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. THE TYRANNY OF SOCIALISM “Socialism-that is the State substituting itself for individual liberty, and growing to be the most terribleof tyrants ” LEDRIJ-ROLLIN,12th Sept., 1848 BY YVES GUYOT EX.MINISTER OF PUBLIC WORKS OF FRANCE EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY J. H. LEVY LATE LECTURER ON LOOlC AND ECONOMICS AT THE BIRKBBCK INSTlTUTIONAND THE CITY OF LONDON COLLEGE LONDON SWANSONNENSCHEIN & CO. NEWYORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS x 427 85 . CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE INTRODUCTION . V AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE FIRST FRENCH EDITION . xxi AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THEESGLISH EDITION xxxi BOOK I. Evolution and Retrogvession. I. SOCIAL RETROGRESSION. i IC. SOCIALISTPROGRAMMES 5 111. CHARACTER OF POLITICALAND INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS . 16 IV. CHARACTER OF SOCIALPROGRESS . 21 V. THE EVOLUTIOX OF PROPERTY . 26 VI. DOCTRINALCONTRADICTIONS OF THE SOCIAL- ISTS , 28 VII.PRACTICAL SELF - CONTRADICTION OF THE SOCIALISTS . 30 BOOK 11. Socialistic So$hsnzs. 1. LABOURAND WEALTH . 11. ON THE LIMITSOF COLLECTIVIST SOCIETY 111. THE LAW OFSUPPLY ANDDEMAND . IV. THE“IRON L.4W” OF WAGES . V. INTEGRAL WAGES VI. TOEACH ACCORDING TOHIS NEEDS . VII. THE ABOLITION OF WAGES , V III. MACHINERYVIII. IX. EXCESSIVEPRODUCTION. X. ECONOMIC CRJSI?S XI. CHEAPNESS iv CONTENTS . ” CHAP. XII. THE GAhIE OFTHE GULLIBLE I XIII. SOCIALISTIC METHODS I XIV. FACTS COMPARED WITH SOCIALIST STATEMENTS X v. REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH . BOOK 111. Socialistic Legislation. I. PUTTING SOCIALISTIC SOPHISMS IN FORCE . 11. THE REGULATION OF CHILD LABOUR . 111. FEMALE LABOUR AND THE LAW IV. COhlPULSORY IDLEKESSOF LYING-IN WOMEN V. NATIONAL LABOUR AND FOREIGNWORKMEN . VI. TRADE SYNDICATES . VII. REGISTRYOFFICES . VIII. NATUREOF LABOUR LAWS ” . BOOK IV. Socialistic Movali& and Re@ect for the Law. 1. CONTEMPT FOR THE LAW . 11. SERVILE LABOUR AND FREE LABOUR , BOOK V. Strikes and Social War. I. COST AND CONSEQUENCES OF STRIKES 11. THE CAUSES OFSTRIKES 111. DURINGTHE STRIKE . IV. SOCIAL WAR , BOOK VI. Res$onsibiZifies. I. PARLIAMENT AND STRIKES . 11. SUBSIDIES TO STRIKERS, 111. THE EXECUTIVE, THE JUDICATURE, AND STRIKES . I V. LIBERTYAND ANARCHY V. THE SOCIALISM OF EMPLOYERS. VI. MILITARISM,PROTECTION, AND SOCIALISM . CONCLUSION , INTRODUCTION. BiOGRAPHlCAL AND CRITICAL. IN the general elect'ion for the Chamber of Deputies in August last, M. Yves Guyot lost his seat for the1st Arondissement of Paris. The occasionwas a notableone, and mag find its place in the political history of our times beside, say, the expulsion of Mr. Bradlaugh from the House of Commons. I do not mean thatthere was any close parity in the circum- stances of the two occasions. M. Guyot was the victim of no outrageous resort to physical force. He was beatenin fair constitutional fight,. He lost his election because those whose votes he sought preferred hisrival. But he, like Mr. Bradlaugh, suffered repulse because of his devotion toindividual liberty. Like Mr. Bradlaugh, he hesitated not a moment, neither trimmed nor wavered, but took a &m foothold on the ground to which he was driven back, and resumed at once t,he good fight for human freedom and equality, which: like Mr. Brad- laugh-I venture to say-he will fight till death looses his grasp on the banner which he has held aloft through many long years of political strife. I Republican, Freethinker, Individualist, like the friend-". Guyot's friend and mine-with whom I have compared him, the odds against him were tremendous ; andit was wonderful thathe attained so respectable a minority of votes. He had the misfortune to be the partisan of no interest, save those of his country and humanity,which he does not dissociate. He had ranged against him Royalists and Clericals, Bonapartists and Boulangists, Protectionists and Socialists,Chauvinists and Anarchists. I was told by an eminent French economist,several weeks before the election, that hissuccess was impossible. That, notwithstanding this, he has a very large number of supporters in France, and is one of the leadersof French opinion, is beyond doubt ; but while the system-uhjustas it is absurd-of local majoiity representation obtains, we may expect thatthe bestmen will be ex- INTRODUCTION. vii cludedfrom parliamentary functions, anda pseudo-democracy will bring discredit and per- haps ruin on popular government. M. Guyot was born on 6th September, 1843, at Dinan (CGtes-du-Nord).His family, on his father’s side, came, originally, from the neigh- bourhood of Rennes. Hisgrandfather, Yves Guyot, was, in 1793, Mayor of ErcB, and was a friend of Le Chapelier, the Deputy of Rennes to theStates General. His father was abarrister at Rennes, and there the author of the present volume was brought up. In 1864, he went to Paris, and at once came into notice as a lecturer. In 1866, he published his first work, The liwentol.. In 1868, afterthe repeal of the press law requiring ‘l preliminary authorisation,”he was called to Nfmes to take the editorship of a Republican journal-the Inde- pendant du Midi. Republican meetings were brutally dispersed at that time by the myrmidons of Louis Napoleon ; but M. Guyot called private meetings all over the Department of the Gard- apart of Eastern.Languedoc. He appearsto have escaped the clutches of the Imperial law so far as these meetings were concerned, but was condemned to a month’s imprisonment on viii INTRODUCTION. accountof his part in the Baudin subscrip- tion. He returned to Paris on the outbreak of the Franco-German war, and became editor of the Rappel. During the siege of Paris, he took part in t’he Battle of Buzenval.At the time of the I Commune, he was a member of the Parisian Rights League (Ligue des Droits de Paris), which attempted to put an end to the struggle between the Comllzune and the French Govern- ment. From September, 18.71, toJuly, 1872, he was editor of the Munic@alitL, which was subsequently amalgamated with the Radical. In 1872, he also published ‘I Political Prejudices,” and “ Worn-out Ideas,” and commenced a “His- tory of‘ Proletarians ” in collaboration with N. Sigismond Lacroix. In November, 1874, he was elected a MunicipalCouncillor of Paris for the Quartier St. Avoye. In 1875, he becamechief editor of T La RelfoTme Ewnomique, a magazine founded by M. Menier, who is better known in England by his chocolate than by hispolitics, but whose i Treatise on the Taxation of Fixed Capital ”- though dsgured bx many economic: crudities- is worth reading by the student of taxation. INTRODUCTION. ix The title of the book is misleading, as the ta,x : proposed by M. Menier is not on FixedCapital asordinarily understood, but on what may be .' called FixedProperty, including .land, household ' furniture, etc. This misuse of termthe ((capital" isnot only contrary to scientific usage,but is open tothe still weightierobjec- tion that it confounds theraw material of the f globe, which is thegift of nature,with those : instrumentsand mater& of production which are the result of human labour, and consequently rentwith interest. Unfortunately, M. Guyot follows M. Menier in this, and it has done more thananything else againstthe success of his .Science Economique in thiscountry--the classic land of economic science. Inthe lasttwo months of 1878, hetook a step which I regard as the crucialone in his career,and which made him knownand loved . by those who were battling in defence of personal rights on this side of the English Channel: I re- fer to the publication of his Lettres dun view 'An English edition of this work, which should be read for the many pearls of wisdom to be found scattered in its pages, was published, in 1884, by Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein & co. X ZNTRODUCTZOh? Petit EmpZoyd-“ Letters of an Old Petty- Official.” In these never-to-be-forgotten letters hethoroughly exposed the abominable system embodied in the Police des Mceuvs, and partially copied in the Contagious Diseases Acts which for twentyyears soiled theStatute Bookin this country. M. Guyot has never ceased to wage uncon~pro~~~ivingwar against this iniquity. His book, Prostitutionuuder the Regulation System,” is the best on thesubject; and his pamphlet,, ‘‘ English and FrenchMorality,” directed against M: Steads Modern Babylon ” crusade, may be considered as anappendix to this work. M. Guyot’s labours in this cause- in manyways the touchstone of political morality-have been long and arduous. He has, without stint, placed at its service his ardent andbrilliant oratory, and his light but always trenchant pen. Andhe has been rewarded. It was in the prosecution of this cause that he first made the acquaintance and afterwards won the friendship of Madame Enlilie Ashurst Venturi, the friend and biographer of Mazzini- a woman friendship with whomwas in itself a religion. When she died, in hlarch, 1593, broken-hearted at the tragic end of Mr. Parnell, INTEODUCTKON. xi one of the most elo{uent of the tributes to her memory, which appeared in Personal Rights, was from hispen. She was the incarnation of the I spirit of justice ; and he, in his reverent homage toher, bowed tothat principle which is the soul of politics. Towards the end of 1879, M. Guyot published, in the Lanteme, his Lettres dun injvnier SUI’ les : asiles d’ alidnds (‘(Letters of a Hospital Attendant on the Asylums for Lunatics”), in which he con- : tinued the struggle for individual liberty against the encroachments of the new medical despotism.‘ InFebruary, 1880, heonce more became a Municipal Councillor of Paris-this time for the QuartierNotre Dame, in which thePrefecture is situate-andwas very active, especially on questions of local taxation. In 1884, he was replaced on the council by M. Ruel. But,in the meantime, he had,in 1881, in response to a numerously supported invitation,contested the 1st Arondissetnent of Paris, atthe general election for theChamber of Deputies, against M. Tirard,then Minister of Commerce. He 1 His novel, Un Fou (“A Madman”), published in 1884, is interestingin this connection.Another of his novels, Un @&e, passed through two editions.

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