Excerpt from Hugo's Les Misérables

The total problems to be solved by the socialists, if we leave aside the illusions, dreams, and mysticism of the theory of the formation of the universe, can be summed up in two main problems:

The first question: the production of wealth.

The second problem: the distribution of wealth.

The first issue includes labour. The second includes the issue of wages.

The first issue concerns the use of labour.

The second relates to the rationing of enjoyment.

The rights of the masses arise from the fair use of labour.

From the reasonable rationing of enjoyment arises personal happiness.

The so-called reasonable rationing is not an average ration, but a fair ration. Paramount equality is justice.

Combining the two things of public rights on the outside and personal happiness on the inside produces social prosperity.

Social prosperity refers to happy people, free citizens, and a strong state.

The UK solved the first of these two problems. It creates wealth brilliantly! But the distribution was improper. Such a solution that accomplishes only one aspect necessarily leads it to two extremes: ugly luxury and ugly poverty. All enjoy to the few, all the poverty to the rest, that is, to the people; Privileges, exceptions, monopolies, and feudalism all arise from labor. It is a false and dangerous situation to base the rights of the masses on private poverty, and the strength of the state rooted in the suffering of the individual. This is a kind of poorly organized strength, in which there are only all material factors, and there is no spiritual factor.

Communism and the Law of the Lands thought they could solve the second problem. They got it wrong. Their distribution stifles production. The average of the grantors cancels the competition. Thus also the abolition of labor. This is the butcher-style distribution method of slaughtering first and dividing later. Therefore, it is impossible to stay on this self-righteous approach.

To stifle wealth is not to distribute it.

These two issues must be addressed together in order to be properly addressed. Two problems must be solved and one to be solved only the first of these two problems, you will become Venice, you will become England. You will have only one false strength like Venice, or, like England, only one material strength, and you will become a bully. You will perish before violence, as in the last days of Venice, or in bankruptcy, as in the future of England. And the world will make you die, let you fall, because whatever is specially self-serving, whatever cannot represent a virtue or a thought for man, the world will always let them fall, die.

Of course, when we refer here to Venice and England, we are not referring to those nations, but to those social structures, to the oligarchy that is high above those nations, not to the nations themselves. For those peoples, we have always respected and sympathized. The nation of Venice will be regenerated, the aristocracy of England will be overthrown, but the nation of England will be immortal. Having said that, let's move on.

To solve those two problems, to encourage the rich, to protect the poor, to eradicate poverty, to put an end to the irrational exploitation of the weak by the strong, to curb the unjust jealousy of those who walk on the road towards those who have attained their goals, to adjust precisely and fraternally the remuneration for labour, to introduce free and compulsory education in the context of the growth of children, to make science the basis of adult life, to develop people's intellect while using physical strength, to make us a strong people and at the same time to be members of a happy family, to democratize property, It is not as difficult as one might think, not to abolish property, but to popularize property so that every citizen, without exception, becomes a proprietor, and in short, to know the production and distribution of wealth, so that you can be both materially and spiritually strong, so that you are qualified to call yourself France. This is what socialism, unlike certain disoriented sects and above them, says, which is what it explores in practical things, which is what it designs in its ideals.

Valuable perseverance! Divine intentions!