CHAPTER II.

OF VALUE.

% 1.--Opposition of value in USE and value in EXCHANGE.

Value is the corner-stone of the economic edifice. The divine

artist who has intrusted us with the continuation of his work has

explained himself on this point to no one; but the few

indications given may serve as a basis of conjecture. Value, in

fact, presents two faces: one, which the economists call value in

USE, or intrinsic value; another, value in EXCHANGE, or of

opinion. The effects which are produced by value under this

double aspect, and which are very irregular so long as it is not

established,--or, to use a more philosophical expression, so long

as it is not constituted,--are changed totally by this

constitution.

Now, in what consists the correlation between USEFUL value and

value in EXCHANGE? What is meant by CONSTITUTED value, and by

what sudden change is this constitution effected? To answer

these questions is the object and end of political economy. I

beg the reader to give his whole attention to what is to follow,

this chapter being the only one in the work which will tax his

patience. For my part, I will endeavor to be more and more

simple and clear.

Everything which can be of any service to me is of value to me,

and the more abundant the useful thing is the richer I am: so

far there is no difficulty. Milk and flesh, fruits and grains,

wool, sugar, cotton, wine, metals, marble; in fact, land, water,

air, fire, and sunlight,-- are, relatively to me, values of use,

values by nature and function. If all the things which serve to

sustain my life were as abundant as certain of them are, light

for instance,--in other words, if the quantity of every valuable

thing was inexhaustible,--my welfare would be forever assured: I

should not have to labor; I should not even think. In such a

state, things would always be USEFUL, but it would be no longer

true to say that they ARE VALUABLE; for value, as we shall soon

see, indicates an essentially social relation; and it is solely

through exchange, reverting as it were from society to Nature,

that we have acquired the idea of utility. The whole development

of civilization originates, then, in the necessity which the

human race is under of continually causing the creation of new

values; just as the evils of society are primarily caused by the

perpetual struggle which we maintain against our own inertia.

Take away from man that desire which leads him to think and fits

him for a life of contemplation, and the lord of creation stands

on a level with the highest of the beasts.

But how does value in use become value in exchange? For it

should be noticed that the two kinds of value, although

coexisting in thought (since the former becomes apparent only in

the presence of the latter), nevertheless maintain a relation of

succession: exchangeable value is a sort of reflex of useful

value; just as the theologians teach that in the Trinity the

Father, contemplating himself through all eternity, begets the

Son. This generation of the idea of value has not been noted by

the economists with sufficient care: it is important that we

should tarry over it.

Since, then, of the objects which I need, a very large number

exist in Nature only in moderate quantities, or even not at all,

I am forced to assist in the production of that which I lack;

and, as I cannot turn my hand to so many things, I propose to

other men, my collaborators in various functions, to yield me a

portion of their products in exchange for mine. I shall then

always have in my possession more of my own special product than

I consume; just as my fellows will always have in their

possession more of their respective products than they use. This

tacit agreement is fulfilled by COMMERCE. Here we may observe

that the logical succession of the two kinds of value is even

more apparent in history than in theory, men having spent

thousands of years in disputing over natural wealth (this being

what is called PRIMITIVE COMMUNISM) before their industry

afforded opportunity for exchange.

Now, the capacity possessed by all products, whether natural or

the result of labor, of serving to maintain man, is called

distinctively value in use; their capacity of purchasing each

other, value in exchange. At bottom this is the same thing,

since the second case only adds to the first the idea of

substitution, which may seem an idle subtlety; practically, the

consequences are surprising, and beneficial or fatal by turns.

Consequently, the distinction established in value is based on

facts, and is not at all arbitrary: it is for man, in submitting

to this law, to use it to increase his welfare and liberty.

Labor, as an author (M. Walras) has beautifully expressed it, is

a war declared against the parsimony of Nature; by it wealth and

society are simultaneously created. Not only does labor produce

incomparably more wealth than Nature gives us,--for instance, it

has been remarked that the shoemakers alone in France produce

ten times more than the mines of Peru, Brazil, and Mexico

combined,--but, labor infinitely extending and multiplying its

rights by the changes which it makes in natural values, it

gradually comes about that all wealth, in running the gauntlet of

labor, falls wholly into the hands of him who creates it, and

that nothing, or almost nothing, is left for the possessor of the

original material.

Such, then, is the path of economic progress: at first,

appropriation of the land and natural values; then, association

and distribution through labor until complete equality is

attained. Chasms are scattered along our road, the sword is

suspended over our heads; but, to avert all dangers, we have

reason, and reason is omnipotence.

It results from the relation of useful value to exchangeable

value that if, by accident or from malice, exchange should be

forbidden to a single producer, or if the utility of his product

should suddenly cease, though his storehouses were full, he would

possess nothing. The more sacrifices he had made and the more

courage he had displayed in producing, the greater would be his

misery. If the utility of the product, instead of wholly

disappearing, should only diminish,--a thing which may happen in

a hundred ways,--the laborer, instead of being struck down and

ruined by a sudden catastrophe, would be impoverished only;

obliged to give a large quantity of his own value for a small

quantity of the values of others, his means of subsistence would

be reduced by an amount equal to the deficit in his sale: which

would lead by degrees from competency to want. If, finally, the

utility of the product should increase, or else if its production

should become less costly, the balance of exchange would turn to

the advantage of the producer, whose condition would thus be

raised from fatiguing mediocrity to idle opulence. This

phenomenon of depreciation and enrichment is manifested under a

thousand forms and by a thousand combinations; it is the essence

of the passional and intriguing game of commerce and industry.

And this is the lottery, full of traps, which the economists

think ought to last forever, and whose suppression the Academy of

Moral and Political Sciences unwittingly demands, when, under the

names of profit and wages, it asks us to reconcile value in use

and value in exchange; that is, to find the method of rendering

all useful values equally exchangeable, and, vice versa, all

exchangeable values equally useful.

The economists have very clearly shown the double character of

value, but what they have not made equally plain is its

contradictory nature. Here begins our criticism.

Utility is the necessary condition of exchange; but take away

exchange, and utility vanishes: these two things are indissolubly

connected. Where, then, is the contradiction?

Since all of us live only by labor and exchange, and grow richer

as production and exchange increase, each of us produces as much

useful value as possible, in order to increase by that amount his

exchanges, and consequently his enjoyments. Well, the first

effect, the inevitable effect, of the multiplication of values is

to LOWER them: the more abundant is an article of merchandise,

the more it loses in exchange and depreciates commercially. Is

it not true that there is a contradiction between the necessity

of labor and its results?

I adjure the reader, before rushing ahead for the explanation, to

arrest his attention upon the fact.

A peasant who has harvested twenty sacks of wheat, which he with

his family proposes to consume, deems himself twice as rich

as if he had harvested only ten; likewise a housewife who has

spun fifty yards of linen believes that she is twice as rich as

if she had spun but twenty- five. Relatively to the household,

both are right; looked at in their external relations, they may

be utterly mistaken. If the crop of wheat is double throughout

the whole country, twenty sacks will sell for less than ten would

have sold for if it had been but half as great; so, under similar

circumstances, fifty yards of linen will be worth less than

twenty-five: so that value decreases as the production of utility

increases, and a producer may arrive at poverty by continually

enriching himself. And this seems unalterable, inasmuch as there

is no way of escape except all the products of industry become

infinite in quantity, like air and light, which is absurd. God

of my reason! Jean Jacques would have said: it is not the

economists who are irrational; it is political economy itself

which is false to its definitions. Mentita est iniquitas sibi.

In the preceding examples the useful value exceeds the

exchangeable value: in other cases it is less. Then the same

phenomenon is produced, but in the opposite direction: the

balance is in favor of the producer, while the consumer suffers.

This is notably the case in seasons of scarcity, when the high

price of provisions is always more or less factitious. There are

also professions whose whole art consists in giving to an article

of minor usefulness, which could easily be dispensed with, an

exaggerated value of opinion: such, in general, are the arts of

luxury. Man, through his aesthetic passion, is eager for the

trifles the possession of which would highly satisfy his vanity,

his innate desire for luxury, and his more noble and more

respectable love of the beautiful: upon this the dealers in this

class of articles speculate. To tax fancy and elegance is no

less odious or absurd than to tax circulation: but such a tax is

collected by a few fashionable merchants, whom general

infatuation protects, and whose whole merit generally consists in

warping taste and generating fickleness. Hence no one complains;

and all the maledictions of opinion are reserved for the

monopolists who, through genius, succeed in raising by a few

cents the price of linen and bread.

It is little to have pointed out this astonishing contrast

between useful value and exchangeable value, which the economists

have been in the habit of regarding as very simple: it must be

shown that this pretended simplicity conceals a profound mystery,

which it is our duty to fathom.

I summon, therefore, every serious economist to tell me,

otherwise than by transforming or repeating the question, for

what reason value decreases in proportion as production augments,

and reciprocally what causes this same value to increase in

proportion as production diminishes. In technical terms, useful

value and exchangeable value, necessary to each other, are

inversely proportional to each other; I ask, then, why scarcity,

instead of utility, is synonymous with dearness. For--mark it

well--the price of merchandise is independent of the amount of

labor expended in production; and its greater or less cost does

not serve at all to explain the variations in its price. Value

is capricious, like liberty: it considers neither utility nor

labor; on the contrary, it seems that, in the ordinary course of

affairs, and exceptional derangements aside, the most useful

objects are those which are sold at the lowest price; in other

words, that it is just that the men who perform the most

attractive labor should be the best rewarded, while those whose

tasks demand the most exertion are paid the least. So that, in

following the principle to its ultimate consequences, we

reach the most logical of conclusions: that things whose use is

necessary and quantity infinite must be gratuitous, while those

which are without utility and extremely scarce must bear an

inestimable price. But, to complete the embarrassment, these

extremes do not occur in practice: on the one hand, no human

product can ever become infinite in quantity; on the other, the

rarest things must be in some degree useful, else they would not

be susceptible of value. Useful value and exchangeable value

remain, then, in inevitable attachment, although it is their

nature continually to tend towards mutual exclusion.

I shall not fatigue the reader with a refutation of the

logomachies which might be offered in explanation of this

subject: of the contradiction inherent in the idea of value there

is no assignable cause, no possible explanation. The fact of

which I speak is one of those called primitive,--that is, one of

those which may serve to explain others, but which in themselves,

like the bodies called simple, are inexplicable. Such is the

dualism of spirit and matter. Spirit and matter are two terms

each of which, taken separately, indicates a special aspect of

spirit, but corresponds to no reality. So, given man's needs of

a great variety of products together with the obligation of

procuring them by his labor, the opposition of useful value to

exchangeable value necessarily results; and from this opposition

a contradiction on the very threshold of political economy. No

intelligence, no will, divine or human, can prevent it.

Therefore, instead of searching for a chimerical explanation, let

us content ourselves with establishing the necessity of the

contradiction. Whatever the abundance of created values and the

proportion in which they exchange for each other, in order

that we may exchange our products, mine must suit you when you

are the BUYER, and I must be satisfied with yours when you are

the SELLER. For no one has a right to impose his own

merchandise upon another: the sole judge of utility, or in other

words the want, is the buyer. Therefore, in the first case, you

have the deciding power; in the second, I have it. Take away

reciprocal liberty, and exchange is no longer the expression of

industrial solidarity: it is robbery. Communism, by the way,

will never surmount this difficulty.

But, where there is liberty, production is necessarily

undetermined, either in quantity or in quality; so that from the

point of view of economic progress, as from that of the relation

of consumers, valuation always is an arbitrary matter, and the

price of merchandise will ever fluctuate. Suppose for a moment

that all producers should sell at a fixed price: there would be

some who, producing at less cost and in better quality, would get

much, while others would get nothing. In every way equilibrium

would be destroyed. Do you wish, in order to prevent business

stagnation, to limit production strictly to the necessary amount?

That would be a violation of liberty: for, in depriving me of the

power of choice, you condemn me to pay the highest price; you

destroy competition, the sole guarantee of cheapness, and

encourage smuggling. In this way, to avoid commercial

absolutism, you would rush into administrative absolutism; to

create equality, you would destroy liberty, which is to deny

equality itself. Would you group producers in a single workshop

(supposing you to possess this secret)? That again does not

suffice: it would be necessary also to group consumers in a

common household, whereby you would abandon the point. We are

not to abolish the idea of value, which is as impossible as to

abolish labor, but to determine it; we are not to kill

individual liberty, but to socialize it. Now, it is proved that

it is the free will of man that gives rise to the opposition

between value in use and value in exchange: how reconcile this

opposition while free will exists? And how sacrifice the latter

without sacrificing man?

Then, from the very fact that I, as a free purchaser, am judge of

my own wants, judge of the fitness of the object, judge of the

price I wish to pay, and that you on the other hand, as a free

producer, control the means of production, and consequently have

the power to reduce your expenses, absolutism forces itself

forward as an element of value, and causes it to oscillate

between utility and opinion.

But this oscillation, clearly pointed out by the economists, is

but the effect of a contradiction which, repeating itself on a

vast scale, engenders the most unexpected phenomena. Three years

of fertility, in certain provinces of Russia, are a public

calamity, just as, in our vineyards, three years of abundance are

a calamity to the wine-grower I know well that the economists

attribute this distress to a lack of markets; wherefore this

question of markets is an important one with them. Unfortunately

the theory of markets, like that of emigration with which they

attempted to meet Malthus, is a begging of the question. The

States having the largest market are as subject to

over-production as the most isolated countries: where are high

and low prices better known than in the stock-exchanges of Paris

and London?

From the oscillation of value and the irregular effects resulting

therefrom the socialists and economists, each in their own way,

have reasoned to opposite, but equally false, conclusions: the

former have made it a text for the slander of political economy

and its exclusion from social science; the latter, for the

denial of all possibility of reconciliation, and the affirmation

of the incommensurability of values, and consequently the

inequality of fortunes, as an absolute law of commerce.

I say that both parties are equally in error.

1. The contradictory idea of value, so clearly exhibited by the

inevitable distinction between useful value and value in exchange

does not arise from a false mental perception, or from a vicious

terminology, or from any practical error; it lies deep in the

nature of things, and forces itself upon the mind as a general

form of thought,--that is, as a category. Now, as the idea of

value is the point of departure of political economy, it follows

that all the elements of the science--I use the word science in

anticipation--are contradictory in themselves and opposed to each

other: so truly is this the case that on every question the

economist finds himself continually placed between an affirmation

and a negation alike irrefutable. ANTINOMY, in fine, to use a

word sanctioned by modern philosophy, is the essential

characteristic of political economy; that is to say, it is at

once its death-sentence and its justification.

ANTINOMY, literally COUNTER-LAW, means opposition in principle

or antagonism in relation, just as contradiction or ANTILOGY

indicates opposition or discrepancy in speech. Antinomy,--I ask

pardon for entering into these scholastic details, comparatively

unfamiliar as yet to most economists,--antinomy is the conception

of a law with two faces, the one positive, the other negative.

Such, for instance, is the law called ATTRACTION, by which the

planets revolve around the sun, and which mathematicians have

analyzed into centripetal force and centrifugal force. Such also

is the problem of the infinite divisibility of matter, which, as

Kant has shown, can be denied and affirmed successively by

arguments equally plausible and irrefutable.

Antinomy simply expresses a fact, and forces itself imperatively

on the mind; contradiction, properly speaking, is an absurdity.

This distinction between antinomy (contra-lex) and contradiction

(contra-dictio) shows in what sense it can be said that, in a

certain class of ideas and facts, the argument of contradiction

has not the same value as in mathematics.

In mathematics it is a rule that, a proposition being proved

false, its opposite is true, and vice versa. In fact, this is

the principal method of mathematical demonstration. In social

economy, it is not the same: thus we see, for example, that

property being proved by its results to be false, the opposite

formula, communism, is none the truer on this account, but is

deniable at the same time and by the same title as property.

Does it follow, as has been said with such ridiculous emphasis,

that every truth, every idea, results from a contradiction,--

that is, from a something which is affirmed and denied at the

same moment and from the same point of view,--and that it may be

necessary to abandon wholly the old-fashioned logic, which

regards contradiction as the infallible sign of error? This

babble is worthy of sophists who, destitute of faith and honesty,

endeavor to perpetuate scepticism in order to maintain their

impertinent uselessness. Because antinomy, immediately it is

misunderstood, leads inevitably to contradiction, these have been

mistaken for each other, especially among the French, who like to

judge everything by its effects. But neither contradiction nor

antinomy, which analysis discovers at the bottom of every simple

idea, is the principle of truth. Contradiction is always

synonymous with nullity; as for antinomy, sometimes called by

the same name, it is indeed the forerunner of truth, the material

of which, so to speak, it supplies; but it is not truth, and,

considered in itself, it is the efficient cause of disorder, the

characteristic form of delusion and evil.

An antinomy is made up of two terms, necessary to each other, but

always opposed, and tending to mutual destruction. I hardly dare

to add, as I must, that the first of these terms has received the

name thesis, position, and the second the name anti-thesis,

counter-position. This method of thought is now so well-known

that it will soon figure, I hope, in the text-books of the

primary schools. We shall see directly how from the combination

of these two zeros unity springs forth, or the idea which dispels

the antinomy.

Thus, in value, there is nothing useful that cannot be exchanged,

nothing exchangeable if it be not useful: value in use and value

in exchange are inseparable. But while, by industrial progress,

demand varies and multiplies to an infinite extent, and while

manufactures tend in consequence to increase the natural utility

of things, and finally to convert all useful value into

exchangeable value, production, on the other hand, continually

increasing the power of its instruments and always reducing its

expenses, tends to restore the venal value of things to their

primitive utility: so that value in use and value in exchange are

in perpetual struggle.

The effects of this struggle are well-known: the wars of commerce

and of the market; obstructions to business; stagnation;

prohibition; the massacres of competition; monopoly; reductions

of wages; laws fixing maximum prices; the crushing inequality of

fortunes; misery,--all these result from the antinomy of value.

The proof of this I may be excused from giving here, as it will

appear naturally in the chapters to follow.

The socialists, while justly demanding that this antagonism be

brought to an end, have erred in mistaking its source, and in

seeing in it only a mental oversight, capable of rectification by

a legal decree. Hence this lamentable outbreak of

sentimentalism, which has rendered socialism so insipid to

positive minds, and which, spreading the absurdest delusions,

makes so many fresh dupes every day. My complaint of socialism

is not that it has appeared among us without cause, but that it

has clung so long and so obstinately to its silliness.

2. But the economists have erred no less gravely in rejecting a

priori, and just because of the contradictory, or rather

antinomical, nature of value, every idea and hope of reform,

never desiring to understand that, for the very reason that

society has arrived at its highest point of antagonism,

reconciliation and harmony are at hand. This, nevertheless, is

what a close study of political economy would have shown to its

adepts, had they paid more attention to the lights of modern

metaphysics. It is indeed demonstrated, by the most positive

evidence known to the human mind, that wherever an antinomy

appears there is a promise of a resolution of its terms, and

consequently an announcement of a coming change. Now, the idea

of value, as developed by J. B. Say among others, satisfies

exactly these conditions. But the economists, who have remained

for the most part by an inconceivable fatality ignorant of the

movement of philosophy, have guarded against the supposition that

the essentially contradictory, or, as they say, variable,

character of value might be at the same time the authentic sign

of its constitutionality,--that is, of its eminently harmonious

and determinable nature. However dishonorable it may be to the

economists of the various schools, it is certain that their

opposition to socialism results solely from this false

conception of their own principles; one proof, taken from a

thousand, will suffice.

The Academy of Sciences (not that of Moral Sciences, but the

other), going outside of its province one day, listened to a

paper in which it was proposed to calculate tables of value for

all kinds of merchandise upon the basis of the average product

per man and per day's labor in each branch of industry. "Le

Journal des Economistes" (August, 1845) immediately made this

communication, intrusive in its eyes, the text of a protest

against the plan of tariff which was its object, and the occasion

of a reestablishment of what it called true principles:--

"There is no measure of value, no standard of value," it said in

its conclusions; "economic science tells us this, just as

mathematical science tells us that there is no perpetual motion

or quadrature of the circle, and that these never will be found.

Now, if there is no standard of value, if the measure of value is

not even a metaphysical illusion, what then is the law which

governs exchanges? . . . . . As we have said before, it is, in a

general way, SUPPLY and DEMAND: that is the last word of

science."

Now, how did "Le Journal des Economistes" prove that there is no

measure of value? I use the consecrated expression: though I

shall show directly that this phrase, MEASURE OF VALUE, is

somewhat ambiguous, and does not convey the exact meaning which

it is intended, and which it ought, to express.

This journal repeated, with accompanying examples, the exposition

that we have just given of the variability of value, but without

arriving, as we did, at the contradiction. Now, if the estimable

editor, one of the most distinguished economists of the

school of Say, had had stricter logical habits; if he had been

long used, not only to observing facts, but to seeking their

explanation in the ideas which produce them,--I do not doubt that

he would have expressed himself more cautiously, and that,

instead of seeing in the variability of value the LAST WORD OF

SCIENCE, he would have recognized unaided that it is the first.

Seeing that the variability of value proceeds not from things,

but from the mind, he would have said that, as human liberty has

its law, so value must have its law; consequently, that the

hypothesis of a measure of value, this being the common

expression, is not at all irrational; quite the contrary, that it

is the denial of this measure that is illogical, untenable.

And indeed, what is there in the idea of measuring, and

consequently of fixing, value, that is unscientific? All men

believe in it; all wish it, search for it, suppose it: every

proposition of sale or purchase is at bottom only a comparison

between two values,--that is, a determination, more or less

accurate if you will, but nevertheless effective. The opinion of

the human race on the existing difference between real value and

market price may be said to be unanimous. It is for this reason

that so many kinds of merchandise are sold at a fixed price;

there are some, indeed, which, even in their variations, are

always fixed,--bread, for instance. It will not be denied that,

if two manufacturers can supply one another by an account

current, and at a settled price, with quantities of their

respective products, ten, a hundred, a thousand manufacturers can

do the same. Now, that would be a solution of the problem of the

measure of value. The price of everything would be debated upon,

I allow, because debate is still our only method of fixing

prices; but yet, as all light is the result of conflict, debate,

though it may be a proof of uncertainty, has for its object,

setting aside the greater or less amount of good faith that

enters into it, the discovery of the relation of values to each

other,-- that is, their measurement, their law.

Ricardo, in his theory of rent, has given a magnificent example

of the commensurability of values. He has shown that arable

lands are to each other as the crops which they yield with the

same outlay; and here universal practice is in harmony with

theory. Now who will say that this positive and sure method of

estimating the value of land, and in general of all engaged

capital, cannot be applied to products also? . . . . .

They say: Political economy is not affected by a priori

arguments; it pronounces only upon facts. Now, facts and

experience teach us that there is no measure of value and can be

none, and prove that, though the conception of such an idea was

necessary in the nature of things, its realization is wholly

chimerical. Supply and demand is the sole law of exchange.

I will not repeat that experience proves precisely the contrary;

that everything, in the economic progress of society, denotes a

tendency toward the constitution and establishment of value; that

that is the culminating point of political economy--which by this

constitution becomes transformed--and the supreme indication of

order in society: this general outline, reiterated without proof,

would become tiresome. I confine myself for the moment within

the limits of the discussion, and say that SUPPLY and DEMAND,

held up as the sole regulators of value, are nothing more than

two ceremonial forms serving to bring useful value and

exchangeable value face to face, and to provoke their

reconciliation. They are the two electric poles, whose

connection must produce the economical phenomenon of affinity

called EXCHANGE. Like the poles of a battery, supply and demand

are diametrically opposed to each other, and tend continually to

mutual annihilation; it is by their antagonism that the price of

things is either increased, or reduced to nothing: we wish to

know, then, if it is not possible, on every occasion, so to

balance or harmonize these two forces that the price of things

always may be the expression of their true value, the expression

of justice. To say after that that supply and demand is the law

of exchange is to say that supply and demand is the law of supply

and demand; it is not an explanation of the general practice, but

a declaration of its absurdity; and I deny that the general

practice is absurd.

I have just quoted Ricardo as having given, in a special

instance, a positive rule for the comparison of values: the

economists do better still. Every year they gather from tables

of statistics the average prices of the various grains. Now,

what is the meaning of an average? Every one can see that in a

single operation, taken at random from a million, there is no

means of knowing which prevailed, supply--that is, useful

value--or exchangeable value,--that is, demand. But as every

increase in the price of merchandise is followed sooner or later

by a proportional reduction; as, in other words, in society the

profits of speculation are equal to the losses,--we may regard

with good reason the average of prices during a complete period

as indicative of the real and legitimate value of products. This

average, it is true, is ascertained too late: but who knows that

we could not discover it in advance? Is there an economist who

dares to deny it?

Nolens volens, then, the measure of value must be sought for:

logic commands it, and her conclusions are adverse to

economists and socialists alike. The opinion which denies

the existence of this measure is irrational, unreasonable. Say

as often as you please, on the one hand, that political economy

is a science of facts, and that the facts are contrary to the

hypothesis of a determination of value, or, on the other, that

this troublesome question would not present itself in a system of

universal association, which would absorb all antagonism,--I will

reply still, to the right and to the left:--

1. That as no fact is produced which has not its cause, so none

exists which has not its law; and that, if the law of exchange is

not discovered, the fault is, not with the facts, but with the

savants.

2. That, as long as man shall labor in order to live, and shall

labor freely, justice will be the condition of fraternity and the

basis of association; now, without a determination of value,

justice is imperfect, impossible.

% 2.--Constitution of value; definition of wealth.

We know value in its two opposite aspects; we do not know it in

its TOTALITY. If we can acquire this new idea, we shall have

absolute value; and a table of values, such as was called for in

the memoir read to the Academy of Sciences, will be possible.

Let us picture wealth, then, as a mass held by a chemical force

in a permanent state of composition, in which new elements,

continually entering, combine in different proportions, but

according to a certain law: value is the proportional relation

(the measure) in which each of these elements forms a part of the

whole.

From this two things result: one, that the economists have been

wholly deluded when they have looked for the general measure of

value in wheat, specie, rent, etc., and also when, after having

demonstrated that this standard of measure was neither here nor

there, they have concluded that value has neither law nor

measure; the other, that the proportion of values may continually

vary without ceasing on that account to be subject to a law,

whose determination is precisely the solution sought.

This idea of value satisfies, as we shall see, all the

conditions: for it includes at once both the positive and fixed

element in useful value and the variable element in exchangeable

value; in the second place, it puts an end to the contradiction

which seemed an insurmountable obstacle in the way of the

determination of value; further, we shall show that value thus

understood differs entirely from a simple juxtaposition of the

two ideas of useful and exchangeable value, and that it is

endowed with new properties.

The proportionality of products is not a revelation that we

pretend to offer to the world, or a novelty that we bring into

science, any more than the division of labor was an unheard-of

thing when Adam Smith explained its marvels. The proportionality

of products is, as we might prove easily by innumerable

quotations, a common idea running through the works on political

economy, but to which no one as yet has dreamed of attributing

its rightful importance: and this is the task which we undertake

today. We feel bound, for the rest, to make this declaration in

order to reassure the reader concerning our pretensions to

originality, and to satisfy those minds whose timidity leads them

to look with little favor upon new ideas.

The economists seem always to have understood by the measure of

value only a standard, a sort of original unit, existing by

itself, and applicable to all sorts of merchandise, as the yard

is applicable to all lengths. Consequently, many have thought

that such a standard is furnished by the precious metals. But

the theory of money has proved that, far from being the measure

of values, specie is only their arithmetic, and a conventional

arithmetic at that. Gold and silver are to value what the

thermometer is to heat. The thermometer, with its arbitrarily

graduated scale, indicates clearly when there is a loss or an

increase of heat: but what the laws of heat-equilibrium are; what

is its proportion in various bodies; what amount is necessary to

cause a rise of ten, fifteen, or twenty degrees in the

thermometer,--the thermometer does not tell us; it is not certain

even that the degrees of the scale, equal to each other,

correspond to equal additions of heat.

The idea that has been entertained hitherto of the measure of

value, then, is inexact; the object of our inquiry is not the

standard of value, as has been said so often and so foolishly,

but the law which regulates the proportions of the various

products to the social wealth; for upon the knowledge of this law

depends the rise and fall of prices in so far as it is normal and

legitimate. In a word, as we understand by the measure of

celestial bodies the relation resulting from the comparison of

these bodies with each other, so, by the measure of values, we

must understand the relation which results from their comparison.

Now, I say that this relation has its law, and this comparison

its principle.

I suppose, then, a force which combines in certain proportions

the elements of wealth, and makes of them a homogeneous whole: if

the constituent elements do not exist in the desired proportion,

the combination will take place nevertheless; but, instead of

absorbing all the material, it will reject a portion as useless.

The internal movement by which the combination is produced, and

which the affinities of the various substances determine--this

movement in society is exchange; exchange considered no longer

simply in its elementary form and between man and man, but

exchange considered as the fusion of all values produced by

private industry in one and the same mass of social wealth.

Finally, the proportion in which each element enters into the

compound is what we call value; the excess remaining after the

combination is NON-VALUE, until the addition of a certain

quantity of other elements causes further combination and

exchange.

We will explain later the function of money.

This determined, it is conceivable that at a given moment the

proportions of values constituting the wealth of a country may be

determined, or at least empirically approximated, by means of

statistics and inventories, in nearly the same way that the

chemists have discovered by experience, aided by analysis, the

proportions of hydrogen and oxygen necessary to the formation of

water. There is nothing objectionable in this method of

determining values; it is, after all, only a matter of accounts.

But such a work, however interesting it might be, would teach us

nothing very useful. On the one hand, indeed, we know that the

proportion continually varies; on the other, it is clear that

from a statement of the public wealth giving the proportions of

values only for the time and place when and where the statistics

should be gathered we could not deduce the law of proportionality

of wealth. For that, a single operation of this sort would not

be sufficient; thousands and millions of similar ones would be

necessary, even admitting the method to be worthy of confidence.

Now, here there is a difference between economic science and

chemistry. The chemists, who have discovered by experience such

beautiful proportions, know no more of their how or why than of

the force which governs them. Social economy, on the contrary,

to which no a posteriori investigation could reveal directly the

law of proportionality of values, can grasp it in the very force

which produces it, and which it is time to announce.

This force, which Adam Smith has glorified so eloquently, and

which his successors have misconceived (making privilege its

equal),--this force is LABOR. Labor differs in quantity and

quality with the producer; in this respect it is like all the

great principles of Nature and the most general laws, simple in

their action and formula, but infinitely modified by a multitude

of special causes, and manifesting themselves under an

innumerable variety of forms. It is labor, labor alone, that

produces all the elements of wealth, and that combines them to

their last molecules according to a law of variable, but certain,

proportionality. It is labor, in fine, that, as the principle of

life, agitates (mens agitat) the material (molem) of wealth, and

proportions it.

Society, or the collective man, produces an infinitude of

objects, the enjoyment of which constitutes its WELL-BEING.

This well-being is developed not only in the ratio of the

QUANTITY of the products, but also in the ratio of their

VARIETY (quality) and PROPORTION. From this fundamental datum

it follows that society always, at each instant of its life, must

strive for such proportion in its products as will give the

greatest amount of well-being, considering the power and means of

production. Abundance, variety, and proportion in products are

the three factors which constitute WEALTH: wealth, the object of

social economy, is subject to the same conditions of existence as

beauty, the object of art; virtue, the object of morality; and

truth, the object of metaphysics.

But how establish this marvelous proportion, so essential that

without it a portion of human labor is lost,--that is, useless,

inharmonious, untrue, and consequently synonymous with poverty

and annihilation?

Prometheus, according to the fable, is the symbol of human

activity. Prometheus steals the fire of heaven, and invents the

early arts; Prometheus foresees the future, and aspires to

equality with Jupiter; Prometheus is God. Then let us call

society Prometheus.

Prometheus devotes, on an average, ten hours a day to labor,

seven to rest, and seven to pleasure. In order to gather from

his toil the most useful fruit, Prometheus notes the time and

trouble that each object of his consumption costs him. Only

experience can teach him this, and this experience lasts

throughout his life. While laboring and producing, then,

Prometheus is subject to an infinitude of disappointments. But,

as a final result, the more he labors, the greater is his

well-being and the more idealized his luxury; the further he

extends his conquests over Nature, the more strongly he fortifies

within him the principle of life and intelligence in the exercise

of which he alone finds happiness; till finally, the early

education of the Laborer completed and order introduced into his

occupations, to labor, with him, is no longer to suffer,--it is

to live, to enjoy. But the attractiveness of labor does not

nullify the rule, since, on the contrary, it is the fruit of it;

and those who, under the pretext that labor should be attractive,

reason to the denial of justice and to communism, resemble

children who, after having gathered some flowers in the garden,

should arrange a flower-bed on the staircase.

In society, then, justice is simply the proportionality of

values; its guarantee and sanction is the responsibility of the

producer.

Prometheus knows that such a product costs an hour's labor, such

another a day's, a week's, a year's; he knows at the same time

that all these products, arranged according to their cost, form

the progression of his wealth. First, then, he will assure his

existence by providing himself with the least costly, and

consequently most necessary, things; then, as fast as his

position becomes secure, he will look forward to articles of

luxury, proceeding always, if he is wise, according to the

natural position of each article in the scale of prices.

Sometimes Prometheus will make a mistake in his calculations, or

else, carried away by passion, he will sacrifice an immediate

good to a premature enjoyment, and, after having toiled and

moiled, he will starve. Thus, the law carries with it its own

sanction; its violation is inevitably accompanied by the

immediate punishment of the transgressor.

Say, then, was right in saying: "The happiness of this class

(the consumers), composed of all the others, constitutes the

general well- being, the state of prosperity of a country." Only

he should have added that the happiness of the class of

producers, which also is composed of all the others, equally

constitutes the general well-being, the state of prosperity of a

country. So, when he says: "The fortune of each consumer is

perpetually at war with all that he buys," he should have added

again: "The fortune of each producer is incessantly attacked by

all that he sells." In the absence of a clear expression of this

reciprocity, most economical phenomena become unintelligible; and

I will soon show how, in consequence of this grave omission, most

economists in writing their books have talked wildly about the

balance of trade.

I have just said that society produces first THE LEAST COSTLY,

AND CONSEQUENTLY MOST NECESSARY, THINGS. Now, is it true that

cheapness of products is always a correlative of their necessity,

and vice versa; so that these two words, NECESSITY and

CHEAPNESS, like the following ones, COSTLINESS and

SUPERFLUITY, are synonymes?

If each product of labor, taken alone, would suffice for the

existence of man, the synonymy in question would not be doubtful;

all products having the same qualities, those would be most

advantageously produced, and therefore the most necessary, which

cost the least. But the parallel between the utility and price

of products is not characterized by this theoretical precision:

either through the foresight of Nature or from some other cause,

the balance between needs and productive power is more than a

theory,--it is a fact, of which daily practice, as well as social

progress, gives evidence.

Imagine ourselves living in the day after the birth of man at the

beginning of civilization: is it not true that the industries

originally the simplest, those which required the least

preparation and expense, were the following: GATHERING,

PASTURAGE, HUNTING, and FISHING, which were followed long

afterwards by agriculture? Since then, these four primitive

industries have been perfected, and moreover appropriated: a

double circumstance which does not change the meaning of the

facts, but, on the contrary, makes it more manifest. In fact,

property has always attached itself by preference to objects of

the most immediate utility, to MADE VALUES, if I may so speak;

so that the scale of values might be fixed by the progress of

appropriation.

In his work on the "Liberty of Labor" M. Dunoyer has positively

accepted this principle by distinguishing four great classes of

industry, which he arranges according to the order of their

development,--that is, from the least labor-cost to the greatest.

These are EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRY,--including all the semi-barbarous

functions mentioned above,--COMMERCIAL INDUSTRY, MANUFACTURING,

INDUSTRY, AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY. And it is for a profound reason

that the learned author placed agriculture last in the list.

For, despite its great antiquity, it is certain that this

industry has not kept pace with the others, and the succession of

human affairs is not decided by their origin, but by their entire

development. It may be that agricultural industry was born

before the others, and it may be that all were contemporary; but

that will be deemed of the latest date which shall be perfected

last.

Thus the very nature of things, as well as his own wants,

indicates to the laborer the order in which he should effect the

production of the values that make up his well-being. Our law of

proportionality, then, is at once physical and logical, objective

and subjective; it has the highest degree of certainty. Let us

pursue the application.

Of all the products of labor, none perhaps has cost longer and

more patient efforts than the calendar. Nevertheless, there is

none the enjoyment of which can now be procured more cheaply, and

which, consequently, by our own definitions, has become more

necessary. How, then, shall we explain this change? Why has the

calendar, so useless to the early hordes, who only needed the

alternation of night and day, as of winter and summer, become at

last so indispensable, so unexpensive, so perfect? For, by a

marvelous harmony, in social economy all these adjectives are

interconvertible. How account, in short, by our law of

proportion, for the variability of the value of the calendar?

In order that the labor necessary to the production of the

calendar might be performed, might be possible, man had to find

means of gaining time from his early occupations and from those

which immediately followed them. In other words, these

industries had to become more productive, or less costly, than

they were at the beginning: which amounts to saying that it was

necessary first to solve the problem of the production of the

calendar from the extractive industries themselves.

Suppose, then, that suddenly, by a fortunate combination of

efforts, by the division of labor, by the use of some machine, by

better management of the natural resources,--in short, by his

industry,--Prometheus finds a way of producing in one day as much

of a certain object as he formerly produced in ten: what will

follow? The product will change its position in the table of the

elements of wealth; its power of affinity for other products, so

to speak, being increased, its relative value will be

proportionately diminished, and, instead of being quoted at one

hundred, it will thereafter be quoted only at ten. But this

value will still and always be none the less accurately

determined, and it will still be labor alone which will fix the

degree of its importance. Thus value varies, and the law of

value is unchangeable: further, if value is susceptible of

variation, it is because it is governed by a law whose principle

is essentially inconstant,--namely, labor measured by time.

The same reasoning applies to the production of the calendar as

to that of all possible values. I do not need to explain

how--civilization (that is, the social fact of the increase of

life) multiplying our tasks, rendering our moments more and more

precious, and obliging us to keep a perpetual and detailed record

of our whole life--the calendar has become to all one of the most

necessary things. We know, moreover, that this wonderful

discovery has given rise, as its natural complement, to one of

our most valuable industries, the manufacture of clocks and

watches.

At this point there very naturally arises an objection, the only

one that can be offered against the theory of the proportionality

of values.

Say and the economists who have succeeded him have observed that,

labor being itself an object of valuation, a species of

merchandise indeed like any other, to take it as the principal

and efficient cause of value is to reason in a vicious circle.

Therefore, they conclude, it is necessary to fall back on

scarcity and opinion.

These economists, if they will allow me to say it, herein have

shown themselves wonderfully careless. Labor is said TO HAVE

VALUE, not as merchandise itself, but in view of the values

supposed to be contained in it potentially. The VALUE OF LABOR

is a figurative expression, an anticipation of effect from cause.

It is a fiction by the same title as the PRODUCTIVITY OF

CAPITAL. Labor produces, capital has value: and when, by a sort

of ellipsis, we say the value of labor, we make an enjambement

which is not at all contrary to the rules of language, but which

theorists ought to guard against mistaking for a reality. Labor,

like liberty, love, ambition, genius, is a thing vague and

indeterminate in its nature, but qualitatively defined by its

object,--that is, it becomes a reality through its product.

When, therefore, we say: This man's labor is worth five francs

per day, it is as if we should say: The daily product of this

man's labor is worth five francs.

Now, the effect of labor is continually to eliminate scarcity and

opinion as constitutive elements of value, and, by necessary

consequence, to transform natural or indefinite utilities

(appropriated or not) into measurable or social utilities: whence

it follows that labor is at once a war declared upon the

parsimony of Nature and a permanent conspiracy against property.

According to this analysis, value, considered from the point of

view of the association which producers, by division of labor and

by exchange, naturally form among themselves, is the PROPORTIONAL

RELATION OF THE PRODUCTS WHICH CONSTITUTE WEALTH, and what we

call the value of any special product is a formula which

expresses, in terms of money, the proportion of this product to

the general wealth.--Utility is the basis of value; labor fixes

the relation; the price is the expression which, barring the

fluctuations that we shall have to consider, indicates this

relation.

Such is the centre around which useful and exchangeable value

oscillate, the point where they are finally swallowed up and

disappear: such is the absolute, unchangeable law which regulates

economic disturbances and the freaks of industry and commerce,

and governs progress. Every effort of thinking and laboring

humanity, every individual and social speculation, as an

integrant part of collective wealth, obeys this law. It was the

destiny of political economy, by successively positing all its

contradictory terms, to make this law known; the object of social

economy, which I ask permission for a moment to distinguish from

political economy, although at bottom there is no difference

between them, will be to spread and apply it universally.

The theory of the measure or proportionality of values is, let it

be noticed, the theory of equality itself. Indeed, just as in

society, where we have seen that there is a complete identity

between producer and consumer, the revenue paid to an idler

is like value cast into the flames of Etna, so the laborer who

receives excessive wages is like a gleaner to whom should be

given a loaf of bread for gathering a stalk of grain: and all

that the economists have qualified as UNPRODUCTIVE CONSUMPTION

is in reality simply a violation of the law of proportionality.

We shall see in the sequence how, from these simple data, the

social genius gradually deduces the still obscure system of

organization of labor, distribution of wages, valuation of

products, and universal solidarity. For social order is

established upon the basis of inexorable justice, not at all upon

the paradisical sentiments of fraternity, self-sacrifice, and

love, to the exercise of which so many honorable socialists are

endeavoring now to stimulate the people. It is in vain that,

following Jesus Christ, they preach the necessity, and set the

example, of sacrifice; selfishness is stronger, and only the law

of severity, economic fatality, is capable of mastering it.

Humanitarian enthusiasm may produce shocks favorable to the

progress of civilization; but these crises of sentiment, like the

oscillations of value, must always result only in a firmer and

more absolute establishment of justice. Nature, or Divinity, we

distrust in our hearts: she has never believed in the love of man

for his fellow; and all that science reveals to us of the ways of

Providence in the progress of society--I say it to the shame of

the human conscience, but our hypocrisy must be made aware of

it--shows a profound misanthropy on the part of God. God helps

us, not from motives of goodness, but because order is his

essence; God promotes the welfare of the world, not because he

deems it worthy, but because the religion of his supreme

intelligence lays the obligation upon him: and while the vulgar

give him the sweet name Father, it is impossible for the

historian, for the political economist, to believe that he

either loves or esteems us.

Let us imitate this sublime indifference, this stoical ataraxia,

of God; and, since the precept of charity always has failed to

promote social welfare, let us look to pure reason for the

conditions of harmony and virtue.

Value, conceived as the proportionality of products, otherwise

called CONSTITUTED VALUE, necessarily implies in an equal degree

UTILITY and VENALITY, indivisibly and harmoniously united. It

implies utility, for, without this condition, the product would

be destitute of that affinity which renders it exchangeable, and

consequently makes it an element of wealth; it implies venality,

since, if the product was not acceptable in the market at any

hour and at a known price, it would be only a non-value, it would

be nothing.

But, in constituted value, all these properties acquire a

broader, more regular, truer significance than before. Thus,

utility is no longer that inert capacity, so to speak, which

things possess of serving for our enjoyments and in our

researches; venality is no longer the exaggeration of a blind

fancy or an unprincipled opinion; finally, variability has ceased

to explain itself by a disingenuous discussion between supply and

demand: all that has disappeared to give place to a positive,

normal, and, under all possible circumstances, determinable idea.

By the constitution of values each product, if it is allowable to

establish such an analogy, becomes like the nourishment which,

discovered by the alimentary instinct, then prepared by the

digestive organs, enters into the general circulation, where it

is converted, according to certain proportions, into flesh, bone,

liquid, etc., and gives to the body life, strength, and beauty.

Now, what change does the idea of value undergo when we rise from

the contradictory notions of useful value and exchangeable value

to that of constituted value or absolute value? There is, so to

speak, a joining together, a reciprocal penetration, in which the

two elementary concepts, grasping each other like the hooked

atoms of Epicurus, absorb one another and disappear, leaving in

their place a compound possessed, but in a superior degree, of

all their positive properties, and divested of all their negative

properties. A value really such--like money, first-class

business paper, government annuities, shares in a

well-established enterprise--can neither be increased without

reason nor lost in exchange: it is governed only by the natural

law of the addition of special industries and the increase of

products. Further, such a value is not the result of a

compromise,--that is, of eclecticism, juste-milieu, or mixture;

it is the product of a complete fusion, a product entirely new

and distinct from its components, just as water, the product of

the combination of hydrogen and oxygen, is a separate body,

totally distinct from its elements.

The resolution of two antithetical ideas in a third of a superior

order is what the school calls SYNTHESIS. It alone gives the

positive and complete idea, which is obtained, as we have seen,

by the successive affirmation or negation--for both amount to the

same thing--of two diametrically opposite concepts. Whence we

deduce this corollary, of the first importance in practice as

well as in theory: wherever, in the spheres of morality, history,

or political economy, analysis has established the antinomy of an

idea, we may affirm on a priori grounds that this antinomy

conceals a higher idea, which sooner or later will make its

appearance.

I am sorry to have to insist at so great length on ideas familiar

to all young college graduates: but I owed these details to

certain economists, who, apropos of my critique of property, have

heaped dilemmas on dilemmas to prove that, if I was not a

proprietor, I necessarily must be a communist; all because they

did not understand THESIS, ANTITHESIS, and SYNTHESIS.

The synthetic idea of value, as the fundamental condition of

social order and progress, was dimly seen by Adam Smith, when, to

use the words of M. Blanqui, "he showed that labor is the

universal and invariable measure of values, and proved that

everything has its natural price, toward which it continually

gravitates amid the fluctuations of the market, occasioned by

ACCIDENTAL CIRCUMSTANCES foreign to the venal value of the

thing."

But this idea of value was wholly intuitive with Adam Smith, and

society does not change its habits upon the strength of

intuitions; it decides only upon the authority of facts. The

antinomy had to be expressed in a plainer and clearer manner: J.

B. Say was its principal interpreter. But, in spite of the

imaginative efforts and fearful subtlety of this economist,

Smith's definition controls him without his knowledge, and is

manifest throughout his arguments.

"To put a value on an article," says Say, "is to DECLARE that it

should be ESTIMATED equally with some other designated article.

. . . . . The value of everything is vague and arbitrary UNTIL

IT IS RECOGNIZED. . . . . ." There is, therefore, a method of

recognizing the value of things,--that is, of determining it;

and, as this recognition or determination results from the

comparison of things with each other, there is, further, a common

feature, a principle, by means of which we are able to DECLARE

that one thing is worth more or less than, or as much as,

another.

Say first said: "The measure of value is the value of another

product." Afterwards, having seen that this phrase was but a

tautology, he modified it thus: "The measure of value is the

QUANTITY of another product," which is quite as unintelligible.

Moreover, this writer, generally so clear and decided,

embarrasses himself with vain distinctions: "We may APPRECIATE

the value of things; we cannot MEASURE it,--that is, COMPARE it

with an invariable and known standard, for no such standard

exists. We can do nothing but ESTIMATE THE VALUE of things by

comparing them." At other times he distinguishes between REAL

values and RELATIVE values: "The former are those whose value

changes with the cost of production; the latter are those whose

value changes relatively to the value of other kinds of

merchandise."

Singular prepossession of a man of genius, who does not see that

to COMPARE, to APPRAISE, to APPRECIATE, is to MEASURE; that

every measure, being only a comparison, indicates for that very

reason a true relation, provided the comparison is accurate;

that, consequently, value, or real measure, and value, or

relative measure, are perfectly identical; and that the

difficulty is reduced, not to the discovery of a standard of

measure, since all quantities may serve each other in that

capacity, but to the determination of a point of comparison. In

geometry the point of comparison is extent, and the unit of

measure is now the division of the circle into three hundred and

sixty parts, now the circumference of the terrestrial globe, now

the average dimension of the human arm, hand, thumb, or foot. In

economic science, we have said after Adam Smith, the point of

view from which all values are compared is labor; as for the unit

of measure, that adopted in France is the FRANC. It is

incredible that so many sensible men should struggle for forty

years against an idea so simple. But no: THE COMPARISON OF

VALUES IS EFFECTED WITH OUT A POINT OF COMPARISON BETWEEN THEM,

AND WITHOUT A UNIT OF MEASURE,--such is the proposition which the

economists of the nineteenth century, rather than accept the

revolutionary idea of equality, have resolved to maintain against

all comers. What will posterity say?

I shall presently show, by striking examples, that the idea of

the measure or proportion of values, theoretically necessary, is

constantly realized in every-day life.

% 3.--Application of the law of proportionality of values.

Every product is a representative of labor.

Every product, therefore, can be exchanged for some other, as

universal practice proves.

But abolish labor, and you have left only articles of greater or

less usefulness, which, being stamped with no economic character,

no human seal, are without a common measure,--that is, are

logically unexchangeable.

Gold and silver, like other articles of merchandise, are

representatives of value; they have, therefore, been able to

serve as common measures and mediums of exchange. But the

special function which custom has allotted to the precious

metals,--that of serving as a commercial agent,--is purely

conventional, and any other article of merchandise, less

conveniently perhaps, but just as authentically, could play this

part: the economists admit it, and more than one example of it

can be cited. What, then, is the reason of this preference

generally accorded to the metals for the purpose of money, and

how shall we explain this speciality of function, unparalleled in

political economy, possessed by specie? For every unique thing

incomparable in kind is necessarily very difficult of

comprehension, and often even fails of it altogether. Now, is it

possible to reconstruct the series from which money seems to have

been detached, and, consequently, restore the latter to its true

principle?

In dealing with this question the economists, following their

usual course, have rushed beyond the limits of their science;

they have appealed to physics, to mechanics, to history, etc.;

they have talked of all things, but have given no answer. The

precious metals, they have said, by their scarcity, density, and

incorruptibility, are fitted to serve as money in, a degree

unapproached by other kinds of merchandise. In short, the

economists, instead of replying to the economic question put to

them, have set themselves to the examination of a question of

art. They have laid great stress on the mechanical adaptation of

gold and silver for the purpose of money; but not one of them has

seen or understood the economic reason which gave to the precious

metals the privilege they now enjoy.

Now, the point that no one has noticed is that, of all the

various articles of merchandise, gold and silver were the first

whose value was determined. In the patriarchal period, gold and

silver still were bought and sold in ingots, but already with a

visible tendency to superiority and with a marked preference.

Gradually sovereigns took possession of them and stamped them

with their seal; and from this royal consecration was born

money,--that is, the commodity par excellence; that which,

notwithstanding all commercial shocks, maintains a determined

proportional value, and is accepted in payment for all things.

That which distinguishes specie, in fact, is not the durability

of the metal, which is less than that of steel, nor its utility,

which is much below that of wheat, iron, coal, and numerous other

substances, regarded as almost vile when compared with gold;

neither is it its scarcity or density, for in both these respects

it might be replaced, either by labor spent upon other materials,

or, as at present, by bank notes representing vast amounts of

iron or copper. The distinctive feature of gold and silver, I

repeat, is the fact that, owing to their metallic properties, the

difficulties of their production, and, above all, the

intervention of public authority, their value as merchandise was

fixed and authenticated at an early date.

I say then that the value of gold and silver, especially of the

part that is made into money, although perhaps it has not yet

been calculated accurately, is no longer arbitrary; I add that it

is no longer susceptible of depreciation, like other values,

although it may vary continually nevertheless. All the logic and

erudition that has been expended to prove, by the example of gold

and silver, that value is essentially indeterminable, is a mass

of paralogisms, arising from a false idea of the question, ab

ignorantia elenchi.

Philip I., King of France, mixed with the livre tournois of

Charlemagne one-third alloy, imagining that, since he held the

monopoly of the power of coining money, he could do what every

merchant does who holds the monopoly of a product. What was, in

fact, this adulteration of money, for which Philip and his

successors are so severely blamed? A very sound argument from

the standpoint of commercial routine, but wholly false in the

view of economic science,--namely, that, supply and demand being

the regulators of value, we may, either by causing an artificial

scarcity or by monopolizing the manufacture, raise the

estimation, and consequently the value, of things, and that this

is as true of gold and silver as of wheat, wine, oil, tobacco.

Nevertheless, Philip's fraud was no sooner suspected than his

money was reduced to its true value, and he lost himself all that

he had expected to gain from his subjects. The same thing

happened after all similar attempts. What was the reason of this

disappointment?

Because, say the economists, the quantity of gold and silver in

reality being neither diminished nor increased by the false

coinage, the proportion of these metals to other merchandise was

not changed, and consequently it was not in the power of the

sovereign to make that which was worth but two worth four. For

the same reason, if, instead of debasing the coin, it had been in

the king's power to double its mass, the exchangeable value of

gold and silver would have decreased one-half immediately, always

on account of this proportionality and equilibrium. The

adulteration of the coin was, then, on the part of the king, a

forced loan, or rather, a bankruptcy, a swindle.

Marvelous! the economists explain very clearly, when they choose,

the theory of the measure of value; that they may do so, it is

necessary only to start them on the subject of money. Why, then,

do they not see that money is the written law of commerce, the

type of exchange, the first link in that long chain of creations

all of which, as merchandise, must receive the sanction of

society, and become, if not in fact, at least in right,

acceptable as money in settlement of all kinds of transactions?

"Money," M. Augier very truly says, "can serve, either as a means

of authenticating contracts already made, or as a good medium of

exchange, only so far as its value approaches the ideal of

permanence; for in all cases it exchanges or buys only the value

which it possesses."[8]

[8] "History of Public Credit."

Let us turn this eminently judicious observation into a general

formula.

Labor becomes a guarantee of well-being and equality only so far

as the product of each individual is in proportion with the mass;

for in all cases it exchanges or buys a value equal only to its

own.

Is it not strange that the defence of speculative and fraudulent

commerce is undertaken boldly, while at the same time the attempt

of a royal counterfeiter, who, after all, did but apply to gold

and silver the fundamental principle of political economy, the

arbitrary instability of values, is frowned down? If the

administration should presume to give twelve ounces of tobacco

for a pound,[9] the economists would cry robbery; but, if the

same administration, using its privilege, should increase the

price a few cents a pound, they would regard it as dear, but

would discover no violation of principles. What an imbroglio is

political economy!

[9] In France, the sale of tobacco is a government monopoly.--

Translator.

There is, then, in the monetization of gold and silver something

that the economists have given no account of; namely, the

consecration of the law of proportionality, the first act in the

constitution of values. Humanity does all things by infinitely

small degrees: after comprehending the fact that all products of

labor must be submitted to a proportional measure which makes all

of them equally exchangeable, it begins by giving this attribute

of absolute exchangeability to a special product, which shall

become the type and model of all others. In the same way, to

lift its members to liberty and equality, it begins by creating

kings. The people have a confused idea of this providential

progress when, in their dreams of fortune and in their legends,

they speak continually of gold and royalty; and the philosophers

only do homage to universal reason when, in their so-called moral

homilies and their socialistic utopias, they thunder with equal

violence against gold and tyranny. Auri sacra fames! Cursed

gold! ludicrously shouts some communist. As well say cursed

wheat, cursed vines, cursed sheep; for, like gold and silver,

every commercial value must reach an exact and accurate

determination. The work was begun long since; today it is making

visible progress.

Let us pass to other considerations.

It is an axiom generally admitted by the economists that ALL

LABOR SHOULD LEAVE AN EXCESS.

I regard this proposition as universally and absolutely true; it

is a corollary of the law of proportionality, which may be

regarded as an epitome of the whole science of economy. But--I

beg pardon of the economists--the principle that ALL LABOR

SHOULD LEAVE AN EXCESS has no meaning in their theory, and is not

susceptible of demonstration. If supply and demand alone

determine value, how can we tell what is an excess and what is a

SUFFICIENCY? If neither cost, nor market price, nor wages can

be mathematically determined, how is it possible to conceive of a

surplus, a profit? Commercial routine has given us the idea of

profit as well as the word; and, since we are equal politically,

we infer that every citizen has an equal right to realize profits

in his personal industry. But commercial operations are

essentially irregular, and it has been proved beyond question

that the profits of commerce are but an arbitrary discount forced

from the consumer by the producer,--in short, a displacement, to

say the least. This we should soon see, if it was possible to

compare the total amount of annual losses with the amount of

profits. In the thought of political economy, the principle that

ALL LABOR SHOULD LEAVE AN EXCESS is simply the consecration

of the constitutional right which all of us gained by the

revolution,-- the right of robbing one's neighbor.

The law of proportionality of values alone can solve this

problem. I will approach the question a little farther back: its

gravity warrants me in treating it with the consideration that it

merits.

Most philosophers, like most philologists, see in society only a

creature of the mind, or rather, an abstract name serving to

designate a collection of men. It is a prepossession which all

of us received in our infancy with our first lessons in grammar,

that collective nouns, the names of genera and species, do not

designate realities. There is much to say under this head, but I

confine myself to my subject. To the true economist, society is

a living being, endowed with an intelligence and an activity of

its own, governed by special laws discoverable by observation

alone, and whose existence is manifested, not under a material

aspect, but by the close concert and mutual interdependence of

all its members. Therefore, when a few pages back, adopting the

allegorical method, we used a fabulous god as a symbol of

society, our language in reality was not in the least

metaphorical: we only gave a name to the social being, an organic

and synthetic unit. In the eyes of any one who has reflected

upon the laws of labor and exchange (I disregard every other

consideration), the reality, I had almost said the personality,

of the collective man is as certain as the reality and the

personality of the individual man. The only difference is that

the latter appears to the senses as an organism whose parts are

in a state of material coherence, which is not true of society.

But intelligence, spontaneity, development, life, all that

constitutes in the highest degree the reality of being, is

as essential to society as to man: and hence it is that the

government of societies is a SCIENCE,-- that is, a study of

natural relations,--and not an ART,-- that is, good pleasure and

absolutism. Hence it is, finally, that every society declines

the moment it falls into the hands of the ideologists.

The principle that ALL LABOR SHOULD LEAVE AN EXCESS,

undemonstrable by political economy,--that is, by proprietary

routine,--is one of those which bear strongest testimony to the

reality of the collective person: for, as we shall see, this

principle is true of individuals only because it emanates from

society, which thus confers upon them the benefit of its own

laws.

Let us turn to facts. It has been observed that railroad

enterprises are a source of wealth to those who control them in a

much less degree than to the State. The observation is a true

one; and it might have been added that it applies, not only to

railroads, but to every industry. But this phenomenon, which is

essentially the result of the law of proportionality of values

and of the absolute identity of production and consumption, is at

variance with the ordinary notion of useful value and

exchangeable value.

The average price charged for the transportation of merchandise

by the old method is eighteen centimes per ton and kilometer, the

merchandise taken and delivered at the warehouses. It has been

calculated that, at this price, an ordinary railroad corporation

would net a profit of not quite ten per cent., nearly the same as

the profit made by the old method. But let us admit that the

rapidity of transportation by rail is to that by wheels, all

allowances made, as four to one: in society time itself being

value, at the same price the railroad would have an advantage

over the stage-wagon of four hundred per cent. `Nevertheless,

this enormous advantage, a very real one so far as society is

concerned, is by no means realized in a like proportion by the

carrier, who, while he adds four hundred per cent. to the social

value, makes personally less than ten per cent. Suppose, in

fact, to make the thing still clearer, that the railroad should

raise its price to twenty- five centimes, the rate by the old

method remaining at eighteen; it would lose immediately all its

consignments; shippers, consignees, everybody would return to the

stage-wagon, if necessary. The locomotive would be abandoned; a

social advantage of four hundred per cent. would be sacrificed to

a private loss of thirty-three per cent.

The reason of this is easily seen. The advantage which results

from the rapidity of the railroad is wholly social, and each

individual participates in it only in a very slight degree (do

not forget that we are speaking now only of the transportation of

merchandise); while the loss falls directly and personally on the

consumer. A special profit of four hundred per cent. in a

society composed of say a million of men represents four

ten-thousandths for each individual; while a loss to the consumer

of thirty-three per cent. means a social deficit of thirty- three

millions. Private interest and collective interest, seemingly so

divergent at first blush, are therefore perfectly identical and

equal: and this example may serve to show already how economic

science reconciles all interests.

Consequently, in order that society may realize the profit above

supposed, it is absolutely necessary that the railroad's prices

shall not exceed, or shall exceed but very little, those of the

stage-wagon.

But, that this condition may be fulfilled,--in other words, that

the railroad may be commercially possible,--the amount of

matter transported must be sufficiently great to cover at least

the interest on the capital invested and the running expenses of

the road. Then a railroad's first condition of existence is a

large circulation, which implies a still larger production and a

vast amount of exchanges.

But production, circulation, and exchange are not self-creative

things; again, the various kinds of labor are not developed in

isolation and independently of each other: their progress is

necessarily connected, solidary, proportional. There may be

antagonism among manufacturers; but, in spite of them, social

action is one, convergent, harmonious,--in a word, personal.

Further, there is a day appointed for the creation of great

instruments of labor: it is the day when general consumption

shall be able to maintain their employment,--that is, for all

these propositions are interconvertible, the day when ambient

labor can feed new machinery. To anticipate the hour appointed

by the progress of labor would be to imitate the fool who, going

from Lyons to Marseilles, chartered a steamer for himself alone.

These points cleared up, nothing is easier than to explain why

labor must leave an excess for each producer.

And first, as regards society: Prometheus, emerging from the womb

of Nature, awakens to life in a state of inertia which is very

charming, but which would soon become misery and torture if he

did not make haste to abandon it for labor. In this original

idleness, the product of Prometheus being nothing, his well-being

is the same as that of the brute, and may be represented by zero.

Prometheus begins to work: and from his first day's labor, the

first of the second creation, the product of Prometheus--that is,

his wealth, his well-being--is equal to ten.

The second day Prometheus divides his labor, and his product

increases to one hundred.

The third day, and each following day, Prometheus invents

machinery, discovers new uses in things, new forces in Nature;

the field of his existence extends from the domain of the senses

to the sphere of morals and intelligence, and with every step

that his industry takes the amount of his product increases, and

assures him additional happiness. And since, finally, with him,

to consume is to produce, it is clear that each day's

consumption, using up only the product of the day before, leaves

a surplus product for the day after.

But notice also--and give especial heed to this all-important

fact--that the well-being of man is directly proportional to the

intensity of labor and the multiplicity of industries: so that

the increase of wealth and the increase of labor are correlative

and parallel.

To say now that every individual participates in these general

conditions of collective development would be to affirm a truth

which, by reason of the evidence in its support, would appear

silly. Let us point out rather the two general forms of

consumption in society.

Society, like the individual, has first its articles of personal

consumption, articles which time gradually causes it to feel the

need of, and which its mysterious instincts command it to create.

Thus in the middle ages there was, with a large number of cities,

a decisive moment when the building of city halls and cathedrals

became a violent passion, which had to be satisfied at any price;

the life of the community depended upon it. Security and

strength, public order, centralization, nationality, country,

independence, these are the elements which make up the life of

society, the totality of its mental faculties; these are the

sentiments which must find expression and representation. Such

formerly was the object of the temple of Jerusalem, real

palladium of the Jewish nation; such was the temple of

Jupiter Capitolinus of Rome. Later, after the municipal palace

and the temple,--organs, so to speak, of centralization and

progress,--came the other works of public utility,--bridges,

theatres, schools, hospitals, roads, etc.

The monuments of public utility being used essentially in common,

and consequently gratuitously, society is rewarded for its

advances by the political and moral advantages resulting from

these great works, and which, furnishing security to labor and an

ideal to the mind, give fresh impetus to industry and the arts.

But it is different with the articles of domestic consumption,

which alone fall within the category of exchange. These can be

produced only upon the conditions of mutuality which make

consumption possible,--that is, immediate payment with advantage

to the producers. These conditions we have developed

sufficiently in the theory of proportionality of values, which we

might call as well the theory of the gradual reduction of cost.

I have demonstrated theoretically and by facts the principle that

ALL LABOR SHOULD LEAVE AN EXCESS; but this principle, as certain

as any proposition in arithmetic, is very far from universal

realization. While, by the progress of collective industry, each

individual day's labor yields a greater and greater product, and

while, by necessary consequence, the laborer, receiving the same

wages, must grow ever richer, there exist in society classes

which THRIVE and classes which PERISH; laborers paid twice,

thrice, a hundred times over, and laborers continually out of

pocket; everywhere, finally, people who enjoy and people who

suffer, and, by a monstrous division of the means of industry,

individuals who consume and do not produce. The distribution of

well-being follows all the movements of value, and reproduces

them in misery and luxury on a frightful scale and with terrible

energy. But everywhere, too, the progress of wealth--that is,

the proportionality of values--is the dominant law; and when the

economists combat the complaints of the socialists with the

progressive increase of public wealth and the alleviations of the

condition of even the most unfortunate classes, they proclaim,

without suspecting it, a truth which is the condemnation of their

theories.

For I entreat the economists to question themselves for a moment

in the silence of their hearts, far from the prejudices which

disturb them, and regardless of the employments which occupy them

or which they wait for, of the interests which they serve, of the

votes which they covet, of the distinctions which tickle their

vanity: let them tell me whether, hitherto, they have viewed the

principle that all labor should leave an excess in connection

with this series of premises and conclusions which we have

elaborated, and whether they ever have understood these words to

mean anything more than the right to speculate in values by

manipulating supply and demand; whether it is not true that they

affirm at once, on the one hand the progress of wealth and

well-being, and consequently the measure of values, and on the

other the arbitrariness of commercial transactions and the

incommensurability of values,--the flattest of contradictions?

Is it not because of this contradiction that we continually hear

repeated in lectures, and read in the works on political economy,

this absurd hypothesis: If THE PRICE OF ALL THINGS WAS DOUBLED.

. . . . . ? As if the price of all things was not the proportion

of things, and as if we could double a proportion, a relation, a

law! Finally, is it not because of the proprietary and abnormal

routine upheld by political economy that every one, in

commerce, industry, the arts, and the State, on the pretended

ground of services rendered to society, tends continually to

exaggerate his importance, and solicits rewards, subsidies, large

pensions, exorbitant fees: as if the reward of every service was

not determined necessarily by the sum of its expenses? Why do

not the economists, if they believe, as they appear to, that the

labor of each should leave an excess, use all their influence in

spreading this truth, so simple and so luminous: Each man's

labor can buy only the value which it contains, and this value is

proportional to the services of all other laborers?

But here a last consideration presents itself, which I will

explain in a few words.

J. B. Say, who of all the economists has insisted the most

strenuously upon the absolute indeterminability of value, is also

the one who has taken the most pains to refute that idea. He, if

I am not mistaken, is the author of the formula: EVERY PRODUCT

IS WORTH WHAT IT COSTS; or, what amounts to the same thing:

PRODUCTS ARE BOUGHT WITH PRODUCTS. This aphorism, which leads

straight to equality, has been controverted since by other

economists; we will examine in turn the affirmative and the

negative.

When I say that every product is worth the products which it has

cost, I mean that every product is a collective unit which, in a

new form, groups a certain number of other products consumed in

various quantities. Whence it follows that the products of human

industry are, in relation to each other, genera and species, and

that they form a series from the simple to the composite,

according to the number and proportion of the elements, all

equivalent to each other, which constitute each product. It

matters little, for the present, that this series, as well

as the equivalence of its elements, is expressed in practice more

or less exactly by the equilibrium of wages and fortunes; our

first business is with the relation of things, the economic law.

For here, as ever, the idea first and spontaneously generates the

fact, which, recognized then by the thought which has given it

birth, gradually rectifies itself and conforms to its principle.

Commerce, free and competitive, is but a long operation of

redressal, whose object is to define more and more clearly the

proportionality of values, until the civil law shall recognize it

as a guide in matters concerning the condition of persons. I

say, then, that Say's principle, EVERY PRODUCT IS WORTH WHAT IT

COSTS, indicates a series in human production analogous to the

animal and vegetable series, in which the elementary units (day's

works) are regarded as equal. So that political economy affirms

at its birth, but by a contradiction, what neither Plato, nor

Rousseau, nor any ancient or modern publicist has thought

possible,-- equality of conditions and fortunes.

Prometheus is by turns husbandman, wine-grower, baker, weaver.

Whatever trade he works at, laboring only for himself, he buys

what he consumes (his products) with one and the same money (his

products), whose unit of measurement is necessarily his day's

work. It is true that labor itself is liable to vary; Prometheus

is not always in the same condition, and from one moment to

another his enthusiasm, his fruitfulness, rises and falls. But,

like everything that is subject to variation, labor has its

average, which justifies us in saying that, on the whole, day's

work pays for day's work, neither more nor less. It is quite

true that, if we compare the products of a certain period of

social life with those of another, the hundred millionth day's

work of the human race will show a result incomparably superior

to that of the first; but it must be remembered also that the

life of the collective being can no more be divided than that of

the individual; that, though the days may not resemble each

other, they are indissolubly united, and that in the sum total of

existence pain and pleasure are common to them. If, then, the

tailor, for rendering the value of a day's work, consumes ten

times the product of the day's work of the weaver, it is as if

the weaver gave ten days of his life for one day of the tailor's.

This is exactly what happens when a peasant pays twelve francs to

a lawyer for a document which it takes him an hour to prepare;

and this inequality, this iniquity in exchanges, is the most

potent cause of misery that the socialists have unveiled,--as the

economists confess in secret while awaiting a sign from the

master that shall permit them to acknowledge it openly.

Every error in commutative justice is an immolation of the

laborer, a transfusion of the blood of one man into the body of

another. . . . . Let no one be frightened; I have no intention

of fulminating against property an irritating philippic;

especially as I think that, according to my principles, humanity

is never mistaken; that, in establishing itself at first upon the

right of property, it only laid down one of the principles of its

future organization; and that, the preponderance of property once

destroyed, it remains only to reduce this famous antithesis to

unity. All the objections that can be offered in favor of

property I am as well acquainted with as any of my critics, whom

I ask as a favor to show their hearts when logic fails them. How

can wealth that is not measured by labor be VALUABLE? And if it

is labor that creates wealth and legitimates property, how

explain the consumption of the idler? Where is the honesty in a

system of distribution in which a product is worth, according to

the person, now more, now less, than it costs.

Say's ideas led to an agrarian law; therefore, the conservative

party hastened to protest against them. "The original source of

wealth," M. Rossi had said, "is labor. In proclaiming this great

principle, the industrial school has placed in evidence not only

an economic principle, but that social fact which, in the hands

of a skilful historian, becomes the surest guide in following the

human race in its marchings and haltings upon the face of the

earth."

Why, after having uttered these profound words in his lectures,

has M. Rossi thought it his duty to retract them afterwards in a

review, and to compromise gratuitously his dignity as a

philosopher and an economist?

"Say that wealth is the result of labor alone; affirm that labor

is always the measure of value, the regulator of prices; yet, to

escape one way or another the objections which these doctrines

call forth on all hands, some incomplete, others absolute, you

will be obliged to generalize the idea of labor, and to

substitute for analysis an utterly erroneous synthesis."

I regret that a man like M. Rossi should suggest to me so sad a

thought; but, while reading the passage that I have just quoted,

I could not help saying: Science and truth have lost their

influence: the present object of worship is the shop, and, after

the shop, the desperate constitutionalism which represents it.

To whom, then, does M. Rossi address himself? Is he in favor of

labor or something else; analysis or synthesis? Is he in favor

of all these things at once? Let him choose, for the conclusion

is inevitably against him.

If labor is the source of all wealth, if it is the surest guide

in tracing the history of human institutions on the face of the

earth, why should equality of distribution, equality as measured

by labor, not be a law?

If, on the contrary, there is wealth which is not the product of

labor, why is the possession of it a privilege? Where is the

legitimacy of monopoly? Explain then, once for all, this theory

of the right of unproductive consumption; this jurisprudence of

caprice, this religion of idleness, the sacred prerogative of a

caste of the elect.

What, now, is the significance of this appeal from ANALYSIS to

the false judgments of the synthesis? These metaphysical terms

are of no use, save to indoctrinate simpletons, who do not

suspect that the same proposition can be construed, indifferently

and at will, analytically or synthetically. LABOR IS THE

PRINCIPLE OF VALUE END THE SOURCE OF WEALTH: an analytic

proposition such as M. Rossi likes, since it is the summary of an

analysis in which it is demonstrated that the primitive notion of

labor is identical with the subsequent notions of product, value,

capital, wealth, etc. Nevertheless, we see that M. Rossi rejects

the doctrine which results from this analysis. LABOR, CAPITAL,

AND LAND ARE THE SOURCES OF WEALTH: a synthetic proposition,

precisely such as M. Rossi does not like. Indeed, wealth is

considered here as a general notion, produced in three distinct,

but not identical, ways. And yet the doctrine thus formulated is

the one that M. Rossi prefers. Now, would it please M. Rossi to

have us render his theory of monopoly analytically and ours of

labor synthetically? I can give him the satisfaction. . . . .

But I should blush, with so earnest a man, to prolong such

badinage. M. Rossi knows better than any one that analysis and

synthesis of themselves prove absolutely nothing, and that the

important work, as Bacon said, is to make exact comparisons and

complete enumerations.

Since M. Rossi was in the humor for abstractions, why did he not

say to the phalanx of economists who listen so respectfully to

the least word that falls from his lips:

"Capital is the MATERIAL of wealth, as gold and silver are the

material of money, as wheat is the material of bread, and,

tracing the series back to the end, as earth, water, fire, and

air are the material of all our products. But it is labor, labor

alone, which successively creates each utility given to these

MATERIALS, and which consequently transforms them into capital

and wealth. Capital is the result of labor,-- that is, realized

intelligence and life,--as animals and plants are realizations of

the soul of the universe, and as the chefs d'oeuvre of Homer,

Raphael, and Rossini are expressions of their ideas and

sentiments. Value is the proportion in which all the

realizations of the human soul must balance each other in order

to produce a harmonious whole, which, being wealth, gives us

well-being, or rather is the token, not the object, of our

happiness.

"The proposition, THERE IS NO MEASURE OF VALUE, is illogical and

contradictory, as is shown by the very arguments which have been

offered in its support.

"The proposition, LABOR IS THE PRINCIPLE OF PROPORTIONALITY OF

VALUES, not only is true, resulting as it does from an

irrefutable analysis, but it is the object of progress, the

condition and form of social well-being, the beginning and end

of political economy. From this proposition and its corollaries,

EVERY PRODUCT IS WORTH WHAT IT COSTS, and PRODUCTS ARE BOUGHT

WITH PRODUCTs, follows the dogma of equality of conditions.

"The idea of value socially constituted, or of proportionality of

values, serves to explain further: (a) how a mechanical

invention, notwithstanding the privilege which it temporarily

creates and the disturbances which it occasions, always produces

in the end a general amelioration; (b) how the value of an

economical process to its discoverer can never equal the profit

which it realizes for society; (c) how, by a series of

oscillations between supply and demand, the value of every

product constantly seeks a level with cost and with the needs of

consumption, and consequently tends to establish itself in a

fixed and positive manner; (d) how, collective production

continually increasing the amount of consumable things, and the

day's work constantly obtaining higher and higher pay, labor must

leave an excess for each producer; (e) how the amount of work to

be done, instead of being diminished by industrial progress, ever

increases in both quantity and quality--that is, in intensity and

difficulty--in all branches of industry; (f) how social value

continually eliminates fictitious values,--in other words, how

industry effects the socialization of capital and property; (g)

finally, how the distribution of products, growing in regularity

with the strength of the mutual guarantee resulting from the

constitution of value, pushes society onward to equality of

conditions and fortunes.

"Finally, the theory of the successive constitution of all

commercial values implying the infinite progress of labor,

wealth, and well-being, the object of society, from the economic

point of view, is revealed to us: TO PRODUCE INCESSANTLY, WITH

THEE LEAST POSSIBLE AMOUNT OF LABOR FOR EACH PRODUCT, THE

GREATEST POSSIBLE QUANTITY AND VARIETY OF VALUES, IN SUCH A WAY

AS TO REALIZE, FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL, THE GREATEST AMOUNT OF

PHYSICAL, MORAL, AND INTELLECTUAL WELL-BEING, AND, FOR THE RACE,

THE HIGHEST PERFECTION AND INFINITE GLORY.

Now that we have determined, not without difficulty, the meaning

of the question asked by the Academy of Moral Sciences touching

the oscillations of profit and wages, it is time to begin the

essential part of our work. Wherever labor has not been

socialized,--that is, wherever value is not synthetically

determined,--there is irregularity and dishonesty in exchange; a

war of stratagems and ambuscades; an impediment to production,

circulation, and consumption; unproductive labor; insecurity;

spoliation; insolidarity; want; luxury: but at the same time an

effort of the genius of society to obtain justice, and a constant

tendency toward association and order. Political economy is

simply the history of this grand struggle. On the one hand,

indeed, political economy, in so far as it sanctions and pretends

to perpetuate the anomalies of value and the prerogatives of

selfishness, is truly the theory of misfortune and the

organization of misery; but in so far as it explains the means

invented by civilization to abolish poverty, although these means

always have been used exclusively in the interest of monopoly,

political economy is the preamble of the organization of wealth.

It is important, then, that we should resume the study of

economic facts and practices, discover their meaning, and

formulate their philosophy. Until this is done, no knowledge of

social progress can be acquired, no reform attempted. The error

of socialism has consisted hitherto in perpetuating religious

reverie by launching forward into a fantastic future instead of

seizing the reality which is crushing it; as the wrong of the

economists has been in regarding every accomplished fact as an

injunction against any proposal of reform.

For my own part, such is not my conception of economic science,

the true social science. Instead of offering a priori arguments

as solutions of the formidable problems of the organization of

labor and the distribution of wealth, I shall interrogate

political economy as the depositary of the secret thoughts of

humanity; I shall cause it to disclose the facts in the order of

their occurrence, and shall relate their testimony without

intermingling it with my own. It will be at once a triumphant

and a lamentable history, in which the actors will be ideas, the

episodes theories, and the dates formulas.