The Socialism of to-day

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 835096955

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-28834

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Laveleye, Émile de

Title:: The Socialism of to-day

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Field & Tuer

Year of publication:: 1884

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XLIV, 331 S.)

Collection:: Economics Books

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COLLECTIVISM AND LAND NATIONALIZATION. 247 intelligent and free agent. In opposition to the physical order, where necessity reigns supreme, there is a moral order, an order of justice and freedom. As man is a responsible agent, his every action must in fallibly and inevitably be rewarded or punished according as it does or does not conform to the rules imposed by his con science ; and this sanction, in order to be inevitable, must take place in a subsequent existence. The aggregate of indisputable reasonings constitutes “ im personal reason,” which, when looked upon as prescribing a rule of action, may be called “ sovereignty.” From the “ immateriality of the sensibility ” flow, according to Colins, other consequences touching man’s relations to the material world, that is to say, touching his social economy. Man alone, he says, works ; man alone is an agent, properly so Called. The material world is the patient on which man acts with the aim of producing something. Originally there existed only man and the earth on which he lived : on the one hand, labour ; and on the other, the soil or raw material, without which all labour would be impossible. But from the joint action of these two elements of production there soon came into being wealth of a peculiar kind, in which labour was, as it were, accumulated, which was movable and separate from the soil. This was capital. It assists production and is the hand maid of labour, but in order to make use of it, a material to which it can be applied is indispensable. From the necessity to which man is subject for a material on which to expend his labour, there results, according to Colins, the following impor tant consequence : Labour is free when the raw material, the soil, belongs to it ; otherwise it is enslaved. Man therefore can, in fact, only exercise his energy with the permission of the owners of the raw material j and he who requires the authority of another before he can act is clearly not free. In order, then, that all the members of the community should become per manent proprietors of the national soil, the soil must be collectively appropriated. The collective appropriation of the soil implies, in the first place, that it should be at the disposal of all who wish to

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