VI.The necessary conditions of commerce are the liberty of the contracting parties and the equivalence of the products exchanged.Now, value being expressed by the amount of time and outlay which each product costs, and liberty being inviolable, the wages of laborers (like their rights and duties) should be equal.
VII.Products are bought only by products.Now, the condition of all exchange being equivalence of products, profit is impossible and unjust.Observe this elementary principle of economy, and pauperism, luxury, oppression, vice, crime, and hunger will disappear from our midst.
VIII.Men are associated by the physical and mathematical law of production, before they are voluntarily associated by choice.
Therefore, equality of conditions is demanded by justice; that is, by strict social law: esteem, friendship, gratitude, admiration, all fall within the domain of EQUITABLE or PROPORTIONAL law only.
IX.Free association, liberty--whose sole function is to maintain equality in the means of production and equivalence in exchanges--is the only possible, the only just, the only true form of society.
X.Politics is the science of liberty.The government of man by man (under whatever name it be disguised) is oppression.Society finds its highest perfection in the union of order with anarchy.
The old civilization has run its race; a new sun is rising, and will soon renew the face of the earth.Let the present generation perish, let the old prevaricators die in the desert!
the holy earth shall not cover their bones.Young man, exasperated by the corruption of the age, and absorbed in your zeal for justice!--if your country is dear to you, and if you have the interests of humanity at heart, have the courage to espouse the cause of liberty! Cast off your old selfishness, and plunge into the rising flood of popular equality! There your regenerate soul will acquire new life and vigor; your enervated genius will recover unconquerable energy; and your heart, perhaps already withered, will be rejuvenated! Every thing will wear a different look to your illuminated vision; new sentiments will engender new ideas within you; religion, morality, poetry, art, language will appear before you in nobler and fairer forms; and thenceforth, sure of your faith, and thoughtfully enthusiastic, you will hail the dawn of universal regeneration!
And you, sad victims of an odious law!--you, whom a jesting world despoils and outrages!--you, whose labor has always been fruitless, and whose rest has been without hope,--take courage!
your tears are numbered! The fathers have sown in affliction, the children shall reap in rejoicings!
O God of liberty! God of equality! Thou who didst place in my heart the sentiment of justice, before my reason could comprehend it, hear my ardent prayer! Thou hast dictated all that I have written; Thou hast shaped my thought; Thou hast directed my studies; Thou hast weaned my mind from curiosity and my heart from attachment, that I might publish Thy truth to the master and the slave.I have spoken with what force and talent Thou hast given me: it is Thine to finish the work.Thou knowest whether Iseek my welfare or Thy glory, O God of liberty! Ah! perish my memory, and let humanity be free! Let me see from my obscurity the people at last instructed; let noble teachers enlighten them;let generous spirits guide them! Abridge, if possible, the time of our trial; stifle pride and avarice in equality;annihilate this love of glory which enslaves us; teach these poor children that in the bosom of liberty there are neither heroes nor great men! Inspire the powerful man, the rich man, him whose name my lips shall never pronounce in Thy presence, with a horror of his crimes; let him be the first to apply for admission to the redeemed society; let the promptness of his repentance be the ground of his forgiveness! Then, great and small, wise and foolish, rich and poor, will unite in an ineffable fraternity;and, singing in unison a new hymn, will rebuild Thy altar, O God of liberty and equality!
END OF FIRST MEMOIR.
WHAT IS PROPERTY?
