I have pushed the hypothesis as far as it could go in order to show, on the one hand, the end to which humanity is tending, and, on the other, the difficulties which it must overcome in order to attain it.Surely the providential order is that progress should be effected, in so far as machinery is concerned, in the way that I have just spoken of: but what embarrasses society's march and makes it go from Charybdis to Scylla is precisely the fact that it is not organized.We have reached as yet only the second phase of its evolution, and already we have met upon our road two chasms which seem insuperable, -- division of labor and machinery.How save the parcellaire workman, if he is a man of intelligence, from degradation, or, if he is degraded already, lift him to intellectual life? How, in the second place, give birth among laborers to that solidarity of interest without which industrial progress counts its steps by its catastrophes, when these same laborers are radically divided by labor, wages, intelligence, and liberty, -- that is, by egoism? How, in short, reconcile what the progress already accomplished has had the effect of rendering irreconcilable? To appeal to communism and fraternity would be to anticipate dates: there is nothing in common, there can exist no fraternity, between such creatures as the division of labor and the service of machinery have made.It is not in that direction -- at least for the present -- that we must seek a solution.
Well! it will be said, since the evil lies still more in the minds than in the system, let us come back to instruction, let us labor for the education of the people.
In order that instruction may be useful, in order that it may even be received, it is necessary, first of all, that the pupil should be free, just as, before planting a piece of ground, we clear it of thorns and dog-grass.
Moreover, the best system of education, even so far as philosophy and morality are concerned, would be that of professional education: once more, how reconcile such education with parcellaire division and the service of machinery?
How shall the man who, by the effect of his labor, has become a slave, -- that is, a chattel, a thing, -- again become a person by the same labor, or in continuing the same exercise? Why is it not seen that these ideas are mutually repellent, and that, if, by some impossibility, the proletaire could reach a certain degree of intelligence, he would make use of it in the first place to revolutionize society and change all civil and industrial relations? And what I say is no vain exaggeration.The working class, in Paris and the large cities, is vastly superior in point of ideas to what it was twenty-five years ago; now, let them tell me if this class is not decidedly, energetically revolutionary! And it will become more and more so in proportion as it shall acquire the ideas of justice and order, in proportion especially as it shall reach an understanding of the mechanism of property.
Language, -- I ask permission to recur once more to etymology, -- language seems to me to have clearly expressed the moral condition of the laborer, after he has been, if I may so speak, depersonalized by industry.In the Latin the idea of servitude implies that of subordination of man to things;
and when later feudal law declared the serf attached to the glebe, it only periphrased the literal meaning of the word servus.(1*) Spontaneous reason, oracle of fate itself, had therefore condemned the subaltern workman, before science had established his debasement.Such being the case, what can the efforts of philanthropy do for beings whom Providence has rejected?
Labor is the education of our liberty.The ancients had a profound perception of this truth when they distinguished the servile arts from the liberal arts.For, like profession, like ideas; like ideas, like morals.Everything in slavery takes on the character of degradation, -- habits, tastes, inclinations, sentiments, pleasures: it involves universal subversion.Occupy one's self with the education of the poor! But that would create the most cruel antagonism in these degenerate souls; that would inspire them with ideas which labor would render intolerable to them, affections incompatible with the brutishness of their condition, pleasures of which the perception is dulled in them.
If such a project could succeed, instead of making a man of the laborer, it would make a demon of him.Just study those faces which people the prisons and the galleys, and tell me if most of them do not belong to subjects whom the revelation of the beautiful, of elegance, of wealth, of comfort, of honor, and of science, of all that makes the dignity of man, has found too weak, and so has demoralized and killed.
At least wages should be fixed, say the less audacious; schedules of rates should be prepared in all industries, to be accepted by employers and workmen.
This hypothesis of salvation is cited by M.Fix.And he answers victoriously:
Such schedules have been made in England and elsewhere; their value is known; everywhere they have been violated as soon as accepted, both by employers and by workmen.
The causes of the violation of the schedules are easy to fathom: they are to be found in machinery, in the incessant processes and combinations of industry.A schedule is agreed upon at a given moment: but suddenly there comes a new invention which gives its author the power to lower the price of merchandise.What will the other employers do? They will cease to manufacture and will discharge their workmen, or else they will propose to them a reduction.It is the only course open to them, pending a discovery by them in turn of some process by means of which, without lowering the rate of wages, they will be able to produce more cheaply than their competitors:
which will be equivalent again to a suppression of workmen.
M.Léon Faucher seems inclined to favor a system of indemnity.
He says:
