"The factory crushing the workshop; the showy establishment
absorbing the humble shop; the artisan who is his own master
replaced by the day-laborer; cultivation by the plow superseding
that by the spade, and bringing the poor man's field under
disgraceful homage to the money-lender; bankruptcies multiplied;
manufacturing industry transformed by the ill-regulated
extension of credit into a system of gambling where no one, not
even the rogue, can be sure of winning; in short a vast
confusion calculated to arouse jealousy, mistrust, and hatred,
and to stifle, little by little, all generous aspirations, all
faith, self-sacrifice, and poetry--such is the hideous but only
too faithful picture of the results obtained by the application
of the principle of competition."[2]
The Fourierists, through their principal organ, M. Considerant,
enumerate the evils of the existing civilisation in the following
order:--
1. It employs an enormous quantity of labor and of human power
unproductively, or in the work of destruction.
"In the first place there is the army, which in France, as in
all other countries, absorbs the healthiest and strongest men, a
large number of the most talented and intelligent, and a
considerable part of the public revenue.... The existing state
of society develops in its impure atmosphere innumerable
outcasts, whose labor is not merely unproductive, but actually
destructive: adventurers, prostitutes, people with no
acknowledged means of living, beggars, convicts, swindlers,
thieves, and others whose numbers tend rather to increase than
to diminish....
"To the list of unproductive labor fostered by our state of
Society must be added that of the judicature and of the bar, of
the courts of law and magistrates, the police, jailers,
executioners, &c.,--functions indispensable to the state of
society as it is.
"Also people of what is called 'good society'; those who pass
their lives in doing nothing; idlers of all ranks.
"Also the numberless custom-house officials, tax-gatherers,
bailiffs, excise-men; in short, all that army of men which
overlooks, brings to account, takes, but produces nothing.
"Also the labors of sophists, philosophers, metaphysicians,
political men, working in mistaken directions, who do nothing to
advance science, and produce nothing but disturbance and sterile
discussions; the verbiage of advocates, pleaders, witnesses, &c.
"And finally all the operations of commerce, from those of the
bankers and brokers, down to those of the grocer behind his
counter."[3]
Secondly, they assert that even the industry and powers which in the
present system are devoted to production, do not produce more than a
small portion of what they might produce if better employed and
directed:--