Chapter XXXVII: Book I (3)

[508] On the relations of socialism to the French Revolution see the preceding chapter on Saint-Simon (p. 199, note).

[509] The Declaration of the Rights of Man speaks of liberty, property, resistance to oppression, but there is not a word about the right of association. Trade association, one of the oldest and most democratic forms of association, was proscribed by the famous decree of Le Chapelier (1791), and severe penalties were imposed upon associations of more than twenty persons by the Penal Code of 1810. These prohibitions were gradually removed in the course of the nineteenth century. Friendly societies were the first to be set free, then followed trade unions, but these laws were not definitely repealed until July 1, 1901.

[510] “It is obvious that the present _régime_ of free competition which is supposed to be necessary in the interests of our stupid political economy, and which is further intended to keep monopoly in check, must result in the growth of monopoly in almost every branch of industry.” (Victor Considérant, _Principes de Socialisme_.)

[511] Fourier’s first book, _Les Quatre Mouvements_, was published in 1808, and his last, _La Fausse Industrie_, in 1836. Owen’s earliest work, _A New View of Society; or Essays on the Formation of Human Character_, was published in 1813, and his last work, _The Human Race governed without Punishment_, in 1858.

[512] “According to details supplied by journalists, Owen’s establishments seem to have at least three serious drawbacks which must inevitably destroy the whole enterprise—the numbers are excessive, equality is one of his ideals, and there is no reference to agriculture.” (_Unité universelle_, vol ii, p. 35)

[513] Despite the fact that Chartism was essentially a working-class movement, controlled by the Working Men’s Association, its demands were exclusively political, the chief of them being universal suffrage.

[514] It is quite possible that Owen regarded the term as his own invention, but we now know that it had been previously employed by Pierre Leroux, the French socialist. The publication of Owen’s _What is Socialism?_ in 1841, however, is the earliest instance of the term being employed as the title of a book.

Owen lived an extremely active life, and died in 1857 at the advanced age of eighty-seven. Of Welsh artisan descent, he began life as an apprentice in a cotton factory, setting up as a master spinner on his own account with a capital of £100, which he had borrowed from his father. His rise was very rapid, and at the age of thirty he found himself co-proprietor and director of the New Lanark Mills. It was then that he first made a name for himself by his technical improvements and his model dwellings for his workmen. It was at this period that his ideas on education also took shape. By and by it became the fashion to make a pilgrimage to view the factory at New Lanark, and among the visitors were several very distinguished people. His correspondents also included more than one royal personage. Among these we may specially mention the King of Prussia, who sought his advice on the question of education, and the King of Holland, who consulted him on the question of charity.

The crisis of 1815 revealed to Owen the serious defects in the economic order, and this marks the beginning of the second period of his life, when he dabbled in communal experiments. In 1825 he founded the colony of New Harmony in Indiana, and the same year witnessed the establishment of another colony at Orbiston, in Scotland. But these lasted only for a few years. In 1832 we have the National Equitable Labour Exchange, which was not much more successful.

Owen, sixty-three years of age, and thoroughly disappointed with his experiments, but as convinced as ever of the truth of his doctrines, entered now upon the third period of his life, which, as it happened, was to be a fairly long one. This period was to be devoted wholly to propagating the gospel of the New Moral World—_The New Moral World_ being the title of his chief work and of the newspaper which he first published towards the end of 1834. He took an active part in the Trade Union movement, but does not seem to have been much interested in the co-operative experiments which were started by the Rochdale Pioneers in 1844, although curiously enough this is his chief claim to fame.

Owen was in no sense a _littérateur_, being essentially a man of affairs, and we are not surprised to find that the number of books which he has left behind him is small. But he was an indefatigable lecturer, and wrote a good deal for the press. We must confess, however, that it is not easy, as we read his addresses and articles to-day, to account for the wonderful contemporary success which they had.

There is an excellent French work by Dolléans dealing with his life and doctrines (1907). The best English life, that of Podmore, is unfortunately out of print.

[515] To his fellow-employers who complained of his almost revolutionary proposals Owen made reply as follows—and his words are quite as true now as they were then: “Experience must have taught you the difference between an efficiently equipped factory with its machinery always clean and in good working order and one in which the machinery is filthy and out of repair and working only with the greatest amount of friction. Now if the care which you bestow upon machinery can give you such excellent results, may you not expect equally good results from care spent upon human beings, with their infinitely superior structure? Is it not quite natural to conclude that these infinitely more delicate and complex mechanisms will also increase in force and efficiency and will be really much more economical if they are kept in good working condition and treated with a certain measure of kindness? Such kindness would do much to remove the mental friction and irritation which always results whenever the nourishment is insufficient to keep the body in full productive efficiency, as well as to arrest deterioration and to prevent premature death.”

[516] Education is given a very prominent place in Owen’s system, and once we accept his philosophy we realise what an important place it was really bound to have. Education was to make men, just as boots and caps are made. Were it not altogether foreign to our purpose it would be interesting to compare his educational ideals with those of Rousseau as outlined in _Émile_.

[517] “The idea of responsibility is one of the absurdest, and has done a great deal of harm.” (_Catechism of the New Moral World_, 1838.)

[518] On the other hand, Owen had great influence with the working classes, and this he attributed to the fact that, “freed from all religious prejudice, he was able to look upon men and human nature in general with infinite charity, and in that light men no longer seemed responsible for their actions.” (Quoted by Dolléans.)

[519] Like most of the economists and socialists of that time, Owen was very much impressed with the crisis of 1815.

[520] On the other hand, there is this objection:

Whenever profit forms a part of cost of production it is impossible to distinguish it from interest. In that case it is true that even perfect competition would not do away with profit, since it will only reduce the price to the level of cost of production. In that case profit cannot be said to be either unjust or parasitic, for the product is sold exactly for what it cost.

When profit does not enter into cost of production there is no possibility of confusing it with interest. It is simply the difference between the sale price and the cost of replacing the article. In this it is certainly parasitic, and would disappear under a _régime_ of perfect competition, which must to some extent destroy the monopoly upon which such profit rests.

But the distinction between profit and interest was not known in Owen’s time, and Owen would have said that they are both one, and that if profit occasionally claims a share in the cost of production with a view to defying competition it has no right to any such refuge, for cost of production should consist of nothing but the value of labour and the wear and tear of capital. Accordingly it ought to be got rid of altogether.

[521] “Metallic money is the cause of a great deal of crime, injustice, and want, and it is one of the contributory causes which tend to destroy character and to make life into a pandemonium.

“The secret of profit is to buy cheap and to sell dear in the name of an artificial conception of wealth which neither expands as wealth grows nor contracts as it diminishes.”

[522] This contradiction did not escape Owen. But we must not forget that he regarded this merely as a compromise, and that he looked forward to a time when the establishment of a communistic association with a new environment would lead to a complete solution of the problem. He began in the New Harmony colony by making _pro rata_ payment for the work done, but the object was to arrive gradually at a state of complete equality where no distinction was to be made between the service rendered or the labour given—with the result that the colony was extinct in six months.

[523] The Labour Exchange, which was opened in September 1832, at first enjoyed a slight measure of success. There were 840 members, and they even went the length of establishing a few branches. Among the chief causes of the failure of the scheme the following may be enumerated:

(_a_) The associates, being themselves allowed to state the value of their products, naturally exaggerated, and it became necessary to relieve them of a task which depended entirely upon their honour, and to place the valuation in the hands of experts. But these experts, who were not at all versed in Owen’s philosophy, valued the goods in money in the ordinary way, and then expressed those values in labour notes at the rate of 6_d._ for every hour’s work. It could hardly have been done on any other plan. But it was none the less true that Owen’s system was in this way inverted, for instead of the labour standard determining the selling value of the product, the money value of the product determined the value of the labour.

(_b_) As soon as the society began to attract members who were not quite as conscientious as those who first joined it, the Exchange was flooded with goods that were really unsaleable. But for the notes received in exchange for these the authorities would be forced to give goods which possessed a real value, that is, goods which had been honestly marked, and which commanded a good price, with the result that in the long run there would be nothing left in the depot except worthless products. In short, the Exchange would be reduced to buying goods which cost more than they were worth, and selling goods that really cost less than they were worth.

Since the notes were not in any way registered, any one, whether a member of the society or not, could buy and sell them in the ordinary way and make a handsome profit out of the transaction. Three hundred London tradesmen did this by offering to take labour notes in payment for merchandise. They soon emptied the Exchange, and when they saw that nothing valuable was left they stopped taking the notes, and the trick was done.

M. Denis very aptly points out that the Exchange was really of not much use to the wage-earner, who was not even allowed to own what he had produced. There is some doubt after all as to whether the system would prove quite successful in abolishing the wage-earners.

[524] This does not imply that consumers’ associations, when they are better organised and federated, with large central depots at their command, will not take up this project once again—that is, will not try to dispense with money in their commercial transactions. They will certainly keep an eye on that problem.

[525] That was Holyoake’s view (_History of Co-operation_, vol. i, p. 215). But, according to a passage quoted by Dolléans, Owen contemplated making an appeal to the co-operative societies to come to the rescue of his National Labour Exchange.

[526] To the workers he wrote: “Would you like to enjoy yourselves the whole products of your labour? You have nothing more to do than simply to _alter the direction of your labour_. Instead of working for you know not whom, _work for each other_.” (Quoted by Foxwell in his introduction to Anton Menger’s _The Right to the Whole Produce of Labour_.)

[527] See the lecture on _Les Prophéties de Fourier_ in Gide’s _Co-opération_.

[528] It is hardly necessary, however, to credit him with a greater amount of eccentricity than he actually possessed, and I seize this opportunity of refuting once more a story told by more than one eminent economist, attributing to him the statement that the members of the Phalanstère would all be endowed with a tail with an eye at the end of it. The caricaturists of the period—“Cham,” for example—represent them in that fashion. The legend doubtless grew out of the following passage from his works, which is fantastic enough, as everybody will admit. After pointing out that the inhabitants of other planets have several limbs which we do not possess, he proceeds: “There is one limb especially which we have not, and which possesses the following very useful characteristics. It acts as a support against falling, it is a powerful means of defence, a superb ornament of gigantic force and wonderful dexterity, and gives a finish as well as lending support to every bodily movement.” (_Fausse Industrie_, vol. ii, p. 5.)

[529] _Nouveau Monde industriel_, p. 473.

[530] Letter dated January 23, 1831, quoted by Pellarin, _Vie de Fourier_ (Paris, 1850).

[531] _Nouveau Monde industriel_, p. 26. For further details see _Œuvres choisies de Fourier_, with introduction by Charles Gide, and Hubert Bourgin’s big volume on Fourier.

[532] It is necessary to point out that Fourier’s suggestions for a solution of the domestic servant problem are really not quite so definite as we have given the reader to understand in the text. They are mixed up with a number of other ideas of a more or less fantastic description, but very suggestive nevertheless. This is especially true of the suggestion to transform domestic service by making it mutually gratuitous—an idea that is worth thinking about.

[533] We were thinking especially of associations like that of the painters under the leadership of M. Buisson, where distribution is as follows: labour, 50 per cent., capital 27 per cent., administration 12 per cent.

[534] _Association domestique_, vol. i, p. 466.

[535] _Ibid._, p. 466. Note that Fourier says that this only applies to civilised societies. For those who live in the future Harmony city there will be other and more powerful motives.

[536] _Unité universelle_, vol. iii, p. 517.

[537] _Ibid._, p. 457.

[538] The system of integral association proposed by Fourier, including both co-operative production and co-operative distribution, will be better understood if we look at the facts of the present situation.

On the one hand we have co-operative associations of producers who are not particularly anxious that their products should be distributed among themselves; they simply produce the goods with a view to selling them and making a profit out of the transaction. On the other hand, the distributing societies simply aim at giving their members certain advantages, such as cheaper goods, but they make no attempt to produce the goods which they need.

In countries where co-operative societies are properly organised, as they are in England, for example, many of these societies have undertaken to produce at least a part of what they consume, and some of them have even acquired small estates for the purpose; but only a small proportion of the employees are members of the societies, with the result that their position is not very different from that of other working men. One understands the difficulty of grouping people in this way. But if the associations are to live it is absolutely necessary that they should produce what they require under conditions that are more favourable than those of ordinary producers; in a word, that they should be able to create a kind of new economic environment.

Even in the colonies one does not find many instances of vigorous associations of this kind.

[539] Co-partnership as outlined by M. Briand is to-day an item in the programme of the Radical Democratic party. See _Les Actions du Travail_, by M. Antonelli.

[540] M. Faguet, _Revue des Deux Mondes_, August 1, 1896.

[541] “Industrialism is the latest scientific illusion.” (_Quatre Mouvements_, p. 28.) We must also draw attention to his suggestion for co-operative banks, where agriculturists could bring their harvest and obtain money in exchange for it—a rough model of the agricultural credit banks. But he only regarded this as a step towards the Phalanstère.

[542] The kinds of labour which Fourier selects as examples are always connected with fruit-growing—cherry orchards, pear orchards, etc. Fruit and flowers have a very important place in his writings. He seems to have anticipated the fruit-growing rancher of California.

Without stopping to examine some of the more solid reasons—which unfortunately are buried beneath a great deal of rubbish—why fruit-growing should take the place of agriculture, we must just recall the curious fact that he was always emphasising the superiority of sugar and preserves over bread, and pointed to the “divine instinct” by which children are enabled to discover this. The suggestion was ridiculed at the time, but is to-day confirmed by some of the most eminent doctors and teachers of hygiene.

[543] It is interesting to contrast this view with Bücher’s, who thinks that the evolution of industry simply increases its irksomeness. A conception of regressive or spiral evolution might reconcile the two views.

[544] Let us not forget his _Petites Hordes_, which consisted of groups of boys who undertook the sweeping of public paths, the surveillance of public gardens, and the protection of animals. The idea was very much ridiculed at the time, but a number of similar organisations, each with its badge and banner, were recently instituted by Colonel Waring in the city of New York.

[545] “My theory is that every passion given by nature should be allowed the fullest scope. That is the key to my whole system. Society requires the full exercise of all the faculties given us by God.”

[546] _Quatre Mouvements_, p. 194.

[547] See, for example, such works as Zola’s _Travail_, and Barrè’s _L’Ennemi des Lois_; and as an example of the general change in the tone of the economists we may refer to Paul Leroy-Beaulieu’s latest writings, in which he speaks of Fourier as a “genial thinker.”

[548] It is no part of our task to relate the story of the several colonies founded either by disciples of Fourier or of Owen. Experiments of this kind were fairly general in the United States between 1841 and 1844, when no less than forty colonies were founded. Brook Farm, which is the best known of these, included among its members some of the most eminent Americans—Channing and Hawthorne, for example—but none of the settlements lasted very long.

Similar attempts have been made in France at a still more recent period. The one at Condé-sur-Vesgres, near Rambouillet, where a few faithful disciples of Fourier have come together, is still flourishing.

[549] Founded in 1859, it only became a co-partnership in 1888, the year of Godin’s death.

[550] As a matter of fact it first appeared as an article in the _Revue du Progrès_ in 1839.

[551] Buonarotti was the author of _La Conspiration pour l’Égalité, dite de Babeuf_, published in 1828. Little notice was taken of the volume by the public, but it was much discussed in democratic circles.

[552] _Organisation du Travail_, 5th ed. (1848). p. 77.

[553] We refer to it as the commonest type because in the previous section we have shown that other co-operative societies exist, such as Le Travail, for example, which claims to be modelled upon Fourier’s scheme, especially in the matter of borrowed capital. But the usual type is affiliated to the Chambre consultative des Associations de Production. Article II of its regulations reads as follows: “No one will be allowed to become a subscriber who is not a worker in some branch of production or other.” See the volume published by the Office du Travail in 1898, _Les Associations Ouvrières de Production_.

[554] In the _Journal des Sciences morales et politiques_, December 17, 1831. Only one association—the goldsmiths’, in 1834—was founded as the result of this article.

[555] Quoted by Festy, _Le Mouvement ouvrier au Début de la Monarchie de Juillet_, p. 88 (Paris, 1908).

[556] Buchez’s proposals for the reform of the “great industry” were of an entirely different character.

[557] François Vidal, _De la Répartition des Richesses_ (1846).

[558] “The emancipation of the working classes is a very complicated business. It is bound up with so many other questions and involves such profound changes of habit. So numerous are the various interests upon which an apparent though perhaps not a real attack is contemplated, that it would be sheer folly to imagine that it could ever be accomplished by a series of efforts tentatively undertaken and partially isolated. The whole power of the State will be required if it is to succeed. What the proletarian lacks is capital, and the duty of the State is to see that he gets it. Were I to define the State I should prefer to think of it as the poor man’s bank.” (_Organisation du Travail_, p. 14.)

[559] “The illusive conception of an abstract right has had a great hold upon the public ever since 1789. But it is nothing better than a metaphysical abstraction, which can afford but little consolation to a people who have been robbed of a definite security that was really theirs. The ‘rights of man,’ proclaimed with pomp and defined with minuteness in many a charter, has simply served as a cloak to hide the injustice of individualism and the barbarous treatment meted out to the poor under its ægis. Because of this practice of defining liberty as a right, men have got into the habit of calling people free even though they are the slaves of hunger and of ignorance and the sport of every chance. Let us say once for all that liberty consists, not in the abstract right given to a man, but in the power given him to exercise and develop his faculties.” (_Organisation du Travail_, p. 19.)

[560] Cf. pp. 186 _et seq._

[561] “Your want of faith in association,” he wrote to the National Assembly of 1848, “will force you to expose civilisation to a terribly agonising death.”

[562] _L’Humanité_ (1840). It would be wrong to conclude, however, that this desire for secularising charity meant that Leroux was anti-religious. On the contrary, he admits his indebtedness for the conception of solidarity to the dictum of St. Paul, “We are all members of one body.”

[563] “I was the first to employ the term ‘socialism.’ It was a neologism then, but a very necessary term. I invented the word as an antithesis to ‘individualism.’” (_Grève de Samarez_, p. 288.) As a matter of fact, as far back as 1834 he had contributed an article entitled _De l’Individualisme et du Socialisme_ to the _Revue encyclopédique_. The same word occurs in the same review in an article entitled _Discours sur la Situation actuelle de l’Esprit humain_, written two years before. See his complete works, vol. i, pp. 121, 161, 378. For a further account of Leroux see M. F. Thomas’s _Pierre Leroux_ (1905), a somewhat dull but highly imaginative production.

[564] For Cabet’s life and the story of Icaria see Prudhommeaux’s two volumes, _Étienne Cabet_ and _Histoire de la Communauté icarienne_.

[565] “The communists will never gain much success until they have learned to reform themselves. Let them preach by example and by the exercise of social virtues, and they will soon convert their adversaries.”

[566] Protection was attacked by Sismondi in _Nouv. Princ._, Book IV, chap. 11. He considered it a fruitful source of over-production, and uttered his condemnation of the absurd desire of nations for self-sufficiency. Saint-Simon considered Protection to be the outcome of international hatred (_Œuvres_, vol. iii, p. 36), and commended the economists who had shown that “mankind had but one aim and that its interests were common, and consequently that each individual in his social connection must be viewed as one of a company of workers” (_Lettres à un Americaine, Œuvres_, vol. ii, pp. 186-187). The Saint-Simonians never touched upon the question directly, but it is quite clear that Protective rights were to have no place in the universal association of which they dreamt. According to Fourier, there was to be the completest liberty in the circulation of goods among the Phalanstères all the world over. (_Cf._ Bourgin, _Fourier_, pp. 326-329; Paris, 1905.)

[567] We refer to two of them only: Augustin Cournot and Louis Say of Nantes. The former, in his _Recherches sur les Principes mathématiques de la Théorie des Richesses_ (1838), a work that is celebrated to-day but which passed unnoticed at the time of its publication, has criticised the theory of Free Trade. But the reputation which he subsequently achieved was not based upon this part of the book. Louis Say (1774-1840) was a brother of J. B. Say. He published a number of works, now quite forgotten, in which he criticised several doctrines upheld by his brother, whose displeasure he thus incurred. We refer to his last work, _Études sur la Richesse des Nations et Réfutation des principales Erreurs en Économie politique_ (1836), for this is the work to which List alludes. It is probable that Louis Say’s name would have remained in oblivion but for List. Richelot, in his translation of List (second edition, p. 477), quotes some of the more important passages of Say’s book.

[568] The union of England and Scotland dates from 1707. Compare the passage in Adam Smith, Book V, chap. 2, part ii, art. 4; Cannan’s edition, vol. ii, p. 384.

[569] List, _Werke_, ed. Häusser, vol. ii, p. 17. The seventh edition of the _National System_, which was published in 1883 by M. Eheberg, contains an excellent historical and critical introduction. Our quotations are from the English translation by Lloyd, published in 1885, republished, with introduction by Professor Shield Nicholson, in 1909.

[570] Petition presented to a meeting of the German princes at Vienna in 1820 (_Werke_, vol. ii, p. 27).

[571] Baden, Nassau, and Frankfort joined in 1835 and 1836. But there still remained outside Mecklenburg and the Free Towns of the Hanse, Hanover, Brunswick, and Oldenburg.

[572] List’s expression “exchangeable value” merely signifies the mass of present advantages—the material profit existing at the moment. It is not a very happy phrase, and it would be a great mistake to take it literally or to attach great importance to it. In his _Letters to Ingersoll_, p. 186, he gives expression to the same idea by saying that Smith’s school had in view “the exchange of one material good for another,” and that its concern was chiefly with “such exchanged goods rather than with productive forces.” We note that List never speaks of Ricardo, but only of Smith and Say, whose works alone he seems to have read.

[573] “In the Italian and the Hanseatic cities, in Holland and England, in France and America, we find the powers of production and consequently the wealth of individuals growing in proportion to the liberties enjoyed, to the degree of perfection of political and social institutions, while these, on the other hand, derive material and stimulus for their further improvement from the increase of the material wealth and the productive power of individuals.” (_National System_, p. 87.)

[574] He defines “political or national economy” as “that which, emanating from the idea and nature of the nation, teaches how a given _nation_, in the present state of the world and its own special national relations, can maintain and improve its economical condition.” (_Ibid._, p. 99.)

[575] It was the example of England that gave List the idea, but the whole conception is based upon a historical error. England possessed a navy, had founded colonies and developed her international trade long before she became a manufacturing nation. Since the time of List various categories of national development have been proposed. Hildebrand speaks of periods of natural economy, of money economy, and of credit economy (_Jahrbücher für National Oekonomie_, vol. ii, pp. 1-24). Bücher proposed the periods of domestic economy, of town economy, and of national economy as a substitute (_Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft_, 3rd ed., p. 108). Sombart, in his turn, has very justly criticised this classification in his book _Der moderne Kapitalismus_ (vol. i, p. 51; Leipzig, 1902). But would that which he proposes himself be much better?

No one, we believe, has as yet remarked that List borrowed this enumeration of the different economic states, almost word for word, from Adam Smith. In chap. 5 of Book II, speaking of the various employments of capital, Smith clearly distinguished between three stages of evolution—the agricultural state, the agricultural-manufacturing, and the agricultural-manufacturing-commercial. Smith considered that this last stage was the most desirable, but in his opinion its realisation must depend upon the natural course of things.

[576] The term “normal” is one of the vaguest and most equivocal we have in political economy. It would be well if we were rid of it altogether. What controversies have not raged around the ideas of a normal wage or a normal price! One of the chief merits of the Mathematical school lies in the success with which it has effected the substitution of the idea of an equilibrium price. The idea of a normal nation is about as vague as that of a normal wage, and it is curious that our author describes as normal a whole collection of characteristics which, according to his own account, were at the moment when he wrote only realised by one nation, namely, England.

[577] P. 292. The idea of national power is, moreover, not completely lost sight of by Smith, as is proved by the following passages: “The riches and, so far as power depends upon riches, the power of every country must always be in proportion to the value of its annual produce.… But the great object of the political economy of every country is to increase the riches and power of that country.” (_Wealth of Nations_, Book II, chap. 5; Cannan’s edition, vol. i, p. 351.)

[578] On the question of the industrial vocation of the temperate zone and the agricultural vocation of the torrid compare _National System_,