The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction.
• Biographical and Critical.
• Author’s Preface to the First French Edition.
• Author’s Preface to the English Edition.
• Book I.: Evolution and Retrogression.
• Chapter I.: Social Retrogression.
• Chapter II.: Socialist Programmes.
• Chapter III.: Character of Political and Intellectual Progress.
• Chapter IV.: Character of Social Progress.
• Chapter V.: The Evolution of Property.
• Chapter VI.: Doctrinal Contradictions of the Socialists.
• Chapter VII.: Practical Self-contradiction of the Socialists.
• Book II.: Socialistic Sophisms.
• Chapter I.: Labour and Wealth.
• Chapter II.: On the Limits of Collectivist Society.
• Chapter III.: The Law of Supply and Demand.
• Chapter IV.: The %u201ciron Law%u201d of Wages.
• Chapter V.: Integral Wages.
• Chapter VI.: To Each According to His Needs.
• Chapter VII.: The Abolition of Wages.
• Chapter VIII.: Machinery.
• Chapter IX.: Excessive Production.
• Chapter X.: Economic Crises.
• Chapter XI.: Cheapness.
• Chapter XII.: The Game of the Gullible.
• Chapter XIII.: Socialistic Methods.
• Chapter XIV.: Facts Compared With Socialist Statements.
• Chapter XV.: Redistribution of Wealth.
• Book III.: Socialistic Legislation.
• Chapter I.: Putting Socialistic Sophisms In Force.
• Chapter II.: The Regulation of Child Labour.
• Chapter III.: Female Labour and the Law.
• Chapter IV.: Compulsory Idleness of Lying-in Women.
• Chapter V.: National Labour and Foreign Workmen.
• Chapter VI.: Trade Syndicates.
• Chapter VII.: Registry Offices.
• Chapter VIII.: Nature of %u201clabour Laws.%u201d
• Book IV.: Socialistic Morality and Respect For the Law.
• Chapter I.: Contempt For the Law.
• Chapter II.: Servile Labour and Free Labour.
• Book V.: Strikes and Social War.
• Chapter I.: Cost and Consequences of Strikes.
• Chapter II.: The Causes of Strikes.
• Chapter III.: During the Strike.
• Chapter IV.: Social War.
• Book VI.: Responsibilities.
• Chapter I.: Parliament and Strikes.
• Chapter II.: Subsidies to Strikers.
• Chapter III.: The Executive, the Judicature, and Strikes.
• Chapter IV.: Liberty and Anarchy.
• Chapter V.: The Socialism of Employers.
• Chapter VI.: Militarism, Protection, and Socialism.
• Conclusion.

CHAPTER VI.

DOCTRINAL CONTRADICTIONS OF THE SOCIALISTS.

Their Aspirations Retrogressive—Collective Ownership—Advice to Mr. Henry George—Suppression of Contracts—Suppression of Personal Decisions—Servile Labour—Organisation on the Military Type.

You Socialists wish to return to the collective proprietorship of primitive peoples, or of those people who are the slowest in their evolution. Mr. Henry George has written a book upon the nationalisation of the land. He is an American. The United States possess immense territories which they are constantly engaged in denationalising and in converting into private properties. Why does he not begin by asking his fellow-countrymen to leave some thousands of square miles of land in a state of nationalisation and go there himself and endeavour to recommence the experience which answered so ill with our Utopians in Texas? This substitution, collective for individual proprietorship, would suffice to test the retrogressive character of your ideas.

You wish to substitute authoritative arrangements for contracts; personal service for service measured by the things produced. You wish to eliminate personal initiative from economic life. Henceforth, by the laws which, according to you, are protective of labour, you wish to limit the working capacity of individuals, and to condemn to idleness the vigorous man, who, to augment his resources, is desirous of using his faculties and his powers; you wish to prohibit women from working so as to keep them in primitive subjection, under hypocritical pretexts of health and morality; you wish for the suppression of all piece-work, so as to remove all initiatory spirit and the chance of increased profit from the intelligent worker, and to reduce him to the state of a mechanical appendage to his trade; in industries you wish to suppress everything that means personal thought on his part, so as to convert him into a sort of passive piece of machinery. Into your ideal society you transport a military organisation. But this organisation involves a hierarchy, discipline, and passive obedience, and crushes all activity. Instead of competition, which is the regulator of free labour, you give as a motive power the restraints of servile labour.