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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8 THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. will thus be made universal. No person should enjoy super fluities, as long as anybody lacks necessaries ; for the right of property in objects of luxury can have no foundation until each citizen has his share in the necessaries of life. Farmers and labourers should form partnerships, so as to produce the most with the least possible exertion.” The essential ideas of the Socialism of to-day, as regards both the notion of right and its realization, are contained in embryo in the foregoing lines, which were manifestly inspired by Rousseau and the eighteenth century philosophers. After Fichte must be mentioned the tailor Weitling, who was deeply imbued with the ideas of Fourrier and Cabet. Fox some years he endeavoured to promulgate them throughout Switzerland and Southern Germany. In 1835 he published his first work, entitled “ Humanity as it is, and as it should be.” * In 1841, at Vevey, he issued a German paper in which he urged the working men to establish a democratic republic. Finally, in a book published at Zurich (1842), entitled “The Guarantees and Harmonies of Liberty,” j" he preached the Communism of Babeuf and Rousseau. “Absolute equality,” he asserts, “ can be established only by the total destruction of the existing State organization. It can admit of administration only, and not of government. Property, when first instituted, was endurable ; it did not then take away from anybody the right and the means of becoming a landowner, for there was no money, while there was vacant land in abundance. From the moment, however, that every free man could no longer appro priate a part of the soil, property has ceased to be a right. It has become a crying evil, and the cause of the misery and destitution of the masses. I bid you open your prisons and say to those shut up there, ‘ You know no more than we what property means ; let us combine our efforts to overturn these walls, these hedges, these barriers, in order that the cause of our enmity may disappear, and that we may live together as brothers.’ ” This is, in the main, the language of Rousseau on the origin of inequality. * Die Menscheit, wie sie ist und sein solle. t Garantien und Harmonien der Freiheit.

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