Introduction

Here we are dealing with the most tangible aspect of Civilisation, where it is hard not to raise one's voice against the madness of the present time and against the chimeras which are so fashionable.

To speak out today against the absurdities of commerce is to run the risk of being anathematised, as if one had spoken out in the twelfth century against the tyranny of the popes and the barons. In fact if I had to choose between two dangerous roles, I think there would be less risk of offending a sovereign with troublesome facts than of offending the mercantile character which reigns despotically over Civilisation and even over its sovereigns.

Nobody ever makes sound social judgements when they are in the depths of an infatuation, as witness the commercial systems: the slightest analysis will show that they deprave Civilisation and disorganise it in every way, and that in matters of commerce, as in everything else, they are going further and further astray under the auspices of the inexact sciences.

The controversy over commerce has scarcely been going on for half a century and its authors have already produced thousands of volumes without realising that the mechanism of commerce is organised against all common sense. All the essential classes – proprietors, farmers, manufacturers, even the government – are controlled by a secondary class, by merchants who ought to be their inferiors, their commission agents, removable and responsible, and yet who direct and obstruct at will all the resources of circulation.