Like those gloomy invalids who are always talking of their approaching death, and who faint when the doctor's opinion confirms their pretence, our materialistic society is agitated and loses countenance while listening to this startling decree of the philosopher, "Thou shalt die!" Honor then to M.Leroux, who has revealed to us the cowardice of the Epicureans; to M.Leroux, who renders new philosophical solutions necessary! Honor to the anti-eclectic, to the apostle of equality!
In his work on "Humanity," M.Leroux commences by positing the necessity of property: "You wish to abolish property; but do you not see that thereby you would annihilate man and even the name of man?...You wish to abolish property; but could you live without a body? I will not tell you that it is necessary to support this body;...I will tell you that this body is itself a species of property."In order clearly to understand the doctrine of M.Leroux, it must be borne in mind that there are three necessary and primitive forms of society,--communism, property, and that which to-day we properly call association.M.Leroux rejects in the first place communism, and combats it with all his might.Man is a personal and free being, and therefore needs a sphere of independence and individual activity.M.Leroux emphasizes this in adding: "You wish neither family, nor country, nor property; therefore no more fathers, no more sons, no more brothers.Here you are, related to no being in time, and therefore without a name; here you are, alone in the midst of a billion of men who to-day inhabit the earth.How do you expect me to distinguish you in space in the midst of this multitude?"If man is indistinguishable, he is nothing.Now, he can be distinguished, individualized, only through a devotion of certain things to his use,--such as his body, his faculties, and the tools which he uses."Hence," says M.Leroux, "the necessity of appropriation;" in short, property.
But property on what condition? Here M.Leroux, after having condemned communism, denounces in its turn the right of domain.
His whole doctrine can be summed up in this single proposition,--_Man may be made by property a slave or a despot by turns_.
That posited, if we ask M.Leroux to tell us under what system of property man will be neither a slave nor a despot, but free, just, and a citizen, M.Leroux replies in the third volume of his work on "Humanity:"--"There are three ways of destroying man's communion with his fellows and with the universe:...1.By separating man in time; 2.by separating him in space; 3.by dividing the land, or, in general terms, the instruments of production; by attaching men to things, by subordinating man to property, by making man a proprietor."This language, it must be confessed, savors a little too strongly of the metaphysical heights which the author frequents, and of the school of M.Cousin.Nevertheless, it can be seen, clearly enough it seems to me, that M.Leroux opposes the exclusive appropriation of the instruments of production; only he calls this non-appropriation of the instruments of production a NEWMETHOD of establishing property, while I, in accordance with all precedent, call it a destruction of property.In fact, without the appropriation of instruments, property is nothing.
"Hitherto.we have confined ourselves to pointing out and combating the despotic features of property, by considering property alone.We have failed to see that the despotism of property is a correlative of the division of the human race;...that property, instead of being organized in such a way as to facilitate the unlimited communion of man with his fellows and with the universe, has been, on the contrary, turned against this communion."Let us translate this into commercial phraseology.In order to destroy despotism and the inequality of conditions, men must cease from competition and must associate their interests.Let employer and employed (now enemies and rivals) become associates.
Now, ask any manufacturer, merchant, or capitalist, whether he would consider himself a proprietor if he were to share his revenue and profits with this mass of wage-laborers whom it is proposed to make his associates.
"Family, property, and country are finite things, which ought to be organized with a view to the infinite.For man is a finite being, who aspires to the infinite.To him, absolute finiteness is evil.The infinite is his aim, the indefinite his right."Few of my readers would understand these hierophantic words, were I to leave them unexplained.M.Leroux means, by this magnificent formula, that humanity is a single immense society, which, in its collective unity, represents the infinite; that every nation, every tribe, every commune, and every citizen are, in different degrees, fragments or finite members of the infinite society, the evil in which results solely from individualism and privilege,--in other words, from the subordination of the infinite to the finite; finally, that, to attain humanity's end and aim, each part has a right to an indefinitely progressive development.
"All the evils which afflict the human race arise from caste.
The family is a blessing; the family caste (the nobility) is an evil.Country is a blessing; the country caste (supreme, domineering, conquering) is an evil; property (individual possession) is a blessing; the property caste (the domain of property of Pothier, Toullier, Troplong, &c.) is an evil."Thus, according to M.Leroux, there is property and property,--the one good, the other bad.Now, as it is proper to call different things by different names, if we keep the name "property" for the former, we must call the latter robbery, rapine, brigandage.If, on the contrary, we reserve the name "property" for the latter, we must designate the former by the term POSSESSION, or some other equivalent; otherwise we should be troubled with an unpleasant synonymy.
