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Updated: May 8, 2025
Absolute literary property would hinder the activity of other men, and obstruct the development of humanity. It would be the death of progress; it would be suicide. What would have happened if the first inventions, the plough, the level, the saw, &c., had been appropriated? Such is the first proposition of M. Wolowski.
Because society has made the fine arts, like the rudest industries, objects of consumption and exchange, governed consequently by all the laws of commerce and political economy. Now, the first of these laws is the equipoise of functions; that is, the equality of associates. M. Wolowski indulges in sarcasm against the petitioners for literary property.
With this view, I had commenced to collect the documents necessary for each of his lectures, but, soon perceiving that the ideas of the professor were incoherent, that his arguments contradicted each other, that one affirmation was sure to be overthrown by another, and that in M. Wolowski's lucubrations the good was always mingled with the bad, and being by nature a little suspicious, it suddenly occurred to me that M. Wolowski was an advocate of equality in disguise, thrown in spite of himself into the position in which the patriarch Jacob pictures one of his sons, inter duas clitellas, between two stools, as the proverb says.
Now I think that I have demonstrated in my First Memoir, that large accumulation and minute division are the first two terms of an economical trinity, a THESIS and an ANTITHESIS. But, while M. Wolowski says nothing of the third term, the SYNTHESIS, and thus leaves the inference in suspense, I have shown that this third term is ASSOCIATION, which is the annihilation of property. November 30.
Yes, when the labor is continued; but if the labor is not continued, the right ceases. Thus is the right of possession, founded on personal labor, recognized by M. Wolowski. M. Wolowski decides in favor of granting to authors property in their works for a certain number of years, dating from the day of their first publication.
Yes, and so has slavery, and despotism also; and likewise polygamy and idolatry. But what does this antiquity show? The members of the Council of the State M. Portalis at their head did not raise, in their discussion of the Code, the question of the legitimacy of property. "Their silence," says M. Wolowski, "is a precedent in favor of this right."
Then M. Wolowski cites his authorities. Great God! what witnesses he brings forward! November 26. M. Wolowski supposes this objection: Land, like water, air, and light, is necessary to life, therefore it cannot be appropriated; and he replies: The importance of landed property diminishes as the power of industry increases.
Nevertheless, I would like him to define these ABUSES of property, to show their cause, to explain this true theory from which no abuse is to spring; in short, to tell me how, without destroying property, it can be governed for the greatest good of all. "Our civil code," says M. Wolowski, in speaking of this subject, "leaves much to be desired." I think it leaves every thing undone.
Indeed, it seems as if I were copying my own words. This proposition of M. Wolowski contains a special expression of a general and absolute idea, one of the strongest and most conclusive against the right of property. Why do artists, like mechanics, find the means to live?
I had resolved to submit to a systematic criticism the semi-official defence of the right of property recently put forth by M. Wolowski, your colleague at the Conservatory.
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