RESTRICTIONS OP INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY 459 



If each individual were in reality limited in his liberty of 

 action by the liberty of action of others, there would be an 

 end to aU competition. A stronger man, whether economically 

 or physically stronger, finding himself in the presence of a weaker 

 opponent, would, if he acted on the maxim of Kant and Fichte, 

 of Adam Smith and Mill, have to use language something Uke the 

 following : " Here are you and I confronted with each other ; 

 I, being the stronger, must inevitably crush you in any com- 

 petition between us. Competition between us signifies your ruin. 

 But my Hberty is limited by your liberty. Complete freedom 

 of action, it is true, is assured me, but on condition that I do 

 not use that freedom to injure others. The moral law gives me 

 no rights on account of my superior strength. I am an individual 

 Uke you, and I am bound to see in you, not a means of enriching 

 myself, but a moral end in yourself. Therefore, I have no right 

 to crush you." Obviously, were such language to be used — and, 

 be it remembered, such language mtist be used if we are to remain 

 true to the doctrines of the founder of philosophic Liberalism — 

 competition would be out of the question. And what becomes, 

 in this case, of Bastiat's exaltation of competition ? Or of 

 similar exaltations by all classical economists, from Mill and 

 Spencer down to Yves Guyot, the only remaining defender of 

 the pure doctrine of the orthodox school of economists. 



Thus, Liberalism, as a theory, appears to contain within itself 

 the germs of a fatal contradiction. On the one hand, it proclaims 

 the rights of man ; on the other, it extols struggle without restric- 

 tion. On the one hand, it declares every individual, as an indi- 

 vidual, to be posesssed of certain inherent rights ; on the other hand, 

 it declares competition necessary in order to permit the strong 

 to manifest their superior qualities, and they can do this only 

 by ignoring the alleged rights of their weaker opponents ; and 

 it declares, further, that competition is beneficial in that it sup- 

 presses the feeble and unfit. On the one hand, it erects a monu- 

 ment to the Rights of Man considered as an abstract metaphysical 



