+property as will not stand this test will, sooner or later, have to be
+given up. An impartial hearing ought, moreover, to be given to all
+objections against property itself. All evils and inconveniences
+attaching to the institution in its best form ought to be frankly
+admitted, and the best remedies or palliatives applied which human
+intelligence is able to devise. And all plans proposed by social
+reformers, under whatever name designated, for the purpose of attaining
+the benefits aimed at by the institution of property without its
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>inconveniences, should be examined with the same candor, not prejudged
+as absurd or impracticable.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4><span class="sc">Socialist Objections to the Present Order of Society.</span></h4>
+
+<p>As in all proposals for change there are two elements to be
+considered&mdash;that which is to be changed, and that which it is to be
+changed to&mdash;so in Socialism considered generally, and in each of its
+varieties taken separately, there are two parts to be distinguished,
+the one negative and critical, the other constructive. There is,
+first, the judgment of Socialism on existing institutions and
+practices and on their results; and secondly, the various plans which
+it has propounded for doing better. In the former all the different
+schools of Socialism are at one. They agree almost to identity in the
+faults which they find with the economical order of existing society.
+Up to a certain point also they entertain the same general conception
+of the remedy to be provided for those faults; but in the details,
+notwithstanding this general agreement, there is a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>wide disparity. It
+will be both natural and convenient, in attempting an estimate of
+their doctrines, to begin with the negative portion which is common to
+them all, and to postpone all mention of their differences until we
+arrive at that second part of their undertaking, in which alone they
+seriously differ.</p>
+
+<p>This first part of our task is by no means difficult; since it
+consists only in an enumeration of existing evils. Of these there is
+no scarcity, and most of them are by no means obscure or mysterious.
+Many of them are the veriest commonplaces of moralists, though the
+roots even of these lie deeper than moralists usually attempt to
+penetrate. So various are they that the only difficulty is to make any
+approach to an exhaustive catalogue. We shall content ourselves for
+the present with mentioning a few of the principal. And let one thing
+be remembered by the reader. When item after item of the enumeration
+passes before him, and he finds one fact after another which he has
+been accustomed to include among the necessities of nature urged <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>as
+an accusation against social institutions, he is not entitled to cry
+unfairness, and to protest that the evils complained of are inherent
+in Man and Society, and are such as no arrangements can remedy. To
+assert this would be to beg the very question at issue. No one is more
+ready than Socialists to admit&mdash;they affirm it indeed much more
+decidedly than truth warrants&mdash;that the evils they complain of are
+irremediable in the present constitution of society. They propose to
+consider whether some other form of society may be devised which would
+not be liable to those evils, or would be liable to them in a much
+less degree. Those who object to the present order of society,
+considered as a whole and who accept as an alternative the possibility
+of a total change, have a right to set down all the evils which at
+present exist in society as part of their case, whether these are
+apparently attributable to social arrangements or not, provided they
+do not flow from physical laws which human power is not adequate, or
+human knowledge has not yet learned, to counteract. Moral evils <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>and
+such physical evils as would be remedied if all persons did as they
+ought, are fairly chargeable against the state of society which admits
+of them; and are valid as arguments until it is shown that any other
+state of society would involve an equal or greater amount of such
+evils. In the opinion of Socialists, the present arrangements of
+society in respect to Property and the Production and Distribution of
+Wealth, are as means to the general good, a total failure. They say
+that there is an enormous mass of evil which these arrangements do not
+succeed in preventing; that the good, either moral or physical, which
+they realize is wretchedly small compared with the amount of exertion
+employed, and that even this small amount of good is brought about by
+means which are full of pernicious consequences, moral and physical.</p>
+
+<p>First among existing social evils may be mentioned the evil of
+Poverty. The institution of Property is upheld and commended
+principally as being the means by which labor and frugality are
+insured their reward, and mankind enabled <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>to emerge from indigence.
+It may be so; most Socialists allow that it has been so in earlier
+periods of history. But if the institution can do nothing more or
+better in this respect than it has hitherto done, its capabilities,
+they affirm, are very insignificant. What proportion of the
+population, in the most civilized countries of Europe, enjoy in their
+own persons anything worth naming of the benefits of property? It may
+be said, that but for property in the hands of their employers they
+would be without daily bread; but, though this be conceded, at least
+their daily bread is all that they have; and that often in
+insufficient quantity; almost always of inferior quality; and with no
+assurance of continuing to have it at all; an immense proportion of
+the industrious classes being at some period or other of their lives
+(and all being liable to become) dependent, at least temporarily, on
+legal or voluntary charity. Any attempt to depict the miseries of
+indigence, or to estimate the proportion of mankind who in the most
+advanced countries are habitually given up during their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>whole
+existence to its physical and moral sufferings, would be superfluous
+here. This may be left to philanthropists, who have painted these
+miseries in colors sufficiently strong. Suffice it to say that the
+condition of numbers in civilized Europe, and even in England and
+France, is more wretched than that of most tribes of savages who are
+known to us.</p>
+
+<p>It may be said that of this hard lot no one has any reason to
+complain, because it befalls those only who are outstripped by others,
+from inferiority of energy or of prudence. This, even were it true,
+would be a very small alleviation of the evil. If some Nero or
+Domitian was to require a hundred persons to run a race for their
+lives, on condition that the fifty or twenty who came in hindmost
+should be put to death, it would not be any diminution of the
+injustice that the strongest or nimblest would, except through some
+untoward accident, be certain to escape. The misery and the crime
+would be that they were put to death at all. So in the economy of
+society; if there be any who suffer physical privation or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>moral
+degradation, whose bodily necessities are either not satisfied or
+satisfied in a manner which only brutish creatures can be content
+with, this, though not necessarily the crime of society, is <i>pro
+tanto</i> a failure of the social arrangements. And to assert as a
+mitigation of the evil that those who thus suffer are the weaker
+members of the community, morally or physically, is to add insult to
+misfortune. Is weakness a justification of suffering? Is it not, on
+the contrary, an irresistible claim upon every human being for
+protection against suffering? If the minds and feelings of the
+prosperous were in a right state, would they accept their prosperity
+if for the sake of it even one person near them was, for any other
+cause than voluntary fault, excluded from obtaining a desirable
+existence?</p>
+
+<p>One thing there is, which if it could be affirmed truly, would relieve
+social institutions from any share in the responsibility of these
+evils. Since the human race has no means of enjoyable existence, or of
+existence at all, but what it derives from its own labor and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>abstinence, there would be no ground for complaint against society if
+every one who was willing to undergo a fair share of this labor and
+abstinence could attain a fair share of the fruits. But is this the
+fact? Is it not the reverse of the fact? The reward, instead of being
+proportioned to the labor and abstinence of the individual, is almost
+in an inverse ratio to it: those who receive the least, labor and
+abstain the most. Even the idle, reckless, and ill-conducted poor,
+those who are said with most justice to have themselves to blame for
+their condition, often undergo much more and severer labor, not only
+than those who are born to pecuniary independence, but than almost any
+of the more highly remunerated of those who earn their subsistence;
+and even the inadequate self-control exercised by the industrious poor
+costs them more sacrifice and more effort than is almost ever required
+from the more favored members of society. The very idea of
+distributive justice, or of any proportionality between success and
+merit, or between success and exertion, is in the present state of
+society so <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>manifestly chimerical as to be relegated to the regions of
+romance. It is true that the lot of individuals is not wholly
+independent of their virtue and intelligence; these do really tell in
+their favor, but far less than many other things in which there is no
+merit at all. The most powerful of all the determining circumstances
+is birth. The great majority are what they were born to be. Some are
+born rich without work, others are born to a position in which they
+can become rich <i>by</i> work, the great majority are born to hard work
+and poverty throughout life, numbers to indigence. Next to birth the
+chief cause of success in life is accident and opportunity. When a
+person not born to riches succeeds in acquiring them, his own industry
+and dexterity have generally contributed to the result; but industry
+and dexterity would not have sufficed unless there had been also a
+concurrence of occasions and chances which falls to the lot of only a
+small number. If persons are helped in their worldly career by their
+virtues, so are they, and perhaps quite as often, by their vices: by
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>servility and sycophancy, by hard-hearted and close-fisted
+selfishness, by the permitted lies and tricks of trade, by gambling
+speculations, not seldom by downright knavery. Energies and talents
+are of much more avail for success in life than virtues; but if one
+man succeeds by employing energy and talent in something generally
+useful, another thrives by exercising the same qualities in
+out-generalling and ruining a rival. It is as much as any moralist
+ventures to assert, that, other circumstances being given, honesty is
+the best policy, and that with parity of advantages an honest person
+has a better chance than a rogue. Even this in many stations and
+circumstances of life is questionable; anything more than this is out
+of the question. It cannot be pretended that honesty, as a means of
+success, tells for as much as a difference of one single step on the
+social ladder. The connection between fortune and conduct is mainly
+this, that there is a degree of bad conduct, or rather of some kinds
+of bad conduct, which suffices to ruin any amount of good fortune; but
+the converse is not true: in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>the situation of most people no degree
+whatever of good conduct can be counted upon for raising them in the
+world, without the aid of fortunate accidents.</p>
+
+<p>These evils, then&mdash;great poverty, and that poverty very little
+connected with desert&mdash;are the first grand failure of the existing
+arrangements of society. The second is human misconduct; crime, vice,
+and folly, with all the sufferings which follow in their train. For,
+nearly all the forms of misconduct, whether committed towards ourselves
+or towards others, may be traced to one of three causes: Poverty and
+its temptations in the many; Idleness and <i>des&oelig;uvrement</i> in the few
+whose circumstances do not compel them to work; bad education, or want
+of education, in both. The first two must be allowed to be at least
+failures in the social arrangements, the last is now almost universally
+admitted to be the fault of those arrangements&mdash;it may almost be said
+the crime. I am speaking loosely and in the rough, for a minuter
+analysis of the sources of faults of character and errors of conduct
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>would establish far more conclusively the filiation which connects them
+with a defective organization of society, though it would also show the
+reciprocal dependence of that faulty state of society on a backward
+state of the human mind.</p>
+
+<p>At this point, in the enumeration of the evils of society, the mere
+levellers of former times usually stopped; but their more far-sighted
+successors, the present Socialists, go farther. In their eyes the very
+foundation of human life as at present constituted, the very principle
+on which the production and repartition of all material products is now
+carried on, is essentially vicious and anti-social. It is the principle
+of individualism, competition, each one for himself and against all the
+rest. It is grounded on opposition of interests, not harmony of
+interests, and under it every one is required to find his place by a
+struggle, by pushing others back or being pushed back by them.
+Socialists consider this system of private war (as it may be termed)
+between every one and every one, especially <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>fatal in an economical
+point of view and in a moral. Morally considered, its evils are
+obvious. It is the parent of envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness; it
+makes every one the natural enemy of all others who cross his path, and
+every one's path is constantly liable to be crossed. Under the present
+system hardly any one can gain except by the loss or disappointment of
+one or of many others. In a well-constituted community every one would
+be a gainer by every other person's successful exertions; while now we
+gain by each other's loss and lose by each other's gain, and our
+greatest gains come from the worst source of all, from death, the death
+of those who are nearest and should be dearest to us. In its purely
+economical operation the principle of individual competition receives
+as unqualified condemnation from the social reformers as in its moral.
+In the competition of laborers they see the cause of low wages; in the
+competition of producers the cause of ruin and bankruptcy; and both
+evils, they affirm, tend constantly to increase as population and
+wealth make <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>progress; no person (they conceive) being benefited except
+the great proprietors of land, the holders of fixed money incomes, and
+a few great capitalists, whose wealth is gradually enabling them to
+undersell all other producers, to absorb the whole of the operations of
+industry into their own sphere, to drive from the market all employers
+of labor except themselves, and to convert the laborers into a kind of
+slaves or serfs, dependent on them for the means of support, and
+compelled to accept these on such terms as they choose to offer.
+Society, in short, is travelling onward, according to these
+speculators, towards a new feudality, that of the great capitalists.</p>
+
+<p>As I shall have ample opportunity in future chapters to state my own
+opinion on these topics, and on many others connected with and
+subordinate to them, I shall now, without further preamble, exhibit
+the opinions of distinguished Socialists on the present arrangements
+of society, in a selection of passages from their published writings.
+For the present I desire to be considered as a mere reporter of the
+opinions of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>others. Hereafter it will appear how much of what I cite
+agrees or differs with my own sentiments.</p>
+
+<p>The clearest, the most compact, and the most precise and specific
+statement of the case of the Socialists generally against the existing
+order of society in the economical department of human affairs, is to
+be found in the little work of M. Louis Blanc, <i>Organisation du
+Travail</i>. My first extracts, therefore, on this part of the subject,
+shall be taken from that treatise.</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Competition is for the people a system of extermination. Is the
+poor man a member of society, or an enemy to it? We ask for an
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>"All around him he finds the soil preoccupied. Can he cultivate
+the earth for himself? No; for the right of the first occupant
+has become a right of property. Can he gather the fruits which
+the hand of God ripens on the path of man? No; for, like the
+soil, the fruits have been <i>appropriated</i>. Can he hunt or fish?
+No; for that is a right which is dependent upon the government.
+Can he draw water from a spring enclosed in a field? No; for the
+proprietor of the field is, in virtue of his right to the
+field, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>proprietor of the fountain. Can he, dying of hunger and
+thirst, stretch out his hands for the charity of his
+fellow-creatures? No; for there are laws against begging. Can
+he, exhausted by fatigue and without a refuge, lie down to sleep
+upon the pavement of the streets? No; for there are laws against
+vagabondage. Can he, dying from the cruel native land where
+everything is denied him, seek the means of living far from the
+place where life was given him? No; for it is not permitted to
+change your country except on certain conditions which the poor
+man cannot fulfil.</p>
+
+<p>"What, then, can the unhappy man do? He will say, 'I have hands
+to work with, I have intelligence, I have youth, I have
+strength; take all this, and in return give me a morsel of
+bread.' This is what the working-men do say. But even here the
+poor man may be answered, 'I have no work to give you.' What is
+he to do then?"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+
+<p>"What is competition from the point of view of the workman? It
+is work put up to auction. A contractor wants a workman: three
+present themselves.&mdash;How much for your work?&mdash;Half-a-crown; I
+have a wife and children.&mdash;Well; and how much for yours?&mdash;Two
+shillings: I have no children, but I have a wife.&mdash;Very well;
+and now how much for you?&mdash;One and eightpence are enough for me;
+I am single. Then you shall <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>have the work. It is done; the
+bargain is struck. And what are the other two workmen to do? It
+is to be hoped they will die quietly of hunger. But what if they
+take to thieving? Never fear; we have the police. To murder? We
+have got the hangman. As for the lucky one, his triumph is only
+temporary. Let a fourth workman make his appearance, strong
+enough to fast every other day, and his price will run down
+still lower; then there will be a new outcast, a new recruit for
+the prison perhaps!</p>
+
+<p>"Will it be said that these melancholy results are exaggerated;
+that at all events they are only possible when there is not work
+enough for the hands that seek employment? But I ask, in answer,
+Does the principle of competition contain, by chance, within
+itself any method by which this murderous disproportion is to be
+avoided? If one branch of industry is in want of hands, who can
+answer for it that, in the confusion created by universal
+competition, another is not overstocked? And if, out of
+thirty-four millions of men, twenty are really reduced to theft
+for a living, this would suffice to condemn the principle.</p>
+
+<p>"But who is so blind as not to see that under the system of
+unlimited competition, the continual fall of wages is no
+exceptional circumstance, but a necessary and general fact? Has
+the population a limit which it cannot exceed? Is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>it possible
+for us to say to industry&mdash;industry given up to the accidents of
+individual egotism and fertile in ruin&mdash;can we say, 'Thus far
+shalt thou go, and no farther?' The population increases
+constantly: tell the poor mother to become sterile, and
+blaspheme the God who made her fruitful, for if you do not, the
+lists will soon become too narrow for the combatants. A machine
+is invented: command it to be broken, and anathematize science,
+for if you do not, the thousand workmen whom the new machine
+deprives of work will knock at the door of the neighboring
+workshop, and lower the wages of their companions. Thus
+systematic lowering of wages, ending in the driving out of a
+certain number of workmen, is the inevitable effect of unlimited
+competition. It is an industrial system by means of which the
+working-classes are forced to exterminate one another."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+
+<p>"If there is an undoubted fact, it is that the increase of
+population is much more rapid among the poor than among the
+rich. According to the <i>Statistics of European Population</i>, the
+births at Paris are only one-thirty-second of the population in
+the rich quarters, while in the others they rise to
+one-twenty-sixth. This disproportion is a general fact, and M.
+de Sismondi, in his work on Political Economy, has explained it
+by the impossibility for the workmen of hopeful <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>prudence. Those
+only who feel themselves assured of the morrow can regulate the
+number of their children according to their income; he who lives
+from day to day is under the yoke of a mysterious fatality, to
+which he sacrifices his children as he was sacrificed to it
+himself. It is true the workhouses exist, menacing society with
+an inundation of beggars&mdash;what way is there of escaping from the
+cause?... It is clear that any society where the means of
+subsistence increase less rapidly than the numbers of the
+population, is a society on the brink of an abyss....
+Competition produces destitution; this is a fact shown by
+statistics. Destitution is fearfully prolific; this is shown by
+statistics. The fruitfulness of the poor throws upon society
+unhappy creatures who have need of work and cannot find it; this
+is shown by statistics. At this point society is reduced to a
+choice between killing the poor or maintaining them
+gratuitously&mdash;between atrocity or folly."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>So much for the poor. We now pass to the middle classes.</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"According to the political economists of the school of Adam
+Smith and Leon Say, <i>cheapness</i> is the word in which may be
+summed up the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>advantages of unlimited competition. But why
+persist in considering the effect of cheapness with a view only
+to the momentary advantage of the consumer? Cheapness is
+advantageous to the consumer at the cost of introducing the
+seeds of ruinous anarchy among the producers. Cheapness is, so
+to speak, the hammer with which the rich among the producers
+crush their poorer rivals. Cheapness is the trap into which the
+daring speculators entice the hard-workers. Cheapness is the
+sentence of death to the producer on a small scale who has no
+money to invest in the purchase of machinery that his rich
+rivals can easily procure. Cheapness is the great instrument in
+the hands of monopoly; it absorbs the small manufacturer, the
+small shopkeeper, the small proprietor; it is, in one word, the
+destruction of the middle classes for the advantage of a few
+industrial oligarchs.</p>
+
+<p>"Ought we, then, to consider cheapness as a curse? No one would
+attempt to maintain such an absurdity. But it is the specialty
+of wrong principles to turn good into evil and to corrupt all
+things. Under the system of competition cheapness is only a
+provisional and fallacious advantage. It is maintained only so
+long as there is a struggle; no sooner have the rich competitors
+driven out their poorer rivals than prices rise. Competition
+leads to monopoly, for the same reason cheapness leads to high
+prices. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>Thus, what has been made use of as a weapon in the
+contest between the producers, sooner or later becomes a cause
+of impoverishment among the consumers. And if to this cause we
+add the others we have already enumerated, first among which
+must be ranked the inordinate increase of the population, we
+shall be compelled to recognize the impoverishment of the mass
+of the consumers as a direct consequence of competition.</p>
+
+<p>"But, on the other hand, this very competition which tends to
+dry up the sources of demand, urges production to over-supply.
+The confusion produced by the universal struggle prevents each
+producer from knowing the state of the market. He must work in
+the dark, and trust to chance for a sale. Why should he check
+the supply, especially as he can throw any loss on the workman
+whose wages are so pre-eminently liable to rise and fall? Even
+when production is carried on at a loss the manufacturers still
+often carry it on, because they will not let their machinery,
+&amp;c., stand idle, or risk the loss of raw material, or lose their
+customers; and because productive industry as carried on under
+the competitive system being nothing else than a game of chance,
+the gambler will not lose his chance of a lucky stroke.</p>
+
+<p>"Thus, and we cannot too often insist upon it, competition
+necessarily tends to increase supply and to diminish
+consumption; its tendency <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>therefore is precisely the opposite
+of what is sought by economic science; hence it is not merely
+oppressive but foolish as well."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+
+<p>"And in all this, in order to avoid dwelling on truths which
+have become commonplaces, and sound declamatory from their very
+truth, we have said nothing of the frightful moral corruption
+which industry, organized, or more properly speaking,
+disorganized, as it is at the present day, has introduced among
+the middle classes. Everything has become venal, and competition
+invades even the domain of thought.</p>
+
+<p>"The factory crushing the workshop; the showy establishment
+absorbing the humble shop; the artisan who is his own master
+replaced by the day-laborer; cultivation by the plow superseding
+that by the spade, and bringing the poor man's field under
+disgraceful homage to the money-lender; bankruptcies multiplied;
+manufacturing industry transformed by the ill-regulated
+extension of credit into a system of gambling where no one, not
+even the rogue, can be sure of winning; in short a vast
+confusion calculated to arouse jealousy, mistrust, and hatred,
+and to stifle, little by little, all generous aspirations, all
+faith, self-sacrifice, and poetry&mdash;such is the hideous but only
+too faithful picture of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>results obtained by the application
+of the principle of competition."<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>The Fourierists, through their principal organ, M. Consid&eacute;rant,
+enumerate the evils of the existing civilisation in the following
+order:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1. It employs an enormous quantity of labor and of human power
+unproductively, or in the work of destruction.</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"In the first place there is the army, which in France, as in
+all other countries, absorbs the healthiest and strongest men, a
+large number of the most talented and intelligent, and a
+considerable part of the public revenue.... The existing state
+of society develops in its impure atmosphere innumerable
+outcasts, whose labor is not merely unproductive, but actually
+destructive: adventurers, prostitutes, people with no
+acknowledged means of living, beggars, convicts, swindlers,
+thieves, and others whose numbers tend rather to increase than
+to diminish....</p>
+
+<p>"To the list of unproductive labor fostered by our state of
+Society must be added that of the judicature and of the bar, of
+the courts of law and magistrates, the police, jailers,
+executioners, &amp;c.,&mdash;functions indispensable to the state of
+society as it is.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>"Also people of what is called 'good society'; those who pass
+their lives in doing nothing; idlers of all ranks.</p>
+
+<p>"Also the numberless custom-house officials, tax-gatherers,
+bailiffs, excise-men; in short, all that army of men which
+overlooks, brings to account, takes, but produces nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Also the labors of sophists, philosophers, metaphysicians,
+political men, working in mistaken directions, who do nothing to
+advance science, and produce nothing but disturbance and sterile
+discussions; the verbiage of advocates, pleaders, witnesses, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"And finally all the operations of commerce, from those of the
+bankers and brokers, down to those of the grocer behind his
+counter."<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>Secondly, they assert that even the industry and powers which in the
+present system are devoted to production, do not produce more than a
+small portion of what they might produce if better employed and
+directed:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Who with any good-will and reflection will not see how much the
+want of coherence&mdash;the disorder, the want of combination, the
+parcelling out of labor and leaving it wholly to individual
+action without any organization, without any <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>large or general
+views&mdash;are causes which limit the possibilities of production,
+and destroy, or at least waste, our means of action? Does not
+disorder give birth to poverty, as order and good management
+give birth to riches? Is not want of combination a source of
+weakness, as combination is a source of strength? And who can
+say that industry, whether agricultural, domestic,
+manufacturing, scientific, artistic, or commercial, is organized
+at the present day either in the state or in municipalities? Who
+can say that all the work which is carried on in any of these
+departments is executed in subordination to any general views,
+or with foresight, economy, and order? Or, again, who can say
+that it is possible in our present state of society to develop,
+by a good education, all the faculties bestowed by nature on
+each of its members; to employ each one in functions which he
+would like, which he would be the most capable of, and which,
+therefore, he could carry on with the greatest advantage to
+himself and to others? Has it even been so much as attempted to
+solve the problems presented by varieties of character so as to
+regulate and harmonize the varieties of employments in
+accordance with natural aptitudes? Alas! The Utopia of the most
+ardent philanthropists is to teach reading and writing to
+twenty-five millions of the French people! And in the present
+state <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>of things we may defy them to succeed even in that!</p>
+
+<p>"And is it not a strange spectacle, too, and one which cries out
+in condemnation of us, to see this state of society where the
+soil is badly cultivated, and sometimes not cultivated at all;
+where man is ill lodged, ill clothed, and yet where whole masses
+are continually in need of work and pining in misery because
+they cannot find it? Of a truth we are forced to acknowledge
+that if the nations are poor and starving it is not because
+nature has denied the means of producing wealth, but because of
+the anarchy and disorder in our employment of those means; in
+other words, it is because society is wretchedly constituted and
+labor unorganized.</p>
+
+<p>"But this is not all, and you will have but a faint conception
+of the evil if you do not consider that to all these vices of
+society, which dry up the sources of wealth and prosperity, must
+be added the struggle, the discord, the war, in short under many
+names and many forms which society cherishes and cultivates
+between the individuals that compose it. These struggles and
+discords correspond to radical oppositions&mdash;deep-seated
+antinomies between the various interests. Exactly in so far as
+you are able to establish classes and categories within the
+nation; in so far, also, you will have opposition of interests
+and internal warfare either avowed or secret, even if you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>take
+into consideration the industrial system only."<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>One of the leading ideas of this school is the wastefulness and at the
+same time the immorality of the existing arrangements for distributing
+the produce of the country among the various consumers, the enormous
+superfluity in point of number of the agents of distribution, the
+merchants, dealers, shopkeepers and their innumerable, employ&eacute;s, and
+the depraving character of such a distribution of occupations.</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"It is evident that the interest of the trader is opposed to
+that of the consumer and of the producer. Has he not bought
+cheap and under-valued as much as possible in all his dealings
+with the producer, the very same article which, vaunting its
+excellence, he sells to you as dear as he can? Thus the interest
+of the commercial body, collectively and individually, is
+contrary to that of the producer and of the consumer&mdash;that is to
+say, to the interest of the whole body of society.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+
+<p>"The trader is a go-between, who profits by the general anarchy
+and the non-organization of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>industry. The trader buys up
+products, he buys up everything; he owns and detains everything,
+in such sort that:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"1stly. He holds both Production and Consumption <i>under his
+yoke</i>, because both must come to him either finally for the
+products to be consumed, or at first for the raw materials to be
+worked up. Commerce with all its methods of buying, and of
+raising and lowering prices, its innumerable devices, and its
+holding everything in the hands of <i>middle-men</i>, levies toll
+right and left; it despotically gives the law to Production and
+Consumption, of which it ought to be only the subordinate.</p>
+
+<p>"2ndly. It robs society by its <i>enormous profits</i>&mdash;profits
+levied upon the consumer and the producer, and altogether out of
+proportion to the services rendered, for which a twentieth of
+the persons actually employed would be sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>"3rdly. It robs society by the subtraction of its productive
+forces; taking off from productive labor nineteen-twentieths of
+the agents of trade who are mere parasites. Thus, not only does
+commerce rob society by appropriating an exorbitant share of the
+common wealth, but also by considerably diminishing the
+productive energy of the human beehive. The great majority of
+traders would return to productive work if a rational system of
+commercial organization were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>substituted for the inextricable
+chaos of the present state of things.</p>
+
+<p>"4thly. It robs society by the <i>adulteration</i> of products,
+pushed at the present day beyond all bounds. And in fact, if a
+hundred grocers establish themselves in a town where before
+there were only twenty, it is plain that people will not begin
+to consume five times as many groceries. Hereupon the hundred
+virtuous grocers have to dispute between them the profits which
+before were honestly made by the twenty; competition obliges
+them to make it up at the expense of the consumer, either by
+raising the prices as sometimes happens, or by adulterating the
+goods as always happens. In such a state of things there is an
+end to good faith. Inferior or adulterated goods are sold for
+articles of good quality whenever the credulous customer is not
+too experienced to be deceived. And when the customer has been
+thoroughly imposed upon, the trading conscience consoles itself
+by saying, 'I state my price; people can take or leave; no one
+is obliged to buy.' The losses imposed on the consumers by the
+bad quality or the adulteration of goods are incalculable.</p>
+
+<p>"5thly. It robs society by <i>accumulations</i>, artificial or not,
+in consequence of which vast quantities of goods, collected in
+one place, are damaged and destroyed for want of a sale. Fourier
+(Th. des Quat. Mouv., p. 334, 1st ed.) says: 'The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>fundamental
+principle of the commercial systems, that of <i>leaving full
+liberty to the merchants</i>, gives them absolute right of property
+over the goods in which they deal: they have the right to
+withdraw them altogether, to withhold or even to burn them, as
+happened more than once with the Oriental Company of Amsterdam,
+which publicly burnt stores of cinnamon in order to raise the
+price. What it did with cinnamon it would have done with corn;
+but for the fear of being stoned by the populace, it would have
+burnt some corn in order to sell the rest at four times its
+value. Indeed, it actually is of daily occurrence in ports, for
+provisions of grains to be thrown into the sea because the
+merchants have allowed them to rot while waiting for a rise. I
+myself, when I was a clerk, have had to superintend these
+infamous proceedings, and in one day caused to be thrown into
+the sea some forty thousand bushels of rice, which might have
+been sold at a fair profit had the withholder been less greedy
+of gain. It is society that bears the cost of this waste, which
+takes place daily under shelter of the philosophical maxim of
+<i>full liberty for the merchants</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"6thly. Commerce robs society, moreover, by all the loss,
+damage, and waste that follows from the extreme scattering of
+products in millions of shops, and by the multiplication and
+complication of carriage.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>"7thly. It robs society by shameless and unlimited
+<i>usury</i>&mdash;usury absolutely appalling. The trader carries on
+operations with fictitious capital, much higher in amount than
+his real capital. A trader with a capital of twelve hundred
+pounds will carry on operations, by means of bills and credit,
+on a scale of four, eight, or twelve thousand pounds. Thus he
+draws from capital <i>which he does not possess</i>, usurious
+interest, out of all proportion with the capital he actually
+owns.</p>
+
+<p>"8thly. It robs society by innumerable <i>bankruptcies</i>, for the
+daily accidents of our commercial system, political events, and
+any kind of disturbance, must usher in a day when the trader,
+having incurred obligations beyond his means, is no longer able
+to meet them; his failure, whether fraudulent or not, must be a
+severe blow to his creditors. The bankruptcy of some entails
+that of others, so that bankruptcies follow one upon another,
+causing widespread ruin. And it is always the producer and the
+consumer who suffer; for commerce, considered as a whole, does
+not produce wealth, and invests very little in proportion to the
+wealth which passes through its hands. How many are the
+manufactures crushed by these blows! how many fertile sources of
+wealth dried up by these devices, with all their disastrous
+consequences!</p>
+
+<p>"The producer furnishes the goods, the consumer the money. Trade
+furnishes credit, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>founded on little or no actual capital, and
+the different members of the commercial body are in no way
+responsible for one another. This, in a few words, is the whole
+theory of the thing.</p>
+
+<p>"9thly. Commerce robs society by the <i>independence</i> and
+<i>irresponsibility</i> which permits it to buy at the epochs when
+the producers are forced to sell and compete with one another,
+in order to procure money for their rent and necessary expenses
+of production. When the markets are overstocked and goods cheap,
+trade purchases. Then it creates a rise, and by this simple
+man&oelig;uvre despoils both producer and consumer.</p>
+
+<p>"10thly. It robs society by a considerable <i>drawing off</i> of
+<i>capital</i>, which will return to productive industry when
+commerce plays its proper subordinate part, and is only an
+agency carrying on transactions between the producers (more or
+less distant) and the great centres of consumption&mdash;the
+communistic societies. Thus the capital engaged in the
+speculations of commerce (which, small as it is, compared to the
+immense wealth which passes through its hands, consists
+nevertheless of sums enormous in themselves), would return to
+stimulate production if commerce was deprived of the
+intermediate property in goods, and their distribution became a
+matter of administrative organization. Stock-jobbing is the most
+odious form of this vice of commerce.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>"11thly. It robs society by the <i>monopolising</i> or buying up of
+raw materials. 'For' (says Fourier, Th. des Quat. Mouv., p. 359,
+1st ed.), 'the rise in price on articles that are bought up, is
+borne ultimately by the consumer, although in the first place by
+the manufacturers, who, being obliged to keep up their
+establishments, must make pecuniary sacrifices, and manufacture
+at small profits in the hope of better days; and it is often
+long before they can repay themselves the rise in prices which
+the monopoliser has compelled them to support in the first
+instance...."</p>
+
+<p>"In short, all these vices, besides many others which I omit,
+are multiplied by the extreme complication of mercantile
+affairs; for products do not pass once only through the greedy
+clutches of commerce; there are some which pass and repass
+twenty or thirty times before reaching the consumer. In the
+first place, the raw material passes through the grasp of
+commerce before reaching the manufacturer who first works it up;
+then it returns to commerce to be sent out again to be worked up
+in a second form; and so on until it receives its final shape.
+Then it passes into the hands of merchants, who sell to the
+wholesale dealers, and these to the great retail dealers of
+towns, and these again to the little dealers and to the country
+shops; and each time that it changes hands, it leaves something
+behind it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>"... One of my friends who was lately exploring the Jura, where
+much working in metal is done, had occasion to enter the house
+of a peasant who was a manufacturer of shovels. He asked the
+price. 'Let us come to an understanding,' answered the poor
+laborer, not an economist at all, but a man of common sense; 'I
+sell them for 8<i>d.</i> to the trade, which retails them at 1<i>s.</i>
+8<i>d.</i> in the towns. If you could find a means of opening a
+direct communication between the workman and the consumer, you
+might have them for 1<i>s.</i> 2<i>d.</i>, and we should each gain 6<i>d.</i>
+by the transaction.'"<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>To a similar effect Owen, in the <i>Book of the New Moral World</i>, part
+2, chap. iii.</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"The principle now in practice is to induce a large portion of
+society to devote their lives to distribute wealth upon a large,
+a medium, and a small scale, and to have it conveyed from place
+to place in larger or smaller quantities, to meet the means and
+wants of various divisions of society and individuals, as they
+are now situated in cities, towns, villages, and country places.
+This principle of distribution makes a class in society whose
+business is to <i>buy from</i> some parties and to <i>sell to</i> others.
+By this proceeding they are placed under circumstances which
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>induce them to endeavor to buy at what appears at the time a low
+price in the market, and to sell again at the greatest permanent
+profit which they can obtain. Their real object being to get as
+much profit as gain between the seller to, and the buyer from
+them, as can be effected in their transactions.</p>
+
+<p>"There are innumerable errors in principle and evils in practice
+which necessarily proceed from this mode of distributing the
+wealth of society.</p>
+
+<p>"1st. A general class of distributers is formed, whose interest
+is separated from, and apparently opposed to, that of the
+individual from whom they buy and to whom they sell.</p>
+
+<p>"2nd. Three classes of distributers are made, the small, the
+medium, and the large buyers and sellers; or the retailers, the
+wholesale dealers, and the extensive merchants.</p>
+
+<p>"3rd. Three classes of buyers thus created constitute the small,
+the medium, and the large purchasers.</p>
+
+<p>"By this arrangement into various classes of buyers and sellers,
+the parties are easily trained to learn that they have separate
+and opposing interests, and different ranks and stations in
+society. An inequality of feeling and condition is thus created
+and maintained, with all the servility and pride which these
+unequal arrangements are sure to produce. The parties are
+regularly trained in a general system of deception, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>in order
+that they may be the more successful in buying cheap and selling
+dear.</p>
+
+<p>"The smaller sellers acquire habits of injurious idleness,
+waiting often for hours for customers. And this evil is
+experienced to a considerable extent even amongst the class of
+wholesale dealers.</p>
+
+<p>"There are, also, by this arrangement, many more establishments
+for selling than are necessary in the villages, towns, and
+cities; and a very large capital is thus wasted without benefit
+to society. And from their number opposed to each other all over
+the country to obtain customers, they endeavor to undersell each
+other, and are therefore continually endeavoring to injure the
+producer by the establishment of what are called cheap shops and
+warehouses; and to support their character the master or his
+servants must be continually on the watch to buy bargains, that
+is, to procure wealth for less than the cost of its production.</p>
+
+<p>"The distributers, small, medium, and large, have all to be
+supported by the producers, and the greater the number of the
+former compared with the latter, the greater will be the burden
+which the producer has to sustain; for as the number of
+distributers increases, the accumulation of wealth must
+decrease, and more must be required from the producer.</p>
+
+<p>"The distributers of wealth, under the present <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>system, are a
+dead weight upon the producers, and are most active demoralisers
+of society. Their dependent condition, at the commencement of
+their task, teaches or induces them to be servile to their
+customers, and to continue to be so as long as they are
+accumulating wealth by their cheap buying and dear selling. But
+when they have secured sufficient to be what they imagine to be
+an independence&mdash;to live without business&mdash;they are too often
+filled with a most ignorant pride, and become insolent to their
+dependents.</p>
+
+<p>"The arrangement is altogether a most improvident one for
+society, whose interest it is to produce the greatest amount of
+wealth of the best qualities; while the existing system of
+distribution is not only to withdraw great numbers from
+producing to become distributers, but to add to the cost of the
+consumer all the expense of a most wasteful and extravagant
+distribution; the distribution costing to the consumer many
+times the price of the original cost of the wealth purchased.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, by the position in which the seller is placed by his
+created desire for gain on the one hand, and the competition he
+meets with from opponents selling similar productions on the
+other, he is strongly tempted to deteriorate the articles which
+he has for sale; and when these are provisions, either of home
+production or of foreign importation, the effects upon the
+health, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>and consequent comfort and happiness of the consumers,
+are often most injurious, and productive of much premature
+death, especially among the working classes, who, in this
+respect, are perhaps made to be the greatest sufferers, by
+purchasing the inferior or low-priced articles.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"The expense of thus distributing wealth in Great Britain and
+Ireland, including transit from place to place, and all the
+agents directly and indirectly engaged in this department, is,
+perhaps, little short of one hundred millions annually, without
+taking into consideration the deterioration of the quality of
+many of the articles constituting this wealth, by carriage, and
+by being divided into small quantities, and kept in improper
+stores and places, in which the atmosphere is unfavorable to the
+keeping of such articles in a tolerably good, and much less in
+the best, condition for use."</p></div>
+
+<p>In further illustration of the contrariety of interests between person
+and person, class and class, which pervades the present constitution
+of society, M. Consid&eacute;rant adds:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"If the wine-growers wish for free trade, this freedom ruins the
+producer of corn, the manufacturers of iron, of cloth, of
+cotton, and&mdash;we are compelled to add&mdash;the smuggler and the
+customs' <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>officer. If it is the interest of the consumer that
+machines should be invented which lower prices by rendering
+production less costly, these same machines throw out of work
+thousands of workmen who do not know how to, and cannot at once,
+find other work. Here, then, again is one of the innumerable
+<i>vicious circles</i> of civilisation ... for there are a thousand
+facts which prove cumulatively that in our existing social
+system the introduction of any good brings always along with it
+some evil.</p>
+
+<p>"In short, if we go lower down and come to vulgar details, we
+find that it is the interest of the tailor, the shoemaker, and
+the hatter that coats, shoes, and hats should be soon worn out;
+that the glazier profits by the hail-storms which break windows;
+that the mason and the architect profit by fires; the lawyer is
+enriched by law-suits; the doctor by disease; the wine-seller by
+drunkenness; the prostitute by debauchery. And what a disaster
+it would be for the judges, the police, and the jailers, as well
+as for the barristers and the solicitors, and all the lawyers'
+clerks, if crimes, offences, and law-suits were all at once to
+come to an end!"<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>The following is one of the cardinal points of this school:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Add to all this, that civilisation, which sows dissension and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+war on every side; which employs a great part of its powers in
+unproductive labor or even in destruction; which furthermore
+diminishes the public wealth by the unnecessary friction and
+discord it introduces into industry; add to all this, I say,
+that this same social system has for its special characteristic
+to produce a repugnance for work&mdash;a disgust for labor.</p>
+
+<p>"Everywhere you hear the laborer, the artisan, the clerk
+complain of his position and his occupation, while they long for
+the time when they can retire from work imposed upon them by
+necessity. To be repugnant, to have for its motive and pivot
+nothing but the fear of starvation, is the great, the fatal,
+characteristic of civilised labor. The civilised workman is
+condemned to penal servitude. So long as productive labor is so
+organized that instead of being associated with pleasure it is
+associated with pain, weariness and dislike, it will always
+happen that all will avoid it who are able. With few exceptions,
+those only will consent to work who are compelled to it by want.
+Hence the most numerous classes, the artificers of social
+wealth, the active and direct creators of all comfort and
+luxury, will always be condemned to touch closely on poverty and
+hunger; they will always be the slaves to ignorance and
+degradation; they will continue to be always that huge herd of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>mere beasts of burden whom we see ill-grown, decimated by
+disease, bowed down in the great workshop of society over the
+plow or over the counter, that they may prepare the delicate
+food, and the sumptuous enjoyments of the upper and idle
+classes.</p>
+
+<p>"So long as no method of attractive labor has been devised, it
+will continue to be true that 'there must be many poor in order
+that there may be a few rich;' a mean and hateful saying, which
+we hear every day quoted as an eternal truth from the mouths of
+people who call themselves Christians or philosophers. It is
+very easy to understand that oppression, trickery, and
+especially poverty, are the permanent and fatal appanage of
+every state of society characterized by the dislike of work,
+for, in this case, there is nothing but poverty that will force
+men to labor. And the proof of this is, that if every one of all
+the workers were to become suddenly rich, nineteen-twentieths of
+all the work now done would be abandoned."<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>In the opinion of the Fourierists, the tendency of the present order
+of society is to a concentration of wealth in the hands of a
+comparatively few immensely rich individuals or companies, and the
+reduction of all the rest of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>community into a complete dependence
+on them. This was termed by Fourier <i>la jeodalite industrielle</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"This feudalism," says M. Consid&eacute;rant, "would be constituted as
+soon as the largest part of the industrial and territorial
+property of the nation belongs to a minority which absorbs all
+its revenues, while the great majority, chained to the
+work-bench or laboring on the soil, must be content to gnaw the
+pittance which is cast to them."<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>This disastrous result is to be brought about partly by the mere
+progress of competition, as sketched in our previous extract by M.
+Louis Blanc; assisted by the progress of national debts, which M.
+Consid&eacute;rant regards as mortgages of the whole land and capital of the
+country, of which "les capitalistes pr&ecirc;teurs" become, in a greater and
+greater measure, co-proprietors, receiving without labor or risk an
+increasing portion of the revenues.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4><span class="sc">The Socialist Objections to the Present Order of Society
+Examined.</span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></h4>
+
+<p>It is impossible to deny that the considerations brought to notice in
+the preceding chapter make out a frightful case either against the
+existing order of society, or against the position of man himself in
+this world. How much of the evils should be referred to the one, and
+how much to the other, is the principal theoretic question which has
+to be resolved. But the strongest case is susceptible of exaggeration;
+and it will have been evident to many readers, even from the passages
+I have quoted, that such exaggeration is not wanting in the
+representations of the ablest and most candid Socialists. Though much
+of their allegations is unanswerable, not a little is the result of
+errors in political economy; by which, let me say once for all, I do
+not mean the rejection of any practical rules of policy which have
+been laid down by political economists, I mean ignorance of economic
+facts, and of the causes by which the economic <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>phenomena of society
+as it is, are actually determined.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place it is unhappily true that the wages of ordinary
+labor, in all the countries of Europe, are wretchedly insufficient to
+supply the physical and moral necessities of the population in any
+tolerable measure. But, when it is further alleged that even this
+insufficient remuneration has a tendency to diminish; that there is,
+in the words of M. Louis Blanc, <i>une baisse continue des salaires</i>;
+the assertion is in opposition to all accurate information, and to
+many notorious facts. It has yet to be proved that there is any
+country in the civilized world where the ordinary wages of labor,
+estimated either in money or in articles of consumption, are
+declining; while in many they are, on the whole, on the increase; and
+an increase which is becoming, not slower, but more rapid. There are,
+occasionally, branches of industry which are being gradually
+superseded by something else, and, in those, until production
+accommodates itself to demand, wages are depressed; which is an evil,
+but a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>temporary one, and would admit of great alleviation even in the
+present system of social economy. A diminution thus produced of the
+reward of labor in some particular employment is the effect and the
+evidence of increased remuneration, or of a new source of
+remuneration, in some other; the total and the average remuneration
+being undiminished, or even increased. To make out an appearance of
+diminution in the rate of wages in any leading branch of industry, it
+is always found necessary to compare some month or year of special and
+temporary depression at the present time, with the average rate, or
+even some exceptionally high rate, at an earlier time. The
+vicissitudes are no doubt a great evil, but they were as frequent and
+as severe in former periods of economical history as now. The greater
+scale of the transactions, and the greater number of persons involved
+in each fluctuation, may make the fluctuation appear greater, but
+though a larger population affords more sufferers, the evil does not
+weigh heavier on each of them individually. There is much evidence of
+improvement, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>none, that is at all trustworthy, of deterioration,
+in the mode of living of the laboring population of the countries of
+Europe; when there is any appearance to the contrary it is local or
+partial, and can always be traced either to the pressure of some
+temporary calamity, or to some bad law or unwise act of government
+which admits of being corrected, while the permanent causes all
+operate in the direction of improvement.</p>
+
+<p>M. Louis Blanc, therefore, while showing himself much more enlightened
+than the older school of levellers and democrats, inasmuch as he
+recognizes the connection between low wages and the over-rapid
+increase of population, appears to have fallen into the same error
+which was at first committed by Malthus and his followers, that of
+supposing that because population has a greater power of increase than
+subsistence, its pressure upon subsistence must be always growing more
+severe. The difference is that the early Malthusians thought this an
+irrepressible tendency, while M. Louis Blanc thinks that it can <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>be
+repressed, but only under a system of Communism. It is a great point
+gained for truth when it comes to be seen that the tendency to
+over-population is a fact which Communism, as well as the existing
+order of society, would have to deal with. And it is much to be
+rejoiced at that this necessity is admitted by the most considerable
+chiefs of all existing schools of Socialism. Owen and Fourier, no less
+than M. Louis Blanc, admitted it, and claimed for their respective
+systems a pre-eminent power of dealing with this difficulty. However
+this may be, experience shows that in the existing state of society
+the pressure of population on subsistence, which is the principal
+cause of low wages, though a great, is not an increasing evil; on the
+contrary, the progress of all that is called civilization has a
+tendency to diminish it, partly by the more rapid increase of the
+means of employing and maintaining labor, partly by the increased
+facilities opened to labor for transporting itself to new countries
+and unoccupied fields of employment, and partly by a general
+improvement <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>in the intelligence and prudence of the population. This
+progress, no doubt, is slow; but it is much that such progress should
+take place at all, while we are still only in the first stage of that
+public movement for the education of the whole people, which when more
+advanced must add greatly to the force of all the two causes of
+improvement specified above. It is, of course, open to discussion what
+form of society has the greatest power of dealing successfully with
+the pressure of population on subsistence, and on this question there
+is much to be said for Socialism; what was long thought to be its
+weakest point will, perhaps, prove to be one of its strongest. But it
+has no just claim to be considered as the sole means of preventing the
+general and growing degradation of the mass of mankind through the
+peculiar tendency of poverty to produce over-population. Society as at
+present constituted is not descending into that abyss, but gradually,
+though slowly, rising out of it, and this improvement is likely to be
+progressive if bad laws do not interfere with it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>Next, it must be observed that Socialists generally, and even the most
+enlightened of them, have a very imperfect and one-sided notion of the
+operation of competition. They see half its effects, and overlook the
+other half; they regard it as an agency for grinding down every one's
+remuneration&mdash;for obliging every one to accept less wages for his
+labor, or a less price for his commodities, which would be true only
+if every one had to dispose of his labor or his commodities to some
+great monopolist, and the competition were all on one side. They
+forget that competition is a cause of high prices and values as well
+as of low; that the buyers of labor and of commodities compete with
+one another as well as the sellers; and that if it is competition
+which keeps the prices of labor and commodities as low as they are, it
+is competition which prevents them from falling still lower. In truth,
+when competition is perfectly free on both sides, its tendency is not
+specially either to raise or to lower the price of articles, but to
+equalize it; to level inequalities of remuneration, and to reduce <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>all
+to a general average, a result which, in so far as realized (no doubt
+very imperfectly), is, on Socialistic principles, desirable. But if,
+disregarding for the time that part of the effects of competition
+which consists in keeping up prices, we fix our attention on its
+effect in keeping them down, and contemplate this effect in reference
+solely to the interest of the laboring classes, it would seem that if
+competition keeps down wages, and so gives a motive to the laboring
+classes to withdraw the labor market from the full influence of
+competition, if they can, it must on the other hand have credit for
+keeping down the prices of the articles on which wages are expended,
+to the great advantage of those who depend on wages. To meet this
+consideration Socialists, as we said in our quotation from M. Louis
+Blanc, are reduced to affirm that the low prices of commodities
+produced by competition are delusive and lead in the end to higher
+prices than before, because when the richest competitor has got rid of
+all his rivals, he commands the market and can demand any price he
+pleases. Now, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>commonest experience shows that this state of
+things, under really free competition, is wholly imaginary. The
+richest competitor neither does nor can get rid of all his rivals, and
+establish himself in exclusive possession of the market; and it is not
+the fact that any important branch of industry or commerce formerly
+divided among many has become, or shows any tendency to become, the
+monopoly of a few.</p>
+
+<p>The kind of policy described is sometimes possible where, as in the
+case of railways, the only competition possible is between two or
+three great companies, the operations being on too vast a scale to be
+within the reach of individual capitalists; and this is one of the
+reasons why businesses which require to be carried on by great
+joint-stock enterprises cannot be trusted to competition, but, when
+not reserved by the State to itself, ought to be carried on under
+conditions prescribed, and, from time to time, varied by the State,
+for the purpose of insuring to the public a cheaper supply of its
+wants than would be afforded by private interest in the absence of
+sufficient <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>competition. But in the ordinary branches of industry no
+one rich competitor has it in his power to drive out all the smaller
+ones. Some businesses show a tendency to pass out of the hands of many
+small producers or dealers into a smaller number of larger ones; but
+the cases in which this happens are those in which the possession of a
+larger capital permits the adoption of more powerful machinery, more
+efficient by more expensive processes, or a better organized and more
+economical mode of carrying on business, and thus enables the large
+dealer legitimately and permanently to supply the commodity cheaper
+than can be done on the small scale; to the great advantage of the
+consumers, and therefore of the laboring classes, and diminishing,
+<i>pro tanto</i>, that waste of the resources of the community so much
+complained of by Socialists, the unnecessary multiplication of mere
+distributors, and of the various other classes whom Fourier calls the
+parasites of industry. When this change is effected, the larger
+capitalists, either individual or joint stock, among which the
+business is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>divided, are seldom, if ever, in any considerable branch
+of commerce, so few as that competition shall not continue to act
+between them; so that the saving in cost, which enabled them to
+undersell the small dealers, continues afterwards, as at first, to be
+passed on, in lower prices, to their customers. The operation,
+therefore, of competition in keeping down the prices of commodities,
+including those on which wages are expended, is not illusive but real,
+and, we may add, is a growing, not a declining, fact.</p>
+
+<p>But there are other respects, equally important, in which the charges
+brought by Socialists against competition do not admit of so complete
+an answer. Competition is the best security for cheapness, but by no
+means a security for quality. In former times, when producers and
+consumers were less numerous, it was a security for both. The market
+was not large enough nor the means of publicity sufficient to enable a
+dealer to make a fortune by continually attracting new customers: his
+success depended on his retaining those that he had; and when a dealer
+furnished <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>good articles, or when he did not, the fact was soon known
+to those whom it concerned, and he acquired a character for honest or
+dishonest dealing of more importance to him than the gain that would
+be made by cheating casual purchasers. But on the great scale of
+modern transactions, with the great multiplication of competition and
+the immense increase in the quantity of business competed for, dealers
+are so little dependent on permanent customers that character is much
+less essential to them, while there is also far less certainty of
+their obtaining the character they deserve. The low prices which a
+tradesman advertises are known, to a thousand for one who has
+discovered for himself or learned from others, that the bad quality of
+the goods is more than an equivalent for their cheapness; while at the
+same time the much greater fortunes now made by some dealers excite
+the cupidity of all, and the greed of rapid gain substitutes itself
+for the modest desire to make a living by their business. In this
+manner, as wealth increases and greater prizes seem to be within
+reach, more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>and more of a gambling spirit is introduced into
+commerce; and where this prevails not only are the simplest maxims of
+prudence disregarded, but all, even the most perilous, forms of
+pecuniary improbity receive a terrible stimulus. This is the meaning
+of what is called the intensity of modern competition. It is further
+to be mentioned that when this intensity has reached a certain height,
+and when a portion of the producers of an article or the dealers in it
+have resorted to any of the modes of fraud, such as adulteration,
+giving short measure, &amp;c., of the increase of which there is now so
+much complaint, the temptation is immense on these to adopt the
+fraudulent practises, who would not have originated them; for the
+public are aware of the low prices fallaciously produced by the
+frauds, but do not find out at first, if ever, that the article is not
+worth the lower price, and they will not go on paying a higher price
+for a better article, and the honest dealer is placed at a terrible
+disadvantage. Thus the frauds, begun by a few, become customs of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>the
+trade, and the morality of the trading classes is more and more
+deteriorated.</p>
+
+<p>On this point, therefore, Socialists have really made out the
+existence not only of a great evil, but of one which grows and tends
+to grow with the growth of population and wealth. It must be said,
+however, that society has never yet used the means which are already
+in its power of grappling with this evil. The laws against commercial
+frauds are very defective, and their execution still more so. Laws of
+this description have no chance of being really enforced unless it is
+the special duty of some one to enforce them. They are specially in
+need of a public prosecutor. It is still to be discovered how far it
+is possible to repress by means of the criminal law a class of
+misdeeds which are now seldom brought before the tribunals, and to
+which, when brought, the judicial administration of this country is
+most unduly lenient. The most important class, however, of these
+frauds, to the mass of the people, those which affect the price or
+quality of articles of daily consumption, can be in a great measure
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>overcome by the institution of co-operative stores. By this plan any
+body of consumers who form themselves into an association for the
+purpose, are enabled to pass over the retail dealers and obtain their
+articles direct from the wholesale merchants, or, what is better (now
+that wholesale co-operative agencies have been established), from the
+producers, thus freeing themselves from the heavy tax now paid to the
+distributing classes and at the same time eliminate the usual
+perpetrators of adulterations and other frauds. Distribution thus
+becomes a work performed by agents selected and paid by those who have
+no interest in anything but the cheapness and goodness of the article;
+and the distributors are capable of being thus reduced to the numbers
+which the quantity of work to be done really requires. The
+difficulties of the plan consist in the skill and trustworthiness
+required in the managers, and the imperfect nature of the control
+which can be exercised over them by the body at large. The great
+success and rapid growth of the system prove, however, that these
+difficulties <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>are, in some tolerable degree, overcome. At all events,
+if the beneficial tendency of the competition of retailers in
+promoting cheapness is fore-gone, and has to be replaced by other
+securities, the mischievous tendency of the same competition in
+deteriorating quality is at any rate got rid of; and the prosperity of
+the co-operative stores shows that this benefit is obtained not only
+without detriment to cheapness, but with great advantage to it, since
+the profits of the concerns enable them to return to the consumers a
+large percentage on the price of every article supplied to them. So
+far, therefore, as this class of evils is concerned, an effectual
+remedy is already in operation, which, though suggested by and partly
+grounded on socialistic principles, is consistent with the existing
+constitution of property.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to those greater and more conspicuous economical frauds,
+or malpractices equivalent to frauds, of which so many deplorable
+cases have become notorious&mdash;committed by merchants and bankers
+between <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>themselves or between them and those who have trusted them
+with money, such a remedy as above described is not available, and the
+only resources which the present constitution of society affords
+against them are a sterner reprobation by opinion, and a more
+efficient repression by the law. Neither of these remedies has had any
+approach to an effectual trial. It is on the occurrence of
+insolvencies that these dishonest practices usually come to light; the
+perpetrators take their place, not in the class of malefactors, but in
+that of insolvent debtors; and the laws of this and other countries
+were formerly so savage against simple insolvency, that by one of
+those reactions to which the opinions of mankind are liable,
+insolvents came to be regarded mainly as objects of compassion, and it
+seemed to be thought that the hand both of law and of public opinion
+could hardly press too lightly upon them. By an error in a contrary
+direction to the ordinary one of our law, which in the punishment of
+offences in general wholly neglects the question of reparation to the
+sufferer, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>our bankruptcy laws have for some time treated the recovery
+for creditors of what is left of their property as almost the sole
+object, scarcely any importance being attached to the punishment of
+the bankrupt for any misconduct which does not directly interfere with
+that primary purpose. For three or four years past there has been a
+slight counter-reaction, and more than one bankruptcy act has been
+passed, somewhat less indulgent to the bankrupt; but the primary
+object regarded has still been the pecuniary interest of the
+creditors, and criminality in the bankrupt himself, with the exception
+of a small number of well-marked offences, gets off almost with
+impunity. It may be confidently affirmed, therefore, that, at least in
+this country, society has not exerted the power it possesses of making
+mercantile dishonesty dangerous to the perpetrator. On the contrary,
+it is a gambling trick in which all the advantage is on the side of
+the trickster: if the trick succeeds it makes his fortune, or
+preserves it; if it fails, he is at most reduced to poverty, which was
+perhaps <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>already impending when he determined to run the chance, and
+he is classed by those who have not looked closely into the matter,
+and even by many who have, not among the infamous but among the
+unfortunate. Until a more moral and rational mode of dealing with
+culpable insolvency has been tried and failed, commercial dishonesty
+cannot be ranked among evils the prevalence of which is inseparable
+from commercial competition.</p>
+
+<p>Another point on which there is much misapprehension on the part of
+Socialists, as well as of Trades Unionists and other partisans of
+Labor against Capital, relates to the proportions in which the produce
+of the country is really shared and the amount of what is actually
+diverted from those who produce it, to enrich other persons. I forbear
+for the present to speak of the land, which is a subject apart. But
+with respect to capital employed in business, there is in the popular
+notions a great deal of illusion. When, for instance, a capitalist
+invests &pound;20,000 in his business, and draws from it an income of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>(suppose) &pound;2,000 a year, the common impression is as if he was the
+beneficial owner both of the &pound;20,000 and of the &pound;2,000, while the
+laborers own nothing but their wages. The truth, however, is, that he
+only obtains the &pound;2,000 on condition of applying no part of the
+&pound;20,000 to his own use. He has the legal control over it, and might
+squander it if he chose, but if he did he would not have the &pound;2,000 a
+year also. As long as he derives an income from his capital he has not
+the option of withholding it from the use of others. As much of his
+invested capital as consists of buildings, machinery, and other
+instruments of production, are applied to production and are not
+applicable to the support or enjoyment of any one. What is so
+applicable (including what is laid out in keeping up or renewing the
+buildings and instruments) is paid away to laborers, forming their
+remuneration and their share in the division of the produce. For all
+personal purposes they have the capital and he has but the profits,
+which it only yields to him on condition that the capital itself is
+employed in satisfying <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>not his own wants, but those of laborers. The
+proportion which the profits of capital usually bear to capital itself
+(or rather to the circulating portion of it) is the ratio which the
+capitalist's share of the produce bears to the aggregate share of the
+laborers. Even of his own share a small part only belongs to him as
+the owner of capital. The portion of the produce which falls to
+capital merely as capital is measured by the interest of money, since
+that is all that the owner of capital obtains when he contributes
+nothing to production except the capital itself. Now the interest of
+capital in the public funds, which are considered to be the best
+security, is at the present prices (which have not varied much for
+many years) about three and one-third per cent. Even in this
+investment there is some little risk&mdash;risk of repudiation, risk of
+being obliged to sell out at a low price in some commercial crisis.</p>
+
+<p>Estimating these risks at 1/3 per cent., the remaining 3 per cent. may
+be considered as the remuneration of capital, apart from insurance
+against loss. On the security of a mortgage <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>4 per cent. is generally
+obtained, but in this transaction there are considerably greater
+risks&mdash;the uncertainty of titles to land under our bad system of law;
+the chance of having to realize the security at a great cost in law
+charges; and liability to delay in the receipt of the interest even
+when the principal is safe. When mere money independently of exertion
+yields a larger income, as it sometimes does, for example, by shares
+in railway or other companies, the surplus is hardly ever an
+equivalent for the risk of losing the whole, or part, of the capital
+by mismanagement, as in the case of the Brighton Railway, the dividend
+of which, after having been 6 per cent. per annum, sunk to from
+nothing to 1-1/2 per cent., and shares which had been bought at 120
+could not be sold for more than about 43. When money is lent at the
+high rates of interest one occasionally hears of, rates only given by
+spend-thrifts and needy persons, it is because the risk of loss is so
+great that few who possess money can be induced to lend to them at
+all. So little reason is there for the outcry against "usury" <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>as one
+of the grievous burthens of the working-classes. Of the profits,
+therefore, which a manufacturer or other person in business obtains
+from his capital no more than about 3 per cent. can be set down to the
+capital itself. If he were able and willing to give up the whole of
+this to his laborers, who already share among them the whole of his
+capital as it is annually reproduced from year to year, the addition
+to their weekly wages would be inconsiderable. Of what he obtains
+beyond 3 per cent. a great part is insurance against the manifold
+losses he is exposed to, and cannot safely be applied to his own use,
+but requires to be kept in reserve to cover those losses when they
+occur. The remainder is properly the remuneration of his skill and
+industry&mdash;the wages of his labor of superintendence. No doubt if he is
+very successful in business these wages of his are extremely liberal,
+and quite out of proportion to what the same skill and industry would
+command if offered for hire. But, on the other hand, he runs a worse
+risk than that of being out of employment; that of doing the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>work
+without earning anything by it, of having the labor and anxiety
+without the wages. I do not say that the drawbacks balance the
+privileges, or that he derives no advantage from the position which
+makes him a capitalist and employer of labor, instead of a skilled
+superintendent letting out his services to others; but the amount of
+his advantage must not be estimated by the great prizes alone. If we
+subtract from the gains of some the losses of others, and deduct from
+the balance a fair compensation for the anxiety, skill, and labor of
+both, grounded on the market price of skilled superintendence, what
+remains will be, no doubt, considerable, but yet, when compared to the
+entire capital of the country, annually reproduced and dispensed in
+wages, it is very much smaller than it appears to the popular
+imagination; and were the whole of it added to the share of the
+laborers it would make a less addition to that share than would be
+made by any important invention in machinery, or by the suppression of
+unnecessary distributors and other "parasites of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>industry." To
+complete the estimate, however, of the portion of the produce of
+industry which goes to remunerate capital we must not stop at the
+interest earned out of the produce by the capital actually employed in
+producing it, but must include that which is paid to the former owners
+of capital which has been unproductively spent and no longer exists,
+and is paid, of course, out of the produce of other capital. Of this
+nature is the interest of national debts, which is the cost a nation
+is burthened with for past difficulties and dangers, or for past folly
+or profligacy of its rulers, more or less shared by the nation itself.
+To this must be added the interest on the debts of landowners and
+other unproductive consumers; except so far as the money borrowed may
+have been spent in remunerative improvement of the productive powers
+of the land. As for landed property itself&mdash;the appropriation of the
+rent of land by private individuals&mdash;I reserve, as I have said, this
+question for discussion hereafter; for the tenure of land might be
+varied in any manner <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>considered desirable, all the land might be
+declared the property of the State, without interfering with the right
+of property in anything which is the product of human labor and
+abstinence.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed desirable to begin the discussion of the Socialist question
+by these remarks in abatement of Socialist exaggerations, in order
+that the true issues between Socialism and the existing state of
+society might be correctly conceived. The present system is not, as
+many Socialists believe, hurrying us into a state of general indigence
+and slavery from which only Socialism can save us. The evils and
+injustices suffered under the present system are great, but they are
+not increasing; on the contrary, the general tendency is towards their
+slow diminution. Moreover the inequalities in the distribution of the
+produce between capital and labor, however they may shock the feeling
+of natural justice, would not by their mere equalisation afford by any
+means so large a fund for raising the lower levels of remuneration as
+Socialists, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>and many besides Socialists, are apt to suppose. There is
+not any one abuse or injustice now prevailing in society by merely
+abolishing which the human race would pass out of suffering into
+happiness. What is incumbent on us is a calm comparison between two
+different systems of society, with a view of determining which of them
+affords the greatest resources for overcoming the inevitable
+difficulties of life. And if we find the answer to this question more
+difficult, and more dependent upon intellectual and moral conditions,
+than is usually thought, it is satisfactory to reflect that there is
+time before us for the question to work itself out on an experimental
+scale, by actual trial. I believe we shall find that no other test is
+possible of the practicability or beneficial operation of Socialist
+arrangements; but that the intellectual and moral grounds of Socialism
+deserve the most attentive study, as affording in many cases the
+guiding principles of the improvements necessary to give the present
+economic system of society its best chance.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4><span class="sc">The Difficulties of Socialism.</span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></h4>
+
+<p>Among those who call themselves Socialists, two kinds of persons may
+be distinguished. There are, in the first place, those whose plans for
+a new order of society, in which private property and individual
+competition are to be superseded and other motives to action
+substituted, are on the scale of a village community or township, and
+would be applied to an entire country by the multiplication of such
+self-acting units; of this character are the systems of Owen, of
+Fourier, and the more thoughtful and philosophic Socialists generally.
+The other class, who are more a product of the Continent than of Great
+Britain and may be called the revolutionary Socialists, propose to
+themselves a much bolder stroke. Their scheme is the management of the
+whole productive resources of the country by one central authority,
+the general government. And with this view some of them avow as their
+purpose that the working classes, or somebody in their behalf, should
+take possession <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>of all the property of the country, and administer it
+for the general benefit.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever be the difficulties of the first of these two forms of
+Socialism, the second must evidently involve the same difficulties and
+many more. The former, too, has the great advantage that it can be
+brought into operation progressively, and can prove its capabilities
+by trial. It can be tried first on a select population and extended to
+others as their education and cultivation permit. It need not, and in
+the natural order of things would not, become an engine of subversion
+until it had shown itself capable of being also a means of
+reconstruction. It is not so with the other: the aim of that is to
+substitute the new rule for the old at a single stroke, and to
+exchange the amount of good realised under the present system, and its
+large possibilities of improvement, for a plunge without any
+preparation into the most extreme form of the problem of carrying on
+the whole round of the operations of social life without the motive
+power which has always hitherto worked the social machinery. It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>must
+be acknowledged that those who would play this game on the strength of
+their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by any experimental
+verification&mdash;who would forcibly deprive all who have now a
+comfortable physical existence of their only present means of
+preserving it, and would brave the frightful bloodshed and misery that
+would ensue if the attempt was resisted&mdash;must have a serene confidence
+in their own wisdom on the one hand and a recklessness of other
+people's sufferings on the other, which Robespierre and St. Just,
+hitherto the typical instances of those united attributes, scarcely
+came up to. Nevertheless this scheme has great elements of popularity
+which the more cautious and reasonable form of Socialism has not;
+because what it professes to do it promises to do quickly, and holds
+out hope to the enthusiastic of seeing the whole of their aspirations
+realised in their own time and at a blow.</p>
+
+<p>The peculiarities, however, of the revolutionary form of Socialism
+will be most conveniently <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>examined after the considerations common to
+both the forms have been duly weighed.</p>
+
+<p>The produce of the world could not attain anything approaching to its
+present amount, nor support anything approaching to the present number
+of its inhabitants, except upon two conditions: abundant and costly
+machinery, buildings, and other instruments of production; and the
+power of undertaking long operations and waiting a considerable time
+for their fruits. In other words, there must be a large accumulation
+of capital, both fixed in the implements and buildings, and
+circulating, that is employed in maintaining the laborers and their
+families during the time which elapses before the productive
+operations are completed and the products come in. This necessity
+depends on physical laws, and is inherent in the condition of human
+life; but these requisites of production, the capital, fixed and
+circulating, of the country (to which has to be added the land, and
+all that is contained in it), may either be the collective property of
+those who use it, or may belong to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>individuals; and the question is,
+which of these arrangements is most conducive to human happiness. What
+is characteristic of Socialism is the joint ownership by all the
+members of the community of the instruments and means of production;
+which carries with it the consequence that the division of the produce
+among the body of owners must be a public act, performed according to
+rules laid down by the community. Socialism by no means excludes
+private ownership of articles of consumption; the exclusive right of
+each to his or her share of the produce when received, either to
+enjoy, to give, or to exchange it. The land, for example, might be
+wholly the property of the community for agricultural and other
+productive purposes, and might be cultivated on their joint account,
+and yet the dwelling assigned to each individual or family as part of
+their remuneration might be as exclusively theirs, while they
+continued to fulfil their share of the common labors, as any one's
+house now is; and not the dwelling only, but any ornamental ground
+which the circumstances of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>association allowed to be attached to
+the house for purposes of enjoyment. The distinctive feature of
+Socialism is not that all things are in common, but that production is
+only carried on upon the common account, and that the instruments of
+production are held as common property. The <i>practicability</i> then of
+Socialism, on the scale of Mr. Owen's or M. Fourier's villages, admits
+of no dispute. The attempt to manage the whole production of a nation
+by one central organization is a totally different matter; but a mixed
+agricultural and manufacturing association of from two thousand to
+four thousand inhabitants under any tolerable circumstances of soil
+and climate would be easier to manage than many a joint stock company.
+The question to be considered is, whether this joint management is
+likely to be as efficient and successful as the managements of private
+industry by private capital. And this question has to be considered in
+a double aspect; the efficiency of the directing mind, or minds, and
+that of the simple workpeople. And in order to state this question in
+its simplest form, we will <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>suppose the form of Socialism to be simple
+Communism, <i>i.e.</i> equal division of the produce among all the sharers,
+or, according to M. Louis Blanc's still higher standard of justice,
+apportionment of it according to difference of need, but without
+making any difference of reward according to the nature of the duty
+nor according to the supposed merits or services of the individual.
+There are other forms of Socialism, particularly Fourierism, which do,
+on considerations of justice or expediency, allow differences of
+remuneration for different kinds or degrees of service to the
+community; but the consideration of these may be for the present
+postponed.</p>
+
+<p>The difference between the motive powers in the economy of society
+under private property and under Communism would be greatest in the
+case of the directing minds. Under the present system, the direction
+being entirely in the hands of the person or persons who own (or are
+personally responsible for) the capital, the whole benefit of the
+difference between the best administration and the worst under which
+the business can <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>continue to be carried on accrues to the person or
+persons who control the administration: they reap the whole profit of
+good management except so far as their self-interest or liberality
+induce them to share it with their subordinates; and they suffer the
+whole detriment of mismanagement except so far as this may cripple
+their subsequent power of employing labor. This strong personal motive
+to do their very best and utmost for the efficiency and economy of the
+operations, would not exist under Communism; as the managers would
+only receive out of the produce the same equal dividend as the other
+members of the association. What would remain would be the interest
+common to all in so managing affairs as to make the dividend as large
+as possible; the incentives of public spirit, of conscience, and of
+the honor and credit of the managers. The force of these motives,
+especially when combined, is great. But it varies greatly in different
+persons, and is much greater for some purposes than for others. The
+verdict of experience, in the imperfect degree of moral cultivation
+which mankind <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>have yet reached, is that the motive of conscience and
+that of credit and reputation, even when they are of some strength,
+are, in the majority of cases, much stronger as restraining than as
+impelling forces&mdash;are more to be depended on for preventing wrong,
+than for calling forth the fullest energies in the pursuit of ordinary
+occupations. In the case of most men the only inducement which has
+been found sufficiently constant and unflagging to overcome the
+ever-present influence of indolence and love of ease, and induce men
+to apply themselves unrelaxingly to work for the most part in itself
+dull and unexciting, is the prospect of bettering their own economic
+condition and that of their family; and the closer the connection of
+every increase of exertion with a corresponding increase of its
+fruits, the more powerful is this motive. To suppose the contrary
+would be to imply that with men as they now are, duty and honor are
+more powerful principles of action than personal interest, not solely
+as to special acts and forbearances respecting which those sentiments
+have been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>exceptionally cultivated, but in the regulation of their
+whole lives; which no one, I suppose, will affirm. It may be said that
+this inferior efficacy of public and social feelings is not
+inevitable&mdash;is the result of imperfect education. This I am quite
+ready to admit, and also that there are even now many individual
+exceptions to the general infirmity. But before these exceptions can
+grow into a majority, or even into a very large minority, much time
+will be required. The education of human beings is one of the most
+difficult of all arts, and this is one of the points in which it has
+hitherto been least successful; moreover improvements in general
+education are necessarily very gradual because the future generation
+is educated by the present, and the imperfections of the teachers set
+an invincible limit to the degree in which they can train their pupils
+to be better than themselves. We must therefore expect, unless we are
+operating upon a select portion of the population, that personal
+interest will for a long time be a more effective stimulus to the most
+vigorous and careful conduct of the industrial <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>business of society
+than motives of a higher character. It will be said that at present
+the greed of personal gain by its very excess counteracts its own end
+by the stimulus it gives to reckless and often dishonest risks. This
+it does, and under Communism that source of evil would generally be
+absent. It is probable, indeed, that enterprise either of a bad or of
+a good kind would be a deficient element, and that business in general
+would fall very much under the dominion of routine; the rather, as the
+performance of duty in such communities has to be enforced by external
+sanctions, the more nearly each person's duty can be reduced to fixed
+rules, the easier it is to hold him to its performance. A circumstance
+which increases the probability of this result is the limited power
+which the managers would have of independent action. They would of
+course hold their authority from the choice of the community, by whom
+their function might at any time be withdrawn from them; and this
+would make it necessary for them, even if not so required by the
+constitution <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>of the community, to obtain the general consent of the
+body before making any change in the established mode of carrying on
+the concern. The difficulty of persuading a numerous body to make a
+change in their accustomed mode of working, of which change the
+trouble is often great, and the risk more obvious to their minds than
+the advantage, would have a great tendency to keep things in their
+accustomed track. Against this it has to be set, that choice by the
+persons who are directly interested in the success of the work, and
+who have practical knowledge and opportunities of judgment, might be
+expected on the average to produce managers of greater skill than the
+chances of birth, which now so often determine who shall be the owner
+of the capital. This may be true; and though it may be replied that
+the capitalist by inheritance can also, like the community, appoint a
+manager more capable than himself, this would only place him on the
+same level of advantage as the community, not on a higher level. But
+it must be said on the other side that under the Communist system the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>persons most qualified for the management would be likely very often
+to hang back from undertaking it. At present the manager, even if he
+be a hired servant, has a very much larger remuneration than the other
+persons concerned in the business; and there are open to his ambition
+higher social positions to which his function of manager is a
+stepping-stone. On the Communist system none of these advantages would
+be possessed by him; he could obtain only the same dividend out of the
+produce of the community's labor as any other member of it; he would
+no longer have the chance of raising himself from a receiver of wages
+into the class of capitalists; and while he could be in no way better
+off than any other laborer, his responsibilities and anxieties would
+be so much greater that a large proportion of mankind would be likely
+to prefer the less onerous position. This difficulty was foreseen by
+Plato as an objection to the system proposed in his Republic of
+community of goods among a governing class; and the motive on which he
+relied for inducing the fit persons to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>take on themselves, in the
+absence of all the ordinary inducements, the cares and labors of
+government, was the fear of being governed by worse men. This, in
+truth, is the motive which would have to be in the main depended upon;
+the persons most competent to the management would be prompted to
+undertake the office to prevent it from falling into less competent
+hands. And the motive would probably be effectual at times when there
+was an impression that by incompetent management the affairs of the
+community were going to ruin, or even only decidedly deteriorating.
+But this motive could not, as a rule, expect to be called into action
+by the less stringent inducement of merely promoting improvement;
+unless in the case of inventors or schemers eager to try some device
+from which they hoped for great and immediate fruits; and persons of
+this kind are very often unfitted by over-sanguine temper and
+imperfect judgment for the general conduct of affairs, while even when
+fitted for it they are precisely the kind of persons against whom the
+average man is apt to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>entertain a prejudice, and they would often be
+unable to overcome the preliminary difficulty of persuading the
+community both to adopt their project and to accept them as managers.
+Communistic management would thus be, in all probability, less
+favorable than private management to that striking out of new paths
+and making immediate sacrifices for distant and uncertain advantages,
+which, though seldom unattended with risk, is generally indispensable
+to great improvements in the economic condition of mankind, and even
+to keeping up the existing state in the face of a continual increase
+of the number of mouths to be fed.</p>
+
+<p>We have thus far taken account only of the operation of motives upon
+the managing minds of the association. Let us now consider how the
+case stands in regard to the ordinary workers.</p>
+
+<p>These, under Communism, would have no interest, except their share of
+the general interest, in doing their work honestly and energetically.
+But in this respect matters would be no worse than they now are in
+regard to the great <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>majority of the producing classes. These, being
+paid by fixed wages, are so far from having any direct interest of
+their own in the efficiency of their work, that they have not even
+that share in the general interest which every worker would have in
+the Communistic organization. Accordingly, the inefficiency of hired
+labor, the imperfect manner in which it calls forth the real
+capabilities of the laborers, is matter of common remark. It is true
+that a character for being a good workman is far from being without
+its value, as it tends to give him a preference in employment, and
+sometimes obtains for him higher wages. There are also possibilities
+of rising to the position of foreman, or other subordinate
+administrative posts, which are not only more highly paid than
+ordinary labor, but sometimes open the way to ulterior advantages. But
+on the other side is to be set that under Communism the general
+sentiment of the community, composed of the comrades under whose eyes
+each person works, would be sure to be in favor of good and hard
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>working, and unfavorable to laziness, carelessness, and waste. In the
+present system not only is this not the case, but the public opinion
+of the workman class often acts in the very opposite direction: the
+rules of some trade societies actually forbid their members to exceed
+a certain standard of efficiency, lest they should diminish the number
+of laborers required for the work; and for the same reason they often
+violently resist contrivances for economising labor. The change from
+this to a state in which every person would have an interest in
+rendering every other person as industrious, skilful, and careful as
+possible (which would be the case under Communism), would be a change
+very much for the better.</p>
+
+<p>It is, however, to be considered that the principal defects of the
+present system in respect to the efficiency of labor may be corrected,
+and the chief advantages of Communism in that respect may be obtained,
+by arrangements compatible with private property and individual
+competition. Considerable improvement is already obtained <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>by
+piece-work, in the kinds of labor which admit of it. By this the
+workman's personal interest is closely connected with the quantity of
+work he turns out&mdash;not so much with its quality, the security for
+which still has to depend on the employer's vigilance; neither does
+piece-work carry with it the public opinion of the workman class,
+which is often, on the contrary, strongly opposed to it, as a means of
+(as they think) diminishing the market for laborers. And there is
+really good ground for their dislike of piece-work, if, as is alleged,
+it is a frequent practice of employers, after using piece-work to
+ascertain the utmost which a good workman can do, to fix the price of
+piece-work so low that by doing that utmost he is not able to earn
+more than they would be obliged to give him as day wages for ordinary
+work.</p>
+
+<p>But there is a far more complete remedy than piece-work for the
+disadvantages of hired labor, viz., what is now called industrial
+partnership&mdash;the admission of the whole body of laborers to a
+participation in the profits, by distributing among <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>all who share in
+the work, in the form of a percentage on their earnings, the whole or
+a fixed portion of the gains after a certain remuneration has been
+allowed to the capitalist. This plan has been found of admirable
+efficacy, both in this country and abroad. It has enlisted the
+sentiments of the workmen employed on the side of the most careful
+regard by all of them to the general interest of the concern; and by
+its joint effect in promoting zealous exertion and checking waste, it
+has very materially increased the remuneration of every description of
+labor in the concerns in which it has been adopted. It is evident that
+this system admits of indefinite extension and of an indefinite
+increase in the share of profits assigned to the laborers, short of
+that which would leave to the managers less than the needful degree of
+personal interest in the success of the concern. It is even likely
+that when such arrangements become common, many of these concerns
+would at some period or another, on the death or retirement of the
+chief's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>pass, by arrangement, into the state of purely co-operative
+associations.</p>
+
+<p>It thus appears that as far as concerns the motives to exertion in the
+general body, Communism has no advantage which may not be reached
+under private property, while as respects the managing heads it is at
+a considerable disadvantage. It has also some disadvantages which seem
+to be inherent in it, through the necessity under which it lies of
+deciding in a more or less arbitrary manner questions which, on the
+present system, decide themselves, often badly enough but
+spontaneously.</p>
+
+<p>It is a simple rule, and under certain aspects a just one, to give
+equal payment to all who share in the work. But this is a very
+imperfect justice unless the work also is apportioned equally. Now the
+many different kinds of work required in every society are very
+unequal in hardness and unpleasantness. To measure these against one
+another, so as to make quality equivalent to quantity, is so difficult
+that Communists generally propose that all should work by turns at
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>every kind of labor. But this involves an almost complete sacrifice of
+the economic advantages of the division of employments, advantages
+which are indeed frequently over-estimated (or rather the counter
+considerations are under-estimated) by political economists, but which
+are nevertheless, in the point of view of the productiveness of labor,
+very considerable, for the double reason that the co-operation of
+employment enables the work to distribute itself with some regard to
+the special capacities and qualifications of the worker, and also that
+every worker acquires greater skill and rapidity in one kind of work
+by confining himself to it. The arrangement, therefore, which is
+deemed indispensable to a just distribution would probably be a very
+considerable disadvantage in respect of production. But further, it is
+still a very imperfect standard of justice to demand the same amount
+of work from every one. People have unequal capacities of work, both
+mental and bodily, and what is a light task for one is an
+insupportable burthen to another. It is necessary, therefore, that
+there <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>should be a dispensing power, an authority competent to grant
+exemptions from the ordinary amount of work, and to proportion tasks
+in some measure to capabilities. As long as there are any lazy or
+selfish persons who like better to be worked for by others than to
+work, there will be frequent attempts to obtain exemptions by favor or
+fraud, and the frustration of these attempts will be an affair of
+considerable difficulty, and will by no means be always successful.
+These inconveniences would be little felt, for some time at least, in
+communities composed of select persons, earnestly desirous of the
+success of the experiment; but plans for the regeneration of society
+must consider average human beings, and not only them but the large
+residuum of persons greatly below the average in the personal and
+social virtues. The squabbles and ill-blood which could not fail to be
+engendered by the distribution of work whenever such persons have to
+be dealt with, would be a great abatement from the harmony and
+unanimity which Communists hope would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>be found among the members of
+their association. That concord would, even in the most fortunate
+circumstances, be much more liable to disturbance than Communists
+suppose. The institution provides that there shall be no quarrelling
+about material interests; individualism is excluded from that
+department of affairs. But there are other departments from which no
+institutions can exclude it: there will still be rivalry for
+reputation and for personal power. When selfish ambition is excluded
+from the field in which, with most men, it chiefly exercises itself,
+that of riches and pecuniary interest, it would betake itself with
+greater intensity to the domain still open to it, and we may expect
+that the struggles for pre-eminence and for influence in the
+management would be of great bitterness when the personal passions,
+diverted from their ordinary channel, are driven to seek their
+principal gratification in that other direction. For these various
+reasons it is probable that a Communist association would frequently
+fail to exhibit the attractive picture of mutual <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>love and unity of
+will and feeling which we are often told by Communists to expect, but
+would often be torn by dissension and not unfrequently broken up by
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Other and numerous sources of discord are inherent in the necessity
+which the Communist principle involves, of deciding by the general
+voice questions of the utmost importance to every one, which on the
+present system can be and are left to individuals to decide, each for
+his own case. As an example, take the subject of education. All
+Socialists are strongly impressed with the all-importance of the
+training given to the young, not only for the reasons which apply
+universally, but because their demands being much greater than those
+of any other system upon the intelligence and morality of the
+individual citizen, they have even more at stake than any other
+societies on the excellence of their educational arrangements. Now
+under Communism these arrangements would have to be made for every
+citizen by the collective body, since individual parents, supposing
+them to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>prefer some other mode of educating their children, would
+have no private means of paying for it, and would be limited to what
+they could do by their own personal teaching and influence. But every
+adult member of the body would have an equal voice in determining the
+collective system designed for the benefit of all. Here, then, is a
+most fruitful source of discord in every association. All who had any
+opinion or preference as to the education they would desire for their
+own children, would have to rely for their chance of obtaining it upon
+the influence they could exercise in the joint decision of the
+community.</p>
+
+<p>It is needless to specify a number of other important questions
+affecting the mode of employing the productive resources of the
+association, the conditions of social life, the relations of the body
+with other associations, &amp;c., on which difference of opinion, often
+irreconcilable, would be likely to arise. But even the dissensions
+which might be expected would be a far less evil to the prospects of
+humanity than a delusive unanimity produced by the prostration of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>all
+individual opinions and wishes before the decree of the majority. The
+obstacles to human progression are always great, and require a
+concurrence of favorable circumstances to overcome them; but an
+indispensable condition of their being overcome is, that human nature
+should have freedom to expand spontaneously in various directions,
+both in thought and practice; that people should both think for
+themselves and try experiments for themselves, and should not resign
+into the hands of rulers, whether acting in the name of a few or of
+the majority, the business of thinking for them, and of prescribing
+how they shall act. But in Communist associations private life would
+be brought in a most unexampled degree within the dominion of public
+authority, and there would be less scope for the development of
+individual character and individual preferences than has hitherto
+existed among the full citizens of any state belonging to the
+progressive branches of the human family. Already in all societies the
+compression of individuality by the majority is a great and growing
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>evil; it would probably be much greater under Communism, except so far
+as it might be in the power of individuals to set bounds to it by
+selecting to belong to a community of persons like-minded with
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>From these various considerations I do not seek to draw any inference
+against the possibility that Communistic production is capable of
+being at some future time the form of society best adapted to the
+wants and circumstances of mankind. I think that this is, and will
+long be an open question, upon which fresh light will continually be
+obtained, both by trial of the Communistic principle under favorable
+circumstances, and by the improvements which will be gradually
+effected in the working of the existing system, that of private
+ownership. The one certainty is, that Communism, to be successful,
+requires a high standard of both moral and intellectual education in
+all the members of the community&mdash;moral, to qualify them for doing
+their part honestly and energetically in the labor of life under no
+inducement but their share in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>the general interest of the
+association, and their feelings of duty and sympathy towards it;
+intellectual, to make them capable of estimating distant interests and
+entering into complex considerations, sufficiently at least to be able
+to discriminate, in these matters, good counsel from bad. Now I reject
+altogether the notion that it is impossible for education and
+cultivation such as is implied in these things to be made the
+inheritance of every person in the nation; but I am convinced that it
+is very difficult, and that the passage to it from our present
+condition can only be slow. I admit the plea that in the points of
+moral education on which the success of communism depends, the present
+state of society is demoralizing, and that only a Communistic
+association can effectually train mankind for Communism. It is for
+Communism, then, to prove, by practical experiment, its power of
+giving this training. Experiments alone can show whether there is as
+yet in any portion of the population a sufficiently high level of
+moral cultivation to make Communism succeed, and to give to the next
+generation among themselves the education necessary to keep that high
+level permanently If Communist associations show that they can be
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>durable and prosperous, they will multiply, and will probably be
+adopted by successive portions of the population of the more advanced
+countries as they become morally fitted for that mode of life. But to
+force unprepared populations into Communist societies, even if a
+political revolution gave the power to make such an attempt, would end
+in disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>If practical trial is necessary to test the capabilities of Communism,
+it is no less required for those other forms of Socialism which
+recognize the difficulties of Communism and contrive means to surmount
+them. The principal of these is Fourierism, a system which, if only as
+a specimen of intellectual ingenuity, is highly worthy of the
+attention of any student, either of society or of the human mind.
+There is scarcely an objection or a difficulty which Fourier did not
+forsee, and against which he did not make provision beforehand by
+self-acting contrivances, grounded, however, upon a less high
+principle of distributive justice than that of Communism, since he
+admits inequalities of distribution and individual ownership of
+capital, but not the arbitrary disposal of it. The great problem which
+he grapples with is how to make labor attractive, since, if this
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>could be done, the principal difficulty of Socialism would be
+overcome. He maintains that no kind of useful labor is necessarily or
+universally repugnant, unless either excessive in amount or devoid of
+the stimulus of companionship and emulation, or regarded by mankind
+with contempt. The workers in a Fourierist village are to class
+themselves spontaneously in groups, each group undertaking a different
+kind of work, and the same person may be a member not only of one
+group but of any number; a certain minimum having first been set apart
+for the subsistence of every member of the community, whether capable
+or not of labor, the society divides the remainder of the produce
+among the different groups, in such shares as it finds attract to each
+the amount of labor required, and no more; if there is too great a run
+upon particular groups it is a sign that those groups are
+over-remunerated relatively to others; if any are neglected their
+remuneration must be made higher. The share of produce assigned to
+each group is divided in fixed proportions among three elements&mdash;labor,
+capital, and talent; the part assigned to talent being awarded by the
+suffrages of the group itself, and it is hoped that among the variety
+of human <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>capacities all, or nearly all, will be qualified to excel in
+some group or other. The remuneration for capital is to be such as is
+found sufficient to induce savings from individual consumption, in
+order to increase the common stock to such point as is desired. The
+number and ingenuity of the contrivances for meeting minor
+difficulties, and getting rid of minor inconveniencies, is very
+remarkable. By means of these various provisions it is the expectation
+of Fourierists that the personal inducements to exertion for the public
+interest, instead of being taken away, would be made much greater than
+at present, since every increase of the service rendered would be much
+more certain of leading to increase of reward than it is now, when
+accidents of position have so much influence. The efficiency of labor,
+they therefore expect, would be unexampled, while the saving of labor
+would be prodigious, by diverting to useful occupations that which is
+now wasted on things useless or hurtful, and by dispensing with the
+vast number of superfluous distributors, the buying and selling for the
+whole community being managed by a single agency. The free choice of
+individuals as to their manner of life would be no further interfered
+with than would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>be necessary for gaining the full advantages of
+co-operation in the industrial operations. Altogether, the picture of a
+Fourierist community is both attractive in itself and requires less
+from common humanity than any other known system of Socialism; and it
+is much to be desired that the scheme should have that fair trial which
+alone can test the workableness of any new scheme of social life.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<p>The result of our review of the various difficulties of Socialism has
+led us to the conclusion that the various schemes for managing the
+productive resources of the country by public instead of private
+agency have a case for a trial, and some of them may eventually
+establish their claims to preference over the existing order of
+things, but that they are at present workable <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>only by the <i>&eacute;lite</i> of
+mankind, and have yet to prove their power of training mankind at
+large to the state of improvement which they presuppose. Far more, of
+course, may this be said of the more ambitious plan which aims at
+taking possession of the whole land and capital of the country, and
+beginning at once to administer it on the public account. Apart from
+all consideration of injustice to the present possessors, the very
+idea of conducting the whole industry of a country by direction from a
+single centre is so obviously chimerical, that nobody ventures to
+propose any mode in which it should be done; and it can hardly be
+doubted that if the revolutionary Socialists attained their immediate
+object, and actually had the whole property of the country at their
+disposal, they would find no other practicable mode of exercising
+their power over it than that of dividing it into portions, each to be
+made over to the administration of a small Socialist community. The
+problem of management, which we have seen to be so difficult even to a
+select population well prepared beforehand, would be thrown down to be
+solved as best it could by aggregations united only by locality, or
+taken indiscriminately from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>the population, including all the
+malefactors, all the idlest and most vicious, the most incapable of
+steady industry, forethought, or self-control, and a majority who,
+though not equally degraded, are yet, in the opinion of Socialists
+themselves as far as regards the qualities essential for the success
+of Socialism, profoundly demoralised by the existing state of society.
+It is saying but little to say that the introduction of Socialism
+under such conditions could have no effect but disastrous failure, and
+its apostles could have only the consolation that the order of society
+as it now exists would have perished first, and all who benefit by it
+would be involved in the common ruin&mdash;a consolation which to some of
+them would probably be real, for if appearances can be trusted the
+animating principle of too many of the revolutionary Socialists is
+hate; a very excusable hatred of existing evils, which would vent
+itself by putting an end to the present system at all costs even to
+those who suffer by it, in the hope that out of chaos would arise a
+better Kosmos, and in the impatience of desperation respecting any
+more gradual improvement. They are unaware that chaos is the very most
+unfavorable position for setting out in the construction of a Kosmos,
+and that many ages of conflict, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>violence, and tyrannical oppression
+of the weak by the strong must intervene; they know not that they
+would plunge mankind into the state of nature so forcibly described by
+Hobbes (<i>Leviathan</i>, Part I. ch. xiii.), where every man is enemy to
+every man:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"In such condition there is no place for industry, because the
+fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the
+earth, no navigation, no use of the commodities that may be
+imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of
+moving and removing such things as require much force, no
+knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts,
+no letters, no society; and, which is worst of all, continual
+fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary,
+poor, nasty, brutish, and short."</p></div>
+
+<p>If the poorest and most wretched members of a so-called civilised
+society are in as bad a condition as every one would be in that worst
+form of barbarism produced by the dissolution of civilised life, it
+does not follow that the way to raise them would be to reduce all
+others to the same miserable state. On the contrary, it is by the aid
+of the first who have risen that so many others have escaped from the
+general lot, and it is only by better organization of the same process
+that it may be hoped in time to succeed in raising the remainder.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4><span class="sc">The Idea of Private Property not Fixed but Variable.</span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span></h4>
+
+<p>The preceding considerations appear sufficient to show that an entire
+renovation of the social fabric, such as is contemplated by Socialism,
+establishing the economic constitution of society upon an entirely new
+basis, other than that of private property and competition, however
+valuable as an ideal, and even as a prophecy of ultimate
+possibilities, is not available as a present resource, since it
+requires from those who are to carry on the new order of things
+qualities both moral and intellectual, which require to be tested in
+all, and to be created in most; and this cannot be done by an Act of
+Parliament, but must be, on the most favorable supposition, a work of
+considerable time. For a long period to come the principle of
+individual property will be in possession of the field; and even if in
+any country a popular movement were to place Socialists at the head of
+a revolutionary government, in however many ways they might violate
+private property, the institution itself would survive, and would
+either be accepted by them or brought back by their expulsion, for the
+plain reason that people will not lose their hold <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>of what is at
+present their sole reliance for subsistence and security until a
+substitute for it has been got into working order. Even those, if any,
+who had shared among themselves what was the property of others would
+desire to keep what they had acquired, and to give back to property in
+the new hands the sacredness which they had not recognised in the old.</p>
+
+<p>But though, for these reasons, individual property has presumably a
+long term before it, if only of provisional existence, we are not,
+therefore, to conclude that it must exist during that whole term
+unmodified, or that all the rights now regarded as appertaining to
+property belong to it inherently, and must endure while it endures. On
+the contrary, it is both the duty and the interest of those who derive
+the most direct benefit from the laws of property to give impartial
+consideration to all proposals for rendering those laws in any way
+less onerous to the majority. This, which would in any case be an
+obligation of justice, is an injunction of prudence also, in order to
+place themselves in the right against the attempts which are sure to
+be frequent to bring the Socialist forms of society prematurely into
+operation.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>One of the mistakes oftenest committed, and which are the sources of
+the greatest practical errors in human affairs, is that of supposing
+that the same name always stands for the same aggregation of ideas. No
+word has been the subject of more of this kind of misunderstanding
+than the word property. It denotes in every state of society the
+largest powers of exclusive use or exclusive control over things (and
+sometimes, unfortunately, over persons) which the law accords, or
+which custom, in that state of society, recognizes; but these powers
+of exclusive use and control are very various, and differ greatly in
+different countries and in different states of society.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, in early states of society, the right of property did
+not include the right of bequest. The power of disposing of property
+by will was in most countries of Europe a rather late institution; and
+long after it was introduced it continued to be limited in favor of
+what were called natural heirs. Where bequest is not permitted,
+individual property is only a life interest. And in fact, as has been
+so well and fully set forth by Sir Henry Maine in his most instructive
+work on Ancient Law, the primitive <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>idea of property was that it
+belonged to the family, not the individual. The head of the family had
+the management and was the person who really exercised the proprietary
+rights. As in other respects, so in this, he governed the family with
+nearly despotic power. But he was not free so to exercise his power as
+to defeat the co-proprietors of the other portions; he could not so
+dispose of the property as to deprive them of the joint enjoyment or
+of the succession. By the laws and customs of some nations the
+property could not be alienated without the consent of the male
+children; in other cases the child could by law demand a division of
+the property and the assignment to him of his share, as in the story
+of the Prodigal Son. If the association kept together after the death
+of the head, some other member of it, not always his son, but often
+the eldest of the family, the strongest, or the one selected by the
+rest, succeeded to the management and to the managing rights, all the
+others retaining theirs as before. If, on the other hand the body
+broke up into separate families, each of these took away with it a
+part of the property. I say the property, not the inheritance, because
+the process was a mere continuance of existing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>rights, not a creation
+of new; the manager's share alone lapsed to the association.</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, in regard to proprietary rights over immovables (the
+principal kind of property in a rude age) these rights were of very
+varying extent and duration. By the Jewish law property in immovables
+was only a temporary concession; on the Sabbatical year it returned to
+the common stock to be redistributed; though we may surmise that in
+the historical times of the Jewish state this rule may have been
+successfully evaded. In many countries of Asia, before European ideas
+intervened, nothing existed to which the expression property in land,
+as we understand the phrase, is strictly applicable. The ownership was
+broken up among several distinct parties, whose rights were determined
+rather by custom than by law. The government was part owner, having
+the right to a heavy rent. Ancient ideas and even ancient laws limited
+the government share to some particular fraction of the gross produce,
+but practically there was no fixed limit. The government might make
+over its share to an individual, who then became possessed of the
+right of collection and all the other rights of the state, but not
+those of any private <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>person connected with the soil. These private
+rights were of various kinds. The actual cultivators or such of them
+as had been long settled on the land, had a right to retain
+possession; it was held unlawful to evict them while they paid the
+rent&mdash;a rent not in general fixed by agreement, but by the custom of
+the neighborhood. Between the actual cultivators and the state, or the
+substitute to whom the state had transferred its rights, there were
+intermediate persons with rights of various extent. There were
+officers of government who collected the state's share of the produce,
+sometimes for large districts, who, though bound to pay over to
+government all they collected, after deducting a percentage, were
+often hereditary officers. There were also, in many cases village
+communities, consisting of the reputed descendants of the first
+settlers of a village, who shared among themselves either the land or
+its produce according to rules established by custom, either
+cultivating it themselves or employing others to cultivate it for
+them, and whose rights in the land approached nearer to those of a
+landed proprietor, as understood in England, than those of any other
+party concerned. But the proprietary right of the village was not
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>individual, but collective; inalienable (the rights of individual
+sharers could only be sold or mortgaged with the consent of the
+community) and governed by fixed rules. In medi&aelig;val Europe almost all
+land was held from the sovereign on tenure of service, either military
+or agricultural; and in Great Britain even now, when the services as
+well as all the reserved rights of the sovereign have long since
+fallen into disuse or been commuted for taxation, the theory of the
+law does not acknowledge an absolute right of property in land in any
+individual; the fullest landed proprietor known to the law, the
+freeholder, is but a "tenant" of the Crown. In Russia, even when the
+cultivators of the soil were serfs of the landed proprietor, his
+proprietary right in the land was limited by rights of theirs
+belonging to them as a collective body managing its own affairs, and
+with which he could not interfere. And in most of the countries of
+continental Europe when serfage was abolished or went out of use,
+those who had cultivated the land as serfs remained in possession of
+rights as well as subject to obligations. The great land reforms of
+Stein and his successors in Prussia consisted in abolishing both the
+rights and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>obligations, and dividing the land bodily between the
+proprietor and the peasant, instead of leaving each of them with a
+limited right over the whole. In other cases, as in Tuscany, the
+<i>metayer</i> farmer is virtually co-proprietor with the landlord, since
+custom, though not law, guarantees to him a permanent possession and
+half the gross produce, so long as he fulfils the customary conditions
+of his tenure.</p>
+
+<p>Again: if rights of property over the same things are of different
+extent in different countries, so also are they exercised over
+different things. In all countries at a former time, and in some
+countries still, the right of property extended and extends to the
+ownership of human beings. There has often been property in public
+trusts, as in judicial offices, and a vast multitude of others in
+France before the Revolution; there are still a few patent offices in
+Great Britain, though I believe they will cease by operation of law on
+the death of the present holders; and we are only now abolishing
+property in army rank. Public bodies, constituted and endowed for
+public purposes, still claim the same inviolable right of property in
+their estates which individuals have in theirs, and though a sound
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>political morality does not acknowledge this claim, the law supports
+it. We thus see that the right of property is differently interpreted,
+and held to be of different extent, in different times and places;
+that the conception entertained of it is a varying conception, has
+been frequently revised, and may admit of still further revision. It
+is also to be noticed that the revisions which it has hitherto
+undergone in the progress of society have generally been improvements.
+When, therefore, it is maintained, rightly or wrongly, that some
+change or modification in the powers exercised over things by the
+persons legally recognised as their proprietors would be beneficial to
+the public and conducive to the general improvement, it is no good
+answer to this merely to say that the proposed change conflicts with
+the idea of property. The idea of property is not some one thing,
+identical throughout history and incapable of alteration, but is
+variable like all other creations of the human mind; at any given time
+it is a brief expression denoting the rights over things conferred by
+the law or custom of some given society at that time; but neither on
+this point nor on any other has the law and custom of a given time and
+place a claim to be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>stereotyped for ever. A proposed reform in laws
+or customs is not necessarily objectionable because its adoption would
+imply, not the adaptation of all human affairs to the existing idea of
+property, but the adaptation of existing ideas of property to the
+growth and improvement of human affairs. This is said without
+prejudice to the equitable claim of proprietors to be compensated by
+the state for such legal rights of a proprietary nature as they may be
+dispossessed of for the public advantage. That equitable claim, the
+grounds and the just limits of it, are a subject by itself, and as
+such will be discussed hereafter. Under this condition, however,
+society is fully entitled to abrogate or alter any particular right of
+property which on sufficient consideration it judges to stand in the
+way of the public good. And assuredly the terrible case which, as we
+saw in a former chapter, Socialists are able to make out against the
+present economic order of society, demands a full consideration of all
+means by which the institution may have a chance of being made to work
+in a manner more beneficial to that large portion of society which at
+present enjoys the least share of its direct benefits.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>THE END.</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Louis Blanc, "Organisation du Travail," 4me edition,
+pp. 6, 11, 53, 57.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Louis Blanc, "Organisation du Travail," pp. 58-61,
+65-66, 4me edition. Paris, 1845.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See Consid&eacute;rant, "Destin&eacute;e Sociale," tome i. pp. 35, 36,
+37, 3me ed. Paris, 1848.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> See "Destin&eacute;e Sociale," par V. Consid&eacute;rant, tome i. pp.
+38-40.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> See Consid&eacute;rant, "Destin&eacute;e Sociale," tome i. pp. 43-51,
+3me. edition, Paris, 1848.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Consid&eacute;rant, "Destin&eacute;e Sociale," tome i., pp. 59, 60.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Consid&eacute;rant, "Destin&eacute;e Sociale," tome i., pp. 60, 61.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Consid&eacute;rant, "Destin&eacute;e Sociale," tome i., p. 134.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> The principles of Fourierism are clearly set forth and
+powerfully defended in the various writings of M. Victor Consid&eacute;rant,
+especially that entitled <i>La Destin&eacute;e Sociale</i>; but the curious
+inquirer will do well to study them in the writings of Fourier
+himself; where he will find unmistakable proofs of genius, mixed,
+however with the wildest and most unscientific fancies respecting the
+physical world, and much interesting but rash speculation on the past
+and future history of humanity. It is proper to add that on some
+important social questions, for instance on marriage, Fourier had
+peculiar opinions, which, however, as he himself declares, are quite
+independent of, and separable from, the principles of his industrial
+system.</p></div>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen"><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>Typographical errors corrected in text:</p>
+<br />
+Page &nbsp; 14: &nbsp;founddation replaced with foundation<br />
+Page &nbsp; 15: &nbsp;Congressses replaced with Congresses<br />
+Page &nbsp; 22: &nbsp;moreever replaced with moreover<br />
+Page &nbsp; 28: &nbsp;Dominitian replaced with Domitian<br />
+Page &nbsp; 42: &nbsp;monoply replaced with monopoly<br />
+Page &nbsp; 44: &nbsp;extention replaced with extension<br />
+Page &nbsp; 84: &nbsp;conditon replaced with condition<br />
+Page &nbsp; 86: &nbsp;occassionally replaced with occasionally<br />
+Page &nbsp; 94: &nbsp;wisdon replaced with wisdom<br />
+Page &nbsp; 96: &nbsp;recieved replaced with received<br />
+Page 123: FN 9: &nbsp;Considerant replaced with Consid&eacute;rant<br />
+Page 123: FN 9: &nbsp;Destinee replaced with Destin&eacute;e<br />
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Socialism, by John Stuart Mill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Socialism
+
+Author: John Stuart Mill
+
+Release Date: November 25, 2011 [EBook #38138]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIALISM ***
+
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+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has     |
+    | been preserved.                                           |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+  SOCIALISM.
+
+
+  BY
+  JOHN STUART MILL.
+
+
+  _Reprinted from the Fortnightly Review._
+
+
+  CHICAGO.
+  BELFORDS, CLARKE & CO.
+  MDCCCLXXIX.
+
+
+
+
+  MANUFACTURED _BY_
+  DONOHUE
+  HENNEBERRY.
+  _CHICAGO, ILL._
+
+
+
+
+PRELIMINARY NOTICE.
+
+
+It was in the year 1869 that, impressed with the degree in which, even
+during the last twenty years, when the world seemed so wholly occupied
+with other matters, the socialist ideas of speculative thinkers had
+spread among the workers in every civilized country, Mr. Mill formed
+the design of writing a book on Socialism. Convinced that the
+inevitable tendencies of modern society must be to bring the questions
+involved in it always more and more to the front, he thought it of
+great practical consequence that they should be thoroughly and
+impartially considered, and the lines pointed out by which the best
+speculatively-tested theories might, without prolongation of suffering
+on the one hand, or unnecessary disturbance on the other, be applied
+to the existing order of things. He therefore planned a work which
+should go exhaustively through the whole subject, point by point; and
+the chapters now printed are the first rough drafts thrown down
+towards the foundation of that work. These chapters might not, when
+the work came to be completely written out and then re-written,
+according to the author's habit, have appeared in the present order;
+they might have been incorporated into different parts of the work. It
+has not been without hesitation that I have yielded to the urgent wish
+of the editor of this Review to give these chapters to the world; but
+I have complied with his request because, while they appear to me to
+possess great intrinsic value as well as special application to the
+problems now forcing themselves on public attention, they will not, I
+believe, detract even from the mere literary reputation of their
+author, but will rather form an example of the patient labor with
+which good work is done.
+
+                                                    HELEN TAYLOR.
+
+  _January, 1879._
+
+
+
+
+SOCIALISM.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+In the great country beyond the Atlantic, which is now well-nigh the
+most powerful country in the world, and will soon be indisputably so,
+manhood suffrage prevails. Such is also the political qualification of
+France since 1848, and has become that of the German Confederation,
+though not of all the several states composing it. In Great Britain
+the suffrage is not yet so widely extended, but the last Reform Act
+admitted within what is called the pale of the Constitution so large a
+body of those who live on weekly wages, that as soon and as often as
+these shall choose to act together as a class, and exert for any
+common object the whole of the electoral power which our present
+institutions give them, they will exercise, though not a complete
+ascendency, a very great influence on legislation. Now these are the
+very class which, in the vocabulary of the higher ranks, are said to
+have no stake in the country. Of course they have in reality the
+greatest stake, since their daily bread depends on its prosperity. But
+they are not engaged (we may call it bribed) by any peculiar interest
+of their own, to the support of property as it is, least of all to the
+support of inequalities of property. So far as their power reaches, or
+may hereafter reach, the laws of property have to depend for support
+upon considerations of a public nature, upon the estimate made of
+their conduciveness to the general welfare, and not upon motives of a
+mere personal character operating on the minds of those who have
+control over the Government.
+
+It seems to me that the greatness of this change is as yet by no means
+completely realized, either by those who opposed, or by those who
+effected our last constitutional reform. To say the truth, the
+perceptions of Englishmen are of late somewhat blunted as to the
+tendencies of political changes. They have seen so many changes made,
+from which, while only in prospect, vast expectations were
+entertained, both of evil and of good, while the results of either
+kind that actually followed seemed far short of what had been
+predicted, that they have come to feel as if it were the nature of
+political changes not to fulfil expectation, and have fallen into a
+habit of half-unconscious belief that such changes, when they take
+place without a violent revolution, do not much or permanently disturb
+in practice the course of things habitual to the country. This,
+however, is but a superficial view either of the past or of the
+future. The various reforms of the last two generations have been at
+least as fruitful in important consequences as was foretold. The
+predictions were often erroneous as to the suddenness of the effects,
+and sometimes even as to the kind of effect. We laugh at the vain
+expectations of those who thought that Catholic emancipation would
+tranquilize Ireland, or reconcile it to British rule. At the end of
+the first ten years of the Reform Act of 1832, few continued to think
+either that it would remove every important practical grievance, or
+that it had opened the door to universal suffrage. But five-and-twenty
+years more of its operation had given scope for a large development of
+its indirect working, which is much more momentous than the direct.
+Sudden effects in history are generally superficial. Causes which go
+deep down into the roots of future events produce the most serious
+parts of their effect only slowly, and have, therefore, time to become
+a part of the familiar order of things before general attention is
+called to the changes they are producing; since, when the changes do
+become evident, they are often not seen, by cursory observers, to be
+in any peculiar manner connected with the cause. The remoter
+consequences of a new political fact are seldom understood when they
+occur, except when they have been appreciated beforehand.
+
+This timely appreciation is particularly easy in respect to tendencies
+of the change made in our institutions by the Reform Act of 1867. The
+great increase of electoral power which the Act places within the
+reach of the working classes is permanent. The circumstances which
+have caused them, thus far, to make a very limited use of that power,
+are essentially temporary. It is known even to the most inobservant,
+that the working classes have, and are likely to have, political
+objects which concern them as working classes, and on which they
+believe, rightly or wrongly, that the interests and opinions of the
+other powerful classes are opposed to theirs. However much their
+pursuit of these objects may be for the present retarded by want of
+electoral organization, by dissensions among themselves, or by their
+not having reduced as yet their wishes into a sufficiently definite
+practical shape, it is as certain as anything in politics can be, that
+they will before long find the means of making their collective
+electoral power effectively instrumental to the proportion of their
+collective objects. And when they do so, it will not be in the
+disorderly and ineffective way which belongs to a people not
+habituated to the use of legal and constitutional machinery, nor will
+it be by the impulse of a mere instinct of levelling. The instruments
+will be the press, public meetings and associations, and the return to
+Parliament of the greatest possible number of persons pledged to the
+political aims of the working classes. The political aims will
+themselves be determined by definite political doctrines; for politics
+are now scientifically studied from the point of view of the working
+classes, and opinions conceived in the special interest of those
+classes are organized into systems and creeds which lay claim to a
+place on the platform of political philosophy, by the same right as
+the systems elaborated by previous thinkers. It is of the utmost
+importance that all reflecting persons should take into early
+consideration what these popular political creeds are likely to be,
+and that every single article of them should be brought under the
+fullest light of investigation and discussion, so that, if possible,
+when the time shall be ripe, whatever is right in them may be adopted,
+and what is wrong rejected by general consent, and that instead of a
+hostile conflict, physical or only moral, between the old and the new,
+the best parts of both may be combined in a renovated social fabric.
+At the ordinary pace of those great social changes which are not
+effected by physical violence, we have before us an interval of about
+a generation, on the due employment of which it depends whether the
+accommodation of social institutions to the altered state of human
+society, shall be the work of wise foresight, or of a conflict of
+opposite prejudices. The future of mankind will be gravely imperilled,
+if great questions are left to be fought over between ignorant change
+and ignorant opposition to change.
+
+And the discussion that is now required is one that must go down to
+the very first principles of existing society. The fundamental
+doctrines which were assumed as incontestable by former generations,
+are now put again on their trial. Until the present age, the
+institution of property in the shape in which it has been handed down
+from the past, had not, except by a few speculative writers, been
+brought seriously into question, because the conflicts of the past
+have always been conflicts between classes, both of which had a stake
+in the existing constitution of property. It will not be possible to
+go on longer in this manner. When the discussion includes classes who
+have next to no property of their own, and are only interested in the
+institution so far as it is a public benefit, they will not allow
+anything to be taken for granted--certainly not the principle of
+private property, the legitimacy and utility of which are denied by
+many of the reasoners who look out from the stand-point of the working
+classes. Those classes will certainly demand that the subject, in all
+its parts, shall be reconsidered from the foundation; that all
+proposals for doing without the institution, and all modes of
+modifying it which have the appearance of being favorable to the
+interest of the working classes, shall receive the fullest
+consideration and discussion before it is decided that the subject
+must remain as it is. As far as this country is concerned, the
+dispositions of the working classes have as yet manifested themselves
+hostile only to certain outlying portions of the proprietary system.
+Many of them desire to withdraw questions of wages from the freedom of
+contract, which is one of the ordinary attributions of private
+property. The more aspiring of them deny that land is a proper subject
+for private appropriation, and have commenced an agitation for its
+resumption by the State. With this is combined, in the speeches of
+some of the agitators, a denunciation of what they term usury, but
+without any definition of what they mean by the name; and the cry does
+not seem to be of home origin, but to have been caught up from the
+intercourse which has recently commenced through the Labor Congresses
+and the International Society, with the continental Socialists who
+object to all interest on money, and deny the legitimacy of deriving
+an income in any form from property apart from labor. This doctrine
+does not as yet show signs of being widely prevalent in Great Britain,
+but the soil is well prepared to receive the seeds of this
+description which are widely scattered from those foreign countries
+where large, general theories, and schemes of vast promise, instead of
+inspiring distrust, are essential to the popularity of a cause. It is
+in France, Germany, and Switzerland that anti-property doctrines in
+the widest sense have drawn large bodies of working men to rally round
+them. In these countries nearly all those who aim at reforming society
+in the interest of the working classes profess themselves Socialists,
+a designation under which schemes of very diverse character are
+comprehended and confounded, but which implies at least a remodelling
+generally approaching to abolition of the institution of private
+property. And it would probably be found that even in England the more
+prominent and active leaders of the working classes are usually in
+their private creed Socialists of one order or another, though being,
+like most English politicians, better aware than their Continental
+brethren that great and permanent changes in the fundamental ideas of
+mankind are not to be accomplished by a _coup de main_, they direct
+their practical efforts towards ends which seem within easier reach,
+and are content to hold back all extreme theories until there has been
+experience of the operation of the same principles on a partial scale.
+While such continues to be the character of the English working
+classes, as it is of Englishmen in general, they are not likely to
+rush head-long into the reckless extremities of some of the foreign
+Socialists, who, even in sober Switzerland, proclaim themselves
+content to begin by simple subversion, leaving the subsequent
+reconstruction to take care of itself; and by subversion, they mean
+not only the annihilation of all government, but getting all property
+of all kinds out of the hands of the possessors to be used for the
+general benefit; but in what mode it will, they say, be time enough
+afterwards to decide.
+
+The avowal of this doctrine by a public newspaper, the organ of an
+association (_La Solidarite_ published at Neuchatel), is one of the
+most curious signs of the times. The leaders of the English
+working-men--whose delegates at the congresses of Geneva and Bale
+contributed much the greatest part of such practical common sense as
+was shown there--are not likely to begin deliberately by anarchy,
+without having formed any opinion as to what form of society should be
+established in the room of the old. But it is evident that whatever
+they do propose can only be properly judged, and the grounds of the
+judgment made convincing to the general mind, on the basis of a
+previous survey of the two rival theories, that of private property and
+that of Socialism, one or other of which must necessarily furnish most
+of the premises in the discussion. Before, therefore, we can usefully
+discuss this class of questions in detail, it will be advisable to
+examine from their foundations the general question raised by
+Socialism. And this examination should be made without any hostile
+prejudice. However irrefutable the arguments in favor of the laws of
+property may appear to those to whom they have the double prestige of
+immemorial custom and of personal interest, nothing is more natural
+than that a working man who has begun to speculate on politics, should
+regard them in a very different light. Having, after long struggles,
+attained in some countries, and nearly attained in others, the point at
+which for them, at least, there is no further progress to make in the
+department of purely political rights, is it possible that the less
+fortunate classes among the "adult males" should not ask themselves
+whether progress ought to stop there? Notwithstanding all that has been
+done, and all that seems likely to be done, in the extension of
+franchises, a few are born to great riches, and the many to a penury,
+made only more grating by contrast. No longer enslaved or made
+dependent by force of law, the great majority are so by force of
+poverty; they are still chained to a place, to an occupation, and to
+conformity with the will of an employer, and debarred by the accident
+of birth both from the enjoyments, and from the mental and moral
+advantages, which others inherit without exertion and independently of
+desert. That this is an evil equal to almost any of those against
+which mankind have hitherto struggled, the poor are not wrong in
+believing. Is it a necessary evil? They are told so by those who do not
+feel it--by those who have gained the prizes in the lottery of life.
+But it was also said that slavery, that despotism, that all the
+privileges of oligarchy were necessary. All the successive steps that
+have been made by the poorer classes, partly won from the better
+feelings of the powerful, partly extorted from their fears, and partly
+bought with money, or attained in exchange for support given to one
+section of the powerful in its quarrels with another, had the strongest
+prejudices opposed to them beforehand; but their acquisition was a sign
+of power gained by the subordinate classes, a means to those classes of
+acquiring more; it consequently drew to those classes a certain share
+of the respect accorded to power, and produced a corresponding
+modification in the creed of society respecting them; whatever
+advantages they succeeded in acquiring came to be considered their due,
+while, of those which they had not yet attained, they continued to be
+deemed unworthy. The classes, therefore, which the system of society
+makes subordinate, have little reason to put faith in any of the maxims
+which the same system of society may have established as principles.
+Considering that the opinions of mankind have been found so wonderfully
+flexible, have always tended to consecrate existing facts, and to
+declare what did not yet exist, either pernicious or impracticable,
+what assurance have those classes that the distinction of rich and poor
+is grounded on a more imperative necessity than those other ancient and
+long-established facts, which, having been abolished, are now condemned
+even by those who formerly profited by them? This cannot be taken on
+the word of an interested party. The working classes are entitled to
+claim that the whole field of social institutions should be
+re-examined, and every question considered as if it now arose for the
+first time; with the idea constantly in view that the persons who are
+to be convinced are not those who owe their ease and importance to the
+present system, but persons who have no other interest in the matter
+than abstract justice and the general good of the community. It should
+be the object to ascertain what institutions of property would be
+established by an unprejudiced legislator, absolutely impartial between
+the possessors of property and the non-possessors; and to defend and to
+justify them by the reasons which would really influence such a
+legislator, and not by such as have the appearance of being got up to
+make out a case for what already exists. Such rights or privileges of
+property as will not stand this test will, sooner or later, have to be
+given up. An impartial hearing ought, moreover, to be given to all
+objections against property itself. All evils and inconveniences
+attaching to the institution in its best form ought to be frankly
+admitted, and the best remedies or palliatives applied which human
+intelligence is able to devise. And all plans proposed by social
+reformers, under whatever name designated, for the purpose of attaining
+the benefits aimed at by the institution of property without its
+inconveniences, should be examined with the same candor, not prejudged
+as absurd or impracticable.
+
+
+SOCIALIST OBJECTIONS TO THE PRESENT ORDER OF SOCIETY.
+
+As in all proposals for change there are two elements to be
+considered--that which is to be changed, and that which it is to be
+changed to--so in Socialism considered generally, and in each of its
+varieties taken separately, there are two parts to be distinguished,
+the one negative and critical, the other constructive. There is,
+first, the judgment of Socialism on existing institutions and
+practices and on their results; and secondly, the various plans which
+it has propounded for doing better. In the former all the different
+schools of Socialism are at one. They agree almost to identity in the
+faults which they find with the economical order of existing society.
+Up to a certain point also they entertain the same general conception
+of the remedy to be provided for those faults; but in the details,
+notwithstanding this general agreement, there is a wide disparity. It
+will be both natural and convenient, in attempting an estimate of
+their doctrines, to begin with the negative portion which is common to
+them all, and to postpone all mention of their differences until we
+arrive at that second part of their undertaking, in which alone they
+seriously differ.
+
+This first part of our task is by no means difficult; since it
+consists only in an enumeration of existing evils. Of these there is
+no scarcity, and most of them are by no means obscure or mysterious.
+Many of them are the veriest commonplaces of moralists, though the
+roots even of these lie deeper than moralists usually attempt to
+penetrate. So various are they that the only difficulty is to make any
+approach to an exhaustive catalogue. We shall content ourselves for
+the present with mentioning a few of the principal. And let one thing
+be remembered by the reader. When item after item of the enumeration
+passes before him, and he finds one fact after another which he has
+been accustomed to include among the necessities of nature urged as
+an accusation against social institutions, he is not entitled to cry
+unfairness, and to protest that the evils complained of are inherent
+in Man and Society, and are such as no arrangements can remedy. To
+assert this would be to beg the very question at issue. No one is more
+ready than Socialists to admit--they affirm it indeed much more
+decidedly than truth warrants--that the evils they complain of are
+irremediable in the present constitution of society. They propose to
+consider whether some other form of society may be devised which would
+not be liable to those evils, or would be liable to them in a much
+less degree. Those who object to the present order of society,
+considered as a whole and who accept as an alternative the possibility
+of a total change, have a right to set down all the evils which at
+present exist in society as part of their case, whether these are
+apparently attributable to social arrangements or not, provided they
+do not flow from physical laws which human power is not adequate, or
+human knowledge has not yet learned, to counteract. Moral evils and
+such physical evils as would be remedied if all persons did as they
+ought, are fairly chargeable against the state of society which admits
+of them; and are valid as arguments until it is shown that any other
+state of society would involve an equal or greater amount of such
+evils. In the opinion of Socialists, the present arrangements of
+society in respect to Property and the Production and Distribution of
+Wealth, are as means to the general good, a total failure. They say
+that there is an enormous mass of evil which these arrangements do not
+succeed in preventing; that the good, either moral or physical, which
+they realize is wretchedly small compared with the amount of exertion
+employed, and that even this small amount of good is brought about by
+means which are full of pernicious consequences, moral and physical.
+
+First among existing social evils may be mentioned the evil of
+Poverty. The institution of Property is upheld and commended
+principally as being the means by which labor and frugality are
+insured their reward, and mankind enabled to emerge from indigence.
+It may be so; most Socialists allow that it has been so in earlier
+periods of history. But if the institution can do nothing more or
+better in this respect than it has hitherto done, its capabilities,
+they affirm, are very insignificant. What proportion of the
+population, in the most civilized countries of Europe, enjoy in their
+own persons anything worth naming of the benefits of property? It may
+be said, that but for property in the hands of their employers they
+would be without daily bread; but, though this be conceded, at least
+their daily bread is all that they have; and that often in
+insufficient quantity; almost always of inferior quality; and with no
+assurance of continuing to have it at all; an immense proportion of
+the industrious classes being at some period or other of their lives
+(and all being liable to become) dependent, at least temporarily, on
+legal or voluntary charity. Any attempt to depict the miseries of
+indigence, or to estimate the proportion of mankind who in the most
+advanced countries are habitually given up during their whole
+existence to its physical and moral sufferings, would be superfluous
+here. This may be left to philanthropists, who have painted these
+miseries in colors sufficiently strong. Suffice it to say that the
+condition of numbers in civilized Europe, and even in England and
+France, is more wretched than that of most tribes of savages who are
+known to us.
+
+It may be said that of this hard lot no one has any reason to
+complain, because it befalls those only who are outstripped by others,
+from inferiority of energy or of prudence. This, even were it true,
+would be a very small alleviation of the evil. If some Nero or
+Domitian was to require a hundred persons to run a race for their
+lives, on condition that the fifty or twenty who came in hindmost
+should be put to death, it would not be any diminution of the
+injustice that the strongest or nimblest would, except through some
+untoward accident, be certain to escape. The misery and the crime
+would be that they were put to death at all. So in the economy of
+society; if there be any who suffer physical privation or moral
+degradation, whose bodily necessities are either not satisfied or
+satisfied in a manner which only brutish creatures can be content
+with, this, though not necessarily the crime of society, is _pro
+tanto_ a failure of the social arrangements. And to assert as a
+mitigation of the evil that those who thus suffer are the weaker
+members of the community, morally or physically, is to add insult to
+misfortune. Is weakness a justification of suffering? Is it not, on
+the contrary, an irresistible claim upon every human being for
+protection against suffering? If the minds and feelings of the
+prosperous were in a right state, would they accept their prosperity
+if for the sake of it even one person near them was, for any other
+cause than voluntary fault, excluded from obtaining a desirable
+existence?
+
+One thing there is, which if it could be affirmed truly, would relieve
+social institutions from any share in the responsibility of these
+evils. Since the human race has no means of enjoyable existence, or of
+existence at all, but what it derives from its own labor and
+abstinence, there would be no ground for complaint against society if
+every one who was willing to undergo a fair share of this labor and
+abstinence could attain a fair share of the fruits. But is this the
+fact? Is it not the reverse of the fact? The reward, instead of being
+proportioned to the labor and abstinence of the individual, is almost
+in an inverse ratio to it: those who receive the least, labor and
+abstain the most. Even the idle, reckless, and ill-conducted poor,
+those who are said with most justice to have themselves to blame for
+their condition, often undergo much more and severer labor, not only
+than those who are born to pecuniary independence, but than almost any
+of the more highly remunerated of those who earn their subsistence;
+and even the inadequate self-control exercised by the industrious poor
+costs them more sacrifice and more effort than is almost ever required
+from the more favored members of society. The very idea of
+distributive justice, or of any proportionality between success and
+merit, or between success and exertion, is in the present state of
+society so manifestly chimerical as to be relegated to the regions of
+romance. It is true that the lot of individuals is not wholly
+independent of their virtue and intelligence; these do really tell in
+their favor, but far less than many other things in which there is no
+merit at all. The most powerful of all the determining circumstances
+is birth. The great majority are what they were born to be. Some are
+born rich without work, others are born to a position in which they
+can become rich _by_ work, the great majority are born to hard work
+and poverty throughout life, numbers to indigence. Next to birth the
+chief cause of success in life is accident and opportunity. When a
+person not born to riches succeeds in acquiring them, his own industry
+and dexterity have generally contributed to the result; but industry
+and dexterity would not have sufficed unless there had been also a
+concurrence of occasions and chances which falls to the lot of only a
+small number. If persons are helped in their worldly career by their
+virtues, so are they, and perhaps quite as often, by their vices: by
+servility and sycophancy, by hard-hearted and close-fisted
+selfishness, by the permitted lies and tricks of trade, by gambling
+speculations, not seldom by downright knavery. Energies and talents
+are of much more avail for success in life than virtues; but if one
+man succeeds by employing energy and talent in something generally
+useful, another thrives by exercising the same qualities in
+out-generalling and ruining a rival. It is as much as any moralist
+ventures to assert, that, other circumstances being given, honesty is
+the best policy, and that with parity of advantages an honest person
+has a better chance than a rogue. Even this in many stations and
+circumstances of life is questionable; anything more than this is out
+of the question. It cannot be pretended that honesty, as a means of
+success, tells for as much as a difference of one single step on the
+social ladder. The connection between fortune and conduct is mainly
+this, that there is a degree of bad conduct, or rather of some kinds
+of bad conduct, which suffices to ruin any amount of good fortune; but
+the converse is not true: in the situation of most people no degree
+whatever of good conduct can be counted upon for raising them in the
+world, without the aid of fortunate accidents.
+
+These evils, then--great poverty, and that poverty very little
+connected with desert--are the first grand failure of the existing
+arrangements of society. The second is human misconduct; crime, vice,
+and folly, with all the sufferings which follow in their train. For,
+nearly all the forms of misconduct, whether committed towards ourselves
+or towards others, may be traced to one of three causes: Poverty and
+its temptations in the many; Idleness and _desoeuvrement_ in the few
+whose circumstances do not compel them to work; bad education, or want
+of education, in both. The first two must be allowed to be at least
+failures in the social arrangements, the last is now almost universally
+admitted to be the fault of those arrangements--it may almost be said
+the crime. I am speaking loosely and in the rough, for a minuter
+analysis of the sources of faults of character and errors of conduct
+would establish far more conclusively the filiation which connects them
+with a defective organization of society, though it would also show the
+reciprocal dependence of that faulty state of society on a backward
+state of the human mind.
+
+At this point, in the enumeration of the evils of society, the mere
+levellers of former times usually stopped; but their more far-sighted
+successors, the present Socialists, go farther. In their eyes the very
+foundation of human life as at present constituted, the very principle
+on which the production and repartition of all material products is now
+carried on, is essentially vicious and anti-social. It is the principle
+of individualism, competition, each one for himself and against all the
+rest. It is grounded on opposition of interests, not harmony of
+interests, and under it every one is required to find his place by a
+struggle, by pushing others back or being pushed back by them.
+Socialists consider this system of private war (as it may be termed)
+between every one and every one, especially fatal in an economical
+point of view and in a moral. Morally considered, its evils are
+obvious. It is the parent of envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness; it
+makes every one the natural enemy of all others who cross his path, and
+every one's path is constantly liable to be crossed. Under the present
+system hardly any one can gain except by the loss or disappointment of
+one or of many others. In a well-constituted community every one would
+be a gainer by every other person's successful exertions; while now we
+gain by each other's loss and lose by each other's gain, and our
+greatest gains come from the worst source of all, from death, the death
+of those who are nearest and should be dearest to us. In its purely
+economical operation the principle of individual competition receives
+as unqualified condemnation from the social reformers as in its moral.
+In the competition of laborers they see the cause of low wages; in the
+competition of producers the cause of ruin and bankruptcy; and both
+evils, they affirm, tend constantly to increase as population and
+wealth make progress; no person (they conceive) being benefited except
+the great proprietors of land, the holders of fixed money incomes, and
+a few great capitalists, whose wealth is gradually enabling them to
+undersell all other producers, to absorb the whole of the operations of
+industry into their own sphere, to drive from the market all employers
+of labor except themselves, and to convert the laborers into a kind of
+slaves or serfs, dependent on them for the means of support, and
+compelled to accept these on such terms as they choose to offer.
+Society, in short, is travelling onward, according to these
+speculators, towards a new feudality, that of the great capitalists.
+
+As I shall have ample opportunity in future chapters to state my own
+opinion on these topics, and on many others connected with and
+subordinate to them, I shall now, without further preamble, exhibit
+the opinions of distinguished Socialists on the present arrangements
+of society, in a selection of passages from their published writings.
+For the present I desire to be considered as a mere reporter of the
+opinions of others. Hereafter it will appear how much of what I cite
+agrees or differs with my own sentiments.
+
+The clearest, the most compact, and the most precise and specific
+statement of the case of the Socialists generally against the existing
+order of society in the economical department of human affairs, is to
+be found in the little work of M. Louis Blanc, _Organisation du
+Travail_. My first extracts, therefore, on this part of the subject,
+shall be taken from that treatise.
+
+    "Competition is for the people a system of extermination. Is the
+    poor man a member of society, or an enemy to it? We ask for an
+    answer.
+
+    "All around him he finds the soil preoccupied. Can he cultivate
+    the earth for himself? No; for the right of the first occupant
+    has become a right of property. Can he gather the fruits which
+    the hand of God ripens on the path of man? No; for, like the
+    soil, the fruits have been _appropriated_. Can he hunt or fish?
+    No; for that is a right which is dependent upon the government.
+    Can he draw water from a spring enclosed in a field? No; for the
+    proprietor of the field is, in virtue of his right to the
+    field, proprietor of the fountain. Can he, dying of hunger and
+    thirst, stretch out his hands for the charity of his
+    fellow-creatures? No; for there are laws against begging. Can
+    he, exhausted by fatigue and without a refuge, lie down to sleep
+    upon the pavement of the streets? No; for there are laws against
+    vagabondage. Can he, dying from the cruel native land where
+    everything is denied him, seek the means of living far from the
+    place where life was given him? No; for it is not permitted to
+    change your country except on certain conditions which the poor
+    man cannot fulfil.
+
+    "What, then, can the unhappy man do? He will say, 'I have hands
+    to work with, I have intelligence, I have youth, I have
+    strength; take all this, and in return give me a morsel of
+    bread.' This is what the working-men do say. But even here the
+    poor man may be answered, 'I have no work to give you.' What is
+    he to do then?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "What is competition from the point of view of the workman? It
+    is work put up to auction. A contractor wants a workman: three
+    present themselves.--How much for your work?--Half-a-crown; I
+    have a wife and children.--Well; and how much for yours?--Two
+    shillings: I have no children, but I have a wife.--Very well;
+    and now how much for you?--One and eightpence are enough for me;
+    I am single. Then you shall have the work. It is done; the
+    bargain is struck. And what are the other two workmen to do? It
+    is to be hoped they will die quietly of hunger. But what if they
+    take to thieving? Never fear; we have the police. To murder? We
+    have got the hangman. As for the lucky one, his triumph is only
+    temporary. Let a fourth workman make his appearance, strong
+    enough to fast every other day, and his price will run down
+    still lower; then there will be a new outcast, a new recruit for
+    the prison perhaps!
+
+    "Will it be said that these melancholy results are exaggerated;
+    that at all events they are only possible when there is not work
+    enough for the hands that seek employment? But I ask, in answer,
+    Does the principle of competition contain, by chance, within
+    itself any method by which this murderous disproportion is to be
+    avoided? If one branch of industry is in want of hands, who can
+    answer for it that, in the confusion created by universal
+    competition, another is not overstocked? And if, out of
+    thirty-four millions of men, twenty are really reduced to theft
+    for a living, this would suffice to condemn the principle.
+
+    "But who is so blind as not to see that under the system of
+    unlimited competition, the continual fall of wages is no
+    exceptional circumstance, but a necessary and general fact? Has
+    the population a limit which it cannot exceed? Is it possible
+    for us to say to industry--industry given up to the accidents of
+    individual egotism and fertile in ruin--can we say, 'Thus far
+    shalt thou go, and no farther?' The population increases
+    constantly: tell the poor mother to become sterile, and
+    blaspheme the God who made her fruitful, for if you do not, the
+    lists will soon become too narrow for the combatants. A machine
+    is invented: command it to be broken, and anathematize science,
+    for if you do not, the thousand workmen whom the new machine
+    deprives of work will knock at the door of the neighboring
+    workshop, and lower the wages of their companions. Thus
+    systematic lowering of wages, ending in the driving out of a
+    certain number of workmen, is the inevitable effect of unlimited
+    competition. It is an industrial system by means of which the
+    working-classes are forced to exterminate one another."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "If there is an undoubted fact, it is that the increase of
+    population is much more rapid among the poor than among the
+    rich. According to the _Statistics of European Population_, the
+    births at Paris are only one-thirty-second of the population in
+    the rich quarters, while in the others they rise to
+    one-twenty-sixth. This disproportion is a general fact, and M.
+    de Sismondi, in his work on Political Economy, has explained it
+    by the impossibility for the workmen of hopeful prudence. Those
+    only who feel themselves assured of the morrow can regulate the
+    number of their children according to their income; he who lives
+    from day to day is under the yoke of a mysterious fatality, to
+    which he sacrifices his children as he was sacrificed to it
+    himself. It is true the workhouses exist, menacing society with
+    an inundation of beggars--what way is there of escaping from the
+    cause?... It is clear that any society where the means of
+    subsistence increase less rapidly than the numbers of the
+    population, is a society on the brink of an abyss....
+    Competition produces destitution; this is a fact shown by
+    statistics. Destitution is fearfully prolific; this is shown by
+    statistics. The fruitfulness of the poor throws upon society
+    unhappy creatures who have need of work and cannot find it; this
+    is shown by statistics. At this point society is reduced to a
+    choice between killing the poor or maintaining them
+    gratuitously--between atrocity or folly."[1]
+
+So much for the poor. We now pass to the middle classes.
+
+    "According to the political economists of the school of Adam
+    Smith and Leon Say, _cheapness_ is the word in which may be
+    summed up the advantages of unlimited competition. But why
+    persist in considering the effect of cheapness with a view only
+    to the momentary advantage of the consumer? Cheapness is
+    advantageous to the consumer at the cost of introducing the
+    seeds of ruinous anarchy among the producers. Cheapness is, so
+    to speak, the hammer with which the rich among the producers
+    crush their poorer rivals. Cheapness is the trap into which the
+    daring speculators entice the hard-workers. Cheapness is the
+    sentence of death to the producer on a small scale who has no
+    money to invest in the purchase of machinery that his rich
+    rivals can easily procure. Cheapness is the great instrument in
+    the hands of monopoly; it absorbs the small manufacturer, the
+    small shopkeeper, the small proprietor; it is, in one word, the
+    destruction of the middle classes for the advantage of a few
+    industrial oligarchs.
+
+    "Ought we, then, to consider cheapness as a curse? No one would
+    attempt to maintain such an absurdity. But it is the specialty
+    of wrong principles to turn good into evil and to corrupt all
+    things. Under the system of competition cheapness is only a
+    provisional and fallacious advantage. It is maintained only so
+    long as there is a struggle; no sooner have the rich competitors
+    driven out their poorer rivals than prices rise. Competition
+    leads to monopoly, for the same reason cheapness leads to high
+    prices. Thus, what has been made use of as a weapon in the
+    contest between the producers, sooner or later becomes a cause
+    of impoverishment among the consumers. And if to this cause we
+    add the others we have already enumerated, first among which
+    must be ranked the inordinate increase of the population, we
+    shall be compelled to recognize the impoverishment of the mass
+    of the consumers as a direct consequence of competition.
+
+    "But, on the other hand, this very competition which tends to
+    dry up the sources of demand, urges production to over-supply.
+    The confusion produced by the universal struggle prevents each
+    producer from knowing the state of the market. He must work in
+    the dark, and trust to chance for a sale. Why should he check
+    the supply, especially as he can throw any loss on the workman
+    whose wages are so pre-eminently liable to rise and fall? Even
+    when production is carried on at a loss the manufacturers still
+    often carry it on, because they will not let their machinery,
+    &c., stand idle, or risk the loss of raw material, or lose their
+    customers; and because productive industry as carried on under
+    the competitive system being nothing else than a game of chance,
+    the gambler will not lose his chance of a lucky stroke.
+
+    "Thus, and we cannot too often insist upon it, competition
+    necessarily tends to increase supply and to diminish
+    consumption; its tendency therefore is precisely the opposite
+    of what is sought by economic science; hence it is not merely
+    oppressive but foolish as well."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "And in all this, in order to avoid dwelling on truths which
+    have become commonplaces, and sound declamatory from their very
+    truth, we have said nothing of the frightful moral corruption
+    which industry, organized, or more properly speaking,
+    disorganized, as it is at the present day, has introduced among
+    the middle classes. Everything has become venal, and competition
+    invades even the domain of thought.
+
+    "The factory crushing the workshop; the showy establishment
+    absorbing the humble shop; the artisan who is his own master
+    replaced by the day-laborer; cultivation by the plow superseding
+    that by the spade, and bringing the poor man's field under
+    disgraceful homage to the money-lender; bankruptcies multiplied;
+    manufacturing industry transformed by the ill-regulated
+    extension of credit into a system of gambling where no one, not
+    even the rogue, can be sure of winning; in short a vast
+    confusion calculated to arouse jealousy, mistrust, and hatred,
+    and to stifle, little by little, all generous aspirations, all
+    faith, self-sacrifice, and poetry--such is the hideous but only
+    too faithful picture of the results obtained by the application
+    of the principle of competition."[2]
+
+The Fourierists, through their principal organ, M. Considerant,
+enumerate the evils of the existing civilisation in the following
+order:--
+
+1. It employs an enormous quantity of labor and of human power
+unproductively, or in the work of destruction.
+
+    "In the first place there is the army, which in France, as in
+    all other countries, absorbs the healthiest and strongest men, a
+    large number of the most talented and intelligent, and a
+    considerable part of the public revenue.... The existing state
+    of society develops in its impure atmosphere innumerable
+    outcasts, whose labor is not merely unproductive, but actually
+    destructive: adventurers, prostitutes, people with no
+    acknowledged means of living, beggars, convicts, swindlers,
+    thieves, and others whose numbers tend rather to increase than
+    to diminish....
+
+    "To the list of unproductive labor fostered by our state of
+    Society must be added that of the judicature and of the bar, of
+    the courts of law and magistrates, the police, jailers,
+    executioners, &c.,--functions indispensable to the state of
+    society as it is.
+
+    "Also people of what is called 'good society'; those who pass
+    their lives in doing nothing; idlers of all ranks.
+
+    "Also the numberless custom-house officials, tax-gatherers,
+    bailiffs, excise-men; in short, all that army of men which
+    overlooks, brings to account, takes, but produces nothing.
+
+    "Also the labors of sophists, philosophers, metaphysicians,
+    political men, working in mistaken directions, who do nothing to
+    advance science, and produce nothing but disturbance and sterile
+    discussions; the verbiage of advocates, pleaders, witnesses, &c.
+
+    "And finally all the operations of commerce, from those of the
+    bankers and brokers, down to those of the grocer behind his
+    counter."[3]
+
+Secondly, they assert that even the industry and powers which in the
+present system are devoted to production, do not produce more than a
+small portion of what they might produce if better employed and
+directed:--
+
+    "Who with any good-will and reflection will not see how much the
+    want of coherence--the disorder, the want of combination, the
+    parcelling out of labor and leaving it wholly to individual
+    action without any organization, without any large or general
+    views--are causes which limit the possibilities of production,
+    and destroy, or at least waste, our means of action? Does not
+    disorder give birth to poverty, as order and good management
+    give birth to riches? Is not want of combination a source of
+    weakness, as combination is a source of strength? And who can
+    say that industry, whether agricultural, domestic,
+    manufacturing, scientific, artistic, or commercial, is organized
+    at the present day either in the state or in municipalities? Who
+    can say that all the work which is carried on in any of these
+    departments is executed in subordination to any general views,
+    or with foresight, economy, and order? Or, again, who can say
+    that it is possible in our present state of society to develop,
+    by a good education, all the faculties bestowed by nature on
+    each of its members; to employ each one in functions which he
+    would like, which he would be the most capable of, and which,
+    therefore, he could carry on with the greatest advantage to
+    himself and to others? Has it even been so much as attempted to
+    solve the problems presented by varieties of character so as to
+    regulate and harmonize the varieties of employments in
+    accordance with natural aptitudes? Alas! The Utopia of the most
+    ardent philanthropists is to teach reading and writing to
+    twenty-five millions of the French people! And in the present
+    state of things we may defy them to succeed even in that!
+
+    "And is it not a strange spectacle, too, and one which cries out
+    in condemnation of us, to see this state of society where the
+    soil is badly cultivated, and sometimes not cultivated at all;
+    where man is ill lodged, ill clothed, and yet where whole masses
+    are continually in need of work and pining in misery because
+    they cannot find it? Of a truth we are forced to acknowledge
+    that if the nations are poor and starving it is not because
+    nature has denied the means of producing wealth, but because of
+    the anarchy and disorder in our employment of those means; in
+    other words, it is because society is wretchedly constituted and
+    labor unorganized.
+
+    "But this is not all, and you will have but a faint conception
+    of the evil if you do not consider that to all these vices of
+    society, which dry up the sources of wealth and prosperity, must
+    be added the struggle, the discord, the war, in short under many
+    names and many forms which society cherishes and cultivates
+    between the individuals that compose it. These struggles and
+    discords correspond to radical oppositions--deep-seated
+    antinomies between the various interests. Exactly in so far as
+    you are able to establish classes and categories within the
+    nation; in so far, also, you will have opposition of interests
+    and internal warfare either avowed or secret, even if you take
+    into consideration the industrial system only."[4]
+
+One of the leading ideas of this school is the wastefulness and at the
+same time the immorality of the existing arrangements for distributing
+the produce of the country among the various consumers, the enormous
+superfluity in point of number of the agents of distribution, the
+merchants, dealers, shopkeepers and their innumerable, employes, and
+the depraving character of such a distribution of occupations.
+
+    "It is evident that the interest of the trader is opposed to
+    that of the consumer and of the producer. Has he not bought
+    cheap and under-valued as much as possible in all his dealings
+    with the producer, the very same article which, vaunting its
+    excellence, he sells to you as dear as he can? Thus the interest
+    of the commercial body, collectively and individually, is
+    contrary to that of the producer and of the consumer--that is to
+    say, to the interest of the whole body of society.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "The trader is a go-between, who profits by the general anarchy
+    and the non-organization of industry. The trader buys up
+    products, he buys up everything; he owns and detains everything,
+    in such sort that:--
+
+    "1stly. He holds both Production and Consumption _under his
+    yoke_, because both must come to him either finally for the
+    products to be consumed, or at first for the raw materials to be
+    worked up. Commerce with all its methods of buying, and of
+    raising and lowering prices, its innumerable devices, and its
+    holding everything in the hands of _middle-men_, levies toll
+    right and left; it despotically gives the law to Production and
+    Consumption, of which it ought to be only the subordinate.
+
+    "2ndly. It robs society by its _enormous profits_--profits
+    levied upon the consumer and the producer, and altogether out of
+    proportion to the services rendered, for which a twentieth of
+    the persons actually employed would be sufficient.
+
+    "3rdly. It robs society by the subtraction of its productive
+    forces; taking off from productive labor nineteen-twentieths of
+    the agents of trade who are mere parasites. Thus, not only does
+    commerce rob society by appropriating an exorbitant share of the
+    common wealth, but also by considerably diminishing the
+    productive energy of the human beehive. The great majority of
+    traders would return to productive work if a rational system of
+    commercial organization were substituted for the inextricable
+    chaos of the present state of things.
+
+    "4thly. It robs society by the _adulteration_ of products,
+    pushed at the present day beyond all bounds. And in fact, if a
+    hundred grocers establish themselves in a town where before
+    there were only twenty, it is plain that people will not begin
+    to consume five times as many groceries. Hereupon the hundred
+    virtuous grocers have to dispute between them the profits which
+    before were honestly made by the twenty; competition obliges
+    them to make it up at the expense of the consumer, either by
+    raising the prices as sometimes happens, or by adulterating the
+    goods as always happens. In such a state of things there is an
+    end to good faith. Inferior or adulterated goods are sold for
+    articles of good quality whenever the credulous customer is not
+    too experienced to be deceived. And when the customer has been
+    thoroughly imposed upon, the trading conscience consoles itself
+    by saying, 'I state my price; people can take or leave; no one
+    is obliged to buy.' The losses imposed on the consumers by the
+    bad quality or the adulteration of goods are incalculable.
+
+    "5thly. It robs society by _accumulations_, artificial or not,
+    in consequence of which vast quantities of goods, collected in
+    one place, are damaged and destroyed for want of a sale. Fourier
+    (Th. des Quat. Mouv., p. 334, 1st ed.) says: 'The fundamental
+    principle of the commercial systems, that of _leaving full
+    liberty to the merchants_, gives them absolute right of property
+    over the goods in which they deal: they have the right to
+    withdraw them altogether, to withhold or even to burn them, as
+    happened more than once with the Oriental Company of Amsterdam,
+    which publicly burnt stores of cinnamon in order to raise the
+    price. What it did with cinnamon it would have done with corn;
+    but for the fear of being stoned by the populace, it would have
+    burnt some corn in order to sell the rest at four times its
+    value. Indeed, it actually is of daily occurrence in ports, for
+    provisions of grains to be thrown into the sea because the
+    merchants have allowed them to rot while waiting for a rise. I
+    myself, when I was a clerk, have had to superintend these
+    infamous proceedings, and in one day caused to be thrown into
+    the sea some forty thousand bushels of rice, which might have
+    been sold at a fair profit had the withholder been less greedy
+    of gain. It is society that bears the cost of this waste, which
+    takes place daily under shelter of the philosophical maxim of
+    _full liberty for the merchants_.'
+
+    "6thly. Commerce robs society, moreover, by all the loss,
+    damage, and waste that follows from the extreme scattering of
+    products in millions of shops, and by the multiplication and
+    complication of carriage.
+
+    "7thly. It robs society by shameless and unlimited
+    _usury_--usury absolutely appalling. The trader carries on
+    operations with fictitious capital, much higher in amount than
+    his real capital. A trader with a capital of twelve hundred
+    pounds will carry on operations, by means of bills and credit,
+    on a scale of four, eight, or twelve thousand pounds. Thus he
+    draws from capital _which he does not possess_, usurious
+    interest, out of all proportion with the capital he actually
+    owns.
+
+    "8thly. It robs society by innumerable _bankruptcies_, for the
+    daily accidents of our commercial system, political events, and
+    any kind of disturbance, must usher in a day when the trader,
+    having incurred obligations beyond his means, is no longer able
+    to meet them; his failure, whether fraudulent or not, must be a
+    severe blow to his creditors. The bankruptcy of some entails
+    that of others, so that bankruptcies follow one upon another,
+    causing widespread ruin. And it is always the producer and the
+    consumer who suffer; for commerce, considered as a whole, does
+    not produce wealth, and invests very little in proportion to the
+    wealth which passes through its hands. How many are the
+    manufactures crushed by these blows! how many fertile sources of
+    wealth dried up by these devices, with all their disastrous
+    consequences!
+
+    "The producer furnishes the goods, the consumer the money. Trade
+    furnishes credit, founded on little or no actual capital, and
+    the different members of the commercial body are in no way
+    responsible for one another. This, in a few words, is the whole
+    theory of the thing.
+
+    "9thly. Commerce robs society by the _independence_ and
+    _irresponsibility_ which permits it to buy at the epochs when
+    the producers are forced to sell and compete with one another,
+    in order to procure money for their rent and necessary expenses
+    of production. When the markets are overstocked and goods cheap,
+    trade purchases. Then it creates a rise, and by this simple
+    manoeuvre despoils both producer and consumer.
+
+    "10thly. It robs society by a considerable _drawing off_ of
+    _capital_, which will return to productive industry when
+    commerce plays its proper subordinate part, and is only an
+    agency carrying on transactions between the producers (more or
+    less distant) and the great centres of consumption--the
+    communistic societies. Thus the capital engaged in the
+    speculations of commerce (which, small as it is, compared to the
+    immense wealth which passes through its hands, consists
+    nevertheless of sums enormous in themselves), would return to
+    stimulate production if commerce was deprived of the
+    intermediate property in goods, and their distribution became a
+    matter of administrative organization. Stock-jobbing is the most
+    odious form of this vice of commerce.
+
+    "11thly. It robs society by the _monopolising_ or buying up of
+    raw materials. 'For' (says Fourier, Th. des Quat. Mouv., p. 359,
+    1st ed.), 'the rise in price on articles that are bought up, is
+    borne ultimately by the consumer, although in the first place by
+    the manufacturers, who, being obliged to keep up their
+    establishments, must make pecuniary sacrifices, and manufacture
+    at small profits in the hope of better days; and it is often
+    long before they can repay themselves the rise in prices which
+    the monopoliser has compelled them to support in the first
+    instance...."
+
+    "In short, all these vices, besides many others which I omit,
+    are multiplied by the extreme complication of mercantile
+    affairs; for products do not pass once only through the greedy
+    clutches of commerce; there are some which pass and repass
+    twenty or thirty times before reaching the consumer. In the
+    first place, the raw material passes through the grasp of
+    commerce before reaching the manufacturer who first works it up;
+    then it returns to commerce to be sent out again to be worked up
+    in a second form; and so on until it receives its final shape.
+    Then it passes into the hands of merchants, who sell to the
+    wholesale dealers, and these to the great retail dealers of
+    towns, and these again to the little dealers and to the country
+    shops; and each time that it changes hands, it leaves something
+    behind it.
+
+    "... One of my friends who was lately exploring the Jura, where
+    much working in metal is done, had occasion to enter the house
+    of a peasant who was a manufacturer of shovels. He asked the
+    price. 'Let us come to an understanding,' answered the poor
+    laborer, not an economist at all, but a man of common sense; 'I
+    sell them for 8_d._ to the trade, which retails them at 1_s._
+    8_d._ in the towns. If you could find a means of opening a
+    direct communication between the workman and the consumer, you
+    might have them for 1_s._ 2_d._, and we should each gain 6_d._
+    by the transaction.'"[5]
+
+To a similar effect Owen, in the _Book of the New Moral World_, part
+2, chap. iii.
+
+    "The principle now in practice is to induce a large portion of
+    society to devote their lives to distribute wealth upon a large,
+    a medium, and a small scale, and to have it conveyed from place
+    to place in larger or smaller quantities, to meet the means and
+    wants of various divisions of society and individuals, as they
+    are now situated in cities, towns, villages, and country places.
+    This principle of distribution makes a class in society whose
+    business is to _buy from_ some parties and to _sell to_ others.
+    By this proceeding they are placed under circumstances which
+    induce them to endeavor to buy at what appears at the time a low
+    price in the market, and to sell again at the greatest permanent
+    profit which they can obtain. Their real object being to get as
+    much profit as gain between the seller to, and the buyer from
+    them, as can be effected in their transactions.
+
+    "There are innumerable errors in principle and evils in practice
+    which necessarily proceed from this mode of distributing the
+    wealth of society.
+
+    "1st. A general class of distributers is formed, whose interest
+    is separated from, and apparently opposed to, that of the
+    individual from whom they buy and to whom they sell.
+
+    "2nd. Three classes of distributers are made, the small, the
+    medium, and the large buyers and sellers; or the retailers, the
+    wholesale dealers, and the extensive merchants.
+
+    "3rd. Three classes of buyers thus created constitute the small,
+    the medium, and the large purchasers.
+
+    "By this arrangement into various classes of buyers and sellers,
+    the parties are easily trained to learn that they have separate
+    and opposing interests, and different ranks and stations in
+    society. An inequality of feeling and condition is thus created
+    and maintained, with all the servility and pride which these
+    unequal arrangements are sure to produce. The parties are
+    regularly trained in a general system of deception, in order
+    that they may be the more successful in buying cheap and selling
+    dear.
+
+    "The smaller sellers acquire habits of injurious idleness,
+    waiting often for hours for customers. And this evil is
+    experienced to a considerable extent even amongst the class of
+    wholesale dealers.
+
+    "There are, also, by this arrangement, many more establishments
+    for selling than are necessary in the villages, towns, and
+    cities; and a very large capital is thus wasted without benefit
+    to society. And from their number opposed to each other all over
+    the country to obtain customers, they endeavor to undersell each
+    other, and are therefore continually endeavoring to injure the
+    producer by the establishment of what are called cheap shops and
+    warehouses; and to support their character the master or his
+    servants must be continually on the watch to buy bargains, that
+    is, to procure wealth for less than the cost of its production.
+
+    "The distributers, small, medium, and large, have all to be
+    supported by the producers, and the greater the number of the
+    former compared with the latter, the greater will be the burden
+    which the producer has to sustain; for as the number of
+    distributers increases, the accumulation of wealth must
+    decrease, and more must be required from the producer.
+
+    "The distributers of wealth, under the present system, are a
+    dead weight upon the producers, and are most active demoralisers
+    of society. Their dependent condition, at the commencement of
+    their task, teaches or induces them to be servile to their
+    customers, and to continue to be so as long as they are
+    accumulating wealth by their cheap buying and dear selling. But
+    when they have secured sufficient to be what they imagine to be
+    an independence--to live without business--they are too often
+    filled with a most ignorant pride, and become insolent to their
+    dependents.
+
+    "The arrangement is altogether a most improvident one for
+    society, whose interest it is to produce the greatest amount of
+    wealth of the best qualities; while the existing system of
+    distribution is not only to withdraw great numbers from
+    producing to become distributers, but to add to the cost of the
+    consumer all the expense of a most wasteful and extravagant
+    distribution; the distribution costing to the consumer many
+    times the price of the original cost of the wealth purchased.
+
+    "Then, by the position in which the seller is placed by his
+    created desire for gain on the one hand, and the competition he
+    meets with from opponents selling similar productions on the
+    other, he is strongly tempted to deteriorate the articles which
+    he has for sale; and when these are provisions, either of home
+    production or of foreign importation, the effects upon the
+    health, and consequent comfort and happiness of the consumers,
+    are often most injurious, and productive of much premature
+    death, especially among the working classes, who, in this
+    respect, are perhaps made to be the greatest sufferers, by
+    purchasing the inferior or low-priced articles.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "The expense of thus distributing wealth in Great Britain and
+    Ireland, including transit from place to place, and all the
+    agents directly and indirectly engaged in this department, is,
+    perhaps, little short of one hundred millions annually, without
+    taking into consideration the deterioration of the quality of
+    many of the articles constituting this wealth, by carriage, and
+    by being divided into small quantities, and kept in improper
+    stores and places, in which the atmosphere is unfavorable to the
+    keeping of such articles in a tolerably good, and much less in
+    the best, condition for use."
+
+In further illustration of the contrariety of interests between person
+and person, class and class, which pervades the present constitution
+of society, M. Considerant adds:--
+
+    "If the wine-growers wish for free trade, this freedom ruins the
+    producer of corn, the manufacturers of iron, of cloth, of
+    cotton, and--we are compelled to add--the smuggler and the
+    customs' officer. If it is the interest of the consumer that
+    machines should be invented which lower prices by rendering
+    production less costly, these same machines throw out of work
+    thousands of workmen who do not know how to, and cannot at once,
+    find other work. Here, then, again is one of the innumerable
+    _vicious circles_ of civilisation ... for there are a thousand
+    facts which prove cumulatively that in our existing social
+    system the introduction of any good brings always along with it
+    some evil.
+
+    "In short, if we go lower down and come to vulgar details, we
+    find that it is the interest of the tailor, the shoemaker, and
+    the hatter that coats, shoes, and hats should be soon worn out;
+    that the glazier profits by the hail-storms which break windows;
+    that the mason and the architect profit by fires; the lawyer is
+    enriched by law-suits; the doctor by disease; the wine-seller by
+    drunkenness; the prostitute by debauchery. And what a disaster
+    it would be for the judges, the police, and the jailers, as well
+    as for the barristers and the solicitors, and all the lawyers'
+    clerks, if crimes, offences, and law-suits were all at once to
+    come to an end!"[6]
+
+The following is one of the cardinal points of this school:--
+
+    "Add to all this, that civilisation, which sows dissension and
+    war on every side; which employs a great part of its powers in
+    unproductive labor or even in destruction; which furthermore
+    diminishes the public wealth by the unnecessary friction and
+    discord it introduces into industry; add to all this, I say,
+    that this same social system has for its special characteristic
+    to produce a repugnance for work--a disgust for labor.
+
+    "Everywhere you hear the laborer, the artisan, the clerk
+    complain of his position and his occupation, while they long for
+    the time when they can retire from work imposed upon them by
+    necessity. To be repugnant, to have for its motive and pivot
+    nothing but the fear of starvation, is the great, the fatal,
+    characteristic of civilised labor. The civilised workman is
+    condemned to penal servitude. So long as productive labor is so
+    organized that instead of being associated with pleasure it is
+    associated with pain, weariness and dislike, it will always
+    happen that all will avoid it who are able. With few exceptions,
+    those only will consent to work who are compelled to it by want.
+    Hence the most numerous classes, the artificers of social
+    wealth, the active and direct creators of all comfort and
+    luxury, will always be condemned to touch closely on poverty and
+    hunger; they will always be the slaves to ignorance and
+    degradation; they will continue to be always that huge herd of
+    mere beasts of burden whom we see ill-grown, decimated by
+    disease, bowed down in the great workshop of society over the
+    plow or over the counter, that they may prepare the delicate
+    food, and the sumptuous enjoyments of the upper and idle
+    classes.
+
+    "So long as no method of attractive labor has been devised, it
+    will continue to be true that 'there must be many poor in order
+    that there may be a few rich;' a mean and hateful saying, which
+    we hear every day quoted as an eternal truth from the mouths of
+    people who call themselves Christians or philosophers. It is
+    very easy to understand that oppression, trickery, and
+    especially poverty, are the permanent and fatal appanage of
+    every state of society characterized by the dislike of work,
+    for, in this case, there is nothing but poverty that will force
+    men to labor. And the proof of this is, that if every one of all
+    the workers were to become suddenly rich, nineteen-twentieths of
+    all the work now done would be abandoned."[7]
+
+In the opinion of the Fourierists, the tendency of the present order
+of society is to a concentration of wealth in the hands of a
+comparatively few immensely rich individuals or companies, and the
+reduction of all the rest of the community into a complete dependence
+on them. This was termed by Fourier _la jeodalite industrielle_.
+
+    "This feudalism," says M. Considerant, "would be constituted as
+    soon as the largest part of the industrial and territorial
+    property of the nation belongs to a minority which absorbs all
+    its revenues, while the great majority, chained to the
+    work-bench or laboring on the soil, must be content to gnaw the
+    pittance which is cast to them."[8]
+
+This disastrous result is to be brought about partly by the mere
+progress of competition, as sketched in our previous extract by M.
+Louis Blanc; assisted by the progress of national debts, which M.
+Considerant regards as mortgages of the whole land and capital of the
+country, of which "les capitalistes preteurs" become, in a greater and
+greater measure, co-proprietors, receiving without labor or risk an
+increasing portion of the revenues.
+
+
+THE SOCIALIST OBJECTIONS TO THE PRESENT ORDER OF SOCIETY EXAMINED.
+
+It is impossible to deny that the considerations brought to notice in
+the preceding chapter make out a frightful case either against the
+existing order of society, or against the position of man himself in
+this world. How much of the evils should be referred to the one, and
+how much to the other, is the principal theoretic question which has
+to be resolved. But the strongest case is susceptible of exaggeration;
+and it will have been evident to many readers, even from the passages
+I have quoted, that such exaggeration is not wanting in the
+representations of the ablest and most candid Socialists. Though much
+of their allegations is unanswerable, not a little is the result of
+errors in political economy; by which, let me say once for all, I do
+not mean the rejection of any practical rules of policy which have
+been laid down by political economists, I mean ignorance of economic
+facts, and of the causes by which the economic phenomena of society
+as it is, are actually determined.
+
+In the first place it is unhappily true that the wages of ordinary
+labor, in all the countries of Europe, are wretchedly insufficient to
+supply the physical and moral necessities of the population in any
+tolerable measure. But, when it is further alleged that even this
+insufficient remuneration has a tendency to diminish; that there is,
+in the words of M. Louis Blanc, _une baisse continue des salaires_;
+the assertion is in opposition to all accurate information, and to
+many notorious facts. It has yet to be proved that there is any
+country in the civilized world where the ordinary wages of labor,
+estimated either in money or in articles of consumption, are
+declining; while in many they are, on the whole, on the increase; and
+an increase which is becoming, not slower, but more rapid. There are,
+occasionally, branches of industry which are being gradually
+superseded by something else, and, in those, until production
+accommodates itself to demand, wages are depressed; which is an evil,
+but a temporary one, and would admit of great alleviation even in the
+present system of social economy. A diminution thus produced of the
+reward of labor in some particular employment is the effect and the
+evidence of increased remuneration, or of a new source of
+remuneration, in some other; the total and the average remuneration
+being undiminished, or even increased. To make out an appearance of
+diminution in the rate of wages in any leading branch of industry, it
+is always found necessary to compare some month or year of special and
+temporary depression at the present time, with the average rate, or
+even some exceptionally high rate, at an earlier time. The
+vicissitudes are no doubt a great evil, but they were as frequent and
+as severe in former periods of economical history as now. The greater
+scale of the transactions, and the greater number of persons involved
+in each fluctuation, may make the fluctuation appear greater, but
+though a larger population affords more sufferers, the evil does not
+weigh heavier on each of them individually. There is much evidence of
+improvement, and none, that is at all trustworthy, of deterioration,
+in the mode of living of the laboring population of the countries of
+Europe; when there is any appearance to the contrary it is local or
+partial, and can always be traced either to the pressure of some
+temporary calamity, or to some bad law or unwise act of government
+which admits of being corrected, while the permanent causes all
+operate in the direction of improvement.
+
+M. Louis Blanc, therefore, while showing himself much more enlightened
+than the older school of levellers and democrats, inasmuch as he
+recognizes the connection between low wages and the over-rapid
+increase of population, appears to have fallen into the same error
+which was at first committed by Malthus and his followers, that of
+supposing that because population has a greater power of increase than
+subsistence, its pressure upon subsistence must be always growing more
+severe. The difference is that the early Malthusians thought this an
+irrepressible tendency, while M. Louis Blanc thinks that it can be
+repressed, but only under a system of Communism. It is a great point
+gained for truth when it comes to be seen that the tendency to
+over-population is a fact which Communism, as well as the existing
+order of society, would have to deal with. And it is much to be
+rejoiced at that this necessity is admitted by the most considerable
+chiefs of all existing schools of Socialism. Owen and Fourier, no less
+than M. Louis Blanc, admitted it, and claimed for their respective
+systems a pre-eminent power of dealing with this difficulty. However
+this may be, experience shows that in the existing state of society
+the pressure of population on subsistence, which is the principal
+cause of low wages, though a great, is not an increasing evil; on the
+contrary, the progress of all that is called civilization has a
+tendency to diminish it, partly by the more rapid increase of the
+means of employing and maintaining labor, partly by the increased
+facilities opened to labor for transporting itself to new countries
+and unoccupied fields of employment, and partly by a general
+improvement in the intelligence and prudence of the population. This
+progress, no doubt, is slow; but it is much that such progress should
+take place at all, while we are still only in the first stage of that
+public movement for the education of the whole people, which when more
+advanced must add greatly to the force of all the two causes of
+improvement specified above. It is, of course, open to discussion what
+form of society has the greatest power of dealing successfully with
+the pressure of population on subsistence, and on this question there
+is much to be said for Socialism; what was long thought to be its
+weakest point will, perhaps, prove to be one of its strongest. But it
+has no just claim to be considered as the sole means of preventing the
+general and growing degradation of the mass of mankind through the
+peculiar tendency of poverty to produce over-population. Society as at
+present constituted is not descending into that abyss, but gradually,
+though slowly, rising out of it, and this improvement is likely to be
+progressive if bad laws do not interfere with it.
+
+Next, it must be observed that Socialists generally, and even the most
+enlightened of them, have a very imperfect and one-sided notion of the
+operation of competition. They see half its effects, and overlook the
+other half; they regard it as an agency for grinding down every one's
+remuneration--for obliging every one to accept less wages for his
+labor, or a less price for his commodities, which would be true only
+if every one had to dispose of his labor or his commodities to some
+great monopolist, and the competition were all on one side. They
+forget that competition is a cause of high prices and values as well
+as of low; that the buyers of labor and of commodities compete with
+one another as well as the sellers; and that if it is competition
+which keeps the prices of labor and commodities as low as they are, it
+is competition which prevents them from falling still lower. In truth,
+when competition is perfectly free on both sides, its tendency is not
+specially either to raise or to lower the price of articles, but to
+equalize it; to level inequalities of remuneration, and to reduce all
+to a general average, a result which, in so far as realized (no doubt
+very imperfectly), is, on Socialistic principles, desirable. But if,
+disregarding for the time that part of the effects of competition
+which consists in keeping up prices, we fix our attention on its
+effect in keeping them down, and contemplate this effect in reference
+solely to the interest of the laboring classes, it would seem that if
+competition keeps down wages, and so gives a motive to the laboring
+classes to withdraw the labor market from the full influence of
+competition, if they can, it must on the other hand have credit for
+keeping down the prices of the articles on which wages are expended,
+to the great advantage of those who depend on wages. To meet this
+consideration Socialists, as we said in our quotation from M. Louis
+Blanc, are reduced to affirm that the low prices of commodities
+produced by competition are delusive and lead in the end to higher
+prices than before, because when the richest competitor has got rid of
+all his rivals, he commands the market and can demand any price he
+pleases. Now, the commonest experience shows that this state of
+things, under really free competition, is wholly imaginary. The
+richest competitor neither does nor can get rid of all his rivals, and
+establish himself in exclusive possession of the market; and it is not
+the fact that any important branch of industry or commerce formerly
+divided among many has become, or shows any tendency to become, the
+monopoly of a few.
+
+The kind of policy described is sometimes possible where, as in the
+case of railways, the only competition possible is between two or
+three great companies, the operations being on too vast a scale to be
+within the reach of individual capitalists; and this is one of the
+reasons why businesses which require to be carried on by great
+joint-stock enterprises cannot be trusted to competition, but, when
+not reserved by the State to itself, ought to be carried on under
+conditions prescribed, and, from time to time, varied by the State,
+for the purpose of insuring to the public a cheaper supply of its
+wants than would be afforded by private interest in the absence of
+sufficient competition. But in the ordinary branches of industry no
+one rich competitor has it in his power to drive out all the smaller
+ones. Some businesses show a tendency to pass out of the hands of many
+small producers or dealers into a smaller number of larger ones; but
+the cases in which this happens are those in which the possession of a
+larger capital permits the adoption of more powerful machinery, more
+efficient by more expensive processes, or a better organized and more
+economical mode of carrying on business, and thus enables the large
+dealer legitimately and permanently to supply the commodity cheaper
+than can be done on the small scale; to the great advantage of the
+consumers, and therefore of the laboring classes, and diminishing,
+_pro tanto_, that waste of the resources of the community so much
+complained of by Socialists, the unnecessary multiplication of mere
+distributors, and of the various other classes whom Fourier calls the
+parasites of industry. When this change is effected, the larger
+capitalists, either individual or joint stock, among which the
+business is divided, are seldom, if ever, in any considerable branch
+of commerce, so few as that competition shall not continue to act
+between them; so that the saving in cost, which enabled them to
+undersell the small dealers, continues afterwards, as at first, to be
+passed on, in lower prices, to their customers. The operation,
+therefore, of competition in keeping down the prices of commodities,
+including those on which wages are expended, is not illusive but real,
+and, we may add, is a growing, not a declining, fact.
+
+But there are other respects, equally important, in which the charges
+brought by Socialists against competition do not admit of so complete
+an answer. Competition is the best security for cheapness, but by no
+means a security for quality. In former times, when producers and
+consumers were less numerous, it was a security for both. The market
+was not large enough nor the means of publicity sufficient to enable a
+dealer to make a fortune by continually attracting new customers: his
+success depended on his retaining those that he had; and when a dealer
+furnished good articles, or when he did not, the fact was soon known
+to those whom it concerned, and he acquired a character for honest or
+dishonest dealing of more importance to him than the gain that would
+be made by cheating casual purchasers. But on the great scale of
+modern transactions, with the great multiplication of competition and
+the immense increase in the quantity of business competed for, dealers
+are so little dependent on permanent customers that character is much
+less essential to them, while there is also far less certainty of
+their obtaining the character they deserve. The low prices which a
+tradesman advertises are known, to a thousand for one who has
+discovered for himself or learned from others, that the bad quality of
+the goods is more than an equivalent for their cheapness; while at the
+same time the much greater fortunes now made by some dealers excite
+the cupidity of all, and the greed of rapid gain substitutes itself
+for the modest desire to make a living by their business. In this
+manner, as wealth increases and greater prizes seem to be within
+reach, more and more of a gambling spirit is introduced into
+commerce; and where this prevails not only are the simplest maxims of
+prudence disregarded, but all, even the most perilous, forms of
+pecuniary improbity receive a terrible stimulus. This is the meaning
+of what is called the intensity of modern competition. It is further
+to be mentioned that when this intensity has reached a certain height,
+and when a portion of the producers of an article or the dealers in it
+have resorted to any of the modes of fraud, such as adulteration,
+giving short measure, &c., of the increase of which there is now so
+much complaint, the temptation is immense on these to adopt the
+fraudulent practises, who would not have originated them; for the
+public are aware of the low prices fallaciously produced by the
+frauds, but do not find out at first, if ever, that the article is not
+worth the lower price, and they will not go on paying a higher price
+for a better article, and the honest dealer is placed at a terrible
+disadvantage. Thus the frauds, begun by a few, become customs of the
+trade, and the morality of the trading classes is more and more
+deteriorated.
+
+On this point, therefore, Socialists have really made out the
+existence not only of a great evil, but of one which grows and tends
+to grow with the growth of population and wealth. It must be said,
+however, that society has never yet used the means which are already
+in its power of grappling with this evil. The laws against commercial
+frauds are very defective, and their execution still more so. Laws of
+this description have no chance of being really enforced unless it is
+the special duty of some one to enforce them. They are specially in
+need of a public prosecutor. It is still to be discovered how far it
+is possible to repress by means of the criminal law a class of
+misdeeds which are now seldom brought before the tribunals, and to
+which, when brought, the judicial administration of this country is
+most unduly lenient. The most important class, however, of these
+frauds, to the mass of the people, those which affect the price or
+quality of articles of daily consumption, can be in a great measure
+overcome by the institution of co-operative stores. By this plan any
+body of consumers who form themselves into an association for the
+purpose, are enabled to pass over the retail dealers and obtain their
+articles direct from the wholesale merchants, or, what is better (now
+that wholesale co-operative agencies have been established), from the
+producers, thus freeing themselves from the heavy tax now paid to the
+distributing classes and at the same time eliminate the usual
+perpetrators of adulterations and other frauds. Distribution thus
+becomes a work performed by agents selected and paid by those who have
+no interest in anything but the cheapness and goodness of the article;
+and the distributors are capable of being thus reduced to the numbers
+which the quantity of work to be done really requires. The
+difficulties of the plan consist in the skill and trustworthiness
+required in the managers, and the imperfect nature of the control
+which can be exercised over them by the body at large. The great
+success and rapid growth of the system prove, however, that these
+difficulties are, in some tolerable degree, overcome. At all events,
+if the beneficial tendency of the competition of retailers in
+promoting cheapness is fore-gone, and has to be replaced by other
+securities, the mischievous tendency of the same competition in
+deteriorating quality is at any rate got rid of; and the prosperity of
+the co-operative stores shows that this benefit is obtained not only
+without detriment to cheapness, but with great advantage to it, since
+the profits of the concerns enable them to return to the consumers a
+large percentage on the price of every article supplied to them. So
+far, therefore, as this class of evils is concerned, an effectual
+remedy is already in operation, which, though suggested by and partly
+grounded on socialistic principles, is consistent with the existing
+constitution of property.
+
+With regard to those greater and more conspicuous economical frauds,
+or malpractices equivalent to frauds, of which so many deplorable
+cases have become notorious--committed by merchants and bankers
+between themselves or between them and those who have trusted them
+with money, such a remedy as above described is not available, and the
+only resources which the present constitution of society affords
+against them are a sterner reprobation by opinion, and a more
+efficient repression by the law. Neither of these remedies has had any
+approach to an effectual trial. It is on the occurrence of
+insolvencies that these dishonest practices usually come to light; the
+perpetrators take their place, not in the class of malefactors, but in
+that of insolvent debtors; and the laws of this and other countries
+were formerly so savage against simple insolvency, that by one of
+those reactions to which the opinions of mankind are liable,
+insolvents came to be regarded mainly as objects of compassion, and it
+seemed to be thought that the hand both of law and of public opinion
+could hardly press too lightly upon them. By an error in a contrary
+direction to the ordinary one of our law, which in the punishment of
+offences in general wholly neglects the question of reparation to the
+sufferer, our bankruptcy laws have for some time treated the recovery
+for creditors of what is left of their property as almost the sole
+object, scarcely any importance being attached to the punishment of
+the bankrupt for any misconduct which does not directly interfere with
+that primary purpose. For three or four years past there has been a
+slight counter-reaction, and more than one bankruptcy act has been
+passed, somewhat less indulgent to the bankrupt; but the primary
+object regarded has still been the pecuniary interest of the
+creditors, and criminality in the bankrupt himself, with the exception
+of a small number of well-marked offences, gets off almost with
+impunity. It may be confidently affirmed, therefore, that, at least in
+this country, society has not exerted the power it possesses of making
+mercantile dishonesty dangerous to the perpetrator. On the contrary,
+it is a gambling trick in which all the advantage is on the side of
+the trickster: if the trick succeeds it makes his fortune, or
+preserves it; if it fails, he is at most reduced to poverty, which was
+perhaps already impending when he determined to run the chance, and
+he is classed by those who have not looked closely into the matter,
+and even by many who have, not among the infamous but among the
+unfortunate. Until a more moral and rational mode of dealing with
+culpable insolvency has been tried and failed, commercial dishonesty
+cannot be ranked among evils the prevalence of which is inseparable
+from commercial competition.
+
+Another point on which there is much misapprehension on the part of
+Socialists, as well as of Trades Unionists and other partisans of
+Labor against Capital, relates to the proportions in which the produce
+of the country is really shared and the amount of what is actually
+diverted from those who produce it, to enrich other persons. I forbear
+for the present to speak of the land, which is a subject apart. But
+with respect to capital employed in business, there is in the popular
+notions a great deal of illusion. When, for instance, a capitalist
+invests L20,000 in his business, and draws from it an income of
+(suppose) L2,000 a year, the common impression is as if he was the
+beneficial owner both of the L20,000 and of the L2,000, while the
+laborers own nothing but their wages. The truth, however, is, that he
+only obtains the L2,000 on condition of applying no part of the
+L20,000 to his own use. He has the legal control over it, and might
+squander it if he chose, but if he did he would not have the L2,000 a
+year also. As long as he derives an income from his capital he has not
+the option of withholding it from the use of others. As much of his
+invested capital as consists of buildings, machinery, and other
+instruments of production, are applied to production and are not
+applicable to the support or enjoyment of any one. What is so
+applicable (including what is laid out in keeping up or renewing the
+buildings and instruments) is paid away to laborers, forming their
+remuneration and their share in the division of the produce. For all
+personal purposes they have the capital and he has but the profits,
+which it only yields to him on condition that the capital itself is
+employed in satisfying not his own wants, but those of laborers. The
+proportion which the profits of capital usually bear to capital itself
+(or rather to the circulating portion of it) is the ratio which the
+capitalist's share of the produce bears to the aggregate share of the
+laborers. Even of his own share a small part only belongs to him as
+the owner of capital. The portion of the produce which falls to
+capital merely as capital is measured by the interest of money, since
+that is all that the owner of capital obtains when he contributes
+nothing to production except the capital itself. Now the interest of
+capital in the public funds, which are considered to be the best
+security, is at the present prices (which have not varied much for
+many years) about three and one-third per cent. Even in this
+investment there is some little risk--risk of repudiation, risk of
+being obliged to sell out at a low price in some commercial crisis.
+
+Estimating these risks at 1/3 per cent., the remaining 3 per cent. may
+be considered as the remuneration of capital, apart from insurance
+against loss. On the security of a mortgage 4 per cent. is generally
+obtained, but in this transaction there are considerably greater
+risks--the uncertainty of titles to land under our bad system of law;
+the chance of having to realize the security at a great cost in law
+charges; and liability to delay in the receipt of the interest even
+when the principal is safe. When mere money independently of exertion
+yields a larger income, as it sometimes does, for example, by shares
+in railway or other companies, the surplus is hardly ever an
+equivalent for the risk of losing the whole, or part, of the capital
+by mismanagement, as in the case of the Brighton Railway, the dividend
+of which, after having been 6 per cent. per annum, sunk to from
+nothing to 1-1/2 per cent., and shares which had been bought at 120
+could not be sold for more than about 43. When money is lent at the
+high rates of interest one occasionally hears of, rates only given by
+spend-thrifts and needy persons, it is because the risk of loss is so
+great that few who possess money can be induced to lend to them at
+all. So little reason is there for the outcry against "usury" as one
+of the grievous burthens of the working-classes. Of the profits,
+therefore, which a manufacturer or other person in business obtains
+from his capital no more than about 3 per cent. can be set down to the
+capital itself. If he were able and willing to give up the whole of
+this to his laborers, who already share among them the whole of his
+capital as it is annually reproduced from year to year, the addition
+to their weekly wages would be inconsiderable. Of what he obtains
+beyond 3 per cent. a great part is insurance against the manifold
+losses he is exposed to, and cannot safely be applied to his own use,
+but requires to be kept in reserve to cover those losses when they
+occur. The remainder is properly the remuneration of his skill and
+industry--the wages of his labor of superintendence. No doubt if he is
+very successful in business these wages of his are extremely liberal,
+and quite out of proportion to what the same skill and industry would
+command if offered for hire. But, on the other hand, he runs a worse
+risk than that of being out of employment; that of doing the work
+without earning anything by it, of having the labor and anxiety
+without the wages. I do not say that the drawbacks balance the
+privileges, or that he derives no advantage from the position which
+makes him a capitalist and employer of labor, instead of a skilled
+superintendent letting out his services to others; but the amount of
+his advantage must not be estimated by the great prizes alone. If we
+subtract from the gains of some the losses of others, and deduct from
+the balance a fair compensation for the anxiety, skill, and labor of
+both, grounded on the market price of skilled superintendence, what
+remains will be, no doubt, considerable, but yet, when compared to the
+entire capital of the country, annually reproduced and dispensed in
+wages, it is very much smaller than it appears to the popular
+imagination; and were the whole of it added to the share of the
+laborers it would make a less addition to that share than would be
+made by any important invention in machinery, or by the suppression of
+unnecessary distributors and other "parasites of industry." To
+complete the estimate, however, of the portion of the produce of
+industry which goes to remunerate capital we must not stop at the
+interest earned out of the produce by the capital actually employed in
+producing it, but must include that which is paid to the former owners
+of capital which has been unproductively spent and no longer exists,
+and is paid, of course, out of the produce of other capital. Of this
+nature is the interest of national debts, which is the cost a nation
+is burthened with for past difficulties and dangers, or for past folly
+or profligacy of its rulers, more or less shared by the nation itself.
+To this must be added the interest on the debts of landowners and
+other unproductive consumers; except so far as the money borrowed may
+have been spent in remunerative improvement of the productive powers
+of the land. As for landed property itself--the appropriation of the
+rent of land by private individuals--I reserve, as I have said, this
+question for discussion hereafter; for the tenure of land might be
+varied in any manner considered desirable, all the land might be
+declared the property of the State, without interfering with the right
+of property in anything which is the product of human labor and
+abstinence.
+
+It seemed desirable to begin the discussion of the Socialist question
+by these remarks in abatement of Socialist exaggerations, in order
+that the true issues between Socialism and the existing state of
+society might be correctly conceived. The present system is not, as
+many Socialists believe, hurrying us into a state of general indigence
+and slavery from which only Socialism can save us. The evils and
+injustices suffered under the present system are great, but they are
+not increasing; on the contrary, the general tendency is towards their
+slow diminution. Moreover the inequalities in the distribution of the
+produce between capital and labor, however they may shock the feeling
+of natural justice, would not by their mere equalisation afford by any
+means so large a fund for raising the lower levels of remuneration as
+Socialists, and many besides Socialists, are apt to suppose. There is
+not any one abuse or injustice now prevailing in society by merely
+abolishing which the human race would pass out of suffering into
+happiness. What is incumbent on us is a calm comparison between two
+different systems of society, with a view of determining which of them
+affords the greatest resources for overcoming the inevitable
+difficulties of life. And if we find the answer to this question more
+difficult, and more dependent upon intellectual and moral conditions,
+than is usually thought, it is satisfactory to reflect that there is
+time before us for the question to work itself out on an experimental
+scale, by actual trial. I believe we shall find that no other test is
+possible of the practicability or beneficial operation of Socialist
+arrangements; but that the intellectual and moral grounds of Socialism
+deserve the most attentive study, as affording in many cases the
+guiding principles of the improvements necessary to give the present
+economic system of society its best chance.
+
+
+THE DIFFICULTIES OF SOCIALISM.
+
+Among those who call themselves Socialists, two kinds of persons may
+be distinguished. There are, in the first place, those whose plans for
+a new order of society, in which private property and individual
+competition are to be superseded and other motives to action
+substituted, are on the scale of a village community or township, and
+would be applied to an entire country by the multiplication of such
+self-acting units; of this character are the systems of Owen, of
+Fourier, and the more thoughtful and philosophic Socialists generally.
+The other class, who are more a product of the Continent than of Great
+Britain and may be called the revolutionary Socialists, propose to
+themselves a much bolder stroke. Their scheme is the management of the
+whole productive resources of the country by one central authority,
+the general government. And with this view some of them avow as their
+purpose that the working classes, or somebody in their behalf, should
+take possession of all the property of the country, and administer it
+for the general benefit.
+
+Whatever be the difficulties of the first of these two forms of
+Socialism, the second must evidently involve the same difficulties and
+many more. The former, too, has the great advantage that it can be
+brought into operation progressively, and can prove its capabilities
+by trial. It can be tried first on a select population and extended to
+others as their education and cultivation permit. It need not, and in
+the natural order of things would not, become an engine of subversion
+until it had shown itself capable of being also a means of
+reconstruction. It is not so with the other: the aim of that is to
+substitute the new rule for the old at a single stroke, and to
+exchange the amount of good realised under the present system, and its
+large possibilities of improvement, for a plunge without any
+preparation into the most extreme form of the problem of carrying on
+the whole round of the operations of social life without the motive
+power which has always hitherto worked the social machinery. It must
+be acknowledged that those who would play this game on the strength of
+their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by any experimental
+verification--who would forcibly deprive all who have now a
+comfortable physical existence of their only present means of
+preserving it, and would brave the frightful bloodshed and misery that
+would ensue if the attempt was resisted--must have a serene confidence
+in their own wisdom on the one hand and a recklessness of other
+people's sufferings on the other, which Robespierre and St. Just,
+hitherto the typical instances of those united attributes, scarcely
+came up to. Nevertheless this scheme has great elements of popularity
+which the more cautious and reasonable form of Socialism has not;
+because what it professes to do it promises to do quickly, and holds
+out hope to the enthusiastic of seeing the whole of their aspirations
+realised in their own time and at a blow.
+
+The peculiarities, however, of the revolutionary form of Socialism
+will be most conveniently examined after the considerations common to
+both the forms have been duly weighed.
+
+The produce of the world could not attain anything approaching to its
+present amount, nor support anything approaching to the present number
+of its inhabitants, except upon two conditions: abundant and costly
+machinery, buildings, and other instruments of production; and the
+power of undertaking long operations and waiting a considerable time
+for their fruits. In other words, there must be a large accumulation
+of capital, both fixed in the implements and buildings, and
+circulating, that is employed in maintaining the laborers and their
+families during the time which elapses before the productive
+operations are completed and the products come in. This necessity
+depends on physical laws, and is inherent in the condition of human
+life; but these requisites of production, the capital, fixed and
+circulating, of the country (to which has to be added the land, and
+all that is contained in it), may either be the collective property of
+those who use it, or may belong to individuals; and the question is,
+which of these arrangements is most conducive to human happiness. What
+is characteristic of Socialism is the joint ownership by all the
+members of the community of the instruments and means of production;
+which carries with it the consequence that the division of the produce
+among the body of owners must be a public act, performed according to
+rules laid down by the community. Socialism by no means excludes
+private ownership of articles of consumption; the exclusive right of
+each to his or her share of the produce when received, either to
+enjoy, to give, or to exchange it. The land, for example, might be
+wholly the property of the community for agricultural and other
+productive purposes, and might be cultivated on their joint account,
+and yet the dwelling assigned to each individual or family as part of
+their remuneration might be as exclusively theirs, while they
+continued to fulfil their share of the common labors, as any one's
+house now is; and not the dwelling only, but any ornamental ground
+which the circumstances of the association allowed to be attached to
+the house for purposes of enjoyment. The distinctive feature of
+Socialism is not that all things are in common, but that production is
+only carried on upon the common account, and that the instruments of
+production are held as common property. The _practicability_ then of
+Socialism, on the scale of Mr. Owen's or M. Fourier's villages, admits
+of no dispute. The attempt to manage the whole production of a nation
+by one central organization is a totally different matter; but a mixed
+agricultural and manufacturing association of from two thousand to
+four thousand inhabitants under any tolerable circumstances of soil
+and climate would be easier to manage than many a joint stock company.
+The question to be considered is, whether this joint management is
+likely to be as efficient and successful as the managements of private
+industry by private capital. And this question has to be considered in
+a double aspect; the efficiency of the directing mind, or minds, and
+that of the simple workpeople. And in order to state this question in
+its simplest form, we will suppose the form of Socialism to be simple
+Communism, _i.e._ equal division of the produce among all the sharers,
+or, according to M. Louis Blanc's still higher standard of justice,
+apportionment of it according to difference of need, but without
+making any difference of reward according to the nature of the duty
+nor according to the supposed merits or services of the individual.
+There are other forms of Socialism, particularly Fourierism, which do,
+on considerations of justice or expediency, allow differences of
+remuneration for different kinds or degrees of service to the
+community; but the consideration of these may be for the present
+postponed.
+
+The difference between the motive powers in the economy of society
+under private property and under Communism would be greatest in the
+case of the directing minds. Under the present system, the direction
+being entirely in the hands of the person or persons who own (or are
+personally responsible for) the capital, the whole benefit of the
+difference between the best administration and the worst under which
+the business can continue to be carried on accrues to the person or
+persons who control the administration: they reap the whole profit of
+good management except so far as their self-interest or liberality
+induce them to share it with their subordinates; and they suffer the
+whole detriment of mismanagement except so far as this may cripple
+their subsequent power of employing labor. This strong personal motive
+to do their very best and utmost for the efficiency and economy of the
+operations, would not exist under Communism; as the managers would
+only receive out of the produce the same equal dividend as the other
+members of the association. What would remain would be the interest
+common to all in so managing affairs as to make the dividend as large
+as possible; the incentives of public spirit, of conscience, and of
+the honor and credit of the managers. The force of these motives,
+especially when combined, is great. But it varies greatly in different
+persons, and is much greater for some purposes than for others. The
+verdict of experience, in the imperfect degree of moral cultivation
+which mankind have yet reached, is that the motive of conscience and
+that of credit and reputation, even when they are of some strength,
+are, in the majority of cases, much stronger as restraining than as
+impelling forces--are more to be depended on for preventing wrong,
+than for calling forth the fullest energies in the pursuit of ordinary
+occupations. In the case of most men the only inducement which has
+been found sufficiently constant and unflagging to overcome the
+ever-present influence of indolence and love of ease, and induce men
+to apply themselves unrelaxingly to work for the most part in itself
+dull and unexciting, is the prospect of bettering their own economic
+condition and that of their family; and the closer the connection of
+every increase of exertion with a corresponding increase of its
+fruits, the more powerful is this motive. To suppose the contrary
+would be to imply that with men as they now are, duty and honor are
+more powerful principles of action than personal interest, not solely
+as to special acts and forbearances respecting which those sentiments
+have been exceptionally cultivated, but in the regulation of their
+whole lives; which no one, I suppose, will affirm. It may be said that
+this inferior efficacy of public and social feelings is not
+inevitable--is the result of imperfect education. This I am quite
+ready to admit, and also that there are even now many individual
+exceptions to the general infirmity. But before these exceptions can
+grow into a majority, or even into a very large minority, much time
+will be required. The education of human beings is one of the most
+difficult of all arts, and this is one of the points in which it has
+hitherto been least successful; moreover improvements in general
+education are necessarily very gradual because the future generation
+is educated by the present, and the imperfections of the teachers set
+an invincible limit to the degree in which they can train their pupils
+to be better than themselves. We must therefore expect, unless we are
+operating upon a select portion of the population, that personal
+interest will for a long time be a more effective stimulus to the most
+vigorous and careful conduct of the industrial business of society
+than motives of a higher character. It will be said that at present
+the greed of personal gain by its very excess counteracts its own end
+by the stimulus it gives to reckless and often dishonest risks. This
+it does, and under Communism that source of evil would generally be
+absent. It is probable, indeed, that enterprise either of a bad or of
+a good kind would be a deficient element, and that business in general
+would fall very much under the dominion of routine; the rather, as the
+performance of duty in such communities has to be enforced by external
+sanctions, the more nearly each person's duty can be reduced to fixed
+rules, the easier it is to hold him to its performance. A circumstance
+which increases the probability of this result is the limited power
+which the managers would have of independent action. They would of
+course hold their authority from the choice of the community, by whom
+their function might at any time be withdrawn from them; and this
+would make it necessary for them, even if not so required by the
+constitution of the community, to obtain the general consent of the
+body before making any change in the established mode of carrying on
+the concern. The difficulty of persuading a numerous body to make a
+change in their accustomed mode of working, of which change the
+trouble is often great, and the risk more obvious to their minds than
+the advantage, would have a great tendency to keep things in their
+accustomed track. Against this it has to be set, that choice by the
+persons who are directly interested in the success of the work, and
+who have practical knowledge and opportunities of judgment, might be
+expected on the average to produce managers of greater skill than the
+chances of birth, which now so often determine who shall be the owner
+of the capital. This may be true; and though it may be replied that
+the capitalist by inheritance can also, like the community, appoint a
+manager more capable than himself, this would only place him on the
+same level of advantage as the community, not on a higher level. But
+it must be said on the other side that under the Communist system the
+persons most qualified for the management would be likely very often
+to hang back from undertaking it. At present the manager, even if he
+be a hired servant, has a very much larger remuneration than the other
+persons concerned in the business; and there are open to his ambition
+higher social positions to which his function of manager is a
+stepping-stone. On the Communist system none of these advantages would
+be possessed by him; he could obtain only the same dividend out of the
+produce of the community's labor as any other member of it; he would
+no longer have the chance of raising himself from a receiver of wages
+into the class of capitalists; and while he could be in no way better
+off than any other laborer, his responsibilities and anxieties would
+be so much greater that a large proportion of mankind would be likely
+to prefer the less onerous position. This difficulty was foreseen by
+Plato as an objection to the system proposed in his Republic of
+community of goods among a governing class; and the motive on which he
+relied for inducing the fit persons to take on themselves, in the
+absence of all the ordinary inducements, the cares and labors of
+government, was the fear of being governed by worse men. This, in
+truth, is the motive which would have to be in the main depended upon;
+the persons most competent to the management would be prompted to
+undertake the office to prevent it from falling into less competent
+hands. And the motive would probably be effectual at times when there
+was an impression that by incompetent management the affairs of the
+community were going to ruin, or even only decidedly deteriorating.
+But this motive could not, as a rule, expect to be called into action
+by the less stringent inducement of merely promoting improvement;
+unless in the case of inventors or schemers eager to try some device
+from which they hoped for great and immediate fruits; and persons of
+this kind are very often unfitted by over-sanguine temper and
+imperfect judgment for the general conduct of affairs, while even when
+fitted for it they are precisely the kind of persons against whom the
+average man is apt to entertain a prejudice, and they would often be
+unable to overcome the preliminary difficulty of persuading the
+community both to adopt their project and to accept them as managers.
+Communistic management would thus be, in all probability, less
+favorable than private management to that striking out of new paths
+and making immediate sacrifices for distant and uncertain advantages,
+which, though seldom unattended with risk, is generally indispensable
+to great improvements in the economic condition of mankind, and even
+to keeping up the existing state in the face of a continual increase
+of the number of mouths to be fed.
+
+We have thus far taken account only of the operation of motives upon
+the managing minds of the association. Let us now consider how the
+case stands in regard to the ordinary workers.
+
+These, under Communism, would have no interest, except their share of
+the general interest, in doing their work honestly and energetically.
+But in this respect matters would be no worse than they now are in
+regard to the great majority of the producing classes. These, being
+paid by fixed wages, are so far from having any direct interest of
+their own in the efficiency of their work, that they have not even
+that share in the general interest which every worker would have in
+the Communistic organization. Accordingly, the inefficiency of hired
+labor, the imperfect manner in which it calls forth the real
+capabilities of the laborers, is matter of common remark. It is true
+that a character for being a good workman is far from being without
+its value, as it tends to give him a preference in employment, and
+sometimes obtains for him higher wages. There are also possibilities
+of rising to the position of foreman, or other subordinate
+administrative posts, which are not only more highly paid than
+ordinary labor, but sometimes open the way to ulterior advantages. But
+on the other side is to be set that under Communism the general
+sentiment of the community, composed of the comrades under whose eyes
+each person works, would be sure to be in favor of good and hard
+working, and unfavorable to laziness, carelessness, and waste. In the
+present system not only is this not the case, but the public opinion
+of the workman class often acts in the very opposite direction: the
+rules of some trade societies actually forbid their members to exceed
+a certain standard of efficiency, lest they should diminish the number
+of laborers required for the work; and for the same reason they often
+violently resist contrivances for economising labor. The change from
+this to a state in which every person would have an interest in
+rendering every other person as industrious, skilful, and careful as
+possible (which would be the case under Communism), would be a change
+very much for the better.
+
+It is, however, to be considered that the principal defects of the
+present system in respect to the efficiency of labor may be corrected,
+and the chief advantages of Communism in that respect may be obtained,
+by arrangements compatible with private property and individual
+competition. Considerable improvement is already obtained by
+piece-work, in the kinds of labor which admit of it. By this the
+workman's personal interest is closely connected with the quantity of
+work he turns out--not so much with its quality, the security for
+which still has to depend on the employer's vigilance; neither does
+piece-work carry with it the public opinion of the workman class,
+which is often, on the contrary, strongly opposed to it, as a means of
+(as they think) diminishing the market for laborers. And there is
+really good ground for their dislike of piece-work, if, as is alleged,
+it is a frequent practice of employers, after using piece-work to
+ascertain the utmost which a good workman can do, to fix the price of
+piece-work so low that by doing that utmost he is not able to earn
+more than they would be obliged to give him as day wages for ordinary
+work.
+
+But there is a far more complete remedy than piece-work for the
+disadvantages of hired labor, viz., what is now called industrial
+partnership--the admission of the whole body of laborers to a
+participation in the profits, by distributing among all who share in
+the work, in the form of a percentage on their earnings, the whole or
+a fixed portion of the gains after a certain remuneration has been
+allowed to the capitalist. This plan has been found of admirable
+efficacy, both in this country and abroad. It has enlisted the
+sentiments of the workmen employed on the side of the most careful
+regard by all of them to the general interest of the concern; and by
+its joint effect in promoting zealous exertion and checking waste, it
+has very materially increased the remuneration of every description of
+labor in the concerns in which it has been adopted. It is evident that
+this system admits of indefinite extension and of an indefinite
+increase in the share of profits assigned to the laborers, short of
+that which would leave to the managers less than the needful degree of
+personal interest in the success of the concern. It is even likely
+that when such arrangements become common, many of these concerns
+would at some period or another, on the death or retirement of the
+chief's pass, by arrangement, into the state of purely co-operative
+associations.
+
+It thus appears that as far as concerns the motives to exertion in the
+general body, Communism has no advantage which may not be reached
+under private property, while as respects the managing heads it is at
+a considerable disadvantage. It has also some disadvantages which seem
+to be inherent in it, through the necessity under which it lies of
+deciding in a more or less arbitrary manner questions which, on the
+present system, decide themselves, often badly enough but
+spontaneously.
+
+It is a simple rule, and under certain aspects a just one, to give
+equal payment to all who share in the work. But this is a very
+imperfect justice unless the work also is apportioned equally. Now the
+many different kinds of work required in every society are very
+unequal in hardness and unpleasantness. To measure these against one
+another, so as to make quality equivalent to quantity, is so difficult
+that Communists generally propose that all should work by turns at
+every kind of labor. But this involves an almost complete sacrifice of
+the economic advantages of the division of employments, advantages
+which are indeed frequently over-estimated (or rather the counter
+considerations are under-estimated) by political economists, but which
+are nevertheless, in the point of view of the productiveness of labor,
+very considerable, for the double reason that the co-operation of
+employment enables the work to distribute itself with some regard to
+the special capacities and qualifications of the worker, and also that
+every worker acquires greater skill and rapidity in one kind of work
+by confining himself to it. The arrangement, therefore, which is
+deemed indispensable to a just distribution would probably be a very
+considerable disadvantage in respect of production. But further, it is
+still a very imperfect standard of justice to demand the same amount
+of work from every one. People have unequal capacities of work, both
+mental and bodily, and what is a light task for one is an
+insupportable burthen to another. It is necessary, therefore, that
+there should be a dispensing power, an authority competent to grant
+exemptions from the ordinary amount of work, and to proportion tasks
+in some measure to capabilities. As long as there are any lazy or
+selfish persons who like better to be worked for by others than to
+work, there will be frequent attempts to obtain exemptions by favor or
+fraud, and the frustration of these attempts will be an affair of
+considerable difficulty, and will by no means be always successful.
+These inconveniences would be little felt, for some time at least, in
+communities composed of select persons, earnestly desirous of the
+success of the experiment; but plans for the regeneration of society
+must consider average human beings, and not only them but the large
+residuum of persons greatly below the average in the personal and
+social virtues. The squabbles and ill-blood which could not fail to be
+engendered by the distribution of work whenever such persons have to
+be dealt with, would be a great abatement from the harmony and
+unanimity which Communists hope would be found among the members of
+their association. That concord would, even in the most fortunate
+circumstances, be much more liable to disturbance than Communists
+suppose. The institution provides that there shall be no quarrelling
+about material interests; individualism is excluded from that
+department of affairs. But there are other departments from which no
+institutions can exclude it: there will still be rivalry for
+reputation and for personal power. When selfish ambition is excluded
+from the field in which, with most men, it chiefly exercises itself,
+that of riches and pecuniary interest, it would betake itself with
+greater intensity to the domain still open to it, and we may expect
+that the struggles for pre-eminence and for influence in the
+management would be of great bitterness when the personal passions,
+diverted from their ordinary channel, are driven to seek their
+principal gratification in that other direction. For these various
+reasons it is probable that a Communist association would frequently
+fail to exhibit the attractive picture of mutual love and unity of
+will and feeling which we are often told by Communists to expect, but
+would often be torn by dissension and not unfrequently broken up by
+it.
+
+Other and numerous sources of discord are inherent in the necessity
+which the Communist principle involves, of deciding by the general
+voice questions of the utmost importance to every one, which on the
+present system can be and are left to individuals to decide, each for
+his own case. As an example, take the subject of education. All
+Socialists are strongly impressed with the all-importance of the
+training given to the young, not only for the reasons which apply
+universally, but because their demands being much greater than those
+of any other system upon the intelligence and morality of the
+individual citizen, they have even more at stake than any other
+societies on the excellence of their educational arrangements. Now
+under Communism these arrangements would have to be made for every
+citizen by the collective body, since individual parents, supposing
+them to prefer some other mode of educating their children, would
+have no private means of paying for it, and would be limited to what
+they could do by their own personal teaching and influence. But every
+adult member of the body would have an equal voice in determining the
+collective system designed for the benefit of all. Here, then, is a
+most fruitful source of discord in every association. All who had any
+opinion or preference as to the education they would desire for their
+own children, would have to rely for their chance of obtaining it upon
+the influence they could exercise in the joint decision of the
+community.
+
+It is needless to specify a number of other important questions
+affecting the mode of employing the productive resources of the
+association, the conditions of social life, the relations of the body
+with other associations, &c., on which difference of opinion, often
+irreconcilable, would be likely to arise. But even the dissensions
+which might be expected would be a far less evil to the prospects of
+humanity than a delusive unanimity produced by the prostration of all
+individual opinions and wishes before the decree of the majority. The
+obstacles to human progression are always great, and require a
+concurrence of favorable circumstances to overcome them; but an
+indispensable condition of their being overcome is, that human nature
+should have freedom to expand spontaneously in various directions,
+both in thought and practice; that people should both think for
+themselves and try experiments for themselves, and should not resign
+into the hands of rulers, whether acting in the name of a few or of
+the majority, the business of thinking for them, and of prescribing
+how they shall act. But in Communist associations private life would
+be brought in a most unexampled degree within the dominion of public
+authority, and there would be less scope for the development of
+individual character and individual preferences than has hitherto
+existed among the full citizens of any state belonging to the
+progressive branches of the human family. Already in all societies the
+compression of individuality by the majority is a great and growing
+evil; it would probably be much greater under Communism, except so far
+as it might be in the power of individuals to set bounds to it by
+selecting to belong to a community of persons like-minded with
+themselves.
+
+From these various considerations I do not seek to draw any inference
+against the possibility that Communistic production is capable of
+being at some future time the form of society best adapted to the
+wants and circumstances of mankind. I think that this is, and will
+long be an open question, upon which fresh light will continually be
+obtained, both by trial of the Communistic principle under favorable
+circumstances, and by the improvements which will be gradually
+effected in the working of the existing system, that of private
+ownership. The one certainty is, that Communism, to be successful,
+requires a high standard of both moral and intellectual education in
+all the members of the community--moral, to qualify them for doing
+their part honestly and energetically in the labor of life under no
+inducement but their share in the general interest of the
+association, and their feelings of duty and sympathy towards it;
+intellectual, to make them capable of estimating distant interests and
+entering into complex considerations, sufficiently at least to be able
+to discriminate, in these matters, good counsel from bad. Now I reject
+altogether the notion that it is impossible for education and
+cultivation such as is implied in these things to be made the
+inheritance of every person in the nation; but I am convinced that it
+is very difficult, and that the passage to it from our present
+condition can only be slow. I admit the plea that in the points of
+moral education on which the success of communism depends, the present
+state of society is demoralizing, and that only a Communistic
+association can effectually train mankind for Communism. It is for
+Communism, then, to prove, by practical experiment, its power of
+giving this training. Experiments alone can show whether there is as
+yet in any portion of the population a sufficiently high level of
+moral cultivation to make Communism succeed, and to give to the next
+generation among themselves the education necessary to keep that high
+level permanently If Communist associations show that they can be
+durable and prosperous, they will multiply, and will probably be
+adopted by successive portions of the population of the more advanced
+countries as they become morally fitted for that mode of life. But to
+force unprepared populations into Communist societies, even if a
+political revolution gave the power to make such an attempt, would end
+in disappointment.
+
+If practical trial is necessary to test the capabilities of Communism,
+it is no less required for those other forms of Socialism which
+recognize the difficulties of Communism and contrive means to surmount
+them. The principal of these is Fourierism, a system which, if only as
+a specimen of intellectual ingenuity, is highly worthy of the
+attention of any student, either of society or of the human mind.
+There is scarcely an objection or a difficulty which Fourier did not
+forsee, and against which he did not make provision beforehand by
+self-acting contrivances, grounded, however, upon a less high
+principle of distributive justice than that of Communism, since he
+admits inequalities of distribution and individual ownership of
+capital, but not the arbitrary disposal of it. The great problem which
+he grapples with is how to make labor attractive, since, if this
+could be done, the principal difficulty of Socialism would be
+overcome. He maintains that no kind of useful labor is necessarily or
+universally repugnant, unless either excessive in amount or devoid of
+the stimulus of companionship and emulation, or regarded by mankind
+with contempt. The workers in a Fourierist village are to class
+themselves spontaneously in groups, each group undertaking a different
+kind of work, and the same person may be a member not only of one
+group but of any number; a certain minimum having first been set apart
+for the subsistence of every member of the community, whether capable
+or not of labor, the society divides the remainder of the produce
+among the different groups, in such shares as it finds attract to each
+the amount of labor required, and no more; if there is too great a run
+upon particular groups it is a sign that those groups are
+over-remunerated relatively to others; if any are neglected their
+remuneration must be made higher. The share of produce assigned to
+each group is divided in fixed proportions among three elements--labor,
+capital, and talent; the part assigned to talent being awarded by the
+suffrages of the group itself, and it is hoped that among the variety
+of human capacities all, or nearly all, will be qualified to excel in
+some group or other. The remuneration for capital is to be such as is
+found sufficient to induce savings from individual consumption, in
+order to increase the common stock to such point as is desired. The
+number and ingenuity of the contrivances for meeting minor
+difficulties, and getting rid of minor inconveniencies, is very
+remarkable. By means of these various provisions it is the expectation
+of Fourierists that the personal inducements to exertion for the public
+interest, instead of being taken away, would be made much greater than
+at present, since every increase of the service rendered would be much
+more certain of leading to increase of reward than it is now, when
+accidents of position have so much influence. The efficiency of labor,
+they therefore expect, would be unexampled, while the saving of labor
+would be prodigious, by diverting to useful occupations that which is
+now wasted on things useless or hurtful, and by dispensing with the
+vast number of superfluous distributors, the buying and selling for the
+whole community being managed by a single agency. The free choice of
+individuals as to their manner of life would be no further interfered
+with than would be necessary for gaining the full advantages of
+co-operation in the industrial operations. Altogether, the picture of a
+Fourierist community is both attractive in itself and requires less
+from common humanity than any other known system of Socialism; and it
+is much to be desired that the scheme should have that fair trial which
+alone can test the workableness of any new scheme of social life.[9]
+
+The result of our review of the various difficulties of Socialism has
+led us to the conclusion that the various schemes for managing the
+productive resources of the country by public instead of private
+agency have a case for a trial, and some of them may eventually
+establish their claims to preference over the existing order of
+things, but that they are at present workable only by the _elite_ of
+mankind, and have yet to prove their power of training mankind at
+large to the state of improvement which they presuppose. Far more, of
+course, may this be said of the more ambitious plan which aims at
+taking possession of the whole land and capital of the country, and
+beginning at once to administer it on the public account. Apart from
+all consideration of injustice to the present possessors, the very
+idea of conducting the whole industry of a country by direction from a
+single centre is so obviously chimerical, that nobody ventures to
+propose any mode in which it should be done; and it can hardly be
+doubted that if the revolutionary Socialists attained their immediate
+object, and actually had the whole property of the country at their
+disposal, they would find no other practicable mode of exercising
+their power over it than that of dividing it into portions, each to be
+made over to the administration of a small Socialist community. The
+problem of management, which we have seen to be so difficult even to a
+select population well prepared beforehand, would be thrown down to be
+solved as best it could by aggregations united only by locality, or
+taken indiscriminately from the population, including all the
+malefactors, all the idlest and most vicious, the most incapable of
+steady industry, forethought, or self-control, and a majority who,
+though not equally degraded, are yet, in the opinion of Socialists
+themselves as far as regards the qualities essential for the success
+of Socialism, profoundly demoralised by the existing state of society.
+It is saying but little to say that the introduction of Socialism
+under such conditions could have no effect but disastrous failure, and
+its apostles could have only the consolation that the order of society
+as it now exists would have perished first, and all who benefit by it
+would be involved in the common ruin--a consolation which to some of
+them would probably be real, for if appearances can be trusted the
+animating principle of too many of the revolutionary Socialists is
+hate; a very excusable hatred of existing evils, which would vent
+itself by putting an end to the present system at all costs even to
+those who suffer by it, in the hope that out of chaos would arise a
+better Kosmos, and in the impatience of desperation respecting any
+more gradual improvement. They are unaware that chaos is the very most
+unfavorable position for setting out in the construction of a Kosmos,
+and that many ages of conflict, violence, and tyrannical oppression
+of the weak by the strong must intervene; they know not that they
+would plunge mankind into the state of nature so forcibly described by
+Hobbes (_Leviathan_, Part I. ch. xiii.), where every man is enemy to
+every man:--
+
+    "In such condition there is no place for industry, because the
+    fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the
+    earth, no navigation, no use of the commodities that may be
+    imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of
+    moving and removing such things as require much force, no
+    knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts,
+    no letters, no society; and, which is worst of all, continual
+    fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary,
+    poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
+
+If the poorest and most wretched members of a so-called civilised
+society are in as bad a condition as every one would be in that worst
+form of barbarism produced by the dissolution of civilised life, it
+does not follow that the way to raise them would be to reduce all
+others to the same miserable state. On the contrary, it is by the aid
+of the first who have risen that so many others have escaped from the
+general lot, and it is only by better organization of the same process
+that it may be hoped in time to succeed in raising the remainder.
+
+
+THE IDEA OF PRIVATE PROPERTY NOT FIXED BUT VARIABLE.
+
+The preceding considerations appear sufficient to show that an entire
+renovation of the social fabric, such as is contemplated by Socialism,
+establishing the economic constitution of society upon an entirely new
+basis, other than that of private property and competition, however
+valuable as an ideal, and even as a prophecy of ultimate
+possibilities, is not available as a present resource, since it
+requires from those who are to carry on the new order of things
+qualities both moral and intellectual, which require to be tested in
+all, and to be created in most; and this cannot be done by an Act of
+Parliament, but must be, on the most favorable supposition, a work of
+considerable time. For a long period to come the principle of
+individual property will be in possession of the field; and even if in
+any country a popular movement were to place Socialists at the head of
+a revolutionary government, in however many ways they might violate
+private property, the institution itself would survive, and would
+either be accepted by them or brought back by their expulsion, for the
+plain reason that people will not lose their hold of what is at
+present their sole reliance for subsistence and security until a
+substitute for it has been got into working order. Even those, if any,
+who had shared among themselves what was the property of others would
+desire to keep what they had acquired, and to give back to property in
+the new hands the sacredness which they had not recognised in the old.
+
+But though, for these reasons, individual property has presumably a
+long term before it, if only of provisional existence, we are not,
+therefore, to conclude that it must exist during that whole term
+unmodified, or that all the rights now regarded as appertaining to
+property belong to it inherently, and must endure while it endures. On
+the contrary, it is both the duty and the interest of those who derive
+the most direct benefit from the laws of property to give impartial
+consideration to all proposals for rendering those laws in any way
+less onerous to the majority. This, which would in any case be an
+obligation of justice, is an injunction of prudence also, in order to
+place themselves in the right against the attempts which are sure to
+be frequent to bring the Socialist forms of society prematurely into
+operation.
+
+One of the mistakes oftenest committed, and which are the sources of
+the greatest practical errors in human affairs, is that of supposing
+that the same name always stands for the same aggregation of ideas. No
+word has been the subject of more of this kind of misunderstanding
+than the word property. It denotes in every state of society the
+largest powers of exclusive use or exclusive control over things (and
+sometimes, unfortunately, over persons) which the law accords, or
+which custom, in that state of society, recognizes; but these powers
+of exclusive use and control are very various, and differ greatly in
+different countries and in different states of society.
+
+For instance, in early states of society, the right of property did
+not include the right of bequest. The power of disposing of property
+by will was in most countries of Europe a rather late institution; and
+long after it was introduced it continued to be limited in favor of
+what were called natural heirs. Where bequest is not permitted,
+individual property is only a life interest. And in fact, as has been
+so well and fully set forth by Sir Henry Maine in his most instructive
+work on Ancient Law, the primitive idea of property was that it
+belonged to the family, not the individual. The head of the family had
+the management and was the person who really exercised the proprietary
+rights. As in other respects, so in this, he governed the family with
+nearly despotic power. But he was not free so to exercise his power as
+to defeat the co-proprietors of the other portions; he could not so
+dispose of the property as to deprive them of the joint enjoyment or
+of the succession. By the laws and customs of some nations the
+property could not be alienated without the consent of the male
+children; in other cases the child could by law demand a division of
+the property and the assignment to him of his share, as in the story
+of the Prodigal Son. If the association kept together after the death
+of the head, some other member of it, not always his son, but often
+the eldest of the family, the strongest, or the one selected by the
+rest, succeeded to the management and to the managing rights, all the
+others retaining theirs as before. If, on the other hand the body
+broke up into separate families, each of these took away with it a
+part of the property. I say the property, not the inheritance, because
+the process was a mere continuance of existing rights, not a creation
+of new; the manager's share alone lapsed to the association.
+
+Then, again, in regard to proprietary rights over immovables (the
+principal kind of property in a rude age) these rights were of very
+varying extent and duration. By the Jewish law property in immovables
+was only a temporary concession; on the Sabbatical year it returned to
+the common stock to be redistributed; though we may surmise that in
+the historical times of the Jewish state this rule may have been
+successfully evaded. In many countries of Asia, before European ideas
+intervened, nothing existed to which the expression property in land,
+as we understand the phrase, is strictly applicable. The ownership was
+broken up among several distinct parties, whose rights were determined
+rather by custom than by law. The government was part owner, having
+the right to a heavy rent. Ancient ideas and even ancient laws limited
+the government share to some particular fraction of the gross produce,
+but practically there was no fixed limit. The government might make
+over its share to an individual, who then became possessed of the
+right of collection and all the other rights of the state, but not
+those of any private person connected with the soil. These private
+rights were of various kinds. The actual cultivators or such of them
+as had been long settled on the land, had a right to retain
+possession; it was held unlawful to evict them while they paid the
+rent--a rent not in general fixed by agreement, but by the custom of
+the neighborhood. Between the actual cultivators and the state, or the
+substitute to whom the state had transferred its rights, there were
+intermediate persons with rights of various extent. There were
+officers of government who collected the state's share of the produce,
+sometimes for large districts, who, though bound to pay over to
+government all they collected, after deducting a percentage, were
+often hereditary officers. There were also, in many cases village
+communities, consisting of the reputed descendants of the first
+settlers of a village, who shared among themselves either the land or
+its produce according to rules established by custom, either
+cultivating it themselves or employing others to cultivate it for
+them, and whose rights in the land approached nearer to those of a
+landed proprietor, as understood in England, than those of any other
+party concerned. But the proprietary right of the village was not
+individual, but collective; inalienable (the rights of individual
+sharers could only be sold or mortgaged with the consent of the
+community) and governed by fixed rules. In mediaeval Europe almost all
+land was held from the sovereign on tenure of service, either military
+or agricultural; and in Great Britain even now, when the services as
+well as all the reserved rights of the sovereign have long since
+fallen into disuse or been commuted for taxation, the theory of the
+law does not acknowledge an absolute right of property in land in any
+individual; the fullest landed proprietor known to the law, the
+freeholder, is but a "tenant" of the Crown. In Russia, even when the
+cultivators of the soil were serfs of the landed proprietor, his
+proprietary right in the land was limited by rights of theirs
+belonging to them as a collective body managing its own affairs, and
+with which he could not interfere. And in most of the countries of
+continental Europe when serfage was abolished or went out of use,
+those who had cultivated the land as serfs remained in possession of
+rights as well as subject to obligations. The great land reforms of
+Stein and his successors in Prussia consisted in abolishing both the
+rights and the obligations, and dividing the land bodily between the
+proprietor and the peasant, instead of leaving each of them with a
+limited right over the whole. In other cases, as in Tuscany, the
+_metayer_ farmer is virtually co-proprietor with the landlord, since
+custom, though not law, guarantees to him a permanent possession and
+half the gross produce, so long as he fulfils the customary conditions
+of his tenure.
+
+Again: if rights of property over the same things are of different
+extent in different countries, so also are they exercised over
+different things. In all countries at a former time, and in some
+countries still, the right of property extended and extends to the
+ownership of human beings. There has often been property in public
+trusts, as in judicial offices, and a vast multitude of others in
+France before the Revolution; there are still a few patent offices in
+Great Britain, though I believe they will cease by operation of law on
+the death of the present holders; and we are only now abolishing
+property in army rank. Public bodies, constituted and endowed for
+public purposes, still claim the same inviolable right of property in
+their estates which individuals have in theirs, and though a sound
+political morality does not acknowledge this claim, the law supports
+it. We thus see that the right of property is differently interpreted,
+and held to be of different extent, in different times and places;
+that the conception entertained of it is a varying conception, has
+been frequently revised, and may admit of still further revision. It
+is also to be noticed that the revisions which it has hitherto
+undergone in the progress of society have generally been improvements.
+When, therefore, it is maintained, rightly or wrongly, that some
+change or modification in the powers exercised over things by the
+persons legally recognised as their proprietors would be beneficial to
+the public and conducive to the general improvement, it is no good
+answer to this merely to say that the proposed change conflicts with
+the idea of property. The idea of property is not some one thing,
+identical throughout history and incapable of alteration, but is
+variable like all other creations of the human mind; at any given time
+it is a brief expression denoting the rights over things conferred by
+the law or custom of some given society at that time; but neither on
+this point nor on any other has the law and custom of a given time and
+place a claim to be stereotyped for ever. A proposed reform in laws
+or customs is not necessarily objectionable because its adoption would
+imply, not the adaptation of all human affairs to the existing idea of
+property, but the adaptation of existing ideas of property to the
+growth and improvement of human affairs. This is said without
+prejudice to the equitable claim of proprietors to be compensated by
+the state for such legal rights of a proprietary nature as they may be
+dispossessed of for the public advantage. That equitable claim, the
+grounds and the just limits of it, are a subject by itself, and as
+such will be discussed hereafter. Under this condition, however,
+society is fully entitled to abrogate or alter any particular right of
+property which on sufficient consideration it judges to stand in the
+way of the public good. And assuredly the terrible case which, as we
+saw in a former chapter, Socialists are able to make out against the
+present economic order of society, demands a full consideration of all
+means by which the institution may have a chance of being made to work
+in a manner more beneficial to that large portion of society which at
+present enjoys the least share of its direct benefits.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] See Louis Blanc, "Organisation du Travail," 4me edition, pp. 6, 11,
+53, 57.
+
+[2] See Louis Blanc, "Organisation du Travail," pp. 58-61, 65-66, 4me
+edition. Paris, 1845.
+
+[3] See Considerant, "Destinee Sociale," tome i. pp. 35, 36, 37, 3me
+ed. Paris, 1848.
+
+[4] See "Destinee Sociale," par V. Considerant, tome i. pp. 38-40.
+
+[5] See Considerant, "Destinee Sociale," tome i. pp. 43-51, 3me.
+edition, Paris, 1848.
+
+[6] Considerant, "Destinee Sociale," tome i., pp. 59, 60.
+
+[7] Considerant, "Destinee Sociale," tome i., pp. 60, 61.
+
+[8] Considerant, "Destinee Sociale," tome i., p. 134.
+
+[9] The principles of Fourierism are clearly set forth and powerfully
+defended in the various writings of M. Victor Considerant, especially
+that entitled _La Destinee Sociale_; but the curious inquirer will do
+well to study them in the writings of Fourier himself; where he will
+find unmistakable proofs of genius, mixed, however with the wildest and
+most unscientific fancies respecting the physical world, and much
+interesting but rash speculation on the past and future history of
+humanity. It is proper to add that on some important social questions,
+for instance on marriage, Fourier had peculiar opinions, which,
+however, as he himself declares, are quite independent of, and
+separable from, the principles of his industrial system.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page  14: founddation replaced with foundation            |
+    | Page  15: Congressses replaced with Congresses            |
+    | Page  22: moreever replaced with moreover                 |
+    | Page  28: Dominitian replaced with Domitian               |
+    | Page  42: monoply replaced with monopoly                  |
+    | Page  44: extention replaced with extension               |
+    | Page  84: conditon replaced with condition                |
+    | Page  86: occassionally replaced with occasionally        |
+    | Page  94: wisdon replaced with wisdom                     |
+    | Page  96: recieved replaced with received                 |
+    | Page 123: FN 9: Considerant replaced with Considerant     |
+    | Page 123: FN 9: Destinee replaced with Destinee           |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Socialism, by John Stuart Mill
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