A striking
example of that sad truth that in society the general welfare is
never the effect of a conspiracy of individual wills!
The farther we delve into this system of illusory compromises
between monopoly and society,--that is, as we have explained in %
1 of this chapter, between capital and labor, between the
patriciate and the proletariat,--the more we discover that it is
all foreseen, regulated, and executed in accordance with this
infernal maxim, with which Hobbes and Machiavel, those theorists
of despotism, were unacquainted: EVERYTHING BY THE PEOPLE AND
AGAINST THE PEOPLE. While labor produces, capital, under the
mask of a false fecundity, enjoys and abuses; the legislator, in
offering his mediation, thought to recall the privileged class to
fraternal feelings and surround the laborer with guarantees; and
now he finds, by the fatal contradiction of interests, that each
of these guarantees is an instrument of torture. It would
require a hundred volumes, the life of ten men, and a heart of
iron, to relate from this standpoint the crimes of the State
towards the poor and the infinite variety of its tortures.
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