EveryDay Ideas 36 - Les Miserables

The original book by Victor Hugo. Read it, if you are interested in current European history, especially France and the early days of the Republic after the Revolution. We can learn a lot from this tome; beware however, it is not a trivial read - being full of modern European history, moral philosophy as well as the well loved narrative and story lines. The popular film depiction, musicals and TV serialisation, in my opinion, do no justice to this very intense and beautifully written work (1862).

As regards our current events and situation with Brexit etc. I have extracted this small section -  buried away between the main story:

...All the problems that the socialists proposed to themselves, cosmogonic visions, revery and mysticism being cast aside, can be reduced to the principal problems:
 
First problem: to produce wealth
Second problem: to share it
The first problem contains the question of work
The second contains the question of salary
In the first problem, the employment of forces is in question
In the second, the distribution of enjoyment

From the proper employment of forces results public power.
From a good distribution of enjoyment results individual happiness.
By a good distribution, not an equal but an equitable distribution must be prosperity understood.
From these two things combined, the public power without, individual happiness within, results social prosperity.
Social prosperity means the man happy, the citizen free, the nation great.

England solves the first of these two problems. She creates wealth admirably. She divides it badly. This solution which is complete on one side only leads her fatally to two extremes: monstrous opulence, monstrous wretchedness. All enjoyments for some, all privations for the rest, that is to say for the people; privilege, exception, monopoly,  feudalism, born from toil itself. A false and dangerous situation, which states public power or private misery, which sets the root of State in the sufferings of the individual. A badly constituted grandeur in which are combined all the material elements into which moral element enters.

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, (1862).