Its argument is exactly the same as that of M. Rossi in regard to
the division of labor: it consists in setting competition and
morality against each other, in order to limit them by each
other, as M. Rossi pretended to arrest and restrict economic
inductions by morality, cutting here, lopping there, to suit the
need and the occasion. I have refuted M. Rossi by asking him
this simple question: How can science be in disagreement with
itself, the science of wealth with the science of duty? Likewise
I ask the communists: How can a principle whose development is
clearly useful be at the same time pernicious?
They say: emulation is not competition. I note, in the first
place, that this pretended distinction bears only on the
divergent effects of the principle, which leads one to suppose
that there were two principles which had been confounded.
Emulation is nothing but competition itself; and, since they have
thrown themselves into abstractions, I willingly plunge in also.
There is no emulation without an object, just as there is no
passional initiative without an object; and as the object of
every passion is necessarily analogous to the passion
itself,--woman to the lover, power to the ambitious, gold to the
miser, a crown to the poet,--so the object of industrial
emulation is necessarily profit.
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