ty a utopia?

NINTH PROPOSITION.

Property is impossible, because it is powerless against Property.

I. By the third corollary of our axiom, interest tells against the
proprietor as well as the stranger. This economical principle is
universally admitted. Nothing simpler at first blush; yet, nothing more
absurd, more contradictory in terms, or more absolutely impossible.

The manufacturer, it is said, pays himself the rent on his house and
capital. HE PAYS HIMSELF; that is, he gets paid by the public who buy
his products. For, suppose the manufacturer, who seems to make this
profit on his property, wishes also to make it on his merchandise, can
he then pay himself one franc for that which cost him ninety centimes,
and make money by the operation? No: such a transaction would transfer
the merchant's money from his right hand to his left, but without any
profit whatever.

Now, that which is true of a single individual trading with himself is
true also of the whole business world. Form a chain of ten, fifteen,
twenty producers; as many as you wish. If the producer A makes a
profit out of the producer B. B's loss must, according to economical
principles, be made up by C, C's by D; and so on through to Z.

But by whom will Z be paid for the loss caused him by the profit charged
by A in the beginning? BY THE CONSUMER, replies Say. Contemptible
equivocation! Is this consumer any other, then, than A, B. C, D, &c.,
or Z? By whom will Z be paid? If he is paid by A, no one makes a profit;
consequently, there is no property. If, on the contrary, Z bears the
burden himself, he ceases to be a member of society; since it refuses
him the right of property and profit, which it grants to the other
associates.

Since, then, a nation, like universal humanity, is a vast industrial
association which cannot act outside of itself, it is clear that no man
can enrich himself without impoverishing another. For, in order that the
right of property, the right of increase, may be respected in the
case of A, it must be denied to Z; thus we see how equality of rights,
separated from equality of conditions, may be a truth. The iniquity of
political economy in this respect is flagrant. "When I, a manufacturer,
purchase the labor of a workingman, I do not include his wages in the
net product of my business; on the contrary, I deduct them. But the
workingman includes them in his net product.... "(Say: Political
Economy.)

That means that al