K. Marx. The French Crédit Mobilier. II
V»- XVI N°- 4,797. NEW-YORK, TUESDAY. JUNE 24, 1866. PRICE TWO CENTS.
K. Marx. The French Crédit Mobilier. II
[il]
It should be recollected that Bonaparte made his coup d'état on two diametrically opposite pretenses: on the one hand proclaiming it was his mission to save the bourgeoisie and "material order" from the Red anarchy to be let loose in May, 1852 [17]; and on the other hand, to save the working people from the middle-class despotism concentrated in the National Assembly. Besides, there was the personal necessity of paying his own debts and those of the respectable mob of the Society of the Dix Décembre,[16] and of enriching himself and them at the joint expense of bourgeoisie and workmen. The mission of the man, it must be avowed, was beset by conflicting difficulties; forced as he was to appear simultaneously as the robber and as the patriarchal benefactor of all classes. He could not give to the one class without taking from the other, and he could not satisfy his own wants and those of his followers without robbing both. In the time of the Fronde [19] the Duc de Guise was said to be the most obliging man of France, because he had transformed all his estates into obligations held by his partisans. Thus Bonaparte also proposed to become the most obliging man of France, by converting all the property and all the industry of France into a personal obligation toward Louis Bonaparte. To steal France in order to buy France — that was the great problem the man had to solve, and in this transaction of taking from France what was to be given back to France, not the least important side to him was the percentage to be skimmed off by himself and the Society of December Tenth. How were these contradictory pretenses to be reconciled? how was this nice economical problem to be solved? how this knotty point to be untwined? All the varied past experience of Bonaparte pointed to the one great resource that had carried him over the most difficult economical situations — Credit. And there happened to be in France the school of St. Simon, which in its beginning and in its decay deluded itself with the dream that all the antagonism of classes must disappear before the creation of universal wealth by some new-fangled scheme of public credit. And St. Simonism in this form had not yet died out at the epoch of the coup d'état. There was Michel Chevalier, the economist of the Journal des Débats; there was Proudhon, who tried to disguise the worst portion of the St. Simonist doctrine under the appearance of eccentric originality; and there were two Portuguese Jews, practically connected with stockjobbing and Rothschild, who had sat at the feet of the Père Enfantin, and who with their practical experience had the boldness to suspect stockjobbing behind Socialism, Law behind St. Simon. These men — Emile and Isaac Péreire — are the founders of the Crédit Mobilier, and the initiators of Bonapartist Socialism.
It is an old proverb, "Habent sua fata libelli. "a Doctrines have also their fate as well as books. St. Simon to become the guardian angel of the Paris Bourse, the prophet of swindling, the Messiah of general bribery and corruption! History exhibits no example of a more cruel irony, save, perhaps, St. Just realized by the juste milieu" of Guizot, and Napoleon by Louis Bonaparte.
Events march swifter than man's consideration. While we, from an investigation of its principles and economical conditions, are pointing at the unavoidable crash foreboded by the very constitution of the Crédit Mobilier, history is already at work realizing our predictions. On the last of May, one of the Directors of the Crédit Mobilier, M. Place, failed for the sum of ten millions of francs, having only a few days before been "presented to the Emperor by M. de Morny" as one of the dieux de la finance. Les dieux s'en vont!c
Almost on the same day the Moniteur published the new law on the Sociétés en commandite? which, on pretense of putting a check on the speculative fever, places those societies at the mercy of the
Crédit Mobilier by making their formation dependent on the will of the government or of the Crédit Mobilier. And the. English press, ignorant of even the existence of a difference, between
Sociétés en commandite and Sociétés anonymes,"(1) to which latter the former are thus sacrificed, goes into ecstacies at this great "prudential act" of Bonapartist wisdom, imagining that French speculators will soon be speedily brought round to the solidity of the English Sadleirs, Spaders and Palmers. At the same time the law of drainage just passed by the famous Corps Législatif,[20] and which is a direct infraction of all former legislation and the Code Napoleon, sanctions the expropriation of the mortgagors of the land, in favor of the government of Bonaparte, who by this machinery proposes to seize on the land, as by the Crédit Mobilier
he is seizing on the industry, and by the Bank of France on the commerce of France; and all this to save property from the dangers of Socialism!
Meanwhile we do not think it superfluous to continue our examination of the Crédit Mobilier, an institution which, we think, is destined yet to enact achievements of which the above are but small beginnings.
We have seen that the first function of the Crédit Mobilier consists in affording capital to such industrial concerns as are carried on by anonymous societies. We quote from the report of M. Isaac Péreire:
"The Crédit Mobilier acts, with regard to the values representing industrial capital, a part analogous to the functions discharged by discount banks with regard to the values representing commercial capital. The first duty of this society is to support the development of national industry, to facilitate the formation of great enterprises which, abandoned to themselves, meet with great obstacles. Its mission in this respect will be more easily fulfilled, as it disposes of various means of information and research that escape the grasp of private individual for soundly appreciating the real value or prospects of undertakings appealing to its aid. In prosperous times our society will be a guide for capital anxious to find profitable employment; in difficult movements it is destined to offer precious resources for the maintenance of labor, and the moderation of the crises which result from a rash contraction of capitals. The pains which our society will take to invest its capital in all affairs only in such proportions and for such limited terms as will permit of a safe withdrawal, will enable it to multiply its action, to fructify in a small space of time a great number of enterprises, and to diminish the risks of its concurrence by the multiplicity of partial commandités" (investments in shares).(2)
Having seen in what manner Isaac develops the ideas of Bonaparte, it becomes important also to see the manner in which Bonaparte comments upon the ideas of Isaac, a comment which may be found in the Report addressed to him by the Minister of the Interior(3) on June 21, 1854, with respect to the principles and the administration of the Crédit Mobilier:
"Among all the establishments of credit existing in the world, the Banque de France is justly considered that which boasts of the most solid constitution;"
so solid that the slight storm of February, 1848, had borne it down in a day, but for the prop afforded it by Ledru-Rollin and Co.; for not only did the Provisional Government suspend the obligation of the Banque de France to pay its notes in cash, and thus roll back the tide of note and bondholders blocking up its avenues, but empowered it to issue notes of 50 francs, while it had never been permitted under Louis Philippe to issue less than 500 franc notes; and not only did they thus cover the insolvent Banque by their credit, but in addition they pledged the State forests to the Banque for the privilege of obtaining credit for the State.
"The Banque de France is at the same time a support and a guide for our commerce, and its material and moral influence gives to our market a very precious stability."
This stability is such that the French have a regular industrial crisis each time when America and England condescend only to a little smash in their commerce.
"By the reserve and prudence which direct all its operations, this admirable institution fulfills, therefore, the part of a regulator; but the commercial genius, to generate all the wonders it carries in its womb, wants, above all things, to be stimulated; and precisely because speculation is restrained in France in the strictest limits, there existed no inconvenience, but on the contrary a great advantage, in putting alongside of the Banque de France an establishment conceived in quite a different order of ideas, and which should represent in the sphere of industry and commerce the spirit of initiative.
"The model for this establishment happily existed already; it is derived from a country celebrated by its severe loyalty, the prudence and solidity presiding over all its commercial operations. By placing at the disposition of all sound ideas and useful enterprises its capital, its credit, and its moral authority, the General Society of the Netherlands has multiplied in Holland canals, drainage, and a thousand other improvements which have raised the value of property a hundred fold. Why should not France likewise profit by an institution the advantages of which have been demonstrated by so dazzling an experience? This is the thought which determined the creation of the Credit Mobilier, authorized by the decree of 18th Nov., 1852.
"According to the terms of its statutes this Society can, among other operations, buy and sell public effects or industrial shares, lend and borrow on them as securities, contract for public loans, and in a word, issue its paper at long dates, to the account of the values thus acquired.
"It has thus the means in hand of summoning and combining at any moment, under advantageous conditions, considerable wealth. In the good use it may make of these capitals the fertility of the institution resides. Indeed, the Society may arbitrarily invest in (commanditer) industry, take an interest in enterprises, participate in operations of a long term, which the constitution of the Banque de France and of the Discount Office forbids these establishments to do; in one word, it is free in its movements, and may change its action just as the wants of commercial credit require it. If it knows how, among the enterprises constantly brought forth, to distinguish the fruitful; if by the timely intervention of the immense funds which it has the disposition of, it enables works to be carried out' highly productive in themselves, but absorbing an unusual duration, and otherwise languishing; if its concurrence be the sure index of a useful idea or a well-conceived project, the Society of the Crédit Mobilier will deserve and win the public approbation; floating capital will seek its channels and direct itself in mass whithersoever the patronage of the Society indicates a guarantied employ. Thus, by the power of example, and by authority which will become attached to its support, more even than by any material aid, this Society will be the cooperator of all ideas of general utility. Thus it will powerfully encourage the efforts of industry, and stimulate everywhere the spirit of invention.""
We shall take an early occasion to show how all these high-flowing phrases conceal but feebly the plain scheme of dragging all the industry of France into the whirlpool of the Paris Bourse, and to make it the tennis-ball of the gentlemen of the
Crédit Mobilier, and of their patron Bonaparte.
Endnotes
[17] In May 1852 Louis Bonaparte's presidential powers were to expire and, according to the Constitution of the French Republic of 1848, new elections were to be held on the second Sunday in May. In view of this the Bonapartists began to prepare a coup d'état in the second half of 1851. They launched a propaganda campaign trying to intimidate the man in the street with the possible victory of democrats and socialists and with the anarchy which, they claimed, would set in if "the red spectre" was victorious.
[16] Louis Bonaparte was nicknamed "the Little" by Victor Hugo in a speech in the Legislative Assembly in November 1851; the nickname became popular after the publication of Hugo's pamphlet Napoléon le Petit (1852).
[19] The Fronde, a movement in France against the absolutist regime from 1648 to 1653, involved various social sections — from radical peasant and plebeian elements and the bourgeoisie in opposition to high-ranking officials and aristocrats — which in many cases pursued opposite aims. The defeat of the Fronde led to the strengthening of absolutism.
[20] !0 The Corps Législatif was established, alongside the State Council and the Senate, under the Constitution of February 14, 1852, after the Bonapartist coup d'état of 1851. Its powers were confined to endorsing bills drawn up by the State Council. The Corps Législatif was an elected body. However, the elections were supervised by state officials and the police, so that a majority obedient to the government was ensured. In fact it served as a screen for Napoleon Ill's unlimited powers.