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Page 1
The Law 173
Capital and Interest.
My object in this treatise is to examine into the real nature of the
Interest of Capital, for the purpose of proving that it is lawful, and
explaining why it should be perpetual. This may appear singular, and
yet, I confess, I am more afraid of being too plain than too obscure. I
am afraid I may weary the reader by a series of mere truisms. But it is
no easy matter to avoid this danger, when the facts with which we have
to deal are known to every one by personal, familiar, and daily
experience.
But, then, you will say, "What is the use of this treatise? Why explain
what everybody knows?"
But, although this problem appears at first sight so very simple, there
is more in it than you might suppose. I shall endeavour to prove this by
an example. Mondor lends an instrument of labour to-day, which will be
entirely destroyed in a week, yet the capital will not produce the less
interest to Mondor or his heirs, through all eternity. Reader, can you
honestly say that you understand the reason of this?
It would be a waste of time to seek any satisfactory explanation from
the writings of economists. They have not thrown much light upon the
reasons of the existence of interest. For this they are not to be
blamed; for at the time they wrote, its lawfulness was not called in
question. Now, however, times are altered; the case is different. Men,
who consider themselves to be in advance of their age, have organised an
active crusade against capital and interest; it is the productiveness of
capital which they are attacking; not certain abuses in the
administration of it, but the principle itself.
A journal has been established to serve as a vehicle for this crusade.
It is conducted by M. Proudhon, and has, it is said, an immense
circulation. The first number of this periodical contains the electoral
manifesto of the _people_. Here we read, "The productiveness of capital,
which is condemned by Christianity under the name of usury, is the true
cause of misery, the true principle of destitution, the eternal obstacle
to the establishment of the Republic."
Another journal, _La Ruche Populaire_, after having said some excellent
things on labour, adds, "But, above all, labour ought to be free; that
is, it ought to be organised in such a manner, _that money-lenders and
patrons, or masters, should not be paid_ for this liberty of labour,
this right of labour, which is raised to so high a price by the
traffickers of men." The only thought that I notice here, is that
expressed by the words in italics, which imply a denial of the right to
interest. The remainder of the article explains it.
It is thus that the democratic Socialist, Thor� expresses himself:--
"The revolution will always have to be recommenced, so long as we occupy
ourselves with consequences only, without having the logic or the
courage to attack the principle itself. This principle is capital, false
property, interest, and usury, which by the old _r�gime_, is made to
weigh upon labour.
"Ever since the aristocrats invented the incredible fiction, _that
capital possesses the power of reproducing itself_, the workers have
been at the mercy of the idle.
"At the end of a year, will you find an additional crown in a bag of one
hundred shillings? At the end of fourteen years, will your shillings
have doubled in your bag?
"Will a work of industry or of skill produce another, at the end of
fourteen years?
"Let us begin, then, by demolishing this fatal fiction."
I have quoted the above, merely for the sake of establishing the fact,
that many persons consider the productiveness of capital a false, a
fatal, and an iniquitous principle. But quotations are superfluous; it
is well known that the people attribute their sufferings to what they
call _the trafficking in man by man_. In fact, the phrase, _tyranny of
capital_, has become proverbial.
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