The first fruit of this study will be, I do not
doubt, a repudiation of his pamphlet on "Organization of Labor,"
and consequently a change in all his ideas of authority and
government. At this price the "History of the French
Revolution," by M. Blanc, will be a truly useful and original
work.
All the socialistic sects, without exception, are possessed by
the same prejudice; all, unconsciously, inspired by the economic
contradiction, have to confess their powerlessness in presence of
the necessity of capital; all are waiting, for the realization of
their ideas, to hold power and money in their hands. The utopias
of socialism in the matter of association make more prominent
than ever the truth which we announced at the beginning: THERE
IS NOTHING IN SOCIALISM WHICH IS NOT FOUND IN POLITICAL ECONOMY;
and this perpetual plagiarism is the irrevocable condemnation of
both. Nowhere is to be seen the dawn of that mother-idea, which
springs with so much eclat from the generation of the economic
categories,--that the superior formula of association has nothing
to do with capital, a matter for individual accounts, but must
bear solely upon equilibrium of production, the conditions of
exchange, the gradual reduction of cost, the one and only source
of the increase of wealth.
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