It may be, then, that political economy, in spite of its
individualistic tendency and its exclusive affirmations, is a
constituent part of social science, in which the phenomena that
it describes are like the starting-points of a vast
triangulation and the elements of an organic and complex whole.
From this point of view, the progress of humanity, proceeding
from the simple to the complex, would be entirely in harmony with
the progress of science; and the conflicting and so often
desolating facts, which are today the basis and object of
political economy, would have to be considered by us as so
many special hypotheses, successively realized by humanity in
view of a superior hypothesis, whose realization would solve all
difficulties, and satisfy socialism without destroying political
economy. For, as I said in my introduction, in no case can we
admit that humanity, however it expresses itself, is mistaken.

Let us now make this clearer by facts.

The question now most disputed is unquestionably that of the
ORGANIZATION OF LABOR.

As John the Baptist preached in the desert, REPENT YE, so the
socialists go about proclaiming everywhere this novelty old as
the world, ORGANIZE LABOR, though never able to tell what, in
their opinion, this organization should be. However that may be,
the economists have seen that this socialistic clamor was
damaging their theories: it was, indeed, a rebuke to them for
ignoring that which they ought first to recognize,--labor. They
have replied, therefore, to the attack of their adversaries,
first by maintaining that labor is organized, that there is no