other organization of labor than liberty to produce and exchange,
either on one's own personal account, or in association with
others,--in which case the course to be pursued has been
prescribed by the civil and commercial codes. Then, as this
argument served only to make them the laughing-stock of their
antagonists, they assumed the offensive; and, showing that the
socialists understood nothing at all themselves of this
organization that they held up as a scarecrow, they ended by
saying that it was but a new socialistic chimera, a word without
sense,--an absurdity. The latest writings of the economists are
full of these pitiless conclusions.

Nevertheless, it is certain that the phrase organization of labor
contains as clear and rational a meaning as these that
follow: organization of the workshop, organization of the
army, organization of police, organization of charity,
organization of war. In this respect, the argument of the
economists is deplorably irrational. No less certain is it that
the organization of labor cannot be a utopia and chimera; for at
the moment that labor, the supreme condition of civilization,
begins to exist, it follows that it is already submitted to an
organization, such as it is, which satisfies the economists, but
which the socialists think detestable.

There remains, then, relatively to the proposal to organize labor
formulated by socialism, this objection,--that labor is
organized. Now, this is utterly untenable, since it is notorious
that in labor, supply, demand, division, quantity, proportion,
price, and security, nothing, absolutely nothing is regulated; on
the contrary, everything is given up to the caprices of