As legislator, as burgomaster, and as judge, the prince has set himself up as a representative of divine authority.A defender of the poor, the widow, and the orphan, he has promised to cause liberty and equality to prevail around the throne, to come to the aid of labor, and to listen to the voice of the people.And the people have thrown themselves lovingly into the arms of power; and, when experience has made them feel that power was against them, instead of blaming the institution, they have fallen to accusing the prince, ever unwilling to understand that, the prince being by nature and destination the chief of non-producers and greatest of monopolists, it was impossible for him, in spite of himself, to take up the cause of the people.
All criticism, whether of the form or the acts of government, ends in this essential contradiction.And when the self-styled theorists of the sovereignty of the people pretend that the remedy for the tyranny of power consists in causing it to emanate from popular suffrage, they simply turn, like the squirrel, in their cage.For, from the moment that the essential conditions of power -- that is, authority, property, hierarchy -- are preserved, the suffrage of the people is nothing but the consent of the people to their oppression, -- which is the silliest charlatanism.
In the system of authority, whatever its origin, monarchical or democratic, power is the noble organ of society; by it society lives and moves; all initiative emanates from it; order and perfection are wholly its work.
According to the definitions of economic science, on the contrary, -- definitions which harmonize with the reality of things, -- power is the series of non-
producers which social organization must tend to indefinitely reduce.How, then, with the principle of authority so dear to democrats, shall the aspiration of political economy, an aspiration which is also that of the people, be realized? How shall the government, which by the hypothesis is everything, become an obedient servant, a subordinate organ? Why should the prince have received power simply to weaken it, and why should he labor, with a view to order, for his own elimination? Why should he not try rather to fortify himself, to add to his courtiers, to continually obtain new subsidies, and finally to free himself from dependence on the people, the inevitable goal of all power originating in the people?
It is said that the people, naming its legislators and through them making its will known to power, will always be in a position to arrest its invasions; that thus the people will fill at once the role of prince and that of sovereign.Such, in a word, is the utopia of democrats, the eternal mystification with which they abuse the proletariat.
But will the people make laws against power; against the principle of authority and hierarchy, which is the principle upon which society is based;
against liberty and property? According to our hypothesis, this is more than impossible, it is contradictory.Then property, monopoly, competition, industrial privileges, the inequality of fortunes, the preponderance of capital, hierarchical and crushing centralization, administrative oppression, legal absolutism, will be preserved; and, as it is impossible for a government not to act in the direction of its principle, capital will remain as before the god of society, and the people, still exploited, still degraded, will have gained by their attempt at sovereignty only a demonstration of their powerlessness.
In vain do the partisans of power, all those dynastico-republican doctrinaires who are alike in everything but tactics, flatter themselves that, once in control of affairs, they will inaugurate reform everywhere.Reform what?
Reform the constitution? It is impossible.Though the entire nation should enter the constitutional convention, it would not leave it until it had either voted its servitude under another form, or decreed its dissolution.
Reconstruct the code, the work of the emperor, the pure substance of Roman law and custom? It is impossible.What have you to put in the place of your proprietary routine, outside of which you see and understand nothing?
in the place of your laws of monopoly, the limits of whose circle your imagination is powerless to overstep? More than half a century ago royalty and democracy, those two sibyls which the ancient world has bequeathed to us, undertook, by a constitutional compromise, to harmonize their oracles;
since the wisdom of the prince has placed itself in unison with the voice of the people, what revelation has resulted? what principle of order has been discovered? what issue from the labyrinth of privilege pointed out?
Before prince and people had signed this strange compromise, in what were their ideas not similar? and now that each is trying to break the contract, in what do they differ?
Diminish public burdens, assess taxes on a more equitable basis? It is impossible: to the treasury as to the army the man of the people will always furnish more than his contingent.
Regulate monopoly, bridle competition? It is impossible; you would kill production.
Open new markets? It is impossible.(8*)
Organize credit? It is impossible.(9*)
Attack heredity? It is impossible.(10*)
Create national workshops, assure a minimum to unemployed workmen, and assign to employees a share of the profits? It is impossible.It is in the nature of government to be able to deal with labor only to enchain laborers, as it deals with products only to levy its tithe.
Repair, by a system of indemnities, the disastrous effects of machinery?
It is impossible.
Combat by regulations the degrading influence of parcellaire division?
It is impossible.
Cause the people to enjoy the benefits of education? It is impossible.
Establish a tariff of prices and wages, and fix the value of things by sovereign authority? It is impossible, it is impossible.
