The Revolution of 1789 was raised against God and against the king in order to institute liberty, but even more for the abolition of privileges, with the promise of Equality for all. Economic liberalism made much of guaranteeing this equality of opportunity and of wealth through the full freedom of the market. Alas, it soon became obvious that this purely theoretical declaration of the "rights of economic man" was a snare. The real strengths of the partners were far too unequal for their profits not to be even more unequal. The profits were absolutely disproportionate to their vital needs, as also to the importance or merit of their respective contributions, the effort made, the risks incurred, the competence and the courage displayed. It appeared that the free play of supply and demand inexorably profited the rich, who grew richer still, even if it did not pauperise the poor to the same extent, as has been claimed.
1. Socialism is primarily a claim to equality in the distribution of goods acquired through human labour. With the proclamation of political democracy, which consists in the equality of social rights, economic democracy, which consists in the equality of material goods, must normally follow and be maintained through the play of economic freedom. Noting the growing inequality between the capitalist and working classes, socialism denounces this injustice as the hidden vice of the liberal system. This is what gives it its passionate character, its justice-loving tone, its breath of generosity. It pleads on behalf of the poor, who are abused, robbed and exploited by the rich.
2. Socialism, in its origin, is of Methodist inspiration. The Anglican Church, "the Established Church", had for too long preached that wealth, according to the Bible, was the certain sign of divine blessing. It was thus compromised with the owning classes, covering up the exploitation of the poor with the cloak of religion. As a reaction against this, Methodism preached another biblical lesson – although of an equally judaic, terrestrial and carnal spirit – announcing salvation to the poor and calling on them to throw off the oppressions of a bad world, pointing them towards a kingdom to come where virtue alone will guarantee the prosperity of all in universal justice and equality.
3. Socialism defines itself as a popular uprising of the masses, a romantic uprising, whose strength resides in the prophetism of its leaders and the utopia of a better world. In vain do its adversaries denounce its "fundamental irrationality". The primary socialist intuition of the hidden disorder, of the trick of the liberal system, is absolutely lucid. Then, it is true, it becomes confused in its search for the causes of the injustice it denounces; it loses its way dreaming of solutions that are just as materialist and liberal, but which are supposed to be innocent, egalitarian and fraternal.
1. In order at last to establish equality, the socialists attack private property, which they regard as the primary cause of all the evils of capitalist society. They advocate its suppression. "The real and complete destruction of every means of exploitation of man by man presupposes the advent of economic democracy, whose starting point remains the collective appropriation of the major means of production, of investment and of exchange." (F. Mitterrand) Neo-socialism also incriminates all private power involving the management of enterprises, the direction of investments and future planning. For a modern socialist a real economic democracy presupposes the collective appropriation of both the major and minor means of production, capital and land. It also presupposes the management of business by the workers – at all levels, right to the very top – and the management of the national economy by the whole people.
This is a blow to the heart of capitalism. The alarm of those who support the capitalist system, as they witness the approach of a socialist revolution, is sufficient indication that the analysis is correct which sees in private property and in the power of decision it confers, the means of exercising pressure that distorts the freedom of the market in a supposedly liberal economy.
2. But equality of goods demands a just sharing out of wealth and a continual redistribution of revenues. This new socialist demand leads to a condemnation of the market and envisages its radical suppression. As a corollary of this, it demands the suppression of money and ultimately the extirpation of the very idea of profit from the heart of man. Then men will no longer have the ties of the market between them; they will no longer be led by selfish interest, but by the sense of collective interest; the "convivial society" (Ivan Illitch), which is the socialist ideal, will appear.
This time it is more than capitalism that is condemned. It is economic life itself which is doomed to disappear, stricken in its essential structure, the market, in its fluid element, money, and in its primary motivator, individual interest. When one thinks that, of all the natural and traditional human relationships on which convivial communities are based, the market was the only social relationship preserved by the liberal revolution, one wonders what will be left when the socialist revolution suppresses it!
3. In the meanwhile, it is clearly proved that capitalist evil is consubstantial with revolutionary economic liberalism, since socialism, in order to destroy money, is forced to close the market, the last remaining social regulator. This is the ultimate solution, one that falls into absurdity. Yet, although disqualified in the forum where its radical injustice is patent, capitalism regains its advantage in the market – the inevitable market! – by challenging the socialists to feed the people as well or better than it does. It asks them by what means they can do this.
Socialism is only able to shine when it is in electoral and parliamentary opposition, where it can be fruitful without risk. If for a time it takes power, it tries to appear in a good light by distributing and squandering what conservative governments before it had saved. Distant from its political and economic responsibilities and immersed in administrative matters and trade unions, it feeds on dreams and builds utopian model societies, where men no longer have passions to master or bodies to feed. As for economic structures, production mechanisms and exchange controls, nothing! When urged to act, it calls on the State.
1. Socialism, if ever it emerges from romanticism, takes on the form of political totalitarianism. It thus rediscovers – beyond the unjust interlude of a bourgeois era when the revolution had been confiscated to the sole advantage of the capitalist oligarchy – the great charter of 1789, of an integral democracy, where the people administer their own justice, govern themselves and see to their own administration through the State they have set up. The State, the emanation of the people, governing on behalf of the people, is the nation’s infallible protector and manager. The error and the crime of the bourgeoisie was to take from the State all economic power, so that it thereafter fell into the hands of the unjust. Socialism restores all power to the State. It is perfectly logical and follows from a democratic blind faith.
It thus rids itself of all otiose questions concerning the future workings of the free, egalitarian and fraternal socialist society!
The justice-dispensing State accedes to the peoples’ demands. It suppresses private property and all private power of economic control. The proprietor State becomes the administrator of public wealth and, as the only social power, it manages all economic activity. The sense of the general interest, which the democratic State possesses by definition, gives it competence and prudence. It is therefore the perfect replacement for the whole delicate mechanism of the free market and its subtle regulation by the capitalist class. No more financial speculation, no more pursuit of the maximum profit, no more free play of supply and demand, no more competition, and no more anarchic free enterprise! State control is perfect. A bureaucracy of functionaries gathers and classifies information and determines the real needs of the collectivity. A state technocracy fixes the objectives and modes of production by means of a series of plans, which ensure the exact satisfaction of people’s needs, without shortage, without excess and without waste.
If the capitalists are demons and the State is a god, it is certain that state capitalism is preferable to private capitalism.
1. In all liberal societies, the "quiet Revolution" is the work of governments that are openly socialist or impregnated with the socialist theses. Reacting against the capitalist ethic of maximum profit, enterprise, risk, competition and brazen inequality, it spreads a feeling of suspicion and of envy, paralysing the rich and making them feel guilty, whilst inciting the claims and pride of the poor. Big capitalism is in no way affected or touched by this; it simply conceals its profits and its power. Small and medium properties and businesses are directly affected; they are discouraged from taking any initiative, arrested in their development, and tightly controlled and pressurised by the tax authorities. The masses of bureaucrats and salaried employees, on the other hand, will see their rights and claims grow in proportion to their feeble output or their lack of usefulness. At the bottom of the scale, however, nothing has changed. If the rich become still richer, the poorest, excluded from the socialist redistribution, are made even poorer by collectivisation and inflation.
The failure of Swedish socialism is instructive, after its alleged success had created such enthusiasm. Soft socialism is the place of despair.
2. A gigantic and tentacular bureaucracy, recruited from among the socialist electorate, duplicates within the administration of the State the hierarchised organisation of capitalist technocracy. And lo, now we have two administrative monsters, rather than just the one, to devour the nation’s substance together.
The remaining virtues still encouraged by capitalism, hard work, savings, invention and personal involvement, are corrupted, and nothing is left of the previous man or of modern economic man but a grasping and contentious consumer.
3. The marxist revolution, which alone goes the whole way, has the advantage of dispelling outright the socialist illusion; the disadvantage is that, once installed, it is here to stay. It makes the peoples taste the experience of freedom and equality for all: it tastes of famine and death. It then makes the peoples climb back to life at the price of sacrificing their illusions. The State-Party, the State-Boss, the universal State-Profiteer guarantee for themselves the monopoly of wealth and of freedom, granting the peoples the order and peace of total slavery.
The faults of the system are too well known: the rigidity and sclerosis of its structures, a lack of adaptation to supply and demand, excesses here and shortages there, the black market, misappropriation of funds at every stage, and irresponsibility. And in order to combat the temptations of misery and despair, there arise ideological pressures, xenophobia, and skilful terror tactics that despatch the reactionary elements to the concentration camps or death. Socialism is hell.
The inadequacies and blemishes of socialism are evident for all to see. An unjust capitalism cannot be remedied by state control, which adds incompetence and negligence to injustice. And to claim that "the dictatorship of the proletariat" will lead to "the classless society", controlled and self-managing, is as great a lie as that of liberalism, which claims that "capitalist concentration" is the best way towards abundance and freedom for all.
Even so, socialism seeks and finds – nothing very much, but it is a whole world! – the remedy to the capitalist evil. This proudhonian French socialism – "socialism with a human face" and "mutualist" – has clearly nothing to do with marxism, "the tapeworm of socialism" (Proudhon). On the contrary, it tends to the rediscovery and reconstruction of the most natural and the most traditional ecology.
1. Self-administration is supposed to bring about a revival of the "convivial society" by rescuing the working people's destiny from a heartless capitalism. The return of property ownership and the power of decision at the grass roots, to the enterprising community where everything is on a "human scale", falls in with our corporatist project. In both cases it is a question of restoring to an organised people their freedom to dispose of themselves, their work and their property.
Unfortunately, democratic egalitarianism dilutes the right to private property and the power of decision by collectivising them, thus making self-administration impossible, as the Yugoslav experiment has proved! The organic and hierarchical corporation, on the other hand, is viable and sure.
2. Nationalisation is supposed to restore order, justice and peace through the intervention of an independent authority, that of the State, as judge, arbitrator, controller and regulator of an economy that would be reduced to a savage jungle, if confronting factions had free rein. This recourse to a sovereign authority, animated solely by concern for the common good, falls in with our appeal to the most Christian monarchy, alone capable of freeing the working people from subjection to the great. Our integral nationalism is about the restoration of the King, father of his people, administrator of justice and arbitrator among his subjects, who will withdraw from the financiers the exorbitant rights they have granted themselves, so as to entrust the interests of trades and professions to those who are truly involved in them.
Unfortunately, the democratic error corrupts the remedy and makes it worse than the evil itself. For the democratic state is neither disinterested nor impartial, but partisan and monopolising. Monarchical nationalisation is a deliverance from parties and from factions. Democratic nationalisation is a subjection leading to the Gulag and transforming the capitalist purgatory into the socialist hell.
What a tragedy! Socialism, with its democratic religion, condemns the people to misery and slavery. Its demophilia, however, approximates somewhat to our position. The Phalange, profoundly enamoured of the people’s happiness and social justice, would willingly call himself socialist, were it not for democratism.