[635] Cf. Sainte-Beuve, P. J. Proudhon, pp. 202, 203; and see on this point Proudhon’s amusing letters to Guillaumin (Correspondance, vol. ii).

[636] Propriété, 1er Mémoire, p. 203.

[637] An article in Le Peuple, in 1848. Proudhon’s attacks are more especially directed against Fourier. Fourier’s was at this time the only socialist school that had any influence, and this was largely due to the active propaganda of Victor Considérant. See Contradictions, vol. ii, p. 297, and Propriété, 1er Mémoire, pp. 153 et seq.

[638] Contradictions, vol. ii, p. 285. For the attack on Cabet, Louis Blanc, and the communists see the whole of chap. 12 of the Contradictions. Louis Blanc “has poisoned the working classes with his ridiculous formulæ” (Idée générale de la Révolution, p. 108). Louis Blanc himself is summed up as follows: “He seriously thought that he was the bee of the Revolution, but he turned out to be only a grasshopper.” (Ibid.)

[639] “I believe that I am the first person possessed of a full knowledge of the phenomena in question who has dared to uphold the doctrine that instead of restraining economic forces whose strength has been so much exaggerated we ought to try to balance them against one another in accordance with the little known and less perfectly understood principle that contraries, far from being mutually destructive, support one another just because of their contrary nature.” (Justice, vol. i, pp. 265-266.) The same idea also finds expression on pp. 302-303. Elsewhere he remarks that what society is in search of is a way of balancing the natural forces that are contained within itself (Révolution démontrée par le Coup d’État, p. 43).

[640] “Division of labour, collective force, competition, exchange, credit, property, and even liberty—these are the true economic forces, the raw materials of all wealth, which, without actually making men the slaves of one another, give entire freedom to the producer, ease his toil, arouse his enthusiasm, and double his produce by creating a real solidarity which is not based upon personal considerations, but which binds men together with ties stronger than any which sympathetic combination or voluntary contract can supply.” (Idée générale de la Révolution au XIXe Siècle, p. 95.) The economic forces are somewhat differently enumerated in chap. 13 of La Capacité des Classes ouvrières. Association and mutuality are mentioned; but while recognising the prestige of the word “association,” especially among working men, Proudhon concludes that the only real association is mutuality—not in the sense of a mutual aid society, which he thinks is altogether too narrow.

[641] It is true that Fourier was not a communist. Proudhon shows that on the one hand his Phalanstère would abolish interest, while it would give a special remuneration to talent on the other, simply because “talent is a product of society rather than a gift of nature.” (Propriété, 1er Mémoire, p. 156.)

[642] Proudhon’s opposition to the principle of association is very remarkable. He refers to it more than once, but especially in the Idée générale de la Révolution. “Can association be regarded as an economic force? For my own part I distinctly say, No. By itself it is sterile, even if it does not check production, because of the limits it puts upon the liberty of the worker.” (P. 89.) “Association means that everyone is responsible for someone else, and the least counts as much as the greatest, the youngest as the oldest. It gets rid of inequality, with the result that there is general awkwardness and incapacity.” (Ibid.)

[643] La Révolution démontrée par le Coup d’État, pp. 53, 54. Elsewhere: “When you speak of organising labour it seems as if you would put out the eyes of liberty.” (Organisation du Crédit et de l’Échange, Œuvres, vol. vi, p. 91.)

[644] Programme révolutionnaire. To the electors of the Seine, in the Représentant du Peuple. (Œuvres, vol. xvii, pp. 45, 46.)

[645] “I should like everybody to have some property. We are anxious that they should have property in order to avoid paying interest, because exorbitant interest is the one obstacle to the universal use of property.” (Le Peuple, September 2, 1849.)

[646] Propriété, 1er Mémoire, p. 204.

[647] Contradictions, vol. ii, p. 203.

[648] Organisation du Credit et de la Circulation, p. 131. Elsewhere: “To adopt Hegelian phraseology, the community is the first term in social development—the thesis; property the contradictory term—the antithesis. The third term—the synthesis—must be found before the solution can be considered complete.” (Propriété, 1er Mémoire, p. 202.) That term will be possession pure and simple—the right of property with no claim to unearned income. “Get rid of property, but retain the right of possession, and this very simple change of principle will result in an alteration of the laws, the method of government, and the character of a nation’s economic institutions. Evil of every kind will be entirely swept away.” Proudhon employed Hegelian terminology as early as 1840, four years before Karl Grün’s visit to Paris. For Proudhon’s relation to Grün see Sainte-Beuve’s P. J. Proudhon.

[649] Justice dans la Révolution, vol. i, pp. 182-183.

[650] Ibid., p. 269. “It is easy to show how the principle of mutual respect is logically convertible with the principle of reciprocal service. If men are equal in the eyes of justice they must also have a common necessity, and whoever would place his brothers in a position of inferiority, against which it is the chief duty of society to fight, is not acting justly.”

[651] This idea of mutual service is further developed, especially in Organisation du Crédit et de la Circulation (Œuvres, vol. vi, pp. 92-93), and in Idée générale, p. 97.

[652] That is how the problem is put in the preface to the first Mémoire.

[653] Contradictions, vol. ii, p. 414.

[654] Le Droit au Travail et le Droit de Propriété, pp. 4, 5, 58 (1848).

[655] Every historian is agreed on this point, which Louis Blanc has dealt with at great length in his Histoire de la Révolution de 1848 (chap. 11). The testimony of contemporaries, especially Lamartine in his Histoire de la Révolution de 1848 (vol. ii, p. 120), is also very significant. “These national workshops were placed under the direction of men who belonged to the anti-socialist party, whose one aim was to spoil the experiment, but who managed to keep the sectaries of the Luxembourg and the rebels of the clubs apart until the meeting of the National Assembly. Paris was disgusted with the quantity and the character of the work accomplished, but it little thought that these men had on more than one occasion defended and protected the city. Far from being in the pay of Louis Blanc, as some people seem to think, they were entirely at the beck and call of his opponents.” É. Thomas in his Histoire des Ateliers nationaux (pp. 146-147) relates how Marie sent for him on May 23 and secretly asked him whether the men in the workshops could be relied upon. “Try to get them strongly attached to you. Spare no expense. If there is any need we shall give you plenty of money.” Upon Thomas asking what was the purpose of all this, Marie replied: “It is all in the interest of public safety. Make sure of the men. The day is not far distant when we shall need them in the streets.”

[656] These addresses were afterwards published in a volume entitled Le Droit au Travail.

[657] Louis Blanc, Histoire de la Révolution de 1848, vol. ii, p. 135.

[658] See the addresses in his La Révolution de Février au Luxembourg (Paris, 1849).

[659] Moniteur, April 27, May 2, 3, and 6, 1848. The dismissal of the commission meant an interruption of the Exposé général, but Vidal in his work Vivre en travaillant! Projets, Voires, et Moyens de Réformes sociales (1848) continued the exposition. It contains a plan for agricultural credit, a State land purchase scheme in order to get rid of rent, a proposal for buying up railways and mines and for erecting cheap dwellings. It affords an interesting example of State Socialism in 1848 which seems to have struck many people then as being very amusing.

[660] Cf. supra, p. 297, note 3.

[661] Cf. supra, “The Associative Socialists.”

[662] “I need hardly say that this measure of fiscal reform [namely, the abolition of private property] must be carried out without any violence or robbery. There must be no spoliation, but ample compensation must be given.” (Résumé de la Question sociale, p. 27.)

[663] Solution du Problème social (Œuvres, vol. vi, p. 32).

[664] Œuvres, vol. xviii, pp. 6-7. See also the letter dated February 25, 1848 (Correspondance, vol. ii, p. 280): “France will certainly accomplish it, whether it remains a republic or not. It might even be carried out by the present decadent Government, at a trifling cost.” This thought did not prevent his taking a hand in the Revolution.

[665] In a pamphlet entitled Organisation du Crédit et de la Circulation, and dated March 31, 1848, he expounds the principle of the scheme and indicates some of its general features. The scheme is dealt with in a number of articles contributed to Le Représentant du Peuple for April, afterwards published in book form by Darimon, under the title of Résumé de la Question sociale. The plan differs slightly from the statutes of the People’s Bank as they appear in vol. vi of the Œuvres, but the guiding principle is much the same. A further exposition was given in Le Peuple in February and March 1849, just when the Bank was being founded. There is still another account contained in the volume entitled Intérêt et Principal: Discussion entre M. Proudhon and M. Bastiat sur l’Intérêt du Capitaux (Paris, 1880). This controversy was carried on in the columns of La Voix du Peuple from October 1849 to October 1850. Proudhon frequently refers to the same idea in his other works, notably in Justice dans la Révolution, vol. i, pp. 289 et seq., and in Idée générale, pp. 197 et seq.

[666] See Solution du Problème social, pp. 178, 179.

[667] Intérêt et Principal, p. 112.

[668] “Money is simply a supplementary kind of capital, a medium of exchange or a credit instrument. If this is the case what claim has it to payment? To think of remunerating money for the service which it gives!” (Ibid., p. 113.)

[669] Cf. Résumé de la Question sociale, p. 39.

[670] Moreover, the advances will take the form of discount. The entrepreneur who has some scheme which he wishes to carry out “will in the first place collect orders, and on the strength of those orders get hold of some producer or dealer who has such raw material or services at his disposal. Having obtained the goods, he pays for them by means of promissory notes, which the bank, after taking due precaution, will convert into circulation notes.” The consumer is really a sleeping partner in the business, and between him and the entrepreneur there is no need for the intervention of money at all. (Organisation du Crédit, Œuvres, vol. vi, p. 123.) Discount was the fundamental characteristic of the bank, and no criticism is directed against this feature of its operations.

[671] “How to resolve the bourgeoisie and the proletariat into the middle class, the class which lives upon its income and that which draws a salary into a class which has neither revenue nor wages, but lives by inventing and producing valuable commodities to exchange them for others. The middle class is the most active class in society, and is truly representative of a country’s activity. This was the problem in February 1848.” (Révolution démontrée par le Coup d’État, p. 135.)

[672] “Reciprocity means a guarantee on the part of those who exchange commodities to sell at cost price.” (Idée générale de la Révolution, pp. 97-98.)

[673] “The very existence of the State implies antagonism or war as the essential or inevitable condition of humanity, a condition that calls for the intervention of a coercive force which shall put an end to the struggle continually waging between the weak and the strong.” (Voix du Peuple, December 3, 1849; Œuvres, vol. xix, p. 23.) “When economic development has resulted in the transformation of society even despite itself, then the weak and the strong will alike disappear. There will only be workers; and industrial solidarity, and a guarantee that their products will be sold, will tend to make them equal both in capacity and wealth.” (Ibid., p. 18.)

[674] “Consequently we consider ourselves anarchists and we have proclaimed the fact more than once. Anarchy is suitable for an adult society just as hierarchy is for a primitive one. Human society has progressed gradually from hierarchy to anarchy.” (Œuvres, vol. xix, p. 9.) A little later, in Idée générale de la Révolution, he states that the aim of the Revolution was “to build up a property constitution and to dissolve or otherwise cause the disappearance of the political or government system by reducing or simplifying, by decentralising and suppressing the whole machinery of the State.” This idea was borrowed from Saint-Simon, and Proudhon has acknowledged the debt in his Idée générale. This conception of industrial society rendering government useless or reducing it to harmless proportions is a development, though perhaps somewhat extravagant, of the economic Liberalism of J. B. Say. The first edition of the Mémoire sur la Propriété contains an admission of anarchical tendencies. “What are you, then? I am an anarchist.—I understand your doubts on this question. You think that I am against the Government.—That is not so. You asked for my confession of faith. Having duly pondered over it, and although a lover of order, I have come to the conclusion that I am in the fullest sense of the word an anarchist.”

[675] “The whole problem of circulation is how to make the exchange note universally acceptable, how to secure that it shall always be exchangeable for goods and services and convertible at sight.” (Organisation du Crédit, Œuvres, vol. vi, pp. 113, 114.)

[676] Organisation du Crédit.

[677] Proudhon always maintained that his reform merely consisted in transforming a credit sale into a cash one. But he might as well have said that black was white. Far from giving mutual benefit, the borrower will be the one who will gain most advantage. Elsewhere he says that to give credit is merely to exchange. This is true enough, but discount is employed just to equalise different credit transactions.

[678] In the Idée générale de la Révolution au XIXe Siècle, p. 198: “The citizens of France have a right to demand and if need be to join together for the establishment of bakehouses, butchers’ shops, etc., which will sell them bread and meat and other articles of consumption of good quality at a reasonable price, taking the place of the present chaotic method, where short weight, poor quality, and an exorbitant price seem to be the order. For a similar reason they have the right to establish a bank, with the amount of capital which they think fit, in order to get the cash which they need for their transactions as cheaply as possible.”

[679] “Association avoids the waste of the retail system. M. Rossi recommends it to those small householders who cannot afford to buy wholesale. But this kind of association is wrong in principle. Give the producer, by helping him to exchange his products, an opportunity of supplying them with provisions at wholesale prices, or, what comes to the same thing, organise the retail trade so as to leave only just the same advantage as in the case of the wholesale transaction, and ‘association’ will be unnecessary.” (Idée générale de la Révolution, p. 92.)

[680] This system was criticised by Marx in his Misère de la Philosophie, published in 1847 (Giard and Brière’s edition, 1896, pp. 92 et seq.). A more recent and more complete exposition is given in Foxwell’s introduction to Anton Menger’s The Right to the Whole Produce of Labour, pp. lxv, etc.

[681] Mazel gave an exposition of his scheme in a series of pamphlets written in very bombastic language, but only of very slight interest to the economist. Another bank known as Bonnard’s Bank was established at Marseilles in 1838, and afterwards at Paris. The ideas are somewhat similar, but much more practical. Both branches are still in active operation. Proudhon refers to this bank in his Capacité politique des Classes ouvrières. Courcelle-Seneuil gives a very eulogistic account of it in his Traité des Banques, and in an article in the Journal des Économistes for April 1853. The modus operandi is explained in three brochures, which may be seen in the Bibliothèque Nationale. One of these is entitled Liste des Articles disponibles à la Banque; the other two describe the mechanism of the bank. Darimon, one of Proudhon’s disciples, in his work De la Réforme des Banques (Paris, Guillaumin, 1856), gives an account of a large number of similar institutions which were founded during this period. Several systems of the kind have also been discussed by M. Aucuy in his Systèmes socialistes d’Échange (Paris, 1907). But we cannot accept his interpretation of various points.

Bonnard’s Bank differs from the others in this way. The client of the bank, instead of bringing it some commodity or other which may or may not be sold by the bank, gets from the bank some commodity which he himself requires, promising to supply the bank with a commodity of his own production whenever the bank requires it. The bank charges a commission on every transaction. Its one aim is to bring buyer and seller together, and the notes are simply bills, payable according to the conditions written on them. But they cannot be regarded as substitutes for bank bills. Cf. Banque d’Échange de Marseille, C. Bonnard et Cie., fondée par Acte du 10 Janvier, 1849 (Marseilles, 1849).

[682] “I repudiate Mazel’s system root and branch,” he declares in an article contributed to Le Peuple of December 1848 (Œuvres, vol. xvii, p. 221). He also adds that when he wrote first he had no acquaintance of any kind with Mazel. “It was M. Mazel who on his own initiative revealed his scheme to me and gave me the idea.” In one of his projects, published on May 10, 1848, Proudhon seems inclined to adopt this idea, just for a moment at any rate. Article 17 seems to hint at this. “The notes will always be exchangeable at the bank and at the offices of members, but only against goods and services, and in the same way commodities and services can always be exchanged for notes.” (Résumé de la Question sociale, p. 41.) This article justifies the interpretation which Courcelle-Seneuil puts on it, in his Traité des Operations de Banque (9th ed., 1899, p. 470), and which Ott accepts in his Traité d’Économie sociale (1851), which, moreover, contains a profound analysis and some subtle criticism of Proudhon’s idea. But we think that this article was simply an oversight on Proudhon’s part; for beyond a formal refutation of Mazel’s idea there is no reference to it in any of his other works, not even in the scheme of the People’s Bank. Moreover, it seems to contradict the statement that the notes would be issued against commodities which had been actually sold and delivered, as well as other articles of the scheme—e.g. Article 30, dealing with buying and selling. It also conflicts with the idea that the discounting of goods is the prime and essential operation of the bank. In our opinion, Diehl in his book on Proudhon (P. J. Proudhon, Seine Lehre u. seine Leben, vol. ii, p. 183) is wrong in thinking that the Exchange Bank would issue notes against all kinds of goods without taking the trouble to discover whether they had been sold or not.

[683] Annales de l’Institut Solvay, vol. i, p. 19.

[684] Ibid., p. 25.

[685] Cf. Principes d’Orientation sociale, a résumé of Solvay’s studies in productivism and accounting (Brussels, 1904).

[686] Although Solvay’s scheme seems very different from Proudhon’s, it possesses features that received the highest commendation from the Luxembourg Commission. In L’Exposé général de la Commission de Gouvernement pour les Travailleurs, which appeared in Le Moniteur of May 6, 1848, we read: “When in the future association has become complete, there will be no need for notes even. Every transaction will be carried on by balancing the accounts. Book-keepers will take the place of collecting clerks. Money, both paper and metallic, is largely superfluous even in present-day society.” The author then proceeds to outline a scheme of clearing-houses.

[687] A hit at Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misère, which was the sub-title of his Contradictions économiques.

[688] In a letter written to Karl Marx on May 17, 1846 (Correspondance, vol. ii, p. 199), à propos the expression “at the moment of striking,” which Marx had employed, Proudhon takes the opportunity of declaring that he is opposed to all kinds of revolution. “You are perhaps still of opinion that no reform is possible without some kind of struggle or revolution, as it used to be called, but which is nothing more or less than a shock to society. That opinion I shared for a long time. I was always willing to discuss it, to explain it, and to defend it. But in my later studies I have completely changed my opinion. I think that it is not in the least necessary, and that consequently we ought not to consider revolution as a means of social reform. Revolution means an appeal to force, which is clearly in contradiction to every project of reform. I prefer to put the question in a different fashion, namely, How can we arrange the economic activities of society in such a fashion that the wealth which is at present lost to society may be retained for its use?” And in the Confessions d’un Révolutionnaire, p. 61: “A revolution is an explosion of organic forces, an evolution spreading from the heart of society through all its members. It can only be justified if it be spontaneous, peaceful, and gradual. It would be as tyrannous to try to suppress it as to bring it about through violence.” See M. Bourguin’s article on Proudhon and Karl Marx in the Revue d’Économie politique, 1893.

[689] On this point see Puech, Proudhon et l’Internationale (Paris, 1907); preface by M. Andler.

[690] This fact is recognised even by German socialists themselves. “The people who gave socialism to the world even in its earlier forms have immortalised themselves,” says Karl Grün, when speaking of France just about the time that our chapter refers to. (Quoted by Puech, loc. cit., p. 57.)

[691] “So many things have we attempted! How is it that liberty, the easiest of all, has never been given a trial?” (Bastiat, Harmonies, chap. 4, p. 125.)

[692] One of the sections of Dunoyer’s La Liberté du Travail is entitled: “Of the True Means of remedying the Evils from which the Workers suffer, by extending the Sphere of Competition.” (Book IV, chap. 10, § 18.)

“As a matter of fact,” says Dunoyer elsewhere, “this competition which seems such an element of discord is really the one solid bond which links together all the various sections of the social body.”

[693] “Whenever the State undertakes to supply the wants of the individual, the individual himself loses his right of free choice and becomes less progressive and less human; and by and by all his fellow citizens are infected with a similar moral indifference.” (Bastiat, Harmonies, chap. 17, p. 545.)

[694] Dunoyer says: “You may search the literature of association as much as you like, but you will never come across a single intelligent discussion of an equitable means of distribution.” (Liberté du Travail, vol. ii, p. 397.) Further, he asserts that association has damaged social even more than individual morality, because nothing will be considered lawful unless done by society as a whole. It is true that in this case he was speaking chiefly of corporative association, but the condemnation has a wider import.

[695] On the occasion of the international gathering of economists at the Paris Exposition in July 1900, Levasseur, one of the most moderate members of the Liberal school, said: “There is no need to draw any distinction between us. Liberal economists ought not to be divided in this way. There may be different opinions on the question of applying our principles, but we are all united on this question of liberty. A man becomes wealthy, successful, or powerful all the sooner if he is free. The more liberty we have, the greater the stimulus to labour and thought and to the production of wealth.” (Journal des Économistes, August 15, 1900.)

[696] “It is a good thing to have a number of inferior places in society to which families that conduct themselves badly are liable to fall, and from which they can rise only by dint of good behaviour. Want is just such a hell.” (Dunoyer, La Liberté du Travail, p. 409.)

[697] See the discussion of the political doctrine of the Physiocrats, pp. 33 et seq.

[698] Editions of the same work appeared between 1825 and 1830; but the volume was much smaller and had a different title. Dunoyer will again engage our attention towards the end of this chapter. Cf. Villey, L’Œuvre économique de Dunoyer (Paris, 1899).

[699] Henry Charles Carey was born at Philadelphia in 1793, and died in 1879. Up to the age of forty-two he followed the profession of a publisher, retiring in 1835 to devote himself to economic studies. The three volumes of his Principles of Political Economy were issued in 1837, 1838, and 1840 respectively. In 1848 appeared The Past, the Present, and the Future, which contains his theory of rent. In 1850 his Harmony of Interests, Agricultural, Manufacturing, and Commercial, was published, and in 1858-59 his Principles of Social Science.

These dates possess some importance. At the time of the publication of the Harmonies in 1850 Carey wrote a letter to the Journal des Économistes accusing Bastiat of plagiarism. Bastiat, who was already on the point of death, wrote to the same paper to defend himself. He admitted that he had read Carey’s first book, and excuses himself for not making any reference to it on the ground that Carey had said so many uncomplimentary things about the French that he hesitated to recommend his work. Several foreign economists have since made the assertion that Bastiat merely copied Carey, but this is a gross exaggeration. Coincidence is a common feature in literary and scientific history. We have quite a recent instance in the simultaneous appearance of the utility theory in England and France.

[700] Frédéric Bastiat, born in 1801 near Bayonne, belonged to a family of fairly wealthy merchants, and he himself became in turn a merchant, a farmer in the Landes district, a justice of the peace, a councillor, and finally a deputy in the Constituent Assembly of 1848. He made little impression in the Assembly; but he scarcely had time to become known there before his health gave way. He died at Rome in 1850, at the age of forty-nine.

Brief as was Bastiat’s life, his literary career was shorter still. It lasted just six years. His first article appeared in the Journal des Économistes in 1844. His one book, appropriately called Les Harmonies économiques, written in 1849, remains a fragment. In the meantime he published his Petits Pamphlets and his Sophismes, which were aimed at Protection and socialism. He was very anxious to organise a French Free Trade League on the lines of that which won such triumphs in England under the guidance of Cobden, but he did not succeed.

His life was that of the publicist rather than the scholar. He was not a bookworm, although he had read Say before he was nineteen, and Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac soon afterwards. He was very enthusiastic about the merits of Franklin’s works, and Franklin’s influence upon his writings, even upon his personal appearance and behaviour, is very marked. “With his long hair, his small cap, his long frock-coat, and his large umbrella, he seemed for all the world like a rustic on a visit to town.” (Molinari in the Journal des Économistes, February 1851.)

These biographical details should not be lost sight of, especially by those who accuse him of lacking scientific culture and of being more of a journalist than an economist.

Despite the fact that he has been severely judged by foreign economists, he is still very popular in France. His wit is a little coarse, his irony somewhat blunt, and his discourses are perhaps too superficial, but his moderation, his good sense, and his lucidity leave an indelible impression on the mind. And we are by no means certain that the Harmonies and the Pamphlets are not still the best books that a young student of political economy can possibly read. Moreover, we shall find by and by that the purely scientific part of his work is by no means negligible.

[701] On this question of who benefits by international trade see our discussion of Mill’s treatment of the problem (pp. 364-365).

[702] Harmonies, p. 21. Our quotations are taken from the tenth edition of the Œuvres complètes.

[703] “Economic phenomena are not without their efficient cause and their Providential aim.” (Harmonies, last page.)

“Looking at this harmony, the economist can join with the astronomer and the physiologist and say: Digitus Dei est hic.” (Ibid., chap. 10, p. 39.)

“If everyone would only look after his own affairs, God would look after everybody’s.” (Ibid., chap. 8, p. 290.)

[704] Auguste Comte, Cours de Philosophie positive, vol. iv, p. 202.

[705] The liturgy of the Reformed Church reads as follows: “We acknowledge and confess our manifold sins.” See our chapter on Doctrines that owe their Inspiration to Christianity.

[706] Harmonies, chap. 5, p. 140.

[707] “I have attempted to show that value is based not so much upon the amount of labour which a thing has cost the person who made it, as upon the amount of labour it saves the persons who obtain it. [He ought to have acknowledged his indebtedness to Carey in this matter.] Hence I have adopted the term ‘service,’ which implies both ideas.” (Ibid., chap. 9, p. 341.)

[708] Ibid., chap. 5, p. 145.

[709] Harmonies, chap. 5, p. 193.

“Socialists and economists, champions of equality and fraternity, I challenge you, however numerous you may be, to raise even a shadow of objection to the legitimacy of mutual service voluntarily rendered, and consequently against the institution of private property as I have defined it. With regard to both these considerations, men can only possess values, and values merely represent equal services freely secured and freely given.” (Ibid., chap. 8, pp. 265, 268.)

Had the limits of this work permitted us to speak of the Italian economists we should have had to refer to Ferrara, professor at Turin from 1849 to 1858, whose theory of value and economic harmony link him to his contemporaries Carey and Bastiat. The whole economic edifice, according to Ferrara, was built upon cost of production. The value of a commodity is not measured by the amount of labour which it really has cost to produce, but by the amount of labour that would be required to produce another similar commodity, or, if the commodity in question be absolutely limited in quantity, such as is the case with an old work of art, by the labour necessary to produce a new one that would satisfy the same need equally well—an application of the principle of substitution which had not been formulated when Ferrara wrote. The progress of industry gradually reduces the cost of labour and dispenses with human effort; hence harmony.

Everything, including the earth and its products, even capital, are subject to this same law, and a gradual diminution of rent and a lowering of the rate of interest are thus assured.

Ferrara’s principal writings consist of prefaces to Italian translations of the works of the chief economists. They were published in a collection known as Biblioteca dell’ Economista (Turin, 1850-70, 26 vols.).