the second immediately attends to the cooking, takes charge of the household affairs, and sees to the provisions, beds, and clothes; provided the stronger does not abuse his superiority by enslaving and ill-treating his companion, their social condition will be perfectly equal.Thus, through exchange of services, the inequalities of Nature neutralize each other, talents associate, and forces balance.Violence and inertia are found only among the poor and the aristocratic.And in that lies the philosophy of political economy, the mystery of human brotherhood._Hic est sapientia_.Let us pass from the hypothetical state of pure Nature into civilization.
The proprietor of the soil, who produces, I will suppose with the economists, by lending his instrument, receives at the foundation of a society so many bushels of grain for each acre of arable land.As long as labor is weak, and the variety of its products small, the proprietor is powerful in comparison with the laborers; he has ten times, one hundred times, the portion of an honest man.But let labor, by multiplying its inventions, multiply its enjoyments and wants, and the proprietor, if he wishes to enjoy the new products, will be obliged to reduce his income every day; and since the first products tend rather to depreciate than to rise in value,--in consequence of the continual addition of the new ones, which may be regarded as supplements of the first ones,--it follows that the idle proprietor grows poor as fast as public prosperity increases.
"Incomes" (I like to quote you, sir, because it is impossible to give too good an authority for these elementary principles of economy, and because I cannot express them better myself), "incomes," you have said, "tend to disappear as capital increases.He who possesses to-day an income of twenty thousand pounds is not nearly as rich as he who possessed the same amount fifty years ago.The time is coming when all property will be a burden to the idle, and will necessarily pass into the hands of the able and industrious...." Lecture of December 22.
In order to live as a proprietor, or to consume without producing, it is necessary, then, to live upon the labor of another; in other words, it is necessary to kill the laborer.It is upon this principle that proprietors of those varieties of capital which are of primary necessity increase their farm-rents as fast as industry develops, much more careful of their privileges in that respect, than those economists who, in order to strengthen property, advocate a reduction of interest.But the crime is unavailing: labor and production increase; soon the proprietor will be forced to labor, and then property is lost.
The proprietor is a man who, having absolute control of an instrument of production, claims the right to enjoy the product of the instrument without using it himself.To this end he lends it; and we have just seen that from this loan the laborer derives a power of exchange, which sooner or later will destroy the right of increase.In the first place, the proprietor is obliged to allow the laborer a portion of the product, for without it the laborer could not live.Soon the latter, through the development of his industry, finds a means of regaining the greater portion of that which he gives to the proprietor; so that at last, the objects of enjoyment increasing continually, while the income of the idler remains the same, the proprietor, having exhausted his resources, begins to think of going to work himself.Then the victory of the producer is certain.Labor commences to tip the balance towards its own side, and commerce leads to equilibrium.
Man's instinct cannot err; as, in liberty, exchange of functions leads inevitably to equality among men, so commerce--or exchange of products, which is identical with exchange of functions--is a new cause of equality.As long as the proprietor does not labor, however small his income, he enjoys a privilege; the laborer's welfare may be equal to his, but equality of conditions does not exist.But as soon as the proprietor becomes a producer,--since he can exchange his special product only with his tenant or his _commandite_,--sooner or later this tenant, this _exploited_ man, if violence is not done him, will make a profit out of the proprietor, and will oblige him to restore--in the exchange of their respective products--the interest on his capital.So that, balancing one injustice by another, the contracting parties will be equal.Labor and exchange, when liberty prevails, lead, then, to equality of fortunes; mutuality of services neutralizes privilege.That is why despots in all ages and countries have assumed control of commerce; they wished to prevent the labor of their subjects from becoming an obstacle to the rapacity of tyrants.
Up to this point, all takes place in the natural order; there is no premeditation, no artifice.The whole proceeding is governed by the laws of necessity alone.Proprietors and laborers act only in obedience to their wants.Thus, the exercise of the right of increase, the art of robbing the producer, depends--during this first period of civilization-- upon physical violence, murder, and war.
But at this point a gigantic and complicated conspiracy is hatched against the capitalists.The weapon of the EXPLOITERS is met by the EXPLOITED with the instrument of commerce,--a marvellous invention, denounced at its origin by the moralists who favored property, but inspired without doubt by the genius of labor, by the Minerva of the proletaires.
