CLASSical Liberalism

Media Bias Against Hoppe?

2007-03-11T21:17:00.000-07:00

Is there a media bias against "Old Right" issues like the right to discriminate in the Las Vegas Review Journal? Is it part of a new effort directed by the often criticized Southern Poverty Law Center to find hate groups somehow, somewhere to fight against? Libertarians, such as Thomas DiLorenzo (who is on top of their list), as well as the Mises Institute itself, often discuss matters such as inequality and anti-egalitarianism in the process of defining the meaning of liberty, and it is not unusual for this to occur. As Walter Williams, a libertarian economist and columnist explains:

Discrimination is simply the act of choice...Our lives are spent discriminating for or against one thing or another. In other words, choice requires discrimination. When we modify the term with race, sex, height, weight or age, we merely specify the choice criteria.
Imagine how... impossible, life would be if discrimination were outlawed. Imagine engaging in just about any activity where we couldn't discriminate by race, sex, height, weight, age, mannerisms, college selection, looks or ability; it would turn into a carnival.
I've sometimes asked students if they believe in equal opportunity in employment. Invariably, they answer yes. Then I ask them, when they graduate, whether they plan to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them. Most often they answer no; they plan to discriminate against certain employers. Then I ask them, if they're not going to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them, what's fair about requiring an employer to give them an equal opportunity to be hired?
Sometimes students will argue that certain forms of discrimination are OK but it's racial discrimination that's truly offensive.
That's when I confess my own history of racial discrimination. In the late 1950s, whilst selecting a lifelong mate, even though white, Mexican, Indian, Chinese and Japanese women might have been just as qualified as a mate, I gave them no chance whatsoever. It appears that most Americans act identically by racially discriminating in setting up marriage contracts.
According to the 1992 Census Bureau, only 2.2 percent of Americans are married to people other than their own race or ethnicity.
You say, "All right, Williams, discrimination in marriage doesn't have the impact on society that other forms of discrimination have."
You're wrong again. When there is assortive (non-random) mate selection, it heightens whatever group differences exist in the population. For instance, higher IQ individuals tend toward mates with high IQs. High-income people tend to mate with other high-income people.
It's the same with education. To the extent there is a racial correlation between these characteristics, racial discrimination in mate selection exaggerates the differences in the society's intelligence and income distribution. There would be greater equality if there weren't this kind of discrimination in mate selection.
In other words, if high-IQ people were forced to select low-IQ mates, high-income people forced to select low-income mates, and highly educated people forced to select lowly educated mates, there would be greater social equality. While there would be greater social equality, the divorce rate would soar since gross dissimilarities would make for conflict.
Common sense suggests that not all discrimination should be eliminated, so the question is, what kind of discrimination should be permitted? I'm guessing the answer depends on one's values for freedom of association, keeping in mind freedom of association implies freedom not to associate.

Lawrence Mower of the Review-Journal in his article today, "Researchers tied to hate groups get invitations" begins with:

An organization headed by a prominent University of Nevada, Las Vegas professor has invited four researchers with ties to hate groups to speak at a May conference in Turkey. [my emphasis]

and continues

"to express viewpoints that some civil rights organizations call "academic racism."" [again, my emphasis]

and concludes

"Anti-discrimination groups have criticized or condemned the speakers for their views on eugenics, or the study of genetic differences between the races." [my emphasis]

One would think from the hue and cry that peoples the world over were going to protest the conference. Actually, however, it is only one person that Mower contacted, Heidi Beirich, deputy director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, who has given him the desired answer to the speakers by lumping them with two nonmembers and non-speakers, Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, and Jean Phillippe Rushton, president of the Pioneer Fund, "are the movers and shakers ... in this world" of academic racism.

The conference itself, is the upcoming second annual Property and Freedom Society's Annual Conference in Turkey in May. Of the six different segments of the conference, only one focuses on anti-egalitarianism and inequality, "The Inequality of Man and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations," and, judging from the list of the other segments' topics, probably the least controversial or interesting. From what I can see of the speakers' c.v.'s, they are, save, perhaps for Yuri Maltsev, experts in understanding inequality. However, Maltsev's background as an international economist will, no doubt, provide him with invaluable insights.

After contacting the local ADL, an author of a book on "scientific racism" and an author of another book on eugenics, Mower is then convinced of the horror of that 1/6 of the program, effectively condemning the entire Conference as somehow racist and provided expected hints connecting all sorts of evils with Hoppe, including the dispute in 2005 between Hoppe and a student unable to understand time preference, mentioned numerous times in the article in an attempt to suggest that Hoppe was wrong in the dispute.

I still remember growing up in Richmond, Indiana as a kid and learning that the town just a ways down the road, German Town, had to change its name to Libertyville, because of the fear by the citizenry that they would not be thought sufficiently patriotic or American after the war. Not all germans (or Austrians) are Nazis, nor are libertarians or anti-egalitarians.

Just a thought.
Just Ken
CLASSical Liberalism

February 22, 1770--"...and a little child shall lead them.

2007-02-26T16:46:00.000-08:00

March 1, 1770
My Dearest Sister Mary,
Tension here is rising. The Redcoats still remain here in Boston . King George III, a few weeks ago, repealed the Townshend Acts. Now business is getting back to normal. Hopefully, mother and father told you that I finished my apprenticeship last Christmas and am now working for the Boston Gazette and Country Journal. I do not know how you could not have known. Do you remember when I first left home to go?
It was hard work but I am happy that I completed it. I had the greatest teacher and his shop was just outside of Newport. He always told me things from his apprenticeship days; they were very helpful. I am now living with a elderly woman whom I help and in trade I may board with her. It was the best I could find. Usually printers live above the shop, but there was no room.
I have seen brother John around town, but I have not talked to him. Cousin Samuel has been very busy lately, organizing the funeral and all. His name, Samuel Adams, has been said a lot around town. Surely you have heard about that. Poor Christopher Seider, he was shot right in the head, and then again in the chest, an awful way to die. Ebenezer Richardson shot him when they were all protesting outside of his shop. I heard they were throwing rocks. One hit his wife, and killed her. As you might suspect he is a supporter of the Crown. There was a funeral for young Seider this past week, I watched it go by the shop, but I did not join though I wanted to.
This morning as I was walking to work, I heard the children taunting the Redcoats, saying things like, "Bloodyback” and “Lobsterback” Although I am against them being here, I dislike how they do this to them. One day the karma will come back to them. I will hate to see that day come.
I arrived to work fairly early today. I got right to work, got my types together, my composing stick, and worked on the article Thomas Johnson sent in about the latest happenings in England. I was halfway done when Benjamin, my manager, came in to tell me that I would have to work late until about 9 o`clock on the 5th of the March. Since I have just started I must always be the one who has to work the extra hours. This means I must walk home that night at that hour - joy.
I have worked a whole fourteen hours today so I must go rest. Good Night.
Your loving sister, Katherine Adams

March 6th,1770
My Dearest Sister Mary,
I am lucky to be alive. The British have fought back. They have killed five Bostonians. Crispus Attucks, a free black man was killed, the poor soul worked so hard to get to where he was. I witnessed the whole “massacre” as the Sons of Liberty have called it. I am as you maybe can tell, not happy.
I had to work extra, as you know, so we could finished this weeks’ publication. As I was walking home I saw, right outside the Customs House, a mob of people. I went closer and saw a British sentry being picked on by the townspeople. People were throwing sticks, snow, ice, rocks, and other objects toward him, There was a foot of snow on the ground and more was coming down so my vision was blurred.
The sentry, who was suddenly knocked down, called for help. Captain Preston, Matthew Kilroy, Hugh Montgomery, and six others arrived pushing through the crowd. I watched as they helped their fellow soldier up. I thought that this would be the end of this whole thing, but I was wrong.
The next thing I knew people were yelling “Fire” at the soldiers and then I heard the church bells ringing. A few moments later housewives and children came out with pails of water and snow. I wondered why they were ringing the bells. There was no fire at all, from what I could see. One word summed up everything happening, confusion. I could tell the soldiers even did not know what was going on. The crowd 'twas not giving up. Fire was still being yelled 'til there was a shot fired. I am not quite sure who it was, but I am thinking that it was Kilroy. He seemed to be angered by everything we colonists do.
The snow was now bloody and everyone was distraught, including me. There have been five people in all killed: Crispus Attucks, as I mentioned earlier; Samuel Gray, who worked at the rope walk; James Caldwell, who was a sailor on an American ship; Samuel Maverick,who was just a young boy at the mere age of seventeen and last but not least, Patrick Carr, a feather maker.
I am going to brother John Adam’s house tomorrow night after work, which by the way was awfully busy. I am tired from thinking about this, it angers me. Katherine Adams

March 13,1770
My Dearest Mary,
It has been a whole six days since I have written to you. I am just getting over a small cases of pneumonia. I have not been taking the best care of myself like I should be. I went to the town doctor, and he told me to drink lots of liquids to help my body recover. I should be back to printing soon.
I have much to tell you. It was just yesterday, that we printed the paper with the massacre story. I am sending it along in case you do not get the Boston Gazette in Newport. At work, I shared the story on my account to my colleagues. I told them in great detail. I guess working the late shift helped .. a little.
I have some news about our brother, John. When I arrived at his home he immediately began to tell me how he felt about the massacre. I learned something very interesting. He has agreed to represent the British soldiers in the trial that will be held along with Josiah Quincy. I was very surprised to hear this from him but he says he wants to show King George III that over here in the colonies everyone is treated equally and may receive a fair trial. I thought, even though I am a Patriot, that it was a very good reason, and I myself might have done the same. He said it would start sometime in October.
I suspect that the soldiers will not be charged with anything much, but I am sure that the prosecutors will have at least one convicted guilty. I wonder if King George has heard yet about what has happened here? I dare say that once the news is passed on to him he will have no idea what to do next. He has gotten himself into this mess, so he must find a way out. I doubt that is going to happen very soon.
Your Sister, Katherine Adams

Young Katherine Adams was certainly there at the center of events, as her cousin, Sam Adams, and his cohorts were waiting for the opening shot to begin a major public event demonstrating the horrors of British justice. Samuel Adams, with a talent for manipulating public opinion, had helped to inaugurate a systematic use of violence and intimidation by revolutionary committees and congresses bent on destroying the British political influence.

The ferment in the port towns like Boston and New York had taken its toll in the British military back in England, with the knowledge of widespread colonial smuggling and avoidance of any fiscal responsibility for the expenses that the Crown had in protecting the colonials from French and Indian predation. The port towns, in particular, were dangerous and violent, and words of revolution were beginning to be spoken there long before others were cognizant. With each action taken or reaction, the level of anger increased, as did the level of violence.

This suited Sam Adams to a "T" (pardon the pun). John Adams knew between fifty and a hundred pseudonyms that Sam Adams used. Even Sam couldn't recall how many he had used, or even referred to in his own broadsides. But it would not matter, "They served their purpose." [p. 27, The Grand Incendiary (NY: Dial, 1973) by Paul Lewis] Francis Bernard, a British Governor, was exasperated with him. "Every dip of his pen stung like a horned snake." [Samuel Adams' Revolution (NY: Harper & Row, 1976. p. 1) by Cass Canfield]. From the Stamp Act in 1765 onward, Sam Adams and his Sons of Liberty would manipulate events and public opinion, with an ever-increasing talent for mayhem. He managed the Stamp Act Riot of August 14, 1765 and was constantly watching for more. He organized parades, festivals and fireworks on the anniversary of the Stamp Act Riot.

Once the Townshend Acts passed compelling the colonists to pay duties on glass, lead, paper and tea (which was considered a very minor tax by the Crown and Parliament), Adams pressured American merchants into signing a pledge of non-importation. Eight did not and Adams wanted to make an example of one of them. On February 22, 1770, a mob (Adams was probably there, members of the Sons of Liberty were certainly there) gathered in the front of the store of Theophilus Lilly with a big wooden hand mounted on a pole pointing at the storefront accusingly.

The Seider/Richardson events could not have given Adams a better tool. It was a cold dreary winter day when Christopher Seider was murdered. Christopher Seider along with a dozen other school boys were among an angry mob in front of a building throwing rocks at the shop of a Loyalist merchant. Ebenezer Richardson, a rather unsavory Loyalist who had worked as a confidential informant to the Attorney General and Customs and friend of Lilly came along, and tried to defend the merchant but was hit in the head with a rock. Ebenezer went back to his house for his musket. From there he climbed up a two story building and aiming his musket into the mob began to fire at random. In doing that Ebenezer shot Christopher Seider. Christopher Seider died with two bullets inserted in him, one right above the heart and the other in the eye at approximately 9pm that evening. After Christopher was shot the angry mob dragged Ebenezer to jail. Christopher Seider's body was taken to Faneuil Hall.

A funeral procession of five thousand Bostonians took place four days later (February 26, 1770) for Christopher Seider. His casket, inscribed with "innocence itself is not safe", was carried from Faneuil Hall, past the Town House where the governor and council met, down to the liberty tree, and to the Granary Burying Ground. His body was laid to rest there. People left flowers as a tribute. Sam Adams called Christopher "the first martyr to American liberty". As for Ebenezer Richardson the judge found him “not guilty”, but was later tortured by local Patriots.

Christopher Seider's death united the citizens of Boston against the British. Within a few days, the British regiments were being constantly pelleted with snowballs filled with rocks, then home-made spears, then clubs. The agitation was constant, and increasing until there was no doubt of the mob's intention. Finally, The Boston Massacre of March 5, 1770 when the rioters charged the infantry line and engaged in hand-to-hand combat. A half native American and half african-American, Crispus Attucks, who led the rioters, knocked down one of the soldiers and grabbed his musket. The soldiers began firing, killing Attucks and three others, wounding six more (one died two weeks later). To this day, there is no evidence that they were ordered to fire.

From the unfortunate event of the inadvertent death of an eleven year old child, Sam Adams began the American Revolution.

Just a thought. (hat tip to J.L. Bell.)
Just Ken
CLASSical Liberalism

WAR--Louis Nazzi (1884-1913)

2007-02-17T22:33:00.000-08:00

Benjamin Tucker, writing in Dora Marsden's The New Freewoman (1913-19), said that "ON the death of Louis Nazzi at the age of twenty-eight, France has lost one of the most promising of her younger writers, and one whose promise had already resulted in a considerable performance. I shall venture to offer THE NEW FREEWOMAN a sample of his quality, though I do so With some foreboding, lest this offering also may appear, to the editorial eye, or ear, as mere "bombast and fustian. "Writing of armed peace and compulsory military service, he says:"

"I hate war, violently, with all my filial and fierce love of life. From the day when I understood the work of faith, ardour, and suffering that is summed up in the single word, life, I have refused my consent to war, which at school I was taught to venerate. When one thinks of the amount of goodwill, tenderness, devotion, fruitless effort, anxious and vigilant thought, toilsome deeds, and tiresome marches, requisite to the filling of a man's existence from the cradle to the grave, one cannot admit its criminal destruction in the name of an interest declared superior. No reason can triumph over it. Nothing can make me deny the individual; I am for him, against sanguinary czars and republics. Man is his own country, and the vastest of all. All that I know, feel, and am, my entire being, rises and refuses its complicity for the day of the next butchery. I need my arms and my brain, my heat and my thought, for my own, my work, and myself. My country is what I love and understand; it overruns four frontiers. If you wish me to kill, efface from my soul my dreams of happiness, efface the words of peace and love, efface everything. Drive from my vision all the images of earth, expel all light ! Burn my deepest recollections, my dearest associations, my reasons to hope and smile again ! Devastate my past, all that has been and all that means to be—the uncertain future that I have prepared by the painful labour of my loyal and trusting hands ! Break the embrace of the mother, the wife, and the child ! If you wish me to kill, kill first the man that is in me; perhaps then the beast will obey you."

Just a thought.
Just Ken
CLASSical Liberalism

George H. Smith

2007-02-10T20:27:00.000-08:00

The philosopher, author and lecturer George H[amilton] Smith (b. 2/10/49) has specialized in two areas close to my own heart, freethought and freedom, and has been the author of numerous essays and books instrumental in both fields. Author of Atheism: The Case Against God, Atheism, Ayn Rand and Other Heresies, The Lysander Spooner Reader, The State (by Franz Oppenheimer) and more recently Why Atheism?, has completed a new book on liberty (I do not know the working title), in addition to his schedule of lecturing and debating. Known best for the logical clarity of his exposition, Smith is known for plumbing the depths of the most difficult subject in a manner which makes almost any topic surprisingly easy to understand, a feat unmatched by almost any other philosopher.

Smith, although noting certain positive elements within Christianity, authored the classic work criticising religion in general and Christianity in particular, Atheism: The Case Against God. There has been no other more influential freethought work in the last half century. His debates with theists of various stripes and lectures on freethought have been significant to both sides of the matter.

Smith became known as a leading independent libertarian intellectual since 1970 with a deep grasp of several schools of thought: Ayn Rand's epistemological and moral ideas, Murray Rothbard's anarchocapitalism, Nisbet's conservatism (through lectures by Nisbet while in Arizona) and even Robert LeFevre's antipolitical "freedom philosophy". Smith's "Rational Anarchism"

" is grounded in the belief that we are fully capable, through reason, of discerning the principles of justice; and that we are capable, through rational persuasion and voluntary agreement, of establishing whatever institutions are necessary for the preservation and enforcement of justice. It is precisely because no government can be established by means of reason and mutual consent that all Objectivists should reject that institution as unjust in both theory and practice."

Rational anarchism, like more recent efforts, has been a thoughtful integration of objectivism and free market anarchism, and forged the direction which much of libertarian thinking has progressed since he formulated his views, although not often credited for his accomplishments.

Smith is also known for his dry sense of humor and wry wit which often brings as many to his side of a conversation as his deep grasp of both theory and history. On a personal note, I've been a friend of George's since the early 1970's and can confirm this effect.
Happy Birthday George!

Just a thought.
Just Ken
CLASSical Liberalism

Bush Brings Back Body Bags!

2007-02-06T16:41:00.000-08:00

Multiply the picture above by 166 times, and try to visualize it. Three rows of one thousand fine young American men and women who will never see their families. Three rows, well over a mile long, of possibilities, futures, children, businesses, of friendships gone, never to be. In each casket, the remains of one more comes home. They each deserve a handshake and a thanks from President Bush. I would hope that he opens each and every casket so as to view the consequences of his own actions. Bush should touch each one and hold their hands, if they have hands left; look them in the eyes, if there are any eyes. He should smell the corpse so as to never forget who they once were. Each of their families deserves a personal phone call from him and an heartfelt apology. Multiply the count by twenty, and the Iraqi losses begin to appear, although it may be far greater. No one knows the exact count.

Wilfred Owen, one of the "Lost Poets" of WWI, wrote:
On Seeing a Piece of Our Heavy Artillery Brought into Action

Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm,
Great Gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse;
Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse
Huge imprecations like a blasting charm!
Reach at that Arrogance which needs thy harm,
And beat it down before its sins grow worse.
Spend our resentment, cannon, -- yea, disburse
Our gold in shapes of flame, our breaths in storm.
Yet, for men's sakes whom thy vast malison
Must wither innocent of enmity,
Be not withdrawn, dark arm, thy spoilure done,
Safe to the bosom of our prosperity.
But when thy spell be cast complete and whole,
May God curse thee, and cut thee from our soul!

When Weapons of Mass Destruction are discussed, you should realize that heavy artillery, tanks, bombs of all sorts, and military airplanes are part of the WMD. What are any of these doing in Iraq? What are they doing in our military bases? Are we so afraid that we need the weaponry, the military bases throughout the world? Is fear truly our motive? Our WMDs cause more harm than they do good and should be scrapped.

What would the world look like without the WMDs of the United State of America? Certainly much more peaceable. We would no longer be able to threaten, cajole or scare other countries. Likewise, other countries would not need to continue the accelerated process of building up their own WMDs. Some may, of course, but without the WMDs in possession by the U.S.A., their own fear-mongering campaigns no longer have the world's largest stockpile of weapons to use in manipulating their own populace to fund their own little wars.

Would this end war for all time? No, and it probably will not end all wars currently in process. But we will no longer be responsible for making war. We will no longer be responsible for starting war. I'm sure that the old canard, “give peace a chance,” is rejected by those willing to start a war if a drop of oil falls onto the sand half-way around the world in some little country, but we have given war a chance. Let's try something different.

Just a thought.
Just Ken
CLASSical Liberalism

Online Stuff--Videos, Books, Periodicals, etc.

2006-12-31T13:59:00.000-08:00

Regular at Antiwar.com and longtime columnist for the Orange County Register, Alan Bock, has entered the world of blog. Good for him! His grasp of foreign policy is the sanest that I'm aware of.

Not only do I blog at Liberty & Power and my CLASSical Liberalism website, but I have two other websites dedicated to important libertarian figures: Spencer Heath and Charles T. Sprading. You may find informative material there unavailable elsewhere. I am in the process of adding a number of important material on each.

NockFest
Google Books continues to amaze me. I just came across Albert Jay Nock and Francis Neilson's The Freeman for 9/15/1920-3/1921. Now, if they only get the rest of the weekly online! Nock's wonderful collection of commentaries, The Book of Journeyman (1930, 1967), is now available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection, courtesy of the Mises Institute, as is his introduction to Our Enemy, The State, "Life, Liberty, and...", "The Criminality of the State", Jefferson, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man and his marvelous, On Doing the Right Thing and Other Essays. This is wonderful for all of you who are unfamiliar with Nock's writings. I have had all of these for many years and treasure the style, wisdom and utter brilliance of Nock at his prime. Now all of you get to enjoy it as well!

In addition, The United States Brewers' Association Yearbook for 1915 has a wonderful Convention Address (pp. 107-114) by Nock, as does the 1916 Yearbook with Prohibition in Kansas (pp. 85-98) and Prohibition and Civilization (pp. 99-104). I also located Nock's The Value to the Clergyman of Training in the Classics (pp. 171-179) in Latin and Greek in American Education: With Symposia on the Value of Humanistic Studies (1911) by Francis Willey Kelsey.

Actual Ethics (Cambridge U. Press, 2006)by James R. Otteson is a great treatment of ethics from the standpoint of classical liberalism.

The Bruno Leoni Institute is up and running, including mp3 files from a 1961 Mont Pèlerin Society conference of talks by Leoni and Friedrich A. von Hayek, Wilhelm Roepke, Ludwig von Mises, Luigi Einaudi, Otto von Habsburg, Salvador de Madariaga, Russell Kirk, Milton Friedman, Henry Hazlitt, Daniel Villey, Felix Morley and many others (hat tip to Tom Palmer).

Always on the lookout for new sources of online research, there are a number of videos online of note:

The documentary, Anarchism in America (1981) is available now on the web. Murray Bookchin, Karl Hess, a rare clip of Emma Goldman, Mildred Loomis, the Dead Kennedys and others are in the film which discusses anarchist history, left anarchists and individualist anarchists.

Hat tip to Wendy McElroy on this one: The great documentary, Free Voice of Labor: The Jewish Anarchists, is now on Google Video. It's a historical commentary on the Jewish Anarchist movement in New York City from the early 1900s through the mid-20th century. As Wendy says,

"My favorite anarchist historian Paul Avrich is the documentary's first commentator and he reappears throughout the presentation. I was particularly pleased to learn more about Freie Arbeiter Stimme, a radical periodical published in Yiddish, which associated with Benjamin Tucker's Liberty. What fun!"

Other finds:

Here are a half-dozen Milton Friedman discussions:

PBS Uncommon Knowledge- Take it to the Limits: Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (1999)

PBS Uncommon Knowledge - Milton Friedman on the State of the Union (1999).

PBS Uncommon Knowledge- The Economics of the War on Terrorism w. Milton Friedman. (2001)

Milton Friedman on Icelandic State Television in 1984.

Charlie Rose - Economist Milton Friedman (2005)

Open Mind - Milton Friedman on Limited Government.

Marc Stevens - Adventures In Legal Land.

The Libertarian Alternative (run by the LP) has a nice collection of interviews. Mark Selzer is an accomplished interviewer and easy with the interviewees:

The Libertarian Alternative - Libertarian Economists. Mark Selzer speaks with Edward Stringham and Benjamin Powell.

The Libertarian Alternative - Libertarian Veterans. Mark Selzer and Victoria Hughot interview two veterans, Bruce Dovner and Nolayan Herdegen.

The Libertarian Alternative - Sue Jeffers. Mark Selzer interviews Sue Jeffers.

The Libertarian Alternative - Authority Figures. Mark Selzer interviews Sharon Presley.

The Libertarian Alternative - Fighting Taxes. Mark Selzer interviews Lawrence Samuels.

The Libertarian Alternative - Harry Browne (2005). Mark Selzer interviews Harry Browne.

The Libertarian Alternative - Antiwar.com. Mark Selzer interviews Eric Garris.

The Libertarian Alternative - Russell Means. Mark Selzer interviews Russell Means.

The Libertarian Alternative - The Iraq War and the PATRIOT Act. Mark Selzer interviews David Horowitz and Bob Barr.

The Libertarian Alternative - David Brin. Mark Selzer interviews David Brin.

The Libertarian Alternative - Richard Mack. Mark Selzer interviews Richard Mack.

The Libertarian Alternative - Healing Our World. Mark Selzer interviews Mary Ruwart.

The Libertarian Alternative - Questions About Drug Testing. Mark Selzer and Victoria Hughot interviews Dr. Sandor Woren

The Libertarian Alternative - New York Libertarians. Mark Selzer interviews John Clifton.

The Libertarian Alternative - The Free State Project. Mark Selzer interviews Amanda Phillips.

The Libertarian Alternative - Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Mark Selzer interviews Nathaniel Branden.

The Libertarian Alternative - Ballot Access News. Mark Selzer interviews Richard Winger.

The Libertarian Alternative - Alternative Medicine. Mark Selzer and Janet Mulligan interviews Dr. Jay Cavanaugh.

The Libertarian Alternative - Bureaucrash. Mark Selzer interviews Heather Talley.

The Libertarian Alternative - How should we fight the war on terror? Mark Selzer interviews Joseph Miranda

The Libertarian Alternative - International Society for Individual Liberty. Mark Selzer interviews Vince Miller.

The Libertarian Alternative - Libertarians and the War in Iraq. Mark Selzer and Angela Keaton interview Joe Cobb.

The Libertarian Alternative - Taking Responsibility. Mark Selzer interviews Nathaniel Branden.

The Libertarian Alternative - Medical Choice. Mark Selzer and Dusti Taylor interviews Allison Margolin.

The Libertarian Alternative - Elected Libertarians. Mark Selzer interviews Mark Dierolf.

The Libertarian Alternative - Ed Thompson. Mark Selzer interviews Ed Thompson.

The Libertarian Alternative - Harry Browne (2004). Mark Selzer interviews Harry Browne.

The Libertarian Alternative - The Drug War. Mark Selzer interviews Jim Gray

The Libertarian Alternative - Libertarian Economists. Mark Selzer speaks with Edward Stringham and Benjamin Powell.

The Libertarian Alternative - Libertarian Veterans. Mark Selzer and Victoria Hughot interview two veterans, Bruce Dovner and Nolayan Herdegen.

The Libertarian Alternative - Sue Jeffers. Mark Selzer interviews Sue Jeffers.

The Libertarian Alternative - Authority Figures. Mark Selzer interviews Sharon Presley.

The Libertarian Alternative - Fighting Taxes. Mark Selzer interviews Lawrence Samuels.

The Libertarian Alternative - Harry Browne (2005). Mark Selzer interviews Harry Browne.

The Libertarian Alternative - Antiwar.com. Mark Selzer interviews Eric Garris.

The Libertarian Alternative - Russell Means. Mark Selzer interviews Russell Means.

The Libertarian Alternative - The Iraq War and the PATRIOT Act. Mark Selzer interviews David Horowitz and Bob Barr.

The Libertarian Alternative - David Brin. Mark Selzer interviews David Brin.

The Libertarian Alternative - Richard Mack. Mark Selzer interviews Richard Mack.

The Libertarian Alternative - Healing Our World. Mark Selzer interviews Mary Ruwart.

The Libertarian Alternative - Questions About Drug Testing. Mark Selzer and Victoria Hugot interviews Dr. Sandor Woren

The Libertarian Alternative - New York Libertarians. Mark Selzer interviews John Clifton.

The Libertarian Alternative - The Free State Project. Mark Selzer interviews Amanda Phillips.

The Libertarian Alternative - Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Mark Selzer interviews Nathaniel Branden.

The Libertarian Alternative - Ballot Access News. Mark Selzer interviews Richard Winger.

The Libertarian Alternative - Alternative Medicine. Mark Selzer and Janet Mulligan interviews Dr. Jay Cavanaugh.

The Libertarian Alternative - Bureaucrash. Mark Selzer interviews Heather Talley.

The Libertarian Alternative - How should we fight the war on terror? Mark Selzer interviews Joseph Miranda

The Libertarian Alternative - International Society for Individual Liberty. Mark Selzer interviews Vince Miller.

The Libertarian Alternative - Libertarians and the War in Iraq. Mark Selzer and Angela Keaton interview Joe Cobb.

The Libertarian Alternative - Taking Responsibility. Mark Selzer interviews Nathaniel Branden.

The Libertarian Alternative - Medical Choice. Mark Selzer and Dusti Taylor interviews Allison Margolin.

The Libertarian Alternative - Elected Libertarians. Mark Selzer interviews Mark Dierolf.

The Libertarian Alternative - Ed Thompson. Mark Selzer interviews Ed Thompson.

The Libertarian Alternative - Harry Browne (2004). Mark Selzer interviews Harry Browne.

The Libertarian Alternative - The Drug War. Mark Selzer interviews Jim Gray

Alexander Korda's Things to Come based on the H.G. Wells socialist utopia is online. If you are not familiar with this, sit down and get ready to be surprised.

David Zieger's Sir No Sir!, a great anti-war film on the opposition within the ranks. Watch it with someone who was in the military, even if they are pro-war. It will bring back memories which an ex-soldier needs to remember.

First Run Features has all of their trailers online, including ones for Saccco & Vanzetti, and also includes the Human Rites Watch movies

Finally, Google now has a Patent Search engine, superior to the U.S. Patent office's one. I remember the weeks that I spent doing a patent search on all of Spencer Heath's patents at the Los Angeles Public Library in the 1970's. The patent room was all but hidden up a flight of tiny wooden stairs in a terribly uncomfortable little room. Now, all I have to do is turn on my computer and with a few clicks, I have instant access to all of the information I need.

On a personal note, this has not been a good year for me. My health as continued on a downward slope and am now wheelchair-bound. My beautiful 14 year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was killed in a hit and run (driver never identified) in October. And I thought it was hard enough when my son, James, was killed by a drunk driver four years ago on a Los Angeles freeway while he was on his way to his house. I thought the worst day of my life was the day when Elizabeth was killed. I was wrong. It's been every day since. Christmas and New Year's are pagan celebrations of the end of the old gods and the birth of new ones. Perhaps the new gods will smile down upon me and my family. It would be a welcome improvement.

Just a thought.
Just Ken
CLASSical Liberalism

Books for Holidays

2006-12-02T21:31:00.000-08:00

Okay, you've taken off your overcoat and have sat down in front of the warm fireplace. Of course, your first thought is what do you want to read. Perhaps something deep enough to help you forget the cold chill in your bones while you dry off:

Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage (Cambridge U. Press, Vol I--2002, Vol. II--2005)
by Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (editors). If there is one work that you want to have on hand about the history of Republicanism, this is it! It is comprehensive as one would expect with Quentin Skinner's involvement over many years in the evolution of this project. The details of the Anglo-European experiences in Republican theory and practice are fully laid out here by specialists in English, Dutch, French, Italian and Polish history as well as Jewish and aristotelian sources. It is a must read.

Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (PublicAffairs, 2007) by Brian Doherty. Okay, okay, this won't be out until February of next year, but you can pre-order. Based on original research and interviews with more than 100 key sources, Brian Doherty of Reason magazine traces the evolution of the movement through the life stories and historical events that altered the course of the libertarian movement from the New Deal through the culture wars of the 1960s to today's most divisive political issues.

The Constitutionalist Revolution: An Essay on the History of England, 1450-1642 (Cambridge U. Press, 2006) by Alan Cromartie is an examination of constitutional ideas during the crucial period from the mid-fifteenth century to the time of Charles I, showing how the emergence of grand claims for common law shaped England's cultural development.

George Mason, Forgotten Founder (U. of North Carolina Press, 2006) by Jeff Broadwater is a welcome addition to the literature on the “Founding Fathers”. One of the American Revolution's most important theoreticians, Mason helped to raise a militia and draft the influential Virginia Declaration of Rights as well as the state constitution. Mason's leadership at the Constitutional Convention shaped the U.S. Constitution, although he ultimately (albeit unsuccessfully) urged that Virginia refuse to endorse it. He believed that, absent a bill of rights, the proposed Constitution did not sufficiently safeguard minority rights, and he feared that the central, federal government it sought to establish would be too powerful and offer too much temptation to corruption. Broadwater also helps to resolve the issue of Mason's stand regarding slavery. Mason was an ardent opponent of slavery, regarding it, in Broadwater's words, "as a moral evil, debasing the souls of slave owners and storing up wrath against the entire nation for a final day of judgment." Mason would speak out strongly and repeatedly against slavery during debates at the Constitutional Convention and opposed the move to count slaves for purposes of determining representation.

The Tyrannicide Brief (Vintage Books, 2006) by Geoffrey Robertson is the first biography of John Cooke, Charles I's prosecutor during the English Civil War, and who was executed for his efforts. A defender of the Levellers, of common law rights and innovator in jurisprudence, it is time for this well-deserved biography.

The Sage of Sugar Hill: George S. Schuyler and the Harlem Renaissance (Yale U. Press, 2005) by Jeffrey Ferguson is a welcome contribution to our understanding of this black libertarian intellectual journalist and novelist.

A History of the French Anarchist Movement, 1917-1945 (Greenwood Press, 2002) by David Berry. Anarchists sought to clarify anarchist theory regarding the nature of 20th-century revolutions and to integrate anarchism more fully into the broader socialist and trade union movements. They organized large campaigns and their analyses of developments on the left and in the trade union movement were often more prescient than those of the socialists and communists.

The New Agrarian Mind: The Movement Toward Decentralist Thought in Twentieth-Century America (Transaction Publishers, 2004) by Allan Carlson. Ralph Borsodi, Louis Bromfield, Herbert Agar and "The Twelve Southerners" are all discussed in this work on the "New Agrarian" movment and the efforts toward decentralism from the early to mid-1900's. Many of these figures were central to the gradual evolution of libertarianism from the left to the right during this period.

The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought (U of N Carolina Press, 2000) by Paul V. Murphy. The Southern Agrarians were a group of literary theorists and historians who gathered at Vanderbilt University in the 1920s. Murphy follows the Agrarians and their thought into the middle part of the twentieth century, demonstrating how the arguments made by John Crowe Ransom, Alan Tate, Donald Davidson, et. al. in their famous collection of essays I'll Take My Stand contributed to the emergence of conservatism in the 1950s.

D.M. Bennett, The Truth Seeker (Prometheus Press, 2006) by Roderick Bradford. This biography of the embattled free speech advocate, D.M. Bennett, founder of the infamous journal, The Truth Seeker, and known as the "American Voltaire", is a real treat. If you are unfamiliar with the American freethought movement, his life will come as a complete surprise. His publications were censored, prohibited at newsstands, and denied access to the US mail. Bennett’s prominent role in the National Liberal League, affiliation with abolitionists, suffragists and the National Defense Association (forerunner of the ACLU) are also examined.

Community Associations: The Emergence and Acceptance of a Quiet Innovation in Housing (Greenwood Press, 2000) by Donald R. Stabile. While I have some trepidations about quasi-municipalities such as homeowner associations, this is an excellent examination of the amazing growth of this new sociopolitical phenomenon. These Community Associations (CAs) have increased in number from 500 in 1960 to 205,000 in 1998. This book explores the issues surrounding this housing innovation and provides a history of community associations and the process of trial and error in the design of CAs.

Sex Radicals and the Quest for Women's Equality (U of Illinois Press, 2003) by Joanne E. Passet includes some of the most up-to-date information on important feminist figures like Mary Gove Nichols, one of the leaders of individualism and the free love movement in antebellum America to the continuing effort to promote an acceptance of sexual freedom until the end of the 19th century. The connections to the spiritualist and abolitionist movements are examined as well.

Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Vol. I (Black Rose Books, 2004) by Robert Graham and Maurice Spira is a good left-anarchist overview with essays going back to an ancient Taoist text, "Neither Lord Nor Subject" up to 1939 (Vol. II will cover later texts). For those who are unfamiliar with anarchist thought, this is a good place to begin.

Cuban Anarchism: The History of a Movement (See Sharp Press, 2001) by Frank Fernandez and Charles Bufe. The Cuban libertarian movement was perhaps the most vibrant in all of Latin America. At the height of their influence in the 1920s, Cuba's anarchists dominated the unions, provided free nonreligious schools for poor children, provided meeting places for Cuba's working class, organized campesinos into unions and agricultural collectives, and published newspapers and magazines across the island. Later, they would take an active part in the resistance to the Machado, Batista, and Castro dictatorships.

Orgasms of History: 3000 Years of Spontaneous Insurrection (AK Press, 2002) by Ives Fremion and Guillaume Keynia. This is an introductory People's History (somewhat poorly translated from the French) of riots, uprisings, revolutions and social groups springing up seemingly from nowhere. Our standard histories tend to treat these as oddities, if treated at all. From the Cynics & Spartacus through the Levellers, Diggers & Ranters to the Revolution of the Carnation, the San Francisco Diggers, Red Guard of Shenwulian, Brethren of the Free Spirit, Guevara, the Provos & the Metropolitan Indians. Nearly 100 episodes of revolt and utopia which popped up without a plan or a leader from the ancient Greeks to the present.

Just a thought.
Just Ken
CLASSical Liberalism

Begrudging Another Battle of Ballot-Boxing

2006-11-24T20:38:00.000-08:00

by Kenneth R. Gregg

A lot of highly-motivated and principled people have put an incredible amount of hard work and money into getting thousands to voting booths for Libertarian Party (LP) and Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC) candidates when in most, certainly in all non-local, elections, there was no realistic prospect of election. The numbers show it and these friends of liberty should be justly proud of it. There may even be a state-wide candidate or two who received a majority of votes somewhere, although I have yet to hear of any. There will most certainly be a few local offices filled by some open, out-of-the-closet, libertarian who will be touted as the latest poster-child for the LP or RLC, allowing them to point and proclaim, "Yes, You See! We've won again!" The totals may be lower, the popularity of the Great Libertarian Elect may not have been noticed as well as the last campaign, but it sure felt good to see that candidate gallop to the victory circle with the flowers, didn't it? I even had a twinge of pride for a moment. A fellow libertarian won! Even if it was only for garbage collector or animal control.

But did we?

Over the last thirty-five years, libertarians have been pouring scarce resources, our labor, finances and heart, into such campaigns, and the result has not weathered the test of time. The state is stronger than ever, engaging in futile wars without a thought about the U.S. Constitution, growing like a cancerous tumor metastasizing in every possible direction. The individual states have increased in power and influence, with state taxes, regulations, controls, prohibitions and the like. Local municipalities have grown with financial budgets the size which can only be compared to nations abroad; and even the invention and massive growth of "quasi-municipalities" such as Homeowner Associations has occurred without individual citizens' recourse to civil liberties and rights.

Has either the LP or RLC stopped this growth? Has either group even slowed the process? Not that anyone can see.

When John Hospers arrived at the Los Angeles Airport from the first Libertarian Party Convention in Colorado, June, 1972, I was there waiting for a friend of mine arriving on the same flight from the same convention. When I saw Dr. Hospers (we had met previously at a USC Conference), I asked him if he had seen my friend, and then asked him what fool had received the LP Convention nomination as their presidential candidate. He looked at me somewhat oddly and mumbled to me as he passed on. I discovered later that he was the Grand Elector. My opinion has yet to change about the consequences of the LP. It is an exercise in tomfoolery.

The only options, outside of third-parties, as I have been told time and time again, are working within major parties or the dreaded non-participation alternative: non-voting, to which the old canard is tossed--"if you don't vote you have no right to complain!"

Well, I have tried working within the regular parties and found it wanting. As I initiated my own process of discovery about politics after discovering the libertarianism of Paine, Chodorov and Rand, I quickly became Area Coordinator for a group of Young Republican clubs (campus and community) for the Southeastern section of Los Angeles County and worked with YRs and the upper levels of the Republican Party in L.A. County, both elected and appointed. It didn't take long to notice a significant difference in attitude between the two groups: the individual members wanted freedom. They wanted the government off of their backs and out of their pockets. That was what the GOP meant to them. The goals of the leadership was another thing altogether. They wanted funds, services, and the influence which more and more active supporters were to provide for them. The ultimate goal was the accumulation of power in their own hands and in their control, and they wanted me to be part of it. Party politics is a racket and it didn't take long to discover this. I considered moving further up the political ladder but I was more constituted for freedom than authority. I quit. I would neither be a controller nor one of the controlled. For some, it would have been a dream come true--money, power, and more power. Not for me.

I then began working with the "Peace and Freedom" party in California, but saw power-politics almost immediately. I came to the realization that corruption was inherent in the political process, and left politicking forever. Third-party politics left a sour taste in me.

That left me with the last option, the anti-ballot.

I found, upon reflection, it isn't strictly nonvoting, but rather voting in the marketplace as opposed to participating in ballot-boxing. In the marketplace, your choices and decisions are unanimously made. You and another party agree on a purchase price and sales price. You make the trade. That's it.

In politics, your vote publicly acknowledges that the question at issue can be rightfully decided by majority vote, and you tacitly agree to the consequences, whatever they may be. If you participate in voting for prohibition of marijuana, or for an immoral war, you have acknowledged the justice of the decision-process as well as the outcome. It may have been one vote short of unanimity or one less than a majority, it's your acceptance of the process which provides it with legitimacy.

In effect, this is a recognition, not of the "if you don't vote you have no right to complain", but of its inverse: "if you vote, you have no right to complain"--a point which politicians, in their attempt to push their civic religion upon you, fail to mention.

If we play a game of chance with set rules and you win goodies from me, there is no reason for me to object, for you have played by the rules. Likewise, if I win, you have no objection (being a non-cheater myself, of course!). That the way it's played. If you decide to play and I don't want to, that's another matter. If you take my goodies from me, proclaiming you are playing the game and I'm not, then of course I have a right to object! And I will, too!

The political vote may be for a particular agenda, like a proposition or referendum, or for a person, which is more unpredictable in its outcome. When you vote for a particular issue, then it is presumed the agenda will proceed once the ballots are tallied and the agenda agreed upon. A person in an election has an immediate vote, yes or no, whether they attain power or not. If the vote is no, assuming a yes or no, up or down, choice, then that person has not gained the office of power and will have no control over you. However, the voting process in a representative democracy such as in the U.S., is not as simple as that. There will be a choice of multiple candidates, or parties, upon which you are to choose. Once one person or party is chosen, then they are in power until another vote takes place and sends them away. This leaves you without control over the matters which The Chosen One can decide upon.

Unlike the marketplace, where the purchase of goods and services is definite and specific, The Chosen One can do pretty much what he wants to do until re-election comes back around. Whereas the marketplace operates constantly throughout the year, The Chosen One has no such restrictions, save for ballot-boxing day. We're not mind-readers, and we will never know the intent or plans hiding in any person's brain, especially someone in politics.

But what if The Chosen One is a libertarian, you ask? What if The Chosen One is part of an elite corps of libertarians who have made a pact with each other to toe the libertarian line, sing the libertarian song and salute the libertarian flag? What if he is a member of the Libertarian Party?

Hey, libertarians are great people and I love being around them! I love socializing with fellow libertarians and think the world of them (some of my best friends are..., well, you know). But the Libertarian Party can only go so far and no more in promoting libertarianism. Libertarians are human, and political institutions direct thoughts and energies toward specific goals; not only because it is political power which is sought, but because it is the prospect of obtaining power which directs the energies of the LP. Indeed, even the whiff of a chance of a possibility of attaining power will completely cloud men's minds.

Politics is the Great Moral Compromise, and political institutions, in order to attain power, must follow the dictates of moral compromise. Regardless of the personal morality of any individual in power, once having obtained the reins of power, power can and must be used. The effort to seek office leads one in giving up ones principles because we do not live in a libertarian world. Some people want the state to provide one service; others prefer another, each person's moral values will come into conflict with another's and some form of compromise must occur. That's politics. Each service requires the use of force, if for no other reason than to receive taxes which maintain the instrumentalities of the state. The stronger a state becomes, the more taxes it requires; the more taxes required, the more force needed to enforce the dictates of the state. The cycle of abuse is inherent in the state, and proclamations about limiting the power of government will do little to alleviate this matter.

Agents of the state use the fact that many vote as evidence they are legitimate representatives. They need this legitimacy if their actions are to be viewed as acceptable by the general populace. It being discovered long ago that so long as the proportion of the populace which holds the state in favor increases, the fewer resources a state needs to use in order to keep the rest under control. That is, the greater legitimacy a state has, the less it needs to use violence against any single person or faction. A state which continually uses violence to achieve its ends would soon be seen for exactly what it was: a criminal ring.

Where does this lead the LP? In order to become successful, it must limit its own conscience and principles to fewer and fewer ideals. If it doesn't, it will fail to collect an ever-growing number of votes. If a member of the LP were ever elected, you would still never know what he was going to vote for in office. He has been elected, not to represent the LP, but to represent the needs of his electorate--and they will be very demanding of him--both the citizens and the special interests who have provided the financial support for his election. The opportunities offered, the reputation among his all-important peers, and his admiring interest groupies will turn him in a direction which he may never have considered before.

In supporting the political anti-vote, I'm not going to proclaim the non-voting public are of a single mind about this because there are many reasons for not ballot-boxing. Some may refrain from the voting booth because they dislike taking the time out for such a wasted effort. Some just may have forgotten about it. The reasons go on and on. I can only speak for myself, and encourage others to understand those reasons. At the same time, however, I am continually voting in the marketplace for products, services, and even ideas! And encouraging others to do the same--and educating them about the virtues of the freedom philosophy and the problems inherent in statism.

Now I often hear all about voting as self-defense. It usually goes something like this:

"A vote for the LP is not only a vote for the reduction of the state and its violence, it's an act of self-defense. If I vote to reduce the initiation of aggression, I am not engaging in any act of violence to any degree whatsoever."

Aren't you foolish to turn down the use of the ballot-box? You may even recognize it destroys morality and is pervasive in our society. So many people have used it that you are truly tempted to use it yourself. If others do it, it must be OK. Countless others have, some more successful than most others. Certainly the incentives are there, and it becomes easier each time the ballot-box is used. You're just being civic-minded, that's all.

Ballot-boxing is a process whereby one gives consent to being governed by another. Voting is the most common form of legitimization. It fulfills the purpose of political legitimization because one has tacitly and publicly accepted the principle that those who play the game must accept the outcome, no matter whether you are on the winning or losing side. Why do politicians plead that everyone's civic duty is to get out and vote? It is because voting is recognized as public legitimization of the political process. You have committed yourself to being governed. Through ballot-boxing you have accepted the process of statism as a way of life and proclaimed for all to hear you are part of the ruled. Through ballot-boxing you have sanctioned not only your own victimhood, but of others as well. You have tacitly accepted and publicly informed your family, friends and communicants your primary recourse is political, and you must hire this third party, the state, to inflict violence on others. You have announced to the world, “I must engage the engines of the state to bulldoze a path through all who are in my way!!” This is self-defense? This is not aggression? Who has paid for the ballot booth? Who has directed the state to go forth and prosper! You, my friend. Taxpayers have paid for the process, agents of the state rely upon it and claim it for themselves, and are more than happy to have you involved with them.

There are boundaries to self-defense, a proportionality that limits one's actions from harming the innocent while protecting yourself, and sustaining injury to no others than the perpetrator from whom you need safety. You are responsible for any harm you may do to the innocent, even while engaging in self-defense. Ballot-boxing is a path best avoided, for it is fraught with many dangers in the pursuit of said self-defense. It is a weapon which does not stop on command and is akin to fighting an opponent carrying a stick with an atom bomb—yes, that stops the opponent, but it also maims or kills any nearby and leaves a deadly residue for many years to come. This is a point all-too often ignored.

Ballot-boxing enables statism and gives it the drive and power to continue. People line up to use the ballot booth for the satisfaction of their own dream and desire by giving indefinite power to those who are more than willing to use it for far more. The voting public is not clean of the consequent use of power, for by such voting, each endorses the statism under which he lives. By the act of voting, each is saying:

"It's right and proper for some, acting in the name of the state, to pass laws and to use violence to compel obedience to those laws if they are not obeyed."

Each, through the process of voting, sanctions the violence used by agents of the state. Each voter assumes the right to appoint a political guardian over other human beings.

Our social realm succeeds because we vote constantly in the marketplace for the goods and services which we need and desire. There is no plunder in our profit, only the produce of willing hands and hearts which we purchase and sell with the coin of the realm. The social world advances with every refinement of choice, every act of profit, recompensing each for the products and services which are placed in the hands of others within the marketplace. We perfect our needs and desires through this repetitive compensation of others for their needs and desires. This social vote is far more productive, more powerful than a vote in a ballot-box. This is freedom; the rewards are greater than the state can put into anyone's hands. Each step of discovery of another market alternative to some violent occurrence (whether by the hands of the state or by a different criminal ring) takes us closer to freedom and further from harm. This is the cycle of progress.

Take the next step to freedom, my friend. Leave politics behind.

Just a thought.
Just Ken
CLASSical Liberalism

Liberalism, Properly So Called

2006-11-24T20:00:00.000-08:00

"by Albert Jay Nock
[This previously unpublished essay was probably written in 1933 or 1934.]

I understand that what you want is not a publishable article but merely a conspectus or brief, which will aid the comprehension of two remarkable historical phenomena.

First, why is it that Liberalism is now motivated by principles exactly opposite to those which originally motivated it, and how did this change come about? Second, why has the spirit and temper of Liberals undergone a corresponding change, and how did this change come about?

The facts are clearly apparent. We now see on all sides the extraordinary spectacle of Liberals doing their best to destroy the cardinal freedoms and immunities which Liberals formerly defended, while all the forces which are historically and traditionally known as Tory or Conservative are arrayed in defense of those freedoms. Furthermore we see Liberals vehemently vilifying those who hold to the original basic principles of Liberalism, denouncing them as enemies of society, and doing all they can to discredit and disable them. These two are probably the strangest anomalies that recent history presents.

To understand them it is necessary to consider Liberalism's origin and rise in Britain, since it is only in this perspective that American Liberalism can be clearly seen and correctly assessed. British political Liberalism was a continuation of Whiggism, which as far back as the time of Charles II proposed to subordinate the royal power to the power of Parliament. Toryism, on the contrary held to the "divine right" theory of monarchy, with all its implications. Put in terms of general principle, the Tory held that obedience to established authority is unconditional; the Whig held that it is conditional. It is of the utmost importance to keep these two primary principles constantly in mind.

Toryism therefore contemplated a type of society organised around a system of compulsory cooperation. This system is best illustrated by the example of a conscript army. The individual soldier has no option about joining or leaving the service; nor has he any say about his duties, his maintenance or his pay. In all ranks throughout the service obedience is unconditional, and is enforced under coercion. The final intention is thus to bring and keep the many under rule of the few; and the service's rules and regulations are devised with a view to strengthening a highly centralised coercive military power over the many, and making them more easily manageable. This is the point to be kept in mind when considering the structure of civil society as Toryism would have it, and for some time did have it. As the Army, not the individual soldier, is the unit of ultimate value, so the civil structure with its system of fixed ascending subordinations, and not the individual member, was Toryism's ultimate criterion; and hence the regulatory laws, edicts, mandates, which Toryism set up were devised with a view to strengthening a highly centralised coercive civil power over the many, and making them more easily manageable.

Liberalism, on the contrary, contemplated a type of society organised around a system of voluntary cooperation; a system of original contract, free contract. This system is best illustrated by the example of an industrial concern like the Standard Oil Company. The individual need not work for Standard Oil unless he wishes to do so; he is not conscripted. His acceptance of the Company's rules is a matter of free contract; he is not coerced; he may leave if he does not like them. His wages, hours and conditions of labor are fixed by consent; if they do not suit him as proposed, he is free to refuse them. Under this system the individual is regarded as the unit of ultimate value. The logic of this position was that society as a whole would gain more from the aggregate initiative and enterprise of groups pursuing various ends in free association and by such means as of free choice should seem best to them, than it would from the efforts of groups pursuing prescribed ends under coercion.

Consequently the political design of Tory measures was uniformly to increase the coercive power of the government over the individual and enlarge its range of action. The design of Whig measures, and subsequently Liberal measures, was uniformly to decrease the government's coercive power and to reduce its range of action. This must be kept clearly in mind, for it is the fundamental distinction between Toryism in practice and Liberalism in practice. It furnishes the one and only test by which to determine whether a specific political measure should be classified as Tory or Liberal. No matter what political label the measure bears; no matter whether its direct object may be desirable or undesirable; its mark of identification is found only by addressing these questions to it: Does this measure tend to diminish or to increase the government's coercive power over the individual? Does it tend to narrow the range of the government's coercive power, or to widen it? Does it tend to diminish compulsory cooperation or to increase it? Does it tend to enlarge the area of conduct in which the individual is free to do as he pleases, or does it enlarge the area in which he must do as governmental agents please? If these questions can be answered by the one affirmative, then the measure is a Liberal measure, properly so called; and if by the other, it is a Tory measure; and it must be repeated that neither the desirability per se of the immediate end which the measure is designed to serve, nor its lack of desirability, has any bearing whatever on this decision.

Liberalism held that society's work should be carried on, its responsibilities met, and its difficulties dealt with, by the application of social power, not governmental power; social power meaning the power generated and exercised by individuals and groups of individuals working in an economy which is free of governmental interference – an economy of free contract. This follows logically from the conception of government inherited from Whiggism in opposition to Toryism's conception of it. Toryism held that the ruler derived his authority from God and distributed that authority to his agents in various degrees according to their function; therefore the agents exercised power by divine right ad hoc, responsible only to the ruler, who in turn was responsible only to God. Whiggism, on the contrary, regarded rulership as purely a civil institution established by the nation for the benefit of all its members, with no inherent power of its own, and responsible only to the nation.

The early Liberals inherited from the Whigs this conception of government as an agency set up by the nation and responsible to it, with no power of its own, but with certain coercive powers granted to it for exercise in sharply defined directions and in none other. They contemplated a government whose interventions on the individual should be purely negative in character. It should attend to national defense, safeguard the individual in his civil rights, maintain outward order and decency, enforce the obligations of contract, punish crimes belonging in the order of malum in se, and make justice cheap and easily accessible. Beyond these negative interventions it should not go; it should have no coercive power to enforce any positive interventions whatever upon the individual.

When the Whigs came into power they kept all the foregoing tenets in mind, and so did the early Liberals who succeeded them. They worked steadily towards curbing the government's coercive power over the individual; and with such effect, as historians testify, that by the middle of the eighteenth century Englishmen had simply forgotten that there was ever a time when the full "liberty of the subject" was not theirs to enjoy. In this connexion the thing to be remarked is that the Whigs proceeded by the negative method of repealing existing laws, not by the positive method of making new ones. They combed the Statute-book, and when they found a statute which bore against "the liberty of the subject" they simply repealed it and left the page blank. This purgation ran up into the thousands. In 1873 the secretary of the Law Society estimated that out of the 18,110 Acts which had been passed since the reign of Henry III, four-fifths had been wholly or partially repealed. The thing to be observed here is that this negative method of simple repeal left free scope for the sanative processes of natural law in dealing with all manner of social dislocations and disabilities. These processes are slow and usually painful, and impatience with them leads to popular demand that the government should step in and anticipate them by positive statutory intervention when anything goes wrong. The Liberals were aware that no one, least of all the "practical" politician, can foresee the ultimate effects, or even all the collateral effects, of such interventions, or can calculate the force of their political momentum. Thus it regularly happens that they bring about ultimate evils which are not only far more serious than the specific evils which they were meant to remedy, but are also wholly unexpected. American legislative history in the last two decades shows any number of conspicuous instances where the political shortcut of positive intervention has been taken towards remedying a present evil at the most reckless expense of future good. The Prohibition Amendment is perhaps the most conspicuous of these instances.

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century British Liberals turned their backs upon their historical principles and gave support to a series of coercive measures, continuously increasing both in number and particularity, from the poor-laws, the Factory Acts, and the subvention of school house building in the 'thirties, down to the proposals set forth in the Beveridge Report of last year. It is hardly possible to conceive of a more complete volte-face on fundamental doctrine. Three circumstances bearing on this change may be noticed.

First, the period from the third quarter of the eighteenth century to the second of the nineteenth was one of wars; and as always in a war period, it was one of savage governmental coercions of all kinds. As always, again, the general structure of society reverted from the more advanced type contemplated by Liberalism, the type marked by voluntary cooperation, to the more primitive type contemplated by Toryism, the type marked by enforced cooperation. The normal development of a society is always from the primitive closely-organised militant type towards the loosely-organised industrial type; that is to say, from organisation in mass to organisation in group. Hence this mutation of type was a retrogression; and in consequence, as invariably happens, the mind and spirit of the people underwent a considerable readjustment. From their adjustment to the terms of pre-war "liberty of the subject," they became largely readjusted to the terms of a slave-status.

Second, as is usually the case, the period almost immediately succeeding the period of war was one of great general distress and serious civil disturbances. "The Hungry 'Forties" was on its way to become a by-word. This state of things brought heavy pressure on the government; and the pressure for positive interventions of one kind and another was much increased by the readjustment just now mentioned. To understand the attitude of Liberals in these premises, one must keep clearly in mind the fact that nothing is more natural than to regard a remedied evil as an accomplished good, and to forget entirely the all-important differentiation of the means by which the good was accomplished; and therefore to conclude that the thing to be aimed at is the direct accomplishment of a present good, or what it presumed to be a good, rather than the consistent employment of a means contemplating far larger measures of ultimate good.

Thus it was natural for Liberals to say,

"The government intervened to accomplish that great good, and that and that; why should it not intervene to accomplish this and this?"

The cardinal fact that in the one case the intervention was negative while in the other it must be positive, was lost sight of or disregarded. The questions of principle which early Liberalism would address to any proposal of intervention were no longer put; the only questions now put were those of expediency and practicability. In this way the later Liberalism progressively abetted the lapse of British society into a mode of State-servitude quite as rigid and unconditional as the mode contemplated by Toryism, and marked by far greater particularity.

Third, the later Liberalism was confirmed in its digression by the spread of a new doctrine of society fathered by Bentham in England and on the Continent by Comte. This doctrine made a slight side-approach to Toryism in holding that society is the unit of ultimate value; rather than the individual, as early Liberalism had held; hence "the greatest good to the greatest number" is the thing to be aimed at, for the individual will find his greatest advantage and happiness in a society controlled by this principle. The consequent justification of expediency is obvious; and the extent to which the later Liberalism has been affected by Benthamite doctrine is well known.

Passing now to consideration of Liberalism and Liberals in the United States, there is hardly anything to be said which is not clearly implicit in the foregoing. We once had a short-lived political party led by Henry Clay and known as Whigs, but it had nothing in common with British Whiggism. It was formed in opposition to Jackson's stand on the National Bank and on nullification, and took the name of Whig only as an anti-Roosevelt party today might do. It came into power in 1840 for four years, and went to pieces some ten years later.

Liberalism in this country never had a political organisation, nor has it ever had anything in common with earlier British Liberalism. It was never formulated in definite terms, even according to the broad original British formula which defined a Liberal as "one who advocates greater freedom from restraint, especially in political institutions." Thus it has had no tradition, unless one might say that it has perhaps come more or less into the degenerate British Liberal tradition of Benthamite and Comtist expediency; but this is no doubt a matter of coincidence rather than design.

Hence we see that those who call themselves Liberals proceed on no fixed principles whatever, and their action in any given premises is notoriously unpredictable. Their title is usually self-chosen, in virtue of an interest in some one special enfranchising or humanitarian cause like freeing slaves, universal suffrage, "social security," improving the conditions of labour, raising the status of Negroes. This interest is often exclusive; the absence of fixed principle is apparent in the Liberal's active opposition to other causes which stand on a logical footing with the cause he favours; as when, for example, many Liberals were rabidly against withholding the suffrage from Negroes and equally against giving it to women.

But the determining factor in the honest Liberal's attitude is his indifference towards the essential nature of the means employed to further the cause in which he is interested. There is here no implication against the honest Liberal's moral character. Nor is there an implied charge that he is acting in black ignorance of history; the charge is only one of stark incompetence with history. Having all history to guide him, he nevertheless fails to look beyond the immediate effect producible by a measure bearing on his cause, and thus fails to see that the ultimate sum-total of effect may be to produce a much worse state of things than the one which it was meant to remedy, and perhaps did remedy.

I have purposely refrained from illustration, since any one with ordinary knowledge of history can readily supply a dozen for every point I have raised. I shall make one here, however, partly to clear the point of the last paragraph, and partly as in a general way typical.

Twelve years ago, when a government made up of professing Liberals proposed a largescale positive bureaucratic intervention to relieve distress, and by use of the taxing-power brought all citizens into enforced cooperation with it, Liberals were in favour of it. They regarded only the immediate end – the relief of distress – and not at all the nature of the means; and the means did actually serve that end, though in a most disorderly and wasteful fashion.

The true Liberal, the Liberal of the eighteenth century, would at once have looked beyond that end and asked the great primary question which finally judges, or should judge, all political action:

"What type of social structure does this measure tend to produce? Does it tend to improve and reinforce the existing type, or to bring about a reversion to the primary militant type? Does it tend towards advance or retrogression, towards progress in civilisation or towards re-barbarisation?"

Let us take the measure apart, and see.

The subordinate questions would then follow: "Will this measure increase the government's coercive power over the individual and widen its scope?" Clearly so. "Will it, through taxation, confiscate social power and convert it into State power?" Yes, to an incalculable extent. "Will it diminish voluntary cooperation and increase compulsory cooperation?" Yes, greatly. "Are the directions and the driving force of this measure's political momentum at all determinable?" No, not even a conjecture is worth making.

If the true Liberal had subjected the proposed relief-measure to these tests twelve years ago, he would have said at once,

"This is in no sense a Liberal measure. There is not a suggestion of Liberalism anywhere in it. On the contrary, it exactly meets every specification laid down by the most hide-bound Toryism, and for that reason I oppose it."

This illustration brings us in sight of reasons why the self-styled Liberal of the present day vehemently defames the representatives of historic Liberalism. But we should make a distinction here by leaving out of account those who are Liberals for revenue only; those of the rice-Christian kind, who take this title with a view to personal gain, as a convenience for getting political jobs, prestige as journalists, essayists, commentators, prestige in one-or-another order of society, or for acquiring some other modicum of advancement or distinction. Such as these meet opposition by the political method technically known as smearing; that is, by applying terms which are irrelevant to the matter in hand, and which are therefore neither descriptive nor meant to be so, but are merely terms of opprobrium. Terms such as Fascist, Naziist, economic royalist, antiSemite, are now conspicuously the property of persons who call themselves Liberals for the sake of personal profit, as rigger-trader and rigger-lover were a century ago, and as bolshevik was in the days following the Russian revolution. Such persons obviously stand outside any serious discussion of Liberalism.

Another order of persons, quite in the majority, style themselves Liberals in all good faith, but being ignorant of Liberalism's principles and history, they understand neither what they say nor whereof they affirm. They conceive of themselves as on the side of progress, enlightenment, a larger measure of welfare and happiness all round, and they regard the content of Liberalism as made up of whatever matters seem compatible with this view. Whether or not they are actually compatible with Liberalism can be determined only by analysis, which they do not attempt to make. To them, whatever social or political end attracts their allegiance is a Liberal desideratum; and whatever means will attain it is, by consequence, a Liberal means.

These usually, and in quite good faith, meet opposition by attributing to the opponent opinions which he does not hold; opinions perhaps which he has often openly disavowed. In my own case, for example, an old friend, a member of the Administration and a self-styled Liberal (but of this second order) describes me as an anarchist because I hold to the theory of government maintained by the eighteenth-century British Liberals, by Mr. Jefferson and Thomas Paine. Nothing could be in more violent contrast with the spirit and temper of the early Liberals. They and the Tories each at least knew what the other's opinions and principles were, and could state them in specific terms. My friend, I regret to say, is wholly ignorant of both.

Again, this ignorance sometimes leads to conclusions prejudicial to an opponent's character; and in a time of popular excitement it quite regularly does so; and I repeat, in all good faith. Here also I may take my own case by way of example. When I questioned the policy of governmental poor relief twelve years ago, on sound Liberal principles, I was met with the question, "But would you let Americans starve?"; and as it happened, the question was pressed hardest on me by persons who called themselves Liberals. As professing Liberals, it meant nothing to them that the exigency clearly called for the application of social power, not governmental power; that there was plenty of social power available, and plenty of social agencies available for its distribution; and that a Liberal government's duty was to stimulate and encourage this application, but not in any way to supplant or supplement it.

I think that now, in the main, the anomalies which are the subject of this inquiry have been accounted for. Enough has been said to show how and why it is that persons calling themselves Liberals are now, many in good faith, some in despicably bad faith, advocating a coercive totalitarian type of government, a recession from the advanced type to the primitive, from the more nearly civilised to the more nearly barbarous; and are also denouncing as reactionary and anti-social those who adhere to the historical principles of Liberalism.

The Rev. Albert Jay Nock, Ph.D. was born October 13, 1870, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He was the only child of Emma Sheldon Jay, who descended from French Protestants, and Joseph Albert Nock, a hot-tempered steelworker and Episcopal clergyman. Nock grew up in a semi-rural Brooklyn, New York neighborhood, and the family had a large garden and fruit trees. According to his account, he learned the alphabet by puzzling over a newspaper and asking questions. He didn't attend school until he was a teenager, but at home books, which he explored randomly, surrounded him. He recalled that the first book he focused on was Webster's Dictionary, probably because it was a fat book on a lower shelf.

"The dictionary became quite literally my bosom friend, for I lugged it about, clasped it to my breast with both hands, from one place to another where I should not be underfoot, and there I would lay it open on the floor and read it."

After attending a private preparatory school, Nock entered St. Stephen's College (later to become Bard College) in 1887. It had fewer than one hundred students. Both institutions stressed a classical curriculum, and Nock relished Greek and Latin literature. He graduated third in his ten-student class. Nock went on to attend Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, Connecticut, and although he left after about a year, he was ordained in the Episcopal Church in 1897. The following year, he began serving as assistant rector at St. James Church. He succeeded the rector, Rev. Henry Purdon.

It was in Titusville that Nock met Agnes Grumbine, and they were married April 25, 1900. They had two sons: Samuel Albert, born in 1901, and Francis Jay, born in 1905. Nock left his wife soon thereafter, and never remarried. His sons grew up to become college teachers. Meanwhile, Nock was called to Christ Episcopal Church, Blacksburg, Virginia, and then to St. Joseph's Church in Detroit.

In 1909, he seemed to have experienced a crisis of faith. "My life was detached, untouched and colorless," he later told Ruth Robinson. Nock embraced ideas of crusading economic reformer Henry George. George's philosophy was the philosophy of human freedom, he believed that all mankind are indefinitely improvable, and that the freer they are, the more they will improve.

Nock quit the clergy to become an editor of American Magazine, launched by editors and writers who had a falling out with S.S. McClure, the pioneering muckraking publisher. Nock worked at American Magazine for four years. He wrote articles advocating a single tax on land and he approved Canada's policy of having government own vast acreage. He befriended the former Toledo mayor and aspiring scholar Brand Whitlock, who later wrote a biography of the Marquis de Lafayette. He spent time with the likes of muckraking journalists Lincoln Steffens and John Reed. He honed his writing. "My stuff is good enough, perhaps, and surely better than five or six years ago, but it still sounds as though it was written from a seat in the grand stand." he wrote Ruth Robinson.

Two years before he died, Dr. Nock's autobiography "Memoirs of a Superfluous Man" was published. In the preface, he wrote, "Personal publicity of every kind is utterly distasteful to me." Indeed, he was a private man.

Albert Jay Nock passed away on August 19, 1945 at the home of Ruth Robinson in Wakefield Rhode Island. He was laid to rest at Riverside Cemetary in Wakefield, R.I.

Just a thought.
Just Ken
CLASSical Liberalism

Timothy Thomas Fortune

2006-10-05T18:17:00.000-07:00

"As an American citizen, I feel it born in my nature to share in the fullest measure all that is American...feeling the full force of the fact that while we are classed as Africans, just as the Germans are classed as Germans, we are in all things American citizens. American freemen....We do not ask the American government or people for charity...We do not ask any special favor from the American government or people. But we do demand that impartial justice which is the standard reciprocity between equals." Timothy Thomas Fortune, Black and White (1884).

Timothy Thomas Fortune (10/3/1856-6/2/1928), was born a slave in Marianna, Florida, son of Emanuel Fortune, a literate slave artisan and one of two African Americans elected as delegates to the 1868 state's constitutional convention and a member of the Florida House of Representatives, and his mother, Sarah Jane Moore, a slave. Fortune was raised amid tumultuous times in Reconstruction Florida. His father was targeted by the Ku Klux Klan and would flee Florida for months at a time, but remained active in Jacksonville politics into the 1890's.

With less than three years of formal education, the young Fortune, following in his father's footsteps as an intellectual and student of the world, took an interest in politics and became a page in the state senate. This experience left him with a distaste for white politicians posing as friends of blacks while using them for opportunistic purposes. He would come away with a strong dislike for the sordid Reconstruction politics. He enrolled at Howard University during the winter 1874 term. Finances forced him to leave after a year, but not before completing a number of courses in legal history and theory and working in the printshop of the People's Advocate, an early black newspaper. A voracious reader, he would constantly read throughout his life. His later writings would reflect his knowledge of history, constitutional law and government.

Briefly teaching school in Florida, he worked for the Jacksonville Daily Union as a printer and traveled to New York where he was hired by the New York Sun in 1878 and later promoted to its editorial staff as his talents as writer and journalist were recognized. For the rest of his life, he would write, edit and/or publish journals, often several at the same time.

During the 1880s, frustrated by the Democratic party's machinations and the inability of Republicans to protect their rights in the South, leading Afro-Americans called for political independence in party affiliation. Fortune articulated their grievances in editorials, articles, and several books. He castigated both major parties for their mistreatment of the freedmen. In July 1881, Fortune, George Parker, and Walter Sampson launched the New York Globe. A few months later, Fortune became editor of the New York Globe, succeeding John F. Quarles. The New York Globe and its successors, the New York Freeman and the New York Age, would establish Fortune as the dean of black journalists. Under his leadership, they were regarded as the most distinguished Afro-American (a term which Fortune coined) papers in the nation.

While editor of the New York Globe, Fortune attacked Republicans for not caring "a snap of the finger" for Negroes. He called upon blacks to form a "new honest party." In 1884 his Black and White: Land, Labor and Politics in the South, a study of contradictory threads, was published. In this study of race and racism, Fortune was influenced by the writings of Henry George (1839-1897), the proponent of the single-tax. Although Fortune criticized the United States for its brutal treatment of African Americans, he vigorously rejected back-to-Africa proposals. Fortune urged blacks and whites to reject established politics for independent voting and to understand that the future struggle in the South would be on the economic issues of "capital and labor, landlord and tenant."

In 1886 Fortune published The Negro in Politics, which accused the Republican party of contemptuous treatment of African Americans. He demanded that freedmen place their interests before party and stop following leaders who "have swallowed without a grimace every insult to their manhood." Both Black and White and The Negro in politics received wide coverage in the African-American press, but few blacks were persuaded to desert the Republican party.

Fortune's cry for political independence cost him control over the New York Globe in 1884, when Parker sold his interest and the purchaser, William Derrick, declared that the New York Globe would be a Republican paper. Fortune disagreed, and the Republican party refused to subsidize the paper until Fortune resigned. Fortune then established the New York Freeman with himself as sole owner, editor, and chief printer. African Americans had considered the Democratic party the party of bigotry, treason, and mob rule, but Fortune's warm praise of Democrat Grover Cleveland raised speculation that he was seeking a political appointment. Fortune denied this assumption and countered that Cleveland would check reactionary forces within his party. Cleveland's appointment of blacks, Fortune wrote, deserved credit, and he was ready to support him

"if the Democratic party pursues a broad, liberal and honorable course toward us" (Freeman, May 16, 1885, p. 2).

This political unorthodoxy forced him for financial reasons to sell the New York Freeman in 1887 to Jerome B. Peterson and Emanuel Fortune, Jr., his brother. A week later the new owners dissolved the paper and founded the New York Age. In 1889, after Emanuel Fortune's death, he accepted the editorship of the New York Age.

Also in 1884 Fortune conceived the idea of a national organization to fight for civil and political rights of African Americans. He later suggested in a May 28, 1887 Freeman editorial that an all-black organization modeled on the Irish National League was needed. Organized in January 1890, the National Afro-American League had as its objectives

the protection of black voters in the South;
the end of the reign of lynch and mob rule;
equal distribution of school funds to both races;
eradication of chain gangs and convict leases that exploited blacks;
the end of segregated public transportation vehicles; and
the end of discrimination by race in hotels, inns, and theaters.

Fortune urged African Americans to agitate for their rights, which would make each one "a new man in black...[who] bears no resemblance to a slave, or a coward, or an ignoramus" (Freeman, May 28, 1887). It was one of the earliest equal rights organizations in the United States and a precursor of the Niagara Falls Movement and The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The National Afro-American League remained in existence for little more than four years and established a legacy that included reliance on litigation, education and political action, all of which became the dominant directions adopted by the 20th century civil rights movements. The League chose Afro-American instead of Black or Colored as the name for its constituents, arguing that this was the more accurate term for a people that were "African in origin, but American by birth." Although it had support from the black press and conventions that were held in 1890 and 1891, the League folded in 1893 because leading black politicians Frederick Douglass, John Mercer Langston, Blanche K. Bruce, and P. B. S. Pinchback refused to support its pointed attacks against the Republican party. The League's militant vision would later echo in the modern civil rights movement.

Fortune's militancy was tempered in 1895 when he allied with Booker T. Washington. Both men were southerners who shared a common interest in self-reliance and manual education. After Washington's famous 1895 Atlanta Compromise speech, Fortune sent him a letter of praise. Frederick Douglass had died earlier that year, and Fortune informed Washington, "We must have a leader." For the next twelve years the two were close friends, and Fortune served as a ghost writer for Washington and editorially defended him from criticisms of younger militants. Fortune's financial dependency on Washington to publish the New York Age motivated W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter, editor of the Boston Guardian, to criticize him for being a mouthpiece for Washington.

In 1901 Washington became an adviser to President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) on racial matters. For the next six years Washington and Fortune would continue on in an enigmatic relationship. At times Fortune would vigorously defend Washington from critics, but there were moments when he could not "reconcile his own views on race matters and politics with the accommodationist views of Washington". In 1902 his loyalty paid off when Washington arranged for him to receive an appointment as a special agent of the Treasury Department to study race and trade conditions in the Philippines. The seven-month trip cost Fortune dearly in health and finances and made him more dependent on Washington's support. The alliance between Fortune and Washington became strained when Fortune attacked Roosevelt for his indifference to the plight of mistreated southern blacks and particularly for the president's decision in 1906 to dishonorably discharge three companies of black soldiers of the Twenty-fifth Infantry stationed at Brownsville, Texas. On the night of August 13, a group of unidentified men killed one person and wounded two others in a shoot-out. The soldiers were blamed, but it was impossible to identify the culprits. None confessed, and not a single soldier offered to implicate his comrades. The black press, including the New York Age, criticized the president for his unprecedented action.

Since 1900, Fortune's alcoholism and depression had alarmed Washington. Concerned with Fortune's increasingly erratic personal and political behavior, Washington in early 1907 secretly became a major stockholder in the New York Age, and removed Fortune from the editor's position. Out of frustration, Fortune wrote to William Monroe Trotter, "Don't let up on Roosevelt and Taft. Lay it on them thick, as usual." For the next three years Fortune drank heavily and suffered bouts of depression that caused his friends to worry about his mental stability. His 1877 marriage to Carrie C. Smiley with his family of five children ended in separation.

Fortune's health appeared to be restored by 1910, and Washington, believing that he had been sufficiently humbled, organized a testimonial for him and returned him to the New York Age's editorship in 1911. Fortune left the New York Age in 1914 because debts kept him in dire financial straits. Following Washington's death the next year, Fortune belatedly reflected that he had more in common with the militancy of Frederick Douglass than with Washington and would have been better off if he never developed such a close relationship with the educator.

Fortune drifted in and out of writing assignments for the next nine years while he suffered from depression and alcoholism. Fortune wrote intermittently for The Amsterdam News and The Norfolk Journal and Guide. He also served as an editor of Marcus Garvey's Negro World, and in 1923 he assumed the editorship of Negro World. Although he did not accept Garvey's emigration proposal, nor did he join the Universal Negro Improvement Association, he admired Garvey for his ability to mobilize the masses. For a time he returned to his earlier militancy, urging his readers to eschew political dependency. Later, after Garvey organized a Negro Political Union and instructed his followers to vote for Calvin Coolidge, Fortune, mindful that his anti-Roosevelt editorials had cost him favor, wrote no dissenting views about Coolidge's presidency.

When Fortune died in Philadelphia, the Negro World (June 9, 1928) eulogized him as one

"who quite as much as Frederick Douglass, perhaps a little more than Booker T. Washington and less than Marcus Garvey, has been a healthful factor in the lives and fortunes of the Negro race in this generation."

He was a precursor to the civil rights movement. Fortune called for black pride and unity. Years before the freedom rides, sit-ins, and demonstrations, Fortune called for organization and agitation.

As Emma Lou Thornbrough says in her insightful essay, "T. Thomas Fortune: Militant Editor in the Age of Accommodation" (p. 19):

"Before he was thirty years old Timothy Thomas Fortune was widely acclaimed as the most able and influential black journalist of his times and was seen by some as a possible successor to Frederick Douglass. As an editor in New York toward the end of the nineteenth century, he sought to use the press as a vehicle for mobilizing black public opinion to support his militant ideology and for establishing himself as spokesman for and defender of the rights of Afro-Americans in the South as well as in the North. He viewed political action as necessary for achieving his ideological goals as well as an instrument for fulfilling his own personal aspirations. He also conceived of a national organization as a means of carrying out his aims and led in the formation of the National Afro-American League. His political ambitions were thwarted as were his hopes for the League, and in later years his reputation as a militant and uncompromising champion of the rights of blacks was compromised by his ties with Booker T. Washington, with whom his career became inextricably linked. This seeming paradoxical relationship between the two men grew out of the interest that each had in furthering his own career as well as out of mutual respect and affection. But as Washington's prestige and power grew, Fortune's influence and reputation declined."

Just a thought.
Just Ken
CLASSical Liberalism

Gottfried Dietze, RIP

2006-08-14T15:14:00.000-07:00

Gottfried Dietze (1920-7/10/2006), classical liberal historian, died recently in Washington, D.C. He devoted his life to his teaching at Johns Hopkins, and his scholarship on the nature of liberty, the rule of law, and government.

Dietze was a Wehrmacht soldier and friend of Otto Skorzeny, with a recorded 5 wins in air-to-air combat during WWII. A student and friend of Carl Schmitt who had studied with him at Berlin, Dietze would also study at Goettingen and Hamburg, and with Max Weber's brother in Heidelberg where he received his Dr. Jur. in 1949 under Walter Jellinek, professor of constitutional law. Following the end of his studies in Germany, he traveled to America to complete his education; his hatred of Hitler and the effects of national socialism would become a character of his personality. After a scholarship enabled him to enroll in the PhD program at Harvard, he left after a year for Princeton University, where he earned his Ph.D. with a thesis on "free government", later published as his influential work, The Federalist.

Author of the The Federalist and In Defense of Property, as well as many other acclaimed works (see below), he was a proponent of the rule of law, although his sense of law was more an emphasis of just law or natural law. He was a personal friend of F.A. Hayek, Felix Morley, the current Pope (when he was a professor), and one of the first members of the Mount Pelerin Society.

By 1954, Dietze joined the John Hopkins University in Baltimore and Washington (he marked his 50th anniversary there two years ago) where he had been Director of the Political Science Department and taught comparative government. It had been reported that Dietze was in peparation of a work, Germany Turning, with the support of the Earhart Foundation.I do not know the status of this work.

My greatest personal debt to Dietze is for his studies in property theory, which strongly influenced me in the late 1960's. His In Defense of Property was available through the Intercollegiate Studies Institute then, and greatly aided me in the process of understanding liberty. In his research on the Protestant tradition within general property theory in In Defense of Property (p. 18. See Calvin's Institutes, Book II, 8, 45-46; and Book IV,20, 3, 8, 13, 20, 24.), he pointed out that

"Luther’s support of private property was matched by John Calvin. Calvin was so emphatic about the value of property that he was said to have enthroned the doctrine of the divine right of property. He realized that common ownership is utopian and denounced the Anabaptists’ plan to abolish property and inequality. God, the supreme legislator, by decreeing ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ ordained the protection of property. What each individual possesses has not fallen to him by chance, but by the distribution of the Sovereign Lord of all. Criticizing idleness as sinful, Calvin felt that God ordained the possession of property as a reward for labor. Property gives man incentive and provides the basis of human progress. It can and should be used to acquire more property. It gives a man a vocation, enables him to provide for his family, and to help others. It is necessary for the peace of society. In view of its extensive blessings, Calvin urged that the institution of property be maintained and that counsel and aid be loaned to those who want to retain their belongings. The state should see to it that every person may enjoy his property without molestation. The prince who squanders the property of his subjects is a tyrant."

Indeed, as he notes (p. 20. quoting from Six Bookes of the Commonweale), Jean Bodin wrote in 1606 that

"property is such a fundamental institution that the degree of civilization can be measured by the severity of punishment for infringements upon property, such as theft. A prince, no matter how great his authority...could not justify infringements upon private property. The claim that the king exercises dominium over all things within his imperium is based upon a misinterpretation of Roman law, for "every subject hath the true proprietie of his own things, and may therefore dispose at his pleasure." The king, no matter how great his temporal powers may be, is still bound by the law of nature and the laws of the realm, and cannot arbitrarily infringe upon property rights."

and that William Blackstone (p. 27. from his Commentaries, 12th ed. 1794) explained that property could be expanded by law, but not restricted:

"The English government, whenever regulating private property, was bound by natural law. English law itself was part of the law of nature. The latter was coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself,...binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original."

Gottfried Dietze was one of the pioneers of the modern libertarian movement as well as a great classical liberal thinker.

The following is a list of Gottfried Dietze's published books:

Über die Formulierung der Menschrechte, 1956.
Natural law in the modern European constitutions, 1956.
Judicial review in Europe, 1957.
The Federal Republic of Germany; an evaluation after ten years, 1958.
America and Europe--decline and emergence of judicial review, 1958.
The Federalist, 1960.
In Defense of Property, 1963 (in Spanish, 1988).
Essays on the American Constitution a Commemorative Volume in Honor of Alpheus T. Mason (editor), 1964.
Magna Carta and Property, 1965.
America's Political Dilemma: From Limited to Unlimited Democracy, 1968.
Youth, University and Democracy, 1970 (in Spanish, 1972).
Bedeutungswandel der Menschenrechte, 1972.
Two Concepts of the Rule of Law, 1973.
Freiheit und Eigentum in der amerikanischen Überlieferung, 1976
Champions of Freedom, 1976 (co-editor)
Zur Verteidigung des Eigentums, 1978.
Herder: ein Lesebuch für unsere Zeit, 1978.
Deutschland, wo bist Du? : suchende Gedanken aus Washington, 1980.
Kant und der Rechtsstaat, 1982.
Liberalism Proper and Proper Liberalism, 1984.
Reiner Liberalismus, 1985.
Konservativer Liberalismus in Amerika, 1987.
Liberaler Kommentar zur amerikanischen Verfassung, 1988.
Amerikanische Demokratie: Wesen des praktischen Liberalismus, 1988.
Politik, Wissenschaft, 1989.
Der Hitler-Komplex, 1990.
Liberale Demokratie, 1992.
American Democracy: Aspects of Practical Liberalism, 1993.
Problematik der Menschenrechte, 1995.
Briefe aus Amerika: Befreiende Essays zur deutschen Lage, 1995.
Begriff des Rechts, 1997.
Deutschland, 1999
Amerikas Schuldgefühl, 2005

Hat tip to Riccardo Pelizzo.
Just a thought.
Just Ken
CLASSical Liberalism Spencer Heath

2006-04-10T12:31:00.000-07:00

THE SCIENCE OF SOCIETY

NO. 1

___________

THE

TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT

in the

SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL

as the

FINAL DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANTISM,

DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM

STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS

________________

[reprinted from the LIBERTARIAN SOCIAL INSTITUTE,

Arya Bhuvan, Sandhurst Road (West) BOMBAY-4. n.d.]

ONLINE EDITION, 2006

Explanatory
Introduction
THE TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT (PART I)
COST THE LIMIT OF PRICE (PART II)
Preface
Chapter I The Cost Principle
Chapter II Equity and the Labor Note
Chapter III Cost, Price, Labor, Natural Wealth
Chapter IV Value Distinguished from Cost
Chapter V Menial Labor Raised in Price
Chapter VI Attractive Industry, Cooperation, and the Economies
Chapter VII Capital, Rent, Interest, Wages, Machinery, etc.
Appendix:
Review of Equitable Commerce
Reply to the Tribune by Mr. Andrews

EXPLANATORY

2006-04-10T12:23:00.000-07:00

This book was first printed nearly forty years ago in 1848. Its seed, for the most part, fell upon stony ground. In consequence of this cold reception, this lack of demand, the work passed through but a few small editions and then disappeared from the market. The author's keen broad, and untiring mind leading him into new fields of thought, he never reprinted it. Thus, for more than a quarter of a century, it has been practically out of sight, out of mind.

Nevertheless, its work has never stopped. Here and there the seed did fall upon oases, and in fertile spots it always took deep root and reproduced its kind. Its children and grand-children and great-grandchildren have seldom been conscious of their ancestry, but today the family is so numerous that the branches of its genealogical tree pervade with a growing, and often a controlling, influence every department of what Mr. Andrews happily calls "Man's social habitat". It can be only helpful to this family to be made acquainted with its origin, especially when the power of the printing-press enables it to revive and freshly scatter the parent-seed upon a more receptive soil.

Such is the purpose of this new edition of "The Science of Society." The social problem is pressing more closely upon our heels than it was in 1851, and a book expounding as lucidly as this the basic principles in which alone its solution is to be found is greatly needed. The author himself, in the closing years of his life, earnestly desired its republication, and the publisher takes pleasure in the thought that the enterprise would meet his approbation. And not only his, but that of Josiah Warren as well, who was never tired of praising Mr. Andrew's work as in his opinion the soundest exposition that ever had been made or ever could be made of the two principles which he (Mr. Warren) had introduced to the world in his less pretentious work, "True Civilization."

But even if this double incentive of satisfying a public demand and honoring a master's memory were altogether lacking, the publisher might sill find abundant justification and encouragement in Robert Browning's lines:

To shoot a beam into the dark, assists;
To make that beam do fuller service, spread
And utilize such bounty to the height,
That assists also,--and that work is mine.

March, 1888.

INTRODUCTION

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This little treatise on the True Constitution of Government was delivered as one of the regular course of lectures before the New York Merchants' Institute for the present winter. It is now published as the introductory number of a contemplated series of publications, presenting certain new principles of society, which it is the belief of the author are eminently adapted to supply the felt want of the present day for an adequate solution of the existing social disturbances. For the principles in question, either as original discoveries, or else as presented in a new light, as solvents of the knotty questions which are now puzzling the most capacious minds and afflicting the most benevolent hearts of Christendom, the author confesses his very great indebtedness, and he believes the world will yet gladly confess its indebtedness, to the genius of Josiah Warren, of Indiana, who has been engaged for more than twenty years in testing, almost in solitude, the practical operation, in the education of children, in the sphere of commerce, and otherwise, of the principles which we are now for the first time presenting prominently to the public.

It has been the belief of the author that there are, in the ranks of those who are denominated Conservatives, many who sympathize deeply with the objects of radical reform, but who have never identified themselves with the movements in that direction, either because they have not seen that the practical measures proposed by the advocates of reform contained the elements of success, or else because they have distinctly perceived or intuitively felt that they did not. They may have been repelled, too, by the want of completeness in the program, the want of scientific exactness in the principles announced, or, finally, by the want of a lucid conception of the real nature of the remedy which is needed for the manifold social evils of which all confess the existence in the actual condition of society. If there are minds in this position, minds more rigid than others in their demands for precise and philosophical principles preliminary to action, it is from such that the author anticipates the most cordial reception of the elements propounded by Mr. Warren, so soon as they are seen in their connections and interrelations with each other.

Believing that these principles will justify the assumption, I have ventured to place at the head of this series of publications, as a general title, "The Science of Society."

The propriety of the use of the term "Science" in such a connection may be questioned by some whom habit has accustomed to apply that term to a much lower range of investigations. If researches into the habits of beetles and tadpoles, and their localities and conditions of existence, are entitled to the dignified appellation of Science, certainly similar researches into the nature, the wants, the adaptations, and, so to speak, into the true or requisite moral and social habitat of the spiritual animal called Man must be, if conducted according to the rigid methods of scientific induction from observed facts, equally entitled to that distinction.

The series of works, of which this is the first in order, will deal in no vague aspirations after "the good time coming." They will propound definite principles which demand to be regarded as having all the validity of scientific truths, and which, taken in their co-relations with each other, are adequate to the solution of the social problem. If this pretension be made good, the importance of the subject will not be denied. If not well founded, the definiteness of the propositions will be favorable to a speedy and successful refutation.

S.P.A.
New York, January 1851.

THE TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT

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A LECTURE

Ladies and Gentlemen:

The subject which I propose to consider this evening is the true constitution of human government.

Every age is a remarkable one, no doubt, for those who live in it. When immobility reigns most in human affairs, there is still enough of movement to fix the attention, and even to excite the wonder of those who are immediately in proximity with it. This natural bias in favour of the period with which we have most to do is by no means sufficient, however, to account for the growing conviction, on all minds, that the present epoch is a market transition from an old to a new order of things. The scattered rays of the gray dawn of the new era date back, indeed, beyond the lifetime of the present generation. The first streak of light that streamed through the dense darkness of the old régime was the declaration by Martin Luther of the right of private judgment in matters of conscience. The next, which shed terror upon the old world, as a new portent of impending revolutions, was the denial by Hampden, Sidney, Cromwell, and others of the divine right of kings, and the assertion of inherent political rights in the people themselves. This was followed by the American Declaration of Independence, the establishment of a powerful Democratic Republic in the western world upon the basis of that principle, followed by the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, the Reaction, and the apparent death in Europe of the Democratic idea. Finally, in our day, comes the red glare of French Socialism, at which the world is still gazing with uncertainly whether it be some lurid and meteoric omen of fearful events, or whether it be not the actual rising of the Sun of Righteousness, with healing in His wings; for there are those who profoundly and religiously believe that the solution of the social problem will be the virtual descent of the New Jerusalem,--the installation of the kingdom of heaven upon earth.

First in the religious, then in the political, and finally in the social relations of men new doctrines have thus been broached, which are full of promise to the hopeful, and full of alarm and dismay to the timid and conservative. This distinction marks the broadest division in the ranks of mankind. In Church and State and social life, the real parties are the Progressionists and the Retrogressionists,--those whose most brilliant imaginings are linked with the future, and those whose sweetest remembrances bind them in tender associations to the past. Catholic and Protestant, Whig and Democrat, Anti-Socialist and Socialist, are terms which, in their origin, correspond to this generic division; but no sooner does a new classification take place than the parties thus formed are again subdivided, on either hand, by the ever-permeating tendency, on the one side toward freedom, emancipation, and progress, and toward law and order and immobility on the other.

Hitherto the struggle between conservatism and progress has seemed doubtful. Victory has kissed the banner, alternately, of either host. At length the serried ranks of conservatism alter. Reform, so called, is becoming confessedly more potent than its antagonist. The admission is reluctantly forced from pallid lips that revolutions—political, social, and religious—constitute the programme of the coming age. Reform, so called, for weal or woe, but yet Reform, must rule the hour. The older constitutions of society have outlived their day. No truth commends itself more universally to the minds of men now than that thus set forty by Carlyle: “There must be a new world, if there is to be any world at all. That human things in our Europe can ever return to the old sorry routine, and proceed with any steadiness or continuance there,--this small hope is not now a tenable one. These days of universal death must be days of universal new birth, if the ruin is not to be total and final! It is a time to make the dullest man consider, and ask himself, Whence he came? Whither he is bound? A veritable “New Era” to the foolish as well as to the wise.” Nor is this state of things confined to Europe. The agitations in America may be more peaceful, but they are not less profound. The foundations of old beliefs and habits of thought are breaking up. The old guarantees of order are fast falling away. A veritable “new era” with us, too, is alike impending and inevitable.

What remains to be done, then, for wise men, is clearly this: to attempt to penetrate the future by investigating the past and the present to ascertain whether there be no elements of calculation capable of fixing with tolerable certainty the precise point in the sidereal heavens of human destiny toward which our whole system is confessedly verging with accelerated velocity. To penetrate the gloom which encircles the orbit of our future progression might, at least, end the torture of suspense, even to those who may be least content with the nature of the solution. “If,” says Carlyle again, “the accused nightmare that is crushing out the life of us and ours would take a shape, approach us like the Hyrcanian tiger, the Behemoth of Caos, or the Archfiend himself,--in any shape that we could see and fasten on,--a man can have himself shot with cheerfulness, but it needs that he shall clearly see for what.”

It is, then, neither unbecoming nor inappropriate, at this time, to attempt to prognosticate, by philosophical deductions from operative principles the characteristics of the new society which is to be constructed out of the fragments of the old. It is, perhaps, only right that I should begin by declaring the general nature of the results to which my own mind is conducted by the speculations I have made upon the subject, and toward which I shall, so far as I may, endeavour, this evening to sway your convictions.

I avow that, for one, I take the hopeful, the expectant, even the exulting view of the prospects of humanity, under the influence of causes which, to the minds of many,m re pregnant with evil. I hail the progress of that unsparing criticism of old institutions which is the characteristic of the present age. I hail with still higher enthusiasm a dim outline which begins to be perceived by the keenest vision, through th twilight mists which yet hang upon the surrounding hilltops of a social fabric, whose foundations are equity, whose ceiling is security, whose pillars are cooperation and fraternity, and whose capitals and cornices are carved into the graceful forms of mutual urbanity and politeness. It is just to you that I should announce this faith, that you may receive the vaticinations of the prophet with the due allowance for the inebriation of the prophetic rhapsody. I proclaim myself in some sense a visionary; but in all ages there have been visionaries whose visions of today have proved the substantial realities of tomorrow.

I shall make no apology for the rashness of the attempt to trace, with a distinct outline, some of the gigantic changes which will occur in the social organization of the world as the necessary outgrowth of principles now at work, and which are becoming every day more potential, in proportion as forces, which have hitherto been deemed antagonistic, converge and cooperate.

I affirm, then, firstly, that there is at this day a marked convergence and a prospective cooperation of principles which have hitherto resisted each other, or, more properly, a development of one common principle in spheres of life so diverse from each other that they have hitherto been regarded as unrelated, if not positively antagonistic. I assert, and shall endeavour to make good the assertion, that the essential spirit, the vital and fundamental principle of the three great modern movements to which I have already alluded,--namely, the Protestant Reformation, the Democratic Revolution, still progressing, and finally, the Socialist Agitation, which is spreading in multiform varieties of reproduction over the whole civilized world,--is one and the same, and that this common affinity is beginning in various ways to be recognized or felt. If this assertion be true, it is one of immense significance. If Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism are merely different expressions of the same idea, then, undoubtedly, the confluent force of these three movements will expand tremendously the sweep of their results, in the direction toward which they collectively tend.

What, then, if this be so, is this common element? In what great feature are Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism identical? I will answer this interrogatory first, and demonstrate the answer afterward. Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism are identical in the assertion of the Supremacy of the Individual,--a dogma essentially contumacious, revolutionary, and antagonistic to the basic principles of all the older institutions of society, which make the Individual subordinate and subject to the Church, to the State, and to Society respectively. Not only is this supremacy or SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL, a common element of all three of these great modern movements, but I will make the still more sweeping assertion that it is substantially the whole of those movements. It is not merely a feature, as I have just denominated it, but the living soul itself, the vital energy, the integral essence or being of them all.

Protestants and Protestant churches may differ in relation to every other article of their creed, and do so differ, without ceasing to be Protestants, so long as they assert the paramount right of private or individual judgment in matters of conscience. It is that, and that only, which makes them Protestants, and distinguishes them from the Catholic world, which asserts, on the contrary, the supreme authority of the church, of the priesthood, or some dignitary or institution other than the Individual whose judgment and whose conscience is in question. In like manner, Democrats and Democratic governments and institutions may differ from each other, and may vary indefinitely at different periods or time, and still remain Democratic, so long as they maintain the one essential principle and condition of Democracy,--namely, that all governmental powers reside in, are only delegated by, and can be, at any moment, resumed by the people,--that is, by the individuals, who are first Individuals, and who then, by virtue only of the act of delegating such powers, become a people,--that is, a combined mass of Individuals. It is this dogma, and this alone, which makes the Democrat, and which distinguishes him from the Despotist, or the defender of the divine right of kings.

Again, Socialism assumes every shade and variety of opinion respecting the modes of realizing its own aspirations, and, indeed, upon every other point, except one, which, when investigated, will be found to be the paramount rights of the Individual over social institutions, and the consequent demand that all existing social institutions shall be so modified that the Individual shall be in no manner subjected to them. This, then, is the identical principle of Protestantism and Democracy carried into its application in another sphere. The celebrated formula of Fourier that “destinies are proportioned to attractions,” means, when translated into less technical phraseology, that society must be so reorganized that every Individual shall be empowered to choose and vary his own destiny or condition and pursuits in life, untrammeled by social restrictions; in other words, so that every man may be a law unto himself, paramount to all other human laws, and the sole judge for himself of the divine law and of the requisitions of his own individual nature and organization. This is equally the fundamental principle of all the social theories, except in the case of the Shakers, the Rappites, etc., which are based upon religious whims, demanding submission, as a matter of duty, to a despotic rule, and which embody, in another form, the readoption of the popish or conservative principle. They, therefore, while they live in a form of society similar in some respects to those which have been proposed by the various schools of Socialists, are, in fact, neither Protestants nor Democrats, and, consequently, not Socialists in the sense in which I am now defining Socialism. The forms of society proposed by Socialism are the mere shell of the doctrine,--means to the end,--a platform upon which to place the Individual, in order that he may be enabled freely to exercise his own Individuality, which is the end and aim of all. We have seen that the shell is one which may be inhabited by despotism. Possibly it is unfit for the habitation of any thing else than despotism, which the Socialist hopes, by ensconcing himself therein, to escape. It is possible, even, that Socialism may have mistaken its measures altogether, and that the whole system of Association and combined interests and combined responsibilities proposed by it may be essentially antagonistic to the very ends proposed. All this, however, if it be so, is merely incidental. It belongs to the shell, and not to the substance,--to the means, and not to the end. The whole programme of Socialism may yet be abandoned or reversed, and yet Socialism remain in substance the same thing. What Socialism demands is the emancipation of the Individual from social bondage, by whatsoever means will effect that design, in the same manner as Protestantism demands the emancipation of the Individual from ecclesiastical bondage, and Democracy from political. Whosoever makes that demand, or labours to that end, is a Socialist. Any particular views he may entertain, distinguishing him from other Socialists, regarding practical measures, or the ultimate forms of society, are the mere specific differences, like those which divide the Protestant sects of Christendom.

This definition of Socialism may surprise some into the discovery of the fact that they have been Socialists all along, unawares. Some, on the other hand, who have called themselves Socialists may not at once be inclined to accept the definition. They may not perceive clearly that it is the emancipation of the Individual for which they are laboring, and affirm that it is, on the other hand, the freedom and happiness of the race. They will not, however, deny that it is both; and a very little reflection will show that the freedom and happiness of each individual will be the freedom and happiness of the race, and that the freedom and happiness of the race cannot exist so long as there is any individual of the race who is not happy and free. So the Protestant and the Democrat may not always have a clear intellectual perception of the distinctive principle of their creeds. He may be attached to it from an instinctive sentiment, which he has never thoroughly analyzed, or even from the mere accidents of education and birth.

Protestantism proclaims that the individual has an inalienable right to judge for himself in all matters of conscience. Democracy proclaims that the Individual has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Socialism proclaims that the Individual has an inalienable right to that social position which his powers and natural organization qualify him, and which his tastes incline him to fill, and, consequently, to that constitution or arrangement of the property relations, and other relations of society, whatsoever that may be, which will enable him to enjoy and exercise that right,--the adaptation of social conditions to the wants of each Individual, with all his peculiarities and fluctuations of tasted, instead of the moulding of the Individual into conformity with the rigid requirements of a preconcerted social organization.

If this be a correct statement of the essential nature of Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism, then Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism are not actuated by three distinct principles at all. They are simply three partial announcements of one generic principle, which lies beneath all these movements, and of which they are the legitimate outgrowths or developments, modified only by the fact of a different application of the same principle. This great generic principle, which underlies every manifestation of that universal unrest and revolution which is known technically in this age as “Progress,” is nothing more nor less than “THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL.” It is that which is the central idea and vital principle of Democracy; and it is that which is the central idea and vital principle of Socialism.

This being so, it is high time that the mutual affinity of these movements should be intelligently perceived and recognized both by the friends and the enemies of the movements themselves. It is high time that the scene of the battle-field should be shifted from the right or wrong of any or all of the partial developments of the principle to the essential right or wrong of the principle itself. The true issue is not whether Protestantism be good or evil, whether Democracy be good or evil, nor whether Socialism be good or evil, but whether the naked, bald, unlimited principle of the Sovereignty of the Individual, in human government and the administration of human affairs, be essentially good and true or essentially pernicious and false. This is the issue now up for trial before the world, and the definitive decision of which must be had before the final destiny of mankind upon earth can be even rough-hewn by the most vivid imagination, and certainly before any thing approximating scientific deduction respecting it can be had.

You will please to consider yourselves, Ladies and Gentlemen, as a jury empaneled to try this issue. I take my position before you as the advocate of the Sovereignty of the Individual, and the defender of the spirit of the present age. If this principle be essentially good and true, then it may be trusted wherever it leads, and the general drift of what the world calls “Progress” is in the right direction, whatever mistakes may be made in matters of detail. If it is a false principle, the sooner we understand that fact the better; but let it be also understood, in that case, that we have much to undo which has been already done, and which has been supposed to be well done, in these modern times. In that case, Protestantism is all wrong, and Democracy is all wrong; the Whateleys, the Wisemans, the Bronsons, the Windischgratzes, and the Haynaus are philosophers and philanthropists of the right school; and the Luthers, the Channings, the Jeffersons, the Washingtons, and the Kossuths are the world's worst foes,--the betrayers and scourgers which the wrath of an offended Heaven has let loose upon earth, first to delude and then to punish mankind for their sins.

I will first endeavor to set before you a clearer view of the doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual, as based upon the principle of the infinite Individuality of things. I will then show that this Sovereignty of the Individual furnishes the law of the development of human society, as illustrated in the progressive movements of modern times. Finally, I shall endeavor to trace the development which is hereafter to result from the further operation of this principle and to fix, so nearly as may be, the condition of human affairs towards which it conducts, especially in that particular department of human affairs which constitutes the subject of investigation this evening,--namely, the government of mankind.

The doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual—-in one sense itself a principle—-grows out of the still more fundamental principle of “INDIVIDUALITY,” which pervades universal nature. Individuality is positively the most fundamental and universal principle which the finite mind seems capable of discovering, and the best image of the Infinite. There are no two objects in the universe which are precisely alike. Each has its own constitution and peculiarities, which distinguish it from every other. Infinite diversity is the universal law. In the multitude of human countenances, for example, there are no two alike, and in the multitude of human characters there is the same variety. The hour which your courtesy has assigned to me would be entirely consumed, if I were to attempt to adduce a thousandth part of the illustrations of this subtle principle of Individuality, which lie patent upon the face of nature, all around me. It applies equally to persons, to things, and to events. There have been no two occurrences which were precisely alike during all the cycling periods of time. No action, transaction, or set of circumstances whatsoever corresponded precisely to any other action, transaction, or set of circumstances. Had I a precise knowledge of all the occurrences which have ever taken place up to this hour, it would not suffice to enable me to make a law which would be applicable in all respects to the very next occurrence which shall take place, nor to any one of the infinite millions of events which shall hereafter occur. This diversity reigns throughout every kingdom of nature, and mocks at all human attempts to make laws, or constitutions, or regulations, or governmental institutions of any sort, which shall work justly and harmoniously amidst the unforeseen contingencies of the future.

The individualities of objects are least, or, at all events, they are less apparent when the objects are inorganic or of a low grade of organization. The individualities of the grains of sand which compose the beach, for example, are less marked than those of vegetables, and those of vegetables are less than those of animals, and, finally, those of animals are less than those of man. In proportion as an object is more complex, it embodies a greater number of elements, and each element has its own individualities, or diversities, in every new combination into which it enters. Consequently these diversities are multiplied into each other, in the infinite augmentation of geometrical progression. Man, standing, then, at the head of the created universe, is consequently the most complex creature in existence,--every individual man or woman being a little world in him or herself, an image or reflection of God, and epitome of the Infinite. Hence the individualities of such a being are utterly immeasurable, and every attempt to adjust the capacities, the adaptations, the wants, or the responsibilities of one human being by the capacities, the adaptations, the wants or the responsibilities of another human being, except in the very broadest generalities, is unqualifiedly futile and hopeless. Hence every ecclesiastical, government, or social institution which is based on the idea of demanding conformity or likeness in any thing, has ever been, and ever will be, frustrated by the operation of this subtle, all-pervading principle of Individuality. Hence human society has ever been and is still in the turmoil of revolution. The only alternative known has been between revolution and despotism. Revolutions violently burst the bonds, and explode the foundations of existing institutions. The institution falls before the Individual. Despotism only succeeds by denaturalizing mankind. It extinguishes their individualities only by extinguishing them. The Individual falls before the institution. Judge ye which is best, the man-made or the God-made world.

In the next place this Individuality is inherent and unconquerable, except, as I have just said, by extinguishing the man himself. The man himself has no power over it. He can not divest himself of his organic peculiarities of character, any more than he can divest himself of his features. It attends him even in the effort he makes, if he makes any, to divest himself of it. He may as well attempt to flee his own shadow as to rid himself of the indefeasible, God-given inheritance of his own Individuality.

Finally, this indestructible and all-pervading Individuality furnishes, itself, the law, and the only true law, or order and harmony. Governments have hitherto been established, and have apologized for the unseemly fact of their existence, from the necessity of establishing and maintaining order; but order has never yet been maintained, revolutions and violent outbreaks have never yet been ended, public peace and harmony have never yet been secured, for the precise reason that the organic, essential, and indestructible natures of the objects which it was attempted to reduce to order have always been constricted and infringed by every such attempt. Just in proportion as the effort is less and less made to reduce men to order, just in that proportion they become more orderly, as witness the difference in the state of society in Austria and the United States. Plant an army of one hundred thousand soldiers in New York, as at Paris, to preserve the peace, and we should have a bloody revolution in a week; and be assured that the only remedy for what little of turbulence remains among us, as compared with European societies, will be found to be more liberty. When there remain positively no external restrictions, there will be positively no disturbance, provided always certain regulating principles of justice, to which I will advert presently, are accepted and enter into the public mind, serving as substitutes for every species of repressive laws.

I was saying that Individuality is the essential law of order. This is true throughout the universe. When every individual particle of matter obeys the law of its own attraction, and comes into that precise position, and moves in that precise direction, which its own inherent individualities demand, the harmony of the spheres is evolved. By that means only natural classification, natural order, natural organization, natural harmony and agreement are attained. Every scheme or arrangement which is based upon the principle of thwarting the inherent affinities of the individual monads which compose any system or organism is essentially vicious, and the organization is false,--a mere bundle of revolutionary and antagonistic atoms. It is time that human system builders should begin to discover this universal truth. The principle is self-evident. Objects bound together contrary to their nature must and will seek to rectify themselves by breaking the bonds which confine them, while those which come together by their own affinities remain quiescent and content. Let human system makers of all sorts, then, admit the principle of an infinite Individuality among men, which cannot be suppressed, and which must be indulged and fostered, at all events, as one element in the solution of the problem they have before them. If they are unable to see clearly how all external restrictions can be removed with safety to the well-being of society, let them, nevertheless, not abandon a principle, which is self-evident, but let them modestly suspect that there may be some other elements in the solution of the same problem, which their sagacity has not yet enabled them to discover. In all events, and at all hazards, this Individuality of every member of the human family must be recognized and indulged, because first, we have seen it is infinite, and cannot be measured or prescribed for, then because it is inherent, and cannot be conquered; and, finally, because it is the essential element of order, and cannot consequently, be infringed without engendering infinite confusion, such as has hitherto universally reigned, in the administration of human affairs.

If, now, Individuality is a universal law which must be obeyed if we would have order and harmony in any sphere, and, consequently, if we would have a true constitution of human government, then the absolute Sovereignty of the Individual necessarily results. The monads or atoms of which human society is composed are the individual men and women in it. They must be so disposed of, as we have seen, in order that society may be harmonic, that the destiny of each shall be controlled by his or her own individualities of taste, conscience, intellect, capacities, and will. But man is a being endowed with consciousness. He, and no one else, knows the determining force of his own attractions. No one else can therefore decide for him, and hence Individuality can only become the law of human action by securing to each individual the sovereign determination of his own judgment and of his own conduct, in all things, with no right reserved either of punishment or censure on the part of any body else whomsoever; and this is what is meant be the Sovereignty of the Individual, limited only by the ever-accompanying condition, resulting from the equal Sovereignty of all others, that the onerous consequences of his actions be assumed by himself.

If my audience were composed chiefly of Catholics, or Monarchists, or Anti-Progressionists of any sort, I should develop this argument more at length, for, as I have said, it is the real issue, and the only real issue, between the reformatory and the conservative portions of mankind; but I supposed that I may, with propriety, assume that I am before an auditory who are in the main Protestant and Democratic, and, assuming that, I shall then be authorized to assume, in accordance with the principles I have endeavored to develop, that they are likewise substantially Socialist, according to the definition I have given to Socialism, whether they have hitherto accepted or repudiated the name. It is enough, however, if I address you as Protestants and Democrats, or as either of these. I shall therefore assume, without further dwelling upon the fundamental statement of those principles, that you are ready to admit so much of Individuality and of the Sovereignty of the Individual as is necessarily involved in the propositions of Protestantism or Democracy. I shall assume that I am before an assembly of men and women who sympathize with ecclesiastical and political enfranchisement,--who believe that what the world calls Progress, in these modern times, is in the main real and not sham progress, a genuine and legitimate development of the race. Instead, therefore, of pursuing the main argument further, I will return to, and endeavor more fully to establish, a position which I have already assumed,--namely, that, by virtue of the fact of being either a Protestant or a Democrat, you have admitted away the whole case, and that you are fully committed to the whole doctrine of Individuality and the Sovereignty of the Individual, wherever that may lead.

I assert, then, the doctrine of Individuality, in its broadest and most unlimited sense. I assert that the law of genuine progress in human affairs is identical with the tendency to individualize. In ecclesiastical affairs it is the breaking up of the Church into sects, the breaking up of the larger sects into minor sects, the breaking up of the minor sects, by continual schism, into still minuter fragments of sects, and, finally, a complete disintegration of the whole mass into individuals, at which point every human being becomes his own sect and his own church. Does it require any demonstration that his is the natural tendency and the legitimate development of Protestantism, that it is in fact the necessary and inevitable outgrowth of its own fundamental principle. The History of all Religions in Protestant Christendom is becoming already too voluminous to be written. With the multiplication of sects grows the spirit of toleration, which is nothing else but the recognition of the sovereignty of others. A glance at the actual condition of the Protestant Church demonstrates the tendency to the obliteration of Sectarianism by the very superabundance of sects.

In the political sphere the individualizing tendency of Democracy is exhibited in the distribution of the department of government into the hands of different depositories of power, the discrimination of the chief functions of government into the Legislature, the Executive, and the Judiciary, in the division of the Legislature into distinct branches, in the representative system which recognizes the Individuality of different confederated states, and of different portions of the same state, in the divorce of the Church and State, and yet more strikingly than all in the successive surrender to the Individual of one branch after another of what was formerly regarded as the legitimate business of government.

Under the old order of things, government interfered to determine the trade or occupation of the Individual, to settle his religious faith, to regulate his locomotion, to prescribe his hours of relaxation and retirement, the length of his beard, the cut of his apparel, his relative rank, the mode of his social intercourse, and so on, continuously, until government was in fact everything, and the Individual nothing. Democracy, working somewhat blindly, it is true, but yet guided by a true instinct, begotten by its own great indwelling vital principle, the Sovereignty of the Individual, has already substantially revolutionized all that. It has swept away, for the most part, in America at least, the impertinent interference of government with the pursuits, the religious opinions and ceremonies, the travel, the amusements, the dress, and the manners of the citizen. One whole third of the field heretofore occupied by government has thus been surrendered to the Individual. To this point we have already attained, practically, at the precise stage at which we now are in the transition from the past to the future model of the organization of society.

But the principle of Democracy does not stop here. Government still interferes, even in these United States, in some instances, with the social and political status of the Individual, as in the case of slavery, with commerce, with the title to the soil, with the validity of private obligations, with the treatment of crime, and, finally, with the marriage and parental relationships of the citizen; and it is obviously an incongruous fact that it interferes with all these, in many instances at least, to the great annoyance of the citizen, who, according to our political theory, is himself the sovereign, and consequently the voluntary fabricator of that which annoys him. To the philosophical mind there is that in this incongruity alone which predicts the ultimate emancipation of the citizen from the restrictions of legislation and jurisprudence, in every aspect of his existence. Accordingly, there is another whole third of the domain hitherto occupied by Government which is at this moment in dispute between it and the Individual. The whole of that legislation which establishes or tolerates that form of human bondage which is called slavery is at this moment undergoing the most determined and vigorous onset of public opinion which any false and tyrannical institution of Government was ever called upon to endure. The full and final abolition of slavery cannot but be regarded, by every reflecting mind, as prospectively certain. Such is the fiat of Democracy; such is the inevitable sequitur from the Democratic premise of inherent political rights. Government interferes, again, to regulate commerce; but what is the demand of Democracy in relation to that? Nothing short of free trade. Democracy says to Government, Hands off! Let the Individual determine for himself when, and where, and how he will buy and sell. Does any one doubt that Democracy will, in the long run, have its own way in relation to this matter as well, and that tariffs, and custom houses, and collectorships, and the whole lumbering paraphernalia of indirect taxation, which fences out the intercourse of nations, will be looked back upon, in a generation or two, in a light akin to that in which the police system of Fouché, the passport system of the despotic countries of Europe, and the censorship of the press are now regarded by us? Government still interferes to control the public domain; but already an organized and rapidly augmenting political organization is demanding in this country a surrender of this whole subject to the Individual Sovereigns who make the Government, and who need the land. Nor are the modest pretensions of Land Reform, which as yet touch only the public domain, likely to end at that. The very foundation principles of the ownership of land, as vested in individuals and protected by law, cannot escape much longer from a searching and radical investigation; and when that comes, the arbitrary legislation of Government will have to give place to such natural and scientific principles regulating the subject as may be evolved. Land Reform, in its present aspect, is merely the prologue to a thorough and unsparing, but philosophical and equitable agrarianism, by means of which either the land itself, or an equal participation in the benefits of the land, shall be secured to the whole people. Science, not human legislation, must finally govern the distribution of the soil Government, again, interferes with contracts and private obligations. But already the demand is growing loud for the abolition of the usury laws, and a distant murmuring is overheard of the question whether good faith and the maintenance of credit would not be promoted by dispensing with all laws for the collection of debts. Both the statesman and the citizens have observed, not without profound consideration, the significant fact that the fear of the law is less potential for the enforcement of obligations than commercial honor; that the protest of a notary, or even a whisper of suspicion on Change, is fraught with a cogency which neither a bench warrant nor a capias ad satisfaciendum ever possessed. Government still deals with criminals by the old-fashioned process of punishment, but both science and philanthropy concur in pronouncing that the grand remedial agency for crime is prevention, and not cure. The whole theory of vindictive punishment is rapidly obsolescent. That theory once dead, all that remains of punishment is simply defensive. Imprisonment melts into the euphemism, detention; and, while detained, the prisoner is treated tenderly, as a diseased or unfortunate person. Nor does Democracy stop at that. Democracy declares that liberty is an inalienable right, the inherent prerogative of the Individual Sovereign, of which there is no possible defeasance, even by his own act. Democracy therefore claims, or will claim, when it better understands the universality of its own pretension, either such conditions of society that criminals shall no longer be made, or else that some more delicate method of guardianship shall be devised which shall respect the dignity with which Democracy invests the Individual man.

When the battles which are thus already waged in these various departments of human affairs between Government and the Individual shall have been finally fought and won, the domain of Government will have shrunk to the merest fragment of its old dimensions. Hardly any sphere of legislation, worthy of the name, will remain, save that of the marriage and parental relations. These are subjects of great delicacy, and form, ordinarily, an insuperable barrier to the freedom of investigation in this direction. It is in connection with these subjects that men shrink with dismay from what they understand to be the program of Socialism. A brief consideration of the subject, conducted with the boldness and impartiality of science, will demonstrate, however, that the most extreme proposition of Socialism does not transcend, in the least, the legitimate operation of the fundamental principle of either Protestantism or Democracy. There is that, both in one and the other, which, carried simply out to its logical and inevitable conclusion, covers the whole case of marriage and the love relations, and completely emancipates them from the impertinent interference of human legislation. First, what says protestantism? Why, that the right of private judgment in matters of conscience is paramount to all other authority whatsoever. But marriage has been, in all ages, a subject eminently under the dominion of conscience and the religious sense. Besides, it is one of the best recognized principles of high-toned religionism that every action of the life is appropriately made matter of conscience, inasmuch as the responsibility of the Individual towards God is held to extend to every, even the minutest thing, which the Individual does. No man, we are told, can answer for his brother. This, then, settles the whole question. It abandons the whole subject to the conscience of the Individual. It implies the charge of a spiritual despotism, wholly unwarranted, for any man to interfere with the conscientious determination of any other with regard to it. Nor can it be objected, with any effect, that this role only applies when the determination of the Individual accords with, and is based upon, his own conscientious conviction, for who shall determine whether it be so or not? Clearly no one but the Individual himself. Any tribunal assuming to do it for him would be the Inquisition over again, which is the special abhorrence of Protestantism. Such, then, is the Protestant faith. But what, let us inquire, is the Protestant practice? Precisely what it should be, in strict accordance with the fundamental axiom of Protestantism. Every variety of conscience and every variety of deportment in reference to this precise subject of love is already tolerated among us. At one extreme of the scale stand the Shakers, who abjure the connection of the sexes altogether. At the other extremity stands the association of the Perfectionists at Oneida, who hold and practice, and justify by the Scriptures, as a religious dogma, what they denominate complex marriage or the freedom of love. We have, in this State, stringent laws against adultery and fornication; but laws of that sort fall powerless, in America, before the all-pervading sentiment of Protestantism, which vindicates the freedom of conscience to all persons and in all things, provided the consequences fall upon the parties themselves. Hence the Oneida Perfectionists live undisturbed and respected, in the heart of the State of New York, and in the face of the world; and the civil government, true to the Democratic principle, which is only the same principle in another application, is little anxious to interfere with this breach of its own ordinances, so long as they cast none of the consequences of their conduct upon those who do not consent to bear them.

Such, then, is the unlimited sweep of the fundamental axiom of Protestantism. Such its unhesitating endorsements, both theoretically and practically, of the whole doctrine of the absolute Sovereignty of the Individual. It does not help the matter to assert that it is an irreligious or a very immoral act to do this, or that, or the other thing. Protestantism neither asserts or denies that. It merely asserts that there is no power to determine that question higher than the Individual himself. It does not help the matter to affirm that the Scriptures, or the law of God, delivered in any form, have determined the nature and limits of marriage. Protestantism, again, neither denies that proposition nor affirms it. It merely affirms, again, that the Individual himself must decide for himself what the law of God is, and that there is no authority higher than himself to whose decision he can be required to submit. It is arrogance, self-righteousness and spiritual despotism for me to assume that you have not a conscience as well as I, and that, if you regulate your own conduct in the light of that conscience, it will not be as well regulated in the sight of God as it would be if I were to impose the decisions of my conscience upon you.

In general, however, Government still interferes with the marriage and parental relations. Democracy in America has always proceeded with due deference to the prudential motto, festina lente. In France, at the time of the first Revolution, Democracy rushed with the explosive force of escapement from centuries of compression, point blank to the bull's eye of its final destiny, from which it recoiled with such force that the stupid world has dreamed, for half a century, that the vital principle of Democracy was dead. As a logical sequence from Democratic principle, the legal obligation of marriage was sundered, and the Sovereignty of the Individual above the institution was vindicated. That the principle of Democracy is, potentially, still the same, will appear upon slight examination. Democracy denies all power to Government in matters of religion. No Democratic Government does, therefore, or can base its interference with marriage upon the religious ground. It defines marriage to be, and regards it as being, a mere civil contract. It justifies its own interference with it upon the same ground that it justifies its interference with other contracts,--namely, to enforce the civil obligations connected with it, and to insure the maintenance of children. But here, as in the case of ordinary obligations, if the conviction obtains that different conditions of society will render the present relations of property between husband and wife unnecessary, and secure, by the equitable distribution and general abundance of wealth, a universal deference on the part of parents to the dictates of nature in behalf of children. Democracy will cease to make this subject an exception to her dominant principles. A tendency to change these conditions is already shown in the passage of laws to secure to the wife an independent or individual enjoyment of property. Already the observation is made, too, that children are never abandoned among the wealthy classes, and hence the natural inference that the scientific production, the equitable distribution, and the economical employment of wealth would render human laws unnecessary to enforce the first mandate of nature,--hospitality and kindness toward offspring. The doctrine is already considerably diffused that the union of the sexes would be, not only more pure, but more permanent, in the absence, under favorable circumstances, of all legal interference. But whether that be so or not is not now the question. I am merely asserting that the inevitable tendency of Democracy, like that of Protestantism, is toward abandoning this subject to the sovereign determination of the Individual, and that Democracy in this country will attain, only more leisurely, the same point to which it went at a single leap, and from which it rebounded, in France.

It is far less obvious, judging from the practical exhibition what it has hitherto made of itself, that the essential principle of Socialism is, equally with that of Protestantism and Democracy, the Individual Sovereignty. Indeed, Socialism has been attacked and resisted more vigorously than from any other cause in consequence of an instinctive perception that the measures hitherto proposed by it sap the freedom of the Individual. The connected interests and complicated artificial organization proposed by Fourier, and the renunciation of independent ownership contemplated by Communism, have been severely criticized and denounced, and the most so, perhaps, by those who are the most thoroughly imbued with the Protestant and Democratic idea of Individuality. To understand this apparent discrepancy we must distinguish the leading idea of Socialism from the methods proposed by its advocates. The two are quite distinct from each other, and it may be that Socialism has mistaken its measures, as every human enterprise is liable to do.

Socialism demands the proper, legitimate, and just reward of labor It demands that the interests of all shall be so arranged that they shall cooperate, instead of clashing with and counteracting each other. It demands economy in the production and uses of wealth, and the consequent abolition of wretchedness and poverty. To what end does it make these demands? Clearly it is in order that every human being shall be in the full possession, control, and enjoyment of his own person and modes of seeking happiness, without foreign interference from any quarter whatsoever. This, then, is the spirit of Socialism, and it is neither more nor less than a still broader and more comprehensive assertion of the doctrine of the inherent Sovereignty of the Individual. The Socialist proposes association and combined interests merely as a means of securing that which he aims at,--justice, cooperation, and the economies of the large scale. Hence it follows that the Democrat resists and the Socialist advocates Association and Communism for precisely the same reason. It is because both want identically the same thing. The Democrat sees in connected interests a fatal stroke at his personal liberty,--the unlimited sovereignty over his own conduct,--and dreads the subjection of himself to domestic legislation, manifold committees, and continual and authorized espionage and criticism. The Socialist sees, in these same arrangements, abundance of wealth, fairly distributed among all, and a thousand beneficent results which he knows to be essential conditions to the possession or exercise of that very Sovereignty of the Individual. Each has arrived at one half the truth. The Socialist is right in asserting that all the conditions which he demands are absolutely essential to the development of the individual selfhood. He is wrong in proposing such a fatal surrender of Individual liberty for their attainment as every form of amalgamated interests inevitably involves. The Democrat is negatively wrong in omitting from his program the absolute necessity for harmonic social relations,--wrong in supposing that there can always be a safe and legitimate exercise of those rights which he declares to be inalienable, short of those superior domestic arrangements which the Socialist demands. It is futile, for example, to talk of removing the restraints of law from marriage, thus guaranteeing freedom in “the pursuit of happiness” in that relation, before the just reward of labor and the consequent prevalence of general wealth shall have created a positive security of condition for women and children. Hence the blunder of Democracy in the old French Revolution, and hence the absolute dependence of Democracy, for the working out of its own principles, upon the happy solution of all the problems of Socialism. Hence, again, the natural affinity of Democracy and Socialism, and the reason why, despite their mutual misunderstanding, they have recently fallen into each other's embrace, in France, resounding in the ears of terrified Europe the ominous cry Vive la Republique Démocratique et Sociale.

The blunder of Socialism is not in its end, but in its means. It consists in propounding a combination of interests which is opposed by the individualities of all nature, which is consequently a restriction of liberty, and which is, therefore, especially antagonistic to the very objects which Socialism proposes to attain. It is this which prevents the harmony of Democracy and Socialism, even in France, from becoming complete, and which renders inevitable the disruption of every attempted social organization which does not end disastrously in despotism,--the inverse mode in which nature vindicates her irresistible determination toward Individuality. Let that feature of the Socialist movement be retrenched, and a method of securing its great ends discovered which shall not be self-defeating in its operation, and from that point Socialism and Democracy will blend into one and, uniting with Protestantism, lose their distinctive appellations in the generic term of Individual Sovereignty.

Such a principle is already discovered. It is capable of satifactory demonstration that out of the adoption of a simple change in the commercial system of the world, by which cost and not value shall be recognized as the limit of price, will grow, legitimately, all the wealth-producing, equitable, cooperating, and harmonizing results which Socialism has hitherto sought to realize through the combination or amalgamation of interests, while, at the same time, it will leave intact, the individualities of existing society, and even promote them to an extent not hitherto conceived of. It is not now, however, the appropriate time to trace out the results of such a principle. We are concerned at present with Individuality and the spirit of the age as connected with governmental affairs.

It is already the axiom of Democracy that that is the best government which governs least,--that, in other words, which leaves the largest domain to the Individual sovereign. It may sound strange, and yet it is rigidly true, that nothing is more foreign to the essential nature of Democracy than the rule of majorities. Democracy asserts that all men are born free and equal,--that is, that every individual is of right free from the governing control of every other and of all others. Democracy asserts also, that this right is inalienable,--that it can neither be surrendered nor forfeited to another Individual, nor to a majority of other Individuals. But the practical application of this principle has been, and will always be found to be, incompatible with our existing social order. It presupposes, as I have said, the preliminary attainment of the conditions demanded by Socialism. The rule of majorities is, therefore, a compromise enforced by temporary expediency,--a sort of half-way station-house, between Despotism, which is Individuality in the concrete, and the Sovereignty of every Individual, which is Individuality in the discrete form.

Genuine Democracy is identical with the no-government doctrine. The motto to which I have alluded looks directly to that end. Finding obstacles in the present social organization to the realization of its theory, Democracy has called a halt for the present, and consented to a truce. The no-government men of our day are practically not so wise, while they are theoretically more consistent. They are, in fact, the genuine Democrats. It is they who are fairly entitled to the sobriquet of “The unterrified Democracy.” They fearlessly face all consequences, and push their doctrine quite out to its logical conclusions. In so doing, they repeat the blunder which was committed in France. They insist upon no government higher than that of the Individual, while they leave in existence those causes which imperatively demand, and will always demand so long as they exist, the intervention of just such restrictive governments as we now have.

It results from all that has been said that the essential principle of Protestantism, of Democracy, and of Socialism, is one and the same; that it is identical with what is called the spirit of the present age; and that all of them are summed up in the idea of the absolute supremacy of the Individual above all human institutions.

What, then, the question returns, is to be the upshot of this movement? If every department of modern reform is imbued with one and the same animating principle; if there be already an obvious convergence, and, prospectively, an inevitable conjunction and cooperation of the three great modern revolutionary forces, Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism; if, even now, in their disjointed and semi-antagonistic relations, they prove more than a match for hoary conservatism; if, in addition, material inventions and reforms of all sorts concur in the same direction; if, in fine, the spirit of the age, or, more properly, of modern times, and which we recognize also as the spirit of human improvement, tends continually and with accelerated velocity toward the absolute Individualization of human affairs,--what is the inevitable goal to be ultimately reached? I have said that in religious affairs the end must be that for every man shall be his own sect. This is the simple meaning of Protestantism, interpreted in the light of its own principles. If the occasion were appropriate, it would be a glorious contemplation to dwell upon that more perfect harmony which will then reign among mankind in the religious sphere,--a unity growing out of infinite diversity, and universal deference for the slightest Individualities of opinion in others, transcending in glory that hitherto sought by the Church in artificial organizations and arbitrary creeds, as far as the new heavens and the new earth will excel the old.

Socialism demands, and will end by achieving, the untrammeled selfhood of the Individual in the private relations of life, but out of that universal selfhood shall grow the highest harmonies of social relationship. It is not these subjects, however, that are now especially appropriate. Let us restrict our specific inquiry to the remaining one of the three spheres of human affairs which we have in the general view considered conjointly,--namely, that which relates to human government.

Is it within the bounds of possibility, and, if so, is it within the limits of rational anticipation, that all human governments, in the sense in which government is now spoken of, shall pass away, and be reckoned among the useless lumber of an experimental age,--that forcible government of all sorts shall, at some future day, perhaps not far distant, be looked upon by the whole world, as we in America now look back upon the maintenance of a religious establishment, supposed in other times, and in many countries still, to be essential to the existence of religion among men; and as we look back upon the ten thousand other impertinent interferences of government, as government is practiced in those countries where it is an institution of far more validity and consistency than it has among us? Is it possible, and, if so, is it rationally probable, that the time shall ever come when every man shall be, in fine, his own nation as well as his own sect? Will this tendency to universal enfranchisement—indications of which present themselves, as we have seen, in exuberant abundance on all hands in this age—ultimate itself, by placing the Individual above all political institutions, the man above all subordination to municipal law?

To put ourselves in a condition to answer this inquiry with some satisfactory decree of certainty, we must first obtain a clear conception of the necessities out of which government grows; then of the functions which government performs; then of the specific tendencies of society in relation to those functions; and, finally, of the legitimate successorship for the existing governmental institutions of mankind.

I must apologize as well for the incompleteness as for the apparent dogmatism of any brief exposition of this subject. I assert that it is not only possible and rationally probable, but that it is rigidly consequential upon the right understanding of the constitution of man, that all government, in the sense of involuntary restraint upon the Individual, or substantially all, must finally cease, and along with it the whole complicated paraphernalia and trumpery of Kings, Emperors, Presidents, Legislatures, and Judiciary. I assert that the indications of this result abound in existing society, and that it is the instinctive or intelligent perception of that fact by those who have not bargained for so much which gives origin and vital energy to the reaction in Church and State and social life. I assert that the distance is less today forward from the theory and practice of Government as it is in these United States, to the total abrogation of all Government above that of the Individual, than it is backward to the theory and practice of Government as Government now is in the despotic countries of the old world.

The reason why apology is demanded is this: So radical a change in governmental affairs involves the concurrence of other equally radical changes in social habits, commerce, finance, and elsewhere. I have shown already, I think, that Democracy would have ended in that, had it not been obstructed by the want of certain conditions which nothing but the solution of the problems of Socialism can afford. To discuss the changes which must occur in every department of life, in order to render this revolution in Government practicable, and to provide that those changes now exist in embryo, would be to embrace the whole field of human concerns. That is clearly impossible in the compass of a lecture. But it is equally impossible to adjust the radical changes which I foretell in Government to the notion of the permanency of all other institutions in their present forms. What, then, can be done in this dilemma? I am reduced to a method of treating the subject which demands apology, both for incompleteness and apparent dogmatism. I perceive no possible method open to me but that of segregating the subject of Government from its connection with other departments of life, and deducting from principles and rational grounds of conjecture the changes which it is destined to undergo; and when those changes involve the necessity of other and corresponding changes elsewhere, to assert, as it were, dogmatically, without stopping to adduce the proofs, that these latter changes are also existing in embryo, or actually progressing.

I return now to the necessities out of which Government grows. These are in the broadest generalization: 1. to restrain encroachments, and 2. to manage the combined interests of mankind.

First, with regard to restraining encroachments and enforcing equity. Is there no better method of accomplishing this end than force, such as existing Governments are organized to apply? I affirm that there is. I affirm that a clear scientific perception of the point at which encroachment begins, in all our manifold pecuniary and moral relations with each other, an exact idea of the requirements of equity, accepted into the public mind, and felt to be capable of a precise application in action, would go tenfold further than arbitrary laws and the sanctions of laws can go, in obtaining the desired results. In saying this, I mean something definite and specific. I have already adverted to the discovery of an exact, scientific principle, capable of regulating the distribution of wealth, and introducing universal equity in pecuniary transactions,--an exact mathematical gauge of honesty,--which, when it shall have imbued the public mind, and formed the public sentiment, and come to regulate the public conduct, will secure the products of labor with impartial justice to all, and tend to remove alike the temptations and the provocations to crime. What that principle does in the sphere of commerce is done in the social and ethical spheres by the doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual. Both give to each his own, for it must be continually remembered that the doctrine of Sovereignty of the Individual demands that I should sedulously and religiously respect your Individuality, while I vindicate my own. These two ground principles, with a few others incident thereto, once accepted and indwelling in the minds of men, and controlling their action, will dispense with force and forcible Government. The change which I contemplate in governmental affairs rests, therefore, upon these prior or concurrent changes in the commercial, ethical, and social spheres. Statesmen and jurists have hitherto dealt with effects instead of causes. They have looked upon crime and encroachment of all sorts as a fact to be remedied, but never as a phenomenon to be accounted for. They have never gone back to inquire what conditions of existence manufactured the criminal, or provoked or induced the encroachment. A change in this respect is beginning to be observed, for the first time, in the present generation. The superiority of prevention over cure is barely beginning to be admitted,--a reform in the methods of thought which is an incipient stage of the revolution in question. The highest type of human society in the existing social order is found in the parlor. In the elegant and refined reunions of the aristocratic classes there is none of the impertinent interference of legislation. The Individuality of each is fully admitted. Intercourse, therefore, is perfectly free. Conversation is continuous, brilliant, and varied. Groups are formed according to attraction. They are continuously broken up, and re-formed through the operation of the same subtle and all-pervading influence. Mutual deference pervades all classes, and the most perfect harmony, ever yet attained, in complex human relations, prevails under precisely those circumstances which Legislators and Statesmen dread as the conditions of inevitable anarchy and confusion. If there are laws of etiquette at all, there are mere suggestions of principles admitted into and judged of for himself or herself, by each individual mind.

Is it conceivable that in all the future progress of humanity, with all the innumerable elements of development which the present age is unfolding, society generally, and in all its relations, will not attain as high a grade of perfection as certain portions of society, in certain special relations, have already attained?

Suppose the intercourse of the parlor to be regulated by specific legislation. Let the time which each gentlemen shall be allowed to speak to each lady be fixed by law; the position in which they should sit or stand be precisely regulated; the subjects which they shall be allowed to speak of, and the tone of voice and accompanying gestures with which each may be treated, carefully defined, all under pretext of preventing disorder and encroachment upon each other's privileges and rights, then can any thing be conceived better calculated or more certain to convert social intercourse into intolerable slavery and hopeless confusion?

It is precisely in this manner that municipal legislation interferes with and prevents the natural organization of society. Mankind legislate themselves into confusion by their effort to escape it. Still, a state of society may perhaps be conceived, so low in social development that even the intercourse of the parlor could not be prudently indulged without a rigid code of deportment and the presence of half a dozen bailiffs to preserve order. I will not deny, therefore, that Government in municipal affairs is, in like manner, a temporary necessity of undeveloped society. What I affirm is that along with, and precisely in proportion to, the social advancement of a people, that necessity ceases, so far as concerns the first of the causes of Government referred to,--the necessity for restraining encroachments.

The second demand for Government is to manage the combined interests of society. But combined or amalgamated interests of all sorts are opposed to Individuality. The Individuality of interests should be as absolute as that of persons. Hence the number and extent of combined interests will be reduced with every step in the genuine progress of mankind. The cost principle will furnish in its operation the means of conducting the largest human enterprises, under Individual guidance and control. It strips capital of its iniquitous privilege of oppressing labor by earning an income of its own, in the form of interest, and places it freely at the disposal of those who will preserve and administer it best, upon the sole conditions of returning it unimpaired, but without augmentation, at the appropriate time, to its legitimate owners.

A glance at the functions which Government actually performs, and the specific tendencies which society now exhibits in relation to those functions, will confirm the statement that all, or most of, the combined interests of society will be finally disintegrated and committed to individual hands. It is one of the acknowledged functions of Government, until now, to regulate commerce. But, as we have already seen, the spirit of the age demands that Government shall let commerce alone. In this country, an important Bureau of the Executive Department of Government is the Land Office. But the public domain is, we have seen, already demanded by the people, and the Land Office will have to be dispensed with. The Army and Navy refer to a state of international relations of which every thing begins to prognosticate the final extinction. The universal extension of commerce and intercommunication, by means of steam navigation, railroads, and the magnetic telegraph, together with the general progress of enlightenment, are rapidly obliterating natural boundaries, and blending the human family into one. The cessation of war is becoming a familiar idea, and, with the cessation of war, armies and navies will cease, of course, to be required. It is probable that even the existing languages of the earth will melt, within another century or two, into one common and universal tongue, from the same causes, operating upon a more extended scale, as those which have blended the dialects of the different countries of England, of the different departments of France, and of the kingdoms of Spain into the English, the French and the Spanish languages, respectively. We have premonitions of the final disbanding of the armies and navies of the world in the substitution of a citizen militia, in the growing unpopularity of even that ridiculous shadow of an army, the militia itself, and in the substitution of the merchant steamship with merely an incidental warlike equipment instead of the regular man-of-war. The Navy and War Departments of Government will thus be dispensed with. The State Department now takes charge of the intercourse of the nation with foreign nations. But with the cessation of war there will be no foreign nations, and consequently the State or Foreign Department may in turn take itself away. Patriotism will expand into philanthrophy. Nations, like sects, will dissolve into the individuals who compose them. Every man will be his own nation, and, preserving his own sovereignty and respecting the sovereignty of others, he will be a nation at peace with all others. The term, “a man of the world,” reveals the fact that it is the cosmopolite in manners and sentiments whom the world already recognizes as the true gentleman,--the type and leader of civilization. The Home Department of Government is a common receptacle of odds and ends, every one of whose functions would be better managed by Individual enterprise, and might take itself away with advantage any day. The Treasury Department is merely a kind of secretory gland, to provide the means of carrying on the machinery of the other Departments. When they are removed, it will of course have no apology left for continuing to exist. Finances for administering Government will no longer be wanted when there is no longer any Government to administer. The Judiciary is, in fact, a branch of the Executive, and falls of course, as we have seen, with the introduction of principles which will put an end to aggression and crime. The Legislature enacts what the Executive and Judiciary execute. If the execution itself is unnecessary, the enactment of course is no less so. Thus, piece by piece, we dispose of the whole complicated fabric of Government, which looms up in such gloomy grandeur, overshadowing the freedom of the Individual, impressing the minds of men with a false conviction of its necessity, as if it were, like the blessed light of day, indispensable to life and happiness.

There is abundant evidence to the man of reflection that what we have thus performed in imagination is destined to be rapidly accomplished in fact. There is, perhaps, no one consideration which looks more directly to that consummation than the growing unpopularity of politics, in every phase of the subject. In America this fact is probably obvious than anywhere else. The pursuit of politics is almost entirely abandoned to lawyers, and generally it is the career of those who are least successful in that profession. The general repugnance of the masses of mankind for that class of the community, by which they testify an instinctive appreciation of the outrage upon humanity committed by the attempt to reduce the impertinent interference of legislation to a science, and to practice it as a learned profession, is intensified, in the case of the politician, by the element of contempt. In the sham Democracies, wherein majorities govern, the condition of the office-seeker and of the office-holder is alike and peculiarly unfortunate. Defeated, he is consigned unceremoniously, by popular opinion, to the category of the “poor devil.” Successful, he is denounced as a political hack. His position is preeminently precarious. Whatever veneration attaches still to the manufacturers and executors of law among us is mostly traditionary. So much of the popular estimation of the men whose business is governing the fellow-men as is the indigenous growth of our institutions is essentially disrespectful. The politician, in a republic, is a man whose business it is to please everybody, and who, consequently, has no personality of his own, and this, here and now, in a country and age in which distinctive personality is becoming the type and model of society. It is regarded today as a misfortune, in the families of respectable tradespeople, if a son of any promise has an unlucky turn for political preferment. Those who execute the laws are in little better plight than those who make them. Recently, throughout most of the States, when changes have been made in the fundamental law, the tenure of office of judges of all ranks has been reduced to a short period of from two to four years, and the office rendered elective. Such is the fearful descent upon which the dignity of powered wigs is fairly launched in Republican America. Judges, Chancellors and Chief Justices entering the canvass, at short intervals, for returns to the Bench, and shaking hands with greasy citizens as the price of judicial authority. It is said that familiarity breeds contempt, or that no man is great to his valet de chambre. When the inhabitants of a heathen country begin to treat their priests and their wooden divinities with contemptuous familiarity, wise men see that the power of Paganism is broken, and the Medicine-man, the Fetish, or the Juggernaut must soon give place to some more rational conception of the religious idea. At the ratio of depreciation actually progressing, office-holding of all sorts, in these United States, from the president down to the constable, will, in a few years more, be ranked in the public mind as positively disreputable. In the higher condition of society, toward which mankind is unconsciously advancing, men will shun all responsibility for and arbitrary control over the conduct of others as sedulously as during past ages they have sought them as the chief good. Washington declined to be made king, and the whole world has not ceased to make the welkin ring with laudations of the disinterested act. The time will come yet when the declinature, on all hands, of every species of governmental authority over others will not even be deemed a virtue, but simply the plain dictate of enlightened self-interest. The sentiment of the poet will then be recognized as an axiom of philosophy.

Whoever mounts the throne,--King, Priest, or Prophet,--Man alike shall groan.

Carlyle complains, in the bitterness of his heart, that the true kings and governors of mankind have retired in disgust from the task of governing the world, and betaken themselves to the altogether private business of governing themselves. Whenever the world at large shall become as wise as they, when all men shall be content to govern themselves. Whenever the world at large shall become as wise as they, when all men shall be content to govern themselves merely, then, and not till then, will “The True Constitution of Government” begin to be installed. Carlyle has but discovered the fact that good men are withdrawing from politics, without penetrating the rationale of the phenomenon. He may call upon them in vain till he is hoarse to return to the arena of a contest which has been waged for some six thousand years or so, with continuous defeat, at a time when they are beginning to discover that the whole series of bloody conflicts has been fought with windmills instead of giants, and that what the world wants, in the way of government, is letting alone.

But what then? Have we arrived at the upshot of the whole matter when we have, in imagination, swept all the actual forms of Government out of existence? Is human society, in its mature and normal condition, to be a mere aggregation of men and women, standing upon the unrelieved dead level of universal equality? Is there to be no homage, no rank, no honors, no transcendent influence, no power, in fine, exerted by one man over his fellow-men? Will there be nothing substantially corresponding to, and specifically substituted for, what is now known among men as Human Government?

This is the question to which we are finally conducted by the current of our investigations, and to this question I conceive the answer to be properly affirmative. Had I not believed so, there would have been no propriety in the title, “The True Constitution of Government,” under which I announced this discourse. It might be thought by some a sufficient answer to the question that might be thought by some a sufficient answer to the question that principles, and not men, will then constitute the Government of mankind. So vague a statement, however, does not give complete satisfaction to the inquisitive mind, nor does it meet the interrogatory in all its varying forms. We wish to know what will be the positions, relatively to each other, into which men will be naturally thrown by the operation of that perfect liberty which will result from the prevalence and toleration of universal Individuality. We desire to know this especially, now, with reference to that class of the mutual relations of men which will correspond most exactly to the relations of the governors and the governed.

Negatively, it is certain that in such a state of society as that which we are now contemplating no influence will be tolerated, in the place of Government, which is maintained or exerted by force in any, even the subtlest, forms of involuntary compulsion. But there is still a sense in which men are said to exert power,--a sense in which the wills of the governor and the governed concur, and blend, and harmonize with each other. It is in such a sense as this that the great orator is said to control the minds of his audience, or that some matchless queen of song sways an irresistible influence over the ears of men. When mankind graduate out of the period of brute force, that man will be the greatest hero and conqueror who levies the heaviest tribute of homage by excellence of achievement in any department of human performance. The avenues to distinction will not be then, as now, open only to the few. Each individual will truly govern the minds, and ears, and conduct of others. Those who have the most power to impress themselves upon the community in which they live will govern in larger, and those who have less will govern in smaller spheres. All will be priests and kings, serving at the innumerable altars and sitting upon the thrones of that manifold hierarchy, the foundations of which God himself has laid in the constitution of man. Genius, talent, industry, discovery, the power to please, every development of Individuality, in fine, which meets the approbation of another, will be freely recognized as the divine anointing which constitutes him a sovereign over others,--a sovereign having sovereigns for his subjects,--subjects whose loyalty is proved and known, because they are ever free to transfer their fealty to other lords. With the growing development of Individuality even in this age, new spheres of honorable distinction are continually evolved. The accredited heroes of our times are neither politicians nor warriors. It is the discoverers of great principles, the projectors of beneficent designs, and the executors of magnificent undertakings of all sorts who, even now, command the homage of mankind. While politics are falling into desuetude and contempt, while war, from being the admiration of the world, is rapidly becoming its abhorrence, the artist and the artisan are rising into relative importance and estimation. Even the undistinguished workers, as they have hitherto been, shall hereafter hold seats as Cabinet Ministers in the new hierarchical government, which shall shadow, in those days, with its overspreading magnificence, the dwellings of regenerated humanity. In that stupendous administration, extending from the greatest down to the least things of human discernment, there shall be no lack of functionaries and no limit upon patronage. Of that social state, which opens the avenues of all honorable pursuits to all, upon terms of equity and mutual cooperation, it may be truly said, as was said by the Great Teacher, when speaking of another kingdom,--if indeed it be another,--”In my Father's house there are many mansions.” The laudable ambition of all will then be fully gratified. There will be no defeated candidates in the political campaigns of that day. Where the interests of all are identical, even the superiority of another is success, and the glory of another is a personal triumph.

A superficial observer might judge that there was more prosperity and power in a petty principality of Germany than there is in the United States of America, because he sees more pomp and magnificence surrounding the court of a puppet prince, whom men call the ruler of that people. No one but an equally superficial observer will mistake the phantom, called Government, which resides in the Halls and Departments at Washington—the mere ghost of what such a Government once was, in its palmy days of despotism—for a nearer approximation to the true organization of Government than that natural arrangement of society which divides and distributes the functions of governing into ten thousand Departments and Bureaus at the homes, in the workshops, and at the universities of the people.

If that trumpery Government be called such, because it performs important public functions, then have we distinguished private individuals among us who are already preeminently more truly Governors than they. If the concern at Washington is legitimately denominated a Government of the people, because it controls and regulates a Post Office Department, for example, then are the Harndens and Adamses Governors too, for they control and regulate a Package Express Department, which is a greater and more difficult thing. They carry bigger bundles, and carry them farther, and deliver them with more regularity and dispatch. It is stated, upon authority which I presume to be reliable, that Adams & Co.'s Express is the most extensive organization of any sort in the world,--that it is, in fact, absolutely world-wide; and yet it is strictly an individual concern. As an instance of the superiority of administration in the private enterprise of the national combination, I was myself at Washington during the last winter, when the mails were interrupted by the breaking up of a railroad bridge between Baltimore and Philadelphia, and when, for nearly two weeks, the newspapers of the Commercial Metropolis were regularly delayed, one whole day, on their way to the Political metropolis of the country, while the same papers came regularly and promptly through every day by the private expresses. The President, Members of Congress, and Cabinet Ministers, even the Postmaster-General himself was regularly served with the news by the enterprise of a private individual, who performed one of the functions of the Government, in opposition to the Government, and better than the Government, levying tribute upon the very functionary of the Government who was elected, consecrated, and anointed for the performance of that identical function. Who, then, was the true Governor and Cabinet Minister, the Postmaster General, who was daily dispatching messengers to rectify the irregularity, and issuing bulletins to explain and apologize for it, or the Adams Express man, who conquered the difficulty, and served the public, when the so-called Government failed to do it? The fault is that the Government goes by rule, preordained in the form of law, and consequently has no capacity for adapting itself to the Individuality of an unforeseen contingency. It has not the Individual deciding power and promptitude of action which are absolutely necessary for such occasions.

It is the actual performance of the function which is all that there is good in the idea of Government. All that there is besides that is mere restriction, and consequent annoyance and oppression of the public, as when our Government undertook to suppress those private expresses, which serve the public better than it. The point, then, is thus: I affirm that every useful function, or nearly every one which is now performed by Government, and the use of which will remain in the more advanced conditions of mankind, toward which the present tendencies of society converge, can be better performed by the Individual, self-elected and self-authorized, than by any constituted Government whatsoever; and further, since it is the performance of the function, and the influence which the performance of the function exerts over the conduct, and to the advantage of men, which makes the true Governor, it follows, I affirm, that the Adams Express man was, in the case I have mentioned, the true Governor, and that the Postmaster General, and the whole innumerable gang of Legislators and Executors of the law at his back, were the sham Governors, such as the world is getting ready to discharge on perpetual furlough.

It is possible that there may be a few comparatively unimportant interests of mankind which are so essentially combined in their nature that some species of artificial organization will always be necessary for their management. I do not, for example, see how the public highways can be properly laid out and administered by the private individual. Let us resort, then, to science for the solution of this anomaly, for every subject has its science, the true social relations of mankind as well as all others. The inexorable natural law which governs this subject is this: that nature demands everywhere an individual lead. Every combined interest must therefore come ultimately to be governed by an individual mind, to be entrusted, in other words, to a despotism. It is the recognition of this law which is embodied in the political axiom that “power is constantly stealing from the hands of the many into the hands of the few,” It is this scientific principle, lying down in the very nature of things, which constitutes both the rationale of monarchy and its appropriate apology. The lesson of wisdom to be deduced from this principle is not, however, as our political leaders have preached to us, that “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance,”--a liberty which is not worth possession if it cannot be enjoyed in security, and a vigilance which is only required to be exercised in order to defeat the legitimate operation of the most universal and fundamental law of nature. The true lesson of political wisdom is simply this: that no interests should ever be entrusted to a combination which are too important to be surrendered understandingly and voluntarily to the guidance of a despotism. Government, therefore, in the present sense of the term, can never, from the very essential nature of the case, be compatible with the safety of the liberties of the people, until the sphere of its authority is reduced to the very narrowest dimensions,--never until the mere commission,--a board of overseers of roads and canals, and such other unimportant interests as experience shall prove can not be so readily managed by irresponsible individual action.

It is this latter alone which will then truly merit the imposing title of Government. There is a sense, as I have said, in which that term is fairly applicable to the natural organization of the interrelations of men. If Genin, or Leary, or Knox devises a new fashion for hats, and manufactures hats in the style so devised, and the style pleases you and me, and we buy the hats and wear them, therein is an example, a humble example, perhaps you will think, but still a genuine example, of true Government. The individual hatter is self-elected to his function. I, in giving him the preference over another, express my conviction of his fitness for that function, of his superiority over others. I vote for him. I give him my suffrage. I confirm his election. The abstract statement of the true order of Government, then, is this: it is that Government in which the rulers elect themselves, and are voted for afterward.

The uncouth and unscrupulous despot proclaims that he governs mankind in his own right,--the right of the strongest. The modernized and somewhat civilized despot announces that he governs by divine right; that he is the God-appointed ruler of the people, by virtue of the fact that he finds himself a ruler at all. The more modern Democratic Governor claims to rule by virtue of the will of a majority. The true Governor rules by virtue of all these authorizations combined. He rules in his own right, because he is self-elected, and exercises his function in accordance with his own choice. He rules by authorization of the majority, because it is he who receives the suffrages of the largest number who governs most extensively, and finally, he, of all men, can be appropriately said to rule by divine right. His own judgment of his own fitness for his function, confirmed by the approval of those whom he desires to govern, are the highest possible evidence of the divinity of his claim, of the fact, in other words, that he was created and designed by God himself for the most perfect performance of that particular function.

What, then, society has to do is to remove the obstructions to this universal self-election, by every Individual, of himself, to that function which his own consciousness of his own adaptation prompts him to believe to be his peculiar God-intended office in life. Throw open the polls, make the pulpit, the school-room, the workshop, the manufactory, the shipyard, and the storehouse the universal ballot-boxes of the people. Make every day an election day, and every human being both a candidate and a voter, exercising each day and hour his full and unlimited franchise.

In order to this consummation, two conditions are indispensably necessary: the first is the cordial and universal acceptance of this very principle of the absolute Sovereignty of the Individual,--each claiming his own Sovereignty, and each religiously respecting that of all others. The second is the equitable interchange of the products of labor, measured by the scientific law relating to that subject to which I have referred, and the consequent security to each of the full enjoyment and unlimited control of just that portion of wealth which he or she produces, the effect of which will be the introduction of general comfort and security, the moderation of avarice, and the supply of a definite knowledge of the limits of rights and encroachments.

The instrumentalities necessary for hastening the adoption of these principles are likewise, chiefly, two: these are, first, a more intense longing for true and harmonic relations; and, secondly, a clear intellectual conception of the principles themselves, and of the consequences which would flow from their adoption. The first is a highly religious aspiration, the second is a process of scientific induction. One is the soul and the other the sensible body, the spiritual substance and the corporeal form, of social harmony. The teachings of Christianity have inspired the one, the illumination of science must provide the other. Intellectual resources brought to the aid of Desire constitute the marriage of Wisdom with Love, whose progeny is Happiness.

When from the lips of truth one mighty breath
Shall, like a whirlwind, scatter in its breeze
The whole dark pile of human mockeries,
Then shall the race of mind commence on earth,
And, starting fresh, as from a second birth,
Man, in the sunshine of the world's new spring,
Shall walk transparent, like some holy thing.

It would, perhaps, be injudicious to conclude this exhibit of the doctrine of the Individual Sovereignty, without a more formal statement of the scientific limit upon the exercise of that Sovereignty which the principle itself supplies. If the principle were predicated of one Individual alone, the assertion of his Sovereignty, or, in other words, of his absolute right to do as he pleases, or to pursue his own happiness in his own way, would be confessedly to invest him with the attributes of despotism over others. But the doctrine which I have endeavored to set forth is not that. It is the assertion of the concurrent Sovereignty of all men, and of all women, and, within the limits I am about to state, of all children. This concurrence of Sovereignty necessarily and appropriately limits the Sovereignty of each. Each is Sovereign only within his own dominions, because he cannot extend the exercise of his Sovereignty beyond those limits without trenching upon, and interfering with, the prerogatives of others, whose Sovereignty the doctrine equally affirms. What, then, constitutes the boundaries of one's own dominion? This is a pregnant question for the happiness of mankind, and one which has never, until now, been specifically and scientifically asked, or answered. The answer, if correctly given, will fix the precise point at which Sovereignty ceases and encroachment begins, and that knowledge, as I have said, accepted into the public mind, will do more than laws, and the sanctions of laws, to regulate individual conduct and intercourse. The limitation is this: every Individual is the rightful Sovereign over his own conduct in all things, whenever, and just so far as, the consequences of his conduct can be assumed by himself; or, rather, inasmuch as no one objects to assuming agreeable consequences, whenever, and as far as, this is true of the disagreeable consequences. For disagreeable consequences, endurance, or burden of all sorts, the term “Cost” is elected as a scientific technicality. Hence, the exact formula of the doctrine, with its inherent limitation, may be stated thus: “The Sovereignty of the Individual, to be exercised at his own cost.”

This limitation of the doctrine, being inherent, and necessarily involved in the idea of the Sovereignty of all, may possibly be left with safety, after the limitation is understood, to implication, and the simple Sovereignty of the Individual be asserted as the inclusive formula. The limitation has never been distinctly and clearly set forth in the announcements which have been made either of the Protestant or the Democratic creed. Protestantism promulgates the one single, bald, unmodified proposition that in all matters of conscience the Individual judgment is the sole tribunal, from there is no appeal. As against this there is merely the implied right in others to resist when the conscience of the Individual leads him to attack or encroach upon them. It is the same with the Democratic prerogative of the “pursuit of happiness.” The limitation has been felt rather than distinctly and scientifically propounded.

It results from this analysis that, wherever such circumstances exist that a person cannot exercise his own Individuality and Sovereignty without throwing the “cost”, or burden, of his actions upon others, the principle has so far to be compromised. Such circumstances arise out of connected or amalgamated interests, and the sole remedy is disconnection. The exercise of Sovereignty is the exercise of the deciding power. Whoever has to bear the cost should have the deciding power in every case. If one has to bear the cost of another's conduct, and just so far as he has to do so, he should have the deciding power over the conduct of the other. Hence dependence and close connections of interest demand continual concessions and compromises. Hence, too, close connection and mutual dependence is the legitimate and scientific root of Despotism, as disconnection or Individualization of interests is the root of freedom and emancipation.

If the close combination, which demands the surrender of our will to another, is one instituted by nature, as in the case of the mother and the infant, then the relation is a true one, notwithstanding. The surrender is based upon the fact that the child is not yet strictly an Individual. The unfolding of its Individuality is gradual, and its growing development is precisely marked, by the increase of its ability to assume the consequences of its own acts. If the close combination of interests is artificial or forced, then the parties exist toward each other in false relations, and to false relations no true principle can apply. Consequently, in such relations, the Sovereignty of the Individual must be abandoned. The law of such relations is collision and conflict, to escape which, while remaining in the relations there is no other means but mutual concessions and surrenders of the selfhood. Hence, inasmuch as the interests of mankind have never yet been scientifically individualized by the operations of an equitable commerce, and the limits of encroachment never scientifically defined, the axioms of morality, and even the provisions of positive legislation, have been doubtless appropriate adaptations to the ages of false social relations to which they have been applied, as the cataplasm or sinapism may be for disordered conditions of the human system. We must not, however, reason, in either case, from that temporary adaptation in a state of disease to the healthy condition of society or the Individual. Much that is relatively good is only good as a necessity growing out of evil. The greater good is the removal of the evil altogether. The almshouse and the foundling hospital may be necessary and laudable charities, but they can only be regarded by the enlightened philanthropist as the stinking apothecary's salve, or the dead flies, applied to the bruises and sores of the body politic. Admitted temporary necessities, they are offensive to the nostrils of good taste. The same reflection is applicable to every species of charity. The oppressed classes do not want charity, but justice, and with simple justice the necessity for charity will disappear or be reduced to a minimum. So in the matter before us. The disposition to forgo one's own pleasures to secure the happiness of others is a positive virtue in all those close connections of interest which render such a sacrifice necessary, and inasmuch as such have hitherto always been the circumstances of the Individual in society, this abnegation of selfhood is the highest virtue which the world has hitherto conceived. But these close connections of interest are themselves wrong, for the very reason that they demand this sacrifice and surrender of what ought to be enjoyed and developed to the highest extent. The truest and the highest virtue, in the true relations of men, will be the fullest unfolding of all the Individualities of each, not only without collision or injury to any, but with mutual advantage to all,--the reconciliation of the Individual and the interests of the Individual with society and the interests of society,--that composite harmony, or, if you will, unity, of the whole, which results from the discrete unity and distinctive Individuality of each particular monad in the complex natural organization of society.

The doctrine of Individuality, and the Sovereignty of the Individual, involves, then, at this point, two of the most important scientific consequences, the one serving as a guiding principle to the true solution of existing evils in society, and to the exodus out of the prevailing confusion, and the other as a guiding principle of deportment in existing society, while those evils remain. The first is that the Sovereignty of the Individual, or, in other words, absolute personal liberty, can only be enjoyed along with the entire disintegration of combined or amalgamated interests; and here the “cost principle” comes in to point out how that disintegration can and must take place, not as isolation, but along with, and absolutely productive of the utmost conceivable harmony and cooperation. The second is that, while people are forced, by the existing conditions of society, to remain in the close connections resulting from amalgamated interests, there is no alternative but compromise and mutual concession, or an absolute surrender upon one side or the other. The innate Individualities of persons are such that every calculation based upon the identity of tastes, or opinions, or beliefs, or judgments, of even so many as two persons, is absolutely certain to be defeated, and as Nature demands an Individuality of lead, one must necessarily surrender to the other whenever the relation demands an identity of action. To quarrel with that necessity is a folly. To deny its existence is a delusion. To enter such combinations with the expectation that liberty and Individuality can be enjoyed in them is a sore aggravation of the evil. Mutual recrimination is added to the inevitable annoyance of mutual restriction. Hence a right understanding of the scientific conditions under which alone Individuality can be indulged, a clear and intelligent perception of the fact that the collisions and mutual contraventions of the combined relation result from nothing wrong in the associated Individuals, but from the wrong of the relation itself, goes far to introduce the spirit of mutual forbearance and toleration, and thus to soften the acrimony and alleviate the burden of the present imperfect and unscientific institutions of society.

Hence, again, as self-sacrifice and denial to one's self of one's own abstract rights is an absolute necessity of the existing order of things, there is a mutual necessity that we claim that of each other, and, if need be, that we enforce the claim. Herein lies the apology for our existing Governments, and for force as a temporary necessity, and hence the doctrine of Individuality, and the Sovereignty of the Individual, while the most ultra-radical doctrine in theory and final purpose ever promulgated in the world, is at the same time eminently conservative in immediate practice. While it teaches, in principle, the prospective disruption of nearly every existing institution, it teaches concurrently, as matter of expediency, a patient and philosophical endurance of the evils around us, while we labor assiduously for their removal. So far from quarreling with existing Government, when it is put upon the footing of temporary expediency, as distinguished from the abstract principle and final purpose, it sanctions and confirms it. It has no sympathies with aimless and fruitless struggles, the recrimination of different classes in society, nor with merely anarchical and destructive onslaughts upon existing institutions. It proposes no chaotic, abrupt and sudden shock to existing society. It points to a scientific, gradual, and perfectly peaceable substitution of new and harmonious relations for those which are confessedly beset, to use the mildest expression, by the most distressing embarrassments.

I will conclude by warning you against one other misconception, which is very liable to be entertained by those to whom Individuality is for the first time presented as the great remedy for the prevalent evils of the social state. I mean the conception that Individuality has something in common with isolation, or the severance of all personal relations with one's fellow-men. Those who entertain this idea will object to it, because they desire, as they will say, cooperation and brotherhood. That objection is conclusive proof that they have not rightly comprehended the nature of Individuality, or else they would have seen that it is through the Individualization of interests alone that harmonic cooperation and universal brotherhood can be attained. It is not the disruption of relationships, but the creation of distinct and independent personalities between whom relations can exist. The more distinct the personalities, and the more cautiously they are guarded and preserved, the more intimate the relations may be, without collision or disturbance. Persons may be completely individualized in their interests who are in the most immediate personal contact, as in the case of the lodgers at an hotel, or they may have combined or amalgamated interests, and be remote from each other, as in the case of partners residing in different countries. The players at shuttlecock cooperate in friendly competition with each other, while facing and opposing each other, each fully directing his own movements, which they could not do if their arms and legs were tied together, nor even if they stood side by side. The game of life is one which demands the same freedom of movement on the part of every player, and every attempt to procure harmonious cooperation by fastening different individuals in the same position will defeat its own object.

In opposing combinations or amalgamated interests, Individuality does not oppose, but favors and conducts toward cooperation. But, on the other hand, Individuality alone is not sufficient to insure cooperation. It is an essential element of cooperative harmony, but not the only one. It is one principle in the science of society, but it is not the whole of that science. Other elements are indispensable to the right working of the system, one of which has been adverted to. The error has been in suppressing that, because the Individuality which is already realized in society has not ultimated in harmony, that Individuality itself is in fault. Instead of destroying this one true element of order, and returning to a worse condition from which we have emerged, the scientific method is to investigate further, and find what other or complementary principles are necessary to complete the well-working of the social machinery.

Regretting that the whole circle of the new principles of society, of which the Sovereignty of the Individual is one, cannot be presented at once. I invite you, Ladies and Gentlemen, as occasion may offer, to inform yourselves of what they are, that you may see the subject in its entire connection of parts. In the meantime I submit to your criticism, and the criticism of the world, what I have now offered, with the undoubting conviction that it will endure the ordeal of the most searching investigation, and with the hope that, however it may shock the prejudices of earlier education, you will in the end sanction and approve it, and aid, by your devoted exertions, the inauguration of the True Constitution of Government, with its foundations laid in the Sovereignty of the Individual.

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THE SCIENCE OF SOCIETY

NO. 2

COST THE LIMIT OF PRICE

A SCIENTIFIC MEASURE OF HONESTY IN TRADE

as one of the

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES IN THE SOLUTION

OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM

COST THE LIMIT OF PRICE (PART II)
Preface
Chapter I The Cost Principle
Chapter II Equity and the Labor Note
Chapter III Cost, Price, Labor, Natural Wealth
Chapter IV Value Distinguished from Cost
Chapter V Menial Labor Raised in Price
Chapter VI Attractive Industry, Cooperation, and the Economies
Chapter VII Capital, Rent, Interest, Wages, Machinery, etc.
Appendix:
Review of Equitable Commerce
Reply to the Tribune by Mr. Andrews

PREFACE

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The preface of a book is always the last thing written, and generally the last thing read. The author is safe, therefore, in assuming that he is addressing, in what he says in this part of his work, hose who are already familiar with the book itself. Availing myself of this presumption, I have a few observations to make of a somewhat practical nature in relation to the effects upon the conduct of the Individual which the acceptance of the principle herein inculcated should appropriately have.

At the first blush, it seems as if the Cost Principle presented the most stringent and inexorable law, binding upon the conscience, which was ever announced,--as if no man desiring to be honest could continue for a day in the ordinary intercourse of trade and pursuit of profit. The degree to which this impression will remain with different persons, upon a thorough understanding of the whole subject, will be different according to their organizations. There are powerful considerations, however, to deter any one from making a martyr of himself in a fruitless effort to act upon the true principle wile living in the atmosphere, and surrounded by the conditions, of the old and false system.

In the first place, it is impossible, in the nature of things, to apply a principle, the essence of which is to regulate the terms of reciprocity, where no reciprocity exists. The Equitist who should attempt to act upon the Cost Principle in the midst of the prevailing system, and should sell his own products with scrupulous conscientiousness at cost, would be wholly unable to obtain the products of others at cost in return; and hence his conduct would not procure Equity. He would at most obtain the wretched gratification of cheating himself knowingly and continuously. There is not space in the few pages of a preface to enter into a fundamental statement of the ethical principles involved in the temporary continuance in relations of injustice forced upon us by those upon whom whatever of injustice we commit is inflicted. The question involved is the same as that of War and Peace. A nation desirous of being at peace with all mankind, and tendering such relations to the world, may, nevertheless, be forced into war by the wanton acts of unscrupulous neighbors. Notwithstanding the over-strained nicety of the sect called Friends, and of non-resistants in such behalf, the common sentiment of enlightened humanity is yet in favor of resistance against unprovoked aggression, while it is at the same time in favor of Universal Peace,--the entire cessation of all War. In like manner, the friends of Equity, the acceptors of the cost principle, do not in any case, so far as I am aware, propose beggaring themselves, or abandoning any positions which give them the pecuniary advantage in the existing disharmonic relations of society, from any silly or overweening deference even for their own principles. They entertain rational and well-considered views in relation to the appropriate means of inaugurating the reign of Equity. They propose the organization of villages, or settlements of persons who understand the principle, and desire to act upon it mutually. They will tender intercourse with “outsiders” upon the same terms, but, if the tender is not accepted, they will then treat with them upon their own terms, so far as it is necessary, or in their judgment best, to treat with them at all. They will hold Equity in one hand and “fight” in the other,--Equity for those who will accept Equity and reciprocate it, and the conflict of wits for those who force that issue. It is not their design to become either martyrs or dupes; martyrdom being, in their opinion, unnecessary, and the other alternative adverse to their tastes.

Still any view of the practical methods of working out the principle which may be here intimated is of course binding upon no one. I state the spirit in which the principle is at present entertained, so far as I know, by those who have accepted it. Every individual must be left free, whether as an inhabitant of the world at large, or of an equitable village, to act under the dictates of his own conscience, his own views of expediency, his own sense of what he can afford to sacrifice in order to abide by the principle rather than sacrifice the principle instead; or, in fine, of whatever other regulating influence he is in the habit of submitting his conduct to. He must be left absolutely free, then, to commit every conceivable breach of the principles of harmonic society. He who is in no freedom to do wrong can never, by any possibility, demonstrate the disposition to do right; besides, whether the absolute or theoretical right is always the practical or relative right, is at least a doubtful question in morals, which each individual must be allowed to judge of solely for himself,--as of every other question of morals and personal conduct whatsoever,--assuming the Cost. Hence, even in the act of infringing one of our circle of principles, the individual is vindicating another,--THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL,--and in the fact of his differing from another, from the majority, or from all others, in the moral character of an act, he is merely illustrating another of the same circle of principles,--namely, INDIVIDUALITY.

It is found to be the most puzzling of all things to those who commence to examine these principles, beset as they are by the fogs of old ideas, that a social reorganization should be proposed without any social compact, the necessity of which has been alike and universally conceded both by Conservatives and Reformers. An illustration may render the matter clear. We do not bring forward a System, a Plan, or a Constitution, to be voted on, adopted, or agreed to, by mankind at large, or by any set of men whatsoever. Nothing of the sort! We point out certain principles in the nature of things which relate to the order of human society; in conforming to which mankind will find their affairs harmonically adjusted, and in departing from which they will run into confusion. The knowledge of these principles is science. It is the same with them as with the principles of Physiology. We teach them as science. We do not ask that they shall be voted upon or applied under pledges. Men cannot make or unmake them. So far as he knows them, and cordially accepts them as truths, he will be disposed to realize them in act. The human mind has a natural appetite for truth. If there are obstacles in the way of their realization, those obstacles will differ with the circumstances of each individual, and the Individual can alone judge of them. Those circumstances may change tomorrow, and then his capacity to act will change. His own appreciation of the subject may change likewise. There is Individuality, therefore, in his own different states at different periods. The man must be bound by no pledges which imply even so much as that he will be himself the same, in any given respect, at any future moment of time. It is the evil of compacts that the compact becomes sacred and the individual profane,--that man is held to be made for the Sabbath and not the Sabbath for man.

Hereupon there is based the claim that these principles constitute in the appropriate and rigid sense THE SCIENCE OF SOCIETY. It is the property of science that it does not say “By your leave.” It exists whether you will or no. It requires neither compacts, constitutions, nor ballot-boxes. It is objectively true. It exists in principles and truths. If you understand and conform, well; if not, woe be unto you. The consequences will fall upon you and scourge you. Hence the government of consequences is itself scientific, which no man-made government is. Men have sought for ages to discover the science of government; and lo! Here it is, that men cease totally to attempt to govern each other at all! That they learn to know the consequences of their own acts, and that they arrange their relations with each other upon such a basis of science that the disagreeable consequences shall be assumed by the agent himself.

THE COST PRINCIPLE

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Chapter I

PRELIMINARY—THE NATURE AND NECESSITY OF A SOCIAL SCIENCE

1. The question of the proper, legitimate, and just reward of labor, and other kindred questions, are becoming confessedly of immense importance to the welfare of mankind. They demand radical, thorough, and scientific investigation. Political Economy, which has held its position for the last half century as one of the accredited sciences, is found in our day to have but a partial and imperfect application to matters really involved in the production and distribution of wealth. Its failure is in the fact that it treats wealth as if it were an abstract thing having interests of its own, apart from the well-being of the laborers who produce it. In other words, human beings, their interests and happiness, are regarded by Political Economy in no other point of view than as mere instruments in the production or service of this abstract Wealth. It does not inquire in what manner and upon what principles the accumulation and dispensation of wealth should be conducted in order to eventuate in the greatest amount of human comfort and happiness, and the most complete development of the individual man and woman. It simply concerns itself with the manner in which, and the principles in accordance with which, men and women are now employed, in producing and exchanging wealth. It is as if the whole purposes, arrangements, and order of a vast palace were viewed as mere appendages to the kitchen, or contrivances for the convenience of the servants, instead of viewing both kitchen and servants as subordinate parts of the system of life, gayety, luxury, and happiness which should appropriately inhabit the edifice, according to the design of its projectors.

2. Hence Political Economy is beginning to fall into disrepute as a science (for want of a more extended scope and a more humanitarian purpose), and is liable even to lose credit for the good it has done. The questions with which it deals can no longer be regarded as an integral statement of the subject to which they relate. They are coming to be justly estimated as a part only of a broader field or scientific investigation which has but recently been entered upon; and as being incapable of a true solution apart from their legitimate connections with the whole system of the social affairs of mankind. The subject-matter of Political Economy will, therefore, be hereafter embraced in a more comprehensive Social Science, which will treat of all the interests of man growing out of their interrelations with each other.

3. A criticism somewhat similar to that here bestowed upon Political Economy is applicable to Ethics. It has been the function of writers and preachers upon Morals, hitherto, to inculcate the duty of submitting to the exigencies of false social relations. The Science of Society teaches, on the other hand, the rectification of those relations themselves. So long as men find themselves embarrassed by complicated connections of interest, so that the consequences of their acts inevitably devolve upon others, the highest virtue consists in mutual concessions and abnegation of selfhood. Hence the necessity for Ethics, in that stage of progress, to enforce the reluctant sacrifice, by stringent appeals to the conscience. The truest condition of society, however, is that in which each individual is enabled and constrained to assume, to the greatest extent possible, the Cost or disagreeable consequences of his own acts. That condition of society can only arise from a general disintegration of interests,--from rendering the interests of all as completely individual as their persons. The Science of Society teaches the means of that individualization of interests, coupled, however, with cooperation. Hence it graduates the individual, so to speak, out of the sphere of Ethics into that of Personality,--out of the sphere of duty or submission to the wants of others, into the sphere of integral development and freedom. Hence the Science of Society may be said to absorb the Science of Ethics as it does that of Political Economy, while it teaches far more exactly the limits of right by defining the true relations of men.

4. The Science of Society labors indeed under a serious embarrassment from the fact of its comprehensiveness. The changes which the realization of the principles it unfolds would bring about in the circumstances of society make it differ from matters of ordinary science, in the fact of its immediate and complicated effects upon what may be termed the vested interests of the community. It is difficult for men to regard that as purely a question of science which they foresee is a radical reform and revolution as well. Still there are few persons who do not recognize the fact that there is some subtle and undiscovered cause of manifold evils, lying hid down in the very foundations of our existing social fabric, and which it is extremely desirable should be eradicated by some means, however much they may differ with reference to the instrumentalities through which the amelioration is to be sought for. The demand for a thorough investigation of the subject, and a settlement upon true principles of the relations of labor and capital especially, has come up during the last few years with more prominence than ever before, both in Europe and America, and has given rise to the various forms of Socialism which are now agitating the whole world. The real significance and tendency of Socialism are stated in No. I of this series of publications, entitled, “The True Constitution of Government, in the Sovereignty of the Individual, as the Final Development of Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism.

5. Indeed, the inquiry into social evils and remedies has not been generally viewed in the light of a science at all, and Reform of all sorts has become distasteful to many among the more intellectual portion of the community, for the reason that it has not hitherto assumed a more strictly scientific aspect. Neither querulous complaints of the present condition of things, nor brilliant picturing of the imagination, nor vague aspirations after change or perfection, satisfy those whose mental constitution demands definite and tangible propositions, and inevitable logical deductions from premises first admitted or established.

6. There is another portion of the community who object to the investigation of all social questions upon nearly opposite grounds. They assume that the moral and social regeneration of mankind is not the sphere of science, but exclusively that of religion,--that the only admissible method of societary advancement is by the infusion of the religious sentiment into the hearts of men, and the rectification thereby of the affections of the individual, and through individuals of mankind at large.

7. If this proposition be reduced to this statement,--that, if the spirit of every individual n a community is right, the spirit of that community, as an aggregate, must be right likewise,--the assertion is a simple truism; but society demands a form as well as a substance, a body no less than a soul; and if that form or body be not a true outgrowth and exponent of the spirit dwelling within, it is affirming too much to say that such a society is rightly constituted. It is the province of science or the intellect to provide the form in which any desire is to be actualized. What Substance is to Form, the Love or Desire is to the intellectual conception of the modes of its realization. Religion deals with the heart or affections; in other words, with the love or desire, which makes up the substance or inherent constituent quality of actions. Science which is born of Wisdom deals with the Forms of action, and teaches that such and such only accord with a given Desire and will eventuate in its realization. The development of the Love or Desire is first in order and first in rank; that of the corresponding Wisdom is nevertheless equally indispensable to the completeness of all that is good and true, in every department of rational being.

8. To illustrate, let us suppose a nation overrun by foreign armies, and its very existence as an independent people threatened, while merely a feeble, heartless, and unorganized resistance is offered. A few patriotic and wise men assemble to consult upon the prospects and the necessities of their country. Immediately a dissension divides them in regard to the cause of their repeated failures to arrest the progress of the enemy. One party asserts that it is a want of military skill, that their country is entirely destitute of the knowledge of tactics and castrametation, which if understood, would be amply sufficient to enable them to display their whole strength, and to make the most desperate successful defense. The other party assumes opposite ground. They affirm that the fault is a want of patriotism among the people. They cite abundant instances to prove that the inhabitants care very little by whom they are governed; that they are, in fine, destitute of that spirit of devotion which is the essence or substance of warlike prowess. Thus divided in views, and jealous upon either side, they waste their time and grow mutually embittered toward each other. At length, after tedious discussions and a long series of acrimonious recriminations, they arrive at the solution in the fact that both parties are right. The people are both destitute of patriotic devotion and of military science. Which, then, is the first want, in order, to be supplied? Clearly the former. Still both are equally essential to the organization of a complete defense. Having accorded in this view, they first disperse themselves as missionaries over the whole country, preaching patriotism. By exciting appeals they arouse the dormant affections of the people for their fatherland, and alarm them for the safety of their wives and little ones. Their efforts are crowned with success. They witness the rising spirit of indignation against the invaders, and of martial heroism on all hands. It spreads from heart to heart,, and throbs in the bosoms of the men, and even of the women and children. At this point, a new evil displays itself. Fathers, husbands, and sons desert their ripening crops and their unprotected families, and rush together, a tumultuous, unarmed mob, clamorous for war. Confusion and distress succeed to apathy. The danger is increased rather than lessened. Famine and pestilence threaten now to be added to the fury of conquerors incensed by irritating demonstrations of a resistance powerless for defense. Then arises the demand for military science. At this point it is the part of the wise men who control the destinies of the people to abandon their missionary labor and assume the character of commanders and military engineers. Preaching is no longer in order. The men who from over-zeal persists in inflaming the minds of the populace, however well-intentioned, may prove the most deadly enemy of his country. Organization, the forming of companies, the drilling of squads, and the construction of forts are now in demand. Desire, the substance, subsists, demanding of Science the true Form of its manifestation.

9. What Patriotism is to the Science of War for the purpose of defense, the religious sentiment of Love is to the true Science of Society. The hearty recognition of human brotherhood, and the aspiration after true relations with God and man, are, at this day, widely diffused in the ranks of society. Christianity has produced its fruit in the development of right affection far beyond what the religious teachers among us are themselves disposed to credit it for. The demand is not now for more eloquence, and touching appeals, and fervent prayers to swell the heart to bursting with painful sympathies for suffering humanity. The time has come when preaching must give away to action, aspiration to realization, and amiable but fruitless sympathetic affections to fundamental investigation and scientific methods. The true preachers of the next age will be the scientific discoverers and the practical organizers of true social relations among men. The religious objection to Social Science is unphilosophical.

10. There is another form in which this objection is sometimes urged by those who claim to understand somewhat the philosophy of progress. They affirm that, if the disposition to do right exist in the Individual or in the community, that disposition will inevitably conduct to the knowledge of the right way; in other words, that Wisdom is a necessary outgrowth of Love; and hence they deduce the conclusion that we need not concern ourselves in the least about discovering the laws of a true social order. The premise of this statement is true, while the conclusion is false. Taken together, it is as if one should assert that the sense of hunger naturally impels men to find the means of subsistence, and hence that no man need trouble himself about food. Let him sit down, quietly relying upon the potency of mere hunger to provide the means of the gratification of his appetite.

11. The very fact of the Socialist agitation of our day, and the continued repetitions in every quarter of the attempt to work out the problem of universal justice and harmony, are the very outgrowth in question of the indwelling desire for truer social relations, and never could have arisen but for the previous existence of that desire. The religionist who denies or ignores this inevitable sequitur from the spirit of his own teachings, is like the insane head that first wills and then disowns the hand that performs.

Science—the rigid, exact, thorough, and inclusive Science of Society—is the only reliable guide to harmonic relations among men. Neither the ardor of piety, nor the sentiment of brotherhood, nor the desperate devotion of generous enthusiasm, nor the repressive force of a rigid morality, offers any adequate remedy for the existing evils of humanity. All these may be necessary, indispensable, nay, infinitely higher in rank or sanctity, if you will, than the other. But love must have its complement in Wisdom. To divorce them is to be guilty of “partialism,” just where it is of the utmost importance that the movement shall be integral and complete.

12. Possibly this statement may enlighten some minds in relation to the existing misunderstanding between the religionists and the Socialists. The former insist upon the spiritual element, the whole of what is requisite to a true development of society. Abstractly, the religionist may be said to be the nearest right, inasmuch as substance is prior to form; but practically, and with reference to the present wants of society, the Socialist is nearer the truth. The spiritual element exists already, at least in embryo. The aspiration after better and truer relations is swelling daily, bursting the bands of existing institutions, and demanding knowledge of the true way,--an organized body of the Christian idea of human brotherhood which the living soul may enter, and wherein it may dwell. But neither without the other is complete.

13. So powerful is becoming the sentiment of right that, unless the demand so created be followed by a complete discovery of the methods of its gratification, there is abundant danger that justice as a blind instinct may prove more destructive than organized oppression. As in the case of the misdirected or ill-directed patriotism in the illustration above, so every right sentiment and affection, without its complement of wisdom, is liable to become pernicious instead of beneficent in its action. If the love the mother bears her child leads her to feed it to excess on candies and comfits, to confine it in close, warm rooms, and guard it from contact with whatever may test and develop its powers of endurance, far better that she loved it less. She needs, in addition to love, a knowledge of Physiology. The Science of Society is to the Community what Physiology is to the Individual; or, rather, it is to the relations of the Individual with others what Physiology is to the relations of the Individual,so to speak, with himself.

14. In the same manner the knowledge on the part of the laboring classes or their friends that they are under an oppressive and exhausting system of the relations of capital and labor does not amount to a knowledge of the true system, into which, when known, it should be their object to bring themselves as rapidly as possible. To discover that true system, by any other means than by long years, perhaps long generations, of fallacious and exhausting experiments, must be the work of genius, of true science, profound fundamental investigations, or any other name you choose to bestow upon that faculty and that process by which elementary truths are evolved by contemplating the nature of a subject.

15. The Socialist agitations of the present day are, therefore, eminently dangerous, as much so as the most violent reactionist ever imagined them, unless Science intervenes to point the way to the solution. Religion, nor the dictates of a stringent morality, will ever reconcile men who have once appreciated their inherent, God-given rights, to the permanency of an unjust system by which they are deprived of them. Mere make-shifts and patched-up contrivances will not answer. False methods, such as Strikes, Trades' Unions, Combinations of Interests, and arbitrary regulations of all sorts, are but temporary palliations ending uniformly in disappointment, and often in aggravation of the evils sought to be alleviated. A distinguished writer upon these subjects says truly: “Establish tomorrow an ample and fair Scale of Prices in every employment under the sun, and two years of quiet and the ordinary mutations of Business would suffice to undermine and efface nearly the whole. No reform under the present system, but a decided step out of and above that system, is the fit and enduring remedy for the wrongs and oppressions of Labor by Capital. And this must inevitably be a work of time, of patience, of genius, of self-sacrifice, and true heroism.” In other words, it is the province of Science to discover the true principles of trade as much as it is to discover the laws of every other department of human concerns, and that discovery is an important part of the still more comprehensive Science of Society.

16. If, then, some profound philosopher, whose high authority could command universal belief, were to step forward and announce the discovery of a simple principle, which—-adopted in trade or business—-would determine with arithmetical certainty the equitable price to be charged for every hour of time bestowed upon its production and distribution, so that labor in every department should get precisely its due reward, and the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth, and the consequent poverty and wretchedness of the masses, be speedily alleviated and finally removed; and if, in addition, the principle were such that its adoption and practical consequences did not depend upon convincing the intellects or appealing to the benevolence of the wealthy classes, but lay within the compass of the powers of the laboring men themselves; if, still further than this, the principle did not demand, as a preliminary, the extensive cooperation, the mutual and implicit confidence, the complicated arrangements, the extensive knowledge of administration, and the violent change in domestic habits, some one or other of which is involved in nearly every proposition of Socialism, and for which the laboring classes are specially disqualified; if, in one word, this simple principle furnished demonstrably, unequivocally, immediately, and practically, the means whereby the laboring classes might step out from under the present system, and place themselves in a condition of independence above that system,--would not this announcement come in good time; would it not be a supply eminently adapted to the present demand of the laboring masses in this country and elsewhere?

With some misgivings as to the prudence of asserting such a faith, in limine, I state my conviction that such a principle has been discovered and is now in the possession of a small number of persons who have been engaged in practically testing it, until its regulating and wealth-producing effects have been sufficiently, though not abundantly, demonstrated.

17. JOSIAH WARREN, formerly of Cincinnati, more recently a resident of Indiana, is, I believe, justly entitled to be considered the discoverer of the principle to which I refer, along with several others which he deems essential to the rectification of the social evils of the existing state of society.

The principle itself is one which will not probably strike the reader, when first stated, as either very profound, very practicable in its application, very important in its consequences, and perhaps not even as equitable in itself. It requires thought to be bestowed on each of these points. You will find, however, as you subject it to analysis, as you trace it into its ten thousand different application, to ownership, to rent, to wages, etc., that it places all human transactions, relating to property upon a new basis of exact justice,--that is, it has the perfect, simple, but all-prevailing character of a UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE.

The question as to the method of commencing to put the principle in operation is a distinct one, and only needs to be considered after the principle itself is understood. I have already observed that it has been and is now being practically tested with entire success.

18. This principle, put into a formula, is thus stated: “COST IS THE LIMIT OF PRICE.”

The counter principle upon which all ownership is now maintained and all commerce transacted in the world is that “Value is the limit of price,” or, as the principle is generally stated in the cant language of trade, “A thing is worth what it will bring.” Between these two principles, so similar that the difference in the statement would hardly attract a moment's attention unless it were specially insisted upon, lies the essential difference between the whole system of civilized cannibalism by which the masses of human beings are mercilessly ground to powder for the accumulation of the wealth of the few, on the one hand, and on the other, the reign of equity, the just remuneration of labor, and the independence and elevation of all mankind.

19. There is nothing apparently more innocent, harmless, and equitable in the world than the statement that a “thing should bring what it is worth,” and yet even that statement covers the most subtle fallacy which it has ever been given to human genius to detect and expose,--a fallacy more fruitful of evil than any other which the human intellect has ever been beclouded by. (130)

20. Value has nothing whatever to do, upon scientific principles, as demonstrated by Mr. Warren, with settling the price at which any article should be sold. Cost is the only equitable limit, and by cost is meant the amount of labor bestowed on its production, that measure being again measured by the painfulness or repugnance of the labor itself.

Value is a consideration for the purchaser alone, and determines him whether he will give the amount of the cost or not. (132)

21. This statement is calculated to raise a host of objections and inquiries. If one purchaser values an article more highly than another, by what principle will he be prevented from offering a higher price? How is it possible to measure the relative painfulness or repugnance of labor? What allowance is to be made for superior skill or natural capacity? How is that to be settled? How does this principle settle the questions of interest, rent, machinery, etc.? What is the nature of the practical experiments which have already been made? Etc., etc.

22. These several questions will be specifically answered in this treatise upon “The Cost Principle,” except the last, which will be more satisfactorily replied by a work embodying the “Practical Details” of twenty-four years of continuous experiment upon the workings of this and the other principles related to it, and announced by Mr. Warren, which work Mr. Warren is now engaged himself in preparing for the press. These “Practical Details” will relate to the operations of two mercantile establishments conducted at different points, upon the Cost Principle, to the education of children, to social intercourse, and, finally, to the complex affairs of a village or town which has grown up during the last four years, under the system of “Equitable Commerce,” of which the Cost Principle is the basis. This work upon “Practical Details” will contain, I may venture to affirm, from a personal knowledge of its characters, a body of facts profoundly interesting to the philanthropic and philosophic student of human affairs. It must suffice for the present allusion to assert that there is no one of the circle of principles embraced by Mr. Warren under the general name of “Equitable Commerce,” or by myself under the name of “The Science of Society,” which has not been patiently, repeatedly, and successfully applied in practice, in a variety of modes, long before it was announced in theory,--a point in which it is thought that these principles differ materially from all the numerous speculations upon social subjects to which the attention of the public has been heretofore solicited.

23. The village to which I have referred is situated in the State of Ohio. It contains as yet only about twenty families, or one hundred inhabitants, having a present prospect of a pretty rapid increase of numbers. I will call it, for the sake of a name by which to refer to it, TRIALVILLE, stating at the same time that this is not the real name of the village, which I do not venture to give, as it might be disagreeable to some of the inhabitants to have the glare of public notoriety at so early a day upon their modest experiment. It might also subject them to visits of mere curiosity, or to letters of inquiry, which, without their consent, I have not the right to impose upon them. Another village upon the same principles is being organized in the vicinity of New York.

Under the sobriquet of TRIALVILLE I shall have occasion, however, to refer to the operations at the former of these villages, which have so far proved successful in a practical point of view that it is deemed, on the part of those most interested in this movement, to be a fitting time, now, to call the public attention more generally to the results. The publication of these treatises is in fact the beginning of that effort, which, if the intentions of those of us who are engaged in the enterprise do not fail of realization, will be more and more continuously and urgently put forth from this time forward. We believe that we have a great mission to fulfill,--a gospel of glad tidings to proclaim,--a practical and immediate solution of the whole problem of human rights and their full fruition to expound. While, therefore, we cannot and would not entirely conceal the enthusiastic feelings by which we are prompted in this effort, still, lest it may be thought that such sentiments may have usurped the province of reason, we invite the most cautious investigation and the most rigid scrutiny, not only of the principles we propound, but also of the facts of their practical working. While, therefore, I do not give the real name or exact location of our trial villages to the public at large, for the reasons I have stated, still we are anxious that all the facts relating to them shall be known, and the fullest opportunity for thorough investigation be given to all who may become in any especial degree interested in the subject. The author of this work will be gratified to communicate with all such, and to reply to such inquiries as they may desire to have answered, upon a simple statement of their interest in the subject and their wish to know more of it. The real name and location of our trial towns will be communicated to such, and every facility given for investigation.

Arrangements are contemplated for organizing other villages upon the same principles, and establishing an equitable exchange of products between them. It is not the object of the present work, however, to enter into the history or general plan of the movement, but simply to elucidate a single principle of a new science embracing the field of Ethics and Political Economy.

24. It will be appropriate, in this preliminary statement of the subject, to guard against one or two misapprehensions which may naturally enough arise from the nature of the terms employed, or from the apparently disproportionate importance attached to a simple principle of trade.

The term “Equitable Commerce” does not signify merely a new adjustment of the method of buying and selling. The term is employed, by Mr. Warren, to signify the whole of what I have preferred to denominate the Science of Society, including Ethics, Political Economy, and all else that concerns the outer relations of mankind. At the same time the mutual interchange of products is, as it were, the continent or basis upon which all other intercourse rests. Society reclines upon Industry. Without it man cannot exist. Other things may be of higher import, but it is of primary necessity. Solitary industry does not supply the wants of the individual. Hence trade or the exchange of products. With trade intercourse begins. It is the first in order of the long train of benefits which mankind mutually minister to each other. The term “commerce” is sometimes synonymous with trade or traffic, and at other times it is used in a more comprehensive sense. For that reason it has a double appropriateness to the subjects under consideration. It is employed therefore in the phrase “Equitable Commerce,” to signify, first, Commerce in the minor sense, as synonymous with “trade,” and secondly, Commerce in the major sense, as synonymous with the old English signification of the word, “conversation,”--i.e., human intercourse of all sorts,--the concrete, or tout ensemble, of human relations.

25. I will here show that these investigations take in the whole scope of Commerce in the major sense, after which I will return to the particular consideration and elucidation of the single principle, “COST IS THE LIMIT OF PRICE,” which does, indeed, chiefly or primarily relate to Commerce in the minor sense, although the modes in which it affects Commerce in the major sense are almost infinite.

26. According to Mr. Warren, the following is THE PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED in all its several branches:

1. “The proper, legitimate, and just reward of labor.”
2. “Security of person and property.”
3. “The greatest practicable amount of freedom to each individual.”
4. “Economy in the production and uses of wealth.”
5. “To open the way to each individual for the possession of land and all other natural wealth.”
6. “To make the interests of all to cooperate with and assist each other, instead of clashing with and counteracting each other.”
7. “To withdraw the elements of discord, of war, of distrust and repulsion, and to establish a prevailing spirit of peace, order, and social sympathy.”

27. And according to him, also the following PRINCIPLES are the means of the solution:

I. “INDIVIDUALITY.”
II. “THE SOVEREIGNTY OF EACH INDIVIDUAL.”
III. “COST THE LIMIT OF PRICE.”
IV. “A CIRCULATING MEDIUM, FOUNDED ON THE COST OF LABOR.”
V. “ADAPTATION OF THE SUPPLY TO THE DEMAND.”

28. The mere reading of this program will suggest the immensity of the scope to which the subject extends. In the present volume I have selected a single principle,--the third among those above name,--and shall adhere to a pretty thorough exposition of it, rather than overload the mind of the reader by bringing into view the whole of a system, covering all possible human relations. A few minds may, from the mere statement of these principles, begin to perceive the rounded outlines of what is, as I do not hesitate to affirm, the most complete scientific statement of the problem of human society, and of the fundamental principles of social science which has ever been presented to the world. Most, however, will hardly begin to understand the universal and all-pervading potency of these few simple principles, until they find them elaborately displayed and elucidated. At present I must take the broad license of asserting that they are UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES, and referring the reader, for what I mean by a universal principle, to what I have to say of the one which I have selected for a particular explanation,--”COST THE LIMIT OF PRICE.”

29. As a mere hint, however, in relation to the others, let us take the last, “ADAPTATION OF THE SUPPLY TO THE DEMAND.” This seems to be a formula relating merely, as, in fact, it does relate mainly, to ordinary commerce,--trade,--commerce in the minor sense. In that sense, it expresses an immense want of civilized society,--nothing less, as Carlyle has it, than a knowledge of the way of getting the supernumerary shirts into contact with the backs of the men who have none. But this same principle introduced into the parlor becomes likewise the regulator of politeness and good manners, and pertains therefore to commerce in the major sense as well. I am, for example, overflowing with immoderate zeal for the principles which I am now discussing. I broach them on every occasion. I seize every man by the button-hole, and inflict on him a lecture on the beauties of Equitable Commerce; in fine, I make myself a universal bore, as every reformer is like to be more or less. But at the moment some urbane and conservative old gentleman politely observes to me, “Sir, I perceive one of your principles is, “The Adaptation of the Supply to the Demand.” I take the hint immediately. My mouth is closed. I perceive that my lecture is not wanted,--that he does not care to interest himself in the subject. There is no demand, and I stop the supply.

But you are ready to say, Would not the same hint given in some other form stop the impertinence of over-zealous advocacy in any case? Let those answer who have been bored. But suppose it did, could it be done so gracefully, in any way, as by referring the offender to one of the very principles he is advocating, or which he professes? Again: grant that it have the effect to stop that annoyance, the hint itself is taken as an offence, and the offended man, instead of continuing the conversation upon some other subject that might be agreeable, goes off in a huff, and most probably you have made him an enemy for life. But, in my case, it will not even be necessary for the conservative old gentleman to remind me,--I shall at once recollect that another of my principles is, “THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL.” One of the highest exercises of that sovereignty is the choice of the subjects about which one will converse and upon which he will bestow his time; hence I recognize cordially his right to exclude my subject, and immediately, gracefully, and good-humoredly I glide off upon some other topic. Then, by a law of the human mind, which it is extremely important to understand, and practically to observe, if it be possible that there should ever arise a demand with him to hear any thing about that subject, my uniform deference for even his prejudices will hasten the time. Indeed, all conservative old gentlemen, who hate reform of all sorts as they do ratsbane, would do well to make themselves at once familiar with these principles, and to disseminate them as they means of defending themselves. Do you begin to perceive that such a mere tradesman-like formula, at first blush as “THE ADAPTATION OF THE SUPPLY TO THE DEMAND,” becomes one of the highest regulators of good manners—a part of the ethics of conversation,--of the “Equitable Commerce” of gentlemanly intercourse,--as well as what it seems to be, an important element of trade; and do you catch a glimpse of what I mean, when I say that it is a universal principle of commerce in the major sense?

30. The doctrine of INDIVIDUALITY is equally universal. I have only to say here that it means the next thing to every thing, when you come to its applications. It means, as applied to persons, that every human being has a distinct character or individuality of his own, so that any attempt to classify him with others, or to measure him by others, is a breach of his natural liberty; and, as applied to facts, that no two cases ever occurred precisely similar, and hence that no arbitrary general rule can possibly be applied to cases not yet arisen. It follows, therefore, that all laws, systems, and constitutions whatsoever must yield to the individual, or else that liberty must be infringed; or, in other words, that the Individual is above Institutions, and that no social system can claim to be the true one, which requires for its harmonious operation that the Individual shall be subjected to the system, or to any institutions whatsoever.

We are taught by it that all combinations of interest whatsoever are limitations upon the exercise of the individuality of the parties, or restrictions upon natural liberty. Hence also, by Individuality, the true practical movement begins with a complete disintegration of all amalgamated interests, such as partnerships, in a manner peculiar to itself. Hence, again, to the casual observer, this movement seems to be in exact antagonism to Association, and the views of Socialism of all the various schools. A more thorough acquaintance with the subject will show, however, that this individualizing of all interests is the analysis of society, preliminary to association as the synthesis,--as much association as is demanded by the economies, being a growth of that cooperation of interests—not combination or amalgamation—which results form the operation of the Cost Principle. (3, 37.)

31. THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL grows out of the more fundamental principle of INDIVIDUALITY, as stated in No. I of this series. A special occasion called for that treatise, and limited it to a particular application. The extensive nature of the subject in its numerous ramifications will demand a separate work upon Individuality and the Sovereignty of the Individual, which, while they are distinguishable as principles, stand, nevertheless, closely related to each other.

32. A CIRCULATING MEDIUM FOUNDED ON THE COST OF LABOR is, perhaps, not so properly a principle as an indispensable instrument for carrying the Cost principle into practical operation. It is a monetary system, holding to the true or equitable system of Commerce a relation quite similar to that which specie and bank notes now hold to the present false and dishonest system. The subject of equitable money will be treated of more at large in the subsequent chapters, and does not require any further explanation at this point. As such a circulating medium is one of the necessary conditions of working out the true societary results, it is classed with principles, along with the means of the solution. (69, 245.)

33. It is claimed that within the circle of these five principles or efficient powers is found every condition of the complex development of a true social order, or, in other words, a full and perfect solution of the social problem stated above. Is that statement of the problem sufficiently comprehensive? Does it include, either directly or consequentially, all which has ever been aimed at by social reformers of any school, and all which is requisite to the full harmony and beauty of human relations? If that be so, and if the assumption just stated be made good, both by exposition and practical results, then have we at length a theory of society strictly entitled to the appellation of a Science,--a movement, precise, definite, and consequential, adequate, on the one hand, to meet the demands of the most exacting intellect, and sufficiently beneficent, on the other, to gratify the desires of the most expansive philanthropy, while in its remoter results it promises to satiate the refined cravings of the most fastidious taste.

34. This volume treats professedly upon the Cost Principle. Still each of the principles above stated will necessarily be referred to from time to time. It will perhaps be well, therefore, that the particular discussion of the principle, which I have selected for present consideration should be prefaced by a brief statement of the interrelations and mutual dependence of these several principles upon each other.

It is especially appropriate that something should be shown which will bridge over the seeming gap between so metaphysical a statement as that of the Sovereignty of the Individual, as set forth in the preceding Number, and the merely commercial consideration of an appropriate limit of price. An integral view of the connections of the different parts of this system of principles can only be a final result of a thorough familiarity with their detailed applications and practical effects. At the same time the fact that they are connected and mutually dependent will appear upon slight examination. For the rest, I must take the license to assert, with great emphasis, the existence of so intimate a relation between them that, if any one of them is omitted, it is totally impossible to work out the proposed results. The others will remain true, but any one of them, or any four of them, are wholly inadequate to the solution. This connection may be established by beginning almost indifferently at any point in the circle. Let us assume, as a starting point, THE ADAPTATION OF THE SUPPLY TO THE DEMAND.

35. By ADAPTATION OF THE SUPPLY TO THE DEMAND is meant a sufficiency of any variety of product, present at every time and place, to meet the want for that particular product which may be felt at the same time and place. It is wholly from the defect of such arrangements, in the existing commercial system, as would secure such an adaptation of supply to demand, that society is afflicted with periodical famine or scarcity, or, on the other hand, with gluts of the market, and consequent sacrifice and general bankruptcy, and, far more important than all, because more continuous, with what is called an excess of labor in the various labor markets of the world, by which thousands of men and women able to work and willing to work are deprived of the opportunity to do so. There is no reason in the nature of the case why there should not be as accurate a knowledge in the community of the statistics of supply and demand as there is of the rise and fall of the tides, nor why that knowledge should not be applied to secure a minute, accurate, and punctual distribution of products over the face of the earth, according to the wants of various countries, neighborhoods, and individuals. The supposed excess of labor is no more an excess than congestion is an excess of blood in the human system. The scarcity of the circulating medium which is now in use, and which is requisite for the interchange of commodities, is regarded by those who have studied this subject profoundly as the principal difficulty in the way of such an adjustment, but that scarcity itself is only a specific form and instance of the general want of adaptation of supply to demand, which extends far beyond all questions of currency,--the supply of circulating medium being unequal to the demand for it, owing to the expensiveness of the substances selected for such medium, and their consequent total unfitness for the purpose.

36. It follows from what has been said that appropriate arrangements for the adaptation of supply to demand are a sine qua non of a true social order. But the existence of such arrangements is an impossibility in the midst of the prevalence of speculation. But speculation has always existed, and is inherent in the present commercial system, and consequently no adequate adjustment of supply to demand has ever been had, or can ever be had, while that system remains in operation. It is the business of speculation, and hence of the whole mercantile profession, to confuse and becloud the knowledge of the community upon this very vital point of their interests, and to derange such natural adjustment as might otherwise grow up, even in the absence of full knowledge on the subject,--to create the belief that there is excess or deficiency when there is none, and to cause such excess or deficiency in fact when there would otherwise be none, in order to buy cheap and sell dear. Speculation is not only the vital element of the existing system of Commerce, but it will always exist upon any basis of exchange short of the Cost Principle. The Cost Principle extinguishes speculation, as will be shown in the sequel, Herein, then, is the connection between these two of the five conditions of social order. (158.)

37. Let us return now to THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL. This has been shown in the previous work to be also a sine qua non of true human relations. The Sovereignty of the Individual, which is merely the complete enjoyment of personal liberty, the unimpeded pursuit by every individual, of his own happiness in his own way, and the development of his own inherent selfhood, is, in fact, the apex, or culminating point, of the true harmony of society. It was also demonstrated that this Sovereignty cannot possibly be indulged, without continual encroachments upon the equal Sovereignty of others, in any other mode than by a complete disintegration of interests,--a total abandonment of every species of combined or amalgamated ownership, or administration of property. Individuality of Character teaches, in this manner, that, in order to the harmonious exercise of the Sovereignty of the Individual, a disconnection of interests must be had, which is in turn nothing else than another application of the same all-pervading principle of Individuality. Such, then, is the intimate connection between Individuality and Sovereignty of the Individual. (3, 30)

38. But again: what is to be the consequence of this general individualization of interests? Such is, to a very great extent, the order of the actual condition of ownership and administration in our existing society, which is, nevertheless, replete with social evils. Indeed, hitherto those evils have been attributed by Social Reformers, to the prevalent individualization of interests among men, more than to any other cause. Hence they have made war upon it, and proposed combined or amalgamated interests, or extensive partnership arrangements, as the only possible means of securing attractive industry, and cooperation, and economy in the production and uses of wealth. We now assert that, in order to secure what is more important than all else, the possibility of the free exercise of Individual Sovereignty, an indispensable condition is a still greater amount than now exists of Individuality, or disconnection in the property relations of men. We affirm that nearly all that there is good in existing society results from that element. What then follows? Do we abandon the high aims of other Socialists in other respects? Is all thought of cooperation and the economies surrendered by us? Clearly they are, unless some new and hitherto undiscovered element is brought in. To go back from the present field of effort of the Social Reformers to so much of Individuality as can exist in the present order of society, and stop at that alone, is evidently to return to the present social disorder, in which it is sufficiently demonstrated by experience that the exercise of the Sovereignty of the Individual—the point we aim to secure—is itself just as impossible as the other conditions desired. But why is it impossible? For the reason that Individuality of interests, upon which that exercise rests, is itself only partially possible in a social state in which there is a general denial of equity in the distribution of wealth,--equity being what the Cost Principle alone can supply. If the woman, or the youth under age, is denied the means of acquiring an independent subsistence, by the fact that they receive less than equivalents for their industry, they are necessarily thrown into a state of dependence upon others. The exercise of their own Sovereignty, then, is obviously an impossibility for them. There are thousands of women, for example, in the higher ranks of society, who never felt the luxury in their lives of spending a shilling that they knew to be actually their own, and never applied to their fathers or husbands for money without the degrading sense of beggary. On the other hand, the husbands and fathers are involved, by the same false pecuniary relations, in an unnecessary and harassing responsibility for the conduct and expenditure of every member of their families, which is equally destructive of their own freedom, or the exercise of their own Sovereignty over themselves. It is the same in the existing relations of the poor and the rich, the hireling and the employer, the master and the slave, and in nearly all the ten thousand ramified connections of men in existing society. By refusing equity in the distribution of wealth; by reducing the earnings of women, and youths, and hired men, and slaves below equivalents; by thus grasping power over others, through the medium of an undue absorption of the products of their industry,--the members of community are brought into the relation of oppressors and oppressed, and both are together and alike involved in a common destiny of mutual restrictions, espionage, suspicions, heartburnings, open destructive collisions, and secret hostility, and each is thereby shorn of the possibility of exercising his prerogative of sovereign control over his own actions.

39. Government of all sorts is adverse to freedom. It destroys the freedom of the subject, directly, by virtue of the fact that he is a subject; and destroys equally the freedom of the governor, indirectly, by devolving on him the necessity of overlooking and attempting, hopelessly, to regulate the conduct of others,--a task never yet accomplished, and the attempt at which is sufficiently harassing to wear the life out of the most zealous advocate of order. With the greater development of the individuals to be governed the task becomes proportionally the more onerous, until, in our day, the business of governing grows vulgar from its excessive laboriousness.

40. All combinations of interest imply and involve the necessity of government, because nature demands and will have an individual lead. The denial of equity implies and involves the necessity of combination of interest, by throwing one part of the community into a state of dependence upon the other, authorizing mutual supervision and criticism, and creating mutual restriction and hostility.

41. A man of wealth is said, among us, to be a “man in independent circumstances”; but in truth the man of wealth of our day has not begun to conceive the genuine luxury of perfect freedom,--a freedom which, by immutable laws, can never be realized otherwise than by a prior performance of exact justice.

42. The principles here asserted are universal. The same causes that are upheaving the thrones of Europe are disturbing the domestic tranquility of thousands of families among us. Red Republicanism in France, African Slavery in America, and the mooted question of the rights of women are one and the same problem. It is the sole question of human liberty, or the Sovereignty of the Individual; and the sole basis upon which the exercise of that Sovereignty can rest is Equity,--the rendering to each of that which is his. The Cost Principle furnishes the law of that rendering. That, and that alone, administers Equity. Hence it places all in a condition of independence. It dissolves the relation of protectors and protected by rendering protection unnecessary. It takes away the necessity resulting from dependence for combinations of interest and government, and hence for mutual responsibility for, and interference with, each other's deportment, by devolving the Cost, or disagreeable effects, of the conduct of each upon himself,--submitting him to the government of natural consequences,--the only legitimate government. In fine, the Cost Principle in operation renders possible, harmless, and purely beneficent the universal exercise of Individual Sovereignty.

43. Hence it follows that the Cost Principle underlies Individuality, or the disconnection of interests, in the same manner as Individuality itself underlies and sustains the Sovereignty of the Individual. Hence, again the Cost Principle is the basis principle or foundation upon which the whole fabric of social harmony rests, as the Sovereignty of the Individual is, as has been said, the apex, or culminating point of the same fabric,--the end and purpose of a true social order. Herein, then, is their intimate and necessary relation to each other.

44. Without Equity as a basis on which to rest, the Sovereignty of the Individual is true still as an abstract principle, but wholly incapable of realization. The Individual Sovereign is so de jure, but not de facto. He is a Sovereign without dominion, treated as a pretender, and his claims ridiculed by the actual incumbent. The assertion of Sovereignty is a phantom and a delusion until the Sovereign comes to his own. The Cost Principle, as the essential element of Equity, gives to each his own, while nothing else can. Hence, again, the intimate and necessary relation between these two principles.

45. The doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual is already beginning to develop itself, originally in an abstract form, in various quarters, and to take a well-defined shape in many minds. It has been announced in substance, recently, by several able writers, not accompanied, however, by the indispensable scientific limitation,--”To be exercised at his own cost,”--without which it is a principle of anarchy and confusion, instead of order. To preach the doctrine, even with the limitation, apart from its basis in equity, is disturbing. It is the announcement to slaves of their inherent right to be free, at the same time that you leave them hopeless of the realization of freedom. It is to unfit men for their present relations while offering them no means of inaugurating truer relations. It is “to curse men's stars, and give them no sun.” As a preliminary work to the impending reconstruction, the unsettling of men's minds may be a necessity, but “transitions are painful,” and humanity demands that the interval should be shortened between inspiring a want and actualizing the conditions of its gratification.

46. The essential condition of freedom is disconnection—individualization—disintegration of interests. The essential condition of disconnection is that that be given to each which belongs to each. All harmonic unity is a result or growth from the prior society, of fealty and protection, and consequent mutual amalgamation or combinations of interests, is a species of amorphous conglomerate, of which the past progress of Reform has been the gradual dissolution. Reform and consequent individualization is the tendency of this age. The process thus commenced must go on to completion, until every man and every woman and, to an appropriate extent, every child, is a perfect Individual, with an interest, an administration, and a destiny solely and emphatically under his or her own control. Out of that condition of things, and concurrently with it, and just in proportion to its completeness, will grow a more intimate harmony, or, if you will, unity of sentiment, and human affections, and mutual regard, begotten purely of attraction, than can be conceived of in the midst of the mutual embarrassment and constraint of our day, and of our order of life. It is only when each individual atom of the dusky mineral is disintegrated from every other, held in complete solution, and allowed to obey, without let or hindrance, the law of its own interior impulse, that each shoots spontaneously to its own place, and that all concur in voluntary union to constitute the pellucid crystal or the sparkling diamond of the mines. So in human affairs, what is feared by the timid conservative as the dissolution of order is, in fact, merely the preliminary stage of the true harmonic Constitution of Society,--the necessary analysis to its genuine and legitimate synthesis.

47. The connection of the Cost Principle with the Adaptation of the Supply to the Demand has been already pointed out. The nature and necessity of an Equitable Money, as the instrument of working the Cost Principle, will be demonstrated, as previously stated, in a subsequent chapter. In this manner the interrelations of this circle of principles are established, not so fully as the nature of the subject demands, but as much so as the incidental character of the present notice will permit.

48. But, although it may be admitted that we gain something of freedom in the action of the Individual by avoiding combinations of interest, do we not lose, by that means, the benefits of cooperation and the economies of the large scale? This question is important, and demands a satisfactory and conclusive answer. That answer is given in the whole treatise which follows. It is admitted that heretofore no other means for securing those ends have been known. It is asserted, however, that principles are now known by which all the higher results of social harmony can be achieved without that fatal feature of combination, which has promised, but failed, to realize them. Hence we draw a new and technical distinction between Combination and Cooperation, and insist on that distinction with great rigor. We assert that the true principles of Social Science are totally averse to combinations of interest. At the same time we admit freely that any principles which should not secure the greatest conceivable amount of Cooperation would fail entirely of solving the problem in question.

49. By Combinations are meant partnership interests and community of property or administration, such as confuse, in any degree, or obliterate the lines of Individuality in the ownership or use of property.

50. By Cooperation, or cooperative relations, is meant such an arrangement of the property and industrial interests of the different Individuals of the community that each, in pursuing his own pleasure or benefit, contributes incidentally to the pleasure or benefit of the others.

51. We assume the burden of proof. We admit the obligation resting upon us to establish the position that extreme Individuality or disconnection of interests is compatible—-contrary to all previous opinion—-with as thorough and extended Cooperation as can exist in any system of Combinations whatsoever.

52. It must not be understood that disconnection of interests implies, in the slightest degree, an isolation of persons. A hundred or a thousand men may be engaged in the same shop, and still their interests be entirely individualized. Such is the case now under the present wages system. The laborers in a manufacturing establishment, for example, have no common interest, no partnership, no combined responsibilities. Their interests are completely individualized, and yet they work together. This is all right. It is not at this point that the evil lurks which the Socialist seeks, or should seek, to remedy. Besides this, these men and women now cooperate completely in their labor. They all work at distinct functions to a common end, which is Cooperation. The evil to be remedied is neither in their individuality of interests nor in any want of cooperation. It is solely in the want of mutuality in the results of that Cooperation,--in other words, in the want of Equity,--in the want of a regulating principle which would secure to each the full, legitimate results of his own labor. The difficulty is that the whole hundred, or the whole thousand men now labor and cooperate, not for their own benefit, but for the benefit of one,--the employer. Under the operation of the Cost Principle their interests will be individual as they are now; they will cooperate as they do now, or, rather, more perfectly but they will cooperate for all others, merely the equivalent and reward of his own labor.

53. I feel painfully that by attempting such a condensation of these matters I am liable to render myself woefully obscure. I will take a special occasion to show that “Equitable Commerce” is not the antagonist of any other of the great Reforms proposed, but that it comes in as the harmonizer of the whole. If it be claimed by his admirers that Fourier has shown “the what” of harmonic social relations, Warren shows “the how” to realize such relations, in which last respect Social Reformers generally have been lamentably deficient.

54. I will conclude by stating how the Cost Principle, in its operation, will address itself to the different classes of community, so that those who feel no demand need not be overburdened by the supply.

The whole community may be divided, under this system,--not according to the old classification of Political Economy into producers and non-producers,--but into those who receive more than equivalents for their labor and those who receive less than equivalents,--those who perform no productive labor and receive a living or more than that being included in the former class.

Of these classes, the latter-—all those who receive less than equivalents, including the great mass of simple operatives who have not the aid of capital—-have an immediate and pecuniary interest in at once adopting the principle.

The remaining class—-those who receive more than equivalents—-have no such interest, but contrariwise. Of these only such as are moved by consideration of benevolence or justice, or the love of order and harmony in human relations, or by the sense of insecurity even for the rich in the existing order of society, or by an appreciation of the higher gratifications of taste through the general prevalence of refinement, luxury, and wealth, have any demand for this new principle of commerce; and so soon as those with whom such considerations are not potential have read enough to know how equivalents can be measured, and that they are now on the gaining side, they will need no further supply of this reform, and the reform must go on without them, as it best may. There are only distant advantages to offer them, and as they have the immediate advantages in their own hands, they must be expected to do the best they can to retain them. The peculiarity of the movement is, however, that it does not proceed by their leave.

EQUITY AND THE LABOR NOTE

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Chapter II

55. HUMAN beings are subject to various wants. Some of these wants have to be supplied to sustain life at all; others to render life comfortable and happy. If an individual produced, with no aid from others, all the numerous things requisite to supply his wants, the things which he produced—-his products—-would belong to himself. He would have no occasion to exchange with others, and they would have no equitable claims upon him for any thing which was his.

56. But such is not the case. We all want continually for our own support or comfort those things which are produced by others. Hence we exchange products. Hence comes trade,--buying and selling,--Commerce, including the hiring of the labor of others. Trade is, therefore, a necessity of human society, and consists of the exchange of the labor, or the products of the labor, of one person, for the labor, or the products of the labor, of another person.

57. It is clear, if this exchange is not equal, if one party gives more of his own labor—either in the form of labor or product—than he gets of the labor of the other,--either in the form of labor or product,--that he is oppressed, and becomes, so far as this inequality goes, the slave or subject of the other. He has, just so far, to expend his labor, not for his own benefit, but for the benefit of another. To produce good or beneficent results from trade, therefore, the exchanges should be equal. Hence it follows that the essential element of beneficent Commerce is EQUITY, or that which is just and equal between man and man.

58. The fundamental inquiry, therefore, upon the answer to which, alone, a Science of Commerce can be erected, is the true measure of Equity, or, what is the same thing, the measure of price in the exchange of labor and commodities. This question is one of immense importance, and, strange to say, it is one which has never received the slightest consideration, which has never, indeed, been raised either by Political Economists, Legislators, or Moralists. The only question discussed has been, what it is which now regulates price,--never what should regulate it. It is admitted, nevertheless, that the present system of Commerce distributes wealth most unjustly. Why, then, should we not ask the question, What principle or system of Commerce would distribute it justly? Why not apply our philosophy to discovering the true system, rather than apply it to the investigation of the laws according to which the false system works out its deleterious results.

59. Simple Equity is this, that so much of YOUR labor as I take and apply to MY benefit, so much of MY labor ought I to give you to be applied to YOUR benefit; and, consequently, if I take a product of your labor instead of the labor itself, and pay you in a product of my labor, the commodity which I give you ought to be one in which there is JUST AS MUCH LABOR as there is in the product which I receive.

The same idea may be differently presented in this manner. It is Equity that every individual should sustain just as much of the common burden of life as has to be sustained BY ANY BODY on his account. Such would be the result if each produced for himself all that he consumed, as in the first case supposed above; and the fact that it is found convenient to exchange labor and the products of labor does not vary the definition of Equity in the least.

60. To a well-regulated mind the preceding propositions present an obvious and self-evident truth, like the proposition that two and two make four, demanding no other proof than the statement itself. Yet simple and undeniable as they appear, with thus distinctly propounded, the consequences which inevitably follow from the principle which they affirm are ultra-radical and revolutionary of all our existing commercial relations, as will be shown in the subsequent chapters of this work. They contain merely, however, a statement of the Principle of Equity. They leave the question of the Method of making an application of the principle still open. They do not furnish the means of arriving at the measure of Equity. This, then, is the next step in the investigation.

61. If I exchange my labor against yours, the first measure that suggests itself for the relative amount of labor performed by each is the length of time that each is employed. If all pursuits were equally laborious, or, in other words, if all labor were equally repugnant or toilsome,--if it cost equal amounts of human suffering or endurance for each hour of time employed in every different pursuit, then it would be exact Equity to exchange one hour of labor for one other hour of labor, or a product which has in it one hour of labor for another product which has in it one hour of labor the world over. Such, however, is not the case. Some kinds of labor are exceedingly repugnant, while others are less so, and others still more pleasing and attractive. There are differences of this sort which are agreed upon by all the world. For example, sweeping the filth from the streets, or standing in the cold water and dredging the bottom of a stream, would be, by general consent, regarded as more repugnant, or, in the common language on the subject, harder work, than laying out a garden, or measuring goods.

But besides this general difference in the hardness or repugnance of work, there are individual differences in the feeling toward different kinds of labor which make the repugnance or attraction of one person for a particular kind of labor quite different from that of another. Labor is repugnant or otherwise, therefore, more or less, according to the individualities and opportunities of persons.

If you inquire among a dozen men what each would prefer to do, you will find the greatest diversity of choice, and you will be surprised to find some choosing such occupations as are the least attractive to you. It is the same among women as respects the labors which they pursue.

62. It follows from these facts that Equity in the exchange of labor, or the products of labor, cannot be arrived at by measuring the labor of different persons by the hour merely. Equity is the equality of burdens according to the requirements of each person, or, in other words, the assumption of as much burden by each person as has to be assumed by somebody, on his account, so that no one shall be living by imposing burdens on others. Time is one element in the measurement of the burdens of labor, but the different degrees of repugnance in the different kinds of labor prevent it from being the only one. Hence it follows that there must be some means of measuring this repugnance itself,--in other words, of determining the relative hardness of different kinds of work,--before we can arrive at an equitable system of exchanging labor and the products of labor. If we could measure the general average of repugnance,--that is, if we could determine how people generally regard the different kinds of labor as to their agreeableness or disagreeableness,--still that would not insure Equity in the exchange between individuals, on account of those individualities of character and taste which have been adverted to. It is an equality of burden between the two individuals who exchange which must be arrived at, and that must be according to the estimate which each honestly forms of the repugnance to him or her of the particular labor which he or she performs, and which, or the products of which, are to be exchanged.

63. It is important for reasons of practical utility to arrive at a general or average estimate of the relative repugnance of different kinds of labor, especially of the most common kinds, and that is done under the operation of the Cost Principle, as hereafter pointed out (195); but, as we have seen, if we had already arrived at it, it would not be a sufficiently accurate measure of Equity to be applied between individuals; while, on the other hand, this average itself can only be based upon individual estimates. The average which now exists in the public mind, by which it is understood that field labor, in cultivating grain, for example, is neither the hardest nor the easiest kind of work, and that sewing or knitting is not so repugnant as washing or scrubbing, rests upon the general observation of individual preferences.

64. It follows, therefore, in order to arrive at a satisfactory measure of Equity, and the adoption of a scientific system of commerce: 1. That some method must be devised for comparing the relative repugnance of different kinds of labor. 2. That, in making the comparison, each individual must make his or her own estimate of the repugnance to him or her of the labor which he or she performs, and 3. That there should be a sufficient motive in the results or consequences to insure an honest exercise of the judgment, and an honest expression of the real feelings of each, in making the comparison.

65. I.--That some method should be devised for comparing the relative repugnance of different kinds of labor. This is extremely simple. All that is necessary is to agree upon some particular kind of labor, the average repugnance of which is most easily ascertained, or the most nearly fixed, and use it as a standard of comparison, a sort of yard-stick for measuring the relative repugnance of other kinds of labor. For example, in the Western American States it is found that the most appropriate kind of labor to be assumed as a standard with which to compare all other kinds of labor is corn-raising. It is also found, upon extensive investigation, that the average product of that kind of labor, in that region, is twenty pounds of corn to the hour. If, then, blacksmithing is reckoned as one half harder work than corn-raising, it will be rated (by the blacksmith himself) at thirty pounds of corn to the hour. If shoe-making be reckoned as one quarter less onerous than corn-raising, it will be rated at fifteen pounds of corn to the hour. In this manner the idea of corn-raising is used to measure the relative repugnance of all kinds of labor.

66. II.--That, in making the comparison, each individual must make his or her own estimate of the repugnance to him or her of the particular labor which he or she performs. This condition must be secured, both for the reasons already stated, and because another equally important principle in the true science of society is the Sovereignty of the Individual. The Individual must be kept absolutely above all institutions. He must be left free even to abandon the principles whenever he chooses. The only constraint must be in the attractive nature and results of true principles.

67. III.--That there should be a sufficient motive in the results or consequences of compliance with these principles to insure an honest exercise of the judgment, and an honest expression of the real feeling of each in making his estimate of the relative repugnance of his labor. The existence of such a motive can only be shown by a view of the general results of this entire system of principles upon the condition of society, and upon the particular interests of the individual. These results must be gathered from a thorough study of the whole subject, in order to establish this point conclusively to the philosophic mind. The force of a public sentiment rectified by the knowledge of true principles will not be lost sight of by such a mind. (229.) The particular remedial results of deviations from the principle of Equity upon the interests of the individual will be specifically pointed out in the subsequent pates. (72-76.)

68. If an exchange could be always made and completed on the spot, each party giving and receiving an equivalent,--that is, an amount of labor, or a product of labor, which had in it an amount of repugnance or cost just equal to that in the labor or product for which it was given or received,--the whole problem of exchanges would be solved by the simple method just stated. There would in that case be no necessity for a circulating medium, or for anything to perform the part which is performed by money in our existing commerce. But such is not the case. Articles are not always at hand which have in them the same amount of cost; indeed, it is the rare exception that exact equivalents can be made upon the spot in commodities which are mutually wanted. Besides, it may frequently happen that I want something from you, either labor or the products of labor, when you, at the time, want nothing of me. In such a case the exchange is only partially completed on the spot, the remaining part waiting to be completed at some future time, by the performance of an equivalent amount of labor, or the delivery of products or commodities having in them an equivalent amount of labor.

69. In such a case as that just stated, it is proper that the party who does not make his part of the exchange on the spot should give an evidence of his obligation to do so at some future time, whenever called upon,--and this the origin of what is called the Labor Note, which is the form assumed by “Equitable Money,” the fourth among the elements of the solution of the Problem of Society. The party who remains indebted to the other gives his own note, provided the other consents to receive it, for an equivalent amount of his own labor, or else of the standard commodity,--say so many pounds of corn, specifying in the note the kind of labor, and the alternative. As it may happen that the party receiving the Labor Note may not require the labor itself, or that it may be inconvenient for the party promising to perform it when it is wanted, it is provided that the obligation may be discharged, at the option of the party giving the note, in the standard commodity instead. In the other hand, although the party receiving the note may not want the labor himself, yet some person with whom he deals may want it, and hence he can pass the note to a third party who is willing to receive it for an equivalent amount of labor, or products, received from him. In this manner the Labor Note begins to circulate from one to another, and the aggregate of labor Notes in circulation in a neighborhood constitutes the neighborhood circulating medium, dispensing, so far as this Equitable Commerce extends, with money altogether, or, rather, introducing a new species of paper money, based solely upon individual responsibility.

70. The use of the Labor Note is not, as has been already observed, strictly a principle of Equity, and partakes more of the nature of a contrivance than any other feature of the system of Equitable Commerce; but yet it seems to be a necessary instrument to be employed in the practical working of the system. The Theory of Equity is complete without it, but the necessity for its use arises from the practical fact that exchanges cannot in every case be completed on the spot. Hence a circulating medium of some sort is indispensable, and in order that the system may remain throughout an equitable one, in practice as well as in theory, the circulating medium must be based on equivalents of labor or cost between individuals.

The features of the Labor Note are peculiar, and the points of difference between it and ordinary money are numerous and far more important than at first appears. They are as follows:

71. I.--Its cheapness and abundance. As it costs nothing but the paper upon which it is written, printed, or engraved, and the labor executing and signing it, it may be said, for practical purposes, to cost nothing. The great fault of our existing currency is its expensiveness and scarcity. It is upon these properties that the whole system of interest or rent on money is founded, a tribute to which the rich as well as the poor have to submit, whenever they want a portion of the circulating medium to use. To show that this is a real and frightful evil in gold and silver currency, and consequently in all money of which gold and silver are the basis, demands a distinct treatise on money. Under the Labor Note system, every man who has in his possession his ability to work, or his character, or in these elements variously combined, the assurance of responsibility or the basis of credit, has always by him as much money as he needs. He has only to take his pen from his pocket and make it at will. There can be no such cases as happen now, of responsible men worth their tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in property, but absolutely destitute of money, and forced to submit to the shaving process of bankers, brokers, and Jews.

72. II.--Being based on individual credit, it makes every man his own banker. This feature of the Labor Note system is substantially contained in the preceding statement, but the more important consequences of his fact remain to be pointed out. Bankers are proverbial for their anxiety to maintain their credit unimpaired and unsuspected. With them distrust is synonymous with the ruin of their business. Under this system every man, woman, boy, and girl, assuming the character of a banker, becomes equally solicitous about the maintenance of his or her credit. Upon the goodness of their reputation for punctuality of redemption depends the fact of their always having change in their pockets. Honesty comes then to a good market, and finds at once a pecuniary reward. If one's credit is suffered to fall into disrepute among this neighbors, he is left positively without money or the means of obtaining it, and reduced to the necessity of making all his exchanges on the spot. He is put pecuniarily into Coventry. Both the superior advantages of possessing credit, and the greater inconvenience of losing it, conspire, therefore, to install the reign of commercial honor and common honesty in the most minute and ordinary transactions of life among the whole people. The moralist who is wise will perceive herein an engine of reform immensely important to subserve his ends. This result is already satisfactorily proven in practice at one point, where this system of exchanges has been introduced, in the fact that every person is anxious to obtain the Labor Notes of others for use and to abstain, so far as he can, from issuing his own; as well as in the general solicitude for the preservation of credit, and the general promptitude in redeeming the notes that are issued. Notwithstanding the fact that, in now small a circle, it is only a part of the pecuniary transactions of the community which can be carried on upon the Cost Principle,--ordinary money having to be used in all transactions with the world outside, and even within the community, for those things which were purchased outside and which cost money,--still these results have been strikingly exhibited in practice.

73. III.--It combines the properties of a circulating medium and a means of credit. These qualities have been substantially stated above as separate attributes of the Labor Note system; but the advantage of their combination in one and the same instrumentality of Commerce is worth of a distinct observation. At the end of the third year from the commencement of the settlement above referred to, there were eighteen families having two lots of ground, each with houses-—nine brick and nine wooden ones—-and gardens of their own, nearly the whole of which capital was created by them during that period. The families, without exception, came there quite destitute of worldly accumulations. Thirty dollars in money was probably the largest sum possessed by any of them. Others ladened there with five dollars and ten as the whole of their fortune. They were nearly all families who had been exhausted in means as well as broken down and discouraged in spirit by successive failures of community, or association attempts at reform. The success they have thus achieved, in so short a time, has resulted entirely from their own labor, exchanged so far as requisite and practicable upon the Cost or Equitable Principle, facilitated by the instrumentality of the Labor Note.

74. A family arriving without means at the location of a village operating on the Equitable Principle, if their appearance or known character inspires sufficient confidence in the minds of the previous settlers, can immediately commence operations, not upon charity, but upon their own credit, issuing their Labor Notes—-men, women, and youths—-so far as their several kinds of labor are in demand, procuring thereby the labor of the whole village in all the various trades necessary to construct them an edifice, and supply them with the necessaries of life, so far as the size of the circle renders it possible to produce them on the spot. Labor, even prospective labor, thus becomes immediate capital. Interest and profits being discarded, the amount of capital thus existing in labor is greatly augmented. The fact that the labor of the women and children is equally remunerated with that of the men again adds to the amount of combined capital in the family. By the operation of these several causes, a family which has been struggling for years, in the midst of the competition of ordinary Commerce and the oppressions of capital, with no success beyond barely holding on to life, may become in a short time independent and well provided. Such are the legitimate workings of the true system of Commerce, and so far as it has been tested by practical operations the results have entirely corroborated the theory.

75. [The settlers at Trialville, however, would not wish any thing said upon this subject to be construed into any pledge on their part to supply any advantages to individuals coming among them. There is no community or society there in the corporate sense of the term. Every individual judges for himself upon what terms he will treat with others, how far he will receive their Labor Notes, or whether he will receive them at all. Persons going there must make up their own opinion whether there is a sufficient demand for the kinds of labor which they can perform, whether their own uprightness of character and punctuality in the discharge of obligations are such as to inspire and maintain confidence, and, indeed, upon every point relating to the subject. No guarantees whatever are given, except such as the Individual finds n the principles themselves, while it is left entirely to the decision of the Individual himself, on every occasion, whether even he will act on the principles or not. There is no compact or constitution,--no laws, by-law, rules, or regulations of any sort. The Individual is kept above all institutions, our of deference to the principle of Individuality and the Sovereignty of the Individual, which belong just as much to the fundamental basis of true society as the Cost Principle itself. There must, therefore, be no reliance on express or implied pledges, nor upon any species of cooperation which is contracted for, and binding by agreement. Besides, the extent to which the advantages of the Labor Note can be rendered available is limited in the beginning by the smallness of the circle, by the prevalence of pursuits unfavorable to the mutual exchange of labor or products, and by numerous other considerations, all of which must be judged of by the Individual upon his own responsibility, and at his own risk.]

76. When credit is raised upon the issue of Labor Notes, it has the advantage of being based upon that which the party has it in his power to give. He has in his own vaults the means of redemption. If a laboring man promises money, his ability to pay the money depends upon the precarious change of his finding a demand for his labor. If he gives a Labor Note, finding a demand for his labor, he secures the means of paying by the act of entering into the obligation. Even if the payment is demanded in the alternative, and is discharged in the standard commodity itself (corn), or, what is more likely, in other commodities, measured by corn, or in the Labor Notes of the others, still all of these are procured by the exchange of his own labor, and it will appear, upon a full exposition of the system, that under the operation of these principles labor will always be in demand, so that no laborer need ever be out of employment. (161.) As a result of this fact every man can know positively, beforehand, to precisely what extent he can, with safety, issue his Labor Notes, the contingencies of sickness and death alone excepted. Hence dishonesty finds no subterfuges. In the case of death the heirs possess the property, if there be property, for which the notes were given. To refuse to redeem them is a palpable ascertained fraud, and the same powerful motives which have been shown as operating on the original debt to insure honesty and punctuality operate also upon them. If they evade the obligation, they, too, are placed in Coventry, and cut off from all the advantages and privileges which such an association affords. The influence thus brought to bear upon them is ten-fold more potent than laws, and the sanctions of laws, in existing society. In the event of sickness, if the invalid has accumulated property, it serves to maintain him, and redeem his outstanding obligations, precisely as now. Such is the main purpose of accumulation. If a person has no property at the time his Labor Notes are given, then his credit is based solely on his future labor, and the liability to sickness and death enters into the transaction and limits the issue. The risk is incurred by the party who receives them. As the amount of these notes in the hands of any single individual is generally small, the risk is a mere trifle, and has never been found, practically, to be enough to make it worth while to take it into account at all. For the contingency of the loss of property by fire or other accidents, between the time when obligations are incurred and their redemption as well as at all other times, insurance can be resorted to, as is done in existing society. Thus the Labor Note, while it is a circulating medium, is at the same time the instrument of a system of credit, having all the advantages, with none of the frightful results of insecurity and bankruptcy, which grow out of, or accompany, the credit system actually prevailing in the commercial world.

77. IV.--The Labor Note represents an ascertained and definite amount of labor or property, which ordinary money does not. We have examples of this feature of currency in the railroad and opera ticket, and other similar representations of a positive thing. A railroad ticket represents a ride of a definite length today, tomorrow, and next day, but a dollar does not represent any thing definite. It will buy one amount of sugar or flour today, another amount tomorrow, and still a different amount the next day. The importance of this feature of the two different systems is immense. It can, however, only be exhibited in its consequence by an extended treatise on the subject. What is shown in this chapter is a mere glimpse at the system of “Equitable Commerce” in operation. A thousand objections will occur which it is impossible to remove at the time of stating the general outline. It will be perceived by the acute intellect that a principle is here broached which is absolutely revolutionary of all existing commerce. Perhaps a few minds may follow it out at once into its consequences far enough to perceive that it promises the most magnificent results in the equal distribution of wealth proportioned to industry, the abolition of pauperism, general security of condition instead of continual bankruptcy, poverty, universal cooperation, the general prevalence of commercial honor and honesty, and in ten thousand harmonizing and beneficent effects, morally and religiously. The larger class of persons, however, will require that each particular detail shall be tract out and defined, and the mass of mankind will only understand the subject upon the basis of practical illustration. Hence the necessity that the practice go along with the theory, a method which has been generally adopted and pursued, and of the results of which the public will be from time to time sufficiently advised.

It would be inappropriate at this early point, and before a better understanding of the results which flow from the fountain of Equity has been obtained, to trace the operation of the Labor Note more into detail. In a subsequent chapter it will be considered in the light of a universal or world-wide system of currency. (245.)

COST, PRICE, LABOR, NATURAL WEALTH

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CHAPTER III

78. The position was established in the preceding chapter that Equity in any exchange of labor or commodities—-the products of labor-—consists of the exact equality of burdens assumed by the parties to the transaction The amount of burden involved in rendering a given amount of labor, or a given commodity, is technically denominated the “COST” of that labor or commodity, and the labor or commodity which is received in return for that which is rendered is denominated the “PRICE” of it. Hence, inasmuch as it is simple Equity that these two should be the equivalents of each other, or exactly equal in the amount of burden imposed, the scientific formula is that “COST IS THE LIMIT (OR SCIENTIFIC MEASURE) OF PRICE.”

79. Cost is, then, the amount of repugnance overcome. Hence, according to this principle, the equitable price of any repugnance or endurance which it has cost to perform the labor or produce the commodity. This, again, is the same thing as labor for labor, burden for burden, or equality of burdens in exchange. Hence it implies that there is no other basis of price, no other ground for a demand for remuneration costing human endurance, than the fact of human endurance itself.

80. This proposition,--Cost the Limit of Price,--so simple, so seemingly unimportant to the casual reader, and yet so obviously true when properly apprehended, so perfectly consonant with the natural sentiment of right in every mind, will appear by its results as previously stated to be one of the most radical propositions ever made. A rigid adhesion to it in commercial relations will revolutionize nearly every species of transaction among men. It will do so beneficently, however, for all classes, so that no alarm need be felt by any. We shall begin, in this chapter, to trace out some of these results, through the various operations of the principle upon the interests of society, and to contrast them with the effects of those principles which are now efficient in the same sphere.

81. The first grand consequence resulting from the simple principle of Equity—-Cost the Limit of Price-—is, as already intimated, that whatever we possess which has cost NO human labor, which has imposed NO BURDEN in its production, which has COST nothing, although it is susceptible of being property, is, nevertheless, not a rightful subject of PRICE. All property of this kind,--whether it is equally open to the enjoyment of all mankind,--the property of the race, like air and water,--or whether it attaches more particularly to some Individual, like genius or skill, is denominated NATURAL WEALTH. The formula relating to this subject is, then, that NATURAL WEALTH BEARS NO PRICE—that is, that it cannot, of itself, be made the subject of price upon any equitable grounds whatsoever,--although the resignation of so much of it as required for one's own convenience may be the basis of price on the ground of a sacrifice endured, as will be explained in speaking of the comprehensiveness of the term Cost. (114.) Every thing valuable which is bestowed by nature without any provision on the part of mankind or the Individual is Natural Wealth, such as fire and water, light and heat, the earth, the air, the principles of science and mechanism, personal beauty, health, natural genius, talent, etc.

82. The principle stated in the preceding Number settles, scientifically and beautifully, the vexed question of the ownership of the soil. Land, in its natural state, is natural wealth, equally belonging to all the inhabitants of the earth. It stands upon the same footing as the ocean and the atmosphere. But so soon as labor is bestowed upon any portion of it, which adds to it a positive value, the labor so bestowed is the rightful subject of price, to be measured like every other species of labor, by the cost or burden assumed in performing it. Thus the equitable price for lands upon which no labor has been performed is zero; the equitable price for wild lands which have merely been surveyed and bounded is the cost of surveying and bounding them; if they have been cleared and fenced, then the equitable price is the cost of clearing and fencing in addition to that of surveying and bounding; and if, still further, they have been sloughed, cultivated, and improved, then the equitable price is the cost of as much labor as, rightly applied, would take the same lands in the natural state and bring them into the state of improvement in which they are found The reason of this latter modification is this,--that lands may have been in cultivation for hundreds of years, and labor have been bestowed upon them each year, while the cost of such labor has been annually repaid by the successive crops, except so much of the same as remains on the land in the form of permanent artificial improvement. The cost which has been already repaid ought not to be paid again, while that which remains invested, and is to be repaid out of the future crops, or other use, may be equitably demanded from the purchaser who is to receive such future benefit. If the lands have been so badly cultivated as to have deteriorated instead of improved, it would be equitable that the seller should pay to the purchaser a sum equal to the cost of bring them up to their natural state. Such cultivation is robbing the land, and incurring a debt to humanity, as if one were to find some means of training or exhausting in the atmosphere, or fouling a stream from which others must draw their supplies.

83. It is the same with the other natural elements. Water as it flows past in the stream is natural wealth, and not the subject of price. The man who should seize upon a stream of water and fence it up or turn it aside, for the purpose of levying a tribute upon those who lived below him upon the same stream, in the form of a price for their necessary supplies, would commit an obvious breach of natural law. But although water, in its natural condition, is not equitably susceptible of price, yet so soon as human labor is bestowed upon it by any person for the benefit of another, a price may be rightfully affixed to the water, to be precisely measured by the cost or burden of the labor so bestowed. Every individual has a right to appropriate so much of the common natural wealth as is requisite to the supply of his wants. So soon as I have dipped up a pitcher full of water from the spring or stream, it is no longer mere natural wealth; it is a product of my labor as well. It is thus my individual property. No one has a right to take it from me without my consent, and in case I do consent, I have an equitable and just right to demand a price equal to the burden I have assumed, which consists of the labor, the risk, or whatever else made it a burden. If I have merely dipped it up, the equitable price is a trifle probably not worth considering; but if I have carried it two miles over a burning plain, it may be considerable; and if I have run the risk of carrying it for the sake of another through the brisk fire from an enemy's battery, the risk will enter equitably into the estimate of the price. (121.) In all these cases it is not really the natural wealth itself, the land or the water, which acquires a price, but the human labor and other elements which are bestowed upon it. Nothing is properly the rightful subject of price but repugnance overcome. But as the portions of natural wealth to which human labor has thus been added are the objects which are wanted by the purchaser, and which are delivered to him when the price is paid, it is natural to speak of them as bearing the price.

84. It is obvious from this application of the principle of cost, which we have seen is nothing but the scientific measure of equity, that simple equity cuts up by the roots every species of speculation in lands. It will be seen, in the next place, that it cuts up equally another species of speculation, which the world hardly suspects of being, although it is, both in principle and in its oppressive results, equally iniquitous,--that is, speculation in talent, natural skill, or genius. The definitions and principles above stated render it obvious that no man has any just or equitable right to charge a price for that which it cost nothing of human labor to create. “Freely ye have received, freely give.”

85. A superior natural tact for the performance of any function or labor renders it easier instead of harder to perform the function or labor. It makes the burden ordinarily lighter instead of heavier, and consequently, upon the Cost Principle, reduces instead of augmenting the price. I say, “ordinarily,” because the case may happen of a person having a high degree of natural ability for a particular kind of industry, and having at the same time, from some special cause, an unusual repugnance to its performance, and it must be constantly remembered that it is the degree of personal repugnance overcome which measures the price. As the rule, however, the taste or attraction for a given pursuit accompanies and corresponds to the degree of excellence in it, and in that case the remarkable result above stated flows from the principle.

86. Naturally enough, a conclusion so strikingly dissimilar to all that is now seen in practice or entertained in idea will be received at first blush with some suspicions of its soundness. It will be found, however, upon examination, that the consequences of admitting it are all beneficent and harmonious. They are, in fact, indispensable to the solution of the problem of true social relations.

87. Talent, natural skill, or genius, distinguished from each ability as is the result of labor or acquisition, is one species of natural wealth. It is not, like earth, air, and water, equally distributed by nature to all men, and cannot, therefore, be equally enjoyed by all. Those on whom it has been conferred in a high degree have a kind of enjoyment of it in the fact of its possession, which cannot be participated with others. It is the same with health or personal beauty, or a naturally graceful deportment. In this particular way, although it is natural wealth, it is individual wealth also. There are other ways, however, in which it is not individual or exclusive, but in which it may be partaken of by all around, as when we experience the pleasure of looking upon a beautiful countenance or a graceful figure, or when we enjoy the creations of another's genius, or the productions of another's natural endowments. This kind of enjoyment is bestowed by nature gratuitously, and is not confined to the individual who produces it. It is the common patrimony of mankind as much as air, earth, and water.

88. It follows from these considerations that neither the forensic talents bestowed by nature upon a Daniel Webster, nor the musical endowments of a Jenny Lind, nor the natural agility of the mountebanks, constitute any legitimate or equitable basis of price, for the simple reason that they have cost their possessors nothing, and it has already been settled that cost is the only legitimate ground of price.

89. Observe, in the first place, that I do not say that the labor which it may require on their part to exercise these natural talents is not a legitimate basis of price. On the contrary, I affirm that it is so, and that such labor is the only basis of price in the performance, and hence that the price of the performance is equitably limited by the precise amount of the labor in it, estimated according to its repugnance to the individual, relatively to other kinds of labor,--not augmented one iota on account of the extraordinary natural abilities which the performance demands. There is in that element no labor, no repugnance overcome, no cost, and consequently no basis of price.

90. Observe, in the next place, that labor expended prior to the performance, in cultivating the natural talent and fitting it for the performance, is an element of cost, a due proportion of which may be equitably charged upon each specific exhibition of the talent. This point will be more fully considered presently in treating of the constituents of cost. (121.)

91. It will be objected that under this system talent and skill receive no protection. Talent and skill are intellectual strength, and it is not strength but weakness which demands protection. Talent and skill now enable their possessors to subject the world as effectually, though its industrial relations, as prowess and physical manhood formerly enabled their possessors to do so upon the battle-fields of past history. The dominion of physical conquest is now partially becoming extinct. We are in the midst of the reign of intellectual superiority, which is far more subtle and intricate in the modes of its tyrannical action. The discovery of the true laws of social order will not be, therefore, the discovery of increased facilities for talent or intellectual power to exert itself for its own immediate and selfish aggrandizement, but the precise contrary.

92. At the same time talent and skill will always command, like physical manhood, a certain degree of homage, and secure, indirectly, more refined and yet more substantial rewards than direct appropriation would confer. In discussing the subject of price we are by no means discussing all the possible effects of performance, but only that one which forms the basis of a demand for a direct equivalent or compensation.

93.Price is that which a party may properly demand AS HIS RIGHT, in consideration of services rendered. It relates, therefore, to exact justice between the parties, and justice has in it no touch of mercy, or gratitude, or benevolence,--no tribute of admiration, no homage. It does not exclude the exercise of those sentiments after its own demands are satisfied, but, for itself, it know nothing of that sort. Justice demands Equity, exact Equivalents, Burden for Burden; and will be satisfied with nothing else. To understand the appropriate sphere of these various affections we must individualize their functions. It is essential not only to the security of rights, but equally in order that benevolence or homage be felt and accepted as such, that the limits of each should be exactly defined. The rendition of justice is the basis, or platform, or prior condition,upon which benevolence must rest. The slave feels little or no gratitude toward his master for any act of kindness which the master may do, because he is conscious that the master is living in an unjust relation toward him, and that he owes him as matter of justice more than he grants as an indulgence. This apparent destitution of the sentiment of gratitude reacts upon the master, and he despises and depreciates the moral constitution of the slave. The fault is in the absence of the prior condition of Justice, which alone authorizes benevolence, which then inspires gratitude, and all conspire to institute and maintain friendly and harmonious relations. A charity bestowed while justice is withheld is always an insult.

94. Again, according to a law of the human mind, injustice persisted in begets aversion or hatred on the part of the perpetrator as well, toward the object of it. But justice cannot be rendered while one is ignorant of what justice is; and since no one how does not know that Cost is the Limit of Price knows what the limits of justice are, it follows that every one has been living in relations of injustice toward all around him. A partial consciousness of this truth tends still farther to inspire ill-will on the part of the governors toward the governed, of the employers toward the employed, and of masters toward slaves. Hence, it will be perceived that a denial of justice operates through two channels to prevent the natural flow of benevolence, by hindering its bestowal, at the same time that it enfeebles or destroys the appreciation of it by the recipient.

95. Still again, from ignorance of the landmarks of justice or Equity, acts are continually done under the supposition that justice demands them, and with no sentiment of benevolence, which should fall within the province of benevolence, while the same ignorance on the other hand hinders their acknowledgment as benevolent acts, and prevents, consequently, the appropriate sentiment of gratitude or reciprocal benevolence, which should be the result.

96. The magnificent testimonial bestowed by the English people upon Rowland Hill for his conception of the idea of cheap postage and his exertions in behalf of the reform had in it nothing discordant with true principles, because it was bestowed as a gratuitous homage and accepted as such. Whenever all obstructions to the natural exuberance of benevolence toward those who confer benefits upon us are removed by the establishment of equitable relations, such voluntary tributes repeated on all hands will furnish a richer inheritance for genius than the beggarly and precarious subsistence which now inures from pensions and patent-laws. The testimonial to Rowland Hill was not the price of his services, any more than a bridal present is the price of affection. Had he opened an account of debtor and creditor with the nation, and charged them a hundred thousand pounds as the price of his services, gratitude would have been extinguished by the preposterous pretension, and benevolence have been converted into aversion and disgust. The people, ignorant of the law of equivalents as a principle, would have felt it as an instinct, and have been repelled unwittingly by the reach of it. To make the higher class of services a matter of price at all somewhat depreciates their estimate. The artist and the inventor is apt to fee something akin to degradation, when forced to prefer a pecuniary demand in return for the fruits of his genius. Every genuine artist has an instinct for being an amateur performer solely. There is an intimation in this fact that in the true social order the rewards of genius will either cease to be pecuniary altogether, or, if not, that they will be wholly abandoned to the voluntary largesse of mankind. (174.)

97. The Cost principle deals wholly with price,--that is, with that to which the party rendering the service should limit his demand, if fixed by himself, not to what it is proper, or becoming, or natural that others should bestow as a gratuity, which latter is a matter solely for their consideration. This last is not his affair.

98. It is in this rigid sense that it is affirmed that Jenny Lind has no equitable right to charge more for an hour expended in singing than any other person should receive for an hour of labor equally repugnant, and which has involved equal contingencies of prior labor and the like. Even that price is then divisible among all who hear her. The refining results of this operation of the principle in diffusing the benefits of superior endowments in every sphere among the whole people will be traced out into infinite ramifications by the reader for himself.

99. The objection that men of genius, inventors, and those who exercise callings which are purely attractive, are not provided by this principle with the means of obtaining a livelihood will be answered under another head.

100. There is another subtle and plausible objection which may be urged to his position, in relation to natural genius, talent, or skill, and which demands no little rigor of attention to detect its fallacy. It may be said that Nature deals with man liberally, in proportion to his endowments; that is, that she crowns with greater exuberance of results the exertions of the strong man and the wise man than she does those of the weak and the simple-minded, and hence that there can be no essential injustice in doing precisely what Nature herself does,--that is, in maintaining so much inequality as results from giving to each an equivalent in the products of others to the products of his own powers. If, on the contrary, a man who can produce more largely and less abundant and inferior commodities, solely according to the intrinsic hardship or cost of the labor to each,--no reference whatever being had to the amount or quality of the products,--it is clear that the man of the highest capacity loses the advantage in the transaction which Nature has conferred upon him, and which seems, therefore, to be justified by the ordinances of Nature. It is clear that, if he gets in the exchange only so much of the products of the other as would have been the result of his own superior ability applied in that direction, he only gets what Nature would have given him if he had dealt directly with her. Why, then, is it not right that he should have as much advantage in the bargain as he has in the direct production?

101. The objection is here strongly put in order that it may be completely disposed of. It is answered as follows:

It is the destiny of man to rise into higher relations than those which he holds with Nature. When man deals with Nature, he is dealing with an abject servant or slave. There is no equality nor reciprocity between the parties. Man is a Sovereign and Nature his minister. He extorts from her rightfully whatever she can be made to yield. The legitimate business of man is the conquest and subjugation of Nature, and the law of superior force is the legitimate law of conquest and subjugation. But so soon as man comes into relations with his fellow-man the disproportion ceases. He is then dealing with his peers. The legitimate object of the intercourse is no longer the same. It is not now conquest and subjugation, but equipoise and the freedom of all. A higher relationship intervenes, and the balance of concurrent Sovereignties can only be established and maintained by acknowledging the law of that relationship. For the strong man, physically or intellectually, to avail himself, to his private advantage, of his superior strength, as the method of his intercourse with his fellow-men, is finally to accumulate all power in the hands of the few, and in the meantime to inaugurate the reign of discord, collision and war.

102. This subtle but most important distinction is already practically acknowledged in a large circle of human affairs. The world is already sufficiently progressed, in civilized countries at least, to act upon this distinction between inanimate nature and rational beings, so far as relates to the immediate exertion of physical strength,--the simple force of bone and muscle directly applied. The strong man is not now justified by the common sense of right in seizing and appropriating the wealth of the weak simply because he can, while at the same time, when dealing with Nature, he is never reproved for compelling her to the utmost of his power over her. Right is distinguished from might with reference to men, a distinction which, as respects Nature, does not exist.

103. As relates to intellectual superiority, the same distinction is likewise already acknowledged to an indefinite and fluctuating extent. The sharper is restrained from availing himself of his quickness of wit by the intervention of stringent laws and exemplary penalties. Upon what principle is that? It is the admission that man ought not,--that it is unjust or inequitable that man should use his superior mental endowments to his own private advantage, in dealing with men, while no such restriction lies upon him when dealing with Nature. He is bound to deal with them, contrary to the fact, precisely as if they had the same amount of strength and mental power as he has himself, or, rather, as if it were not a question of strength but of right; in the same manner as, according to the canons of international law, the large and powerful State recognizes the equal sovereignty of the smallest independent community. The law of intercourse between Individual Sovereigns is the same as between the concrete Sovereignties of existing States. To commit a breach of this higher law of Sovereign peerage is to secure to the stronger party an immediate and apparent advantage, to the destruction of the less obvious but more substantial benefits resulting to both from the existence of a true social equilibrium. Such is the policy of the brigand and the pirate, who pounce upon their booty for the supply of their immediate wants,--because they can,--regardless of the fact that their practices will prove the disruption of society and end in the destruction of the very commerce upon which they prey.

104. In the intellectual sphere, the admission of this higher law has hitherto been made only up to an unascertained line. Superior talent or skill, naturally bestowed, have always been, and are still, practically recognized as giving superior right, except in the few extreme cases in which the enormity of the principle is too obvious to be overlooked, and in which the exercise of that superiority is defined by Fraud, Gambling, Swindling, or some other of the euphonious epithets by which society stigmatizes, in its ultimates, a rule of conduct which, in its more general and pervading applications, it sanctions and approves. Whenever the perception of this true law shall have been thoroughly awakened; when the public mind shall be wholly penetrated by the conviction that the employment of either physical or intellectual power, had by natural endowment, in any transaction between men, in such a manner as to gain an immediate and selfish advantage to the stronger party, is of the essential nature of fraud, swindling, and robbery,--society will rise to a new plane, and will then find a development as superior to our present civilization as that is to the savage state,--a development in which those who surrender most will as truly find their highest emolument as those who surrender least. Thus true science conducts us back, in some sense, to the sublime precept of religion: “He that would be greatest among you let him serve.”

105. So far, then, as the individual consumes directly products of his own labor, he enjoys the immediate advantage of his own talent or skill, as the strong man enjoys his strength or the beautiful woman her beauty. But the moment he proposed to exchange his labor with other human beings, it is the harmonic law that he shall renounce that advantage entirely, recognizing the full equality of the inferior party. To claim it is to introduce an element into the social relations as disturbing in its nature as it would be if the handsome woman were to claim of right superior rank by virtue of her beauty, or the strong man impunity from the law by virtue of his strength.

106. It is characteristic of the most progressed or humanized society that the strong recognizes the equality of the weak. Hence the constant advancement of woman in the relative scale of position,--the sinking of physical superiority before intellectual, and finally of intellectual before the spiritual, affectionate, and aesthetic. That sublime characteristic of the highest type of humanity is wholly wanting in the demand of the superior worker that the inferior shall make up the difference in excess of labor. It is preeminently exhibited, on the contrary, and the highest attainment of civilization achieved, when the basis of the exchange is shifted from the equality of products to the equality of burdens. The strong says to the weak, labor is painful and imposes a burden. It is not just between beings who hold human relations that you, who are weak, shall be required to endure a greater burden than I, who am strong. Hence we will exchange labor for labor, not according to its fruitfulness, but according to the repugnance which has to be overcome.

107. Take an illustration as between nations. A small but industrious and civilized people inhabit a country lying between the dominions of a powerful empire on one side, and hordes of treacherous savages on the other, who threaten to invade and lay waste the country. The feeble nation applies to the powerful one to extend a degree of protection over them by establishing forts upon the frontier and adding the weight of their influence in overawing the savage tribes. Assume that the cost of the aid thus rendered is equal to one million of dollars per annum, and that by estimate it saves the whole property of the weaker nation from destruction, the income upon which amounts to a hundred million of dollars. What tribute in the nature of payment shall the weaker nation render to the stronger? According to one rule, it will be an amount equal to the expenditure by the stronger. According to the other, it will be an amount equal to the whole products of the land. Is it not clear which is the humanitarian, courteous, or civilized basis of the transaction and which the barbarous one? According to the latter, the choice of the people whose safety is endangered lies between two sets of savages, each of whom will rob them equally of all they possess. Is it not clear, then, that the humanitarian basis of remuneration is not measured by the extent of the benefit conferred,--the Value,--but by the extent of the burden assumed,--the Cost. And is it not clear, again, in the case supposed, if the strong nation were still more powerful, so that the use of its name merely were a terror to its savage neighbors, and would suffice, with less extensive fortifications, as a mere demonstration of the animus to resist, or with no fortifications at all, to restrain them, that the cost of the defense would be decreased by such superiority of strength and weight of name, and that consequently the price of it should be diminished likewise, instead of being augmented thereby.

Carry out the analogy of this illustration to the case of the way in which natural talent and skill are made the basis of price in private transactions, and it will be perceived that the principle now acted on is the barbarous principle,--the principle of conquest and rapine,--the principle of an equality of benefits demanded between parties, one of whom is capable of conferring great benefits at slight cost, and the other only capable of conferring small ones at an equal or greater amount of cost,--a principle destructive of equality, equipoise, and harmony, and under the operation of which the weaker are inevitably crushed and devoured by the stronger, to the utter annihilation of all hope of realizing the higher and more beautiful phases of possible human society.

108. To illustrate still further. When a robust and hearty youth rises and stands, yielding his seat to a woman, an old man, or an invalid, he does so because, in consequence of his strength, it costs him less to stand,--it is less repugnant for him to do so than for the other. The superior power reduces the cost, and all refined and well-developed manhood admires the vindication of the principle involved, even while not understanding it as such. In this transaction there is no price demanded, but, if there were, it is obvious that the price to the robust man for yielding his advantage should be less than to the feeble, while upon the value principle it would be more. In this species of intercourse we already, then, draw the line between cultivated and advanced humanity, and barbarous or boorish humanity, precisely where these two principles diverge. With a more complete efflorescence of Humanitarian Ethics, true principle will supersede the false throughout the whole range of personal transactions. The adoption of the Cost Principle in commerce will not only insure the equitable distribution of wealth, and disperse the manifold evils which grow out of the pervading injustice of the existing system, but it will do more,--it will crown the common honors of life with a halo of mutual urbanity, and render the daily interchange of labor and of ordinary commodities a perpetual sacrament of fraternal affection.

109. It results, then, that the natural and necessary effect of the Cost Principle is to limit the relative power and advantage of the intellectually strong over the intellectually weak in the same manner as Law, Morality, Religion, Machinery, and the other appliances of civilization have already, in civilized countries, partially limited the power and neutralized the advantage of the physically strong over the physically weak, and to complete, even in the physical sphere, what Law, Morality, Religion, Machinery, technology and the other appliances of civilization have hitherto failed to accomplish, for the want of the more definite science of the subject.

110. But, in order to the general adoption of this regulating principle, is not the consent of the strong man indispensable as well as that of the weak? By what means shall he be persuaded to make the sacrifice of his superior advantage? Is not the appeal solely to his benevolence, and has not past experience demonstrated that all such appeals are nearly powerless against the controlling current of personal interests?

111. Certainly the concurrence of both the powerful and the feeble is alike requisite to the complete and general adoption of the Cost Principle, but that cannot be said to be necessary to commence its application. It has already been stated that the Cost Principle affords the means to the laboring classes, who are kept now in comparative weakness and ignorance, of stepping out from under the oppressions of capital and leaving it with no foundation on which to rest in its usurped superiority over labor. Hence the weak are enabled by it to cope with the strong, while the strong themselves will not long resist the innovation, for the reason that their own positive strength is also increased by the same means. It is only their relative superiority which is reduced by it. In other words, all classes will have their condition positively improved, the rich only a little less than the poor, so that the frightful inequalities of the present system will be obliterated and extinguished. An analogue of this effect is found in the material sphere, in the invention of gunpowder and firearms, for example. A pistol puts a small man and a large man upon the same footing of strength, or perhaps rather reverses it a little, as the large man presents a broader surface to the deadly aim. Still either party is a more powerful man with than without it. It serves to establish a balance of power, while at the same time it augments the power of both. It is the same with larger arms and larger bodies of men. Hence the pistol, the blunderbuss, and the cannonade have been among the greatest civilizers of mankind. It is the same, again, with laws and the civil state which have been instituted to equalize the diversities of strength among men by substituting arbitrary rules for physical force. Like firearms and gunpowder, they are a barbarous remedy for a more barbarous evil, and will give place, in turn, with the progress of man, to the government of mere principles, accepted into and proving operative upon the individual mind.

112. In this manner the Cost Principle has in it the means of first compelling and then reconciling to its adoption those to whom the possession of superior intellectual powers or cunning, with the accumulations of capital, give now the ascendancy. This, however, only so far as such compulsion shall prove necessary. It is a grand mistake to assume, as the inclusive rule, that those who have the best end of the bargain in our present iniquitous social relations are averse to a reorganization upon the basis of justice. The ignorant and selfish among them are so, but it is among this superior class that the best and most devoted friends of the rights of man are likely to be found. The progress of the race has always been officered by leaders from among the Patricians. It is among those who gain the advantage, and are thrown to the surface and exposed to the blessed air and light of Heaven by the fluctuations of the turbulent ocean of human affairs, that the greatest development occurs; and along with development comes the sentiment of humanity and human brotherhood. The masses of men have seldom been indebted solely to themselves for what they have at any time gained. The most unbounded benevolence is often coupled with the possession of great wealth. But how often has the sentiment been repelled and made to recoil upon itself with disappointment and disgust at the results of its own efforts to benefit mankind! How often has the harsh lesson been taught to the rich and the good that the sentiment is powerless without the science,--that Love, without its complement in Wisdom, is blind and destructive of its own ends!

113. Hence, whenever a true science of society shall have been demonstrably discovered, when the means of permanent benefit to the race shall be unquestionable at hand, benevolent capitalists will assuredly be found in the first ranks of those who will concur to realize the higher results of human society, to which such knowledge is competent to conduct. The advanced and highly developed among men are always ready to sacrifice their relative superiority for the greater good of all, for no other reason than simply because they are men. Hence, again, although the Cost Principle is fully adequate to enable the poor, feeble, and oppressed classes to emancipate themselves from the oppressions of capital, it will, in practice, be put to no such strain. The future will show that the rich and poor will freely cooperate with hearty sincerity in the work of social regeneration, upon scientific and truly constructive principles.

114. It is proper at this point to show more explicitly the extension and comprehensiveness of the term Cost. It has been spoken of in the preceding pages chiefly as human repugnance overcome in the performance of labor. It is more accurate to define it, however, simply as human repugnance overcome in any transaction. It has both an active or positive, and a passive or negative, aspect, to which last a slight reference has already been had. (81.) The repugnance overcome in the actual performance of labor is the active phase of the subject, but there is also repugnance overcome in the mere sacrifice of surrender of any thing which we possess, and which we require at the time for our own convenience or happiness. This last is the passive aspect of Cost. Thus, for example, if I plant pictures of manufacture watches for sale, the cost, and consequently the price at which I must sell them, to deal upon the equitable principle, is the amount of labor contained in them; but, if I have in my possession—not as an article of merchandise, but for my own pleasure and convenience,--a watch or a favorite painting,--say, for example, it is a present from a friend, for which reason I attach to it a particular value,--and you, taking a fancy to it, wish to induce me to part with it, then the legitimate measure of price is the amount of sacrifice which it is to me,--in other words, the degree of repugnance which I feel to surrendering it, how much so ever that may exceed the positive Cost of the article, and whatever relation it may hold to its positive Value.

115. It is the same, as already observed, even with reference to natural wealth, in which there is no positive Cost, and so of everything which we require, in kind, for our own use. (81.) Thus, for example, although land in its wild state is not rightfully the subject of price, and although, when simply enclosed, its positive Cost is the labor of enclosing it, yet, if I have selected pleasant situation for my own habitation and culture, and am induced to part with it for the accommodation of another, the price in that case is legitimately augmented by whatever amount of repugnance I may feel to making the surrender.

116. The exact thinker will readily perceive the distinction between objects of all sorts which are required for personal convenience at the time, and surplus property or capital not needed for present use, or needed only as the means of procuring other conveniences by means of exchange,--between things properly in commerce, and things taken out of commerce by special appropriation. In the latter case the labor contained in or bestowed upon the property is the whole of its equitable price. In the former it is augmented by the amount of sacrifice experienced in parting with it, occasioned by the present need.

117. In the case of passive or negative Cost,--the mere repugnance to the surrender of what is at the time serving a personal purpose,--none but the party making the surrender can know the real extent of the sacrifice, or can judge with accuracy of the equity of the price charged. Hence, with reference to things not properly in commerce, a common average of estimate cannot be attained as in the ordinary case of exchanges. (195.) But even here the operation of the principle is quite distinct from that of value as the limit of price. The party making the surrender will satisfy his own conscience by estimating the degree of sacrifice to him, and not as under the value standard by estimating the degree of the want of the other party. In other words, whenever he has arrived at a price which he would prefer to take rather than not sell, he is restrained from going farther, without inquiring whether he has reached the highest point to which the purchaser would go. This distinction between the active Cost of the labor of production and the passive Cost of surrender is important in various ways, and especially, as we shall see, in settling the question of interest or rent on capital. (226.)

118. As it is the positive Cost of the labor of production, alone, which relates to things properly in commerce, it is that which is usually meant by Cost, unless the repugnance of surrender is especially mentioned in addition.

119. There is still another observation in relation to the comprehensiveness of the term Cost. Although it refers back, in its rigid technical sense, to the original labor of production, measured by its repugnance, and fixes the price in labor, still it holds good as the equitable measure of price with reference to all articles purchased with money, under the present system, and not traced back to their component, labor. Thus an article purchased for a given price in money, and sold again for the same amount of money, plus the labor of the transaction, is sold for Cost. The Cost Principle is, therefore, merely the entire abandonment of profit making, whether it relates to labor production or dealings in money. The method of keeping a shop and selling goods upon the Cost Principle, during the transition period,--that is, while the community is too small to supply all its own wants,--is to charge for each article its original money Cost with all the money charges and contingencies, in money, and the labor of buying, handling, and selling, in labor, the time occupied in the transaction being measured, by the clock and charged according to the estimated repugnance of that kind of labor. A yard of cloth is, therefore, so many cents in money and so many minutes in labor. The particulars of the management of such stores, and the immense power which they exert over the commercial habits of large districts of country within their influence, will be shown in Mr. Warren's work on Practical Details.

120. The comprehensiveness of the term Labor needs also to be defined. By Labor is meant, in the first place, not merely manual, but intellectual and oral labor as well,--whatever is done or performed by the hand, head, or tongue, and which involves repugnance or painfulness overcome,--the measure of price being based upon the well-known principle that man naturally seeks the agreeable and shuns that which is disagreeable or painful.

121. In the second place, the Labor by which price is measured is not always merely the particular performance done at the time. Whatever has required an especial skill obtained by previous labor, unproductive at the time, has its price augmented by its own due proportion of such loss, from previous necessary unproductive labor. For example, the surgeon may equitably charge for each surgical operation not only the time occupied in it, measured by its repugnance, but an aliquot portion of the time necessarily expended in acquiring the knowledge to enable him to do it in a skillful manner, according to the repugnance to him of that preliminary labor. So of every other necessary contingency,--all necessary contingencies, such as prior preparatory labor, risk incurred, etc., entering into and constituting a portion of Cost.

122. It results from what has been said that the basis of vendible property is human labor, and that the measure of such property is the amount of labor which there is, so to speak, laid up in the article owned. The article is the product of labor, and is therefore the representative of labor. Price is that which is given either for labor directly, or for property, which is the product of labor, that is, for labor indirectly, and it should therefore be a precise equivalent for that labor. The only proper ground of difference, then, between the price of side-saddle and the price of a house is the differenced in the amount of human labor which has been bestowed upon the one and upon the other. It follows, again, that the mode of arriving at the legitimate price of any article whatever is to reduce it first to labor. For example: if we take a house to pieces, we trace it back to trees growing in the woods, to clay, and sand, and lime, and iron, etc., lying in the earth. All that makes it a house, and entitles it to a price, as property, is the human labor that there is in it. That house over the way is, then, so many hours of labor at brick-making, so many hours of carpenter's work, so many of lime-burning, so many of iron-work, nail-cutting, so many at glass-blowing, so many at hauling, so many at planning, drafting, etc., etc., etc. The whole house is nothing but human labor, dried, preserved, laid away. Each of these hours of labor in different occupations may have a different degree of repugnance, so that to estimate the gross amount of labor in the house it is necessary to bring them all to a common denomination. This is done by reducing them to the standard degree of repugnance in the standard labor,--corn-raising,--which is then expressed in the standard product of that kind of labor,--namely, so many pounds of corn. Hence the price of a house, or of any other object, is said to be so many pounds, or so many hours, meaning so many pounds of corn, or so many hours of labor at corn-raising, in the same manner as we now say so many dollars and cents. By this means all price is constantly referred to labor, and rendered definite, instead of being referred to a standard which is itself continually expanding and contracting by all the contingencies of speculation or trade. (77.)

123. The first point is to obtain a standard for a single locality, after which it is quite easy to adjust the standard of other localities to it. Agricultural labor is first selected, because it is the great staple branch of human industry. The most staple article of agricultural product is then taken, which for this country and especially for the great valley of the Mississippi, is Indian corn. In another country it may be wheat or something else, although Indian corn, wherever it is produced, will be found to have more of the appropriate qualities for a standard than any other article whatsoever, being more invariable in quality, more uniform in the amount produced by the same amount of labor in a given locality, and more uniform in the extent of the demand than any other article. At a given locality, or, as I have stated, at a great variety of localities in the Western States, the standard product of Indian corn is twenty pounds to the hour's labor,--the measurement by pounds being also more inflexible or less variant than that by bulk. If, then, in some other locality,--as, for example, New England,--the product of an hour's labor devoted to raising corn is only ten pounds of corn, the equivalent of the standard hour's labor there will be ten pounds of corn, while in the West it will be twenty pounds. It is the hour's labor in that species of agriculture which is therefore the actual unit of comparison, of which the product, whatever it may be, is the local representative. And in the same manner, in another country wheat may be the standard,--as, for example, in England,--and may be reckoned at ten pounds to the hour, or whatever is found by trial to be the fact. The reduction of the standard of one locality to that of another will then be no more difficult than the reduction of different currencies to one value, as now practiced.

124. There is an absolute necessity for some standard of cost, and it is not a question of principle, but of expediency, what article is adopted. It is the same necessity which is recognized at present for a standard of value, which is sought for, and by some persons erroneously supposed to be found, in money. The question may still be asked: Why not employ money as the standard with which to compare other things, and as a circulating medium, as is done now? The answer is found in the uncertain and fluctuating nature of money,--in the fact that it represents nothing definite.

125. Money has professedly two uses: (1) as a standard of value, and (2) as a circulating medium.

First, then, as a standard of value, or a measure with which to compare other values. It does not even profess to be a standard of cost. It has no relation whatever to the cost, or, in other words, to the labor which there is in the different commodities for which it is given as price, because there is no question about cost in existing commerce, the value alone being taken into account. But value is incapable of a scientific estimate, as will be more specifically shown in the next chapter. (134.) Hence it is fluctuating because it relates to nothing definite. But what are the capacities of the yard-stick itself? Is it fixed or elastic? The theory is that gold and silver are selected as standards of value because the quantity of those commodities in the world is more uniform than that of most other articles. If the fact be granted, then gold and silver have one of the fitting properties of a standard. But gold and silver are not convenient as a circulating medium. Hence paper money is assumed as a representative of specie. So far very well again. There was a time when bank-paper was an exact representation of specie, if it represented nothing else. The old bank of Amsterdam, the mother of the banking system, issued only dollar for dollar. Her bills were merely certificates of deposit for so much specie. So far, then, the yard-stick did not stretch nor contract, while the paper money was more convenient as a medium of circulation than the specie. But with the development of the banking system two, three, five, or more dollars of paper money are issued for one dollar of specie on deposit. The amount is then expanded and contracted, according to the fluctuations of trade and the judgments or speculating interests of perhaps five hundred different boards of bank directors. How is it, then, with the inflexibility of your standard? Your yard-stick is one year, one foot long, and the next year, five feet long. The problem with existing finance, then, is to measure values which are in their nature positively, incapable of measurement, by money, which is in its nature positively incapable of measuring any thing. It is therefore uncertainty x fluctuation = price.

126. There is no such thing, therefore, in money as a standard of value. As a circulating medium merely, considering no other properties nor the reasons why we should have a circulating medium at all, nothing better can be devised than paper money. It is thin, light, pliant, and convenient in all respects.

127. To make gold the standard of cost, instead of value, would be to take as much gold as is ordinarily dug in an hour in those countries where it is procured-—say California-—as the price of an hour's labor in other branches of industry equally troublesome and repugnant. This may perhaps be one dollar, which would make the price of labor a dollar an hour, and the difference between that price in this article and the usual price of labor in the same article-—which is rendered necessary now, as the means of acquiring all other commodities—-is some indication of the degree to which labor is robbed by adopting the value standard instead of the cost standard of price. But the fact is that no average of the product of gold-digging can be made. It is proverbially uncertain. The product of gold, therefore, regarded as a standard of any thing, is as nearly worthless as the product of any article can be. The demand for it in the arts is also exceptional and uncertain. Apart from the factitious demand resulting from the fact that it is made a nominal standard and a medium, it is not in any sense a staple article. It would be just as philosophical to measure all other industry by the product of the mackerel fishery, or the manufacture of rock candy or Castor oil, as it would be to measure it by gold. The result of all this investigation is therefore this: That the product of gold, and, for the same reason, that of silver, is quite unfit for the first purpose we have in view, which is to select a staple species of labor with which to compare other labor, while corn or wheat does fulfill those conditions and (2) that paper is just what is wanted as a circulating medium, provided it can be made to rest upon a proper basis, and represent what ought to be represented by a circulating medium.

128. Now, what is it which ought to be represented by a circulating medium? Clearly it is price,--the price of commodities. The pledge or promise should be exactly equivalent to, as it stands in the place of, the commodity or commodities to be given hereafter. These commodities, which the paper stands in the place of, are the price of what was received. The equitable limit of price is, we have seen, the cost of the articles received. The promise is therefore rightly the equivalent of, or goes to the extent of, the cost of the articles received. But the cost of an article is, we have seen, the labor there is in it, rightly measured. Every issue of the circulating medium should therefore be a representative of, or pledge for, a certain amount of human labor, or for some commodity which has in it an equal amount of human labor, and, to avoid all question about what commodity shall be substituted, it is proper that a staple or standard article, the cost of which all agree upon, should be selected.

We return, then, to the Labor Note as the legitimate germ of a circulating medium.

VALUE DISTINGUISHED FROM COST

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CHAPTER IV

129. The second grand result from the principle of Equity—Cost the Limit of Price—is that the value of labor or of a commodity has nothing whatever legitimately with fixing the PRICE of the labor or commodity. This proposition would be deduced partially form what has been already shown; it requires, however, to be more explicitly stated and more conclusively demonstrated. It is, as well as the result considered in the last chapter in relation to natural skill or talent, quite new, and therefore surprising.

130. There is certainly nothing more reasonable, according to existing ideas, than that “a thing ought to bring what it is worth.” No proposition could be more seemingly innocent upon the face of it than that. (19.) There is no statement upon any subject upon which mankind would more generally concur, and yet that statement covers a fallacy which lies at the basis of the prevalent system of exploitation or civilized cannibalism. It is precisely at this point that the whole world has committed its most fatal blunder. It will be the purpose of this chapter to expose that error so obviously that it can no longer lurk in obscurity even in the least enlightened mind. To that end I beg the especial attention of the reader to the technical distinction between Value and Cost,--a point of great importance to this whole discussion.

131. “What a thing is worth” is another expression for the Value of a commodity or labor. The Value of a commodity or labor is the degree of benefit which it confers upon the person who receives it, or to whose use it is applied. The Cost of it is, on the other hand, as already explained, the degree of burden which the production of the commodity or the performance of the labor imposed upon the person who produced or performed it. They are therefore by no means the same. No two things can possibly be more distinct. The burden or cost may be very great and the benefit or value very little, or vice versa. In the case of an exchange or transfer of an article from one person to another, the Cost relates to the party who makes the transfer, the burden of the production falling on him, and the Value to the party to whom the transfer is made, the article going to his benefit. It is the same if the object exchanged is labor directly. It follows, therefore, that to say that a “thing should bring what it is worth,” which is the same as to say that its price should be measured by its value, is quite the opposite of affirming that it should bring as much as it cost the producer to produce it. Hence, both rules cannot be true, for they conflict with and destroy each other. But we have already seen that it is exactly equitable that Cost be adopted as the universal limit of price,--in other words, that as much burden shall be assumed by each party to the exchange as is imposed upon the opposite party. Consequently the accepted axiom of trade that “a thing should bring what it is worth” provides, when tested by simply balancing the scales of Equity, to be not only erroneous, but, so to speak, the antipodes of the true principle. Such is the result when we recur to fundamental investigation. It will be rendered equally obvious in the sequel, by a comparison of the consequences of the two principles in operation. That Cost is the true and Value the false measure of price.

132. But although Value is not the legitimate limit of Price nor even an element in the price, it is, nevertheless,, an element in the bargain. It is the Value of the thing to be acquired which determines the purchaser to purchase. It belongs to the man who labors or produces an article, estimating for himself, as we have seen, the amount of burden he has assumed, to fix the price, measured by that burden or Cost. He alone knows it, and he alone, therefore, can determine it. It belongs, on the other hand, to the purchaser to estimate for himself the Value of the labor or commodity to him. He alone can do so in fact, for he alone knows the nature of his own wants. By the settlement for the first point—-the Cost to the producer-—the Price becomes a fixed sum. If the Value then exceeds that sum in the estimation of the other party, he will purchase; otherwise, not. Hence the Value, though not an element in the Price, is an element in the bargain. The Price is a consideration wholly for the vendor, and the Value a consideration wholly for the purchaser.

133. As this is also a point of great importance, let us state it again. If you require and desire to obtain one hour or one year of my services, or the results of those services in commodities, which is the same thing, it is a matter which does not concern me,--it is impertinence on my part to concern myself with the question of the degree of benefit you will derive from such services. That is purely a question for your own consideration, and determines you whether the value to you equals the cost to me,--that is, it determines the demand. Your estimate of that value or benefit to you may be based on considerations obvious to others, or upon a mere whim or caprice to the gratification of which others would attach no importance. But it belongs to the Sovereignty of the Individual to gratify even one's whims or caprices without hindrance or interference from others, at his own cost, which is, when the services of others are required to that end, by paying to them the cost to them of such services.

134. On the other hand, it is equally an impertinence for you, in the case supposed, to attempt to settle for me the degree of attraction or repugnance which there is to me in the performance of the services which you require. No one else but myself can possibly know that. No one else can therefore fix a just price upon my labor. Hence it follows that both value and cost enter into a bargain, even when legitimately made. But value goes solely to determine the demand, and is solely cognizable by the purchaser or consumer,--by him who receives, while cost (or burden) goes to determine the price, and is solely cognizable by the seller or producer,--by him who renders. By this means the cost of one's acts is made to fall on himself, which is the essential condition to the rightful exercise of the Sovereignty of the Individual. If you overestimate the value to you of my services, you endure the cost or disagreeable consequences of your mistake or want of judgment. If I, on the other hand, underestimate the cost or endurance of the performance to me, the cost of that error falls on me, submitting each of us to the government of consequences, the only legitimate corrective. If, again, I overestimate the cost to me and ask a price greater than your estimate of the value to you, there is no bargain, and I have lost the opportunity of earning a price measured by the real cost of the performance, so that the cost of my mistake falls again on me; while-—the market being open, and a thorough adjustment of supply to demand being established—-others will make a juster estimate, whose services you will procure, and you will suffer no inconvenience. Competition will regulate any disposition on my part to overcharge. (160.)

135. All this is reversed in our existing commerce. The vendor adjusts his price to what he supposes to be its value to the purchaser,--that is, to the degree of want in which the purchaser is found,--never to what the commodity cost himself; thus interfering with what cannot concern him, except as a means of taking an undue advantage. The purchaser, on the other hand, offers a price based upon his knowledge or surmise of what the degree of want of the vendor may force him to consent to take. Hence the cannibalism of trade.

136. But it is objected that in the case supposed above, while nominally adjusting my price to the degree of repugnance to myself, I may in fact take into account the degree of your want, and charge you as much as I think you will endure. This objection, otherwise stated, is simply this,--that the Individual, in the exercise of his sovereign freedom, may abandon the Cost Principle, or, in other words, the true principle, and return to the value, or false principle. This is, in other words, again, simply to affirm that there is nothing in the true principle to force the Individual to comply with it, to the extent of depriving him of his freedom to do otherwise. This is granted. Any such compulsion would infringe upon the principle of the Sovereignty of the Individual, which is, if possible, still more important than the Cost Principle itself. Once for all let it be distinctly understood that the principles of Equitable Commerce do not serve directly and mainly to coerce men into true or harmonic relations when destitute of the desire for such relations. Their first office is, on the other hand, to inform those who do desire such relations, how they may be attained. If it is assumed that there are no such persons, then, certainly, the supply of true principles, of any sort, is a supply without a demand,--but not otherwise.

137. The secondary or indirect effect of true commercial principles in operation will be, however, correctional, and in one sense coercive, but coercive in a sense entirely compatible with freedom. It will be to throw the consequences of each one's deviation from right practice upon himself, leaving him free to exercise his own Sovereignty, but free to do so, as he ought, at his own cost, while they will surround him with a public sentiment in favor of honesty more potent than laws, at the same time that they will remove the temptations now existing to infringe the rights of others. It will be seen at another point that competition, which is now the tyrant that forces men to be dishonest, will, under these principles, operate with equal power to induce them to be honest. (160, 206.)

138. An illustration of the entire disconnection between Price and the Value to the purchaser is found in the one-price store, in existing commerce. Upon this plan of trade the prices are fixed by the merchant-vendor of the goods, and each article is labeled at a fixed and invariable amount. The customer has nothing whatever to do with fixing those prices. On the other hand, it is the purchaser alone who determines whether the Value of an article to him is sufficient to induce him to purchase at the price fixed. In these particulars the operation is the same as that of Equitable Commerce. It differs, however, in the essential particular that the merchant, in fixing his prices, is governed by no scientific principle. The prices are not adjusted by any equitable standard. They rest upon an uncertain and fluctuating basis, partly Cost, partly the necessities or cupidity of the vendor, and partly the supply and demand or the supposed Value to the purchaser. Value is thus made actually an element of the price in a general way, though not in the particular case. The vendor refuses to vary his price according to the particular Value to the particular purchaser, but he has previously taken into the account the general value to purchasers at large. The case is only good, therefore, to illustrate the single point for which it was adduced,--namely, the separability of Price and Value to the purchaser,--the fact that they are not necessarily commingled with each other. The ticket at the theater, the public lecture, the railroad, etc., furnishes another illustration of the same fact. The price is invariable, and the purchaser is left to determine for himself whether the Value equals the Cost; if so in his opinion, there is a bargain, otherwise not.

139. As respects the propriety of measuring Price by Value, in the first place, it is essentially impossible to measure Value EXACTLY, or, in other words, to ascertain the precise WORTH of labor of commodities.

Cost is a thing which looks to the past, and is therefore certain. Value is a thing which looks to the future, and is therefore contingent and uncertain. A bushel of potatoes lies before us. It is possible to estimate with accuracy how much human labor it ordinarily takes to produce that amount of that article, and how disagreeable the labor is as compared with other kinds, and then we have the standard cost of the article, but who will undertake to say what the value of that bushel of potatoes is as it stands in the market? Value, remember, is the degree of benefit it will confer upon the person or persons who are to consume it. That value, it is obvious, will vary with every one of the fifty thousand persons in the city who may chance to purchase it, and will vary with the extremes of saving twenty human lives (as it may do on shipboard, for example) and nothing at all, for the potatoes may stock a larder already overstocked and be permitted to decay, appropriated to no beneficial purpose whatsoever. As every one of the twenty starving persons would gladly have given at least ten thousand dollars for his share of the potatoes rather not have had them, the value of the bushel of potatoes is anything between cipher and two hundred thousand dollars.

Take a more complicated case. It is possible to calculate how much it costs, down to the fraction of a cent (or, more properly, of an hour's labor), to convey a man from New York to Albany on a first-class steamboat,--the Isaac Newton or the Hendrick Hudson for example,--taking into account the cost of construction, the cost of running, the number of persons regularly traveling among whom the expense is to be divided, etc. But who will undertake to calculate the different values of a trip up the Hudson to the eight hundred or a thousand persons who gather at the wharf at the departure of one of those magnificent boats? One is neglecting his business at home and going on a speculation in which he will lose a thousand dollars. How much is the trip worth to him? There is a bridegroom and bride going off to enjoy the honeymoon. How much in hard money is the trip worth to them? There stands a poor invalid who hopes to recover a little health by the cool breezes on the quiet river. There is a young man fresh from school, just starting out to see the world and gratify his curiosity. There is a sharper who will cheat somebody out of a few hundreds before he gets back, and so on. What is the Value to each of these of a trip up the Hudson? Value is the benefit to be done to each. How big is a piece of chalk? How much is considerable? How far is a good way? And yet all the political economy, all the calculations of finance, all the banking, all the trading and commercial transactions in the world, are based upon the idea of the measurement and comparison of Values. Even Mr. Kellogg, Mr. Gray, and others who write as financial reformers, and whose labors in demonstrating the oppressive operation of interest or rent on many are invaluable, fall into the same error. Mr. Kellogg has a chapter “On the Power of Money to Measure Value,” and assert without question that this is one of the legitimate functions of a circulating medium.

140. It is possible, it is true, for parties to form an estimate of relative values, based upon their present knowledge of all future contingencies, and thus to prefer one thing to another in a certain ratio; but the very next event which occurs may show the calculation of chances to have been entirely different from what was anticipated. Hence, every change, based upon the comparison of values, is a speculation upon the probabilities of the future, and not a scientific measurement of that which already exists. All trade under the existing system is therefore speculation, in kind, the uncertainty differing in degree, and all speculation, in kind, the uncertainty differing in degree, and all speculation is gambling or the staking of risks against risks. The instrument of measurement is equally defective, as has been already shown in discussing the nature of money. (77, 215.)

141. In the next place, if it were possible to measure Values precisely, the exchange of commodities according to Value would still be a system of mutual conquest and oppression,--not a beneficent reciprocation of equivalents. This will appear by one or two simple illustrations.

142. I.--Suppose I am a wheelwright in a small village, and the only one of my trade. You are traveling with certain valuables in your carriage, which breaks down opposite my shop. It will take an hour of my time to mend the carriage. You can get no other means of conveyance, and the loss to you, if you fail to arrive at the neighboring town in season for the sailing of a certain vessel, will be five hundred dollars, which fact you mention to me, in good faith, in order to quicken my exertions. I give one hour or my work and mend the carriage. What am I in equity entitled to charge—-what should be the limit of price upon my labor?

Let us apply the different measures, and see how they will operate. If Value is the limit of price, then the price of the hours labor should be five hundred dollars That is the equivalent of the value of the labor to you. If cost is the limit of price, then you should pay me a commodity, or commodities, or a representative in currency which will procure me commodities, having in them one hour's labor equally as hard as the mending of the carriage without the slightest reference to the degree of benefit which that labor has bestowed on you; or, putting the illustration in money, thus; assuming the twenty-five cents to be an equivalent for an hour's labor of an artisan in that particular trade, then according to the Cost Principle I should be justified in asking only twenty-five cents, but according to the Value Principle I should be justified in asking five hundred dollars.

143. The Value Principle, in some form of expression, is, as I have said, the only recognized principle of trade throughout the world. “A thing is worth what it will bring in the market.” Still if I were to charge you five hundred dollars, or a fourth part of that sum, and, taking advantage of your necessities, force you to pay it, everybody would denounce me, the poor wheelwright, as an extortioner and a scoundrel. Why? Simply because this is an unusual application of the principle. Wheelwrights seldom have a chance to make such a “speculation,” and therefore it is not according to the “established usages of trade.” Hence its manifest injustice shocks, in such a case, the common sense of right. Meanwhile you, a wealthy merchant, are daily rolling up an enormous fortune by doing business upon the same principle which you condemn in the wheelwright, and nobody finds fault. At every scarcity in the market you immediately raise the price of every article you hold. It is your business to take advantage of the necessities of those with whom you deal, by selling to them according to the Value to them, and not according to the Cost to you. You go further. You, by every means in your power, create those necessities by buying up particular articles and holding them out of the market until the demand becomes pressing, by circulating false reports of short crops, and by other similar tricks known to the trade. This is the same in principle as if the wheelwright had first dug the rut in which your carriage upset and then charged you the five hundred dollars.

Yet hitherto no one has thought of seriously questioning the principle,--namely, that “Value is the limit of Price,” or, in other words, that it is right to take for a thing what it is worth. It is upon this principle or maximum that all honorable trade professes now to be conducted, until instances arise in which its oppressive operation is so glaring and repugnant to the moral sense of mankind that those who carry it out are denounced as rogues and cheats. In this manner a sort of conventional limit is placed upon the application of a principle which is equally the principle of every swindling transaction, and of what is called legitimate commerce. The discovery has not hitherto been made that the principle itself is essentially vicious, and that in its infinite and all-pervading variety of applications this various principle is the source of the injustice, inequality of condition, and frightful pauperism and wretchedness which characterize the existing state of our so-called civilization. Still less has the discovery been made that there is another simple principle of traffic which, once understood and applied in practice, will effectually rectify all those monstrous evils, and introduce into human society the reign of absolute equity in all property relations, while it will lay the foundations of universal harmony in the social and moral relations as well.

144. II.--Suppose it costs me ten minutes' labor to concoct a pill which will save your life when nothing else will; and suppose, at the same time, to render the case simple, that the knowledge of the ingredients came to me by accident, without labor or cost. It is clear that your life is worth to you more than your fortune. Am I, then, entitled to demand of you for the nostrum the whole of your property, more or less? Clearly so, if it is right to take for a thing what it is worth, which is theoretically the highest ethics of trade.

145. Forced, on the one hand, by the impossibility, existing in the nature of things, of ascertaining and measuring positive values, or of determining, in other words, what a thing is really worth, and rendered partially conscious by the obvious hardship and injustice of every unusual or extreme application of the principle that it is either no rule or a bad one, and not guided by the knowledge of any true principle out of the labyrinth of conflicting rights into which the false principle conducts, the world has practically abandoned the attempt to combine Equity with Commerce, and lowered its standard of morality to the inverse statement of the formula,--namely that “A thing is worth what it will bring,” or, in other words, that it is fitting and proper to take for a thing when sold whatever can be got for it. This, then, is what is denominated the Market Value of an article, as distinguished from its actual value. Without being more equitable as a measure of price, it certainly has a great practical advantage over the more decent theoretical statement, in the fact that it is possible to ascertain by experiment how much you can force people, through their necessities, to give. The principle, in this form, measures the price by the degree of want on the part of the purchaser,--that is, by the degree of want on the part of the purchaser,--that is, by what he supposes will provide to be the value or benefit to him of the commodity purchased, in comparison with that of the one with which he parts in the transaction. Hence it becomes immediately and continually the interest of the seller to place the purchaser in a condition of as much want as possible, to “corner” him, as the phrase is in Wall Street, and force him to buy at the dearest rate. If he is unable to increase his actual necessity, the resorts to every means of creating an imaginary want by false praises bestowed upon the qualities and uses of his goods. Hence the usages of forestalling the market, of confusing the public knowledge of Supply and Demand, of advertising and puffing worthless commodities, and the like, which constitute the existing commercial system,--a system which in our age, is ripening into putrefaction, and coming to offend the nostrils of good taste no less than the innate sense of right, which, dreadfully vitiating as it is, has failed wholly to extinguish.

146. The Value Principle in this form, as in the other, is therefore felt, without being distinctly understood, to be essentially diabolical, and hence it undergoes again a kind of sentimental modification wherever the sentiment for honesty is most potent. This last and highest expression of the doctrine of honesty, as now known in the world, may be stated in the form of the hortatory precept, “Don't be too bad,” or “Don't gouge too deep.” No Political Economist, Financier, Moralist or Religionist has any more definite standard of right in commercial transactions than that. It is not too much to affirm that neither Political Economist, Financier, Moralist, nor Religionist knows at this day, nor ever has known, what it is to be honest. The religious teacher, who exhorts his hearers from Sabbath to Sabbath to be fair in their dealings with each other and with the outside world, does not know, and could not for his life tell, how much he is, in fair dealing or equity, bound to pay his washerwoman or his housekeeper for any service whatever which they may render. The sentiment of honesty exists, but the science of honesty is wanting. The sentiment is first in order. The science must be an outgrowth, a consequential development, of the sentiment. The precepts of Christian Morality deal properly with that which is the soul of the other, leaving to intellectual investigation the discovery of its scientific complement.

147. It follows from what has been said that the Value Principle is the commercial embodiment of the essential element of conquest and war,--war transferred from the battlefield to the counter,--none the less opposed, however, to the spirit of Christian Morality or the sentiment of human brotherhood. In bodily conflict the physically strong conquer and subject the physically weak. In the conflict of trade the intellectually astute and powerful conquer and subject those who are intellectually feeble, or whose intellectual development is not of the precise kind to fit them for the conflict of wits in the matter of trade. With the progress of civilization and development we have ceased to think that superior physical strength gives the right of conquest and subjugation. We have graduated, in idea, out of the period of physical dominion. We remain, however, as yet in the period of intellectual conquest or plunder. It has not been questioned hitherto, as a general proposition, that the man who has superior intellectual endowments to others has a right resulting therefrom to profit thereby at the cost of others. In the extreme applications of the admission only is the conclusion ever denied. In the whole field of what are denominated the legitimate operations of trade there is no other law recognized than the relative “smartness” or shrewdness of the parties, modified at most by the sentimental precept stated above.

148. The intrinsic wrongfulness of the principal axioms and practice of existing commerce will appear to every reflecting mind from the preceding analysis. It will be proper, however, before dismissing the consideration of the Value Principle, to trace out a little more in detail some of its specific results.

The principle itself being essentially iniquitous, all the fruits of the principle are necessarily pernicious.

149. I.--It renders falsehood and hypocrisy a necessary concomitant of trade. Where the object is to by cheap and sell dear, the parties find their interest in mutual deception. It is taught, in theory, that “honesty is the best policy,” in the long run, but in practice the merchant discovers speedily that he must starve if he acts upon the precept—-in the short run. Honesty-—even as much honesty as can be arrived at—-is not the best policy under the present unscientific system of commerce, if by the best policy is meant that which tends to success in business. Professional merchants know the fact well, and conscientious merchants deplore it; but they see no remedy. The theory of trade taught to innocent youths in the retired family, or the Sunday school, would ruin any clerk, if adhered to behind the counter, in a fortnight. Hence it is uniformly abandoned and a new system of morality acquired the moment a practical application is to be made of the instruction. A frank disclosure, by the merchant, of all the secret advantages in his possession would destroy his reputation for sagacity as effectually as it would that of the gambler among this associates. Both commerce and gambling, as professions, are systems of strategy. It is the business of both parties to a trade to overreach each other,--a fact which finds its unblushing announcement in the maxim of the Common Law, Caveat emptor (let the purchaser take care).

150. II—It makes the rich richer, and the poor poorer. Trade being, under this system, the intellectual correspondence to the occupation of the cut-throat or conqueror under the reign of physical force, the stronger consequently accumulating more than his share at the cost of the destruction of the weaker,--the consequence of the principle is that the occupation of trade, for those who possess intellectual superiority, with other favorable conditions, enables them to accumulate more than their share of wealth, while it reduces those whose intellectual development—of the precise kind requisite for this species of contest—and whose material conditions are less favorable, to wretchedness and poverty.

151. III.--It creates trade for trade's sake, and augments the number of non-producers, whose support is chargeable upon labor. As trade, under the operation of this principle, offers the temptation of illicit gains and rapid wealth at the expense of others, it creates trade where there is no necessity for trade,--not as a beneficent interchange of commodities between producers and consumers, but as a means of speculation. Hence thousands are withdrawn from actual production and thrust unnecessarily into the business of exchanging, mutually devouring each other by competition, and drawing their subsistence and their wealth from the producing classes, without rendering any equivalent service. Hence the interminable range of intermediates between the producer and consumer, the total defeat of organization and economy in the distribution of products, and the intolerable burden of the unproductive classes upon labor, together with a host of the frightful results of pauperism and crime.

152. IV.--It degrades the dignity of labor. Inasmuch as trade, under the operation of this principle, is more profitable or at any rate is liable to be, promises to be, and in a portion of cases is more profitable than productive labor, it follows that the road to wealth and social distinction lies in that direction. Hence “Commerce is King.” Hence, again, productive labor is depreciated and condemned. It holds the same relation to commerce in this age-—under the reign of intellectual superiority—-that commerce itself held a few generations since—-under the reign of physical force—-to military achievement, personal or hereditary. Thus the degradation of labor, and all the innumerable evils which follow in its train, in our existing civilization, find their efficient cause in this same false principle of exchanging products. The next stage of progress will be the inauguration of Equity,--equality in the results of every species of industry according to burdens and the consequent accession of labor to the highest rank of human estimation. Commerce will then sink to a mere brokerage, paid, like any other species of labor, according to its repugnance, as the army is now sinking to a mere police force. It will be reduced to the simplest and most direct methods of exchange, and made to be the merest servant of production, which will come, in its turn, to be regarded as conferring the only true patents of nobility.

153. V.--It prevents the possibility of a scientific Adjustment of Supply to Demand. It has been already shown that speculation is the cause why there has never been, and cannot now be, any scientific Adaptation of Supply to Demand. (35, 36.) It has also been partially shown, at various points, that speculation, or trading in chances and fluctuations in the market, has its root in the Value Principle, and that the Cost Principle extinguishes speculation. It will be proper, however, in this connection to define exactly the limits of speculation, and to point out more specifically how the Value Principle creates it, and how the Cost Principle extinguishes it.

154. By speculation is meant, in the ordinary language of trade, risky and unusual enterprises entered upon for the sake of more than ordinary profits, and in that sense there is attached to it, among merchants, a slight shade of imputation of dishonesty or disreputable conduct. As we are seeking now, however, to employ language in an exact and scientific way, we must find a more precise definition of the term. The line between ordinary and more than ordinary profits is too vague for a scientific treatise. At one extremity of the long succession of chance-dealing and advantage-taking transactions stands gambling, which is denounced by the common verdict of mankind as merely a more specious form of robbery. It holds the same relation to robbery itself that dueling holds to murder. Where is the other end of succession? At what point does a man begin to take an undue advantage of his fellow-man in a commercial transaction? It clearly appears, from all that has been shown, that he does so from the moment that he receives from him more than an exact equivalent of cost. But it is the constant endeavor of every trader, upon any other than the Cost Principle, to do that. The business of the merchant is profit-making. Profit signifies, etymologically, something made over and above,--that is, something beyond an equivalent, or, in its simplest expression, something for nothing.

155. It is clear, then, that there is no difference between profit-making in its mildest form, speculation in its opprobrious sense as the middle term, and gambling as the ultimate, except in degree. There is simply the bad gradation of rank which there is between the slaveholder, the driver on the slave plantation, and the slave dealer, or between the man of pleasure, the harlot, and the pimp.

156. The philanthropy of the age is moving heaven and earth to the overthrow of the institution of slavery. But slavery has no scientific definition. It is thought to consist in the feature of chattelism, but an ingenious lawyer would run his pen through every statute upon slavery in existence, and expunge that fiction of the law, and yet leave slavery, for all practical purposes, precisely what it is now. It needs only to appropriate the services of the man by operation of law, instead of the man himself. The only distinction, then, left between his condition and that of the laborer who is robbed by the operation of a false commercial principle would be in the fact of the oppression being more tangible and undisguisedly degrading to his manhood.

157. If, in any transaction, I get from you some portion of your earnings without an equivalent, I begin to make you my slave,--to confiscate you in my uses; if I get a larger portion of your services without an equivalent, I make you still further my slave; and, finally, I obtain the whole of your services without an equivalent,--except the means of keeping you in working condition for my sake,--I make you completely my slave. Slavery is merely one development of a general system of human oppression, for which we have no comprehensive term in English, but which the French Socialists denominate exploitation,--the abstraction, directly or indirectly, from the working classes of the fruits of their labor. In the case of the slave the instrument of that abstraction is force and legal enactment. In the case of the laborer, generally, it is speculation in the large sense, or profit-making. The slaveholder will be found, therefore, upon a scientific analysis, to hold the same relation to the trader, which the freebooter holds to the blackleg. It is a question of taste which to admire most, the dare-devil boldness of the one, or the oily and intriguing propensities and performances of the other.

158. But, you exclaim, why should I sell at cost? How am I to live as a merchant without profits? Never you mind. That is not the question now up. Perhaps the world has no particular use for you as a merchant. We will take care of all that by and by. Just now all that we are doing is to settle the nature of certain principles. We shall want some merchants after all, and will pay them just what they are equitably entitled to. Do you want more? I shall now be understood when I say that the Cost Principle is merely the mutual abandonment, on all hands, of every species of PROFIT-MAKING,--each contenting himself with simple EQUIVALENTS OF COST in every exchange. It will be perceived, too, that the term speculation is used as synonymous with profit-making, when it is affirmed that that has hitherto defeated the Adaptation of Supply to Demand. With the cessation of profit-making there is no longer any temptation to conceal from each other any species of knowledge bearing upon that subject. At that point gazetteers, catalogs, and statistical publications of all sorts spring into existence, giving exact information upon every point connected with the demand and supply of labor and commodities and the production and distribution of wealth.

159. VI.--The Value Principle renders Competition destructive and desperate. The general subject of Competition will be more fully considered under another head. (202.) The consequence here stated follows in part as a necessary result of the preceding one, the want of Adaptation of Supply to Demand, and in part from the robbery of labor by the system now in operation. In the existing state of things there is an apparent surplus of both commodities and laborers, and the result is that men and women who are able to work, and willing to work, are not able to find employment. Hence, to be thrown out of occupation by competition is a frightful calamity, always implying distress, frequently destitution and wretchedness, and sometimes absolute starvation, while the fear of such a catastrophe is a demon which haunts continually the imagination of the workingman, afflicting him with a misery hardly less real than the occurrence of the calamity itself. It is the tendency and direct effect of competition to throw out the inferior workman from every occupation, and to supply his place by the superior workman in that particular branch of industry. This tendency, direful as its consequences are in the existing state of things, is nevertheless a right tendency, and society ought to be organized upon such principles that it should have full pay-—to an extent far beyond what it now has—-with no other than beneficent results to all. It is perfectly right that the inferior workman should be thrown out of any employment to make room for the superior workman in that employment. To retain the inferior workman in any occupation, while there is in the whole world a superior workman for that occupation, who can do the same work at less cost, and therefore upon the Cost Principle at a less price, is bad economy of means,--as base as it is to employ an inferior machine or process after a superior machine or process has been discovered,--and any system or set of relations which works out bad results from such appropriate substitution of the superior for the inferior instrument must be itself essentially bad.

160. It is now calamitous for any person to be thrown out of his particular occupation for several reasons, all of which either relate directly to the operations of the Value Principle, or indirectly to it, through the general want of the Adaptation of Supply to Demand, which is occasioned by it.

161. The principal of these are: I. Because when one avenue to industry is closed another is not opened; as would be the case if supply and demand were accurately adjusted; and hence apparently there is not enough labor for all. In the existing order, or rather disorder of commerce, there is what is called over-production. More of a given article seems to be produced than is wanted, which is shown by the fact that it cannot be disposed of in the market at any price. With all the irregularities of existing commerce this seldom happens. The evil does not generally go beyond the reduction of price. When it does, it is because there is now no provisory means of adjusting supply and demand. The producer cannot know beforehand, for example, precisely how many persons are engaged in rearing the particular kind of fruit which he cultivates, what number of trees they have, the amount of fruit annually consumed in the city where they find their market, etc. But although the workings of the law of supply and demand are not pointed out to him beforehand, the law is sure to work nevertheless. It is inflexible as the law of the Medes and Persians. It will punish the error, although it did not prevent it. The over-supply may happen one year, but it will not happen the second and the third years. The persons employed in that kind of production will find their way into other pursuits. In a country which should prohibit all change of pursuits, that remedy would not exist. The evil would have to go on, or be remedied by the starvation of the producer of the given article. In America, where the avenues to every pursuit are more open than elsewhere, the remedy is more speedy than elsewhere. Under the reign of Equity, the evil would not exist, because there would be a provisory adjustment of the supply to the demand, and, if it did occur, the remedy would be immediate, because ALL avenues to ALL pursuits would be open to ALL by means of that adjustment, and the general preparedness of all to change rapidly their pursuits, together with the general prevalence of cooperation. (163.)

Still there is, in the nature of things, and apart from the workings of any particular system, a limit to the demand for every article. When that demand is supplied, must not the demand for labor cease? Certainly, for the production of more of that particular article. We have seen, however, that that labor will go into different avenues,--that is, into the production of other articles. If the question is, whether all the wants of all mankind will not be so completely supplied that there will be no occasion for further labor, the answer is three-fold. First, so soon as the labor ceased, consumption would reproduce the wants and the demand. Secondly, if this were partially so, it would only give additional leisure for mental improvement and other means of enjoyment to all mankind by emancipating them so far from the necessity of labor. Thirdly, the wants of human beings are infinite. As the lower wants are supplied higher wants are developed. As soon as men and women have ordinary food, clothing, and shelter, they demand luxuries, and these of a higher and still higher class. The gratification of every taste creates a new demand. It is impossible, therefore, that the demand for human labor, and for all the labor which can be given, should ever cease. Hence there is no such thing possible as a real overstocking of the world with labor, or the products of labor. There is no such thing possible as a real dearth of labor to be performed. With all the avenues continually open, there will then always be a demand for all the labor that any body is ready to perform, even down to the inferior and lowest grades of skill. It will be still more clearly shown, in treating of the remaining results of the Cost Principle, how, under the true system, the avenues to every pursuit will be open to every individual at all times without artificial obstacles, and how there will be at all times labor enough for all. (213.)

162. 2. Because, when avenues are open to new pursuits, men and women are not now prepared to avail themselves of them. This unpreparedness results from their wretchedly cramped and insufficient industrial education. This results again from speculation. Men now strive, on all hands, to monopolize those occupations which are most profitable, and hence to exclude others from acquiring the necessary knowledge to enable them to enter them. Hence there results from the value or profit-making principle a general embargo on knowledge, and the reduction of all classes to narrowness of information and general ignorance. Information in any trade or pursuit is made a means of speculation. Hence the barbarous system of 7 years' apprenticeship, and other similar absurdities. Hence, when men and women are thrown out of any particular occupation to which they have been bred and molded, they are fitted for nothing but pauperism. Under the operation of the Cost Principle all this will be reversed. Every member of the community will be a MAN or a WOMAN, competent to do various things,--not a mere appendage to a trade, carrying from the cradle to the grave the badge of servitude in the degrading appellation of tailor, weaver, shoemaker, joiner, and the like. Now, shops are fenced in, locked and bolted, to keep out intruders and shut up the information contained in them. Trades are hedged in by the absurd and barbarous system based on Value. Men who have knowledge of any kind hoard it. They look, unnaturally, upon those who would learn of them as if they were enemies. As the result, the avenues to different occupations are everywhere obstructed by artificial obstacles. Then information of all sorts will be freely given to all. Suggestions will be made on all hands, aiding every one to enter that career in which he can most benefit, not himself only, but the whole public. In a word, all the avenues to every occupation will be thrown completely open to all, and all knowledge be freely furnished to all at the mere cost of the labor of communicating it, measured, like any labor, by its repugnance only.

163. VII.--The Value Principle renders the invention of new machinery a widespread calamity, instead of a universal blessing. The hostility so generally felt by laboring men to new inventions is not without reason. It is certainly true that machinery is a great benefit to mankind at large, and that in the aggregate and in the long run it improves the condition even of laboring men as a class. But it is equally true, on the other hand, that every invention of a labor-saving process is, under the present arrangements of society, an immediate individual misfortune, and frequently nothing less than ruin and starvation to a large number of individuals of that class. This result comes from the causes stated above, stated above, which render it impossible for the laborer to pass rapidly and harmoniously from one occupation to another, and from the monopoly of the immediate benefits of the saving secured by the machine, by capital, and all these again from profit-making or the operation of the Value Principle. It is the same with competition and machinery. Competition, even in the present order of things, is productive of far more good than evil, looking to the aggregate and the long run, while it is ruinous and destructive immediately and individually. Under the new order both will become purely harmonic and beneficent. (208, 243.)

164. This catalog of the deleterious results of the false principle of trade might and should be extended, and the details expanded beyond what the limits of this work will allow. The reader will add, for himself, the monopolizing of natural wealth, the perversion of skill to the shamming or adulteration of every species of commodity, the waste of time and exertion in detecting and defeating frauds and cheats, the general want of economy in the production of wealth, the cost of convicting and punishing criminals, constructing poor-houses and prisons, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

It must suffice here to affirm that out of these several consequences of the operation of the Value Principle results that complicated systems of injustice, discord, distrust, and repulsion which harmony, and which characterizes, in the most eminent degree, in the midst of their success, the most commercial and prosperous nations. The comparison of the present is not to be instituted, however, mainly, with any condition of society prior to the commercial age, since different manifestations of the want of equity have characterized them also. The exhibition of relations of truth in human intercourse could not precede the discovery of the principles according to which such relations must be adjusted.

165. The operation of the Cost Principle reverses every one of the consequences which I have pointed out or intimated as the legitimate fruits of the principle which now governs the property relations of mankind. In the next chapter we shall return to the consideration of the results of the true principle.