OVER - PRODUCTION. 5 ", 5 



the age, Victor Hugo, says: u For various reasons we can 

 not discuss here, from the theoretical point of view, the 

 questions raised by socialism, and we limit ourselves to an 

 indication of them. All the questions which the socialists 

 proposed laying aside cosmogonic visions, reverie, and 

 mysticism may be carried back to two original problems, 

 the first of which is, to produce wealth, and the second, 

 to distribute it. The first problem contains the question 

 of labor, the second, the question of wages; in the first, 

 the point is the employment of strength, and in the second, 

 the distribution of enjoyments. From a good employ- 

 ment of strength results public power, and from a good 

 distribution of enjoyments, individual happiness. By 

 good distribution we mean, not equal, but equitable, dis- 

 tribution, for the first quality is equity. From these two 

 things, combined public power abroad and individual 

 happiness at home, results social prosperity, that is to say, 

 man happy, the citizen free, and the nation great. 



u England solves the first of these two problems she 

 creates wealth admirably, but distributes it badly. This 

 solution, which is completely on one side, fatally leads her 

 to these two extremes, monstrous opulence and monstrous 

 misery; all the enjoyments belong to the few, all the pri- 

 vations to the rest that is to say, to the people, and 

 privileges, exception, monopoly and feudalism spring up 

 from labor itself. It is a false and dangerous situation to 

 base public power-on private want, and to root the grandeur 

 of the state in the suffering of the individual; it is a badly 

 composed grandeur, in which all the material elements are 

 combined, in which no moral element enters. Communism 

 and the agrarian law fancy that they solve the second ques- 

 tion, but they are mistaken. Their distribution kills 

 production, and equal division destroys emulation and con- 

 sequently labor. It is a distribution made by the butcher 

 who slaughters what he divides. 



