can be safely affirmed that those who have presided
over the gigantic progress of international economy, of the exuberant
activity which now affects the whole world, were, as at the time of the
Renaissance, parvenus, self-made men. As at the time of the Renaissance,
again, their belief is in individualism and liberalism alone. Breaking
with the traditions of the old regime, they take for their motto
"_laissez faire, laissez passer_". They carry the consequences of the
principle to an extreme. Unrestrained competition sets them to
struggling with each other and soon arouses resistance in the form of
socialism, among the proletariate that they are exploiting. And at the
same time that that resistance arises to confront capital, the latter,
itself suffering from the abuses of that freedom which had enabled it to
rise, compels itself to discipline its affairs. Cartels, trusts,
syndicates of producers, are organized, while states, perceiving that it
is impossible to leave employers and employees longer to contend in
anarchy, elaborate a social legislation; and international regulations,
transcending the frontiers of the various countries, begin to be applied
to working men.

I am aware how incomplete is this rapid sketch of the evolution of
capitalism through a thousand years of history. As I said at the
beginning, I present it merely as an hypothesis resting on the very
imperfect knowledge which we yet possess of the different movements of
economic development. Yet, in so far as it is exact, it justifies the
observation I made at the beginning of this study. It shows that the
growth of capitalism is not a movement proceeding along a straight line,
but has been marked, rather, by a series of separate impulses not
forming continuations one of another, but interrupted by crises.

To this first remark may be added two others, which are in a way
corollaries.

The first relates to the truly surprising regularity with which the
phases of economic freedom and of economic regulation have succeeded
each other. The free expansion of wandering commerce comes to its end in
the urban economy, the individualistic ardor of the Renaissance leads to
mercantilism, and finally, to the age of liberalism succeeds our own
epoch of social legislation.

The second remark, with which I shall close, lies in the moral and
political rather than the economic field. It may be stated in this form,
that every class of capitalists is at the beginning an