Chapter CLV: Section VI: Paper Money—A Curse Or A Blessing? (6)

476 That the socialism of _Plato_, De Repub., V, was no mere fancy, is
proved by the polemic which _Aristophanes_ directs against it in his
Ecclesiazuses. See also _Aristot._, Polit., II, 2, Schn. In the
contemporary practice of the Greeks, with the increasing
democratization of the state, it became more and more usual for it
to bear the expense of the outlay for the means of subsistence of
the great crowd. (See _Plutarch_, Cimo, 10.) Every act of public
life was paid for. Citizens were paid for attending popular meetings
three oboli per day, while the pay of the soldiers was six, and that
of the sailors three. (_Thucyd._, III, 17; VII, 27; VIII, 45.) The
pay of the commonest day laborer was from three to four oboli per
day. _Aristophan._, Eccl., 310, and _Pollux_, VII, 29. The number of
magistrates was very large, in order that as many as possible might
participate in this species of remuneration. Thus, in Athens, when
it had only about 20,000 inhabitants, there were 6,000 judges. In
addition to all this, there were numberless feasts, plays, banquets
etc., which were offered to the people gratis. The wealthy who were
compelled to meet all the expense thus incurred, lived in such a
state of terror of the populace, that they considered their own
impoverishment as a species of deliverance. (_Xenoph._, Conviv., 4,
and _Lysias_, pro Bonis.) _Isocrates_ called it much more dangerous
to be rich than to commit a crime, since in the latter case one
might obtain a pardon or a mild punishment. (De Permut., p. 160.)
(_Lysias_, De Invalido, de sacra Olea, seq.) There is little
difference between this state of things and a semi-community of
goods. Only that, indeed, the great mass of the slaves were excluded
from enjoying them. The contrast which somewhat later distinguished
the Cynics from the Cyreno-Epicureans affords a striking analogy to
that which, in our own times, exists between the pure socialists and
the worshipers of mammon after the fashion of Doctor Ure. Concerning
the Utopia of _Iambulos_, see _Diodor._, II, 55 ff.

477 Our sources of information concerning the division of the Roman
republic into a moneyed oligarchy, and the proletariat are very
numerous. Compare _infra_, § 205. The speeches of the Gracchi (e.g.
_Plut._, T. Gracchus, 9), and still more the violent discourses of
Catiline’s conspiracy (_Sallust_, Cat., 20, 23, 37-39), remind us
very forcibly of the shibboleths of modern socialism. We very
frequently meet with the expression of a longing desire to return to
the most uncivilized and hoary past, when there was no money and no
wealth—an aspiration which lies at the very foundation of communism.
Thus _Virgil_, Geo., I, 125, ff., _Tibull._ I, 3, 35, ff. _Propert._
II, 13, III, 5, 11; _Seneca_, Epist., 90; _Senec._, Oct. II,
_Hippol._, II, 2; _Plin._, H. N. XXXII, 3. On the other hand, the
practice of supporting the populace at the expense of great
candidates or of the state, was developed to a very great extent.
The masses lived very largely by the sale of their right of suffrage
to the highest bidder. At the election of consuls in the year 54,
500,000 thalers were offered to the century called on to vote first.
(_Cicero_, ad Quintum II, 15; ad. A.H. IV, 15.) Even _Cato_ had a
part in such bribery. (_Sueton._, Caes., 19.) In the social reform
of the younger Gracchus, besides the limitation of large
land-ownership, the principal points were the following: the sale of
wheat under the market price, but only to the inhabitants of Rome
itself; the construction of great highways in Italy; colonization at
the expense of the state, and the increase of soldiers’ pay.
(_Ritsch_, Gracchen, 392 ff.) The socialistic plans of Rullus went
much further. Were his agrarian laws put in execution, he would have
confiscated very nearly the entire country in the interest of the
poor, and of their demagogues! (_Cicero_, De Lege agrar.) Rome twice
experienced a social revolution of the most frightful character, one
by which a great portion of all private goods fell into the hands of
the propertyless (soldiers), who knew nothing of how to turn it to
account or to invest it—under Sulla, and then under the later
Triumviri. (Compare _Appian_, Bell, civil., V, 5, 22.) Complaints
concerning the latter, in _Horat._, Epist., I, 2, 49; _Virgil_,
Buc., IX, 28; _Tibull._ I, 1, 19, IV, 1, 182; _Propert._, IV, 1,
129. The elder Gracchus had promised compensation to the last
possessors. _Tabulæ novæ_ of Cinna, Catiline, Cælius, Dolebella.
Clodius introduced the distribution of wheat, which according to
Cicero pro Sext., 25, ate up almost one-fifth of the public
revenues. About 320,000 persons were, in this way, supported for a
long period of time (_Sueton._, Caes, 41, _Dio C._, XLIII, 21; L.
LV, 10), but only in such a manner as to keep them from starvation.
(_Sallust_, 268 ed. Bip.) To all this was soon added distributions
of salt, meal and oil, also free baths, numberless public plays,
colossal banqueting, payment of one year’s rent etc. _Panem et
circenses!_ (Juvenal, X, 80 seq.) The mere distribution of money
under Augustus, in which from 200,000 to 320,000 men participated,
cost each time from 2,500,000 to 6,000,000 thalers. (Monum Ancyr.,
372 Wolf.) Extraordinary assistance was, by way of preference,
accorded to colonies of the poor. (_Sueton._, Caes, 42.) Concerning
this entire policy, see _Plin._, Paneg., 26 ff. Even in
Constantinople, at the time of its foundation, large distributions
of bread were made at the expense of Egypt, although there could
scarcely be any real pauperism in that new and flourishing city.
(_Theod._, Cod., XIII, 4, XIV 16; _Socrat._, II, 13.) I can only
allude to the plan proposed by the emperor Gallien by the
neo-platonist Plotin, to found a city in which the ideas of Plato’s
republic should be carried out. (Porphyr., V, Plotin., 8.)

478 During the two centuries of which the Reformation constituted the
middle point, the transition from the peasant system of agriculture
to the large farming system of modern times bore very heavily on the
inferior classes. Such, too, was the operation of the fall in price
of the precious metals. (§ 140.) The suppression of the many
monasteries caused an increase in the wretchedness of the poor; and
the numerous poor-laws enacted in England, Spain etc., were not
sufficient to supply a remedy. The feeling of the people during this
period of tribulation found expression in the War of the Peasants,
in the sect of Anabaptists, in the many reformations and
counter-reformations, in the revolt of the Netherlands, in the
conflicts for the crown in France and England etc. In Italy, the
contrast existing between the moneyed oligarchy and the proletariat
had been developed several centuries, but from the middle of the
sixteenth century, it had become much more oppressive by reason of
the universal impoverishment of the country. For an account of the
pantheistic “Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit,” with their
community of goods and of women, see _Ullmann_, Reformatoren vor der
Reformation, II, 18 ff. They were very numerous from the thirteenth
to the fifteenth century in Italy and France, as well as in Germany,
and lead us to the Adamites in the Hussite war. (_Aschbach_,
Geschichte K. Sigismunds, III, 109.) Earlier yet, we have the sect
of the Giovannali, who had their property and women in common, and
who, in 1355, had won the third of Corsica, but who were afterwards
suppressed by Genoa and the Church. (_Lebret_, Geschichte von
Italien, VI, 208 ff.) The coarse socialist, _John Balle_, bears
about the same relation to Wycliffe, that Münzer and Bockholt did to
Luther. (_Walsingham_, Hist. Angliæ in _Camden, Scriptt._, 275.)
Hans Böheim of Würzburg, 1476, seems to be the direct precursor of
Münzer. (_Ullmann_, I, 421 ff.) It was almost as usual in Luther’s
time, as in 1848, or in our day, to hear of the deep demoralization
of trade—the _Fuggerei_ of the Germany of the time—and of the
universal system of fraud that prevailed. See the citations in
_Hagen_, Deutschland’s Verhältnisse im Reform-Zeitalter, II, 313 ff.
Münzer’s fundamental principle: _Omnia simul communia!_ _Sebastian
Frank_, Chronica, Zeytbuch und Geschychtbibel etc., 1551, fol. VI,
16, 27, 116, 194, 414, 433. John Bockholt’s life presents us with a
striking contrast. While they were bringing his perfumed women,
sparkling with jewels, to his rose-covered bed, hung with curtains
of gold cloth, on which he was reclining, his subjects were a prey
to the horrors of famine, to such an extent that they were compelled
to salt the bodies of children who had died of starvation. How
frightful the end of this communistic benefactor of mankind!
Libertine community of goods and women. (_Calvin_, Instructio adv.
Libertinos, cap. 21.) English communists in the age of the
reformation. (_J. Story_, Comment. on the Constitution of the U.S.,
I, 36.) Even under Cromwell, there were many Englishmen who believed
that farmers were no longer obliged to pay rent to land-owners. On
the sect of Levellers, see _Walker_, History of the Independency,
II, 152. Even in _Erasmus_, we find some sympathy with communism.
(Enchirid. milit. Christ, 80.) _Contra_, see _Melanchthon_, Prolegg.
in Cic. de Off., Corp. Reform, XVI, 549 ff. The most remarkable
systematic works of this period are _Thomas More’s_, Utopia, 1516,
and _Campanella’s_ Civitas, solis, 1620. _Thomas More_ bluntly says
that all existing governments are in fact only permanent
conspiracies of the rich to further their own interests under the
mask of the common good, and to despoil labor. The abolition of
money, which should be continued in use only to carry on foreign
war, would, he contends, remove all misery. There was no really
private property in his Utopia. There should be a rigid
superintendence of all work by the public authorities, whose duty it
should be to see to it, that no one should abandon agricultural
pursuits. All should eat at a common table and dress after the same
fashion. Internal commerce should give way to a mutual exchange of
gifts under the supervision of the state. _Campanella_, besides a
community of goods, recommends continually varying occupation, to
last not more than four hours daily; education in common, especially
by means of pictures, popular encyclopedias etc., all under the
supreme guidance of a despotism to be composed of the wise, some
secular and some spiritual, operating through the confessional.
Socialists nearly always succeed better in the critical part of
their works than in the positive. Compare _R. Mohl_, Geschichte und
Literatur der Staatswissenschaften, § 1, 165 ff.

479 Considering the aversion exhibited against private property by _J.
J. Rousseau_, and the unlimited power which he accords to the
majority for the time being in the state (Contrat Social, 1761, II,
ch. 4), it cannot be denied that his freedom and equality contain,
to say the least, germs of communism by no means insignificant. But,
he would, in the present state of civil society, have a feeling of
respect for the rights of property implanted in the mind of the
child very early, and even before the feeling of liberty is
developed. (Emile, 1762, Livre II.) About the same time _Morelly_
published his Basiliade ou Naufrage des Iles flottantes, 1753, a
political romance in the interest of communism. See the same
author’s Code de la Nature, 1755. _Mably_, in his two works, Doutes
proposés aux Economistes, 1768, and La Législation ou Principes des
Lois, 1776, recommended the abolition of all inequality and a real
community of goods. The introduction of property seems to him, _une
faute qu’il était presque impossible de faire_. Even _Beccaria_
calls property a dreadful but perhaps a necessary right which has
left to the unfortunate nothing but a naked existence. (Dei Delitti
e delle Pene, 1765, cap. 22.) The French Reign of Terror came pretty
near carrying these ideas into effect. We need only refer to the
abolition of the census, the payments made to the workingmen who
attended the section meetings, two francs per diem, the enormous
extension of confiscation, requisitions and forced loans, the
revolution effected in the fortunes of individuals by the system of
issuing assignats, the maximum affixed to the price of all the
necessaries of life, the abolition of indirect taxes, and of what
remained of the economic institutions handed down from the middle
ages. According to _St. Just_: _l’opulence est une infamie; il ne
faut ni riches ni pauvres_. The Cahier des Pauvres demands, first of
all, that salaries “should no longer be estimated in accordance with
the murderous principles of unbridled luxury.” See Forster’s letter
dated November 15, 1793. (Sämmtl. Schriften, IX, 125.) On the
conspiracy of Baboeuf, who was executed in 1796, and who wanted to
see the completest equality and community of labor, of enjoyment and
education, the abolition of large cities etc., see _Buonarotti_, La
Conjuration de B., 1821. This book contributed powerfully towards
the revival of communistic ideas after the July revolution. Among
modern communists who are to be distinguished from the more ancient,
especially by the industrial coloring given to their theories,
_Cabet_, Voyage en Icarie, 1840, II, holds a very prominent place.
He declares the abolition of religion, of the family and of the
state, to be open questions, and desires to bring the practice of a
community of goods to a successful issue only through the peaceful
channel of conviction.

Compare _Reybaud_, Etudes sur les Réformateurs contemporains ou
Socialistes modernes, 1840. _L. Stein_, Der Socialismus und
Communismus des heutigen Frankreich. See, also, the learned history
of socialistic systems in _Marlo’s_ Weltökonomie, I, 2, 435 ff.; and
in what concerns the most recent time, _R. Meyer_, Der
Emancipationskampf des vierten Standes, II, 1874, seq.; a book
which, in spite of its many defects, both doctrinal and
journalistic, is as rich in thought, and in the knowledge of the
subject it treats of, as it is permeated by a love of truth
regardless of consequences. Among the opponents of socialism and
communism, _Malthus_, On Population, B. III, ch. 3, and _B.
Hildebrand_, Die Nationalökonomie der Gegenwart und Zukunft, vol. I,
1848, hold a very distinguished place. _J. S. Mill_, Principles, II,
ch. 1, 3, calls attention to the fact that hitherto the principle of
free property has never been consistently carried out. The first
social arrangement of modern society was almost everywhere the
result of conquest and violence, large traces of which yet remain.
Things have always been made property which ought not to be
property. Governments have endeavored to intensify the darkness of
the dark side of property, and favored the concentration instead of
the diffusion of wealth etc. Hence, no one can claim that the social
wrongs, so-called, had their origin in property as such. _Schäffle_,
Kapitalismus und Socialismus, 1870, has made a very note-worthy
effort to recognize whatever of truth there is in socialism, and to
combat its errors.

_ 480 Saint Simon’s_ reproach to the liberals, that their fundamental
principle was: _ôte-toi de là, que je m’y mette_, is well known.

481 Compare _Malthus_, Additions to the Essay on Population, 1817, IV,
ch. 7.

482 The _travailleurs égalitaires_ wished to murder not only the king,
the court, and the ministry, but also the Liberals and all owners of
property.

483 As soon, indeed, as this true love disappears in the married state,
the community of goods even there degenerates only too easily into a
spoliation of the better party by the worse.

484 The community of goods of the first Christians at Jerusalem, so
frequently cited and extolled (_James_, I, 1), was only a community
of use, not of ownership (Acts IV, 32), and, throughout, a voluntary
act of love, not a duty (V. 4), least of all, a _right_ which the
poorer might assert. Spite of all this, that community of goods
produced a chronic state of poverty in the church of Jerusalem.
Hence, Paul had collections taken up for them on all sides, without,
however, anywhere establishing a similar institution. (Romans, 15,
26; I. Corinth., 16, 1.) Compare _Mosheim_, De vera Natura
Communionis Bonorum in Ecclesia Hierosol., in his Dissertatt. ad
Histor. Eccles. pertinentes, II, 1 ff. As to whether _Barnabas_
(Epist., 19) desired to say anything more, compare Epist. ad
Diognetum, 5. For a real recommendation of a community of goods, on
economic grounds, see _Joh. Chrysostom._, in Acta Apost., Hom. XI.
Also _Clemens Rom._ c. 2 C. 12, qu. 1. Community of goods among the
Essenes: _Philo._ Opp. II. 457 ff. _Joseph. Bell_, Jud., II. 8.
_Bellermann_, Geschichtliche Nachrichten über die Essener. (1821.)
In many monasteries, there has been and is a species of community of
goods. There was once a singular contest on this subject, carried on
between the Minorites and the Pope, in the time of Louis of Bavaria.
The Minorites claimed that property was a thing, so much to be
condemned, that even food, at the moment of eating it, did not
belong to the person using it. The Pope taught on the other hand,
that even Christ and the Apostles possessed property, part personal
and part in common. (_Raynaldi_, Ann. eccl., XV, 241, 285 ff.)
Community of goods of the Homiliates, later of the Brothers of
Common Life, after the manner of the monks, but of a much higher
kind. (_Ullmann_, Reformatoren v.d. Reform, II, 62 ff.) The first
settlers of New Haven, Connecticut, held their property in common.
Land was divided among families in proportion to the number of
persons in them, and of the number of cattle they had brought with
them; and all sales and purchases were made on account of the whole
community. And so in Massachusetts during the first seven years of
the colony’s existence. (_Ebeling_, Geschichte und Erdbeschreib. der
Vereinigten Staaten, II, 391, I, 557.) _Herrnhut_ community of goods
in Pennsylvania, from 1742 to 1762, but which was done away with
when the number of colonists became too great. (_Ebeling_, IV, 717.)
Community of goods of the Shakers and Lutheran Rappers.
(_Buckingham_, Eastern States, II, 214, 427. _Prinz Neuwied_, Reise
in Nord Amerika, I, 136, ff.) Russian sects with community of goods.
(_v. Haxthausen_, I, 366, 407.) _Harless_, christliche Ethik § 501,
distinguishes very well between the “anti-christian” and “pseudo
christian” stand point, from which it is sought to establish the
doctrine of a community of goods. The Christian view of this subject
(compare Ephes., 4, 28, I; Thess., 4, 11, II, 3, 12; Matth., 6, 24;
Pet. 4, 10; Matth., 26, 7-11) is accused of hypocrisy by many
socialists. It is very easy, they say, when one is himself in
comfortable circumstances, to represent to the poor that their
poverty is a school for heaven, and to preach a contempt for riches
etc. They entirely forget, that the first promulgation of the Gospel
was made at a time when the worst kind of pauperism prevailed; and
that even the Master Himself, and the greater number of His Apostles
belonged to the lowest stratum of society. _Luke_, 9, 58. Many of
the Fathers of the Church, however, in their exhortations to
benevolence, used language in which modern Socialists have found a
rich mine which they have sedulously worked. (Compare
_Villegardelle_, Histoire des Idées sociales, 1846, 61 ff.)

485 Even _Aristotle_ says that what is common to many is a matter of
little concern to any one. (Polit., II, 1.) _Bastiat_ remarks: “We
compete to-day to see who works most and best. Under another regime,
we should emulate one another to see who should work least and
worst.” (Harmonies Econ., ch. VIII.) When the first settlers of
Virginia, in 1611, gave up the system of common labor and of
joint-stock companies, as much work was performed in a day as
formerly in a week, or as much by three workmen as formerly by
thirty. (_Purchas_, Pilgrims, iv, 1866. _Bancroft_, History of the
United States, I, 161.) Even in New England, therefore among men
both steady and accustomed to labor, who for conscience sake had
sacrificed so much, a community of goods was accompanied
uninterruptedly by famine. A change for the better took place, for
the first time in 1623 with the introduction of the institution of
private property which was followed in 1624 by the right of
inheritance. (_Bancroft_, I, 340.) The military colonies of Algeria,
also, in which husbandry in common was carried on, begged, at the
end of a year, that the system should be abandoned, for the reason
that it was good for nothing but to generate idlers; and yet, these
colonists were all powerful men of about the same age, and
accustomed to order and service in common. They were, moreover,
assisted by the nation with pay and food. Compare _Bugeaud’s_
account: Revue des deux Mondes, June 1, 1848. “The French
associations (after 1848), whose object was labor in common, have
nearly all died out.” _M. Chevalier_ in the Journal des Débats, Feb.
3, 1851. In the United States, sixteen phalansteries of Fourierites,
founded between 1840 and 1846, had all collapsed in 1855. (_D.
Vierteljahrsschrift_, October, 1855, 205 ff.)

486 Even in New Harmony, the members considered the task which they had
to perform to obtain food, clothing and shelter, as villeinage in
the worst sense of the term. (_H. Bernhard v. Weimar_, Nordamerikan.
Reise, V, 134 ff.; 151, 310, ff.) It is very inconsistent in
socialists to continue the proprietorship and heirship of the state.
To be consistent they should give both these rights only to mankind
as a whole. Compare _Kiraly_, Ueber Socialismus und Comm., 1868, 35.

487 It would not be entirely fair to take a partisan view of the
_ateliers nationaux_ of 1848, and claim them as a practical
refutation of socialistic utopias, since no serious experiment was
made with them. Compare _E. Thomas_, Histoire des Ateliers nationaux
considérés sous le double Point de Vue politique et social, 1848.

488 Socialists generally overlook the fact, that the greater number of
enjoyments from which the poorer classes are excluded, by the right
of property, would not exist at all were it not for that very right.
(_Spittler_, Politik, 356 ff.) This remark may also be made of
_Hugo’s_ ingenious objections. (Naturrecht, § 208 ff.) One of the
most effective pieces of socialistic declamation is that the lower
classes have a much shorter average of life than the upper. Hence
the institution of private property is charged with being a species
of spoliation of the poor of so many years of life, and the entire
“present society” condemned on that account. Here again it is not
borne in mind, that a few centuries ago the general average of life
was probably still smaller; and that it was precisely the growth and
development of “present society” that lengthened the days of the
poorer classes even, although it may have lengthened those of the
rich in a still greater proportion. See § 246.

489 But a community of goods would not, by a great deal, accomplish as
much as is generally supposed. In Prussia, for instance, in 1867,
only about three per cent. of the entire number of families in the
community had a yearly income of 1,000 thalers; only nine per cent.
had 500 thalers or more, and only 6,465 returned an income of more
than 4,000 thalers, while only 590 returned one of 16,000 thalers.
(Preuss. statist. Ztschr, 1868, 83. _Held_, Die Einkommensteuer, 197
ff) How little, therefore, could the poor here gain by the
spoliation of the rich! Besides, the purely personal consumption of
the rich is, after all, not so great; and if all luxury were
abandoned, an innumerable number of men would lose their gains.
(Compare _Ad. Smith_, Wealth of Nations, I, ch. 11, 2.) It would be
to kill the hen that had hitherto laid the golden egg in order to
divide its flesh a little more equally.

_ 490 Babeuf_ declared all arts and sciences to be evils. He would have
no one learn anything but Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and a little
of the Geography of France; and have the strictest censorship
enforced to keep every one within these limits. Compare the able
criticism of _Proudhon_, Contradictions, ch. 12.

491 According to _Umpfenbach_, Nationalökonomie, 201, where a community
of goods obtains, there can be but the alternative, viz.: whether
each person or each family shall receive just the same amount. (The
former would be more in harmony with principle, but what an
over-population would be the consequence!) Precisely so, too, if
each person were to come and take his own portion (anarchy!), or if
it were parcelled out to each by a board of distributors
(despotism!).

492 This expression came into vogue, principally, through _L. Blanc_,
Organization du Travail (1841), the leading ideas in which work are
the following: The suppression of competition by the establishment
of state industries; equality of remuneration for labor; equality
and legislative determination of the rate of interest; the choice of
superintendents by the workmen. With many modern socialists, the
shibboleth is not so much _liberté_ as _solidarité_. Besides,
_Fichte’s_ Naturrecht (1796), and his geschlossener Handelsstaat,
are, without doubt, among the most remarkable works favoring an
“organization of labor.” They aim at the destruction of the present
social system, which, at most, needs only to be reformed and
rejuvenated; and to galvanize the dead body into a new and different
life (Medea’s magic cauldron!). Compare _Corvaja_, Bancocrazia o il
gran Libro sociale, 1840.

493 Cabet’s Icarian colony in America numbered 298 adults and only 107
children. Yet spite of this condition, so favorable to production,
it did but a very sorry business. Its government was very similar to
that of a house of correction or a penitentiary. Even in religious
matters, spite of all pretended toleration, those members who did
not agree with Cabet were described in the official weekly paper as
_des infames ou des aveugles_. (D. Vierteljahrsschrift, 1855,
October, 205 ff.)

494 An eastern sage says, that land possesses the ideal of legal
security through which a beautiful woman, decked with pearls, might
travel without danger. What would such a sage say of a European
country, in which even orphan children have their property not only
preserved to them, but find it increased from having been placed at
interest, as soon as they reach their majority? (_Barrow_.)

495 “The equality of communism is the worst species of inequality,
because it guarantees to one for two hours of poor labor as much as
it does to an other for four hours of good work.” (_Bastiat_,
Harmonies économiques, ch. 8.)

_ 496 Proudhon_, Qu’est-ce que la Propriété, 283, says, very justly, that
“a community of goods is the spoliation of the strong by the weak.”

497 Called a negative community of goods, by _Zacchariä_, Vierzig Bücher
vom Staate, IV, 146, in contradistinction to the positive and
universal community of gain, as desired by the communists.

498 Community of goods and of women among the Ichthyophages on the Red
Sea, who lived in caves, went naked for the most part, plundered all
shipwrecked people, and never reached an advanced age. _Diodor._,
III, 15 ff. _Peripl._, Maris Erythr., 12. Concerning the Scythians,
see _Strabo_, VII, 300; the Spaniards, _Plutarch_, Marius, 6; the
Rhetians, _Dio Cass._ LIV, 22; the Triballi, _Isocr._, Panath., §
237; the Kilici, _Sext._, Empir. Pyrrh. Hypot. III, 24. Community of
goods among the Caribs who performed all their work in common, and
had, at least in the case of males, a common table and common stores
with supplies. (_Petr. Martyr_, Dec. VII, 1. _Rochefort_, II, c. 16.
_B. Edwards_, History of the West Indies, I, 43 ff.) Among the
Kuskowimers of Russian America, all the able-bodied men of the tribe
live together. (_v. Wrangell_, Nachrichten, 129.) Among the
inhabitants of the Aleutian islands, at least in times of scarcity
of food, the produce of the fisheries is divided according to their
need. (_V. Wrangell_, 185.) The organization of labor is rigidly
enforced among the Otomacs, on the banks of the Orinoco, and they
are, nevertheless, more civilized than their neighbors. (_Depons_,
Voyage, I, 295.) A community of goods must, however, be considered
an advance, in the case of an isolated people; and it is an error to
look upon it as the most primitive condition, as does, for instance,
_Ambrosius_, De off. Minist. I, 28, and _Frederick II_, in the
preface to his general code. (Allgemein. Gesetzbuche, 1231.) The
hospitality of the inhabitants of the Friendly Islands borders on a
community of goods. (_Mariner_, Freundschaftsinseln, 75, 81.
_Klemm_, Kulturgeschichte, IV, 398.) Concerning the beginnings of
property among the Esquimaux, See _Klemm_, II, 294.

499 Οὐκ ἄδοξον ἧν παρὰ τοῖς παλαιοῖς ληστεύειν, ἀλλ᾽ ἔνδξον. (_Didym._,
ad Odyss. II, 73, IX, 252.)

500 In Mexico, the Spaniards found land ownership among the most
distinguished of the natives, but only a species of possession in
common and common store houses among the peasantry. (_Robertson_,
History of America, § VII.) Hence, the agriculture of the country
was so unimportant that the little army of the _conquistadores_
frequently produced a famine by their marches.

501 The Tcherkesses considered robbery honorable provided the robber was
not caught _in flagrante_. Compare _Koch_, Reise in den kaukasischen
Isthmus, I, 370 ff. _Bell_, Journal of a Residence in Circassia, I,
181, II, 201. The organized robber bands of ancient Egypt, when it
was so highly civilized (_Diodor._, I, 80) may, on the other hand,
be accounted for by similar conditions actually existing in the
large cities of our own day.

502 What a frightful organization of labor we find in Sparta, combined
with a community of goods! Let us recall the exposing of children
authorized by law, the mode of education which must have cost the
life of all whose constitution was weak, the _cryptia_, the stern
hierarchy of age etc. _Plut._, Inst. Lac. 2, appreciates the bad
taste of the black broth at its true value. The Cretan community of
goods was based chiefly on the unnatural relation created by the
authorities known as paiderastia; and which was a very efficient
means to prevent over-population. (_Plat._, De Legg, I, 636.
_Arist._, Polit. II, 8.)

503 Remarkable reasons therefor in _Cæsar_, Bell. Gall., VI, 22.

504 There are, especially in Russia, a multitude of such institutions
among the inhabitants of the country still. See _Roscher_,
Nationalökonomik des Ackerbaues, § 71 ff.

505 In the Corpus Juris Canonici, that crown of medieval theology,
politics and jurisprudence, the ideal of a community of goods
occupies a place almost as prominent as in the works of modern
socialists. The only difference is, that in the former the
opposition to private property arises from a one-sided religiousness
and contempt of the world, while, in the latter, it arises generally
from irreligiousness and over-estimation of worldly goods.

506 This does not include the cost of the schools, churches and
benevolent institutions.

507 According to _Lassalle_, System der erworbenen Rechte, 1861, § 259,
history shows that law, as civilization advances, curtails more and
more the proprietary sphere of private individuals, inasmuch as it
tends more and more to place a greater number of objects outside the
circle of individual ownership.

508 Saint Simonism is a warning example of this tendency. Saint Simon
never lost an opportunity to give vent to his utter contempt for the
liberals, and for constitutional government—_ce bátard du régime
féodal et du régime industriel_; and to counsel the crown, after the
example of Louis XI. to place itself at the head of the working
class, and in opposition to the middle class. (Oeuvres de _Saint
Simon_, éd. 1841, 44, 148, 209.) _Bazard_, Exposition, 76, demanded
that all antagonism between the temporal and spiritual powers, all
opposition for the sake of freedom, _méfiance organisée_ of
parliaments, and all competition, should cease. Even education he
would have bestowed according to _capacité_, which he would have
determined by the _chefs légitimes de la société_ (280). To the
criminal court should be referred all cases of _delicts_, that is,
all inopportune acts, even in the scientific and artistic
departments. They should be tried after the manner of the “courts of
trade;” that is, in a summary way, without appeal, and by experts
(317 ff). All the relations of property should be determined by the
_décision arbitrale des chefs d’industrie_ (326). _Bazard_
everywhere insists that the reign of genius and of self-sacrifice on
the one hand, and on the other of confidence and obedience, is the
only true policy (330). Saint Simonism was nearly related to
Bonapartism.

_ 509 Schäffle_, Nat. Œk., III, Aufl., I, 61.

510 If we remove in thought, all injurious elements from a community of
goods, and add to it all the incentives and restraints necessary to
be added, we shall have a state of things entirely similar to that
in a nation whose public and private affairs are carried on in
accordance with the principles of a healthy system of Political
Economy as understood to-day. (Edinburgh Review, January, 1851.)

511 How true freedom is accompanied by what _Bastiat_ calls “true Saint
Simonism and true communism,” see _infra_, § 210.

512 The experiments of a community of goods, which have proved
successful in practice, were all based on the more or less complete
celibacy of the members of the societies. Compare _Hermann_,
Staatsw. Unters., II, Aufl., 45.

513 Thus _Proudhon_ (Contradictions, ch. 5) says that the many
socialists, who would construct their societies after the type of
the family, as the _molscule organique_, are all wrong. The family
has a “monarchical, patriarchal” character. In it, the principle of
authority is formed and preserved. On it, ancient and feudal society
was based; and “precisely against this old patriarchal constitution,
modern democracy protests and revolts.” _Fourier_ calls marriage,
_un groupe essentiellement faux: faux par le nombre borné à deux,
par l’absence de liberté et par les dissidences du goṅt, qui
éclatent dès le premier jour_. (Nouveau Monde, 57.)

514 On the Indians of North America, see _Schoolraft_, Information
respecting the Indian Tribes of the United States, II, 194; on the
South American _d’Orbigny_, Voyage, IV, 220, and passim, on the
South Sea Islanders, the Novara-Reise, II, 418; on the ancient
Albanians, _Strabo_, XI, 503.

515 The hereditary transmission of property to posterity has an obvious
tendency to make a man a good citizen. It ranges his passions on the
side of duty, and induces him to make himself profit the common
good, and it assures him that his reward shall not die with himself,
but that it shall be handed down to those to whom he is joined by
the dearest and most tender feelings. (See _Blackstone’s_
Commentaries, II, 11.) Without the right of inheritance, credit is
scarcely possible, since with the death of the debtor the only stay
of the creditor would cease.

516 Testamentary freedom (which obtained in places there about the
beginning of the eighteenth century) prevails completely in England
at present, contrary to the principle of the Roman law requiring an
obligatory portion (_la légitime_) to be left to the heirs, which is
still binding in France, but in a very much developed form. The
consequence is that last testaments are as frequent in England as
they are rare in France. There were, in Paris, in 1825, 7,649
judicial, and only 1,081 testamentary partitions of property.
(_Monnier_.) In Great Britain, in 1838, the number of testamentary
alienations of property taxed stood to those in which there was no
will, in the proportion of 8:3; and the values of the alienated
property as 10:1. (_Porter_.) Among a people noted for their high
moral tone, testamentary freedom is a powerful means of
strengthening paternal authority on the one hand, and of keeping
alive, in the minds of parents, on the other, a sense of
responsibility for the future of their children. Compare
_Helferich_, Tübinger Zeitschr., 1854, 143, ff.

_ 517 Polyb._, XX, 6. Hence it was, that all (?) the wealth of Thebes,
when it was destroyed by Alexander the Great, was only 440 talents.
(Athen., IV, 148.) _Drumann_, Gesch. Roms. etc., VI, 333 ff.
_Cicero_, Phil., II, 16. _Hoeck_, Röm. Gesch., I, 2, 118. _Sueton._,
Octav., 66. An especially scandalous instance in _Petron._, 140. For
a masterly theory of legacy-hunting, see _Horat._, Sat., II, 5.
Compare _Lucian_, Dialogues of the Dead, 5-9. _Petronius_ speaks of
a _turba hæredipetarum_. (124.)

518 Even the revolutionary shibboleth, _paternité_, really means nothing
more than the equal right of inheritance of all, i.e., the abolition
of the right of inheritance! (_R. Meyer_.) The strongest attack,
from a scientific point of view, made on the right of inheritance in
more recent times, comes from Saint Simonism. The founder himself,
after a life rich in experience but poor in action, spent in the
search of much but in the finding of little, succeeded only in
arraying the industrial and proprietary classes against each other,
in declaring the poorest class to be the most important of all, and
in basing the new _religion of love_ on the emancipation of labor.
His disciples went further. In order to abolish all the privileges
of birth, _Bazard_, Exposition de la Doctrine de Saint Simon, 1831,
p. 172, ff., taught that it was not enough to distribute public
employments according to merit, and in the interest of the people
generally, but that the distribution of property should be made in
accordance with the same principle. The inequality of ownership
should correspond with the inequality of merit. Every one may,
during his life, keep what he had acquired himself, but give it to
the state at death. Thus would a reconciliation be effected between
the general interest and private interest; and the public revenue,
supplied in this way, might easily be employed in place of the
revenue raised by such taxation as weighs most heavily on the
inferior classes. _F. Huet_, also, Le Regne social du Christianisme,
1853, III, 5, would have all private property, after the death of
the owner, fall _également à tous les jeunes travailleurs_. The
practical consequences of this system may now be seen in Turkey.
There, the principal military fiefs are held in this way. Hence it
is, that the Turkish owner of such a fief builds as little as
possible. When one of his walls threatens to fall, it is kept
standing by means of props. If it falls in fact, the only
consequence is that there are fewer rooms in the house, and the
owner settles beside the ruins. (_Denon_, I, p. 193.) In the Butan,
there exists a species of practical Saint Simonism. _Robinson_,
Descriptive Account of Assan, 1841.

519 It was chiefly fear of the consequences of the declamations of the
socialists and their declamation against “monopoly” that induced
_Bastiat_ to reduce all the value of landed property to that of the
capital employed in its manuring, improvement etc. (Harmonies, ch.
9.) We may, however, unreservedly grant him that, as a rule, until
the time of its original possession by man, land had no _valeur_
whatever (278).

_ 520 Kant_ thinks the very contrary: Metaph. Anfangsgründe der
Rechtslehre, (Werke, IX, 72 ff). _Contra_, _Grotius_, J. B. et P.,
II, 2. _Graswinkel_, in his Schriften für die Freiheit des Meeres,
1652 ff., in _Laspeyres_, Geschichte der niederländischen N. Œk.,
12. _Hufeland_, Neue Grundlegung, I, 307.

521 “A district of Tartary of ten square miles, in which several hordes
pasture their flocks, may contain between 400 and 500 shepherds, who
find employment in this mode of production.” In Brie, in France, on
the same area, 50,000 peasants who own no land, live and draw their
sole income from their labors in the fields (_J. B. Say_).

_ 522 Schubert_, Reise durch Frankreich und Italien, I, 188.

523 “Without labor, the earth bestows nothing on man but a stopping
place. Hence, the reasons for private property do not extend so far
as to prove that the great land and water highways should not be
reserved as common property, and as a home to every man.”
(_Zachariä_, vom Staate, VII, 43.)

524 This is the practice in Taway. _Ritter_, Erdkunde, V, 130. And so in
ancient Germany. _J. Grimm_, Rechtsalterthümer, 92. Right of the
“dead fire” in Spain and Portugal during the middle ages. _S. Rosa
de Viterbo_: Elucidario das Palavras etc., I, 470. In many parts of
Persia, the land belongs to anyone who has provided it with water by
canals or wells. (_Fraser_, Journey in Chorasan, ch. 7.) Especially
after the Mongolian devastation about the beginning of the
fourteenth century, it was decreed that land which had remained
uncultivated for a long time should belong to the person who made it
productive. (_d’Ohsson_, Hist. des Mongols, IV, 418.) Similarly, in
the time of the ancient Persians (_Polyb._, X, 28, 3), the harvest
for the first five years belonged to the person who first irrigated
the land. On the upper Euphrates, likewise, the land is very often
neither sold nor leased. Anyone who will till it and pay one-tenth
of the produce to the bey may have it for nothing. (_Ritter_, X,
669; compare VIII, 468; IX, 900.) So, too, among the Fulah and
Mandingo negroes, and even among the Tscherkessans. (_Klemm_,
Kulturgeschichte, III, 337 ff.) As the latest stages of development
so often present instances of a reversion to the earliest, we find
that Theodosius and Valentinian decreed that the _agri deserti_
should, after two years’ cultivation, belong to the possessor. L. 8,
Cod. Just., XI, 58.

525 Thus anyone may burn his own coat or throw it in the water; but no
one may set fire to his own house or drown his land by the
destruction of a dam. Even the non-user of a large area, in a
thickly populated region, would scarcely be permitted. The taking of
property by the state, at the present day in times of peace, is
confined almost exclusively to land.

526 Thus _P. v. Arnim_, in a work entitled “Ideen zu einer vollständigen
landwirthschaftlichen,” Buchführung, 1805, a treatise on
“agricultural book-keeping,” considers the farmer as a state
official who should cultivate whatever he believed in conscience, or
what the state declared to be, most necessary. He suggests that the
state should subject all new purchasers of land to an examination to
ascertain whether they are rich and noble enough to act in this way.

527 Thus, for instance, _Herbert Spencer_, Social Statics, 1851, 114
ff., and to some extent _Spinoza_, Tract. polit., VI, 2. There are
now in England several Land-Tenure-Reform-Associations, some of
which would “expropriate” all land and vest the title in the state.
The programme of the others embraces not only opposition to the
right of primogeniture, to family _fidei commissa_ and the assertion
of the right of freedom of trade in land, and of a more democratic
use of common lands, but also the appropriation by the state of the
increase in the rent of land which is caused by no labor of the
landlord, but solely by the increase of population and of the wealth
of the community or of the nation. _Newmarch_, on the other hand,
very correctly remarks, that since it is impossible to draw a line
of demarkation showing the increase of the value of land growing out
of the increase of population etc., the owner of land in making
improvements would never know whether he made them for himself or
for the state. (Statist. Journal, 1871, 488 ff.) Compare _Wolkoff_,
Sur la Rente foncière, 1854, and _H. H. Gossen_, Entwickelung der
Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs (1854).

528 In Congo and on the gold coast of Guinea the land, in whole
villages, is tilled in common and the harvest distributed among the
families per capita. Wherever absolutism reigns, the prince is also
the owner of all the land. (_Klemm_, III, 337.) In China, where the
original tenure in common of the land by all was broken through in
the third century before Christ, all the land of the country now
belongs, strictly speaking, to the state; and the possessor of land
who permits it to go untilled is punished. (_Plath._ in the
phil.-hist. Sitzungsberichten der Münchener Akad., 1873, 793 ff.) In
Corea, private property in land is unknown; arable land is divided
by the state according to the number in a family. (_Ritter_, IV,
633.) The example, on the largest scale, of a country without
private property in land is the British East Indies. Compare the
paper by _Ch. Campbell_, in the Essays published by the Cobden Club;
System of Land Tenure in various Countries, 1870.

529 The legal and economic difference between property in land and
property in capital is well defined by _J. S. Mill_, Principles, II,
ch. 2, 6. “The reasons which form the justification, in an
economical point of view, of property in land, are only valid in so
far as the proprietor of the land is its improver. In no sound
theory of private property was it ever contemplated that the
proprietor of land should be merely a sinecurist quartered on it.”
He here alludes specially to Ireland. The Fourierist, _Considérant_,
distinguishes accurately between the capital produced by labor and
saving, and the increase of the value of land caused by capital and
labor, and its original value. Only the first two elements can
justly be made property. But as, for prudential reasons, it is
necessary to grant individuals the right of private property in
land, those who are not such proprietors must, as a compensation for
the common property which they have lost, be guaranteed the right to
labor. (Théorie du Droit de Propriété et du Droit au Travail.) In
England, the opinion that the compulsory support of the poor was
introduced in compensation to them for the establishment of private
property in land has met with considerable favor. _Bishop Woodward_,
On the Expediency of a Regular Plan for the Maintenance of the Poor
in Ireland, 1775. Compare _Eden_, State of the Poor, I, 413.
However, the poor rates, in a country like England, are much more
than an equivalent of what its soil could produce without the
assistance of capital.

530 The principal classical work on this subject is _Nebenius_, Der
öffentliche Credit, 1820, 2d ed., 1829. Previously, _Salmasius_, De
Modo Usurarum, 1639; and even _Demosthenes_, adv. Dionysiod, 1283.
Compare further _Schäffle_, in the Deutsch. Vierteljahrsschrift, No.
106, II, 289 ff.

531 Compulsory loans by the state, for instance, occupy an intermediate
position between taxes and credit-operations, properly so called.

532 Besides loans proper, all payments in advance, or delays made in the
payments of earnest-money, all leases and lettings, which
_Courcelle-Seneuil_ calls _un médiocre degré de crédit_, insurances
and even all contracts for wages where the payment is delayed for a
long period of time, are species of credit. For a nice distinction
between leasing (_Pacht_) and letting (_Miethe_), see _Knies_,
Tübinger Ztschr., 1860, 180 ff., and the Freiburger Univ. Programm.,
9. September, 1862. _D. Wakefield_, Essay upon Political Economy,
1804, 35, distinguishes between “loan-credit” which is given to a
poor man in the hope of his paying it by means of his labor, and
“exchange-credit,” or credit between property owners.
_Cieszkowski’s_ definition: _le crédit c’est la métamorphose des
capitaux stables et engagés en capitaux circulants et dégagés_. (Du
Crédit et de la Circulation, 2d ed., 1847.) According to _Knies_,
Tübinger Ztschr., 1859, 568, every credit-operation is an exchange
or sale of services, one of which is to be performed in the present,
and the counter-service of the other party in the future. According
to _Macleod_, it is “a sale of debts.”

533 Personal credit, of course, preponderates in commerce. Hence it is,
that in mercantile life, information concerning the personal status,
reputation etc. of his colleagues, plays so important a part with
the merchant. This information was made more accessible in England
by the Lloyd institution. On similar North American institutions,
see _Tellkampf_, Beiträge, I, 51. Credit given on security is a
modification, sometimes of personal and sometimes of real credit.
Compare, _infra_, the theory on bankers, brokers etc.

534 In despotisms, credit is almost entirely personal. _Montesquieu_
Esprit des Lois, L.V., 15. In New York, says _M. Chevalier_, a
merchant with resources worth 200,000 francs, can do a business of
from 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 francs. In Paris, under similar
circumstances, the same man would find it difficult to be credited
to the extent of 500,000 francs. In Holland, two hundred years ago,
a person who hypothecated his property was obliged to pay a higher
rate of interest than in business (_Becher_, Polit. Discurs, 1763,
699), while the stationary period, one hundred years ago, made
personal credit extremely difficult. In Zurich, it was encouraged by
the prohibition of loaning money out of the country. (_Büsch_,
Geldumlauf, III, 40.)

_ 535 Schäffle_, Nat. Œk., II, Aufl., 112.

_ 536 Schäffle_, according to the purpose which it is intended to
subserve, divides credit into production-credit (investment of loans
in immoveable property and in moveable property engaged in
industrial operations), consumption-credit and clearing-credit, or
loans made to pay respited purchase and earnest money, inheritances
etc. (Kapitalismus und Socialismus, 552.)

_ 537 Pinto_, Traité de la Circulation et du Crédit, 1771, considers
loans bearing interest as new portions of the resources of a country
(p. 161), and that government loans not made in excess of its powers
are _une alchymie réalisée dont souvent eux mêmes qui l’ opèrent n’
entendent pas tout le mystère_, (p. 338.) Similarly and earlier, _v.
Schröder_, F. Schatz-und Rentkammer, 238 ff; _Mélon_, Essai
politique sur le Commerce, 1734, ch. 6; next, _Hamilton_, Report to
the House of Representatives on the subject of Manufactures, Dec. 5,
1791; _Von Struensee_, Abhandlungen, 1800, I, 259. See infra, § 210.
More recently, _St. Chamans_, Nouvel Essai sur la Richesses des
Nations, 1824, 83 ff. To some extent, even _Dietzel_, System der
Staatsanleihen, 1855, 200. This is a dangerous error, since to every
credit there is a set-off in the nature of a debit of an equal
amount; and the evidences of debt are nothing but claims on the
future revenue of the state. This was fully recognized by
_Cantillon_, 291 ff. One of the principal advocates of that view
among writers on Political Economy is the vivacious, acute and
practically not unskillful, but sophistically superficial _Macleod_.
(Elements of Political Economy, 1858, ch. 3, Dictionary, 1862, v.
Credit.) The creditor’s assignable right of demand, he considers
immaterial capital. While bills of lading, warehouse receipts, dock
yard receipts etc., only represent goods, the bank note is new
goods. Even metallic money has only a credit-value, inasmuch as it
can be used only to effect exchanges. To the - of the creditor may
correspond a + of the debtor; but the latter is negative only in the
sense that we speak of negative electricity, a negative
thermometrical degree. When an estate is leased, the owner has, in
his demand for rent, a vendible _plus_; but the lessee no
corresponding _minus_. (Not so. To the same extent that the
proprietor has his future payments on the lease discounted, the
present sale-value of his estate is diminished; or if it is not
sold, the last party obtaining the discount has made his available
capital as much less by the advance as that of the lessor has been
increased.) The “discounting of the future,” that is, the apparent
capitalization of hopes, so much in vogue at the present time, may
be a great spur to production as it may also be to baseless
extravagance.

538 Many theoreticians ascribe a direct creation of new capital to
credit, in so far as the capacity of the evidences of debt to
circulate as a medium of exchange effects a real saving, and permits
the former very costly and intrinsically valuable instruments of
exchange to be used in some other way. (§ 123.) Compare _Ricardo_,
Proposals for a secure and economical Currency (1817). _J. S. Mill_,
Principles, II, 174 and 36. _McCulloch_, Commercial Dictionary, art.
Credit. And so it was in the first four editions of this book of
mine. But here, too, there is, immediately, only a transfer of
already existing capital. The person, for instance, who accepts a
bank note for payment, loans a part of his capital to the bank; and
the advantage to the whole community of such credit-operations
consists chiefly in this: that so large a quantity of cash-capital
which lay idle in banks etc., may be used more productively.

539 When _Roesler_ says that credit is capital, the product of saving,
and very serviceable in further production (_Grands._, 300), he
confounds credit itself with the foundations of credit, which are,
indeed, in large part material or moral capital.

540 Compare Discourse on Trade, Coyn and Paper-Credit, London, 1697, 72
ff.

541 Compare _Buron_, Guerre au Crédit, 1868. _Schäffle_, Tüb. Ztsch.,
1869, 296 ff. With a thorough understanding of its
politico-economical bearing, _O. Michaelis_, (Berliner V. Jahrsschr.
1863, IV, 121,) says: The capital-value of my credit is not equal to
the nominal value of my evidences of indebtedness [notes etc.], but
to the capitalized amount of the extra surplus which I have obtained
in my business by means of credit, after deduction is made of the
costs and of the risk-premium.