The economists, with that simplicity of honest folk which they have inherited from their elders and which even today is all that stands to their credit, have taken no pains to see that the progressional theory of the tax, which they point out to governments as the ne plus ultra of a wise and liberal administration, was contradictory in its terms and pregnant with a legion of impossibilities.They have attributed the oppression of the treasury by turns to the barbarism of the time, the ignorance of princes, the prejudices of caste, the avarice of collectors, everything, in short, which, in their opinion, preventing the progression of the tax, stood in the way of the sincere practice of equality in the distribution of public burdens; they have not for a moment suspected that what they asked under the name of progressive taxation was the overturn of all economic ideas.
Thus they have not seen, for instance, that the tax was progressive from the very fact that it was proportional, the only difference being that the progression was in the wrong direction, the percentage being, as we have said, not directly, but inversely proportional to fortunes.
If the economists had had a clear idea of this overturn, invariable in all countries where taxation exists, so singular a phenomenon would not have failed to draw their attention; they would have sought its causes, and would have ended by discovering that what they took for an accident of civilization, an effect of the inextricable difficulties of human government, was the product of the contradiction inherent in all political economy.
The progressive tax, whether applied to capital or to income, is the very negation of monopoly, of that monopoly which is met everywhere, according to M.Rossi, across the path of social economy; which is the true stimulant of industry, the hope of economy, the preserver and parent of all wealth;
of which we have been able to say, in short, that society cannot exist without it, but that, except for it, there would be no society.Let the tax become suddenly what it unquestionably must sometime be, -- namely, the proportional (or progressional, which is the same thing) contribution of each producer to the public expenses, and straightway rent and profit are confiscated everywhere for the benefit of the State; labor is stripped of the fruits of its toil; each individual being reduced to the proper allowance of fifty-six and a half centimes, poverty becomes general; the compact formed between labor and capital is dissolved, and society, deprived of its rudder, drifts back to its original state.
It will be said, perhaps, that it is easy to prevent the absolute annihilation of the profits of capital by stopping the progression at any moment.
Eclecticism, the golden mean, compromise with heaven or with morality:
is it always to be the same philosophy, then? True science is repugnant to such arrangements.All invested capital must return to the producer in the form of interest; all labor must leave a surplus, all wages be equal to product.Under the protection of these laws society continually realizes, by the greatest variety of production, the highest possible degree of welfare.
These laws are absolute; to violate them is to wound, to mutilate society.
Capital, accordingly, which, after all, is nothing but accumulated labor, is inviolable.But, on the other hand, the tendency to equality is no less imperative; it is manifested at each economic phase with increasing energy and an invincible authority.Therefore you must satisfy labor and justice at once; you must give to the former guarantees more and more real, and secure the latter without concession or ambiguity.
Instead of that, you know nothing but the continual substitution of the good pleasure of the prince for your theories, the arrest of the course of economic law by arbitrary power, and, under the pretext of equity, the deception of the wage worker and the monopolist alike! Your liberty is but a half-liberty, your justice but a half-justice, and all your wisdom consists in those middle terms whose iniquity is always twofold, since they justify the pretensions of neither one party nor the other! No, such cannot be the science which you have promised us, and which, by unveiling for us the secrets of the production and consumption of wealth, must unequivocally solve the social antinomies.Your semi-liberal doctrine is the code of despotism, and shows that you are powerless to advance as well as ashamed to retreat.
If society, pledged by its economic antecedents, can never retrace its steps; if, until the arrival of the universal equation, monopoly must be maintained in its possession, -- no change is possible in the laying of taxes: only there is a contradiction here, which, like every other, must be pushed till exhausted.Have, then, the courage of your opinions, --
respect for wealth, and no pity for the poor, whom the God of monopoly has condemned.The less the hireling has wherewith to live, the more he must pay: qui minus habet, etiam quod habet auferetur ab eo.This is necessary, this is inevitable; in it lies the safety of society.
Let us try, nevertheless, to reverse the progression of the tax, and so arrange it that the capitalist, instead of the laborer, will pay the larger share.
I observe, in the first place, that with the usual method of collection, such a reversal is impracticable.
In fact, if the tax falls on exploitable capital, this tax, in its entirety, is included among the costs of production, and then of two things one:
