第103章

As for the personal composition of the company, it naturally divides itself into two categories, -- the managers and the stockholders.The managers, very few in number, are chosen from the promoters, organizers, and patrons of the enterprise: in truth, they are the only associates.The stockholders, compared with this little government, which administers the society with full power, are a people of taxpayers who, strangers to each other, without influence and without responsibility, have nothing to do with the affair beyond their investments.They are lenders at a premium, not associates.

One can see from this how all the industries of the kingdom could be carried on by such companies, and each citizen, thanks to the facility for multiplying his shares, be interested in all or most of these companies without thereby improving his condition: it might happen even that it would be more and more compromised.For, once more, the stockholder is the beast of burden, the exploitable material of the company: not for him is this society formed.In order that association may be real, he who participates in it must do so, not as a gambler, but as an active factor; he must have a deliberative voice in the council; his name must be expressed or implied in the title of the society; everything regarding him, in short, should be regulated in accordance with equality.But these conditions are precisely those of the organization of labor, which is not taken into consideration by the code; they form the ULTERIOR object of political economy, and consequently are not to be taken for granted, but to be created, and, as such, are radically incompatible with monopoly.(4*)

Socialism, in spite of its high-sounding name, has so far been no more fortunate than monopoly in the definition of society: we may even assert that, in all its plans of organization, it has steadily shown itself in this respect a plagiarist of political economy.M.Blanc, whom I have already quoted in discussing competition, and whom we have seen by turns as a partisan of the hierarchical principle, an officious defender of inequality, preaching communism, denying with a stroke of the pen the law of contradiction because he cannot conceive it, aiming above all at power as the final sanction of his system, -- M.Blanc offers us again the curious example of a socialist copying political economy without suspecting it, and turning continually in the vicious circle of proprietary routine.M.Blanc really denies the sway of capital; he even denies that capital is equal to labor in production, in which he is in accord with healthy economic theories.But he can not or does not know how to dispense with capital; he takes capital for his point of departure; he appeals to the State for its silent partnership:

that is, he gets down on his knees before the capitalists and recognizes the sovereignty of monopoly.Hence the singular contortions of his dialectics.

I beg the reader's pardon for these eternal personalities: but since socialism, as well as political economy, is personified in a certain number of writers, I cannot do otherwise than quote its authors.

"Has or has not capital," said "La Phalange," "in so far as it is a faculty in production, the legitimacy of the other productive faculties?

If it is illegitimate, its pretensions to a share of the product are illegitimate;

it must be excluded; it has no interest to receive: if, on the contrary, it is legitimate, it cannot be legitimately excluded from participation in the profits, in the increase which it has helped to create."

The question could not be stated more clearly.M.Blanc holds, on the contrary, that it is stated in a very confused manner, which means that it embarrasses him greatly, and that he is much worried to find its meaning.

In the first place, he supposes that he is asked "whether it is equitable to allow the capitalist a share of the profits of production equal to the laborer's." To which M.Blanc answers unhesitatingly that that would be unjust.Then follows an outburst of eloquence to establish this injustice.

Now, the phalansterian does not ask whether the share of the capitalist should or should not be equal to the laborer's; he wishes to know simply whether he is to have a share.And to this M.Blanc makes no reply.

Is it meant, continues M.Blanc, that capital is indispensable to production, like labor itself? Here M.Blanc distinguishes: he grants that capital is indispensable, as labor is, but not to the extent that labor is.

Once again, the phalansterian does not dispute as to quantity, but as to right.

Is it meant -- it is still M.Blanc who interrogates -- that all capitalists are not idlers? M.Blanc, generous to capitalists who work, asks why so large a share should be given to those who do not work? A flow of eloquence as to the impersonal services of the capitalist and the personal services of the laborer, terminated by an appeal to Providence.

For the third time, you are asked whether the participation of capital in profits is legitimate, since you admit that it is indispensable in production.

At last M.Blanc, who has understood all the time, decides to reply that, if he allows interest to capital, he does so only as a transitional measure and to ease the descent of the capitalists.For the rest, his project leading inevitably to the absorption of private capital in association, it would be folly and an abandonment of principle to do more.M.Blanc, if he had studied his subject, would have needed to say but a single phrase:

"I deny capital."

Thus M.Blanc, -- and under his name I include the whole of socialism, -- after having, by a first contradiction of the title of his book, "ORGANIZATION