10

COMPETITION

There is not in the whole vocabulary of Political Economy a word that has aroused the fury of modern reformers so much as the word Competition, which, in order to render it the more odious, they never fail to couple with the epithet, anarchical.

What is the meaning of anarchical competition? I really don’t know. What could we substitute for it? I am equally ignorant.

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

In the first part of this work—alas!

IX.

HARMONIES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

BOOK TWO

11

PRODUCER—CONSUMER

If the level of the human race is not continually rising, man is not a perfectible being.

If the social tendency is not a constant approximation of all men toward this progressive elevation, the economic laws are not harmonious.

Now, how can the level of humanity be rising, if each given quantity of labor does not yield a constantly increasing amount of enjoyments, a phenomenon that can be explained only by the transformation of onerous into gratuitous utility?

12

THE TWO APHORISMS

Modern moralists who contrast the maxim Chacun pour tous, tous pour chacun, to the old proverb Chacun pour soi, chacun chez soi, have formed a very incomplete, and for that reason a very false, and, I would add, a very melancholy idea of Society.

13

RENT

If, with an increase in the value of land, a corresponding augmentation took place in the value of the products of the soil, I could understand the opposition that the theory I have explained in the present work (part 1, chapter 9) has encountered. It might be argued, “that in proportion as civilization is developed the condition of the laborer becomes worse in comparison with that of the proprietor. This may be an inevitable necessity, but assuredly it is not a law of harmony.”

14

15

SAVING

To save is not to accumulate quantities of wheat, of game, or of crown-pieces. This hoarding-up of material and consumable commodities, which must necessarily from its nature be restrained within narrow bounds, represents only the saving of man in a state of isolation. All that we have hitherto said of value, of services, of relative wealth, shows us that, socially, saving, although it proceeds from the same source, develops itself differently and assumes another character.

16

17

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SERVICES

Services are exchanged for services. The equivalence of services results from voluntary exchange, and the free bargaining and discussion that precede it.

In other words, each service rendered to society is worth as much as any other service of which it constitutes the equivalent, provided supply and demand are in all respects perfectly free.

It is in vain to carp and refine upon it; it is impossible to conceive the idea of value without associating with it the idea of liberty.