Whether the dealer or manufacturer pays expenses at this rate, matters not; if, after the maximum is fixed, he closes factory, or gives up business, we declare him a "suspect;" we chain him down to his pursuit, we oblige him to lose by it .-- This is the way to clip the claws of beasts of prey, little and big! But the claws grow out again, and, instead of paring them down, it would probably be better to pull them out.

Some amongst us have already thought of that; the right of pre-emption shall be applied to every article; "in each department, national storehouse might be established where farmers, land-owners and manufacturers would be obliged to deposit at a fixed price, paid down, the surplus of their consumption of every species of merchandise.

The nation would distribute this merchandise to wholesale dealers, reserving a profit of six per cent.

The profit of the wholesale dealer would be fixed at eight per cent and that of the retailer at twelve per cent."[2182] In this way, farmers, manufacturers, and merchants would all become clerks of the State, appointed on a premium or a discount; unable to gain a great deal, they would not be tempted to gain too much; they would cease to be greedy and soon cease to be egoists.[2183]--Since, fundamentally, egoism is the capital vice and individual proprietorship the food that nourishes it, why not suppress individual proprietorship altogether?
Our extreme logicians, with Babaeuf at the head of them, go as far as that, and Saint-Just seems to be of that opinion.[2184] We are not concerned with the enacting of an Agrarian; the nation may reserve the soil to itself and divide among individuals, not the soil, but its lease.

The outcome of this principle affords us a glimpse of an order of things in which the State, sole proprietor of real-estate, sole capitalist, sole manufacturer, sole trader, having all Frenchmen in its pay and service, would assign to each one his task according to his aptitude, and distribute to each one his rations according to his wants.[2185]--These various uncompleted plans still float in a hazy distance but their common purpose is clearly distinguishable.
"All which tends to center human passions on the vile, individual ego must be repudiated or repressed;"[2186] We should annihilate special interests, deprive the individual of the motives and means for self-isolation, suppress preoccupations and ambitions by which Man makes himself a focal point at the expense of the real center, in short, to detach him from himself in order to attach him wholly to the State.
This is why, disregarding the narrow egoism through which the individual prefers himself to the community, we strive towards the enlarged egoism by which the individual prefers the community to the group of which he forms a part.