[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, Book II, chap. 4.
[579] “The German nation will at once obtain what it is now in need of, namely, fisheries and naval power, maritime commerce and colonies.” (National System, p. 143.) List has no difficulty in allying his patriotic idealism with the practical side of his nature.
[580] List deliberately distinguishes between exchange values and productive forces; but the distinction is by no means a happy one. For a policy which aims at encouraging productive forces has no other way of demonstrating its superiority than by showing an increase of exchange value. The two notions are not opposed to one another, and in reckoning a nation’s wealth we must take some account of its present state as well as of its future resources. In his Letters to Ingersoll (cf. Letter IV, referred to above) he distinguishes between “natural and intellectual capital” on the one hand and “material productive capital” on the other (Adam Smith’s idea of capital). “The productive powers of the nation depend not only upon the latter, but also and chiefly upon the former.”
[581] National System, p. 117.
[582] Unjustly as we think, for on more than one occasion Smith did take account of moral forces. He dated the prosperity of English agriculture from the time when farmers were freed from their long servitude and became henceforth independent of the proprietors. He remarks that towns attain prosperity quicker than the country, because a regular government is earlier established there. “The best effect which commerce and manufactures have is the gradual introduction and establishment of order and good government, and with them the liberty and security of individuals among the inhabitants of the country. This, though it has been the least observed, is by far the most important of their effects. Mr. Hume is the only writer who so far as I know has hitherto taken notice of it.” (Book III, chap. 4; Cannan, vol i, p. 383.) Speaking of the American colonies, Smith (Cannan, vol. ii, p. 73) makes the remark that although their fertility is inferior to the Spanish, Portuguese, and the French colonies, “the political institutions of the English colonies have been more favourable to the improvement and cultivation of this land than those of any of the other three nations.” How could List have forgotten the celebrated passage in which Smith attributes the prosperity of Great Britain largely to its legal system, which guarantees to each individual the fruits of his toil and which must be reckoned among the definitive achievements of the Revolution of 1688? “That security which the laws in Great Britain give to every man that he shall enjoy the fruits of his own labour is alone sufficient to make any country flourish, notwithstanding these and twenty other absurd regulations of commerce; and this security was perfected much about the same time that the bounty was established.” (Book IV, chap. 5; Cannan, vol. ii, pp. 42-43.)
[583] National System, chap. 17, beginning.
[584] Compare chapters 7 and 15, where he treats of the manufacturing industry in its relation to each of the great economic forces of the country.
[585] Ibid., p. 87.
[586] National System, p. 150.
[587] “It may in general be assumed that where any technical industry cannot be established by means of an original protection of 40 to 60 per cent., and cannot continue to maintain itself under a continued protection of 20 to 30 per cent., the fundamental conditions of manufacturing power are lacking.” (Ibid., p. 251.)
[588] “Solely in nations of the latter kind, namely, those which possess all the necessary mental and material conditions and means for establishing a manufacturing power of their own and of thereby attaining the highest degree of civilisation and development of material prosperity and political power, but which are retarded in their progress by the competition of a foreign manufacturing Power which is already farther advanced than their own—only in such nations are commercial restrictions justified for the purpose of establishing and protecting their own manufacturing power.” (Ibid., p. 144.)
[589] Ibid., p. 240.
[590] “Everyone knows,” says he (quoted by Hirst, pp. 231 et seq.), “that the cost of production of a manufactured good depends very largely upon the quantity produced—that is, upon the operation of the law of increasing returns. This law exercises considerable influence upon the rise and fall of manufacturing power.… An English manufacturer producing for the home market has a regular sale of 10,000 yards at 6 dollars a yard.… His expenses being thus guaranteed by his sales in the home market, the cost of producing a further quantity of 10,000 yards for the foreign market will be considerably reduced and would yield him a profit even were he to sell for 3 or 4 dollars a yard. And even though he should not be making any profit just then, he can feel pretty confident about the future when he has ruined the foreign producer and driven him out of the field altogether.” List thinks that this shows how impossible it is for manufacturers in a new country without any measure of protection to compete with other countries whose industry is better established. But this is one of the arguments that has been most frequently used by British manufacturers in recent years in demanding protection against American competition. We would like to know what List would have thought of this.
[591] National System, p. 144, and the whole of chap. 16 of Book II. He considered that “it would be a further error if France, after her manufacturing power has become sufficiently strong and established, were not willing to revert gradually to a more moderate system of Protection and by permitting a limited amount of competition incite her manufacturers to emulation.” (Ibid., p. 249.)
[592] Ibid., p. 253, and especially p. 162, etc., where with a sudden change of front he declares himself in favour of Free Trade in agriculture, and employs the arguments which Free Traders had applied to all products. Compare again p. 230, where he declares that agriculture “by the very nature of things is sufficiently well protected against foreign competition.”
[593] The authors were unable to find a copy of Hamilton’s works in France, but according to Bastable (Commerce of Nations, 6th ed., London, 1912, pp. 120, 121) the principal arguments deduced by the report to prove the advantages of industry are that it permits of greater division of labour, prevents unemployment, supplies a more regular market than the foreign, and encourages immigration.
[594] It is very probable that List had read the work of another American Protectionist, Daniel Raymond, whose Thoughts on Political Economy appeared in 1820 and ran into four editions (cf. Daniel Raymond, by Charles Patrick Neill, Baltimore, 1897). This seems to be the opinion of the majority of writers who during the last few years have especially concerned themselves with the study of List’s opinions (Miss Hirst, in her Life of Friedrich List, and M. Curt Kohler in his book Problematisches zu Friedrich List, Leipzig, 1909). But to regard Raymond as his only inspirer, as is done by Rambaud in his Histoire des Doctrines, seems to us mere exaggeration. Apart from the facts that Raymond’s ideas are not particularly original and that List had lived some years in America in a Protectionist environment, List never quotes him at all. On the other hand, he frequently and enthusiastically refers to both Dupin and Chaptal in his Letters to Ingersoll. The expression “productive forces” was probably borrowed from Baron Dupin’s Situation progressive des Forces de la France (Paris, 1827), which opens with the following words: “This forms an introduction to a work entitled The Productive and Commercial Forces of France. By productive forces I mean the combined forces of men, animals, and nature applied to the work of agriculture, of industry, or of commerce.” Again, the idea of protecting infant industries is very neatly put by Chaptal. On p. xlvi of the introduction to his De l’Industrie français (published in 1819) we meet with the following words: “It does not require much reflection to be convinced of the fact that something more than mere desire is needed to overcome the natural obstacles in the way of the development of industry. Everywhere we feel that ‘infant industries’ cannot struggle against older establishments cemented by time, supported by much capital, freed from worry and carried on by a number of trained, skilled workmen, without having recourse to prohibition in order to overcome the competition of foreign industries.”
It is certain that List, during his first stay in France, had read these two authors, and had there found a confirmation of his own Protectionist ideas. It is not less certain, from a letter written by him in April 1825 (quoted by Miss Hirst, p. 33), that he was converted before going to America, but that he expected to find some new arguments there which would strengthen him in his opposition to Smith. Marx’s assertion made in his Theorien über den Mehrwerth, vol. i, p. 339 (published by Kautsky, Stuttgart, 1905), that List’s principal source of inspiration was Ferrier (Du Gouvernement considéré dans ses Rapports avec le Commerce, Paris, 1805) has not the slightest foundation. Neither has the attempt to credit Adam Müller with being the real author of the conception of a national system of political economy. List, we know, was acquainted with Müller, a Catholic writer who wished for the restoration of the feudal system. But to be a German writer in the Germany of the nineteenth century was quite enough to imbue one with the idea of nationality. Moreover, Protectionists’ arguments are extremely limited in number, so that they do not differ very much from one epoch to another, and it is a comparatively easy task to find some precursors of Friedrich List.
[595] Published in a volume entitled Outlines of a New System of Political Economy, in a Series of Letters addressed by F. List to Charles Ingersoll (Philadelphia, 1827). This publication did not find a place in the collected edition published by Häusser, but the whole of it has been incorporated in the interesting Life of Friedrich List by Margaret E. Hirst (London, 1909).
[596] This was the consideration that influenced him in adopting a Protectionist attitude, although hitherto he had regarded himself as a disciple of Smith and Say. (Letters to Ingersoll, p. 173.)
[597] National System, preface, p. 54.
[598] The Zollvereinsblatt, which was published by him towards the end of 1843.
[599] National System, p. 230. We do not by any means imply that the Germany of List’s day was in greater need of Protection than the Germany of to-day. Indeed, if we accept Chaptal’s view, we may well deny this, for, writing in 1819, he said that Saxony occupied a place in the front rank of European nations in the matter of industry. Speaking of Prussia, he declared that the industry of Aix-la-Chapelle alone was enough to establish the fame of any nation (De l’Industrie française, vol. i, p. 75). We must also recall the fact that the basis of the present prosperity of Germany was laid under a régime of much greater freedom.
[600] “Neither is it at all necessary that all branches of industry should be protected in the same degree. Only the most important branches require special protection, for the working of which much outlay of capital in building and management, much machinery and therefore much technical knowledge, skill, and experience, and many workmen are required, and whose products belong to the category of the first necessaries of life and consequently are of the greatest importance as regards their total value as well as regards national independence (as, for example, cotton, woollen, and linen manufactures, etc.). If these main branches are suitably protected and developed, all other less important branches of manufacture will rise up around them under a less degree of protection.” (National System, p. 145.)
[602] Carey, Principles of Social Science.
[603] Carey, Principles of Social Science.
[604] National System, Book II, chap. 3.
[605] Principles of Political Economy, Book V, chap. 10, § 1.
[606] “Of all the things required for the purposes of man, the one that least bears transportation, and is, yet, of all the most important, is manure. The soil can continue to produce on the condition, only, of restoring to it the elements of which its crop had been composed. That being complied with, the supply of food increases, and men are enabled to come nearer together and combine their efforts—developing their individual faculties, and thus increasing their wealth; and yet this condition of improvement, essential as it is, has been overlooked by all economists.” (Principles of Social Science, vol. i, pp. 273-274.)
[607] Principles of Political Economy, Book V, chap. 10, § 1.
[608] On this point see Jenks, Henry C. Carey als Nationalökonom, chap. 1 (Jena, 1885).
[609] Compare the long passage in the Principles, Book V, chap. 10, § 1, which begins: “The only case in which on mere principles of political economy protecting duties can be defensible is when they are imposed temporarily (especially in a young and rising nation) in hopes of naturalising a foreign industry, in itself perfectly suitable to the circumstances of the country. The superiority of one country over another in a branch of production often varies only from having begun it sooner.” Stuart Mill, however, does not refer to List, and one wonders whether the paragraph owes anything to his influence.
[610] We must make an exception of M. Cauwès, whose Protectionism, on the contrary, is a quite logical adaptation of List’s idea, viz. the superiority of nations possessing a complex economy. This is the only scientific system of Protection that we are to-day acquainted with. But it must be confessed that the majority of writers are very far removed from Cauwès’ point of view. Compare his Cours d’ Économie politique, 3rd ed., vol. iii.
[611] Such, e.g., are the economists who are always speaking of a “commercial deficit,” i.e. of an unfavourable balance of commerce. Despite the frequent refutations which have been given of it, it is still frequently quoted as an axiomatic truth. List criticised the school for its complete indifference to the balance of imports and exports. But he did not favour the Mercantilist theory of the balance of trade; on the contrary, he regarded that as definitely condemned (p. 218). He regarded the question from a special point of view, that of monetary equilibrium. When a nation, says he, imports much, but does not export a corresponding amount of goods, it may be forced to furnish payment in gold, and a drainage of gold might give rise to a financial crisis. The indifference of the school with regard to this question of the quantity of money is very much exaggerated (Book II, chap. 13). The policy of the great central banks of to-day aims at easing those tensions in the money market which appear as the result of over-importation, and in this matter they have proved themselves much superior to any system of Protection.
[612] Some writers go even farther. Patten (Economic Foundations of Protection) longs to see a national type established peculiar to each country, as the result of forcing the inhabitants to be nourished and clothed according to the natural resources of the country in which they live. We should, as a consequence of this, have an American type quite superior to any European type. “Then,” says he, “we should be able to exercise a preponderant influence upon the fate of other nations and could force them to renounce their present economic methods and adopt a more highly developed social State.” Until then no foreign goods are to enter the country. Here, as is very frequently the case, Protectionism is confounded with nationalism or imperialism.
[613] “A merely agricultural State is an infinitely less perfect institution than an agricultural-manufacturing State. The former is always more or less economically and politically dependent on those foreign nations which take from it agricultural products in exchange for manufactured goods. It cannot determine for itself how much it will produce: it must wait and see how much others will buy from it.” (National System, p. 145.)
[614] “A nation which has already attained manufacturing supremacy can only protect its own manufactures and merchants against retrogression and indolence by the free importation of means of subsistence and raw materials, and by the competition of foreign manufactured goods.” (National System, p. 153.) Hence the appeal to England in the name of this theory to abolish her tariffs, but to gracefully allow France, Germany, and the United States to continue theirs.
[615] See M. Pareto’s Economia Politica (Milan, 1906) for a demonstration that international exchange is not necessarily advantageous for both parties (chap. 9, § 45).
[616] But the line is sometimes difficult to follow. Latterly statesmen have been concerned not so much with the exportation of goods as with the migration of capital. Ought the Minister for Foreign Affairs to veto the raising of a loan in the home market on behalf of a foreign Power or an alien company? To what extent ought bankers and capitalists to accept his advice? Such are some of the questions that for some years past have been repeatedly asked in France, England, and Germany. And it seems in almost every case that political economy has had to bow before political necessity, and not vice versa.
[617] It is very remarkable that List’s greatest admirer, Dühring, in his Kritische Geschichte der Nationalökonomie und des Sozialismus (2nd ed., p. 362), insists on the fact that Protection is not an essential element, but a mere temporary form of the principle of national economic solidarity, which is List’s fundamental conception, and which must survive all forms of Protection. Dühring is the only real successor of List and Carey. He has developed their ideas with a great deal of ability and has shown himself a really scientific thinker. But what he chiefly admires in both writers is not their Protection, but their effort to lay hold of the material and moral forces which lie below the mere fact of exchange, and upon which a nation’s prosperity really depends. His Kursus der National- und Sozial-oekonomie (Berlin, 1873) is very interesting reading.
[618] Except the Saint-Simonians nobody seems to have conceived of the State’s responsibility for a nation’s productive forces. List refers to them sympathetically, especially to those who, like Michel Chevalier, “sought to discover the connection of these doctrines with those of the premier schools, and to make their ideas compatible with existing circumstances” (National System, p. 287). But List differs from them in his love of individual liberty and in the importance which he attaches to moral, political, and intellectual liberty as elements of productive efficiency.
[619] Philosophie du Progrès, Œuvres, vol. xx, p. 19: “Growth is essential to thought, and truth or reality whether in nature or in human affairs is essentially historical, at one time advancing, at another receding, evolving slowly, but always undergoing some change.” In his Contradictions économiques he defines social science as “the systematised study of society, not merely as it was in the past or will be in the future, but as it is in the present in all its manifold appearances, for only by looking at the whole of its activities can we hope to discover intelligence and order.” (Vol. i, p. 43.) “If we apply this conception to the organisation of labour we cannot agree with the economists when they say that it is already completely organised, or with the socialists when they declare that it must be organised, but simply that it is gradually organising itself; that is, that the process of organisation has gone on since time immemorial and is still going on, and that it will continue to go on. Science should always be on the look-out for the results that have already been achieved or are on the point of realisation.” (Vol. i, p. 45.)
[620] A vigorous exposition of his other ideas is given in Bouglé’s La Sociologie de Proudhon (Paris, 1911).
[621] The following are Proudhon’s principal works: 1840, Qu’est-ce que la Propriété? (studies in ethics and politics); 1846, Système des Contradictions économiques (the “philosophy of destitution”); 1848, Organisation du Crédit et de la Circulation et Solution du Problème social; 1848, Résumé de la Question sociale, Banque d’Échange; 1849, Les Confessions d’un Révolutionnaire; 1850, Intérêt et Principal (a discussion between M. Bastiat and M. Proudhon); 1858, De la Justice dans la Révolution et dans l’Église (three volumes); 1861, La Guerre et la Paix; 1865, De la Capacité politique des Classes ouvrières. Our quotations are taken from the Œuvres complètes, published in twenty-six volumes by Lacroix (1867-70).
[622] “Do you happen to know, madam, what my father was? Well, he was just an honest brewer whom you could never persuade to make money by selling above cost price. Such gains, he thought, were immoral. ‘My beer,’ he would always remark, ‘costs me so much, including my salary. I cannot sell it for more.’ What was the result? My dear father always lived in poverty and died a poor man, leaving poor children behind him.” (Letter to Madame d’Agoult, Correspondance, vol. ii, p. 239.)
[623] It has been said that Proudhon borrowed this formula from Brissot de Warville, the author of a work entitled Recherches philosophiques sur le Droit de Propriété et sur le Vol, considérés dans la Nature et dans la Société. It was first published in 1780, and reappeared with some modifications in vol. vi, pp. 261 et seq., of his Bibliothèque philosophique du Législateur (1782). But this is a mistake. Proudhon declares that the work was unknown to him (Justice, vol. i, p. 301); and, moreover, the formula is not there at all. Brissot’s point of view is entirely different from Proudhon’s. The former believes that in a state of nature the right of property is simply the outcome of want, and disappears when that want is satisfied; that man, and even animals and plants, has a right to everything that can satisfy his wants, but that the right disappears with the satisfaction of the want. Consequently theft perpetrated under the pressure of want simply means a return to nature. The rich are really the thieves, because they refuse to the culprit the lawful satisfaction of his needs. The result is a plea for a more lenient treatment of thieves. But Brissot is very careful not to attack civil property, which is indispensable for the growth of wealth and the expansion of commerce, although it has no foundation in a natural right (p. 333). There is no mention of unearned income. Proudhon, on the other hand, never even discusses the question as to whether property is based upon want or not. He would certainly have referred to this if he had read Brissot.
[624] Contradictions, vol. i, pp. 219, 221.
[625] Résumé de la Question sociale, p. 29. We meet with the same idea in other passages. “Property under the influence of division of labour has become a mere link in the chain of circulation, and the proprietor himself a kind of toll-gatherer who demands a toll from every commodity that passes his way. Property is the real thief.” (Banque d’Échange, p. 166.) We must also remember that Proudhon did not consider that taking interest was always illegal. In the controversy with Bastiat he admits that it was necessary in the past, but that he has found a way of getting rid of it altogether.
[626] We must distinguish between this and Marx’s doctrine. Marx believed that all value is the product of labour. Proudhon refuses to admit this. He thinks that value should in some way correspond to the quantity of labour, but that this is not the case in present-day society. Marx was quite aware of the fact that Proudhon did not share his views (see Misère de la Philosophie). Proudhon follows Rodbertus, who taught that the products only and not their values are provided by labour.
[627] Propriété, 1er Mémoire, pp. 131-132. It is true that Proudhon adds that without land and capital labour would be unproductive. But he soon forgets his qualifications when he proceeds to draw conclusions, especially when he comes to give an exposition of the Exchange Bank, where we meet with the following sentence: “Society is built up as follows: All the raw material required is gratuitously supplied by nature, so that in the economic world every product is really begot of labour, and capital must be considered unproductive.” Elsewhere he writes: “To work is not necessarily to produce anything.” (Solution du Problème social, Œuvres, vol. vi, pp. 361 et seq., and p. 187.)
[628] Propriété, 1er Mémoire, p. 133.
[629] L. von Stein, Geschichte der sozialen Bewegung in Frankreich, vol. iii, p. 362 (Leipzig, 1850). A remarkable piece of work altogether.
[630] It is true that Proudhon’s attack is entirely directed against the ethics of private property. He shows how every justification that is usually offered, such as right of occupation, natural right, or labour, cannot justify the institution as it is to-day. Private property as we know it is confined to the few, whereas on these principles it ought to be widely diffused. Criticism of this kind is not very difficult, perhaps, but it does nothing to weaken the arguments of those who would justify property on the grounds of social utility. The criticism of the Saint-Simonians, who approach it from the point of view of utility and productiveness rather than from the ethical standpoint, seems to be much more profound. This is why we have regarded them as the critics of private property.
[631] “This is the fundamental idea of my first Mémoire.” (Quoted by Sainte-Beuve, P. J. Proudhon, p. 90.) Later on he complains that the suggestion was never even discussed.
[632] Propriété, 1er Mémoire, p. 94.
[633] Ibid., p. 91.
[634] Blanqui’s letter dated May 1, 1841, in reply to a communication from Proudhon concerning the second Mémoire on property.