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Natura non facit saltum

Let us sto

p here a moment and glance over the journey we have just made. We will note two limits within which almost all of the certain knowledge that is accorded to our natural intelligence is concentrated, so to speak. [34] One of those limits, our point of departure, is the idea of ourselves, which leads to that of the Omnipotent Being, and of our principal duties. The other is that part of mathematics whose object is the general properties of bodies, of extension and magnitude. Between these two boundaries is an immense gap where the Supreme Intelligence seems to have tried to tantalize the human curiosity, as much by the innumerable clouds it has spread there as by the rays of light that seem to break out at intervals to attract us. One can compare the universe to certain works of a sublime obscurity whose authors occasionally bend down within reach of their reader, seeking to persuade him that he understands nearly all. We are indeed fortunate if we do not lose the true route when we enter this labyrinth! Otherwise the flashes of light which should direct us along the way would often serve only to lead us further from it. The limited quantity of certain knowledge upon which we can rely, relegated (if one can express oneself this way) to the two extremities of space to which we refer, is far indeed from being sufficient to satisfy all our needs. The nature of man, the study of which is so necessary and so highly recommended by Socrates, is an impenetrable mystery for man himself when he is enlightened by reason alone; and the greatest geniuses, after considerable reflection upon this most important matter, too often succeed merely in knowing a little less about it than the rest of men. The same may be said of our existence, present and future, of the essence of the Being to whom we owe it, and of the kind of worship he requires of us. Thus, nothing is more necessary than a revealed Religion, which may instruct us concerning so many diverse objects. Designed to serve as a supplement to natural knowledge, it shows us part of what was hidden, but it restricts itself to the things which are absolutely necessary for us to know. The rest is closed for us and apparently will be forever. A few truths to be believed, a small number of precepts to be practiced: such are the essentials to which revealed Religion is reduced. Nevertheless, thanks to the enlightenment it has communicated to the world, the common people themselves are more solidly grounded and confident on a large number of questions of interest than the sects  [35] of the philosophers have been.

The advantage men

found in enlarging the sphere of their ideas, whether by their own efforts or by the aid of their fellows, made them think that it would be useful to reduce to an art the very manner of acquiring information and of reciprocally communicating their own ideas. This art was found and named Logic. It teaches how to arrange ideas in the most natural order, how to link them together in the most direct sequence, how to break up those which include too large a number of simple ideas, how to view ideas in all their facets, and finally how to present them to others in a form that makes them easy to grasp. This is what constitutes this science of reasoning, which is rightly considered the key to all our knowledge. However, it should not be thought that it [the formal discipline of Logic] belongs among the first in the order of discovery. The art of reasoning is a gift which Nature bestows of her own accord upon men of intelligence, and it can be said that the books which treat this subject are hardly useful except to those who can get along without them. People reasoned validly long before Logic, reduced to principles, taught how to recognize false reasonings, and sometimes even how to cloak them in a subtle and deceiving form. [38]

Too much communication can sometimes benumb the mind and prejudice the efforts of which it is capable. If one observes the prodigies of some of those born blind, or deaf and mute, one will see what the faculties of the mind can perform if they are lively and called into action by difficulties which must be overcome.

The science of communication of ideas is not confined to putting order in ideas themselves. In addition it should teach how to express each idea in the clearest way possible, and consequently how to perfect the signs that are designed to convey it; and indeed this is what men have gradually done.

The general system of the sciences and the arts is a sort of labyrinth, a tortuous road which the intellect enters without quite knowing what direction to take. Impelled, first of all, by its needs and by those of the body to which it is united, the intelligence studies the first objects that present themselves to it. It delves as far as it can into the knowledge of these objects, soon meets difficulties that obstruct it, and whether through hope or even through despair of surmounting them, plunges on to a new route; now it retraces its footsteps, sometimes crosses the first barriers only to meet new ones; and passing rapidly from one object to another, it carries through a sequence of operations on each of them at different intervals, as if by jumps. The discontinuity of these operations is a necessary effect of the very generation of ideas. However philosophic this disorder may be on the part of the soul, [57] an encyclopedic tree which attempted to portray it would be disfigured, indeed utterly destroyed.

It is only after having considered their particular and palpable properties that we envisaged their general and common properties and created Metaphysics and Geometry by intellectual abstraction. Only after the long usage of the first signs have we perfected the art of these signs to the point of making a science of them. And it is only after a long sequence of operations on the objects of our ideas that, through reflection, we have at length given rules to these operations themselves.

nature of the different minds that determines which route is chosen

In order to avoid the inconvenience of such situations, every prudent man in every period of society, after the first establishment of the division of labor, must naturally have endeavored to manage his affairs in such a manner as to have at all times by him, besides the peculiar produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of some one commodity or other, such as he imagined few people would be likely to refuse in exchange for their produce....It is in this manner that money has become in all civilized nations the universal instrument of commerce, by the intervention of which goods of all kinds are bought and sold, or exchanged for one another....

The value of any commodity,

is equal to the quantity of labor which it enables him to purchase or command

Labor, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities....

The real price of everything

is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.

which resolves itself into labor

resolves itself into rent

resolves itself into profit

ordinary or average rate both of wages and profit

partly by the general circumstances of the society,

partly by the particular nature of each employment

ordinary or average rate of rent

partly by the general circumstances of the society or neighborhood in which the land is situated,

partly by the natural or improved fertility of the land

When the price of any commodity is neither more nor less than what is sufficient to pay the rent of the land, the wages of the labor, and the profits of the stock employed in raising, preparing, and bringing it to market, according to their natural rates, the commodity is then sold for what may be called its natural price.

The actual price at which any commodity is commonly sold is called its market price

he market price of every particular commodity is regulated by the proportion between the quantity which is actually brought to market, and the demand of those who are willing to pay the natural price of the commodity, or the whole value of the rent, labor, and profit, which must be paid in order to bring it thither.

A competition will immediately begin among them, and the market price will rise more or less above the natural price, according as either the greatness of the deficiency, or the wealth and wanton luxury of the competitors, happen to animate more or less the eagerness of the competition.

quantity brought to market exceeds the effectual demand

A monopoly granted either to an individual or to a trading company has the same effect as a secret in trade or manufactures.

When by an increase in the effectual demand, the market price of some particular commodity happens to rise a good deal above the natural price, those who employ their stocks in supplying that market are generally careful to conceal this change

The exclusive privileges of corporations, statutes of apprenticeship, and all those laws which restrain, in particular employments, the competition to a smaller number than might otherwise go into them, have the same tendency, though in a less degree. They are a sort of enlarged monopolies,

THE produce of labor constitutes the natural recompense or wages of labor.

Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of their labor.....

Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labor even below this rate

The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, necessarily increases with the increase of the revenue and stock of every country, and cannot possibly increase without it. The increase of revenue and stock is the increase of national wealth....

It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged

First, by restraining the competition in some employments to a smaller number than would otherwise be disposed to enter into them; Second, by increasing it in others beyond what it naturally would be; and, Third, by obstructing the free circulation of labor and stock, both from employment to employment and from place to place.

First,

by restraining the competition in some employments to a smaller number than might otherwise be disposed to enter into them

and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbor is a plain violation of this most sacred property.

An exclusive corporation necessarily weakens the force of this discipline.

Second,

by increasing the competition in some employments beyond what it naturally would be

by obstructing the free circulation of labor and stock both from employment to employment, and from place to place,

Third,

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.

but the abolition of bourgeois property.

Abolition of private property

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

, that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer.

allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.

By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.

It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.

bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness;

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty

But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social. And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.?

Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.

to freedom of commerce, to the world market,

The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.

In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.

The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

traditional property relations

traditional ideas

to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

State

exclusive monopol

State.

State;

public