His pamphlet, all
enamelled with eloquent pages, does honor to his literary
capacity: as for the philosophical value of the book, it would be
absolutely the same if the author had confined himself to writing
on each page, in large letters, this single phrase: I PROTEST.
To sum up:
Competition, as an economic position or phase, considered in its
origin, is the necessary result of the intervention of machinery,
of the establishment of the workshop, and of the theory of
reduction of general costs; considered in its own significance
and in its tendency, it is the mode by which collective activity
manifests and exercises itself, the expression of social
spontaneity, the emblem of democracy and equality, the most
energetic instrument for the constitution of value, the support
of association. As the essay of individual forces, it is
the guarantee of their liberty, the first moment of their
harmony, the form of responsibility which unites them all and
makes them solidary.
But competition abandoned to itself and deprived of the direction
of a superior and efficacious principle is only a vague movement,
an endless oscillation of industrial power, eternally tossed
about between those two equally disastrous extremes,--on the one
hand, corporations and patronage, to which we have seen the
workshop give birth, and, on the other, monopoly, which will be
discussed in the following chapter.
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