This mirror, held up to capitalist society almost a century before the time of writing, is clear and comprehensive enough in all conscience. Sismondi put his finger on every one of the sore spots of bourgeois economics: the ruin of small enterprise; the drift from the country; the proletarisation of the middle classes; the impoverishment of the workers; the displacement of the worker by the machine; unemployment; the dangers of the credit system; social antagonisms; the insecurity of existence; crises and anarchy. His harsh, emphatic scepticism struck a specially shrill discord with the complacent optimism, the idle worship of harmony as preached by vulgar economics which, in the person of MacCulloch in England and of Say in France, was becoming the fashion in both countries. It is easy to imagine what a deep and painful impression remarks like the following were bound to make: 'There can only be luxury if it is bought with another's labour; only those will work hard and untiringly who have to do so in order to get not the frills but the very necessities of life.'[151] 'Although the invention of the machine which increases man's capacity, is a blessing for mankind, it is made into a scourge for the poor by the unjust distribution we make of its benefits.'[152] 'The gain of an employer of labour is sometimes nothing if not despoiling the worker he employs; he does not benefit because his enterprise produces much more than it costs, but because he does not pay all the costs, because he does not accord the labourer a remuneration equal to his work. Such an industry is a social evil, for it reduces those who perform the work to utmost poverty, assuring to those who direct it but the ordinary profits on capital.'[153] 'Amongst those who share in the national income, one group acquires new rights each year by new labours, the other have previously acquired permanent rights by reason of a primary effort which makes a year's labour more advantageous.'[154] 'Nothing can prevent that every new discovery in applied mechanics should diminish the working population by that much. To this danger it is constantly exposed, and society provides no remedy for it.'[155] 'A time will come, no doubt, when our descendants will condemn us as barbarians because we have left the working classes without security, just as we already condemn, as they also will, as barbarian the nations who reduced those same classes to slavery.'[156] Sismondi's criticism thus goes right to the root of the matter; for him there can be no compromise or evasion which might try to gloss over the dark aspects of capitalist enrichment he exposed, as merely temporary shortcomings of a transition period. He concludes his investigation with the following rejoinder to Say: