Property Is Theft!
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Each of its members, moreover, has the right to examine the books and documents of the Company whenever he may choose to do so.
The Council of Oversight may delegate three of its members for a year, who shall be particularly charged with examining as often as possible, the books, the cash, and all the transactions of the administration.
Compensation for loss of time may be granted to the delegates, of which the amount shall be determined by the General Assembly.
[…]
THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Article 74. The General Assembly shall be composed of one thousand delegates at most, named by the whole body of members and supporters;
Article 75. The election of delegates shall be made by industrial classes, and proportionally to the number of members and supporters in each class.
The bulletin of the Bank will announce before the elections the number of delegates to be named by each profession and locality.
Article 76. The Annual Meeting of the General Assembly shall take place regularly in the first month of each year.
[…]
The General Assembly, composed as above described, represents the whole body of shareholders and supporters.
[…]
Article 78. Decisions shall be made by a majority of votes of members present, whatever their number.
Article 79. In addition to the Annual General Assembly, there may be special General Assemblies, summoned either by the management, or by the Council of Oversight.
[…]
Article 81. The objects of the General Assembly shall be:1. To receive the accounts and reports of the management, and to approve them if possible, after having heard the advice of the Council of Oversight;
2. To amend, if necessary, the by-laws, upon the motion of the Manager or of his delegates, all constitutional powers for that purpose being granted to him;
3. To deliberate upon all questions submitted to it, nevertheless without interfering with the management;
4. To decide upon any increase in the capital, and to order the issue of additional shares in connection therewith;
5. To order the recall of the Manager, upon the motion of the Council of Oversight;
6. To appoint another Manager if necessary;
7. To appoint the members of the Council of Oversight and to provide every year for replacing them;
8. To determine the rate of discount for the coming year;
9. To point out the general needs of the Company, and the means of satisfying them.
[...]
REPORT OF THE LUXEMBOURG DELEGATE AND WORKERS’ CORPORATION COMMISSION
TO SET THIS presentation in order, we will start by dealing with the mechanism of those various institutions by supposing their complete and definitive organisation; then we will present the various modifications intended to harmonise the institutions with the current special organisation from the start so that they operate in a practical way.
Each of the two parts of this presentation will therefore be divided into three distinct chapters:• The Bank of the People;
• The Syndicate of Production;
• The Syndicate of Consumption.
Let us begin with an overview of all of these establishments.
All of you know that any bank is nothing other than a mechanism of circulation. Therefore, the three institutions above can be summarised with three words:• Circulation;
• Production;
• Consumption.
That is, these are all of the social functions anticipated within their three economic aspects.
In fact, production and consumption may be considered the two poles of the social organisation that circulation is intended to balance, and from that perspective, circulation becomes the crucial cog.
We will begin this presentation with the Bank of the People, which is the circulation organisation.
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
The Bank of the People
As you know, citizens, first under the name of the Exchange Bank and then of the Bank of the People, citizen Proudhon has tried to constitute an institution of circulation that can be for the People what the Bank of France is for the bankers.
Our friend’s proposed goal has been to steal away the masses of workers from capital’s exploitation. Therefore, he has had to try to lower capital’s interest so that it only represents the indispensable fees for Bank of the People administration, that is, compensation to its employees for their labour, plus the cost of the risks inherent in any operation of that type, risks such as the prime rate decreasing due to the increased number of Bank members. Once those conditions are met, credit becomes free.
[…]
The bank’s internal organisation
The main establishment of the bank will be in Paris. In each neighbourhood, it will have a counter, and in each commune it will have a correspondent bank. Its internal organisation in both Paris and the department is based on the three principles:1. Election;
2. The division and independence of employees;
3. The individual responsibility of each employee.
CHAPTER II
Overview of Contemplated Syndicates of Production or Consumption
Among the members of the commission responsible for developing the Bank of the People project is citizen Jules Lechevalier, a mutual friend, whom you all know, and whose great deal of work as a socialist has earned him a justly deserved position. We are indebted to him for the idea of establishing the two unions that we are going to discuss with you; the development of the organisation, as will be presented to you in the follow-up to this work, is under his special direction.
Just as Proudhon had organised circulation in his bank project, Jules Lechevalier asked himself if, to complete that work, it was essential for him to create two major controls by organising production, on the one hand, and consumption, on the other, so that the production and distribution of products could function as economically as possible and the social transformation would be facilitated by the gradual elimination of parasitic functions in production and consumption, just as the Bank of the People operates in relation to circulation.
In the name of those unions, he first designed two large corporations responsible for centralising production and consumption operations so that all the various retail operations, which came to the Bank of the People as the major circulation agent, had to first go through one of those two corporations, which, independent from the bank, also provided it with guarantees inherent to business itself, the bank coming from the community of those same businesses represented as a body by both of those large corporations, which vouch for all operations they send to the bank; furthermore, the relationships between those two corporations had to go through the Bank of the People, which was for them, as for all the business they centralised, the major and sole circulation element.
First, we have to present to you the fundamental idea on which a large part of the development work we must begin will operate.
Up until now, various economists have only understood two things as capital:1. Raw materials appropriated for use;
2. Accumulated labour, represented by those same materials implemented.
But with regard to the human race, the great creator of all wealth: although those who exploited labour considered it as income, they did not consider the accumulated individual talent, which was the source of that income, as capital. However, in the land of slaves where the race of humans is so truly appropriated that it is designated as real property, humans are considered as capital on which all circulation operations, known as bank operations, take place as they do with properties (movable and immovable), which constitute what we in Europe call capital.
Therefore, let’s examine if humans under the conditions of freedom lose the very thing that pertains to them, their virtue of being capital, that is, they will be able to conduct operations on themselves to their own benefit, operations that, in the state of slavery, the master conducted on them to t
heir detriment.
The only objection that could be made is that humans in a state of slavery are a constant source of labour because that labour is forced, but in the state of freedom, with the ability to voluntarily cease to produce, they do not present the same degree of solvency as they do in the first state.
How specious that objection is, and the facts victoriously answer it: on the soil of the United States, the least encumbered soil of all civilisations, slavery is disappearing overnight due to the competition of free labour.
If we now compare humans considered from this new perspective with the dead material believed until now to be the only capital, we find that humans have the double property of being able to value and strengthen themselves in an even more effective manner through mutual life insurance.
Therefore, an average partnership of approximately 500 francs each, or 18 billion for all the French people together, will then be completely guaranteed by the living capital on which that partnership will have been made because all of the workers, by only taking as a base the effective creation of wealth in the current regime of atomisation, represent a capital of between 169 tand259 billion if we consider France’s revenue to be between 8.5 and 12 billion.
Let’s now move on to a specific examination of each of these institutions.
General syndicate of production
This syndicate’s active membership will be comprised of proper delegates from the various production branches. Its responsibilities will be:1. To create the free and democratic corporation as the absolute and definitive system for all workers, regardless of their present social condition: already organised in associations, still belonging to the employers or working in isolation from each other; it must also give rise to the organisation of associations.
2. To put the workers in a position of liquidity, that is, to make themselves and their work tools available.
Workers’ advances depend on these bases:1. Each producer’s prior availability;
2. Workers’ reciprocal financing for means of production;
3. Reciprocal financing of food supplies for workshops and labour;
4. Centralisation of manufacturers’ relations on all products;
5. Control of products;
6. Co-operation in the distribution of labour and therefore of unemployment among the various workshops with the goal of improving the balance between production and consumption;
7. Co-operation in the liquidation of obsolete industries in favour of new ones;
8. Provision of the general costs of industrial development and compensation for industrial displacements due to the use of new processes;
9. Reimbursement of inventors;
10. Solicitation of inventions and improvements;
11. Establishment of a common fund for reciprocal compensation to be awarded to various industries;
12. Establishment of mutual insurance of all the corporations against all disaster subject to valuation;
13. Negotiation and guarantee of each special corporation’s loans visà-vis the Bank of the People, it being agreed that the only coverage will be the fair valuation of the worker’s life in capital and current circulation on the labour force’s obligations;
14. Organisation of apprenticeship, so that:1. Children can always find a place to pursue their vocations;
2. There is no glut of workers in a corporation;
3. Apprentices, through reimbursement agreements their parents contract for them, can receive the necessary credit for food when their work does not cover its expense;
4. All corporations that need apprentices can have them at will.
15. Determination of each corporation’s relationship with the general union with regard to its sharing of expenses for apprentices connected with the corporation and the means for reimbursing those expenses;
16. Determination of benefit conditions and mutual services in case of illness, accident or disability; the union provides for these by means of its reserve fund and a contribution from all the workers to the general fund. It will negotiate the conditions under which it shall interact with all corporations with regard to union members;
17. Organisation of a central pension fund, the deposits into which will be produced through the corporations’ contributions; this central fund in concert or in participation with the corporations will contribute to the workers’ pensions;
18. Search for a method of meshing work to avoid inherent unemployment in certain industries and the counterbalancing of the fatal influence that the extended division of work produces on workers.
CHAPTER III
General Syndicate of Consumption and Its Responsibilities
The Syndicate of Consumption is responsible for storing raw materials and manufactured products, as well as for ensuring flow.
It will credit workers with raw materials and make all advances on manufactured product consignments.
Therefore, it will provide raw materials to all industries from seeds to precious metals and ensure a regular supply. It will provide for all preparations, productions and services necessary for the needs of life.
Product distribution service
The Syndicate of Consumption will be a general supply and commission business.
In that regard, it will have combined buildings constructed from a perspective of safety, economy and the distribution of forces for all social needs and services.
It will have bakeries, butcher shops, fruit shops, grocery stores, etc. established—in short, establishments in all branches of industry involved in people’s direct consumption.
It will store all raw materials and receive them on consignment.
There will be general warehousing for all raw materials with limited consumption and special warehousing for those with significant consumption.
It will open credits and reach agreements with the Syndicate of Production and various corporations for supplies connected with various production workshops.
It will make advances to the Syndicate of Production on manufactured products deposited with it or consigned for sale.
In all centres, it will directly organise raw material warehouses and merchandise bazaars or initiate relations with already existing local establishments of that nature.
Concurrently with the Syndicate of Production, it will exert its control on product quality and prices.
It will deliver products and raw materials to the best market in return for circulating bonds and cash.
To connect the syndicates in a more unified manner with the Bank of the People, a division will be formed within the bank under the title of central bureau of supply and demand to receive all offers and requests and forward them to the proper syndicates so as to prevent procedural problems on the part of the public, which need not be familiar with the organisations’ internal details, such as going to one of the syndicates for operations that are the domain of another syndicate. As we have seen above, this would be especially likely because the industries concerned with manufacturing products appropriate for personal use are under the aegis of the Syndicate of Consumption even though they are production work.
[…]
In 1789, despotism had its fortress; it was the Bastille. In one of its days of sublime rage, the People razed it to the ground, and on its site, that evening, one could read the inscription, so beautiful in its simplicity: Here is where we danced.
In 1849, financial feudalism has its fortress: it is the Bank of France. A clever engineer has come to tell us that this fortress, which all thought impregnable, is not so. Let us have courage, then, and the temple of usury, no longer seeing the product of our sweat flow into its coffers, deserted by its priests, will collapse, taking the old world with it.
CONFESSIONS OF A REVOLUTIONARY
TO SERVE AS A HISTORY OF THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION
October 1849
Translation by James Bar Bowen (Chapters III and XXI), Martin Walker
(Chapters VI and XVIII), Ian Harvey (Chapter X), and P
aul Sharkey
(Chapter XVII)
CHAPTER III
NATURE AND GOAL OF GOVERNMENT
HOLY SCRIPTURE SAYS THAT DIVISION INTO FACTIONS OR PARTIES IS INEVITABLE, oportet enim hœreses esse!489 “How terrible is this concept of the ‘inevitable’!” exclaimed Bossuet in a profound moment of clarity, without actually daring to seek out a reason for this inevitability.
A small amount of reflection soon shows us the principle and the significance of the division into parties: but more important is to understand their means and their ends.
All men are equal and free: society, by nature and design, is thus autonomous and, in other words, ungovernable. The sphere of activity of each citizen being determined by the natural division of labour and by the choice that he makes as to the work he will do, the said functions combine in such a way as to produce a harmonious effect, order resulting from the free actions of everyone: there is no need for government. Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and a tyrant: I declare him my enemy.
However, the physiology of society does not immediately conform to this egalitarian organisation: the idea of Providence, one of the first to appear in society, rejects it. Equality among us comes through a succession of tyrannies and governments under which Liberty continually battles with absolutism, as Israël with Jehovah. Equality is therefore repeatedly born out of inequality; Liberty takes government as its point of departure.
When the first men gathered at the edge of the forests in order to found society, they did not say (like shareholders in a limited partnership): “Let us organise our rights and our responsibilities so as to produce for each and every person the greatest amount of well-being, thus bringing into existence both equality and independence.” Such reasoning was beyond the capabilities of the first men, and contradicts what scholars have been able to discover. Indeed, theirs was a completely different concept: “Let us constitute among ourselves an authority to watch over and govern us!” Constituamos super nos regem! And that was exactly what was meant by our compatriots when they gave their votes to Louis Bonaparte on 10th December 1848. The voice of the people is the voice of power, with the expectation that it will become the voice of Liberty. Additionally, all authority is divine right: omnis potestas a deo, as St. Paul said.490