For the rest, if the economists, by exclusive attention to their
old routine, have finally lost all knowledge of the present state
of things, it cannot be said that the socialists have better
solved the antinomy which division of labor raised. Quite the
contrary, they have stopped with negation; for is it not
perpetual negation to oppose, for instance, the uniformity of
parcellaire labor with a so-called variety in which each one can
change his occupation ten, fifteen, twenty times a day at will?
As if to change ten, fifteen, twenty times a day from one kind of
divided labor to another was to make labor synthetic; as if,
consequently, twenty fractions of the day's work of a manual
laborer could be equal to the day's work of an artist! Even if
such industrial vaulting was practicable,--and it may be asserted
in advance that it would disappear in the presence of the
necessity of making laborers responsible and therefore functions
personal,--it would not change at all the physical, moral, and
intellectual condition of the laborer; the dissipation would only
be a surer guarantee of his incapacity and, consequently, his
dependence.
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