Food rationing, collectivism and the market economy.

I see everywhere public stores containing the riches of the republic; and the magistrates, truly fathers of the country, have barely any other function than to maintain the mores and distribute to each family the things they require. THE RIGHT TO EXISTENCE The fair distribution of the ‘fruits of the earth’ represented the acid test of Jacobin egalitarianism, relegating all the other social and economic reforms to second place. The primary goal of society, according to Marat, was ‘bread for all’. The ‘right to subsistence’ which La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt had wanted to see included in the Declaration of 1789, the ‘right to existence’ demanded by Robespierre, the ‘right to live’ defended by Thuriot, the ‘preservation of life’ considered the first of all human rights by Romme, ‘equality of consumption’ proclaimed by Harmand – all amounted to a principle that pre-empted all others: that of each person's entitlement to food. The Jacobin rhetoric of subsistence was indistinguishable in this respect from that of the sans-culotte militants: ‘The life of men’, Jacques Roux proclaimed, ‘is the most sacred of properties.’ Was it permissible in these circumstances for a consumer's right of appropriation to extend with impunity to staple foodstuffs beyond individual entitlement, or should it be subordinated to the common welfare? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]