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用心 爱心 专心1 CHAPTERCHAPTER VII VII FIFTHFIFTH PERIOD PERIOD POLICE POLICE OROR TAXATION TAXATION In positing its principles humanity as if in obedience to a sovereign order never goes backward Like the traveller who by oblique windings rises from the depth of the valley to the mountain top it follows intrepidly its zigzag road and marches to its goal with confident step without repentance and without pause Arriving at the angle of monopoly the social genius casts backward a melancholy glance and in a moment of profound reflection says to itself Monopoly has stripped the poor hireling of everything bread clothing home education liberty and security I will lay a tax upon the monopolist at this price I will save him his privilege Land and mines woods and waters the original domain of man are forbidden to the proletaire I will intervene in their exploitation I will have my share of the products and land monopoly shall be respected Industry has fallen into feudalism but I am the suzerain The lords shall pay me tribute and they shall keep the profit of their capital Commerce levies usurious profits on the consumer I will strew its road with toll gates I will stamp its checks and indorse its invoices and it shall pass Capital has overcome labor by intelligence I will open schools and the laborer made intelligent himself shall become a capitalist in his turn Products lack circulation and social life is cramped I will build roads bridges canals marts theatres and temples and thus furnish at one stroke work wealth and a market The rich man lives in plenty while the workman weeps in famine I will establish taxes on bread wine meat salt and honey on articles of necessity and on objects of value and these shall supply alms for my poor And I will set guards over the waters the woods the fields the mines and the roads I will send collectors to gather the taxes and teachers to instruct the children I will have an army to put down refractory subjects courts to judge them prisons to punish them and priests to curse them All these offices shall be given to the proletariat and paid by the monopolists Such is my certain and efficacious will 用心 爱心 专心2 We have to prove that society could neither think better nor act worse this will be the subject of a review which I hope will throw new light upon the social problem Every measure of general police every administrative and commercial regulation like every law of taxation is at bottom but one of the innumerable articles of this ancient bargain ever violated and ever renewed between the patriciate and the proletariat That the parties or their representatives knew nothing of it or even that they frequently viewed their political constitutions from another standpoint is of little consequence to us not to the man legislator or prince do we look for the meaning of his acts but to the acts themselves 1 Synthetic idea of the tax Point of departure and development of this idea In order to render that which is to follow more intelligible I will explain inverting as it were the method which we have followed hitherto the superior theory of the tax then I will give its genesis finally I will show the contradiction and results The synthetic idea of the tax as well as its original conception would furnish material for the most extensive developments I shall confine myself to a simple announcement of the propositions with a summary indication of the proofs The tax in its essence and positive destiny is the form of distribution among that species of functionaries which Adam Smith has designated by the word unproductive although he admits as much as any one the utility and even the necessity of their labor in society By this adjective unproductive Adam Smith whose genius dimly foresaw everything and left us to do everything meant that the product of these laborers is negative which is a very different thing from null and that consequently distribution so far as they are concerned follows a method other than exchange Let us consider in fact what takes place from the point of view of distribution in the four great divisions of collective labor extraction 1 manufactures commerce agriculture Each producer brings to market a real product whose quantity can be measured whose quality can be estimated whose price can be debated and finally whose value can be discounted either in other services or merchandise or else in money In all these industries distribution therefore is nothing but the mutual exchange of products according to the law of proportionality of values Nothing like this takes place with the functionaries called public These obtain their right to subsistence not by the production of real utilities but by the very state of unproductivity in which by no fault of their own they are kept For them the law of proportionality is inverted while social wealth 用心 爱心 专心3 is formed and increased in the direct ratio of the quantity variety and proportion of the effective products furnished by the four great industrial categories the development of this same wealth the perfecting of social order suppose on the contrary so far as the personnel of police is concerned a progressive and indefinite reduction State functionaries therefore are very truly unproductive On this point J B Say agreed with A Smith and all that he has written on this subject in correction of his master and which has been stupidly included among his titles to glory arises entirely it is easy to see from a misunderstanding In a word the wages of the government s employees constitute a social deficit they must be carried to the account of losses which it must be the object of industrial organization to continually diminish in this view what other adjective could be used to describe the men of power than that of Adam Smith Here then is a category of services which furnishing no real products cannot be rewarded in the ordinary way services which do not fall under the law of exchange which cannot become the object of private speculation competition joint stock association or any sort of commerce but which theoretically regarded as performed gratuitously by all but entrusted by virtue of the law of division of labor to a small number of special men who devote themselves exclusively to them must consequently be paid for History confirms this general datum The human mind which tries all solutions of every problem has tried accordingly to submit public functions to exchange for a long time French magistrates like notaries etc lived solely by their fees But experience has proved that this method of distribution applied to unproductive laborers was too expensive and subject to too many disadvantages and it became necessary to abandon it The organization of the unproductive services contributes to the general welfare in several ways first by relieving producers of public cares in which all must participate and to which consequently all are more or less slaves secondly by establishing in society an artificial centralization the image and prelude of the future solidarity of industries and finally by furnishing a first attempt at balance and discipline So we admit with J B Say the usefulness of magistrates and the other agents of public authority but we hold that this usefulness is wholly negative and we insist therefore on describing these functionaries by the adjective unproductive which A Smith applied to them not to bring them into discredit but because they really cannot be classed in the category of producers Taxation very well says an economist of Say s school M J Garnier taxation is a privation which we should try to reduce to the furthest point of compatibility with the needs of society If the writer whom I quote has reflected upon the meaning of his words he has seen that the word privation 用心 爱心 专心4 which he uses is synonymous with non production and that consequently those for whose benefit taxes are collected are very truly unproductive laborers I insist upon this definition which seems to me the less questionable from the fact that however much they may dispute over the word all agree upon the thing because it contains the germ of the greatest revolution yet to be accomplished in the world I mean the subordination of the unproductive functions to the productive functions in a word the effective submission always asked and never obtained of authority to the citizens It is a consequence of the development of the economical contradictions that order in society first shows itself inverted that that which should be above is placed below that which should be in relief seems sunken and that which should receive the light is thrown into the shadow Thus power which in its essence is like capital the auxiliary and subordinate of labor becomes through the antagonism of society the spy judge and tyrant of the productive functions power whose original inferiority lays upon it the duty of obedience is prince and sovereign In all ages the laboring classes have pursued against the office holding class the solution of this antinomy of which economic science alone can give the key The oscillations that is the political agitations which result from this struggle of labor against power now lead to a depression of the central force which compromises the very existence of society now exaggerating this same force beyond measure give birth to despotism Then the privileges of command the infinite joy which it gives to ambition and pride making the unproductive functions an object of universal lust a new leaven of discord penetrates society which divided already in one direction into capitalists and wage workers and in another into producers and non producers is again divided as regards power into monarchists and democrats The conflicts between royalty and the republic would furnish us most marvellous and interesting material for our episodes The confines of this work do not permit us so long an excursion and after having pointed out this new branch in the vast network of human aberrations we shall confine ourselves exclusively in dealing with taxation to the economic question Such then in succinctest statement is the synthetic theory of the tax that is if I may venture to use the familiar comparison of this fifth wheel of the coach of humanity which makes so much noise and which in governmental parlance is styled the State The State the police or their means of existence the tax is I repeat the official name of the class designated in political economy as nonproducers in short as the domestics of society But public reason does not attain at a single bound this simple idea which for centuries had to remain in the state of a transcendental conception Before 用心 爱心 专心5 civilization can mount to such a height it must pass through frightful tempests and innumerable revolutions in each of which one might say it renews its strength in a bath of blood And when at last production represented by capital seems on the point of thoroughly subordinating the unproductive organ the State then society rises in indignation labor weeps at the prospect of its immediate freedom democracy shudders at the abasement of power justice cries out as if scandalized and all the oracles of the departing gods exclaim with terror that the abomination of desolation is in the holy places and that the end of the world has come So true is it that humanity never desires what it seeks and that the slightest progress cannot be realized without spreading panic among the peoples What then in this evolution is the point of departure of society and by what circuitous route does it reach political reform that is economy in its expenditures equality in the assessment of its taxes and the subordination of power to industry That is what we are about to state in a few words reserving developments for the sequel The original idea of the tax is that of REDEMPTION As by the law of Moses each first born was supposed to belong to Jehovah and had to be redeemed by an offering so the tax everywhere presents itself in the form of a tithe or royal prerogative by which the proprietor annually redeems from the sovereign the profit of exploitation which he is supposed to hold only by his pleasure This theory of the tax moreover is but one of the special articles of what is called the social contract Ancients and moderns all agree in terms more or less explicit in regarding the juridical status of societies as a reaction of weakness against strength This idea is uppermost in all the works of Plato notably in the Gorgias where he maintains with more subtlety than logic the cause of the laws against that of violence that is legislative absolutism against aristocratic and military absolutism In this knotty dispute in which the weight of evidence is equal on both sides Plato simply expresses the sentiment of entire antiquity Long before him Moses in making a distribution of lands declaring patrimony inalienable and ordering a general and uncompensated cancellation of all mortgages every fiftieth year had opposed a barrier to the invasions of force The whole Bible is a hymn to JUSTICE that is in the Hebrew style to charity to kindness to the weak on the part of the strong to voluntary renunciation of the privilege of power Solon beginning his legislative mission by a general abolition of debts and creating rights and reserves that is barriers to prevent their return was no less reactionary Lycurgus went farther he forbade individual possession and tried to absorb the man in the State annihilating liberty the better to preserve equilibrium Hobbes deriving and with great reason legislation from the 用心 爱心 专心6 state of war arrived by another road at the establishment of equality upon an exception despotism His book so much calumniated is only a development of this famous antithesis The charter of 1830 consecrating the insurrection made in 89 by the plebeians against the nobility and decreeing the abstract equality of persons before the law in spite of the real inequality of powers and talents which is the veritable basis of the social system now in force is also but a protest of society in favor of the poor against the rich of the small against the great All the laws of the human race regarding sale purchase hire property loans mortgages prescription inheritance donation wills wives dowries minority guardianship etc etc are real barriers erected by judicial absolutism against the absolutism of force Respect for contracts fidelity to promises the religion of the oath are fictions osselets 2 as the famous Lysander aptly said with which society deceives the strong and brings them under the yoke The tax belongs to that great family of preventive coercive repressive and vindictive institutions which A Smith designated by the generic term police and which is as I have said in its original conception only the reaction of weakness against strength This follows independently of abundant historical testimony which we will put aside to confine ourselves exclusively to economic proof from the distinction naturally arising between taxes All taxes are divisible into two great categories 1 taxes of assessment or of privilege these are the oldest taxes 2 taxes of consumption or of quotit 3 whose tendency is by absorbing the former to make public burdens weigh equally upon all The first sort of taxes including in France the tax on land the tax on doors and windows the poll tax the tax on personal property the tax on tenants license fees the tax on transfers of property the tax on officials fees road taxes and brevets is the share which the sovereign reserves for himself out of all the monopolies which he concedes or tolerates it is as we have said the indemnity of the poor the permit granted to property Such was the form and spirit of the tax in all the old monarchies feudalism was its beau ideal Under that regime the tax was only a tribute paid by the holder to the universal proprietor or sleeping partner commanditaire the king When later by the development of public right royalty the patriarchal form of sovereignty begins to get impregnated by the democratic spirit the tax becomes a quota which each voter owes to the COMMONWEALTH and which instead of falling into the hand of the prince is received into the State treasury In this evolution the principle of the tax remains intact as yet there is no transformation of the institution the real sovereign simply succeeds the figurative sovereign Whether the tax enters into the peculium of the prince or serves to liquidate a common debt it is in either case only a claim of society 用心 爱心 专心7 against privilege otherwise it is impossible to say why the tax is levied in the ratio of fortunes Let all contribute to the public expenses nothing more just But why should the rich pay more than the poor That is just they say because they possess more I confess that such justice is beyond my comprehension One of two things is true either the proportional tax guarantees a privilege to the larger tax payers or else it is a wrong Because if property is a natural right as the Declaration of 93 declares all that belongs to me by virtue of this right is as sacred as my person it is my blood my life myself whoever touches it offends the apple of my eye My income of one hundred thousand francs is as inviolable a the grisette s daily wage of seventy five centimes her attic is no more sacred than my suite of apartments The tax is not levied in proportion to physical strength size or skill no more should it be levied in proportion to property What is Property Chapter II These observations are the more just because the principle which it was their purpose to oppose to that of proportional assessment has had its period of application The proportional tax is much later in history than liege homage which consisted in a simple officious demonstration without real payment The second sort of taxes includes in general all those designated by a sort of antiphrasis by the term indirect s