WARNING TO THE PROPRIETORS

LETTER TO MR. VICTOR CONSIDÉRANT

Editor of the Phalange

ON A DEFENSE OF PROPERTY

Mr. Editor,

I have read the brochure entitled: Défense du fourièrisme, Réponse à MM. Proudhon, Lamennais, Reybaud, Louis Blanc, etc., and I am pleased with this publication, the author, despite the aberrations of his logic and the injustice of his reproaches, showing himself almost always a friend of progress and full of zeal for science and truth.

I say to you in all confidence, Mr. Editor, that Fourierist there is one of us; sooner or later, you will see him in the ranks of equality; there is too much loyalty and intelligence in him for the God of free men to not treat him with his mercy and let him die an infidel.

However, I regret that from motives of which I am ignorant, but which are doubtless highly respectable, your defender believed he needed to remain anonymous. Why, like those heroes de roman appearing suddenly to avenge the honor of a belle, has he come to throw himself, visor lowered, without colors or device by which he could be recognized, in this furious melee where at this moment are decided the destinies of France and perhaps of the world? Why does he not at least reveal himself to the one that he has chosen as his premier adversary? I would not betray his confidence, and, as much as he may believe us enemies, his secret would be dead in my heart. However, despite this rather discourteous reserve, which I would have the right to punish, I will content myself with counter his attacks and will not strike him: for, who knows? perhaps my critic is one of my friends; perhaps, if I knew him, I would prefer to win him than to sacrifice him to my cause; perhaps finally… I have not forgotten deplorable history of Tancrède and Clorinde, and how, believing he fought a pagan, the hapless crusader killed his mistress. Also, by the mildness of the argumentation, the lack of systematization in the ideas, a certain flux of sentiment and style, and some traits of feminine choler, I believe I have recognized a woman in my black knight…

I admit however that on one point that I begrudge him: he seems to believe and he says that I hate all those that I attack, all the representatives of the ideas and principles that I combat. What do you say to that, Mr. Editor? Your anonymous neophyte has not been planted in good Comtois soil, and does not know what it is to be a highlander of Jura. Me, hate someone, good God! because I am irritated by which I read and what I see; because I characterize, to the degree of my feeble perception, ideas and act, les persons and things! You might as well say that the doctor hates the patient, because he describes the malady. Certainly, I regard as very fortunate and I admire the one holding the speculum up to the seat of our ignominy, preserves his serenity and his phlegm; as for me, I declare it, I would not think to live and I would think little of myself if I resembled him. And I appeal to you, general of the societary army, a man grieved by the imbecility of the century, what would you do with a soldier who marched into combat singing a Priapeia, carrying the thyrse of Bacchus instead of a sword, and the mantle of Epicurus for armor? A la guerre comme à la guerre[1], says the old Galois proverb: when the enemy insults and murders you, is that the moment to say to him, arms extended: “Brother, friend!”?

But, without exaggerating anything, let us look at the facts, and let us judge the discourse.

If I read the journals, if I open a revue, if I browse through some brochure from one of our political eagles, the first thing that strikes me is that clamor of béate indignation against the false doctrines, the dissolving doctrines, the execrable doctrines that seduce the people and put society in peril. Why then doesn’t someone appose some better instructions to these doctrines de perversity? Does governmental truth have no more apostles? Will right-thinking men be badly paid? Or if the chest of secret funds is empty? Quoi! A true doctrine exists, a salutary doctrine, a holy and immortal: a doctrine which is not that of constitutional monarchy, which we no longer want, nor that of the republic, dead on 9 thermidor; nor that of legitimacy, that the people have twice condemned: and that doctrine, that everyone believes and no one discovers, the government, far from seeking it, dreads it, the privileged curse it in advance and raise the hue and cry against those who speak of it! Indeed, the phalansterians have a few blasphemers and no judges; the communists, like the Christians in the past, are declared enemies of the human race, probably because they are as poor of heart as poor of goods; the egalitarians are abominated everywhere, as exterminators of privilege and despisers of heroes and geniuses. Against these novelties we have anathemas and abuse, but not reasons. Why then should the old priests of the fallen religions, the fossil doctors of pure morals, sane philosophy, and imperishable right, deign to enter the lists and compete with use for the salvation of the people and the glory of God? Why do the Guizots, the Cousins, the Villemains, and their innumerable pensioners, instead of fighting for portfolios and positions, refuse to put themselves in search of the new order, and study the true discipline of the nations?

I seek in the numerous categories of the tribe of officials, I survey from high to low the hierarchic ladder of the corporations and bureaucrats; everywhere I find some mean who eat and who rant, but not one who contemplates and thinks. Such indeed are those who work to enlighten the people and cope with the chaos of the social and philosophical sciences? Are these our philosophers, greedy, shameless and skeptical? Are these our priests, occupied, as in their best days, with their ridiculous indulgences, having for all their social consciousness [the notion of] Christian charity, as if the precept of charity was a law of political organization? Are these our magistrates, these stoic upholders of all the cowardice, all the baseness, and all the follies of the parliaments? Are these are academicians, do backward, so fawning, and so simple-minded? Are these our journalists, these little tyrants of opinion, whose name alone is enough to arouse laughter? Are these our deputies, these praetorians of the constitutional regime, sellers ministers and secret funds? Is it the government finally, the most hypocritical, the most perverse, the most all-consuming, the most anti-national that ever was?

It is necessary to recognize it; it is a profoundly abnormal thing, a scourge for society, that preaching and teaching pass from legitimate teachers to men without mission and without authority; that I, a poor industrial worker, who is neither deputy, nor magistrate, nor academician, nor journalist, nor priest; that a M. Considérant, captain of artillery, who should be at this cannons, or managing a factory, or serving a railroad; that one Boyer, who might have lived at his page-setting without concerning himself with organization and prud’homie; that so many others finally who do not follow their trade, and meddle in that which does not concern them, we busy ourselves remaking the world, and are so bold as to touch the hand of justice or the staff of command? But, again, whose fault is that? Isn’t it these shepherds of the people, as the good Homer said, who pasture us without bread and without work; these bureaucratic administrators, buried in their papers, incapables even of organizing the fêtes du monopole et de ranger des lampions; these judges, who seem to be established only to condemn some vagabonds and listen to lawyers; this clergy without acquired doctrine[2] , these scientists who know nothing of what it is most important for us to know; to these pacifiers of the political press, who want to enchain the giant with a hundred arms under a canvas to catch butterflies? — Move yourself then, Briareos!

And yet, see how the malice of our bourgeois juste-milieu increases every day and is cheered on; how the greed of the monopolist marches more brazenly; how power and its accomplices develop their counter-reformist projects.—“We have no fear,” they say. “We have no fear; the phalansterians are ridiculous, the communists scorned, the egalitarians impossible; the last of the Saint-Simonians was just lost in uniting with the Great Whore. Hurrah! Death to the revolutionaries! Woe to the vanquished!”

And you, apostle of a new faith, you were hoping to make a spark of sacred fire penetrate these rotten, moth-eaten consciences! What have you got these last fifteen years, by your bows, your kindness, your pious frauds, your protestations of preserving everything by renewing everything?… No, no, it is not thus that one leads a revolution. Recall the words of Danton, the day after that 10th of August, when insurgent France demanded of its citizens a counsel which would save the homeland: “We must,” cried Danton with an exterminating gesture, “we must make the aristocrats fear.” And three weeks later, the workers of Maillard responded to the voice of Danton. Danton did not warn; he struck. Well! Today, if we want to escape a new September, we must speak truth to the proprietors.

I am going, monsieur editor, to examine quickly, by addressing them under a small number of heads, the critiques of your anonym. You have profited from the defense, you will hear the response: and I count on your fairness to inform your readers of it, and all those in general interested in these debates.

[1] A priest, as enlightened as pious, said to me: “Why do you persecute us? We are surrounded by a ring of fire: we can not express a political thought without being immediately accused of cabal and intrigue; the memory of our former power renders us suspect to all opinions and confines us in our ceremonies.” — “It is necessary,” I said to him, “to return to the ancient traditions; it is necessary to continue the work of the original Church, and die, if it is necessary, a second time for charity and justice.”—“Would to God, he replied, it took only our lives to give the world order and the rest! But do not you see that, far from winning minds, we would increase the flames; instead of martyrs, we would reap only hatred and ridicule? Proletarians, nous vous avons enfantés jadis à la liberté, march now in your strength, and when you have vanquished, think of your spiritual fathers.”

He might add that the high ecclesiastical dignitaries, united in their view with the men of power, would never permit the low clergy to follow its generous and patriotic instincts. Thus the people no longer have à compter que sur lui seul…