Note 178-2 — Chapter III

L. Faucher calls the droit au travail worse than the equal and compulsory distribution of all goods, because it lays hands on not only present products but even on the productive forces. It supposes that unlimited production is possible; that the state may regulate the market at pleasure to serve its purposes; that, in fact, the state can give without having first taken what it gave. (Mélanges d'Economie politique, II, 148 ff.) The French national assembly rejected the "right to labor" on the 15th of September, 1848, by 596 ayes to 187 nays, after the provisional government had proclaimed it, February 25. Le Droit au Travail à l'Assemblée nationale avec des Observations de Faucher, Wolowski, Bastiat etc., by J. Garnier, Paris, 1848.