of 1789 was to destroy feudalism, and here is a new feudalism proclaiming itself and withholding all political rights through the franchise. These barons of industry exploit the serfs of industry who are the true producers. Such is the simple genesis of the democratic and revolutionary conceptions of socialism from 1830 to 1848.

CHAPTER II

PIERRE LEROUX AND THE "CIRCULUS" Pierre Leroux-The religion of humanity-Mutual solidarity-The word "socialism"-Dissensions

The Triad-Theory of the "Circulus"-How Leroux practised it.

PIERRE LEROUX is also a disciple of Saint Simon. He claims to supplement Christianity by the religion of humanity.1 According to him man is based upon the family; nationality and property are in complete communion with all their equals throughout the universe, and by confining his communion to a more or less limited portion by means of the family, the city, or by property, their results are imperfection and an evil. It was he who introduced the word solidarity into the sociological vocabulary, to replace the word charity. "Temporal" society was based on the principle of egoism. With the principle of charity as we understand it, that is to say, with the principle of mutual solidarity, the temporal society is entrusted with the care of organising charity.

1 See "L'Humanité" and "L'Encyclopédie nouvelle."

I congratulate Pierre Leroux on having supplemented the word "solidarity" with the epithet of "mutual," for the system which is actually presented to us under the name of solidarity is a solidarity which is unilateral and obligatory on a certain number of persons, but no explanation is vouchsafed of how a reciprocal solidarity might be exercised.

Pierre Leroux disputes with Owen the honour of having invented the word "Socialism." He had a hatred of eclectic philosophers and of economists, to whom he applied the supreme insult of "Malthusians." He claimed that, the annual produce of labour in France being nine thousand millions of francs, two hundred thousand families of landowners, capitalists, and financiers appropriated five milliards by the rent of land, interest on capital and

taxes.

He worshipped one thing--the Triad or Number Three. Man is at the same time triple and single, exhibiting sensation, feeling and knowledge. Hence the division of the human race into three great classes, philosophers or men of knowledge; artists or warriors, or men of feeling, and industrial chiefs, or men of sensation. Hence also the castes of India and Egypt and of the Republic of Plato, except that these castes were not equal as they ought to be. Every human being has a right to a dwelling, sustenance, and clothing. The formula for the remuneration of all officials (and all citizens are such) is triple and single, to each according to his capacity, to each according to his labour, and to each according to his necessities. "Capacity remunerates itself by duties, and imposes duties. Labour completed remunerates itself by leisure. Necessity is satisfied by production, natural or artificial, artistic or scientific."

Pierre Leroux discovered the principle by virtue of which nature has established a constant relation

between population and the means of subsistence. This is the Circulus. The digestion of each individual yields more than the equivalent of the amount of his nourishment. "A man who were to refuse to labour, would still have the right to live by placing himself under cover of the Circulus." Pierre Leroux put this agricultural theory into practice in Jersey, where he had taken refuge. Paul Meurice once told me that one day Mme. Victor Hugo and he paid Leroux a visit, when he entertained them with his hobby and, in order to add an experimental demonstration to what he was saying, he opened a cupboard in which were some bacon and other provisions. From this he took an enormous dish, in which a monumental element of the Circulus was taking its ease. Mme. Hugo put her handkerchief to her nostrils, and Paul Meurice, who was short-sighted, after having sufficiently ascertained the nature of the object presented to them, said quietly, "I thought you were waiting for its transformation to put it into the cupboard." Pierre Leroux replied with a fine gesture which was meant to embrace a whole Triad, but Mme. Victor Hugo and Paul Meurice made their escape without waiting for an explanation.

CHAPTER III

LOUIS BLANC AND THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR Louis Blanc and the organisation of Labour-"To live working or to die fighting"-The instrument of Labour and the weaver of Lyons-"The State as banker of the poor"--Social workshops-Solidarity in the workshops and of the workshops-Suppression of credit and of trade-Down with competition--The ruin of England-"You lose the right to speak of God"-The family and heredity-Labour as a point of honour.

SAINT SIMON had abandoned the principle of equal rights for all, proclaimed by the Revolution of 1789, and had returned to the policy of privilege by wishing to make of the industrials an order which paid taxes, but should have a monopoly of power. The Socialists initiated class politics by opposing the workmen to the industrial chiefs.

Louis Blanc's "Organisation du Travail" was published in 1839. He conjured up the motto of the insurgents of Lyons: "To live working or to die fighting." This antithesis, if it proved the bravado of these wretches, also proved their ignorance, for insurrection has never yet provided workmen with work. Louis Blanc added: "What is wanting to the workmen is the instruments of their labour," thus proving that he did not know that the weavers of Lyons were the owners of their frames. He considered that the State ought to supply the workman with his instruments of labour and called it the "banker of the poor." He coolly demanded that the State should constitute "Social workshops, destined gradually and without shock, to supersede the workshops of individuals; they were to be regulated by rules which realised the principle of association and had the force, form and power of law. Once founded and set in motion, the social workshop would be self-sufficing and

F

would be dependent solely on its own principles. The associated workers would freely choose directors and managers after the first year, they would effect the division of profits among themselves, and would devote themselves to the means of increasing the enterprise they had commenced." "From the solidarity of all the workers in the same workshop," he concludes, "to the solidarity of the workshops in the same industries. By killing competition we should stifle the evils which it engenders." "Who says machinery says monopoly." In Louis Blanc's system there are to be no more patents for inventions; the inventor is to be rewarded by the State, and his discovery placed at the service of all. There is to be no more trade, and credit is to be nothing more than a means of supplying workmen with the instruments of labour.

He enters into few details of this organisation, for the excellent reason that he only conceives it in an extremely vague manner, but he is angry because it provokes criticism. He fails to understand why it should be thought unnatural that the State should employ a portion of its revenue in creating competition with private industry, and innocently thinks that this is a fair system and does not involve the slightest degree of spoliation. He declaims against the use of machinery as causing the lowering of wages. "Out of individualism there issues competition, out of competition the instability and inadequacy of wages." Under the empire of competition, labour produces a generation which is decrepit, atrophied, gangrened, and rotten. Not only does it produce these effects upon the workmen but it ruins small industries for the benefit of greater ones, and is a cause of the ruin of the middle-class. It encourages over production and is condemned by the example of England. "England's atonement," he cries, "is