Essays on Political Economy | Page 2

doubled in your bag?
"Will a work of industry or of skill produce another, at the end of
fourteen years?
"Let us begin, then, by demolishing this fatal fiction."
I have quoted the above, merely for the sake of establishing the fact,
that many persons consider the productiveness of capital a false, a fatal,
and an iniquitous principle. But quotations are superfluous; it is well
known that the people attribute their sufferings to what they call the
trafficking in man by man. In fact, the phrase, tyranny of capital, has
become proverbial.
I believe there is not a man in the world, who is aware of the whole

importance of this question:--
"Is the interest of capital natural, just, and lawful, and as useful to the
payer as to the receiver?"
You answer, No; I answer, Yes. Then we differ entirely; but it is of the
utmost importance to discover which of us is in the right, otherwise we
shall incur the danger of making a false solution of the question, a
matter of opinion. If the error is on my side, however, the evil would
not be so great. It must be inferred that I know nothing about the true
interests of the masses, or the march of human progress; and that all my
arguments are but as so many grains of sand, by which the car of the
revolution will certainly not be arrested.
But if, on the contrary, MM. Proudhon and Thoré are deceiving
themselves, it follows that they are leading the people astray--that they
are showing them the evil where it does not exist; and thus giving a
false direction to their ideas, to their antipathies, to their dislikes, and to
their attacks. It follows that the misguided people are rushing into a
horrible and absurd struggle, in which victory would be more fatal than
defeat; since, according to this supposition, the result would be the
realisation of universal evils, the destruction of every means of
emancipation, the consummation of its own misery.
This is just what M. Proudhon has acknowledged, with perfect good
faith. "The foundation stone," he told me, "of my system is the
gratuitousness of credit. If I am mistaken in this, Socialism is a vain
dream." I add, it is a dream, in which the people are tearing themselves
to pieces. Will it, therefore, be a cause for surprise, if, when they awake,
they find themselves mangled and bleeding? Such a danger as this is
enough to justify me fully, if, in the course of the discussion, I allow
myself to be led into some trivialities and some prolixity.

Capital and Interest.
I address this treatise to the workmen of Paris, more especially to those
who have enrolled themselves under the banner of Socialist democracy.
I proceed to consider these two questions:--
1st. Is it consistent with the nature of things, and with justice, that
capital should produce interest?
2nd. Is it consistent with the nature of things, and with justice, that the
interest of capital should be perpetual?

The working men of Paris will certainly acknowledge that a more
important subject could not be discussed.
Since the world began, it has been allowed, at least in part, that capital
ought to produce interest. But latterly it has been affirmed, that herein
lies the very social error which is the cause of pauperism and inequality.
It is, therefore, very essential to know now on what ground we stand.
For if levying interest from capital is a sin, the workers have a right to
revolt against social order, as it exists. It is in vain to tell them that they
ought to have recourse to legal and pacific means: it would be a
hypocritical recommendation. When on the one side there is a strong
man, poor, and a victim of robbery--on the other, a weak man, but rich,
and a robber--it is singular enough that we should say to the former,
with a hope of persuading him, "Wait till your oppressor voluntarily
renounces oppression, or till it shall cease of itself." This cannot be; and
those who tell us that capital is by nature unproductive, ought to know
that they are provoking a terrible and immediate struggle.
If, on the contrary, the interest of capital is natural, lawful, consistent
with the general good, as favourable to the borrower as to the lender,
the economists who deny it, the tribunes who traffic in this pretended
social wound, are leading the workmen into a senseless and unjust
struggle, which can have no other issue than the misfortune of all. In
fact, they are arming labour against capital. So much the better, if these
two powers are really antagonistic; and may the struggle soon be ended!
But, if they are in harmony, the struggle is the greatest