Many a present-day socialist, without acknowledging the fact, perhaps without knowing it, loves to repeat the arguments which Sismondi was the first to employ, to stir up his indifferent contemporaries. CHAPTER II: SAINT-SIMON, THE SAINT-SIMONIANS, AND THE BEGINNINGS OF COLLECTIVISM Sismondi, by supplementing the study of political economy by a study of social economics, had already much enlarged the area traced for the science by its founders. But while giving distribution the position of honour in his discussion, he never dared carry his criticism as far as an examination of that fundamental institution of modern society—private property. Property, at least, he thought legitimate and necessary. Every English and French economist had always treated it as a thing apart—a fact so indisputable and inevitable that it formed the very basis of all their speculations. Suddenly, however, we come upon a number of writers who, while definitely rejecting all complicity with the earlier communists and admitting neither equality of needs nor of faculties, but tending to an agreement with the economists in claiming the maximum of production as the one aim of economic organisation, dare lay their hands upon the sacred ark and attack the institution of property with whole-hearted vigour. Venturing upon what had hitherto been holy ground, they displayed so much skill and courage that every idea and every formula which became a commonplace of the socialistic literature of the later nineteenth century already finds a place in their system. Having definite ideas as to the end which they had in view, they challenged the institution of private property because of its effects upon the distribution and production of wealth. They cast doubt upon the theories concerning its historical evolution, and concluded that its abolition would help the perfection of the scientific and industrial organisation of modern society. The problem of private property was at last faced, and a recurrence of the discussion was henceforth to become a feature of economic science.[435]