But in labor all hangs together, from the initial undertaking to the final result, from the raw material to the most finished production, from the great manufacturer down to the pettiest jobber; grasping the first link of the chain involves grasping the last one. The requisition here again answers the purpose: we apply it to all pursuits; each is bound to continue his own; the manufacturer to manufacture, the trader to trade, even to his own detriment, because, if he works at a loss, the public profits, and every good citizen ought to prefer public profit to his own profit.[16] In effect, let his office be what it will, he is an employee of the community;therefore, the community may not only prescribe task-work to him, but select his task; it need not consult him in the matter, for he has no right to refuse. Hence it is that we appoint or maintain people in spite of themselves, in the magistracy, in the army and in every other species of employment. In vain may they excuse themselves or try get out of the way; they must remain or become generals, judges, mayors, national agents, town councilors, commissioners of public welfare or administration,[17] even against their will. Too bad for them if the responsibility is expensive or dangerous, if they have no time for leisure, if they do not feel themselves qualified for it, if the rank or services seems to them to lead to a prison or the guillotine; when they declare that the work is forced labor we reply that they liable to work for the State. -- Such is, henceforth, the condition of all Frenchmen, and likewise of all French women. We force mothers to take their daughters to the meetings of popular clubs. We oblige women to parade in companies, and march in procession at republican festivals;we invade the family and select the most beautiful to be draped as antique goddesses, and publicly promenaded on a chariot; we sometimes even designate those among the rich who must wed patriots[18]: there is no reason why marriage, which is the most important of all services, should not be put in requisition like the others. --Accordingly, we enter families, we carry of the child, we subject him to a civic education. We are schoolmasters, philanthropists, theologians, and moralists. We impose by force our religion and our ritual, our morality and our social customs. We lord it over private lives and consciences; we dictate ideas, we scrutinize and punish secret inclinations, we tax, imprison and guillotine not only the evil-disposed, but again "the indifferent, the moderate and the egoists."[19] Over and above his visible acts we dictate to the individual his ideas and his deepest feelings; we prescribe to him his affections as well as his beliefs, and, according to a preconceived type, we refashion his intellect, his conscience and his sensibilities.
III.
The object of the State is the regeneration of man. - Two sides to this undertaking. - Restoration of the Natural man. - Formation of the Social man. - Grandeur of the undertaking. - To carry it out, the use of force is a right and a duty.
There is nothing arbitrary in this operation; for the ideal model is traced beforehand. If the State is omnipotent, it is for the purpose of "regenerating Mankind," and the theory which confers its rights, at the same time assigns to it its object. In what does this regeneration of Man consist? - Consider a domestic animal such as a dog or a horse. Scrawny, battered, tied up or chained, a thousand are strained and overworked compared to the few basking in idleness, dying from rich living; and with all of them, whether fat or lean, the soul is more spoiled than the body. A superstitious respect keeps them cowed under their burden, or makes them cringe before their master.
Servile, slothful, gluttonous, feeble, incapable of resisting adversity, if they have acquired the miserable skills of slavery, they have also contracted its needs, weaknesses and vices. A crust of absurd habits and perverse inclinations, a sort of artificial and supplementary being, has covered over their original nature. - And, on the other hand, the better side of their original nature has had no chance to develop itself, for lack of use. Separated from the other, these two parts of its nature have not acquired the sentiment of community; they do not know, like their brethren of the prairies, how to help each other and subordinate private interests to the interests of the flock. Each pulls his own way, nobody cares for others, all are egoists; social interests have miscarried. - Such is Man nowadays, a disfigured slave that has to be restored. Our task, accordingly is two-fold: we have to demolish and we have to construct;we must first set free the natural Man that we may afterwards build up the social Man.
It is a vast enterprise and we are conscious of its vastness.