This result might easily have been
foreseen. Economic phenomena obey laws as abstract and immutable
as those of numbers: it is only privilege, fraud, and absolutism
which disturb the eternal harmony.
[13] Meeting of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences,
September, 1845.
M. Blanqui, repentant, as it seems, at having taken this first
step toward socialistic ideas, has made haste to retract his
words. At the same meeting in which M. Passy demonstrated the
inadequacy of cooperative association, he exclaimed: "Does it
not seem that labor is a thing susceptible of organization, and
that it is in the power of the State to regulate the happiness of
humanity as it does the march of an army, and with an entirely
mathematical precision? This is an evil tendency, a delusion
which the Academy cannot oppose too strongly, because it is not
only a chimera, but a dangerous sophism. Let us respect good and
honest intentions; but let us not fear to say that to publish a
book upon the ORGANIZATION OF LABOR is to rewrite for the
fiftieth time a treatise upon the quadrature of the circle or the
philosopher's stone.
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