trouble to be born, and others for whom the fortune of life is but an
opportunity for long-continued poverty; idlers with large incomes, and
workers whose fortune is always in the future; some privileged by birth
and caste, and others pariahs whose sole civil and political rights are
THE RIGHT TO LABOR, AND THE RIGHT TO LAND. For we must not be deceived;
in the phalanstery every thing will be as it is to-day, an object of
property,--machines, inventions, thought, books, the products of art,
of agriculture, and of industry; animals, houses, fences, vineyards,
pastures, forests, fields,--every thing, in short, except the
UNCULTIVATED LAND. Now, would you like to know what uncultivated land is
worth, according to the advocates of property? "A square league hardly
suffices for the support of a savage," says M. Charles Comte. Estimating
the wretched subsistence of this savage at three hundred francs
per year, we find that the square league necessary to his life is,
relatively to him, faithfully represented by a rent of fifteen francs.
In France there are twenty-eight thousand square leagues, the total rent
of which, by this estimate, would be four hundred and twenty thousand
francs, which, when divided among nearly thirty-four millions of people,
would give each an INCOME OF A CENTIME AND A QUARTER. That is the new
right which the great genius of Fourier has invented IN BEHALF OF THE
FRENCH PEOPLE, and with which his first disciple hopes to reform the
world. I denounce M. Considerant to the proletariat!

If the theory of M. Considerant would at least really guarantee this
property which he cherishes so jealously, I might pardon him the flaws
in his syllogism, certainly the best one he ever made in his life. But,
no: that which M. Considerant takes for property is only a privilege
of extra pay. In Fourier's system, neither the created capital nor
the increased value of the soil are divided and appropriated in any
effective manner: the instruments of labor, whether created or not,
remain in the hands of the phalanx; the pretended proprietor can touch
only the income. He is permitted neither to realize his share of the
stock, nor to possess it exclusively, nor to administer it, whatever it
be. The cashier throws him his dividend; and then, proprietor, eat the
whole if you can!

The system of Fourier would not suit the proprietors, since it takes
away the most delightful feature of property,--the free disposition of
one's good