TO THE YOUTH OF FRANCE

Love of study, and lack of fixed opinions—a mind free from prejudice, a heart devoid of hate, zeal for the propagation of truth—ardent sympathies, disinterestedness, devotion, candor—enthusiasm for all that is good and fair, simple and great, honest and religious—such are the precious attributes of youth. It is for this reason that I dedicate my work to you. And the seed must have in it no kernel of life if it fail to take root in a soil so generous.

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WANTS, EFFORTS, SATISFACTIONS1

What a profoundly afflicting spectacle France presents to us!

It would be difficult to say if anarchy has passed from ideas to facts, or from facts to ideas, but it is certain that it pervades all, and abounds everywhere.

The poor rise up against the rich, men without fortune or profession against property; the populace against the bourgeoisie; labor against capital; agriculture against manufactures; the country against the town; the provinces against the metropolis; the denizen against the stranger.

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WANTS OF MAN

It is perhaps impossible, and, at any rate, it would not be of much use, to present a complete and methodical catalogue of human wants. Nearly all those of real importance are comprised in the following enumeration:

Respiration (I retain here that want, as marking the boundary where the transmission of labor or exchange of services begins): Food—Clothing—Lodging—Preservation or Re-establishment of Health—Locomotion—Security—Instruction—Diversion—Sense of the Beautiful.

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EXCHANGE

Exchange is Political Economy—it is Society itself—for it is impossible to conceive Society as existing without Exchange, or Exchange without Society. I shall not pretend in this chapter to exhaust so vast a subject. To present even an outline of it would require the entire volume.

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OF VALUE

All dissertations are wearisome—a dissertation on Value the most wearisome of all. What unpracticed writer, who has had to face an Economic problem, has not tried to resolve it without reference to any definition of value?

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CAPITAL

The economic laws will be found to act on the same principle whether we take the case of a numerous agglomeration of men or of only two individuals, or even of a single individual condemned by circumstances to live in a state of isolation.

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PROPERTY—COMMUNITY

Recognizing in the soil, in natural agents, and in instruments of labor, what they incontestably possess, the gift of engendering Utility, I have endeavored to denude them of what has been erroneously attributed to them, namely, the faculty of creating Value—a faculty that pertains exclusively to the Services men exchange with each other.

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LANDED PROPERTY

If the leading idea of this work is well founded, the relations of mankind with the external world must be viewed in this way:

God created the earth. On it, and within it, he has placed a multitude of things that are useful to man, inasmuch as they are adapted to satisfy his wants.

God has, besides, endowed matter with forces—gravitation, elasticity, porosity, compressibility, heat, light, electricity, crystallization, vegetable life.