"Whoever has neither income nor wages has no right to demand anything of others: his misfortune falls on his own head; in the game of fortune, luck has been against him."
From the point of view of political economy these propositions are irrefutable;
and Malthus, who has formulated them with such alarming exactness, is secure against all reproach.From the point of view of the conditions of social science, these same propositions are radically false, and even contradictory.
The error of Malthus, or rather of political economy, does not consist in saying that a man who has nothing to eat must die; or in maintaining that, under the system of individual appropriation, there is no course for him who has neither labor nor income but to withdraw from life by suicide, unless he prefers to be driven from it by starvation: such is, on the one hand, the law of our existence; such is, on the other, the consequence of property; and M.Rossi has taken altogether too much trouble to justify the good sense of Malthus on this point.I suspect, indeed, that M.Rossi, in making so lengthy and loving an apology for Malthus, intended to recommend political economy in the same way that his fellow-countryman Machiavel, in his book entitled "The Prince," recommended despotism to the admiration of the world.In pointing out misery as the necessary condition of industrial and commercial absolutism, M.Rossi seems to say to us: There is your law, your justice, your political economy; there is property.
But Gallic simplicity does not understand artifice; and it would have been better to have said to France, in her immaculate tongue: The error of Malthus, the radical vice of political economy, consists, in general terms, in affirming as a definitive state a transitory condition, -- namely, the division of society into patricians and proletaires; and, particularly, in saying that in an organized, and consequently solidaire, society, there may be some who possess, labor, and consume, while others have neither possession, nor labor, nor bread.Finally Malthus, or political economy, reasons erroneously when seeing in the faculty of indefinite reproduction -- which the human race enjoys in neither greater nor less degree than all animal and vegetable species -- a permanent danger of famine; whereas it is only necessary to show the necessity, and consequently the existence, of a law of equilibrium between population and production.
In short, the theory of Malthus -- and herein lies the great merit of this writer, a merit which none of his colleagues has dreamed of attributing to him -- is a reductio ad absurdum of all political economy.
As for socialism, that was summed up long since by Plato and Thomas More in a single word, UTOPIA, -- that is, no-place, a chimera.
Nevertheless, for the honor of the human mind and that justice may be done to all, this must be said: neither could economic and legislative science have had any other beginning than they did have, nor can society remain in this original position.
Every science must first define its domain, produce and collect its materials: before system, facts; before the age of art, the age of learning.
The economic science, subject like every other to the law of time and the conditions of experience, before seeking to ascertain how things ought to take place in society, had to tell us how things do take place; and all these processes which the authors speak of so pompously in their books as laws, principles, and theories, in spite of their incoherence and inconsistency, had to be gathered up with scrupulous diligence, and described with strict impartiality.The fulfilment of this task called for more genius perhaps, certainly for more self-sacrifice, than will be demanded by the future progress of the science.
If, then, social economy is even yet rather an aspiration towards the future than a knowledge of reality, it must be admitted that the elements of this study are all included in political economy; and I believe that I express the general sentiment in saying that this opinion has become that of the vast majority of minds.The present finds few defenders, it is true; but the disgust with utopia is no less universal: and everybody understands that the truth lies in a formula which shall reconcile these two terms: CONSERVATION and MOTION.
Thus, thanks to Adam Smith, J.B.Say, Ricardo, and Malthus, as well as their rash opponents, the mysteries of fortune, atria Ditis, are uncovered;
the power of capital, the oppression of the laborer, the machinations of monopoly, illumined at all points, shun the public gaze.Concerning the facts observed and described by the economists, we reason and conjecture:
abusive laws, iniquitous customs, respected so long as the obscurity which sustained their life lasted, with difficulty dragged to the daylight, are expiring beneath the general reprobation; it is suspected that the government of society must be learned no longer from an empty ideology, after the fashion of the Contrat social, but, as Montesquieu foresaw, from the relation of things; and already a Left of eminently socialistic tendencies, composed of savants, magistrates, legists, professors, and even capitalists and manufacturers, -- all born representatives and defenders of privilege, -- and of a million of adepts, is forming in the nation above and outside of parliamentary opinions, and seeking, by an analysis of economic facts, to capture the secrets of the life of societies.
Let us represent political economy, then, as an immense plain, strewn with materials prepared for an edifice.The laborers await the signal, full of ardor, and burning to commence the work: but the architect has disappeared without leaving the plan.The economists have stored their memories with many things: unhappily they have not the shadow of an estimate.
They know the origin and history of each piece; what it cost to make it;
