There you have the first reason—a wholly philosophical one—for rejecting not only the thing, but the name, property. Here now is the political, the highest reason.
Every social revolution—M. Cousin will tell you—is effected only by the realization of an idea, either political, moral, or religious. When Alexander conquered Asia, his idea was to avenge Greek liberty against the insults of Oriental despotism; when Marius and Caesar overthrew the Roman patricians, their idea was to give bread to the people; when Christianity revolutionized the world, its idea was to emancipate mankind, and to substitute the worship of one God for the deities of Epicurus and Homer; when France rose in ’89, her idea was liberty and equality before the law. There has been no true revolution, says M. Cousin, without its idea; so that where an idea does not exist, or even fails of a formal expression, revolution is impossible. There are mobs, conspirators, rioters, regicides. There are no revolutionists. Society, devoid of ideas, twists and tosses about, and dies in the midst of its fruitless labor.
Nevertheless, you all feel that a revolution is to come, and that you alone can accomplish it. What, then, is the idea which governs you, proletaires of the nineteenth century?—for really I cannot call you revolutionists. What do you think?—what do you believe?—what do you want? Be guarded in your reply. I have read faithfully your favorite journals, your most esteemed authors. I find everywhere only vain and puerile entités; nowhere do I discover an idea.
I will explain the meaning of this word entité—new, without doubt, to most of you.
By entité is generally understood a substance which the imagination grasps, but which is incognizable by the senses and the reason. Thus the soporific power of opium, of which Sganarelle speaks, and the peccant humors of ancient medicine, are entités. The entité is the support of those who do not wish to confess their ignorance. It is incomprehensible; or, as St. Paul says, the argumentum non apparentium. In philosophy, the entité is often only a repetition of words which add nothing to the thought.
For example, when M. Pierre Leroux—who says so many excellent things, but who is too fond, in my opinion, of his Platonic formulas—assures us that the evils of humanity are due to our ignorance of life, M. Pierre Leroux utters an entité; for it is evident that if we are evil it is because we do not know how to live; but the knowledge of this fact is of no value to us.
When M. Edgar Quinet declares that France suffers and declines because there is an antagonism of men and of interests, he declares an entité; for the problem is to discover the cause of this antagonism.
When M. Lamennais, in thunder tones, preaches self-sacrifice and love, he proclaims two entités; for we need to know on what conditions self-sacrifice and love can spring up and exist.
So also, proletaires, when you talk of liberty, progress, and the sovereignty of the people, you make of these naturally intelligible things so many entités in space: for, on the one hand, we need a new definition of liberty, since that of ’89 no longer suffices; and, on the other, we must know in what direction society should proceed in order to be in progress. As for the sovereignty of the people, that is a grosser entité than the sovereignty of reason; it is the entité of entités. In fact, since sovereignty can no more be conceived of outside of the people than outside of reason, it remains to be ascertained who, among the people, shall exercise the sovereignty; and, among so many minds, which shall be the sovereigns. To say that the people should elect their representatives is to say that the people should recognize their sovereigns, which does not remove the difficulty at all.
But suppose that, equal by birth, equal before the law, equal in personality, equal in social functions, you wish also to be equal in conditions.
Suppose that, perceiving all the mutual relations of men, whether they produce or exchange or consume, to be relations of commutative justice—in a word, social relations; suppose, I say, that, perceiving this, you wish to give this natural society a legal existence, and to establish the fact by law—
I say that then you need a clear, positive, and exact expression of your whole idea—that is, an expression which states at once the principle, the means, and the end; and I add that that expression is association.
And since the association of the human race dates, at least rightfully, from the beginning of the world, and has gradually established and perfected itself by successively divesting itself of its negative elements, slavery, nobility, despotism, aristocracy, and feudalism—I say that, to eliminate the last negation of society, to formulate the last revolutionary idea, you must change your old rallying-cries, no more absolutism, no more nobility, no more slaves! into that of no more property! …
But I know what astonishes you, poor souls, blasted by the wind of poverty, and crushed by your patrons’ pride: it is equality, whose consequences frighten you. How, you have said in your journal—how can we “dream of a level which, being unnatural, is therefore unjust? How shall we pay the day’s labor of a Cormenin or a Lamennais?”
Plebeians, listen! When, after the battle of Salamis, the Athenians assembled to award the prizes for
