The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Communism by Henri Baudrillart 1890

The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Communism by Henri Baudrillart 1890

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We here propose to discuss communism both in itself and from an historical point of view. Such a plan is broad enough without introducing into it the various social Utopias. We are here concerned exclusively with avowed and consistent communism, and not with what in our day goes under the vague name of socialism.

Communism is the system of doctrine which, in the name of the general interest and of absolute justice, most frequently sees the type of social perfection in a putting in common of persons and things. We purposely say persons and things. The distinction which certain communists pretend to establish between the two is in reality an empty one. The thing possessed is here the person, or at least a part and an extension of the person, who has put his labor into it and placed upon it the seal of his liberty. It is impossible to respect the producer and deprive him of his product. This first usurpation involves all the others, and ends in the complete monopoly of the human person.

Thus communism, whatever amount of logic it may have (and we shall see that it has not been lacking in this regard), is forced, inevitably, to speak to humanity in nearly the following words: "I shall first take possession of all material products in order to distribute them in accordance with the general interest; but that there should not be an over-abundance of some things, dearth of others, and consequently the impossibility of a just distribution, I shall direct production, which cannot be done unless I dispose of the producers themselves as I think best. I shall, therefore, assign to each man his task; and to satisfy myself as to how he accomplishes that task, and that he does nothing else, I shall oblige him to work in common. And then, that he may not be suspected of depriving his brethren of any portion of the social part which comes to him, he shall also consume in common." Here we have the family transferred to the public square. But why let the family itself exist? Are we not acquainted with the jealous activity and watchful foresight of the father and mother for their children? To uphold the family is to create a permanent conspiracy against communism in the bosom of communism itself; it is to condemn communism to witness soon, under the deceitful names of liberty, emulation, economy, of conjugal, paternal, maternal and filial attachment, all the competition, saving, jealousy, favoritism, preference of self or of one's own to others; in one word, the wretched retinue of individualism and familyism. This is not all. There are evil inclinations in the bosom of every individual which resist communism by tending to persuade him that communism, or a community of goods, is not for the best. Hence, a love for communism must be instilled into him, of course in his own interest, at an early day, by education, which consequently must be in common.

"Moreover we know how much religious systems, which pretend to concern themselves only with heaven, influence earthly affairs. What sources of division and struggles, beliefs and ideas are! Hence, no sects, no heresies, no individual opinion! Religion must, therefore, be a common religion for all, at least if we [communism] judge proper that there should be such a theory as religion, which is not very certain. Now, as all this cannot be accomplished, and a certain number of individuals not think they have a right to complain, the state must be charged, on the one hand, with the task of carrying out this plan, and, on the other, with putting down the malcontents, unless speedily and completely converted. Hence, the state must be the sole producer, the sole distributer, the sole consumer; it must teach, preach, pray and carry on the work of repression; it must be the great agriculturist, the great manufacturer, the great merchant, the great professor and high priest; it must be spirit and matter, dogma and force, religion and the police—everything."

This all shows how chimerical is the disposition which it sometimes pleases certain adherents of communism to make of things and persons, of property and family, of the action of the state, and of individual initiative. Properly speaking, communism knows nothing of persons. It knows only things. The forfeiture of property which it declares strikes at the last principle of liberty in its vital part. Communism drags into its sphere the moral and intellectual as well as the physical life; and man from whom it pretended to take but a single faculty and one order of products only, passes soul and body under its complete control. It is evident, then, that when communism says it wishes to destroy individualism, it means that it wishes to destroy the individual himself. To destroy liberty is, in fact, to destroy the individual in his very essence. A writer has defined man as an intelligence served by organs. From the economic point of view, it would perhaps be more correct to say: "man is a liberty served by organs;" and these organs include intelligence itself, physical power, land and capital. To liberate the organs, is to liberate the man; to reduce them to slavery, is to enslave the man himself.

Liberty is the moral basis of political economy. Now, what we find at the bottom of all communistic parties and systems is an attack on liberty. Communism is, therefore, directly opposed to political economy. Let us first say a word on the fundamental error of communism. It may, we think, be summed up in the preference which it gives to equality over liberty.

Now communism fails to insure equality for the very reason that it has a preference for equality.

Equality supposes something anterior to itself, something which may admit of equality. But in what are men equal? In intelligence? Take two men at random: they are different both in the degree and in the nature of their aptitudes. And so it is in the mental and physical, in the moral and material order. Do you wish to find the type, the basis, the rule of equality? Turn to liberty. The liberty of every man recognized and guaranteed, is true equality. We are equal in and through liberty. This truth is the absolute rule, the only source, in fact and in law, of equality between the members of the great human family. Outside of equality through liberty everything is chimerical and deceptive. To profess to put equality above liberty is therefore nonsense. To pretend to secure one by the suppression of the other is a monstrous contradiction. This contradiction is the starting point of communism.

Let us glance at the declivity which leads communism to the abyss.

Communism not knowing how to find equality where it exists, is led to place it where it is not. For the idea of equality is inherent in the mind of man, an imperative want of his heart, a necessary law of his development. Not having found equality in liberty where alone it exists, communism tries to enforce an equality of passions, ideas, wants, things; in one word, of everything which does not admit of equality. Moreover, having misunderstood the true nature of liberty, it plays the tyrant with it, when it meets it, as an obstacle in its way. It is the general tendency of false systems to suppress violently whatever stands in their way, and to replace it by arbitrary equivalents.

False ideas of equality and liberty are the starting point of communism; all the rest results from those false ideas.

Communism ignores and destroys both liberty and equality, and by this very fact sacrifices real rights to chimerical ones.

As a free being I have the right to dispose of my faculties, the right to work, with all that that right involves; such a right is nothing but the recognition of general liberty, and therefore it is evident that it oppresses no man. According to communism I have the right to labor, and all the other rights which are necessarily involved in this one right: that is to say, I may demand work, and force others to give me work. Here, then, we have a portion of humanity, not only obliged morally, but constrained physically, obliged by the authority of the law to furnish work to others. When I assist a poor man I merely pay him a debt which I owe him; to give him nothing when I can afford to give him something, is to be not only hard-hearted but wicked; it is to be a thief. I deserve then to be treated as such, that is, to be imprisoned or hanged.

Communism endows the individual with lying rights; and to satisfy these rights it burdens the state with impossible duties. A double germ of anarchy and despotism, this, which leaves no alternative to society than a desperate war of all against one, and of each against all, or the most grinding slavery.

The economic and moral consequences which are so closely connected with one another in the communistic system, flow no less logically from its erroneous premises. How can there be merit where individual liberty is sacrificed, where successful effort is counted for nothing? Communism itself feels what a stranger to it merit is, and how fatal it would be to it. For the hallowed formula: Each one according to his merit, it substitutes the following, borrowed from the pretended holiness of instinct: To each one according to his wants. So that, whether a man works little or much, produces with more or less zeal, care, or in greater or less abundance, it does not matter. Does communism destroy the abuses which it pretends to radically abolish? It is easy to prove that it only aggravates them and renders them more general. We know how furiously it attacks competition, that is to say, liberty. But in the place of the legitimate, industrious, enlightened competition of interests which is profitable to all, it puts the blind, barren and disorderly competition of appetites. It complains of robbery in human society, and decrees universal spoliation in order to suppress it. It groans over prostitution, and makes a law of the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes. It is angered at seeing a number of men who, to enjoy themselves, had only to take, as it says, the trouble of being born; and the taking of this trouble, it claims, entitles them to a share in every social advantage! It impeaches slavery and exploitation of the proletariat, and it makes of every man a slave to be exploited by the state. Let us add that the slavery which it establishes is not merely a political and economic one, but a moral slavery which must perpetuate, indefinitely, both political and economic slavery. When free will and personal dignity, care for the future, the calculations and affections which make existence worth having, flights of imagination and innocent fancies, are abolished in men; what is there to replace these broken springs, or to compensate for the loss?

Communism, by enervating all the motives which constitute the essence, the health, the energy of the moral being, at one blow exhausts all the sources of wealth.

Communism has sought the principle of liberty, by appealing to love. With instinct as its basis, it seeks in instinct the means of correcting the evil effects of instinct. This twofold pretension is evidently chimerical. Instinct can not be tempered by its own excess. As to making lore and fraternity the only springs of production, it is the most impossible of Utopias. It is madness to suppose that a man will work, manufacture, sell, etc., with the perpetual enthusiasm which religion itself does not always produce.

Never has the saying of Pascal: "The man who wishes to imitate the angels becomes a beast," been better justified than by communism, which commences by supposing angelic virtues in man, and ends by always showing him gross and brutal in practice. What an illusion it is, then, to suppose that the individual will love everybody, will devote himself to everybody, when he is prohibited from loving his own family and devoting himself to it! Sympathy, like all other faculties, has need of practice and food. Men do not begin by loving the human race, but end there. And how much enlightenment, how much philosophical or religious elevation of mind, is supposed by so complicated a sentiment! It is a fact which has not escaped the most superficial observer, that affection becomes more intense by being restricted to a narrower circle; more sublime perhaps, but less energetic, in proportion as it extends to a greater number of objects. Communism, by opposing this elementary law, drowns, so to speak, sympathy and devotion in the depths of the limitless ocean called the human race, and buries the individual in the immense and vague abstraction which it calls society.

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We have seen communism, considered as a system, plunging into every error and contradiction; aggravating the evils of which it complains by letting new ones loose on humanity; rousing the appetites and finding nothing to create the immense amount of capital it would need to carry out its plans, except the unproductive principle of fraternity; and rendering this very fraternity impossible by inviting each member of the community to seize a quantity of products which must necessarily grow less and less; or to bow under the hard law of a state which can live only by the skillful distribution of wretchedness. We may well be astonished that such a doctrine should find adherents. Still communism can appeal to a long tradition continued through all the centuries, through revolutions of every kind. The explanation of this strange phenomenon is instructive in more ways than one; and we are astonished to find that communism has often been but the logical development of the principles adopted almost universally by the nations which stigmatized it. Nothing is truer of ancient nations; and as to those which followed them, especially up to 1789, was not the principle of the right to landed property changed by conquest and civil legislation to such a degree, disregarded in law to such an extent by the doctrine that all property in land was held from the state, that communism became, if not justifiable, at least perfectly explainable? As a symptom, if not as a theory, communism still has an importance not to be underrated. Like all social Utopias, it has its source in the imperfections of the social state; some of which are susceptible of amendment, others unavoidable; and is explained by a feeling of pity for human misery and by base passion.

Communism has been at work in the world, and it may be judged by its fruits. To begin with, it is an ugly thing that a doctrine held up as a charter of emancipation of the human race, should always appear in history based on and supported by slavery. How can we speak of communism without mentioning Sparta; and how can we mention Sparta without recalling what was most odious in ancient slavery? The regime of communism and labor are two things so incompatible that wherever the former has been established it has been necessary to condemn whole classes to forced labor. Thus the communism of the citizens of Lacedemonia


could be maintained only by making helots of those engaged in agriculture and the useful arts. Sparta reached the ideal of communism better than any other city, unless it be perhaps Crete. Sparta was not guilty of the error of making movable property and material products common property. It also made education and women common property. But, by one of those concessions which the reality always makes to logic, and which we meet everywhere in the history of practical communism; by one of those inconsistencies which make the existence of communism possible and its destruction inevitable, it retained something of individual property by providing that lands should be divided into equal portions. But how great the practical superiority of Spartan communism over the communism of the nineteenth century! It did not promise the members of the association wealth and enjoyment in common, but poverty and abstinence. It spurred the children onward, not by making labor attractive, but by the whip. By these means it was able to exist for a time. Their principles of morality, moreover, debarred the Spartans from the softening influence of the arts—a privation which their economic principles would have been sufficient to effect. The fine arts are impossible where there is not an excess of the wealth produced over the wealth consumed; and such an excess is impossible where communism prevails. The master work of Spartan legislation was to inspire the fanaticism of self-denial and a devotion to this state of things. Spartan morals were not the best. The Spartan, living on coarse food, trained for war, without luxury, without commerce, without a corrupting literature, was no less debauched than savage. Their rude power yielded at almost the first contact with civilized Greece, and could not withstand the wealth acquired after the war of the Peloponnesus. The people, who had rejected the institution of property, were famed for their rapacity, their avarice, and the venality of their magistrates. The people, who had sacrificed all to military prowess, fell to such a degree of weakness that they were forced to recruit their armies from among the helots, among whom they found their last great men. Occupied, like all ancient legislators, with the sole idea of doing away with revolution by destroying inequality, Lycurgus forgot that for states there is a worse danger than revolution—dissolution; and this is how Sparta ended.

The genius of Rome ignored communism. Everything vague, undetermined, is in keeping with the doctrine of communism, which in religion adores the all, in morality denies the person and sees only humanity, and in political economy absorbs individual property in the collective possession of the community. At Rome everything was well defined, the gods, virtue, the laws. Rome witnessed flourishing side by side stoicism which exalts the liberty and the dignity of the person, and property which assures that liberty and dignity. The institution of property might be abused without the right of property being denied, in Rome. That right was extended, under the rude authority of the father, not only to the slaves, but to the family. Usury appeared there without compassion. As to agrarian law, so frequently confounded with communism, we know that it was merely a claim (revenditation) by the poor plebeians who had taken part in the conquest, for lands retained exclusively by nobles and knights. The Gracchi did nothing, said absolutely nothing, incompatible with the right of property As to the revolts of slaves, what connection had they with communism? These unfortunates revolted not to have everything in common; they fought to own themselves.

We know how powerful an organization the family spirit and property received from the Mosaic law in Judea. Nevertheless, it must be remarked that if the law of the jubilee, which brought back to the same family alienated lands, was a sanctioning of the right of property, it was also an attack on that right: it sanctioned it by keeping it intact in the hands of the same families; it attacked it because it trammeled individual liberty and hindered the natural course of transactions between man and man. Each one lived "under the shadow of his vine and fig tree;" but for that very reason each one was, so to speak, made a parcel of the soil of his own patrimonial estate. Industry, commerce, the sciences, the arts, which have need of a certain surplus, and the activity which results from the frequent relations between men, remained foreign to this intelligent and energetic people. As where there is no right to property whatever there is no civilization, so an incomplete civilization is the result of every curtailment of the right of property, which can only show its full effects on condition of remaining an individual right.

Essenianism was the communism of Judea. In this country of religion communism was associated with the religious principle, as in Greece, the country of philosophy, it was associated with the philosophic idea, with Pythagoreanism, which was its partial realization. The school of Pythagoras was a community of sages living in accordance with the severest prescriptions of spiritual life, in self-denial, friendship, and the cultivation of the sciences, especially mathematics and astronomy. Their austerity and their labors suggest to us that it was a sort of pagan Port Royal, while their eagerness for rule and their political activity, which drove them out of most of the cities in which they had founded their establishments, remind us of the celebrated society of the Jesuits. In contrast with the Pythagoreans, who constituted, as it were, monasteries of philosophers, and whose political ideal was an aristocracy of enlightenment guiding and governing the obedient masses, the Essenes exhibit to us a little people, forming a kind of fraternal democracy; not that hierarchy was not respected among them, nor that ranks were not known and even sharply defined; but all were admitted among them on the single condition of a pure or repentant life; and everything was held in common by the chiefs and the subordinates. It must be said to the honor of the Essenes that they looked on slavery as an impious thing, an exception, however, which means nothing in favor of communism. The Essenes were in reality a very limited and entirely voluntary association; they were like a small tribe of monks; and Pliny said of them, "They perpetuate themselves without women, and live without money. * * * Repentance and distaste for the world are the fruitful sources which keep up their number." Communism, thus understood, was only a form of free association; the community received only those who agreed to form a part of it. Labor was carried on among them, moreover, by men reared in the habits and teachings of the upper society; and like all religious communities, it was founded not on the principle of unlimited satisfaction of human wants, but on that of rigorous abstinence. We can say as much of the Therapeutics, a Jewish sect of Egypt, whose members lived in isolation, and had little in common but their practices of religion.

Christianity put an end to the old world. Was it favorable to communism in the time of its Founder and the first apostles? This is a question which has been much discussed in our time, and which the communists, anxious to have the greatest authority of the civilized world on their side, unanimously answer in the affirmative. This claim has been refuted to our thinking, with an array of reasoning which amounts to demonstration. To begin with, if Christ had intended to extol communism, he would not have maintained the most profound silence on the subject. Then the texts of the gospels, appealed to in favor of communism, have a meaning altogether different from that attributed to them. Jesus Christ recommended almsgiving, the giving away of one's goods, which is a use and not the negation of property. In a word, he makes charity a religious duty, not an act of constraint, which abolishes all virtue and all charity. He repeats the precept of the divine law: "Thou shall not steal," which is a sanction of the right of property. He preaches the inviolability of the family so far as to condemn divorce, one of the few laws relating to civil life which he laid down. The language and conduct of the apostles are none the more on the side of communism. The spontaneous putting of all their goods in common by the first believers, was as much a means of resistance in their hands, and an instrument of propagandism, as a picture of Christian brotherhood. Liberty and the laws of morality and political economy find nothing contrary to their principles, in this free community of a religious sect pretending in no way to set itself up as a model of social organization nor to change the general conditions of the production of wealth. The example of the small Christian family, at Jerusalem, after the death of Christ, an example not followed to any extent by the other churches, has no weight as an argument.

We have to reach the second century and turn to a heresy severely condemned by Christianity, to see an instance of practical communism authorized by religion. The Carpocratians, who were confounded with the Gnostics, revived, a little earlier than two centuries after Christ, the infamy of the bacchanals that Rome had seen a little less than two centuries before his coming. The Christian communities, which were established with an ascetic object, had nothing to do with the history of communism. It is even certain that they could not have supported themselves in a communistic society; because they obtained their resources not from among themselves, but from outside. Moreover, these communities and the communists differ in every respect. Men came to join them, but were not born in them. Their object was almost always purely religious. The sexes, far from being together, lived separately; where marriage was permitted, its laws were strictly observed. The association of Herrnhuters, or Moravian brethren, is the sole exception to the above remarks. It was upheld by its evangelical spirit of humility, self-denial, hope in a future life, which rendered it less exacting in this one; in a word, by the very spirit most opposed to that of communism. While recognizing their virtues and their negative happiness, it must be recognized also that their narrow feeling of sect, their stationary condition, their want of arts, their proscription of everything lofty in science and all philosophical speculation, do not agree with the general character and the most necessary conditions of modern civilization.

When we follow the history of heresies in the Christian church, we find that communism was a stranger to most of them. Ecclesiastical authors, in order to brand them more surely, have been somewhat lavish of this reproach against them; and communistic writers have eagerly granted the truth of the reproach in order to gain for themselves a more imposing family tree. Bossuet, in his "History of the Variations," has not been sparing in this accusation against the heretics of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, especially against the Waldenses and Albigenses, whose innocence, in this respect, has been established, it appears to us, by the historian of communism, Sudre. The same is the case with the Lollards and some other sects more theological than political. It needed all the partiality of contemporary history, written from the communistic point of view, to make a Wickliffe and a John Huss apostles of social fraternity. The germs of communism were developed, nevertheless, in certain sects, such as the Brothers of the Free Spirit in the thirteenth century, and perhaps among some others. But communism broke out with the Anabaptists in a bold and most terrible form. It does not enter into our plan to relate this tragic episode in the history of communism in which it appeared with all the retinue of false theories which it advocated and evil passions which it roused. "We are all brothers," said Muncer, the chief of the Anabaptists, to the listening crowd, "and we have a common father in Adam; whence comes this difference in rank and possessions which tyranny has set up between us and the great ones of the earth? Why should we groan in poverty and be overwhelmed with misery while they are swimming in delight? Have we not a right to equality of goods, which, by their nature, are made to be divided among all men? Give up to us, rich men of the world, covetous usurpers, give up to us the goods which you keep unjustly; it is not as men alone that we have a right to an equal distribution of the advantages of fortune, but also as Christians." Spoliation, polygamy, the destruction of statues, of paintings, of books, with the exception of the Bible, followed these preachings, especially at Mulhausen and Munster.

After having shown how sensual and fierce it can make men, of itself, it remained for communism to show by the example of Paraguay how moral, mild and happy it may make them when joined to the religious principle. This last experience of which it boasts, does not appear, any more than the others, very brilliant or very enviable. The crowning work of the Jesuits in their colonies was to change a colony of men into a flock of obedient and timid children, without any ideas of their own, without vices, but at the same time without virtues. The Jesuit fathers had established a system of absolute rule; they directed the production and distribution of wealth with that despotism without which communism is not possible. The happiness which they procured their flock was not, however, protected from the storm; and it is stated that the news of their departure was received with shouts of joy. The state of primitive innocence and even happiness under a superior authority can not be, at all events, the ideal of a civilization which prefers struggle, with its inevitable failure and the progress consequent on it, to this inert and stupid state of impeccability.

We must come down to our own time and to the New Harmony of Owen to find a fresh example of practical communism. The illusions of the modern reformer, who made irresponsibility his principal dogma, need not be recalled. It may be said that, on the whole, communism has done nothing considerable since the time of Paraguay, where it was able to survive for a time, owing solely to the change and modifications made in it by the religious spirit. Since then, it has appeared in the form of aspiration or conspiracy. Buboeuf and his accomplices met the same fate as Muncer and John of Leyden, without having had the same success; and the records of the doctrine since June, 1848, and recently, have been only those of its defeats and disappointments.

To complete the review of communism it only remains to cast a glance over the Utopias which it has produced, limiting ourselves to pointing out the chief trait of each, and the conclusions to be drawn from them all.

The type of all the communistic Utopias has justly been found in the Republic of Plato. It is important, however, to distinguish carefully the communism of the Greek philosopher from the doctrines with which it is confounded. Plato has been too frequently thought of as a modern utopist who aims at reforming the world. The republic of Plato is a purely ideal application of his philosophy to society. As a philosopher he paid too little attention in his analysis of man to the moral fact of liberty. This defect appears with all its deplorable consequences in his imaginary society. As a philosopher he understood the idea of justice admirably as far as it can be understood when detached from liberty; and with a geometrical precision concealed under the freest and most brilliant forms he arrives at absolute equality, interrupted no longer by individual differences of effort and merit, but by the personal differences of intelligence and moral energy. In this way he reaches an aristocracy of philosophers and warriors. Let us not forget, either, that Plato, far from looking toward the future had his eyes constantly turned toward the east, a country of (more or less) collective property and theocracy. Except in a few views purely moral, as sublime as they were new, which contained in them the future of the human race, we may say that Plato in his Republic wrote simply the Utopia of the past. Let us observe also that, in this work itself, property and the family seem forbidden only to one class, that of the warriors. Do not European armies recall some of the traits of this organization, supported by the other classes of citizens? Have the soldiers a family? have they land to cultivate or a table apart? The republic attests with none the less force the irresistible inclination of communism, which, whether it takes its starting point in the brutal appeal to the instincts, or has its source, as here, in the principles of abstract justice shorn of the idea and the feeling of the freedom of the will, reaches the same result, and derives the negation of the family from that of property. But the smile of Socrates while exposing this impracticable system, is perhaps the refutation best suited to this brilliant play of dialectics and imagination combined, a logical and poetical deduction of an idea, and not a serious plan of social reform.

What could a regular explanation of the systems of Thomas More and Campanella add to what we have already said? It matters little that the Utopia and the City of the Sun differ in certain regards, but it is important to remark that they agree in some of the great negations brought about by that of liberty and property. More wishes the institution of the family might remain, but he wants slaves for great public works and to fill the voids left in production by the utopists. Campanella abolishes the family. Both make the state sovereign master of labor and sole distributer of products.

Communism assumed in the eighteenth, century an exclusively philosophical form; it very nearly renounced allegory and symbolism to make use of analysis and reasoning. We do not doubt that the constitution of the institution of property which communism had before its eyes was vicious, and that philosophy and political economy were to labor for its reformation; but if the excessive and unjust equalities of eighteenth century society explain communism, how can they justify a system which moved in opposition to the general aspirations for liberty and civilization? Rousseau was not a partisan of this doctrine though he gave it weapons. In his "Discourse on Inequality," as well as in his "Social Contract," he recognizes the close solidarity of property and society, and while deploring the existence of the latter he declares it indestructible. In basing property on the law he fell into an error, general in his time, and from which Montesquieu himself was not free. Mably, who carried the principles of Rousseau to absurdity, and who changed his tendencies into systems, asks humanity to return to its natural state. In his Legislation, or Principes des lois, in his Doutes sur l'ordre naturel et essentiel des Societis opposed to the Physiocrates, in his Entretiens de Phocion, he is scarcely more than the servile commentator of Rousseau and Lycurgus. Labor in common, distribution by the state, abolition of arts, intolerance in matters of religion: these ancient consequences of the doctrine are deduced by Mably with a rigor which leaves little to be desired. The obscure Morelly goes farther yet, if possible, in his tedious Basiliade and in his hateful Code de la nature, which became the code of revolutionary communism. The boldness of Brissot de Warville, who, anticipating a celebrated saying, assimilated property to theft, and the inconsistent eccentricities of Neckcr and Linguet, could only repeat or extenuate these anathemas and theories. They were continued through the French revolution which deprived them of their raison d'etre. A disciple of Rousseau, Robespierre was not a communist, though his principles put society on the incline which leads to communism. Baboeuf, on the contrary, was. Morelly became a man of action. Philosophic and dreamy communism appeared only with Cabet, author of the Voyage en Icarie, and with the more advanced editors of the Humanitaire. These latter are much more consistent. In his communism founded on fraternity, and repeating all the arguments restoring the use of all the habitual methods of communism varied but little in its nature, Cabet, nevertheless, wished to retain the family. L'Humanitaire opposed this. We have shown on which side the logic was. Let us add also, in order to be just, that Cabet deceived himself with the fond delusion that each one would retain his cottage and his garden. He allowed his Icarians, after having well served the state which oversaw them strictly all the week, to be absolutely free every Sunday. This is far too much. A single Sunday in freedom would be death to Icaria. With these exceptions we recognize under the honey of the form the inevitable spirit of communism, that is to say, the purest despotism regulating industry, science, religion, etc.

Of what use is it to know that there are several varieties of communists in France in the nineteenth century? Some of them in a minority wish to act with mildness, just as if when property is once recognized as an obstacle to all progress, it is not necessary to destroy it at once. Some deny a God, the soul, responsibility; others mean to admit them, which is perfectly useless, since they conduct to the same practical materialism. There are others who wish to retain the fine arts, as if their economic system permitted the retention. Some are in favor of having towns, while others find it better to destroy them and force all to live in the country. These differences are of little interest. In reality there is only one and the same communism: consistent communism.

And now, if communism as an aspiration is a real disease of the social state, and if communism as an economic doctrine is merely a disease of the human mind, what are the remedies? After good moral training and instruction, to which we assign the first place, we know of but two: as to society, to apply in it more and more the great principles of economic science which indeed can not destroy its evils, but may gradually diminish them; as to minds, to imbue them continually more and more with the truths of political economy. Such is the best or rather the only real antidote against the threatening progress of communism.

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THE ESSENTIAL FALLACIES OF MALTHUSIAN TEACHING 

BIRTH control, in the sense of the prevention of pregnancy by chemical, mechanical, or other artificial means, is being widely advocated as a sure method of lessening poverty and of increasing the physical and mental health of the nation. It is, therefore, advisable to examine these claims and the grounds on which they are based. The following investigation will prove that the propaganda throughout Western Europe and America in favour of artificial birth control is based on a mere assumption, bolstered up by economic and statistical fallacies; that Malthusian teaching is contrary to reason and to fact; that Neo-Malthusian practices are disastrous alike to nations and to individuals; and that those practices are in themselves an offence against the Law of Nature, whereby the Divine Will is expressed in creation.

The Rev. Thomas Malthus, M.A., in 1798 published his Essay on the Principle of Population, His pamphlet was an answer to Condorcet and Godwin, who held that vice and poverty were the result of human institutions and could be remedied by an even distribution of property. Malthus, on the other hand, believed that population increased more rapidly than the means of subsistence, and consequently that vice and poverty were always due to overpopulation and not to any particular form of society or of government. He stated that owing to the relatively slow rate at which the food supply of countries was increased, a high birth-rate inevitably led to all the evils of poverty, war, and high death-rates. In an infamous passage he wrote that there was no vacant place for the superfluous child at Nature's mighty feast; that Nature told the child to be gone; and that she quickly executed her own order. This passage was modified in the second, and deleted from the third edition of the Essay. In later editions he maintained that vice and misery had checked population, that the progress of society might have diminished rather than increased the "evils resulting from the principle of population," and that by "moral restraint" overpopulation could be prevented. As Cannan has pointed out, this last suggestion destroyed the force of the argument against Godwin, who could have replied that in order to make "moral restraint" universal a socialist State was necessary. In order to avoid the evils of overpopulation, Malthus advised people not to marry, or, if they did, to marry late in life and to limit the number of their children by the exercise of self-restraint. He reprobated all artificial and unnatural methods of birth control as immoral, and as removing the necessary stimulus to industry; but he failed to grasp the whole truth that an increase of population is necessary as a stimulus not only to industry, but also as essential to man's moral and intellectual progress.

The theory of Malthus is based on three errors, namely (a) that the population increases in geometrical progression, a progression of I, 2, 4, 8, 16, and so on upwards; (b) that the food supply increases in arithmetical progression, a progression of I, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on upwards; and (c) that overpopulation is the cause of poverty and disease. If we show that defacto there is no overpopulation it obviously cannot be a cause of anything, nor be itself caused by the joint operation of the first two causes. However, each of the errors can be severally refuted.

(a) In the first place, it is true that a population might increase in geometrical progression, and that a woman might bear thirty children in her lifetime; but it is wrong to assume that because a thing might happen, it therefore does happen. The population, as a matter of fact, does not increase in geometrical progression, because Nature places her own checks on the birth-rate, and no woman bears all the children she might theoretically bear, apart altogether from artificial birth control.

(b) Secondly, the food supply does not of necessity increase in arithmetical progression, I because food is produced by human hands, and is therefore increased in proportion to the increase of workers, unless the food supply of a country or of the world has reached its limit. The food supply of the world might reach a limit beyond which it could not be increased; but as yet this event has not happened, and there is no indication whatsoever that it is likely to happen.

Human life is immediately sustained by food, clothing, shelter, and fuel. Food and clothing are principally derived from fish, fowl, sheep, cattle, and grain, all of which tend, more so than man, to increase in geometrical ratio, although actually their increase in this progression is checked by man or by Nature. As regards shelter there can be no increase at all, either arithmetical or geometrical, apart from the work of human hands. Again, the stock of fuel in or on the earth cannot increase of itself, and is gradually becoming exhausted. On the other hand, within living memory, new sources of fuel, such as petroleum, have been made available, and old varieties of fuel have been used to better advantage, as witness the internal-combustion engine driven by smoke from sawdust. Moreover, in the ocean tides is a vast energy that one day may take the place of fuel.

(c) Thirdly, before anyone can reasonably maintain that overpopulation is the cause of poverty and disease, it is necessary to prove that overpopulation actually exists or is likely to occur in the future. By overpopulation we mean the condition of a country in which there are so many inhabitants that the production of necessaries of livelihood is insufficient for the support of all, with the result that many people are overworked or ill-fed. Under these circumstances the population can be said to press on the soil: and unless their methods of production could be improved, or resources secured from outside, the only possible remedy against the principle of diminishing returns would be a reduction of population; otherwise, the death-rate from want and starvation would gradually rise until it equalled the birth-rate in order to maintain an unhappy equilibrium.

According to Malthusian doctrine overpopulation is the cause of poverty, disease, and war: and consequently, unless the growth of population is artificially restrained, all attempts to remedy social evils are futile. Malthusians claim that "if only the devastating torrent of children could be arrested for a few years, it would bring untold relief." They hold that overpopulation is the root of all social evil, and the truth or falsehood of that proposition is therefore the basis of all their teaching. Now, when Malthusians are asked to prove that this their basic proposition is true, they adopt one of two methods, not of proof, but of evasion. Their first method of evading the question is by asserting that the truth of their proposition is self-evident and needs no proof. To that we reply that the falsity of the proposition can and will be proved. Their second device is to put up a barrage of facts which merely show that all countries, and indeed the earth itself, would have been overpopulated long ago if the increase of population had not been limited by certain factors, ranging from celibacy and late marriages to famines, diseases, wars, and infanticide. The truth of these facts is indisputable, but it is nevertheless a manifest breach of logic to argue from the fact of poverty, disease, and war having checked an increase of population, that therefore poverty, disease, and war are due to an increase of population. It would be as reasonable to argue that, because an unlimited increase of insects is prevented by birds and by climatic changes, therefore an increase of insects accounts for the existence of birds, and for variations of climate. Nor is it of any use for Malthusians to say that overpopulation might be the cause of poverty. They cannot prove that it is the cause of poverty, and, as will be shown in the following chapter, more obvious and probable causes are staring them in the face. For our present purpose it will suffice if we are able to prove that overpopulation has not occurred in the past and is unlikely to occur in the future.

In the first place, the meaning of the word "overpopulation" should be clearly understood. The word does not mean a very large number of inhabitants in a country. If that were its meaning the Malthusian fallacy could be disproved by merely pointing out that poverty exists both in thinly populated and in thickly populated countries. Now, in reality, overpopulation would occur whenever the production of the necessities of life in a country was insufficient for the support of all the inhabitants. For example, a barren rock in the ocean would be overpopulated, even if it contained only one inhabitant. It follows that the term "overpopulation" should be applied only to an economic situation in which the population presses on the soil. The point may be illustrated by a simple example.

Let us assume that a fertile island of 100 acres is divided into 10 farms, each of 10 acres, and each capable of supporting a family of ten. Under these conditions the island could support a population of 1,000 people without being overpopulated. If, however, the numbers in each family increased to 20 the population would press on the soil, and the island, with 2,000 inhabitants, would be an example of overpopulation, and of poverty due to overpopulation.

On the other hand, let us assume that there are only 1,000 people on the island, but that one family of ten individuals has managed to gain possession of eight farms, in addition to their own, and that the other nine families are forced to live on one farm. Obviously, 900 people would be attempting to live under conditions of dire poverty, and the island, with its population of 1,000, would now offer an excellent example, not of overpopulation, but of human selfishness.

My contentions are that poverty is neither solely nor indeed generally related to economic pressure on the soil; that there are many causes of poverty apart altogether from overpopulation; and that in reality overpopulation does not exist in those countries where Malthusians claim to find proofs of social misery due to a high birthrate.

If overpopulation in the economic sense occurred in a closed country, whose inhabitants were either unable or unwilling to send out colonies, it is obvious that general poverty and misery would result. This might happen in small islands, but it is of greater interest to know what does happen.

In a closed country, producing all its own necessities of life and incapable of expansion high birthrate would eventually increase the struggle for existence and would lead to overpopulation, always provided that, firstly, the high birth-rate is accompanied by a low death-rate, and secondly, that the high birth-rate is maintained. For example, although a birth-rate was high, a population would not increase in numbers if the death-rate was equally high. Therefore, a high birth-rate does not of necessity imply that population will be increased or that overpopulation will occur. Again, if the birth-rate fell as the population increased, the danger of overpopulation would be avoided without the aid of a high death-rate. For a moment, however, let us assume that the Malthusian premise is correct, that a high birthrate has led to overpopulation, and that the struggle for existence has therefore increased. Then obviously the death-rate would rise; the effect of the high birth-rate would be neutralised; and beyond a certain point neither the population nor the struggle for existence could be further increased. On these grounds Neo-Malthusians argue that birth-control is necessary precisely to obviate that cruel device whereby Nature strives to restore the balance upset by a reckless increase of births; and that the only alternative to frequent and premature deaths is regulation of the source of life. As a corollary to this proposition they claim that, if the death-rate be reduced, a country is bound to become overpopulated unless the births are artificially controlled. Fortunately it is possible to test the truth of this corollary, because certain definite observations on this very point have been recorded. These observations do not support the argument of birth controllers.

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John Stossel:

“If overpopulation or lack of resources created poverty, then Hong Kong should be poor. Hong Kong has 20 times as many people per square mile as India, and no valuable natural resources. Yet Hong Kong is rich; the average income there is higher than in Great Britain or Canada. This is a recent development. In the 1920s, Hong Kong was as poor as India. But in a relatively short time it became rich because of one key ingredient: economic freedom.”

Julian Simon:

"Adding more people causes problems, but people are also the means to solve these problems. The main fuel to speed our progress is our stock of knowledge, and the brake is our lack of imagination. The ultimate resource is people – skilled, spirited, and hopeful people who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit, and inevitably they will benefit not only themselves but the rest of us as well."

The Early Literature of Socialism by Daniel J. Ryan 1920

The Early Literature of Socialism by Daniel Joseph Ryan 1920

From the book Historic Failures in Applied Socialism

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THE ideal commonwealth wherein everyone shares equally in property, profits and opportunity has been the dream of humanity. The iridescent mirage of a state without poverty, where there was no injustice, no wrong-doing, no unmerited suffering, and where the citizenship was a brotherhood living under laws that produced universal happiness has been the ambitious project of socialism that has led millions of innocent and well-meaning souls into a state of confusion, far away from the paths of sound thinking.

Long before the modern socialist sought to make it a question of sociology or of government this "NeverNever Land" of human happiness was the theme of poetic thinkers and philosophical dreamers. When they were aroused to discontent by imperfect and unjust social relations, when they saw the greed of man oppressing the poor and the gross injustice of the ruling classes, their aspirations and ideals were bound to break into articulate expression. Thus the sentimental genesis of such ideas forced their way into the literature of our race in philosophic dissertations or poetical fiction. First, men think of things, then they write of them, and as a result they carry them into action. This evolution of aspiration, expression and performance is the history of every human movement. Nor can there be accurate historic narration without these antecedents as a background. Therefore a summarized review of the literature having for its purpose the exposition of the idealized or socialized state is necessary to a full understanding of the unsuccessful attempts at socialism.

The protagonist in this class of literature is Plato, who in his Republic created an ideal state, but like a true logician he first created an ideal people, and so made it a perfect commonwealth. In this work, which is his acknowledged masterpiece, he expresses himself through Socrates, who in his lifetime was the teacher of Plato. Thus the spirit of Socrates, conversing with companions, is the vehicle for Plato's thoughts. In tracing the rise of a state he says: "Man, isolated from his fellowmen, is not self-sufficient. Hence the origin of society, and of the state, which requires the concurrence of four or five men at least, who establish the first elements of a division of labor, which becomes more minute as the members of the community increase. Thus the society comprises at first only husbandmen, builders, clothiers, shoemakers. To these are soon added carpenters, smiths, shepherds, graziers. Gradually a foreign trade arises, which necessitates increased production at home, in order to pay for the imported goods. Production carried out on so large a scale will form into existence a class of distributors, shops and a currency. Thus the state requires merchants, sailors, shopkeepers and hired laborers.

"A state, thus constituted, will be well supplied with the necessaries of life, if its members do not multiply too rapidly for its resources. But if it is to be supplied with the luxuries, as well as the necessaries, of life, it must contain in addition cooks, confectioners, barbers, actors, dancers, poets, physicians, etc. It will therefore require a larger territory, and this want may involve it in a war with its neighbors. But war implies soldiers, and soldiers must be carefully trained to their profession. Hence the state must possess a standing army, or class of Guardians."

These Guardians, Plato says, must be selected with reference to high qualities. "They must be strong, swift and brave; high spirited but gentle; and endowed with a taste for philosophy." They must not own any property, for otherwise they might become avaricious, and instead of being watchdogs they will almost be sure to become wolves. They must live a hardy, frugal life, quartered in tents, not houses, and be supported by the contributions of the other citizens. They must be scrupulously educated; truth, courage and self-control must be inculcated from childhood. Their speech must be simple and severe. They must be educated in music —in songs, harmonies and musical instruments. No soft or enervating music will be allowed them, and only the simplest instruments—the lyre, the guitar and the pipe shall be used." After music the Guardians must be trained in gymnastics. Their diet must be simple and moderate, and therefore healthy, the object being to make them independent of physicians except in case of accident or acute illness.

From the Guardians thus educated and disciplined are selected the magistrates of the states—the lawmakers, law interpreters and law enforcers. They must be the oldest, the wisest, the ablest and the most patriotic members of that body. These constitute the real Guardians—the remainder are called the Auxiliaries— the soldiers. The laborers and craftsmen are called Producers.

It is evident that Plato had some knowledge of the institutions of Sparta, to which we shall afterwards refer, for we find him incorporating into his imaginary state some of the principal practices and institutions that obtained among the Spartans. For instance, he provided for what we should now-a-days call the "nationalization of women." There was a community of sexual relations entirely aside from the marriage state, based upon good health and desirable offspring, foreshadowing the modern aspirations of eugenics. He therefore regulated the sexual association with the greatest detail. He regarded children as the property of the state, the purpose being to perpetuate a healthy race, and he required the defective ones, to use his own words "to be concealed in some mysterious and unknown hiding place." The state of Plato, unlike that of Sparta, was intended to be a highly intellectual community, and therefore the greatest attention was paid to education and the development of the intellectual and spiritual side of its inhabitants. Hence the state undertook to develop in the highest degree the arts and sciences.

Thus Plato created his perfect state with three orders: the Guardians, or ruling class; the Auxiliaries, or military class; and the Producers, or working class. He makes Socrates, by his well-known method of question and answer, prove that it is the truest and most beneficent state for man. Plato, a philosopher with the soul of a poet, died in the year 347 before Christ. He was the first writer of antiquity who advocated a project for a socialistic community where man should live for his species and not for himself, but his work was without fruit except to plant the thought in other minds; but it is a masterpiece of mingled metaphysics and idealism, of reasoning and romance. He has had great influence on imaginative literature and social evolution, and has suggested to the reformers of subsequent ages much of their impracticable movements.

But there were philosophers and writers under Christianity that had the same longing views of an ideal community as Plato had, and we find them expressing themselves in the form of some of the most brilliant writings of their time. The most remarkable and impressive of these productions was written by Sir Thomas More, the Lord High Chancellor of England. He lived in the reign of Henry VIII, a very turbulent and tumultuous period of English history; he was a great character, a profound philosopher, and a brilliant writer. Seeing the disturbed and unequal conditions of the times, he wrote Utopia the creation of an imaginary people who lived upon an island, and enjoyed a happy welfare of being, socially, industrially, intellectually and religiously, in a community in which the labor class was made the basis. He foreshadowed things that have happened in our day—short hours of labor, sanitary reform, healthful recreation, popular education, just principles of penal law, religious toleration, a concord and friendship of nations. This he pictured out in the most romantic style, which appeared to him as an idealism that would never come true, but which future generations have all seen turn into facts. As a piece of literature it is intensely worthy of study, and is of great interest and instruction.

In Utopia there was no private property, no money, no rich and no poor; all shared alike; there was no crime, because there was no inducement to crime. All the produce raised from the land was controlled by public authority; it was dispensed to the people for immediate use or preserved for the future. Every man and woman worked. The hours of labor were reduced to a minimum, and the leisure hours were employed under direction of the state in the cultivation of the arts and sciences, especially music, since intellectual pleasure is considered the highest form of enjoyment.

Sir Thomas More's book was regarded in his day as a satire on existing conditions in England, and an indirect argument for the reconstruction of English society. He did not dare print it in Great Britain, so he published it at Louvain in 1516.

Another book that created a great impression in England at the time of its production, was Sir Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, written in 1629, more than a century after the appearance of More's Utopia. Lord Bacon's social philosophy was embodied in this publication. It followed somewhat the lines of Utopia. It was built upon a humane philosophy, and constructed a state based upon kindness and compassion towards the distressed, and its purpose was to open a way to the liberal thought of England to do something in that direction. Bacon's speculations were bold and original, but they were not impracticable. Macaulay's essay reviewing Lord Bacon's works, says of New Atlantis that "some parts, and not the least startling parts, of the glorious vision have been accomplished, even according to the letter, and the whole construed according to the spirit is daily accomplishing all around us." Both More's Utopia and Bacon's New Atlantis are exceedingly romantic in their contents, and are written in brilliant literary style. Among the attractive incidents of Bacon's romance is "Solomon's House," a combination of a college and museum, dedicated to the study of the works and creations of God. Of his description of this, Macaulay says "that there is not to be found in any human composition a passage more eminently distinguished by profound and serene wisdom."

Contemporaneous with the New Atlantis was the City of the Sun, by Thomas Campanella, who was a Dominican monk. This work was written in Spain, and notwithstanding that he was defended by Pope Urban VIII, he suffered much on account of the opinions expressed, but it was in the same nature and spirit of all the writers that have endeavored to formulate their idealistic views, and bears in many respects a striking resemblance to More's Utopia.

There is another work of a more modern type than these which we have been discussing, and of more interest from the fact that it is directly connected with the United States. This is A Voyage to Icaria, by a Frenchman named Etienne Cabet. It follows the general lines of the idealistic philosophy similar to the literature of this nature from Plato down. The government of Icaria was pictured as a democratic commonwealth, with community of goods, cooperative industrialism, progressive income tax, state regulation of wages, national work shops, agricultural colonies, political freedom, liberal education and equality of the sexes. It prohibited the publication of any newspapers except the official journal of the state. The work was received by the starved proletariat of France with joyful acclaim, and they looked with anxiety and longing upon the prospect of a future society where capitalists could no longer domineer over the sons of toil, or put to their own uses the profits of labor. The book created a profound impression; the author was regarded with great enthusiasm, and his system was cried for by the multitude.

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Thomas Aquinas & Economics by Robert Palgrave 1894

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS and Economics by Sir Robert Harry Inglis Palgrave 1894

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Aquinas, the greatest of the schoolmen, is of the utmost importance in the history of economic thought, in that he sums up the teaching of the mediaeval church, and at the same time furnishes the point of departure for all subsequent reasoning down to the Renaissance. He would seem, indeed, to have had no special interest in the economic side of life; he was led to handle it partly because his Summa Theologica was intended to be encyclopaedic, partly because the growth of industry and trade, and the tendency to apply to them the maxims of the Civil Law (qv), rendered necessary a restatement of Christian principles. Politics and economics were not yet separated from theology; accordingly the utterances of Aquinas on political economy are to be found not in any one place, but scattered up and down his great treatise and his minor writings. It will, however, be convenient to group them under three heads— (i.) fundamental questions of social organisation; the ethics of business ; (iii.) the theory of taxation.

(i.) The early Christian Fathers had used language which might seem to deny the justice of private property; the canon law had expressly included community of goods among its examples of natural law, and had even incorporated a passage ascribed to Clement of Rome (bishop of Rome in the latter part of the 1st century), wherein it was laid down that the use of all that is in the world ought to be common to all men. Aquinas, with strong common sense. set himself to justify individual ownership without directly taking up a position of antagonism to those earlier ideals. In the first place, he explained away the significance of the generally accepted phrase as to natural law, by drawing a distinction between what was natural absolutely, and what was natural by way of consequence. In the former sense, it was true, there was no reason why a field should belong to one man rather than to another; but in the latter sense such ownership might properly be called natural, considering how necessary it was that the land should be cultivated and that its fruits should be enjoyed in peace. Moreover, argued Aquinas, the phrase did not mean that natural law forbade private property, but only that it did not introduce it; its introduction was due to positive law, the invention of human wisdom. In the second place, he fell back on the teaching of Aristotle—whose Politics he was the first of the schoolmen to incorporate with mediaeval thought —and pointed out the beneficial results of private property; and in Aristotle's maxim that property should be owned separately but used for the common good, he found a distinction which seemed to harmonise with the meaning of the Fathers.

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But if the absence of private property was not suitable for society generally, might it not be a duty incumbent on such Christians as sought perfection in the religious life to divest themselves of their wealth? St. Francis had taken poverty for his bride; there was a strong party among the Franciscans who opposed even the corporate holding of property; and the question of apostolic poverty was already beginning to tear the church asunder. Accordingly Aquinas devotes to this topic a more than usually long section. Poverty, he lays down, is not an end in itself, but a means—a means towards following Christ. Riches, therefore, are wrong only so far as they are hindrances in the way of this object. And if external goods are possessed only in such moderate quantities as are necessary for men's due maintenance, they need not distract the soul. If they are the common property of a religious body, the care of them may even be regarded as a work of charity. But in this case the degree in which material goods are desirable, will depend on the character of each particular organisation.

The duty of almsgiving had been closely associated in the teaching of the Fathers with their views as to property; and it had been inculcated without much regard to possible limitations. Here again Aquinas endeavoured to state traditional principles in a more prudent form. The giving of alms was, of course, with him also, a matter of divine command, and not merely a counsel of perfection. But it was to be guided by right reason, according to which men were not bound, unless in exceptional cases, to give more than their superfluity; and superfluity was defined as that which remained after providing for a man's due maintenance, and that of those dependent on him, in the rank of life to which they belonged.

In what to Aristotle was the other great fundamental question, viz. slavery, Aquinas was clearly but little interested, doubtless owing to the changed conditions of society. He nowhere discusses at any length the justice of personal servitude, and his occasional arguments on the subject seem purely academic. He would appear to have accepted Aristotle's view of the expediency of slavery; but he differed from him in believing that by nature (in the “absolute” sense of the term) all men were equal; and he followed some of the Fathers in holding that slavery was among the consequences of the fall of Adam.

(ii.) Of wider practical importance was his teaching as to the ethics of business. He contributed but little to the development of church doctrine in this regard; but he gave it a systematic shape which greatly strengthened its hold upon men’s minds. In laying down that, in buying and selling, nothing but a JUST PRICE (gm) should ever be demanded or paid, Aquinas was quite conscious that he was enunciating a principle in direct opposition to that of the civil law; and he met the difficulty by urging that human law was necessarily limited, and that it could not, like divine law, prohibit all that was opposed to virtue. As to trade, he agreed with Aristotle that it was base, and with the Fathers that it was sinful, if carried on for the sake of gain; but it was not sinful when the merchant sought only a moderate reward for his exertions, and spent it in the maintenance of his family or the relief of the poor; still less when it was carried on for the public good, that a country might not be without the necessaries of life. Concerning usury he repeated the arguments of his predecessors Alexander of Hales and Albert the Great, laying particular stress on the distinction between Fungibles and Consumptibles (q.v): with the loan of a consumptible, such as money, passed the right to make use of it, so that to demand the return of the money and a payment for its use was to make a double charge for one thing. He allows, however, that a compensation may justly be received for a Damnum Emergens (q.v.), i.e. the loss arising from the non-restoration of a loan at the appointed time, though not for a Lucrum Cessans (q.v.) But he makes two dangerous concessions when he allows that a man may, without sin, borrow from one who is already a usurer, if it is for some good object; and that a man may, without sin, entrust his money to a usurer, if the purpose is not gain, but the safe keeping of the money.

(iii.) The treatise De Regimine Principum, the most popular manual of statecraft in the later Middle Ages, is, unfortunately, from the hand of Aquinas only as far as the middle of the second chapter of the second book. But there is extant almost interesting letter of his in reply to certain questions of the Duchess of Brabant; among others as to the justice of taxation. Aquinas replies that as princes are established by God, not that they may seek their own gain, but the common utility of the people, they should, as a general rule, content themselves with the revenues of their demesne lands. But when these will not suffice for the defence of the country or to meet other emergencies, then it is just that subjects should be called upon to give their aid. This position is identical with the demand, which appears so often in the constitutional struggles of the 14th century in England, that the king should “live of his own."

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The Socialist Attitude Towards Machinery 1908

The Socialist Attitude Towards Machinery 1908

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Machinery, so Mr. Belfort Bax asserts, "has proved the greatest curse mankind has ever suffered under. . . ."

Mr. Belfort Bax again assures us that "the action of the 'Luddites' in destroying machinery, so far from being a mere irrational outburst, the result of popular misapprehension, as the orthodox economists assert, was perfectly reasonable and justifiable."

"But machinery not only," writes Karl Marx in his Capital, "acts as a competitor who gets the better of the workman, and is constantly on the point of making him superfluous. It is also a power inimical to him. . . ."

Again, according to Marx, "In agriculture as in industry the machine employs and enslaves the producer." "In manufacture, he (the workman) is part of a living mechanism. In machinery he is the living appendage of a lifeless mechanism."

The Socialist habitually denounces, as do Mr. Bax, Marx, and others, the use of machinery under the present system, though with Socialist consistency he predicts a vast extension of its use in the Socialist State.

In Industry under Socialism Mrs. Annie Besant foretells a greatly extended use of machinery by the Socialist State. "What we shall probably do will be to instruct all our youth in the principles of mechanics and the handling of machines . . . the skilled workman will be the skilled mechanic, not the skilled printer or bootmaker."

By another Socialist writer, Mr. John Spargo, we are informed: "In the first place, much of this kind of work that is now performed by human labour could be more efficiently done by mechanical means."

The same policy is propounded by innumerable Socialist writers.

The Socialist position in this matter is grotesque indeed. The existing system of society is inveighed against for the reason, amongst others, that it does not provide work for all who need it. Strangely enough, the Socialist State offers as one of its main attractions a diminution in "the tragedy of toil." And machinery, which we are assured by Socialists is a baneful factor at present, is to be the blessed means of securing greater leisure under Socialism.

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The Socialist estimate of the effect of machinery upon the labour market is yet another of their false conclusions. Machinery does not diminish employment, but, on the contrary, it actually increases it. It is true, we grant, that in the earlier stages when a new form of machine is laid down it does supersede the manual labour which was previously employed. Experience, however, proves that before long, as the result of the cheaper production, there follows an increased demand for the manufactured article. In this way machinery, so far from permanently displacing labour, has repeatedly proved itself to be the means of providing additional employment.

With regard to machinery we must deal with our point in stages. The first stage is that machinery cheapens the cost of production, and, in the vast majority of cases, consequently increases the demand for the goods.

Mr. A. Maurice Low, in an exceedingly able chapter dealing with the condition of the industrial classes in the United States of America, writes: "One explanation of the greater productivity of the American working-man ... is the greater use of machinery, and it has been shown that only in a country where the rate of wages is high, is it economical to use machinery"

"... The history of American industry affords convincing proof that the use of the most improved types of machinery, and the most highly specialised and best paid labour, results not in increasing the cost, but, on the contrary, in decreasing it."

Again, writes Mr. Maurice Low, "The more extensively machinery enters into manufacturing processes the lower the cost to the consumer. Therefore, machinery increases wages and cheapens production, so that the labourer obtains a double benefit by receiving a greater reward for his labour and having to spend less for the necessaries of life. . . ."

We now reach the next stage. "Cheap goods!" cry the Socialists; "what do they mean but cheap labour?" And into this pitfall Mr. Blatchford tumbles headlong.

"Now cheap goods mean cheap labour, and cheap labour means low wages."

Let us imagine an industry. Manual labour is employed and the question of the introduction of machinery is under consideration. The machinery and its installation is, however, a costly business. Unless, then, the wages that are paid are high, it will, in all probability, not pay the employer to introduce that machinery. Having done so, however, he finds that his output is enormously increased, and the cost pro rata decreased. How is he to create an equivalent, increase in the demand? He arrives at that by cheapening the sale price of his product, which the lower relative cost permits of his doing. Very quickly he finds that a large increase must be made in the numbers he employs for the purpose of meeting the increased demand on the part of the consumer. Had, indeed, such not been the almost universal result of the use of machinery during the last fifty years, what, we wonder, would have been the state of employment when regard is had to the great increase in the population of Great Britain?

An ounce of fact is, we submit, worth a ton of Socialist assertion. The following evidence, given before the American Industrial Commission, shows that cheap labour means high wages.

Owing to American imports of gunny cloth cutting out the Indian manufacturer in his own home market, the manager of a large Calcutta factory travelled to the United States in order to ascertain, if possible, the reason.

On going over a great factory in Brooklyn, U.S.A., the Calcutta manager saw the great looms working with one man to the loom. "How much," he asked, "does that man earn?" "$1.50 a day," was the reply. "Why, the weavers in Calcutta only earn 12.5 cents a day." I do not understand it. How do you explain it?" The American manager replied, "What is the cost of weaving in Calcutta a yard of gunny cloth at 12.5 cents a day?" "2.5 cents a yard", replied the Calcutta manager. The answer of the American manager was: "The cost of weaving on that loom is 1/2 cent a yard." "Well," said the Calcutta manager, suddenly enlightened, "I have come half-way around the world to find out what a d---d fool I have been."

The matter is in no sense one of fiscal controversy. That cheap labour means cheap production is accepted as a fallacy now by both Protectionists and Free Traders in the States. "The cheapest labour is the labour which is the most productive, irrespective of first cost," that is, irrespective of the amount which the artisan receives as wages.

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Frederic Bastiat by Henry Macleod 1896

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FREDERIC BASTIAT - Reaction against the Economics of Jean Baptiste Say and John Stuart Mill 1896

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For nearly half a century the Economics of J. B. Say reigned supreme in France, and when J. S. Mill introduced it, though with many divergences, into England in 1848, his work was saluted by his friends and an uncritical public with unbounded applause, and was supposed to have brought Economics to the highest state of perfection; and for many years it was supposed that it was as futile to criticize Mill as to criticize infallibility itself. Whatever Mill asserted was to be accepted without doubt or profane questioning.

But soon after the publication of Mill's work a reaction began in France, and has gone on increasing to the present time, and the most advanced Economists throughout the world have come to see that it is impossible to erect Economics into a positive and definite Science on the system of Say and Mill, and that this can only be done by reverting to the original conception of its founders—that it is the Science of Commerce or Exchanges, or the Theory of Value.

Frederic Bastiat, the brightest genius who ever adorned the science of Economics, was born in 1801, the son of a merchant at Bayonne. He was left an orphan at the age of nine, and was brought up under the care of his grandfather, who had a small estate at Mugron, in the department of the Landes. After being at college he was placed in his uncle's house of business at Bayonne, in his 19th year. At first he thought that the business of a merchant was purely mechanical, and could be picked up in a few months. But he was soon disabused, and found that the science of commerce was not mere routine, and that a merchant, besides his books and ledgers, ought to study the Laws of Economics.

Having succeeded to his grandfather's property of Mugron, and thereby having acquired a competence, he left commerce and devoted himself to study. He read Adam Smith and J. B. Say, for whom at that time he had a great admiration, and other Economists. He also devoted much attention to English and Italian literature, as well as philosophy. Thus, for several years his life passed away in deep study and peaceful meditation, and filled some departmental offices.

Bastiat had written a few minor articles shewing great ability, and containing many of the ideas he afterwards developed with such surpassing brilliancy, which appeared in the provincial journals: but it was in July, 1844, that his first article appeared in the Journal des Economistes which announced to the world that a great Economical writer had arisen.

We must pass over his inimitable Sophismes Economiques, also his strenuous efforts, in company with Michel Chevalier, to found a Free Trade league in France, in imitation of the Anti-Corn-Law League in England, because all we have to do with in this place is to ascertain what his views were of the nature and objects of the science of Economics. He began, as said above, by having a great admiration for J. B. Say, whose work was then the great standard work on Economics in France, and held the same position there as the Wealth of Nations did in England. But when he came to declare his own views as to the nature and objects of Economics, he entirely abandoned the system of J. B. Say, and reverted to the original conception of it as the Science of Commerce or Exchanges, or the Theory of Value.

In his Harmonies Economiques, under Besoins, Efforts, Satisfaction, he investigates the true limits and objects of the science of Economics. He determines that it is founded upon the wants of mankind, and their reciprocal services ministered to their reciprocal wants and desires.

"It is, in fact, this faculty given to man, and to man only, among all creatures, to labour for each other: it is this transmission of efforts, this exchange of services, with all their complicated and infinite combinations to which it gives rise through time and space: it is that precisely which constitutes Economic Science, shows its origin, and determines its limits. . . .

"To accomplish an effort, to satisfy the wants of another, is to render him a service. If a service is stipulated in return, there is an exchange of services: and as that is the most usual case, Political Economy may be defined as the Theory of Exchange.

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"Whatever may be the degree of want of one of the contracting parties, or the intensity of the effort of the other, if the exchange is free, the two services exchanged are of equal value. Value consists, then, in the comparative appreciation of reciprocal services, and so one may say that Political Economy is the Theory of Value."

In the article on Value, Bastiat investigates the conception of Value, and shews that it is entirely founded on the mutual appreciation of services interchanged, and not upon labour.

"Thus the definition of the word Value, to be correct, should regard not only human efforts, but also those efforts exchanged or exchangeable. Exchange does more than state and measure values, it gives them existence. I do not say that it gives existence to the acts, or to the things which are exchanged, but it gives them the notion of Value.

"I say, then, that Value is the relation of two services exchanged.

"The idea of Value entered into the world the first time that a man said to his brother, 'Do this for me, and I will do that for you.' They came to an agreement: for then, for the first time, one could say the two services exchanged were equal in value.

"By means of exchange, we labour to provide food, clothing, shelter, light, to heal, to defend, instruct each other: thence reciprocal services. These services, we compare them, we discuss them, we value them: thence Value."

He shews that many circumstances affect Value, and points out the false origins which have been attributed to the word.

"Up till now, the principle of Value has been sought for in one of the circumstances which augment it or diminish it, materiality, durability, utility, scarcity, labour, difficulty of acquisition, judgment, &c.: a false direction impressed from the beginning on the science, because the accident which modifies the phenomenon is not the phenomenon. . . . Thus the principle of Value is for Smith in materiality [Smith has admitted that both Personal Qualities and Abstract Rights have Value] and durability, for Say in utility, for Ricardo in labour, for Senior in scarcity, for Storch in judgment, &c."

He then shows the confusion into which the science has been thrown by these contradictory conceptions, and shews that the only true source of Value is Exchangeability.

The natural consequence of this view is that all services which are exchanged are Economical elements, whatever their nature may be, whether material or immaterial: and that all labour is productive labour which produces any service which is wanted. Hence those persons who satisfy any of our mental desires, such as opera-singers, are included in that category. Bastiat then points out at great length the erroneous conclusions to which the doctrines of preceding Economists on the conception of Value, lead.

So again in Organisation Naturelle he says: "We should shut our eyes to the light if we refused to acknowledge that society cannot present such complicated transactions, in which the civil and penal laws have so little part, without obeying a wonderfully ingenious mechanism. This Mechanism is the object of Political Economy."

Thus Bastiat entirely emancipated himself from the evil influence of J. B. Say, whom he had admired so much at first. He plucked up by the roots the noxious fallacies which are the Economics of Adam Smith and Ricardo, that all Wealth is the produce of land and labour, and that labour is the cause of all Value, which are the doctrines upon which the Socialists found their systems.

He wrote a vast number of piquant and vivacious pamphlets assailing Protection and Socialism, and other false doctrines of Economics, then current. But unfortunately he did not live to construct a definite system of Economics on the fundamental ideas he had so lucidly expounded. After a short but brilliant career of six years he was cut off in the maturity of his powers, and in the very height of his reputation, in 1850.

Bastiat has been called the founder of the third school of Economics. But this is a misconception. He simply cleared away the stupendous chaos and confusion and mass of contradictions of Adam Smith and J. B. Say, and reverted to the unanimous doctrine of the ancients, of which he does not seem to have had any knowledge, that Exchangeability is the sole essence and principle of Wealth: and that Value is not a quality inherent in an object, but is simply the relation between any Economic Quantities which are exchanged: and that Economics is the science of Commerce or Exchanges, or the Theory of Value: a conclusion in which the most advanced Economists in the world are now agreed.

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