What, then, is human knowledge, if
all its affirmations destroy each other, and on what shall we
rely? Divided labor is a slave's occupation, but it alone is
really productive; undivided labor belongs to the free man, but
it does not pay its expenses. On the one hand, political economy
tells us to be rich; on the other, morality tells us to be free;
and M. Rossi, speaking in the name of both, warns us at the same
time that we can be neither free nor rich, for to be but half of
either is to be neither. M. Rossi's doctrine, then, far from
satisfying this double desire of humanity, is open to the
objection that, to avoid exclusiveness, it strips us of
everything: it is, under another form, the history of the
representative system.
But the antagonism is even more profound than M. Rossi has
supposed. For since, according to universal experience (on this
point in harmony with theory), wages decrease in proportion to
the division of labor, it is clear that, in submitting ourselves
to parcellaire slavery, we thereby shall not obtain wealth; we
shall only change men into machines: witness the laboring
population of the two worlds.
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