Part 14 (1/2)
B. What! does this frightful commotion of the populace against capitalists arise from money being confounded with wealth?
F. It is the result of different causes. Unfortunately, certain capitalists have arrogated to themselves monopolies and privileges which are quite sufficient to account for this feeling. But when the theorists of democracy have wished to justify it, to systematize it, to give it the appearance of a reasonable opinion, and to turn it against the very nature of capital, they have had recourse to that false political economy at whose root the same confusion is always to be found. They have said to the people:--”Take a crown, put it under a gla.s.s; forget it for a year; then go and look at it, and you will be convinced that it has not produced ten sous, nor five sous, nor any fraction of a sou.
Therefore, money produces no interest.” Then, subst.i.tuting for the word money its pretended sign, _capital_, they have made it by their logic undergo this modification--”Then capital produces no interest.” Then follow this series of consequences--”Therefore he who lends a capital ought to obtain nothing from it; therefore he who lends you a capital, if he gains something by it, is robbing you; therefore all capitalists are robbers; therefore wealth, which ought to serve gratuitously those who borrow it, belongs in reality to those to whom it does not belong; therefore there is no such thing as property; therefore everything belongs to everybody; therefore ...”
B. This is very serious; the more so, from the syllogism being so admirably formed. I should very much like to be enlightened on the subject. But, alas! I can no longer command my attention. There is such a confusion in my head of the words _cash_, _money_, _services_, _capital_, _interest_, that, really, I hardly know where I am. We will, if you please, resume the conversation another day.
F. In the meantime, here is a little work ent.i.tled _Capital and Rent_.
It may perhaps remove some of your doubts. Just look at it, when you are in want of a little amus.e.m.e.nt.
B. To amuse me?
F. Who knows? One nail drives in another; one wearisome thing drives away another.
B. I have not yet made up my mind that your views upon cash and political economy in general are correct. But, from your conversation, this is what I have gathered:--That these questions are of the highest importance; for peace or war, order or anarchy, the union or the antagonism of citizens, are at the root of the answer to them. How is it that, in France, a science which concerns us all so nearly, and the diffusion of which would have so decisive an influence upon the fate of mankind, is so little known? Is it that the State does not teach it sufficiently?
F. Not exactly. For, without knowing it, it applies itself to loading everybody's brain with prejudices, and everybody's heart with sentiments favourable to the spirit of anarchy, war, and hatred; so that, when a doctrine of order, peace, and union presents itself, it is in vain that it has clearness and truth on its side,--it cannot gain admittance.
B. Decidedly, you are a frightful grumbler. What interest can the State have in mystifying people's intellects in favour of revolutions, and civil and foreign wars? There must certainly be a great deal of exaggeration in what you say.
F. Consider. At the period when our intellectual faculties begin to develop themselves, at the age when impressions are liveliest, when habits of mind are formed with the greatest ease--when we might look at society and understand it--in a word, as soon as we are seven or eight years old, what does the State do? It puts a bandage over our eyes, takes us gently from the midst of the social circle which surrounds us, to plunge us, with our susceptible faculties, our impressible hearts, into the midst of Roman society. It keeps us there for ten years at least, long enough to make an ineffaceable impression on the brain. Now observe, that Roman society is directly opposed to what our society ought to be. There they lived upon war; here we ought to hate war. There they hated labour; here we ought to live upon labour. There the means of subsistence were founded upon slavery and plunder; here they should be drawn from free industry. Roman society was organised in consequence of its principle. It necessarily admired what made it prosper. There they considered as virtue, what we look upon as vice. Its poets and historians had to exalt what we ought to despise. The very words, _liberty_, _order_, _justice_, _people_, _honour_, _influence_, _&c._, could not have the same signification at Rome, as they have, or ought to have, at Paris. How can you expect that all these youths who have been at university or conventual schools, with Livy and Quintus Curtius for their catechism, will not understand liberty like the Gracchi, virtue like Cato, patriotism like Caesar? How can you expect them not to be factious and warlike? How can you expect them to take the slightest interest in the mechanism of our social order? Do you think that their minds have been prepared to understand it? Do you not see that, in order to do so, they must get rid of their present impressions, and receive others entirely opposed to them?
B. What do you conclude from that?
F. I will tell you. The most urgent necessity is, not that the State should teach, but that it should _allow_ education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education.
The Law.
The law perverted! The law--and, in its wake, all the collective forces of the nation--the law, I say, not only diverted from its proper direction, but made to pursue one entirely contrary! The law become the tool of every kind of avarice, instead of being its check! The law guilty of that very iniquity which it was its mission to punis.h.!.+ Truly, this is a serious fact, if it exists, and one to which I feel bound to call the attention of my fellow-citizens.
We hold from G.o.d the gift which, as far as we are concerned, contains all others, Life--physical, intellectual, and moral life.
But life cannot support itself. He who has bestowed it, has entrusted us with the care of supporting it, of developing it, and of perfecting it.
To that end, He has provided us with a collection of wonderful faculties; He has plunged us into the midst of a variety of elements. It is by the application of our faculties to these elements, that the phenomena of a.s.similation and of appropriation, by which life pursues the circle which has been a.s.signed to it, are realized.
Existence, faculties, a.s.similation--in other words, personality, liberty, property--this is man. It is of these three things that it may be said, apart from all demagogue subtlety, that they are anterior and superior to all human legislation.
It is not because men have made laws, that personality, liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty, and property exist beforehand, that men make laws.
What, then, is law? As I have said elsewhere, it is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defence.
Nature, or rather G.o.d, has bestowed upon every one of us the right to defend his person, his liberty, and his property, since these are the three const.i.tuent or preserving elements of life; elements, each of which is rendered complete by the others, and cannot be understood without them. For what are our faculties, but the extension of our personality? and what is property, but an extension of our faculties?
If every man has the right of defending, even by force, his person, his liberty, and his property, a number of men have the right to combine together, to extend, to organize a common force, to provide regularly for this defence.
Collective right, then, has its principle, its reason for existing, its lawfulness, in individual right; and the common force cannot rationally have any other end, or any other mission, than that of the isolated forces for which it is subst.i.tuted. Thus, as the force of an individual cannot lawfully touch the person, the liberty, or the property of another individual--for the same reason, the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individuals or of cla.s.ses.