“Property in land is inalienable or alienable by mutation; it is transmitted from father to son. As regards new buildings demanded by the multiplication of the population, it is carried out at state expense, which cedes them to owners in return for an annual repayment equal to the rate of interest, so as to reconstitute the capital expended in 20 years. The payment can be made in full, if the buyer possesses sufficient cash savings to make the disbursement in its entirety, but the State does not cede his claim until he has established that he does not already own another plot; that would be contrary to the objective of the law, which, setting a limit to property in land, attempts to inhibit the extension of capital no matter what form it might take.
“The concentration of capital becomes a source of poverty for generations to come. Those who acquire it only return a portion of it to circulation. Those who convert it into immovable property enjoy a personal income of which the commonweal does not share. It follows that the agglomeration of cash or immovable property in a few hands gradually depletes the social body, which languishes alongside a latent wealth that it cannot reach. That is what one sees today in England: either fortune or poverty, both to an excessive degree; no middle way.
“Fortune beyond our needs is unjust and immoral. The superfluity is built on the necessity of the have-nots. It falls to those who do the least work, by means of those who do the most—I’m speaking here about modern society.
“Our descendants, in order to obviate this inconvenience, have devised a system of compensation that I shall explain shortly, with regard to direct taxation.
“Capital is continually displaced, passing from hand to hand by virtue of transactions. That displacement is the source of public fortune, but in the incessant comings and goings it sometimes remains, in large measure, with those whose prestige is sufficiently powerful to retain it. Money attracts money.
“The balance of compensations is the only remedy that can be applied to maintain equilibrium, but that remedy, handled with care, ought not to aim at the capital itself, but on its results.
“To return to property in land, every citizen being an owner, since it is inalienable, repairs are made at the expense of individuals, if their quota of direct contributions testifies to their income, at state expense in the opposite circumstance. Direct contributions, in order to establish their quota, are also based on the statistics of each citizen’s affairs.
“A Special Commission, emanating from the Ministry of Finance, is responsible for that verification; it works with the account books, which it compels and compares. That census takes place every year.
“Idleness is, therefore, severely proscribed. Everyone works for a living, People work according to their tastes, but they work, and the State, as I said before when talking about the family, assigns everyone a supplier from which he cannot depart without an important reason assessed and judged by the tribunal. In that way, everyone is sheltered from poverty. Mutual aid operates within a fixed and secure framework.
“Life, freed from material preoccupations of success is, in consequence, peaceful, happy and regulated. There is nothing to be desired.
“Everyone is at approximately the same level. So much the better for people who, by virtue of a surplus of intelligence or labor, are able to gain further ease; they have earned it; they owe it to themselves. They profit by it; that is fair; but their children, if they do not have the intelligence to save a part of the interest after their death, will fall in accordance with the prescription within 30 years.
“The concentration of capital in the hands of the State, by virtue of the system of public debt, does not deprive anyone, but nevertheless serves the general interest.
“The State no longer acquires capital by way of loans under the entitlement of obligation; it acquires it by way of property, under the entitlement of law. That which, before 1959, was a measure of prosperity, would be a monstrosity in 3878. Other times, other mores. Laws follow the current of customs, and the thread that binds them always has as its point of origin the society that provokes them.
“That moral transformation has not taken place without effort, without conflict, without revolutions. It could only be imposed after a series of painful but decisive battles. Gradually, the public debt has been amortized, as I said before, with the produce of taxes and railway receipts. Immediately thereafter, however, the State, overturning the legislation, took possession of half the capital by levying a tax of 50% on its income. It was only long afterwards that the Minister of Finance replaced that 50% tax by the income bond expiring after 30 years.
“There were murmurs, there were debates, there were battles, but the victory has remained with the reformers. The further democracy goes, the more ground it gains. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, vain words today, will one day be a reality.
“Direct taxation has acquired a greater extension as it has also been imposed on businesses on the bass of the figures collected by the Finance Commission.
“As in our day, direct contributions voted by parliament are shared out by general councils between the taxpayers, but property in land being almost equally divided, by virtue of the law that paralyzes its development within a certain limit, the tax quota is established primarily in proportion to the incomes specified in business accounts. A Commission of Enquiry verifies it every year, and calculates the tax due based on its calculation of conversion.
“That quota, up to a minimum, permits taxpayers only pay a relative price for enterprises owned by the state, such as railways, steamships and telegraphs—in sum, everything constituting circulation and transport.
“Direct contributions therefore have two principal branches: property taxes, which the State estimates fairly before collection, and commercial taxes, which are subject to variations in business and almost reenter the domain of indirect contributions, since they do not fall upon the taxpayer immediately.
“Property taxes always produce the same result because the property, however parceled out it might be, whether it belongs to one or several individuals, is subject to the same tax as a whole. That tax is divided by the general councils into as many parts as there are private properties; it is only a question of fractions.
“The indirect contributions that, in our day, are such a great help to a government in distress after a ruinous war, by virtue of the enormous duties that they levy on raw materials, only attack objects of secondary necessity or superfluity, such as playing cards, tobacco, coffee, chocolate and tea. Flour, pepper, salt, sugar, wine and other alcoholic beverages—everything, in a word, that enters into everyday human consumption, is exempt from import duties.
“In our day, wars, competition between parties and social revolutions are such a drain on State finances that we have been reduced to demanding from people more than they can give, and the derisory liberty that is mirrored in the imagination consists of striking the poor with the same taxes as the rich. The former pay as dearly as the latter, and thus pay more dearly.
“Thus, a cask of wine bought for 85 francs outside the walls pays, for the right of entry, 30 centimes a liter, and even if the wine is only worth 20 centimes a liter, the cask must nevertheless pay 30 centimes a liter. The duty is not based on quality but on quantity. So the rich, who can afford a cask of fine wine worth 70 francs a liter, only pay 30 centimes a liter. For the duty to be fair, it would be necessary for it to be in accord with the quality of the material on which it is imposed, or that it should not exist at all.
According to that erroneous calculation, the rich drink wine at a relatively cheaper price than the poor, and the fruit of the labor of poor increases the government’s reserve to the sole end of constructing so-called public monuments, to which their mediocre resources do not allow them access. Everything for the rich, nothing for the poor—and yet, everything by means of the poor.
“But let us to return to the society of 2000 years hence.
“The first reform that it brought in was the alleviation of indirect taxation. In fa
ct, indirect taxation paralyze commerce and industry by opposing exaggerated taxes to their development: a poor speculation because, slowing down labor itself infallibly weaken the most obvious State revenues.
“Then again, indirect taxation, not being addressed in the same way as direct taxation, weighs indiscriminately upon on the poor and the rich, whereas direct contributions are assessed according to exact calculations of effective property.
“The true secret of finances is not to direct them at the social body; it is, on the contrary, to establish a proportion between incomes, to equilibrate the means of existence by a system of compensation. Only direct contributions furnish that system of compensation, because they alone are targeted as to where they fall, by contrast with indirect contributions.
“There are complaints about the demands of the people; there is astonishment with regard to their murmurs; their rebellions are punished. Let us tackle the evil at its birth; let us begin by not rendering material life impossible for the poor by bleeding them dry while the rich might give without sacrifice; or, let us augment their salaries in proportion.
“Indirect taxation is, however, indispensable to some degree in a constitutional State. There are petty taxes that can reduce the needs of the government without hindering the poor classes. The constitution that I am analyzing has not excluded them entirely, and the greatest benefits it obtains from them come from the customs duties levied on items of secondary necessity; but it makes no differentiation in taxation between imports and exports, because, when exchange is not equally weighed, when importation is not in proportion to exportation, a quantity of money flows out of a country unequal to that which flows in. It is necessary, in order to equilibrate a country’s finances, that the revenue brought in by exports should be equal to that which leaves by way of imports. Free trade is the only way to obtain that solution.”
Chapter VIII
AGRICULTURE, INDUSTRY
AND COMMERCE
Agriculture—Agricultural Associations
“The foremost of all the goods that the Creator has given to humans in bringing them out of nothingness is the earth.
“The earth is the primary source that supplies the needs of human beings. It offers to bring within reach cereals, fruits and vegetables for their nourishment, water to quench their thirst, wood to shelter them and warm limbs numbed by cold, and the foliage of those woodlands to protect them against the ardor of the sun.
“In addition, the Creator has populated the world with an infinity of animal species, some of which furnish them with wool for them to weave and make clothes, others hides in order that they might make shoes, and nearly all of them flesh, to fortify them with solid nourishment and complete the excessively light diet of bread, vegetables and fruits.
“Thus, in the earliest times, the soil was sufficient for essential human needs; their intelligence had not yet invented the marvels that are the preoccupations of their entire existence. They only had to reach down in order to gather, and only had to gather in order to live.
“As they multiplied, however, humans founded cities. Their intelligence, activated by emulation, devised refinements. They abandoned the simple and facile life of the fields for the hazardous and stressful life of cities.
“Since that day, the indispensable has been neglected: the indispensable, which ought to have been the object of our assiduous concerns, because rural life fortifies the body whereas urban life weakens it, and also because the natural richness of the soil does not yield all of its treasures for want of arms to exploit them. Commerce and industry take possession of the laborers; it has been forgotten that it is the land that encloses in its bosom the raw materials that are the bases of industry.
“Before studying the means of utilizing them, ought one not seek to multiplying them, to purify them and to perfect them?
“Humans, animals and vegetables are perpetuated by procreation. Who knows whether minerals do not harbor a spark of vitality within them that is hidden from the investigations of science?
“How is it that, independently of volcanic eruptions, the nature of terrains varies with the centuries? If the formation of minerals is not produced by procreation—as I believe—then it is the result of the combination of chemical elements that encounter one another in the bowels of the Earth.
“Thus, after having observes the nature of the soil in different epochs, and the phenomena that have signaled each modification, humans ought to apply themselves to provoking the formation of metals artificially and preparing ground with a view to that production, aiding nature in its work.
“Soil becomes weary and exhausted when it is not alimented. As a woman in the pains of childbirth requires a charitable hand to abridge her pain by facilitating the birth, the earth requires humans to employ their arms to fecundate the seeds enclosed in its entrails. Left to itself, it is true, it will produce, because it encloses the elements of generation within it, but that neglected production does not take long to become paltry and unhealthy, until it declines completely. On the other hand, fertilize it, water it and care for it, and it will respond to your efforts. The more you cultivate it, the more it will profit.
“It is an error to think that the soil is a capital inferior to other placements. Today, it only yields 2 or 2½%, because the cities absorb three-quarters of the workforce, but it can produce more. It is all a matter of fertilization.
“The earth is so forsaken that, if one brought it back to agriculture it would require to less than ten years for it to be able to compete with commerce and industry. In a word, it would be necessary to return it to health. After ten years of hard labor and assiduous care, however, it is evident that it would yield 5, perhaps 6%.
“The Egyptians, in the remotest antiquity, recognized the importance of agriculture more than we do; it was the basis of their political economy. It is worth adding that they possessed a powerful agent of fertilization that we do not have: the Nile. The regular flooding of that river contributed greatly to fortify in an astonishing manner the country over which it poured the overflow of its waters.
“In our day, Rumania, southern Russia and China draw the major part of their income from agriculture. The greatest fortunes of these countries are in land, and their owners know full well how to make it bring in 4½ or even 5%. That certainly does not match the yield of commercial interests, but it is higher than that of industrial or financial shares, whose dividends dazzle to begin with but often leave nothing in hand but a piece of paper, good for nothing but lighting the fire. The earth is a real capital, visible and palpable, represented by itself and not by an illusion.
“But enough talk of times past and present; let us occupy ourselves with the world of 2000 years hence.”
Here the savant collected himself for a few minutes—the time to cross 20 centuries.
“Why!” he cried. “Fourier was not as utopian as he was thought to be during his lifetime, and even after his death; the future has proved his theories right. His plan for agricultural associations has been realized.
“In attributing the invention of the association to Fourier I am robbing another author of his legitimate due. Fourier was only the activating nerve. It was Plato who first set out the plan in his treatise on The Republic, in which he brought out the advantages of the commonalty of goods and the division of labor according to individual aptitudes. But the theory strayed a little further alone the path of fantasy. Having ingeniously analyzed the division of labor and entered into the smallest details of the association, he concluded with the commonalty of women and children. This is what he said: ‘I propose that the wives of our warriors should be common to all, that none of them live specifically with any one of them, that the children should be communal, and that the latter should not know their parents, nor the parents their children.’33
“The virtuous Socrates must have addressed one of those reprimands to Plato of which he possessed the secret when he read that scheme for paternity in society.34 In making women a
capital, at the mercy of an indeterminate social reckoning, he ignored the therapeutics which demonstrate that, in that kind of association, every member of society destroys the work of his colleague. Thus, in wanting to lodge his ideal Republic too securely, he risked undermining its foundations. No children, no Republic.”
Monsieur Landet smiled. “But I’m straying from my subject,” he said. “You might say me what Racine wrote in the Plaideurs: ‘Advocate, get to the Deluge.’
“The association has thus become the basis of agricultural exploitation. It is now a matter of going back to its establishment and explaining its institutions. I shall take one of these societies as an example.
“Starting from the principles that a collection of specialties forms a complete whole; that one obtains better results on a large scale than a small one; and that participation in benefits is a stimulant to the activity of labor; a few individuals organized themselves into a regular society to which each of them made an initial subscription. The partners were based in a productive commune, and the society members were shareholders in their work. With their capital, the society bought adjacent lands, in a region that as neither too dry nor too damp, surrounded by other lands that it reserved the right to acquire later, with funds deposited annually in a savings bank.
“Then they built comfortable, well-ventilated and spacious accommodations for the society members and their families as well as their livestock and equipment. Finally, they proceeded, by election, to the choice of the members appointed to run the nascent colony. These members, supported by an administrative council, were nominated for as many years as it pleased the society to assign to their term, but the latter retained the power to reelect them, or dismiss them in the case of poor administration.
“As soon as the society was organized according to the statutes elaborated by the administrative council and ratified by the general assembly of society members, the colony began to function. It divided up the labor, according to each person’s specialty, in such a way that the combined specialties fit together to form a perfect whole. Everyone was given work appropriate to their aptitudes, whether for agricultural labor or for service within the colony.
The World in 2000 Years Page 18
