If the economists had had a
clear idea of this overturn, invariable in all countries where
taxation exists, so singular a phenomenon would not have failed
to draw their attention; they would have sought its causes, and
would have ended by discovering that what they took for an
accident of civilization, an effect of the inextricable
difficulties of human government, was the product of the
contradiction inherent in all political economy.
The progressive tax, whether applied to capital or to income, is
the very negation of monopoly, of that monopoly which is met
everywhere, according to M. Rossi, across the path of social
economy; which is the true stimulant of industry, the hope of
economy, the preserver and parent of all wealth; of which we have
been able to say, in short, that society cannot exist without it,
but that, except for it, there would be no society. Let the tax
become suddenly what it unquestionably must sometime be,--namely,
the proportional (or progressional, which is the same thing)
contribution of each producer to the public expenses, and
straightway rent and profit are confiscated everywhere for the
benefit of the State; labor is stripped of the fruits of its
toil; each individual being reduced to the proper allowance of
fifty-six and a half centimes, poverty becomes general; the
compact formed between labor and capital is dissolved, and
society, deprived of its rudder, drifts back to its original
state.
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