第88章

But what do I say? organize! The whole organic work of M.Blanc consists in this great act of expropriation, or substitution, if you prefer: industry once displaced and republicanized and the great monopoly established, M.

Blanc does not doubt that production will go on exactly as one would wish;

he does not conceive it possible that any one can raise even a single difficulty in the way of what he calls his system.And, in fact, what objection can be offered to a conception so radically null, so intangible as that of M.Blanc? The most curious part of his book is in the select collection which he has made of objections proposed by certain incredulous persons, which he answers, as may be imagined, triumphantly.These critics had not seen that, in discussing M.Blanc's system, they were arguing about the dimensions, weight, and form of a mathematical point.Now, as it has happened, the controversy maintained by M.Blanc has taught him more than his own meditations had done; and one can see that, if the objections had continued, he would have ended by discovering what he thought he had invented, --

the organization of labor.

But, in fine, has the aim, however narrow, which M.Blanc pursued, --

namely, the abolition of competition and the guarantee of success to an enterprise patronized and backed by the State, -- been attained? On this subject I will quote the reflections of a talented economist, M.Joseph Garnier, to whose words I will permit myself to add a few comments.

The government, according to M.Blanc, would choose moral workmen, and would give them good wages.

So M.Blanc must have men made expressly for him: he does not flatter himself that he can act on any sort of temperaments.As for wages, M.Blanc promises that they shall be good; that is easier than to define their measure.

M.Blanc admits by his hypothesis that these workshops would yield a net product, and, further, would compete so successfully with private industry that the latter would change into national workshops.

How could that be, if the cost of the national workshops is higher than that of the free workshops? I have shown in the third chapter that three hundred workmen in a mill do not produce for their employer, among them all, a regular net income of twenty thousand francs, and that these twenty thousand francs, distributed among the three hundred laborers, would add but eighteen centimes a day to their income.Now, this is true of all industries.

How will the national workshop, which owes its workmen good wages, make up this deficit? By emulation, says M.Blanc.

M.Blanc points with extreme complacency to the Leclaire establishment, a society of house-painters doing a very successful business, which he regards as a living demonstration of his system.M.Blanc might have added to this example a multitude of similar societies, which would prove quite as much as the Leclaire establishment, -- that is, no more.The Leclaire establishment is a collective monopoly, supported by the great society which envelops it.Now, the question is whether entire society can become a monopoly, in M.Blanc's sense and patterned after the Leclaire establishment:

I deny it positively.But a fact touching more closely the question before us, and which M.Blanc has not taken into consideration, is that it follows from the distribution accounts furnished by the Leclaire establishment that, the wages paid being much above the general average, the first thing to do in a reorganization of society would be to start up competition with the Leclaire establishment, either among its own workmen or outside.

Wages would be regulated by the government.The members of the social workshop would dispose of them as they liked, and the indisputable excellence of life in common would not be long in causing association in labor to give birth to voluntary association in pleasure.

Is M.Blanc a communist, yes or no? Let him declare himself once for all, instead of holding off; and if communism does not make him more intelligible, we shall at least know what he wants.

In reading the supplement in which M.Blanc has seen fit to combat the objections which some journals have raised, we see more clearly the incompleteness of his conception, daughter of at least three fathers, -- Saint- Simonism, Fourierism, and communism, -- with the aid of politics and a little, a very little, political economy.

According to his explanations, the State would be only the regulator, legislator, protector of industry, not the universal manufacturer or producer.

But as he exclusively protects the social workshops to destroy private industry, he necessarily brings up in monopoly and falls back into the Saint-Simonian theory in spite of himself, at least so far as production is concerned.

M.Blanc cannot deny it: his system is directed against private industry;