To
defend usury they have pretended that capital was productive, and
they have changed a metaphor into a reality. The
anti-proprietary socialists have had no difficulty in overturning
their sophistry; and through this controversy the theory of
capital has fallen into such disfavor that today, in the minds of
the people, CAPITALIST and IDLER are synonymous terms.
Certainly it is not my intention to retract what I myself have
maintained after so many others, or to rehabilitate a class of
citizens which so strangely misconceives its duties: but the
interests of science and of the proletariat itself oblige me to
complete my first assertions and maintain true principles.
1. All production is effected with a view to consumption,--that
is, to enjoyment. In society the correlative terms production
and consumption, like net product and gross product, designate
identically the same thing. If, then, after the laborer has
realized a net product, instead of using it to increase his
comfort, he should confine himself to his wages and steadily
apply his surplus to new production, as so many people do who
earn only to buy, production would increase indefinitely, while
comfort and, reasoning from the standpoint of society, population
would remain unchanged.
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