The theory of M.Considerant has this remarkable feature, that, in attempting to satisfy at the same time the claims of both laborers and proprietors, it infringes alike upon the rights of the former and the privileges of the latter.In the first place, the author lays it down as a principle: "1.That the use of the land belongs to each member of the race; that it is a natural and imprescriptible right, similar in all respects to the right to the air and the sunshine.2.That the right to labor is equally fundamental, natural, and imprescriptible." I have shown that the recognition of this double right would be the death of property.I denounce M.Considerant to the proprietors!
But M.Considerant maintains that the right to labor creates the right of property, and this is the way he reasons:--Major Premise.--"Every man legitimately possesses the thing which his labor, his skill,--or, in more general terms, his action,--has created."To which M.Considerant adds, by way of comment: "Indeed, the land not having been created by man, it follows from the fundamental principle of property, that the land, being given to the race in common, can in no wise be the exclusive and legitimate property of such and such individuals, who were not the creators of this value."If I am not mistaken, there is no one to whom this proposition, at first sight and in its entirety, does not seem utterly irrefutable.Reader, distrust the syllogism.
First, I observe that the words LEGITIMATELY POSSESSES signify to the author's mind is LEGITIMATE PROPRIETOR;_ otherwise the argument, being intended to prove the legitimacyof property, would have no meaning.I might here raise the question of the difference between property and possession, and call upon M.
Considerant, before going further, to define the one and the other; but I pass on.
This first proposition is doubly false.1.In that it asserts the act of CREATION to be the only basis of property.2.In that it regards this act as sufficient in all cases to authorize the right of property.
And, in the first place, if man may be proprietor of the game which he does not create, but which he KILLS; of the fruits which he does not create, but which he GATHERS; of the vegetables which he does not create, but which he PLANTS; of the animals which he does not create, but which he REARS,--it is conceivable that men may in like manner become proprietors of the land which they do not create, but which they clear and fertilize.The act of creation, then, is not NECESSARY to the acquisition of the right of property.I say further, that this act alone is not always sufficient, and I prove it by the second premise of M.Considerant:--Minor Premise.--"Suppose that on an isolated island, on the soil of a nation, or over the whole face of the earth (the extent of the scene of action does not affect our judgment of the facts), a generation of human beings devotes itself for the first time to industry, agriculture, manufactures, &c.This generation, by its labor, intelligence, and activity, creates products, develops values which did not exist on the uncultivated land.Is it not perfectly clear that the property of this industrious generation will stand on a basis of right, if the value or wealth produced by the activity of all be distributed among the producers, according to each one's assistance in the creation of the general wealth? That is unquestionable."That is quite questionable.For this value or wealth, PRODUCED BY THE ACTIVITY OF ALL, is by the very fact of its creation COLLECTIVE wealth, the use of which, like that of the land, may be divided, but which as property remains UNDIVIDED.And why this undivided ownership? Because the society which creates is itself indivisible,--a permanent unit, incapable of reduction to fractions.And it is this unity of society which makes the land common property, and which, as M.
Considerant says, renders its use imprescriptible in the case of every individual.Suppose, indeed, that at a given time the soil should be equally divided; the very next moment this division, if it allowed the right of property, would become illegitimate.
Should there be the slightest irregularity in the method of transfer, men, members of society, imprescriptible possessors of the land, might be deprived at one blow of property, possession, and the means of production.In short, property in capital is indivisible, and consequently inalienable, not necessarily when the capital is UNCREATED, but when it is COMMON or COLLECTIVE.
