A'AHL MARX. 
39 
would almost entirely disappear ; but what of that ? Capital 
and machinery operate in this way. They multiply useful 
objects and diminish the cost of their production. They thus 
contribute enormously to the growth of well-being; they are 
then essentially productive of wealth ; for, as Voltaire has very 
well said, “ Wealth consists in the abundance of useful or 
agreeable things.” 
What is it that has freed man from want and made him the 
master of the world? Not muscular strength. The savage 
who wallows in the most degrading destitution wields as much 
strength as the civilized man. No; it is intellectual power 
which, embodied in machines and in scientific processes, 
creates twenty times more utilities for the same sum of effort. 
Marx, measuring all values by the average amount of labour 
that they have cost, would keep the whole product for the 
labourer, leaving nothing whatever for the person who brings 
to the joint work capital and intelligence, that is to say, the 
principal producer. See to what flagrant injustice and manifest 
absurdity an imperfect analysis leads ! If you do not re 
munerate the head of the business exceptionally well, you will 
have a man who will turn out dishonest or incapable, and you 
will lose your property. Whenever co-operative societies have 
failed, it has always been through the fault of the managers. 
In fine, we may say that the mighty and pretentious 
attempt of Marx to overturn the foundations of existing society, 
while relying on the very^principles of Political Economy, has 
failed, because he has only strung together a number of 
abstract formulas, without ever going to the root of things. 
Nevertheless, all those—and they are still numerous—who 
admit the theories of Ricardo and Bastiat on labour, will be 
unable to escape from the conclusions of the German Socialist 
without inconsistencies. His deductions are perfectly logical ; 
it is the starting-points of his reasonings, which he has borrowed 
from the most orthodox economists, that are false. 
If we compare the theoretical Socialists of Germany with 
those of France, what a contrast we find ! The former are 
incomparably more learned. As Lassalle said of himself, they 
are armed with all the science of our times ; but they use it to