Bees, ants, and other animals living in society
seem endowed individually only with automatism; with them soul
and instinct are almost exclusively collective. That is why,
among such animals, there can be no room for privilege and
monopoly; why, even in their most volitional operations, they
neither consult nor deliberate. But, humanity being
individualized in its plurality, man becomes inevitably a
monopolist, since, if not a monopolist, he is nothing; and the
social problem is to find out, not how to abolish, but how to
reconcile, all monopolies.
The most remarkable and the most immediate effects of monopoly
are:
1. In the political order, the classification of humanity into
families, tribes, cities, nations, States: this is the elementary
division of humanity into groups and sub-groups of laborers,
distinguished by race, language, customs, and climate. It was by
monopoly that the human race took possession of the globe, as it
will be by association that it will become complete sovereign
thereof.
Political and civil law, as conceived by all legislators without
exception and as formulated by jurists, born of this patriotic
and national organization of societies, forms, in the series of
social contradictions, a first and vast branch, the study of
which by itself alone would demand four times more time than we
can give it in discussing the question of industrial economy
propounded by the Academy.
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