[The Origins of Contemporary France<br> Volume 4 (of 6) by Hippolyte A. Taine]@TWC D-Link book
The Origins of Contemporary France
Volume 4 (of 6)

CHAPTER I
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A Communist State.
The Jacobin concept of Society .-- The Contrat-Social .-- Total surrender of the Individual to the Community .-- Everything belongs to the State .-- Confiscations and Sequestrations.
-- Pre-emption and requisition and requisition of produce and merchandise .-- Individuals belong to the State .-- Drafts of persons for Military service .-- Drafts of persons for the Civil service .-- The State philanthropist, educator, theologian, moralist, censor and director of ideas and intimate feelings.
Let us trace this inward development and go back, along with the Jacobin, to first principles, to the original pact, to the first organization of society.

There is but one just and sound society, the one founded on the "contrat-social," and "the clauses of this contract, fully understood, reduce themselves to one, the total transfer of each individual, with all his rights, to the community,....

each surrendering himself up absolutely, just as he actually stands, he and all his forces, of which the property he possesses forms a part."[2101] There must be no exception or reservation.

Nothing of what he previously was, or had, now belongs to him in his own right; henceforth, what he is, or has, devolves upon him only through delegation.

His property and his person now form a portion of the commonwealth.


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