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 XII.

THE GAME OF THE GULLIBLE.

The Art of Diminishing Production—Hours of Labour—Closing the Outlets—Shutting the Door in your own Face—Machinery of Production and Distribution—Singular Fraternity—Two-fold Disaster for the Labourer—Capacity of Credulity—Ingratitude.

I know, Socialist, that you are more logical than this, and that you endeavour to reduce production by several processes. To begin with, in reducing the working day to eight hours, you think you will lessen production. But why do you not demand the annihilation of the steam motors, which represent 5 millions of horse power, or the labour of 100 millions of men? You dare not. I accuse you of compromising. You have not the courage to go to the root of your convictions. And why eight hours? Why not two? Why not one? Why not zero? The reduction of production would be still more effective.

But if you reduce production, you increase the net cost; therefore you close the outlets for your produce, and consequently you destroy the chances of work for yourself and your companions. Your trick is, to shut the doors of the offices, workshops, and factories in your own faces. It is no more for his own benefit than for yours that the manufacturer produces articles for the use of others, and not for his own. If he constructs productive machinery, it is because he hopes that he shall thereby sell at greater advantage. And you would suppress this machine by raising the net cost of the goods which you manufacture. If you do not wish goods to pass out of a workshop, why do you enter it? What business have you to be there?

Not only do you thus place yourself in a false position as producer, but you also place yourself in a false position as consumer. Truly, you have a strange way of showing your democratic sentiments when you try to make things dearer. Whom will it affect, if not your brother workmen and their wives and children; because with the same money they will be able to buy fewer things. You begin by showing your brotherly feelings towards them, by placing them in straitened circumstances; but your comrades display the same altruistic sentiments towards yourself, when they require you too to undergo the effects of this political economy. You and your doctors have a strange way of studying your interests.

Under this plan you are struck on the right cheek as producer; and on the left cheek as consumer. If to this you say “Amen“ that will prove, not the gentleness of your character, but your capacity for being duped. Just reflect, that if there is anyone who has everything to gain by cheapness, it is yourself. In the first place you profit by it as a workman; because the more products there are to exchange for their equivalents, the more will consumption grow, with the result that the demand for labour will be continually on the increase and your wages will rise.

You will, moreover, gain as a consumer; and, with equal money-wages, you will be able to obtain more things that you require. When with 10 francs of your wages, you can buy shoes for which you would formerly have paid 20 francs, your wages are to that extent double.

When you constitute yourself the advocate of high prices, you continue to act the part of George Dandin. You ingrate! for more than half a century you have been the constant favourite of that Law of Supply and Demand against which you fulminate your anathemas.