System of Economical Contradictions; Or, The Philosophy of MiseryProudhon, P.-J. (Pierre-Joseph)
Philosophy
System of Economical Contradictions; Or, The Philosophy of Misery
Proudhon, P.-J. (Pierre-Joseph)
Economics
So M. Blanc must have men made expressly for him: he does not
flatter himself that he can act on any sort of temperaments. As
for wages, M. Blanc promises that they shall be GOOD; that is
easier than to define their measure.
M. Blanc admits by his hypothesis that these workshops would
yield a net product, and, further, would compete so successfully
with private industry that the latter would change into national
workshops.
How could that be, if the cost of the national workshops is
higher than that of the free workshops? I have shown in the
third chapter that three hundred workmen in a mill do not produce
for their employer, among them all, a regular net income of
twenty thousand francs, and that these twenty thousand francs,
distributed among the three hundred laborers, would add but
eighteen centimes a day to their income. Now, this is true of
all industries. How will the national workshop, which owes ITS
WORKMEN GOOD WAGES, make up this deficit? By emulation, says M.
Blanc.
M. Blanc points with extreme complacency to the Leclaire
establishment, a society of house-painters doing a very
successful business, which he regards as a living
demonstration of his system. M. Blanc might have added to this
example a multitude of similar societies, which would prove quite
as much as the Leclaire establishment,--that is, no more. The
Leclaire establishment is a collective monopoly, supported by the
great society which envelops it. Now, the question is whether
entire society can become a monopoly, in M. Blanc's sense and
patterned after the Leclaire establishment: I deny it positively.
But a fact touching more closely the question before us, and
which M. Blanc has not taken into consideration, is that it
follows from the distribution accounts furnished by the Leclaire
establishment that, the wages paid being much above the general
average, the first thing to do in a reorganization of society
would be to start up competition with the Leclaire establishment,
either among its own workmen or outside.
Wages would be regulated by the government. The members of the
social workshop would dispose of them as they liked, and THE
INDISPUTABLE EXCELLENCE OF LIFE IN COMMON WOULD NOT BE LONG IN
CAUSING ASSOCIATION IN LABOR TO GIVE BIRTH TO VOLUNTARY
ASSOCIATION IN PLEASURE.
Is M. Blanc a communist, yes or no? Let him declare himself once
for all, instead of holding off; and if communism does not make
him more intelligible, we shall at least know what he wants.
In reading the supplement in which M. Blanc has seen fit to
combat the objections which some journals have raised, we see
more clearly the incompleteness of his conception, daughter of at
least three fathers,-- Saint-Simonism, Fourierism, and
communism,--with the aid of politics and a little, a very little,
political economy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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