"But this is not all, and you will have but a faint conception
of the evil if you do not consider that to all these vices of
society, which dry up the sources of wealth and prosperity, must
be added the struggle, the discord, the war, in short under many
names and many forms which society cherishes and cultivates
between the individuals that compose it. These struggles and
discords correspond to radical oppositions--deep-seated
antinomies between the various interests. Exactly in so far as
you are able to establish classes and categories within the
nation; in so far, also, you will have opposition of interests
and internal warfare either avowed or secret, even if you take
into consideration the industrial system only."[4]
One of the leading ideas of this school is the wastefulness and at the
same time the immorality of the existing arrangements for distributing
the produce of the country among the various consumers, the enormous
superfluity in point of number of the agents of distribution, the
merchants, dealers, shopkeepers and their innumerable, employes, and
the depraving character of such a distribution of occupations.
"It is evident that the interest of the trader is opposed to
that of the consumer and of the producer. Has he not bought
cheap and under-valued as much as possible in all his dealings
with the producer, the very same article which, vaunting its
excellence, he sells to you as dear as he can? Thus the interest
of the commercial body, collectively and individually, is
contrary to that of the producer and of the consumer--that is to
say, to the interest of the whole body of society.
* * * * *
"The trader is a go-between, who profits by the general anarchy
and the non-organization of industry. The trader buys up
products, he buys up everything; he owns and detains everything,
in such sort that:--
"1stly. He holds both Production and Consumption _under his
yoke_, because both must come to him either finally for the
products to be consumed, or at first for the raw materials to be
worked up. Commerce with all its methods of buying, and of
raising and lowering prices, its innumerable devices, and its
holding everything in the hands of _middle-men_, levies toll
right and left; it despotically gives the law to Production and
Consumption, of which it ought to be only the subordinate.
"2ndly. It robs society by its _enormous profits_--profits
levied upon the consumer and the producer, and altogether out of
proportion to the services rendered, for which a twentieth of
the persons actually employed would be sufficient.