Double the normal wages of the workman, and you invite him to
idleness, humiliate his dignity, and demoralize his conscience;
take away from him the legitimate price of his efforts, and you
either excite his anger or exalt his pride. In either case you
damage his fraternal feelings. On the contrary, make enjoyment
conditional upon labor, the only way provided by nature to
associate men and make them good and happy, and you go back under
the law of economic distribution, PRODUCTS ARE BOUGHT WITH
PRODUCTS. Communism, as I have often complained, is the very
denial of society in its foundation, which is the progressive
equivalence of functions and capacities. The communists, toward
whom all socialism tends, do not believe in equality by nature
and education; they supply it by sovereign decrees which they
cannot carry out, whatever they may do. Instead of seeking
justice in the harmony of facts, they take it from their
feelings, calling justice everything that seems to them to be
love of one's neighbor, and incessantly confounding matters of
reason with those of sentiment.
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