第87章

But no one can consent to seem a dupe or an imbecile: now, putting personality entirely aside, what can there be in common between socialism, that universal protest, and the hotch-potch of old prejudices which make up M.Blanc's republic? M.Blanc is never tired of appealing to authority, and socialism loudly declares itself anarchistic; M.Blanc places power above society, and socialism tends to subordinate it to society; M.Blanc makes social life descend from above, and socialism maintains that it springs up and grows from below; M.Blanc runs after politics, and socialism is in quest of science.No more hypocrisy, let me say to M.Blanc: you desire neither Catholicism nor monarchy nor nobility, but you must have a God, a religion, a dictatorship, a censorship, a hierarchy, distinctions, and ranks.For my part, I deny your God, your authority, your sovereignty, your judicial State, and all your representative mystifications; I want neither Robespierre's censer nor Marat's rod; and, rather than submit to your androgynous democracy, I would support the status quo.For sixteen years your party has resisted progress and blocked opinion; for sixteen years it has shown its despotic origin by following in the wake of power at the extremity of the left centre:

it is time for it to abdicate or undergo a metamorphosis.Implacable theorists of authority, what then do you propose which the government upon which you make war cannot accomplish in a fashion more tolerable than yours?

M.Blanc's SYSTEM may be summarized in three points:

1.To give power a great force of initiative, -- that is, in plain English, to make absolutism omnipotent in order to realize a utopia.

2.To establish public workshops, and supply them with capital, at the State's expense.

3.To extinguish private industry by the competition of national industry.

And that is all.

Has M.Blanc touched the problem of value, which involves in itself alone all others? He does not even suspect its existence.Has he given a theory of distribution? No.Has he solved the antinomy of the division of labor, perpetual cause of the workingman's ignorance, immorality, and poverty? No.Has he caused the contradiction of machinery and wages to disappear, and reconciled the rights of association with those of liberty?

On the contrary, M.Blanc consecrates this contradiction.Under the despotic protection of the State, he admits in principle the inequality of ranks and wages, adding thereto, as compensation, the ballot.Are not workingmen who vote their regulations and elect their leaders free? It may very likely happen that these voting workingmen will admit no command or difference of pay among them: then, as nothing will have been provided for the satisfaction of industrial capacities, while maintaining political equality, dissolution will penetrate into the workshop, and, in the absence of police intervention, each will return to his own affairs.These fears seem to M.Blanc neither serious nor well- founded: he awaits the test calmly, very sure that society will not go out of his way to contradict him.

And such complex and intricate questions as those of taxation, credit, international trade, property, heredity, -- has M.Blanc fathomed them?

Has he solved the problem of population? No, no, no, a thousand times no:

when M.Blanc cannot solve a difficulty, he eliminates it.Regarding population, he says:

As only poverty is prolific, and as the social workshop will cause poverty to disappear, there is no reason for giving it any thought.

In vain does M.de Sismondi, supported by universal ex-perience, cry out to him:

We have no confidence in those who exercise delegated powers.We believe that any corporation will do its business worse than those who are animated by individual interest; that on the part of the directors there will be negligence, display, waste, favoritism, fear of compromise, all the faults, in short, to be noticed in the administration of the public wealth as contrasted with private wealth.We believe, further, that in an assembly of stockholders will be found only carelessness, caprice, negligence, and that a mercantile enterprise would be constantly compromised and soon ruined, if it were dependent upon a deliberative commercial assembly.

M.Blanc hears nothing; he drowns all other sounds with his own sonorous phrases; private interest he replaces by devotion to the public welfare;

for competition he substitutes emulation and rewards.After having posited industrial hierarchy as a principle, it being a necessary consequence of his faith in God, authority, and genius, he abandons himself to mystic powers, idols of his heart and his imagination.

Thus M.Blanc begins by a coup d'État, or rather, according to his original expression, by an application of the force of initiative which he gives to power; and he levies an extraordinary tax upon the rich in order to supply the proletariat with capital.M.Blanc's logic is very simple, -- it is that of the Republic: power can accomplish what the people want, and what the people want is right.A singular fashion of reforming society, this of repressing its most spontaneous tendencies, denying its most authentic manifestations, and, instead of generalizing comfort by the regular development of traditions, displacing labor and income! But, in truth, what is the good of these disguises? Why so much beating about the bush? Was it not simpler to adopt the agrarian law straightway? Could not power, by virtue of its force of initiative, at once declare all capital and tools the property of the State, save an indemnity to be granted to the present holders as a transitional measure? By means of this peremptory, but frank and sincere, policy, the economic field would have been cleared away; it would not have cost utopia more, and M.Blanc could then have proceeded at his ease, and without any hindrance, to the organization of society.