From the Introduction to Fourier's
"Theory of Social Organization" translated
by Albert Brisbane._
"Among the influences tending to restrict man's industrial rights, I
will mention the formation of privileged corporations which,
monopolizing a given branch of industry, arbitrarily close the doors of
labor against whomsoever they please. These corporations will become
dangerous, and lead to new convulsions on being extended to the whole
industrial and commercial system. This event is not far distant and it
will be brought about all the more easily as it is not apprehended. The
greatest evils have often sprung from imperceptible germs, as for
instance, Jacobism, and if our civilization has engendered this and so
many other calamities, may it not engender others which we do not now
foresee? The most imminent of these is the birth of a commercial
feudalism or the monopoly of commerce and industry by joint-stock
companies, leagued together for the purpose of usurping and controlling
all branches of industrial organizations. Extremes meet, and the
greater the extent to which anarchical competition is carried, the
nearer is the approach to _universal monopoly_, which is the
opposite excess.
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