Ceri Crossley
112
ble and mineral kingdoms. Change and decay were inevitable aspects
of the cycle of nature but death did not extinguish meaning because
the movement of transformation was purposive and self-sustaining:
“La Nature a établi un Circulus entre la Production et la Consommation. Nous ne créons rien, nous n’anéantissons rien; nous opérons des
changements” (p. 89). If Nature’s resources were managed in accordance with the principle of the circulus no one would need to go hungry. Regrettably, however, humans had broken with the order of
nature. Modern industrial society fostered division, competition and
separation. It disdained the values of the circulus which was nature’s
way of bringing together the disparate elements of creation. Industrial
society, founded on an arrogant individualism and the profit motive,
had lost the sense that humans should abide by the very same principles used by nature “pour relier les différents êtres entre eux” (p. 97).
Leroux argued that in future the exploitation of human waste
should be handed over to public authorities interested in alleviating
the condition of the poor and no longer entrusted to individuals driven
by the desire for private gain. The central focus of Leroux’s ire was
English economic liberalism which he viewed as a corrosive and destructive force, sundering humans from nature and precipitating a general crisis of civilization. Again and again he denounced Malthus and
his followers, accusing them of using an inadequate model of nature in
order to lend legitimation to the cruel and heartless society created by
industrialism.
19 He was appalled by what he saw on the streets of
London: crime, prostitution, unemployed labourers touting for work,
Malays callously left to starve on the streets. How fortunate then that
the theory of the circulus gave the lie to the Malthusian proposition
that human population growth inevitably outstripped a society’s ability to feed all its members. Leroux wanted to reconstruct the social
bond by reconnecting humans to the order of nature. In opposition to
Malthusian notions of competition, production and consumption, as an
antidote to the egoism of his age, Leroux put forward “l’idée Socialiste du Circulus” (p. 27). This foregrounded connectivity. He started
from the premise that the processes of digestion and excretion cannot
adequately be understood in terms of the ways in which an organism
extracts nutriments from ingested food before expelling the residue as
___________________________
19 See Malthus et les économistes (1849) in which Leroux republished six articles that
had already appeared in his Revue sociale.
112
ble and mineral kingdoms. Change and decay were inevitable aspects
of the cycle of nature but death did not extinguish meaning because
the movement of transformation was purposive and self-sustaining:
“La Nature a établi un Circulus entre la Production et la Consommation. Nous ne créons rien, nous n’anéantissons rien; nous opérons des
changements” (p. 89). If Nature’s resources were managed in accordance with the principle of the circulus no one would need to go hungry. Regrettably, however, humans had broken with the order of
nature. Modern industrial society fostered division, competition and
separation. It disdained the values of the circulus which was nature’s
way of bringing together the disparate elements of creation. Industrial
society, founded on an arrogant individualism and the profit motive,
had lost the sense that humans should abide by the very same principles used by nature “pour relier les différents êtres entre eux” (p. 97).
Leroux argued that in future the exploitation of human waste
should be handed over to public authorities interested in alleviating
the condition of the poor and no longer entrusted to individuals driven
by the desire for private gain. The central focus of Leroux’s ire was
English economic liberalism which he viewed as a corrosive and destructive force, sundering humans from nature and precipitating a general crisis of civilization. Again and again he denounced Malthus and
his followers, accusing them of using an inadequate model of nature in
order to lend legitimation to the cruel and heartless society created by
industrialism.
19 He was appalled by what he saw on the streets of
London: crime, prostitution, unemployed labourers touting for work,
Malays callously left to starve on the streets. How fortunate then that
the theory of the circulus gave the lie to the Malthusian proposition
that human population growth inevitably outstripped a society’s ability to feed all its members. Leroux wanted to reconstruct the social
bond by reconnecting humans to the order of nature. In opposition to
Malthusian notions of competition, production and consumption, as an
antidote to the egoism of his age, Leroux put forward “l’idée Socialiste du Circulus” (p. 27). This foregrounded connectivity. He started
from the premise that the processes of digestion and excretion cannot
adequately be understood in terms of the ways in which an organism
extracts nutriments from ingested food before expelling the residue as
___________________________
19 See Malthus et les économistes (1849) in which Leroux republished six articles that
had already appeared in his Revue sociale.