village community, its nearest realized type, might stil be possible, without involving much permanent loss. It might prove a refuge for the unemployed (not likely to be again employed), for the temporarily unemployed, composed of agricultural labourers and artisans, and for those only casually employed, provided, that is, that they would be willing to go to it voluntarily. But one can see that these are not promising materials for our village community; it would not be an ideal one by any means. Even including agricultural labourers and such artisans as might be willing to take their fortune for a period in it (who would not be of the best kind), it would not be very successful economically. Still they might, under certain conditions, make a living in these villages of refuge, spare the public rates, and save to some extent their own dignity. And something resembling the above, though not modelled on the phalanstery of Fourier, seems to have been the village contemplated and recently described by the Rev. Mr. Mills as a refuge for the unemployed, as well as for the recipient of out-door relief and the casual labourer."

There is, however, this further to be said that if a self-contained, self-sustaining village community would be good, one that did not produce all it needed, but bought from the outside and gave its best products in exchange might be better; from whence it would follow that it might be better to have an association mostly of agricultural labourers, or a mainly agricultu7 For a fuller consideration of Mr. Mills' scheme, see Chapter XI.

'ral village with good farming machinery; the clothes and some other necessaries being bought where cheapest. It could give some employment, no doubt, to inferior artisans, as shoemakers and carpenters, and the like. To this extent, perhaps, the village community might be restored, but it would always be in a state of unstable equilibrium, unless the new recruits were enlisted for at least a twelvemonth without the power of leaving it. This, no doubt, would be a sorry ending for the phalanstery, which was announced with confident gravity by the founder as the one means, without doubt, of making labour attractive, mankind happy, and of introducing once again the Golden Age. To come to a sort of semipauper, semi-penal village community without the Fourierist Palace in the centre, would be a lowering of the phalansterian flag. Or if the palace be insisted on, we shall have a building, half barrack, half workhouse, in which the resemblance to the latter would be only too painfully marked.

V.

THE phalanstery shocked and went to pieces on the large system of production, with which it is incompatible. Universalized, it would impoverish a nation, besides being otherwise impracticable. On the other hand, St. Simonism would destroy individual liberty, would weight the State with endless responsibilities, and the whole details of production, distribution, and transportation. It would besides be a despotism if it could be carried out, and not a beneficent despotism,

considering the weakness and imperfection of men. So objected Louis Blanc to St. Simonism, in his "Organisation du Travail" (1840), whilst bringing forward a scheme of his own, which, he contends, would be at once simple, immediately applicable, and of indefinite extensibility; in fact a full and final solution of the Social Problem.

The large system of production, the large factory and workshop, he saw was necessary. Large capital, too, was necessary, but the large capitalist was not. On the contrary, capitalism—capital in the hands of private individuals, with, as a necessary consequence, unbounded competition, was ruinous for the working classes, and not good for the middle classes, including the capitalists themselves, because the larger capitalists, if sufficiently astute or unscrupulous, can destroy the smaller ones by under-selling, as in fact they constantly did. His own scheme was what is now called co-operative production, with the difference that instead of voluntary effort, he looked to the State to give it its first motion, by advancing the capital without interest, by drawing up the necessary regulations, and by naming the hierarchy of workers for one year, after which the co-operative groups were to elect their own officers. He thought that if a number of these co-operative associations were thus launched State-aided in each of the greater provinces of industry, they could compete successfully with the private capitalist, and would beat him within no very long time. By competition he trusted to drive him out in a moderate time, and without shock to industry in general. But having conquered the capitalist by

competition, he wished competition to cease between the different associations in any given industry; as he expressed it, he would "avail himself of the arm of competition to destroy competition."

The Government, being the founder of the "social workshops," would draw up the statutes which, deliberated on and voted by the national representation, would have the form and power of law. The Government having regulated the hierarchy of functions for the first year, thereafter when the labourers had learned each other's powers from daily contact, and being deeply interested in having the best superiors, "the hierarchy would issue from the elective principle.”

The net proceeds each year would be divided into three parts: the first to be divided equally amongst the members of the association; the second to be devoted partly to the support of the old, the sick, the infirm, partly to the alleviation of crises which would weigh on other industries; the third to furnish “instruments of labour" to those who might wish to join the association, so as to allow of an indefinite extension of the principle.

Each association might also have affiliated to it groups of subordinate workers in connected industries, forming different parts of one whole, obeying the same laws, and deriving the same advantages.

Every member might spend his salary as and where he pleased; but the "evident economy and incontestable excellence of the life in common would give birth to voluntary association for wants and pleasures," and thus the better part of Fourier's scheme would be realized.

Capitalists would be invited into the associations, and would receive the current rate of interest at least, which interest would be guaranteed to them out of the national budget; but they would only participate in the net surplus in the character of workers.

The struggle with private capital would not be long, he thinks; because all the co-operators would have the economic advantages of the life in common, and a great stimulus to produce quickly and well. Nor would the struggle be subversive; because the State would be always present to mitigate the effects of it, and could prevent the products of the social workshop from being offered too cheaply. The co-operators would not act like the strong competitor under the existing régime, who sells at half the price of his competitors, "to ruin them, and remain master of the field of battle." The Government would not be a party to such tactics; and thus the final industrial war between the associations and private enterprise would be shorn of its most disastrous feature for the conquered. There would be no sudden ruin for the private capitalists; they would merely be slowly but surely defeated; and they would soon come to recognize the fact. There would be for the first time "a healthy competition." At present, when the great capitalist declares war on the little capitalist, it is generally accompanied by "fraud, violence, and all the evils that iniquity carries in its train; " but the war between association and capitalism would be carried out" without brutality, without shocks, and with as much clemency as would consist with attaining the desired end, namely, the absorption, successive and pacific, of