But the
metaphor of the usurers has prevailed over the joke of the
Stagyrite; usury, like rent, of which it is an imitation, has
been declared a perpetual right; and only very lately, by a
half-return to the principle, has it reproduced the idea of
REDEMPTION.
Such is the meaning of the enigma which has caused so many
scandals among theologians and legists, and regarding which the
Christian Church has blundered twice,--first, in condemning every
sort of interest, and, second, in taking the side of the
economists and thus contradicting its old maxims. Usury, or the
right of increase, is at once the expression and the condemnation
of monopoly; it is the spoliation of labor by organized and
legalized capital; of all the economic subversions it is
that which most loudly accuses the old society, and whose
scandalous persistence would justify an unceremonious and
uncompensated dispossession of the entire capitalistic class.
Finally, monopoly, by a sort of instinct of self-preservation,
has perverted even the idea of association, as something that
might infringe upon it, or, to speak more accurately, has not
permitted its birth.
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