As for us, guided by the idea that we have formed of social
science, we shall affirm, against the socialists and against the
economists, not that labor MUST BE ORGANIZED, nor that it is
ORGANIZED but that it IS BEING ORGANIZED.
Labor, we say, is being organized: that is, the process of
organization has been going on from the beginning of the world,
and will continue till the end. Political economy teaches us the
primary elements of this organization; but socialism is right in
asserting that, in its present form, the organization is
inadequate and transitory; and the whole mission of science is
continually to ascertain, in view of the results obtained and the
phenomena in course of development, what innovations can be
immediately effected.
Socialism and political economy, then, while waging a burlesque
war, pursue in reality the same idea,--the organization of labor.
But both are guilty of disloyalty to science and of mutual
calumny, when on the one hand political economy, mistaking for
science its scraps of theory, denies the possibility of further
progress; and when socialism, abandoning tradition, aims at
reestablishing society on undiscoverable bases.
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