by Tony Moilin
Below the Secretary of the Republic are the Ministers, appointed by him and each responsible for a major public service.
These Ministers, nine in number, are:
The Minister of the Interior, who appoints the commissioners of the départements and the mayors of the communes, commands the public force and answers for the maintenance of order.
The Minister of Finance, who oversees taxation, directs the National Bank, collects the State’s receipts and pays all its expenses.
The Minister of Public Education, who is responsible for schools, libraries, scientific and literary societies, the Academy and so on.
The Minister of Justice, who appoints judges and makes sure that they fulfill their duties efficiently.
The Minister of Public Works, whose department is responsible for the houses and monuments belonging to the State, for letting them, repairing them and constructing new ones.
The Minister of Transport, whose responsibilities include roads, canals and railways as well as the transportation of goods, passengers, letters and telegraphic dispatches.
The Minister of Marine, who presides over the construction of ships and maritime navigation.
The Minister of Industry, who directs the metallurgical establishments and various factories belonging to the State.
The Minister of Commerce, who has the employees of retail and wholesale stores under his orders, and is responsible for the purchase and sake of merchandise.
Finally, there is one other ministry, the Secretariat, which has no minister of its own but is under the direct control of the Secretary of the Republic, whose responsibilities are rather complicated; it promulgates the laws, maintains relations with foreign powers, distributed national rewards and presides over all the ceremonies of the socialist religion.
3. Public Force
The executive Authority of the Republic does not have at its disposal any permanent army, national or mobile guard. The only public force it possesses consists of a few gendarmes and police agents responsible for maintaining order and supervising the execution of the law.
That radical suppression of permanent armies, and hence of all civil or foreign wars, is not the least benefit that the Socialists have rendered to humankind. That was one of their first reforms, and it is curious to relate how they went about establishing permanent peace between peoples and putting an end to the ruinous armaments that were exhausting the finances of all States.
As soon as the Socialist Government was solidly established, it proposed a general disarmament to all the neighboring Powers. To that effect, it selected the men most highly recommended by their knowledge and eloquence, and dispatched them as ambassadors to the various sovereigns.
The latter could not have given a better welcome to the Republic’s envoys; they listened very attentively to their harangues regarding the horrors of war and the benefits of peace, and never failed to applaud the finest passages warmly. Then they replied that all the sentiments of fraternity expressed by the ambassadors were worthy of praise, but that they were totally impractical; to their great regret, and in order to safeguard the honor and security of their people, they were therefore obliged to keep their permanent armies and to undertake a small war every now and again in order to permit their officers to win promotion.
The French envoys returned disappointed, but the Government did not lose hope of convincing the foreign princes and clearly demonstrating to them the advantages of peace.
The new diplomats chosen for the second mission were neither very knowledgeable nor very eloquent. The majority of them expressed themselves quite incorrectly—some did not even know how to read—but their number, there being twelve hundred thousand of them, substituted perfectly for their lack of education. Clad simply in red trousers and gray coats, with knapsacks on their backs, equipped with advanced weapons, they went to pay visits to neighboring kings, singing the verses of the Marseillaise to amuse themselves.
For their part, the sovereigns of Europe came to an understanding between themselves, and in order to receive us worthily, they also chose a large number of ambassadors similar to ours, except that their uniforms were different. The two diplomatic processions met in the middle of a vast plain, and, without further ceremony, they immediately made contact and set about exchanging explanations.
First, the French envoys began by presenting a series of preliminary notes consisting of cannonballs and rifle-bullets—notes that immediately convinced and reduced to silence all those who took cognizance of them. The foreign kings, however, observed that these arguments were already very old, obsolete, and told them nothing knew about the inconvenience of pitched battles.
Our ambassadors agreed, in fact, that that kind of reasoning was quite old and that much better ones had recently been discovered. To provide proof of that, they immediately dispatched a considerable number of protocols consisting of explosive shells and bullets. These protocols were no longer addressed to isolated individuals but to entire companies, from which they removed any desire ever to deliver themselves to any combat.
The allied Princes got a good taste of the spirit and detail of these protocols and began to admit that war was a horrible thing and that peace was greatly preferable. They still retained numerous doubts, however. The French took responsibility for dissipating every last one of those doubts with irresistible ultimatums. These were rockets loaded with potassium picrate—rockets that enveloped an entire regiment in a furnace of flaming gases and reduced all the soldiers to little pieces of charcoal.8
When they had witnessed the sending of these ultimatums, which were carefully repeated several times over, the allied kings were gripped with a profound horror of war and an inexpressible enthusiasm for the mildness of peace. They immediately declared that ideas of universal fraternity were the most practical in the world. Not only did they immediately renounce the maintenance of permanent armies, but, resigning voluntarily from their sovereignty, they established Republican Government in their own countries, and in order to set a personal example of the solidarity of peoples, they went to live abroad as simple individuals.
On their departure, they only made one reproach to the French—that they had not sent the second embassy, whose arguments had been so successful, first.
“There,” they said, pointing to the envoys in red trousers, “are practical and eloquent orators, who know how to make what they have to say understood, and we like them a thousand times better than your first ambassadors, who talked for hours on end, and proved absolutely nothing.”
4. Taxes
In the Social Republic of the year 2000, the returns of taxation are considerable, reaching approximates ten billion francs. That figure is not at all exorbitant, however, if one considers the number and the extent of the public services maintained by the State and the multitude of its employees.
In fact, in Socialist society, save for Agriculture and light industry, left to individual initiative, it is the Government that does absolutely everything. It provides Education, distributed Credit, constructs houses, railways, roads, canals, charters ships and controls Commerce. Now, it is easy to comprehend that to do all that requires a great deal of money, and that ten billion is really not excessive. In any case, in spite of the magnitude of the figure, taxation seems light to individuals because it is always equitably distributed and never falls upon the necessary, but is addressed solely to the superfluous.
The Social Republic’s taxes are not every numerous, but are very productive. They are:
Firstly, income tax, as we have already mentioned. It is proportional to annual income so long as that does not exceed twelve thousand francs, but above that figure it becomes total and takes into the public Treasury everything in excess of the legal maximum.
Many manufacturers, far from limiting their business when they have earned an income of twelve thousand francs, make it even more extensive and have the honor of making large profits in order to remit them to the State. That conduct is not as disinter
ested as it appears, because it wins them a great deal of consideration and influence, and makes them important people. Moreover, the Government can express its gratitude to these voluntary tax-collectors; it often honors them with national rewards and willingly appoints them to much sought-after positions as experts attached to tribunals.
On the other hand, the social position of citizens, the value of their retirement pensions and the aid given to them by the State are based on the income that they declare themselves to have. Everyone, by virtue of self-esteem, and also of self-interest, therefore exaggerates his wealth rather than minimizing it, and a considerable number of people pay more to the State than they need to, with the sole objective of passing themselves off as being richer than they really are.
All these causes, in combination, ensure that the income tax is extremely productive and one of the Treasury’s best resources.
In any case, if manufacturers were tempted to understate the figure of their annual income, the Government would perceive it immediately, for, buying everything from and selling everything to individuals, it knows everyone’s annual expenditure to the nearest centime. That sort of verification is not applicable, however, to physicians and other professionals who do not sell anything to the State, and deal directly with the public. In order to calculate the exact income of those citizens, the Administration takes charge of collecting all fees on their behalf. Far from complaining, physicians are strongly in favor of that measure, only too glad to receive their fees without having any need to occupy themselves with questions of money, so repugnant to a liberal mind.
Secondly, the tax on Credit. We have already seen that the National Bank lends to all manufacturers who are in need, so long as they can offer guarantees of reimbursement. Although the interest on the sums advanced is minimal and not at all usurious, it produces a considerable annual profit, which covers all the expenses of administration and contributes about two billion to the State coffers.
Thirdly, sales taxes. All the Republic’s commerce beings in the hands of the Government, the profits that result therefrom belong to the State and serve to pay for public expenditure.
The profits made on the sale of merchandise are very variable and depend on the nature of the objects sold. Thus, it is almost zero on all goods of primary necessity, such as common foodstuffs, basic clothing, ordinary wines, cheap furniture, salt, fuel, soap, lighting, etc. It is the same for all the principal raw materials employed by Industry: metals, wood, marble, chemical products, etc., as well as machinery, agricultural implements, books, newspapers, etc.
By contrast, the profits realized on sales are quite considerable for all luxury items and those purchased without any necessity, such as tobacco, strong liquors, fine wines, luxurious furniture, fine fabrics, fashionable and whimsical articles, etc. On all these objects, the Government seeks, without any scruple, to make as much money as possible and to raise prices to the limit at which they will produce the largest benefits without harming consumption. And no one can complain about that measure in buying any item that is unnecessary or nearly so, having the money to do so and being, in consequence, able to pay the tax without inconvenience.
Fourthly, the tax on rents. As previously stated, the Sate owns all the houses in cities and rents them to the citizens. Now these rents, solely by virtue of the competition of individuals, produce handsome annual returns. These, in any case, serve in large measure either for the construction of new houses or for the decoration of those that already exist, and other public services obtain little benefit from that source of revenue.
Fifthly, land tax. This very moderate tax is calculated in the following manner. It is proportional to the extent of the land possessed by each agriculturalist, without taking any account of whether the yield of the land is good or poor, whether it is covered with buildings or left to lie fallow.
This action has been taken with the aim of favoring the progress of Agriculture. The peasant, paying as much for a poor patch of land as for a good one, for terrain that is built on or not, is keenly interest in improving his yields and constructing the necessary buildings. Instead of competing to determine who owns the largest domains, agriculturalists compete in the efficiency of their cultivation. When they own heath-lands or marsh-lands they clear them or drain them, or sell them to someone else who will take responsibility for those operations. If they sometimes give up uncultivated land in order not to pay the tax on it, the State immediately takes possession of it and makes use of it by planting trees.
Another tax has also been established in order to prevent the extreme subdivision of heritages. It is a tax that is collected very time a field is divided and an adjustment to the land-register is requested, although a similar adjustment costs nothing when several parcels of land are combined. In order not to pay that registry tax, families have abandoned their old habit of dividing up inherited land in such a way that some fields are no longer more than a couple of furrows wide, to the great detriment of their crops.
Such are the taxes that exist in the Social Republic. The Administration has often been asked to create new resources with the aid of taxes on windows and doors, on the stamping of official documents and newspapers, on public Education, on imports and exports, on the transport of letters, merchandise and passengers, etc., but the Government has always refused, those sources of revenue seeming to be injurious to the prosperity of the country. If it needs to balance its budget, it prefers to increase one of the five existing taxes slightly rather than establishing a sixth.
5. The Law
Civil Law.
All Socialist institutions have the objective of obtaining justice between citizens and this preventing protests and lawsuits. It follows that complaints to the courts are very rare in France in the year 2000, and if they have not disappeared completely, it is because there are people who want make a case regardless of merit, who and require to be judged and punished.
Thanks to the small number and scant importance of lawsuits, the judiciary system of the Republic is very simple. It has dispensed entirely with bailiffs, clerks, solicitors, advocates, notaries and the flood of stamped documents that they inscribed. Preliminary Tribunals, Courts of Appeal and Courts of Cassation have similarly been abolished, and that entire costly legal apparatus has been easily replaced by simple Justices of the Peace sitting in every district.
These Justices of the Peace, assisted solely by a secretary, examine and settle all disputes between inhabitants, and do it without files, wads of papers, contradictory speeches and other unnecessary formalities, which have never rendered a judgment more equitable and were only instituted in the interests of lawyers. When a judge needs information about specialized matters, he appoints experts, who make a report and give the court the required elements of appreciation.
When an issue is of sufficient magnitude, and the loser believes that he is in the right, it might be necessary for the initial judgment to be revised by a second justice of the peace known as an appellant. These further judges, of consummate experience and irreproachable integrity, only sit in large cities. They examine the cases submitted to their jurisdiction with the greatest care and render definitive decisions.
When the loser thinks that the law is obscure or that it has been misapplied, however, he can make a further appeal, but only with regard to the interpretation of the law and not the facts of the case. That further appeal take place before the legislative body, perfectly competent in that matter since it makes all the laws of the land and knows better than anyone else the veritable meaning of texts found to be obscure.
Criminal law.
Free and obligatory education, which has dissipated ignorance, the organization of labor, which has suppressed poverty, and the laws regarding marriage and inheritance, which have banished domestic hatreds, have all greatly reduced the number of contraventions and crimes. Even in the Republic of the year 2000, however, some are committed, and this is how they are judged and punished.
Those who are gui
lty of assaults inflicting trivial injuries, insults, and calumnious imputations against individuals or Government employees, contraventions of regulations and other similar actions are brought before a so-called police magistrate.
The latter, aided by his secretary, examines the affair, hears witnesses, and then renders a reasoned verdict in public. The penalties he applies are only of two kinds: fines and the deprivation of civil rights. Imprisonment has been abandoned, which, as well as costing the State dearly, prevents the sentenced individual from working and thus harms he prosperity of the nation. As for the deprivation of civil rights, it is applied very frequently. That punishment, although entirely moral, is greatly feared by citizens, who are anxious to conserve their right to vote and, in consequence, do not take the risk of having it withdrawn. In any case, the deprivation of civil rights is usually only pronounced for the duration of a year, except in cases of recidivism, when the court is more severe.
Crimes and misdemeanors—fraud, theft, perjury, serious assault, attempted murder, murder, rape, poisoning, etc.—are tried in the Court of Assizes.
Once, under the old regime, these various crimes were quite common. They were almost all committed by a category of individuals, always the same, who were at war with society and spent half their lives in prison and the other half meriting their return thereto. Far from reforming the guilty, penitentiaries and prisons only rendered them more audacious and more skillful; they were veritable schools of crime—schools that were also very costly to the Administration. The death penalty was available against major criminals, but juries found it repellent and it was rarely requested—and, in addition, every execution was even more costly than imprisonment.
The Socialist Government, at its inception, did not hesitate for an instant in changing the punishments applied to crimes. It abolished imprisonment, forced labor and the death penalty, and replaced them with a single punishment: deportation for life to Algeria or Guyana, according to the seriousness of the crime.
