"If we assume that a worker can earn an average of 400 francs a year from his daily labor, and that this sum is sufficient for one adult to eke out a living, then anyone who receives 2,000 francs in interest or rent is indirectly forcing 5 men to work for him; an income of 100,000 francs represents the labor of 250 men; and 1,000,000 francs the labor of 2,500 (300 million -- Louis Philippe -- therefore represents the labor of 750,000 workers)."
[ Pecqueur, pp. 412-13 ]
"The property owners have received from human law the right to use and abuse the materials of all labor -- i.e., to do as they wish with them.... There is no law which obliges them punctually and at all time to provide work for those who do not own property or to pay them a wage which is at all times adequate, etc."
[ Pecqueur, p. 413 ]
"Complete freedom as to the nature, the quantity, the quality, and the appropriateness of production, the use and consumption of wealth and the disposal of the materials of all labor. Everyone is free to exchange his possessions as he chooses, without any other consideration than his own interest as an individual."
[ Pecqueur, p. 413 ]
"Competition is simply an expression of free exchange, which is itself the immediate and logical consequence of the right of any individual to use and abuse all instruments of production. These three economic moments, which are in reality only one -- the right to use and abuse, freedom of exchange and unrestricted competition -- have the following consequences: each produces what he wants, how he wants, when he wants, where he wants; he produces well or he produces badly, too much or not enough, too late or too early, too dear or too cheap; no one knows whether he will sell, to whom he will sell, how he will sell, when he will sell, where he will sell; the same goes for buying. The producer is acquainted with neither the needs nor the resources, neither the demand nor the supply. He sells when he wants, then he can, where he wants, to whom he wants and at the price he wants. The same goes for buying. In all this he is at all times the plaything of chance, the slave of the law of the strongest, of the least pressed, of the richest.... While at one point there is a shortage of wealth, at another there is a surfeit and squandering of the same. While one producer sells a great deal, or at high prices and with an enormous profit, another sells nothing or sells at a loss.... Supply is ignorant of demand, and demand is ignorant of supply. You produce on the basis of a preference or a fashion prevalent among the consuming public; but by the time you are preparing to put your commodity on the market, the mood has passed and some other kind of product has come into fashion.... The inevitable consequences are continual and spreading bankruptcies, miscalculations, sudden collapses, and unexpected fortunes; trade crises, unemployment, periodic surfeits and shortages; instability and decline of wages and profits; the loss or enormous waste of wealth, of time, and of effort in the arena of fierce competition."
[ Pecqueur, p. 414-16 ] Ricardo in his book [ On the Principles of Political Economy et al ] (rent of land): Nations are merely workshops for production, and man is a machine for consuming and producing. Human life is a piece of capital.
Economic laws rule the world blindly. For Ricardo, men are nothing, the product everything. In Chapter 26, of the French translation, we read:
"To an individual with a capital of 20,000 pounds, whose profits were 2,000 per annum, it would be a matter quite indifferent whether his capital would employ a hundred or a thousand men... is not the real interest of the nation similar? Provided its net real income, its rents and profits, be the same, it is of no importance whether the nation consists of 10 or 12 million inhabitants."
[ Ricardo, pp. 234-5 ]
"In truth," says M. de Sismondi, "it remains only to desire that the king, who has been left quite alone on the island, should, by continuously cranking up a number of automatons, get all England's work done."
[ J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi, Nouveaux principes d'economic politique, 2 volumes, Paris, 1819, II, p. 331 ]
"The master who buys a worker's labor at a price so low that it is barely enough to meet his most pressing needs is responsible neither for the low wages nor the long hours of work: he himself is subject to the law which he imposes.... Misery is the product not so much of men as of the power of things."
[ Buret, I, p. 82 ]
