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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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

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