Socialist Tradition

CHAPTER IV

ROUSSEAU AND SOME OTHERS

(a) ROUSSEAU

FORTUNATELY, we are here concerned with only one side of Rousseau—assuming, indeed, that it is possible to detach for consideration one aspect of his legacy. Rousseau was primarily a writer on politics, concerned, after the manner of Hobbes and of Locke, in explaining the origins of government by reference to a mythical Social Contract, the terms of which may of course be varied, according to the deductions it is desired to draw from it. He was also a writer, and a writer of influence, on education, though he would doubtless have been a rash parent who sent his daughter to any Ladies’ College conducted by Rousseau. He was a prophet of sentiment and sensibility. For that matter, he had views on music. Doubtless even in the most versatile there is a unity linking divergent activities. In the present case, the significance of Rousseau in the development of socialist thought is to be found in the combined and pervasive influence of all his writings on succeeding generations. Yet, within the space here available, it may be permissible, if scarcely defensible, to look on the Contrat Social as belonging rather to the history of political thought; and, accordingly, in searching for his contribution to socialist thought, we shall confine ourselves to those writings which are more exclusively occupied with the perpetual themes of socialist discussion. Briefly, this comes down to a consideration of his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality among Men, an essay which was not awarded the prize for a dissertation on this subject by the Academy of Dijon.

But before proceeding to the Discourse on Inequality, it may be permissible to glance at the earlier essay to which the Academy of Dijon did award its prize, thereby suddenly making Rousseau a celebrity. The subject prescribed for this essay was: ‘Whether the restoration (rétablissement) of the Sciences and the Arts had contributed to the purification of manners?’ There is a traditional tale that when Rousseau indicated his intention of competing for the prize, he was warned by a wise acquaintance that if he wished to have any chance of success, he would have to answer the question in the negative, since all the other candidates would be found ranged on the other side. The authenticity of the story may be assessed by Rousseau experts. It is probably entirely apocryphal; but any examiner of experience will acknowledge, in his cups if not at other times, that if of fifty competing essays, forty-nine say the same thing with varying degrees of lucidity, and the fiftieth says something wholly different, this last cunning candidate has an initial advantage out of all proportion to his deserts, if only because of the difficulty the examiner has in arranging the other forty-nine in ascending order of demerit. In any case, whether because he conscientiously so believed, or because he was instigated by Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Rousseau elected to denounce the baneful influence of the Sciences and of the Arts. As the outlook disclosed is fundamentally the same as in the more effective, but unsuccessful, later essay, it is as well to read the two together.

Later Rousseau affected to regard his Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts as mediocre. In substance it is; but there is a certain bravado about this violent and monstrously one-sided attack on civilisation and all its works, which doubtless made it an arresting production on its first appearance, and which obviously carried the Academicians of Dijon off their feet. There is a considerable kinship with the later Discourse, and here already it is obvious that the theme closest to Rousseau’s heart is that of inequality and the loss of freedom. The Sciences, Literature, and the Arts, we are told, stifle in men the sentiment of that original liberty for which they seem to have been born, and make them love their bondage.1 The Sciences and the Arts owe their origin to our vices, and we should be in less doubt as to their advantages if they sprung from our virtues. In explanation he argues that astronomy was born of superstition; eloquence, of ambition; geometry, of avarice (a dark saying, unless he refers to the ‘mensuration’ of our possessions); physical science, of a vain curiosity 2; and all are the offspring of human pride. Here we touch the fundamentals of theology, for is there not high authority for the view that Pride is not only the fundamental sin, but the only sin, of which all other sins are merely allotropic modifications? Moreover, this defect in the origin of the Sciences and the Arts is reflected in their aims and objects. What would be the good of jurisprudence without the injustice of man? Where would history be, if there were no tyrants, wars or conspiracies? In an illuminating question which goes to the root of Rousseau’s thought or prejudices in these matters, he asks: ‘Who would wish to pass his life in sterile contemplation, if each of us, thinking only of the duties of man and the needs of nature, had time only for the fatherland, for the unfortunate and for his friends?’3 The Sciences, born in idleness, in turn nourish idleness and the vices that spring therefrom. Rousseau, it will be observed, was not the man to allow a regard for truth to deprive him of his paradox.

But, worst of all and most specifically suggestive of the later Discourse, all these things lead to inequality. With the development of the Sciences and the Arts, tribute is no longer paid to virtue but to ability:

We no longer ask of a man if he has integrity, but if he has talents; nor of a book if it is useful, but if it is well-written. Rewards are showered on intellect, and virtue remains without honour. There are thousands of prizes for les beaux discours, none for les belles actions.1

So far as there is an ideal here, it is that of a primitive life, so fully occupied with the claims of the fatherland, the unfortunate, and one’s friends, that there is no leisure left over in which to become vicious; for an advance beyond this point means the development of opportunities for manifesting superiority based on intellect in place of an imaginary condition of equality in which virtue alone is held in honour.

In the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, dating from 1754, Rousseau gives a philosophy of history, resting on a condensed account of the development of the human race, and the whole essay is saturated with that passionate hatred of inequality which may not unfairly be regarded as the dominant feature of his character. It is almost unnecessary to say that for Rousseau’s history there is not the faintest shadow of a particle of evidence. Nor does Rousseau claim that there is; he is indeed engagingly ingenuous on this point. ‘Here,’ he says, addressing Man at large—‘here is your history as I have thought it was to be read, not in the books of your fellows, who are liars, but as it is to be found in Nature, which never lies.’ 2 Such a procedure without doubt greatly simplifies the writing of history. In fact, Rousseau is merely imagining what it is convenient to imagine; and, viewed in the cold light of reason, his account of the life of primitive man at times borders on the grotesque and ludicrous.

The Discourse falls into two parts, of which the first is devoted to the fairy-tale of Rousseau’s primitive man, and the second to the departure, with increasing acceleration, from that happy state. As Rousseau sees him, primitive man takes his fill beneath an oak; he quenches his thirst at the nearest stream, and he finds his bed at the foot of the tree which has given him sustenance; and thus are all his needs satisfied. In this condition, having regard to the rigours of the seasons (for it cannot always be pleasant to sleep, nude, beneath a sheltering oak); having regard likewise to the needs of defence or escape in the matter of beasts of prey, man is, and must be, robust and strong; so also is his progeny. He must use his body, his arms and his legs for everything. When he learns to use an axe, a ladder, a sling, a horse, the convenience is bought at the price of a diminution of strength or agility. Nor does he fear wild animals at this stage; he is a match for them, and if need be, he can climb a tree.3

Apart from such dangers of the jungle, there are other ineluctable enemies—natural infirmities, infancy and old age. Infancy, of course, is not an infirmity peculiar to man; but on the whole, our remote ancestors scored over other animals by reason of the greater capacity which the female of our species has in carrying about her young. In the matter of old age, Rousseau draws a most rosy and optimistic picture of how things used to be. In old age, the need of victuals diminished with the power of getting them—a singularly beneficent arrangement on the part of Providence; and thus in the absence of gout and rheumatism (unknown to la vie sauvage) old people get snuffed out without anyone perceiving that they have ceased to exist, and almost without their noticing it themselves—‘ils s’éteignent enfin, sans qu’on s’aperçoive qu’ils cessent d’être, et presque sans s’en apercevoir eux-mêmes.’1 One would naturally expect that their extinction would be more obvious to the survivors than to the deceased.

As for our other maladies—the rough-and-tumble of a panel practitioner’s life—Rousseau indicts society for its sins, and argues that most of our misfortunes are our own work, and that practically all could have been avoided, if we had adhered to the ‘simple, uniforme et solitaire’ manner of life prescribed by Nature. As will be seen presently, it is the word solitaire that is here the most significant. The history of human diseases is best obtained by tracing the development of civil society. In Rousseau’s primitive paradise, no surgeon other than Time is needed to cure a fractured limb; no treatment is necessary other than leur vie ordinaire; and all this is accomplished without the patient being tormented with incisions, poisoned with drugs, or wasted with fastings. If primitive man has nothing to hope but from Nature, he has on the other hand nothing to fear but his own illness. So much for the advantages of medical benefit.2

Rousseau’s dissertation on the origin of language hardly concerns us, except in so far as the conditions of his problem throw light on his conception of the life of the natural and primitive man. For the surprising view emerges, as indicated in the word solitaire already emphasised, that Rousseau’s primitive men hardly ever met. It is Rousseau’s first difficulty in the matter of the origin of language: How could a language arise, or be regarded as necessary among men who had no communication with each other, nor any occasion to have such communication? For in that early phase of human society, any encounter was fortuitous and ephemeral.3 It is indeed fundamental to the development of Rousseau’s ultimate thesis, that Nature has taken no trouble to bring men together on the basis of their mutual needs: ‘sociability’ is not a quality prepared by that mysterious eighteenth-century divinity called Nature. In this primitive condition man had no need of man, and Rousseau intends to emphasise that we must, for our salvation, return to this state of affairs. But though primitive man thus wandered about, for ever solitary except for casual and transient encounters, he was not miserable; for what kind of unhappiness could properly be attributed to a ‘free being, whose heart is at peace, and whose body is in health’?1

It follows that in this strange world where individuals can, at most, salute each other in passing, where no moral relationships or acknowledged duties unite them, it is impossible to speak of men as being either good or bad. In this lonely and solitary world, no question of virtue or vice can arise. Somewhat oddly, however, and on rather insufficient grounds, Rousseau allows primitive man to have ‘Pity,’ which is the source of all social virtues. It is this ‘Pity’ that in a state of nature takes the place of laws, of morals and of virtue.2

Clearly also this elimination of the primitive man’s fellows delivers him from many of our present-day shortcomings. Having no relationship with others, he knows nothing of vanity, or esteem or contempt for others. Even the sexual instincts, in these happy days, occasioned no jealousy. Rousseau distinguishes between that love which consists in the satisfaction of a physical need, and that love which, if it is permissible to paraphrase, results from the frills which civilisation has added. It is in this type of love alone that jealousy may arise. The primitive man knows only the first kind of love: ‘toute femme est bonne pour lui,’ and again, ‘le besoin satisfait, tout le désir est éteint.’3

Thus for primitive man the happy generations passed—an endless wandering in the forests, ‘without industry, without speech, without domicile, without war as without union, without any need of his fellows, or any desire to injure them.’ If any discoveries were made, ‘the art perished with the inventor’ in a world where there was no education or progress, and where each succeeding generation set out from the same starting-point.4

Rousseau’s description of the blessedness of primitive man has been summarised in some detail, because, fantastic as it may be, it is of the essence of his view of things, and it colours his later account of the fall of man from this high estate. At this point, however, it is sufficient to draw attention again to the most astonishing feature in this most astonishing reconstruction of history. The foundation and reason for primitive man’s happiness lies in the fact that he had no need of his fellows, in fact had no dealings with his fellows, whom, indeed, to all intents and purposes he never met. Man was never so happy because man was never so much alone.

The second part of the Discourse is devoted to tracing the growth of inequality in place of these primitive egalitarian conditions. It opens with a purple passage which has been so often quoted that its further quotation is almost inevitable:

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, took it into his head to say: ‘This belongs to me,’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would have been spared the human race by him who, snatching out the stakes or filling in the ditch, should have cried to his fellows: ‘Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget that the fruits belong to all and that the earth belongs to none.’1

This first unrecorded enclosure was the beginning of property; but in fact it was a culminating point rather than a point of departure. Already, ways and means had been found to take such precautions as were necessary for safety. There had been discoveries and inventions; fire had been brought to earth; the bow and the arrow, as well as hooks and snares for catching animals, had been contrived. All this gave man a sense of superiority over other animals, and implanted in his heart ‘the first movement of pride.’2 Thus, in the triumphant and unseemly gloating of the hunter over his victim, we find the far-off roots of human inequality.

With this also came the distant foreshadowings of co-operation. There were occasions—admittedly rare—when l’intérêt commun justified primitive man in counting on the assistance of his fellows. How these ultra-individualistic nomads came to conceive of such a thing as the ‘common interest’ is, however, not explained. In such a case they united ‘by some sort of free association which was binding on none, and which lasted only so long as the transitory need which had occasioned it.’ Clearly, however, we have reached a stage when man is not quite so solitary as he once was: the bloom is off the peach. For such occasional acts of mutual assistance as these, no more highly developed language than that of crows or monkeys would be necessary.3

In this imaginative history of the human race, the great turning-point, with ramifications in many directions, came when man ceased to sleep ‘under the first tree,’ and made some semi-permanent shelter or hut, with branches and mud as their basic constituents. For here you have the beginning of the home. Rousseau’s primitive man had been extraordinarily successful in shaking off the casual women whom he encountered. But now, enclosed in the same hut, are man and woman, parents and children. Doubtless with this transition, as Rousseau acknowledges, there came the sweetest sentiments known to man, conjugal and paternal love; but he is able to compile an alarming series of items to be entered on the debit side. Women became sedentary, clinging to the hut, and thus there resulted a division of labour. Also men and women alike became softer, losing something of their ferocity—although in the previous paragraphs Rousseau’s primitive man had been depicted as anything but ferocious. Among men living in adjacent huts, language perforce had to arise. More significant is the fact that mere propinquity gave rise to the habit of making comparisons in the matter of merit and beauty. Jealousy awakens with love, and in the highly-coloured language which Rousseau loved: ‘Discord triumphs, and the sweetest of passions receives sacrifices of human blood.’1

It is an odd picture which Rousseau here draws of the rise of ‘distinctions’ among men, imposed by their environment. Brought together to live in adjacent cabins, what is there for these attractive primitives to do in the evenings, unless they sing and dance together under a great tree? Now it is a familiar fact that we do not all sing equally well or equally badly, and the same is demonstrably true in the matter of dancing. But, given the circumstances, the man who sings best, who dances best, is most ‘considered.’ ‘Why did she fall for the leader of the band?’ is the question put by a later generation, confronted by the same phenomenon. Es ist, apparently, eine alte Geschichte, doch bleibt sie immer neu. In these distinctions, embodied in the judgment of spectators and critics of primitive ball-room behaviour, Rousseau finds the first step towards inequality and towards vice at the same time. One other departure from primitive perfection is significant. From this last idea of ‘consideration’ paid to any one excelling in any respect, arose the first ideas of civility on the one hand, and on the other the sense of outrage should the measure of respect supposed to be due happen to be withheld. In a world where a man’s a man for a’ that, and where all are equal, there can clearly be no room for civility.

Despite these first shadows, this was the stage at which Rousseau would have had the human race remain, and he sums up in language of unmistakable clarity his astonishing philosophy of human nature:

So long as they confined themselves to works which one alone could do, and to arts which did not need the assistance of several hands, they lived free, healthy, good and happy...; but from the moment when one man had need of the assistance of another, from the moment when it was perceived that it was useful for one man to have provisions for two, equality disappeared, property was introduced, labour became necessary, and vast forests were changed into smiling fields which it was necessary to water with human sweat, and in which slavery and misery were soon seen to germinate and increase with the harvests.2

This indeed is the fundamental idea in this extraordinary Discourse. Men may be equal and happy, so long as they never meet, so long as no one needs the assistance of another; but from the moment when they cease to be solitaire, from the moment when they begin to live together, help each other, do things together, inequality enters, and from Rousseau’s point of view the rest of history is a hastening descent. Waiving his earlier and later history as entirely fictitious, there, is of course, one sense in which Rousseau is merely expressing a platitude in a somewhat allegorical form. On all this question, there is in fact of course no such thing as equality among men, for so it has been ordained by God. Neither in stature, nor in weight, nor in chest expansion, neither in the colour of the eyes or of the hair, neither in strength, intellectual capacity or moral sensibility, are men equal. It is perhaps possible to speak of the equality of men, if there is no possibility of comparison; if, as in Rousseau’s primitive conditions, human beings are never brought together except for fortuitous acts of silent copulation—if, in short, the doctrine of equality is never brought to the test. But the whole doctrine of equality in the literal sense breaks down the moment you bring men together and inevitably are forced to compare them, not merely in their capabilities for singing and dancing, as in Rousseau’s rather puerile example, but up and down the whole range of human equipment. It is indeed only necessary to view two human beings together in order to realise that in certain respects A is ‘superior’ to B, and in others B is ‘superior’ to A; but probably in no respect are they equal. In this sense Rousseau is possibly right in suggesting that the postulated equality of men who are never brought into comparison disappears at once when they live in adjacent huts. It is, however, to be hoped that Rousseau was trying to express more than this dowdy platitude. Also, of course, the admitted inequality of man does not really affect that deeper question as to whether the differences in human endowment furnish grounds for existing differences in rights and rewards.

In the remainder of the Discourse, Rousseau warms to the task of denunciation as he traces the growth of inequality. It may not, however, be necessary to follow in detail the development of the argument. The prime impulse towards the furtherance of inequality is found by Rousseau in the arts of metallurgy and agriculture: in more concrete language it is iron and corn that have been the curse of humanity, creating groups of workers dependent on each other.1 Agriculture likewise led to the partition of land, and consequently to laws to protect the possessor and define his rights. Following Grotius, Rousseau recalls that when Ceres was given the title of ‘Lawgiver,’ it was to indicate that the partition of land brought with it the necessity of a new kind of law, the law of property, as distinguished from natural law.2

With industry (typified by iron) and agriculture thus brought on the scene, the stage is set for the development of inequality. Diversity of talent and of capacity bring their natural consequences in diversity of condition. Vice is not far off. It becomes necessary that men should appear to have certain qualities, even when these are absent. ‘To be’ and ‘to appear’ have become entirely different matters. Hypocrisy and deceit have arrived. Man is no longer free and independent, since he is dependent on his fellows for the satisfaction of a multitude of needs: ‘Rich, he has need of their services; poor, he has need of their assistance; and even mediocrity does not enable him to do without them.’ 1 Add to these ‘devouring ambition,’ and the picture begins to resemble the vision of Marx:

In a word, competition and rivalry on the one hand, and on the other conflict of interests, and always the concealed desire to make a profit at the expense of others: all these evils are the first effect of property and the inseparable accompaniment of rising inequality.2

The final pages of Rousseau’s essay are perhaps best viewed as examples of lurid writing rather than of lucid thinking. He defines three main stages in the descent. The first is the establishment of law and the right of property; the second is the institution of the magistrature; the third is the transformation of legitimate into arbitrary power. In somewhat different language, these stages consecrate the distinction between rich and poor, between strong and weak, and between master and slave. Moreover, Rousseau’s pessimism is without frontier and without boundary. In surveying the inevitability of human descent, he observes that ‘the vices which render social institutions necessary are just those which render inevitable the abuse of these institutions.’ What, in short, is the good of anything?

It is a far journey from the innocent picture of men dancing and singing on the grass, beside the primitive mud-covered huts. It was then, when admiration was paid to one and withheld from another, that inequality was born. Into this other Eden, another Serpent entered. The final picture, when the curse has had time to work itself out, is one of unrelieved gloom. Rousseau gives as bitter a picture of modern civilisation as may be found anywhere,3 and ends with the impassioned declaration that ‘it is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however it may be defined, that a child should command an old man, that an imbecile should conduct a wise man, and that a handful of people should be stuffed with superfluities, while the famished multitude lack what is necessary.’ 1

Perhaps Rousseau has sufficiently testified to the faith, or the lack of faith, that is in him, so far as this is manifested in the two Discourses. Fundamentally it is a curiously churlish philosophy that is here propounded. Men are represented as happy so long as they live in complete isolation, having no need of each other, and no occasion to meet each other; all evil springs from bringing them together and allowing them to co-operate. Nor indeed is it even a consistent philosophy. Doubtless, Rousseau is careful to explain that his savage in his solitary state has neither virtue nor vices; but he is assuredly a noble beast, endowed with Pity, the mother of all the virtues. Yet as soon as they are brought into contact with each other, it is of the essence of Rousseau’s explanation of the decline of man, that forthwith these noble savages seek to take advantage of each other.

Coming more closely to Rousseau’s place in the socialist tradition, there are perhaps three points which may be isolated and underlined for their relationship to what has gone before and to what is yet to come. Firstly, property is specifically regarded as the source of all evil, with doubtless a certain emphasis on the case of land. Community in all things is implied—land again receiving special emphasis—though perhaps it should be made clear that by ‘community’ is rather meant non-appropriation. Secondly, Law for Rousseau is essentially a device whereby those in possession protect themselves against the ‘have-nots’; it is in short one of the instruments for the establishment and the maintenance of inequality. In other words, Law (and with it, the State) is an instrument of the governing class. Thirdly, in the contrast between rich and poor, the strong and the weak, masters and slaves, Rousseau preaches, and his words lend themselves to, a vitriolic class-war. But when all is said, it is perhaps truer of Rousseau than of most, that his influence can be traced less to any particular dogma or doctrine which he enunciated than to a pervasive atmosphere which emanated from Rousseau as a whole.

(b) MABLY

‘Who now reads Cowley?’ Probably fewer to-day than when the enquiry was first addressed to the world; but even so, possibly a hundred for every one who reads Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709–1785). Mably is one of the most striking examples of swift and irretrievable descent from a position of the highest reputation and influence to a position in which he is less than the dust that strews the paths of the generations of book-worms. A writer who, within a few years of his death, enjoys the spectacle of four entirely distinct editions of his collected works (ranging from 12 to 26 volumes according to the format) has no occasion to complain of neglect. Mably, in short, was read and quoted by every one in his own day, and immediately thereafter; almost a hundred years later, M. Janet was able to testify that, in the frequency of his appearance in the book-stalls along the Quais, he reigned supreme, with the Abbé Raynal as the only possible runner-up. The answer to those who are so hardy as to ask why the world at large does not now read Mably, is that they themselves should try. Without entering into a dangerous controversy, it may be suggested that he is the extreme example of the evil consequences of an undiluted classical education. He was never able to lay the ghost of Plato, and he wrote Platonic dialogues, as they might have been written by Plato, had Plato not been Plato. He worshipped Sparta and all its institutions, real or imagined; Lycurgus was his constant obsession. It has been suggested that he was acutely sensitive to the social evils, to the inequalities and injustices of his day, when the floods of revolution were gathering to sweep over France. In fact, however, the impression left on a reader of these days is that he sees everything through a haze of classical reading. His heart may have been touched by the wrongs of his time, but he thought and wrote in terms of Lacedaemon. A certain awareness of this paralysing defect seems at times to have knocked dumbly at the portals of his consciousness. In one of his dialogues, one of the speakers (who is more or less Mably) expresses a fear of what his friends may say of him: ‘La tête a tourné à ce pauvre homme; c’est dommage... il s’est gaté l’esprit à lire l’histoire des Grecs et des Romains qu’il aimait.’ 1 His friends would have been abundantly right; but they obviously failed to say it effectively.

Mably was destined for the Church, but although throughout his life and subsequently, he has been consistently designated as ‘Abbé,’ he soon faded away from ecclesiastical activities. He trembled for a time on the fringe of political employment, but this he also abandoned and gave himself up to a life of writing. His works are deplorably numerous and extensive, ranging over the whole field of history, politics, legislation, morals and much more, although always, in his rather pedantic and pedagogic manner, he was chiefly concerned with making man good. For the purpose of ascertaining the relationship which links Plato and More at the one end and Babeuf at the other, a small selection from this numerous brood of publications is sufficient. There is the rather cumbrously entitled Doutes proposées aux philosophes économistes sur l’ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques, which Mably wrote in order to demolish the views on property and other things expressed by Mercier de la Rivière, one of the Physiocrats—not in itself a difficult task. Des Droits et des Devoirs du Citoyen is not quite a dialogue, though it professes to report conversations with Lord Stanhope. De la Legislation, ou Principes des Loix is a triangular conversation between an English peer (who figures merely as ‘Milord’) who, although easily converted, is supposed to represent ‘common-sense’ views, a Swede who brings vision, and the narrator, who is either markedly silent, or modestly refrains from reporting his own contributions to the discussion. Lastly, for our purpose there is the Entretiens de Phocion, professedly a translation of a classical manuscript discovered in a monastery—a fiction as innocuous as the Entretiens themselves. It should scarcely be necessary to repeat the warning already hinted at in the case of Sir Thomas More. The Doutes are unmistakably straightforward Mably; but in some of the other more important works (e.g. De la Législation) he is professedly reporting the discussions of fictitious characters, and in such cases he clearly cannot be held responsible for all the views expressed. Probably in the work cited, Mably would approve in general of the views of the Swede, and he would not always have approved of the views of ‘Milord’; but in the nature of things it would have been open to him to disclaim both.

If truth be told, there is not much in Mably that may not be found better expressed elsewhere; he is of interest, partly because of his place in the development of things, and partly because of the strange pessimism which persuaded him that the world was suffering from a disease, or a multiplicity of diseases, for which there could be no effective remedy. Relying on natural law, he believed in the equality of men; looking around him (in the intervals of reading the classics) he was satisfied that private property was the root-cause of all human misfortunes; and (especially after reading the trite moral maxims of antiquity) he was of the opinion that there is much to be said for a simple life. Such, in brief, is the theoretical basis of Mably.

For Mably, the equality of man is part of the design of Nature: ‘Nature says to us in a hundred different ways: You are all my children, and I love you all equally... the whole earth is the patrimony of each of you; you were equal when you left my hands.’1 Nature has given us the same needs to be a continual reminder of our equality. It made men parfaitement égaux, without rights one over the other, and consequently perfectly free. Nature created neither kings nor magistrates, neither subjects nor slaves, neither rich nor poor. When Nature had finished her work in the creation of man, there was nowhere any principle of inequality.2 In a frequently recurring phrase Nature destined man to be equal. In one place he opens a wider door, and in words which sound rather like an anticipation of Proudhon, he tells us that this sentiment of equality is nothing other than the sentiment of our dignity.1 In amplification, and a dangerous amplification, Mably emphasises the uniformity of Nature. Men are the same everywhere; he will have nothing to do with the geographical school that holds that men are affected by such trivialities as latitude, temperature and rainfall—as if it were the duty of a legislator, before settling to his task, to consult a thermometer in place of the human heart.2 If it is urged that men are in fact unequal in endowments, Mably again gives a somewhat Proudhonian reply; it is education, brutalising some and developing the faculties of others, that persuades us to believe (wrongly) that Providence has established differences among men. At birth all men are substantially alike. The variegated history of any family, where presumably the members have the same heredity, and to a large extent have the same environment and education in essential matters, should provide sufficient comment on this aspect of the argument that humanity is but a tub of undifferentiated and indistinguishable peas.

On the question of the origin of property in the bosom of that primitive society which was so happy as to be propertyless, Mably offers suggestions which are peculiar, and which, if he had paused to reflect, go far towards the torpedoing of all his theorisings on these subjects. For in the Doutes where he is writing in his own person and cannot therefore disclaim responsibility, he suggests that property had its origin in the indolence of certain drones, frelons, who sought to live at the expense of others, and in whom it had not been possible to inculcate a love of work—à qui on n’avoit pas l’art de faire aimer le travail.3 This same explanation is advanced at greater length by the Swedish philosopher in De la Législation. Indolent men, less active than the others, served society with less assiduity and zeal. Their indifference grew because it was not repressed. These idlers were a burden on their fellow-citizens, who complained of their conduct, and presently the Republic was agitated by dissensions. Presumably, society then fell back on the Pauline injunction that if any would not work, neither should he eat. Should this theory of the dronishness of men prove unacceptable, the Swedish philosopher, like an obliging salesman, is quite prepared to offer an alternative solution of the problem of the origin of property. It is that certain of the magistrates retained more than their share in the distribution of the fruits of the earth, or showed an unjust preference towards their friends and relations.4 On this curious (and, perhaps, in part plausible) theorising, two comments are inescapable. Firstly, the indolence that ruined primitive communism would probably once again ruin communism, if re-established; there would still be drones willing to live at the expense of others, laborem fugientes in the language of St. Thomas Aquinas. And secondly, it reveals an extraordinary confusion of thought and of argument to proclaim that communism is the only condition in which men may live virtuously and happily, and in the same breath explain that communism was abandoned because the ordinary citizen failed to play fairly by his fellows, or alternatively because the leaders of society were dishonest and given to nepotism. The Abbé, in spite of himself, is being forced back to acknowledge the reality of original sin.

That property is the source of ‘tous les malheurs’ and of ‘tous les maux’ hardly calls for particularisation, inasmuch as the argument is on familiar lines.1 The moment property is established, inequality becomes inevitable, with the result that there are henceforward opposed interests, all the vices of wealth and all the vices of poverty, brutalisation of men’s minds, corruption of civil manners, and much more.2 Carrying the argument a stage further, the existence of property leads to war.3 It is property that has introduced l’oisiveté and la fainéantise,4 those pet aversions of Saint-Simon later; although oddly enough, as has been seen, it was this penchant to l’oisiveté that led to the establishment of property. In language closely resembling that used by Babeuf, the thought constantly recurs that what one has in excess is obtained at the cost of others suffering deficiency. More important from the point of view of the theory of property, it is contended that property finds no support in the laws of nature; its sanction is to be found solely in convention; and what convention has made, convention may unmake.

If it be argued, as for example ‘Milord’ (representing commonsense) does in fact argue in De la Législation, that a ‘stimulus’ is needed, and that, in short, ‘on ne travaille pas pour les autres avec la même ardeur que pour soi,’5 Mably, disguised on this occasion as the Swedish philosopher, has two answers. Firstly, even if less were produced, it would be better so. There are more important things than opulence. Adam Smith said as much, having his mind directed to the issue of national defence. For Mably (or the Swede) the thing that is more important than Abundance is Virtue. It is more advantageous for the human race to have quelques vertus than beaucoup de fruits.6 It sounds like the echo of an unimpeachable copybook Latin tag. Moreover, to those who seek and attain unto simplicity, everything else is added. Adam Smith’s ‘defence,’ for instance, comes in as a by-product of a life spent in spare leanness. With a curious innocence of mind he holds that such a society is safe from its enemies. If you have any doubt on the subject, he refers you to Plato and Socrates for reassurance; for is it not written that a poor army, if composed of happy citizens, is invincible, and will always be victorious over an army three times as numerous, which has the handicap of representing a rich State? 1 In the twentieth century the assurance even of Plato brings us no comfort on this point.

The second answer suggested by Mably on this question of stimulus—and he is abundantly right—is that avarice is not the only motive capable of moving the human heart. Unfortunately, he pins his faith to a motive which for his purpose would be but a broken reed. There are such things, he says, as ‘distinctions’; and if society had in time devised an adequate system of distinctions, the whole evolution of property could have been nipped in the bud. This ‘amour de la gloire et de la considération’ obviously played a considerable part in Mably’s ideas relating to the ordering of the universe. Milord’s objection that a man works hardest when working for himself is met with the retort that he is in very deed, véritablement, working for himself, if the horizon is dotted with prospects of ‘glory’ and ‘distinctions.’ In a rather absurd phrase, what will a man not do to ‘goûter le plaisir qui accompagne la considération’?2

The idea that the world may find its driving force in a Birthday Honours List (giving the King, if necessary 365 official birthdays in the year) occurs with pathetic frequency in the more Utopian forms of socialist literature, although perhaps few are so badly bitten with the notion as is Mably. Fourier doubtless is more extreme, but he is always in a class by himself. It is a foolish doctrine anywhere, but nowhere more foolish than in Mably. For in his scheme of things, he makes use of ‘distinctions’ to induce every one to work, so that, had matters been arranged properly, society need never have been driven to the recognition of property. But obviously, if any were wise or depraved enough to say that they preferred indolence to a ribbon (and there would be many such) they would have to be allowed to continue to lead idle lives, sponging on their neighbours; perhaps some who had at last attained the ribbon might burst into a blaze of fainéantise in order that they might without distraction savour the pleasure which accompanies consideration. Mably’s world, in short, is one in which it is expected that work will be done by all, without intermission, in the hope of a distinction to come, or in gratitude for a distinction already received.

But indeed the idea that the normal motives of life can be replaced by the desire of the scholar to be created, let us say, a Companion of the Midnight Lamp, or by the ambition of the worker to become a Member (Fourth Class) of the Most Assiduous Order of the Indefatigable Beaver, is a delusion revealing a strange misreading of human psychology in these matters. A distinction is a distinction, only if it distinguishes; and no commodity so precipitously loses all value, so rapidly comes to be shunned, as a distinction somewhat too generously shared with others. There is, moreover, a further point on which the Utopian resort to ‘distinctions’ and ‘honours’ as a substitute for more sordid incentives lamentably fails. Mably, since he at the moment is giving evidence, does not say how or by whom his distinctions are to be conferred: he is always vague when the point at issue calls for something more precise than a lugubrious shaking of the head. But it is assumed, and always is assumed, that there will be a universal and unquestioning belief that the fountain of honour has sprayed its refreshing waters on all the most deserving and on none but the most deserving. This naively innocent faith does not exist in the world we know, nor is it likely to exist in any earthly paradise that man may imagine. In the absence of such a faith, the shower of distinctions which Mably thinks ought to have saved the world from its selfishness might have precisely the contrary effect. An Honours List, while it is designedly an official commendation of those contained therein, is also inferentially, if not an official censure, at least a display of official frigid neutrality, of postponed approval with regard to those excluded. As Tertullian says, ‘choice implies rejection.’ It skilfully attains two ends simultaneously; it gives, or is supposed to give, pleasure to those included, if only by enabling them to contemplate the mortification of the less fortunate: no less emphatically it annoys, or may annoy, those who are excluded, and this annoyance is caused not by their exclusion, which might be borne with fortitude if not indifference, but by their having to witness the inclusion of others whom they deem less worthy. A general or a civil servant, kept waiting unduly in the queue for the Bath, may find his youthful ardour replaced by the sourness of hope deferred, and zeal may flag. Mably wants to confer honours on the shepherds whose flocks are most prolific (doubtless, the Order of the Fecund Ewe), the hunter who is best able to bear fatigue and the rigours of the seasons, and many more, including ‘la femme la plus ocupée de ses devoirs domestiques.’ Here indeed would be a nice apple of discord to toss lightly into the ranks of the W.R.I. and a copious cause of heart-burning among the excluded marginal women. This may appear a trivial, almost a puerile question, almost unworthy of mention; yet the search for non-material stimuli in the form of what Mably calls ‘considération’, is so recurrent, that it deserves somewhere to be looked at rather more closely.

Having thus laid bare the evils of the past and the present, Mably might be expected to hold out some hope for the future. He is, however, almost unique in his pessimism: never was a diagnostician so gloomy in his prognosis. It is a recurrent note in his lamentations that our accumulated vices have made any return to a state of happiness impossible. In preaching equality, he makes it clear at the outset that in his view no human power could now restore it without causing greater disorders than those sought to be avoided; and a few pages later he adds that the evil to-day is too deeply rooted to allow any hope of a cure.1 The barriers between us and the true order of nature are insurmountable.2 How gladly would one return to the equality established by Lycurgus and sought after by Plato, but in this world of ours this equality can be but a chimera.3 Moreover, the world is foolish and there is no use in trying. We have reached such a stage of corruption that ‘l’extrême sagesse doit paroître l’extrême folie, et l’est en effet.’4 The Swedish philosopher, who without injustice may in general be taken as the mouthpiece of Mably, declares that if he were to attempt to re-establish equality, he would most infallibly be taken for a fool.5 The Apostle Paul was not so sensitive.

This is indeed the voice of Timorous, who, having had his vision, such as it was, of the Celestial City, turns back in his pilgrimage, because of the lions in the way, not caring to know whether they were sleeping or waking, or perhaps even chained. From Mably, in short, we may look for no solution, for our evils are ‘sans remède.’ The utmost he can suggest lies in the adoption of a few ‘palliatives,’ in order perhaps to soften and somewhat diminish our misfortunes. The laws should be fashioned so as to discourage avarice and ambition, the two primary vices which property and inequality engender. The substance of his suggestions is somewhat archaic, as is indeed everything in Mably. The State must set the example. It must have few requirements: expenditure and taxation must be kept down to the minimum.6 As a slight contribution in this direction (and for other reasons) magistrates should be unpaid. The citizens should be induced to be content with a mediocre fortune, and to achieve this end riches should be rendered inutiles.7 Most of all he recommends sumptuary laws, of wide range and universal application. Luxury must be abandoned, and in this thirst for primitive simplicity, the Arts also should go: ‘je demande à quoi peut nous être bonne une académie de peinture?’ 8 The law of inheritance and bequest should be modified to prevent accumulation of wealth: a single daughter would be forcibly given two adopted brothers, in order to prevent her from being corrupted by an excess of wealth. Commerce should as far as possible be forbidden: it is undertaken for reasons of cupidity, and against the interests of good government. A merchant is a dangerous person, in that he has no fatherland. Here, mixed up with physiocratic views, is a reminiscence of the mediaeval doctrine that a merchant can hardly be pleasing to God. But indeed Hosea had already said it: ‘He is a merchant, the balances of deceit are in his hand: he loveth to oppress.’ Such, more or less, are the stale pills which Mably offers to the patient whom he has already pronounced too far gone for recovery.

On his own meagre merits, Mably might be left undisturbed in the complete oblivion that has overtaken him; but such a test is not the only proper criterion in an attempt, however sketchy, to trace the development of ideas and of thought. In his own lifetime and during the succeeding generation, he was an influence of the first magnitude in stressing the idea of absolute equality—although, indeed, his communism is largely based on the more or less uniform capacity of the human stomach, as man ‘leaves the hands of Nature,’ to borrow one of his favourite expressions. To take one instance of his influence (if it be not an absurd conjunction of names), there can be little doubt that he is the connecting link between Plato and Babeuf. His very great contemporary fame is slightly incomprehensible, even admitting that in many ways—as, for example, in his rapt admiration of the noble savage—he is of his time. But though a passable writer, discoursing with reasonable competence and adequate book-learning on a vast range of subjects,1 no one would now call him a good writer. He is an uninteresting pedestrian who in time covers the ground several times. Moreover, when we turn to the substance of Mably, it is difficult to resist the impression that, if not a sham (and no one ought to allege this), his socialism was an artificial, academic product, quite out of touch with the needs of his own, and still more of the next, generation. It is exclusively a product of Plato and Lycurgus. His dream is of a primitive community which has succeeded in banishing luxury and the arts, or has never had them; which takes its magistrates direct from the plough, and which looks to its poverty and its temperance as the most potent munitions of war against any possible external enemy. Nor does Mably even have the redeeming feature of feeling at one with the people; in his heart he feels something approaching contempt for his fellows. In short, Mably is, all the time, looking in the wrong direction—backward and not forward; and it is rather odd that his own generation should apparently have had no instinctive feeling of this disabling characteristic.

(c) MORELLY

It is now universally accepted that Le Code de la Nature, ou Le Véritable Esprit de ses Loix de tout tems négligé ou méconnu, which appeared anonymously in 1755, in the same year as Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality was the work of Morelly; but Morelly remains, nevertheless, the most elusive of figures. For long the work was attributed to Diderot, and indeed so generally attributed that Le Code in fact appears in certain collected editions of Diderot’s works. Such an attribution is, however, an insult to the memory of the great. It is for the expert in French literature to assess the evidence which has fathered this work on Morelly. To the outsider, the chief reason seems to be that Le Code contains in the early pages, and throughout, somewhat fulsome praise of a bad allegorical political poem, La Basiliade, published two years earlier; and as it seems to be agreed that no one but the author of La Basiliade could possibly praise La Basiliade, it follows that the author of Le Code was the author of La Basiliade, who was Morelly. Doubtless, this is not the only piece of evidence bearing on this point. Unfortunately this conclusion does not take us much further. Certain other very minor works swim into the picture, and there have been suggestions that there are two Morellys, a father and a son, sharing the honours between them. Perhaps in all this we should remember that fine flower of classical criticism, crystallised in the saying that ‘the Iliad was not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name.’ The only fact that clearly emerges is that nothing is known of Morelly. ‘Morelly,’ in short, is little more than a convenient abbreviation for ‘the author of Le Code de la Nature.’

But whether Le Code was written by Morelly, or by his father, or his son, or by another man of the same name, the book itself remains a work of capital importance as an influence in the second half of the eighteenth century, and beyond. The Code is as nearly destitute of intrinsic merits as it is possible for any book to be, though it has its interests. Apart from those spiritually akin to Babeuf, the critics have been uniformly harsh in their attitude toward Morelly. Raynal, on its appearance, described it as possessing ‘ni suite, ni méthode, ni vues’; another contemporary critic found ‘ni principes, ni raison, ni lumières dans son livre.’1 Much later, from an impartial distance, Janet pronounced Morelly’s socialism as ‘un socialisme sans lumières et sans culture,’ and Morelly himself as ‘un esprit vulgaire et de bas étage.’2

These criticisms are substantially justified. Morelly annoys—and in many ways. He is complacent, self-satisfied, and shallow; he dabbles in psychology and theology, indulging in doubtful disputations beyond his stunted depth; he is uniformly rather dreary. Moreover, putting aside as irrelevant (if one may rise to such heights of magnanimity) all these many occasions of irritation, Morelly has the further disability that he has not much to say that is in any way peculiar to himself. He believes that man is fundamentally good, and not depraved; he holds that the wickedness of man is occasioned by the society in which he lives and the corrupting institutions which surround him; and that ultimately all these evils spring from the existence of property; and he further seeks to persuade his readers that a better society, indeed a perfect society, would result from the abolition of property. All this is moderately common late eighteenth-century, left-wing doctrine, presented with no distinction. Where Morelly differs from anyone else is that he endeavours to codify the Code of Nature, and prints a ‘Model of Legislation conforming to the intentions of Nature.’ Natural law is spread all over the eighteenth century, but for obvious prudential reasons, it is usually left vaguely in the air, without a too precise definition of its contents. It is the merit, or at least the peculiarity, of Morelly, that he rushed in where Quesnay and many others had feared to tread, and laid down in a terrifying document the fundamental laws of a society that would seek to conform to the intentions of Nature.

We may pass over the compliments which at the outset the author of Le Code pays to the author of La Basiliade, a work which is supposed to clothe with poetic grace the truths about to be demonstrated in prose. Having discharged this pleasant duty, Morelly turns to the first point of his programme, the perverse and erroneous views of the political and moral philosophers. Morality ought to be as simple and as evident in its first axioms as mathematics, but it has become disfigured and clouded with prejudices. The fundamental error of the moralists is that they have assumed as their foundation the proposition that man is born vicious and evil (vicieux et méchant). It is, it will be observed, the repudiation of the Fall of Man and of the doctrine of Original Sin, which is so large a part of socialist teaching for the next three generations. It has not, he says, occurred to anyone (although in the fullness of time it will most emphatically occur to Fourier) that the problem is ‘to find a situation in which it is almost impossible for man to be depraved or wicked.’ 1

The view of the philosopher is that even before Man is born, he carries within himself the baneful seeds of his depravity, urging him to seek his own good at the expense of all his kind.2 This is self-interest (amour propre), and Morelly’s attack on the philosophers is largely a white-washing of this self-love, and a demonstration that self-love ought to lead to sociability. For this self-love, transformed by the moralists into an hundred-headed hydra, is something entirely innocent ‘in the order of Nature.’ It is nothing more than a constant desire to preserve one’s existence by means which are both easy and innocent, and which Providence has placed within the reach of all. But when human institutions have surrounded these innocent means with insurmountable difficulties and much more, need it cause surprise that this self-love is transmuted into a multitude of vices?1 It is, however, from this ‘triste Morale’ of the philosophers, and not from Nature, that this ill-omened leaven derives.

The Supreme Wisdom, to which Morelly has at all times free access, intended, however, something entirely different. Its purpose was to make the human species an Intelligent Whole, which should arrange itself by a mechanism as simple as marvellous—indeed by a species of ‘moral attraction,’ another pointer in the direction of Fourier.2 For out of self-love there springs, or ought to spring, a ‘benevolent affection’ for all that alleviates or helps our weakness. The desire to be happy may be fundamental, but self-love achieves nothing without assistance, and this impels us to the happy necessity of being benevolent. Crystallised in a sentence: ‘Tu veux être heureux; sois bienfaisant.’3 Benevolence is the path by which self-love realises itself.

Had we but followed the intentions of the Supreme Wisdom, the situation should have been an entirely happy one. Using in a contrary sense a metaphor to which Malthus was later to give an unenviable notoriety, Morelly assures us that

the world is a table sufficiently furnished for all the guests, whose provisions belong in their entirety, sometimes to all because all are hungry, sometimes to some only because the others are satisfied: thus no one is absolutely the master, nor has the right to claim to be so.4

Nature has ingeniously contrived a number of devices whereby men are impelled, though perhaps not very effectively, towards unanimity and general concord. It has given us a sense of equality of conditions and of rights and of the necessity of labouring in common by showing us our ‘parity’ in feeling and in needs. By temporary variations in our needs, so that all are not equally affected at the same time (we are not all hungry together), it has warned us that we should sometimes renounce our rights for the advantage of others. By endowing men differently in strength, in industry and in ability, it has pointed the way to different employments. The pain and effort of satisfying our needs when acting alone, impress on our minds the necessity of looking for the assistance of others, and inspire us with an affection for all that helps us. Thus Morelly, revealing the inner workings of the divine plan, shows how the stage was set to urge man on to a comprehensive benevolence; and these urgings the politicians and the moralists should have seconded, instead of playing the part of ‘maladroit mechanicians,’ breaking the springs and thereby involving the dissolution of humanity. Morelly is rather proud of his view of society as an automatic machine, and it recurs.

The methods by which primitive legislators should have kept man in the straight path are not obscure. There is but one vice in the world, namely Avarice.1 All other vices, how different soever they may present themselves to the human eye, ultimately resolve themselves into a desire to possess, le désir d’avoir; and it therefore follows, with a devastatingly simple logic, that where there is no property, there can likewise be none of the pernicious consequences flowing from property. But our legislators, those pretended sages whom our imbecility admires, have broken the bonds of sociability in recognising property.2 The law should have regulated, not property, but the use of property. Even now (apparently) if property is abolished, all will be well. If we are but delivered of this tyrant, as he tells us in a phrase of delicious and superfluous emphasis, it will be ‘impossible de toute impossibilité’ that man should be guilty of crime, that he should be either a thief, an assassin, or a conqueror.3 The legislators, however, missed the golden opportunity of basing society on the true intentions of Nature which, as will be seen presently, can be summarised in a few simple propositions. So far as concerns the application of these principles in practice to such matters as the direction of each to his appropriate employment and the assignment to each of the means of subsistence—all the tasks of the Ministry of Labour and of the Ministry of Food—this need cause no anxiety. Morelly belongs to that long and pathetic line that believes that the business of this world and the administration of government are matters which any child could compass in his less intelligent moments. All these questions, he says, merely amount to a simple matter of enumeration of things and of persons, a simple operation of calculation and combination and, consequently, ‘susceptible d’un très-bel ordre.’ Too often have socialist dreams of a Utopia been vitiated by the innocent faith that all business is ‘merely a matter of accounting.’

One other point in Morelly’s general theory is perhaps worth mentioning, as it serves to link him with anarchist thought of a later date. He will have nothing to do with the suggestion that men are by nature indolent, or in any way averse from labour. If men appear to be lazy, or to be addicted to an untimely folding of the hands together, this also is the result of prejudices, springing from the institutions by which we have been corrupted. We have fixed a permanent condition of repose on some whom we call prosperous, leaving to others the heat and burden of the day. In these circumstances, where idleness is the privilege of the fortunate, it is natural that the others should acquire an aversion, indeed a dégaut, for work imposed upon them. That men are not naturally idle, may, however, be inferred from the zeal with which the rich seek ‘le tumulte fatiguant des plaisirs pour se délivrer d’une oisiveté importune.’ It is a wholly fallacious argument which in the fullness of time is called upon to bear a heavy burden.1

The peculiarity of Morelly, however, lies in the fact that in the fourth part of the Code he is so temerarious as to give a model of legislation which conforms with the intentions of Nature.2 It is a curious document. Quite obviously the intentions of Nature are not what they are usually assumed to be; moreover, Nature, which ought to confine herself to generalities, condescends to questions of detail which ought to be beneath her dignity. There are three fundamental and sacred laws, which are guaranteed by Morelly to cut the roots from the vices and evils of any society. These laws are buttressed by laws on specific subjects—distributive laws, agrarian laws, sumptuary laws, laws relating to the form of government, conjugal laws, penal laws and so on. These are not certified as fundamental and sacred; and on certain matters they contain very detailed provisions, sometimes of a rather arbitrary nature. What Morelly does is to present, professedly as a code of laws—though no lawyer would recognise it as such—the picture of a communistic society which owes not a little to More’s Utopia. The three fundamental and sacred laws are somewhat general in their character. The first prescribes that there shall be no private property, apart from the things of which a man is making actual use, whether for his needs, his pleasures or his daily work—a definition which already opens a whole corridor of serious doors. The second, in a rather curious phrase, requires that every citizen is to be an ‘homme public,’ maintained and employed at the expense of the public. The third imposes on every citizen the obligation to contribute to the public good according to his strength, his talents and his age.3

The Morellian commonwealth is in part an orthodox Utopia; in part it has original features. However viewed, it would be a thoroughly unpleasant place of residence. The structure rests on families, tribes, cities and, if need be, provinces; and there is a system of government by rotation which may represent an obeisance to the principle of equality, but which would certainly sacrifice the remnants of efficiency. As in Utopia, goods are accumulated in, and distributed from, public magazines. In the event of a shortage of ‘provisions d’agrément,’ there may be a suspension or restriction of supplies. Essential goods are, however, dealt with on a different basis: ‘on prendra garde, avec soin, que ces accidens n’arrivent pas à l’egard de choses universellement nécessaires.’ 4 That ought to be quite enough to put a stop to a bad harvest. Every citizen works in agriculture from the age of 20 to 25, which again brings an echo from Utopia. Boys and girls are sorted out at the age of five, and entrusted to a curious rota of fathers and mothers, who do duty consecutively for periods of five days. It does not seem a very effective system of education; fortunately, education seems to end at the age of ten. At that age the children pass to the workshops: indeed, those who are bright may have acquired before then the rudiments of their destined trade. They are married off at the earliest possible moment, between the ages of fifteen and eighteen; and all marriages take place together at the beginning of the year. Religious, metaphysical and philosophical doctrine is prescribed, and no departure tolerated. Children are not to have their minds ‘imbued’ with any ‘fable, conte, ou fictions ridicules.’1 The animosity of Utopians towards Red Riding Hood is deep-seated and ineradicable. There is an astonishing wealth of detailed provisions regarding divorce: Utopia apparently does not guarantee connubial felicity. One provision is so surprising that it deserves to be expiscated; the children (both sexes) remain with the father in the event of a divorce, and the woman whom he has last married will alone be regarded as their mother; none of those who have preceded her may take the title with regard to the children of the husband. This may be in conformity with the intentions of Nature, but one would like to know the sources of Morelly’s information.

Lastly, these laws partake in part of the nature of the laws of the Persians and the Medes. The section dealing with government (foolish enough in itself) is, like the fundamental laws, to be reputed sacred and inviolable: ‘they cannot be changed or abrogated by anyone soever.’2 Morelly shows a ghoulish enjoyment in the prospect of punishing his offenders, though it is odd that in a world where it was to have been ‘impossible de toute impossibilité’ for man to err, there should still be a place for penal laws. He is not the first of whom it may be said that the latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning. These laws for the restraint of criminals are, however, ‘aussi douces qu’efficaces.’ Morelly’s ideas of a ‘douce’ punishment are somewhat peculiar. There are two grades of offenders, those who have merited separation from society for a time, and those who have deserved to ‘die civilly’—in other words to be separated perpetually from their fellows. In the least agreeable and most barren part of the country, Morelly contemplates the creation of a gloomy prison and a cemetery in close proximity. The prison with the heavy gratings is not, indeed, for those who would tamper with the laws. It is reserved for minor offenders, doing time—adulterers, those who speak disrespectfully of the Senators, and such small fry. Those who have deserved to die civilly, the would-be tamperers with the law, are accommodated in the cemetery, in spacious caverns with heavy iron bars, until they are not merely civilly dead, but dead in very deed. Thereafter the cavern becomes their tomb. It is an arrangement which is at least ultimately economical in the matter of transport; and again one can but wonder at the intentions of Nature.

Doubtless few will dissent from the verdict of M. Janet that this is indeed ‘un esprit vulgaire, et de bas étage,’ and that his is a socialism without light and without culture. This, however, does not prevent him from having given light, albeit a murky light, to others. Morelly and Mably indeed go hand in hand for many years, the inspiration of the egalitarian side of the French Revolution, culminating in the mysterious conspiracy of Babeuf. Babeuf was right when he said that the author of Le Code was the leader of his conspiracy: that he happened to call him Diderot is irrelevant. What chiefly astonishes and offends us to-day is perhaps not so much Morelly’s shallow pilferings from all ages and his total lack of comprehension and profundity in face of the problems with which he professes to grapple, as his effrontery in fathering on Nature the details of a constitution and a system of law of which (apart from hints from Plato and More) no one but he could be the begetter. History, unfortunately, demands a place even for foolish people, and Morelly cannot be ignored here, partly because of his relation to Babeuf; partly (though one says it with regret) because in certain respects he holds out a hand to Fourier.

(d) BABEUF

At the portals of what purports to be a history of thought, Babeuf—Gracchus Babeuf or François Noël Babeuf, according as one prefers his familiar adopted name or his forgotten baptismal name—should perhaps knock in vain; for there are those who have suggested that Babeuf was innocent of thought. Yet he has a place in history, and in some ways is a portent. Babeuf represents a combination of Mably and Morelly, transferred to the field of action. The pessimistic shrug of the shoulders with which Mably had acknowledged the futility of doing anything is replaced by a demoniacal subterranean energy, aiming at the destruction of all things. On the theoretical side, the doctrine is unalloyed Mably-Morelly, apart from such minor modifications and variations of emphasis as inevitably emerge when an accepted point of view is restated in the light of another environment. Babeuf had not enjoyed the ample surroundings which had enabled Mably to discourse frigidly of equality in classical dialogues. On the contrary, poverty had lurked incessantly by his doorway. It would probably be true to say that Babeuf was not without envy in his heart, envy of those who had been more kindly treated in the lottery of life. His appeal for a higher way of life is accordingly addressed to the lower instincts and passions of mankind. Babeuf is thus of interest as showing the logical continuation, downhill, of Mably and Morelly, when their gospel is accepted by one who is not beset by academic jitters, as was Mably. He is also of interest because, in the rage for destruction which finally consumed him and his sect, the Babouvists are a connecting link with nihilism and later destructive anarchism.

The stormy life and the tempestuous death of Babeuf are part of the history of the French Revolution. The barest bones, designed to ‘place’ him, must suffice here. Born in 1764, he was already a provincial journalist, practising in Amiens on Le Correspondent Picard, before the Revolution sucked him into the Parisian vortex. He became a figure on the extreme left-wing, assumed the name of Caius Gracchus, and was ever afterwards known as Gracchus Babeuf. Also, without any authority apart from his own mere volition, he called himself the ‘Tribune of the People,’ and in the course of time published under this title a paper which periodically went underground. After the fall of Robespierre and under the reaction of 1795 (la réaction thermidorienne), Babeuf developed an extraordinary subterranean activity, which culminated in the notorious ‘Conspiration.’ The object of the conspiracy, engineered by the ‘Secte des Egaux’ was to overthrow the existing government and to establish complete and ‘real’ equality. The whole story of the conspiracy has about it a flavour of fantastic melodrama, and in view of its wide ramifications and extensive publicity, the existing government was rather obtuse not to have become alive to the danger sooner than it did. It may be that we of our generation have little experience of conspiracies of this nature; yet, even allowing for our disability in this respect, it is difficult to resist the impression that the conspirators were melodramatically acting the part of plotters, and were greatly enjoying the experience. In time they established a ‘directoire secret de salut public.’ There is a curious document enacting that ‘the people is in insurrection against tyranny,’ preceded by four pages of clauses, each beginning with ‘considérant que...’ for all the world as though they were the I.L.O. in full session.1 It is not thus, one imagines, that conspiracies are usually run. At the last moment, the plot was betrayed by a traitor to the cause, Georges Grisel. The leaders were arrested, and a somewhat wearisome and protracted trial ensued. In the end, Babeuf and his chief supporter Darthe were condemned to death. Across the distance of years, it is rather surprising that in so far-reaching a conspiracy, justice was supposed to be satisfied with a mere two capital sentences. The final scene has an element of ghoulishness which happily is almost unique. True to the inspiration of the name ‘Gracchus’ and the old Roman Stoic virtues which it suggested, Babeuf and Darthe endeavoured to fall on each other’s swords after being condemned. Such a method of suicide obviously calls for a certain technique of its own, nor is suicide the kind of thing in which the necessary dexterity can be acquired by practice. The conspirators merely succeeded in grievously wounding each other, so that they bled profusely until their execution next day (24th February, 1797): it was what Buonarotti rightly calls ‘une exécution sanglante.’

Even in the most summary account of Babeuf, this fellow-conspirator, Buonarotti, has an indefeasible right to be mentioned, for in a sense he supplies the epilogue. It is not clear why he escaped the fate of Babeuf, for, assuming guilt, he seems to have been as guilty as any. In his own words the Tribunal merely said to him and some others: ‘Allez traîner une vie malheureuse loin de la patrie dans des climats brûlans et meurtriers,’1 which may be accepted as an ornate paraphrase of a sentence of banishment. But before the end Buonarotti had given the martyrs a solemn pledge that he would one day write the full story of the conspiracy, and justify their memories. He kept his word, although not until after the lapse of some thirty years of vagabondage. His Conspiration pour l’Egalité, dite de Babeuf (1828), with as many ‘pièces justicatives’ as time had spared, was until quite recent years the real source of our knowledge regarding Babeuf. Moreover, though it may not be a great book, it is a book of some interest as carrying still further the Mably-Morelly tradition.

A consideration of Babeuf raises a question of great historical interest, which in its time has been much discussed. How far was the French Revolution a movement inspired by socialist ideas in the ordinary acceptation of the phrase? The fullest answer in one sense has been given by M. Janet.2 The lectures which lie at the base of M. Janet’s book were delivered in 1872. Doubtless the acid test of what should be regarded as socialism in 1872 is not what would be accepted as appropriate to-day; doubtless also M. Janet was sufficiently near the generation of Sudre, Thonissen, and Reybaud, to have an instinctive feeling that socialism was of the devil. Yet, with these reservations, the conclusions of M. Janet are probably substantially correct. For Janet, socialism covers generally any doctrine which undermines the principle of private property; just as conversely (if it is conversely) the strongest weapon against socialism is private property. Now according to Janet, ‘nowhere, at no time, and in no country, has the right of private property been more firmly claimed and more firmly guaranteed than by the Revolution.’ 3 For the detailed argument the reader must consult Janet himself; in the brevity which is here imposed, it is sufficient to recall that the right of property was indeed viewed as one of the fundamental rights of man. In the Constitution of the French Republic decreed in the year 1793, it is expressly stated (Article 2) that the natural and imprescriptible rights of man are: ‘l’égalité, la liberté, la sureté, la propriété’; and Article 16 defines the right of property as ‘celui qui appartient à tout citoyen, de jouir et de disposer à son gré de ses biens, de ses revenus, du fruit de son travail et de son industrie.’1 Much of Babeuf’s revolutionary activity was directed to getting back to the Constitution of 1793, as a stepping-stone, but he never disguised the fact that its consecration of property was, in his eyes, a grave blot. Buonarotti quotes with approval the superior version of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, drafted by Robespierre, where property is defined as ‘le droit qu’a chaque citoyen de jouir et de disposer à son gré de la portion de bien qui lui est garantie par la loi.’ Those who attacked property were, according to Janet, a dissident minority, standing apart from the main stream of thought and action, which, while it doubtless interfered with property in various ways, never dreamed of questioning the fundamental right of property. Here then lies the significance of Babeuf; he was a protest against the Revolution stopping halfway in its task; in a world that spoke of Equality, he clamoured for ‘real’ equality, which (he held) could not be attained so long as property existed.

Even a brief summary of Babeuf runs the risk of being a tedious repetition, on a different plane, of a point of view encountered elsewhere. Yet though the substance does not differ materially from what may be found in those who inspired him, the flavour in Babeuf is different; and enough must be said to catch, if it be possible, something of this peculiar flavour. Apart from what he wrote for Le Tribun du Peuple, Babeuf was a very valiant correspondent. M. Maurice Dommanget has brought together in a volume of Pages Choisies as much as—indeed probably a great deal more than—anyone is likely to desire in the matter of Babeuf’s writings. For that matter a very lengthy letter of July 28, 1795, together with No. 35 of Le Tribun du Peuple, are sufficient to give the clotted cream of Babeuf’s views on things in general.2

The starting-point is inevitably the familiar contention that Nature has made all men equal in rights and needs. If there are inequalities, the law of society should act so as to redress the balance and maintain the equality designed by Nature; but in fact it has acted in precisely the opposite direction.3 Babeuf is perhaps peculiar in the emphasis he lays on the fact that human prejudices have unjustly favoured certain occupations. Some are given ‘une valeur d’opinion.’4 It is a point on which he is almost inclined to nag, so that one almost suspects that the prosperity of some of his fellow-villagers had become an offence to him. In fact, all honest men are equal. Every one ‘qui a des vertus’ honours his calling, and all should therefore enjoy ‘une égale aisance.’1 There is perhaps more originality—and up to a point more commendable originality—in his views on education. Babeuf has that pathetic faith in education, which is to be found only in those who have been denied it, and who have struggled to make good a self-confessed deficiency. It colours all his frequently expressed anxieties with regard to the future of his children. Yet to Babeuf, with his eyes intent on equality, the system of education is full of dangers. For inequality has one of its roots in the different education of rich and poor. In a phrase which has an arresting quality seldom found in Babeuf, he asserts that education has become ‘a species of property.’ Education, like other property, should therefore be something that all should share alike. There is a touch of the wild language later characteristic of the Secte des Egaux in Babeuf’s exclamation that there should either be no education at all, or all should be able to have it equally. Consistently through life, he was an advocate of ‘all or nothing.’2

Where there is inequality, there must be injustice; if one has superfluity, another must lack. For Babeuf, like his immediate predecessors, is extraordinarily well informed as to the intentions of Nature, and is able to define these intentions with the utmost precision. Nature, which is described as ‘économe de ses dons,’ produces only just approximately what is useful for all the beings it creates3; apparently, Nature takes a census, and quite apart from what may be done meanwhile by the beings it creates, it sends sufficient rations and no more, like a somewhat stingy Minister of Food. It follows that if one enjoys superfluity, drawn from this nicely calculated store, somewhere else there must be someone suffering a corresponding deficiency: ‘ce qui manque au grand nombre existe dans le trop, dans le superflu du petit nombre.’4 By a natural transition (even though Proudhon has not yet spoken the word) this becomes a species of theft. The deficit, where there is a deficit, springs from what others have stolen—‘stolen legitimately, if you like, with the help of laws made by brigands.’ 5 There is here sufficient groundwork for an extreme statement of the class warfare, and Babeuf expresses it in various picturesque phrases. There is perpetual war between the starvers and the starved, les affameurs et lés affamés; a war between rich and poor; a war between those who have nothing and those who have all.6 Moreover, the doctrine of the class war is driven home by a liberal and oratorical appeal to the envy and the discontent of the unfortunate. Why should some have la bonne table, and others le pain noir? 7 How can you expect me, Babeuf, to ‘temporiser,’ to ‘politiquer,’ when I have not eaten for 48 hours; when, on rising in the morning, I do not know whether it is my old breeches, my shirt, my shabby coat, or my frayed bed-cover that I shall have to sell? 1

In the eyes of Babeuf, as of Fourier later, everything is wrong; and in the extremely significant letter of July 28, 1795 (or should we say, of the 10th thermidor of the Year III?), addressed to Charles Germain, he comes nearer than elsewhere to a systematic indictment of the world in which we live.2 Commerce exists, he says, for the purpose of pumping the sweat and blood of more or less everybody, in order to form lakes of gold for the benefit of the few; it is a Fourieresque thought, down even to the confused picture which it evokes. The idea of exploitation is hinted at on lines familiar to a later generation. There is a conspiracy (complot) of the part against the whole: the procedure, in a rather cumbrous and lumbering phrase, is to contrive to set in motion a multitude of arms without allowing those who in fact move these arms to receive their destined fruit. Wealth flows to criminal speculators, who are aided and abetted by merchants, their co-voleurs—a pleasant word. The most essential workers get least: this, in a significant phrase, is ‘la loi barbare dictée par les capitaux.’ It is a world of uncertainty: we can never be sure that we or our offspring are secure against the danger of destitution. It is a thought which obsesses Babeuf, ever yearning for his children. He has already reached the characteristic note of the later ‘Conspiration,’ in avowing that the only course is to destroy everything. Had I but the magic fairy ring, he exclaims, ‘je ferais la poussière du passé,’ and simultaneously evoke from the earth the much-dreamed-of Société des Egaux. Here, as with the anarchists of the deed, what is desired is the annihilation of all things, trusting that out of the dust of destruction a fair city may arise. And buoyed by such a hope, how blithely would Babeuf bide the stour.

Putting it otherwise, the revolution, however nobly it may have been originally designed, has turned out a misfire, above all since 1793. So long as everything that is worthless has not been overthrown, we have not yet ‘assez revolutionné pour le peuple.’ So far as the people are concerned, there has been no revolution. The revolution must be continued until it becomes the revolution of the people. Indeed, the whole thing must be done over again: la révolution est à réfaire.3 And in this, what is primarily necessary is a work of destruction.4

Before we glance at certain of the documents relating to the conspiracy, Buonarotti, in his capacity of literary and revolutionary executor, should perhaps be allowed to supplement Babeuf. Apart from the pièces justificatives which throw a flood of light on dark places, the chief interest of Buonarotti lies in the fact that a substantial part of the first volume is devoted to a systematic outline of the Babouvist heaven. Babeuf had been anything but systematic, and Buonarotti’s re-editing of the ultimate aims of the conspirators, thirty years after the event, is a better statement than Babeuf could himself have produced. What, however, most impresses in reading Buonarotti is our nearness to Mably and Morelly. In this world of ‘égalité sans mensonge,’ the right to property is replaced by a right to an existence as happy as that enjoyed by anyone else 1; although, obviously, a state that seeks to equalise so elusive a thing as happiness has some nice psychological problems in its path. It is a world of abundance to all, with, however, this caveat, that what cannot be ‘communicated’ to all, must be severely cut down. In effect, unless everyone is to have everything, no one is to have anything.2 It is a world of simplicity, cutting out the arts and turning its back on foreign trade and the luxuries and dangers it brings with it3; a world where every citizen is a soldier, and where youth will be encamped on the frontier, but which nevertheless finds its most sure shield of defence in its simplicity and integrity 4; a world where there are few laws, for laws are not required where there is equality. What laws, indeed, beyond the simplest, are needed among a people who are ‘without property, and without the vices and crimes which it engenders, without commerce, without money, without taxes, without finances, without civil processes, and without poverty’?5 It is a world where education is to be ‘national, common and equal,’ since political equality springs from equality in education.6 Unfortunately, and it represents the debit side of much socialist Utopian speculation, it is also to be a world in which the individual will have no life of his own: ‘La patrie s’empare de l’individu naissant pour ne le quitter qu’à la mort.’7 In a world which has shed so many things that laws have become virtually unnecessary, it is odd that the State should continue as an octopus, against whose encirclements the grave alone provides a secure asylum.8

Even a short account of Babeuf calls imperatively for some reference to the numerous proclamations and what-nots in which his conspiracy was shrouded. Never surely was a conspiracy so amply ‘documented’: the plotters shed their ink as freely as they urged their followers to shed their blood; and the result is a curious collection of manifestos, draft decrees, and instructions which may be found among Buonarotti’s pièces justificatives. They are of interest in showing the path a successful Babouvism would have followed. The most notorious is the Manifeste des Egaux, said to be the work of Sylvain Maréchal. This is a fire-eating and loud-mouthed production: the unkind might even call it rant. A few sentences will suffice:

Eh bien! We claim henceforward to live and die equals, as we have been born equals. We demand real equality, or Death; that is what we must have.

And we will have this real equality, no matter at what price. Woe to those whom we meet, coming between it and us! Woe to whomsoever offers resistance to so determined a desire.

The French Revolution is only the fore-runner of another revolution, still greater, still more solemn, and which will be the last....

We must have this equality, not merely transcribed in the declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen: we must have it in our midst, under the roof of our houses. We consent to everything for its sake, to make table rase, so that we may cleave to it alone. Perish, if need be, all the arts, provided there remains to us real equality!1

The various projects and fragments of projects, the body of decrees drawn up by the ‘insurrectionary committee’ in preparation for ‘the day,’ furnish an interesting introduction into the technique of revolution, though perhaps the ultimate lesson lies in the revelation of what should be avoided. The curious ‘Acte d’Insurrection,’ which purports to enact a state of insurrection, provides in Article 12 that all opposition will be overcome on the spot, and that those who oppose will be exterminated. More humanely (Articles 13 and 14) it provides for a free distribution of victuals to the people, and conscripts the bakers to bake bread incessantly. Article 17 provides for the goods of the enemies being distributed among the defenders of, the Fatherland.2 Another projected decree enacts that poor citizens who are at the moment badly housed, will not return to their ordinary dwellings: the houses and the furniture of the former rich will be made available for their use.3

There is something refreshingly humorous in a conspiracy, of which the primary purpose is the abolition of property, drafting in advance an enactment legalising loot. After a lapse of thirty years the point had obviously begun to worry Buonarotti. It would be wrong, he says, to consider the promise of a large distribution of goods as contrary to the spirit of communism which was aimed at: Le grand point était de réussir. This surely is the disarming simplicity of old age.1

There is further a fragment of an economic decree which seems to foreshadow something in the nature of national workshops, and is of some mild interest in tracing the affiliations of Louis Blanc.2 Of more general significance, however, is a project of a police decree dealing with ‘étrangers,’ which, to avoid the implications of the words ‘stranger’ and ‘foreigner,’ should perhaps be translated as ‘outsiders.’ Those who do nothing for the Fatherland, that is, those not engaged in certain specified useful occupations (and in fact not all these), are classed as ‘outsiders,’ to whom the Republic accords ‘hospitality,’—which sounds quite honorific. In fact, their ultimate destination is one or other of the small islands off the French coast, converted into places of correction. These islands, moreover, are to be ‘rendered inacessible.’ 3 The hospitality accorded by the unborn Republic is, in short, the hospitality of the concentration camp. There may have been many reasons for the failure of the ‘Conspiration, dite de Babeuf.’ A perusal of Buonarotti leaves little doubt that one reason among others was that they all talked too much, and spent too much time elaborating draft edicts to come into force on the blessed day of revolution.

Enough—perhaps too much—of Babeuf for the narrow confines of this book. Weighed dispassionately, he may have had few gifts, apart from a certain inflammatory biliousness in his pen. In ordinary times he would have been one of the world’s very small men, going to and coming from his appointed task, somewhere in Picardy. Do not let us condemn him in that he called himself Caius Gracchus; it was in accordance with the custom of the time. Less pardonable was his assumption of the title of ‘Tribune of the People’; for to such an office or dignity no man may nominate himself. Let it be remembered that he was dreadfully in earnest. Nor let us be too censorious over his censorious rebukings of the actors at Amiens, at whose hands he was condemned ‘à voir des Marquis et d’autres gens de cette espèce.’ ‘Moi republicain, moi homme libre, moi ami de l’égalité’ could hardly be expected to sit in the pit unprotestingly under such an outrage.4 He was a sans-culotte, and took himself seriously. Moreover, taking himself seriously, he was at times rather inclined to think well of himself, though this may have been but the workings of the inferiority complex. One feels most kindly towards Babeuf when reading his intimate letters, through which there glows such a love of wife and children as would have won the approval of Robert Burns in his more official moments. His letters written from prison in the last days almost achieve real pathos, and might have succeeded in doing so had he been able to prune somewhat the sproutings of his egotism. But even on the night before his execution, a man should not comfort his wife by foretelling the satisfaction she will feel when men say of her husband: ‘Il fut parfaitement vertueux.’ 1

Nevertheless, when all has been said in demonstration of the inherent insignificance and commonplaceness of Babeuf, he remains vastly more interesting than many who have been more generously endowed. He represents one end of a tradition, if traditions ever do end without being immediately reborn. It is instructive, even if it be not edifying, to witness the platonic dialogues of Mably debouching in the rather fatuous decrees of La République des Egaux, conceived but never born. Babeuf is also of interest because his wild rage of destruction, his willingness to smash the universe if frustrated, is, in its intensity, something new, and for anything similar we have to await the Russian nihilists. The significance of Babeuf then is that he represents the nodal point at which the academic egalitarianism of Mably becomes transformed into the ungovernable destructiveness of left-wing anarchism.

There is another respect in which Babeuf, if certainly not unique, is at least an example of a moderately rare phenomenon. He speaks somewhere rather slightingly of Rousseau as a dreamer, the suggestion being that Rousseau was a dealer in words who did nothing. It is true that revolutionary writers have not always been revolutionaries, nor even conspirators. Even Marx beyond the age of thirty may perhaps be described as a dreamer in this sense, sowing revolutionary seed, but to the ordinary eye a mere bourgeois, living on the fringes of debt and of Hampstead. Lenin is perhaps the great example of the theoretical revolutionary carrying his theories into practice. It is a far cry from the Russian Revolution to the Conspiration des Egaux; but, to put it no higher, Babeuf would have liked to resemble Lenin.

(e) FICHTE

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) has incontestable claims to admission to a history of socialism, though there may be some doubts as to the precise chapter to which he should be shepherded. In some respects he has kinship with later German developments, in so far as German thought has always shown a marked tendency in favour of a strong State and a strict authoritarian régime. On the other hand, he is essentially of the eighteenth century, and perhaps therefore he may be included here among writers who on the whole represent late eighteenth-century impulses. Fichte may not unfairly be described as a Utopian, in the sense that the book with which we are here concerned (Der geschlossne Handelsstaat) is calculated to elicit the snorts of the practically minded; he is a philosopher; being of the eighteenth century, he moves within the framework of the idea of a Social Contract—not indeed of one contract, but of a whole plethora of contracts, which are held together and guaranteed by the State. Even of the exiguous contents of the Geschlossne Handelsstaat there is much that may here be left aside. What concerns us is his view of the functions of the State; of the relation of the State to its members, and of the members of the State to each other. The purpose of the State, in rounded language, is said to be to give to each what is his; to confirm each in his possession, and thereafter to protect him therein.1 It is the State alone which has power to turn an indeterminate crowd into a ‘closed whole’; through it alone a right to property can be established. The distribution of functions (if one may borrow a later phrase) rests on a contract of all with all, and the underlying assumption on which the contract is based is that all should have approximately an equal share of the pleasures and amenities of life: they must alle ungefähr gleich angenehm leben können.2

Who, it may be asked, are the parties to this contract or contracts? We have, it may be, come to swallow the idea of a Social Contract, as presented by Hobbes, Locke or Rousseau, without too much protest against the absurdity of the whole business—perhaps because most of us encounter these contracts at an early and unquestioning stage of our initiation into political wisdom. Elsewhere, fictitious and notional contracts reek of artificiality, and tend to provoke expressions of impatient incredulity—nowhere more so than in the case of Fichte. His contract is in the first place between the Produzenten and the Künstler, the producers of the original materials and the artificers—and ultimately as there are all manner of artificers, the number of contracts is proportionately multiplied. The substance of the contract, in very simplified language, is that each shall do his job, and stick to his job, and not interfere with the other man’s job, and inevitably, of course, that each shall ebenso angenehm leben können as the others. To these presently come the merchants, the Kaufleute, with further proliferation of contracts, and obviously it is also essential that the Kaufmann should ebenso angenehm leben könne as the original producer and the artificer. The basis of all these imaginary contracts is that all should be able to enjoy an equally agreeable life.1

It is time to introduce the State into this orgy of contracts; for in one sense the function of the State is to assure the observance of all the contracts which have thus been made.2 The fact that the argument is phrased with reference to contracts which were never made and never could have been made is immaterial: what clearly emerges is a State with devastatingly extensive powers. In the first place, it must determine the number of those to be admitted to each calling, and must never allow any excess over the number deemed necessary. And in this task it must see to the provision of essentials before allowing for luxuries. There must be enough for all, before there are superfluities for some.3 The State must have an absolute power to refuse anyone the right to exercise a calling. Also there must be proof of capacity; every candidate must satisfy the Kunstverständige, the knowers-of-the-job. The number of merchants is likewise fixed, and they are under an obligation to buy or sell on demand, like the Bank of England in the matter of gold under the Act of 1925.4 The whole of production is to be carefully planned on the basis of requirements; and control of the machine is facilitated by the fact that merchants are guaranteed their customers and their sources of supply. There are to be bestimmte Verkäufer and bestimmte Abkäufer—registered customers, in the language of a war-tried generation.5

The State must also fix prices which indeed are to be unalterable for all time. Into Fichte’s theory of value it is unnecessary to enter. It is not a promising avenue to take as the measure of the relative value of things, the time we can live on them respectively.6 His theory of value is mixed up with his theory of money, which, even on points of detail, is suggestive of Knapp, without the inconvenience of Knapp’s barbarous language.1 The State must have its own money, which must be no one else’s money, and as the State can do what it likes in these matters, prices may be fixed without any variableness or shadow of turning.2

One last point may be noted in this regimented world. As is indicated by the title of his essay, Der Geschlossne Handelsstaat, Fichte aims at creating a self-contained world. No one is to be allowed to engage in foreign trade. If there must be foreign trade (and the possibility is not wholly excluded), then it should be regarded—like the making of war, of treaties and alliances—as something to be done by the State alone. Any arrangement whereby the citizen of one State is allowed to have direct dealings with the citizens of another State must in fact view them both as citizens of one State.3 The thought is not very gracefully expressed, but the implication is clear. Economic intercourse can take place only between citizens of the same state, and indeed it implies common citizenship. The frontiers within which intercourse may take place should therefore be adjusted accordingly. It is, from a different angle, akin to the physiocratic idea, that the merchant is a danger because he belongs to two countries. If goods are required from abroad—and in fact the need of imports can be cut down to the vanishing point—then the State and the State alone should do it on the basis of barter: rather pathetically, Fichte contemplates such arrangements (when necessary) as enduring to eternity, zu ewige Zeiten4

Fichte does not usually figure with any prominence in histories of socialism—and perhaps rightly so. The network of contracts on which he bases his view of society may be ignored as eighteenth-century convention, quite becoming in a son of the eighteenth century; much (with all respect to a great philosophical name) may be regarded as somewhat foolishly impracticable; he may be criticised for his vagueness (if such a word may be applied to a complete silence) on the important question of the machinery through which the State will discharge its high tasks. But on two points at least, he is extremely instructive for our purposes and reveals insight denied even to some of our own day.

In the first place, Fichte’s idea is that of a State of unlimited competence whose primary purpose is to guarantee to all the requirements of a reasonable life. But he does not delude himself, as some of our own generation do, into the belief that a State can provide for everyone on these lines, and yet leave everyone free to do as he likes. The price of a guaranteed security lies in a sacrifice of freedom. In Fichte’s vision, the citizen, if he does not become the slave of the State, at least lives subject to the constant direction and redirection of a National Service Officer. It is by Gesetz und Zwang alone—by law and compulsion—that the State may discharge its obligations.1 In the concluding paragraphs, Fichte realises that the opposition to his visionary proposals will come from those who incessantly call aloud for freedom, free trade, freedom from supervision by the police, freedom from order and morality. To these people, he adds contemptuously, anything aiming at regularity and a firmly established uniform march of events, appears as an infringement of their natural freedom.2 To authoritarians of all classes, liberalism has always been the arch-enemy. Socialism of the type outlined by Fichte is, on his own analysis, incompatible with freedom.

The other point of interest in Fichte is in the central conception of the ‘closed State,’ the enactment that none shall engage in foreign trade. This may be, and perhaps is, foolish, especially with some of Fichte’s refinements; but at least it may be urged that it is at worst a foolish answer to a real difficulty, and this is always more stimulative to the advance of truth than a failure to realise that a difficulty exists, Foreign trade is for Fichte an upsetting element in the national balance sheet: it represents the roots of instability. A State cannot guarantee the undisturbed continuance of a foreign market; if, with its encouragement, its citizens embark in enterprises which may suddenly come to an end, how can it then, in the day of adversity, discharge its primary duty towards its citizens? The question of foreign trade has long been a stumbling-block in socialist speculation. For the present day, Fichte’s difficulty may be put more pointedly. We are told, by an increasing multiplicity of voices, that ‘outside planning there can be no salvation. But, in effect, says Fichte, forerunner of planners,3 no one may plan who does not have under his control all the elements that enter into the plan. In this sense, foreign trade is most emphatically not subject to control. If our national plan assumes the export of so much coal to Poland and Italy, or the export of so much salted cod to South America, and so on indefinitely, and if these countries should’ suddenly decide otherwise, what then becomes of the plan? In substance, Fichte’s contention was that only a self-contained unit can ‘plan’; and in this sense he was abundantly right.