He will say
that the State is bound to protect and encourage his industry; he will
plead that it is a good thing for the State to be enriched, that it may
spend the more, and thus shower down salaries upon the poor workmen.
Take care not to listen to this sophistry, for it is just by the
systematising of these arguments that legal plunder becomes
systematised.
And this is what has taken place. The delusion of the day is to enrich
all classes at the expense of each other; it is to generalise plunder
under pretence of organising it. Now, legal plunder may be exercised in
an infinite multitude of ways. Hence come an infinite multitude of plans
for organisation; tariffs, protection, perquisites, gratuities,
encouragements, progressive taxation, gratuitous instruction, right to
labour, right to profit, right to wages, right to assistance, right to
instruments of labour, gratuity of credit, &c., &c. And it is all these
plans, taken as a whole, with what they have in common, legal, plunder,
which takes the name of socialism.
Now socialism, thus defined, and forming a doctrinal body, what other
war would you make against it than a war of doctrine? You find this
doctrine false, absurd, abominable. Refute it. This will be all the more
easy, the more false, the more absurd and the more abominable it is.
Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out of your
legislation every particle of socialism which may have crept into
it,--and this will be no light work.
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