ind his comfort and his rights,
refuses to employ the laborer, how can the laborer live? He has ploughed
an excellent field, and cannot sow it; he has built an elegant and
commodious house, and cannot live in it; he has produced all, and can
enjoy nothing.

Labor leads us to equality. Every step that we take brings us nearer to
it; and if laborers had equal strength, diligence, and industry, clearly
their fortunes would be equal also. Indeed, if, as is pretended,--and
as we have admitted,--the laborer is proprietor of the value which he
creates, it follows:--

1. That the laborer acquires at the expense of the idle proprietor;

2. That all production being necessarily collective, the laborer is
entitled to a share of the products and profits commensurate with his
labor;

3. That all accumulated capital being social property, no one can be its
exclusive proprietor.

These inferences are unavoidable; these alone would suffice to
revolutionize our whole economical system, and change our institutions
and our laws. Why do the very persons, who laid down this principle, now
refuse to be guided by it? Why do the Says, the Comtes, the Hennequins,
and others--after having said that property is born of labor--seek to
fix it by occupation and prescription?

But let us leave these sophists to their contradictions and blindness.
The good sense of the people will do justice to their equivocations.
Let us make haste to enlighten it, and show it the true path. Equality
approaches; already between it and us but a short distance intervenes:
to-morrow even this distance will have been traversed.

% 6.--That in Society all Wages are Equal.

When the St. Simonians, the Fourierists, and, in general, all who in our
day are connected with social economy and reform, inscribe upon their
banner,--

"TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS CAPACITY, TO EACH CAPACITY ACCORDING TO ITS
RESULTS" (St. Simon);

"TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS CAPITAL, HIS LABOR, AND HIS SKILL"
(Fourier),--

they mean--although they do not say so in so many words--that the
products of Nature procured by labor and industry are a reward, a palm,
a crown offered to all kinds of preeminence and superiority. They regard
the land as an immense arena in which prizes are contended for,--no
longer, it is true, with lances and swords, by force and by treachery;
but by acquired wealth, by knowledge, talent, and by virtue itself. In
a word, they mean--and everybody agrees with them-