‹In relation to one another, men are proprietors only of values, and
values represent only services compared, and voluntarily received and
rendered.› [p227]
That, on the one hand, the true meaning of the word ‹value› is
what I have already demonstrated it to be (Chapter V.); and that,
on the other, men are never, and never can be, as regards each
other, proprietors of anything but ‹value›, is evident as well from
reasoning as from experience. From reasoning—for why should I go to
purchase from a man, by means of an effort, what, without any effort,
I can obtain from nature? From universal experience, which is too
weighty to be despised in this question,—nothing being more fitted
to give us confidence in a theory than the rational and practical
acquiescence of men of all ages and all countries. Now I say that
universal consent ratifies the sense which I give here to the word
Property. When a public officer makes an inventory after a death,
or by authority of justice, of when a merchant, manufacturer, or
farmer does the same thing for his own satisfaction, or when it is
done by officials under a bankruptcy—what do they inscribe on the
stamped rolls as each object presents itself? Is it its ‹utility›,
its intrinsic merit? No, it is its ‹value›, that is to say, the
equivalent of the trouble which, any purchaser taken at random would
have in procuring himself a similar commodity. Does a jury named
by a judge to report upon a work or a commodity inquire whether it
be more useful than another work or commodity? Do they take into
consideration the enjoyments which may be thereby procured? Do
they esteem a hammer more than a china jar, because the hammer is
admirably adapted to make the law of gravitation available to its
possessor? or a glass of water more than a diamond, because the
former is capable of rendering more substantial service? or the
work of Say more than the work of Fourier, because from the former
we can draw more rational enjoyment and more solid instruction? No,
they ‹value›, they set down the ‹value›, in rigorous conformity,
observe, with my definition, or, to say better, it is my definition
which is in conformity with their practice. They take into account,
not the natural advantages, or the gratuitous utility, attached to
each commodity, but the exertion which each acquirer should have to
make for himself, or to require another to make for him, in order
to procure it. They never think of the exertion which nature has
made, if I may hazard the expression, but upon the exertion which
the purchaser would have had to make. And when the operation is
terminated, when the public is told the sum total of Value which is
carried to the balance-sheet, they exclaim with one voice, Here is
the wealth which is available to the «Proprietor».
As property includes nothing but value, and as value expresses only a
relation, it follows that property itself is only a relation. [p228]
When the public, on the inspection of two inventories, pronounces
one man to be richer than another, it is not meant to say that the
relative amount of the two properties is indicative of the relative
absolute wealth of the two men, or the amount of enjoyments they can
command. There enters into positive satisfactions and enjoyments
a certain amount of ‹common and gratuitous utility› which alters
this proportion very much. As regards the light of day, the air we
breathe, the heat of the sun, all men are equal; and Inequality—as
indicative of a difference in property or value —has reference only
to ‹onerous utility›.
Now I have often said, and I shall probably have occasion frequently
to repeat the remark (for it is the finest and most striking,
although perhaps the least understood, of the social harmonies, and
includes all the others), that it is of the essence of progress—and
indeed in this alone progress consists—to transform onerous into
gratuitous utility—to diminish value without diminishing utility—to
permit each individual to procure the same things with less effort,
either to make or to remunerate; to increase continually the mass
of things which are ‹common›, and the enjoyment of which, being
distributed in a uniform manner among all, effaces by degrees the
Inequality which results from difference of fortune.
We must not omit to analyze very carefully the result of this
mechanism.
In contemplating the phenomena of the social world, how often have
I had occasion to feel the profound justice of Rousseau’s saying:
“Il faut beaucoup de philosophie pour observer ce qu’on voit tous
les jours!” It is difficult to observe accurately what we see every
day; ‹Custom›, that veil which blinds the eyes of the vulgar, and
which the attentive observer cannot always throw off, prevents our
discerning the most marvellous of all the Economic phenomena: real
wealth falling incessantly from the domain of Property into that of
Community.
Let us endeavour to demonstrate and explain this democratic
evolution, and, if possible, test its range and its effects.
I have remarked elsewhere that if we desire to compare two epochs
as regards real wealth and prosperity, we must refer all to a
common standard, which is unskilled labour measured by time, and
ask ourselves this question—What difference in the amount of
satisfaction, according to the degree of advancement which society
has reached, is a determinate quantity of unskilled labour—for
example, a day’s work of a common labourer—capable of yielding us?
[p229]
This question implies two others:
What was the relation of the satisfaction to unskilled labour at the
beginning of the period? What is it now?
The difference will be the measure of the advance which gratuitous
utility has made relatively to onerous utility—the domain of
community relatively to that of property.
I believe that for the politician no problem can be proposed more
interesting and instructive than this; and the reader must pardon me
if, in order to arrive at a satisfactory solution of it, I fatigue
him with too many examples.
I made, at the outset, a sort of catalogue of the most common human
wants: respiration, food, clothing, lodging, locomotion, instruction,
amusement, etc.
Let us resume the same order, and inquire what amount of
satisfactions a common day-labourer could at the beginning, and can
now, procure himself, by a determinate number of days’ labour.
‹Respiration.›—Here all is completely gratuitous and common from the
beginning. Nature does all, and leaves us nothing to do. Efforts,
services, value, property, progress, are all out of the question. As
regards utility, Diogenes is as rich as Alexander—as regards value,
Alexander is as rich as Diogenes.
‹Food.›—At present, the value of a hectolitre of corn in France is
the equivalent of from 15 to 20 days’ work of a common unskilled
labourer. This is a fact which we may regard as unimportant, but
it is not the less worthy of remark. It is a fact that in our day,
viewing humanity in its least advanced aspect, and as represented
by a penniless workman, enjoyment measured by a hectolitre of corn
can be obtained by an expenditure of 15 days’ unskilled labour. The
ordinary calculation is, that three hectolitres of corn annually are
required for the subsistence of one man. The common labourer, then,
produces, if not his subsistence, what comes to the same thing, the
value of his subsistence, by an expenditure of from 45 to 60 days’
labour in the year. If we represent the type of value by ‹one› (in
this case ‹one day’s unskilled labour›), the value of a hectolitre of
corn will be expressed by 15, 18, or 20, according to the year. The
relation of these two values is, say, ‹one to fifteen›.
To discover if progress has been made, and to measure it, we must
inquire what this relation was in the early days of the human race.
In truth, I dare not hazard a figure, but there is one way of
clearing up the difficulty. When you hear a man declaiming against
the social order, against the appropriation of the soil, against
rent, against machinery, lead him into the middle [p230] of a
primitive forest and in sight of a pestilential morass. Say to him,
I wish to free you from the yoke of which you complain,—I wish to
withdraw you from the atrocious struggles of anarchical competition,
from the antagonism of interests, from the selfishness of wealth,
from the oppression of property, from the crushing rivalry of
machinery, from the stifling atmosphere of society. Here is land
exactly like what the first clearers had to encounter. Take as much
of it as you please—take it by tens, by hundreds of acres. Cultivate
it yourself. All that you can make it produce is yours. I make but
one condition, that you will not have recourse to that society of
which you represent yourself as the victim.
As regards the soil, observe, this man would be placed in exactly the
same situation which mankind at large occupied at the beginning. Now
I fear not to be contradicted when I assert that this man would not
produce a hectolitre of corn in two years: Ratio 15 to 600.
And now we can measure the progress which has been made. As regards
corn—and despite his being obliged to pay rent for his land, interest
for his capital, and hire for his tools—or rather because he pays
them—a labourer now obtains with 15 days’ work what he would formerly
have had difficulty in procuring with 600 days’ work. The value of
corn, then, measured by unskilled labour, has fallen from 600 to 15,
or from 40 to 1. A hectolitre of corn has for man the same utility
it had the day after the deluge—it contains the same quantity of
alimentary substance—it satisfies the same want, and in the same
degree. It constitutes an equal amount of ‹real wealth›—it does not
constitute an equal amount of ‹relative wealth›. Its production has
been transferred in a great measure ‹to the charge of nature›. It is
obtained with ‹less› human ‹effort›. It renders ‹less service› in
passing from hand to hand, it has less ‹value›. In a word, it has
become ‹gratuitous›—not absolutely, but in the proportion of 40 to 1.
And not only has it become ‹gratuitous›—it has become ‹common› to the
same extent. For it is not to the profit of the person who produces
the corn that 39-40ths of the effort have been annihilated, but to
the advantage of the consumer, whatever be the kind of labour to
which he devotes himself.
‹Clothing.›—We have here again the same phenomenon. A common
day-labourer enters one of the warehouses at the Marais,[54] and
there obtains clothing corresponding to twenty days of his labour,
which we suppose to be unskilled. Were he to attempt to make [p231]
this clothing himself, his whole life would be insufficient. Had he
desired to obtain the same clothing in the time of Henri Quatre, it
would have cost him three or four hundred days’ work. What then has
become of this difference in the ‹value› of these stuffs in relation
to the quantity of unskilled labour? It has been annihilated, because
the ‹gratuitous› forces of nature now perform a great portion of the
work, and it has been annihilated to the advantage of mankind at
large.
For we must not fail to remark here, that every man owes his
neighbour a service equivalent to what he has received from him. If,
then, the art of the weaver had made no progress, if weaving were not
executed in part by ‹gratuitous› forces, the weaver would still be
occupied two or three hundred days in fabricating these stuffs, and
our workman would require to give him two or three hundred days’ work
in order to obtain the clothing he wants. And since the weaver cannot
succeed, with all his wish to do so in obtaining two or three hundred
days’ labour in recompense for the intervention of gratuitous forces,
and for the progress achieved, we are warranted in saving that this
progress has been effected to the advantage of the purchaser or
consumer, and that it is a gain to society at large.
‹Conveyance.›—Prior to all progress, when the human race, like our
day-labourer, was obliged to make use of primitive and unskilled
labour, if a man had desired to have a load of a hundredweight
transported from Paris to Bayonne, he would have had only this
alternative, either to take the load on his own shoulders, and
perform the work himself, travelling over hill and dale, which would
have required a year’s labour, or else to ask some one to perform
this rough piece of work for him; and as, by hypothesis, the person
who undertook this work would have to employ the same means and the
same time, he would undoubtedly demand a remuneration equal to a
year’s labour. At that period, then, the value of unskilled labour
being ‹one›, that of transport was 300 for the weight of a cwt. and a
distance of 200 leagues.
But things are changed now. In fact there is no workman in Paris who
cannot obtain the same result by the sacrifice of two days’ labour.
The alternative indeed is still the same. He must either do the work
himself, or get others to do it for him by remunerating them. If our
day-labourer perform it himself, it will still cost him a year of
fatigue; but if he applies to men who make it their business, he will
find twenty carriers to do what he wants for three or four francs,
that is to say, for the equivalent of two days’ unskilled labour.
Thus the value of such labour being [p232] represented by ‹one›, that
of transport, which was represented by 300, is now reduced to ‹two›.
In what way has this astonishing revolution been brought about? Ages
have been required to accomplish it. Animals have been trained,
mountains have been pierced, valleys have been filled up, bridges
have been thrown across rivers, sledges and afterwards wheeled
carriages have been invented, obstacles, which give rise to labour,
services, value, have been removed; in short, we have succeeded in
accomplishing, with labour equal to two, what our remote ancestors
would have effected only by labour equal to 300. This progress has
been realized by men who had no thought but for their own interests.
And yet, who profits by it now? Our poor day-labourer, and with him
society at large.
Let no one say that this is not Community. I say that it is Community
in the strictest sense of the word. At the outset the satisfaction
in question was, in the estimation of all, the equivalent of 300
days’ unskilled labour, or a proportionally smaller amount of skilled
labour. Now 298 parts of this labour out of 300 are performed by
nature, and mankind are exonerated to a corresponding extent. Now,
evidently all men are in exactly the same situation as regards the
obstacles which have been removed, the distance which has been wiped
out, the fatigue which has been obviated, the value which has been
annihilated, since all obtain the result without having to pay for
it. What they pay for is the human effort which remains still to be
made, as compared with and measured by two days’ work of an unskilled
labourer. In other words, the man who has not himself effected this
improvement, and who has only muscular force to offer in exchange,
has still to give two days’ labour to secure the satisfaction
he wishes to obtain. All other men can obtain it with a smaller
sacrifice of labour. The Paris lawyer, earning 30,000 francs a year,
can obtain it for a twenty-fifth part of a day’s labour, etc.,—by
which we see that all men are equal as regards the value annihilated,
and that the inequality is restrained within the limits of the
portion of value which survives the change, that is, within the
domain of Property.
Economical science labours under a disadvantage in being obliged to
have recourse to hypothetical cases. The reader is taught to believe
that the phenomena which we wish to describe are to be discovered
only in special cases, adduced for the sake of illustration. But it
is evident that what we have said of corn, clothing, and means of
transport, is true of everything else. When an author generalizes,
it is for the reader to particularize; and [p233] when the former
devotes himself to cold and forbidding analysis, the latter may at
least indulge in the pleasures of synthesis.
The synthetic law may be reduced to this formula:
‹Value, which is social property, springs from Effort and Obstacle.›
‹In proportion as the obstacle is lessened, effort, value, or the
domain of property, is diminished along with it.›
‹With reference to each given satisfaction, Property always recedes
and Community always advances.›
Must we then conclude with M. Proudhon that the days of Property are
numbered? Because, as regards each useful result to be realized, each
satisfaction to be obtained, Property recedes before Community, are
we thence to conclude that the former is about to be absorbed and
annihilated altogether?
To adopt this conclusion would be to mistake completely the nature
of man. We encounter here a sophism analogous to the one we have
already refuted on the subject of the interest of capital. Interest
has a tendency to fall, it is said; then it is destined ultimately to
disappear altogether. Value and property go on diminishing; then they
are destined, it is now said, to be annihilated.
The whole sophism consists in omitting the words, ‹for each
determinate result›. It is quite true that men obtain ‹determinate
results› with a less amount of effort—it is in this respect that
they are progressive and perfectible—it is on this account that we
are able to affirm that the ‹relative› domain of property becomes
narrower, looking at it as regards each given satisfaction.
But it is not true that all the ‹results› which it is ‹possible› to
obtain are ever exhausted, and hence it is absurd to suppose that it
is in the nature of progress to lessen or limit the ‹absolute› domain
of property.
We have repeated often, and in every shape, that each given effort
may, in course of time, serve as the vehicle of a greater amount of
gratuitous utility, without our being warranted thence to conclude
that men should ever cease to make efforts. All that we can conclude
from it is, that their forces, thus rendered disposable, will be
employed in combating other obstacles, and will realize, with equal
labour, satisfactions hitherto unknown.
I must enlarge still farther on this idea. These are not times
to leave anything to possible misconstruction when we venture to
pronounce the fearful words, Property and Community.
Man in a state of isolation can, at any given moment of his
existence, exert only a certain amount of effort; and the same thing
holds of society. [p234]
When man in a state of isolation realizes a step of progress, by
making natural agents co-operate with his own labour, the sum of
his efforts is reduced by so much, ‹in relation to the useful
result sought for›. It would be reduced not relatively only, but
‹absolutely›, if this man, content with his original condition,
should convert his progress into leisure, and should abstain from
devoting to the acquisition of new enjoyments that portion of effort
which is now rendered disposable. That would take for granted that
ambition, desire, aspiration, were limited forces, and that the human
heart was not indefinitely expansible; but it is quite otherwise.
Robinson Crusoe has no sooner handed over part of his work to natural
agents, than he devotes his efforts to new enterprises. The sum total
of his efforts remains the same,—but one portion of these efforts,
aided by a greater amount of natural and gratuitous co-operation, has
become more productive, more prolific. This is exactly the phenomenon
which we see realized in society.
Because the plough, the harrow, the hammer, the saw, oxen, and
horses, the sail, water-power, steam, have successively relieved
mankind from an enormous amount of labour, in proportion to each
result obtained, it does not necessarily follow that this labour,
thus set free and rendered disposable, should lie dormant. Remember
what has been already said as to the indefinite expansibility of
our wants and desires—and note what is passing around you—and you
will not fail to see that as often as man succeeds in vanquishing
an obstacle by the aid of natural agents, he sets his own forces
to grapple with other obstacles. We have more facility in the art
of printing than we had formerly, but we print more. Each book
corresponds to a less amount of human effort, to less value, less
property; but we have more books, and, on the whole, the same
amount of effort, value, property. The same thing might be said of
clothing, of houses, of railways, of all human productions. It is not
the aggregate of values which has diminished; it is the aggregate
of utilities which has increased. It is not the ‹absolute› domain
of Property which has been narrowed; it is the absolute domain of
Community which has been enlarged. Progress has not paralyzed labour;
it has augmented wealth.
Things that are gratuitous and common to all are within the domain
of natural forces; and it is as true in theory as in fact that this
domain is constantly extending.
Value and Property are within the domain of human efforts, of
reciprocal services, and this domain becomes narrower and narrower
as regards each given result, but not as regards the aggregate of
results; as regards each determinate satisfaction, but not [p235]
as regards the aggregate of satisfactions, because the amount of
‹possible› enjoyments is without limit.
It is as true, then, that relative Property gives place to Community,
as it is false that absolute Property tends to disappear altogether.
Property is a pioneer which accomplishes its work in one circle,
and then passes into another. Before property could disappear
altogether we must suppose every obstacle to have been removed,
labour to have been superseded, human efforts to have become useless;
we must suppose men to have no longer need to effect exchanges, or
render services to each other; we must suppose all production to
be spontaneous, and enjoyment to spring directly from desire; in a
word, we must suppose men to have become equal to gods. Then, indeed,
all would be gratuitous, and we should have all things in common.
Effort, service, value, property, everything indicative of our native
weakness and infirmity, would cease to exist.
In vain man raises himself in the social scale, and advances on the
road of civilisation—he is as far as ever from Omnipotence. It is
one of the attributes of the Divinity, as far as we can understand
what is so much above human reason, that between volition and result
no obstacle is interposed. God said, ‹Let there be light, and there
was light›. And it is the powerlessness of man to express that to
which there is so little analogous in his own nature, which reduced
Moses to the necessity of supposing between the divine will and the
creation of light the intervention of an obstacle in the shape even
of a word to be pronounced. But whatever advance man, in virtue of
his progressive nature, may be destined yet to make, we may safely
affirm that he will never succeed in freeing himself entirely from
the obstacles which encumber his path, or in rendering himself
independent of the labour of his head and of his hands. The reason
is obvious. In proportion as certain obstacles are overcome, his
desires dilate and expand, and new obstacles oppose themselves to new
efforts. We shall always, then, have labour to perform, to exchange,
to estimate, and to value. Property will exist until the consummation
of all things, increasing in mass in proportion as men become more
active and more numerous; whilst at the same time each effort, each
service, each value, each portion of property, considered relatively,
will, in passing from hand to hand, serve as the vehicle of an
increasing proportion of common and gratuitous utility.
* * * * *
The reader will observe that we use the word Property in a very
extended sense, but a sense which on that account is not the [p236]
less exact. ‹Property is the right which a man possesses of applying
to his own use his own efforts, or of not giving them away except
in consideration of equivalent efforts.› The distinction between
Proprietors and Prolétaires, then, is radically false, unless it is
pretended that there is a class of men who do no work, who have no
control over their own exertions, or over the services which they
render and those which they receive in exchange.
It is wrong to restrict the term Property to one of its special
forms, to capital, to land, to what yields interest or rent; and
it is in consequence of this erroneous definition that we proceed
afterwards to separate men into two antagonist classes. Analysis
demonstrates that interest and rent are the fruit of services
rendered, and have the same origin, the same nature, the same rights
as manual labour.
The world may be regarded as a vast workshop which Providence has
supplied abundantly with materials and forces of which human labour
makes use. Anterior efforts, present efforts, even future efforts,
or promises of efforts, are exchanged for each other. Their relative
merit, as established by exchange, and independently of gratuitous
forces and materials, brings out the element of value; and it is of
the value created by each individual that each is owner or proprietor.
But what does it signify, it may be said, that a man is proprietor
only of the value, or of the acknowledged merit of his service? The
possession of the value carries along with it that of the utility
which is mingled with it. John has two sacks of corn. Peter has only
one. John, you say, is twice as rich in ‹value›. Surely, then, he is
also twice as rich in utility, even natural utility. He has twice as
much to eat.
Unquestionably it is so: but has he not performed double the labour?
Let us come, nevertheless, to the root of the objection.
Essential, absolute wealth resides, as we have said, in utility. The
very word implies this. It is ‹utility› alone which renders ‹service›
(‹uti›—in French ‹servir›). It alone has relation to our wants, and
it is it alone which man has in view when he devotes himself to
labour. Utility at all events is the ultimate object of pursuit; for
things do not satisfy our hunger or quench our thirst because they
include value, but because they possess utility.
We muse take into account, however, the phenomenon which society
exhibits in this respect.
Man in a state of isolation seeks to realize utility without [p237]
thinking about value, of which, in that state, he can have no idea.
In the social state, on the contrary, man seeks to realize value
irrespective of utility. The commodity he produces is not intended to
satisfy his own wants, and he has little interest in its being useful
or not. It is for the person who desires to acquire it to judge of
that. What concerns the producer is, that it should bear as high a
value as possible in the market, as he is certain that the utilities
he has to receive in return will be in proportion to the value of
what he carries thither.
The division of labour and of occupation leads to this result, that
each produces what he does not himself consume, and consumes what he
does not himself produce. As producers, what we are in quest of is
value; as consumers, what we seek is utility. Universal experience
testifies to this. The man who polishes a diamond, or embroiders
lace, or distils brandy, or cultivates the poppy, never inquires
whether the consumption of these commodities is good or bad in
itself. He gives his work, and if his work realizes value, that is
enough for him.
And let me here remark in passing, that the moral or immoral has
nothing to do with labour, but with desire; and that society is
improved, not by rendering the producer, but the consumer, more
moral. What an outcry was raised against the English on account of
their cultivating opium in India for the deliberate purpose, it
was said, of poisoning the Chinese! This was to misunderstand and
misapply the principle of morality. No one will ever be effectually
prevented from producing a commodity which, being in demand, is
possessed of value. It is for the man who demands a particular
species of enjoyment to calculate the effects of it; and it is in
vain that we attempt to divorce foresight from responsibility.
Our vine-growers produce wine, and will produce it as long as it
possesses value, without troubling themselves to inquire whether this
wine leads to drunkenness in Europe or to suicide in America. It is
the judgment which men form as to their wants and satisfactions that
determines the direction of labour. This is true even of man in an
isolated state; and if a foolish vanity had spoken more loudly to
Robinson Crusoe than hunger, he would, in place of devoting his time
to the chase, have employed it in arranging feathers for his hat.
It is the same with nations as with individuals—serious people have
serious pursuits, and frivolous people devote themselves to frivolous
occupations.
But to return: