PRIMITIVE PROPERTY AND MODERN SOCIALISM. 



437 



" If improved " — that is the charm of such 

 theorizing ; the vices which have " almost uni- 

 versally accompanied a system" are treated as 

 accidents for which might easily be substituted 

 the special properties of a system exactly the 

 opposite. The powers of organization and the 

 habit of directing the aggregate energies to the 

 improvement of the communal property, which 

 the Glaris commoner derives from the habits he 

 has learned in the private capitalist's factory, M. 

 de Laveleye supposes could, without insuperable 

 difficulty, be ingrafted on the Russian peasant's 

 habit of merging his own individuality in the 

 abstract mir, and making this the Hercules that 

 is to pull him out of the mud. M. de Laveleye 

 blames the Russian Government for assigning 

 at the emancipation the meadows and forests to 

 the lords, whereas the peasants formerly enjoyed 

 the use of them as of the arable land : " The in- 

 stitution of the mir forms a perfect traditional 

 system, which ought either to be respected or 

 replaced entirely by independent property. We 

 may say of it as of a celebrated order, Sit ui est, 

 aid Hon sit" We may say likewise of M. de Lave- 

 leye's own suggestions for improving the village 

 communal system, Sit id est, ctut non sit ; if M. 

 de Laveleye will not have it as it is, he must 

 make up his mind to do without it. M. de Lave- 

 leye esteems the Russian peasant happier than 

 the enterprising and unsettled American in the 

 midst of his riches and progress. We are not 

 particularly enamored of the special type of 

 American progress ; but humanity, even in the 

 coming era which M. de Laveleye foresees, will 

 have changed indeed before it resigns its indi- 

 vidual freedom for such melancholy and stolid 

 obedience as the Russian peasant learns from his 

 communal system to pay to any who claim it. 

 If the example of Russian peasant-life be not of 

 a nature to stimulate imitation in Western Eu- 

 rope, it will be scarcely of much use for M. de 

 Laveleye to point to Java. The growth of a 

 population from between 5,000,000 and 6,000,- 

 000 in 1826, to over 1*7,000,000 in 18*72, may 

 have been advantageous to the Netherlands ex- 

 chequer, which takes a fifth part of the produce, 

 and one day's work in the week ; but it has 

 suggested even to Dutch economists gloomy fore- 

 bodings as to the future of a system which has 

 already diminished the peasant's allowance of 

 land to half, or in some cases a quarter, of what 

 their fathers tilled. With the population ever multi- 

 plying, and a system of periodic partition of land, 

 " there will still be equality, but " — it is a Dutch- 

 man who writes — " it will be equality in misery." 



Unless when preserved artificially, as by the 

 iron despotism of Holland in Java, or by the 

 pride of the Swiss in his hereditary institutions, 

 the communal system, whether of the village or 

 the family type, is fast disappearing. Even in 

 the Swiss allmends disintegration is manifesting 

 itself. The commoners derive very unequal bene- 

 fits from the common property, and in inequality 

 lurks the seed of decay. Again, it is of the 

 essence of communal property that the inhabi- 

 tants of a fixed locality should enjoy it ; but we 

 are told by M. de Laveleye that in Glaris at the 

 present day the commonable alps are let by auc- 

 tion for a number of years ; and, in complete op- 

 position to ancient principles, strangers may ob- 

 tain them as well as citizens. The Russian mir 

 is gradually relaxing its hold on the nation, and 

 the Arcadian life of Servia, which never had so 

 many good words bestowed on her as in the 

 volume before us, " is falling to ruin, and disap- 

 pearing everywhere that it comes in contact with 

 modern ideas." M. de Laveleye is far too shrewd 

 an observer not to perceive these phenomena, 

 and far too honest to conceal them. All these 

 institutions are, he admits, unable easily to with- 

 stand " the conditions of a society in which men 

 are striving to improve their own lot as well as 

 the political and social organization under which 

 they live. . . . Once the desire of self-aggrandize- 

 ment awakened, man can no longer support the 

 yoke of the zadruga, light though it be. ... To 

 live according to his own will, to work for him- 

 self alone, to drink from his own cup, is now the 

 end preeminently sought by every one." With 

 the tendencies of modern humanity the old com- 

 munal institutions must, M. de Laveleye knows, 

 surely disappear, but " the economist," he con- 

 cludes, " will not see them disappear without re- 

 gret." 



While, however, the "economist" laments 

 the loosening of the bonds of family life in Ser- 

 via, it can scarcely be the province of the " econ- 

 omist" to exaggerate the defects of the institu- 

 tions of his own day and the virtues of those of 

 former ages by contrasting the failures of the 

 present with the successes of the past. This M. 

 de Laveleye, no doubt quite unconsciously, does 

 throughout in " Primitive Property." What can, 

 for instance, be more extraordinarily unreason- 

 able and unjust than to contrast an English pau- 

 per with a Swiss commoner, and to rest in the 

 self-satisfied conclusion that " a comparison be- 

 tween the degraded inmate of an English work- 

 house and the proud, active, independent, and 

 industrious commoner of the Swiss allmend is 



