VII. Conclusion
"When one reflects that bankruptcy is only a single one of the thirty-six features of trade, one finds difficulty in explaining why this so fearful mine of crimes, this mechanism of trade, has not yet been analysed; and that in this century, which is so uncompromising towards the crimes of all classes in society and has made public the crimes of kings and popes.
"When one reads this collection of merchants' filth, one cannot help wondering how it comes that a century which calls itself the friend of lofty truth has been able in all seriousness to grow enthusiastic over this lying trade, arguing that after all one cannot do without trade; as if for that reason one must accept fraud and theft such as those which we have listed in one single crime of trade, namely bankruptcy.
"However, let us finish what we have to say about this. "The saying that justice sends only petty thieves to the gallows is proved false in trade. The bankrupt, even the smallest, evades prosecution, protected by the merchants themselves. We saw that under the last category (false brothers), which is that of miniature bankrupts.
"It would be vain to quote the punishment of a few fraudulent bankrupts; ninety-nine manage to get away with it, and if the hundredth fails he must be a stupid devil and not know how to pursue his intrigue. For the operation is so simple nowadays that the old precautionary measures have long ago been forgotten. Formerly a bankrupt used to flee to Trient, Liège or Carouge, but since the rebirth of 1789 this custom has been abandoned. Everybody now goes bankrupt en famille. The matter is quietly prepared, and when it explodes, one goes for a month to the country, to the intimacy of one's relatives and friends;
the notary meanwhile puts everything in order. After a few weeks one reappears, and the public is so accustomed to this kind of story that it regards it as a pleasant joke; it is called 'being confined' and one says quite dispassionately: 'So-and-so is back, he has just had his confinement.'
"I have noted that bankruptcy is the only social crime which becomes epidemical and forcibly carries the honest man along the road of the scoundrel. If to bankruptcy we add stockjobbing and so many other infamies, we shall find that I was right when I affirmed that civilised people had never committed so many political follies as since they plunged into trade. Never have the philosophers, who dream of nothing but counterbalance and guarantees, thought of providing the social body with the guarantee which governments, judiciously enough, demand of their fiscal agents! A prince assures himself of the rectitude of his treasurer by means of a cash security and the prospect of inevitable punishment if he were to dare risk or squander the public monies deposited with him. Why does it" not happen that the collectors of public monies appropriate the revenues from taxes and write letters of lamentation to the government saying: The misfortunes of the times, the critical circumstances, the deplorable accidents, etc., in a word, I have gone bankrupt, insolvent, or whatever you call it. Your treasury should contain ten million; I offer you half of that sum, five million, payable in five years. Allow yourself to be moved by the misfortune of a lamentable treasurer, maintain me in your confidence and the administration of your treasury, without which I am not even able to pay you the half which I now offer you; but if you leave me my position and my income, I shall endeavour to discharge my obligations towards you honourably, that is, to treat you to a second bankruptcy as soon as the treasury is full again.
"Such in brief is the content of all bankrupts' letters. If treasurers do not follow this example, it is because they know that no philosophical theory can save them from the punishment which the bankrupt evades — under the protection of the principle: 'Leave the merchants complete r~eedom without demanding any guarantee against their machinations.'"
* * *
So writes Fourier. The continuation of this article in the second issue of the Phalange contains three chapters on Stock Exchange operations, speculative purchase (accaparement) and parasitism, the greater part of which, however, has already been reprinted in the
Quatre mouvements.222 Partly for this reason, partly because the fragment given above is fully adequate for my purpose, I break it off here.
Let the learned German Herren, who so zealously sail the "stormy sea" of bottomless3 theories, and above all fish for the "principle" of "socialism", follow the example of the commis marchand* Fourier. Fourier was no philosopher, he had a great hatred of philosophy and savagely ridiculed it in his writings and in this connection said a multitude of things which our German "philosophers of socialism" would do well to take to heart. True, they will object that Fourier, too, was abstract, that by means of his series he speculatively constructed God and the world in defiance of Hegel, but that will not save them. Fourier's eccentricities, which are, after all, products of genius, are no excuse for the boring so-called systematic expositions of arid German theory. Fourier speculatively constructs the future, after correctly understanding the past and the present; German theory first of all ar-ranges past history according to its liking and then prescribes to the future, too, what direction it should take. Compare, for example, Fourier's epochs of social development (savagery, patriarchate, barbarism, civilisation) and his characterisation of them with Hegel's Absolute Idea, which laboriously makes its way through the labyrinth of history and despite the four world empires223 at the end, but still grunting and groaning, achieves the semblance of a trichotomy — not to speak of the post-Hegelian speculative constructions. For, although Hegel's speculative construction still made some sense, even if it is turned upside-down, that of the post-Hegelian system manufacturers no longer makes any sense at all. It is truly high time that the Germans at last stopped making such a fuss about their thoroughness. With a few meagre data they are capable not only of concocting any kind of theory, but also of linking it with world history. On the basis of the first fact that happens to reach them at third hand, concerning which they do not even know at all whether it occurred in such and such a way or some other, they will prove to you that it must have occurred in this particular way and no other. Has anyone in Germany written on social questions without also saying something about Fourier by which German thoroughness has most thoroughly exposed itself to ridicule! Among them is a Herr Kaiser,3 who immediately used "L. Stein's excellent work" b for a world-historic speculative construction, the only pity about which is that all the facts it is based on are false. German theory has already at least twenty times allotted Fourier his "place in the development of the Absolute Idea"— each time a different place — and each time German theory relied for the facts on Herr Stein or other dubious sources. For this very reason, too, German "absolute socialism" is such terribly poor stuff. A little "humanitarianism", as the thing is called nowadays, a little "realisation" of this humanitarianism or, rather, monstros-ity, a very little about property from Proudhon — at third or fourth hand — a little moaning about the proletariat, and a little about the organisation of labour and wretched associations for raising the lower classes of the people224 — together with boundless ignorance of political economy and the real character of society — that is the sum total of all this "socialism", which moreover loses its last drop of blood, the last trace of energy and strength through its non-partisanship in matters of theory, its "absolute tranquillity of thought". And with this tedious stuff they want to revolutionise Germany, set the proletariat in motion, and make the masses think and act!
If our German half or fully communist university lecturers had only taken the trouble to have a look at Fourier's main writings, which after all are as easy for them to obtain as any German book — what a treasure-trove of material for speculative construction and other uses they would have found in them! What a mass of new ideas — still new for Germany even today — would have offered itself to them there! Up to now these good people find nothing to reproach present-day society with except the condition of the proletariat, and even about that they are not capable of saying very much. Of course, the condition of the proletariat is the main point, but does that exhaust the criticism of present-day society? Fourier, who, except in his later works, hardly touches on this point at all, provides the proof that even without it existing society can be seen to be thoroughly reprehensible, and that by criticism of the bourgeoisie alone — namely of the bourgeoisie in its inner relationships, apart from its attitude to the proletariat— one can arrive at the necessity of a social reconstruction. For this aspect of criticism, Fourier up to now remains unique. Fourier inexorably exposes the hypocrisy of respectable society, the contradiction between its theory and its practice, the dullness of its entire mode of life; he ridicules its philosophy, its striving for perfection de la perfectibilité perfectibilisante* and auguste véritéb; he ridicules its "pure morality", its uniform social institutions, and contrasts all this with its practice, le doux commerce, which he criticises in a masterly manner, its dissolute delights which are no delights, its organisation of adultery in marriage, its general chaos. All these are aspects of contemporary society which have never yet been mentioned in Germany. True, there has been talk here and there about free love, about the position of woman and her emancipation; but what has been the result? A few confused phrases, a few blue-stockings, a little hysteria and a good deal of moaning about the German family — not even one bastard came out of it!
Let the Germans first acquaint themselves with the social movement abroad, both practical and literary — the practical movement includes the whole of English and French history during the last eighty years, English industry and the French Revolution — let them then do as much as their neighbours as regards practice and literature, and only after that will the time have come to raise such idle questions as that of the greater or lesser achievement of the various nations. But by then there will no longer be any audience for these sophistical disquisitions.
Until then it would be best for the Germans above all to acquaint themselves with what has been achieved abroad. All the books about this that have so far appeared are without exception bad. Anyhow, brief summaries of that kind can at best give only a criticism of those works, not the works themselves. The latter are partly rare and unobtainable in Germany, partly too voluminous, and in part mixed with matters which are now only of historical or literary interest and no longer interest the German public of 1845. To make available those works, the valuable contents of which are even now still new for Germany, requires a selection and editorial treatment such as the French, being in such matters also much more practical than we are, carry out in respect of all material coming to them from abroad. Such editions of the epoch-making socialist literature from abroad will shortly begin to be published. A number of German Communists, among them the best brains of the movement, who could just as easily produce works of their own, have joined in this undertaking,225 which, it is to be hoped, will show the wise German theoreticians that all their wisdom is old stuff, the pros and cons of which have already been thoroughly discussed on the other side of the Rhine and the English Channel long ago. Only after they have seen what was done before them will they have an opportunity to show what they themselves can do.
Brussels AND NATIONAL TRADES' JOURNAL.
VOL. VIII. NO. 409. LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13.1845. """V