HISTORICAL COMMENT.--The struggle between colonial and native sugars furnishes us a striking example of this impossibility of property.Leave these two industries to themselves, and the native manufacturer will be ruined by the colonist.To maintain the beet-root, the cane must be taxed: to protect the property of the one, it is necessary to injure the property of the other.
The most remarkable feature of this business is precisely that to which the least attention is paid; namely, that, in one way or another, property has to be violated.Impose on each industry a proportional tax, so as to preserve a balance in the market, and you create a MAXIMUM PRICE,--you attack property in two ways.
On the one hand, your tax interferes with the liberty of trade;on the other, it does not recognize equality of proprietors.
Indemnify the beet-root, you violate the property of the tax-payer.Cultivate the two varieties of sugar at the nation's expense, just as different varieties of tobacco are cultivated,--you abolish one species of property.This last course would be the simpler and better one; but, to induce the nations to adopt it, requires such a co-operation of able minds and generous hearts as is at present out of the question.
Competition, sometimes called liberty of trade,--in a word, property in exchange,--will be for a long time the basis of our commercial legislation; which, from the economical point of view, embraces all civil laws and all government.Now, what is competition? A duel in a closed field, where arms are the test of right.
"Who is the liar,--the accused or the accuser?" said our barbarous ancestors."Let them fight it out," replied the still more barbarous judge; "the stronger is right."Which of us two shall sell spices to our neighbor? "Let each offer them for sale," cries the economist; "the sharper, or the more cunning, is the more honest man, and the better merchant."S
TENTH PROPOSITION.
Property is impossible, because it is the Negation of equality.
The development of this proposition will be the resume of the preceding ones.
1.It is a principle of economical justice, that PRODUCTS AREBOUGHT ONLY BY PRODUCTS.Property, being capable of defence only on the ground that it produces utility, is, since it produces nothing, for ever condemned.
2.It is an economical law, that LABOR MUST BE BALANCED BYPRODUCT.It is a fact that, with property, production costs more than it is worth.
3.Another economical law: THE CAPITAL BEING GIVEN, PRODUCTIONIS MEASURED, NOT BY THE AMOUNT OF CAPITAL, BUT BY PRODUCTIVECAPACITY.Property, requiring income to be always proportional to capital without regard to labor, does not recognize this relation of equality between effect and cause.
4 and 5.Like the insect which spins its silk, the laborer never produces for himself alone.Property, demanding a double product and unable to obtain it, robs the laborer, and kills him.
6.Nature has given to every man but one mind, one heart, one will.Property, granting to one individual a plurality of votes, supposes him to have a plurality of minds.
7.All consumption which is not reproductive of utility is destruction.Property, whether it consumes or hoards or capitalizes, is productive of INUTILITY,--the cause of sterility and death.
8.The satisfaction of a natural right always gives rise to an equation; in other words, the right to a thing is necessarily balanced by the possession of the thing.Thus, between the right to liberty and the condition of a free man there is a balance, an equation; between the right to be a father and paternity, an equation; between the right to security and the social guarantee, an equation.But between the right of increase and the receipt of this increase there is never an equation; for every new increase carries with it the right to another, the latter to a third, and so on for ever.Property, never being able to accomplish its object, is a right against Nature and against reason.
9.Finally, property is not self-existent.An extraneous cause--either FORCE or FRAUD--is necessary to its life and action.
In other words, property is not equal to property: it is a negation--a delusion--NOTHING.
