【英文读物】Essays on Political Economy.docx

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1、【英文读物】Essays on Political EconomyCapital and Interest. My object in this treatise is to examine into the real nature of the Interest of Capital, for the purpose of proving that it is lawful, and explaining why it should be perpetual. This may appear singular, and yet, I confess, I am more afraid of

2、being too plain than too obscure. I am afraid I may weary the reader by a series of mere truisms. But it is no easy matter to avoid this danger, when the facts with which we have to deal are known to every one by personal, familiar, and daily experience. But, then, you will say, What is the use of t

3、his treatise? Why explain what everybody knows? But, although this problem appears at first sight so very simple, there is more in it than you might suppose. I shall endeavour to prove this by an example. Mondor lends an instrument of labour to-day, which will be entirely destroyed in a week, yet th

4、e capital will not produce the less interest to Mondor or his heirs, through all eternity. Reader, can you honestly say that you understand the reason of this? It would be a waste of time to seek any satisfactory explanation from the writings of economists. They have not thrown much light upon the r

5、easons of the existence of interest. For this they are not to be blamed; for at the time they wrote, its lawfulness was not called in question. Now, however, times are altered; the case is different. Men, who consider themselves to be in advance of their age, have organised an active crusade against

6、 capital and interest; it is the productiveness of capital which they are attacking; not certain abuses in the administration of it, but the principle itself. A journal has been established to serve as a vehicle for this crusade. It is conducted by M. Proudhon, and has, it is said, an immense circul

7、ation. The first number of this periodical contains the electoral manifesto of the people. Here we read, The productiveness of capital, which is condemned by Christianity under the name of usury, is the true cause of misery, the true principle of destitution, the eternal obstacle to the establishmen

8、t of the Republic. Another journal, La Ruche Populaire, after having said some excellent things on labour, adds, But, above all, labour ought to be free; that is, it ought to be organised in such a manner, that money-lenders and patrons, or masters, should not be paid for this liberty of labour, thi

9、s right of labour, which is raised to so high a price by the traffickers of men. The only thought that I notice here, is that expressed by the words in italics, which imply a denial of the right to interest. The remainder of the article explains it. It is thus that the democratic Socialist, Thor exp

10、resses himself:- The revolution will always have to be recommenced, so long as we occupy ourselves with consequences only, without having the logic or the courage to attack the principle itself. This principle is capital, false property, interest, and usury, which by the old rgime, is made to weigh

11、upon labour. Ever since the aristocrats invented the incredible fiction, that capital possesses the power of reproducing itself, the workers have been at the mercy of the idle. At the end of a year, will you find an additional crown in a bag of one hundred shillings? At the end of fourteen years, wi

12、ll your shillings have doubled in your bag? Will a work of industry or of skill produce another, at the end of fourteen years? Let us begin, then, by demolishing this fatal fiction. I have quoted the above, merely for the sake of establishing the fact, that many persons consider the productiveness o

13、f capital a false, a fatal, and an iniquitous principle. But quotations are superfluous; it is well known that the people attribute their sufferings to what they call the trafficking in man by man. In fact, the phrase, tyranny of capital, has become proverbial. I believe there is not a man in the wo

14、rld, who is aware of the whole importance of this question:- Is the interest of capital natural, just, and lawful, and as useful to the payer as to the receiver? You answer, No; I answer, Yes. Then we differ entirely; but it is of the utmost importance to discover which of us is in the right, otherw

15、ise we shall incur the danger of making a false solution of the question, a matter of opinion. If the error is on my side, however, the evil would not be so great. It must be inferred that I know nothing about the true interests of the masses, or the march of human progress; and that all my argument

16、s are but as so many grains of sand, by which the car of the revolution will certainly not be arrested. But if, on the contrary, MM. Proudhon and Thor are deceiving themselves, it follows that they are leading the people astray-that they are showing them the evil where it does not exist; and thus gi

17、ving a false direction to their ideas, to their antipathies, to their dislikes, and to their attacks. It follows that the misguided people are rushing into a horrible and absurd struggle, in which victory would be more fatal than defeat; since, according to this supposition, the result would be the

18、realisation of universal evils, the destruction of every means of emancipation, the consummation of its own misery. This is just what M. Proudhon has acknowledged, with perfect good faith. The foundation stone, he told me, of my system is the gratuitousness of credit. If I am mistaken in this, Socia

19、lism is a vain dream. I add, it is a dream, in which the people are tearing themselves to pieces. Will it, therefore, be a cause for surprise, if, when they awake, they find themselves mangled and bleeding? Such a danger as this is enough to justify me fully, if, in the course of the discussion, I a

20、llow myself to be led into some trivialities and some prolixity.Capital and Interest. I address this treatise to the workmen of Paris, more especially to those who have enrolled themselves under the banner of Socialist democracy. I proceed to consider these two questions:- 1st. Is it consistent with

21、 the nature of things, and with justice, that capital should produce interest? 2nd. Is it consistent with the nature of things, and with justice, that the interest of capital should be perpetual? The working men of Paris will certainly acknowledge that a more important subject could not be discussed

22、. Since the world began, it has been allowed, at least in part, that capital ought to produce interest. But latterly it has been affirmed, that herein lies the very social error which is the cause of pauperism and inequality. It is, therefore, very essential to know now on what ground we stand. For

23、if levying interest from capital is a sin, the workers have a right to revolt against social order, as it exists. It is in vain to tell them that they ought to have recourse to legal and pacific means: it would be a hypocritical recommendation. When on the one side there is a strong man, poor, and a

24、 victim of robbery-on the other, a weak man, but rich, and a robber-it is singular enough that we should say to the former, with a hope of persuading him, Wait till your oppressor voluntarily renounces oppression, or till it shall cease of itself. This cannot be; and those who tell us that capital i

25、s by nature unproductive, ought to know that they are provoking a terrible and immediate struggle. If, on the contrary, the interest of capital is natural, lawful, consistent with the general good, as favourable to the borrower as to the lender, the economists who deny it, the tribunes who traffic i

26、n this pretended social wound, are leading the workmen into a senseless and unjust struggle, which can have no other issue than the misfortune of all. In fact, they are arming labour against capital. So much the better, if these two powers are really antagonistic; and may the struggle soon be ended!

27、 But, if they are in harmony, the struggle is the greatest evil which can be inflicted on society. You see, then, workmen, that there is not a more important question than this:-Is the interest of capital lawful or not? In the former case, you must immediately renounce the struggle to which you are

28、being urged; in the second, you must carry it on bravely, and to the end. Productiveness of capital-perpetuity of interest. These are difficult questions. I must endeavour to make myself clear. And for that purpose I shall have recourse to example rather than to demonstration; or rather, I shall pla

29、ce the demonstration in the example. I begin by acknowledging that, at first sight, it may appear strange that capital should pretend to a remuneration, and above all, to a perpetual remuneration. You will say, Here are two men. One of them works from morning till night, from one years end to anothe

30、r; and if he consumes all which he has gained, even by superior energy, he remains poor. When Christmas comes he is no forwarder than he was at the beginning of the year, and has no other prospect but to begin again. The other man does nothing, either with his hands or his head; or at least, if he m

31、akes use of them at all, it is only for his own pleasure; it is allowable for him to do nothing, for he has an income. He does not work, yet he lives well; he has everything in abundance; delicate dishes, sumptuous furniture, elegant equipages; nay, he even consumes, daily, things which the workers

32、have been obliged to produce by the sweat of their brow, for these things do not make themselves; and, as far as he is concerned, he has had no hand in their production. It is the workmen who have caused this corn to grow, polished this furniture, woven these carpets; it is our wives and daughters w

33、ho have spun, cut out, sewed, and embroidered these stuffs. We work, then, for him and for ourselves; for him first, and then for ourselves, if there is anything left. But here is something more striking still. If the former of these two men, the worker, consumes within the year any profit which may

34、 have been left him in that year, he is always at the point from which he started, and his destiny condemns him to move incessantly in a perpetual circle, and a monotony of exertion. Labour, then, is rewarded only once. But if the other, the gentleman, consumes his yearly income in the year, he has,

35、 the year after, in those which follow, and through all eternity, an income always equal, inexhaustible, perpetual. Capital, then, is remunerated, not only once or twice, but an indefinite number of times! So that, at the end of a hundred years, a family which has placed 20,000 francs,1 at five per

36、cent., will have had 100,000 francs; and this will not prevent it from having 100,000 more, in the following century. In other words, for 20,000 francs, which represent its labour, it will have levied, in two centuries, a tenfold value on the labour of others. In this social arrangement, is there no

37、t a monstrous evil to be reformed? And this is not all. If it should please this family to curtail its enjoyments a little-to spend, for example, only 900 francs, instead of 1,000-it may, without any labour, without any other trouble beyond that of investing 100 francs a year, increase its capital a

38、nd its income in such rapid progression, that it will soon be in a position to consume as much as a hundred families of industrious workmen. Does not all this go to prove that society itself has in its bosom a hideous cancer, which ought to be eradicated at the risk of some temporary suffering? Thes

39、e are, it appears to me, the sad and irritating reflections which must be excited in your minds by the active and superficial crusade which is being carried on against capital and interest. On the other hand, there are moments in which, I am convinced, doubts are awakened in your minds, and scruples

40、 in your conscience. You say to yourselves sometimes, But to assert that capital ought not to produce interest, is to say that he who has created instruments of labour, or materials, or provisions of any kind, ought to yield them up without compensation. Is that just? And then, if it is so, who woul

41、d lend these instruments, these materials, these provisions? who would take care of them? who even would create them? Every one would consume his proportion, and the human race would never advance a step. Capital would be no longer formed, since there would be no interest in forming it. It would bec

42、ome exceedingly scarce. A singular step towards gratuitous loans! A singular means of improving the condition of borrowers, to make it impossible for them to borrow at any price! What would become of labour itself? for there will be no money advanced, and not one single kind of labour can be mention

43、ed, not even the chase, which can be pursued without money in hand. And, as for ourselves, what would become of us? What! we are not to be allowed to borrow, in order to work in the prime of life, nor to lend, that we may enjoy repose in its decline? The law will rob us of the prospect of laying by

44、a little property, because it will prevent us from gaining any advantage from it. It will deprive us of all stimulus to save at the present time, and of all hope of repose for the future. It is useless to exhaust ourselves with fatigue: we must abandon the idea of leaving our sons and daughters a li

45、ttle property, since modern science renders it useless, for we should become traffickers in men if we were to lend it on interest. Alas! the world which these persons would open before us, as an imaginary good, is still more dreary and desolate than that which they condemn, for hope, at any rate, is

46、 not banished from the latter. Thus, in all respects, and in every point of view, the question is a serious one. Let us hasten to arrive at a solution. Our civil code has a chapter entitled, On the manner of transmitting property. I do not think it gives a very complete nomenclature on this point. W

47、hen a man by his labour has made some useful thing-in other words, when he has created a value-it can only pass into the hands of another by one of the following modes-as a gift, by the right of inheritance, by exchange, loan, or theft. One word upon each of these, except the last, although it plays

48、 a greater part in the world than we may think. A gift needs no definition. It is essentially voluntary and spontaneous. It depends exclusively upon the giver, and the receiver cannot be said to have any right to it. Without a doubt, morality and religion make it a duty for men, especially the rich,

49、 to deprive themselves voluntarily of that which they possess, in favour of their less fortunate brethren. But this is an entirely moral obligation. If it were to be asserted on principle, admitted in practice, or sanctioned by law, that every man has a right to the property of another, the gift would have no merit-charity and gratitude would be no longer virtues. Besides, such a doctrine would suddenly and universally arrest la