III. Hierarchy of Bankruptcy
"When a crime becomes very frequent, one gets accustomed to it and witnesses it with indifference. In Italy or Spain people remain quite cool at the sight of a hired assassin stabbing his designated victim and taking refuge in a church, where he enjoys immunity. In Italy one sees fathers mutilate and murder their children to improve their voice, while the servants of 'the God of peace' encourage them to perpetrate these brutalities so as to obtain good singers for their choirs. Such abominations would arouse the indignation of all other civilised nations if they occurred amongst them," but on the other hand they "have other outrageous customs which would make the Italians' blood boil.
"If the customs and opinions within civilisation differ so much from nation to nation, how much more must they differ from one social epoch to another; how hateful would the vices which are tolerated in civilisation seem in less imperfect social stages! One can hardly believe that countries which call themselves well ordered can tolerate for a moment such abominations as bankruptcy.b
"Bankruptcy is the most ingenious and shameless villainy that has ever existed; it guarantees every merchant the ability to rob the public of a sum proportionate to his fortune or his credit, so that a rich man can say: 'I set up as a tradesman in 1808; on such and such a day in the year 1810 I will steal so and so many millions, whoever they may belong to.' "Let us leave aside a present development, the new French code[2 4] and its intention to punish bankruptcy. There is no unanimity in respect of the success of this intention and means of evading the new laws are already being suggested. Therefore we shall first let practice decide and meanwhile base our arguments on already known facts; consider the disorders which result from the philosophical system and the principle: Leave the merchants complete freedom, without demanding any guarantee of the cleverness, the honesty or the solvency of each individual.
"From these arises, alongside other abuses, bankruptcy, a still more heinous robbery than highway robbery. However, people have become accustomed to it and put up with it so well that they even recognise honest bankruptcies—those in which the speculator steals only half.
"Let us go on to a detailed description of this kind of heroism, which was little known in antiquity. Since then it has experienced a brilliant upswing. It presents analysts with a series of developments which testify to our progress towards perfectibility.
Hierarchy of Bankruptcy.—Feature 31.—The Crime* of Trade.—A Free Series in Three Orders, Nine Genera, and Thirty-Six Species[215]
"Right or ascending wing. Light hues.
I. The Innocent.
1) Child bankruptcy. 2) Daredevil bankruptcy. 3) Stealthy bankruptcy. . 4) Posthumous bankruptcy.
II. The Honourable.
5) Goose bankruptcy. 6) Ecstatic bankruptcy. 7) Unprincipled bankruptcy.
III. The Seductive.
8) Amiability bankruptcy. 9) Bankruptcy de bon ton. 10) Amorous bankruptcy. 11) Bankruptcy by favour. 12) Sentimental bankruptcy.
"Centre of the Series. Grandiose Hues.
IV. The Tacticians.
13) Fat bankruptcy. 14) Cosmopolitan bankruptcy. 15) Hopeful bankruptcy. 16) Transcendent bankruptcy. 17) Graded bankruptcy.
VI. The Agitators.
22) Bankruptcy in grand style. 23) Large-scale bankruptcy. 24) Attila bankruptcy.
"Left or Descending Wing. Dirty Hues.
VII. The Cunning Sneakers.
25) Compensation bankruptcy. 26) Bankruptcy out of rank. 27) Crescendo bankruptcy. 28) Godly bankruptcy.
VIII. The Bunglers
29) Fools' bankruptcy. 30) Invalids' bankruptcy. 31) Crushing bankruptcy. 32) Swinish bankruptcy.
IX. The False Brothers.
33) Villains' bankruptcy. 34) Gallows-bird bankruptcy. 35) Fugitive bankruptcy. 36) Bankruptcy for fun.
Endnotes
[24] Doctrinaires—a group of French bourgeois politicians during the Restoration (1815-1830). They were constitutional monarchists, enemies of the democratic and revolutionary movement and wished to unite the bourgeoisie and the nobility. Their ideal was a political system after the English model, formalising these two privileged classes' monopoly of governmental power in opposition to the broad "uneducated" and propertyless sections. The best known Doctrinaires were the historian François Guizot and the philosopher Pierre Paul Royer-Collard. p. 85
[215] In the list of varieties of bankruptcy in Fourier's manuscript the names of bankrupt businessmen were given. But the publishers of the work in La Phalange omitted these, leaving in the subsequent description of each variety only names which were imaginary or borrowed from literary works. Engels himself points this out in a footnote (see p. 638 of this volume).