[486] P. 179.

[487] “Another mistake that is also very general is to speak of property as if it were an institution with a fixed, unchangeable form, while as a matter of fact it has assumed various aspects and is still capable of further modification as yet undreamt of.” (Laveleye, De la Propriété et de ses Formes primitives, 1st ed., 1874, p. 381.) Stuart Mill, in a letter addressed to Laveleye on November 17, 1872, congratulated him on the demonstration he had given of this. (Ibid., preface, p. xiii.)

[488] Note this argument, which has so frequently been employed by Liberal economists, and which we shall come across in Bastiat’s work. The Saint-Simonians are constantly running with the hare as well as hunting with the hounds.

[489] Doctrine, p. 182. The historical argument of which we have just given a short summary is developed in the Doctrine, pp. 179-193. It is open to a still more fundamental criticism, inasmuch as it does not seem to be historically accurate.

[490] Saint-Simon, Mémoire introductif sur sa Contestation avec M. de Redern (1812) (Œuvres, vol. i, p. 122).

[491] Doctrine, p. 144.

[492] The philosophy of history might be said to consist of attempts to show that history is made up of alternating periods of organic growth and destructive criticism. The former periods are marked by unity of thought and aim, of feeling and action in society; the latter by a conflict of ideas and sentiments, by political and social instability. The former periods are essentially religious, the latter selfish. Reform and revolution are the modern manifestations of the critical nature of the period in which we live. Saint-Simonism would lead us into a definitely organic epoch. Historical evolution seems to point to a religious and universal association.

[493] Doctrine, p. 119.

[494] Ibid., p. 121. “Man is not without some intuitive knowledge of his destiny, but when science has proved the correctness of his surmises and demonstrated the accuracy of his forecasts, when it has assured him of the legitimacy of his desires, he will move on with all the greater assurance and calmness towards a future that is no longer unknown to him. Thus will he become a free, intelligent agent working out his own destiny, which he himself cannot change, but which he may considerably expedite by his own efforts.”

[495] This is developed at great length in the seventh lecture, Doctrine, pp. 211 et seq.

[496] “Politics,” says Saint-Simon, “have their roots in morality, and a people’s institutions are just the expression of their thoughts.” (Œuvres, vol. iii, p. 31.) “Philosophy,” he remarks elsewhere, “is responsible for the creation of all the more important political institutions. No other power would have the strength necessary to check the action of those that have already become antiquated or to set up others more in conformity with a new doctrine.” (Syst. indust., Œuvres, vol. v, p. 167.) He further insists upon the part which philanthropists may play in the creation of a new society. “One truth,” he writes, “that has been established in the course of human progress is this: a disinterested desire for the general well-being of the community is a more effective instrument of political improvement than the conscious self-regarding action of the classes for which these changes will prove most beneficial. In a word, experience seems to show that those who should naturally be most interested in the establishment of a new order of things are not those who show the greatest desire to bring it about.” (Œuvres, vol. vi, p. 120.) It would be difficult to imagine a neater refutation of Marxian ideas, especially the contention that the emancipation of the workers can only come from the workers themselves.

[497] Cf. on these points Weill, L’École Saint-Simonienne (1896), and Charléty, Histoire du Saint-Simonisme (1896).

[498] “The object of credit,” says Enfantin (Économie politique et Politique, p. 53), “in a society where one set of people possess the instruments of production but lack capacity or desire to employ them, and where another have the desire to work but are without the means, is to help the passage of these instruments from the former’s possession into the hands of the latter.” No better definition was ever given.

[499] Doctrine, p. 226. Cf. p. 223 for an eloquent passage denouncing Ricardo and Malthus, who, as the result of their “profound researches into the question of rent,” undertake to defend the institution of private property.

[500] The article is entitled De la Classe ouvrière, and may be found in vol. iv of Le Producteur. See particularly pp. 308 et seq.

[501] Engels, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, p. 277.

[502] “The majority of economists, and especially Say, whose work we have just reviewed, regard property as a fixed factor whose origin and progress is no concern of theirs, but whose social utility alone concerns them. The conception of a distinctively social order is more foreign still to the English writers.” (Doctrine, pp. 221 and 223.) No exception is made in favour of Sismondi or Turgot.

[503] Le Producteur, vol. iii, p. 385.

[504] In the preface to Économie politique et Politique, Enfantin again writes: “All questions of political economy should be linked together by a common principle, and in order to judge of the social utility of a measure or idea in economics it is absolutely necessary to consider whether this idea or measure is directly advantageous to the workers or whether it indirectly contributes to the amelioration of their lot by discrediting idleness.” It is a pleasure to be able to concur in the opinion expressed by M. Halévy in his article on Saint-Simon (Revue du Mois for December 1907), in which he maintains that this idea is the distinctive trait of Saint-Simon’s socialism. We have already called attention to another feature that seems to us equally important, namely, the suggested substitution of industrial administration for political government.

[505] It is impossible not to make a special mention of Anton Menger’s excellent little book. Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag (1886) (the English translation, with an excellent introduction by Professor Foxwell, is unfortunately out of print). It is indispensable in any history of socialism. We must also mention, with deep acknowledgments, Pareto’s Les Systèmes socialistes (Paris, 1902, 2 vols.)—the most originally critical work yet published on this subject, though not always the most impartial—and Bourguin’s Les Systèmes socialistes et l’Évolution économique (Paris, 1906), as containing the most scientific criticism of the economic theories of socialism.

[506] “Association, which is destined to put an end to antagonism, has not yet found its true form. Hitherto it has consisted of separate groups which have been at war with one another. Accordingly antagonism has not yet become extinct, but it certainly will as soon as association has become universal.” (Doctrine de Saint-Simon, Exposition, Première Année, p. 177.)

[507] In Owen’s paper, the Economist, for August 11, 1821, we meet with the following words: “The secret is out!… The object sought to be obtained is not equality in rank or possessions, is not community of goods, but full, complete, unrestrained co-operation on the part of all the members for every purpose of social life.” Fourier writes in a similar strain: “Association holds the secret of the union of interests.” (Assoc. domestique, vol. i, p. 133.) Elsewhere he writes: “To-day, Good Friday, I discovered the secret of association.”

[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 6d. 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.